The Last Days in Hamburg

Wow... I can't believe its been over 2 weeks... and sooo much has happened since I left Hamburg. But the last few days went by like all partings tend to. Too slow, but too fast. Involved lots of hugging cheek kissing... which we all know I love. And Me Tomoko, Demetri, and Paul went out to dinner on Saturday night. Just the pizza place Tomoko and I had ate at during the Germany/Turkey match a month and a half before. I had packed early for a change, and barely slept as I anxiously awaited my early morning taxi to the Trainstation. Public transportation was down... too much construction on the lines, so no way for me to make my train on time. I then rode for 5 hours down to Frankfurt Airport... Checked in, and stored my luggage, all without much of a hitch. Then I was off to Russia...

(I shall be updating this a bit at a time for the next week or so)

H&M, Ikea, Absolute... Oh my!

This last weekend trip to Stockholm was possibly one of the most stressful flip-flop back and forth decisions I've ever made. It almost made me feel like a politician. Here's the drama: Stockholm is far away. No really, its anywhere between 10-17 hours away by train. Seeing as I invested in a Eurail, I intended to use it for everything. But when you are at the last weekend of your trip, you just came back from Poland, and are heading to Russia in a week... this seems a little bit daunting. I have a Swedish family friend, Andreas, who had offered me a free place to stay and have as a guide through Stockholm. How often does that randomly happen? And initially my Cuban friend, Emil, was going to come with me. But he ended up pulling out. Now being me, I was starting to debate, ok, what is the responsible thing for me to be doing... maybe I will fly. So I looked at airline tickets, and they weren't half bad. Then I said, lets see how I feel post poland. While in Poland there was an air strike in Hamburg. Flights shot up 100 euro... but only the flight there. Reluctantly, I decided to cancel. Made the phone call and everything. I was worried about time, money, etc. So, I went to a going away dinner for my friend Lucio, and on the way home was talking to another friend, Bruno, who, it happened was leaving the institute and heading to Sweden the next day (this is Wednesday, same day I canceled) and I'm like, oh man. So lots of kicking myself the whole night for canceling, then getting to work the next morning to realize most of my friends had left that week or were sick, or stuck doing work b/c their computers crashed, there was no reason for me to be in Hamburg. (There were a couple of people that were just flat out missing... and i didn't learn till this week where there were or anything). So I looked, and during lunch, decided, I would go reserve a seat on the train for the way there, and fly back. This was the best impulsive decision ever... (ok maybe not the best, poland may have stolen that spot, but definitely one I'm very glad I made, or else I would always question whether I should have gone).

The train ride was long. There were two potential trains i could take, late and early... however the second half of the early train was full and the first half of the late train was full... the end result was that i had to split the ride in two and spend a couple of hours in Malmo, Sweden. Which wasn't bad b/c I got to grab food and watch yet another beach volleyball tournament going on in front of the town hall. During the second half of the trip I got the worst seat in a cabin... the middle seat w/ out arm rests or anything... and always in the sun. It was a long, hot trip... And I was quite happy to get to Stockholm.

By the time I got it, it was already pretty late, so we grabbed dinner, chatted and called it an early night. Andreas had another friend staying with him, Lena, who had just gotten a job in the area cataloging crawfish.

The next morning, I set off pretty early on my own. My goal was to grab a boat tour of the archipelago, but I missed the boat by literally seconds. I opted to take the next one, and wandered around the town hall to kill time. The tour was amusing. I learned all about Swedish industries, and how in all these different locations there used to be factories, and are now homes. The tour also played a lot of swedish pop music, including, abba, ace of base, and the cardigans.

I then proceeded to walk through an absolute downpour into the old city. Meandered around a church that housed the tombs of Swedish royalty; it was a lot more... British, and medieval than everything else I had seen during this trip, which I rather enjoyed. Then, I braved the elements and headed towards the castle. Where I saw 3 different museums, all very very nice. And I actually quite loved the inside of the castle.

Here I should point out, that getting around Stockholm for me was no the same as getting around Krakow. My theories for this include: 1) If i go underground (such as via train) i lose any and all sense of direction-- this also happens in Hamburg, 2) I only function directionally when there is sun, 3) I clearly never lived in Stockholm in a past life.

As I was leaving one of the exhibits at the castle, my timing was perfect to see the Changing of the guard, which I thought surely I had missed. For those keeping tabs, thats my second changing of the guard this trip. Its not something ridiculously special, its more just interesting to watch. As my time was winding down, I did not hit the 4th museum in the castle. But as I was leaving I could here the thump and rumble of bass... the distinct sound of... a night club... in the middle of the day in Stockholm. Well, I am a creature of curiosity, so I followed the "um-cha, um-cha, um-cha" and found myself in the middle of a gigantic gay pride parade. It was fantastic. A colorful mixture of people, banners, costumes, and floats... Combining stereotypes, in the best of ways, with serious political messages, and rocking floats that were basically discos on wheels. The whole thing went on for hours, and provided a very fun backdrop for my time in the city.

After getting lost for about the bagillionth time that day, I finally managed to catch up w/ Andreas and Lena, and we wandered around old town a bit, checking out old cafe's built in cellars, and swinging by H&M (this was a must, as i needed to be involved in some way in Swedish consumer culture in some way. Afterwards, though was a major highlight of the trip.

We went to the Absolute Icebar Stockholm. You may have heard of the Ice hotel or at least seen it on the traveling gnome commercials... well, cut from the same glacier and shipped down to Stockholm, is the Icebar... A bar made of Ice. Where they give you special coats, and you are allowed a whole 45 minutes to stay in. Drinks are all made w/ Absolute vodka (another swedish product)... and they are served in glasses made of Ice (also shipped down from glacier). This place was awesome. In the corner there was a statue of a guy doing graffiti and many people had left their marks on the ice. There were some plants frozen in some blocks... and Tv's frozen in others. Fur lined the ice couches. Overall, incredibly awesome.

That night, I got a slice of Swedish culture... a Swedish Fish Party!!! hahaha, ok, not really a Swedish Fish party, but rather a Traditional Swedish Crawfish party. Andreas' friend Jonas came over, as did his cousin and his cousins' wife, who, I apologize to, I can not remember their names to save my life. I got to try all sorts of traditional Swedish foods... I even ate crawfish... yes ladies and gents, I actually ate a new type of seafood, and did become ill from the en devour (well... not from the actual eating of the crawfish i should say). About every 5-10 minutes or so, there would be a drinking song sung, and shots of schnapps. I learned valuable lesson... I do not drink like a Swede. But it was riotous good fun overall.

