An attempt to keep in touch with everyone

2015-04-18T21:32:00.000+02:00

Hi,

Second resurrection of this blog. I'm sure this one will stick, right?

Just got back from a whirlwind six-day holiday in Auckland. Congratulations to Mikael and Ada! It was a lovely wedding, you guys are great together. And happy birthday to my Mum; 60 years young!

I'm not feeling particularly prose-y, so I'll just list a few highlights in bullet point form.

Stag party. Unexpected photos on my camera the next day. Karaoke stars were forged.
Fish and chips.
3rd at pub quiz!
Rain! I didn't realise that I miss the rain!
Pie.
Beach.

I'm back in ridiculously sunny California now, excited about getting back into work.

Will try to do something exciting in the next couple of weeks so I've got something to write about. Also will try to take photos - I was pretty bad over the last week.

Adam

Happy New Year!

2015-01-01T21:41:00.001+01:00

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope your 2015 is great.

Here are 3 photos from the last week.

New Year's fireworks above the San Francisco ferry building.

View from the Golden Gate Bridge.

I go past this place on the train from Palo Alto to San Francisco. I don't know what it is.

Christmas etc

2014-12-27T06:07:00.003+01:00

Hi,

Merry Christmas everyone! Was just going through my photos from the last few weeks and was inspired to update this blog thing.

So, I've been here for 6 weeks, and everything is good. Well not everything is good (like I've got a hole in the sole of one of my shoes and my left sock gets wet when it rains), but on average, everything is fine.

In my last post, I was just moving into my new flat. It's good - it reminds of Dunedin, which is why it's cheap and in an excellent location. It's closer to the lab than some people who live on campus (Stanford is a big campus). And it's very close to downtown Palo Alto. When I say it's cheap, it's cheap by Palo Alto standards - which is officially the most expensive city in this country! It's Google and Facebook's fault. I'm paying about 10 times what I was paying in Potsdam, but here it is on a beautiful "winter's" day:

And here's a photo of the second most expensive city in the US to rent in. It was from the top of a hill in Berkeley which me and my flatmate decided, for some reason to bike up. It nearly killed us but we got hazy views of San Francisco.

San Francisco (contrast etc cranked all the way up so you can see it through the haze)

We also went on a bike ride up a hill closer to Palo Alto which looked more like this:

And one last photo, the obligatory Christmas dinner photo which was with my neighbours from Auckland. We had a worst present competition (which resulted in lots of hats) and a cook off in pairs. Here we are eating the main which was meant to be turkey burgers, but the entree team decided to make turkey sliders (with tomato soup) so we had to think on our feet - it turned into a salad with sliced turkey breast and turkey meatballs. Dessert was triple chocolate brownie (with sour cream...) which we all agreed was probably enough chocolate for the brownie.

It was great Skyping with some of you on Christmas day, sorry the connection was so dodgy. We should try again some day!

Adam

USA! USA! USA!

2014-11-16T05:04:00.000+01:00

Hi all,

I'm going to resurrect this blog to, as the title says, try to keep in touch with you. This is a two-way street, though, so please comment, or send me an email or telegram if you feel like it. Or send me a link to your blog.

I set off from Auckland on Wednesday evening, and arrived on Wednesday morning after a surprisingly restful flight, as I'd lucked two spare seats beside me, and I could fold all 3 seats out into a skycouch. It was pretty handy as a freebie, but I'm not sure if I'll cough up the extra $1800 you need to book one.

From the airport in San Francisco to Palo Alto, I'd decided to catch a shuttle because it was only $50 and promised door to door service in about an hour. Unfortunately, for me and my shuttle-mates, it was our driver's first day on the job, and did have the hang of the GPS yet. The waypoint optimisation was very clearly not working, and it also seemed to be set on "avoid highways unless they're taking you in the wrong direction". And our driver followed all its instructions (poorly) for the 2.5 h it took to drop me off (last).

Anyway, Wylie and Janet had left a key out for me and I followed their treasure hunt-like clues to the Garage Mahal. Wylie and Janet have been very welcoming, and have been great at giving me the lay of the land and loaning me bikes etc. I could happily stay here for longer, but I don't want to overstay my welcome.

Luckily, I've already found a flat and I'm moving in tomorrow. It's real close to uni, the train station and downtown Palo Alto, and the house is not so flash, so it's pretty affordable by Palo Alto standards. It's inhabited by 4 other guys, doing tech and medicine kind of stuff.

I'm moving in tomorrow, so need to pack my bags tonight so Janet can give me a lift with all my crud tomorrow morning.

Thanks for reading!

Adam

Hello

2012-02-13T20:12:00.007+01:00

I should have known not to mention how warm the weather was in my last update... Minutes after my last post, two white kittens arrived in our flat, Friedrich and Wilhelm, and with them came the winter. For the last 3 weeks or so we haven't got above 0C. The temperature's been consistently below -10C, even below -20C. It hasn't snowed much, but when it did, it was really cold, so the snowflakes were like real snowflakes from a cartoon. Here's one I tried to take a photo of on my sleeve.

That day the kittens were allowed outside for the first time. Wilhelm (probably, we still can't really tell them apart) got stuck up a tree. I climbed halfway up the tree, Wilhelm climbed onto my head, then I climbed down to terra firma. I hope he appreciated it, and that he's not the one that's peeing on my bed when I leave my door open.

Anyway, last week the largest annual public film festival in the world started in Berlin. I'm trying to see as many films as practical. So far I've seen two amazing films. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is an American film about 9.11 and a boy trying to handle the death of his father. Film critics seem to think it's a cheap ploy to get awards, but I found it a really absorbing, honest, and uplifting film. I also managed to get tickets to one of the funniest movies I've ever watched - it was called Iron Sky and it's about nazis living on the moon. It was really clever, and despite the subject matter, there was not a single awkward moment for the audience. In Q&As afterwards, the producer mentioned that he did find it hard to get funding from Germany!

Instead of taking the train back to Potsdam on Sunday, we walked back over the frozen river. It was very cool, a real experience. It was not so cool that I didn't zip up my pocket and lost the tickets I had to 2 more movies this week. Doh!

My tickets are out there somewhere...

Anyway, hope you're all doing well. I love to hear what you're up to!

