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Chaos House
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2 February, 2005
Well, here I am in Sydney. The flight was awesome, my first with Emirates. There was a screen in the back of every seat on which passengers could play games, watch movies or TV, or the view in front of and underneath the aircraft. It didn't matter that I didn't have a window seat, I had a great view, and I watched a movie of my own choosing. Some day I'll have to add a page describing my impressions of various airlines. The guy next to me had a bit of a problem though, his screen kept crashing with a segfault in vgalib. I was amused, but he wasn't, so I lent him my New Scientist to pass the time.
I had no trouble getting through customs, and Chris found me easily enough (he's always been good at that. I could rely on him to turn up if I stayed in the same place for more than a few minutes at WWDC.) I was introduced to his flatmate's boyfriend Geoff, who had driven Chris to the airport.
When we arrived at the flats, there was no mistaking which car park belonged to Chaos House (the name of Chris and Jess's flat.) It was half full of stacked up computers. The flat itself is not much different. From my vantage point on the couch I can see twelve monitors, a blue & white G3, a half-full server rack, various anonymous computer towers, a stack of SPARC servers, some bits of disassembled computers, a Sega Dreamcast, a Nintendo GameCube, a Nintendo 64, a Playstation 2, a media server named Jukebox, and an AV switch (for switching between the games consoles). There are other things currently obscured by the rack. Oh yeah, and a TV, though I don't think anyone watches TV on it. The house is currently in the middle of a disk space crisis... there's about a terabyte all up and it's mostly full.
That night, and the next day, were spent mainly lazing around playing with computers and games consoles, and watching anime. The next day was Monday, so after playing with my computer and being subjected to some more anime, I followed Chris to work at the University of Sydney. There we went to see the Mac Mini which somebody had acquired, acquiring followers on the way in Wizard of Oz style. The Mac Mini is... small. Width and depth just big enough to fit an optical drive, and not as high as one of my business cards. After that, we looked up some travel information I needed online, met a few more people, and then had lunch. I had intended to do some sightseeing, but by the time all this had happened there was only an hour until I'd arranged to meet back up with Chris again, and there isn't even time to get lost and found again in an hour. I stayed in his air-conditioned office and read while Chris completed a day's work at super-speed (at least, I'm going to say he did a day's work, in case his boss is reading this.) Our last act was to go to the media lab to burn the latest build of Tiger (which we'd downloaded the previous night) to DVD.
By then it was time to meet one of Chris's friends, who will also be going to the Tiger Tech Talk. I can't think of anything to say about that right now, we just sat around drinking (juice etc, not that kind of drinking) and talking for a while until Jess turned up. The plan had been to visit JB Hi-Fi but by the time Jess arrived it would have been about to close, so we just went home.
The next day I was determined to get some sightseeing done. The most important thing to do was go to the top of CentrePoint tower and take some pictures... I've already mentioned that I like to take pictures from high up. The ticket I bought included the Sky Tour, which was a presentation of the history of Australia in two parts. First was a series of short displays involving static scenery with holographic people and other objects moving around in front of it. That was pretty neat. Then there was one of those things where the seats move in coordination with what's being shown on the big screen. It makes use of Newton's observation that the state of uniform motion is indistinguishable from the state of rest. Just by rumbling the chairs a bit and displaying fast-moving scenery on the screen, it created the sensation that we were moving at great speed. That was fun.
After that I met Chris again by the steps of the town hall (a popular meeting place) and we met up with Jess, went to JB Hi-Fi, and bought too many CDs. On the way home Chris mentioned that new PowerBooks had come out that day. That was great news for me, since I have an ADC Hardware Discount which expires on February 26th, and I was afraid the PowerBooks would probably be revamped soon after that expired. I have now placed an order for a brand spanking new PowerBook.
When we got home, I checked my mail to find another staggeringly great piece of news. On my third attempt, I have been 'selected by CERN in accordance with its contract to provide Research Training Activities financed by the European Commission, under the Marie Curie Early Stage Training programme.' That means I'll be moving to Geneva in March and working at CERN for two years. What makes this even more startling is, the information in my application had not been updated since I originally applied for a completely different fellowship over a year ago. I originally applied for the fellowship programme, and when the Marie Curie programme started my application was automatically put forward for that. I didn't get into either, so I applied again after returning from my visit to CERN, but was unable to update any of the details because the new Marie Curie job had the same ID in CERN's database as the old one. If the same application which was not good enough the first time around is good enough now, then either the job description is more suitable for me or one of the people I met at CERN pulled some strings. They didn't seem to be in the appropriate positions to do so though.
