Reflections and Highlights: It's a Wrap
Living and working here for the past three months has helped clear my mind and allowed me to learn about myself.
1.)
2.) Making friends and being social is a great way to keep yourself busy and out of boredom.
3.) You can really learn anything you want if you focus on it for 3 months
4.) I love traveling, but next time I am working in a foreign place, I would prefer to learn a little bit of the language before hand.
5.) I will never sacrifice cost for convenience in staying in a place ever again.
6.) I don't have to really drive everywhere all the time...there are these things called buses, bikes, and your feet that move you places.
7.) I'm not a fan of backpackers who associate with backpacking as the "cool" thing to do with their massive packs that are larger than themselves and hanging out with the other backpackers. (you really don't need more than 3-4 days clothes at a time)
9.) Always wander around and go the extra mile, you never know what path you might find.
10.) Nighttime is the best time to wander to avoid everybody at the major sites.
11.) Jack Bauer is awesome
I'm sure there are many more, but these are the ones I can think of right now.
Working and living in a foreign place is significantly different than travelling and staying in a place. As a resident you see the same locals over and over whether its the boss at work or the old lady at the bus stop every morning. Everything you say or do could be brought up again by the people you see so consistently. You relate and immerse yourself with the locals. When you are travelling, you always have that safety net of being able to leave if you don't like it.
For those in engineering, I've learnt a whole lot about a field that I had zero background going into EVEN though I'm a graduated engineering student from Queen's with my iron ring. There are no lines in the departments you chose because if there is a need to learn something for your project, you do it. I've spent the last 3 months reading code and simulating. The only background I had was a little experience with the programming software and programming. Quite an eye-opening experience when I received a 40 file program in MATLAB with integrated loops and triggers. Not to mention it was in German. Speaking of which, I've noticed that I can get by nowadays and understand the gist of most signs which was made obvious to me later. I would encourage anybody who's had an inkling to try something new to apply for RISE or any other international exchange and you will find QUITE an exhilarating experience.
Highlights of the places I visited
The following are my highlights off the top of my head of the places I enjoyed on my travels. I am not a serious beer drinker and found it pretty much the same. Much better taste than back home, but still prefer my water. I also don't like tourists and dirty hippie wannabe backpackers that think they are getting a "global" perspective.
Dortmund - Westfallenhalle, Westfallenpark, Syburg
Dusseldorf - chill out by the river
Cologne - Cathedral, chocolate museum's gift shop
Bonn - hike up to one of the castles in the city (couldn't remember where it was)
Prague - eat pizza for cheap, Vladstad fortress for sunset, Prague Castle at sunset, dawn on the Charles bridge, and the pendalum and university surrounding areas for walking at the top of the valley.
Heidelberg - Castle and philosopher's way night and day
personal highlight, jumping off a 40 foot dive tower several times until I had a sore body.
-for cheap hostel, the jergenburger hostel is nice
Amsterdam - Reichesmuseum (if fully open), Vondelpark, redlight district (quite a sight and listen careful to what people are saying to you), hanging out at the cafes.
Copenhagen and Surrounding Areas - LOVE THIS PLACE! Danish summers are memorable, full of beautiful people, and full of culture. Plus they are really friendly.
Christiania for some hippie culture history, the norreport for hanging out.
See Roskilde for its viking museum, Helsingor for Kronberg Castle (Hamlet's castle) and to see Sweden
Swimming in the Baltic.
Berlin - wandering aroudn the city at night, Checkpoint Charlie history, olympic stadium
-stayed at EastSeven hostel - LOVED IT!
Munich - (for beer drinkers) Deutches Museum, olympic stadium, probably VERY nice in the sun, Nyphemburger castle and castle grounds
-stayed at Wombat's -> good atmosphere, relatively clean, AWESOME location right at HBF
Fussen - take a day trip from Munich then hike up the mountain across the bridge for a GREAT view of the castle.
