Sebastian has been up on Svalbard virtually all summer working on his PhD research. This week, he sent back a few images taken with his thermal infrared camera. No need to describe how these came about, I just think they are pretty fun to look at.
The light colors on the reindeer are the only places it is losing heat – around its legs and eyes. Not anything like the top of my balding noggin. That reminds me… it is about time to break out my winter hat !!! Fall has arrived in Potsdam (I have been wearing shoes to work now — too cold for sandals)).
Following are a sequence of pictures taken from the Ny-A webcam taken on Thursday afternoon as a little squal blew through town.
On my way home from Istanbul, I began to feel like something was not quite right with my throat. By mid-week, I (along with everyone else in Potsdam) was down for the count. On Wednesday, it felt like nobody on the campus was at work. I went home early on Wednesday – pretty much straight to bed. Thursday was spent mostly in bed. After consuming more vitamin C than I can recall doing before, I was beginning to feel quasi-human again (Friday). After being cooped up all week, I was feeling the need to break out of my own personal Krank Haus.
So what did the break out compose of? Friday night, the local men’s fußball team (Babelsberg) played – so I went. It was a fairly strange scene. At the beginning of the 2nd half, the flares came out, smoke filled the stadium, flares were tossed onto the field, riot cops poured in, and beer and taunts poured onto the riot cops – and the game continued on all the while. I just kept thinking to myself, “but this is Babelsberg”. I was smart enough to buy an expensive seat away from all the action.
The rest of the weekend was also full and busy – Turkish coffee with P&J, visiting the Babylon Exhibition at the Pergamon Museum, Drachenfest kite festival (I really liked watching the kites), watching an ultimate frisbee tournament hosted by the Goldfingers (I was not feeling well enough to play), taking Emil to the Turbine Potsdam fußball game, and finally going to a percussion concert (Vanille-Orange) in Berlin. All-in-all, I think I managed to escape my Krank Haus pretty well.
Following Edward to his European layovers, I found myself in Istanbul this past weekend. Ed is on his way to a couple of the *-istan countries to study a bit of language and exploring a bit over the next 5 or so weeks. We also met up with Ela, a friend that I met playing frisbee in Potsdam. Ela is now an exchange student that has been in Turkey for about a month (taking language classes) and had just arrived in Istanbul about 10 days ago. She is now on holiday and decided to spend a couple days with us exploring parts of the city as well. We were very lucky that she had been there long enough to figure out public transport system and know the basic layout of the city. This made our lives much much easier.
Istanbul is a very large (> 10 million people) sprawling city. I think it is one of the cleanest cities I have been in a long time – if ever. The older parts of the city (near the water) is very touristy, but unlike any other city I have been in. The outside areas reminded me of the hills outside of Los Angeles – areas like Riverside, Palmdale, etc – stripped away hills filled with row after row of apartments and townhouses and malls and ‘modernization’ that all looks the same to each other and every other suburb in the world. I found Istanbul (the old parts) to be a pretty amazing city. Very European, full of beautiful people, crazy loud, crazy traffic, full of cats, generally friendly people, hot, at times very different, and full of energy.
On Thursday afternoon, Ela met us at the airport (Ed arrived from Fairbanks about 45 minutes after I did) and we headed back to our hostel (The hostel was very nice. I wish we had a bit more time just to enjoy breakfast and enjoy the view of the water. I would stay there again if I ever get the chance to return). After grabbing a quick snack, we headed toward the Beyoglu district. This was a fun place. Tons of people on the street, bands playing everywhere, lots of music, horns, noise, energy, and life. It is actually the type of place I was very much expecting Bucharest to be, but wasn’t (at least we couldn’t find it). Ela called a friend and got directions to a local restaurant and was completely unmarked. Directions – go to the shoe store on the corner, turn left until the tobacco store, across the street go into the building with an elevator, and go to the top. No signs, no numbers, that’s it. It as a bit strange. But we ended up eating on top of a roof with very good food and friendly service. Beer is expensive though.
