Risø and Roskilde

Questa notte, causa riunioni, soggiorno a Roskilde, presso la gloriosa Guesthouse del Risø, il piú grande centro della Danimarca. Visto che nel vecchio blog avevo scritto qualcosa in proposito, ripropongo l'intervento anglofono con qualche aggiornamento.

Risø is the biggest research center in Denamrk and it's located in Roskilde, a 50000 inhabitans 30 km far from Copenhagen. They are researching in many fields (for instance, biology, agronomy, polymers,...) and one of them is, of course, wind energy. The reason for me being here is that the the wind depertment co-founding (one third) of my project: I have one supervisor here and sometimes I comes here for meetings and seminars.

Regarding the city (Risø is in the middle of nowhere, 15 minutes from the center), Roskilde is nice and quite a typical danish city: there is the main pedestrian street and of course all shops that you can expect in a Danish city (who have seen more than one city in Denmark knows what I mean). But Roskilde is also mentioned in the book "1001 places you have to see before you dies": this is because of the huge cathedral, where many of the Danish royal family are buried, and the Vikingskibmuseet, where 5 viking ships from 1000 dC have benn rebuilt and placed into this museum as they looked 1000 years ago. I haven't seen any of them, but from outside the cathedral is very nice and it is located at the top of a small hill from where you can see all the Roskilde fjord.
Another reason for celebrity is that Roskilde hosts every summer the Roskilde Festival: four days of music with more or less famous bands (among the others, last summer they had Bjork and the Red Hot Chili Peppers) and hundred thousands people leaving at the concert place (it is amazingly crowded with tents all around during the concert). Funny story about last summer: since the rain came down as hell during last festival, all gumboots in Copenhagen were sold out to the people going to the concert... It is true, in Denmark there is not bad weather, just bad clothes!