The trip from Aachen to Geneva was largely uneventful. I was conscious that I'd probably made a mistake by flying rather than taking trains, but I was happy to just live with it. I had a couple of hours at Heathrow, during which I principally amused myself by grinning about Australia having beaten England in another ODI.
Geneva, on this trip, struck me as a distinctly dirty city. This was an odd impression to take away, since it wasn't one I'd had on my previous visit 10 years ago, nor did it fit with my general stereotype of Switzerland, of order and organisation. Admittedly, my hotel was near the main railway station - never a good location in a European city, but I felt neither impressed nor even particularly safe walking around the streets looking (without great satisfaction) for a decent restaurant.
For the rest of the trip:
Showing posts with label germany. Show all posts
Showing posts with label germany. Show all posts
Monday, 27 January 2014
Aachen
The dust is deep on this blog, but on my recent work/holiday trip to Aachen and the Jura, respectively, I felt compelled to write, and did. So, here follow, in episodes correspondingly loosely to days, those accounts.
The first week of my trip bears little discussion, really. Most days consisted of catching a cab around daybreak from the hotel out to the university, where we worked through the day writing and talking about the book, with lunches at the uni cafeteria. We generally broke between 7 and 8 for dinner in town somewhere. For the most part the days were uneventful and the dinners nothing to write home about (although one of the restaurants was apparently the birthplace of Reuters).
The change in Aachen on the Saturday was quite remarkable. Throughout the week, the streets in the evenings and particularly in the mornings had seemed almost deserted, but come Saturday the town was filled with people.
It was a lovely sunny day, and I'm not sure from whence they'd come (visiting from out of town or just emerging from the suburbs), but the town was buzzing with people from all walks. I had a couple of nice walks around town, past the town hall and cathedral, both bristling with a half dozen different architectural styles all mashed together over the centuries.
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| View from hotel room in Aachen |
The first week of my trip bears little discussion, really. Most days consisted of catching a cab around daybreak from the hotel out to the university, where we worked through the day writing and talking about the book, with lunches at the uni cafeteria. We generally broke between 7 and 8 for dinner in town somewhere. For the most part the days were uneventful and the dinners nothing to write home about (although one of the restaurants was apparently the birthplace of Reuters).
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| The Dom in Aachen |
The change in Aachen on the Saturday was quite remarkable. Throughout the week, the streets in the evenings and particularly in the mornings had seemed almost deserted, but come Saturday the town was filled with people.
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| The back of the Aachen town hall |
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| The front of the Aachen town hall |
Saturday, 21 April 2012
Berlin wrap-up
Having been so energetic about blogging during the first week and half of my trip through Europe, it behooves me to finish off the story a little.
My original purpose for being in Berlin, other than establishing and reaffirming relationships with various other researchers, was to attend the DSAL workshop, where I was coauthor of a paper with some collaborators from Germany and Luxembourg. That was done by Tuesday, so in theory at least, I was a little more at my leisure for the rest of the week. In practice, it changed little; I wasn't presenting the paper anyway, and we in fact spent more of the week working on a paper submitted the following week.
During the DSAL workshop, in one of the duller talks (yes, there are dull talks at academic workshops - a shocking revelation, I know), when I wasn't plotting running tracks, I discovered that there was a concert in town on Wednesday night by the Shai Maestro Trio.
Shai Maestro is a young Israeli pianist who played on a couple of albums by Avishai Cohen, who has in recent years been probably my favourite jazz performer. Maestro's playing had really impressed me, and I have been looking forward to his new album (now released, in fact), so I was pretty excited at the prospect of being able to see him live. The gig was at 10pm in town, necessitating a train a little after 9, and upon inspection, the conference social event, a boat cruise, was scheduled in the programme to finish at 9, right next to the train station, so I figured I was all good.
The boat cruise was pretty good, out on the lake around which I had run earlier in the week. The company was also good - as I had been for much of the week, I surrounded myself with French-speakers - Jacques, Max, Jean-Marc (who came along for the Wednesday and Thursday morning), Phillipe from Nice and Joerg from Montreal. We had some really interesting discussions, about French politics, Swiss ice-skating, and Dan Simmons novels, and the time passed quickly.
