In citta

I'm here in Genova, with the nuns. They're good value, though we have to communicate in French. The room seems very nice, and I can see the sea. Tomorrow I have to start looking for a more long term place to stay.

The journey through Switzerland was very pretty, though I kept falling asleep as I was up til 2 cleaning up my flat and packing, and I had to get up at 6 to make the train. The Panoramawagen turned out to be mythical, the train was actually pretty ordinary, but the scenery was still amazing.

Need to eat and sleep now.

The landlady didn't show up last night. Quite annoying.

Sunny again today. Here's a picture of a red squirrel and some flowers in the Schloss gardens.

My landlady is hopefully going to come round this evening to look at my furniture. I'm hoping she'll decide to rent the place out furnished and let me leave the furniture there. Otherwise we're going to have to carry it quite a long way to the nearest street collection, which will be a bit boring.

I'm going to go home and make my flat look tidier.

Got my tax form into the Finanzamt this morning. Had to wait a while to see someone, but after that it was relatively painless. Looking back at the language problems I had trying to get my bank card when I first arrived, it's pretty remarkable to me that I managed to do the whole tax declaration thing in German. I even found out how to get a tax card for next year when I'm not here - unfortunately, I have to go to the BürgerBüro to arrange this, another thing on the list off stuff to do before I can leave.

Got some train tickets for Genova, but the station here wasn't able to guarantee Panoramawagen seats. All the places just come up as normal seats on their computers. I decided to book a window seat and hope for the best.

Last night I had dinner with Lena's family (Lena is my language partner, as you no doubt remember). The main course was Spätzle, a south west speciality. I had tried it in the Mensa before where it was mediocre, but Lena's father made an unrecognisably better version. The whole meal was excellent. The wine was a particular highlight. We had German prosecco to go with the pre-dinner nibbles, a dry Badische white whine to go with the salad and goats' cheese starter, a Spätburgunder to drink with the Spätzle, and a fruity dessert wine with dessert. All of the wines were very fine, but the prosecco was probably my favourite. Lena's father sells Badisch wine for a living.

I guess that last night's dinner will probably prove the high water mark for my German until I come back to Germany again. Several hours of conversation ranging over a large variety of topics, from wine to European immigration, with no option to drop out into English like you often have at university parties. It was a lot of fun. It's a little frustrating that I'll have to back to the beginning again with my Italian.

Before dinner Lena and I want to the Caracalla, the newer bath complex in Baden-Baden. It's very modern and has some novel features like a pool outdoors. The water is about 34 degrees, which is warm enough provided you swim about a bit, and then you can sit in a hot tub, also outdoors, and absorb some more volcanic minerals. They also have a large sauna complex, including some outdoors made of Schwarzwald wood that smell really good. And I tried the cold water bucket for the first and last time.

I went out with Ignacio and his brother and father on Satuday night. It was good fun. We went to the bar opposite my flat and then came back to mine and finished off the whisky that my research group gave me before I left Edinburgh. The bar opposite, called Coppa, sells Tapas food. We tried some. The Spaniards were not terribly impressed, about as impressed as I was by Nordsee's fish and chips. When in Germany, eat the German food.

On the subject of German food, last week I tried Maultaschen, a south west German speciality. They're a bit like large ravioli. Very tasty.

Last night I was at Anusch's place for his birthday party. Good fun, lots of German practice. I gave him some Scottish Breakfast tea from Jenner's.

I will be very busy the next few days and might not have time to post much. Not doing anything exciting, just lots to sort out before I leave next week. The current problems:

Where to stay in Genova? I don't have a flat waiting for me, so will have to stay in a hotel for a while. Luca has recommended a place run by nuns, sounds like fun.
How to get to Genova? The current plan involves a train, changing once in either Zurich or Basel. It's about a ten hour trip. If I get up early enough, I can change at Basel for a train with a 'Panoramawagen' for the rest of the trip. Sounds cool, but is it worth getting out of bed at 6am for?
What to do with my furniture? Current plan involves dumping it in a nearby Sperrmüll collection on Wednesday morning, except for the bed, which I will keep until next Tuesday.
Paperwork Of course loads of paperwork to do, including reclaiming tax etc. which is a language nightmare. Better get on with it...

For exiled cricket fans, I recommend the BBC cricket fielding game. Maybe a touch too easy, and gully looks a bit too much like second slip, but still good fun.

I took two photos of the people in the Schloss gardens yesterday evening.

Weather still warm and sunny. Not much work going on in this building. Yesterday it was 24.4 degrees C, a record for Karlsruhe at this time of year. The local TV company was out in the Schloss gardens taking footage for the news.