Anyway, things will be much easier because I already know my way around some of Geneva and CERN. I'll get to learn French too, which is a bonus. We English speakers have it far too easy. Most of the Europeans I met knew two or more languages fluently, but the English speakers can just visit without knowing a jot of the host language.
Today I wore my CERN T-shirt, and went to Chris's work again. There was a presentation on computers and music at 2p.m which we planned to go to. I was intending to have a look around near the university before then, but the pull of the air conditioned office and Chris's iBook were too strong. I enjoyed myself anyway. One of Chris's other friends swung by, and she was quite fun to talk to.
The presentation was interesting, it was by Barry Vercoe, a New Zealander who has done great things at MIT's media lab. I think Rob would have liked it.
Soon after we got home, my friend Carla called to congratulate me on the CERN appointment and reveal the hitherto secret date of her upcoming wedding. I'll have to see if I can delay moving to Geneva until mid-March so I can attend the wedding -- hopefully it won't be a problem as the foreseen start date of March 1 is not set in stone. That would probably work better for my tragically understaffed team at work and also give me more time to sort stuff out. I'll update you once the date has been decided.
Later that night, we had roast kangaroo for dinner. It tastes of... kangaroo, and whatever it was seasoned with. Interesting.
Across the ditch
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16 January 2005
Well, I didn't think I'd be planning another trip so soon, but I'm off to Sydney on the 29th. It's all because I went to WWDC. With my WWDC ticket I got the 'Getting Started' bundle, which includes a year's ADC Select membership. That gives me free admission to the Tiger Tech Talks.
Also as a result of going to WWDC, I have a whole lot of airpoints, which I could have used for the flights to and from Sydney if only it were possible to get in contact with Thai Air to do so. I ended up buying $119 flights from Flight Centre. The tax works out to be almost equal to the fares.
While in Sydney I'll be staying with Chris, whom I met at WWDC. No doubt he'll be introducing me to all his other geek friends. It'll be great.
I'll update the itinerary and people pages later, for now I'll just tell you that I'll return from Sydney on February 6th. Geneva
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10 October 2004
I flew from Frankfurt to Geneva as promised. Took a taxi to the hostel -- it's only five minutes' walk from the main bus/train station, but that equates to ten minutes' walk for me, or probably half an hour's walk for me pulling a 26kg suitcase. I had pretty much half the day left, in which I did very little.
The next day was Sunday, the only day of the week when CERN's Microcosm exhibition is closed. I wandered down to the lake and had a look around... saw some boats, ducks, swans, and birds I'd never seen before. Also, there's a 120m tall jet of water, which I'd seen from the plane. It's really impressive, the kind of thing that might have been used as an example in a continuum mechanics course. I also saw a couple of pretty fancy monuments.
On the way home I located the correct stop at Gare Cornavin for the bus to CERN, which was not a particularly easy task. I waited for the bus to ensure that it is indeed unmistakeably marked '9 CERN', and then I went back to the hostel.
The next day I went to CERN and spent the whole day slowly and thoroughly looking around the Microcosm exhibition. The first things I saw when I entered the reception building were the iMacs (complete with old striped Apple stickers) being used by the receptionists. There was also an iMac G4 at the end of the corridor leading to Microcosm. As well as a variety of things inside, there's a garden containing actual pieces of the old LEP collider. Pretty cool. I sat in the garden listening to the Cernettes for a little while, and then found that I couldn't get back inside, until a cleaner came and opened the door.
At some point I went to get some lunch from a nearby service station (CERN's restaurants are off-limits to the public) and sat and ate it in front of the reception. From there I had a good view of the Globe of Innovation.
After I'd looked at everything, I bought too much stuff at the souvenir shop, just like I did at the Apple Campus. The reason is the same -- 'when am I ever going to be here again?' and so is the answer to that rhetorical question... when I work there.
It's CERN's 50th anniversary this year, and although I'd be back in NZ before their open day, I'd read that on Wednesday (the actual anniversary) they were having a celebration including the illumination of the LHC ring. The celebration was in Crozet, France, so I asked whether there was any way of getting there via public transport. They didn't know of anything. I spent much of Tuesday trying to find some way on the internet, but couldn't, so I figured I'd just go to CERN on Wednesday (which I was going to do anyway, for my visit) and hope I could get a lift to Crozet somehow. There would surely be people from CERN going to CERN's anniversary.
