More about Forschungszentrum Jülich

Prof. Dr. Felix Wolf, my host professor here in Jülich, gave me a little history lesson over lunch today. I had supposed that the research center had a military background because of its remote location and nearby military buildings, but not so. The center was founded in the 1950s as a nuclear research center, focusing on nuclear power. It's in the middle of nowhere for several reasons:

1. The area around Jülich is a major coal-producing region, so there is easy access to an abundance of electrical power.
2. This was the most thoroughly-destroyed part of Germany after WWII (95% completely leveled!), so the research center was seen as a way to revitalize the area.
3. When everything for miles around has been bombed to oblivion, land is cheap.
   
4. People who question the basic laws of physics should work in the middle of nowhere.

Nuclear weapons were never researched here because the Allies would have been annoyed. They're not researched now because the German people would be annoyed. In fact, nuclear power research is shutting down because of political pressure.

Basically anything that needs a lot of electricity tries to be nearby. The military is nearby also because of the cheap power. The world-wide German AM radio stations are broadcast just outside Jülich (the antenna is a spider-web sorta thing about the size of three football fields that hangs between six tall towers. I can't get a good photo because the cables are so thin.)

Prague!

Prague was really unforgettable and certainly the most architecturally beautiful European city I have yet visited. I was there with Mike, Charity, and Bettina, who are CESRI fellows from Poland, Slovakia, and Germany respectively. I took a Schlafwagen (sleeping car in the night train) from Köln (Cologne) at 10:00pm-ish on Thursday and arrived 10:00am-ish on Friday very tired. The Schlafwagen was not worth the extra 100 Euro, but now I can say I've spent the night in a sleeper train! :)



The other CESRI fellows wouldn't arrive until 8:30pm, so I wandered around the town. I found this billboard directly outside my train station. No idea what they're selling.



I found our hotel and picked up a flier proclaiming itself as "The Most Useful Map of Prague!", which turned out to be handy if you wanted to find a hotel, which I didn't, since I already had one. It did include a metro-map though, so 15 minutes later I was down on St. Wenceslaus square in front of the National Museum.



"The Most Useful Map" showed parks behind the museum, so I wandered over there. Remember, I hadn't been in Prague so much as an hour, so I was a little shocked to find a drug dealer helping shoot up two kids in broad daylight behind the museum. Leather strap on upper arm, needle, lighter, the complete set. I even stopped to stare and they didn't seem to care. But that was nothing. Right round the next corner I found a lady holding a baby on one arm and shooting herself up with the other! I decided I didn't like Prague very much at first sight.

I took a walk down St. Wenceslaus and into the old town. I found hot-dog sellers, lots of tourists, and beautiful buildings everywhere. In one side-alley, I found a creepy Asian guy selling hand-guns and an M-16. Down another was a fantastic collection of cut and spun crystal. Crystal is a big thing in Prague. You can buy it everywhere. I had Chinese food for lunch.

Here's part of the story I shouldn't tell, but hey, here goes.... So even after seeing these druggies behind the museum, I decided to take a little rest in the park. (Park was close to the Museum, which I wanted to see next.) My 15-min sit-on-a-bench turned into a complete 1-hour completely passed-out nap in the heart of shoot-me-up Prague. I sure felt stupid when I woke up....

I probably would have slept even longer, except it began to hail (in June!). It was an excuse to check out the National Museum, which actually sucked. They have this annoying habit of exhibiting things they don't actually own. For example, the Hope Diamond is in the Smithsonian collection, but somehow it was on display here. As a plastic copy. Next to the plastic copy of the Jubilee Diamond and the Blue Heart Diamond. OK. They also did this with two prehistoric human skeletons (also in the Smithsonian) and the Statue of the Dying Gaul (which, to be fair, has been copied quite a lot). The mammalian collection was really cool though. They have an enormous (real) whale skeleton.



I met up with Mike and Charity around 7:30 and we got some dinner. We were sleeping four people in a three-person room, so we had to keep a lookout for Bettina so she wouldn't try to check-in and blow our cover. Our watch was supported by some excellent Vodka and blackcurrant juice that Mike bought duty-free in Poland. Once Bettina showed up, we went out on the town! We walked through Old Town and across the Charles Bridge in the dark. It was very crowded with tourists, but very beautiful.


