Day 7: Walking street and palace excursion:

The day started with a Beef Safety seminar at the university. To our (pleasant) surprise, we were released at 12:30 instead of 2:00 like we were expecting. We walked back to the hotel, put some things away, and Dr. Harris and I headed out! We made our way back to the walking street, with the full intent to visit two castles (slots as they are called here) but we were first distracted by a Market Day we found in the square. These are just a few pictures to try and show what we saw!


Huge cheese wheels, there must have been 100 to choose from.

Marmalade and jam brought over from Sweden, Dr. Harris and I each got 3 (their awesome). I chose 2- Cherry and 1-Blackberry & Apple jam.

This became lunch. A HUGE soft pretzel covered in melted cheese :) The one we chose actually had ham on it too, they cost $8 USD.

Dried sausages, at one of the many meat stands.

Same stand, different sausage.

The second huge cheese tent!

This is the Queen's winter residence, that is still used in the winter, guards are actively patrolling. We actually saw a guard reprimand a women for getting to close to a window.

Roses in the King's Garden near the 2nd palace we visited.

Rosenberg Palace (our second stop) complete with a mote and everything. This was originally built as the King's summer residence, but has not been inhabited since 1710. Unlike the first palace, we were able to enter this one and take a self tour with a fully detailed map. However, we entered the cellar first and were told to leave and go buy a ticket, so we did. Upon our second attempt, we enter the castle entrance and I got sent out because my purse was too big. Oh, and you had to pay extra to take pictures....So I walk back to the ticket place to rent a locker to store my purse. We tour the castle, taking tons of pictures. When we finished the castle we returned to the treasury/cellar. On my way over, I realized that I had left my ticket in my purse, in the locker. Even though this was the second time this women had seen us, and now I was wearing the sticker that served as proof for paying for photography - she sent me out - AGAIN. I walk back to the ticket place, the third time, and get my ticket out of the locker. On my way back I had to pause, for the changing of the guards - which was actually pretty interesting. This time she let me in. It reminded me of the airport incident on "Meet the Parents!"

Crowns of a past King and Queen. (Located in the treasury, guarded by the "Takes her job too serious" lady)

After leaving the castles, we past another meat market or two, so naturally, I took more pictures.

Kidneys and livers in a meat case.....YUM.

Tongues. Enough said.

These next two pictures are just proof that the "genie" pants, and the many styles of leggings/tights are actually for sale to (and purchased by) the public!!

Be warned, that green thing is not a skirt, that shorter area in the cloth is actually the crotch, and the elastic area at the top is the waist line....no joke.

These are "pleather" snake skin, and plain black tights/leggings....stylish.

Anyway, it is almost 10:00 now, and I have to get up in time to check out and leave the hotel at 6:15am our time, 11pm US time. But most importantly, I AM PACKED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Be home soon!!!!!

Day 6: Plant Pictures

Bird's eye view of the plant

Apparently pigs are calmer in groups of 15. Most of these guys are sleeping before their "final walk."

Christmas trees covered in hams.

Cooler, I think it holds 60,000 carcasses - I can't remember - thousands for sure!

"Three-piece cutter" cuts carcass into hams, middles, and "front ends."

Depiction of plant uniforms, just thought this was cute!



Poster of exports - US get the spareribs.

Lunch :(

Day 6: Pork Harvest Tour

The weather this morning was gorgeous, we took a short walk around 8am to catch our bus over to the plant. We were mentally prepared for a 2 hour ride several towns over. At 10:30, while still on the bus, I started to get curious, so I opened a map on my phone, only to find that the trip is a full 3 hour drive - which actually took us a little longer. Unfortunately, Dr. Savell's bus (in the second group) got lost, and was about an hour or so late. Our tour started around 11:15 or 11:30 and we returned to the hotel at 6pm. I actually forgot my iPod and headphones, luckily, Dr. Harris had an extra pair - otherwise the trip would have been unbearable. There were so many different countries represented by the participants on the tour, listening to all of the conversations for a total of 6.5 hours would have given anyone a headache.