I'm sure there are many other great and fun things to do around here, but these are just some of the awesome memories I've taken home with me. Hope you enjoyed this chapter in my life and I hope some of you will venture out and try to duplicate or improve these shots I've posted. For a full collection, check out my facebook profile!
Last big trip - Berlin, Munich, Heidelberg
Vehniah and I kicked off my last trip on Friday evening (she was continuing hers starting from Cologne on Thurs)
We arrived, starving, in Berlin HBF at around 7:30pm and after walking up and down the streets looking for the shewdter strasse hidden behind the trees, we managed to settle into our sweet ikea inspired hostel and proceeded to find some chow. I suggested we go get some traditional German food, and found a nice little restaurant around the corner that served sharmas called Babel. after a delicious meal of meat carved off a large rotating drum, we dropped off all unnesseary items, grabbed our cameras and headed out to explore the town, figuring it would be a better idea to walk around first to see everything before heading out in the morning since we were only in Berlin for a short time......that was before we took the first picture.
Check out the mess under the shawarma!
We took a ton of night shots in the empty streets, feeling like we owned the place. Night time is the best time to explore the city cuz there are NO tourists and you can do the silly things at the places you want to do, but was too embarassed to do in front of other people. Places like Checkpoint Charlie, Brandenburg Gate, the war memorial, the chancellery, alexanderplatz, the reichstag, and seigessaule amongst many other sites were explored at a casual pace and not another soul in site. Also the stretch between the seigessaule and the gate was being set up for some extreme sports festival so it was rather assuring to have people in and around. I'm not going to lie and philsophize about all the things and importance of the sites, I'm just impressed by nice architecture and also fascinated about anything cold war related or wwII related.
After a stroll through the city and back to the hostel (we refused to take public transport since it was so nice to walk around and also, note to self: don't let Vehniah navigate) we managed to get home for a respectible 3am bedtime. The next morning, after a quick breakfast from Lidl supermarket, we headed out to the East Side Gallery to check out reconstructed parts of the Berlin wall that had artists recreate or add new pieces to the wall. Unfortunately, some of the nicer works that I enjoyed were marred by the grafhetti that seems to be prevalent everywhere I look in Germany which was a shame. I suppose it is nicer than gun violence and violent crime, but still.... it really makes quite a difference.
We continued scoping out the city during the day and finally night time rolled around and we headed to the HBF to catch our train. Lo and behold, we were just in time for the open air concert starring none other than the SCORPIONS and headlined by NENA. The power riffs of the song that sounds like "rock you like a hurricane" but not and one of their unmemorable new songs that I've heard on the radio before were followed by a wicked cover of Dust in the Wind. they had an orchestra backup for much of the concert which reminded me of Metallica's S&M album.
Scorpions in concert!
Soon it was time to catch the train and no time to wait for Nena to headline the show. To my surprise, the overnight train to Munich was one of the nicest sleeper trains I had ever seen. Instead of stuffing 6 people into a single compartment coffin styles, they had now sectioned off 2 bunks per section with two seats sitting across from each other that slide out forming the bottom bunk and the top bed folding out of the wall. It was really clean and nice inside. However, I was sure the thin drapes that separated each compartment did little to suppress the snoring. oh well, sucks to be everybody else.
9 hrs and many kilometers later, we arrived in Munich at around 7am. We checked into the pretty busy Wombat Hostel which was quite bumping and I had just stepped into the bathroom to clean up for about 5 minutes before returning to find some guy chatting it up with Vehniah or Vehniah, chatting up some guy. The guy let it "slip" that he was from South Africa and just about to tell some story about his days from the Savannah, when I stepped in with the "oh really? I lived in Lagos, you know, Lagos, Nigeria" line leading to a lot of backpedaling about African wilderness exploits. Game killed. hahaha sucker.
