Jenny and Aaron's Green Adventure

Aaron just featured at Copenhagen’s poetry slam in Club Vega. Now he is an internationally performing poet! How doya like that?!

We went to the CPH just for a couple days, taking in an excellent vegetarian lunch at a restaurant called Morgenstedt (Morning Star) in Christiania, Denmark’s very own anarchist hippie commune. After a long nap, we headed over to the venue, which was very full with poetically-inclined young Danes. (The crowd was overwhelmingly 20-something.) Aaron performed some awesome spoken word, which I’ll put up here very soon, and then we stayed up til the wee hours partying with the ever-festive Danes after the slam.

Then, we went for a long walk home, guided by our friend Alex, through the early morning streets of the city, passing about one million kebab places and some much more sketchy places as well. It’s a different place at two in the morning, quiet, lonely, the kebab and pizza shops still open, spilling their light onto the sidewalk.

The next day (after some excellent hanging around) we packed up and headed back to Home Sweet Samsø! And we’re back.

That I’ve been practicing my kung fu!

Jenny captured me practicing this one leg stance on this post. Very Shaolin!

This was at this old old windmill – ironically a post mill type of mill. When Jenny’s mom, Jane, was here, we went all around looking at stuff like this. It was really fun and we took pictures and, here the old post mill. Oh, for those who don’t know, those old windmills come in basically two varieties: Dutch Style, which you can probably imagine the look of, and Post Mills, which look about the same, only they are sitting atop a huge post. They can be turned on that post to get into the best wind, and although it’s huge, it’s designed in such a way that even a kid can easily turn it.

it's tall!

And there's stairs, old ones...

This is where the wings would attach...

...if they weren't laying over here broken.

I told you in my last entry the Danes have a long history of using windmills, as evidenced at this old mill, and if you look out from the hill it's on, more evidence is right out there...

You can see a lot of farming from up here, too.

And ships floating in the sky! WAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!

I think Jenny's mom and I think we're vikings and we've conquered this old deserted windmill...

Now that we've conquered it, I can practice my stances some more!

Once we left the mill, we went to the lighthouse (which I told you about before). Near the lighthouse, we found lotso pheasants!

Back at the 'ol Brundby Stubmølle, I'm using my "loser" technique - this is how I tell Jenny that I see something I want her to take a picture of (it's not really a loser L, it's the side of a box, you know, like a picture frame)! Usually she decides that, but sometimes I get an idea too!

Well, these have been some pics of that. Jenny, I encourage you to make blog posts with other pictures, if you have cool ones I don’t! The rest of you, uhm, carry on.

Footage from Vesborg Fyr Lighthouse on Samsø from Jennifer Malin on Vimeo.

Be sure to notice how awesome the sound is on this! Aaron did a great job blending it and making it very atmospheric!

Hi!  A couple weeks ago when we got to Samsø, we interviewed a guy who talked about his PV (photovoltaic – meaning electricity generating) solar panels and his special insulation, and special air-to-air heat pump and some of the history of Samsø as “energy island” – even some of the history in general, say, of windmills in Denmark.

We found out from him something I found REALLY fascinating, which is that the first electricity in Denmark (back in around the 20’s? 30’s?  *shrug*) was actually generated by windmills.  People were putting them on their roof!  Eventually a (coal burning) utility grid was starting to get built and the company building it went around asking this people if they’d like to be on the grid – better reliability and such.  Whenever someone with a windmill said yes, they said ok but you have to take down this windmill!  They didn’t want the competition.  Rats!

Well that guy might show up in the movie and/or in a subsequent blog post, but right now, I’ve actually come to tell you about the other thing he told us about:

The Rock Hotel!

AKA Hotel Brundby, here on Samsø.  This place is great!  It’s a hotel, a nice old quaint sorta fancy place with a restaurant and such, but their whole deal is to be a rock’n'roll hotel.  Touring acts come through here and stay in the hotel and play in the venue there.  It’s a whole experience and I have a dream now that I will bring a band here and play the Rock Hotel!

Well we went down there that night, and sure enough our new friend was there, and we had a beer and some Danish dudes and dudettes were playing the @%^@ out of some blues, country and old American rock’n'roll!  I wish my dad could’ve been there!  Unfortunately we didn’t have the HD camera, or any kind of permission to shoot, but Jenny used her little digital photo camera to grab a couple of short low res video clips, and although they’re not high quality, I’d still like to share them with you!

So here:

Me, chillin out, bobbin the head:

A blues song of unknown nature:

See ya later alligator!

And there!

I don’t know what to say about this other than, we went to see a lighthouse!

Jenny’s mom came to visit – I know that sounds crazy, she lives in Houston, but it happened!  It’s awesome actually.  We went driving all over the southern part of the island of Samsø looking at stuff.  Here’s a few pics I took when we arrived at an old lighthouse and I YOINKED Jenny’s camera and ran off!

This is what we came upon...

Jenny turned right, and went up those stairs, saying the view was great. I thought I could find an even higher view, so I went toward the lighthouse! I stole her camera and took this of her and Jane, her mom, from the base of the lighthouse, across the driveway to them on their hill.

I disappeared inside, and here's what I found...

As I climbed the old thing, out the window I saw this direct TV dish. HA! Juxtoposition!

I got to the mostly top and there was this!

When I went out the door at the top, this is what I saw.

And turning left, this...

Amazed, walking, turning again, this...

I think it's Jutland in the distance. Can you see the smoke stack?

A little different angle on Jutland...

