New Class

I started my 3-Week course on Monday. The class is "Planning and Management in Construction." We had an introduction lecture and group formation on Monday. Then Tuesday and Wednesday were spent preparing for a presentation, and we presented (as a group of 7) two chapters of the text on Thursday. The Class started at a fast pace, but now that the presentations are done we will be having guest lectures for a week, with no work to take home. And, this weekend is a three day weekend because we get Monday off for a Holiday.

Last week I went to the Distortion festival in Copenhagen. It was just a half week of parties in streets around Copenhagen. I have never seen so many people gathered in one area in my life, certainly not dancing in city streets!

I am very pleased I made the decision to attend the three week course because the weather is so pleasant. Tomorrow I plan on biking to the beach then going for a little run there. Certainly something I couldn't do (comfortably) a few weeks ago.

About 50% of my friends have gone home, but there are still plenty here to spend time with so I can't complain. Have a great weekend everyone!

Zell Am See & Krimml Falls

The last two days in Austria were spent in Zell Am See and a day trip to Krimml falls.

Picture #1 is a picture taken at Krimml.

Picture #2 is of the lake at Zell Am See. Behind me in the photo you can see some buildings on the shore. One of the buildings to the right of me, off my left shoulder, on the shore is where we stayed. It was a youth hostel, and as far as we could tell there was a class retreat currently taking place. There were a lot of kids everywhere, but we did get to see them learn how to wind surf, which made it worth it.

Photo #3 was taken at Krimml falls. It was a really sunny day and the spray from the waterfall offered a lot of good rainbow photo opportunities.

Photo #4 is of the kids trying to wind surf. They had a lot more luck then we did at Roosevelt when we tried. But, there boards were really stable. For them, standing on that board is the equivalent of me standing in a boat.

The photo below is of me riding a goat at Krimml falls.

Vienna & Salzburg

The first picture is of St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna. Of course they spelled it wrong, because we all know Stephen should be spelled with a v instead of ph. But it was great to see regardless.

My travel book said it was important to have to have some coffee in a cafe, so picture #2 is of my coffee experience. The book also said I should have white wine and goulash, which were delicious as well.

Picture #3 is overlooking Salzburg from the Fortress (Fortress Hohensalzburg).

In Salzburg we found a little brewery and had some beers and dinner there, as seen in picture #4. The dinner was an asparagus salad, with a big block of goat cheese in the middle.

Austria

I am a little behind on my blog posts now, but I will try and get caught up these next few days. I had a little trouble hitting the ground running when I came back, I have a final oral exam on Friday. I am on a comfortable path to being prepared for this final at this time.

A simple schedule of my trip is below.

• Monday
• Fly into Vienna
• Stay the night in Vienna
• Tuesday
• Take a train to Salzburg
• Stay the night in Salzburg
• Wednesday 
• Take a train to Zell Am See
• Stay the night in Zell Am See
• Thursday
• Take a day trip up to Krimml and hike adjacent to a waterfall.
• Stay the night in Zell Am See
• Friday
• Take a train through Salzburg to Vienna, and fly home to Copenhagen. 

I will have more posts specific to each day with plenty of pictures!

Parents Visit

My parents got in Friday morning from their cruise. They had a great time on their cruise and it sounds like they have plenty of good story's. It's also nice they can give Carrie, Lisa and I advice about Paris and London now.

Here is a wrap up of the visit!

Friday

• Tivoli
• Walk Stroget
• Nyhavn
• Boat Tour
• Our Savior Church (A walk to the top)
• Little Mermaid

Saturday

• Viking Ship Museum
• Rosenborg Castle

Sunday

• DTU Campus visit
• Frederiksborg Castle

I also wanted to make sure they experienced kebab pizza, street vendor hot dogs, pastries, and a durum.

I got to my room at 9:00pm from dropping off my parents at the airport. Now I am just packing, and tomorrow morning I fly out of Copenhagen at 9:20am.

I will write longer posts and put up plenty of pictures when I get back of both my parents visit and Austria.

Relay

Above is a picture of Team Hedgehog. We did the free relay here at DTU. Even though it was a free race we still received the free shirts we are wearing in the photo, and we had free lasagna after the race. We got 7th out of 270 teams, and we're really happy about that. We were also only 28 seconds away from 2nd! If I ran the same time as my all time fastest 5k we would have won! hahaha.. but it's not 5 years ago.

Dead Week

This is a picture of an extremely delicious pizza that I had. It was from a delivery place that gives discounts to students on the DTU campus, and delivers for free. I kept a menu and circled which one it was so I can have it again.

