An Israeli Canada Day

Hi everyone,

So I actually wrote a similar blog entry yesterday, but of course it got deleted with no traces left. So here we go again...

I just arrived in Israel 2 or so hours ago, and am now sitting in my room at the Reisfeld Residence which belongs to the Hebrew University of Agriculture, and is across the street from the Weizmann Institute which is where I will be living.

But I really meant this post to be more of a reflection on Berlin. I think its crazy that I only spent 7 weeks in Berlin, but I will miss it so very much. It is a fantastic city, made for living. It is probably the least German city in Germany, but I think its by far the most exciting one. Each neighbourhood has its own personality, and there is something for everyone no matter where you go. But of course these past 7 weeks would not have been nearly as exciting if not for the other fantastic RISE interns which have made my stay in Berlin way too much fun. I think the lifestyle was amazing. The great thing about an internship (unlike a semester abroad, for example) is that you don’t have any homework, and so we went out as much as we liked and as much as we could. Beer in Germany is cheap and good, and this made life that much better. I was incredibly sad to leave and wish that I have done a 10 or 12 week internship instead...but I guess that’s life.

I was however, excited to arrive in Israel. As always, it felt like coming back home. Being able to understand the signs (unlike the German ones) was something new, and hearing all the Hebrew talk around me made me excited to be here. I got picked up from the airport by a family friend. He also gave me an Israeli phone, and when I got to my room here I could access the Wi-Fi right away. In a sense all of this was very different from my first few hours in Berlin when I was completely clueless to my surroundings. But the learning curve was steep. By the end I knew the names and order of many subway stations around where I lived...I also knew the names and personalities of many American universities, but that’s mainly due to the other wonderful interns who made that possible for me J

All in all, my time in Germany was incredible. Those 7 weeks had both some of the best and some of the most foreign moments I have ever experienced. But human beings are incredibly adaptive, and you adapt to everything that comes your way, especially when it is good.  A little off topic, I actually have an entire post about Prague and Amsterdam in the making, and its about 2 pages long so far, but not quite done yet...so I will post that when I can. I am also going to write a long post about my project in Berlin, describing what exactly we were studying and what we managed to accomplish. I’ll give myself 3 days to publish both of these...I know very ambitious when considering my previous track record.

I will also write something about my time in Rehovot so far once I get at least a little bit adjusted and start to unpack. REALLY not looking forward to unpacking considering I just finished packing less than 24 hours ago. Sigh.

Hope everyone back home is doing well. Please, please, please leave me comments, or email me, or send me facebook messages. They are all much appreciated J

Cheers!

Alina

Vienna part II, Prague, and missing trains

Hi everyone!
Let me just mention that the reason I am able to write this post at this time is due the ridiculous timeliness (not quite sure if this is a real word) of German trains. We were supposed to leave to Munich at 4:36am this morning, but due to our own poor time management skills (and a lot of bad luck) we managed to miss our Munich train by about 2 minutes. That being said, this might actually have been for the better because this means that I actually got to sleep tonight in my own bed (versus trying unsuccessfully to fall asleep , sitting up, on moving trains). Of course by the time I actually got home and fell asleep it was 7:15am, so I now have a severely shifted sleeping schedule. All the better for skyping with people from back home :) Anyway, I figured I would finish my story of last weekend, and also upload some more pictures. I know I am uploading them in a sort of strange order (Prague first, even though I haven't written about it yet) but I promise all the pictures will be up at some point soon (including ones from Dresden from 2 weeks ago...)

On the second day in Vienna we explored the old city centre.  We climbed 385 or so stairs up to the top of St. Stephen's cathedral and also went inside it to look at the church (I will make sure to label these pictures so you know which ones are from St. Stephen's. Climbing the stairs was an adventure in itself because the staircase was ridiculously narrow, went up in a spiral, and was the method by which you both climbed up and came back down. So we spent a lot of time being glued to the walls of this particular staircase. We then had really good Gelatto (of the calibre of Il Gelatiere back home- a place at Mt. Pleasant and Eglinton), and walked around some more in search of Motzart's house. There are lots of pictures of other beautiful churches and buildings we encountered on the way some of whose names I don't remember. We went into St. Peter's church, which was actually very different from St. Stephen's...a true experience of church variety (Quick German lesson- the word for church in German is Kirche, pronounced "kirsha"...I managed to mess up this pronunciation about 15 times since I learned this word. In fact the way I learned this word is probably the funniest- on my way to and from work, I bike past a large glass building with a huge sign that says "Scientology Kirche" on it...so I asked my somewhat German speaking friends and then confirmed my suspicion...and laughed at my pronunciation for half an hour :)) .

