Dresden

Last weekend, I traveled over to visit Dresden. I have a friend there, so this time I was able to have a place to stay and an expert tour guide (Thanks, Selina!). It was really interesting to see and definitely a fun weekend. Dresden, of course, is partly famous for being brutally firebombed at the end of WWII. This was a bit controversial because Dresden was seen as more of a cultural city and less of a military target. And also, because of the magnitude of the destruction and death toll and because it was bombed so close to the end of the war. And of course, the bombing of Dresden was part of the basis for Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut.

Believe it or not, there is still a lot of evidence of this in Dresden today. A lot of places in Germany that were bombed, have preserved a place or two in a state of destruction to act as a memorial to war. They had some of that in Dresden too. But, they also had some stuff that was just still not finished being rebuilt or recovered. This partly speaks to the magnitude of the destruction, but also the speed at which this recovery has taken place may partly be due to it's place in the former East Germany. Anyway, some of this history makes Dresden an interesting place to visit.

The first day I was there, we went to the Sächsische Schweiz, which is located just outside Dresden. My guidbook had said that it was nearly impossible to capture the place in a photo, and they were pretty correct. The Sächsische Schweiz is near the Elbe river and has these big bluffs and sandstone rock formations which are really interesting looking. Also, there used to be some people who lived up there a number of centuries ago, because they found it easy to defend from intuders, with all the cliffs. So, there's some evidence of them as well. Here is a photo to give you a taste. ;

The next day, we looked around the city of Dresden itself. It has a very pretty and historical city center. One of the highlights is the Zwinger. It is a huge palace built for the sole purpose of having royal parties. I think no one lived there. It was only for parties. Supposedly, one of the more famous parties lasted for 43 days. For a prince's birthday, or something. Can you imagine? When was his birthday, then? The beginning, middle, or end? Hard to imagine. Anyway, the Zwinger is gargantuan, but here is a photo to give you an idea, below. Here, I am in the middle of the complex, and the building goes 360 degrees around.

Overall, I had an awesome visit in Dresden. Thanks again to Selina for hosting me, and for an awesome weekend!

Hamburg

A couple of weekends ago, I managed to visit Hamburg to see a new place in Germany. It's the second largest city in Germany, so I'd felt like that was missing from the list of places I'd been here. It has easy transportation connections from Berlin though, so I took the train up. I didn't know anyone there, so I'd just made a central hotel accomodation to check out the city. Pretty interesting. It's a very large port so it has a large harbor for ship-building and fishing. It also has a pretty international feel there because of all the different people a large port brings. The city was much more centralized than Berlin; you don't have to go very far from the city center to see most of the things of note. If Berlin is Techno, then Hamburg is Heavy Metal. Anyway, the city had a pretty interesting feel. The Reeperbahn is kind of the center of party scene in Hamburg and that place is no joke. One of the most interesting things was the fishmarket. Here is one of the salesmen selling some eels. They don't taste too bad.

The salesmen get really into selling their particular fish (or whatever product) and so it's become a big attraction there. They are always yelling something or another about how they sell the cheapest and the freshest and the guy next to them sells overpriced, rotten fish. Makes for an interesting atmosphere. Also, below here is a photo from a barber shop in Hamburg. Staying with the previous theme that Germans love the Simpsons. I guess they are claiming that the hair stylists there can bring about a similar transformation to you, as seen with Marge here. I didn't try it out, but I like the advertising effort.

Work etc.

Hmm, it seems that I haven't posted in a while (again) and so I feel like I should be writing something new. I have finally dipped my toe in the world that exists outside of Berlin. But only barely. Recently, my department at work had its annual meeting in the northern part of former East Germany. Really the middle of nowhere so it was a pretty boring locale. Plus, it was for work, so that didn't help for the excitement either. Then, last weekend I managed to make a day trip to Potsdam, a short distance from Berlin. This one was at least not work-related. There is a castle there and such, so there were some things to see, and now I can say that I've been there. But, hopefully soon, I'll be getting out a bit more. Still working on it.