Adam

Hi from Germany

2012-01-22T14:21:00.002+01:00

Hello everyone,

Here's a very late blog post. My updates are getting further and further apart. At the start of this blog, I decided to post an update every week. I apologised sometimes for having 2 weeks between posts! Last year, I made 3 updates in total.

But that's all gunna change this year, I'm gunna aim for monthly updates, I've written it in my diary, and even if nothing exciting has happened, I'll still post that.

So after a fantastic 3 weeks in NZ, catching up with friends, family, and sun, I survived the flight back and got over the jetlag by the time I had to go back to work. The shock in being back in the northern hemisphere was not quite as bad as I was expecting, maybe because this winter is a really warm one, there's pretty much been no snow or even many frosts. It's been over 0 C most days, which is fine by me. I can still ride my bike, whereas this time last year there was half a meter of snow on the ground still!

Nothing much has really happened in the last 2 weeks, I had a presentation a week after I got back, so was working pretty long that first week finishing enough experiments for the presentation (and they seemed to work, I think there's hope with this PhD thing!). Next week I have an awful "circadian" experiment, taking samples every 4 hours for 24h straight, but my supervisor will help out so I can get some sleep in between. Other highlights this year include doing my washing, deciding to adopt 2 white kittens in the flat, and my flatmate announcing she's pregnant! This house is going to be getting full, and we've already got 9 of us living here!

Anyway, hope you're all well, enjoy the end of summer in NZ, because it must be our turn up here very soon!

Adam

Prague II

2011-05-29T12:41:00.005+02:00

Hi everyone,

I'd kind of forgotten about this blog, but I'm going to revive it a bit somehow. To start, I'd like to talk about my trip to Prague last weekend.

I visited Prague 1.5 years ago, you may remember that I was disappointed that the famous astronomical clock was out of order that time. I declared "I'll be back, astronomical clock!", so when my flatmate Abiah wanted to visit for her birthday, how could I say no?

The key words this trip were; sun, cold beer, tourists, amazing architecture. My flatmate Mirko spent 6 months studying in Prague, so he knew all the tourist sights, and was a great tour guide. We basically spent the weekend walking the streets, admiring the sights, stopping when it got too hot for some beer and Czech cuisine. The tipping proved to be a bit of a challenge, I think we managed to offend every waiter we encountered, by tipping too much, too little, paying with discontinued banknotes, only ordering drinks in a restaurant, and paying 10x too little at one place.

The gang in front of the cathedral thing.

When we weren't eating, we checked out the big castle, the smaller castle, the bridge, and the ASTRONOMICAL CLOCK!!! We were there at quarter to 12, and there were already 1000 people waiting for it to chime. I have to say, when the moment finally arrived, and all the puppets started doing their things, it was a little underwhelming. But anyway, been there, done that. Tick.

Me and the clock.

That was basically Prague, we caught a train back on Sunday evening (with broken air conditioning, no seat reservation, and halfway they halved the size of the train because of malfunctioning breaks - but they didn't halve the number of people in the train). Good times!

The train was rather full.

Hope all of you are well, I love hearing what you're up to.

Adam

Christmas in Romania

2011-01-15T12:27:00.005+01:00

So again its been much too long between posts. Sorry!

But anyway, it was great to catch up with many of you in November, only far too short. It was a bit of a shock coming back to the middle of one of the coldest winters in Europe for quite a few years (that's also what they said about last winter, but). We had a few weeks when the temperature hovered around -15 C - and quite a bit of snow too. It's warmed up now (a balmy 10 C today!), and only a few piles of snow remain. The other day, after a week of -10 C, so the ground was really cold, it started raining really lightly about 8am. As soon as the rain hit the ground, it froze solid instantly. So 8 it was a normal morning, by 8.30 every surface in Potsdam was covered with a few millimetres of the slipperiest ice I've ever seen. Cars were abandoned on the street where they stopped (a few dozen metres from where they started breaking), buses gave up and had smoko. One woman on the news fell over and broke her arm, so decided to go home because it was too dangerous, and on the way home, she fell over and broke her other arm. Ow! It thawed a bit by about 11, and most people could get to work.

But I'm getting distracted here, I'm meant to be talking about Romania. Me and my flatmate (from ~~America~~ USA) decided that as we were both not going home for Xmas, we should go somewhere a bit exotic, not just chill out in Potsdam. After a bit of deliberating we decided on Romania. People ask "why Romania?" and I reply "why not?". Then they often say that it's a horrible country, full of stray dogs, poverty, vampires, and bad roads. We ignored them (maybe because we'd booked tickets already) and went with an open mind (because the guide book I ordered on Amazon didn't arrive in time).

Well, we tried to go! Lots of snow all over Europe had thrown the airports into chaos. We checked if our flight to Munich was on time the night before we were meant to leave, to be greeted with a red "cancelled". Lufthansa had, I reckon, taken their phone off the hook so we found a train that would arrive in Munich 3h before our connecting flight to Bucharest. It was a 10h night train, so we had to pack really quickly and run to the train station, were we found it was 20min delayed, then 30min, then 40min, then I realised I forgot my passport! I found a taxi and asked him to speed to my flat, where I found my passport in about 15 seconds, and jumped back into the taxi so fast I broke the button on my pants! Racing back to the train station, I got a txt from Abiah saying the train was another 20min delayed. Phew! The train arrived, got a bed, woke up in the morning to the announcement that they were 2.5h delayed. Called Lufthansa (they were by now answering their phone), they booked us on a flight in the afternoon. Yay! Then they called back to say they only got one of us a ticket on that flight, the second ticket was snapped up by someone else while they booked the first one. At the airport we lined up for an hour or so and somehow both got boarding passes, and made in the Romania!

Romania in pictures:

Typical Bucharest cityscape.

An old fortress we visited. It was pretty run-down, but they'd repaired bits of it and had gift shops in these bits.

Brasov "Hollywood" sign on the hill above the cathedral.

Christmas dinner in the hostel. Note the 2.5L bottles of beer which cost less than $2!

Stray puppies!

The view from Dracula's castle.

After far too few days in Bucharest, our flight to Munich was an hour delayed, so of course we (just!!!) missed our connection in Munich. It was the last flight of the day, so we got put up in a hotel for the night. Got up at something like 5 the next morning, and made it to Berlin. Yay! We were joking that the only thing that could still go wrong is that they could lose our bags... And yup, you guessed it, as everyone else collects their bags and leaves, we are left by an empty luggage carousel. By the time we report them missing, I've well and truly missed my train to Czech Republic - but I'm gunna have to make that holiday a different story.

