Binary Tuberculosis

I’ve been going around Germany these past few days (Hamburg & Munich), got a couple pics up. Pretty tired now, need me sleep, off to the airport tomorrow, going to London for the weekend. Haven’t been there in a decade or so, so we’ll see how things compare to what I have in my head.

I’ll try and give a more detailed report later if I’m in the mood, if I’m not, no big loss, I doubt you guys care anyway.

Just had a big dose of Sweden. Spent about three days taking in 2 cities, Lund and Stockholm. Had to go to Lund for a meeting involving the project I’m working on, figured I’d check out Stockholm while I was in the country as well.

One thing that totally impressed me about Sweden was it’s people and the communicative skills. Everybody, everybody, I’ve met in Sweden speaks English. I’m not talking about knowing English well enough to get by, I’m talking about being fluent in it. Even the ones with “bad” English just speak it a bit slower with an accent. I asked a taxi driver about this and compared it the Germans I’ve met and their language skills. He agreed with me and mentioned how the in Sweden, English is just another language spoken, it’s part of the country, while in Germany the people just strongly prefer German and don’t want to speak English. I’m sure he over generalizing a bit, but at least I got the POV of the Swedes. I always did like Sweden, I mean, I drive a Volvo.

I visited the Vasa Museum while in Stockholm. This museum houses the oldest and best preserved warship from the 17th century. It was in Swedish waters for many years and so well preserved, since Swedish waters don’t contain any wood eating mussels I believe. You’ve always seen pictures and videos of old ships, but this thing was amazing, it was much much bigger than I thought it would be, immense even, you just can’t realize how big until you’re actually close enough to touch it. The workmanship on its hull also describes the political and artistic and even mythological perspective of the Swedish royalty and its people from the 17th century.

Took a few pics from my amazing cell phone as well. None of the ship, it was a bit dark around the ship itself, but got some ship replicas clicked.

It’s spelled Lund, but pronounced Loondt. It’s a pretty nice town in Sweden. Internet access is hard to come by for me (currently in the middle of a break in our project meeting here), but will write more about Lund and hopefully Stockholm (planning on going there tonight) later.

Last night was the official longest day of the year I think around here. Sunset was pretty late, don’t remember what time exactly, but I want to say around 11:30PM.

My iPod mini crashed or something, wth? Stuck on screen with a Snow Patrol song, no audio, backlight on. Guess I’ll wait for the batteries to die and hope that fixes it.

Well I saw a new place today, since the 2 weeks or so I’ve spent in my current room have been not-so-amazing, not bad, but think of the shittiest dorm on campus in your undergrad years…yup, that’s my room.

Babett, the administrative chick in our Neuro- and Bioinformatik department here at the University, drove me to a new place to give it a look see. It’s a pretty nice place and is pretty close to the city too. I just may move there once I find out about the Internet going ons for that room, which will be tomorrow. It’s right in front of a pizza place and bus stop, around the corner from a grocery store and convenience store (kiosk as they like to call it, or maybe they translated it for me in Engrish, shrug), and cross the road and you hit the river, walk 2 blocks toward the back and you hit a nice park/river (the river encircles Luebeck, makes a narrow crossing around this neighborhood).

The flat also has 3 other rooms, one occupied by an architect (who is usually never in town), a teacher and her daughter (they seem real nice), and a guy my age who works for the telecom company (T-Mobile is pretty much the Verizon of Germany…mobile phones, landlines, DSL, etc). Oh, and the landlady seems super nice, German nice…like everybody else in this city.

Babett has been a great help to me too, she’s been looking for a better place for me for some time. We got a talking in the car while we drove to the flat. She’s a few years older than me (I assume, I’ve learned from numerous weird looks and punches that asking a girl what her age is, is a bad idea), has lived in Frankfurt (a stewardess), in Greece (owned a clothing store), and currently lives in Travemunde because she loves the beach.

OK, back to watching the Tunisia vs Saudi Arabia football game, Saudi Arabia just scored again. Oh man, this bread is gooood, bakeries are everywhere here, glad I can have my bread fix whenever I feel like it (as long as it’s before 8pm, shops shutdown at that time).

Put up a couple pics I took on my Hamburg trip yesterday, didn’t click anything interesting.

Germans must really really love bratwurst and currywurst, it’s everywhere, I’m talking Starbucks everywhere.

Shame I don’t eat meat, it smells great though, wish I was a cheater, settled with fish n chips tonight.

Trains moving, goodbye Hamburg.

I went over to Travemunde yesterday, Luebeck’s Lovely Daughter. Nice scenic town, good folk, good food, great park. A big screen was setup there to show the opening game of the World Cup, so figured yesterday was a good day to visit the place, only 30 or so minutes by bus.

Stopped by a restaurant there as well, was deciding between a few seafood entrees, and since I am just a visitor I went for the expected shotgun approach, ordered the seafood platter, which included a variety of what the other entrees included. The fish tasted delicious as did the shrimp and prawns, they were fresh catches, which I knew, not because it was written somewhere, but because I felt the breeze of the Baltic in my face during the meal. Oh yeah, did I mention that Travemunde is on the Baltic, a beach town?

The big screen was setup on the beach and occasionally a loud roar could be heard and the German commentator would go on a long excited oration about the game. Since Germany did beat Costa Rica, the entire town’s sound level increased by more than a few decibels, the bus ride back with painted, drunk, joyous, singing Germans had its memorable moments.

Took a couple pictures of the place, they can be found in the usual area.