Study Tour #2 and Some Other Stuff

So, for this episode of hovsatak, we'll start off with an English version word-of-the-day: neglect.

As in: "As soon as I start to get real work I choose to neglect my blogging responsibilities."

Anyways, so many things have happened since I last planted myself down in front of this computer with the purpose of adding to this log. Sit down, strap in, and enjoy the newest installment of my danish ramblings.

Okay, so as some of you may know, Copenhagen hosted the International Olympic Committee a few weeks ago as they voted on who will host the 2016 Olympics (spoiler: it's Rio de Janeiro), and there were some terrific events going on in conjunction with it. First off, Copenhagen was very festive in welcoming the Obamas to the city. There was a general lockdown downtown (a lockdowntown if you will...) and it was actually kind of hard to move anywhere near to the parliament building, but it was a very cool experience to see how another country prepares to receive our president.

There was also a Chicago 2016 event that I volunteered at. It was essentially a cocktail party at the Danish Royal Theater for the movers and shakers of Chicago. It was a great opportunity to bump elbows with some famous Americans while in Denmark. I met David Robinson, Brandi Chastain, Nastia Liukin, Michael Johnson, and Jackie Joyner-Kersee among others. It was a really fun evening!

Another fun event connected to the presence of the IOC was the Aqua concert I got to go see. They played both "Barbie Girl" and "Back to the '80s." It was pretty much amazing and was an absolute blast! I was in the front row!

I also got the opportunity to perform a little bit a couple of weeks ago in Hillerod with Jakob and Kristian. We sang briefly at one of the events for the city's KulturNat (Culture Night). It was a lot of fun. I also went kayaking and swimming in a Danish lake with Carsten a couple of weekends ago. It was a blast, but the kayaks here are absurdly tippy and it took most of my concentration to keep myself from tipping over!

Anyways, the bulk of this post is of course going to focus on the long study tour. I spent last week in Brussels, Belgium, and Bonn and Frankfurt, Germany. We left Copenhagen on a VIP tour bus (more of a headache than it was worth) at 8 a.m. for what should have been an 11 hour bus ride to Brussels. A couple of hours into the ride, we arrived at the ferry between Denmark and Germany. The 45 minute ride was epic, resulting from the 14 foot (4.5 meter) seas and howling wind. Fortunately, I inherited a Hewett (as opposed to Kennedy) stomach, and I handled the tossing and turning ship relatively well, and even managed to have a little lunch onboard. As opposed to almost all other travel experiences, food and groceries on the ferry were, in fact, cheaper than on either of the two countries. It was the first time since I'd been in Europe that I didn't have to pay MOMS (our 25% sales tax).

We were on mainland Europe (in Germany) shortly before noon, and were back on the road shortly thereafter. The rest of the afternoon was spent crossing Germany, and the next time we stopped for any long duration was at seven that evening for dinner. Our bus driver had made a couple of wrong turns, so nobody quite knew exactly where we were. We had dinner at a roadside hotel, and when we got into the lobby, I went up to the front desk and asked something I never thought I'd need to: "Do you happen to know what country we're in"? Turns out, we were in Holland, and still had three hours of driving ahead of us to get to Brussels. We had a quick dinner, got back on the road, and finished our journey. We got to our Chinese-themed hotel in the red light district of Brussels at about 11, and I crawled into bed and fell asleep.

The next morning we had an academic visit in the conference room of our hotel from an IETA representative. IETA is the International Emission Trading Association, the group essentially responsible for managing the carbon market in Europe. It was an interesting presentation and we learned quite a bit about the market mechanisms behind a lot of the environmental economics that we'd been looking at the previous week in class. That afternoon we had one of our cultural events: a bike tour through Brussels. That was an absolute blast. You can see so much of a city in a short time on a bike. We saw the court, the EU parliament (more on that later), many of the historic buildings in Brussels, had some delicious fries and beer, and even witnessed a farmer's protest. A group of farmers were gathered in front of one of the government offices, rioting for higher milk prices. They were in the middle of our planned route, so we decided to go in and have a bit of a look. There were quite a few little explosions, which were mostly just small firecrackers, some small fires, and some very angry farmers--not to mention about 5,000 police lining the street in full on riot gear (including gas masks). We mingled for about ten minutes, before heightened tensions started to worry our tour guide. At one point, he looked over at me and muttered, "I think they're about to attack, we should run now..." at which point we took off on down a side street to get away from the raucous crowd of angry farmers. Photo credit: Georges Gobet/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images. From http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/business/global/06milk.html

Later that evening, we had a traditional Belgian meal of Mussels, salad, fries, and beer. We then headed out to a bar to while away the evening hours with some locals and one of the other DIS classes that happened to be in Brussels. The bar was named Delirium, and it holds a Guinness World Record! It is the bar with the most commercially available beers in the World! It was unbelievable! I spent the evening putting my fate in the hands of the bartenders, going up and asking each of them to give me their favorite beer. I was never disappointed! The Belgians know their beers--needless to say it was an amazing night!