As far as at work, here is a picture of the equipment I'm currently working with. It is kind of a bigger and more complicated version of the same class of equipment I worked with during my Ph.D. Currently, it is one other German postdoc and I working on this machine. It is generally considered unfavorable for more than one postdoc to be working on a piece of equipment. They tend to get in each other's way and sometimes there can be conflict over the direction the research should go. Sooooooo, I've been supposed to move to another piece of equipment for the last couple of months. But, there are all kinds of excuses why they haven't moved me yet. The latest one is that there is some foreign visitor who has applied to come do experiments on that equipment for a couple of months. All in all, the guy I'm working with is not difficult to get along with and so it is ok working where I am now. But, I'd rather not feel like I'm in limbo all the time waiting to move somewhere else. It makes it a little more difficult to be invested in what I'm currently doing. Plus, I'll inevitably have another learning curve when I move to another piece of equipment, and I'd rather get that going sooner rather than later. Also, working with another German postdoc as now, it seems that he is given preference on a lot of things, partly because the other Germans are more comfortable talking to him. We'll see how the situation develops.

So, there's the short work update. Now all of you who have been clamoring for work updates, I hope will be satisfied. What's that? No one has been clamoring for work updates? Hmmm, well you've got one anyway. Enjoy.

Hmmmm

So, I just got back from my department's annual meeting, held this year at Hasenwinkel (http://www.hasenwinkel.com/) and I thought I'd make a short post. So, after living at my apartment for more than two months, I recently noticed that I have a plant. Apparently, it must have always been there. Of course that makes sense, since who would have broken into my aparment and given me a plant, managing to leave without any other trace. The evidence that this plant was always there is further supported by this photo from when I moved into my apartment. Anyway, so it probably goes without saying that I haven't really been caring for this plant, since I didn't know it was there. So, no watering whatsoever. No easy access to sunlight. But, then, the day after I noticed the plant, it sprouted these two pretty flowers (below). You can see it harvesting the light it can from in between the cracks of the venetian blinds.

Pretty nice! Plus, I'm hoping it's not reading too much into things to wonder if this plant is somehow representative of my current state of evolution in Berlin as well. Perhaps...

Some things I've noticed

There are a lot of things in Germany that you'd anticipate are different than in the U.S. But, there have also been some random things that I've been noticing over time as I've been here. The little things. Here are a few.

• If you have a real job in Berlin, then you are in the minority. Berlin must have the highest number of photographers/writers/artists/muicians/other random self-employed things per capita of any other city. If you tell someone that you are not available to meet them at 2pm on a Tuesday because you have a job, and you have to go every day, all week long, then you get quite the funny look.


• Smokers. Just about everyone here smokes. It's just a matter of how often and in what contexts. There is a guy at my work who claims to smoke only on Wednesdays. It's possible that my calendar might be broken, because I've seen him smoking on all of the other days as well.


• Dogs. Almost all Berliners seem to own dogs. And they come everywhere. They are often unleashed and you'll find people "walking" their dogs by just biking down the sidewalk with their unleashed dog trailing somewhere behind. A lot of people also bring their dogs on the u-bahn, and they seem to lie there silently no matter what chaos is going on around them. I don't know if this is a matter of breed or training or both. But what kind of dog doesn't bark at you when you accidentally step on it?


• Doors. Of course there are two types of doors: the push kind and the pull kind. Often times they are labeled, but sometimes they are not. I've found that when they are not labeled, I guess wrong nearly 100 out of 100 times. At least until recently when I starting trying to think the opposite of what I want to think. Confused? You're not alone. I'm not sure what subtle clues I use in the U.S. that hint to me whether the door is push or pull, but whatever those are, they must be opposite here. Quite embarassing, depending upon the circumstances.


• In a similar vein, they put the light switches on the the outside of the bathrooms here. So, often an unsuspecting person such as me goes inside only to find that there's no light in there, and then you have to come back out and turn it on. It's not so bad, usually you can just open the door a bit and reach around the corner to turn it on. You'd think this would be easy for me to catch on to, right? Well, you'd be partly correct in thinking so. But, here's the problem. Somehow, I cannot categorically separate bathrooms from every other type of room in my head. So, when I got here I pretty quickly caught on to this bathroom trend. But then, I started trying to reach around and turn on the light when I entered the kitchen. And the living room. And the hallway.... I enter those other rooms more often than I enter the bathroom, so I had to switch myself back. By now, I'm all mixed up. Sometimes, it's easier to just pee in the dark.