So in summary, Romania was awesome! I really like the people, the countryside is absolutely spectacular (must be mindblowing in summer), and the cities are no uglier than so many others. I definitely got the feeling that the people remember very vividly when life wasn't so good, so although they're still not living in luxury by our standards, they appreciate everything they have. And Lufthansa found our bags after 2 weeks!

Thanks for reading, I'd love to hear about your Christmases and stuff!

OKTOBERFEST!

2010-09-22T18:49:00.007+02:00

Hi everyone,

I had 2 (ok maybe 3) reasons I wanted to go to Oktoberfest:

1. It's almost the only thing Germany is famous for, so if I didn't go, I'd get the question "Did you go to Oktoberfest?" for the rest of my life.
2. Every German you talk to about it says "Why would you want to go to that, it's awful, [horror story about their "friend" that went there and had the worst time]". And then you ask them what happened when they went, and they admit they've never been. But every year 6 million people go! Are the Germans just showing their dislike of all things Bavarian? Are they trying to keep the tourirts away to preserve it for themselves? Of course, I had to find out.

So we organised a group from all corners of the world (Poland, Portugal, Chile, Russia, Australia, Mexico, and New Zealand), and headed off to Munich!

The gang. From me clockwise; Chile, Portugal, Poland, Poland, Russia/Australia, Mexico.

We were staying in a semi-permanent tent (The Tent - highly reccomended) with about 30 beds. It was positively tiny compared to the main tent there - with 100+ beds. Queuing up to check it, I realised that one of the rumours about Oktoberfest is true: that everyone is Australian.

The "Weis'n" from the top of a ride.

We were there for the opening weekend, so on Saturday there was a big parade. We didn't get the timing right, but still managed to catch the last 5 minutes of the parade, before we headed to Oktoberfest proper. We arrived there just as the mayor tapped the first keg, and declared the festival open. We ran to the nearest beer tent, but they closed the doors just before we got through, and were told to wait for some seats to be free. This was worringly close to how many of the horror stories started. And the next hour waiting in line was too, as was the announcement that the tent was full.

A parade.

Getting a bit nervous, we decided to give up on getting a beer for a bit, and explore the fair ground a bit. It was big. The next tent we tried to get into was full as well, but we managed to wriggle our way into its beer garden, and scam a delicious beer. Success!

Inside the Hippodrom tent.

The next day we had a booking for a beer tent already, so we spent the morning watch another parade, and exploring Munich a bit. The tent we booked was one of the smaller ones, with only seating for 3300 people(!). Somehow we were in an exclusive booth with complementary fingerfood and a(n almost) private waitress. It was crazy how loud it was - and how drunk/happy all the Germans were! We made the most of our aliquoted 3 hours we were allowed there, and headed into town where we met some pretty rude waiters, and some deceptive fountains.

Monday, we had to head back to Potsdam, but we took a short detour to the Czech Republic for goulash and fried cheese. I collapsed into bed about 10pm, at the end of a fantastic weekend.

Thanks for reading, I recommend Oktoberfest for everyone, even if you're not so into beer.

See ya!

Adam

Sailing in Poland!

2010-08-31T18:38:00.005+02:00

I've spent the last week sailing in Poland, in a region of lakes and canals called Masuria. I was lucky enough to be invited by 2 Poles from the institute (who were fantastic tour guides/translators/itinerary planners), a German guy and Portuguese girl also came from the institute, and we picked up several more Poles on the way or met them there.

The team. From left, Some idiot, Artur, Spirit, Marta, Nadia, Amid, Wolfram, Marek.

I had no idea what to expect, every time I talked to Marta she reminded me to take wet weather gear, warm clothes, and insect repellent, so I was expecting the worst on the weather front (turns out there was no need to worry - we had warm sun most of the time, and a couple of evening thunderstorms). On the other fronts I had no idea - how "wild" are the wilds of Poland? Anyway, after a 800km drive (and the motorway was closed for most of the way), we picked up our rental boats. They were trailer-sailer kind of things with bunks for 6 people. They were pretty simple boats, and pretty indestructible too - one of the 2 we had was sunken in a bad storm a few years ago - but they were pretty fun.

The mighty Andan.

So we spent a few days sailing south, stopping at little ports set up exactly for people like us, and motoring through old canals made by the Germans. I was a bit scared of the boats to start with, but after a day or so, I realised that even though I don't have my boat licence (2 years ago I didn't even know boat licences existed!), and I've never really been in charge of a boat bigger than a cutter, I could handle these boats just as well as everyone else. I kept having to stop myself using nautical terms (port, bow, jib), and use words that people would understand instead (left, front, small sail). I learnt some Polish words (levo, don't know, fok) and my favourite odbijacz (fender).

Halfway into the trip, we got to the most untouched forest I've seen in Europe. It looked just like the forests look in fairy tales, with tall conifers, moss covered ground with mushrooms and berries, and little frogs jumping around all over the place. We collected mushrooms and berries, and firewood from the less pretty woods closer to the boat. We cooked sausages over an open fire and hid potatoes in the embers for the next morning.

Cooking sausages on an open fire. Germans go pretty feral when they are away from the motherland for more than a couple of days.

The next morning, Marek was searching for the cooked potatoes and managed to fall into the fire a bit, and burnt his hand pretty badly. The wind had also come up (maybe up to 20 knots), and we had planned on staying in the same place for the day, but decided we should go and get some medical treatment. So we reefed in the mainsail, left the jib furled and limped to the nearest biggish city. Marek got some drugs and bandages and was happier.

Then we slowly made our way back up north, stopping every night in cute little "ports" and eating Polish cuisine in the local pub. And before I knew it, we were handing over the keys to the ripoff agent (who charged us 5 zloty per plate (x6!) he alleged we lost), and making the mammoth drive back to Potsdam (via Wroclaw). Work was a bit hard on Monday morning, but it was definitely worth it.

And to end, here's some building in Wroclaw.

Thanks for reading my story. Hope you enjoyed it. It's the first day of autumn, so I'm gunna have to start hibernating soon I think. Well, after our lab retreat and Oktoberfest. But then I'll hibernate.

Hope you're all well and happy - let me know what's up in your lives!

