Prost!

Welcome again to the latest edition of your weekly robs update!

Ok, so clearly I may have been watching waaaaaay too much CNN, but it’s the only channel I have in English, and I just started getting it two weeks ago (I’m not counting the random reality tv shows on MTV that they don’t dub over)… And what a two weeks to get the news… especially for someone interested into international criminal and human rights law… I mean seriously exciting things going on. But hopefully, you all know this and so I don’t need to go about spouting my opinions on all the world going ons. But something you may have missed is the brewing conflict between Thailand and Cambodia over a small patch of land at the base of the Preah Vihear temple. I’ve decided on taking a rare stance in the blog and actually dedicate a blip to outside affairs. *I’m not an expert on all this and my be wrong, its mostly just opinion.--- If you arent’ interested, just skip down to the next bolded heading…

Preah Vihear has recently become a world heritage site… this means things like funding, etc. The temple itself has been in conflict for several decades. When France moved out of the region they gave the land to Thailand, but a Court decided that this was wrong and in fact belonged to Cambodia. And this more or less makes a lot of sense. The architecture of the temple along w/ the people and culture in the area most closely resembles Khmer. The temple is the same style and time as Angkor. Unfortunately, the Khmer haven’t had the money to do things like build a decent road to go up to the temple. I can’t remember whether I blogged about this last year, but it was really frustrating for me as it was one of the number one places I wanted to visit here, but due to my lack of experience on a dirt bike, the levels of mud, and rainy whether, it just wasn’t a possibility for me to go up. However, on the Thai side of the mountain there is a road that tourists can go up, but once up, you can’t cross over to the temple (I think that’s how it works). So Cambodia applied to have it labeled a World Heritage site, but some Thais think that they should also have claims to the temple and so it should have been a joint application (and joint money)… So then 3 people decided to take back the temple for Thailand… via planks of wood over the barbed wire border, they were captured, soldiers called in… and things have generally degraded from here. While last week things seemed to have settled back down again, the news today says that both sides are building up militarily, and they are prepping for conflict. Land and money… land that if I’m right is still covered in a lot of mines, so its only use is getting to and from the temple… seems rather ridiculous… especially for Cambodia, who right now has been building up their infrastructure like crazy and really should only be concerned with stabilizing conditions to promote foreign investment, something that really hasn’t happened since the last bit of fighting 11 years ago. (in other words, there’s still no McDonalds or any other major western business taking route in the country) It’s a bit ironic that the country with the most claim to the area, is also the one with the most incentive to back down. Sorry, on now to back to a more regular robin update.

The Weekend

For a change, I really did stay in Hamburg… ALL weekend… be shocked! Friday night Jodie (USA II), Lucio (Portugal II), Rafael (Brazil II) and I (USA I) had a lovely dinner at the Hofbrauhaus… let me tell ya, that brings back memories of 4 years ago… or at least fuzzy visions of where memories should be. ;-) In case you don’t know, the Hofbrauhaus in Munich is probably the most famous bier hall in the world… While the one in Hamburg wasn’t exactly the same, it was still a pretty good time… and a definite must for a German experience, even if not in Bavaria.

Saturday, unfortunately was a bit of a bust. It basically pored cats and dogs all day long, and by evening the big plans to hit up the Reeperbahn for some all night dancing had collapsed like a flan in a cupboard. But this didn’t stop us (Jodie and I) from going and still grabbing some drinks. Holy rediculousness… w/ in 2 minutes of being out of the train station I Had seen guys in fake prison uniforms with balls and chains attached, been serenaded by passing singers of drinking songs, and ran into some people that had clearly just stepped out of the matrix {movie not club version}… basically the whole street was over flowing with people in a giant party, w/ outdoor stages set up for no particular reason, a night market in the middle, and all the “specility” stores, discos and casinos in full glory. It proved to be the perfect opportunity to just sit and people watch while sipping on drinks.

