Wow, what a busy day!  I learned at about 2:30am today that Denmark has only about 5 hours of darkness.  It is dark from about 10:30pm til 2:30am.  I woke up worried that I had overslept - no worries on that part!  Look at Denmark on the map and see if you can figure out why!

First thing, this morning we walked to the Denmark Conference Center to hear a lecture about the Oresund Bridge and the Fehmarnbelt Tunnel network.  You might think this would be boring, but it was fascinating.  This bridge is over 10 miles long over the Baltic Sea and then goes into an immersed tunnel (a tunnel they built on land then placed in the ocean in a trench and covered with rock and ocean silt).   This is the road connection between the metropolitan areas of Copenhagen, Denmark and Malmo, Sweden.    The tunnel allows ship traffic through and they couldn't have a high bridge right by the airport.

Before this bridge was built, the only way to get from Denmark to Sweden was to fly or take a ferry. The bridge now has over 20,000 daily communters.  We live in a global society and this bridge links not just the land, but the people and the economy. People are now moving back and forth between Denmark and Sweden. People in Denmark buy summer homes in the forests of Sweden.  Denmark is now planning to build a 10.9 mile immersed tunnel from Denmark to Germany to link Northern Europe together.

Next we walked along the "Lakes" of Copenhagen to visit Ingrid Jespersen's Privatskold.

  The school did not look anything like I thought it would.

The only playground is in the courtyard, but it has multiple levels and really cool toys.  The girls here are swinging on something that is like a cross between a hammock and a bungee cord.

This is a friend that I met playing on the playground.  All the students and Danes speak English. All Danish students must study Danish, English, Math and Science.

The playground has about 5 of these little playhouses up on a 2nd level because of space.

Since the area is all paved they had picnic tables and lots of fun riding toys.  Many of the parents and students bike to school.  Parents have a place for babies and small children on their bike. Parents were picking their students up on bikes and the student and parent would ride their bikes home.  Bike lanes are everywhere. Pedestrians have to yield to bikes. Most bike lanes are 4 and 5 bikes across.

Of course, I found the library (Bibliotek).  They have about 10,000 books, but in several different rooms and halls.

The librarian said that Danish students love Harry Potter!!!

It is about 7:30 in the evening here and we have walked to Christianshavn for dinner. In the background, you can see the spire of Vor Freisers Kirke (The Church of our Savior). It has a gilded staircase on the outise of the spire that you can climb up. It was finished in 1696.

Last for the night, we went to Christiania which is a town within a town. It declared its independence from Denmark in the 1970's and runs itself as a separate country. They do not allow pictures inside so this was on the outside walls. Graffiti is very common in Copenhagen.  According to the Danish teenagers, it is legal on any public wall.

Hope you have a good day. Tomorrow, I am off to the Danish Energy Commission and then Roskilde to the Viking Ship museum.