Adam

Summer!

2010-07-18T16:50:00.003+02:00

Hi,

This post is coming to you from the other side of a pretty warm heat wave. For the last couple of weeks we've been having temperatures consistently above 30C, getting up to 37C! At work they cancelled all seminars, and used the seminar rooms as makeshift offices as they have air conditioning. In the last couple of days there have been a few thunderstorms which have cooled things down a bit, so now I'm sitting in a very pleasant 23C.

Luckily for me, I didn't have to go to work for the last week or so. I had an operation to remove the screws they put in my knee last year. It was really short, and I was home 4h after arriving at the clinic. It was good timing because it meant I didn't have to go anywhere much for a few days, but also kind bad timing because I couldn't (and still can't for a couple of days) go swimming with an open wound. Tuesday get the stitches out then it should be completely back to normal.

The souvenirs!

In other news my flatmates have got a new house, and are very busy doing housey things with it. It needs lots of work, but we're all moving in in a month or so. It's cheaper and closer to work for me, but it is of a slightly lower standard than the current flat. It's all good, I'm looking forward to moving in.

I'm gunna try to be better at this blogging thing, I promise. This is only the 3rd post this year, I think! Feel free to pester me if I forgot again after a couple of weeks, k?

Adam

Finally, an update!

2010-06-26T18:41:00.004+02:00

I wrote this post a few weeks ago but didn't manage to click "publish", so here it is now!

Hello,

I've got horribly behind with this blog thing. It's been too long to cover everything, and I've been putting it off for that reason, but I'm gunna have to just bite the bullet and do a post of some kind.

So here goes, in no particular order:

I've caught a pretty bad case of (Football) World Cup fever. For someone who had never watched a whole game of soccer, I surprise myself how into it I've got. It's hard not to, when the whole country is completely crazy about it. When Germany is playing, all the projectors at the institute which are usually used for powerpoint slides, are definitely showing the game, and it's pretty much forbidden to work. Not soooo much interest in the NZ games, but I managed to watch all 3, people are still complementing me on our achievements. Undefeated! I'll bet money that we will be the only unbeaten team in the whole tournament!

Last weekend Sarah was visiting, and we went out to play frisbee in the park. One thing led to another, and we found ourselves in Poland. Poland was nice. Lots of shops selling cigarettes, vodka and haircuts to German "tourists". It was kind of bizarre walking over a bridge from Germany to Poland, and realising that our euros weren't official currency anymore.

View out the window of our hotel in Poland. This was the prettier side. But for 12 euros a night in a 3 star hotel you can't really complain!

A few weeks ago, there was a protest for promoting riding your bike. They closed the motorway, and let people ride their bikes from Potsdam to Berlin on the Autobahn. I went along with my flatmates, for the novelty of riding on a motorway. I thought there might be quite a few people turning up, but I wasn't really prepared for 200,000! Two hundred thousand people! Insane!

And here are a couple of carefully selected photos of other stuff.

Carnival of Cultures in Berlin

Part of Sanssoucci park, when Beryl was visiting.

Easter Bike Trip

2010-04-25T19:15:00.004+02:00

Seven people from four continents have somehow all found their way to a small city, Linz, in the north of Austria. We all have our bike laden with supplies - hopefully enough to get us to Vienna. All that separates us from this city is 230km of bike path along the backbone of Europe - the Danube river.

Why did we not just catch a train to Vienna? To be honest, I'm still not sure, but I think it's something along the lines of the saying "lessons come from the journey, not the destination".

With our journey stretching out ahead of us, a blue sky above us, and a good Austrian breakfast inside us, we start our journey. We've only given ourselves 50km to do the first day - to get into the rhythm. We'll play the rest by ear. After a few minor bike adjustments, it's pretty clear that we'll manage 50km today. The next two days are a different question though. 85km sounds like quite a lot. We take it slow on this first day, and we get a bit separated for lunch, but most of us find a market square in (the first of many) cute little old villages. We manage to hold ourselves back from buying excessive quantities of exotic cheeses. Sausages for lunch.

After a mammoth hill climb, our accommodation is a bit of a shock. We'd seen on its website that they sell ceramic garden figurines, but that doesn't really prepare us for the reality. Every piece of land that isn't covered with house is covered with hideous porcelain gnomes. We slowly edge our way through them to the front door, and are rewarded with hot showers and comfortable beds. After a bit of down time, we limp to the local pub, and eat various kinds of deep fried meat and potatoes. And the pancake soup is great.

Day two. We're pretty sore from yesterday. But we would have been encouraged to hear from our future selves that that day was the hardest. I guess we all just had to get used to new bikes, etc.

This day has the nicest scenery - passing through so many really cute really old villages, and nice European "wilderness" between them. An impromptu picnic for lunch also felt very European. Cheeses and sliced meat on fresh bread in a courtyard surrounded by tiny cobbled streets.

The worst bike malfunction happens on Saturday too. Long story, and this blog already looks pretty long, but to cut it short, one of us peddles for about an hour with her front brakes on, complaining the whole time about how hard it is. Once we figure it out, disconnect the breaks and it's all good to go.

For our second night, we stay in a really tiny village called Willmersdorf. It's got half a dozen bnbs, a great pub, and a museum for a famous stone statue found in this village. This statue is so famous it's got its own wikipedia page.

The next day, Sunday, the Easter bunny forgets to distribute Easter eggs, but biking is easy. Really getting into the zone now. It's a bit windier than the last days, but Mirko seems happy riding at the front, breaking the wind for us. We easily cover about 80km and find another bnb in a place that's almost a suburb of Vienna. More deep fried stuff for dinner on the side of the river as the sun goes down - including the very healthy sausage stuffed with cheese, wrapped in bacon, and served with chips.

On our last day, we have only about 1 hours ride to Vienna. By now this is absolutely no problem. I have to say it was very sad handing our bikes back to the rental place.

Vienna was fascinating. So many amazing old buildings everywhere. I'll spare you the details, though, as I told you it was about the journey, not the destination. So how was the journey? It was fantastic. We really lucked it with the weather, with the people, and had no accidents of any kind really. It was my first "bike trek", but I will definitely do more.

Thanks for reading, I'll post another update rather soon covering all (ok, some) of the goings on since Easter.

Adam

The latest from Germany

2010-03-28T18:21:00.005+02:00

Hello!