Last week ended up going relatively smooth. The group interview went worse that I expected, the presentation went better than I expected, and the project due on Friday went exactly as I expected. Its hard to complain about that.

This week I am working on an individual paper that is due Friday. It will be the only thing I turn in this semester that isn't done in a group. I also have a meeting tomorrow morning to put together a small report to follow up the presentation last week.

Tomorrow is the big relay! There are a total of 270 teams signed up. This means 810 people will be running, which should be a lot of fun! I just learned there will also be lasagna after the race.

I am enjoying relaxing now that classes are over. I just work a few hours a day on my papers or studying for the oral exam.

My parents will be getting in this Friday. I have a basic idea of what we are doing but I haven't finalized everything, so I will post what we will be doing soon. I miss them a lot so I look forward to spending time with them! 

After my parents leave Sunday evening, I will immediately start packing for leaving to Austria Monday morning. Monday Brett and I will be flying into Vienna and spending the day there. Tuesday we will be taking a train to Salzburg. Wednesday we take a train to Zal Am See. We will be staying at Zal Am See for two days at a hostel right on the waterfront.

Have a great week!

Last Week of Lecture

The weather has been almost perfect! It has rained a couple afternoons since I have gotten back, but other than that the pictures are good examples of what it's like on campus.

This is the last week of lecture for the 13-Week session. Tomorrow morning I have a group interview, and Thursday I will be presenting a group project I have worked on all semester.

I have no idea what the group interview is going to be like. Its for a class that had weekly group assignments, so I am hoping we will just be getting feedback on our work. I haven't received grades or feedback of any kind for my work so far at DTU. Hopefully it will not turn out to be a oral quiz of concepts learned over the semester to see who deserves good grades within our group.

The presentation is for Super-Light structures. The basic concept of super-light structures is to build a structure with a mixture of high strength concrete and low density concrete, as opposed to a single standard strength concrete. Our group chose to design a parking structure. Below is a picture of the column/beam/slab system. You can see the lightweight concrete blocks surrounded by high strength concrete. The reinforcement includes both prestressed and postressed steel.

My largest contribution to the team was the presentation video. Below is one of the videos I made. The final video is a little longer and has some cars, but I can't get it to upload for some reason.

Back to School

I finally got around to uploading the video of the jump into the water. I hope it works out, I can't tell if the video will work before I post it.

Yesterday we had a BBQ. And the tree's are getting green!

Day #7 Norway

Above are some photo's of life on the boat. In the third picture you can see our house. It is the last one on the right, on the water. The picture was taken from the boat coming back to the house.

Today we slept in and went fishing twice for a total of about 5 hours. We caught two fish that were about 6 inches, and one more normal size Pollock. It was a great relaxing last day on the water. Now that I am done fishing, I can confidently say I am pleased with the success to equipment lost ratio. Six fish and only one set up loss. The set-up was about $20 though, but for a whole week of fishing its not bad.

Tomorrow is our long trip home!

Day #6 Norway

The first picture is from a ferry we took today on our drive to the hike. The second picture is of a helicopter that came to the top of where we hiked to pick up a hiker that hurt his leg somehow. It didn't look bad, the hiker was putting some weight on it, but the trail was pretty difficult. The last two pictures are of the final destination of the hike.


Today we decided to take a break from fishing and went for a hike to Preikestolen. The pictures I have taken are not a good example of how gorgeous it really is so follow this link to look at some Google images of it! http://www.google.com/search?q=preikestolen&hl=en&sa=X&prmd=ivnsm&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&ei=P3-wTcP3I4OTswaw8IztCw&ved=0CCcQsAQ&biw=1130&bih=529

Last night was an experience I did not expect to have, and it is a rather long story. But, the story is certainly worth telling.

The owner of the house is named Yan. I met him last night as he was on his way to another town with his boat. He lives upstairs in the same house as we are renting, and he keeps his boat next to the house. He already seemed like he had consumed a bit to much to be operating any type of moving object, but he shook our hands and said he was going to town to drink some beer. The way he went about leaving was hilarious all on its own. He pulled a few feet of the boat out of its resting spot with a rope, jumped in, and gunned it out of the bay! And I am serious when I say gunned it. He almost knocked over a passenger that was standing in the boat, luckily he was holding the bow line and didn't fall over! And the little bay we are in has a 5 knots limit..

