Berlin has a crazy bar called Dr. Pong. Combining drinking with competitive sport. Awesome.
Basically everyone is in at the start, and you keep rotating around the table hitting one ball at a time until there are only 2 left. They then play out a game.
Does anyone think that the guy in the dark jacket and white shirt in the video looks like Roger Federer?
Thursday, 29 May 2008
Wednesday, 21 May 2008
on to berlin
Finally, on my long weekend (which was a few weeks back now!), I met up with Carmen, Cynthia and Shanaka in Berlin. Thankfully, it was a bit drier in Berlin than in Copenhagen.
Note to the intrepid traveller: travelling in Europe on May Day long weekend can be annoying. In Copenhagen there were noisy protests with police in armour looking on. In Berlin the buses were on strike. Luckily they ran "emergency" buses, which were packed to the rafters (if buses had rafters). Also note: don't buy the German version of the lonely planet guide if you can't speak German. Good thing I tried to read it straight after buying it. Interestingly the English version is €5 more than the German one!
Being in town the night before the others I went on a scouting mission to find good food and maybe a bar or two. Not too difficult in Berlin: head to Friedrichshain. They have a passion for graffiti and the drinks are cheap. The food was pretty good too. Interestingly I had to pay €1 deposit on my glass - maybe they have a problem with them going missing? Getting broken?
Berlin is the capital of Germany, and it has famous symbols such as the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate, I suspect however it is best known for the Berlin Wall (and the fall thereof). The start of the cold war can be characterised by the Berlin Airlift. The Americans and the English airlifted food and supplies into the city after the Soviets blockaded the western half of the city. At one stage a plane was landing at Tempelhof airport every 90 seconds! Tempelhof is currently being closed and replaced by the other two airports in Berlin. I used both the other ones, and they're crap. Hopefully by having only two airports they can focus on making a couple of decent ones! The residents near Tempelhof disagree with me given the amount of protest posters on street poles, shop fronts and alley ways.
The most interesting I discovered during my visit was that West Berlin was an enclave inside East Germany: the wall surrounded West Berlin entirely. I'd imagined it was a "vertical" spilt down the middle of Germany. Not much of the wall remains. Mostly the route of the wall is traced by metal "tracks" in the pavement. One section is preserved and protected - ironically - protected by another wall! Really it's only a fence, but it's amusing none-the-less. Another section called The East Side Gallery, is open for anyone to graffiti: it was quite interesting. We visited it at dusk:
Personally the wall raised all sorts of interesting questions for me. For instance, so many East Germans fled to West Germany. This prompted the creation of the wall. But the again, many East Germans did not flee. When is the point at which you decide it's time to flee a country? When are conditions so bad, that you are forced to move? What made people stay? What factors weigh in when deciding to stay? Family? Friends? Work? Familiarity? Habit? The unknown?
The fall of the wall is also amazing in its randomness. One time-poor, unbriefed, government minister, reading the incorrect information caused the wall to "fall". What the chances of that? One single utterance changed history!
I really liked Berlin. The very recent history. The graffiti, while not always great: the vast majority is just plain old "tagging"; the best stuff was artistic, and the political commentary was also good. I even found some graffiti supporting Internationalised Domain Names (IDN's):
This system is a non-issue in Australia and the USA: it allows "extended" characters (such as: ß or ä) to be used in domain names (such as: www.google.com). It must be quite important in Europe and the rest of the world however! The German domain name system has allowed IDN's since 2004.
I'd definitely recommend visiting Berlin. It's dirty, relatively cheap and very interesting.
Note to the intrepid traveller: travelling in Europe on May Day long weekend can be annoying. In Copenhagen there were noisy protests with police in armour looking on. In Berlin the buses were on strike. Luckily they ran "emergency" buses, which were packed to the rafters (if buses had rafters). Also note: don't buy the German version of the lonely planet guide if you can't speak German. Good thing I tried to read it straight after buying it. Interestingly the English version is €5 more than the German one!
Being in town the night before the others I went on a scouting mission to find good food and maybe a bar or two. Not too difficult in Berlin: head to Friedrichshain. They have a passion for graffiti and the drinks are cheap. The food was pretty good too. Interestingly I had to pay €1 deposit on my glass - maybe they have a problem with them going missing? Getting broken?
Berlin is the capital of Germany, and it has famous symbols such as the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate, I suspect however it is best known for the Berlin Wall (and the fall thereof). The start of the cold war can be characterised by the Berlin Airlift. The Americans and the English airlifted food and supplies into the city after the Soviets blockaded the western half of the city. At one stage a plane was landing at Tempelhof airport every 90 seconds! Tempelhof is currently being closed and replaced by the other two airports in Berlin. I used both the other ones, and they're crap. Hopefully by having only two airports they can focus on making a couple of decent ones! The residents near Tempelhof disagree with me given the amount of protest posters on street poles, shop fronts and alley ways.