We finally ended up in the museum district. The museums themselves look like castles from the outside. We wandered around some more (the weather was amazing!) and finally ended up in what turned out to be my favourite thing in Vienna- the Freud museum. Located in his old apartment (where he lived for 47 years before fleeing to England in 1938 to avoid the Nazis). The best part about the visit to his apartment was that we managed to stumble on a lady giving a tour of it in English and so we tagged along. I was way too excited about being there, probably because I learned about Freud in so many different classes. I felt like my education hasn't completely gone to waste :)...I think that the pictures I will post will do much more justice telling his story than me. I do want to say how much I loved seeing the waiting room where his patients sat, the couch where he had his famous Wednesday night meetings, and some of his other possessions. There was even a room dedicated to the concept of Freud's couch in this museum. It had pictures of how far this couch concept has infiltrated (including Andy Warhol's work).

After this, we went to the market, which is ...well a market. It has lots of stands selling food (the funniest part is that most of them sell the same sort of food...not quite sure how they compete with each other). The best part was that we had lunch at this place called Tewa (means Nature in Hebrew), and after seeing the menu I got a feeling that the food was very Israeli. Sure enough, after asking, I got introduced to the owner and we talked a bit in Hebrew about Vienna...It was a lot of fun (I really miss speaking in Hebrew to people...). After the market it started raining quite a bit, and we somehow miraculously found a subway station, grabbed our backpacks from the hostel and left to Prague.

I think I will write a separate post about Prague because there is quite a bit to say...for now you can look at my second album of Prague pictures :)

Feel free to leave lots of comments!

Cheers :)
Alina

Vienna: The Beginning

Hi everyone,
It has definitely been a while! We had a 4 day weekend here in Germany, and so we went to Vienna and Prague for 4 days. I just got back late last night so I am still in the recovery phase. This post will be about Vienna, and I will write 1 or 2 more to finish off the story of Vienna and Prague.

We took the night train to Vienna. We did our best to sleep, but the seats did not recline (at all) which made this a little bit difficult...We got to Vienna nice and early on Thursday morning. After checking in to our Hostel (which by the way was amazing!) We went to a nearby Schloss! So Schloss is one of approximately 15 German words I have learned so far (10 of those are the numbers from 1 to 10 :)), it means...Castle!

Now a North American might think that this is single handedly the most useless word you can ever learn in German. However, in the last 3 weeks I have been to SO SO SO many of these Schlosses, that I am starting to think it is the most useful word I learned so far. This particular one was called Schönbrunn. Its a huge palace with any beautiful gardens, located in the south west corner of my map of the Vienna centre. We actually did a tour of its inside, and to be honest it was a little bit more impressive than Casa Loma. This specific castle was home to Franz Joseph, who I believe was a ruler in the early 19th century. His wife Elizabeth also lived there, and apparently she is famous under the name Sisi (There are movies about her under this name...). His mother (who also lived there during her reign) was named Maria Theresa, and she ruled the Kingdom of Austria before Franz Joseph. She was actually the mother of Marie Anoinette...and 15 other children. The interesting thing is that she would marry her children to the right people for political favours. And so Marie Antoinette ended up marrying into the French royal family. Anyway, we saw a bunch of nice rooms and the beautiful gardens. Pictures should be uploaded to facebook once I sort through them (there are far too many as you might expect...)

The other really curious thing about this palace is that it seems to be the place to jog. Almost everyone we saw could be grouped into 2 categories- tourist or jogger. It seemed like the place to be if you like to run. The same day we visited the Botanical gardens (plus a Schloss there...see pictures:)). We also walked around the Vienna centre for a while. One of the most impressive things was a World War II memorial erected by the Soviets (it was in Russian)...you will see pictures of that as well! All the buildings in the centre were beautiful. It will be hard to return to skyscrapers and rectangular buildings after this...

That night we went to the Opera. You can get standing room tickets for 3 euro, and you don't have to dress up super fancy which is a plus when you only brought one backpack of clothes. The opera itself was called Simon, and it was in Italian. The singing was beautiful, and we got really lucky in the sense that there were English subtitles on these small screens below where we stood. Yay! The storyline was still difficult to understand even with the direct translation. But the singing was great!