The facility we visited is the 2nd largest pork harvest facility in Europe, and is only 4 years old. They employ nearly 1500 people - including 40 veterinarians. A plaque I read said that, to date, 250-300 human jobs have been eliminated by robots and equipment. The interior feels very fresh and open, and the employees have outstanding working conditions. Hardly comparable to those of the US. We were able to see the majority of the process, and several of the "robots" from viewing windows. We never entered the floor. Unfortunately, we were unable to see the dehairing, head removal, and evisceration machines in action. We moved on to see parts of the "deboning" rooms. Turns out, this facility does clean casings, but does not produce any processed products. All trim produced is consumed by the Danish citizens and is processed by a sister plant. All of their spare ribs are exported to the US along with some shoulders. I took a picture of a poster that shows where they export all of their cuts.

I haven't looked extensively, but a tour and videos of the robots should be available online.

Virtual Horsens Slaughterhouse tour: http://www.danishcrown.com/custom/horsens_uk/3755.asp

The plant staff (Danish Crown) was actually kind enough to provide lunch. However, it was my 5th strange Danish buffet, "light" and no chairs of course. I have pictures of the food too. Two of the items looked like they had hairs all over them! Yuck!

I am trying to add our pictures.....but I am experiencing technical difficulties.

Dinner was really good tonight...Dr. Harris and I wandered around town, sat down at a Spanish restaurant - changed our minds and then settled on a Mexican/Italian restaurant. I know, sounds strange - but they actually had both. We decided to be bold and order chips and salsa, and beef enchiladas. It was by no means the food from home - but it has been the best thing I have eaten on the trip, hands down!

I'll try the pictures again tomorrow!

Day 5: Congress Dinner

Today was by far the hardest day to get through...we have all been so sleepy all day long! We got back to the hotel around 5:30 pm and I took a power nap before the big Congress Dinner tonight.

Around 7 we took a bus down to Fredricksberg Town Hall for the dinner. When we arrived, there was a small reception with seasoned almonds and wine. No coke, no water, no tea. Here is a picture of the town hall from the second story, looking down on the dinner tables:

Once we were seated, there was water! But look at the ratio of water to alcohol. :(




The was the first course. It was some kind of horrific Atlantic Whitefish soup. It had a piece of Parma Ham on top. The tacky stuff on top was some kind of salad.



Finally, something recognizable (that was actually yummy!) - roasted potatoes:

We were told these were Bilberries, but the man from the UK (Peter - he is a hoot!) told us these we Red Currants. Bilberries are apparently black - therefore, these are not Bilberries. These berries were very tart, similar to cranberries. I also learned a little bit about Gooseberries. Apparently they are furry, and are they are full of "pips." Apparently a pip is the English word for seed! We had a few language failures at dinner tonight. For example, Peter was explaining that when short of money, and trying to cook fruit, you take butter, sugar, and flour and crumble it over the fruit. From that point the juices of the fruit cook the breading. Dr. Harris and I informed him that in Texas, that would be a cobbler. He let us know that a UK cobbler made of beef with sliced potatoes on top! Dr. Harris told Peter that is a casserole in the US. He said a casserole in the UK doesn't contain potatoes. It was a fun conversation to say the least! We went on to talk about traffic behavior and some other things...

Dinner consisted of pork loin, rolled pork shoulder, a crackling, some kind of herb-filled mashed potato, and a parsnip. The berries were meant to be eaten with the pork in addition to some kind of sauce. Oh, by the way - there was pickled lemon inside the pork roll...

Dessert was a cake type thing with a fudgy milk chocolate on top. A dollop of mint cream, and a drink of orange juice and mint.

All I have left to say is that it took about an hour between each course. We arrived at 7 and left around 11pm. I am ready for Mexican food, and iced tea - have I already said that?!

I need to head to bed, it is after midnight, and I have to be up early for a 2 hr commute to the pork slaughter facility owned by the Danish Crown. The tour is supposed to be great - I will let you know. A funny thing about it though - Dr. Harris & I got assigned to group #1 8am to 6pm. Somehow Dr. Savell got group#2 9am to 7:45pm or something like that - haha.

