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Molbohistorier

Okay, finally I am done with the pictures from the TMU field trip to Mols Bjerge. The Mols Mountains. I was wondering if I should post all 36 of them here in the blog, but I figured I wouldn’t torture you all like that. Instead I made an album. So if you want to have a look at them all then go there. In the meantime I’ll post a select few shots with commentaries.

First of all I should point out that even though it’s called “Mols Mountains” it’s more like “Moll Hills”. They don’t really qualify as mountains haha. But Denmark is a very flat country so I guess we are easily impressed. Anyway, there is a wiki entry about Mols if you want to know more.

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Look at those giant mountains! Hehe. It’s a nice landscape out there though.

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That’s our bus. It was a bit old and rickety, although it looks fine from the outside there. It was a little nerve wracking some times when we were driving on narrow dirt roads. And at one point we suddenly had a giant truck behind us on a road too narrow for overtaking and I started thinking that we’d have like a Duel situation, that the truck would start ramming us off the road. Luckily that didn’t happen.

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Walking upwards. We didn’t actually do that much walking. We just found a nice spot where our guide then sat us down and started talking.

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There he is. He is illustrating the length of the different iceage periods on that ruler. He was a real cool guy. You could tell he was really into the stuff he was talking about. He knew a lot about how the landscape had been formed by the iceages (and the people). And he had props, sand and rocks and maps. It was quite good actually. I am fascinated by the idea that Denmark has been covered by ice. As a kid I always liked to try and imagine how the place where I was standing would have been in the past. How it would have changed. Imagined Denmark covered in forest. In ice. In dinosaurs (I was a kid, a forest of T-Rexes was awesome to me).

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Not everyone was that interested, though!

You might remember that I talked about photography week. This trip was supposed to be part of that. But the photographer didn’t turn up this time either, so no photography week. TMU’s cameras were still brought on the trip, though. So I wasn’t the only one taking pictures.

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I think that’s Majbritt. I really should learn everybody’s names, eh?

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That’s Paw. One of the teachers. He is into photography too. They have a subscription to a magazine about digital photography at TMU. Peter, the boss, came and gave it to me. Figured that I might be interested in it. Which I was. And that’s how Paw found out that I was interested in photography. I showed him my camera. He came and showed me the cameras they had there. And talked about his own. So that was nice.

Also in that magazine I saw a review of this camera. And I want it. 18x zoom! wow. That rocks. And it’s generally better than the camera I have now. I might end up buying it. I really shouldn’t, though. I already have what? Four or five cameras. Actually, I just sold one of my old ones to my mum. For cheap, of course. So maybe I can justify getting a new one… I saw it for fairly cheap in a local shop. Saw it on their website. It said that it would be in stock on March 29th. Then on March 29th it said it would be in stock April 27th. So I have time to talk myself out of it, I guess. I’ll see.

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There is Paw and Majbritt again. And two teachers, Anne and Anne. Anne is the physical trainer and Anne is the crafts/Danish teacher. She was the one who gave me that Danish test I mentioned a while ago.

After all the iceage stories and some sightseeing we had a lunch at a bench out in the middle of the greenery. And then we went to check out a swamp.

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The bus parked at the side of the road. And we ventured into the woods.

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Our guide pointing the way. This swamp had a special kind of moss. Now I’m not going to try to explain it all from memory. You can read something about sphagnum on wiki. The point of the matter is that we stepped out onto this moss. It looked like normal ground. But it was like walking on a giant waterbed. If you started rocking back and forth the ground would start moving too. It was a very peculiar feeling and as I said I can’t really explain it properly. If you ever get the chance to walk on sphagnum, do do it. Doo doo.

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That’s where we got on the moss. The left part is normal ground. The earth we walk on. Then there’s like a stream of water. And on the right it’s moss. It looks like normal ground, but I tells ya it’s not. You can see that we had to balance on a couple of branches to get over the stream. A couple of people fell in. I fell forwards a bit, but managed to avoid getting soaked.

Our guide took off his shoes by the way.

