Berlin, Berlin

Two busy days being a tourist in Berlin. Yesterday Paul took me touring - we walked over to the check-point Charlie Museum, but didn’t go in. Then up Friedrichstraße - one of the main streets. Stopped for coffee and cake on the way (yum). Looked briefly the vw car dealership/museum - they have a classic combi hippie van on display. It was too clean and tidy to be a real hippie van. Then caught an S train across town to the radio tower (like sky tower) to book for dinner - unfortunately no availability. We then rented a couple of bikes and biked from there through to the Brandenburg gate, stopped at the Dom (church) and had a look inside and walked up to the top of the dome - good view. Then the length of the Tiergarten - a huge, and lovely park. Had lunch it a Bier Garten. Then back through the park to the parliament buildings - the queue was a couple of hours so we moved on. Some of the new govt buildings in this are really cool. At the river there is a 'beach' - really. Here is Paul on a sun lounger - notice how little competition he had to find a chair - it was about 12C.

Then looked at the DTR museum - a new, really little museum showing 'normal' life in East Germany in the 70's- 80's. Paul grew up in East Germany - though he was only 6-7 when the wall went down - he said it was pretty realistic. There was an interesting propaganda film of them building new housing areas, again Paul lived in one of these flats when he was very young. Got me thinking about what they are like now - more on that soon.

At 7pm (8 hours later) we returned our bikes and met up with Adam for a drink and dinner. A really enjoyable day.

This morning it was raining (as forecast), I excused Paul from tour guide duties for the morning and went shopping - it would be too cruel to ask him to go shopping. We meet up at lunch time and worked, yes worked (well I gave Paul a whole heap of work to do) till about 4. We had an hour or so to kill before we were due to meet up with Adam and Paul's mum, so I asked Paul if we could go out and look at the East German housing as depicted in the film. It is high density 'efficient' housing, but way better than the equivalent in the UK or Otara. The neighbourhoods and buildings look well maintained and like people care about their environment.

The public transport is fantastic - we took tram and trains back into the city and met up with the others to go to the bluemen show. Its mime - come drums/rock, very entertaining. We then all had dinner together and I said goodbye to Adam. Tomorrow I head for home.

Lab Visits today

Today was the day for visiting research labs. In the morning Paul Schmieder and I went to Patrick Baudisch's HCI lab at an institute on the northern side of Potsdam. We saw lots of cool interaction tools that this group are working on and I gave a talk on our work. Hopefully they understood some of my Kiwi English - Paul helped with translation a couple of times. We had lunch there and looked at a nice project with multi-line braille displays.

Paul and I then took the train to the absolute opposite side of Potsdam to Adam's lab. The first pic is his room - it is looking so clean and tidy because today was the annual cleaning day. We then went down to the basement to look at some of his slime. It looked various shades of bright green but the light was red, hence the funny colour in the photo. And we also up to the top floor to the slime factory. Its a pretty amazing setup - a building full of labs and equipment, liquid nitrogen tanks in the foyer of each floor.

Paul and I then went back past my hotel to pickup my bag and on into Berlin. It was great having a Paul as local guide to get here - much easier than reading subway maps and coping with the language etc, etc.

I am having a night off tonight in preparation for another couple of days of hard touristing!

I arrived in Potsdam in time for dinner last night. Adam met me at the train station and we took my bag to the hotel and booked in. Then went back into the main street and had Sushi for dinner (so German).

Today I hired a bike and we biked the Park Sanssouci - the summer palaces of the Prussians. It's huge with a couple of large palaces and lots of little ones. Also a big imposing building to keep the delicate plants warm for the winter. Today they were hauling them out. Palms, bay trees etc.

We toured several of the palaces - they all have parquet floors and you have to put on very elegant slippers so you don’t mark the floor. Adam's bike got a puncture at the far end of the park, but close to the bus route so we locked his bike up and wandered back to my hotel.

with Alice

I watched the changing of the guard at Buckingham Place, with Alice - at least there probably was an Alice or two among the 100's of spectators.

I went back up to London today to go the the Victoria and Albert Museum to see the quilt exhibition. The Brighton train arrives at Victoria Station which is quite close to Buckingham Place so I wandered over and watched the new guard assembling in the forecourt of Wellington Barracks. The band played a medley of numbers including the star wars theme. The then marched across to the palace - swapped with the old guards, didn't see much of this, too many people and then the old ones marched back. I then walked up theGreen Park side of the palace to go to the V&A. About 1/2 way up a group of horse guards (well guards on horses) came trotting by - cool.

It was quite a walk up to the museum - but a pleasant day so enjoyable. I spent a couple of hours looking around the quilts. Some were 300 years old, others were made for the exhibition. Then wandered back towards the station.

Stopping on the way for afternoon tea at Harrods. Went up the Egyptian escalators - what is at the top? A 2m high brass head of Mohamed al-Fayed, owner of Harrods and father of Dodi (as in Dinah an Dodi). How sad is that?





The rest of my return trip was through the well-heeled squares of South Kensington, where you can buy a town house for a cool 3-7 mill.