Next morning involved a large breakfast, and more or less laying low, till it was time to catch my bus, to grab my plane. And then another bus back to Hamburg, which, managed to break down just as we reached the city limits.

While it was a very very very short trip, I have to say I had a ton of fun, and definitely hope to go back at some point in the future.

Robin Belinsky-- As American as Apple Pie

Which is to say, not as much as you would think… And for those of you who are completely lost on the joke, “Belinsky” is a very very very Polish name… Which, if you happen to be in Poland, people like to point out to you… a lot… and then they believe you should be able to speak polish, then they question why your parent’s didn’t teach you to speak polish, and then they try to guess when your family moved to America… Its all very odd… But even odder is the Polish claim to apple pie… go figure…

Before we even get started, I just want to say, I don’t think there is any way for me to actually portray how awesome Poland really is or how much fun I had traveling there solo… Its not a place you can go into w/ expectations, b/c its not somewhere you’ve seen tons of pictures of (well you hadn’t before you looked at my blog)… you go in relatively clueless, but w/ excitement and high expectations… and are not disappointed.

So riding the overnight train from Berlin to Krakow I met a fabulous girl, Shiva… Shiva is a doctor form LA, also happens to be an Iranian Jew… Making her probably one of the most interesting people I have ever met, particularly since she lived in Iran until she was 16, so she had some very interesting stories to tell. She also contributed to our trip through Auschwitz. And she took me to an orthodox Jewish service on Saturday, which we wouldn’t have been able to see otherwise. I didn’t stay for the whole thing… actually we were there, I ended up leaving for a bit b/c nothing was really going on, until as we were about to leave a bunch of Israeli kids on a trip showed up… apparently the service wasn’t starting till they got there. I wandered about for a bit and met back up w/ Shiva and she took me into the service again, this time it was in full swing. Men and women were separated by different rooms with windows that had lace curtains in between. The Rabbi’s were in full dress… very beautiful to watch, though I Had no idea what was going on… and so we stayed for a few songs, and headed out again.

But as usual, I’m getting ahead of myself…

Krakow—Friday, Saturday

Ok, so at this point, I grabbed a train Thursday night from Berlin, where I met Shiva, and we hit it off, and she hadn’t booked her hostel yet, so she ended up staying w/ me at mine. And we headed to Auschwitz, which you should have already read about… but when we got back we were hungry hungry girls. And went in pursuit of a restaurant that my Polish friend at the institute told me about… unfortunately by the time we got there, it was done serving dinner… so we ended up at a fabulous Italian place… that was incredibly beautiful. Then we wandered about for a little while, and saw that Krakow’s nightlife is actually pretty happening. The whole old quarter just comes to life, full or bars, and late night cafes, and night clubs. We ended up popping into the oldest chocolate maker in Poland’s place, E. Wedel… most delicious chocolate ever… no one got any as souvenirs as I don’t think it would have made it home, so I didn’t even try. We didn’t go out out on Friday… as we were pretty tired to begin with, so we just headed back to our hostel for some sleep.

The Hostel was incredible… possibly the best I have ever stayed at. It was called Goodbye Lenin! Its tucked away in the ally, a little bit far from the main area, but it meant that it was quiet to sleep, and central between old town and the jewish quarter. It had a fantastic bar, (with one free drink, including shots of vodka… and Poland is known for its vodka), excellent breakfast… I now eat lunch meat… this is a great milestone in life… and generally just good atmosphere (free internet as well).

Shiva kept poking fun at me the whole time we were in Krakow b/c it was a lot like I know my way around. Which is really rather true… that’s exactly what it was like. I almost never needed the map except to double check names. I always knew which way to turn, how to get back to places, etc. It was really really really, kind of on the creepy side. Past life? Polish intuition? Who knows?

In the morning I easily navigated us to the Jewish quarter, where we found the Market… too early ironically enough as we were late according to the times we were told. We did the Jewish service, and I wandered around and got myself lost in the neighborhood. I was trying very hard to find a bagel place… apparently bagels are also polish… but no one knew what a bagel was nor had they heard of the bakery I was referred to.

Post Jewish district we did breakfast back at the hostel (free breakfast) then headed out to explore old town during the day. Extremely lovely. Krakow is one city in Poland not destroyed during the War… so everything is old and original… and that is Krakow’s appeal. We did a bit of shopping, and took coffee in the main square, which is the largest market square in Europe… Just behind us a stage suddenly went up, and the next think you knew we were listening to polka music, and it turns out there was a whole polish folk festival going on behind us. There were dancers and bands from all over the world. After watching a few songs, we decided we wanted to do a walking tour of the city.

This was a fabulous idea (at least for me… b/c I love wandering around for hours listening to guides tell stories… no I’m serious… it goes hand in hand with my love of piles of rocks). I can’t remember for the life of me what our guide’s name was… but he was fabulous… though a bit on the enthusiastic side right to the end where he was like… ok, normally the tour ends here, but I want to take you to see this one last thing… I thought it was great. We wandered all around the old town, visited the University, where Copernicus and Pope John Paul studied…we hit up a Franciscan Church, where a wedding was going on, which we actually walked in the middle of a bit… sort of odd, as our guide walked ahead of us, and we all just sort of stood there and stared like, “are we really supposed to follow him????”… Then I got to do some Pope stalkin… for those of you new to my world, I have a reputation for Pope stalking… at least the old pope, not the new one… it just happened to be whenever I show up in Rome, the old pope would be out there blessing people… and I got pictures, etc. so… pope stalker. Seeing as he was from Poland, I got to do a bit more pope stalking… There were memorials and statues set up everywhere. It turns out he even used to teach classes at the Uni. Could you imagine wandering into class one day and the Pope being your professor???? I would have totally studied in Krakow if I got to have the pope as my Prof. We headed up to the castle, though didn’t go inside… It was pretty nice… the king at one point had an Italian wife and built her a court yard in Italian style to make her feel more at home. Oh and while we were there, there were soooooooo many weddings going on, and couples doing pictures, etc. It was very romantic, even for the single women running around.

The tour lasted a little over 3 hours, ending with the old fortress. By that point Shiva was rather tired of walking, and I volunteered to run back to the tour office to grab our jackets and some bags (it had gotten rather hot, and they had a place to keep our stuff)… we had picked up a guy from our tour, Steve, and Aussie that had been living in Scotland. We agreed to meet back up at the restaurant that we had tried to eat at earlier… on the way, I ran into a bunch of break dances… on the way back I ran into a shoe store… We had plans to go out that night, but according to my guidebook… sneakers and sandals were a no no… and as I only brought sneakers, shoes were a necessity… *hush you laughers*… necessity I tell your… and I’ve gotten many compliments on the shoes and their awesomeness since. Dinner was fabulous, traditional polish food… downstairs was unfortunately booked, and set up in the style of 18^th century bourgeoisie, upstairs was styled like a stable… we got to eat in the stable… it worked. We then agreed to meet up w/ Steve later to go Dancing!

