{"id":4637,"date":"2025-05-02T20:26:28","date_gmt":"2025-05-02T19:26:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/?page_id=4637"},"modified":"2025-05-03T05:56:59","modified_gmt":"2025-05-03T04:56:59","slug":"week-16-observatory-working-groups-semana-santa-and-copenhagen","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/?page_id=4637","title":{"rendered":"Week 16: Observatory Working Groups, Semana Santa and Copenhagen"},"content":{"rendered":"

A busy week, starting with the semi-annual meetings of the Working Groups of the European Observatory on Infringements of IP Rights, followed by the Easter processions in Alicante, and finally the week ended in Copenhagen which I visited over the Easter weekend. <\/p>\n

16_1<\/strong>
\nThe Working Group meetings began on Monday afternoon. Here is our team in the large circular meeting room that is normally used for formal meetings of our governing bodies. It is really too big for the Working Groups, but the smaller rooms were not available:
\n\"R001708\"<\/p>\n

16_2<\/strong>
\nCarolina, my favourite statistics nerd:
\n\"R001716\"<\/p>\n

16_3<\/strong>
\nOn Monday evening, we hosted a dinner for all the Working Group participants, by far the nicest part of the meetings. It was held at Teselas, a restaurant on the main Esplanada de Espa\u00c3\u00b1a near the waterfront, site of what used to be a traditional “gentlemen’s club” similar to those in England. The main dining room looks very posh, but actually the prices are very reasonable, the food is good, and because the restaurant is within walking distance of the hotels where the participants are staying, we save the expense of hiring buses to transport them between the hotels and the restaurant:
\n\"DSF0199\"<\/p>\n

16_4<\/strong>
\nAs usual on such occasions, I prowled the tables with my camera. This is Patricia, the director of our Observatory department, and Charo, a former colleague now working for the Spanish government:
\n\"DSF0196\"<\/p>\n

16_5<\/strong>
\nClaire, always happy with a glass of wine in hand:
\n\"DSF0200\"<\/p>\n

16_6<\/strong>
\nEri with a Greek and a Bulgarian colleague:
\n\"DSF0206\"<\/p>\n

16_7<\/strong>
\nClaire having a side conversation with people representing our stakeholders from the business side:
\n\"DSF0216\"<\/p>\n

16_8<\/strong>
\nOf course I also cycled in the morning most days, and this week I was rewarded with particularly spectacular seascapes:
\n\"1040843\"<\/p>\n

16_9<\/strong>
\n\"1040848\"<\/p>\n

16_10<\/strong>
\nAnd I continued walking Mochi from time to time. One morning we were being watched carefully:
\n\"DSF0223\"<\/p>\n

16_11<\/strong>
\nOutside a local paella restaurant, the tools of the trade, drying:
\n\"DSF0224\"<\/p>\n

16_12<\/strong>
\nThe week leading up to Easter is Semana Santa, Holy Week, and there are 2-3 processions in Alicante every day. Each procession is performed by a fraternal society attached to a particular church, and one this one occasion the main sculptures from the church are paraded around the city. This year I did not have much time to photograph the processions, but I did manage one in the afternoon of Ash Wednesday. While I was waiting for the procession to start, I sat down for a beer on a nearby square. While I was there, several Roman legionaries came by:
\n\"DSF0231\"<\/p>\n

16_13<\/strong>
\nI found a decent spot in the crowd at the beginning of the route, on a square called Plaza del Carmen. Even though it would be at least an hour before the procession would pass the square, the crowd was already quite dense:
\n\"DSF0243\"<\/p>\n

16_14<\/strong>
\nFinally, the first part of the procession appears:
\n\"DSF0265\"<\/p>\n

16_15<\/strong>
\nAnd then the main protagonist:
\n\"DSF0269\"<\/p>\n

16_16<\/strong>
\nThe crowd was now truly dense. A Semana Santa procession is not a place for people who don’t like crowds:
\n\"DSF0285\"<\/p>\n

16_17<\/strong>
\nIn addition to the crowds on foot, the roads and parkings in the city were also crowded. I had to park a couple of km from Plaza del Carmen. Afterwards, during the walk back to my car, I passed the Castillo Santa B\u00c3\u00a1rbara from where there was a nice view of Alicante in the early evening light:
\n\"DSF0286\"<\/p>\n

16_18<\/strong>
\nThursday was the last working day before Easter, as we have Good Friday and Easter Monday off. On Friday afternoon, I flew to Copenhagen to begin my spring trip to Denmark. I checked into my hotel and then went to the popular bar street Nyhavn to meet my childhood friend Beata. On the way, I passed the beautiful square Kongens Nytorv. The square contains some of Copenhagen’s iconic places, including the Royal Theatre, the city’s oldest department store Magasin du Nord, and its grand old hotel, Hotel d’Angleterre:
\n\"DSF0300\"<\/p>\n

