What to find under a bridge

I have a weakness for second hand book stores and it is bad because I always end up buying way to many of them (books this is, not book stores - that will be a later stage of my addiction). Back in the day when I had more than 30 seconds a day of spare time I would actually go through them all quite quickly, but now that I am busy with the Master 24/7 AND I don't need to take public transport to get to work (believe it or not I have read more books during the 20 mins underground ride than anywhere else) I can't keep up. If you share my symptoms there is one place you should definitely not go:

Welcome to the Southbank Centre Book Market. 

This market is so nice! It consists of a couple of tables with people that sell books (bet you did not see that coming), but the charming thing is that it is located under a bridge (my impression is that they probably held it ON the bridge the first time and it took 10 minutes for the whole place to flood in the rain and for the people to move everything under the bridge). This has the benefit that they can have this market every day, regardless of the weather (it actually IS a daily market).

The location is not too bad either. A bit further down the river you can see St Paul's Cathedral (and other very important buildings which I am sure I don't need to mention to you, because EVERYONE of course knows them).

To the other side of the river you also have some buildings but none of them are particularly famous as far as I know...

All I can say is thank god this place is reasonably far away from my flat, because otherwise I would have to rent a second apartment for my books only.

The Center For the Unknown

And from the traditional facades of Notting Hill we move on to one of the most futuristic looking buildings I have seen lately. I give you, the Champalimaud Center for the Unknown:

This place is a very modern research centre of the Champalimaud Fundation in Lisbon. Research in these premises deals mostly with cancer and neuroscience, the latter being the reason I visited it in the first place. A couple of months ago I travelled to Lisbon to learn more about their graduate program and I was really impressed by the centre.

This is what the interior patio looks like. Pretty standard, right?

The centre has amazing views on to the sea as well. This is what the end of the facilities look like:

It is incredible that not more people were sitting outside. If I worked there I would never leave these terraces. Ever!

Maybe the stunning interiors explain their behaviour. What is up with that window! I don't think I would be able to concentrate in a lecture hall like that! The lady that showed us around said something about it being the biggest piece of continuos glass in a widow in Lisbon/Portugal/Europe/the world (?). So yeah, there you have your facts.

I enjoyed this detail on one of the pillars. You know how they usually have big bronze or marble plaques to commemorate the inauguration of a building? Well these people are either very original or someone forgot to get one and just pulled an Edding out of his pocket in the last minute...

The Colors of Notting Hill

I actively visited Notting Hill for the first time with a friend the other day (I crossed it  and jogged through it a couple of times before but it was still on my to-do list). Notting Hill, for those who are not familiar with it is (apart from a famous movie) a district in London. Although apparently it was quite run down in the 1980's now it is considered a rather fancy area. My favourite thing about this place though, is definitely how colourful it is! I always assumed it would be a pretty but boring area, given the status of the inhabitants, but it is the exact opposite:

There is not much to say to these pictures, I just wanted to show you how great the colours look!

These vibrant details really make such a difference!

This could be the Google headquarters.

Of course not all of the houses are this incredibly colourful, as a matter of fact most of them are the regular white ones, but maybe more and more facades will join over time. :)

The weather was also amazing, which did a lot, but I really did enjoy the neighbourhood!

He was a skater boy...

Here is a part of London that reminds me more of Germany than the United Kingdom. 

This could easily be anywhere in Berlin but it turns out it is a skater park in Southbank. It is a really cool place, because it is right next to the Thames and a bit further down the river you can see the Big Ben and the London Eye. 

It is a pity that they wanted to close this place down (I guess it does not fit the rest of the prettier London) but luckily enough the managed to save it thanks to demos and other initiatives!

As you can see there is actually a lot of people watching behind a fence (it was really packed!). It is nice to watch them go up and down the colourful ramps… good thing they kept this place! :)

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.