Anyways, we proceeded directly to Fussen to see Schloss Neuchwanstein, the beautiful fairy tale castle, and also the other castle that was orange and started with an H (Howgoenu or something like that). Following the Asian crowds up the street to the castle, we broke ahead and started the picture shooting. Realizing there was more to enter without the entrance fee, we explored around. We found the path to the sky bridge over a large waterfall and a beautiful view of the castle. However, it was still obstructed so we found a path that ended up being a hike up the neighbouring hill and got an unobstructed view of the castle with no guard barriers. We descended and followed another path that continued along the waterfall and resultant tributary.
Fussen began to pour shortly after we arrived back at the pickup site. Fortunately, there was lots of cover and we made it to the train relatively dry and prayed that it would not follow us back into Munich.
The great weather man in the sky hates us. The rain followed, but we both had rain jackets so it wasn't much of a problem. We found a Wombat recommended local restaurant which served VERY good bavarian food and enjoyed a nice slow meal to wait out the rain. As night fell, we got pumped up to take some photos and headed out to Schloss Nymphenburger where it was unlit and we happened to come across a play/opera. It was happening on the 2nd floor, so we couldn't really see much, only what we could catch through the windows on the second floor from the outside and what we could hear from the open windows. It started to pour and we decided to get the hell out of there. The rain was relentless and it ended up being a relatively uneventful night. The photos are here, but I don't like them.
Totally disappointed by the lack of lit up buildings at night and by the rain!
The following day (because both Dacau and the Benz museum in Stuggart are closed on Mondays), we headed out to Olympic stadium followed by some shopping and then we decided to check out the Deutches Museum. This museum was massive with interactive displays. Too bad most of it was in German and the parts that had english I believe were not in the same level of detail as their German counterparts. We did not make it through the entire museum by closing time, but with the rain, and cloud cover, we really didn't care much. We had dinner at Pasta e Basta which was amazing and amazingly CHEAP leading to a second dinner following our first order. The waiter was a little confused, but went along with it since we were still eating. By that time, it was dark and we headed back to the hostel where we met Jane from Australia. Jane asked me what I was up to tonight to which I replied "oh you know, we like wandering around the city at night when there is nobody else around and do some night photography" Only after I had left, did I realize how crazy we sounded. Here I was, with no apparent camera gear, heading out to do Night photography....honestly, doesn't really add up.
A couple dismal shots later of the "Chinese" tower in the English garden which looks like a bird house (seriously, it was disappointment after disappointment) we went home for an early night so we could leave for Heidelberg.
Heidelberg was amazing. Even though it was raining, it was significantly warmer and the place we stayed was quite close to the city so we did not have to take a bus anywhere unlike the last time I was here. I did the best I could remember to show Vehniah around the city, going to the old brewary where my tour had dinner, and then followed up to the castle for a walk about, down back through the city visiting the library and student jail. We headed up the philosopher's way and waited for the sun to go down before snapping some sweet night shots of the castle. So enjoy them, we sat and waited through rain spurts for them.
We got up bright and early at 5am. I sent off Vehniah back to Canada in Frankfurt Flughafen Stn and continued my way back to Dortmund.
Dortmund was a busy busy place for me as I had to pack up, have my room inspected, try and find the tax refund centre (which doesn't exist anymore) and go back to school to return my keys. I've organized a ride to the airport and am excited at the prospect of going home. I'll see many of you faithful readers (hahaha...I really believe they exist) soon.
Oot and Aboot with my coworkers
Well the time had come to say goodbye to the people I have been spending the better part of my summer with. My awesome group of coworkers who have made me feel so very welcome in Germany brought everybody together for a last big shindig before I headed off for a 5 day vacation traveling through Germany. Vehniah was here so she tagged along to the party and got an quite a memorable impression of my coworkers as representatives of the Dortmunder peoples. Not much to say, but it was a pleasure to be working with them and hopefully I will be seeing them in the near future.
Last week of work :D
Being excited to be finished is an understatement. These past days have been rainy, stressful, and frustrating as I frantically searched for results and prepared for my presentation. I have been here almost 3 months and I've realized even with all the work that I have done and the research that I've been doing, I've only managed to scratch the surface of the fields of study that my collegues are experts in. Well to be fair, they are doing their PhD's in these fields not to mention completed their Diploms (direct M Sc equivalence) in these areas.
