Copenhagen

So today we went to Carlsberg Brewery which was so awesome! It had a really cool museum with the Wolrd's Largest Bottle collection and the history of beer making, as well as the history of the Carlsberg label and lots of cool interactive exhibits about historical beer making technology and techniques compared to today. Then you got to have two glasses of different Carlsberg, Jacobson, or Tuborg beers. I had a Hefeweisen, which I didn't like that much (it was a banana beer) and the Carlsberg Brown Ale, which was delicious. Then I walked over to the National Museum which had alot of cool exhibits from the middle ages and the renaissance. It had alot of rooms set up like what they would be in that time period and lots of cool outfits and crowns and swords. It was all very regal. Then I went home, read for a little bit and we went to dinner as a group at a vegetarian buffet. It was so good to eat vegetables again after two weeks of bread, cheese, meat, and more bread, all of which I barely ever eat at home. The next day I spent all day walking around the city by myself. I really like my group, but I’m getting sick of being in a group all the time, so it was nice to have some freedom. I went to this art museum that was really pretty. It was a really old building that had been completely re-done inside. It had a nice garden in the center and some cool exhibits of Danish paintings, some nice Monet, Degas, and Rousseau. They had these neat sculptures of Degas ballerinas too, which I had never seen before and thought were really beautiful. They had a lot of really nice sculpture, including Danish, Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and other older pieces. Then I wondered over to the Danish Architecture Center which was having an exhibition on Sustainable Design. They featured a lot of new age international buildings. I wish they had had more information about what made the buildings sustainable, but the woman working there said there was more information on the website. One really interesting one was this woman who had designed a Mobile School on a trailer that would follow around these poor kids that had to move all the time because of the monsoons in India. The design folded out of the trailer and was very efficient.
Then I wondered around a neighborhood called Christhavn along the canal and everyone was outside with their boats and sitting by the water on this beautiful Sunday, it was really pleasant. I walked over to Christiania, which is a hippy community kind of like People’s Park that started in the 70’s. It is a little more permanent than People’s Park though, it is in some old army barracks and people actually live there, as opposed to just squat. They were having a fair though, with this band that was playing CSNY kind of stuff, but they weren’t that good. After that I walked back through Christhavn, which you can tell is the yuppie part of town with lots of cute little cafes and stuff all around the big canal running through the city. They have a park running along it where everyone was laying out in the sun. I happened on some people playing lawn bowling and seemed to be on teams and have jerseys and be rather serious about it. By this time it was 5:30-ish and I headed back to the hostel to meet the rest of the group for a delicious dinner at an Italian restaurant by our hostel and ice cream after.
The next day we went to the Greenlandic House, which is like a cultural and resource center for Greenlandic people living in Copenhagen. They had these cool pictures in the café downstairs done by Greenlanders. Then we went to the University and got to see the ice cores they are working on there. They have 7 miles of ice cores stored in Copenhagen. Then Gerard, our professor, gave a talk and we had cake with some of the ice researchers working there. Danish people have coffee and cake pretty much every afternoon, it’s very civilized. Then I walked back to the hostel and went for a run to look at the little Mermaid. That night we went out to a restaurant that was all you can eat and all you can drink for 45 Kronner, which is quite a deal. And surprisingly it was good food too and Carlsberg and red and white wine on tap. We are getting ready to get on the plane now and I will be back in Seattle this afternoon. It has been a great trip and I hope this not the last that I see of the ice. Talk to you soon. Love, Sarah