Random sunset.

Again, I apologise for forgetting to blog. I think I've been hibernating through the winter. But finally spring is upon us! I never appreciated the seasons at home, I think because they aren't nearly as dramatic as they are here. Sure, summer is sunny in NZ, but the rest of the year is all pretty similar. But here, it's amazing how brown winter is, how white winter is, and how green spring is. A few weeks ago, there was still 10 cm of snow on the ground, that had stayed there since before Christmas, but then in a week it all melted, and the daffodils and co. have sprung up everywhere. It's not green yet, but it will be soon, I'm sure.

Archway at castle up the hill from my house.

While it was still winter, the Berlinale happened. The Berlinale is a big international film festival in Berlin. Unfortunately I didn't manage to see the NZ film everyone is talking about now, "Boy", but I did see an awesome NZ documentary about a family living off the land ("This Way of Life"). And the world premiere of some long lost footage of the classic sci-fi movie, Metropolis. I was completely blown away what they could do in 1927 (that's not a typo!). Sure, they didn't have sound, but they had some pretty tricky special effects and amazing sets. As you can see in the picture, it was an outdoor screening, and it was freezing! Glad I managed to stick with it and watch to the end, though.

Metropolis screen, with Victoria, the roman goddess of victory on the Brandenburg Gate.

Other than that, it's been quite a bit of working, and I kind of got some results which I kind of believe! But anyway, I won't be so slack about my next blog, a group of us are going to Austria to do a bike trip for Easter, so I will be sure to take lots of photos and will have something to write about (probably about what a disaster it was!), so check back in a couple of weeks for more!

Hope you are all well,

Adam

2010

2010-01-31T14:48:00.006+01:00

My last blog, I see, was at the start of December last year, and now we're at the start of February. Two months... sorry.

So since then, I had a couple of weeks at work, then made the long and perilous journey back home for Christmas and new years. That was 3 weeks or so, which means I've been back in sunny Potsdam for about 3 weeks too. I'm gunna gloss over the 3 weeks in New Zealand, because most of you are kiwis, and stories set in exotic locations are much more interesting.

My flight back took me via Korea, not quite Seoul, but really close. I had an overnight stopover there, and the airline put me up in a (pretty nice, actually) hotel. It was really cold. Especially when I'd been in 25C the 3 weeks before. And I didn't have the best cold weather clothes, but I still braved the Korean subway system and found the city centre (not of Seoul, of Incheon - this city just beside Seoul). It was full of bright neon lights and icy footpaths. I did not see a single other tourist, all the people around seemed to be locals doing late night shopping in these brightly decorated clothing shops. With a bit of pointing and sign language, I managed to get some delicious Korean food (seafood pancake thing) that a friend had recommended (thanks Paul). That was Korea, I went back to the hotel and fell asleep with my backpack on.

Incheon town centre. There were actually lots of people - I don't know why there is noone in this picture...

"Simplicity Descending Life Line" in the hotel room on the 8th floor.

The rest of the journey was pretty uneventful, got back to Potsdam in the early hours of the morning, had a few hours sleep and went to work the next day. Turns out this wasn't such a great idea, and the next day I had a killer cold, so I took the Friday off and it was all good by Monday.

Now I thought Korea was cold - maybe it was -5C. The day I got back to Potsdam was -15C, I think. Since then it's been close to 0 a few times, but also down to -25C. Minus 25 degrees is cold. Even in -15C it's very dangerous to lick a metal pole. I learnt this the hard way. But cold also has advantages - snow, for example. Potsdam is still covered in at least 30cm of snow now, it's lying in huge piles on the sides of the roads. It kind of rained a bit last week so it's really crunchy and satisfying to walk on. My flatmates and I went sledding the other day too in Park Sanssoucci.

The institute in snow.

Icicles on the balcony.

Last night I went into Berlin with friends from work. Twice a year, all the museums and churches and stuff stay open until 2am, and you can buy a cheap ticket to visit all of them. We didn't go to ALL of them, in fact we only went to 4, but we didn't want to rush through heaps and see nothing. So we went to the Berliner Dom - an impressive cathedral I've posted photos of before, St Marienkirche - the oldest church in Berlin, the Natural History Museum - with the biggest dinosaurs in a museum, and the first dinosaur they found with feathers, and finally we finished up at the aquarium - which is HUGE and even has a tuatara exhibit. I know tuatara aren't fish, but the aquarium also had reptiles, amphibians and insects. A good night, lots of fun and lots of interesting stuff. Got back home at about 3, and had to get up by 11 today cos it's my flatmate's birthday and we had a big brunch so have been eating food ALL day.

Dome of Berliner Dom.

Dinosaurs!!!

That's the highlights - feel free to drop me an email bragging about the fantastic weather you're having.

Adam

Prague

2009-12-01T20:16:00.008+01:00

Sorry for not writing for ages, [insert excuse here]. To make up for this (OK, maybe not just to entertain my loyal readers), I went to Prague for the weekend, and took lots of photos.

A friend, Sarah, is living there at the moment and kindly offered her couch and tour guide skills for the weekend. I took a night bus from Berlin arriving in Prague at about 6am. I managed to get a little bit of sleep on the bus, but it nicely set the tone for a sleep deprived weekend.

First thing on the list was a visit to Charles Bridge, the famous bridge in Prague that's on all the postcards. It's covered with souvenir stalls and tourists most of the time, but was very pleasant early in the morning in the off-season when we went.

Statue on Charles Bridge

Here are a few random photos from the rest of the morning.

I forgot what this was called, some building of some kind. It was close to the miniature museum, which was not very big, and had all kinds of really small art, so small they had microscopes set up to see the pieces.

Skodas everywhere! Noone else in Europe seems to think they are a joke, especially not in the Czech Republic. We did get asked to help push start one, though...

Then I checked out the castle, the biggest in Europe, I'm told. It was indeed very big, and pretty crowded with tourists, but there was still room to breath, I don't think there is in summer. Maybe I should have taken a tour, because I don't really have anything else to say about it, it had a nice feeling though.

The changing of the guards. Their bayonets look pretty scary.

Postcard shot of the castle.

Another clichéd postcard shot of the castle.

