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)

Up and Away

So as you may have figured out by now, there are a lot of new posts this week. It isn't to say I sat and did them all at once... more that I've been working on them at home... and Poland took a lot of time. I also did something I've never done before... I started editing my pictures... making them better quality etc... or at least thats what I've been telling myself... its rather time consuming... and not something I do at work.

I also did manage to pick up a new adapter, that works for everything including my phone. Which means I'm sitting at home right now doing a lot of writing. I also expanded my Online photo storage, so should be able to post all of Sweden's pictures as well.

But this is just a quick post here. Every so often when I walk out of work there is something new that just pops up in the area. One week it was a circus. During this last week I walked out to what appeared to be a giant bouncy castle... (this wouldn't surprise me at all seeing as earlier i looked out my bedroom window to a giant bouncy castle suddenly in my backyard...) As I approached there were two more structures being blown up... Turns out they were hot air balloons!! Massive ones. One regular, one in the shape of an Ice Cream cone... and one in the shape of a fork lift. It was pretty cool.

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…

Oot and Aboot

So clearly even if I say I’m not doing any traveling for a weekend, I’m still doing something… and well, last weekend was no different. I finally got around to touring around Hamburg, followed up by a day trip out to Lübeck (ok so I lied, I did travel, but not far… only about an hour).

Friday

Friday night after work Fathi (Turkey) took me and Tomoko out to “the city of Altona”… which is really just the neighborhood outside of downtown Hamburg, kind of like Oakland in Pittsburgh. But it was a new neighborhood for me and a lot of fun to wander around, and we ate some of the best döner kebab I have ever had. The area has a nice pedestrian thoroughfare with lots of little shops and things. I learned later this week with Jodie that it also has a lot of little happening bars during the middle of the week.

Saturday

Saturday was a long day with bipolar weather… It was sunny one minute, downpouring the next, both hot and cold… with just enough humidity to totally kill my hair. My day started with heading downtown for the first time. [this isn’t entirely true, my day really started with heading into the village and enjoying some breakfast and coffee at the one of the local bakeries] my first stop was the Rathaus [town hall] where, in the middle of the square was the European Beach Volleyball Championship Finals… so of course I had to go in and watch for a bit, until the rain very suddenly started hammering down on us… They passed out ponchos in an attempt to get people to stay… but really, it just wasn’t worth it (but hey, I got a free poncho). So I just started wandering around the city, which is actually just another major shopping area, full of pedestrian areas, and indoor mall like passageways (a lot like Singapore… but less so… hard to explain)… The best part was finding possibly the largest H&M I’ve ever seen directly across from a Lush store. I got all the way down to the Hauptbanhof (main train station) turned back around headed back to the Rathaus, ended up taking a tour of the interior, then headed over toward Sankt Nikolaikirche (Saint Nicolas Cathedral), which is the bombed out ruins of what is left of an old church. Its really very neat; rather than rebuild the church they have left it the way it was after the WWII bombings, and they have added an elevator to the top of the cathedral tower to see a panorama view of the city. After that I headed off to the warehouse district [Speicherstadt], which is basically an entire community of old fashioned brick warehouses and canals. While I did pass by the Hamburg dungeon and miniature wonderland, I restrained myself from going into either in hopes of bringing some people with me [I really am just a big kid]

From here I made my way to the symbol of Hamburg, Sankt Michaeliskirche, [St. Michael’s Cathedral]. Just outside the Cathedral was a little community festival with high school bands and a classic car show etc. [It really is just a fantastic fluke of fate that I got to see a volleyball championship and classic car show all on the same day]. Again, I got take another elevator trip up the steeple to see the city… I LOVE that Germans believe in elevators rather than making you walk bagillions and bagillions of steps, especially considering by that point I had been walking for about 5 hours. I ended my little jaunt by checking out a street set up for the widows of tradesmen, and seeing the main harbor Landungsbrücken… There is a relatively famous tower here, its on all the post cards, unfortunately it was under scaffolding when I got there, so I just jumped on the train and headed home.

Sunday

Sunday is the sunniest day I’ve seen since I was in France, so I seized the opportunity to head out to Lübeck… which claims to be the home of Marzipan and quite possibly the creepiest city I have ever been to… EVER. It is a world heritage site, known for its red brick buildings, and one of the only places (if not THE only place, to have an entire downtown labeled as a historical site). Unfortunately, what this means is that all the buildings are sort of shifty… as in literally shifty… the bricks are starting to break down so nothing is quite standing straight up. This is pretty neat looking until you go into your first building… apparently I get a bit queasy in slanty buildings… it didn’t help that the first slanty building was the museum, so I was trying to read the history and things… and everything was very legitimate… until the last room… which was the torture chamber… out of no where, and totally not in theme with the rest of the museum. They also have one of the largest puppet museums in the world… but not just puppets, marionettes… which I also find to be uber creepy, and decided not to go in mainly because I wasn’t sure how much time I had before things closed as it was Sunday. So I dropped into my first church… Everything is completely white washed on the inside… no pews… and a black crucifix… and 1940’s jazz playing in the background… now beside reminding me of a Torchwood episode…the whole thing was… well… I took video, you’ll get the idea. The other thing was that all of the buildings I went into had a dank musty smell to them all, which didn’t help the atmosphere at all.

At the Catholic cathedral all of the artwork was very morbid, lots of skulls (in general this was true in all the churches along with lots of clocks). But then in the back they had an art exhibit… the first thing I saw was a guy being crushed by a rock, followed by lots of bloody dark, horrific pictures. Turns out it was an exhibit on Depression.

I then just strolled around, hit up the Marzipan store, etc. The whole place was very very quiet, despite lots of people. But also very pretty. It only took me about 5 hours to see the whole city and do all the things they recommended (they actually had a tourist map with path to walk along to see everything… along with a mini history of each bit… the only hitch being that I had to pay for it, *it’s the first time in Europe I had to pay for a tourist map… and they knew w/out it you’d be more or less screwed so it cost near 3 euro – that’s like $5 right now)

Monday

Back in good old not creepy Hamburg! After work I met up w/ Tomoko and one of her friends from Japan and we went to Sankt Jacobi for an organ concert. Now this turned out to not exactly be what any of us expected. It was all music composed between the 1950’s- 1980’s… so it was kind of like old school sci-fi music, which while it works in old-school corny sci-fi movies… when put to an organ concert, its just weird. And they never introduced the songs or anything… They just started playing, paused, switched songs, and then ended… somehow the rest of the audience knew they were finished… how, I’m not so sure. It was pretty weird, but yet another event I can check off under amusing experience.

Other random things:

So basically the last week has been all about getting into Hamburg. I’ve also been doing some exploration after work w/ Jodie, and you really get to see that this whole city has more dimensions than most places I’ve ever lived. Though we’ve both agreed that it might be too “hip” for either of us.

Otherwise things are good… I’m reading a book that is soooo not up my ally that I have to finish it just to say I have, and thanks to Bryan, I’m catching up on the latest season of Dr. Who (for those of you have to watch via regular TV, I laugh at you and the suspense your must be going through each week).