To the races!

I am aware that my last post will lose a bit of credibility as I show you this, but here it comes…

Welcome to Ascot!

The Ascot racecourse is one of the most important (if not THE most important) and the most famous racecourse in England. My friend wanted to celebrate his birthday there (yes, that is the type of high-class friends that I have (actually it was only £10 to get premier class because it was the inauguration, still not a millionaire…)) and I immediately accepted since it was a great chance to be witness of this incredibly British ritual.

Unfortunately it was not the Royal Ascot (oh dear, sounding rather posh today!) so while people WERE dressed in a fancy way, it was not the extravagant type. As I just realised I have been doing a good ob at ignoring the pictures and you are probably wondering what is going on. The second pictures shows the grandstand (apparently that is a word (at this point I am just taking anything that Wikipedia says for the holy truth)) from the entrance with the little lawn in front where the horses are paraded before the race so you can make sure that you are not betting on the horse that is limping (you can get a better view on the next image). On the third picture you can see the view on the actual racecourse from the other side of the grandstand. There are seats for the first class people but as we were not aware of this we stood on the lawn for all of the races.

This is the promised lawn. The horses are walked on the grey circle and the owners of the horses and the jockeys are standing in the middle looking important.

More or less like this. 

It was actually a quite stressful schedule: There were six races, one every half an hour. At the beginning of every half hour we read about the horses and their jockeys for this race in the little booklet that you are given. Then you go watch the horses on the little circle from the pictures above and see how they are doing that day. After that you run to the other side of the grandstand and if you want to bet you have to place them then. Otherwise you just run with me to the from of the fence to get a good spot and wait for this: 

 It was a great experience (although the travel there and back took 5 hours in total….)!

I should start wearing a monocle...

Science, yeah!

So I have been a bit overwhelmed with work in the lab lately… 

This is the main reason why I never get to write this blog regularly and also why I have been so tired lately. But even when I am really stressed and have tons to do I am happy that I have the chance to be a scientist and get to do things that are pretty futuristic and cool! Like...

spelling words only by thinking (granted, this includes an hour EEG setup before),

wearing fancy suits that track my motions (this model was used for the movie Avatar, for example) and also attend quite fascinating (and very serious, as you can see) conferences and lectures on all kinds on subjects:

Those are the standard lab-coats worn by all scientists on this planet (haha, yeah right, as if anyone in the lab EVER wore a lab coat (this good habit has led to more than one hole in my clothes, btw…)). I have to admit that research might not be the easiest of the paths that I could have chosen, but I am pretty sure it is the most fun :)

(Jesus Christ, I have wasted all the time that I could not spend these last days on writing the blog just now trying to figure out how to show these clips to you. I am happy with the result though (although it's probably not working on half of the browsers…))

To The German People

Get prepared to get serious and political today. All I can say is that I hope you like "history" because this is pretty much just me quoting Wikipedia and pretending that I still know all of this from school. The things I do for this blog...

The German Reichstag has been such an important landmark in Berlin since the first time I visited that I somehow instinctively felt it has always been the meeting house of the parliament.

Turns out, however, it has only been re-used as such since 1999(!). I guess it makes sense, if you think about it (and leaned it in school in German history class but somehow never realised this is all recent and actually happening). 

When Germany was divided the German Democratic Republic started meeting in the Palast der Republik (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/64/Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-R0821-400%2C_Berlin%2C_Palast_der_Republik.jpg (in this picture you can actually recognise the Reichstag in the background (it is in the upper left side))) and the Federal Republic of Germany would just ignore Berlin altogether and meet 600 km away in Bonn (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5b/Bundesarchiv_B_145_Bild-F010479-0006%2C_Bonn%2C_Bundeshaus_mit_Fahnen.jpg).

After the reunification in 1990 they decided to return to this building which had not only been abandoned for 45 years but also severely damaged in a fire in 1933. So clearly they needed to clean up a couple of things here and there which apparently took them 9 years. The result is really cool, though:

The Reichstag has now a glass cupola on top instead of the old roof one and the idea behind this is that people can walk all the way up and look down on the politicians meeting up (look down in the best and most symbolic sense of the word, not in a "spit on them from above"-sense). You can see the blue seats from the parliament in the picture above.

You can climb all the way up to the top of the cupola along the white path in the picture above. I also really like the mirrors in the middle. I mean, this is Germany, not Morocco, they are going to need every photon that makes it through the clouds.

As straight as a die

Here's an ode to German precision

BBaP (Berlin Bits and Pieces)

These are just a couple of pictures of details or pretty things that I took around Berlin. Without further ado here are a couple of images that I had no separate category for.

The picture above shows the Berlin victory column a monument in the middle of one of the main roundabouts. Curiously enough the bronze (yeah, apparently it is bronze, not gold - fools!) angel statue was added later to commemorate further victories of the prussian empire which raises the question of who put the guy in charge that thought a plain grey column would be a good thing to stand by itself in the middle of a roundabout).

The horses on top of the Brandenburger Tor, who has not seen these? (On a side note, the horses are also bronze like the angel in the one before, so if you ask me it is pretty clear what statues get the special treatment in this city…)

Those are some helmets decorating the facade of a building which I particularly enjoyed.

Just like these horses (/frogs/sarah jessica parker mermaids?) that are holding the triton on the railing of a bridge. They are so cute though!

So majestic! This kind of style clearly clashes with this very typical German one:

I found the clock very funny, it reminded me of a swimming pool clock for some reason… Very eighties/nineties (because I was so aware of what was going on then, let me tell you).

Very interesting city, so these won't be the last Berliner bits you'll see from me.

Hands off the wall

The first thing that comes to mind when talking about Berlin is usually the wall. Most of it has been removed, but there are some short bits that were left standing and can be visited today. 

As it is only a ~3 m grey concrete wall it would not be much of an interesting tourist attraction if it wasn't for the graffitis that cover every inch of this 

Some of them are really famous, like the one in the picture above (artist: Birgit Kinder) or this one from Thierry Noir:

I think it is a pity that most of them get overwritten by ugly signatures or comments. If at least they put in some effort, but just covering this historic heritage with some cheap tags is a real waste.

These historic heritages tend to be a bit psychedelic by the way and often display political messages:

Probably the most famous one (by Dimitrij Vrubel) is this:

I was a bit disappointed to find out that this is just a copy of an actual image (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Breznev-Honecker_1979.jpg). Who on earth would have thought that is how the politicians greet each other? (for more about this Google "social fraternal kiss" and go from there).

Some more creepy nazi-kid graffitis...

And last but not least a view of both sides (if I am not mistaken the right one should be the west and the left the east). Don't get fooled by the amazing sun. It was super windy and for some reason that wall was no wind protection whatsoever. Thanks a lot, wall.

Detour

Today I am very busy but I will take the chance to quickly introduce the city that I will be showing you these following days. I went there for a winter school a couple of weeks ago (for the third time in my life) and I loved it as much as ever.

Can you guess which one it is?

Here is another (more obvious) tip:

That's right! Prepare to be BERLINed!