Denmark - Day 8 through 12

Work week. We have been getting in to lab around 9am every morning and then working until about 6:30 or 7. Results here are up and down. Somethings are working and somethings are not, but that is typical regardless of the lab. Some things never change.

Here's a picture of almost everyone in the AFM room trying to measure the topography of some DNA samples. This was near the end of the day and we agreed to convene in this room before taking off for the day.


We gave talks yesterday the danish students. They were supposed to be a 10 minute summary of our plans and results. Here's a screen shot of my ppt.

Here is a picture of us in the kitchen working on our talks. Well, the one guy is drinking beer, but Elizabeth and I were working.


Lastly, here is a picture of my office.

The side of Denmark you shouldn't see!
Just kidding. Actually, nevermind, I guess I am not kidding.

We took Andy to dinner tonight because it was his last night in town. He had to get back for the start of high school. We rode bikes to a seafood restaurant, which turned out to be closed. We then walked about 20 mins to another place. The entrees were probably $45 per person, which was a little steep even for Denmark (but that includes tax and tip). I ordered vegetarian! It was plated very neatly, and the portions were extremely small. Surprisingly I wasn't hungry when I left. I paid cash, but the rest of the group wanted to pay on their CC's. When their visas came back rejected, they scrounged enough cash to pay. We walked back home with our
bikes (because we didn't bring bike lights) and called it a night.

Denmark - Day 7

I got up earlier than anyone else (around 11am) and took a short stroll to the park at the end of the street. I ran a loop around the park (it was a big park - maybe a 2.5 mile loop), and stopped at the beach when I was done. The beach was small, but the Danes seemed to love the lukewarm weather and sand. I got home and everyone else was slowly waking. We went to the store to buy supplies for dinner, then we went off in search of lunch and a laundromat. We ate lunch at a small sandwich shop near the movie theater. See the red arrow below.

We found the laundry right after lunch, in no time, but it took us a little while to determine the exact method of washing clothes. You would think laundry is like using the restroom, universal, the same in every country. Wrong. They centrifuge their laundry in a whole seperate machine before drying. Apparently for efficiency, but still unusual to us. After slowly figuring out how to buy detergent, program the washers and dryers, and work the centrifuge we agreed to come back with our laundry and do it again some other time. We then rode to lab for a bit to process our reactions. Here is a picture of everyone climbing the stairs.

After school we rode back to the guest house, prepared and ate chicken salad, then milled around. We didn't finish eating until around 11pm. We got a late start on the day though.

Denmark - Day 6

We got up Saturday morning and met in the visitor house lounge around 10:30. We biked down the street to the train station, and took a 30 minute train ride 30 miles to Bjerringbro. From there we paddled canoes down the longest river in Denmark, 9 miles to Langa (see the map below) and had a BBQ at Jacob's house.

Here are a couple of photos. Not everyone is pictured. There were probably about 11-13 people total.


After telling stories and getting to know the Danish students we hopped the last train back to Arhus (it can be spelled Aarhus, or Arhus) and rode to town. Somewhere along the way the Danes got the idea they wanted to take us to the bars. Dirty and tired from canoeing, we agreed (me with the idea we wouldn't stay out too long). I got home at 3:30am and promptly fell asleep. I would have preferred to not stay out that late after canoeing all afternoon, but it was good fun. We actually left the Danish students at the bar, they were going to try one more place before they went home. Sheesh.

Denmark - Day 5

The lab supplies showed up the day before, so we're off to our first real day of work. We spent our morning troubleshooting an instrument for our Danish hosts. Elizabeth (a graduate student from Duke) and I stayed with them over several hours and helped identify their possible problems. In the end their data turned out better than it ever had (by far, they said), and they were giving each other high-fives. It would normally be a little weird to spend so much time solving someone elses problems, but they're going to take us canoeing tomorrow in return so it seemed like a fair trade. We only had about an hours worth of work to do today anyway, because we had to set up reactions and then wait for them to finish. They should be done on Sunday so we'll head back in then to figure them out. Here is everyone (minus the photographer - me) leaving after a long day.

Denmark - Day 4

Alright, a little late on this post. We went to an art museum today, ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum. ARoS is one of the largest art museums in northern Europe, 10 stories tall with a total of 17,000m² of floor space. They don't allow cameras inside so I have no pictures to show you. Except this one, which was googled. It is an EXTREMELY lifelike fiberglass sculpture of a boy, but if standing up the boy would be over 40 feet tall.

After this we went shopping, I bought some postcards and a danish hot dog as a snack. I took a picture of Peak Performance. In the U.S. these are sporting stores for runners, but here it is a high end clothier of the same name (no relationship though).

After that, we went back to the guest house and made dinner. Here is a photo of our spaghetti/garlic bread feast.

After dinner we walked down the block to gelato, came back and relaxed.

Denmark - Day 3

After getting up around 7:30 this morning I made my way down to the basement gym of the visitor house. It's a bit like a hotel gym, with a few cardio-type machines, some free weights, and a couple machines for lifting weights. I lazily worked out (if at that point you could even call it working out) and then took a shower. Around 9:20 this morning we jumped on our street rods and cruised over to the University. We fetched some keys that allow us after hours access to various rooms and labs. We had lunch in the on-campus cafeteria (crab cakes, quiche, and orzo salad) and then we went to a mall for postcards, batteries, and a few other necessities. I took some photos of the campus.
The first is the chemistry building.

The next two are panorama photos are taken from the top of the Physics building, I think it is the tallest in Aarhus at 8 stories.


I took a photo of the vending machines in the building too.

Excited yet? :)
Here's a picture of the cereal seen in the small mart near the university.

That's right, guld corn! :)
After the horseplay of the photographer I thought I'd better look like I was doing something worthwhile. After failing at this, I decided to do the next best thing. Take some pictures of Den Gamle By, a mock danish town composed of 15th century (and newer buildings).
Check out how thick this thatched roof is!

Or you may want to see the waterwheel and the gears that it drives...



And lastly, before my camera died, the "secret." That's what this little room was called. It was an enclosed room with a window seat attached to the outside second story of a building. This little window seat had a special opening where Danish people would sit and drop presents on the street below. Yes, that's right, an indoor toilet with no running water, only a 10 foot drop to the sidewalk. This is the view from down below. Lucky for me (and probably everyone reading this blog) the room was unoccupied during the photograph. :)


We're still waiting on supplies from the U.S. so we're not exactly busy working, yet (the supplies arrive tomorrow--they're in Paris at the moment).