Another day arrived, with an even earlier wake-up call. Today we had a very busy schedule, including a 2-hour drive to the next city, Århus.
The day started around 7:30 at breakfast in the hostel. This was quite a basic breakfast, but it did the job in my opinion. After this, we had to be ready at 8:30 in the lobby in order to catch our bus to Århus.
The first stop of the day would be the old town of “Den Gamle By”, where we could explore the old Danish and Viking cultures. The museum was in the open air, and with the weather forecast saying it was gonna rain we were very worried for the enjoyment of the participants. Luckily, the weather gods were with us today, as real rain was only experienced during the bus drive. However, at some point, a couple of participants got stuck in an elevator, which luckily got resolved rather quickly. The museum offered a lot of different experiences, with a shopping street from the 70s as well as houses from the 1800s. The town was complete with a working phone network, including a switch operator, actors dressed up in the correct clothing, and old stores that were actually selling items.
After this amazing experience of history, we transitioned to something a lot more technologically advanced. We went to visit the wind turbine designer Vestas, which was just a 15-minute drive away. At Vestas, we listened to some inspiring presentations from talented people in their electrical department. We got presentations about the company’s vision, the importance of system modeling and analytics, how the wind turbines are controlled, about the converters and other electronics, and finally, we got a presentation from a Dutch systems engineer, where he answered all of our dire questions. We were spoiled at vestas as well with vast amounts of coffee and cake.
The last official stop of the day was the hostel, where everyone got settled in their rooms. At night everyone was free to do what they wanted, but most people ended up having dinner at the street food market, which was a big old bus garage at the harbor, where a lot of shipping containers were placed with all types of street food and drinks vendors inside of them to create a very interesting and divers dining experience.