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.