The Much Delayed Greenland Part II Post

We had an amazing time in Disko Bay. The research station was so homey and the kitchen was amazing. Our third day in Disko Bay, after another lecture in the morning, Michelle, the grad student who is leading the trip, Girard, the accompanying professor, a few other of the more adventurous students and I went on another hike to attempt to reach the glacier near to town. We couldn’t find anyone who knew the route to get there, so we looked at the map and picked our way up a river to a boulder field that lead up the valley to the glacier. We got pretty close when we decided we should turn around, but it was a very fun hike. It was a little more intense than our previous hikes and involved some route finding, back-country, and boulder hopping and it was nice to get away from the WHOLE group and do something a little less planned. When we got back Lindsey, a girl on the trip who also went hiking and leads climbing trips back in Seattle, and I made mulled wine by heating red wine and adding a little honey and cinnamon. It was delicious and really hit the spot after a cold windy hike. That night Christian, a guy from Arizona on the trip, made burgers and I made curry vegetables and garlic potatoes for dinner, YUM! The next day we got back on the ferry to Ilulissat, which was a little rough. A lot of people felt seasick and we didn’t get back to the hostel until midnight. The next day back in Ilulissat I took a hike by myself down to the Jacobshavn Glacier south of town, which is the most active glacier in the world. It drains 10% of the Greenland Ice sheet and it literally a river of ice coming out of the fjord. It is magnificent. I hiked out and marveled at the massive ice bergs cascading like an assembly line out of the glacier for hours. The next morning we had to Ilulissat, which almost feels like leaving home since we had been in and out of and around that town for so long, and get on the ferry to Nuuk, the capitol of Greenland. The ferry is a lot like the ferry Mike and I took back from Alaska. We are in nice little bunks with 8 people to a room, but not too crowded and there is a cafeteria and a really nice seating area in the back that has lots of windows. We saw whales off the boat and the sunset was beautiful as I sat in the back and read. It was so nice to sit and read and enjoy the water and the ice and the beautiful colors. We spent two nights on the boat and got off in Nuuk, the capitol city, at 7am this morning. After being out in the tundra, Nuuk seems huge. It has a population of 5,000 and busses and bustles like a little city. It is also full of all these apartment blocks that were built in the 70’s where people live. They house 1% of the population and are a little depressing. After breakfast at the Seaman’s House, a cafeteria for fisherman which was pretty neat, we walked over to the National Museum and had a guided tour from a guy who worked at the University here. It was interesting to learn about the history of Greenland and how it was colonized. We even got to see the first rock house ever built. It was built by Hans Egede, a missionary who came in 1728 to colonize and convert (very successfully I might add) Greenland to Danish rule and the Lutheran Church. The Greenlanders used to live in turf houses in the winter and then move to seal-sink teepees near the sea in the summer. We also got to see their traditional outfits at the museum, which were very colorful and made of fur and beads and some colored cloth after the Europeans came over. After lunch we went to see another aspect of Greenland politics and hear from the President of the Inuit Circumpolar Council. It was a very interesting, passionate presentation and a point of view we hadn’t heard before. The next day we went to see the new Parliament meeting room that was under construction and heard from an under-secretary there about Parliamentary procedure for the Home Rule government and the upcoming referendum this November to move to Home Government (another step towards Independence, basically more responsibility moved to the Greenland government). The new construction project is to make the Meeting room for the 31 Parliamentary members larger, with a public seating area, and outfit it with microphones and capabilities to broadcast the sessions on national television. Then we went to the new University and heard from the President of the Home Land Rule Commission about the new Home Government Act and what that would mean for Greenland. The conclusion was basically that Greenland can and probably will become Independent in the future, but first needs to internally grow their economy by focusing on education. The University is the only one in Greenland and has a long history, dating back from 1845, but this building, as well as the associated Institute of Natural Resources, is new as of 1998. They are very beautiful architecture, all large cedar panel with huge South-facing windows and passive solar heating in the concrete floors. The woman who talked to us at the Institute said they don’t have to heat the building for a large portion of the year or use lights, which is a no small accomplishment in Greenland. At the Institute of Natural Resources we heard from a biologist who was working on monitoring the shrimp catch. It seems our host professor knows EVERYONE here, which is very nice since we get to have the insider’s tour. That evening we went to a Thai restaurant in town, which had surprisingly good Thai curries and I “Greenland Sushi” which I had to try. It had sashimi cuts of Salmon, Greenlandic Halibut, shrimp, whale, and whale skin, and a few maki rolls. It was very interesting to try raw whale, and not as bad as I thought, it was actually pretty good. The whale skin was a little weird, but mostly it just had a weird aftertaste. Anyways, then we flew back to Kangerlussuaq and got in this morning at 9am. After dropping our stuff at the hostel and eating breakfast, a few other kids and I rented bikes and rode 50km down this HORRIBLE bumpy, rocky, washboarded dirt road to a glacier. Even though the road was bad and the bikes were nothing special, it was a beautiful ride and it was nice to see the ice again. Apperantly it is the “musk ox road” too, and we saw a bunch of vans of tourists on “musk ox safaris” but we didn’t see any ourselves. The next day we just had lectures and I went for a run and then had an all night flight back to Copenhagen, fun. Unfortunately I couldn't sleep at all, but now I am here and get to email all you fine people, which is awesome. Some kids on the trip and I are going to go to the Carlsberg brewery. On Tuesday I fly back home and am on to other adventures. Sorry it took so long to get this one out, Internet access has been spotty. Hope you are all well and talk to you soon!

Disko Island

So I am blogging much more than I imagined, but we have free internet here and I thought I'd give you all some new pictures. We took the ferry from Ilulissat over to an island right off the coast called Disko Island this morning. The ice was beautiful, again. And the amazing thing is that they look different every time. The water was calm and new sea ice was starting to form on the surface of the ice. It's amazing that it already seems like winter is beginning here. And it makes me kind of excited. We came into the town and walked to the research base in Disko Island, which is amazing. I want to live here. We each have our own little bunk and it has a beautiful kitchen and a wooden

spiral staircase. This afternoon we went on a hike around the pennisula around this awesome basalt cliffs with crazy rock that looks like all these bricks. The rock goes like that because it is a special kind of volcanic rock that is magnetic. They make caves everywhere and are really fun to climb around on. We spent a few hours playing on the rocks, and when we got back several of us decided we should jump in the ocean. Which I thought would hurt alot, but actually felt very refreshing. I can't wait to spend a

few days here. We will be here for 2 days before we head back to Ilulissat to catch the ferry to Nuuk. I'll update again if anything interesting happens, which I'm sure it will since it just seems like each day is better than the last here!