That night, we met Sarah's flatmate (Jana) at a pub in the region of Prague which boasts the most bar/pubs per square meter compared to the rest of Europe. It was a pretty crazy place, full of crazy Czechs. It kinda looked like a good old fashioned country pub, only it was full of incredibly drunk (+) people singing Czech anthems and jumping on the tables. Someone had a bubble blower, and there was a disconnected telephone hand piece and a ski mask on our table. The one owner/barman/chef somehow managed to stop for a chat with all the regulars, and people seemed to deal with their change themselves from a bowl on the bar. An old man with missing teeth pointed out that we had the same shoes, and showed me a special orthopedic insert he had put in his. This sparked a flurry of more shoes being removed and closely inspected.

Jana had trouble leaving...

Sunday, after a slow start, we saw many more of the sights. Unfortunately, my camera battery died, so there are no pictures for them all. They included; a metronome, churches, cemeteries, hills, bridges, old buildings, many small dogs and many more Skodas.

To finish we had dinner at a great restaurant which had been recommended by 3 different people at various times. And the last sight I hadn't managed to see was the astronomical clock, "the iphone of its day". It predicts sunset/sunrise, phases of the moon, zodiac, and all that jazz, and every hour it does a cuckoo clock kinda thing. So we are standing in front of the clock at 10.59pm, dozens of tourists have their cameras at the ready. Finally, the minute hand ticks over and the bells begin chime. Nobody breaths and the fingers on shutter buttons tense. Then the chimes stop. Nobody dares breath. Then the minute hands ticks over again. Some of the tourists begin to lower their cameras, people begin to look side to side. The minute hand ticks over again. Nothing happens... nothing happens... nothing happens. The darn clock is on the blink. Beaten but not broken, we give up. I'll be back, astronomical clock!

Thanks for reading, hope you are all fine. I hope I get to see many of you in a couple of weeks! I'm in NZ from the 17th Dec till the 10th Jan, so keep those dates in your diary!

1 Year!

2009-10-10T10:34:00.006+02:00

Hi,

I have trouble believing it, but, according to my calendar I arrived in Germany a full 13 months ago. I was meant to write a big retrospective piece on the anniversary, but (as usual) it slipped my mind, and here I am a month late.

When I arrived, I remember I had 2 days of sunny weather and then winter hit with a vengeance. So this year, the weather has definitely taken a turn about the same time. I took this photo in Berlin about a month ago, when it was still warm.

It was an omen of things to come. Last week we turned the central heating on in the flat, I take my jacket with me whenever I go outside, leaves are rapidly yellowing and disappearing. Xmas decorations are appearing shop windows, and at street festivals they are serving gluhwein (mulled wine).

Although it feels like this year has passed really quickly, when I think back to what it was like at the beginning, I realised that it has really been a long time. Those early days I was really completely clueless about everything - German, supermarkets, buses, Berlin, my project, Germans. I feel like the language thing is the biggest thing that's changed. I'm definitely not fluent, or even competent, but I can survive using just German now. When the German knows that my German is rubbish, and they are very patient, we can usually understand each other. Living with 4 Germans definitely helps (although soon to be 3 Germans and 1 American), at parties and things people tend to speak German. So yea German has gone from a 1/10 to maybe a 5.5/10, which is good enough for me at the moment.

In other news, I'm worried I may be becoming a little bit too German. The things that I scoffed at when I first got here now seem pretty normal, like the not-talking-to-people-at-the-busstop kind of culture. And before it was "Wow, beer is really good and cheap here", but now it's "Beer is really bad and expensive in NZ". And I get really annoyed when a bus is more than 2 minutes late, just like a German. I also was talking to someone (German) at work, and he said he went to England for 6 months, and when he came back, people would complement him on how good his German was because he had picked up an English accent in his German. So I hope that I don't talk funny in English now. I think I definitely talk slower, and don't use as much slang, because otherwise noone would understand anything I was talking about.

But you'll be able to find all of this out first hand in a couple of months - I've booked tickets for Christmas and New Years in lil old NZ - arrive on 18th December, leave 11th January. Will be great to see all of you again, and escape another white xmas!

And just to pad this out a bit, here are some random photos from the last few weeks:

TV Tower in Berlin.

7m high puppet in Berlin for Reinunfication Day

7m high puppet's feet

Heidelberg, a city in the South-West. Was there for a conference/meeting thing.

Hope you're all going well, send me an email or whatever to let me know what you're up to!

Adam

Recent news

2009-09-06T15:53:00.004+02:00

Hi everyone.

For once I don't have to start off with an apology about forgetting to update for too long!

Last week, Sarah came to visit on her way from Holland to Czech Republic. We went for a paddle in a flatmate's canoe on the river. This is my flatmate Maraike, she came too.

We also went to my first ever football match. It was in the Olympia Stadium, with seats for 100,000 people it was a real experience. Luckily the people we went with in the end weren't supporting the home team. This was good because the guests won (3:2, all the goals in the second half). They really get into the supporting their team thing here, at least half the people were fully decked out in team colours with flags and stuff. I was totally wearing the wrong colours, though...

This weekend has been a bit more relaxed, I went to check out a big (>50,000 people) anti-nuclear protest in Berlin. 300 tractors had driven across the country for it. Lots of music and people with "Atomkraft? Nein danke!" [Nuclear power? No thanks!] stickers. I found it strange how everybody seemed to be pushing a slightly different agenda. Some people were saying it's not about the safety, it's about what you do with the waste. But then so many people had Cheronobyl (etc) signs. One guy had a very cryptic sign which said [Nuclear symbol] + CO2 = [Skull]. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't nuclear have pretty low CO2 emissions? Anyway, I'm not going to really give my opinion on the issues, because to be honest, I don't know. Both sides of the debate have so much propaganda out there I don't know who to believe.

Anyway I've gotta go, hope this finds you all well.

Adam

I'm alive!

2009-08-22T13:23:00.005+02:00

I know it's almost been 2 months since my last update, but I am still alive! Bad friend/son/grandson/etc!

So I can't quite remember everything that's happened in those 2 months, I'll try to catch you up on the highlights. As a warm up, here are a couple of pictures from Berlin I took when Nicky and her Mum/Dave were visiting.

Cool sand sculpture competition. Really amazing.

Gedächtniskirche (memorial church - it's hard to see but it's only half a church because the other half was bombed) and its memorial thing. I think I've already posted a picture like this, but no complaining!

