Europe in the Fall

November 13, 1994

I'm halfway between Copenhagen and Zurich, zipping along on a flight in pitch blackness, presumably someplace over the Alps below ... This trip started out in Brussels, which turns out to be a far prettier city than I remember. It's not one of the cities I visit very often, and most of my memories are of rather squat, ugly buildings in the city center .... but on this visit, I travelled through some of the residential suburbs to reach the conference center where my computer conference was being held -- very quiet and picturesque and peaceful, much like the French countryside. Unfortunately, I was far too tired to appreciate it very much; the jet-lag during the first day or two was pretty awful.

After a day in Brussels, I flew up to Denmark, where I spent two days in Copenhagen and two days in the town of Aalborg. It's not that much farther north than Brussels, but the weather and the overall mood changed dramatically: it's been gray and cold and windy and gloomy for the entire week. The sun comes up between 7:30 and 8:00 in the morning, and disappears around 4:00 in the afternoon -- except there isn't any sun. I've seen nothing but dark,ominous clouds for the entire week, and the pilot has just announced that it's overcast and cloudy in Zurich, too. Ugh!

I cancelled the dinner engagement that my clients had scheduled for the first night in Copenhagen, and managed to get a good night's sleep; I've been in a better mood since then, and have caught up with enough deadlines and work-activities that I hope to be able to enjoy this upcoming week in Zurich and Vienna. The visit to Aalborg turned out to be fairly interesting; it's a relatively small town on the North Sea, on the northern peninsula of Jutland, about a 30-minute flight from Copenhagen. I spent one day giving a lecture sponsored by the University of Aalborg, and another day doing some consulting for local computer companies, who are all working on fairly interesting problems. I couldn't figure out how they could afford my consulting fees, and the answer turned out to be interesting: the cost of my visit was paid for by the European Common Market, which provides subsidies for increased cooperation between academia and industry, but only for high-tech industries, and only in relatively depressed areas of Europe. Jutland is not a high-tech area at all; its industries have been fishing and shipbuilding, and they've been in a state of decline for the past decade or two. But now a local computer industry is growing up, and I guess my visit was supposed to help in that regard.

My hosts in Denmark were very proud of the fact that they had arranged the conference and consulting activities to take place in a resort hotel on the edge of "the largest forest in Jutland." I never saw any of it because it was dark when I arrived, and dark when I left. But as far as I could tell, it's not much bigger than Central Park in New York. However, it does have a special significance: there's some kind of Danish-American friendship society that sponsors a huge party on a meadow in the middle of the forest, every 4th of July; and the annual party/celebration is apparently famous throughout Denmark. Most of the fields in the area are covered with heather, and though it's gray and barren in November, I was told that it's stunningly beautiful in the summertime ... maybe I'll have a chance to go back and see it again sometime ...

Because of a mixup between my hotel and the university, I didn't have a room at the resort hotel on my last night in Aalborg, and they transferred me to a different hotel in the middle of the town. It's an old town, and also an old hotel -- dating back to the 18th century. The local people are very proud of the history of the hotel, as illustrated by the description I read in the hotel brochure:

In 1770, when Brigadier William von Halling came home to Denmark from India, he brought with him enormous riches and black slaves, whom he housed in the cellars of what is now the hotel. He was a plague to his surroundings and mistreated his peasants, slaves, and even his wife. On his landed estate, the Brigadier exercised the right to decide on marriage partners for his peasants -- and to spend the wedding night with the bridge. His crude behavior resulted in unsuccessful attempts on his life and when he finally died, the church bells were rung for joy and the peasants flocked to his funeral in Aalborg to see him safely under six feet of earth. In 1853, the Brigadier's house was converted into the Hotel Phoenix, taking its name from the Arabian Phoenix, blah blah blah ...

Well, it was dark and drafty, but the bed was comfortable ...