Luebeck Guided Tour

Lubeck

On our tour of Lubeck, we were lucky enough to enjoy very beautiful weather, unlike our tour of Hafencity. Our delightful tourguide pointed out the crooked and sloping buildings due to their duration. We went down several very narrow streets that led to small open spaces with entrances to houses. We were told that these houses used to house up to 8 people per househould, resulting in a total of 80 people in extremely tiny living spaces. We also visited St. Mary's Church which was surprisingly colder than the outside temperature. We discovered the drastic change in temperature was due to the fact that the church has never been heated as it takes far too much money to heat such a large church. We also learned that the organ in the church is extremely elaborate. It takes the organ player about 30 minutes to just get up to the organ, depending on the physical state of the player. We were also told the story of the devil sitting outside of the church.

by Laila

by Laila

by Laila

by Laila

by Laila

by Laila

by Laila

Hamburg---Green Capital

   Hamburg is the European Green Capital 2011. The title well deserved as most of us realized while staying in Hamburg. The streets of Hamburg appear to be very clean and that is not only due to the well organized trash disposal system but also due to contribution and willingness to be ecologically friendly of the citizens of Hamburg. As we heard during the presentation there has been a lot of work done to achieve this highly valued status. However, Hamburg will not stop on what they have achieved already, this trend will continue improving the ecological standard of the city and make it more attractive to live in. 

     One can always find a bicycle to be rented out and the system of rent and return is sophisticated enough not to create jams or unnecessary and unpleasant moments waiting. Hamburg also pays close attention to its environmental programs. For the years to come there is a well planned and organized system to reduce Carbon Dioxide pollution into the atmosphere by 80% until 2050 which will be rather challenging. But where would humanity be if we did not set ambitious goals and pursuit them.

     Another interesting idea created by the organization in Hamburg was the "Train of Ideas". We found it very creative to compress the most important ideas and achievements of the city and try to share them with their European neighbors. Frankly Veniamin and I would like to visit this "Train of Ideas" when it will be passing Zurich in May. After all it is important to challenge oneself but after achieving certain goals share your progress with other, so that the environmental health of the planet will no longer be an issue.

by Veniamin and Emil

The Food

Exquisite Food in Hamburg & Copenhagen

For 10 straight days we had the pleasure of eating the most diverse and tasteful foods. For these 10 days, pesto pasta was not on the menu for once. The trip started with Pakistani food complete with mango lassi. We had the pleasure of experiencing succulent Portuguese cuisine the next night and the enjoyable dinners continued throughout the entire trip with dinners at Thai and Asian/Japanese restaraunts, steakhouses, and traditional Danish cafes. Each and every night the group would leave the restaraunt with full bellies and happy taste buds. We students were pleasantly surprised in every city we visited to find such diverse and cultural dining options. The best part of our dinners of course though, was the fact that they were completely paid for! :)

 by Laila

by Laila

by Laila

by Laila

The food in the travel

The first time in my life have I ever experienced such diverse food in my life. I have never ate so much amount of international food in ten straight days. Our first cuisine on the travel was an unexpectedly good Pakistani restaurant, unlike the chicken curry in the grotto the Pakistani's chicken curry was much more succulent than what we have expected. But our food adventure did not stop there! Another night our professor will take us to restaurants we could never have imagined going to. One night we went to an above average Asian restaurant, another Japanese, the next day Portuguese and so on. And sometimes during the day, our professor would take us to the best cafes in town just for a light meal. Overall, I believe that the food was one of the most important experience on our travel and I hope that I can repeat the travel again after I have lost the weight I gained from the food.

By Haitham

The Danish Museum of Design

The Danish Museum of Design was a highlight of the trip for me. To be able to see the contemporary chair styles from Danish designers such as Finn Juhl, Arne Jacobsen, Verner Panton, and Hans Wegner, was incredible. The Danish chair style is minimal, modern, and iconic. Here are some of my favorite chair designs.

Japan: A Fly on the Back of the World

March 8th, 2011 was just another Friday for the Japanese. The adults were working, the children were at school and everyone was counting down to the moment where they can all go home for the weekend. Sadly, however, this wouldn't happen for those who lived on the Northern end of the country. The largest recorded earthquake in Japan's history hit off the coast on this "normal" Friday; it's also the fifth largest earthquake in the World's recorded history. The earthquake itself, however, did not do the shocking damage, rather, the massive tsunami wave crashing into the coastal towns at 500 miles per hour is what caused the devastation.
    It's quite the interesting feeling, waking up in multiple cities throughout Germany and in Denmark where everyone is going to work, we're going on tours and all we really do after this is eat, drink and then go to sleep. There is no devastation, no destruction, no one is dying on a massive scale and everything is "normal". I've seen booming economies, fast cars and happy faces all across the board. Yet every single day, I wake up to the news that Japan continues to get worse and worse. Not only are there over 3000 recorded deaths, over 10,000 people are suspected to be killed in one town alone. Along with the wave that destroyed the Northern tip of Japan, the nation's Nuclear Power Plants are all shut down; what this means is that the coolent systems are shut down and causing explosions in the reactors. Nuclear fallout seems all too real for Japan, and this wouldn't be the first time.     But here I am, writing a blog post in the lobby of my hotel in Copenhagen. I see the sadness on the faces of those who have suffered, I know people who have lost friends in Japan, but I don't feel that pain. I feel bad, scared for what could happen, horrified really. Reality has set in and even the Japanese emperor did something that he rarely ever does; he addressed the nation and claimed that he was "deeply worried" about the nuclear problem. I think the whole world shares something with the Emperor... We are all worried, scared and waiting. Just waiting.

by Sam

Ice Bar

Sorry guys, my old and small secondary camera seems to not work anymore (see group pictures below). Maybe Daniela is willing to replace these by the one I made with her camera?

