pictures, pictures, pictures

I've posted another hefty batch of pictures onto my picasa.

They are of Nuremberg, Prague, and Olympia, Augsburg, and Theresien.

Nuremberg and Prague I've already written about. Olympia refers to the Olympic park where the '72 Olympic Games were held in Munich. Augsburg is an old medieval (and older actually) city northwest of Munich that I took a day trip out to. Theresien is where Oktoberfest is held every year inside of the city. The pictures for these three places tell as much of the story as is really necessary so I'll just point you to those. Viel Spaß!

Shane

Our Last Full Day Together

Today we woke up in Prague, ate breakfast in the hotel again, and hit the road back to Munich. I don't really know why, but we set out with only general ideas of where we needed to go. So of course, we got seriously lost in the Czech Republic, again. But it was a good opportunity to get to stop at random gas stations to try and get directions from people that didn't necessarily speak a language common to any of us (and by common to any of us, I mean either English or German). The drive back to the highway took us through a bunch of tiny little towns, through the hillside, in some cases with a view of mountains, so it was really a beautiful drive. Once we got back into Germany we stopped in Regensburg which is a nice little Bavarian city somewhat known for having some neat castles and stuff like that. And one fact that I've always liked, Regensburg means "City of Rain" in German... and very near to Regensburg in Bavaria still is a city called Feucht which translates as "Wet." Anyways, we actually had no idea what was in Regensburg to do and we all were pooped to begin with so all we did was stop in a shopping mall, get something to eat, and then continued back to Munich. Back in Munich we dropped off the car and I took Ian and Dave to a little beer garden by the River I've been to a couple times. I made them have O'batzda mit Brez'n (Mixed Cheese with a Pretzel), and of course a little beer to accompany the food (or was the food to accompany the beer?). In the walk back to the train station we picked up some pizza, stopped for some ice cream, and then just went back to Garching for the night. Overall I thought it was a really nice day, but pretty uneventful so not much to say beyond this. Tomorrow Ian flies to London, and then Dave the day after so for our joint adventures, that's it for now. So chances are my next update will be back to 'normal.'

8/1/07
Shane

Prague Revisited

After waking up and eating breakfast at the hotel (a breakfast which could only be described as "weak sauce"). We used the metro line to get back into the city center, or just south of the center in order to meander northward and hopefully stumble upon things to see. Holy Crap! Most of the day was spent in this "northward" progression and the first part of we really had no clear goal, so we just ran into things. Every building around every corner had this really neat and unique architecture to it and half of them had awesome sculptures just in the middle of two people's bedroom windows, and I felt like it had to have some equally unique and neat history behind it, but since none of us knew a single thing about the history of Prague we had no idea what to think of anything. I wanted to take a walking tour so that we could get some of that information from a local while seeing the sights but the idea didn't take. It was actually frustrating to me to be seeing all this really amazing stuff and not knowing a single thing about it beyond "ooh, that's pretty." It felt as though I wasn't actually there, but instead took a look at someone else's snapshots of their tour through Prague. This is almost the exact reason I'm writing all of this right now. All I have taken from Prague is pictures and personal experiences, no cultural exchange, no further understanding. So I'm trying to preserve those aspects I did get to hang on to.

Eventually we decided on going into the direction of the castle to see how far we'd get before fatigue set in. Before we crossed the bridge to get to the proper side of the river though we ran across a building which I could only assume to be a museum that was littered with statues, of who I could only assume to be philosophers, striking the most majestic poses ever. Only pictures can truly explain just how majestic this was. But let it be known, I want a statue just like one of these on my tombstone. Don't even need a grave really, just the statue somewhere. On our ascent towards the castle we ran into what I think was the sort of garden in front of the current Senate building. It had, again, some really awesome statues, fountains, and a crazy looking wall that I still don't understand beyond the pictures I took.

The road to the castle was a little on the steep side but once we got to the top, surprise surprise, it was amazing and huge. We all went back into picture mode since we again had no idea about the history of any of this stuff. We went picture crazy on the gates, a church on the inside of the gates, and everything else we stumbled across. At the top we kind of just sat around for a little bit to let our minds be blown. I'm still not even sure whether we saw the actual castle tower or not. When I first started exploring Prague I thought to myself that as nice of a city as it was I don't think I could bring myself to live there. It seemed as though it could really start to get to you. But then at this area I started to change my mind. The city can seem a little crazy, but they still have places around that retain their peaceful qualities. Not a whooole bunch, but just enough to make it seem livable.

