Tuesday 15 November 2011

Long time, no see!

So quite a lot has happened in the last few months but I have not really had the time (could not really be bothered) to write anything until now. There are probably going to be lots of things that I will miss out because as most people know, my memory is not very good. So don't blame me!

Firstly, for those interested, my project has taken many ups and downs. I managed to go through a 2/3 month period without really doing much because my experimental setup went kaputt!! I still have no idea why but we decided, mostly, just to ignore it. Then in the space of about a week, it took a massive change in direction, going from testing of a setup to higher order Autocorrelation functions (its a bit too complicated to explain on here!). It is safe to say that that was the most difficult week for my brain, trying to keep up with my supervisors train of thought. However, on the upside, we presented these new ideas at a conference in Surrey (typical that the only conference that I go to is at my own university!) and won third place for the poster. Not bad for a weeks work. Recently, I have been doing a lot of programming which has been fun but would, maybe, be much better if not done in Delphi. It is such a frustrating language! However, it is a little scary that I only have a month left and I think I will end up trying to cram as many experiments in as possible.

I think one important thing that I have to mention, that has happened in the last few months, is the moving on of friends, which is very sad. Since June (the end of summer semester), a lot of people that I have become friends with have returned to their own country and will be missed. Not all are in this photo but it was the best one I could find.

In July (I think), I went on a hike around the Harz mountains with my institute (not mental institute, Eleanor!), which was great. I saw a lot of the beautiful nature of the surrounding area and it was topped off with a BBQ and a fire at Dr. Adams house.

Most recently, I went on another trip around Europe, this time going to the other side of Germany. We had a few problems as usual, but one of the strangest was that German cars are not allowed in Eastern Europe. Unfortunately we hired a Mercedes, so our plan to go to Prague was out the window. So instead we took a slight detour around Czeck Republic and went firstly to Nuremberg (Nümberg). This was a really nice Historical city but unfortunately I was not allowed to take the car around the Nuremberg ring :(. However, Nuremberg did have one of the most awesome museums ever, a toy museum!

The next day was very long. We planned to see two cities in one day also travelling just under 200 miles (300 Km for the strange people). The first city was Passau, which is a small town in the strange region/country of Bavaria. It had an awesome castle at the top of the hill, which, after a very long tiring walk up a billion stairs, we reached. From the top of the castle you could see the amazing view shown to the right. However, I think the highlight of our visit to Passau was what we found in the car park. The first level of the car park was signposted "Frauen". It was a section especially dedicated to female drivers, with very, very large parking spaces. There were also foam poles to stop women from doing to much damage if they hit the wall. I thought this was the most amazing and hilarious thing I had seen!

Then next was Linz however, just before we arrived in Linz, we came to these traffic lights. I am pretty sure that there was someone controlling them, laughing their heads off, because I am sure we were sat there for about 20 minutes before they changed to green! Anywho, in Linz we arrived quite late but we managed to find the most awesome Hostel. It was only 18 Euros a night but was probably equivalent to a 3/4 star hotel. When we went out to explore the city, I came across a very strange sight.
They have buses that are attached to wires from above just like trains or trams. I have never seen this before but apparently it is quite common in Europe. Overall though, Linz was a very beautiful city was some great old Cathedrals and other buildings.

On the way to our next destination, we found a small village with a spectacular building above it but I cannot remember what it was called but it is shown in the picture to the left. The next city that we visited was Vienna (Wien) naturally. Here again we were very lucky with the hostel getting a private 4 bed room for about 15 Euros per night. The city, I think, was even better than Linz with countless beautiful buildings and many other things to see as well as a large city center to go out and enjoy yourself. While wandering the city, we came across a very bizarre Sculpture. I have no idea what was going through their minds when they thought that making it would be a good idea. The actual shape was
 not too bad, you could say quite interesting but after a certain time,
it starting making some strange sounds that could only be well described as white noise! And worst of all, it is surrounded by houses that I am                                                                                                                        
 pretty sure people live in.  After we spend a day in Vienna, we decided to go to Bratislava in Slovakia. Based on the film Eurotrip, I was expecting to go to a 5-star hotel with a couple of Euros but no! Do not be deceived, it is not that cheap and thinking about it, it is probably relatively expensive compared to some of the places I have visited. However, it was here that I found probably the most unlikely shop ever. As you can see in the sign, there is a Tesco in Bratislava! Also just a word of warning, if you ever visit Bratislava, do not be put off by the area surrounding the train station. We managed to walk through the worst part but after a while we found the old city and it was much, much, much nicer. There was yet another awesome castle above the city which had a great view of everything and much to the girls disgust we also
went to the memorial even higher up to get an even better view of the city. It was here that I started my quest to find a bottle of real absinthe with the hallucinogen in (more specifically with a scorpion in as well). This would add to my collection of 80% Rum (Stroh)...

Unfortunately, when we returned to Vienna, we found that our car had been broken into and the genius' managed to steal my favourite hoodie but miss the satnav (navigation), worth several hundred Euros, that was still plugged into the cigarette lighter. We managed to acquire a new car and visited the schönbrunn palace and then started the nearly 10 hour journey home to Clausthal. However, the sacrifice of my hoodie was not in vain because the trip was a great experience and great fun.

Wow, you managed to get this far. Congrats! It took me hours to get here. Sorry for such a long blog but like I said before, I have not written in a long time.

 On the next episode of Mein Blog, Ross travels to Prague (finally!) and then again to Amsterdam, if everything goes to plan. He will also be experiencing some of Germany's famous Christmas markets with lots of Gluhwein and Rum. Stay tuned!
   

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