On Wednesday was my scheduled CERN visit -- anyone can arrange to have a tour of CERN including a visit to an actual experimental area. Before the visit I had another look at Microcosm, taking better pictures of the world's first web server and looking at the Grid Cafe. As I was coming out of Microcosm the person from reception who I'd spoken to on Monday happened to see me, and asked if I'd had any luck finding a way to Crozet. I said I hadn't, but I'd ask if anyone else in the visit was going. While I was sitting around waiting for the visit time, I overheard some people on the couch talking about the event at Crozet, so I asked if I could get a lift with them. One of them turned out to be the commissioner for the event, who couldn't take me because she had to go with somebody equally important-sounding. She was apologetic about the lack of transport and said if she'd known about the problem a week ago she would have arranged something, and that she'd try to work something out.
After an introductory video and talk, we went to see parts of the ATLAS experiment being assembled. That was at some part of CERN which was in France. We didn't get to finish the talk, because somebody else had to use that room, so we went back there later for the rest of the introduction. I was wearing my 'God Said...' T-shirt, and while our guide was explaining about the old ideas of ether, he got me to stand up and turn around to show everyone Maxwell's equations. Later on he thanked me for wearing the shirt, and mentioned a shirt with the equations using nabla notation, which now that I think about it would look a lot more elegant.
After the tour, I arrived at reception to hear a man asking whether there was any transport to Crozet, and being told he was the fourth person to ask that. I told him to wait while I contacted the commissioner to find out whether she had worked anything out, but she'd been too busy organising other things. I sat back down and talked to the man, whose name is Richard. It turns out he works for MFS, a company which handles some of CERN's superannuation funds and also sponsored the creation of one of CERN's 50th anniversary videos, and he'd arrived too late to get a lift with a colleague. He would get to Crozet somehow though, and I could go with him. After a few failed attempts at ordering taxis (both from Swiss taxi companies and French ones) he called his contact at CERN who arranged for someone else to pick us up.
When we got to the venue Richard and I got some cans of drink and stood around talking. We seemed to be the only people there speaking English. The band of the Geneva police marched past playing music, and somebody else from the police gave me a torch with a Geneva Police sticker on it. We later figured out that it was probably for using the port-a-loos at night.
As the speeches started I walked straight into an area where I later found out only people with invitations are supposed to go. Richard had some trouble getting in there but joined me eventually, which meant we had some free nibbles. The speeches were in French, which he could understand some of. I understood the occasional word, the kind of words that are spelled identically in French but pronounced almost unrecognisably, but it wasn't particularly enlightening.
Later we were paraded to the observation platform, to see the LHC ring lit up with spotlights above ground. I thought something must have malfunctioned, because I could only see about five lights so they didn't obviously describe a ring like they do in the promotional picture. I found out later that really was all the spotlights that were planned... I suppose mathematically you only need four points to specify a unique ellipse, so there's no need to waste spotlights. That's what happens when you get a bunch of physicists to plan a birthday party.
After that was more music, and the birthday cake. Even the sign on the cake was edible, and I saw somebody carefully peel off the word 'CERN' to eat it. The cake was surrounded for about half an hour, with people fighting to get some, so I was surprised that there was still some left when the mob dispersed. It was a delicious cake, which seemed to be made almost entirely of cream and partially frozen boysenberries.
We watched a message from Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the web) over a video link to Boston. He was only the second speaker of the night to be speaking English, and it was difficult to hear what he was saying due to the low-quality sound. At some point I spotted a CERN lectern with nobody behind it, so I got Richard to take a picture of me standing behind it. I was wearing my CERN sweatshirt so I looked the part.
We arranged that Paola (Richard's CERN contact who arranged the lift there, and who also introduced the speakers etc... at least, I think that's what she was doing, but she was speaking French so it was difficult to tell) would give us a ride back to CERN. Before that we had some champagne and a chat. When I mentioned I'd applied unsuccessfully for a few fellowships at CERN, Paola gave me details of someone I should contact about getting involved with computing at CERN.
I must mention Paola's top. It glows green, thanks to fibre optic fabric technology developed at CERN (they don't just chase invisible particles around!) She has a bag made out of the same stuff, only purple. It's not on the market yet but I reckon it'll be popular, at least in nightclub and safety gear.