We started looking for a place to eat while heading towards the general direction of the metro. Our food solution was to stop in two different restaurants along our way, each time ordering one meal and splitting it three ways. Worked out well I'd say, as we got to try some fairly varied things from completely different restaurants. On our journey back to the metro we kept on running across more awesome-ness of the city but by this time it was too dark for pictures to come out. For example, the Charles Bridge, which is an old gorgeous bridge with tons of statues lining it took us nearly half an hour to walk a tenth of a mile because of our (mostly failed) attempts to take so many pictures. After that we headed back to the hotel (although first had some sausage type thing at a little stand that I think we'd all rather forget about). Sitting here now I am positive that two days was not enough to see anything here. I feel like a day could have been spent in the castle alone, not just two or so hours. And the first night we were here we passed by other interesting things that we didn't come close to finding again but we didn't stop to explore because we were being hurried to go eat. In the end I think it serves as a small taste of the city and I'll have to come back at some point to really see the rest of it. There was simply no way to get as much out of it as possible in two days.

Shane
7/31/07

Ian, Dave, meet Germany. Germany, Ian and Dave.

Ian and Dave showed up on Friday, hence the day was almost completely filled with shuffling around baggages and people between the airport, Garching, and their hostel. Dave and I had a pretzel and a beer at the Viktualien Markt before Ian's flight came in but then met up with Ian at the airport, dropped off his stuff at my place, and had some Bavarian food in the city, i.e. Sausage and Beer.

Saturday I met them at their hostel and we headed to the concentration camp at Dachau. Well at first we headed to the actual city of Dachau, and since I had never been there before and had no idea where to go, I was naturally appointed as navigator. I decided to get us lost in the city center for a while before asking for directions to the camp. Upon asking, I discovered that the best way to get there was to take a bus from the train station we had gotten off at at Dachau. We were able to find a second best option by hopping a couple buses (buses which crossed at " J.F. Kennedy Platz") and met Robert out there.

Dachau as an experience was really neat and I would even say powerful. Everything is so perfectly preserved that at first it's a little too nice looking. But after living here for as long as I have I can definitely imagine Germans putting all the TLC in the world into making the lawn look gorgeous while ignoring heinous crimes behind them. Alles muss ordentlich sein. Not that Germans as a people are amoral, just that their attention to detail seems to sometimes prevent them from seeing the big picture. But that in itself is quite a strong stereotype that would be impossible to extend to the whole population. It'd be like saying every American drives a Hummer to work wearing cowboy boots and carrying a rifle.

Beyond that I really have no idea how to describe the experience... so I'm actually not even going to try. Miraculously my camera batteries were dead that day too so I don't even have pictures to refer to. Maybe it's better that way.

We used some information posts to find a tiny Bavarian Restaurant that was ridiculous to find (by German standards). We got into one of those situations there where the waitresses either didn't speak English, or I had somehow fooled them into thinking that I speak German, so I became the representative for the group. The place had no menus, and only three dishes, which she described to me in German while I tried to translate, and keep the details in my head, before explaining back to the group. A lot was "lost in translation" but I was able to get out "Schnitzel with French Fries", "Noodles with cheese", and "Turkey something." There being 4 of us and three dishes we ran the gamut. Despite the difficulties, that place was really good, and perhaps my favorite place I've found in Munich so far.

After this we headed towards the English Gardens where we promptly passed out in the grass for a couple hours. After that was the Chinese Tower where they have live music, beer, food, and also wireless internet... who would have thought. We stumbled upon a blockparty inside the city that was really neat where we had our dinner and listened to some Germans singing English music before the rain called it a night for us.

The next day Ian and Dave procured our valiant Steed and we headed off in the direction of Regensburg. Or we would have, but I had left my passport in my guesthouse in Munich. Those things can be handy this side of the globe, so we turned around about 30 minutes into our journey to grab it and by that time we decided on just cutting out Regensburg from this leg of the trip and headed towards Nuremberg instead where our Hotel was.

Somehow we ran into some sort of Block Party again! but it was really neat and all types of food (not just Sausages and Doener like at the other one). I had myself some Flammenkuchen (flame cake). I had no idea what it was at the time, but now that I've been educated by the Germans here I can tell you that it's a dish from the area of Germany near the French border which is like meat and cheese on a thin bread which is then thrown into a really hot oven for maybe 5 minutes (cooks really fast because it's really really thin) and then a large group of people are supposed to eat it really quickly since it gets cold really fast (again, it's really thin). Or that's how they'd do it in those regions. Here they just treated it like a pizza. But it was still quite good and recommendable. Ian and Dave went for some Curry Wurst (Curry Sausage), their sausage intake for the trip at this point at about threat level Orange, despite me trying to convince them that Germans don't eat nearly as much sausage as they had been doing and they have much more varied and different types of food, many of which had less risk of keeping ME up at night.

Overall, Nuremberg is a nice quaint little town. I felt fairly comfortable there since it's still Bavarian and more and more I feel like a "Bavarian"... or at least a permanent tourist of Bavaria. My vocabulary is especially southern, to the point where I think if I spoke normally to a northerner they would say something like "where the hell did you learn German?" Nuremberg was also unique enough in its own right to stand out from Munich to me. Both are nice nice places. The night ended with a bunch of wandering, some Doener eating, and some sleeping.