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Peculiar. The rest of us borrowed rubber boots to keep our feet dry. He said that the water/soil there had a really high (or low) PH balance? That people in New York would pay a fortune for a foot bath like that. I think he just likes to walk around barefoot.

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What’s not to like?

Okay, that’s all I can be bothered with. The rest of the pictures are in the album. I came home very tired from walking in hills and slopes and forests. And also mentally tired from being in a group of people with no possibilities for breaks or hiding away. It’s hard on the old head. But I’m glad I managed to go. It was good and interesting.

The end.

PS. The goats were doing fine today. Vanilje was running around with her tail in the air. Eating and baahing and being fun and happy. What a joy to behold.

6 Responses to “Molbohistorier”

  1. Stu Says:

    That spagnum looks cool… like a big waterbed? :)

  2. Stu Says:

    Since you had no photo instructor, I’ll give you tip number one… if you divide your picture up into three, then subjects often look good if they’re on the cross of the lines, or if it’s a long subject (horizon, tree etc.) put it along one of the lines. It’s called the “rule of thirds” and can help make photos more interesting somehow.

    Have a look at your tree with the rule of thirds…

    http://www.pygmygoat.net/images/rule_of_thirds.jpg

    For some reason, it makes the picture more ‘active’.

  3. Debster Says:

    Is it my imagination or are there quite a few pictures of Majbritt? And you tease me with pictures of the guides’ calves, oh my . . . and what nice calves they are, too.

    STU: I see what you mean about the tree picture and the rule of thirds . . . does make the tree more interesting. The only other thing wrong with Plume’s pictures would be the utter and total lack of GOATS!

    Plumer: How do you know about walking across a waterbed? My husband came with a waterbed and I never did really like it. We have a normal King-size bed now. (Hee, hee, I wish he would have come with gold and diamonds and goats. At least I didn’t have to give his family any goats for a dowry!) All my Dad said to my husband when we were getting married is: “Well, she’s yours now, don’t bring her back!”

    I am a very nice person, I just don’t know why people say these things about me.

  4. Luis Lemmings Says:

    Now we know where you got your sense of humour: thanks Dad!

    The place looks terribly pretty. It reminds me of the wine valley up in Northern California. Just picture fields of grapes growing. If you can, watch the movie “Sideways” and in the beginning you’ll see the on ramp to the freeway which is only a few blocks away from my house.

    I hope you get that photographer soon. I still have my camera and have been taking really bad photos. So I need your advice on taking better pictures.

  5. Debster Says:

    LUIS LEMMINGS: Rule #1 in photography: you must take many, many bad pictures before you can take a good one. Each bad photo is one step closer to a good one.

    Yours truly . . . Debster, the Photography Expert

  6. Plume Says:

    Stu – A GIANT waterbed! Thanks for the photo advice. That makes sense. I would like to learn much more about this. I hope the rest of the photoweeks at TMU won’t be canceled as well.
    Funny, I remember the rule of three from my schooldays. Only that was in writing. Faery tales. Three brothers, three trials, three dogs with gian eyes etc.

    Debster – It must be your imagination! But ehm, you certainly should not go back and count. Trust me, you’re imagining things. Especially since she has a boyfriend and all. Yup. *Whistles innocently*.
    I should have brought the goats on the trip. I am sure Mads would have loved the spagnum.. TO EAT!
    Come to think of it I don’t think I have ever walked on water bed. I certainly haven’t slept on one. But there’s motion in that ocean.
    I think people are jealous of your royal amazingliness. Maybe you should stop wearing that crown and jewelled necklace. And lose the bodyguards too. You don’t need them anyway, what with the goats and all.

    Luis Lemmings – Wow, my house has never been almost in a movie. Not that I know about anyway. Oh wait, do my digital camera movies count?
    I second Debster’s advice. Taking a ton of pictures is a good way to learn. Having a digital camera is handy, you can take a million and only keep the good ones. For every picture I post, I have probably deleted 50 others that weren’t good enough. so if I post 10 pictures in an entry that means that I had probably taken 500 that day.

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