My presentation was yesterday and I think it went okay. I was nervous and unsure of some of the background information in the slides. Not to mention, due to complications, I was only able to obtain enough data for one set of parameters and unable to compare others due to a lack of time. The professor asked me on several questions but I seemed to have managed to get through them with some of the background information and inferences that I somehow absorbed during my time here. It's funny how you much you really know about something when you are asked the right questions. However, some of the more challenging ones required a broader knowledge in the field and not being a control expert, it stumped me. Luckily, it became an open forum and the other PhD students began to answer some of these inquires for me. At the end, Professor Dr. Engell suggested that I stay in touch and perhaps we can set up an exchange with Queen's University which I personally think is a GREAT idea.
I was finally finished! We celebrated by going out to dinner at a Spanish restaurant with Tapas. My friend Vehniah also showed up yesterday afternoon as we are going on a blitzkreig tour of south Germany. Regarding my presentation, my coworkers told me it was funny hearing a native speaker talk in English in my "funny" accent. Also my presentation had included a reflection of my time here, something that was original to them as their presentations were usually all business.
I'm pretty tired so nothing really comes to mind other than I am looking forward to travelling and coming back home to Canada.
My experience I would say has been really interesting and I would highly recommend it for anybody else to try. Living and immersing yourself in another culture is a challenging experience and really makes you independant. You hone up on your independance and your socializing skills which I think are key components to making it through your stay. Overall, I have learned a great deal about a topic I had grazed upon at school and made some good friends and connections over here in Deutschland and have many great memories of working here. The next couple days will be spent traveling to Berlin and Munich so I will update those once I get back.
Work and Henkel Facility Tour (week of Aug 13)
Work has been back to the same ol' trial and error of parameter guess and check. But I am trying more ambitious things now, varying more of the code that I have a better grasp of these days. Due to the nature of the random number generators in the code, I am relying on modifying the weighting factors of the parameters to get the highest probability of a good result.
On Wednesday (Aug. 16) I went to Dusseldorf for my invited tour of the Henkel facility. Henkel is a HUGE player here in Germany that is similar to Proctor and Gamble or Johnson and Johnson. They manufacture a large number of personal and homecare goods in addition to industrial products such as adhensives. You might recognize the brands got2b and pritt. Mainly, I think I've seen some of the bottles of haircare/skincare products around but I don't use enough of it to know. We saw the production and packaging facility for their hotmelt product used by companies such as CocaCola to put the labels on their bottles. Like most plants in Germany, the majority of the labour was automatic to save on costs of labour. It was really cool to see all the components work together from cooling the product, to packing the product into boxes and further on to palattes. After an amazing lunch of salmon and fresh salads, and a nice coffee, we split up and I went off with the chemical process engineer who was with us. We chatted about work and the issues I would face in the work environment after being in school. He showed me the development path of projects and take note here, Queen's students, they used TRIZ and other design processes I learned about in APSC 381. I got to tour his lab work area and saw a lot of the microreactors that were apparently all the rage now in industry where they ran tests and were trying to get a pilot scale plant project approved. It really was quite interesting.
A funny thing a fellow RISE student and I noticed were how immaculate all the Henkel employees looked. The guys were all dressed in fashionable suits as were the ladies, but their hair were all spikes giving the look of those cheesy haircare commercials. I guess they all believe in their product and have to "wear" it to work like a GAP employee.
After this, I was shown to the gate and given my gift bag (containing various skincare/haircare products and industrial adhesives) and sent home. Again, acousted by a fare checker, apparently if you buy a ticket from a machine in the station, you don't have to stamp the ticket, but if you buy a ticket from the machine IN the train you are on, you have to stamp the ticket....in case you wanted to get on the train and then get off....no common sense whatsoever.