By around 8:45pm, though, I was getting antsy - the boat showed no sign of returning to port, and time was marching on. Time continued its march, and by around 9:30pm, still not ashore, I had resigned myself to missing not only the start of the gig, but most of it. We ended up getting back to shore a little after 10pm, and with a 15 minute wait for a train, I decided that the game was lost, and headed dejectedly back to my hotel.
I felt particularly guilty at missing the concert as I had boasted over Skype to Paul, another Avishai devotee and Shai Maestro admirer, about going to the gig, and telling him I had been in Berlin and still missed it was an unappealing prospect.
As much as I had a good time on the boat cruise, I'd still rather have seen the gig.
My original purpose for being in Berlin, other than establishing and reaffirming relationships with various other researchers, was to attend the DSAL workshop, where I was coauthor of a paper with some collaborators from Germany and Luxembourg. That was done by Tuesday, so in theory at least, I was a little more at my leisure for the rest of the week. In practice, it changed little; I wasn't presenting the paper anyway, and we in fact spent more of the week working on a paper submitted the following week.
During the DSAL workshop, in one of the duller talks (yes, there are dull talks at academic workshops - a shocking revelation, I know), when I wasn't plotting running tracks, I discovered that there was a concert in town on Wednesday night by the Shai Maestro Trio.
Shai Maestro is a young Israeli pianist who played on a couple of albums by Avishai Cohen, who has in recent years been probably my favourite jazz performer. Maestro's playing had really impressed me, and I have been looking forward to his new album (now released, in fact), so I was pretty excited at the prospect of being able to see him live. The gig was at 10pm in town, necessitating a train a little after 9, and upon inspection, the conference social event, a boat cruise, was scheduled in the programme to finish at 9, right next to the train station, so I figured I was all good.
The boat cruise was pretty good, out on the lake around which I had run earlier in the week. The company was also good - as I had been for much of the week, I surrounded myself with French-speakers - Jacques, Max, Jean-Marc (who came along for the Wednesday and Thursday morning), Phillipe from Nice and Joerg from Montreal. We had some really interesting discussions, about French politics, Swiss ice-skating, and Dan Simmons novels, and the time passed quickly.
By around 8:45pm, though, I was getting antsy - the boat showed no sign of returning to port, and time was marching on. Time continued its march, and by around 9:30pm, still not ashore, I had resigned myself to missing not only the start of the gig, but most of it. We ended up getting back to shore a little after 10pm, and with a 15 minute wait for a train, I decided that the game was lost, and headed dejectedly back to my hotel.
I felt particularly guilty at missing the concert as I had boasted over Skype to Paul, another Avishai devotee and Shai Maestro admirer, about going to the gig, and telling him I had been in Berlin and still missed it was an unappealing prospect.
As much as I had a good time on the boat cruise, I'd still rather have seen the gig.
Wednesday, 28 March 2012
More running and eating in Babelsberg
I went out for another run last night. Based on advice from a local Oracle researcher at the conference on Monday, I had modified my original plan, of skirting around the northern edge of Babelsberg, to instead head across a bridge and up to Klein Glenicke, and the Volkspark of the same name.
Like my previous run, my route took me along a shared cycling/pedestrian path flanked on one side by the shore of the lake and on the other by forest in the first early blooms of spring. I get the feeling that the Volkspark, like Park Babelsberg, had a few old buildings hidden away in the forest set back and up from the shore. Unlike my previous run, though, I was further from home, so I was a little loathe to take diversions. So I pretty much just stuck to the lakeside, stopping from time to time at the jetties or benches to take photos across the lake. There were a bunch of other cyclists (mostly) and runners (a few) out on the path, and I was in a pretty good mood.