I will let you know how it goes! I am sure I am forgetting a funny story or two, but I will add them on tomorrow!

Day 4: BBQ?!

YAY!!!! I got the pictures to work!!!!

After a lovely day of meetings, and laughing at Dr. Savell because his zipper broke halfway through they day MWAH AHAHAHA - we headed to the BBQ!! (Sorry Dr. Savell, you have got to stop giving me ammunition.) I just hope I don't fall asleep in an embarrassing fashion on the plane - he may take a picture and distribute it at the rate I am losing brownie points!!

(This is the entrance to the garden on campus were the BBQ was held. This building is actually their Animal/Life Science facility)

The idea behind the BBQ dinner was very unique - and they get points for creativity - but, you had to cook your own protein. They had multiple stations set up, and you could choose from beef, veal, pork, chicken, or pork sausage. Dr. Harris and I each got some beef, and shared the sausage and veal. The sides were weird again, but the meat made up for it. I wish I had better pictures, it was a really neat concept. And since the Danish Crown owns a large cattle herd, and the major pork operation, they had "advertising" everywhere. This included aprons we wore during our cooking excursion, and then we got to keep them as souvenirs!

(Stand to eat...)

(Notice all of the stations, and the retail cases. Each case had a different protein, it was very well organized)

(At this point I think she was finishing our veal, just before she scorched her finger with the juices when the paper plate folded in half!)

After dinner, we made the trek back towards the hotel. Just prior to leaving the BBQ, Dr. Harris and I decided some more chocolate ice cream was necessary. So, we get back to hotel, drop a few people off, and head out. Little did we know, the Danish Woodstock (not really, but close enough) was going on in Town Square or City Centre or whatever we call that place. There was no way to take pictures but there were literally THOUSANDS of kids (age 14-20) and THOUSANDS of bikes EVERYWHERE. I will never be able to convey the mass of people, how much they were drinking, and smoking, and, well, doing things to each other. Oh my gosh - it was unreal. And to think, when we got here we wondered why there was broken glass and trash everywhere in this town.......don't go downtown after dark. It almost got scary.

Well I wanted to go to bed early tonight - blew it again - it's almost 12. I will try some more pictures tomorrow. Good bye for now!

Day 4: Tuesday!

Well, for some reason I am having trouble getting pictures up tonight. I have been waiting for 15 minutes and they won't upload. They were mostly of tonight's dinner - which is a long story.

Like yesterday, we started with interesting transportation on our way to meetings that started at 8:30 although we were a little late. Break ~10am usually consists of coffee, hot tea, and fruit. Then there are more speakers until lunch. Today's talks were a lot of fun, much better than yesterday. We started the day with robotics, and finished with food safety. Needless to say, I was entertained all day long! Rumor has it they will post the presentations online after the Congress, which means we can show all of you the Marel (Standard Meat's steak cutting technology manufacturer) and DMRI (Danish Meat Research Institute) technologies.

There is no way for me to describe the level of automation that we witnessed this morning. Everything from trimming fish filets, to removing pork heads. The pork head removal and carcass splitting devices were quite impressive. Not to take away from the shoulder deboning machine (WOW!). It was funny though, one of the companies engineered an ergonomic tree loading machine. A human takes meat (ex. ham) straight from the end of the conveyor to a hook, no lifting at all. They actually call them "Christmas trees" here. As the weight on the tree increases, the tree lowers, allowing the employee to load the next tier with no effort. (And to think, they pay these plant workers 200 DKK/hour-thats roughly $38 USD/hr.) The best part is the unloading of the tree! They call this device the "Mexican hat" which was very funny coming from a Dane! The hat pushes up under the tree, and all of the meat falls off onto a conveyor. They even invented a machine that detects a good stick to bleed the hogs!

I am hoping for pictures on the plant tour Thursday, otherwise, we have to hope they put all of this on the website...you have to see it to believe it.