Aug 11-12 - Copenhagen Round 2
Not much has been happening since I had return from Copenhagen the weekend before. Work was back to usual with the looming realization that my time here was coming quickly to an end and I was still short on results. My project has become more of a troubleshooting one than an optimization. However I feel that I am achieving both goals in playing around with the parameters to get my model working. Each iteration leads to a new discovery or implementation of an idea to speed up the process and "optimize" the simulation. With the rain and significant cooling of the weather, the once sunny Ruhrland area has settled now into a cool, perma-overcast sky with constant rain showers which made me really look forward to my return to Copenhagen.
This time around, I invited Reed Martin, a student of Georgia Tech from Georgia to come along for the ride because it was his last free weekend and he had yet to leave the country. We arrived in Copenhagen early Sat morning after a rough overnight train ride from Dortmund and proceeded to head directly to Roskilde to see the Viking museum and area. Unfortunately, the rain had followed us and proceeded to miserably drizzle the entire time there. Also apparently, there is a fee to enter the grounds (which we bypassed by walking into the dock from another entrance) but we did not find this out until we were leaving and found some signs indicating this to us.
Returning to Copenhagen Central, we decided to put our bags into a locker (which we'll later regret) and head to our next destination: Helsingor, where Kronborg castle situated. As previously mentioned in my last post, Kronborg was where Shakespeare based Hamlet. This time around, the castle was open for Reed and I to wander about. Traveling on a tight budget, we did not pay the admission to tour the castle. Inside we were told there was a large statue of a giant Dane, Ogier the Dane, where legend has it, he is slumbering only to arise when Denmark is in a time of grave danger in time to save the nation. In the courtyard which we were allowed to wander free of charge, they were set up for a production of Hamlet which appears to be a regular summer event.
Receiving a call from my friend Carina, she instructed us to head to Gilleleje (pronounced Gilly-Lie) for a pick-up. We caught the next train there on what appeared to be a city tram and arrived in the city. After a 2 hr wait, Carina finally pulled into roundabout for pickups and we promptly went into town for dinner shopping down by the pier.
A couple pounds of fresh white fish and potatoes later, we returned to her summer house in Vejby and helped peel and wash potatoes enjoying Czech beer and the warmer weather. Three bottles of red wine later, it was time for bed. We passed out watching the Beach and after getting kicked out out of sleeping area to the guestroom for snoring (which is why I wish I had my stuff, not to mention my clean clothes) we called it a night.
The next day, we headed back to Copenhagen after a nice breakfast of cheese and crackers and met up with Therese. She took us to other parts of the city (it was still kind of wet, but the sun came out every so often) and to a wicked little burger joint where the inside was an actual railway tram. The atmosphere was cosy and it was very cool. The prices were reasonable too! I had a huge burger topped with caviar and egg and hollandaise sauce for about 54 Krons (8 euros) which is about average for a sit down lunch.
We made our way back towards the train station and were taken around the red light district of Denmark. The area has recently in the past 5-6 years become quite trendy and now was quite cleaned up. By the time we were finished, it was time to head home and we bid our goodbyes and caught our train back to Dortmund.
We arrived Monday morning, 2.5 hrs late which meant a 8:20 arrival as opposed to a 5:20 arrival so that was nice. I just felt bad for the people who were waiting for the 5:20 train to Prague and Munich.
Nothing's Rotten in the State of Denmark (Aug. 4-Aug. 6)
Leaving the cold ~15 degree gloominess that was Germany this weekend, I arrived in beautiful Copenhagen on Friday morning after taking the overnight train there from Dortmund using my newly acquired Eurorail pass.
This was my sleeper cart - 6 people to a compartment
After wandering around aimlessly at the train station looking for this "clock tower" for about a half hour or so, I decided to check my email again to verify that I was to indeed meet at the clock tower. Seconds after purchasing my internet credit, I turn around and I see Carina about to do the same thing at the internet cafe. A big welcome hug later and we were on our way to see the rest of Copenhagen.
Outside the train station is Tivoli, an amusement park that's been around for ages. Supposedly it is quite nice inside with many parks, bars and restaurants, but as much fun as it would have been, I would much rather just explore Copenhagen for the time being.