I think I've got no more narrative about this phase so I'm going to revert to some nice randomness which seemed to work out in the past.

-One day in Nuernberg and I seem to have met more non-English speaking Germans than in Munich two months of Munich. It would be expected that there'd be a little bit more but it seems like more than I imagined. Poor Ian and Dave don't always have it easy since I'm not always around and not always able to translate.
-I'm starting to build a taste for Pilsener beer... but still doesn't compare to a good German Helles or Weissbier.
-Prague seems to be a huge destination for German Tourists. Most signs are written in Czech and then repeated in German and English. (This point was explained to me later on. The Eastern bloc was a good vacation spot for West Germans since everything was so cheap by comparison, and East Germans couldn't go into the West so it was basically their only option.)
-I like the sound of Czech... it's a little softer and not so "wavy" as Russian and also uses the Roman script so it's actually somewhat possible to read.
-I've really had to go out of my way to not be sold all sorts of things in the middle of the street in Prague, legal and illegal. Scariest part is that they start by speaking English. Although nobody I've met recently has guessed me to be American... but I'm not sure if that's because only the people really bad at guessing guess or if it's not perfectly obvious. I usually get spoken to in Italian or Spanish if the person's native language doesn't yield good results.

7/30/2007
Shane

Prague

We drove to Prague from Nuremberg, using directions from our Nuremberg hotel to our "Prague Hotel". Everything about Prague makes it nearly impossible to navigate through it. Imagine Boston's crappy layout, but remove most street signs, and those that you leave are as far as we were considered a random collection of letters and accent marks, which just happened to be repeated identically in our map. To make it worse, no street is longer than about 3 blocks worth, where it changes name to something else equally foreign to us. So if you're trying to follow a map driving on one road, you look up to see what road you just crossed, and when you look back at the map you're on a new road. The names change so quickly that at first I was convinced they were just the names of the buildings, not the street signs.

But despite everyone being at their nerve's end my first impressions were that the city was really quite gorgeous and I couldn't wait to be able to walk around the city once we found our hotel. We got to the address for our hotel, which also happened to be very near the city center of Prague, and certainly the most crowded area, only to discover that it was some sort of monument. This lead us to reconsider the accuracy of our information. After calling expedia, we finally discovered that our address was completely wrong, were able to get some internet access thanks to this really sweet girl working at Europcar, and once we got the real address she helped us locate it on our map. I think we partially owe our lives to that girl. Our wrong address took us to the dead center of the city, hence the worst driving conditions I've ever seen, but the real address took us towards the outer edges (district 10 of 14, instead of 1 of 14). At that point we could smell victory on our drive to the hotel and so the ride was much more fun than the stress induced first section. We checked into our hotel and decided to brave the public transit back to the city to wander a little before the night was over and to get an idea of what we want to do with our one full day in the city. On our way to a tram line we stopped inside of another hotel to buy tickets and saw an old German couple trying to ask the receptionist for help but they spoke no English and the receptionist spoke no German. Ian ordered me to go play translator so I tried to jump in and see if I could help. Essentially they wanted to exchange tickets they had bought so I was able to find out for them that the man that does that wouldn't be available until the following day and they needed to come back then. I felt mostly inadequate, but I think the couple was really frustrated before I jumped in and they at least knew something afterwards so it wasn't a complete bust.

We ended up at a place where the guy had no clue what language we spoke (his first guesses were Italian and Spanish) that served 'set' meals with the description of being Czech. I don't know if they were actually Czech, but it at least was neither German nor American and it was good so who cares. They serve almost exclusively Pilsener beer in Prague, and I'm not a huge fan of Pilsener, but I've been getting myself used to it, and as far as Pilsener goes it was pretty good.

After dinner it was a little on the late side, and we were getting towards the last 40 minute or so of public transport so we walked to a busy pick up point for the trams and started our... debate... about which way to go. I was proposing the 24 line, North... Ian was a big fan of the general Northern direction, and I think Dave was a little partial towards the 9, South. We had fewer maps than suggestions, and were making no progress so I was able to convince everyone to jump onto 24 North as it passed by. As I had guessed, the 24 line goes practically right next to our Hotel and would have been perfect... if we had picked it up going in the opposite direction. Dave saved us a few stops in and we hopped off and started to figure out where we need to go to not be lost in the middle of the Prague for the evening. Nice of a city as it was... not a place I wanted to be lost at past 1 am. We went to a metro during our random scramblings where we tried to ask a worker there to help us with directions and her first sentence to us was "Sprechen Sie Deutsch?"! As it turns out, my German helped us more in the Czech Republic than it ever did in Germany.