The next day was really full! We started at the Museum of Communism, where we learned about Jan Palach who lit himself on fire to protest communism. Took the guy four days to die. After that, we took a hike around the city. The Prague Castle and the view from St. Vitus Cathedral were particularly amazing.



At noon, we watched the Prague Astronomical Clock chime (I made a video).



My favorite part of the trip came next: Bodies!


Bodies features humans which have been dissected and plastinated so every tiny detail is completely life-like. It's an amazing experience. There were exhibits for all the primary systems (nervous, skeletal, etc) as well as athletically-posed bodies. The reproduction exhibit included embryos and fetuses at all stages of development which had been treated with calcium dyes to show developing bones. There was also a body which had been cut head-to-toe into thin, evenly-spaced cross sections which was really cool, and a body where the skeleton had been removed from the soft tissue to look like two people holding hands, but it's really one guy holding hands with his own skeleton. Nothing is covered or removed, but everything is presented in a scientific light with a strangely artistic flair. My mom would have loved it.



After Bodies we went to a pub Charity had discovered. (Charity didn't come to Bodies, but I was glad Bettina went. She's a Vet so she gave us a much more interesting tour than my silly audio guide). I tried a few sips of absinthe and a plate of traditional Czech food (cheese, anchovies, pepper, paprika, and bread, all soaked in beer) to go with my excellent Czech beer. At dusk, we climbed up a nearby hill where a gigantic statue of Stalin used to stand, but now there's a crummy giant metronome covered in graffiti and necking teenagers. It turned out to be exactly the right place to be because a fireworks show started not long after we arrived. (The city was launching fireworks. Not the teenagers.)

The next morning we visited the Czech Technical Museum. Only we didn't. We were confused by the Czech signs and went into the museum across the square, which was the Czech Agricultural Museum. We spent about a half hour looking for something technical beyond tractors before we realized our mistake. But we did find this drawing on a tack-board covered in children's sketches. Apparently Prague is a tough town.


After the museum debacle we went down to the river and rented a rowboat. Bettina and I rowed while Mike and Charity took pictures. I let Charity row long enough to get this photo.

We saw the Dancing House from the river and all the marvelous Czech architecture. For lunch we stopped in a non-English speaking pub and ordered beer and random menu selections. Turns out we got fried spam, chicken and dumplings, and lots of mashed potatoes. Nice farm food.


This mistranslation was the source of innuendo for the next half hour or so, particularly when Mike "happened" to get a picture of Bettina's face just below the writing.

I left Prague at 8:00PM, sharing a seating car with four other people. I slept by spreading myself out on the floor and not caring who stepped on me, and arrived back in Köln at about 7:00AM. From there, I was one train-stop from a shower and the lab. Whew!

A Day with Saskia, an evening in Köln, and the Nachtzug to Praha!

Wednesday night I met up with Saskia in Aachen. We had fresh pasta for dinner and then watched her uncle perform a terrific two-man comedy at a small local theater. It was tricky to understand German acting, but I think I got about half the jokes.


I spent the night at Saskia's house and had salmon and tomato omelets for breakfast. Yum! We went back to Aachen and visited the Lindt chocolate factory, where I bought an entire kilogram of high-quality German chocolate for 3.50 Euro!! After that, we bummed around cafes and bakeries downtown, dodging rain showers until about 2:00 when I took the train to Köln (Cologne). I had problems buying my ticket because my bank locked down my credit card after my trip to Paris. (I'd only told them I'd be using the card in Germany). Saskia was awesome and bought the ticket for me and lent me 100 Euro for the trip. What a sweetheart!

Köln is lovely! The cathedral is astoundingly huge and I climbed all the way to the top. I tried to visit the Chocolate Museum, but they closed just as I walked in the door. Choco-Nazis. Instead, I went to a concert with the Köln Philharmonic Orchestra that was broadcast live over WDR (German national radio station). Very nice!

I think I've finally figured out how to photograph stained glass.



The night train was uncomfortable, but now I'm in Prague! More later!

More memories from Paris

Last night I remembered a few more little things from Paris.

The first thing Jonathan and I did was visit a small cafe that looked like something straight from the 1920s. (Jonathan said he sometimes sees movies being filmed there). There was a notice in the window, which Jonathan translated thus: (please imagine a sexy French accent)

"Ah! Someone's cat is missing. It is a small cat. It's name is Lu-Lu, and it is the sort of cat you can hold to your face and snuggle with your nose. It has white fur."