The most interesting I discovered during my visit was that West Berlin was an enclave inside East Germany: the wall surrounded West Berlin entirely. I'd imagined it was a "vertical" spilt down the middle of Germany. Not much of the wall remains. Mostly the route of the wall is traced by metal "tracks" in the pavement. One section is preserved and protected - ironically - protected by another wall! Really it's only a fence, but it's amusing none-the-less. Another section called The East Side Gallery, is open for anyone to graffiti: it was quite interesting. We visited it at dusk:
Personally the wall raised all sorts of interesting questions for me. For instance, so many East Germans fled to West Germany. This prompted the creation of the wall. But the again, many East Germans did not flee. When is the point at which you decide it's time to flee a country? When are conditions so bad, that you are forced to move? What made people stay? What factors weigh in when deciding to stay? Family? Friends? Work? Familiarity? Habit? The unknown?The fall of the wall is also amazing in its randomness. One time-poor, unbriefed, government minister, reading the incorrect information caused the wall to "fall". What the chances of that? One single utterance changed history!
I really liked Berlin. The very recent history. The graffiti, while not always great: the vast majority is just plain old "tagging"; the best stuff was artistic, and the political commentary was also good. I even found some graffiti supporting Internationalised Domain Names (IDN's):
This system is a non-issue in Australia and the USA: it allows "extended" characters (such as: ß or ä) to be used in domain names (such as: www.google.com). It must be quite important in Europe and the rest of the world however! The German domain name system has allowed IDN's since 2004.I'd definitely recommend visiting Berlin. It's dirty, relatively cheap and very interesting.
Tuesday, 13 May 2008
next stop: københavn
Next stop on my long weekend was Copenhagen. It was a bit gloomy when I arrived in town, and as I read the hotel guide book to the city I began to worry. It had a list of common phrases in English, with the Danish translations, such as:
Excuse me, which way is ___? Undskyld, hvad vej ligger ___?
and
How much does this cost? Hvor meget koster den her?
... but that wasn't what worried me... it was this phrase that worried me:
Does it EVER stop raining here?? Holder det NOGENSINDE op med at regne her??
Yup, even the emphasis was included in the guide book. "Meh" I thought, "how bad could it be?", and so I continued on my merry way to grab some brunch. I have no qualms about recommending BarBar Bar for brunch either, the food was excellent. By the time I'd finished brunch however, it had begun to spit with rain. "Nevermind" I thought, "it'll just be a passing shower", and so I set off on a four hour self-guided walking tour. This is me at the half way mark, just before giving up:
Cold. Wet. Slightly miserable.
Consulting some more guides I decided to go back to my hotel, grab a change of clothes, and head indoors to some of the museums around town.
On my way back I passed some May Day protests, they seemed to be tame enough, but given the police presence, complete with protective head gear for the constables, I wasn't sticking around to find out. Trekking further towards the hotel I walked down a street that the Danes claim to be one of the longest outdoor shopping strips in Europe. That's fine... except when it's raining! BYO umbrella!
The Danes are masters of modern design. The Danish Design Centre provides some museum-esque exhibits of the history of Danish design, as well as an exhibition space for some of the latest pieces. Danish and Scandinavian design, whilst being modern, also tends to include a lot of wood. To force modern-ness on such a natural material they developed methods of steaming, bending and moulding wood.
It seems that the Danish design ethic is to be functional, aesthetically pleasing, and without ornamentation. From a computer-science view of the world, I like that this usually means that the objects have Affordance: that is, how the object looks, implicitly suggests how to use it. Sometimes, however, the objects were slightly abstract:
Looking at this jug reminded me of something... The beer is cheaper in Denmark than in Sweden! Time to head to a bar for a few brews.
Not content with only modern product design, I visited the Arken Museum of Modern Art. It's well worth the visit. Most of the pieces in the museum were created after 1990. Frustratingly they don't allow cameras inside. Some of the pieces in the museum were definitely worth a picture or two. I could describe them, but they really are visual things, so I wont.
The museum itself looks like a ship anchored to the nearby lake. Here's a view from the front:
That concluded my short, and somewhat soggy trip to Copenhagen. Two and a half days of long weekend still ahead of me, it was back to the airport, to fly to Berlin.
Excuse me, which way is ___? Undskyld, hvad vej ligger ___?
and
How much does this cost? Hvor meget koster den her?
... but that wasn't what worried me... it was this phrase that worried me:
Does it EVER stop raining here?? Holder det NOGENSINDE op med at regne her??