Yesterday we went to the Irish pub for the quiz again. Being March 17th, it was pretty busy. We finished fourth, just outside the prizes - all the questions were about leprechauns and shamrocks.

Back in Karlsruhe

When I left Karlsruhe it was still winter. Two weeks later, it's summer. It's 20 degrees C today, sunny, smells of spring flowers, fresh cut grass, coffee being drunk outside. Everyone's in shirt sleeves and sunglasses and looking like it's midsummer. I was quite sad to leave London yesterday, but I'm feeling pretty glad to be here now.

Keep on to the post-doc, don't stop till you get enough

Alan (my PhD supervisor) found out today that our application to EPSRC for some money to fund a post-doc project has been successful. The grant details are here.

Some photos from the post-oral exam celebrations here.

The Hamburg pictures are finally ready here.

viva

passed with minor corrections, a good result. Was a stressful experience, glad it's over. off to pub.

I'm preparing my stuff for my visit to Edinburgh to take my PhD oral exam, hence no time to write much about the weekend just yet. It was a very good one though, I was back in Hamburg for a housewarming at Tina's flat and to meet up with Graham. Have just a few photos ready: Graham and me in front of the Alster lake, taking a Sekt breakfast at the Hamburg fishmarket after next to no sleep (timestamped for authenticity), the crazy sekt seller giving Graham his change, while the band blasts out Beatles numbers. And finally, a picture of the sunset on Hamburg docks.

Flying tomorrow, more pictures to come on Wednesday.

A picture from the Faschings parade with my language partner Lena on the far right and some of her PH friends, all covered in confetti from the parade.

Faschings is supposed to chase away the winter. Instead it's snowing again today. I've had more than enough cold weather.

The parade in Karlsruhe was ok, but not as good as the Braunschweig one. There were fewer sweets, and nobody was giving out bratwurst and beer like in Braunschweig. There was less drunkeness at the Karlsruhe parade too, but that was a good thing. Parents getting really plastered in front of young children makes me nervous. Generally, Karlsruhe was pretty sober all day by comparison to Braunschweig. The club underneath my house actually closed early, I guess nobody showed up.

Meanhwile, I went to a half decent faschings party near the PH. There were some good costumes, including a cyborg man with lots of flashing lights and various boys dressed up as girls. The DJ was rubbish again though. He kept playing 10 seconds of a song people liked, then pulling out the plug or something, 30 seconds silence followed by playing another track that nobody wanted to hear instead. The party scored points for accepting cash for beer though, instead of the stupid buy a raffle ticket, exchange it for beer system some other student parties have had. And 1 euro for a bottle of Beck's is pretty reasonable by party standards.

Ok, the parade seems to be starting directly outside my building. Blaring horns, people shouting "Hellau!".. time to go and join in I think..

FotoFotoFoto

Photos of Braunschweig are here. There's the usual problem of low winter sun and big contrast between light bits and shady bits. But they're pretty cool all the same.

Karlsruhe's Faschings Umzug is today - 250 000 people are expected according to the always optimistic SWR radio. I'm off there soon, must do some work first, so more Braunschweig commentary and Faschings digest tomorrow.

Oh - except there was an earthquake in Baden-Württemberg (the state where I live) yesterday - 5.1 on the Richter scale! Nobody was injured fortunately. There's a short report (in German) here.

Carnival

It's very much carnival season here. Today is Rosen Montag, and pretty much everyone in the department is taking the day off. If the Braunschweig carnival is anything to go by, they are probably all recovering from their hangovers. I've never seen so much hard liquor consumed in daylight hours, by teenagers, adults and pensioners in equal amounts. I got home quite late last night, so I haven't had time to sort out all the photos, but i brought four in today. We have: the castle in Braunschweig old town - almost all of the medieval old town was destroyed in 1944, but that which survived or was rebuilt is very pretty. Next, the Happy Rizzi Haus, I'd quite like to live there but unfortunately it's all offices, then Julia demonstrating her device for making Milchkaffee, and finally, a photo from the carnival parade. The main activity in the carnival is to try to catch sweeties and toys thrown by the people on the floats. The photo is a kind of 'action shot' of the process.

More tomorrow when I've got all the photos ready..

Off to Braunschweig for the weekend. Faschings has just started - it's carnival time. Got to run..

German band of the week is Tok Tok vs Soffy O. This is what Berlin is all about. Buy the album now. now!

How, exactly, do you expect the unexpected?

Today I did another thing I didn't expect to do whilst in Germany: giving a seminar on cockney rhyming slang to a group of teaching students. Bizarre. I'm clearly no authority on the subject, coming from the wrong part of London, but even with the dozen or so examples i could come up with, I managed to totally baffle everyone. I've never seen my class so confused. The class teacher really enjoyed it though, she got really into it. As I left the classroom after I'd finished, she said to her students, 'right class, now let's have a butchers at these handouts..'. A thoroughly surreal experience.