I thought the sun looked cool ow my eye

Sorry, the sea just amazes me.

OMG! Windmills in the water!

And on land!

Holy big rolling freshly plowed field of dirt, batman!

It's an island. A rolling hills island of farming and islanding.

Oh man the light itself is neat.

Inside the light...

Oop! Jenny's caught me! Stay back, Camera Police!

Well, first I showed Jenny the view, then she ooh’d and ahh’d, then we went down those steps and down down the other steps, and out to our next adventure!!

Today, we watched Annette Mørch, a local organic farmer, harvest potatoes. Now we’re about to go birdwatching with my Mom! Hope to update you with some organic farming video soon.

At one point in Copenhagen, we saw that the “World Out Games” was taking place.  It’s an olympics type thing, with many sporting events (we saw the tail end of an aerobic dance competition and we saw, we think, some same sex ballroom competitions).  We took some video at one thing involved with the Out Games – a temporary village that was built in a couple parking lots out of reused building materials, where there were bands and booze and shops and stuff.  I guess there were a bunch of these villages around town.

But these pictures I wanted to just post up are not from there, they’re from the parade – I just have a few I liked, and here you go!

These guys are leading cheers! Actually they weren't saying anything.

These people are a marching band!

There were a lot of these floats. Every one had a DJ bumping some sort of dance tunez.

These were water polo players. The shamanistic pink leader there, though, I'm not sure he was a water polo player.

Here's a pink Union Jack!

Hello everyone! It’s been a great week here in Samsø. My Mom has come to visit, which is making for some lovely adventures! Yesterday we had a fabulous time touring around the southern part of the island. One of the highlights was a visit to one of the largest squash displays I’ve ever seen. This row of squash was presented by the road to be bought on the honor system. (No one manned the collection. You just pay for your squash in a little money box and drive off with your bounteous selection.) This sort of farm stand is ubiquitous on Samsø. It’s a wonderful thing to live in a community where honesty is the assumption.

There were at least 18 varieties of squash!

Turban Squash

We took one of these home -- it's an acorn squash hybrid.

Aaron found a big pumpkin!

The farm stand was carefully guarded by a giant turkey.

This farmer clearly had a passion for winter squashes! A squash virtuoso!

Me and Mom and All the Squash

Alright — that’s all for now about the squash. We ended up taking home BEAUTIFUL little squashes and a bag of potatoes. Perhaps we will update you on what the squash ended up tasting like!

Signing off,

Jenny

Hej!

I thought I’d just post a few pictures from Trekroner Island fortress – already posted my crazy video of it, but I found these pictures, wanted to delete ‘em from my rapidly filling hard drive, and thought “ok, here, we’ll put ‘em on the blog”.

I call this the Fortress Sun Room! Sun yourself in our fortresses' only lit up place!

That was sunny!

It's sunny out there, too... if only I hadn't stolen those city bikes, I wouldn't be peeking at these happy free people from in here...

Here's the lunch room/torture chamber. It's like a cafetorium, only we call it a cafetortur'em.

This is the hallway to our "quarters" (they're cells, but they call 'em quarters to remind us of drawing and quartering - scary)

Here's a nice portrait of Jenny in pris---blue.

And a little portrait of me looking out that window at those people!

Here I go, doing Jenny's job while she's busy getting tortured.

Well that’s it for those – *DELETE*!

Ok we haven’t posted much the last couple weeks, but now we’re getting ourselves back into it (I think)! We started getting very busy as people came back from holiday (the Danes are serious about taking nearly all of July off) and we made more connections.

We also started expanding out, travelling to various other places, going in cars and trains and boats, etc.

First we borrowed our roomate’s car and went to Louisiana! Ok it was not the crazy New Orlean’s containing state in America, but the fancy art museum about 40 minutes drive from Copenhagen. We went there because they had an exhibit about sustainability, and we’d been granted access to shoot there (thanks to our part time Line Producer type, Tove).

We packed us a picnic lunch, which we did a lot those couple weeks, and off we went!

Happy to be going!

I was truly happy to be going down the road.  Growing up in such a car culture, and this being our first time obtaining a car, there was this big sense of relief and comfort.  How do you like that?  *sigh*

I was very excited, apparently!  Even though I was suffering from beginnings of the weirdest throat weirdness, which Jenny theorizes was thrush.

Jenny's happy to go too! What a beautiful smile.

We sure are happy for two people who are unwittingly hours late…

North we go! A common theme here: Roads by the sea!

It was a beautiful day, maybe a smidge windy, but just beautiful.  We drove along, happy, content, relaxed.  Then we got there, and asked for our contact at the front desk, and the front desk lady called our contact lady.  Then she gave Jenny the phone.  Jenny’s droopy worried frown told it all:  we had miscommunicated, thinking we were to arrive any ol time, when in reality, we were scheduled at 11AM with the curator of the exhibit!  CRIKE!  It was now 12:30!  CRIKE CRIKE!

Jenny handled it though, she’s a pro, and we entered the exhibit free of charge (luckily ’cause it was pretty expensive), with our badges saying we were allowed our camera and tripod, and shot and shot.  Then our contact lady found us in there, and brought us the curator and we interviewed him in the exhibit!  WOOT!  They were very nice about the blunder, and it actually was good, I think, because our guy didn’t have much time so it forced us all to be concise and efficient with our interview.

Of course, once we were done driving, we had the video gear out and not the still camera, so there will probably be another post about Louisiana with video.  I think one of the most interesting things was a piece about DIStopias that could possibly arise by going too far with various “green” solutions.