Lunch was miserable...again. I think we managed to avoid pickled herring today, but there may have been more salmon with lovely toppings. I know for sure there was a horrific salad with muscles, and some kind of walnut/brown rice/pico de gallo mess that looked good but tasted indescribably yucky. I ate the "chili" and I am still living, maybe the roll absorbed anything harmful. Also, I'm not sure that I mentioned this, but they don't believe in chairs. We stand for every meal. No joke.

I just thought of something from the food safety lectures today. There was this Danish guy talking about the food safety system in Denmark, and how much work on consumer education remains. He proceeded to show us a poster, in Danish of course, that was posted to increase hand washing. What he had to translate for us Americans was, "Wash your hands after handling raw meat." The catch is, they hung these signs above urinals in public restrooms. He went on to say that he should word this cautiously but, "The information penetrated well." If you didn't catch the joke, I guess you had to be there - the whole place was either rolling or had blushed cheeks. No Modesty here, I think I've mentioned that already.

Day 2: (Yesterday, still...) Final Chapter - Tivoli

Before making our stop at the Danish amusement park Tivoli, we meandered from the canal towards the hotel to drop off the Savells. On our way, we saw a group of Danish troops marching in the street (changing of the guard I'm assuming). And I got to see a very rare site...similar to Will's Dimebox Emu's which I did not believe until I saw for myself. All of a sudden, I heard tons of commotion, and in a hurry Dr. Savell yells, "ASHLEY, GET YOUR CAMERA - HURRY!!" At first he tugged on my arm, I had no idea what was going on, and before I could dig out my camera, Dr. Savell was RUNNING towards the street like a crazy person....LOL....I die all over just thinking about it. Telling everyone this may make me subject to retaliation, but it will be sooooooooo worth it. So, I wasn't fast enough to get an action shot - BUT, I have two pictures of the scene, so you can take a look at the distance he "sprinted" for the photo opportunity!! I have gotten to see him RUN on two other occasions so far...hahaha. First, yesterday afternoon we were headed to the reception, following a group, and Dr. Savell stopped to tie his shoe. Well, the walk sign turned green, (LOL) and you only have a tiny glimpse of time to cross before death stares you in the face (in the form of speeding taxi's, speeding buses, and speeding bicycles - which ding their bell at you angrily if you get in their way)! So, this time Jackie yells back, "JEFF, JEFF, your gonna get left," as we all hussle forward. Dr. Savell was left with one choice, RUN accross the crosswalk or ...... SQUISH!

(~12x zoom)

(note the man in the maroon hoodie and blue hat!)

Okay, Tivoli - really this time. Here is a picture of 1/3 of the main entrance, which does not do this place justice at all. I am not sure how many city blocks it consumes, but streets touch it on every side. There are entrances to all of the major restaurants and stores from both sides (on the street and inside the park). Things like Build-a-Bear, and Hard Rock are the two major ones that I recognized.


Once you enter you see this huge building called Nimb. It was supposed to have an in-house dairy, a massive aquarium, and several other things of interest, but we decided there would not be any cows, and we didn't want to pay an additional 20 DKK to see the fish.

After walking around the park, and watching a humiliating dance competition (a cross between Bring It On and something crazy like America's Got Talent), Dr. K. Harris decided it was time to try Danish ice cream to compare to the German ice cream that was sampled in abundance over the course of the last week!

Let me tell you, it was some of the (if not the) most fabulous chocolate ice cream I have had. Just wonderful. I opted for the minimum allowed 2 scoops; however, they will give you up to 6 scoops - for a price.

I also took a picture of the cotton candy sign, in Denmark, it's Candy Floss - sounds yummy, not.

We looked in all of the shops in the park, to be honest, the things for sale and the way they were display reminded me of a combination of the Renaissance festival, a garage sale, and a flea market. The things for sale were not your typical souvenir key chains, mugs, and stuffed characters. Try hand crocheted booties, feathered masks, licorice lollipops, glass critters of every shape, size and color. Tacky home decor, and the humor factor of the day.....nasty key chains and signs, right out in the open. A key chain with two individuals clearly doing, you know what - luckily the saying was in Danish. Several said things I refuse to repeat, and one said "18 and sexy." On top of that you could go to the picture booth, and put your face on a plywood cut-out of a completely naked women, or a scantly dressed man holding a dirty magazine. Let me tell you.....modesty is not the standard policy here. On top of that, everywhere we have gone, EVERYONE smokes, even children who look 14, some younger. It is ridiculous.