Last work day in Brighton tomorrow - off to Berlin on Saturday.

Sun!

Yes it was a sunny day today, and a bit warmer. About 5pm I decide a trip to the beach was in order. I wandered down the pier - I guess you need to do this at least once per visit to Brighton. Then wandered down the beach and dipped my toes in the water - it was cold, but not freezing.

Otherwise it has been a good coding day at work. Most of the abstract model is done now.

A day in London

Yesterday I went to up to London to see the Royal Ballet. The weather didn't look that good so I didn't leave Brighton till after lunch. I did a whirlwind tour of the 'best monopoly streets' - Park Lane, Oxford St, Regent St, Piccadilly Circus, - managed to buy a couple of pairs of shoes on the way. All the clothes were summer stuff, they don't look very appealing when its 10C.

I then wandered down to Trafalgar Sq where there were lots of groups of Morrismen performing - there is always something interesting going on. It was rather cool standing around so I visited my favourite Constable paintings in the National Gallery (right on Trafalgar sq) and wandered through the impressionists section. Then over to Covent garden for a bite to eat before the ballet.

The ballet was three modern pieces - all really enjoyable. It is interesting to see modern ballet from a classical perspective, we don't get much like that. The opera house is, of course, fabulous - the curtains had the most amazing embroider E R II on the corners. Afterwards it was a brisk walk to the underground station (200-300m), underground to Victoria Station and then train to Brighton. Taxi from the station home. I was home in just over an hour! Reading a tourist brochure on the way home I found there is a quilt exhibition on at the Victoria and Albert Musuem - apparently the first British quilt exhibition. I might just have to go back up during the week to see it.

This morning I slept in - didn't wake until after 9! In fact I have had a pretty lazy day. My one outing was down to the sports club for a swim. They have good wireless down there (no firewalls like the uni) so I did some work in the lounge and had dinner there.

Why did it take so long?

I has taken me all day today to produce the little text list "bda b bdc bd" in the window on the left of the image.

What is it you may well ask?

It's the abstract description of the diagram. Ok I can only do containment so far - ie bda means 'a' is within 'd' which is within 'b'. Next is intersections so the diagram of a few days ago (below) can be describe as 'a b c ab ac bc abc' but thats for another day!

Work days

Just been working the last couple of days. Seems to be a million things to do and too little time to do them. The most interesting thing was doing a seminar today - it must have been advertised across the uni as there was a guy there from architecture and another from somewhere in the medical field that does medical records systems.

Brrr - trying to be a tourist

It is a long weekend here so I have been doing tourist stuff - or trying to, the weather hasn't been to kind.

Yesterday I went up to Royal Tumbridge Wells - a place where the London ladies used to go to 'take the waters'. I had a little drink from the well (50p), it tasted of iron - it's full of iron and other minerals. The fashion was to spend 6 weeks there. I guess 6 weeks of R&R would cure many ills.

The weather was pretty horrid, my car said it was 6C and it was raining. By about 3 I had wandered the town and gardens (nice gardens), got wet, dry again in the shopping center, and wet again. I had thought to go visit a stately home and gardens, there are lots around that area, however it didn't seem so appealing in the rain. I drove back to Brighton.

Gem and Jean invited me for dinner at their home. Had a lovely dinner and long chat till rather late.

Today it was till cold, but only showers. I had planned to go to Arundel and then Chichester - I only made it to Arundel. It is the seat of the Duke of Norfolk. A 'real' castle and supporting little town. The castle has an old Norman Castle within and various wings that were built at different times. The oldest part is about 1000 years old. The family still live there and I think were in residence. There are one of the powerful (rich) old families. It was really interesting but did make me feel like turning socialist. It made me think again about some of the reasons our great-grandparents had for leaving the UK.

The walled garden was beautiful - really nice layout and proportions. Someone must like tulips, they were everywhere.

Back to work tomorrow.

North East of Brighton

Today I did a wee road trip up the coast northwards. First stop was the seven sisters - seven ridges that run down to the cliff. I walked 4 or 5 of them. It was rather chilly and windy, but the hills warmed me up.

What was kinda spooky was the abrupt edge, no fence, just a 100 ft or 2 down to the gravel.

Then I went on to Hastings, which is another seaside town. I had a wander round and had lunch. I then headed inland to Battle.

Battle is where the Battle of Hastings took place. What was the Battle of Hastings? It was THE battle in 1066 when William the Conqueror beat the Anglo-Saxon king and the Normans overtook England. About 6000 men died in the field in the picture - must have been some battle. William built a Abbey on the site a few years later (as penance apparently - or could have just been to rub it in - who knows). When Henry 8th split with the pope he gave it to one of his followers who promptly demolished the Abbey but lived in the rest of the place.

There is a little village at Battle, that grew up to support the Abbey. Some of the buildings date from that time - wobbly windowsills and roofs, but then they are rather old. I wandered along and brought a pork chop for my dinner from the local butcher, the pig was from their farm 1 mile from the village. That's buying local.