We finished the night with a ride on this ancient Ferris Wheel, in an amusement park. The amusement park is open 24/7, and unlike the CNE there is no admission fee to enter, you just pay for separate rides. This specific Ferris wheel is famous because it was built in the 19th century, and has been spinning ever since! You get quite a good view of Vienna from above...and that's when you realize that Vienna has very few sky scrapers. I think really the big (and perhaps only, in terms of aesthetics) benefit of sky scrapers is that they make the sky line look beautiful at night. So the ride on the wheel was fun, but not breathtaking like standing on the top of the Empire State building at night (New York has crazy sky scrapers AND ridiculous lights)...

We then went back to our hostel and practically passed out...walking around castles all day gets pretty tiring!
I will try to write about part 2 of Vienna tonight :) And will post pictures once I wade through them!

I also think I fixed the commenting. So comment away!

Alina

Kreuzberg, The Zoo, The game, Dresden, and other adventures

Hi Everyone!
Sorry for the delay in writing, but it has been a busy weekend! I promise to post most of my pictures onto facebook tomorrow :) That was you can have visual evidence of what went on...
Friday night after dinner we went to Kreuzberg. Its a neighbourhood in Berlin that's big on nightlife, bars, and people. Its like the Queen street West of Berlin in the sense that you can find the strangest things there, but it is a lot of fun. Many of the bars we tried to get into were packed with people and impossible to enter...can't say I've seen much of this in Toronto (with the exception of the Bier Market on the Esplanade, but it serves European beer like the bars here, so I see a trend...) We ended up finding a bar with a pool table, and so I played what turned out to be the best pool game of my life. I managed to make some ridiculous shots and of course missed some of the easiest ones...I also developed a really great method for ordering beer. I just always order the first one on the menu since I don't know how they all taste like anyway...and this way I always end up trying a different beer.

Saturday morning I finally got to sleep in (!!)...I then went to the flee market which is apparently a popular attraction on Saturdays and Sundays for everyone, even non-tourists. I didn't really find much there though, but they did have many huge painting and heavy china which would for sure not fit into my already overflowing suitcases. I also found another Berlin Bear! I think I will just collect all my Bear pictures and post them into an album later this week!

We then headed to the zoo. I really, really love zoos, so this was quite the highlight :) I think there are a few reasons the Berlin zoo is great. For one, its located right in the centre of Berlin, unlike the Toronto zoo which is practically in the suburbs. The other really unique thing about the zoo is that it also has a huge aquarium inside of it, which we didn't make it into because we only had 4 hours or so. Finally, the zoo has this nocturnal animal pavilion which had some really cool animals that I have never seen before, including the Kangaroo rat (which lives in the dessert and has probably the most efficient kidney in the animal kingdom...thanks Animal Phys II) and another really cool animal that looks like a perfect mix between a kangaroo and a bunny. Watch out for pictures :) Besides that there were all the usual awesome animals: giraffes, rhinos, lots and lots of birds, flamingos, elephants, and many more. However, the whole time we were trying to find the polar bears. And so, after a 4 hour journey through the corners of the zoo, we finally saw the polar bears. Needless to say they weren't too excited to see us, and just looked like they were pacing around and swinging to some sort of inaudible beat... we were glad that we at least reached our much desired destination!

After the zoo we were all about as hungry as those polar bears, and so we had Doner kebabs. A Doner (pronounced Derner) is a lot like a shawarma, expect the bread is thick Turkish bread instead of a pita. Its probably the most popular fast food in Germany. There are some arguments about whether it came to Germany with the immigrants from Turkey, or whether it originated in Germany. It was really good. Possibly also because we were all really hungry. After this, we headed to a bar to watch the finals of the European soccer league teams. It was a game between Manchester United and Barcelona. We were probably cheering for Barcelona just because one of the guys who was with us had a Barcelona jersey. What I am trying to say is that we didn't have much choice...but we clearly picked a good team to cheer for because they beat Manchester U 3 to 1.

After getting home I managed to sleep for a few hours before getting up at the crack of dawn to get on a train to Dresden, which is this city southeast of Berlin. To be honest I haven't read up so much about it, but I do know that it was one of the last cities to be bombed by the allies during World War II, and that it was bombed when the allies were pretty sure they were going to win the war. Apparently most of it was destroyed, but the beautiful castles have been rebuilt since World War II. If you look at the pictures you can see just how blue the sky was today. It was pretty much unreal.