Yup, even the emphasis was included in the guide book. "Meh" I thought, "how bad could it be?", and so I continued on my merry way to grab some brunch. I have no qualms about recommending BarBar Bar for brunch either, the food was excellent. By the time I'd finished brunch however, it had begun to spit with rain. "Nevermind" I thought, "it'll just be a passing shower", and so I set off on a four hour self-guided walking tour. This is me at the half way mark, just before giving up:
Cold. Wet. Slightly miserable. Consulting some more guides I decided to go back to my hotel, grab a change of clothes, and head indoors to some of the museums around town.
On my way back I passed some May Day protests, they seemed to be tame enough, but given the police presence, complete with protective head gear for the constables, I wasn't sticking around to find out. Trekking further towards the hotel I walked down a street that the Danes claim to be one of the longest outdoor shopping strips in Europe. That's fine... except when it's raining! BYO umbrella!
The Danes are masters of modern design. The Danish Design Centre provides some museum-esque exhibits of the history of Danish design, as well as an exhibition space for some of the latest pieces. Danish and Scandinavian design, whilst being modern, also tends to include a lot of wood. To force modern-ness on such a natural material they developed methods of steaming, bending and moulding wood.
It seems that the Danish design ethic is to be functional, aesthetically pleasing, and without ornamentation. From a computer-science view of the world, I like that this usually means that the objects have Affordance: that is, how the object looks, implicitly suggests how to use it. Sometimes, however, the objects were slightly abstract:
Looking at this jug reminded me of something... The beer is cheaper in Denmark than in Sweden! Time to head to a bar for a few brews.Not content with only modern product design, I visited the Arken Museum of Modern Art. It's well worth the visit. Most of the pieces in the museum were created after 1990. Frustratingly they don't allow cameras inside. Some of the pieces in the museum were definitely worth a picture or two. I could describe them, but they really are visual things, so I wont.
The museum itself looks like a ship anchored to the nearby lake. Here's a view from the front:
That concluded my short, and somewhat soggy trip to Copenhagen. Two and a half days of long weekend still ahead of me, it was back to the airport, to fly to Berlin.
Monday, 5 May 2008
kicking things off with a parade
Last weekend was a nice, long, four day weekend. I think it was for most of Europe, whether they were celebrating May Day: for workers rights; or Ascension Day: a Christian holiday; or even Walpurgis Night or Day: a confused holiday for either Pagans, Satanists, or Roman Catholics.
In Göteborg they celebrate Walpurgis Night with a parade by Chalmers (a University in Göteborg) through the middle of the city. The parade is called The Cortège and students have been selling programmes for the event on the streets for a couple of weeks beforehand. The programme tells you what the floats in the The Cortège are all about. The Cortège satirises the previous year's worth of news, current affairs, and the affairs of shady celebrities.
A colleague of mine from Australia, Deepika, has an apartment overlooking the route of The Cortège, so we were able to avoid the crowds, and frantically try and work out what the hell each float was all about. Between bad attempts at translating the Swedish in the program, a little local knowledge and watching the floats, we were able to work out most of them.
Here are some of the floats. Such as this one, regarding the attempts to shut down The Pirate Bay, a Swedish bit torrent tracker:
Quite a number of the floats seemed to be a good excuse for the male students to cross dress. Paris Hilton is an easy target...
And the final photo I'll put here shows that Göteborg has the opposite problem to Melbourne with the weather forecasts: they get told it'll be sunny, but it seems to always rain! Can't say that's really been my Göteborg experience so far... thankfully! As usual more photos are here.
In Göteborg they celebrate Walpurgis Night with a parade by Chalmers (a University in Göteborg) through the middle of the city. The parade is called The Cortège and students have been selling programmes for the event on the streets for a couple of weeks beforehand. The programme tells you what the floats in the The Cortège are all about. The Cortège satirises the previous year's worth of news, current affairs, and the affairs of shady celebrities.A colleague of mine from Australia, Deepika, has an apartment overlooking the route of The Cortège, so we were able to avoid the crowds, and frantically try and work out what the hell each float was all about. Between bad attempts at translating the Swedish in the program, a little local knowledge and watching the floats, we were able to work out most of them.
Here are some of the floats. Such as this one, regarding the attempts to shut down The Pirate Bay, a Swedish bit torrent tracker:
Quite a number of the floats seemed to be a good excuse for the male students to cross dress. Paris Hilton is an easy target...And the final photo I'll put here shows that Göteborg has the opposite problem to Melbourne with the weather forecasts: they get told it'll be sunny, but it seems to always rain! Can't say that's really been my Göteborg experience so far... thankfully! As usual more photos are here.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