The next story is my knee. Most of you have already heard, probably, but just to get everyone up to speed: ~6 weeks ago I dislocated my knee cap playing volleyball at work. I've done this 2x before, so this makes number 3. After number 3, they recommend surgery to adjust the alignment of the kneecap to prevent the same thing happening a 4th time. So 3 weeks ago I had the op, spent a week in hospital, 1 week at home, and have been back at work for a week now. It's healing well, and should be running around in a month or so. Here's an MRI scan (from the side of the knee) that I think looks pretty cool.

And last weekend, after my compulsory 1 week at home, I got to go on our annual lab retreat where we all go away for the weekend and do team building stuff. Was good fun, if a little frustrating sometimes not being able to join in with all the sports. Here's the whole team (this is actually only half our lab, it was split into 2 weekends).

Hope you're all well, let me know what's up in your corner of the woods.

Adam

Hurricane Festival

2009-06-27T15:49:00.004+02:00

Hi all,

A couple of weeks ago I got an email from the NZ embassy here in Berlin saying that I should be very careful about swine flu - I should keep my personal hygiene up, and avoid large gatherings of people. So me and 3 other people from work (Kate the Aussie, Dietrich and Christin the Germans) decided Hurricane festival sounded like the perfect place to go. Three days of camping with 60,000 other people doesn't count, does it?

The 60+ bands playing over the weekend included Kraftwerk, Faith No More, The Wombats, Moby, Lily Allen, Pixies, Kings of Leon, Franz Ferdinand. They were all very cool, Kraftwerk was definitely a highlight - and a bit bizarre, these 60 year old men standing perfectly still on stage in fluorescent lycra playing their keyboards. The Wombats were very good too, the crowd was really dancing pretty much for the whole set. Kings of Leon were good, but I dunno, they didn't have great stage presence I thought, they weren't much better than a CD. Pixies, on the other hand, were really fantastic.

The weather for the whole weekend was a pretty strange - it would be really sunny and hot 1 minute, then you would see these dark clouds roll in and it would rain and be really cold for half an hour, and repeat. But it was all good, better than being constantly too hot or too cold, I suppose!

Pixies playing in the sun.

Dark clouds rolling in...

... and then it rains! The people dressed in bear suits were in the middle of a soccer match and looked pretty soggy 10 minutes later.

Thanks for reading, let me know what's up where ever you all are now. I've finally invested 14 euros and got skype working (adam.idoine), add me if you've got skype.

Adam

Olympia Stadion, Teufelsberg and Karneval der Kulturen

2009-06-01T10:39:00.005+02:00

Every time I catch a train to Berlin, at one stop they say "XXX stop, please exit here for Olympia Stadion". I always think it sounds interesting, but always have somewhere else to be. Last weekend I took the chance to check out what this stadium is all about. As is becoming a theme, I forgot my camera, but it would've been pretty hard to capture the place in photos. It was built for the 1936 olympics, and was intended to rival the colosseum. I haven't seen the colosseum, but I imagine this stadium doesn't fall far short of its goal. It was also really interesting to see the approach that was taken to the whole olympic thing - it seems like it was much more war-like, with statues of warriors and that kind of stuff everywhere. Heaps of links to Roman gladiator kind of culture. Quite a contrast to the "fair play" kind of ideas associated with the olympics these days.

From the stadium, I set out to find a hill called Teufelsberg. Teufelsberg is the biggest hill in Berlin (115m). On top there is a old US spy station used in the cold war to monitor, um..., something. Now it's all abandoned with broken windows and holes in the fence surrounding it. There's also a pretty exciting looking dirt bike track going down the mountain, and in winter there's a small skiing area. You have to be careful of wild pigs apparently, too. But none of that is what makes this hill interesting. What I found fascinating was that there's a nazi military school underneath this mountain. And on top of the school is 12 million cubic meters of rubble from the second WW. That's right, the highest hill in Berlin is completely man-made. There are trees and dirt and stuff now, but there are still bricks and concrete sticking up out of the dirt everywhere. Apparently, most cities in Germany have hills like this, Berlin has several.

This weekend, I went to the Karneval der Kulturen (Carnival of Cultures) in Berlin. This is a big (~2 million visitors) parade and party all weekend celebrating the diversity of different cultures in Berlin. Berlin is definitely very diverse - the parade yesterday went for 9 hours! Here are some (quite poor) pictures from there:

Can't remember what culture these people were, maybe from Peru I think.

Actually representing a culture was kind of optional, most floats were just people having fun playing music, beating drums, dancing, or whatever.

Yes, and here you have the culture of assorted animals.

Just to make you feel a little better about the horrible weather I hear you've been having in NZ lately, just after the parade, it started pissing down like a tropical monsoon. We managed to find a spot under a bridge, and wait it out, then it was all on again.

Huddled under the bridge.

And I happened to be standing in this torrent of water. At least only my feet got wet.

That's all the news I've got at the moment, hope you are all well, looking forward to hearing from you.

An update

2009-05-09T20:23:00.005+02:00

Oh dear, I see that it's been three weeks since my last post. I've gotta get better at this!

Firstly, due to popular demand, I'll tell you something about what I do at work. OK, so I'm working (doing my PhD studies, with a "scholarship" thing) at the Max Planck (pronounced plunk) Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology. This is one of nearly 80 MPIs in the world (mostly Germany). In ours there are ~400 people, including me. The annual budget of these places all together is ~3.2 billion NZ$, and they are the place to do research (not just science) in Germany.

I'm working on a project involving an algae called Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. This is a model organism for plants. Like people use mice to research human diseases, people also use this algae to research plant stuff, because an algae is easier to work with.

DNA is the information carried in an organism. It is the "blue print" that tells the cell if it's a dog, oak tree or worm. The information in DNA is written in a 4 letter "alphabet". In the DNA, there are sequences which describe a protein. Proteins are the things that actually do stuff in a cell, the DNA just carries the information. Proteins are not made from DNA, they are made from an intermediate thing, called RNA, which is pretty much a disposable copy of DNA. Now we get to my project, I am measuring how much RNA for every protein is produced under different conditions (like, dark, light, really light, starving, hot, cold, etc). Phew that was actually really hard to write, I hope some of it makes sense.