Later, when our beer was served....

"My boss always says 'American beer is like the piss of a cat' .... but of course, he wasn't talking about a cat like Lu-Lu. This is a mean American cat that pisses on your shoes. Not a white cat like Lu-Lu."

I also remembered the name of one of the Italian painters I particularly liked: Giuseppe Arcimboldo. He did these really creative portraits composed of natural objects. This series was my favorite:









I also liked Pompeo Batoni.


Here's a picture of the Thalys high-speed train I took from Paris to Aachen.


My birthday cake! A "Bombe Chocolate", the richest chocolate cake I have ever tasted. I don't know what it was exactly, but it tasted like dark Lindt chocolate mixed in rich chocolate pudding, spread over a bed of milk chocolate on a piece of dense vanilla pound cake, and dusted with coca powder. De-lish-us!

Paris and my 23rd birthday!

June 6th I turned 23, and what better way to celebrate than take a train to Paris? I was particularly lucky, since the 6th - 10th were public holidays in Germany! So that afternoon, I boarded a Thalys high-speed train to Paris from Aachen. Three hours later I was in the City of Light.


My friend Jonathan Kalafatis met me at the station. Jonathan and I were neighbors in the Donaldson Brown Graduate dorms at Virginia Tech and had a weekly ritual of watching LOST together. Good times!


Jonathan took me first to a small cafe for some fine French beer (very light and nutty). Afterwards we took a small walking tour of the neighborhood, including the magnificent Basilique du Sacré Coeur. There was a guy on the steps, totally drunk, who was singing "I must stop Vodka!" over and over in French. I felt very much that I was in Paris.


I spent most of the next day at the Louvre (Jonathan had to work). This was such an amazing experience! The Louvre is HUGE! It's like a maze, but at every dead end and wrong turn you experience priceless artworks from around the world. I particularly loved both the French and Italian galleries, though I'm not sure what I liked better: the Italian paintings or the Italian sculpture. Perhaps my favorite piece was Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss by Antonio Canova, but all the paintings from the Italian masters were so vibrant that they seemed to glow. Once, I had been looking at a portrait of a beautiful Italian woman when I glanced over to see a woman in the gallery. My immediate thought was "Is she OK? She looks sick!". At second glance I could see she was healthy and even attractive, but she looked sick compared to the fantastic glow of the portrait's skin.


Napoleon's dining room. Almost big enough for my family!


Everyone's seen this picture before. I found this one in Napoleon's apartments.


Proof-positive that they had Walkmans in the 18th century.


After the Louvre, I bought a map of the city from a small souvenir shop and took a walk up to the Arc de Triomphe. You can go to the top for 8 Euro, but there was so much fog I didn't bother.


From the Arc, I took a 40min walk along the Seine river to the Cathedral Notre-Dam. This was absolutely amazing, though actually smaller than some of the other cathedrals I've visited (Aachen, Berliner Dom, and St. Paul's felt larger, though Westminster might have been smaller). There was a mass in progress, and strangely, they didn't throw out the tourists. That was fine by me, because I got to hear some gorgeous music and smell the incense. The robes, stain glass, and ethereal hymns felt very holy and awe-inspiring.

Jonathan comes from Normandy, so that night he introduced me to some good ol' fashioned Normandy food. Dinner was a massive "salad" of two fried eggs, about 1/2lb of three kinds of ham, lots of goose liver and some goose meat, all piled on about half a cup of romaine lettuce and served in a gigantic wooden bowl with chopped apples and oil for dressing. It was delicious, but quite impossible to finish (Jonathan had his down 15min before I was halfway through). That evening we met one of Jonathan's lovely lady friends (a coworker) at a local travel-themed jazz cafe (lots of antique bikes and suitcases). Jonathan's friend spoke perfect British English and our first conversation went something like this:

Me: Your English is excellent! You have a very nice British accent.
Her: Thank you. I studied in Briton for two years.
Me: That's great!
Her: Yes. You have a very nice American accent.
*pause*
Her: I hate American accents.

A few minutes later she said my accent was tolerable, and we got along very well. We three sat on an indoor balcony over the band, drinking corona and discussing how we would save the world.


