Sunday 29 May 2011

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 

Tuesday 24 May 2011

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

Saturday 21 May 2011

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

Wednesday 18 May 2011

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

Tuesday 17 May 2011

Day 1 of Work

Hey everyone!
So its not exactly true, but today was sort of the 1st day of work. Our experiments don't start until next week, so so far I am just reading the papers, and maybe doing a short lit review. To be honest I didn't get that much reading done today because I was a little distracted by the internet, and figuring out other things, such as the Euro to Canadian Dollar conversion rate, which I think is probably important anyway :)

I really promise to take pictures, its just that I forgot my camera at home today, but it was sort of cloudy anyway so tomorrow should be a lot better since it should be sunny! I will also try to write a little more about the theories surrounding our experiments, they are actually really cool, even for people who don't do psychology research.

My PhD student also gave me a crash course in stats today. I did take them at the beginning of 2nd year, but needless to say I don't really remember that much of it...:(

I also finally got to speak to some other students here today. There is a guy from Waterloo also in our department doing his co-op. So he will be here for 4 months which seems incredibly long to me :)
I also finally met someone from my program (Aditya) he is doing an engineering internship at the same university as I am (TU Berlin). He actually speaks fluent German so it was great having dinner with him (he translated stuff and told me more about Berlin). Fun Fact: The band U2 got its name from one of the subway lines in Berlin! And I actually took this subway line home today after dinner! I am sure some of you already knew about this, but I definitely didn't, so its pretty awesome!

A few more funny things...I went to the cafeteria to buy tea today...of course since I don't understand German I just picked out a tea bag at random that I thought was black tea. In fact, it turned out to be reddish-pink and was really good (raspberry or something :)) So sometimes it clearly pays off not to understand the language ;)

I think I'll finish by talking about my subway adventure. It was the first time taking the subway for me. Aditya pointed me in the right direction, but after ending up on the platform, I wasn't sure where to buy a ticket. So I looked for the most scholarly-looking man on the platform, and approached him in hopes that he speaks english. He did. In fact, he spoke so well at first i thought he was British, but he was actually from Bavaria, the southern part of Germany around Munich. He told me where the ticket machines were and so I bought some sort of ticket and even managed to validate it by myself. Once I finally start using my camera, I'll take a picture of the tickets and post it here...

Hope everyone is doing well back home!
And thanks for all the comments! Keep them coming :)

Alina

Monday 16 May 2011

Arrival!

Hi Everyone!
So I have officially arrived in Berlin around 12pm our time (that's 6pm EST).
Yesterday was a little crazy, considering I didn't sleep much on the plane and pretty much missed the "night" due to the time difference. Now its 3:30am my time, but I woke up and can't sleep so I figured I would write.

I think what most people want to hear is about Berlin, so I will try to write about that.
I think its ironic that the blog is called "96 days of summer" because well, when I left Toronto it was raining, and of course when I got here it was also...raining. Granted not as hard, but its never fun. Its a little bit warmer here which I guess is good. My PhD student picked me up from the airport with his 7-month old daughter (her name is spelled something like Ylna- its a Swedish name). He took me to the lab since my apartment wasn't going to be ready until 4pm. I guess descriptors are important, so if I was going to describe my first impression of the Germans would be "the cars are small but the men are very tall", both the PhD student and the professor I will be working with are very tall blonde me. Probably well above 6 feet- I felt like a midget. They were very nice people- I have my own "office" with my own computer, and there is even a label outside the office with my name. They bought me nice flowers that smell (important to me!) so the room looks great. After about a million introductions (which included another Canadian intern who was really nice but I think he might have given me the "You go to York??" look :))

Not sure if anyone is interested but the PhD system works a little differently in Germany. In Germany the PhD students are actually lecturers and they have their own Masters students which is interested. So pretty much he's responsible for like 5 people which is cool. Tomorrow, after I read a little bit of the literature I'll probably get a better idea of the theory of what I will be doing, but in terms of the actual techniques I will be testing participants in a driving simulator. Its funny that problems in labs all over the world seem to be the same- designing the actual stimuli is very error-prone, you code for something and it doesn't work (and of course no one knows why). Anyway it was all very familiar :)

The actual university I work in is called TU-Berlin, it roughly translates to "Technological University of Berlin". So I was really curious as to why there is a Psychology department at the university. They told that during World War II this university actually made lots of technology/weapons for Hitler and after WWII the Allies told the university that it can operate as long as it has a more "human" aspect to it, and so now it has some interesting human aspects to it. For example- they have a huge PhD program concerned with Human-Machine interface, so the interactions between machines and humans, as my PhD student put it "from cooking machine to cars and more". Sounds like an awesome department! In fact, one of his Master's students just made this giant "I-Pad". Its like a homemade screen which is multi-touch when connected to a computer. As Stefan (the PhD student) said, they have the technology, now they just have to come up with a use for the screen :D!

Okay so on to Berlin (this is a reward for those who got this far). I promise to post pictures once it stops raining and I have the motivation to get outside and stuff. The part where I live in is called "Charlottenburg" its just one of the neighborhoods of the city. Apparently Berlin is unique in that each neighbourhood sort of has something called a Kitte (I think that was the word) which just means "centre" so each neighborhood has its own downtown. The neighbourhood itself is nice, with the big streets having lots of shops on them. I live in a 5 or so story building on the 3rd floor above a grocery store. Yesterday I went on an hour long search of buying a surfstick so I could use the internet. After many unsuccessful shops, I finally bought one at Vodofone. Its pretty much my own portable wireless! So I think it was worth the money (by the way haven't looked up the Euro/CAD exchange rate yet which is sort of bad...) The people on the streets look like they do in Canada. I think its a relatively diverse city in terms of ethnicities (which is what Stefan was saying as well). The streets I walked on looked sort of like a mix between College and Spadina, Bloor and Spadina, and Queen West. Lots of stores selling different things. I hope that tomorrow it will rain less and I will get to walk around more so I have better than just "surfstick" stories. My neighbourhood is very green so its nice (yay jogging space!).


Okay I think this is the end for today, and I will be impressed if anyone got this far, but blogging is a lot of fun actually. I can definitely say that I am a little homesick, but hopefully this will go away when I meet more people in my program. I also hope to go on a weekend trip somewhere this weekend so maybe I'll see something nice! You can post comments and I will definitely respond or email me at alina.beliavsky@gmail.com.

 Miss you all!

Cheers,
Alina