I think that almost as interesting, was our adventure to Dresden. We were supposed to take a 2 hour train from Berlin, and then switch over trains and take a different 1 for an hour to reach Dresden. Somehow...and we really still don't know how (and are blaming it on being hungry...) we got on the wrong train at our transfer stop...and found this out only about 1.5 hours into what was supposed to be a 1 hour train ride. Needless to say we freaked out a bit, but luckily we got some help from some of the ticket agents on the train, and so we took it to its final destination, Chemnitz, before switching over to a 1 hour train to Dresden. We got really lucky with this transfer because if we didn't catch that Dresden train, we probably would have had to spend the day in Cheminitz. Anyway, we somehow made it to the city, and learned to never trust print outs that tell you what platform to get on at. Just to reinforce this lesson, the platform we were supposed to get on for our train to Berlin was mysteriously changed to one next door to it, so we suspect this is what happened during our first transfer when we weren't paying much attention...:(

Okay, I am quite exhausted now, considering my early start to this crazy day. Hope everyone is doing really well back home! I have heard again that the comments tool doesn't work properly, and if it continues failing I might switch to a different blog website...I will see. But leave comments if you are able to do so, so that I know that it at least sort of works :)

Cheers!
Alina 

Some more Stuttgart, Berlin, and Work

Hi everyone,
I figured I would address everything at once for increased efficiency :)
Pictures from Stuttgart are being uploaded onto facebook as we speak! They are taking quite a while though because there are quite a few!
The last day of Stuttgart was fun. We went to this neighbourhood park (think any regular park in a regular suburb), but of course this one had the remains of a castle, some ducks and geese, some baby ducks and baby geese (see pictures for cute furry birds!) and some canoe type boats that we took a ride in!
I have a feeling that if this sort of park existed in Toronto, it would be a huge attraction, like one of the top 5 things to do in Toronto, it would be like the next Casa Loma...
We then visited another small town called Ludwigsburg which incidentally had a parade that day so there are some pictures from that :) This city also has a huge castle which we saw a bit of, it looks sort of like a mini version of Versailles. Then we went back to Stuttgart, took some more pictures, and then I got on the train and finally finished the Undercover Economist, which is like a slightly more technical version of Freakonomics, I think its almost as entertaining though!

Back in Berlin I finally met some more people from my program :) We went to Cafe Hardenberg (which is amazing, so this was the second time I was here) and had Berliner Weisse (I of course had to look up the proper name because I can't seem to remember the second half of most German words because they are quite long...maybe this isn't the best example for long word, but still). Its pretty much a light beer mixed with raspberry syrup so it turns pink and tastes great! Yay authentic food/drink! We then proceeded to wander around the city and I had to take 4 different trains to get home so that was sort of exciting.

I have been meaning to write some more about work. There is a really cool theoretical component to what we are doing which I will probably dedicate an entire post to later this week. But in terms of the actual mechanics of the work...well its starting to resemble some sort of design/architecture project rather than a psychology/ergonomics one, which is sort of interesting. We are pretty much trying to build a driving simulation that is realistic (so that the reviewers can't complain about that) but still tests basic assumptions. So for the past 2 days I have been trying to learn a bit of this program called Blender in which you can design pictures in 3D. I have been trying to add some things (like fog and text) to the pictures...but, since this program in itself is sort of a mystery and none of the people I work with really know it too well, we are sort of reluctant to use it. So at the same time, I am trying to export pictures out of it so that we can use them as frames in a simulation and insert them into my very favourite program Presentation (I have luckily worked with it before :):):))... Anyway the point of this long rant is that we are doing the same project in parallel on 2 programs because we don't know which one we will have to use...I guess its sort of productive...

Hope all is well! Leave comments...and if the commenting tool doesn't work (as I have heard from someone) you can just email me or message me on facebook)...

Talk soon :)
Alina

Stuttgart (Day 1)

Hey All!
Sorry for the 2 day break! And I actually do promise to write a little more about the research because I would like to eventually go back and re-read this myself :)
But for now, Stuttgart!

Stuttgart is located in the south of Germany, and so it was a 5 hour train ride to get here last night. I travelled on one of the ICE trains, which are the really fast ones that go throughout Europe.

I gave some family friends who live here, and so I am staying with them :)
I was really pleasantly surprised when I got out of the train station here around midnight yesterday...it looked like a street party! I made a mental note to come back here and participate when I am here with someone else and not alone...
People just seemed to be having a really good time wandering between patios and up and down the streets (its legal to drink outside here), and there were sooo many people...it was great!
The family friends here live in a small suburb of Stuttgart named Tamm. Its super suburban...like much more than Richmond Hill suburban, which is saying something!

