In the Dark
Posts about Copenhagen written by telescoper
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In the Dark
The great tenor saxophonist Ben Webster moved to Europe in 1964 and spent much of the rest of his life in Denmark until he passed away in 1973. After his cremation, his ashes were interred in the Assistens Kirkegård in Copenhagen; I visited his grave many moons ago:

That’s a bit of context for a beautiful clip I just stumbled across and couldn’t resist sharing here. It was filmed in Copenhagen in 1965 in the intimate surroundings of the apartment of Danish bass player Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen (who plays on the track), with Ole Steenberg on drums and Kenny Drew on piano. Kenny Drew is also buried in the Assistens Kirkegård, in a grave not far from Ben Webster’s.

This is a fine demonstration of Webster’s beautifully tender way of playing ballads, in this case George Gershwin’s Someone to Watch Over Me.

I made it to the conference venue (CPH Conference) for this year’s Euclid Consortium Meeting, which is 5 minutes walk from my hotel.

One thing that confused me when I looked at the programme last night was that all the rooms in the conference centre are named after locations in and around the city, e.g. Kastrup, Amager, Vesterbro, etc. For a while I thought the delegates would be running around Copenhagen to find their parallel sessions! Then I realized these were just names of meeting rooms…

The full programme doesn’t start until tomorrow but today I attended a couple of sessions aimed at early career researchers, not because I identify myself as such but because I wanted to listen to questions they asked and the advice given to them, much of which was very sound.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow, especially the plenaries, but first: dinner.

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So here I am in my hotel room in Copenhagen after breakfast doing a quick post before checking out. I’ve put the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door.

Ibsens Hotel seems to know its guests!

My flight back to Dublin is not until this evening and I have to leave the hotel by 11am (local time) so I have a few hours wandering about the city which should be very nice, since the weather is lovely.

I took the above picture with my phone yesterday morning while taking the short walk to the Niels Bohr Institute. The strange effect was cause by the mist hanging over the city. This morning is bright and sunny. Ideal for a walk about.

Anyway, the main point of this post is to congratulate Dr Sebastian von Hausegger who successfully defended his PhD thesis yesterday. In the Danish system the thesis defence is a public affair, involving a talk by the candidate followed by questions from a panel involving two external examiners, of which I was one. The talk lasted about 45 minutes and was followed by about 40 minutes of questions. I’m told that was a longer than usual question-and-answer session, but that’s only because we found the thesis so interesting. The thesis concerned various projects related to the cosmic microwave background, including foreground subtraction methods and analysis of polarization.

It was actually a very enjoyable occasion, rather than an ordeal, and the candidate passed with flying colours. Afterwards there was a small drinks reception, during which I got to talk to Sebastian’s parents and his girlfriend (who apparently reads this blog). I hope they all had a good celebration yesterday evening!

P.S. I couldn’t think of a good title for this post so I borrowed the latin motto of the City of Newcastle (my home town). Roughly translated it means `triumphing by brave defence’!

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Once again I find myself in the wonderful city of Copenhagen. As far as I’m concerned, at least, my wavefunction has collapsed (along with the rest of me into a definite location: Ibsen’s Hotel, in fact. Henrik Ibsen isn’t here: he checked out many years ago.

The hotel management, being Danes, are refreshingly honest in their description of my room:

Usually hotel rooms this size are described as `standard’…

After a very enjoyable but rather tiring day yesterday I was up early this morning to get from Loughborough to Luton Airport. What I thought would be the reasonable way of making the trip – train from Loughborough to Luton Airport Parkway and shuttle bus from there – turned out to be inconvenient in terms of timing and cost, so the kind people of Loughborough University just booked me a cab all the way there. I had to leave at 7am, though, so missed the hotel breakfast but I got to the airport in good time to have something there.

My second flight with Ryanair this week was also on time and Copenhagen’s excellent public transport system got me to this hotel very quickly. It’s a good few degrees colder here than in England.

When I checked in the receptionist asked me if I had stayed here before. I said yes, but couldn’t remember when. She said it was 2012, as I was still on their system. I did actually post about it then. The hotel hasn’t changed at all from what I remember last time. I must remember to get to breakfast in good time.