Had a good night out with my language partner last night. There are some nice pubs in Karlsruhe.

You might remember me explaining the problems Germany has been having with its new toll collection systems for the Autobahn - i talked about them on nov. 7th. Well now it's really gone pear-shaped -- the contract has been cancelled, all the money lost, the people who bought tracking boxes for their lorries have wasted their money, and the lawyers are moving in for the usual disgusting cash-in. Even worse, various states in germany have already started spending the money they were expecting to get, on new road improvements etc., and now they have been told they won't get the cash. It will be a minimum of two years before a replacement system comes on line. What a Blamage, as the radio stations are calling it. All because they couldn't bear to buy the Swiss system or the Austrian system, both of which are already running without problems.

Before you laugh too hard, remember this kind of thing happens in the UK all the time (e.g. 1, 2...)

Fountainbridge brewery to close

Edinburgh-based people might be interested to hear scottish and newcastle are closing their Fountainbridge brewery. Expect the site to turn into exhorbitantly priced luxury flats within a couple of years..

Return to München

Had a really good time with Mark in Munich this weekend. I like the city a lot.

Mark got in on Friday morning and our first move was a trip to the Vierortsbad, Karlsruhe's sauna baths. The ideal way to relax ahead of a good holiday weekend. It was very quiet being still during working hours. We ate a fine lunch at the Italian deli afterwards.

We got into Munich at half eleven Friday night, after a very smooth and comfortable train ride and appropriate anthropological research in the buffet car. They actually have beer on tap and real glasses in a German train, not half-warm cans of Heineken for ridiculous prices.

On Saturday we went to the Deutsches Museum. It's absolutely huge. There's no way you could really go round it in a day. Lots of people brought pack lunches and flasks of coffee to consume as they went round. We saw the Zuse Z3 which I thought was cool, the world's first programmable computer. It was made with relays instead of valves, for reliability. There were also lots of other huge old computers with mercury delay lines and other crazy technology in.

Other cool things in the museum were the aeroplanes, including a Wright brothers flyer, a replica of Baron von Richthofen's Fokker triplane, and a rocket-powered Messerschmidt plane that was used towards the end of WW2. They also had the Magdeburg Hemispheres, the apparatus used by Roentgen to discover X-rays, and an Enigma encryption machine.

Never mind that, what about the beer?

After the museum, we started in the Bratwurstherzl. This is a sausage and beer hall in the old town. You can order anything from 6 (beginner) to 12 (professional) Nürnberger sausages, which you then get on a heart-shaped plate with your choice of potato salad or sauerkraut. We both ordered 8. Meanwhile, the Bavarians on the next table were engaged in entertaining banter with the waiter about who was eating the most sausages. Really excellent food, goes down especially well with a light and refreshing Weissbier.

Following this, we came across a very friendly pub close to the Frauenkirche (the big cathedral with the distinctive twin clocktowers). It was packed out inside, and people were standing on the porch where they had tables, stools and heaters to keep the determined-to-drink-outside Bavarians happy. The Weissbeer here was cloister-brewed to a recipe from 1426 or something, and was first-rate. If you could start selling this in Britain, without the ridiculous price tag it attracts in the poncy London and Edinburgh bars which do sell it, you could make a fortune. I'd never drink Deuchar's IPA again.

Our next stop was Dürnbräu, in a small street just on the edge of old town called, helpfully, Dürnbräugasse. This is a small, initmate beer hall with a large, sociable centre table. We arrived just in time to get the last seats, they were turning people away afterwards. This is often a sign that you've stumbled into the right place. This proved to be the case as we were served with some excellent Schnapps for aperitif, followed by some of the very best beer of the weekend. And that's some damn fine beer. The Dunkel (dark beer) even came in a glass with a pewter flip-top lid. We ate dinner here too, high quality Wiener Schnitzel. A really good place.

On Sunday, we started by going to mass in the incredible rococo Asamkirche. The priest was on good form. His sermon was about the passage where Jesus tells the crowd that people who are poor now will be be rich in heaven, and people who cry now will laugh in heaven, and vice-versa. He said; "does this mean we shouldn't laugh here on earth? That we shouldn't laugh in church? No! In fact, I don't think we laugh here enough! Here's one about the time I was in the seminary: this famous cardinal was coming to visit, you see, it was just before lent, and.." then he proceeded to tell a long gag about one of the other trainee priests not recognising the cardinal, thinking he was also a trainee priest, and saying something along the lines of 'so I've heard this big-time charlie cardinal that's coming really thinks he's God' - the cardinal didn't take it too well. The 70 year old Asamkirche priest was clearly still laughing about it. He was a good guy.