And dance we did. We went to a club called Prozac… which had multiple rooms, dug into a cave like basement, a hookah bar, and light up dance floor. Turns out Shiva and Steve are both big into trance music… I just like to dance. Here was a very interesting situation though… it was all guys on the dance floor. Now, this wasn’t a gay bar, it just happened to be guys. And while this might be something every girl going dancing may have dreamed about, the fact is… its really awkward to just have a dance floor of boys… actually dancing… with each other… But we ended up having a fantastic time for most of the evening… though both Shiva and I were harassed a bit by some over enthusiastic guys, but by then it was around 3am, so we decided to call it a night… particularly since I had a train at like 8:30 am to catch.

Warsaw-- Sunday, Monday

And so my great Poland adventure continued on to Warsaw. 3 hours of sleep is not the best way to do this kind of trip, but at the same time led to one of the most interesting nights ever… but as usual, jumping ahead. So after I got to my hostel, I learned check in wasn’t till 3… it was around 10 or 11. So I dropped off my bags, and headed towards old town. Now Warsaw was basically flattened during the war. And Rebuilt afterwards. When you first get off the train you just go… wow, this is big… and it is… the first building you see is a giant soviet sky scraper… the palace of science and technology or something like that is the name… the roads are wide… for soviet parades and tanks. Then in the distance you see the modern skyscrapers… totally glass, springing from the skyline in fabulous modern design. So the last thing I was really expecting as I walked up the road was to find myself in Baroque Europe. But there it was… with bright colors on a bright blue sky… beyond picturesque. I wandered around for a few hours, and ended up at a hole in the wall restaurant specializing in … pirogues. Now I have objected to the existence of pirogues for years… the idea of potato inside noodle is well… unnatural.. real pirogues however is a different story. For instance I had a baked pirogue w/ cheese and pumpkin seeds… mmmmm… and the best beer… it was Honey beer… wow.

I wandered around a little longer, then headed back to the hostel. The Okie Dokie hostel. It is probably one of the more famous hostels… each room is designed by a different Warsaw artist. My room turned out to be the Communist room… woot woot… sigh… I should have brushed up on my commie knowledge before coming out. I used to be so good… Anyway, as I’m standing in line, the girl in front turned around, and it was Tanya, who I met during our Auschwitz tour. Small world. But she was going to see her room and I was in line. After I got settled in I went to look for her with no luck. And then… I made the fatal mistake of lying down for the first time all day… and totally passed out for couple of hours. I awoke to the sound of a new person coming into the room ( I stay in co-ed dorm style rooms… cheapest, best way to meet people). Once coming through a little bit, I had a rare moment of boldness and asked if the new kid wanted to go do dinner. Turns out he had just gotten in, and was also hungry. And he does have a name, Cyril, from Lyon, France… 24… engineer. To my relief he also spoke pretty decent English. So off to dinner we went.

We just randomly picked a little Italian place… and to my overwhelming amusement he ordered my food for me. I’m about 95% sure, no one has ever… I mean ever, ordered me my food… hilarious. So the night goes on, and just as we’re about to head out to find another place to grab drinks, the couple next to us starts talking to us due to the overwhelming slowness of the wait staff. After we paid, they insisted that they buy us drinks. About 5 hours after we went to dinner, we finally rolled back into the hostel. The couple, Stephen and Victoria, nearly got their very own blog post. They are a British couple, who had been living in Poland for some time. Victoria’s daughter was about our age and living in South Africa. They had been married for a few years, and reminded me more of brother/sister-best friends than your normal married couple. Steve had done more or less everything from leading tours for famous people in Italy, to being the economist who brought Ford to Poland. He seemingly had knew everyone in Warsaw, with connections everywhere. They bought us drink after drink, and were incredibly nice. Unfortunately, this might be why you aren’t hearing more about them… When we got back to the hostel we headed to the bar, which has cheese graters for lights… there were a bunch of Canadians there and Tanya… but as we sat for one last drink, they were headed out to the clubs… mind you, its after 1am at this point. So we just chilled out, until it was closing time.

Next morning I woke up early, ate breakfast… Cyril came out as I was near finishing so I opted to stick around for a bit longer. His plan was to pick up a friend at the airport and I wanted to really tour the city and do the castle and museums etc. And so, we parted ways. *side not to Mom—this is debatable as to whether or not I blew him off, its not like we had plans to see things together, and I wasn’t about to sit around the hostel “hanging out” when there was a city to see…*

And see it I did… The castle is free on Mondays, which was awesome. Of course none of the stuff is entirely real… which is amusing, but it was still pretty nice to see people’s ideas of what should have been there. I explored all the churches, Chopin’s old hang outs, etc. Once I was exhausted I jumped on the tourist bus, No guide, just riding around seeing things. This was great, b/c really… Warsaw is huge. By bus you can see the whole contrast of old and new.

I ate more perogies for lunch… and had some fabulous Balkan food for dinner…where all the waiters were like, “you are here alone?” My train didn’t leave until 11:30 pm… and I learned a valuable lesson about checking, double checking, and using visuals such as a calendar when booking tickets in other languages for night trains… as it turns out my ticket was for the next day… but managed to change things around w/ out too much trouble.

And thus ended my grand Poland adventure!

Berlin part II

So, here are all my pictures from my spontaneous trip to Berlin along with the pics from the Obama rally and video of a very enthusiastic older gentleman.

Ich Bin Ein Berliner

Ok, so maybe I’m obsess over Kennedy’s famous speech just a little too much, and really I just wanted Obama to say it, just once, in jest, during his own speech in Berlin. For those of you who are completely clueless for whatever reason, “Ich bin ein Berliner”, literally translates to, “I am a jelly doughnut.” See below for original speech clip and a full explanation from Eddie Izzard.

But anywho, why am I talking about Presidents, candidates, and doughnuts? Because something deep inside possessed myself and my other American friend here, Jodie, to head out on July 24 to hear Barack Obama’s unprecedented speech in Berlin. Before I jump into that though I’ll give you some background of the day. Jodie and I left early on Thursday morning, along with one of Jodie’s friends from Cambridge, named David, who is an Aussie, living in England who is/was a television producer, who took time off to get an MBA. In commemoration of the epic day, I did in fact purchase us a few jelly doughnuts for the ride. Once in Berlin, we met up with a few more of Jodie’s friends, Shannon and Paul, also Americans. We had a picnic, took a boat ride, and generally just had a rather chill day in Berlin… which worked for me as I was carting along my whole bag for my weekend in Poland.