On a different note, there was a pantomime show near the entrance to the park, I got a picture of the theater, but we didn't wait around to see the show:

However, we did see a mime in the square near lunch yesterday. Dr. Savell wanted me to go put money in the canister, but that guy would freeze for a while, then start dripping water like a fountain. Later he would make faces, and shoot people with water....pass on the mime. They remind me of clowns - weird.

Well, it is 11:30 here, I think I will call it a night, and wait to give ya'll the scoop on the food situation, maybe if I wait until tomorrow I will think of some other stories pertaining to today...

Yesterday's Canal Tour

Okay, finally - the canal tour pictures...This is a picture of part of the canal from dry land. But after today, I have officially taken every form of transportation: plane, boat, taxi/NASCAR, bus, train, feet; except a dog sled. And with the way the weather is acting right now (and my lapse of judgement on packing anything remotely resembling a jacket) I may have to call the dogs in, and mush my way over to the Town Hall Dinner tonight...

This is very interesting. These narrow houses are very common along the canal, and the reason for their odd shape, is due to property tax calculation. Before building them, the individuals involved first calculated the property taxes, and decided to go tall and thin, to reduce surface area!

Just FYI, in Denmark they say, "Mind your head," which sounds very strange to me, but in the US we "Watch our heads," which as it turns out, also makes absolutely no sense. Think about it...Nonetheless, we literally had to duck under several of the bridges, this was not the lowest one, because the tour guide (front right, with HAIRY armpits) is not leaning down under this one. Dr. Savell asked me if the low bridges made me feel tall >:( Not funny.



This was one of my favorite parts of the canal/harbor tour, getting to see all of the Queen's stuff. This is her ship, docked right out in the harbor. You can see one of the little crowns on the back...I have a better picture, but this one will do for now.

Directly across the harbor from the Queen's current castle is the Opera House, donated to the people of Denmark by a huge ship firm, Marek or something close to that. Anyways, very pretty, and easily accessible by the queen.

This is the Queen's former castle (I guess that's what they call it, it is a stone fortress - works for me), it burned down on three different occasions before she finally decided to move. This is the entrance and the very edge of an intricately detailed bridge. This also has the little golden crowns on top. Speaking of which, his Royal Highness the Prince, spoke at the start of today's meeting. No crown, no entourage. Turns out, he is the runner-up prince, not the crowned prince who is on all of the postcards, oh well.

This is the former home of Hans Christian Andersen (Danish pronunciation = [ˈhanˀs ˈkʰʁæʂd̥jan ˈɑnɐsn̩]) LOL. Right. He was born and passed in Denmark, died at age 70 in 1985. If you notice the indention above the center window on the first floor, his name is actually carved there. I'm sure most of you know who he is, but for those who don't, he is known for "The Little Mermaid," "The Ugly Duckling," and "Thumbelina."

This is the famous Little Mermaid statue, created to commemorate H.C. Andersen. The statue is very popular, and is a landmark for Denmark tourists, as you can see by the crowd. Several people actually attempt to wade out in the water to take pictures at alternative angles. At first I thought they had dropped something in the water, then I realized they just wanted a picture, CRAZY!

When we passed the bank of a strange looking community, we were told "people of an alternative lifestyle live there." Most of that area was hidden in the trees, I managed this, and one other picture. Really creepy looking, Dr. Savell informed the Harris' and I that it was a hippie community. Copenhagen is trying to take the neighborhood back, and modernize it, with the rest of the harbor and town - no luck so far.

And finally, this is a statue of the founder of Denmark (maybe just Copenhagen....whatever) any way, we took this picture on land, but you can see him from the water too.

I have a several other pictures of old brewery's and marinas used to hide old naval ships that have now been converted to office buildings and apartments. Most of them are very pretty.

I will save those for later - I have to mush to Town Hall now.