This morning we went to the Mercedes-Benz museum. Stuttgart is pretty much car production central with the head offices of Mercedes-Benz and Porsche. The museum was pretty good, even for someone who doesn't really like/care about cars. They showed important events that happened during a period of time, followed by pictures of cars from that era. I will be uploading the pictures up to facebook in the next few days!
I think the most interesting thing I learned was where the name Mercedes comes from (Benz was the name of one of the intervtors of the first automobile). Emil Jellinek was this European enterpreneur who bought lots of cars from Benz and resold them, therefore making great business for them. I believe he wanted a fast car for a race and so he commissioned Benz to make him one. He insisted in naming it Mercedes, which was the name of his only daughter. Emil Jellinek doesn't really get enough credit, even though he helped popularize the Benz cars all over Europe.

After the museum we went to a little town close to Stuttgart called Esslingen. There is really not much I can describe about it expect that it was really quite beautiful. Lots of pictures of it to follow. Its positioned on a slope and so there are some really great views of the hill side below. The streets are for the kmost part cobblestone which makes it even better looking. In terms of interesting landmarks, we saw a synagogue that used to function until 1937 and a street that used to be called the Jewish street but was also renamed in 1937. Apparently the city used to be home to many Jews before World War II.

After this city we went to downtown Stuttgart which was again beautiful. We walked through a park and then went to eat on the top floor of a department store (apparently most department stores here have food places at the top). I think the deaprtment store was much like the Bay. It then started raining like crazy (even though it was close to 30 degrees outside). And so it was an interesting experience- we ran to the car under strong sunshine and pouring rain.

That was pretty much the end of my sight seeing. We did some conventional stuff like eating dinner afterwards as well. Don't know if I mentioned this before, but the food here is really good. It just tasted better. From the vegetables to the fruit to the cheese and meat. I don't really know what the rational explanation to this would be.
Tomorrow we will do some more sight seeming before I have to get back on a train going to Berlin at 5pm. One more interesting thing...I went to the McCafe (which is the coffee off-shoot of McDonalds, popular in Europe) and it is actually more expensive than the Starbucks in Canada...go figure!

In high hopes of more interesting stories in the next little while...
Hope everyone is doing well! Please leave me comments :)

Cheers,
Alina

Day 1 of Exploration

Hi everyone!
Don't know how long I can keep doing this on daily basis, but I feel like today I really must write otherwise I'll forget a bunch of stuff. Photos of today are loading onto facebook as we speak so you can just go see them on facebook! (add me if I don't have you on facebook for some reason...)

Today I finally pulled out my camera and it was a good day to do so! It was probably 23 degrees and sunny in the afternoon, so really beautiful weather! Around 3pm me, Tristan (the student from Waterloo), my PhD student (Stefan), and his daughter Ylva (not Ylna like I previously posted...) went on a tour to the downtown of Berlin (Mitte, which apparently directly translates to City Centre in German). We walked for something like 5 hours so needless to say by the end all of our legs were pretty much dead. I think the pictures speak for themselves, but here are a few descriptions. We walked through this park called Tiergarten (which literally means Deer garden)- there used to be deer here back when the city ended after this park), we also saw the presiden't house- a house where the president (who by the way has no real power and is just a ceremonial figure) has to leave. The chancellor that actually has power can live wherever she wants! We also saw the Pregnant Oyster, a building that frequently has arts exhibitions (it also has a proper name which apparently berliners don't really use). We saw the new Parliament which is transparent so that the public can feel like their government is transparent. We saw the old parliament which is actually totally accessible for the public now, so I am planning to go there.

We saw the Victory gates which are the super touristy area with lots of different consulates. The American consulate of course requested to build a fence around itself but the German people didn't let them, so instead they built 2 buildings, 1 behind the other, and the front one serves as a fence :). One of the coolest thing we saw was the line that used to divide East and West Berlin before the collapse of the Berlin wall (metaphorical, not literal collapse) in 1989. All the old buildings were in East Berlin (occupied by the Soviets). There is also these cobblestones that run throughout the city indicating where the wall used to be.

We saw the Jewish Memorial. Stefan was right when he told me that it was like no other memorial. There is almost no writing, just these huge concrete blocks that get really tall in the centre and make the centre of the memorial feel really cold and dark. Apparently the blocks are supposed to represent the Nazi spirit, they are small and insignificant in the beginning, as in they don't make a difference, but when you get deeper you encounter serious changes and issues...

We also saw city hall and many parks. The world clock is at the end of my album and it is incredible (I love clocks). Hoping to go there again soon. On a final note, I really like the bears of Berlin. I have so far only photographed 2, but am on the hunt for many more!

Hope all is well! Comment so that I see you guys are alive!

-Alina