I can’t believe we’re at the end of May already! The weather has been absolutely fantastic here in Copenhagen this month, and in this edition, we’re continuing with the spring theme.
Svaner på søerne (swans on the lakes)
On my commute to the office, I’m lucky to cycle right alongside some lakes. Which lakes, you may ask? Well, ’The Lakes’ (søerne in Danish), of course. These lakes are just west of the inner city, and are a real iconic feature of Copenhagen. You’ll see many locals (and tourists) enjoying a walk or run around the ~6.4 km lakes.
Swans – the national Danish bird – also enjoy the lake, and in spring, some will nest just alongside the water. Last year, some kind people (from the council, I presume), actually built a little fence around a swan nesting site that was right next to the walking path. I’m not sure if this was to protect the swans from dogs/people, or vice-versa! This year, I’ve been keeping an eye on one such swan family on my commute, waiting for the day for the swanlings to hatch.
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The day came late in May (the 22nd), so here I present to you some young (<24 hour) swanlings (AKA cygnets – ed.)! It was definitely worth lugging my camera around with me each day in anticipation. All in all, another really nice expression of life coming back in the Danish spring.
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Butterflies and flowers are pretty much the same thing (change my mind)
Now for other expressions of spring – albeit less natural, as this was a visit to the Copenhagen Botanic Garden with my 105 mm macro lens. Butterflies and flowers are more similar than you might think at first glance, despite one being an insect and the other being a plant. Biologically, they both exist primarily for one purpose – sex and reproduction. Both are typically ephemeral (don’t hang around for long), and both bring an amazing diversity of colours and shapes to our world. They are also both quintessentially spring! While a botanic garden is an artificial environment, they are great places to appreciate Earth’s amazing biodiversity, and I’m always blown away at how much plant diversity there is in the world. Botanic gardens are also great places for taking close up (macro) photos (which I love). Them was the words, here be the photos, enjoy:
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A weekend in Viborg (Jutland)
There are many foreigners that live on Copenhagen who never set foot on the ‘mainland’ of Denmark – Jutland (Jylland in Danish). We decided to take advantage of a recent long weekend by taking our first trip to Jutland, specifically to a small town called Viborg. Why Viborg of all places? Well, there’s a great bakery there that I found out about (they put out some nice video recipes that I have tried). It’s also where I got my pizza steel that I mentioned in the Jan round-up. Anyway, that’s as good an excuse as any to check out rural Denmark (it’s a city of ~40,000, so perhaps not so rural?). So off we went on a couple of trains:
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Viborg is an old city by Danish standards (settlement started ~8th century according to Wikipedia). The old town is really cute, with many buildings at least a few hundred years old.
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The weather was fantastic, so we had a great day walking around one of the two lakes that sit adjacent to the town. Spring was definitely evident!
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On the journey home, we spent the afternoon in Aarhus (Denmark’s second-largest city behind Copenhagen). A big attraction is the contemporary art gallery ARoS – a very distinctive building with its 360° viewing platform that has a rainbow of glass. Overall, a really nice relaxing trip, and it’s good to finally have made it to Jutland (though there’s definitely more to see!). Supposedly there are differences in accent between Jutland and Zealand (island that Copenhagen is on), but I honestly couldn’t tell! Perhaps it’s analogous to the difficulties other have in distinguishing Australian and New Zealand accents.
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Photo of the month
I’ve really come to appreciate the humble daisy. It’s not the fanciest nor most colourful flower, but it adds a really nice contrast to the green grass, and to me is a real signal of spring that I’ve come to appreciate since living in Denmark.
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Interesting things I’ve read/watched
I’ve been cooking pasta wrong my entire life.. TLDR: It’s more efficient (time and energy) to start your pasta cold. Pour cold water onto your pasta (only needs to cover by 2-4 cm) and turn on the heat, then cook to your liking.
James Shaw (former Green party leader in NZ) gave his leaving parliament speech this month. If you don’t have the time to watch, it’s worth watching or reading the last part (my eyes definitely got a bit wet). Seems like a really decent person – something we definitely need more of in politics.
Keeping to the NZ theme, here’s another great article from NZ Geographic about invasive pines in NZ. It’s a big problem, and one that needs to be addressed sooner than later. Quite interesting point about how NZ’s stance on genetic modification is stalling the development of sterile pines for the timber industry – which would help a lot with preventing timber industry associated outbreaks.
And some more kiwi stuff… Hayley made a fantastic video about the one of NZ’s Great Walks, the Lake Waikaremoana Track. Featuring a 60-year-old never hiker (her step-mum).
Not NZ, but continuing on the tree theme, here’s a great piece of video journalism from Vox about the forestry industry in Uruguay. At the start I was a bit sceptical – white guy from U.S.A goes to Uruguay seemingly to solve a mystery from satellite imagery, but it goes much deeper than that.
And lastly, if you’re into video games, here’s a antitrust litigation motion against the company Valve in relation to their video game distribution platform Steam. If you’re a gamer you’ve probably heard of Steam, but you’re probably not aware of the fact that they take a 30% cut on sales. This motion argues that the reason they can get away with this high rate is due to anticompetitive behaviour. It seems that they are intentionally stifling competition to maintain what is essentially a monopoly in the industry. This is usually always bad, as it means that both the consumer and the developer of the games are the ones that are paying for Valve’s immense profits. Gabe Newell (CEO of Valve) is quite happy with the situation, as he supposedly has an armada of super yachts worth ~1 billion USD….
Antitrust is something that I’m getting increasingly concerned about, so expect some future articles on the topic.