Friday morning came and we were unexpectedly awoken by church prayers being blasted over a system of loud speakers at 5 a.m.! We were there during Ramadan, but apparently the happens every single day. I am not sure if it is the worst or best alarm clock I have ever experienced. I guess I would call it the worst just due to the time, but if it was an hour or two later, it would most definitely be the most effective one. At breakfast, we saw a large ship with big guns, a helicopter, and flying an US flag come floating by. I found myself wondering ‘what the f$§k is that doing here?’ I then realized that the country of Georgia is fairly close by… I still wonder though. After breakfast, we met up with Ela and went on the big tour of Istanbul. We started off with the Blue Mosque, then the Mosaic Musium, then Aya Sofya… All this before lunch.
After lunch we went to the Bizaar districts of Istanbul, hitting the spice market, the Grand Market, taking a ferry across to Asia (I have now stepped foot in Asia!) to Kadikoy, then back to Beyoglu district to the tower to watch the sunset. I found the spice market pretty amazing and the Grand Market very overwhelming. Kadikoy was a very cool district with a university feel to it. Lots of young people, alternative shops, nice market, lots of cafes, etc. The tower at sunset was very crowded, but it had a nice view.
Saturday was a short day. We were all a bit lethargic. I am not sure if it was because of our crazy schedule yesterday or just the weather – it was hot and muggy. Something seemed to suck the life out of us. We ventured into the Topkapi Palace and wandered around for a few hours. It was pretty nice – full of gardens, lots of tile work (very nice), etc. There were a lot of people there – too many for all of us and our morning mood. After a pretty bad lunch (especially for Ela and her vegi pizza), we went to the Basilica Cistern – an underground cavern for holding water – still in its original condition. The Cistern was very cool and good way to end the trip.
I really enjoyed the weekend. I wish I had more time there. If given a chance, I think Istanbul could become one of my favorite cities. It was very big and crowded, so maybe just for short bursts, but still very very cool and worth many many return trips.
The one bad thing are these things. They are eveywhere. I found out the hard way that they are quite painful on the shin when you are not paying attention! I cracked my head a couple times in the hostel as well.
It seems to me that that same people that are accusing supporters of Obama of drinking Kool-Aid are drinking from the same bucket. The coverage of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate is completely unbelievable. The more I read and learn about her, the more frightened I become — and I am now very afraid.
The video speaks to the title of this post…. These guys are morons.
Yesterday, I went with the Goldfingers (or Fast Switchers, I am not sure) to Leipzig to play in a 1-day beach tournament. The tournament consisted of 24 teams from all over Germany. The team consisted of a few people with multiple years experience and a few more people with only a year or so experience. We were definitely an inbetween-er team – too experienced to play in the junior division (which we did) and not good enough to be really competitive in the more competitive division. I went in with very low expectations – just wanting to throw, swim, and run a bit for a day – and I was not disappointed in the least. A very good and fun day.
The day started out pretty cool and cloudy (I started out with a jacket on in the morning). I was not in the least prepared the sun and heat that came about noon. I ended up getting pretty baked – my face, arms, and legs are quite lobster red looking now – not as bad was my sunburn in Florida – but still pretty bad.
Our team did pretty well. I don’t think we lost any games, although we tied a few. Our first few games were pretty competitive, our last few were not very competitive at all. A few things I liked that were a bit different – the score was kept by hanging socks (white and black) on a clothes line (see image at the top of the post) and games ended on a whistle. The whistle signaled three passes remaining – play stopped afterward. No hard or soft caps, no adding points, just three passes and finished. Done. Clean and simple. I guess you have to have it that way when you are running a 24 team tournament in 1 day on 4 fields.
The girl haning socks in the top picture is Jenny from Leipzig. I have played with her with the Mother Tongue team before. She is much different condition than the last time I saw her.
For almost 2 years now, I have been placing all my change that is less than 1 Euro in these two bags (the bags contain 0.50, 0.20, 0.10, 0.05, 0.02, and 0.01 EUR coins). I am planning on going to the bank this week (probably Thursday) and have the money counted. I have no clue how much is in there – I am hoping for around 5000 EUR, but I imagine it is much less than that. Any guesses?
UPDATE: When I started counting, I was thinking that realistically there would be somewhere between 80-100 EUR. The total is 345.45 EUR. The little ones add up after a while.