When he came back a few hours later we closed our doors and blinds so he wouldn't try to talk to us. He did seam nice, but its never fun being around someone that drunk. After he had been home for about a half hour, someone came barging in to our house with out knocking. We were all in the living room so I got up to meat whoever it was in the hallway. It was the Police! They were shining lights in our face and talking to us in Norwegian. We let them know we only know English, and we are from Germany here on a fishing trip. Then the police asked if we were in the boat with Yan earlier, and we confirmed we were not.

Then the Police tried to get into Yan's place upstairs and the door was locked. They eventually used our table on the porch out back to climb up to Yan's balcony and get in. Of course at this point we turned off the TV and radio because this was a much more amusing source of entertainment. There was the sound of a little tussle up stairs, then we saw Yan get put into their police van in nothing but his boxer shorts and hand cuffs.

This morning some more people were knocking and ringing the doorbell upstairs, and eventually they asked us where Yan was. It was some family trying to drop off Yan's children. His boat and car were both hear at the house so they were confused. After some discussion we eventually told them that the police came last night and that could be the source of Yan's disappearance.

Also this morning we noticed that Yan's boat had sustained some damage on the bow, and the automatic bilge pump was kicking on every 20 minutes or so.. which is a bad sign. In the boat the seat mattresses were out of place. My favorite part is what could be found in the boat! In the boat was one beer can, one beer bottle, one single shoe, and the keys to the boat.

Day #5 Norway

Today only one fish was caught, but it was a big one. Torsten caught a 75cm (~30") Ling!

I had the goal of swimming in the North Sea this vacation. I really only swam the 7 ft from where I landed in the water to the dock, but that counts in my book! The water was about 2 degrees C (36 F), COLD!

There is a good video of this "swim." But I am going to have to wait until I have better internet to upload it.

Day #4 Norway

Today we left the dock at 6:00 am, but it wasn't unbearably cold. We had been fishing for about a half hour when Torsten got a fish on the line and got it to the boat. It turned out he had two fish! Then about the same time he boated his two I got a fish on the line, and it felt big! But it was wierd because I could still feel shaking on the line like you would feel with a small fish. It turned out with my four hooks I had caught FOUR FISH! We don't have a net or a gaff so actually getting these four fish into the boat was a two person job, team work!

 

For the rest of the morning and day I didn't catch anymore fish, which was ok with me. I couldn't complain with my four fish boated. That morning we caught 11 fish (~15" each) almost all at once, probably because a school passed by us. Then two more fish were also caught, one medium and one larger. 

The end of the day, just like yesterday, one large Cod was caught. Christof caught a Cod that measured 68 cm! This was a new record for the week.

Day #3 Norway

It has been nothing but beautiful blue skies these last two days. That of course means hat weather, but I don't have a hat. Thankfully I found a hat on the ground near the front yard of our house. That is showcased in the first photo.

The second photo is the view from our back door. The back door opens to a porch that is over the water! It's where we eat breakfast and lunch everyday. From left to right it is Torsten, Christof, and Magnus.

Photo #3 is of the biggest fish caught so far, boated by Torsten. It was a 58 cm Cod (~23").

The last photo from our back porch. I took the picture 10 minutes ago, life is good!

Today was the best day of fishing we have had so far. Six fish were caught today in perfect order from smallest to largest.. giving us high hopes starting tomorrow!

1. 8cm Cod (Christof)
2. 43cm Ling (Me)
3. 47cm Ling (Torsten)
4. 45cm Pollock (Christof)
5. 53cm Pollock (Magnus)
6. 58cm Cod (Torsten)

Tomorrow we are going to have an ambitious start and try to get on the water early. Then we are going on a hike to a huge rock ledge of some sort. I will keep taking a lot of pictures!

Day #2 Norway

The first picture is taken from the ferry trip we took from Denmark to Norway. The other four pictures are of our kitchen, my room, the living room, and our boat. The boat is powered by a 9.9hp outboard.

Today we were fishing in the boat for 7 or 8 hours. Three fish were boated by three different people, and all three were Pollock, like yesterday. My fish was maybe 2 lbs, the same size as Torsten's. Magnus caught a 52 cm  (20.5") fish that probably weighed about 5 lbs. Those three fish plus potato's were dinner. These guys really know how to cook fish! Quite delicious!

Hanging out with three German guys has created some very hilarious moments. My favorite thing that often happens is they pronounce German words in an English way. So they think its fine.. but I look confused. So even though I am the native English speaker I am always the one confused because they keep making up words!

I am the only person that hasn't lost any gear yet.. which is great because I am borrowing all of it. But everyone else is losing enough equipment to make a trip into town necessary. So tomorrow I have the opportunity to gear up Norway style. Hopefully I can bring some knowledge an equipment back to the Washington coast.