Obama-mania sort of filled the air while we were there. In fact, as we got off the train in the Hauptbanhof, (which to my irritation is not the same as it was 4 years ago… I mean literally not the same, the built a new one closer to the Reichstag).. we were walking up to the chancellor offices, when there were just masses of people standing around and large scale amounts of security. It didn’t take all that long to figure out what was going on, but opted not to sit around and wait to see a few cars drive by… so we kept walking… only have an even better view a few seconds later… enough so to get a pretty up close view of Obama as he went by. His little caravan more or less seemed to be where ever we were going, and his cars were followed by people on bikes following him around. There were supporters, and people who were just curious, and one old guy with an umbrella w/ McCain written on pieces of paper taped to it. There were lots of people… germans even, wearing Obama t-shirts and hats and things. I have to say its nothing that I would ever of imagined seeing. It just seems well, odd… even to the strongest of Obama supporters. Really… what business does a presidential candidate have in campaigning abroad, and what was the draw? And boy was it a draw….

By the time we headed over to the Victory Column, the first entrance into the area we tried to get in was closed. There was an estimated 200,000 people in the crowds… I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it. We ended up standing in the street way far in the back where we couldn’t even see. The Victory Column was chosen after a good month of rather heated debate here in Germany. Originally, Obama was to speak in front of the Brandenburg Gate… a rather historical monument, where Reagan made his own famous speech, “tear down this wall”… However, chancellor Merkel stepped in and said, no way… that’s reserved for presidents (never mind that they hold all sorts of events including fashion shows at the gate)— all sorts of conspiracy theories went around here about how Bush had asked Merkel to step in, etc. I actually think it may have had something more to do with the construction going on in front of the gate where they were putting in new piping… but that’s just me.

I’m not entirely sure what people were expecting to hear… that he’d change the world, and this is how he was going to do it? It was a bit of an awkward speech, and you could sort of tell that he felt awkward giving it. The subject matter was broad and idealistic. He said everything that a liberal international affairs oriented individual would like to hear. End war in Iraq, save the environment, stop genocide (and he did say genocide) in Darfur, end torture, stop nuclear proliferation, do something about Zimbabwe, focus on Afghanistan… etc. etc. etc. It was all very nice ideas, and well, gives you sort of the warm fuzzies to hear someone talk about it. He wants to see the world unite and walls of the world torn down. It was about at this point that one of the people in our group asked, “Yes, but how does he plan on doing any of this?” Good point. There was no logical plan put out in the speech. You could see if it were a speech given at home, the plan would be something like, “And we can do this if you elect me president”… but here, it was more like someone stating the obvious.

I might just be a bit too cynical here. After all, everything he said makes perfect and clear sense to me as to what the U.S. or indeed the world should be focused on, but then again this is what I spend my time studying and looking at. Maybe the rest of the world needed some sort of reassurance as to what the goals and priorities of a potential next president would be. Just looking back at the laundry list of things I’ve listed you can make a comparison to the current administration and sort of see that the world may really have reason to have some concern. Look at the past 8 years and Bush’s stances on Kyoto, nuclear proliferation treaties, and Gitmo. When looked at from that perspective Obama’s speech radically flies in the face of recent U.S. foreign policy. And I think these are the things that people wanted to hear. Maybe the speech was made a little bit too early, maybe it should have been saved for if he becomes president. But at the same time I think that the speech shows that Obama really does have his hand on the pulse of foreign affairs. He said what people, especially Europeans wanted to hear, more or less blowing away the concept that he’s out of touch with the international community. The real question then becomes, from a realistic perspective, could he actually pull these ideals off? And what should this all mean for the everyday American?

In an extraordinarily vague nut shell, international cooperation good and easier to achieve when everyone works for the same things… and for the more pessimistic, you can also add in more bargaining chips… Good in terms of economics, development, and of course, security.

I think if I were Obama I’d have made that last point to be more clear… Unity will improve the world economy and security. Another point he left weak was when talking about how Europe and the U.S. relied on each other… He started off strong, but ended on just talking about how Europe needed the US for security. He should have pulled it back together… while he may have been showing off U.S. feathers, at the same time some people will look at it as a one sided relationship that the U.S. doesn’t necessarily need. And it would have been good for the European audience to hear how the U.S. needs Europe.

Admittedly, it was hard to judge who exactly Obama was talking to. Was he really addressing Berlin and the international community? If he was, did they find it patronizing to get a run down history of Berlin, and how the U.S. played a role? Or was that merely to educate joe six-pack American who doesn’t realize how closely tied the U.S. has been in European development for decades? But then again, outlining what the U.S. should be doing internationally sounds a lot like shelling out more money, and taking on more international responsibilities than the U.S. already has, which doesn’t really play well with your average Americans.

So I guess from a strategic perspective, I don’t think it was the best of moves. However, from the perspective of a relatively liberal American living in Europe… it was a pretty awesome experience to go and check it out.

Ok, for now my pictures from the event aren't posted... I was going to put them up tomorrow, but turns out I'm going away. So, check back here after I post again. Also, I'll have up pictures and posts from Poland. And hopefully throw up the Sweden pictures as well, and be caught up before I go to Russia... wow time is going by fast here!

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…

"Take the Long Way Home"-- Supertramp

Soooooo…. This weekend turned out to be quite the high powered adventure through central Europe. I met up with one of my GSPIA friends, Chansonette, in Strasbourg, France… we then headed out to the country side and visited Selestat and Comar. That was followed up by a trip to Luxembourg City, Luxembourg, and from there we parted ways and I stopped off in Koln (Cologne), Germany. The reason for the post being the long way home was that I was supposed to get back into Hamburg at around 9 on Monday morning… I looked all the trains up and had it all planned out rather well… what I didn’t look up was lay-over times… turns out that if I took the overnight train I wanted to take, I would have been stuck in Cologne from midnight to 6am… so rather than blow off Luxembourg, I opted to stay the extra night, and got to see Cologne the next day… which, while being the long way home, was a great decision on my part.