16_19<\/strong>
\nThe weather was decent, it was Friday, and so Nyhavn was crowded:
\n\"DSF0294\"<\/p>\n

16_20<\/strong>
\nBeata and I spent some quality time talking, mostly about our families, at McJoy’s Pub, a place where I used to go with my father. Going for a beer there is one of the ways in which I honour his memory. Here, I must have said something funny:
\n\"DSF0299\"<\/p>\n

16_21<\/strong>
\nI was also going to spend Saturday with Beata, visiting the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art with her husband Ricardo and their daughter Natalia who has now declared that she is old enough to go to art museums (she is 24). But I started the day with a little walk around the centre of Copenhagen. Near the city hall I noticed this bicycle “expressway”, a bike path designed for a commute from the suburbs into the centre, with synchronised traffic lights, more space than a normal bike path, and devices like this, designed to provide a convenient way to stop at a red light without having to put your foot on the ground:
\n\"DSF0308\"<\/p>\n

16_22<\/strong>
\nTivoli entrance, decorated for the season:
\n\"DSF0303\"<\/p>\n

16_23<\/strong>
\nI met up with Beata, Ricardo and Natalia, and we took the train to Humleb\u00c3\u00a6k, a seaside town some 30 km north of Copenhagen where Louisiana is located. This is the original main building of the museum:
\n\"DSF0383\"<\/p>\n

16_24<\/strong>
\nThe garden surrounding Louisiana was beautiful on this spring day:
\n\"DSF0377\"<\/p>\n

16_25<\/strong>
\nWe walked around in the sculpture park, looking at works such as these by Danish sculptor Henry Heerup:
\n\"DSF0354\"<\/p>\n

16_26<\/strong>
\nInside Louisiana there were several interesting exhibitions, like this one by Russian-Swiss painter Alexej Jawlenski (1864-1941). I was really impressed with his paintings:
\n\"DSF0340\"<\/p>\n

16_27<\/strong>
\nAnother exhibition was by German artist Hans-Peter Feldmann, called “100 Jahre”. Created between 1998 and 2000, the exhibition consists of 101 photos of members of his extended family, aged from 0 (more precisely, an 8-week old baby) to 100 years old:
\n\"DSF0348\"<\/p>\n

16_28<\/strong>
\nThen we walked back to Humleb\u00c3\u00a6k station for the train back to Copenhagen. There was an explosion of blooms:
\n\"DSF0386\"<\/p>\n

16_29<\/strong>
\nWhen I arrived back at Copenhagen’s Central Station, there was a small pro-Palestinian demonstration inside the main hall:
\n\"DSF0387\"<\/p>\n

16_30<\/strong>
\n\"DSF0388\"<\/p>\n

16_31<\/strong>
\nThe police had parked their motorcycles inside the station, and many people stopped to have a closer look:
\n\"DSF0390\"<\/p>\n

16_32<\/strong>
\nA few more vignettes from the city. A seagull feeds on a rubbish bin next to the main pedestrian street Str\u00c3\u00b8get. Seagulls are basically rats with wings:
\n\"DSF0398\"<\/p>\n

16_33<\/strong>
\nThe 7-11 store on the pedestrian street is woke:
\n\"DSF0401\"<\/p>\n

16_34<\/strong>
\nThis van is permanently parked across the street from the main entrance to Russia’s embassy in Copenhagen. This way the “diplomats” can be reminded of the fact that they represent a fascist regime every day when they come to work:
\n\"DSF0402\"<\/p>\n

16_35<\/strong>
\nSunday was my last day in Copenhagen. After lunch I had a 4-hour bus ride to my hometown Aarhus. But Sunday morning I had an important task to perform–to visit the graves of my parents. I first went to the main cemetery of Copenhagen where my mother is buried, stopping near the entrance to photograph the small memorial to the Danish soldiers killed on 9 April 1945, when Germany invaded and occupied Denmark:
\n\"DSF0408\"<\/p>\n

16_36<\/strong>
\nMy mother’s grave. As you can see, she died on 21 April 2001, so I try to be in Copenhagen as close to this date as possible. This time I was one day off:
\n\"DSF0409\"<\/p>\n

16_37<\/strong>
\nThe Jewish cemetery next door is my father’s final resting place:
\n\"DSF0411\"<\/p>\n

16_38<\/strong>
\nHaving done my filial duties, I went back to my hotel to retrieve my luggage and made my way to the bus station for my bus to Aarhus. Next to the station is an impressive new apartment building called the Cactus Tower:
\n\"DSF0415\"<\/p>\n

More photos from the procession can be seen here<\/a>, and there is also a Copenhagen gallery here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A busy week, starting with the semi-annual meetings of the Working Groups of the European Observatory on Infringements of IP Rights, followed by the Easter processions in Alicante, and finally the week ended in Copenhagen which I visited over the Easter weekend. 16_1 The Working Group meetings began on Monday afternoon. Here is our team […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":4543,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4637"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4637"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4645,"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4637\/revisions\/4645"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}