We spent so much time being completely lost in our first day in Prague that I think we are NOW some of the most directionally apt tourists to ever visit Prague. Have to be. This was only the first day though and I'm really excited to go back to the city in the morning to have a full day of adventure. Yay!

7/30/2007
Shane

The next few updates...

... will be incredibly boring. But what's new about that?

no that's not what I meant to say. I meant to say "... will work a bit differently."

Last week Ian and Dave visited, during the course of which we saw a fair bit of Munich, Nuremberg, and Prague. During most of the trip, while Dave and Ian were keeping up with their respective marriages (Dave to Donna, Ian to Mark), I would scope out whatever semi blank pieces of paper I could find in the hotel and write voraciously about the day. So now I have a stack of numbered papers (many of which have advertisements acquired in Prague, half in English and half in German, for massages on the back side) which tells the condensed story of our trip as best I could at the time. It strongly resembles the basic theme to Vonnegut's "Hocus Pocus" if you're familiar with it.

Anyways I'm going to work on writing and polishing these up a bit and posting them as soon as they're ready. So the next few posts will be these writings, organized chronologically by when I wrote them (which happens to be out of order of how they happened...), and with an extra date telling you when I first wrote them.

I have no working laptop currently, so pictures could be severely delayed, but they will come.

Shane

Berlin

Last weekend I met Cassie in Berlin. Oh Berlin... how to describe.

I got there using this carpooling website to meet people already going to these cities and then you just split gas with them essentially and it works out great usually. The guy that drove on my way to Berlin FLEW on the Autobahn. I was actually pretty sure that if the car was any more aerodynamic or god forbid had wings we would have been having lift problems. I was remarkably calm though considering I had trouble trying to imagine friends of mine that I would even agree to be in a car with going nearly that fast.

Let me start by explaining that it was the hottest day I've had to experience in Germany so far... it was on the hot side even by Florida standards (90s Fahrenheit... I think... either that or I've become a wimp this Summer) and since Europe has virtually no air conditioning the only escape you can get from the heat is finding some shade with a breeze. So after Cassie and I met we tried to walk around and see some sights but it was about 1:00 in the afternoon so it was at its hottest so we decided to find a park and some shade and hang out for a bit hoping it would cool down soon. Neither of us having slept much the previous night, we ended up passing out for a few hours in the Tiergarten under a tree. When we woke up it was indeed a little bit cooler... but still pretty awfully hot as far as I was concerned.

We walked around the city trying to find sights to see and just sort of wander... we didn't realize it at the time but we walked through a good 80% of a tour we took later. The most noticeable thing about walking around the city, this is on a Saturday evening mind you, is how just terribly quiet it was. It didn't feel like the capital of a fairly big country with a supposedly famous reputation for getting crazy... it was just... quiet. We scavenged together a dinner from a grocery store (where after speaking to the cashier there in German her first real sentence in response to me was "you speak English?"), did a bit more walking, a bit of beer drinking, and called it a night.

We took a 'free' tour of the city the next day which ended up passing exactly through most of what we had seen the day before for the first part, just with a lot more information, and sort of placing the historical events I had known to occur in the city to specific spots. The actual chronology of our day at this point is partially a blur and mostly unimportant so I'm going to drop that construct.

Compared to Munich, Berlin certainly wins in just how neat their memorials and monuments are. They have a Holocaust Monument which is just absolutely amazing. They stuck it right smack in the middle of the city, I think with the intention to make it absolutely impossible to ignore. I have pictures of it so I'll refer you to those to see what it is exactly, but the beauty of it isn't in the actual structures erected so much as the experience of being there and walking through it. I don't think I can describe it correctly like this so maybe you'll have to ask me personally about it sometime, but I strongly recommend this to you if you're ever in the area. I was actually reluctant to mention it or post pictures of it because the difference between seeing the pictures or hearing about it is so vast compared to being there and walking through it that I felt I would be doing it a disservice.

And on the spot of where the first Nazi book burnings took place they have another really neat monument. It looks almost like a window sitting on the ground. If you look at it at an angle you see shelves... shelves that are said to contain an empty space for all of the irreplaceable books that were burnt that day. And then looking straight down at it all you see is your own reflection. This translation is repeated in the captions of my pictures but the marker for this monument has the extremely fitting quote by Heinrich Heine (written over a hundred years prior to this burning, and whose works were burnt) which translates as "That was only a prelude, for where one burns books, in the end one also burns people."