Strasbourg, France

I rolled into Strabourg just after 1 in the afternoon on Friday. The train ride hadn’t been half bad, and I got a lot of much needed sleep after only 3 hours the night before. (There was another stammtisch, and I didn’t get home till about 12, and needed to be up by about 4:30 to catch my train at 6… plus pack at some point in there). Strasbourg is the capital of the Alsace region of France, and also one of the three cities that makes up the governing bodies of the European Union. You may recognize Alsace from your world war history. It’s the region between Germany and France that has been passed back and forth between the two for several hundred years.

The architecture is a mix of both German and French; this was an aspect that both Chansonette and I both noticed. For me as soon as I got there I was like, “this is sooooo French,” she on the other hand found everything to be very German. We got a full view of this mix of French/German… Old/New… atmosphere as we took a boat tour through the city. This, was an excellent idea. We saw everything, got a good dose of history and lots of random anecdotes… things like how one bridge was where they dunked people, and when they became more humane, they started using cages, and the women would come and mock the prisoners while doing needle work (because these prisoners were adulterers and prostitutes). We heard about the sauerkraut factory that was turned into a theater, and about how sauerkraut is originally from China… Or about how there was a fire in a hall with only a window as the way out and 20 people died b/c a fat monk couldn’t fit through the window and got stuck… and we saw the house where spinsters and widows were kept… There were lots and lots of these amusing tidbits during the tour… lots of them sort of caused your jaw to drop open. I would recommend the tour to anyone going to Strasbourg.

We of course did all the touristy things… cathedrals, cathedrals, more cathedrals… and ended up in a cathedral listening to a live organ concert. Followed by crepes (not just desert crepes, but the kind you can eat for dinner)… and bottles of wine of a game of cards.

Selestat and Comar

Saturday we headed away from Strasbourg down further south into wine country. The original goal was maybe to do a wine tour… Personally I liked the one that talked about riding horses through the vineyards, Chansonette had some objections to this. But it turned out wine tours were expensive so, we just grabbed a train to Comar, which at one point Chansonette was like, lets get off here, so we did… b/c you can do that when you’re on a random adventure. The area we were in had a ton of castles in the distance on top of every little hill. And the actual village of Selestat was very picturesque.. a lot like wandering around Bush Gardens w/out the rides.

From there we went to Comar… with several goals in mind. First, we wanted to get to the tourist office, second, we wanted to see Voltaire’s house, third, we wanted to see (or I should say I wanted to see) what the House of Heads was. We’re easily distracted, by things like… food. Comar was even prettier than Selestat, making for more great pictures. Voltaire’s house turned out to be a private residence… that you couldn’t go in… in fact it turned out to of just been a house that Voltaire rented two rooms from at one point… with a plaque outside. The House of Heads, turned out to just be a really old hotel… I didn’t even take a picture. By the time we got to the tourist office, it was getting late, and most things were starting to close. But we did do a wine tasting. Just a little shop, and not so much wine, as schnapps and liquors. The woman just kept asking if we wanted to try another, and then another… all for free, though I did end up buying some.

Luxembourg

Early morning Sunday, we headed out to Luxembourg City, Luxembourg. It was an appropriately grey and cold day… appropriate for two reasons really, first b/c Luxembourg has more of a medieval feel to it, and dark and dreary works for that, and second b/c I was in a skirt and tank top… it can’t be hot and sunny when I’m in a skirt and tank top…it would violate the Murphy principles. There was a marathon going on when we got into the city… but it just seemed like people were running, walking, or Nordic walking everywhere and not really in an organized manner. After dropping off our stuff we hiked our way up a giant hill (as hour hostel was in a valley) and started crossing into the town. On the way there, there were these Casemates, which is basically old underground fortifications of the city that you could climb through… with lots of random passageways, and twisty staircases (climbing through caves also falls under murphy’s law when wearing a skirt)…

After some time we wandered the city, saw the sights, opted not to pay a fortune for a city tour, found a museum that went through the whole history of Luxembourg and how it developed. Random tidbits, Luxembourg has its own language… not quite French, not quite german. They use French for business, German for media, and then Luxembourgish for everyday things. The city is protected by a fairy/siren/mermaid. The founder fell in love with her and asked her to marry him, which she did on the condition that she get one day a week where she wasn’t to be bothered. Years went by, they had kids, built the city, etc. but the king got jealous, and peeped through a key hole into his wife’s room on her off day, where he saw she had scales for legs, gasped, scared her, and the rocks came and ate her, with the key to the city in her mouth. Lesson: Give girls their space when they ask for it. I learned all this from a rather bizarre museum exhibit… but it wasn’t as strange as the exhibit about tourists… and what the characteristics of tourists are and things like that… I can’t even describe it right. It seemed very tongue in cheek, seeing as I would think mostly tourists would go to the museum… Oh and then there was a room that had mirrors on the floor and walls… also inevitable when wearing a skirt…

Later that evening we headed to a free concert in the main square, Rock um Kneudler. The first band we stayed and listened to was a African cover band… who played the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and lots and lots of Led Zeppelin. Which was great for me. Then the second band came on… now I knew I know the name, Supertramp (actually it was just the singer songwriter from supertramp, Roger Hodgson) but couldn’t for the life of me remember what they sang… He opened w/ Take the Long way home… and followed it up with other popular songs you’d recognize like: Give a little Bit [of your love to me], The Logical Song, Dreamer, Take a look at My Girlfriend, and … I love free random concerts.

Cologne

Not much here, we headed off early in the morning on Monday. We were headed in the same direction, so we took the same train until I jumped off in Cologne. While there I wanted to check out the Dom, one of the most famous Cathedrals in all of Europe… probably one of the most visited ones in the world. I had studied it back in my Medieval Art and Architecture class. Lucky for me, it was literally just outside the train station. Now we had been walking for 3 days straight now, but something possessed me to climb the 509 stairs to the top… Oy… and the way down… spiral staircase (w/people still climbing up) It built “character” or at least that’s what I told myself, and gave me a chance to grab some nice pics. I didn’t do the rest of the city, mainly b/c I didn’t know what else there was to see… judging from my guidebook, I didn’t miss much except a chocolate factory. But it had been a long trip and it was time to head back home.

Other Random Updates…

Just a few things to report. I caught a cold, but thanks to some uber strong meds was only out of it for about a day. I also now have another American here. Her name is Jodie, went to Harvard for university and Columbia for law school, where she was journal editor, and is now on the tail end of a Fulbright that she used to do research in Cambridge, England… despite the background she’s one of the nicest people I’ve met here, and to my amusement has no idea what she wants to do w/ her life… we click. I don’t have any big traveling plans for the next two weeks, if I do anything it will probably be locally (no more than an hour or 2 away)… so don’t be expecting too much in terms of posts… w/out football things have sort of slowed down around here…

Matches of the Century...

