København!

PART 1

Last week I was lucky enough to get the chance to go to Copenhagen for a week. The official reason was to attend the ICES WKFLR. Marine biology is a field laden with acronyms and abbreviations, so in layman's terms thats the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea worskshop on Fisheries Libraries in R (R being a programming language). The idea was to make stock assessment and ICES WG scientists from around the world, in particular the NAFO region, competent in EDA, SR relationships, XSA, SCURBA and ICA analyses using a common platform of FLR. FLR uses the open source R, instead of the less accessible SAS, for carrying out VPA and ADAPT style analyses for developing BRP based HCRs to be evaluated in MSEs (I only know what half of those are). Apparently this is pretty central to the work I'm supposed to be doing for the DFO at NAFC, funded by the NSERC. But enough BS, basically 25 scientists from Europe and North America, no more than 3 per country, were nominated by their various governing bodies to attend this meeting so there was an eclectic mix of nationalities including Danish (obviously), Canadians, Poles, Irish, Latvians, Faroe Islanders (that's not what they're called but it sounds better than Faroese, which they actually are) and even the odd South African. I won't go into any more detail on the workshop itself, because it wasn't particularly exciting and we spend most of our time hunched over our laptops, inputing lots of numbers and outputing lots of different numbers and pictures with lots of dots, circles and curvy lines. There was a nice coffee machine there.

So, the trip itself. I always get excited before I fly anywhere. I don't know why. When I was young it was probably because it was something new and exciting (and there were free chips!). Now I've done it so often and I have enough money to not even get that excited about the prospect of free booze. I suppose its the same kind of excitement I get from buying a scratch card. I know there is sweet FA chance of winning anything decent and that I will most likely lose. But there's always that chance that I just might win 4 or 5 bucks and effectively get what I paid for. And this feels like some sort of victory because I didn't actually LOSE. I am constantly hoping that I just might get what I paid the airline for i.e. get to where it says on the ticket, when it says on the ticket. Unfortunately I am starting to realise that this is very rarely the case. The trip to Copenhagen was like getting a scratch card with three identical symbols that say 'You owe us another R50', three brown eyes. But thats another story in itself. Basically I arrived in Copenhagen 10 hours late without my luggage. I also didn't have a single Krone to my name and only a vague idea of where my hotel actually was in Copenhagen.

Given my situation I decided it best to make my first port of call the pub, and a pint of Carlsberg (probably the best beer in the world they would have you believe). I caught the end of the Handball World Cup quarter final (which saw Denmark walk over the Czechs) while I calmed my nerves and quietly cursed Air Canada and the entire Star Alliance. The bar lady was a pleasure to look at and very helpful too giving me detailed instructions on how to get get to my hotel by bus. I paid very close attention to her and caught bits of what she said and managed to find the hotel on the first go. I was staying right in the middle of Copenhagen at The Square Hotel. ICES headquarters was a short walk down H. C. Andersen Blvd and most of the good sites in the city and toursit spots were also within walking distance. The centre of town is fairly Americanised and within a two block radius of the hotel there were 3 McDonalds, 2 Burger Kings, KFC, 3 7Elevens and the Church of Scientology. Scottish and Irish pubs are also popular, but I generally tried to avoid all these places (in particular the Scientologists) in favour of more traditional Danish establishments (like the plentiful sausage (Polsen) stalls scatterred around town).

More to follow...