In the end I think if I had to pick one way to describe Berlin it would be as a "recovering Schizophrenic." Berlin was originally many small villages that were sort of mashed together to form one city, and then after WWII it was split up for some 50 years. It's only been one city again for 17 years, and only been the capital of unified Germany since 1996. In some ways I feel like it's somewhat skittish and still sort of in the middle of integrating the lifestyle of West Berlin and East Berlin to make a single identity, not to mention the huge presence that the Soviet Union and the Allies have left there... maybe not as far as military presence, but historical... and you can just kind of feel it there. After our two days there I felt as though I had seen nothing of the spirit of the city... I really felt as though I hadn't been in Berlin at all actually. By contrast I really felt like I had started to feel comfortable in London after a few hours, Edinburgh overnight, and after spending one day in Munich I felt closer to the city. Obviously a weekend isn't enough time to really see any city worth seeing... but Berlin especially so compared to everywhere I've been up to now. But it's changing so quickly these days that I would imagine someone that grew up there would have the same problem if they came back for a weekend.

This is already way more than I thought I was able to write about Berlin. Ian and Dave are coming to visit at the end of the week(!) and the entire time they're here I'm taking off from work so I think my next adventures will be all about that time.

Mit freundlichen Grüssen,
Shane

ein kleines Update

So I've added some more pictures to my Munich album. For the most part they are relatively random and there aren't many stories behind them but I'll try to highlight the additions.

 -one church here has a series of bones on display, i don't want to know whose or why... it's more fun that way
 -I had the opportunity to play chess on a nearly lifesize chess board
 -We witnessed a hunting protest involving marching and dancing boars, birds, cats, and foxes.
 -So many of the churches here have dragon slayers... I think that's a part of the Bible often forgotten in the US
 -Found a Quantum Physics book in the Gift Shop of the Deutsches Museum titled " Schrödinger's Cat." And yes, that does imply that the gift  shop for this museum contains Quantum Physics books ... in German... also Mathematics and Chemistry books... among others.

One really neat little highlight was spending a day in the Deutsches Museum with Robert. This is essentially a massive science Museum... massive. To give you an idea Robert and I spent nearly an entire day there, from 10:30 to 5:00(when it closed), and by the end of the day I think I had seen maybe one quarter of the exhibits they had... and those that I saw we ran through a little on the quick side since we skipped almost all the displays which were in German since for me to read just one display may take 10 minutes so it just wasn't worth it. They have scheduled "shows" every now and then including one that incorporated loud bangs from strong electrical discharges and a Faraday Cage! They had a room to demonstrate some of the interesting results from Newtonian Physics, an example of which is a video I took (several actually) of Robert or Myself holding onto dumbells and spinning on a platform with our arms outstretched... then when you pull your arms in due to the conservation of angular momentum you speed up... this is exactly what figure skaters do in just about every finishing of a routine, that super spin effect. I felt like a little boy running through a toy store throughout most of the day because every thing was interactive, there was always some button to push or magnet to play around with or chemical to mix... such a great place. I hope to go back soon but I have other priorities so we'll see. For a geek like me though, this place is heaven.

That's all for now. I've been busy lately so more to come shortly, just wanted to appease the fan(s).

Shane

Freising, Cassie, Tantalum... Beer...?

Hello Hello,

I have new pictures and stories to share that I've been just sitting on so I wanted have an accompanying update. So... here it is...

And as a general notice, I've become absolutely obsessed with war memorials here... I'm really fascinated with how people view their past in general, even more so in Germany, so every time I came across a monument I would usually stand there and pull out my dictionary to translate the whole thing... until my friend here Robert suggested I just take a picture and translate it at home... so because of that I've got more pictures of monuments than anything else and I've translated as best as I can into the captions. I don't particularly go searching for these things either, I just run into them and go trigger happy.


- Freising -

A couple weekends ago my Portuguese friend Robert and I took a little day trip to this city just north of Munich, Freising. I feel like we did so little there but it was a really fun day. Our first order of business was finding the tourist information and there they suggested that we eat at this restaurant that was about 200 feet away from the Weihenstephan brewery. Weihenstephan is a separate little sub-section of the city there, and it's also the oldest brewery in the world, it was started in 1040. There's a picture of our meal... but I have no idea what it actually was... except that it was good. And the beer was incredible. I think it is the best I've had since I've been here and I'd be hard pressed to think of any time I had something better.

As an aside, I feel as though I'm starting to grasp the thing about beer here compared to say Gainesville. I think in Gainesville we could find most of the stuff I find here or something of almost similar quality... but you'd have to search, and that's the main difference. You can go to practically any restaurant in Munich (with the possible exception of McDonald's) and ask for a "helles Bier" and it will just about always be better than what you drive 30 minutes to find a specialty store in a weird part of town for in Gainesville. It'd be like being able to walk into a place like Applebee's and literally saying "normal beer" and getting something really really good... and for about the same relative price that they charge for crap like Bud back home too. I think I'm getting spoiled.

Okay, so after eating, Robert and I wandered around the city, trying to see some sights on a map we were given, but getting sidetracked a lot. We walked into some exhibit of a Freising window maker or something like that... but the man running it didn't speak any English and the exhibit was entirely in German so the details were lost on me besides "please come in, have a look around, it's free." We did make our way to this really neat church on a hilltop where a lot of pictures came from. It had some really neat statues inside and some candle lit plaques in the basement. I really liked it in that city though... I would definitely go back.