No, I haven't disappeared, I just haven't felt like writing anything up in the past week... maybe its depression over the football loss, who knows... but I do have updates and what not now... In case you haven't noticed I've added a map up above the posts and I'll be marking off my routes and things as I head through Europe. I've also finally got around to picking up a bike and made the 6 mile trek home on the hottest day Hamburg has had since i've been here (this is inevitable for me, I always bike on the hottest of days)... and I only got mildly lost, so by this time next week i should be a biking fiend and actually know how to get back and forth from home... This weekend I'm meeting up with Chansonette (one of my GSPIA friends) in Strasbourg, France, followed by Luxembourg... So thats what you get to look forward to next week... and now onto last weekend...
Last Saturday
Besides the football match, one of the main reasons i opted to stay in Hamburg this weekend was for the Jazz festival... 2 days of jazz music accompanied by bier and wurst stands in the middle of the botanical gardens (actually its called Plant und Blumen)... Upon waking up Saturday ready to go... rain... rain... more rain... and a touch of rain... even my plan for exploring before the show was offset by the weather... so 5 hours after i originally intended on getting out of the apartment, I finally went down the concert, and the first band was well... awful... it would be what would happen if i were to pick up a sax... except maybe i'd at least be able to hammer out mary had a little lamb... this was just random toots... I proceeded to find a place where i didn't have to listen to the "music", but close enough to tell when the band changed.
After a while I found a nice seat in the back, made friends with some locals, who proceeded to ask me about my interest in Terry Pratchett (I was reading in between sets)... and then finally met up with my people around 8ish... Tomoko came out along with Lucio (portugal 2-- Riu, portugal 1 has sadly gone back to portugal, along with Javier-- columbia-- who went home for 2 months... i have to make new friends... again)... but that isn't hard as Lucio brought a bunch of people he had met in a lecture... There was an Argentinian, who kept making fun of my Americanness and lack of geographical knowledge (though i still say i know more than most people... i just don't do latin american cities very well), a couple of swedes, a girl from portugal, and a guy mike, from NOVA... (northern virginia for those that don't know... and he even went to UVA...) The rest of the night was spent listening to soft jazz... mostly soft jazz covers of disco music, and a rather corney and off key

Germany v. Spain
So, Sunday was the big game... what we've all been waiting for, the big match-up between Spain and Germany. Excitement filled the air, I even headed down to the Fischmarkt again to pick up a Deutchland scarf... Then headed off to a little Spanish restaurant in the Portuguese district... To my frustration, I was the only person in our group routing for Germany... which in some ways made the great loss even more disappointing, but in other ways meant that i got pictures of all my people being happy... which is better than a lot of sulking football fans...



Robin v. Washer machine
So no matter what i do, i don't seem to be able to get my washer machine to fill up with water... Now i've been here for 3 weeks, clearly i've washed my clothes during this time... by hand.... I can get the machine to spin... and drain the non existant water... I can get it to lock and refuse to open for multiple hours at a time.... But I've begun to outsmart the machine... I hand wash things, then spin them to get rid of any extra water. My land lady is just as baffled as I am about the whole thing and just keeps turning dials... And then she finally offered to wash some of my clothes... Now despite my overwhelming dislike of other people touching my laundry, this was too good an opportunity to give up (i mean, one reason i picked the place was for the washer... and no, there are no laundry mats in my area)... and so this is one battle i've won... though the war rages on

*UPDATE* I wrote that bit up there a couple of days ago... last night the war came to a fabulous conclusion. My land lady called up the last tenant to see if she knew how to work the washer... turns out, she had turned off the water when she left... and so... I'm washing clothes like a mad women and enjoying (using the term loosely here) every minute of it.

Deutchland! Deutchland!

Ok, so before I jump right into it... I just wanted to show you this first... this is a shop... a shop that sells two things... Wine and Shoes... I'm not sure what else europe can pair with wine, i mean first ice cream, now shoes? Crazy Europeans...


So, yes, the DE beat Turkey in the Semi-finals... you really couldn't ask for a bigger rivalry considering the large Turkish population actually within Germany. To get a seat in any location you needed to come about 2 hours early... while there 2 hours early, Tomoko and I were too busy trying to meet up w/ other people to actually grab seats. The street we were on is lined with little bars and restaurants, and they all put up little TVs on the outside for people to watch, and the entire street was completely packed... It was like being at a concert, except w/ out the stage. The game itself was a nail biting experience as the DE didn't play so hot for the first half leaving the game tied 1 up at half time. (please note my number 7 was the first to score for DE and actually scored twice). Much to our dismay, lightening decided to strike the satellite broadcast tower in Switzerland... and knocked out the game... to the whole entire world. This near caused rioting within the streets. But in the end, DE pulled it off and we won the game 3-2. The entire city was out on the streets, I've only ever seen anything like it when the Steelers won the super bowl... and its just semi-finals... I can't wait to see what happens on Sunday with the championship...

"To be or not to be, that is the question..." -- Hamlet

While I was trying to avoid using the most cliché of quotes for the title, nothing else quite fit... And if you're going to Denmark, how can you not quote Hamlet? But this here is the furtherest extent of any Hamlet reference, as once in Kobenhavn (Copenhagen) there really wasn't any acknowledgment of the story... nor was there any real reference to Vikings except in souvenir shops and a handful of restaurants. And now without further ado, let us begin with our opening scene…

On the train to Denmark

It is official, one of the few points in time where I irrationally lose my temper, and not in the traditional passive aggressive manners is when I am on a train and have to change seats… Now this isn’t necessarily b/c I’m irrational, its more that no one ever approaches these things in a calm manner… no one is ever like, oh, I’m sorry I have this seat reserved. No people, will stand there and stare at you, and you’ll ask if the seat is reserved b/c of course everything is written in Danish… not even German, so you don’t really know, and the one other person you’ve met is another girl traveling alone, and she’s looking to you for the German translation of things… and the closest you can guess is that anything that has the word that resembles “reservation” must be reserved. Needless to say, it was a Danish couple who didn’t speak English and then when finally pulling out their ticket only for me to see they had every seat reserved, except the one I was in, so there was no reason for them to be yelling at me in the first place, makes me disgruntled. The little old German lady behind them however, did have my seat, but was fairly sweet about it. Meanwhile, the gentleman beside us who understood everything going only, finally chimed in after us amusing everyone and did some translating.

