Tonight, I was part of an estimated 200,000+ gathering to watch Barack Obama give a speech in Berlin. The speech was a little shorter than I had expected, but I really enjoyed what I did hear. He claimed he was speaking as a ‘citizen of the world’ and not a candidate for president, but there were plenty of politics to be had.
It is a little difficult to describe the scene. Initially, it felt more like a rock concert than a political speech. Many people filing in, hanging out, drinking beer, eating, and dancing. There were a number of workers there for people living overseas to register to vote. Lots of t-shirts, lots of stickers, lots of people. There were a couple warm-up bands (Maren claimed they were famous in Germany, I had never heard them before).
As I mentioned before, I really enjoyed the talk. I felt the talk revolved around bridging the gap between the Atlantic Ocean (newly formed over the past 7 years) and helping those that need it most. One thing he mentioned I found interesting was the unsustainability of economic growth if the gap between rich and poor continues to grow as it has. I feel this is already being felt in many parts of the world, but I also believe this is even more true even the global nature of the world we live in. He received loud applause for ending the Iraq war and eliminating nuclear weapons. However, the loudest applause was centered around climate change. The Germans definitely take the climate change issue very seriously.
A good night. I am beginning to see a bit of light and hope at the end of this very very dark tunnel. I really hope his actions come remotely close to his words. I feel that living up to words is something we (the US) have not done a very well recently.
I am back in Germany and finally starting to catch up on my sleep. I am now in the home stretch of my stay here – busy trying to finish up things with work and beginning to really plan the next steps forward. I am also trying to figure out how to do all the things I have wanted to do here in Europe / Germany before leaving… I feel like I have done a lot, but there is so much more to do and see.
Last week, I went with Konstanze and Thorsten (her boyfriend) to R.E.M. They really put on a good show – a very fun night. On Thursday, I am planning to go see Barack Obama speak in Berlin. His speaking in Berlin has generated a bit of conversation here over the past week. I read yesterday that “they” are expecting between 10,000 – 1,000,000 people to show up. It should be pretty crazy and interesting. I can only see one bad thing about it — last week at the R.E.M. show, it was a real drag trying to get on the S-Bahn (train system) with 20,000 other people. I can not imagine trying to catch a train with 1,000,000 other people…. I know there will be more trains, more central location, etc…. but still a potential nightmare.
A few months ago, I managed to lock myself out of my image gallery. I have managed to finally recreate the gallery and have added some new pictures including pictures from my Romania holiday and last weekend’s hike near Tok.
It has been a while since my last post. Life has been more than a bit busy lately. Now I am in Fairbanks and it really feels good to be back. I have been here for the past week or so for the NICOP conference hosted by UAF. The conference was good, but the highlights have been shared with old friends. It has been a very busy week. I hope this week slows down and I am able to take my time and enjoy the days, the people, the life, etc. before returning to Berlin at the end of the week.
Ann and I spent just returned from a couple day hike somewhere around Tok (Cathedral Falls). I realized that it has been a while (2005) since I have been a real hike. In 2006, I was a bit busy trying to finish my thesis. In 2007, I was able to spend the entire summer outside, but it was working and spent in a very limited (although incredibly amazing) place.
The rest of the pictures from my trip home can be found here.
On Sunday, I took part in some sort of ‘demonstration.’ I am not sure what the purpose or cause was, but it basically consisted of most all the roads (including autobahns) leading into Berlin were closed to autos and opened up to bikes. According to Paul, the police said there were 25,000 people and the organizers said some 250,000 people participated. I have no idea how many were there, it was just a lot.
I had originally planed on biking all the way in from Potsdam. When I arrived in Potsdam, there were bikes everywhere, but they were going in all different directions. Confused, I decided to go downtown to see if I could figure out where I was supposed to be and then off to Glienicker Brücke (Paul thought the route might go that way). Nothing downtown so I cut through Neuer Garten only to be stopped by the park police. The park police said something, I replied ‘My Deutch is schleckt.’ to which I was told to ‘get off my bike.’ Okay. By the time I made it to the bridge, I only ran into runners running the Potsdam marathon but no bikes. So then I rushed back to the train station and went to Wannsee. Fortunately, I made it there just as the bikers were leaving and they happened to be leaving right outside the train station… So I was a bit lucky there. The tour went from Wannsee all the way to the Brandenberg Gate in the center of Berlin. It took just over 2 hours (longer if you include my Potsdam time). Perfect weather, good spirits, lots of fun….
Near Wannsee. It took somewhere between 30-45 minutes to get onto the autobahn. Bikes coming from all directions.
I must be fast…. just look how the wind thins my hair…
Pangea Day, the international day of film, begins tomorrow (20:00 in Germany, 10:00 in Alaska). Inspired by Jehane Noujaim, winner of the 2006 TED prize, the idea of Pangea Day is to begin the world togetheer through film. 24 short films in 4 hours. I have read, watched, and heard much about this event now. There are a number of ways to watch – TV, public events, private events, streamed through the internet.
