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!

Extreme Technical Difficulties

Ok,
So as things are winding down here, things tend to go wrong. Things such as I have used up the capacity of my online picture storage, so cant upload anymore without paying (which i think is totally lame, especially since they decided to count my asia pictures)... also, today, I managed to blow both my power converter and my adapter... meaning i cant charge any electronics or plug in my computer.

So what this means for the blog... Most of my pictures are uploaded, just not posted yet, except for half of sweden... I plan on emailing myself what i have written in terms of posts later today or tommorrow using what i have left of battery power on my lap top. Seeing as i was working on the blogs at home and trying to wrap up researching here, I wasnt planning on writing much more... mazbe ill just post pictures for now... stories later... its also hard to write using stupid german key board im not used to. our IT people are currently out till monday, so no one can give me another adaptor... i give scowling face to those of zou laughing at me now.

As for work, it looks like ill be handwriting notes, and photocopzing books for two days. I did try the media mart electronics store... thez onlz had european adaptors-converters... so i will trz to pick something up in the frankfurt airport, otherwise ill just have to buy regular battereis for my camera, use my watch as my alarm clock, and live without music and phone for 10 days.

ah well... such is life as a traveler.

Auchwitz-Birkenau

This is one of my more serious posts. Though not as graphic as the one from last year dealing with the Khmer Rouge and the Killing Fields… The topic of Auschwitz is just as grim, if not more so.

On this day, it rained… it shifted back and forth between thunder showers and a constant drizzle. Appropriate weather for where we were going. We opted to take a private tour, as we figured it would be cheaper and more informative in the end… and faster to get there. Which was very true… as we learned, b/c the driver sped the whole way there. At one point I looked out the window to see a camel. Yes I said a camel… a real one, just sort of chilling out in someone’s back yard. I was there with my friend Shiva that I met the night before (and I’ll talk about more later)… when we got there we had to wait for the English speaking guide, so we had time to take coffee. I took a Turkish coffee, as Shiva said she would read my coffee grains… [ strong woman, married 2 kids, need to leave my past behind, attachment to Egypt]… We met another girl from slovakia I think… I’m not sure, she was a teacher named Tanya. [quasi important later]… then we got our headsets… brilliant idea… give the guide a microphone and everyone a headset, so everyone can hear as you are wandering around. And then we began…

Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest Nazi death camp. Originally just a concentration and labor camp, where polish intellectuals were sent, the camp was extended to Auschwitz II, where the primary purpose was death, especially towards the end of the war, where it was used for mass exterminations. Something around 1.2 million people died here. 90% of the individuals here were Jews, others included Poles (intellectuals), Soviets, Gypsies, and Homosexuals.

We took a tour through the camp; first the original camp, with its brick barracks… deceptively nice for someone passing by, as they were in fact, originally built as military barracks. But as you go through you hear the history. You see where prisoners lived, their faces staring back at you from the walls where their photos hang. Nazi efficiency, cataloging the people. At least in the beginning… when the camp turned to just an extermination camp, and as the Nazis where pulling out, they destroyed records, and the gas chambers so that people wouldn’t know what they had done.

As you go through the rooms, you see where individuals were tortured, or punished, and where people were experimented upon. The courtyards where executions took place. There are whole individual rooms filled with luggage, shoes, brushes, glasses, hair. Hair is the worse… it has an odor to it. Some still has some color to it, and they are all in braids. They even had an example of what the Nazi’s did with the hair: the sold it to be used as blankets and the lining of uniforms. Tests of these linings showed residue of the gas used during executions.. indicating the hair was shaved afterwards. We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside the rooms… I don’t really think that anyone would want to.

The Second part of the Camp was huge. There is a video below to show how far it stretched. To my surprise there are houses not all that far off. And I couldn’t help but wonder how people could live and wake up everyday to see this place on the other side of the road. But at the same time, the memory of living just a few blocks from Toul Sleng prison in Cambodia, and eating regularly across the street comes creeping into my head.

Overall, the experience was a bit on the surreal side. Touching, solemn, but definitely worth while.

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…

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).