The next day I emailed the person Paola gave me the details of, and got a reply within five minutes saying that he'd get his colleague Matti to show me around the computer centre and discuss non-standard ways to get involved in computing-related work at CERN. And that's what we did! We had coffee in one of the CERN cafes first, which in itself is pretty cool since the general public are generally told to go to the service station across the road to get food. Well, it might be only across the road but once you add in walking to the nearest traffic lights and back, it's about as far away as France. Yeah, I actually could have walked to France.
Anyway, we looked around the computing centre, with all its thousands of computers and space being prepared for more. Like giant server rooms, with tape silos complete with robotic arms to pick the tapes out. There was some interesting old hardware on display in a cabinet somewhere, and pictures/articles similar to the ones in Microcosm. I wish I'd taken more pictures but I was busy listening and talking. I found out what sort of thing to get involved with to end up at CERN, but I don't think it's going to be easy in NZ... there's a map on one of the signs I saw during my visit, demonstrating the international collaboration CERN relies on, and NZ is not even on the map. I prefer the map at Grace's place, with Europe in the centre and a NZ on each edge. Still, Ian Foster, who practically invented the grid, comes from NZ.
That was my last time at CERN for now... that afternoon I went on a cruise around Lake Geneva. We saw all the famous buildings and houses, such as the UN building, but mostly from quite a distance. We also passed close enough to the waterspout to feel some spray, and I got some nice pictures of the rainbow in it.
The next day was my last full day in Geneva, so my last chance to fill every remaining space in my suitcase with souvenirs. Most of the standard souvenirs are available at a good price at the hostel itself, but I spent most of the day looking around souvenir shops at the variety of T-shirts.
My flight home wasn't scheduled to leave until late Sunday evening. Although my suitcase was locked in a day locker at the hostel and not easily accessible for adding more souvenirs, I had most of that day for sightseeing. I decided to visit a cafe/clothes shop with free wireless internet which Matti had told me about, which meant crossing to the other side of the lake for the first time. On the way over I noticed a whole lot of people going the other way, and wondered what was happening on 'my' side of the lake. I went for a ride on a solar powered train along the edge of the lake, which was a fun way of seeing the major sights of that side. I also saw a cloud of helium balloons being released on the other side, confirming my suspicions that something was going on there.
On my way to the cafe/clothes shop, I came to realise that most of the shops were closed due to it being Sunday. Cafes were open, however, so I wondered whether the cafe/clothes shop would be open. It wasn't. Still, it was a good motivation for getting to see that side of the lake. I had a doner kebab and wandered back across the lake, to find that there was some sort of trade-aid gala going on. It didn't look as interesting as the number of people would suggest, but perhaps I'm just saying that because I was on the wrong side of the lake for it. I had a brief look around, took a picture of what I think was Mont Blanc in the distance, and went back to the hostel.
There were no major dramas getting back home. I got to ride on the cool monorail Grace had told me about between terminals in the Frankfurt airport. When I arrived at home there were two things in the letterbox for me... the DVDs of WWDC, and my first issue of New Scientist since I suspended my subscription before leaving - a week earlier than the issue they said they'd restart the subscription at, but just on time. I had contemplated buying that issue at the airport in Singapore but bought the one before it instead, so things worked out pretty well. The next day the box of stuff I'd sent home from Canada, and an Apple Developer Connection CD arrived in the mail. I look forward to more packages from myself in the next few months.
Yesterday I went to the inaugural Macintosh expo conference thingy, and caught up with a few Mac people I hadn't seen for ages. Tomorrow I'll be going back to work, to use Windows for the first time in ages... aarrghh! It's nice to be doing so many interesting things that you forget some...
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24 September 2004, on the train to Frankfurt
Well, I actually forgot a few important things in the last update. After the river cruise on Saturday (which coincidentally was on the boat called Johannes Kepler) I went to the Kepler museum, where they were participating in a special 'long night of the stars' (which might not be a good translation but that's the gist of it) where they had two people acting out Kepler's life. I didn't understand very much of what they were saying, but I was enthralled anyway, because they were such good actors... the way they spoke was very dramatic, especially as they could roll their Rs and pronounce that weird German 'ch' sound so well.
Also, on Monday after having lunch with the police but before going to see Barbara, I wanted to do my usual thing of getting to the top of a tower and taking pictures. The tower that you have to pay to go up was closed, so Grace told me about another tower in a park nearby, which is not as tall, but free to go up. The view wasn't incredible but the tower was great. It was like a castle tower from a fairy tale or something. When I opened the door at the top of the steps I half expected to see a wizened old lady spinning, or somebody with extremely long blonde hair who didn't realise there's a door.