I think this is going to be pretty amazing. I am very much looking forward to it. If you have nothing else going on (or even if you do), I think this would be a very inspiring and worthwhile way to spend part of your day.
Last week, my friend Mareike (engineer I met on Svalbard last summer) and I spent a week wandering around Romania. Romania is situated in the far east of Europe bordering on the Black Sea. It is a country that underwent a bloody revolution in 1989 and is appears to be building its way back out of the rubble.
Over the week, we spent time in Bucharest (Monday, Tuesday, Sunday), Transylvania (the towns of Brasov, Bran on Wednesday, Thursday) – the same Transylvania where Dracula once roamed, and the Danube River Delta (Friday and Saturday). While I did not experience anything that was completely amazing, the week was filled with a number ‘adventures’ – most good and a few bad and some just interesting.
I think my lasting impression will be that Romania is a country full of contrasts — huge advertisements draping over buildings that are falling apart, a railway system that features both new ICE trains and rusted out tin cans – often in the same station and both going down the same tracks, the beautiful delta of the Danube River that is lined with an incredible amount of empty plastic bottles, similarly old villages sitting at the base of some really large and dramatic mountains alongside piles of garbage, new glass sided buildings that are fed electricity from a rat’s nest of wires, a sex shop adjacent to a church.
It is also a country where life is obviously much harder than in the west. Many homeless people, many kids asking for money well past midnight, people sleeping under street vents to stay warm. The people we did interact with were mostly friendly. In Bucharest (the hub of our travels), we stayed at a hostel owned by a Canadian couple. The owner was incredibly friendly (not surprising as I believe that Canadians are generally the nicest people on earth (although Scandinavians and Kiwi’s are also right up there)) and made fantastic pancakes. People would see us looking at a map for directions and ask where we were going and point us in the right direction (only to catch up with us again when we took out the map on the next corner and again point us in the right direction). I think that 90% of the people smoke in Romania. If a smoking ban was implemented in Romania, I think there would be another bloody revolution. Religion also plays a strong role in the lives of the people. On a bus, I sat next to a woman who made the sign of the cross continuously as we went by every church. Many of the bus drivers have crosses hanging from their mirrors. Sunday was the Orthodox Easter celebration. On Saturday night, we walked by a church with many people dressed up and waiting to go inside for midnight mass. I found out the next morning that the church services last throughout the night and the entire next day.
Bucharest is a city that is filled to the brim with dogs. I think there must be at least one dog for every two people. Many (most?) of the dogs are homeless and roam the city at night, barking non-stop. They were the cause of a few sleepless nights. The city is also undergoing massive amounts of (re-)construction – especially in the center of the city. The buildings along the main drag of the city seemed to alternate between a casino and some sort of ‘sexually oriented’ business. Bathrooms and morning coffee were both hard to find. We found a nice jazz bar with outdoor seating and nice music and we also had a great traditional Romanian dinner in Bucharest. McDonalds, KFC, and Pizza Hut have managed to find their way into Romania, but Starbucks seems to be a bit slower. I imagine it is only a matter of months before their arrival. Note to future Bucharest travelers: do not have a heart attack on any day other than a holiday – the ambulance has no chance of reaching you in time – the traffic is horrid there. Crossing streets, even at the cross walks, was a supreme act of courage.
The towns of Brasov and Bran are situated in Transylvania, which is located among the Carpathian Mountains. I was impressed by these mountains – both big and steep. I liked the town of Brasov – it had a nice city square, a big old church, and slower pace than Bucharest. We had a few funny and interesting experiences in Brasov. On our way to our hostel, we missed our bus stop as we could not get to our luggage (the bus was extremely overcrowded) before the bus pulled away. I tried to exit through the back of the bus hoping that Mareike would be able to reach our backpacks through the masses and just throw them out the door. Well, she could not get there and I nearly did not get back onto the bus. We walked back one stop to find the address of our hostel, only to find out that it no longer exists (my lonely planet was outdated (wrong) on a number of occasions). We wandered back toward the city center and found a nice place to stay. It was a bit frustrating at the time…. but sort of funny looking back. We also went to this crazy movie theater, complete with fluorescent lighting, couches with foot rests, tables, disco balls, and no people. Next door was a bar where we got a couple of beers. We saw a really bad movie, ‘Online Crime,’ but experiencing the movie theater was probably worth it (and it was nice to be in from a fairly heavy rain). The next day we went to the tourist trap known as Bran Castle, the fabled home of Dracula. However, Dracula (Vlad Tepes) never lived there. The only thing remotely Dracula about ‘Dracula’s Castle’ was the incredibly kitsch market near its base selling everything Dracula – from coffee mugs, to plastic blah, to more blah, and more blah. The market even had a haunted house. The castle was nice, but probably not worth the special trip.