Sunday was a day of culture. Again it was, Jodie, Lucio, Rafael, and myself. We first had lunch at a very very very old restaurant with a view of some of old buildings not destroyed during the war. It had some pretty incredible traditional dishes that matched the atmosphere. Afterwards we headed to the art museum to see the Mark Rothko Exhibit. Now I’m not usually the biggest fan of abstract art, but I do still try to appreciate it… but it turned out to be pretty interesting, and Jodie and I got to make all sorts of commentary which was a lot of fun.

Monday

Monday was the big summer festival here at the institute. I’ve never seen more rain… ever. But lets rewind a second. We were all supposed to make some sort of BBQ dish from home… this is really difficult living in another country. Its actually established that while I can handle staying somewhere for a few months, if I had to actually live somewhere else permanently, I would get really frustrated trying to cook regular meals. But anyways… what is really American that you can make that won’t be compared to European food? And I have no oven, so baking is out of the question. I decided upon Deviled eggs. I went to go grocery shopping on Sunday… this doesn’t work as every grocery store is closed. So I got up early on Monday morning, trekked down to the store, in the rain. But everything is in German, and they have no idea what I’m saying when I ask for ingredient X , which is ironic as I thought it was actually german [due to the nature of family secrets when it comes to recipe’s I cannot actually say what ingredient X, or any other ingredients really are]… in the end they didn’t have 3 of the ingredients I needed for deviled eggs (which actually have a total of 6 ingredients… betcha didn’t know that, eh?)… anywho, I made one substitution, and somehow managed to make pretty good eggs.

Everything kicked off with Konzil, where 3 people presented their research. Unfortunately, the first two people presented in German… I only sat in on the last part of the second speech… which even though I didn’t understand a word of what was going on, I’m glad I did mainly because he was an incredibly good speaker, probably one of the best (from what I could tell) that I’ve ever heard. The last speech was actually in English and done by my friend Guillermo (Chile). I’ve learned some basic things about myself since I’ve been here… one of the most important life lessons is how much I really just don’t care about most private law… and the area of corporations, and security law, totally goes over my head. So trying to listen to someone giving a presentation about the subject matter… basically has the same effect of me listening to someone giving a speech in German.

The party itself was a lot of fun, met tons of new people… lots of free German beer, wine, and champagne, and great food.

Tuesday

Tuesday was one of those days you aren’t really expecting… Its starts off relatively normal, though surprisingly pain-free and well rested after the long night before. Then disaster struck… I was walking to lunch and my heal got caught, tearing off the bottom. Unfortunately I had to keep walking for some time afterwards, wearing down the nail (sorry boys the dynamics of heals is probably going right over your head right now)… so it looks like they won’t be able to be fixed… I’ll need to go buy a new pair of brown heals now to match my things… oh darn.

The heal incident was almost immediately followed by my first ever bee sting (to my knowledge at least)… Those things really really hurt…But I’ve learned I’m not allergic, and its just a little pink and itchy today, not so much pain.

After work, Jodie, Georgious (Greece), and I went out for coffee downtown. Now one them for the day for Jodie and I was that everywhere we went to eat was either closed or soooo crowded we had to find somewhere else—this happened at lunch, coffee, and dinner. But we ended up taking coffee on the water, which was very nice. We then headed over to Sternchanze to meet up with Tomoko (Japan I), and a couple of other people from Japan… Professor Saurada (Japan II) is a very well known corporate professor, and was Tomoko’s professor’s professor (grand professor?)… absolutely hilarious and very nice man. Eriko (Japan III) is Tomoko’s friend from Japan who came over for two weeks to visit. And Manabu (Japan IV) is another PhD student that was just here for the week, and we were all out b/c it was his last night here. The end result was yet another very fun night of drinking. There are two drinks I must tell you about... they are called Alsterwasser and Elbewasser ( Alster water and Elbe water), as Hamburg is situated on Alster lake, and the Elbe River. Alsterwasser is beer with lemonade, and Elbewasser is beer with cola. They are surprisingly very good drinks, especially if you aren't intending to drink a lot, or if you aren't used to drinking. It reminded me a lot of the Austrian ColaWeis-- Wine and Cola, which we drank to save money and survive drinking games.

And that more or less wraps up the last week. Tomorrow I head off to Berlin where we’ll go and see Obama speak, followed by my most anticipated trip out to Poland…