The girl I met’s name was Macarina from Chile, and we became fast friends for our 5 hour trip to Denmark (or a single serving friend if you will). About half way through the trip, the train… the whole train… drove onto a boat and we ferried across the Baltic… which is black… a giant black ocean… and the top of Germany and all of Denmark just looks flat and green against the black ocean with giant white pinwheels lining the coasts of both countries (apparently they are big into wind energy)

Friday Night

Fresh off the train in Kobenhavn, the first thing you run into is the Tivoli Amusement Park in the center of town. After wandering around aimlessly on the streets you quickly find an ATM, then eventually head back to the train station to find a city map (the only reason you left the train station to begin with was that you were following signs to the tourist information only to find it was now an empty office)

Immediately upon getting to the hostel, I befriended Jane, the Aussie, who had just finished up teaching in London and was now backpacking and we opted to do dinner together on Stroget… the longest pedestrian thoroughfare in the world… holy shoppers heaven… 3, yes I said 3, women’s H&Ms all with different clothes and sales

Jane was pretty awesome and caught me up on some basic danish history and monarch gossip. The danish monarchy is the oldest in europe, and it has its ties to more or less every royal family (as they all tend to). However, in recent years, they have been extending outside of royalty to continue on with the line. The crown prince is married to an Aussie that he met in a bar during the Australian Olympics. His brother is married to a French woman, and previously a woman from Hong Kong... all more or less common people.

The mystery of great crack solved!

This section is really just for Dana, Amanda and Nikki... so, apparently "Great Crack" means something along the lines of "awesome" or "really cool"... a film maker from Ireland made a movie kind of about it... called "The Crack"... ok, so the mystery isn't quite solved, just kind of explained... great crack... heehee

Saturday Day

Rather than write everything let me just say go to the pictures to see everything I saw, and I’ll just go through some key points…

Denmark is the home of Hans Christian Anderson who wrote such memorable fables such as the little mermaid… the real one where she not only lost her voice when she became human it also felt as though she walked on swords, and the only way to stay human was to kill the prince, which she opted not to do, and instead died and turned into sea foam. At the far end of town there is a statue dedicated to the little mermaid, which is the first thing I went and saw. I also saw a well preserved fort (Kastellet) (with a windmill), a marble church with the 3^rd largest dome in Europe (which I was thrown out of for a wedding), One of 3 palaces, the botanical gardens, Stroget again, and back to the hostel for some regrouping.

Street Performers

Now there were all sorts of street performers out… which I love… I love everything from watching artists paint, to listening to live music, to watching magicians… and Stroget has them all. Of particular note were the Native American performers and well… the Danish monks… blonde Danish monks. But the most memorable of all was a comedic magician, who wasn’t particularly good… talked too much, drew things out a lot… kind of like odd family guy sketches… but well, he decided to single me out to be his “sexy lady assistant”… Being me, I was half mortified to have to stand in front of a less than smiling audience, and probably change a few hundred shades of red. And he kept telling me I’d have to do a “sexy” walk around, which he proceeded to demonstrate… there really aren’t the right words to describe this, but I don’t think he realized that when challenged and told to do something, despite mortification, I’ll follow through, and strut and prance… in fact, those of you that know me best probably realize that I’m very good at this kind of “acting”… and then he gave me fire… which I had to hold, in the air for about 10 minutes, and every time I brought my arm down, he’d have me bring it up again, and told me stand sexy by sticking my chest out (I’m just gonna point out, “sexy” is hard to do when you’re in an oversized sweatshirt—the sweatshirt is another story all together that isn’t nearly as entertaining)… So at the end he asked for a kiss on the cheek… and like all cheeky Europeans, he turned his head and got me on the lips… *note—how many shades of red do you really think I can change??--- and then proceeded to profess his love for me… Jane happened to be walking by at the time, she’s going to send pictures once she gets back home.

Saturday Night

Saturday night was spent at Tivoli… not riding rides… Let me tell you… Kopenhavn is super ridiculously expensive… meals… anywhere, including the hostel cost about $20, even breakfast, wanting to see things cost, even w/ student discounts… and for Tivoli, they charge for a ticket AND you have to then pay for ride tickets too! Now Tivoli has all the best rides of say Bush Gardens strategically organized to take up a minimal amount of space… with room for multiple stages shows and beer gardens… The lack of rides wasn’t all that bad however, as I got to spend 2 hours listening to big band jazz music… which was pretty awesome… most songs were Sinatra songs, or others I know all the words to, and apparently it’s a big deal for jazz/big band dancers, as the entire dance floor was full of professional level dancers, just there having fun… (all this has done is reemphasized my desire to learn jazz/swing dancing next year if anyone else is interested in joining me)… the jazz show was followed up but a pretty awesome light show…

Sunday

Sunday was a marathon day of palace touring... if there was a palace, I toured it... the only problem being that there's a lot of waiting in this process. First, nothing opens until 10... and then you find out that you can only take an actual tour... so you have to wait around for an english tour to even go in the main palace (Christ....), while at the same time trying to time things right to catch the changing of the guard (which i did catch), and making sure you make it to your train on time (which i did, w/ time to spare b/c the train schedule changed)... Oh, and it was raining... a lot, and so I learned my umbrella is rusting and in fact has a couple of holes in it... which in turn kind of defeat the purpose of having an umbrella... But it was all pretty cool... I love wandering palaces and getting dosed with history... I even got to see piles of rocks (i'm not being sarcastic here, a side effect of wanting to be an archaeologist for most of my life is that I tend to find nothing better than life than the opportunity to check out a giant pile of old rocks). It seems that the main castle had been rebuilt several times due to wars, fires, and the general need to spruce things up over the last 900 years.

The ride home was more ore less uneventful, though after lots of seat changing, I ended up sitting w/ a danish family who had two very young very loud but cute kids, who kept trying to talk to me... seeing as i'm pretty good with non verbal entertainment of children, and in order to get them to well... we'll just say quiet down a bit, i taught them how to play penny soccer... I think we played for about an hour... I was thanked later by other people on the train.

Now as for pictures... there's a video of clips of video I took during the trip, along with the regular slide show of pics...

SCORE!