- Munich -

This past weekend Cassie's family was passing through Munich so she spent the weekend here and I got to be a tourist with her and her family. I haven't really had many chances to be a tourist here so it worked out great. As far as my pictures go though, the Munich album is my repository for all the pictures I've taken in the city since I got here... most are from this weekend of tourism, but some are from just wandering the city with a friend or by myself... and I'll be continually adding to it since I'll be continually taking pictures in Munich.

Saturday I met up with Cassie, and we went to Sergey's place first, dropped off Cassie's bag, had a short rest, and then went to the city center to meet her family. Sergey guided us to a nice Bavarian Restaurant in Munich where I had some Bavarian meat dumpling type dish which was quite nice. We headed towards the English Gardens where Robert met up with us and towards the Chinese Tower for BEER by the liter (that's how Bavarians like it). In the water under some bridge we saw a bunch of people in full wetsuits surfing... I had always heard about that but never been sure if it were true... surfing in Munich... who would have thought. The night ended with Sergey, Cassie, Robert, Jandy, and Nick having a couple beers at a little pub/restaurant type deal and then Cassie and I heading back towards Garching.

Sunday we visited die alte Pinakothek which is an art gallery in the city. After leaving there we stumbled upon some big festival celebrating immigration or something like that we're guessing... there was Bavarian dancing and what seemed to be Turkish food but it was really neat. i recorded video of the Bavarian dancing but I'm currently having technical difficulties getting it online... so that will have to wait. We met with Robert again at that point and later we continued on to the Deutsches Museum since it was free for the last hour it is open. That's a gigantic science museum and it's pretty awesome. I need to spend about an entire day there at some point since in one hour Robert and I barely finished looking through a single exhibit on Mining.

- Tantalum -

So if any of you are having trouble sleeping lately, this was written with you in mind. I guarantee you that by reading through what I'm writing next, you will be on the verge of falling asleep. You can thank me later.

I've been asked now and then about what my research entails and now that I'm starting to make a little progress I can (somewhat) answer that question. I'm currently studying small systems containing the metallic element Tantalum, to try and compare it to other theoretical work done or experimental results found. I'm trying to fine tune our method and basis sets so we can have reasonable accuracy and also be computationally efficient. The basis set is just the collection of functions you use to describe a system... the more you use the closer you get to reality but the more the computations cost. Most people normally don't spend as much time on the basis sets as I have to, but I'm the first person in this group to do calculations on Tantalum so I have to start from the beginning. The end goal is to study the catalytic properties of silica supported Tantalum complexes although I'm not sure I'll ever get to that point before I leave. My next step is to just calculate tons of different molecules for the sake of comparison. Tantalum is named after the Greek Myth about Tantalus. That's also where the word tantalizing comes from. So, do deal with Tantalum, is equivalent to suffering... that's the moral of the story.

Well now I'm being beckoned to lunch and I've avoided working long enough anyways... hope you enjoy.

Shane

Mozartburg, the city where Salz was born.

Today is a holiday here in Germany (before anybody asks, not Memorial Day) and so yesterday a few of us took a day trip out to Salzburg. Salzburg is the city that Mozart was born in, and they take that very very seriously. Around every corner you see Mozart plaques, memorabilia, souvenirs, or just plain portraits. And then for the actual sites you can see his birthplace, where he lived, bars he frequented, where he once took a dump, I mean the city really takes that man seriously.

The collection of people was Sergey, Manu, Siham (very nice Algerian girl from our research group), and MS (short for something that I don't really remember actually, but he's from Paris). We started off in a garden with a live Orchestra that was quite good, and a series of statues of Hercules wrestling Antaeus representing the four elements.

We moved on to walk around the city, climbed up to the main tower of the castle (and when I say climbed, that is definitely what we did) had lunch at this place with a beautiful view towards the top of the area where I also took pictures which I used to make the panorama with that I'm attaching to the email. It was really quite a beautiful view... and it's a beautiful little city.

There were a few exhibits inside the castle area that we visited. After that we walked back down, had a short rest at some cafe type place down near the city center and then eventually continued on to climb some last little mountain to see what the view would be before heading back to the train.

Other than their obsession with Mozart, Salzburg really was a great city... and I would gladly go back sometime. It was just very peaceful and quiet... relaxing even. More so than Munich is I can say. But it also had some character to it, and history. We found a cemetery and some catacombs on our climb up to the castle that were very nice and interesting and I imagine that if we spent more time there we would find more little hidden pleasant surprises.

And the people were really nice, most of them seemed to be able to speak any language you could throw at them. Our group kind of confused them I think and so a waiter tried to give me my total in French and I just stared at him. But other than that after hearing us speak once they would speak English to me, German to Manu, French to Siham and MS, and either German or English to Sergey depending on who.