The flight from Luton Airport carried a large contingent of Chelsea supporters. Their team is playing Malmö this evening in the UEFA Europa League. Malmö is easily reachable from Copenhagen by train over the Øresund Bridge. Fortunately I was heading into Copenhagen on the Metro so parted company with the supporters as soon as I left the airport.

Anyway, I’m in Copenhagen again as one of the External Examiners for a thesis defence at the Niels Bohr Institute tomorrow morning and then I’ll be returning directly to Dublin on Saturday afternoon. I’m missing today’s Computational Physics lecture and laboratory in Maynooth, but the students are being well looked after in my absence by John and Aaron who have all the notes and lab scripts.

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Well, I made it back to Cardiff on schedule last night, although that did involve getting home at 2am. I was pretty much exhausted by then so had a bit of a lie-in this morning. I think I’m getting too old for all this gallivanting about. I crashed out soon after getting home and had to spend an hour or so this morning sorting through the stack of mail that arrived while I was away (including some book tokens courtesy of another crossword prize).

I usually try to get to the airport plenty of time in advance when I’m flying somewhere, so got to Copenhagen airport yesterday a good three hours before my scheduled departure. I had checked in online before setting out so I could have left it later, but I’m obviously a creature of habit. As it happened I was able to leave my luggage at the bag drop immediately and it took no longer than 5 minutes to clear the security checks, which meant that I was left with time to kill but I had my iPod and plenty to read so it was all fine.

I was a little disturbed when I got to the departure gate to hear the announcement that `Tonight’s British Airways flight to London Heathrow is operated by Qatar Airways’, but at least it explained why it wasn’t a BA plane standing outside on the tarmac. As it happened the flight went smoothly and Qatar Airways do free food and drink for economy class passengers (unlike BA who nowadays sell expensive snacks and beverages supplied by Marks and Spencer). The only downside when we arrived at Heathrow was that we parked at a remote stand and had to wait 20 minutes or so for a bus to take us to Terminal 5. I could hear the ground crew unloading luggage while we waited, however, so that meant less time waiting at the carousels…

On previous occasions I’ve been greeted at Heathrow by a packed passport control area, but this time it was virtually deserted. In fact I’ve never seen it so empty. My bag was waiting for me when I got to the reclaim area so I got to the Heathrow Express terminal and thence to Paddington in time for the 10.45pm train to Cardiff.

When I got back to the Data Innovation Research Institute office around lunchtime I discovered that our big screen TV has been installed.

This will of course be used exclusively for skype calls and video conferences and in no way for watching cricket or football or any other inappropriate activity.

Well, I’d better get on. Marking resit exams is the order of the day.

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This is my last full day in Copenhagen before flying back tomorrow evening, so I decided to take care of some unfinished business by visiting the famous Assistens Kirkegård in the Nørrebro district of the city. I went there five years ago (almost to the day) but on that occasion I didn’t find the memorial I was looking for, that of the great Heldentenor Lauritz Melchior.

I was surprised to find at the time that his name was absent from the main index, and still doesn’t appear on the maps displayed at the cemetery. Its location is however now on a guide you can find online so I had little difficulty locating it this time round. In case anyone is interested it is in section F, near the western end of the park. Lauritz Melchior was cremated, and his remains interred in a small family plot:

The small slab to the left marks the burial of Lauritz Melchior:

In fact this memorial is not far from that of another famous Dane I missed last time, pioneering physicist Hans Christian Ørsted:

The Hans Christian Ørsted Institute, part of the University of Copenhagen, is a short walk from the main buildings of the Niels Bpohr Institute. It houses Chemistry and Mathematical Sciences and some physicists of the Niels Bohr Institute.

You might think that a cemetery was a rather morbid choice of place to go for a stroll in the sunshine, but actually it’s not that way at all. It’s actually a rather beautiful place, a very large green space criss-crossed by pleasant tree-lined paths. These are poplars:

We British have a much more reserved attitude to cemeteries than the Danes seem to have, at least judging by their behaviour in this place; joggers and cyclists pass through Assistens Cemetery at regular intervals, and many people were having picnics or just sitting and reading between the gravestones. I find this matter-of-fact attitude to the dead rather refreshing, actually.