The next morning, however, was a little difficult. Tuesday had an ambitious schedule to begin with, and I woke up that morning with a terrible headache (for one reason or another). That morning, however, we were scheduled to have a trip to Planet Chocolate for a demonstration and tasting. It was a lot of fun, and the chocolate was out of this world! The Belgians also, apparently, know their chocolate. After a very short lunch break, we made our way to our first (of three) visits of the afternoon. The first two were both at business lobbies--one Danish and one European. They were both excruciatingly boring and not particularly informative, but blessedly short. Our third activity was potentially the highlight of the entire week, and as such, will receive it's own paragraph (see below).

The third visit of Tuesday was to the European Parliament. DIS has a contact named Frank (pretty sure he doesn't have a last name...) that got us through security and showed us around. The best way to describe Frank is that he is "that guy." You know, as in "Do you know 'that guy'?" "Of course I do, everybody knows 'that guy'!" Well, he was incredible, and introduced us to numerous movers and shakers, including a couple of former Prime Ministers and current MEPs (Members of European Parliament). The first hour was spent getting through security, which was no small feat. We then had a tour of parliament, including visits to the Plenary committee, where we got pictures on the floor and at the podium. We then moved onto the Protocol Room, where the president of the European Parliament greets visiting heads of state. Unless you're head has been under a rock for the last few years, I can almost guarantee that you've seen a picture of this particular room before. We were only there for about 40 seconds, because that's how long Frank thought we could get away with it before somebody from security would be down to kick us out. After we left, we moved onto the main hall, where two separate receptions were being held. We enjoyed some very delicious champagne and hors d'oeuvres courtesy of the European Union and bumped elbows with some very important people. It was a lot of fun. After our cocktail hour, we moved onto the movie premier that was technically the reason for our visit. We sat through the 55-minute film Harragas, and snuck out before the Q&A began. After the film, a few of us went down to one of the dining rooms to crash a dinner hosted by the EU pharmaceutical industry. It was a delicious, and most importantly free buffet dinner. We did get a couple of odd looks, but nobody seemed to mind that a collection of well-dressed youths had joined the party. We helped ourselves to some wine, some food, and some dessert and even interacted with a couple of the doctors in attendance before leaving and heading back to the hotel. All-in-all it was an incredible visit!

Wednesday was another big day of driving. We left at about 10 in the morning for Bonn, Germany, where we had a meeting with the UNFCCC, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. They gave a terrific, informative presentation that really solidified the mechanisms that we had been studying. After the presentation, we continued on our way to Frankfurt, arriving shortly after 8 that evening, in time for dinner at the restaurant at the hotel (the beautiful Radisson Blu) and a swim and a sauna before bedtime.

The next day was a break from our academic visits, focusing instead on cultural activities. We spent the morning on a walking tour of Frankfurt and spent half of the afternoon at the Stadel Art Museum and the other half exploring the city on our own. That night we had a group dinner of pork seven ways at a delicious little German restaurant. That night we explored a little bit of the Frankfurt nightlife before heading back to the hotel for our last night of sleep in continental Europe.

The next morning we went back into the city for our visit at the European Central Bank, Europe's version of our Federal Reserve, and the masterminds of the Euro. It was an interesting enough visit, but it was pretty dense and a little bit cookie cutter. You got the feeling that about 5000 other groups had received the exact same presentation, and unlike the other visits, it was not tailored to the goals and objectives of our class. We did learn quite a bit there though, and it was a successful final visit. After that, we had a group lunch and wrap-up session at a local hotel, spent the afternoon exploring a little more of the city on our own, and then got back on the bus to travel back to Denmark.

The next morning we arrived back in Copenhagen. It was a great trip, a nice little break, and a good way to mark the midpoint of my time in Denmark! That's it for now, but I'll try to post again before another three weeks have passed!