Earth Hour

(Afternoon with Kevan, Sabine and Johnny ... Tivoli Gardens ... Lantern Parade ... Lights off at 7 PM ... )

I carried a small Danish girl on my shoulders so she could see the stage. She couldn't speak English yet, so she gave me a quizzical look when I spoke to her, but her brother could speak English and translated for her.

This lady from the Hopenhagen organization kept asking Eric to take photos with his camera, lol. I had to continuously clean off the lens with my scarf, as it was snowing through the evening, and the lens kept fogging up.

I was freezing the whole time -- I was still wearing my suit and dress shoes from this morning, and my feet were especially feeling it. Until suddenly, near the end, I had gone down to look for a pen, and when I stood up, I suddenly felt warm, my feet were so warm. I realized this was not a good sign.

At the end of the event, we went to Burger King to warm up for a few minutes. Then we dashed over to McDonald's for wireless internet. (Yes, the same cafe I had gone to in the morning).

--

Afterward, Eric and I went to the "Global Greens" event for mayors, hosted at the Nimb Hotel. This is the event that Steve Schneider had sent out to the Stanford COP15 list. There were apparently five events going on at the same hotel, including one for mayors upstairs, where apparently Mayor Bloomberg of New York and Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, were present.

The GG event organizers said they would try to corral everyone passing through to come down to the "Vinotech" i.e. wine cellar, where the event was taking place. It wasn't part of the World Mayor's Forum upstairs, but none of the mayors would know exactly where they should be, so we were going to just reel them in.

There was a complex set of instructions that involved checking guests off on the list, then asking for a business card if they didn't have one, and then waving them in, where they could get their coats taken. (Amber and Matt Colgan were assigned to be coat people ... two Stanford grad students as manservants ... such luxury, lol! I told Matt, "Seriously, you shouldn't have to be doing this. These people can hang up their own coats. They're not royalty." Heh heh.)

It was a fine event. I think we were all tired and we just sat at the table and had a mellow time chatting and drinking wine (or eating oranges, in my case).

//Steve Schneider speech at the end//

It was truly an awesome day. To close it out, when we left the hotel after midnight, a soft white blanket of snow had fallen over Copenhagen. The sidewalks were covered with a layer of white. We were giddy at the sight of snow -- you see, some of us are from California, and snow is an absolute novelty!

We gathered it up in our hands, and tossed it into the air, and took photos of ourselves crunching through the fine layer of powder under foot. I bet the city looks wholly different tomorrow; it already seems calmer, quieter as we walked home through the snow tonight.