• Whoever said that there was a bee shortage has not been to Berlin. I don't know if it is specific to here or general to Germany. But, I have noted it. There are bees and wasps everywhere. If you open a beer outside, they are quickly onto you. The other day, I was in my apartment and I opened a jar of honey to put on some bread I was eating. Then, suddenly a bee flew in my open window and noticed my honey and started to chow down. It sounded like "buzz buzz buzz", but, to a bee, that must sound like, "Holy crap, there's like 2 hives worth of honey sitting here. Come on everybody and join in the feast!" So, I had to fend off the bees with the feeble instruments I had at hand and defend my honey. Never happened to me before. This reminds me of another thing they don't have here. Window screens.


• Germans generally like to be well equipped for the tasks they have at hand. For instance, in the U.S., you might see someone out and about dressed in athletic clothes, and then ask them what they are doing that day. They might reply that they are going on a bike ride. This type of conversation is not often had in Germany. Here, if you are going on a bike ride, you are wearing biking shoes, biking socks, biking shorts, a special biking shirt/jersey, biking hat or helmet, and biking gloves. This makes the question unnecessary. Similarly, there are certain uniforms for certain jobs. If you are a custodial worker, you are wearing a set of grey overalls. Fix-it people wear blue ones. If you are a gardner, there is a very specific sort of green overalls you wear. There's no need to ask that guy what he does for a living. He's wearing green overalls, then he's a gardner.


• Here they are much more formal with greetings and with titles etc. There was a long booklet on regulations that I read when I got here and at the end, I determined that I do in fact meet the requirements to be called Dr. in the country of Germany. So, I am many times referred to as such. Not by my immediate coworkers or in informal settings of course, but on other occasions. For instance, I am allowed to label the mailbox at my apartment as Dr. As evidence, pictured below is my German bank card, complete with title. Funny.

World Championships

The track and field world championships have been going on in Berlin for the past couple of weeks or so. I haven't gone to any of the formal events in Olympia-Stadion. Apparently Bolt set another world record. Now, he's all over the gossip pages here about this and that. I haven't paid too close of attention really. But, recently they had the marathon events out in the city, and it turned out to be pretty cool (thanks Lars, for giving me the heads-up). Here is a video showing a bit of what it looked like. You can see the Fernsehturm to one side and the Brandenburger Tor to the other side. You can also somewhat hear fleet of helicopters above that were filming and monitoring things. Unfortunately, I was not able to capture on video the guy who vomited on himself while running, without breaking stride. I was quite impressed. Enjoy! Hopefully this video doesn't take up too much computer memory...

Thanks to Lars for his help with my video technical difficulties as well. Who knew that the answer was on my computer all along. Two thank yous in on blog post. I hope Lars actually reads this.

Hackepeter

Most of you know that eating is one of my absolute favorite passtimes. So, of course I have tried to eat and drink as many interesting things as possible while I am in a place with some foods that are different than I'm used to. The list of interesting things I've eaten is pretty long, but here is one highlight: Hackepeter. It is basically raw ground pork. You can spread it on bread like it's jelly or something and then just eat it. Here are a couple of pictures of the eating. And the verdict is...it tastes like....nothing. If nothing were cold, soft, and squishy, then that's what it would taste like. I think Germans sometimes put little chopped onions on top. I didn't, but if I had then I suppose it would have tasted like onions (nothing + onions = onions). The thing is, the Hackepeter doesn't really keep very long, so you're supposed to eat it all immediately, or cook what you don't eat. I didn't feel like cooking it particularly, and there isn't anybody to help me eat that stuff. So, I just sat down and ate that whole pile of raw meat. I'm not sure my stomach was certain exactly what I had just fed it. I'm not sure I particulary recommend Hackepeter, but it was definitely interesting to try once.