Greetings to everyone on this most glorious of Friday mornings! Why glorious, you ask? Well b/c last night Germany totally kicked Portugal's ass in the quarter finals... and well... Portugal was the favored team to win the tournament.
We opted to watch the game in the Portuguese district, at a little Portuguese bar, this made it even more exciting. The only thing I can do to relate what this stuff is like, is say, think about Pittsburgh winning the Super Bowl... (for those of you who haven't experienced that atmosphere, I don't know how else to describe it)... Its definitely the most fun that I have had at a game yet... (ooo, and on a side note I tried rabbit for the first time... very good).
I now officially have some favorite players on the team... My favorite player just because he's a good player and I enjoy the fact that the first game I saw he got red carded, then had to sit out the next game, only to come back this game to score the first goal and assist in another one, and he's number 7, is Bastian Schweinsteiger (yes, that links to his player profile).Overall... good times... and look, I finally have pictures of my people... of course half of them are sad about Portugal losing... but oh well... and yes, I listed their real names and not just country (I had to cheat to do this... there's a list of people and their country at the mailboxes... I find I can remember names better when I read it

BBQ's, Beaches, Markets, and of course, More Football!

A brief rundown of the events of the past few days:

My weekend began and ended in rather the same fashion… me having issues w/ the train system Normally, the trains run rather smoothly and there’s a fork at one point and you either stay on the train your on or head over to the other side of the platform to grab the opposite train… now for whatever reason, the trains weren’t lined up time wise… so I just jumped on my transfer only to figure out I was somewhere way, way, way off from where I needed to be.

Saturday/BBQ and Beach

So the original plan for Saturday was to head out to Lubeck for the day, since it isn’t all that far away. But as I was leaving on Friday Imen (Tunisian, guest event coordinator) was like “oh, we’re having a BBQ tomorrow, you should come.” At first I went to say no, but then Cuba (yes if I don’t know names I am referring to countries) jumps in and tells me all about how I need to go. And so, I did, and I had a great time, meeting large handfuls of new people, trying to rationalize American politics and learning about how the Pittsburgh Penguins are actually known in Germany. I’ve also found my first drinking buddy, Johanas (aka German I, English translation= John)… who, of course, is sadly leaving the institute next weekend.

The BBQ ended up rather early... actually it was rather a weird ending, I was talking w/ Johanas on the deck, and we went inside and everyone was gone. So I ended up heading back to the apartment, but instead of going straight there, I opted to turn right off the train station and wander around Othmarschen. Its an incredibly beautiful neighborhood (also one of the richest in Hamburg). After about a mile you hit the waterfront, which is lined with trees and bike paths. Unfortunately the view of the Elbe river isn't all that exciting since its mostly docks and rigs, but the area around it is nice, and there is a little beach, where people hang out and swim, but only w/ wet suits, as it is freezing. In the middle of all this is a giant rock; of course the explanation for this rock is only in German, so I ended up having to ask for a translation. Turns out the rock was found in the Elbe when they were dredging, but its actually from Sweden and has been her for like 900 years. When you look at the pictures below, you too will question how a rock that size gets down to Germany from Sweden.

Sunday/Market

Sunday I did something rather unheard of from me… I rolled out of bed at the ass crack of dawn (6am)… when I didn’t actually need to… The reason for this is that on Sunday mornings down at the docks in St. Pauli, there is a fish market. Yes, the fish market has more than fish, or clearly a) I wouldn’t have gone due to my dislike of fish, and b)even if I did like fish, I don’t see me wandering down there at 7am for it. The decision to get out of bed was truly one of my better ones.

As you wander down the street from the banhof (train station) your first instinct is to hope you know where you are going… and then you start to see one or two people hauling around mounds of fresh produce… then there are flocks of them. As you get closer you start to smell the distinct odor of market fish, and well, market in general (This isn’t something I can really describe, I can just tell you every market in the world as similar base sent, that’s then accented by whatever it specializes) As you finally round the corner as far as you can see from side to side are tents ands stalls full of fresh produce and fish. There were candy stalls set up that reminded me of Fasching in Munich. Lots of hat stalls and offensive t-shirt stands… but they were in German so I wasn’t really sure what exactly they said. In one section (this was easily a mile strip of stalls) there were live animals… the first thing I saw were the bunnies, then chickens and doves… these were the fattest chickens I have ever seen, and then there were hares… I don’t think we ever give any consideration to hares… they’re huge. They were selling tons of flowers and trees… lots of bonsai that you could see college students running around with. And then in the center of it all was a giant warehouse… In this warehouse was live bands, waffles, and beer. The bands only played classic rock and 80’s music… in English. Needless to say, by 9:30 I had my waffles and beer in hand and had been completely sucked into the atmosphere. As I was leaving I bought like a 10 lb. basket of fruit for 10 euro… awesome… until I had to carry it home… not so awesome.

My entire morning was not spent just at the market, but rather, at some point in the middle of marketing I took an adventurous detour. Perhaps I should start over. Upon leaving my apartment all that was going threw my head was, “don’t forget to pick up cash”… due to a series of distractions, I ended up at the market with all of 15 euro. So, once I realized I needed more cash I started walking…

St. Pauli is an infamous neighborhood… the pleasant family oriented fish market of today, at one point years ago was the docking post of sailors and the gateway into Hamburg’s red light district… the largest red light district in all of Europe. Now a days, it still has all of its red light charm with the addition of being the central hub of European punk rock, parties, bars and discos. Its where the Beatles made their début… Wandering the street on a Sunday morning, you see “drinking parks” littered with Saturday night’s leftovers, including a few passed out bodies here and there. The overwhelming amounts of graffiti that mark Hamburg turns into some incredible wall art, and there are more bars on every block than I have ever seen in my life. But no ATMs… that is until you get to Reeperbahn. There are a lot of famously scandalous roads in the world, and well, I tend to find them… but nothing compares to the Reeperbahn. Even at around 8-9 in the morning on a Sunday, Reeperbahn has the ability to make even me blush and feel awkward. It’s a huge street, with nothing but strip joints, casinos, and sex shops, along with all of the largest night clubs and party centers. There is no wonder why its actually called the Miles of Sin. And lucky for me there were some ATMs around, so I got my cash and headed back down to the market.

Monday/Football

MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL… Woot Woot!... I mean, Olay, olay, olay, olay…. So Monday night was the big match between Austria and Germany. As per usual, I rolled back over to the MPI to watch the game, and at half-time me and Johanas were like, lets blow this joint (not a lot of people were there… too big of a game) and headed to the nearest bar… an aussie bar of all places, that handed out free shots when Germany scored a goal, and of course again when we won the game. It was good times, and I’m looking forward to the quarterfinals on Thursday as we’re playing Portugal, which is probably the best team in the league right now, but any which way it should be pretty exciting.

I learned an important lesson on the way home that night… I learned that just because you know the time for the last train you need to grab, and you make it there on time, this doesn’t actually mean you’ll make it all the way home… especially if you need to make a connection, and it turns out the connection stopped running about 10 minutes before hand. But that’s why there’s cabs… And so it ends as it began…