I think that's all I'd forgotten. Oh yeah, and the milk here tastes very nice, even though it's longlife milk. Some of it claims to be alpine milk, from mountain cows I suppose. We saw some cows on the Stanserhorn while we were on our way up it on the Europe tour. Somebody was wondering whether they were as sure-footed as mountain goats, and right on cue one of them fell over.
This morning brought the usual frantic search, this time for my document wallet containing my passports, plane tickets, and other important stuff. It had somehow ended up in a suitcase of Grace's which had recently been moved to my room. Ilse took me to the station, and just as I was hopping on the train Grace (who was on her lunch break) arrived at the platform to say goodbye.
I guess I'm just going to have to get a day of internet at the hotel in Frankfurt so I can post this.
Okay, here I am at the hotel with my day of internet, which I won't be able to use the whole day of since I'll be leaving early in the morning to catch a flight to Geneva.
Wow, I got a much better reception at Hotel National this time, and I don't mean AirPort reception (that was good both times.) Last time the guy at reception couldn't speak very much English, and didn't know how to give me the password for a day of internet. He was nice enough, even asking if I wanted a room nearer the street or toward the back where it would be quieter, but just gave me the key and told me where the room was. This time, I was told all about when breakfast is, the details of pay TV, and check-out time. With such good English speakers at reception I had no problem booking a taxi to the airport for tomorrow morning. In theory I could go by train but I don't feel like pulling my suitcase back across the road and onto a train to who knows what part of the airport.
Then somebody showed me to my room, carrying my suitcase and backpack, and showed me how to use the key. It had taken me a few minutes to figure that out last time I was here, it's a card system unlike those of the other hotels I've been in. He even lifted my suitcase onto a raised platform in my room which looks like it's there only so that tired suitcases can enjoy that off-floor comfort. I wonder whether I'll injure myself getting it down. On the subject of tired suitcases, I think I mentioned that half of the plastic bit at the bottom of my suitcase had broken off, and last time I was in Frankfurt I was unable to buy anything to fix it. Well, while in Regensburg I reattached the broken bit with tape, but it fell off while Ilse was taking the suitcase to her car. It was only an experimental fix really, and not necessary since the remaining half did the job. Here at the hotel in Frankfurt, while the hotel guy was taking my suitcase the wrong way (thinking I was in a different room) the remaining half fell off, but the suitcase still stands upright without it. I wonder if this improved service has anything to do with the fact that I paid more for the room (thought still not full price), having booked it through Deutsche Bahn instead of HostelWorld.
What's more, there's a bible in one of the drawers -- there wasn't last time. For some reason I have an irrational interest in whether there really is a bible in every hotel room. It's kind of like a treasure hunt... okay, you're in a room you've never seen before, with all sorts of drawers and cupboards... find the bible! During the hunt I usually find other useful things like hotel information booklets or shoe cleaners. This bible is the New Testament in German, French and English... interesting, but I liked the Marriott's bible collection better because it included a book about the founder of the hotel chain as well, in case you got bored of the old Messiah. There's always room at this inn, but only if you bring gifts of gold!
Aah, there's nothing quite like a piece of hotel chocolate after a three hour train trip. More on Regensburg
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September 17 to September 23, 2004
This will probably be my last update until after I get home, since I'm going to Frankfurt tomorrow and Geneva the next day, and I don't think I'll be able to connect my Mac to the internet while I'm in Geneva. I'll be using the internet at public terminals in the hostel. Gyah!
Okay... so what's happened? Well, on Saturday Grace and I went for a cruise down the Danube. While waiting until the cruise was supposed to leave, we had a quick look around the ship travel museum, which is inside a boat on the Danube. There was an interesting model of boats being pulled by horses, walking along the river bank. It seems illogical to me... if you're going to have something in the water being pulled by horses, shouldn't you use seahorses? Anyway, the cruise was nice, we saw some interesting buildings and bridges and places where Grace sometimes swims. After that we went to a beer garden hoping to find some fried camembert, which is another Bavarian specialty I had to try. They didn't have any, but what I had was nice.