In the end, I probably went a little further than I had planned. I had entertained the idea of stopping at a bar, Wirsthaus Moorlake, squirrelled away in a bay, but I felt good, so I ran on another kilometre or two to another bar at Pfaueninsel, a tiny little ferry stop for people going across to the castles on the island across the strait.
On my way home, I ran past the local soccer stadium, home of the Babelsberg club in the Bundesliga 3 (although possibly not for long). They had a match on against the oddly named Kickers Offenbach (which they went on to lose), and it was interesting to see the enthusiasm generated, in the form of giant flags and the full stadium, and to hear, in the guise of singing and, I suppose, the full stadium. There were police outside the stadium, too, which I guess is the flipside of the enthusiasm (although I'd argue that this is more characteristic of soccer enthusiasm than general sporting enthusiasm), but it was still nice to see.
After the run, I met up with Jacques and Max for dinner. We hit up what I guess is a typical German restaurant, and had pretty typical food, I guess: currywurst, schnitzel, and a giant plate of ribs for me, which almost certainly negated any health benefits of my 12km run, but was a great source of sticky pleasure while I was eating them :)
Like my previous run, my route took me along a shared cycling/pedestrian path flanked on one side by the shore of the lake and on the other by forest in the first early blooms of spring. I get the feeling that the Volkspark, like Park Babelsberg, had a few old buildings hidden away in the forest set back and up from the shore. Unlike my previous run, though, I was further from home, so I was a little loathe to take diversions. So I pretty much just stuck to the lakeside, stopping from time to time at the jetties or benches to take photos across the lake. There were a bunch of other cyclists (mostly) and runners (a few) out on the path, and I was in a pretty good mood.
In the end, I probably went a little further than I had planned. I had entertained the idea of stopping at a bar, Wirsthaus Moorlake, squirrelled away in a bay, but I felt good, so I ran on another kilometre or two to another bar at Pfaueninsel, a tiny little ferry stop for people going across to the castles on the island across the strait.
On my way home, I ran past the local soccer stadium, home of the Babelsberg club in the Bundesliga 3 (although possibly not for long). They had a match on against the oddly named Kickers Offenbach (which they went on to lose), and it was interesting to see the enthusiasm generated, in the form of giant flags and the full stadium, and to hear, in the guise of singing and, I suppose, the full stadium. There were police outside the stadium, too, which I guess is the flipside of the enthusiasm (although I'd argue that this is more characteristic of soccer enthusiasm than general sporting enthusiasm), but it was still nice to see.
After the run, I met up with Jacques and Max for dinner. We hit up what I guess is a typical German restaurant, and had pretty typical food, I guess: currywurst, schnitzel, and a giant plate of ribs for me, which almost certainly negated any health benefits of my 12km run, but was a great source of sticky pleasure while I was eating them :)
Tuesday, 27 March 2012
An evening in Potsdam
On Sunday night I arrived in Potsdam for the second of my four-week swing through Europe (with apologies to British separatists). So far, I have been impressed by how helpful everyone has been. On leaving the airport, I immediately struggled with my extremely weak grasp of German, trying and failing to buy a ticket on the bus. Fortunately, though, a German hostess helped me out, and I managed to navigate my way to Charlottenburg S-bahn and from there to Babelsberg and my hotel. After orienting myself, and not having colleagues to meet (for a change), I decided to head out for a run.
Babelsberg, it seems, and Potsdam more broadly, is surrounded by parks, forests and lakes. According to google maps (thank goodness for hotel wifi), the closest of these green and blue blobs to my hotel is Park Babelsberg, so it was in that direction that I set out, headphones in, and braced against the single-figure temperature.
I had probably run about 300 metres when I became aware of a man running beside me wearing business attire and waving. As I stopped, so did he, bent over puffing and panting to regain his breath, before rising and handing me the key to my hotel room. Apparently it had fallen from my pocket a while back, and he had been chasing me to return it. I think my lack of German made it difficult for him to tell me to be careful as sternly as he would have wanted, and it certainly made it difficult for me to be as effusive in my thanks as his good deed warranted.