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Christiania

Christiania represents the power of determination and humanistic spirit. In the face of controversy and opposition, the freetown has been able to establish a sense of community and a stable way of life. Christiania was founded in 1971 when the area was abandoned by the military. Not long after the establishment was vacated, homeless people began to enter the area and eventually allowed for it to become a haven for vagabonds, immigrants, social outcasts and people who desired a freer lifestyle. The community has developed and progressed tremendously since that date and has surpassed many obstacles. In order to ensure the overall well-being of the populace, a series of common laws have been erected. All in all, Christiania appears to be a very close-knit community that truly believes in, and appreciates the value of life.

written by Sean

Malmo

Yesterday we visited the Swedish city of malmo. This city is rich with modern architecture but still keeps their original heritage alive. As I walked through the old streets, modern buildigs sat side by side with buildings from hundreds of years ago. This city is really energy efficient as well with a wind turbine farm off the coast and sustainable housing. The city was designed with the intent of making it very green with narrow streets so cars could not pass through and ingenious storm drains. Malmo was my favorite city and a place that I will visit again soon.

Malmoe, Tuesday afternoon

by Sean

by Sean

Western Harbour Malmoe

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Turning Torso, by Sean

by Delaney

by Delaney

Oeresund Bridge by Delaney

Oeresund Bridge, by Sean

Harbour Tour Copenhagen

Nyhavn, picture by Sean

by Sean

Monday afternoon, Copenhagen

by Sean

Foggy day, picture by eprisner

picture by eprisner

Downtown, picture by Sean

DESY Facility

Outer Alster

Instruction

Dear all,

Since I have problems posting images on MOODLE, I thought we might use a blog for our common wiki assignment. Wouldn't it be nice to have a common travel blog, a travel journal? The idea is that for every ingredient of our travel, we have one or two (or more) of us reporting. It would also be nice if you could provide some pictures.
So please, type in some text, upload some of your pictures. It could be in draft form first---everything can be edited on this blog. Please feel also free to edit text from others (including of course my texts), but be respectful. Correct typos, reword, but instead of making major changes put in comments in parantheses first, and wait for the corresponding author to accept this recommendation for improvement. The writing style will differ, but keep in mind the intention of this blog to communicate about our travel. So this will not be a research paper, but rather a journal with different voices.

In order to work on this blog, you need a google email account. With this, you log in here and make changes. If you don't want this, send me the text as email, and I will post it. The same with images.

Keep in mind that this is part of your grade. You can either contribute with text, or with images, or with both. But more important should be that we can tell about our experiences, good or bad, whether it was too boring, too cold, too long, to our friends and relatives.

And please use the blog freely---open posts, edit existing posts, and so on. It's our blog.

St. Annen Museum

Any report on this?

Luebeck

St Marien

Saturday morning we took the bus to Luebeck. After arriving there, at 11:30, I (EP) made a walk aorund the city, enjoying the warm and at times quite sunny weather. Later I made another walk, surrounding the inner city of Luebeck.

Anybody interested to share your pictures on Luebeck? And what did you do Saturday afternoon?

DESY

Friday afternoon we visited DESY. Who has pictures to post? Who is able to write a report on what we did? Was it interesting? How much of the information provided could you, as non-scienctists, understand?

DESY was an interesting facility Although I could barely understand the scientific explanations. This facility has many different projects and experiments in progress at the moment. The biggest project they had was the electron accelerator called HERA. Although it is not running at the moment, it provided valuable information about the structure of protons and electrons. I was surprised about how much these projects cost and how some of them are just sitting there gathering dust.

By harrisoncrosby on DESY on 3/15/11

The huge catastrophies in Japan

Friday noon students told me about the desastrous catastrophies in Japan---incredible strong earthquake of size 9.0, tsunami, and as a result of both the problems with several atomic reactors. As we learned only slowly, thousands of people had died in the tsunami. The following days were and are filled with reports.

Kunsthalle

IBA

Please write a short report on this.

Hafencity Tour

Who can report about our Hafencity guided tour? Who can share photos?

Tuesday evening in Hamburg

Afer landing around 2:30, a bus was carrying to our hotel, which is close to the Train station.

This is part of the train station.

The weather was sunny, though rather cold.

The Innenalster with a look on the Michel church (St. Michael)

This was the cover of a building adjacent to our hotel.

Sean, Nick, Jordan, Sam, Anthony,Matt,  Diego, Harrison, Erin, Daniela

Matt, Diego, Harrison, Erin, Daniela, James, Teela, Veniamin, Emil

James, Teela, Veniamin, Emil, Quinten, Marietta

We walked between Innen- and Aussenalster, and through parts of Rotherbaum and the University quarter for our first dinner at the restaurant Balutschistan. The food was ... ?