Part of the attraction of Assistens Kirkegård – the name derives from the fact that it was originally an auxiliary burial place, outside the main city, designed to take some of the pressure off the smaller cemeteries in the inner areas – is the large number of famous people buried there, many of whose graves I found last time. I didn’t however notice the large area devoted to common graves nor did I realise that there was a memorial to French and Belgian soldiers of World War 1. Most of these died in 1919, which puzzled me. It turns out that they had been prisoners of war and many of them were ill or injured and had been sent to Copenhagen to recuperate only to be struck down by the Spanish ‘flu epidemic of 1919.

It’s noticeable that some of the smaller graves are extremely well-tended whereas many of the more opulent memorials are in a state of considerable disrepair. I think there’s a moral in there somewhere. My ambition is to be forgotten as quickly as possible after my death so the idea of anyone erecting some grandiose marble monument on my behalf fills me with horror, but I have to say I do find graveyards are strangely comforting places. Rich and poor, clever and stupid, ugly and beautiful; death comes to us all in the end. At least it’s very democratic.

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A very busy but also very interesting day at the office in the Niels Bohr Institute ended this evening with a thunderstorm, complete with spectacular lightning and torrential rain. I got wet on the walk back to my small home, but I managed to get inside before the worst of it started. I seem to remember a similar thing happened last time I was in Copenhagen. Maybe it’s the time of year.

Anyway, torrential rain isn’t the only thing that’s been falling today. The Pound dropped sharply against the Euro, so it is currently around €1.1069, not far from its lowest point in the last year. That’s not directly relevant to my visit to Denmark, which isn’t in the Eurozone, but the Pound has tumbled against the Danish Kroner too. In fact it’s been falling steadily over the past three months:

At 8.234 Kroner to the Pound, this the worst exchange rate I can remember in all the approximately 30 years I’ve been travelling to Copennhagen. The rate has usually been about 10:1 or even higher. Copenhagen has always seemed a rather expensive place, but converting prices into Pounds at the current exchange rate makes your eyes water. Fortunately I’m getting my local expenses paid by the NBI so the increased cost won’t really affect me, but it’s definitely noticeable. Such is the shambolic state of our government that I wouldn’t bet against the pound reaching parity with the Euro before too long.

Of course one is not allowed to suggest that the falling pound and sluggish economic growth might be something to do with BrExit because that would be `talking the country down’. The worrying thing, though, is that we haven’t left the European Union yet. Just wait until March 2019 when we leave the European Union, together with the Single Market and Customs Union without any trade agreement. Where will the pound be then, I wonder?

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As you might have inferred from my earlier post, I’m back again in the wonderful city of Copenhagen, as a guest of the Niels Bohr Institute. I’ve been here almost every year since my first visit here way back in the 1980s. I didn’t come here last summer, as I was too busy finishing off my duties at Sussex and relocating back to Cardiff so it’s nice to be back again now. I’m staying in one of the `9 small homes‘ that comprise a hotel near the NBI. I’ve stayed here before though not in my current small home, which is actually a self-contained apartment on the ground floor with its own front door. It’s also got a small kitchen so I can cook for myself when I don’t feel like eating out (like tonight). Incidentally, `hjem’ (the Danish word for `home’) is pronounced exactly as `home’ is pronounced in Geordie (i.e. as `hyem’). I did some shopping earlier this evening and attempted to speak Danish when I paid for my groceries. As always, however, I got a reply in English.

I realised only this morning that it’s a year since I left my previous job. I haven’t done half the things I had hoped to do in the year after stepping down as Head of School, but that’s partly because it took quite a while to get over certain health problems and also because quite a few things have come up that I didn’t anticipate. From what I’m told the old place is doing just fine without me!

Coincidently (?), I have arrived here at the Niels Bohr Institute at precisely the time that there is a delegation here from LIGO and there’s been a lot of serious – but good-natured – discussion of `The Danish Paper‘ that came out some time ago and which questioned some aspects of the data analysis of the first detection of gravitational waves. I think there are still quite a few issues to be resolved between the two groups. Although they do seem to be converging on what’s going on, I don’t think this controversy will be fully concluded until more data are made public, as the currently available time series are not exactly those used in the actual LIGO analysis.

I think this discussion can only be of benefit to the science community in the long run, especially if it encourages LIGO to get more fully into the spirit of open science, by releasing more data for use of researchers outside the consortium.

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