Day #1 Norway

Today at 5:00am three German friends and I left to go fishing in Norway for a week! We arrived at the house at about 7:00pm. We immediately got into the boat that came with our house and went to the mouth of the bay to fish for the 45 minutes of light that we had left. Magnus caught a Pollock about 3 lbs! It is ready now.. so I have to go. But I wanted to let everyone know that I safely arrived in Norway.

Football (Soccer)

Yesterday evening I had a very enjoyable and lucky experience.

I went for a run, then after went for a short bike ride. During the bike ride I heard some drums. I decided that after my workout was done I would get dressed and walk towards the mystery drum sound, hoping for a high school marching band. As I got closer I heard an announcer through speakers and started hoping for a high school football game.

The guy in front of me was obviously heading for the same area so I asked him who was playing and he said the local football team which was ranked #11 in the league and they were playing the #10 team in the league. So it was the semi-professional Lyngby soccer team! I asked how much a ticket would be and he said 150 dkk (~$30). So, I was a little disappointed. But then he asked if I needed a ticket because he happened to have an extra! I offered him some money but he didn't take it, because he got his tickets for free somehow.

The stadium wasn't very big but the seats were covered, so it was a very nice and shaded. There was one section that was very loud and everyone was always standing. As per my agreement upon receiving the free ticket, I cheered on the home team!

There were some differences that I noticed. When the crowed was let down it sounded much more like an EEEHHH then an AAAHHH. The announcements were of course in danish, so I didn't catch at all what they were saying. That was ok with me because I am very familiar with the sport. They also played a lot of house and techno, which I have never heard at a public sporting event.

Although, since I only went to "check it out," I was just wearing a t-shirt. Everyone else was wearing a sweatshirt and a coat, which made sense to me as soon as it started getting dark.

What I learned is, if you are ever in Europe and hear drums.. walk towards it!

Sorry I do not have any picture updates this time!

Saturday we had a barbecue that was a lot of fun! Doing any activity here has its difficulty of course. Usually when a group plans something there is one person that knows what is really going on. But, I always do things with my international friends, so it turns into a "how many engineers does it take to plan a barbecue" joke.  A very very long story short, it takes 8 engineering students a little more than 5 hours after meeting to make food.

Many of you know that I did cross country as a sport in high school and raced at a distance of 5k. Lucky for me there is a relay here with a 5k loop! So two friends and I have made a team to do a 15k relay. There is a trail around campus that is exactly 5k so this relay is an annual event! It will take place exactly one month from this day. Of course, I started training today. So, I will be a far cry from the 5k runner that I once was.

One of my friends introduced me to this sight. It gives sentence examples of why the English language is difficult. It gave me some laughs.

www.sheetr.com/21-reasons-why-english-sucks

Have a good week!

Bike Ride

I am, ever so slowly, becoming a little more European. I enjoy trains, I drink wine sometimes, and I decided I needed a bike. So, I looked for a bicycle for a while and told a few people I was looking for a bicycle. One day a Lithuanian friend of mine saw a bicycle with a sign on it that said "Garbage." So he moved it from the garbage pile to the closest bike rack. Then he told me about it in class and took me to it after class.

It was free, so of course I liked it! Both tires were flat, the front wheel didn't turn very well, it didn't shift, the chain looked like it was made of rust, and as you may be able to see in the picture it doesn't have the normal exposed sprockets with a derailleur that I am used to.

But, I borrowed a friends pump and pumped up the tires and they actually held air. I then needed some type of lubricant, so I went to some bike shops. Off the top of my head I could think of three different bike shops in Lyngby that I had walked by, because there are SO MANY bike shops here. I went into my third shop that day and they had WD-40, so of course I chose that.

I probably used half my can of WD-40, but now I have a fully functional bicycle! The front wheel still has a little resistance to spinning, but I try to think of it as extra exercise.

Today I decided to go for a bicycle ride. I looked on google maps for a few minute and tried to find this park I had heard people talk about, but I couldn't find it. But I did know what general direction it was, so I just guessed and rode straight there, which is astonishingly lucky. The entrance to the park is about 3.5 km from my home. From the entrance to the park to the ocean is about 3km. Both of those distance I checked on Google Maps.

Above are some of the pictures I took during the ride. The first picture is about .5 km inside the entrance of the park. That household is about in the middle of the park. The second and third pictures are just of the building. The fourth picture is from the house to the ocean. And the fifth picture is where I turned around to head home.

Have a good weekend!