By the time we left Transylvania, we were both looking forward to getting away from the cities and to seeing the Danube River Delta. We were a bit unlucky in that we were visiting on the holiday weekend and the bus we planned to take back out of town would not be running that day. We scrambled a bit and made alternative plans, but we had to leave much earlier than we anticipated (Saturday afternoon verses Sunday morning). On Friday night, we found an expensive boat to take us into the wildlife preserve of the delta for 3 hours. I really really enjoyed this trip – nice colors from the low sun, lots of birds, a wild cat, and the boat driver was interested in what we were seeing and pointing out different birds, etc. The next day, we hoped to take a speed boat down the river and visit a small village for an hour or so before returning. We walked up and down the harbor looking for a boat to take us. This experience was very frustrating and annoying. Walking along the harbor, we only found boats already completely booked or extremely annoying ‘pimps’ of private boats willing to take us out. We finally found a boat willing to take us to a village, but we were not able to leave when we wanted as the captain was either out getting gas or drunk, I am not sure which. We, along with a few Austrians willing to go out with us to help split the cost, were told to wait as it would be just a few more minutes. A few minutes turned into a few more minutes which ended up being over an hour. Completely frustrated with the situation, we left and went to another pimp that we were negotiating with earlier. This pimp was a very fat, slimy, obnoxious pimp. We did not want to go out with his boat because it would take us basically in the same areas we were at the night before and we really did not want to support his pimping operation. However, we were desperate and running out of time. So off we went on an excruciatingly long, 5 hour journey through the wildlife preserve on a boat that had only two speeds – painfully slow and broken down. About 20 minutes from the end of our wildlife ‘adventure’ (and about 1 hour from when our bus was leaving town), the boat broke down. Long story short, the boat was fixed and we arrived back in the harbor about 15 minutes before leaving town on the bus, meaning we had to rush to get our luggage and then rush to the bus station. It was bad way to end the river delta experience. After looking so forward to seeing the region, I left the area with a bad taste in my mouth. Once back in Bucharest, we went out to the Jazz club we liked before, so at least we were able to end the day on a good note.
The last morning in the hostel, we had breakfast with a man from New York City. He was nice enough, but nearly every stereotype of NYC was brought to life. The one thing he did mention was that he found a number of really nice parks around Bucharest. We ended our Romanian experience by finding and wandering around in a very nice park and an empty city (because of the holiday). A good way to end the trip. I would return to Romania if given the chance. I think it is a place in transition and it would be interesting to see how much (if anything) changes over the next years.
A good meeting. Much better than last year’s. Maybe because Ryan wasn’t there. Probably not, but there is a good correlation there. I was busy at my poster presentation. Julia, Torsten, and Sebastian all gave good talks. Julia was busy at Moritz’s poster as well. I think the SPARCs managed to represent themselves pretty well.
Each week in Potsdam, our group gets together to read and review a journal paper on a topic that is related to our work. We get 15 minutes to read the paper then we spend about 45 minutes talking about it, deciding if it was good or bad and why. A while ago, we reviewed a paper and decided it was quite bad for a number of reasons. I happened to be in a session where this author basically presented the same paper. The ‘live’ version of the paper is much worse than the paper version. I kept waiting for Sebastian to stand up and say ‘this is complete bullshit.’ He would have said it in the weekly review meeting (and probably did), but not such luck here. I think I would have paid him 5 EUR if he would have said something. That is a lot more than I was going to pay him for proof of sleeping with a reindeer last summer on Svalbard.
I also some some really good talks and sessions. One session opened my eyes to myself. It was a session on the interaction between research and applied engineering (in hydrology context). In the session there was a lot of discussion of what an engineer is and and what a scientist is. I have always considered myself a hydrologist even though my degree says engineering, mostly because I do not like the stereotypes/perceptions of engineers. Here are my notes from the session…. A scientist tries to understand a problem without solving it. An engineer tries to solve problems without complete understanding. Science is about knowledge, doing something interesting, seeking truth, seeing the risk, no deadlines, and waiting for certainty (confidence levels) whereas an engineer is about action, giving good advice, seeing opportunities, having deadlines, and as having to make decisions under uncertainty (fudge factors). I realized that I think so much more like an engineer than a scientist it is not really funny. Maybe it is time to embrace the stereotype. One speaker managed to crack himself up (giggling uncontrolably) when discribing ‘poop freeze’ — his method of discarding different theories/ideas about a problem he was working on. It was pretty funny.
Other highlights.. Sebastian and I spent an afternoon wandering around Vienna city center. It feels so much more like a European city than Berlin to me. We had some really really good pizza for lunch. We were invited (by TU Wein group) to a Heurigen (wine tavern) on Wednesday night for food and drink. We were the last people there but managed to get a great seat next to the food. It was a fun and late night. Too much wine though…. Hard to keep interest (and wake up) on Thursday. I was so tired on Thursday that only managed to watch MacGyver (in German) that evening — sort of, I fell asleep during the not so exciting hour. I also spent a fair amount of time with Ted. It was really good to see and talk to him about many different things. I also ran into David Newman and Skip Walker (both from UAF). I also talked with Jed Brown (from FBKS and friend of Seth Adams) for a while about his research. He thinks on a completely different plane of reality than I do. He is doing some really interesting work. It was nice to see so many familiar faces.
Off to Bucharest tomorrow morning. I am pretty excited about going on holiday.