Overall it was a nice day, and a little email can't describe it at all. I posted pictures on my picasa. The last picture is a panorama from near the spot we had lunch. The quality on picasa doesn't really do it justice so I've attached the "medium" quality version I have which is still quite large. It was a really amazing spot. We had to wait on the girls to go to the bathroom at that spot and I just spent the entire time we were waiting taking pictures of that view.

Until the next time I do something interesting...
Shane

Aus Deutschland

So,

last I left everyone I was escaping chemical spills and gallavanting around Munich. Hmmm, what's new?

Well I started my "work" for one. Thus far I'm doing basically a training program on the use of Gaussian which is a very popular computational chemistry program. For those that are interested (all one of you) the sorts of things I've been doing with this training are doing a series of calculations on a particular system, say the atomization of formaldehyde, with different computational methods, different basis sets, different orientations, and then comparing the results against each other and to experiment as well as evaluating the flaws and strengths of each particular method (does it cope with spin coupling, is it computationally efficient, etc.). Everything I've done so far is very well known and studied both computationally and experimentally but once I'm done with this training section I'll be moving on to some problems where the answers aren't known and in some cases the existence of an answer isn't entirely certain... that's the more interesting part of research. And it seems like the professor is interested in getting me to work on some solid state stuff so maybe that will be my area.

Everybody in the lab is really nice in general. Nobody here understands me if I speak normally in English so I feel like at the end of the summer my English will get worse since I'm constantly simplifying myself and slowing myself down. I share a room with Egor and at about 6 PM everyday when we start to get very bored and anxious for the day to be over we start to chit chat about Russia or America and comparisons of the two. I have to say I never thought I'd learn so much about Russia while in Germany, but I won't complain. And I think I've made a couple good friends out of Sergey and Manuela. Sergey is also Russian, but Manuela is German, from central Germany type area. Sergey has spent a few days just showing me around Munich and going to biergartens with me and whenever possible Manuela (Manu for short) joins us. I went running with them the other day. They ran about a total of 10 km I think (which is around 6 miles). I however was not able to keep up with them and I think I only managed maybe 4 miles. They literally ran circles around me at certain points. But it was still fun although I'm still very sore. Monday is a holiday here so we may go up to the Alps or do something like that on that day. Oh and Manu told me that my pronunciation in German is actually quite good which made my day... it's just everything else about the language I have to fix.

Also, another Russian from the lab gave me his old bike today so now I have a bike to get myself around! The main city area where I can buy groceries and such is only about 10 to 15 minutes away by bike and I believe Munich itself is maybe 30 by bike so this will be very useful and I'm excited about the prospect. I mean it's a crappy little bike but it goes so I'm happy.

FOOD! I actually haven't been eating much since I've been here but when I do eat it tends to be in the Mensa here. Mensa pretty much translates to cafeteria but I feel like they are different experiences and even when people speak english here they still refer to it as the Mensa so I will do the same. I have this habit to look at food and think to myself "hmm, what looks the strangest and least enjoyable? Ah yes I will try that!" Since Mensa food is not necessarily the best it hasn't always worked out for me. I also don't pay attention to the names or signs since I can't actually read them so I couldn't even tell you what it is. For example, today I had some asparagus like vegetable (although certainly not asparagus) with a cheese sauce, rice and salad. And another day I had basically a sweet roll with some strange fruit filling in the center. I think this drive to try the stuff that looks the strangest to me might just get me into trouble at some point but so far no harm done. I have had trouble trying to find some German restaurants because apparently Germans don't eat German food. Everyone tells me all about great Greek restaurants or great Italian restaurants but nobody has recommended to me a "good" German restaurant.

I can't really think of much else to add to that for now and it's getting late here so I think I will call it a night. I've started to post my emails on the blog I made so if I happened to forget someone (and I hope I haven't) in one of them they are all here. Maybe in the future I'll put something up there that is not exactly an email but maybe you'll have to check to find out! And I'm still working on getting some good pictures but for now I have some on my picasa account, although they're mostly crap.

I will try to say more later, but I'm going to go to sleep now. Gute Nacht.

Shane

BAH!

So I was just about done writing that previous email to everyone when there was a chemical spill in my wing of the building and we had to evacuate the building for the day. I had been in the building just long enough to sit down and write the majority of that email.

So then I found Egor again, we met up with more people from our research group and after a while went to the Mensa (cafeteria). The food was so-so but different than I'm used to so it was a nice experience. We had a table of like 8 people filled with me, five Russians, an Asian girl (I haven't actually spoken to her yet so I don't know from where), and a German girl. The Russians spoke a lot of Russian and I understood nothing.

