ITU Copenhagen

On Friday I visited the IT University in Copenhagen and acted as one of three opponents to a PhD candidate. He gave an hour long talk and then I and the other two opponents posed questions for about another two hours. After the defense, we deliberated in that little hanging room to the right of the pic. Afterward we went out for dinner followed by a couple of drinks.

The day before I walked around Copenhagen and visited the National Museum of Fine Art and the National Museum of Denmark. The art museum was quite good, with a large collection of realist paintings, my preferred type of art. The national museum was also excellent with Denmark's history dating back to the stone age! There were oak coffins with skeletons that still had holes in skulls from trepanning operations, a large number of flint ax heads, then going up through bronze, iron, all the way up to 2000. Great stuff. Of course I felt obliged to go find the little mermaid as well—kind of a Copenhagen must-see, I think.

When I wasn't walking I got around town via the metro. Coincidentally enough, it's very similar to Vancouver's SkyTrain, on which I was just on a week or two before Copenhagen. Copenhagen's metro is similar in size with just two lines, and it too pops up from underground like at this station at the ITU. My hotel in Copenhagen was close to one of the central downtown stations and the morning when I left I also took the metro to the airport. Most convenient, especially since it runs 24 hrs a day, which I think Vancouver's SkyTrain should do as well.