Bochum

This week I was in Bochum. Bochum is an old mining town a little bit south and a lot west of Berlin. Before I went, as I said, all I knew about Bochum was that the university looks like a spaceship, and that it's famous for musicals. The uni does look like a spaceship, but it's only famous for 1 musical (Starlight Express). It's been playing there since 1989 in the same theatre. There was even a statue of it in our hotel. There's also a subway station that looks like a coal mine. That's pretty much Bochum, not an aweful city, but nothing very exciting, either.

What was exciting, though, was the microbiology conference I was there for. This was a huge conference (compared to the other 2 conferences I've been to) - 1300 attendees, more than 600 posters, and something like 130 talks all up. There were sometimes 7 different programs in parallel, so nobody could possibly go to all the talks! It was pretty full on, so I didn't even get to work the trade exhibit for freebees, just a couple handfuls of pens. I also went into the wrong lecture hall at one point, and had to sit through the annual meeting of some society (in German), complete with voting for... something... or someone... Another highlight was the organ (like in a church) in the lecture theatre. There's something very strange about combining microbiology and organ music.

 

After all that excitement, I came back to Potsdam on Wednesday on a superfast train (250km/h). I've been hanging out for this weekend - need to catch up on quite a bit of sleep from the last 3 or 4 weeks.

Hope you are all well.

Adam

News

Hi,

I'm sorry I've been so slack with keeping in touch, I'll try harder next week. But now I've got to try to remember the last 3 weeks. I'm having trouble putting them in the right order, so I'm just going to put everything out of order, if that's OK.

I went sledding with a couple of friends the other day. It had s

nowed quite a lot for the week, but the Friday we decided to go had warmed up a bit, and it had rained quite a lot so the snow was quiet slushy. Slush is not acceptable for sledding, so we waited till about 10pm when it cooled down enough for the snow to become a bit more solid. We went to the biggest mountain in Potsdam/Spandau (a suburb of Berlin) (took about 10min to walk to the summit). 

Then proceeded to spend the next 3-4 hours walking up and sledding down. Needless to say, I felt it the next day!

Also went to a movie in the Berlinale (big, famous, film festival). Saw a kiwi movie called The Strength of Water - was very cool to hear thick "Northland accents". The director was there, and had questions and answers afterwards. A bit bizarre walking out of the theatre after watching Northland scenery for 2h into thick falling snow. Highly recommend the movie if you get the chance.

But the snow's days are numbered, I believe. It's definitely warmer, all the snow on the ground has melted. A few of us from work went iceskating last weekend, and the ice was kind of melting a bit,  I think it was the last weekend that ice rink was open. There are even buds on the trees, so spring must be just around the corner.

What's also just around the corner is a presentation I'm giving tomorrow morning (just to out lab group). I'm going to conference on the other side of Germany (in Bochum) next week, and giving the same short talk there. All the Germans look a bit sorry for me when I tell them where I'm going - but I have been told that the university looks like a space ship, and that it's the place to go in Germany if you like musicals, so it can't be all bad... Anyway, I'd better go to bed to get a good night's sleep before my presentation tomorrow.

Hope you are all well. Love hearing what you're up to! Yes, really!

Adam

Hello

Hi,

I have to apologise first of all for getting a little behind with this. Second, I'd like to thank you all for the birthday wishes. It was a little weird with the time difference, I wasn't sure whether I should start celebrating midday the day before or what. Birthdays are a big deal here, with solemn handshakes and heartfelt "happy birthday"s. It's also really (REALLY) bad luck/rude to wish someone happy birthday before it's actually the day. I made a banana cake with lemon icing to take to work, and it got polished off pretty quick, and had nachos for dinner.

Not too much else to report for the last couple of weeks, been working pretty hard, but still managing to fit in a bit more exploring of potsdam - here are some pictures of Ruinenberg, a water reservoir some king built in the 1700s. It's designed to look like ancient Roman ruins, but it isn't actually that old. I found it a little ironic that they are now restoring some of the structures, after deliberately making them look old in the first place.

My German's still getting better, still pretty slow though. I'm finding that I keep learning things about English in the German lessons. For example, Kunst is art in German, kunstlich is artificial - I'd never noticed that the root word of artificial was art until I learnt the German. Germans always apologise to me about how hard German must be to learn because of all the different genders and endings and things, but at least it's reasonably logical, and even though I'm sure I get the gender right less than 33% of the time, it's still understandable.

Happy Waitangi day for Friday, I'm a little jealous of the "perfect bbq weather" the Herald predicted for the weekend, so I hope you made the most of it!

Adam

Spring on the way?

Hi

Well since the last pictures, Potsdam has warmed up remarkably. 5C today, has been around that for the last week or so. The snow and ice is slowly melting, the river's flowing again.

In non-weather related news, Sarah came to visit from Scotland last week. Did the whole tourist thing in Potsdam and Berlin with her. The highlight of the Potsdam day was the windmill museum, located inside an actual windmill! All the information was in German but there were diagrams, buttons to push, and it was actually grinding wheat at the time, so it was 2 euro well spent.


It was still pretty cold then, so here are a couple more photos of snow and ice. I like the no swimming sign.



We also went on a pub crawl in Berlin. It was a HUGE commercial operation, more than 100 people I think, and half of them were really drunk and loud Australians, the other half were from Britain, in town for the Oasis concert the next night. Me, Sarah, and another Kiwi who's studying in Berlin were also going to the Oasis concert. First we met at a Kiwi cafe and drank Tui, ate kiwiburgers, wedges, and steak and wandered over to the concert. The concert was amazing - so many people it was hard to move. They played all their hits, and sometimes the crowd was singing along so loud that you couldn't hear the band!


My flatmate's birthday is tomorrow, so I'd better go help clean up the house for the party tonight. Hope you are all well.

Adam

Latest news

Just after the holidays, we had a cold snap here. Lots of snow fell, and we had -10C during the day, down to -20C overnight. This is colder than usual for Potsdam, and it threw the buses into chaos. Usually, being German, the buses and trains are scheduled to the second. The first Monday of work, though, stuff was really late - my flatmate heard her bus driver saying that he was 59 minutes behind schedule, so everyone though he was the next bus. The snow is still pretty thick, and, most importantly, the lakes have frozen over! So today I went for a walk on a lake. And here are some pictures:

Heiliegersee, not looking very much like a "sea". I think most of the population of Potsdam was here today.

People didn't seemed worried about cracks like these. They had cut a section out and you could see that the ice was about 10cm thick, so I assume it was relatively safe.

Nobody sunbathing today!

This is the river leading into the lake.

This boat isn't going anywhere!

On Thursday, I met up with a friend from school who's doing her OE, and had reached the Berlin leg. Got directions to the most German restaurant in the area, and had schnitzel and pork knuckle with sauerkraut, then went to a very cool bar on the 12th floor of an office building with great view of the city. Unfortunately, I forgot/didn't know that the train home has different times during the week than on the weekend. Facing a 3 hour wait, I decided to crash in Berlin, and luckily, there was a spare bed at the hostel Clare was staying at. I got up early Friday morning and made it to work an hour earlier than usual!

Hope you are all good, how were your Christmases and New Years?

Adam