We grabbed some bread, cheese, and some amazing Danish baked goods and headed to her friend Therese's apartment. Carina "lives" there too so she had a key and as expected, Therese (who had just come back from SE asia), her sister, and another friend of theirs, Fleming were still sleeping when we arrived. We set up breakfast, roused them from their slumber and after a couple hours of chatting and eating, we got up to explore Copenhagen.
First up on the tour was Christiania. Christiania was considered a self governed community after hippies and like-minded individuals entered and occupied this former army base in 1971. The ideals was that the place was to be independent from city rules and about peace, love, and happiness. Not to mention drugs too (however "hard" drugs are banned here). The famous street is called "Pusher street" where they used to openly sell hash. Now there is a large smoking paraphenelia market in its place. Photos are also forbidden in this place and takers are subject to personal damage should this happen. The movement to keep Christiania as a colony was largely supported by the public and therefore the city had an understanding with the community. As long as things did not get out of hand and as long as there was public support for the project, they would have their own community.
The flag of Christiania is a red back with 3 yellow dots
Unfortunately, in recent times, the 900 or so residents of Christiania who have built their own homes and have a livelihood here are about to lose their community due to new political action and the city is also trying to remove this piece of Copenhagen history to make space for condos and private commercial space. This is rather sad since when you are in the community, all concept of being in Copenhagen falls away as you enter through the gates. The sign on one of the entrances says it best, "Now entering the EU".
After, I boarded a train to Roskilde to see the Viking museum. Roskilde is a quaint little town more known for its large music festival in June. To my dismay, by the time I arrived, the Viking museum was closed. However, I still took a bus to venture down by the water. It turns out that many of the exhibits are out in the open on the docks and I was able to look as some of the Viking ships and woodwork as well as just hang out down by the water in this beautiful place. After a couple hours, I walked back to the train station and headed back to Copenhagen.
The next day, Therese and Fleming took me out on a walking tour of Copenhagen. I don't remember many of the names of the places that we saw, but they were quite impressive. I'll just comment on the pictures. They also filled me in aspects of Danish life such as the Scandanavian rivalries that exist between everybody and Sweden in addition to their wonderful social systems in place.
Some of the local architecture
Nyborg I believe, which is an area where in the summer lots of people just hang out by the water and enjoy a cool BEvERage or a nice glass of wine.
Statue where after graduation, Therese told me all the Danish students dance around him and party. Also note the Swedish soldier positioned under the horse. This was placed there because the lead in the leg was deteriorating and rather then redo the whole structure, they put a Swedish soldier there in its place.
My wonderful tour guides, Fleming and Therese. More of the tour was conducted by Therese who seemed to know somebody who lived near each of our destinations. As Fleming pointed out, she was giving us a tour of her friend's houses.
The Danish palace.
Like England, these guards can't move or talk, yet told me to keep my distance. It could have been the bags I was carrying that made them uneasy.
The Little Mermaid - it's not as big as you think it would be.
After touring Copenhagen, we headed to Helsinger to see Hamlet's castle.
First we had a cross a bike race. Apparently there was a big one in Denmark at the time.
Shakespeare had based his characters of Hamlet to be living in this castle. Hamlet did not exist.
These cannons are pointed at Sweden should they invade. Fleming really likes to point these interesting facts out to me. One time the sea had frozen over and the Swedes invaded Denmark and the cannons were not of much use since they were more positioned to destroy
A Hobbit burrow...or Viking long house.
Carina picked us up there and drove us to her summer home where I met her parents, had a VERY delicious salmon dinner and we spent the evening chatting and enjoying some fine wine and Danish beer.
Carina is making breakfast here for us...what a great host!
The next morning, we got up, went for a swim in the sea which was quite refreshing and by the time we got back to Copenhagen, sadly, it was time to go. However, I decided there and then that I would come back the following week because I am in love with Denmark! (at least in the summertime)
Group picture
View from outside the train...I stuck my hand out the window