The annual Baumbluetenfest (blossum festival) has been on here for the last 2 weeks. You wouldn't guess it from the name, but it's the second biggest Volksfest in Germany, second only to the infamous Oktoberfest! The difference is, Oktoberfest is all about beer, Baumbluetenfest is all about wine, specifically fruit wine. It can get very roudy at night, but the 2 times I was there, the hoards of cops kept everything pretty civilised.

Here are some pictures I took in Berlin today.

Kaiser-Wilhelm Gedaechtniskirche - half was destroyed in the war, this half has been preserved as a memorial.

This angry looking baby was on a statue of Alexander van Humboldt, I think.

Berliner Dom, lamppost and Fernsehturm.

Berliner Dom again.

And that's all I've got for ya, thanks for reading, I hope everything is good back home.

Adam

Hamburg

2009-04-16T18:43:00.002+02:00

I decided weeks ago I needed to go on a trip somewhere for the long Easter weekend, but couldn't make up my mind where. Living in the middle of Europe, it's a pretty hard decision, with so many famous places so close. In the end I decided to go somewhere in Germany because I'm embarrassed about how little I've seen of this country I'm living in. In the end, I settled on Hamburg, because I have some friends there with a comfy couch.

In Hamburg, the weather was amazing! For the 4 days I was there, I only put a sweatshirt on once, the rest of the time, I was walking around in a tshirt. The weather in Potsdam has turned too; green, sunny, warm! But Hamburg is a really nice city, quite a bit more open than Berlin, lots of big old (not actually very old, though, most of Hamburg burnt down ~100 years ago) merchant buildings, and heaps of water everywhere. The port is the 2nd biggest in Europe, even though it's 80km to the sea! There are lots of canals and lakes in the city too - the city has more bridges than Venice, even. In the city though, the highlight was probably St Nikolai church. It was bombed in the war, and hasn't been rebuilt. The bits that remain have been preserved as a monument. The tower is still ok, and we went up it for a fantastic view of the city. Unfortunately I left my camera in Potsdam, so have no photos of the whole weekend...

What Hamburg is famous for it's red light district called Reeperbahn. Kinda strangely, it's also the place to go for drinks at night. The drinks were soo cheap it was unbelievable, 50c shots and 1 euro beers. We intended to just go for a bit to see what it was all about, but the atmosphere was really great, so we had to stay an extra couple of hours. On Sunday mornings the fish market opens at 5am, so the traditional way to have a good Saturday night is to enjoy "the Kiez" until then, stumble down to the fish market, buy some fish, go home and cook it for breakfast. Yum... We took the shortcut version, and fitted a few hours of sleep in between. The fish market was very cool, again a very nice, friendly atmosphere, and stalls selling everything, including live guinea pigs.

Sunday we went to Florian's parent's place in Bremen for a bike ride. A very European bike ride. We rode along an asphalt path (as crowded as tour de France, almost) for a couple of hours to a Bier Garten where we had a Weissbier, then rode home. I didn't think it was possible, but even wearing (SPF5) sunblock, my arms were a little bit pink that evening! Aaah and that evening we had New Zealand lamb for dinner!!! It was great, tasted exactly like back home.

This is getting pretty long, so I'd better speed up a bit! We also went to Stade for a day, which is a really cute little town built in the middle ages, I think. It has narrow cobbled streets, houses that are sometimes 20 degrees off straight, and a canal. And I also went for a tourist trip on the Hamburg harbour on a boat. The commentary was in German, but I was stoked that I could understand some of what they were saying. Very big port!

And that was Hamburg, got back to Potsdam about 2am Tuesday morning, exhausted, but had a very good time. It was the perfect break, now I have to persuade my brain that it's no longer holidays and I need to do some work!

Thanks for reading, hope this finds you all well. I love hearing what's happening back home, so send me an email or something if you've got anything exciting (or not so exciting) to report!

Adam

Another update

2009-04-01T21:23:00.006+02:00

As usual, I have to apologise for being so slack in staying in touch. Excuse 1: Nothing very exciting has happened in the last 2 and a bit weeks. Excuse 2: I've been real busy at work. The two excuses are probably very closely linked.

I did have a free Sunday a week or 2 ago, and went to see the East Side Gallery, a section of the Berlin wall that has been preserved, and decorated/graffitied/painted soon after the wall fell. Now, after 20 years, most (perhaps all?) of the paintings still visible have been restored, or painted fresh. Still, lots of them still look like they did 20 years ago. The

re's lots of new graffiti on top, I saw one tag dated the day before I was there, so it's definitely an evolving thing. Here are some pictures I took:

This is a very famous one, a Trabi (iconic East German car) breaking through the wall.

This one says something like "many small people in many small places doing many small things can change the face of the world"

No more wars. No more walls. A united world.

And this is in a different part of Berlin, showing how the wall looked when it was still in use. I thought it was an amazing contrast.

Back in Potsdam, after quite a few false starts, I'm hopeful that spring is here to stay. It was so warm today some people ate lunch outside, some even not wearing jackets! Buds are starting to burst, and a few bulbs starting to flower (see picture). I've really been hanging out for some sun, so it's great.

Hope you are all good, let me know what's up back home!

Adam

Bochum

2009-03-12T19:17:00.003+01:00

This week I was in Bochum. Bochum is an old mining town a little bit south and a lot west of Berlin. Before I went, as I said, all I knew about Bochum was that the university looks like a spaceship, and that it's famous for musicals. The uni does look like a spaceship, but it's only famous for 1 musical (Starlight Express). It's been playing there since 1989 in the same theatre. There was even a statue of it in our hotel. There's also a subway station that looks like a coal mine. That's pretty much Bochum, not an aweful city, but nothing very exciting, either.

What was exciting, though, was the microbiology conference I was there for. This was a huge conference (compared to the other 2 conferences I've been to) - 1300 attendees, more than 600 posters, and something like 130 talks all up. There were sometimes 7 different programs in parallel, so nobody could possibly go to all the talks! It was pretty full on, so I didn't even get to work the trade exhibit for freebees, just a couple handfuls of pens. I also went into the wrong lecture hall at one point, and had to sit through the annual meeting of some society (in German), complete with voting for... something... or someone... Another highlight was the organ (like in a church) in the lecture theatre. There's something very strange about combining microbiology and organ music.

After all that excitement, I came back to Potsdam on Wednesday on a superfast train (250km/h). I've been hanging out for this weekend - need to catch up on quite a bit of sleep from the last 3 or 4 weeks.

Hope you are all well.

Adam