The Copenhagen Cultural Night

This was my first big trip to the city, with the sole purpose of strolling and enjoying the ambience, after the Introduction Week around more than a month back. Copenhagen hosts a Cultural Night every year, which lasts for just six hours and only for a single day. Quite less a time to cover a wide spectrum of Copenhagen's culture, but very enjoyable for sure. The working of the Cultural Night is simple: from six o clock in the evening through midnight, nearly 150 odd locations in and around Copenhagen host events in which they are masters. These locations include churches, museums, zoo, institutes etc. The entry fee to the Night is 70 DKK, and thats it, one can go to all these locations for free. Also, since these locations are spread over a large area (covering the main Copenhagen, and also counties around it, called Greater Copenhagen), the transpotation, via buses, trains and metros is covered in this entry fee - Amazing..!! Though in just six hours one cannot go to every place, one has to pre-plan things, according to interests and logistics as well. Thats the best way of utilising the 70 DKK to the maximum. Each of these locations has their own programme, within these six hours. Churches would host lectures on God, Museums would host exhibitions on Renaissance, Zoo would be open for free on provinding the proof of participating in the Cultural Night (You get a badge, which you put on, thus indicating that you are part of the Cultural Night) etc etc. But all this for only six hours, and then the city is back to normal, you pay for transport for example after midnight [:P].

I had heard about this before, but was not sure if I might be going. But suddenly the plan came up, and I found myself in the train to Copenhagen the next moment (it takes around 20 minutes from the Lyngby station, in which county my University is, to Copenhagen Central). We had not much to select from the 150 odd locations, and the most obvious ones were sorted out. These included the Neils Bohr Institute, Zoo, the Christianhavn Library, and a short concert by Veronica. The Veronica thing was more of on my list, since she is of British-Asian origin, and was supposed to play some sort of a fusion music, by mixing Bollywood, Lollywood and Bhangra with Western music. That sounded quite intriguing, but the only problem was that it was from 11:30 till midnight, which was difficult, since after 12 we would have had to pay for the transport back to the hostel, and secondly we would have no bus to take us from Lyngby station to the hostel, since the last one was at 11:48 PM). So we decided to drop the plan of the Veronica concert and get back home smoothly and without paying [:P].
















The Neils Bohr Institure seemed to be very simple from outside. When we reached there, we saw some people showing some experiments to the public. And we had to wait to understand what exactly was the experiment. The students were actually showing us how unstable liquid nitrogen was when it was kept in the open atmosphere. The liquid nitrogen was stored at -200 centigrade in a huge container, and they removed some of it and poured it in a cola bottle and then closed the bottle tight. The cola bottle was then kept in a big box, and we were asked to shut our ears. After some seconds there was an explosion...!!! Conceptually, liquid nitrogen is very unstable and tries to get back to its stable form in the gaseous state having form N-N. So if liquid nitrogen is closed in a bottle, it would try and pressurize the bottle to break free and get back to atmosphere, and in the process exploding with a thunderous noise. The student even poured some liquid nitrogen on my hand, which gave a cooling sensation. It dried out immediately, since all the liquid nitrogen got converted into vapours, which could be seen. Quite amazing that was.

Next we entered the Institute to see a lot more things. There were lectures scheduled, but all in Danish, so we could not attend them. But there also were experiments being demonstrated inside, on some of which we were able to have an hands on. In one demonstration, the student was explaining about the experiments on atomic research being carried out in CERN, in Switzerland, coupled with good conceptual explanations. The lady who was explaining us was working as a postdoc at the Institute, and was from Italy. We also wanted to see an experiment which demostrated how light-weight objects could be moved using the power of laser lights..!! But unfortunately, we were not able to get on time. We left the Neils Bohr Institute having seen some great things, and were now heading towards the Zoo. But there was a problem, the way to the Zoo was yet to be figured out..!!!

Keep visiting, lots more to come after a short break [:P]