On Monday I went to Grace's work at 11:30 to have lunch with the police, at the police station. One of the police was having a birthday, and when it's someone's birthday they all have sausages (or meatloaf) and the person whose birthday it is pays for the whole thing. Grace had asked her boss if I could come and he seemed very interested in meeting me, but in the end he wasn't at work that day. We had Weiβwurst (the same sort of white sausage which somebody had in Munich) and wieners, which is just another name for frankfurters. Grace had told me they're just like frankfurters but the skins are a different colour, and later I looked back at the first reading exercise in my 'German in 3 months' book which explained that the inventor of the frankfurter went to Vienna where they started calling them wieners. This is not the same as a wiener in the US of course.
After that I went to the shop where Grace got her Regensburg T-shirt, because I wanted one like it. That was the second time I'd been there, and the second time the shop was closed. So instead I went to Barbara's office and learnt some German. Barbara is one of the people in New Jerusalem, and she works for an organisation which helps young people from other countries (mostly from Turkey and Italy it seems... there are a lot of Turkish and Italian people around here, which explains the popularity of döners and gelati) integrate into society here. Barbara had said I could go by her office any time and she'd teach me German, because she's not particularly busy. Actually she was busy at that time, so I had to go eat some icecream from a Venice-themed icecream cafe and come back an hour later. The icecream was even nicer than what I'd had in Venice, and I think most people on the tour had two or three icecreams in Venice, it was so good. At Barbara's I had some Turkish tea, brewed in a weird Turkish double-teapot thing. I also saw her strange contraption for making Italian coffee.
Monday is the day when NJ meets in Neupfarrplatz to do some praying, singing, and evangelising -- just like on the day I arrived. I went there with Barbara. This time I followed the other Doro (who is on holiday here staying with Doro & Wolfgang) while she conducted a survey. Doro is from somewhere else in Germany, and is fluent in German, English, Chinese, Spanish and French. She also knows a bit of Afrikaans. Nonetheless we still found somebody who didn't speak any of those languages well enough to do the survey. We were hoping to find someone who spoke English so that I'd know what they were saying, and eventually we found a couple of Australians. They were keen to do the survey, but they also wanted to know if we knew anywhere they could get dinner and entertainment. By the time Grace had told them where a nearby theatre was, for some reason it was vitally important that we stopped the surveying to have dinner, so we didn't actually get to survey the Australians.
We had dinner somewhere nearby, again they did not have the fried camembert. The other Doro, Grace and I shared two meals between us, since I never seem to be able to eat a whole meal and we all wanted to try a particular dish that none of us had heard of. It included potatoes with a weird spongy texture. I liked it.
The next day I had been planning to go visit Barbara again, but I didn't particularly feel like walking into town, especially since I'd re-injured the toe that was hurt in St. Goar. So I sat around for a while, talked to Ilse, and did some of the tough puzzles which Val (Eric's wife) had given me. Then I decided I may as well go to the closest place of interest to home... the indoor pools.
The pools were open, and I was quite relieved to find I could buy my ticket from a machine, so I only needed to know enough German to know which was the child's ticket, and which ones were too expensive to be what I wanted. There was a sign with arrows pointing out where things were. Upstairs to the left: changing rooms (a word I understood from when I'd been to the outdoor pools with Grace) downstairs to the right, some other kind of changing rooms. Straight to the left, more changing rooms, and finally, to the right, some changing rooms. So I had no problem finding somewhere to get changed. Then I went back to the sign to see whether it said where the pools were, which it didn't. I went down some steps in a direction which I didn't think was on the sign, to find some more changing rooms. Eventually I had to ask somebody where the pools were, and after asking me something I didn't understand which involved getting changed (I know that, because I know the word and she was gesturing with her own clothes) she showed me to the pools. Due to the unusual route I'd taken to get to the pools, after I'd had a swim I had to ask someone how to get to the particular changing room where I'd left my bag. Actually I could have found it by going back the way I'd come but somebody asked if I needed help while I was reading the sign, so I figured I may as well find out the quicker way to get there.
That evening Grace brought home some crumbed camembert patties from the supermarket, and cooked them up so that we wouldn't have to keep going to restaurants looking for them. They were great, as any dish made almost entirely of cheese is. On the subject of cheese, there's a lot of it in the funny-looking fridge here. When I first got here I tried a Bavarian cheese called obazda (or obatzda, or obazder, depending where you get it from), which means 'splat'. And here's something completely unrelated... that night Other Doro came over to stay out of Doro & Wolfgang's hair for their date night, so we looked through a book Grace has with some satellite pictures of the Earth which have been weirdly manipulated in the name of art. I actually recognised the views of San Francisco and the Great Lakes, because I've been there.