We had some coffee, played some table soccer, and I learned some bad Russian words everytime someone would score. Then myself, another Russian (Sergey), Manuela the german girl, and an Algerian girl from the research group all went into Munich together. The two girls went shopping while Sergey gave me a pretty decent tour of Munich along with a lot of the historical type things.

Munich is quite beautiful. I hadn't planned on going into the city at that point so I didn't have my camera with me but I'll be here so long that I'll have plenty of opportunities. I'm definitely going to go back and revisit mostly everything I saw there.

There was a really neat souvenir shop type thing attached to a Museum there that just had tons of science books in German, like introduction to group theory and algebra, electricity and magnetism, relativity... like real science books in German... at a souvenir shop. I'm cutting out a lot of detail but eventually we found our way to this Italian restaurant and had some food and beer. Then we met back up with Manuela.

Previously everybody had been speaking to me almost exclusively in English (with a couple exceptions of people asking me if i speak any german in german). But with Sergey and Manuela I just started to speak German whenever I had something to say that I could get out in german and eventually they started to respond back and say things to me in German, although it's very hard because my level of german is so low compared to their level of german or english.

We decided to go to the Cinema to kill the rest of the day. We picked out some movie, called "How to Cook Your Life", that looked like it might be interesting and I thought it was going to be in German so I would just get some fun practice with my listening skills. It turned out to be all about this guy that practices zen in baking in California so the entire movie was in English with subtitles.

But at that point we called it a night and I caught the train back to Garching and passed out quite quickly.

Sergey was a really good tour guide and we got along really well and he and Manuela were both being really nice and helpful in General. Everyone has been in fact so with their help I'm doing quite well. And people have begun to speak to me in German a little so I'm glad for that but hopefully moreso in the future.

I think I need to start some work so I'm going to sign off for now but there will be more eventually.

Shane

Well I'm Here...

I took a train and a bus from the airport over to the campus at Garching and then walked to the Chemistry building, met with the people that invited me, had a little introduction to some people, my work area, and was given a tad bit of advice by a few people.

I knew coming in that most of the research group I'm working with isn't German... but it seems as though they are almost entirely Russian but furthermore, it seems like they don't like to speak German unless they have to. So it seems I'll have to go out of my way to find opportunities to speak German.

Then they passed me off to Egor, one of the (Russian) grad students and he showed me the Gaesthaus where I'll be staying. It's a small little room, a little smaller than my dorm was, with a bed, tiny desk, big window, and a big armoire type thing called a "Kleiderschrank" I believe but it's a single so it's not so bad. The only true downside to the guesthouse is that it has no internet access in it which is why I'm not sending this out until now.

Egor and I went to a cafeteria type place connected to the math department. I actually don't know what it is that I ate but it was good and I had some beer to go along with it (of course). We talked for a while about Russia, the US, Germany, Chemistry... I got told probably five or six times to repeat myself more slowly because he couldn't understand my "accent".I also found it strange because he seemed to really buy into American stereotypes. Like "This place is good but it is no 'McDonalds' yeah? I hear that in America everybody eats McDonalds all the time." and "I hear all American women are huge?" Also, they all knew I was from the US and asked me where exactly in the US and it was the first time I've gotten blank stares after saying "Florida". This is in complete contrast to the first time I met the head professor and told him I was from the area south of Gainesville and he said "Oh, Tampa?" and I told him further south and he said "So like Fort Myers?"

After that I went back to my room, unpacked, set myself up and went to sleep. I'm working on pictures and more info and such... so far no luck though.

Shane

Of course...

... and in keeping with Britain's reputation (tradition?) the the weather for the two days following my last post have been complete shit.

Outta My Head

Yesterday just happened to be an incredibly gorgeous day so I headed out to Hyde Park. I spent a good few hours just wandering around... sitting on a bench listening to Blur, walking along the pond thing they have in the park, laid down for maybe an hour in the grass listening to some M. Ward.

I think this is my favorite thing about London, how well they can sneak in these massive beautiful parks where people go and just take naps in the grass. I've heard that Munich has some of the nicest parks there are so I'm really looking forward to that.

Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my camera so I don't have anything to share besides this.

Back in Bermondsey

On my flight from Washington to London there was a man across the aisle from me who was flying to London with his two sons (I would guess 5 or 6 years old) on his way to meet his wife and their mother. When we got off the plane they were saying to each other "When we see Mommy, you hug one side of Mommy and I'll hug the other so that way we can both hug her at the same time" and then the reply "Okay, I'll get the better side of Mommy and you get the slightly less good side of Mommy." It was perhaps the most adorable thing I've heard in my entire life.

Other than that I've really only had time to hang out with Cassie a little bit and then go to sleep (I got to Bermondsey about 12:15 am London time). Soon though, English Breakfast!

Oh and ignore the previous post on this... it's from the first few days of coming up to England in December... I just never followed through with it because I'm a lazy bum.