Scandinavia - 31.10.12

For Halloween, I dressed up like an Eskimo.  I put 5 layers on the top and 3 layers on the bottom and got on the train to Sweden, the land of Volvo, Ikea, H&M, and many other thriving socialist success stories.  I just went across the really long Øresund Bridge to Malmö, walked around, had lunch, and went back.  It's a lot like Denmark.  There are, however, many interesting statues in Malmö:

When I got back to Copenhagen, I had a few hours until the next train to Hamburg left, so I walked around the city some more.  I've always been a big fan of Hans Christian Andersen (ever since I was about 2 years old), so I decided to go see the little mermaid in the harbor.

She looked quite cold out on that rock on a breezy October afternoon.  I offered her my jacket, but she didn't even acknowledge me.

On the ferry ride I was inside eating pickled herring instead of exposing my face to the Baltic winds.  After a long train ride, I'm back in the middle of nowhere.

Linux - 30.10.12

This morning I walked to Bella Center in Copenhagen just in time for the Ubuntu Enterprise Summit.

It's the business conference of Canonical, the supporters of the Ubuntu Linux distribution.  There were various lectures all day.  It was aimed to the business side of open source software (not an oxymoron), but I got a lot out of it.  I learned that Windows XP support is ending and Windows 8 is "jarring and bizarre," so of course they hope that everyone will make the switch to Linux now.  I learned that every day more than 570 man-years are spent playing angry birds.  They also demoed some of their new server management tools, but I think the most valuable thing for me was to get a better glimpse into the modern cloud computing architecture.
There were a lot of businessmen in suits who took themselves a little too seriously, and a lot of hackers in XKCD T-shirts, so I fit in well with my Einstein T-shirt.  If I had a Bohr T-shirt, I would've worn it.
At lunch I saw one of my personal heroes, Mark Shuttleworth, who gives tens of millions of his own British pounds to support open-source software development.  I want to do that someday.  At lunch I talked to him a little about Webkit (because I wanted something intelligent to say), and asked if I could take our picture for my blog.

In the afternoon there were some more lectures, a Q&A panel with some of the leaders, and some fancy Danish hors d'oeuvres, which aren't quite as French as the French hors d'oeuvres I had a few weeks ago.  I rode the train back.  There are a lot of interesting conversations on the train going away from a Linux developer conference.  I ended up going to a late but delicious dinner with some graphics card driver developers.  I fit in quite well: they were talking about the Planck's constant, and I had Max Planck's biography in my pocket.

The Copenhagen Interpretation - 29.10.12

It was the longest day. It was the shortest day.
I awoke from my nap a little earlier than anticipated.  I got to skype with my mom from outside the church on the temple grounds.  I'd never done a video call from outside before.

I got on the train at 11:30 with a ticket that wasn't valid until the 29th and I got my ticket checked twice, but neither time was anything said.  I took a train through the Rhine river valley to Cologne then Hamburg.  I kind of slept most of the time in the train.  Then I got on a little train to Copenhagen.  I wondered why it was so short until we went slowly into a well-lit tunnel, everybody got out of the train, and we went up an elevator.  We were on a train in a big boat!
I didn't want to have my first experience with the Baltic sea be tainted by heating and windows, so I sat out on the deck for the whole ferry ride, mostly by myself.

After the ferry ride, we got back into the train in the boat and the train took us into Denmark.  I said "Hi" to Thorvaldsen's Christus:

I went and stood where my great great grandmother stood:

There are a lot more cars and bikes than there were back then:

Now I'm exhausted.  I'm going to sleep in my little hostel.

Friederichsdorf - 28.10.12

This morning was the time shift. I thought my cell phone would update automatically, so I set my alarm for 8:45, since I took a shower last night. When it rang, I got up, turned it off, and said, "viertel vor neun," to which everybody jumped out of bed and was about to quickly get ready when someone said that it was quarter to eight. We all slept for another half hour.
We sang in the Friederichsdorf ward's sacrament meeting, ate lunch, then sang for the Usingen ward. We had a bit more practice, then everybody said goodbye and left. My train to Copenhagen leaves at 1:00 in the morning, so I'm going to take a long nap before I turn in my key.

Vorsingen - 27.10.12

I don't think I've ever sung so much in my life.  We pretty much had choir practice all day, except for a few breaks to eat.  I had to try out at noon, and I was actually a little bit nervous, which is quite atypical for me.  I sang "Gloria in Excelsis Deo" from Haydn's Heiligmesse and the first half of "O Magnum Mysterium" by Tomas Luis de Victoria with a soprano, an alto, and a tenor.  Then I sang the melody and bass lines of "Seht, der Herr ist auferstanden", and explained why I am here.  It wasn't so bad since I was quite prepared, but unfortunately not everybody that tried out made it.
My voice hurts.  They try to cram in as much choir practice into one weekend as possible, since people come from all over German-speaking Europe to sing.  Everyone else had already practiced this music one weekend, but I caught on quickly.  The Christmas music we're preparing includes some German and English songs, but most of it is classical Latin.  I spent a good portion of the day singing, "Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax, pax hominibus, bonae voluntatis.  Laudamus te." et cetera.
Today was the first snow of the year in Frankfurt:

ProWo - 26.10.12

This morning I awoke in Quickborn as usual, but it was no ordinary day.  First of all, the first frost of the year was on the freshly fallen oak leaves:

I got on the train to Hamburg, and I had almost an hour before my bullet train left, so I went and said hi to Ralf's wife Anke and his son's girlfriend Morganne (a confusing name in German), who was taking a test at the Goethe Institut not far from the train station.  Then off to Frankfurt.  There was a policeman and an older lady in the train with me, and we all talked.  Germans almost never talk to strangers in the train.
I got to Frankfurt and went to the church about 2 hours early.  This weekend is ProWo, Probe Wochenende.  That's what they call the practice weekend for Vocalis, a German-area choir.  It's probably not a coincidence that ProWo is a homonym of Provo, since it was named by a bunch of German mormons.  After a few hours of waiting, people came, we sang, a few of us went to McDonalds, and now I'm going to go to sleep in the little hostel next to the temple.

Break a leg - 25.10.12

Today my blog passed the 1000 views mark!  If this many people had read my homework in high school, I probably would've done better in English class.
I got a lot of work done today.  I also did some more paperwork for the German government.  I am insured through the employment of my dad.  I could also have been insured through my own employment in Utah, but I thought it would be a waste of company money to do so since I'm already insured.  The BYU study abroad program requires its own additional insurance, so I had to be doubly insured when I came over to Germany.  The German government, however, doesn't care.  It mandates that each employee who is paid more than 400 euros per month must also be given insurance.  They also said that I could not be paid less than 400 euros per month in order to get my visa.  So I am about to be triply covered by insurance.

"The trade of insurance gives great security to the fortunes of private people, and, by dividing among a great many that loss which would ruin an individual, makes it fall light and easy upon the whole society." - Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

Even so, Adam, I still don't think anyone needs as much insurance as I have.