Copenhagen? How about Denmark? Maybe more?

So, it has been quite a long time since I last posted. I must say, I have been quite caught up in Denmark. Right now, I am in Helsinki, Finland for the first week of my study break. We were at Tvarminne Zoological Station for the past few days doing our research projects for the Marine and Environmental Biology Program. My group’s project studied phytoplankton abundance and diversity along a salinity gradient. Sounds pretty boring, and let me tell you if you don’t like seeing cool little phytoplankton, it turns out to be very boring. 

Anyhow, let us back track to my last post. I was telling you about Copenhagen and my short study tour around Denmark. Well I'm back with more!

Here  is a picture of me posing in the sun after taking some samples with the wader. It was really fun to get out in the water and take samples. This is the kind of stuff that gets me excited about biology.
 

One of the more exciting trips I have had was for my Nordic Mythology class. We traveled to a few places nearby, including a Viking ship museum and a preserved Viking village. The Viking ship Museum holds the only preserved Viking ships ever. There are six total ships.

It turns out that some of the cargo ships could have held as much as 20 tons of cargo! It is quite amazing for the technology of their time. At the nearby preserved Viking village, we learned about how the Vikings lived in a real life setting and also saw some re-enactors. That was a treat no one expected, including the professors. I ended up trying some Viking mead, which is a sweet beverage that makes you very warm. Of course, warmth is very important in Scandinavia!

Another exciting trip was Legoland. I recommend it no matter where you are! We visited the one in Denmark, the original home of the Lego. It isn't all Legos like you'd expect, but they do have some interesting constructions!

 

Also, we visited the Zoological Museum in Denmark. It actually has one of the most extensive collections in the entire world, but no one really knows about it. Since our professor knew one of the researchers their, we got a nice tour of the secret research floors where normal tourists are not allowed. We saw some really amazing things, like a blue whale skeleton! It was only 24 meters long; many can be as long as 30 or more!

Here is a picture of a tube of krill, the little guys that these big blue whales feed on. It really is a marvel of nature if you ask me. Unfortunately, these large wonders were hunted down a great deal in the 20^th century and now less than 15,000 exist where more than 300,000 had once lived. They are believed to be the largest animal to have ever lived, weighing in at nearly 200 tons on the large end! Their heart is the size of a VW minibus, and humans could literally swim in their larger blood vessels. Truly a wonder!

I also visited Paris and Amsterdam!

This is taken at the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam. I visited and didn’t really enjoy it too much. I did find the architecture of the building very interesting, however. One of the more interesting things about Amsterdam is that it is a huge metropolitan city that is right in the middle of the beautiful Holland countryside. I happened to venture into a nearby windmill town where they still used classical windmills to produce cheese, mustard, etc. It was quite clearly a massive tourist trap, but it was wonderful nonetheless. The cheese in the sandwich I ate there was quite delicious, as is most cheese in Europe. Something about fresh cheese is just amazing.

While I was in Paris, I visited the usual Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triumph. Nothing too special and I’m sure you have all seen pictures. I preferred not to take pictures of them because collecting postcards is just much more wonderful. They seem to get the right angles at the right time of day and that is much better than any tourist with a Canon Power Shot can hope to achieve. However, I did also visit the Montmartre quarter. Montmartre is a hill that is 130 meters high in Paris. Atop the hill stands a magnificent church and a small quarter that was once a haven for artists of all kinds, including Picasso and Degas. The reason this was a huge artists haven was become, as the stereotype goes, most of them were poor and starving. In the 19^th Century when Napoleon III and his city planner Haussmann began redeveloping the city to make it the most beautiful city in the world, much of the inner city land was redeveloped and redistributed to Napoleon and those close to him in his administration. The term Haussmannization comes from this inner city restructuring which requires moving all the lower class citizens out of the city center to make it more desirable. These lower class citizens included the artists of the time. The people had to go somewhere, so many of them chose outer city areas which include the hill on Montmarte. Today, it is a massive tourist trap with many street painters. Here is a cool painting I saw which I would definitely have bought if I wasn’t a college student and had enough money to spend on it!

Anyhow, that's Paris. Let's get to Finland!

Finland is quite glorious. It is a very large nation in Scandinavia, sitting in between Sweden and Russia.
Helsinki is the capital city and its larger metropolitan area houses around one million people. The other four million people live throughout the rest of the land in Finland. Finland is popular for having lots of trees, reindeer, bear, and moose. If you can scrape together some cash and happen to not be a vegetarian (I am, but I must let you know nonetheless!), you can enjoy some reindeer, bear, or moose delicacy. The city is very calm compared to other European cities, but that is probably due to its small size. Tonight I will be going to see a hockey game, which promises to be very interesting. However, besides all that I have pictures of the research station and of a monument made for Jean Sibelius, the composer of Finlandia. Many Fins hold Finlandia close to their heart and consider it a second national anthem. Check it out if you have time. You can hear the Russian influences quite clearly. This is probably due to the fact that Finland gained their independence only in 1917 and before that had been a battleground for Sweden and Russia to conquer. Anyhow, the monument is quite interesting.

Tvarminne Zoological Station

Jean Sibelius Monument

Anyhow, that’s all I really have for now. From this point, I will travel back to Paris tomorrow, spend a few days in Geneva and then head out to a long trip to Greece. My study tour ends on November 4^th, and I hope to post again a few weeks after that. Until then, enjoy the Wofford bubble, I’ll keep enjoying the rest of the world!

~Prashant Patel