The next day was another work day for Jonathan so I was on my own again. I hadn't visited the Eiffel Tower yesterday because of the fog, and today wasn't any better, but it was my last chance. At 8:00 I sent some post cards and set off in the morning gloom for the famous symbol of Paris.


The tower was quite impressive, and it was really funny to see all the fat American, Italian, and German tourists standing in line for hours to use the elevator, while I happily climbed the stairs after a 5 minute wait. On the way up, I met a terrific pair of Germans from Munich (Linda and Mathias) who were celebrating Mathias' 12th birthday. We immediately became good friends and spent the rest of the day together, speaking German the whole day.


After the tower, I went with my new German friends to Les Invalides, to visit the sarcophagus of Napoleon Bonaparte. While Les Invalides is nice, it's really not prepared for tourists who can't speak French. (Well naturally, the grave sites of American leaders are not prepared for tourists who can't speek English, so what did I expect?) We spent 6 Euro a piece to get in and see the sarcophagus, but couldn't really appreciate any of the exhibits without a translator. Oh well.


The next stop was infinitely better, and definitely my favorite place after the Louvre: Les Carrières de Paris, The Catacombs of Paris! Here we found enormous piles of human bones in gigantic rows. It was a little like a supermarket for human bones -- aisles and aisles of bones stacked 4-feet high. In many places the skulls were arranged in patterns: hearts, faces, symbols, and geometric patterns. You could get right up in the bones, touch them, pick them up, whatever (as long as you were discrete). I found three skulls which were perfectly tuned for a little drum-beat action. Mathias was very impressed and wanted me to play again, using two leg bones for drum sticks. I deferred to the approaching security guard and declined my encore request.



I put my camera inside one of the skulls to take this picture looking out through the eye sockets.


Chillen' out with the bones.

After the Catacombs, Linda and Mathias headed back to their apartment and I went to borrow a suit from Jonathan, because we were headed to the opera! Unfortunately, my subway car broke down on the way to the show and we missed our chance for last-minute tickets. To salve our disappointment, we went in search of a nice place for dinner and wound up at a small restaurant strategically opposite one of Jonathan's favorite dessert bakeries. I had a lovely three-course meal: goat cheese wrapped in sweet crepes, grilled perch, and chocolate creme and espresso for dessert. Afterward, we bought a "Bombe Chocolate" from the dessert bakery and took it back to Jonathan's place where we watched the season finale for LOST season 3. It was a fantastic evening and a perfect conclusion to my Parisian vacation.

Weekend with Saskia

I spent last weekend with my good old friend Saskia Triesscheijn (Zas-kia Tree-shine). We were neighbors in the graduate dorms at Virginia Tech last year, but after her graduation she went back to Germany and it was hard to keep in touch. She's a heptathlete (200m/800m run, 100m hurdles, shot put, javelin throw, high jump, and long jump) training for the Olympic games, and fortunately her sports club is only a few kilometers from Jülich! We visited Aachen for a day and took a look inside the Hohe Domkirche, a gorgeous old cathedral. They had several supposed holy relics on display there, including the diaper of Jesus (Holy crap! Sorry, had to say it...). The relics only come out every 7 years so we were lucky.

Sunday Saskia had a competition in high jump, shot put, and 1000m relay. Her goal was to improve her high jump so we were very excited when she scored a personal record of 1.80m! While she did the hard work, I was busy meeting cool people: Shiela (sprinter who was fluent in five languages and conversational in three more), and Eugene (decathlete who wasn't born; he was carved). It was a lingual adventure since you didn't know if the person you greeted to would answer in English, German, or Dutch.



In Aachen, I finally found a power adapter for my camera so I can get some pictures of Jülich!

Forschungszentrum Jülich

The research center at Jülich is really impressive. I'm working with Daniel Becker on time stamp syncronization for highly-scalable post-mortem performance analysis, and it looks to be exciting! They have two major computers here: an IBM p690 cluster with 1312 Power4+ CPUs and an IBM BlueGene/L 8192 PowerPC 440 CPUs. There's also a data center with three 670 TeraByte tape silos and tons of other goodies. There's a nuclear reactor somewhere on campus, but it's being decommissioned. There's also a particle accelerator and major medical research equipment.

The center is completely hidden deep in a forest near Jülich. I think it must have been a military institution when it was founded, because it's so hidden and there are military warehouses and old equipment scattered throughout the neighborhood. It's a really cool place to work.