After mass we were just in time to get to the Augustiner Grossgaststätten for Weisswurst before the theoretical midday deadline. It was really good. It reminded me (and Mark) a little of extremely good quality haggis.

You're standing on the art

We went to the Pinakothek after that for some modern art. It's free on Sundays which is nice as, in addition to personal financial savings, it leads to a much friendlier crowd inside in my opinion. One mishap was that one newly acquired piece involved a lot of frisbees, one of which was on the floor. People kept treading on it and setting off an alarm, all day. As well as junk there was a lot of good stuff, some rooms full of strangely placed pieces of wool which I liked and a good collection of Picasso, Klee, Magritte, Braque - all the usual suspects. There's a design section too, but that wasn't all that great. There were a few excellent pieces, but some sub-Ikea furniture as well which was a bit dull to look at. It was another huge museum, and we were again knackered by the time we had looked around.

After coffee we looked in several of the grand old churches in Munich before returning to the stand-outside-under-heatlamp pub near the Frauenkirche for a few Weissbeers for the journey home. Having retrieved our gear from the left luggage lockers, we made the train home with about 0 seconds to spare, the guard was actually yelling at us (and several other people) to get a move on. When they say 18:43 train in this country, they really do mean 18:43. We made it though and the journey was again very relaxed and easy. A really nice weekend. And a good city.

Finished nowhere in the quiz last night. It was fun though, Ignacio brought along two girls, one Russian and one American, and Carlos came down as well. We had a good time debating the answers, but ultimately made all the wrong decisions.

Booked a 1-star hotel in Munich for the weekend. Mark is coming to visit. The hotel receptionist spoke perfect English, in fact from her accent she must have spent some considerable time somewhere near York I'd say, but she only realised I was English when she asked for my nationality. Apparently, my accent doesn't sound at all English. It sounds definitely eastern European. This isn't a complement in Germany. I've heard people moaning that a lot of the 'repatriated' Germans who moved back to Germany from parts of the old soviet union etc. speak really awful German. Telling me I sound eastern european is all part of the magic of German customer service..

Anyway, one place the service can be a lot better is in the beer halls of München, it's a strict no-Hofbräuhaus rule this time, as we aim to visit some of the more unusual and less tourist-infested places. The daytime plan is to visit the Deutsches Museum, which has lots of exhibits from famous science experiments, and the replica (built by the original inventor) of the world's first computer.

Got the referee reports from EPSRC about my post-doc proposal. They are generally positive, but not without some criticism. We have 7 days to write a 1-page response that gets presented, along with the referee reports, to the final selection panel. Without having seen the quality of the other proposals, it's very hard to estimate my chances. Roughly speaking, since this is the second round of the process, we need to finish in the top half. Having read the reports, I'm now even more convinced that it's good work and should be funded. Fingers crossed. Decision day is March 12th.

Il tempo

It snowed again last night, though it's turning to rain now. Ugh. The novelty of snow has worn off. I want Frühling.

Club

As you may or may not know, my flat in Karlsruhe is directly above a nightclub. One of the oldest, longest running nightclubs in Karlsruhe in fact. This might have been expected to lead to a few sleepless nights, since it was open every night until 5am, but thanks to some enourmous stroke of fortune, it closed for renovation a few days after I arrived, and has been closed ever since. However, refurbishment work has now begun in earnest, and there's the lovely sound of hammer drills to be heard every morning from 8am. This is, I think, worse than the sound of the club. It opens for a 'mega Faschings party' in a week or so. Faschings is German for 'pancake day', though they don't eat any pancakes and instead dress up as clowns and things and have a party. They'll be open for five nights in a row, then they're closing for more refurbishment, so it sounds like people will be dancing amidst the cement sacks and fallen plaster. Nutcases.

Ein Polar Tief bringt kalter Luft zu uns. Winter's back, in other words. Icy north wind and bursts of stinging rain. Trying to warm up by looking at pictures of Genova.

My talk on Friday went ok. In Germany, instead of clapping, you bang your knuckles on the table at the end of a talk to masochistically signal appreciation. Very strange.

The Schloss gardens has red squirrels. I want to take a picture of one, but they seem to know whether I've brought my camera or not. When I bring it along, there are none to be seen, but when, like this morning, I forget it, they are all over the place jumping around and posing on birdtables a bit like that old advert for crunchy nut bars.

There are also lots of mountains molehills in the Schloss gardens today, that weren't there yesterday. It must be mole season.