Greenland: the Coolest Place on Earth

Hi everyone. The saying is lame, I know, but it really is true! We flew from Copenhagen to Greenland on 8/15. First was a 5 hour flight to Kangerlussuaq (Kang-gar-loo-sack), then a 45 minute hop to Illulisat where we would spend the night. As soon as we landed in Kangerlussauq it was like being back in Alaska or northern Canada. The same wind-swept, barren tundra, brown tuft littered with exposed granite. By the time we got to Illulisat (ill-lool-eh-sat) and to the hostel we were staying in, it was late. KJ, another girl on the trip (I’ll give a better cast of characters later), and I walked to the grocery store to buy some provisions. Most of the others in the group went out to one of the towns 4 or 5 restaurants. The town is very small, but the 3rd largest in Greenland at 5,000 people. The airport is a 3km drive away and the town is clustered around a small harbor. All the boats in the harbor are swarmed around the small docks, sometimes 2 or 3 rows deep so everyone can tie up. Nearly everyone in Illulisat has a boat. The other thing nearly everyone in Illulisat has is dogs. It is common practice in Illulisat to yield to dog sleds in the winter because once they are close to home, the dogs won’t stop. The town is very cute, all the houses are bright primary colors, which we imagine is to keep spirits up in the dark winter months. The hostel we are staying in is pretty nice, it has showers and a kitchen and everything. But we did not stay long, the next day we caught a boat at 7am to a camp a few hours north of Illulisat near Eqi Glacier. Along the way we stopped to see a Humpback whale and watch the Glacier calve (have new icebergs fall off). Watching the ice was amazing. Before it calved it would give this deep rumbling sound then loud cracking as it finally gave way. Then it would crash into the water, sending huge 10m waves decending on the boat. I was struck by the massive scale of everything. The face of the glacier we were looking at was 100m tall and that was a smaller one. Many of the ice bergs we saw along the way were the size of a cruise ship or larger. When we arrived at the camp we pulled up to “dock” by dropping a car tire off the bow of the boat and lining the boat up so the bow and tire pressed onto the outcropping of rock, where a metal bridge was held in place while the ship captain gunned the engine to keep us in place. But we made it off and hiked with our two guides about 7km to the place where we would be staying near the inland ice. Our guides worked for a tour company owned cooperatively by the Greenlandic government tourism department and a Danish tourism company. They were both Danish students and very nice and knowledgable. The camp we had landed at originally was the first camp of a French explorer named Paul Emil Victor who had come to the area in the 1950’s to survey and study the ice. The camp we hiked to and stayed at was near his third camp. Amazingly, many off his things, the wood he used to build his cabin, the caterpillar machines he used to drive around his equipment, etc, were still around and in pretty good condition because it is so cold and dry. After the hike our guides prepared whale stew for us, which was amazing. It tasted just like beef stew, but the meat was tougher and a little more flavorful. I liked it though. We set up our tents and went to sleep at 10:30 as the sun was dropping behind the mountains, although it was still very bright. It was very cold and windy, because the wind blows off the ice in the night, but I slept well in the cold air. The next day after breakfast (it was so much like luxury camping, being served all our meals) we hiked to the edge of another glacier about a kilometer from our camp. We talked a lot about the features of the glacier and surrounding landscape and how they had come to be that way. We stopped for lunch near a beautiful waterfall draining water from the inland ice. After lunch, of bread and various canned fish products, we hiked up the near-by mountain onto the inland ice. It was amazing, ice as far as the eye could see, but all bumpy and crevassed. Everything I saw reminded me of Alaska and the glaciers I had seen there, but going out onto the ice was a whole new experience.

Hello From Denmark!

Hi everyone! So we made it to Denmark, and Copenhagen is amazing. The buildings are so colorful and I love all the bikes! Everyone bikes here, which is so nice. You see them riding around with their little baskets. We saw this huge group of people in the park both days and apparently young kids all just ride to the park and hang out and drink beer. We tried a danish hot dog and nachos here which were very good. And very yummy bakeries. We went to the Greenlandic Studies Department of the University of Denmark and the Arctic Geological Center here and had lectures from people at each place, which made me very excited to go. It should be so interesting to see all the research up close. Other than that we have just wandered around. Everything has been very fun expect for somehow (I don't really know how), I lost my wallet at dinner tonight. We all went as a group and when I got back to the hostel it was gone. I have no idea, but it sucks. Thankfully I still have my passport and I cancelled my cards and I'll figure everything else out when I get back. But, we are leaving for Greenland tomorrow and I can't wait! I'll try to blog sometime in Greenland as well. Love you all.