The next day I went into town to meet Grace for lunch, sans policemen. We ate at a Turkish place. After that I went back to the shop with the T-shirts with little hope of it being open. It looked as dim as ever but I could see people at the back so I went in and bought a T-shirt. The man gave me a Regensburg pin badge (worth a whole euro!) as a gift, I guess because he'd seen the ten or so badges I have on my bag. That put me in an even better mood. Then I wandered around and went into a shop I hadn't been to before which looked like it had souvenirs. They had the Regensburg badges for two euros, so I'm pretty sure the rest of their stuff was overpriced too, but I finally found the key ring I wanted. The coat of arms for Regensburg has two keys crossed over, which seemed to me like the ideal motif to put on a souvenir key ring, but although I'd seen the coat of arms on magnets (yes, they have magnets even though they can't put them on their fridges) steins, and other souvenirs, I'd almost given up hope of finding it on a key ring. I bought a key ring with the coat of arms on it from that shop, and made a point of attaching it to my large bunch of key rings from other cities in front of the shop keeper. She said, in German, that it was very beautiful, and 'from every city a keyring', and I understood every word.
On my way into town that morning, I'd passed a butcher and been reminded of a deal I'd intended to take advantage of... you could get two Weiβwurst and a CD with a song about Weiβwurst for €4.95. I didn't particularly want two raw sausages, especially since Grace and I were going to the university that evening and not straight home, but surely there's no better German souvenir than a song about sausages. I mentioned it to Grace and she said I would have a couple of hours in which to find a homeless person to give the sausages to, which would be an interesting mission. I wasn't too confident that I could succeed in that though, because I hadn't noticed many homeless people... they're nowhere near as common in Regensburg as they are in San Francisco. So my first tactic was to try to purchase the CD without the sausages. I picked up a CD from the counter and said, in perfectly good German as far as I know, 'I only want this, no sausages.' The lady responded by pointing at the promotional sign and saying stuff I didn't understand (which I assumed meant that I had to get it with the sausages) and getting two sausages for me. In desperation I said something like, 'I not want sausages' and she put the sausages down and charged me €3.45. Given that she knew how much to charge for the CD alone I can only assume that my first comment actually made less sense than my second.
I'd arranged to meet Grace at a bus stop at 5:00 so we could go to the university and meet the rest of NJ, for more praying, singing and food. Before then I hoped to find a cafe with black forest cake, but ended up just having a particularly nice hot chocolate with cream. The waiter came quickly when I wanted to order and pay, and I was inside so I didn't have to share my drink with wasps. On the way to the bus stop, I walked through a park on impules and happened to find the Kepler memorial I'd read about in a guide to Regensburg but forgotten the location of. I took a few pictures of that and a few other monuments around the place. All in all, it was a great day... I got good food, the T-shirt I wanted, the key ring I wanted, the CD I wanted, pictures of the Kepler memorial, and no sausages.
Today (Thursday) I went to meet Grace for lunch again, this time with another friend of Grace's as well. The place we went to doesn't have typical Bavarian food, in fact most of the names of the foods on the menu are in English (though the descriptions are in German.) Grace and I just had potatoes with sour cream. Afterwards we bought some bee sting cake, another of the many local foods I had to try. It involves almonds, custard and a lot of honey.
It's a pretty cold, wet day today... not actually raining much but everything is wet just the same. Yesterday was the first day I thought it was a bit cold, and it happened to be marked on the calendar as the start of autumn. If the weather behaves itself in Auckland (as if that ever happens!) it should be starting to warm up when I get home. Anyway, it wasn't the sort of weather which made me want to continue wandering the city, and I bought everything I wanted yesterday, so after looking around a shopping mall for a while I went home.
Tomorrow at 12:33p.m. I will take a train back to Frankfurt, where I'll stay the night at the same hotel I was in almost three weeks ago. The next day I'll catch a plane to Geneva, to spend a week shopping and looking around CERN. I have booked a tour of CERN for 2p.m. on the Wednesday, the rest of the time I guess I'll be looking at the Microcosm exhibit.
Actually, there's a nonzero chance that I'll be able to find an open wireless network at CERN so I can hook my Mac up to the net... maybe there will be another update after all. Until then, Tschüβ! Next Page |
