I hope I get Zuccini on my plate!

The famous words before the most horrific meal of our lives! Thoughout this entire trip one would expect to have outstanding meals and amazing food here... unfortunately we were sadly mistaken!  We arrived in Lolland, Denmark yesterday and stopped for a quick lunch at Liva, much to our surprise we recieved chicken instead of fish and their famous potatoes and vegetables. It was amazing and we fully indulged trying to make up for the lack of food we sufficed during every meal we have had.  Thus began our high standards for Lolland and their food! We were much intrigued and with a full stomach ready to finally gain some knowledge of the sustainable proccesses they have in place here on this island.  (finally some well know sustainability..supposidly the basis of this trip)  Lollad is home of one of the worlds largest off shore wind turbine farms, among other things.  They are very open to expirementation with different energy sources such as hydrogen for residential energy and algae growth for biomass energy.  It is amazing the different thought process they have here, and how they achieve their ideas on the topic.  It is much more feasable considering the size of the island and population, but in turn very advanced compared to many other places in the world.  There are a few downfalls to the experiements done here, they are very expensive and don't fully get the return on their investments.  Although this is a downfall, this has never stopped the island of Lolland's ambition. 

Let us quickly brief you on Wind Turbines and why they believe in the usage here,

Wind power accounts for 20% of the national electricity consumption in Lolland and they are ambitious about reaching 50% by 2025.  This in turn has created many jobs for the community during this economic crisis.  The wind farms they have here in Lolland produce more electricity than the town uses, so they transport the exccess energy to neighboring countries, such as Germany.  This being said, it is considerably more expensive to place wind  turbines at sea than on land.  So why the heck did they decide to put 72 of them out there??... this is because, an offshore wind turbine on average produces 1.5 more times more power than a similar land-based wind turbine.  Winds are more frequent and stronger offshore.  Also, good locations for land turbines are almost all taken and hard to comeby.  The offshore turbines do need to have an enviornmental assesment report done before they are placed in order to make sure the ecosystem is regularly registered.  Although, the construction phase does temporarily loose bottom living fauna and blue mussles, the base of the wind turbines will allow for excellent growth sites for algae and will function as artificial reefs, and provied more habbitats for animal and plant species to have good living conditions.  The turbines are normally placed with a concrete base that extends and is stabalized within the waterbed, but more recently they have created a system where the turbine is floating and three anchors are placed at the bottom of the ocean to hold it in place, this is more effective and less dissruptive to the sealife.

Ok, we are not in a classroom... but we thought we would share a little bit of wind turbine knowledge that we have gained.. and no it has not been completely boring this entire trip! We were able to hug one.. yes hug a HUGE trubine on shore..an eering feeling for us turbine huggers but we were soon soothed by the sound they made.  We will show you pictures of this amazing structure along with the offshore farm that we were finally able to see when the clouds ceased.

Oh.. and then Dinner.. Remember our expectations of the wonderful food here in Lolland? Just take those expectations and mix them up with a bunch of peas and meatloaf (vegitarian style)... That is the only thing we could think it could be.  I would imagine it was not edible.. but we did not take the chance, instead we americans kindly mushed everything together so it appeared we had eaten some and then graciously put our napkin over the entire plate so you could not see our mess underneath until you reached the kitchen.  We nicely demonstrated our culture that night! your welcome!- we just don't stomach peash.. lets just say our stomaches did not sit well when we went to see the algae farm the next morning... so much for amazing food.

Hope you enjoyed the lecture as much as we did! At least we are finally learning somewhat of the sustainability we came here for.