Ed: At this point I would love to embed the map for the run, along with the pictures I took, but runkeeper's embeddable maps are broken at the moment. Anyway, it can be found at http://runkeeper.com/user/jimsteel/activity/77584686, including a few pictures.
I ran on, past the local football stadium and across into Park Babelsberg. Almost immediately I was greeted by what a naive Australian would call a castle, but which I suppose in reality is just one building amongst some kind of feudal estate. As I ran on I encountered more, and more various, buildings, in very good condition and with scatterings of people wandering around looking at them. I ran on, along the edge of the lake (the Tiefer See), past a bar serving cyclists watching the sunset over the lake, around to a small bridge near a university embedded into the forest.
Running back, I abandoned my simple and easily followed route, and just wandered amongst the little trails winding through the park, heading towards and around towers and stately homes at whim. By the time I got back, I had racked up 7 or 8km, which I was happy with, given how long I had gone without running.
After showering, I again headed out, in search of dinner. I wandered into an Italian restaurant near the hotel, and sat down. Throughout the meal, I answered the waiter's fairly predictable questions in stuttering, broken German. He obviously knew I didn't speak much, but he humoured me and allowed me to struggle on, which I liked. The food itself, some bruschetta followed by tagliatelle with a gorgonzola, spinach and walnut sauce, was pretty good. I made the mistake, though, of ordering Lambrusco on the strength that it was the only red wine I recognised. I should perhaps have considered that the basis for my recognition was more of notoriety than renown - it was a pretty ordinary excuse for wine, especially for my Australian palate. Nonetheless, I was pretty happy sitting there, as the other patrons chatted away in German and I stared contentedly out the window at the sleepy boulevard.
Babelsberg, it seems, and Potsdam more broadly, is surrounded by parks, forests and lakes. According to google maps (thank goodness for hotel wifi), the closest of these green and blue blobs to my hotel is Park Babelsberg, so it was in that direction that I set out, headphones in, and braced against the single-figure temperature.
I had probably run about 300 metres when I became aware of a man running beside me wearing business attire and waving. As I stopped, so did he, bent over puffing and panting to regain his breath, before rising and handing me the key to my hotel room. Apparently it had fallen from my pocket a while back, and he had been chasing me to return it. I think my lack of German made it difficult for him to tell me to be careful as sternly as he would have wanted, and it certainly made it difficult for me to be as effusive in my thanks as his good deed warranted.
Ed: At this point I would love to embed the map for the run, along with the pictures I took, but runkeeper's embeddable maps are broken at the moment. Anyway, it can be found at http://runkeeper.com/user/jimsteel/activity/77584686, including a few pictures.
I ran on, past the local football stadium and across into Park Babelsberg. Almost immediately I was greeted by what a naive Australian would call a castle, but which I suppose in reality is just one building amongst some kind of feudal estate. As I ran on I encountered more, and more various, buildings, in very good condition and with scatterings of people wandering around looking at them. I ran on, along the edge of the lake (the Tiefer See), past a bar serving cyclists watching the sunset over the lake, around to a small bridge near a university embedded into the forest.
Running back, I abandoned my simple and easily followed route, and just wandered amongst the little trails winding through the park, heading towards and around towers and stately homes at whim. By the time I got back, I had racked up 7 or 8km, which I was happy with, given how long I had gone without running.
After showering, I again headed out, in search of dinner. I wandered into an Italian restaurant near the hotel, and sat down. Throughout the meal, I answered the waiter's fairly predictable questions in stuttering, broken German. He obviously knew I didn't speak much, but he humoured me and allowed me to struggle on, which I liked. The food itself, some bruschetta followed by tagliatelle with a gorgonzola, spinach and walnut sauce, was pretty good. I made the mistake, though, of ordering Lambrusco on the strength that it was the only red wine I recognised. I should perhaps have considered that the basis for my recognition was more of notoriety than renown - it was a pretty ordinary excuse for wine, especially for my Australian palate. Nonetheless, I was pretty happy sitting there, as the other patrons chatted away in German and I stared contentedly out the window at the sleepy boulevard.
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