European Excursions

Auf Wiedersehen!

2006-09-30T18:01:00.000-07:00

Well, a great summer in Kiel has come to an end. It has been a superb educational and cultural experience, and I would like to pass on my thanks to my supervisor, Stefan Schöllmann, to the DAAD for organizing the RISE program, and to the University of Alberta International for funding my summer abroad.

Stefan and Annika from the University of Kiel with summer students, Steven from Canada and Jasmita from India

I wrote a brief summary of my RISE experience for the DAAD website. It is available here.

German Food: Much more than Sauerkraut!

2006-09-23T22:29:00.000-07:00

A sampling of a few fine Deutsch morsels that I came across:

Sausage (Wurst) is probably the most well-known German food (besides beer). Though the Bratwurst and Currywurst are probably the most famous variants, there are a plethora of regional specialities. My favourite is shown above, the Krakauer.

For lunch, I usually ate at the University cafeteria, the Mensa, which served traditional German food everyday. The dishes usually included some kind of boiled vegetable and some manner of potato or bread with meat, sausage, or, on Fridays, fish. The dish above (Kartoffel Nudeln) may look like noodles, but it is actually made of potato!

Overall, the quality of food (Lebensmittel) from the markets in Germany is usually higher than that in North America, and I was particularly impressed by some of the fruit: German cherries (Kirschen) and strawberries (Erdbeeren) for instance are small, sweet, and very tasty—much better than the stuff from California!

German bread and dairy products are very cheap (29 cents for 250 g of yoghurt!) and sold everywhere. More types of bread (brötchen) and baguette sandwiches than you can imagine are available at the train stations—above is breakfast on the train during my trip Brussels.

Germany

has a large immigrant population, particularly from Eastern Europe. Ethic foods like Turkish and Greek are very popular and fulfill the role of “fast food”. Much better quality than American fast food, though: three Euros buys a huge Döner, fresh Turkish bread stuffed with vegetables and beef or chicken, ready in a minute!

Finally, German desserts deserve mention, such as Quark (curds) with syrupy fruit, ice cream (Softeis), or one of the many types of cake (Kuchen), such as the Black Forest Gateau (Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte) from the south.

Knusper Schoko-lecker! (a.k.a. Chocolate for Breakfast)

2006-09-17T15:09:00.000-07:00

I only spent 90 days in Deutschland, yet somehow managed to consume 30 boxes of chocolate cereal. I'm going to miss the stuff...

So good!

Berlin and Dresden

2006-09-17T00:38:00.000-07:00

My first trip to Berlin wasn’t nearly enough time to see it all, justifying a second trip:

I decided to leave Kiel early to catch the first train to Berlin, allowing time for a museum or two, but it was not meant to be. As I dashed into the station at 4 a.m., some security people pounced on me. Apparently some lunatic tried to blow up a couple trains leaving Köln, only to be captured in Kiel after escaping! I arrived just as this fellow was being arrested and the police closed the station. A few hours later I finally caught a bus to the next station and made my way from there…

I spent most of the day sightseeing, but had to skip the museums thanks to the train delay. Among the highlights: the Fernsehturm, the Berliner Dom, E=mc² on museum island, Unter den Linden, Potsdamer Platz, the Ku’damm, and, of course, the Brandenburger Tor and Reichstag buildings.

The Altes Museum on Museum Island, Berlin

Among the most interesting sites were those related to the Berlin Wall. The Berlin Wall came down almost 17 years ago and little remains except for a crumbling, short section near Checkpoint Charlie, the former crossing between the American and Soviet sectors of the city. (After the War, Berlin was inside East Germany, but the city itself was divided into Soviet, American, British, and French sections).

No more bricks in this wall...

There are some great historical displays and museums in the area and a stone path through the city marks the Wall’s former path. A neat section of the Wall on the east side of the river Spree has been restored and displays some of the Wall’s lost art.

At the East Side Gallery

Since reunification, Berlin has rapidly developed into a modern city. Construction everywhere, tearing down the old and building the new … the Canadian embassy is in a brand new building among the skyscrapers in Potsdamer Platz, for instance. Berlin became the German capital once again about a decade ago and the German parliament sits in the restored Reichstag, complete with a modern interior and elegant glass cupola.

I met my RISE friend, Hanyue from Montréal, and we toured the Reichstag in the evening and visited the trendy Oranienburger Street for something to eat.

The Cupola

The next day, we took a rail-pass trip down to Dresden. Dresden was among the worst bombed cities during the war resulting in the loss of countless pieces of baroque architecture. City restoration did not begin in full until reunification and still continues today.

On the "Balcony of Europe" in Dresden

In the evening, we made our way back to Berlin for a concert from the Berlin Symphony orchestra. It was an outdoor event and, unfortunately, there was a little rain, but the concert was unlike anything I have attended and a definite highlight of the summer—a Vienna-themed evening with best of Strauss and Mozart from a magnificent 50 piece orchestra (even complete with a fireworks display).

The rest of the pictures are here. If only there were time for a third trip to Berlin!

Pondering...

2006-08-25T00:37:00.000-07:00

The summer is winding down and my last weekend adventure inside Germany was to Berlin and Dresden ... more soon!

Copenhagen

2006-08-22T09:32:00.000-07:00

Catching a night train at 4 a.m. and stepping out of this train six hours later into pouring rain, I had my doubts whether my trip to Denmark would be worth it, but a mermaid, a dome, a couple palaces, an amusement park, and (several) Danish pastries later, I was pleasantly impressed. Check out the pictures here.

The Little Mermaid

I think that Copenhagen must have the most bronze and copper statues per capita of any city in Europe—they are everywhere! Copenhagen’s dome is one of my favourites and the view from the top is splendid. Copenhagen also has Tivoli Gardens, a great amusement park worth marvelling at without even trying the rides!

Lots of great Danish food, too: soft ice cream, Danish hot dogs, fancy sandwiches, and, of course, pastries. I was never much of a Danish pastry fan in Canada, but now that I’ve tried the real thing….

Thanks to multiple currency exchanges, this is the first (and last) time I pay 6 (Canadian) dollars for a hot dog.

The Danish country side is very beautiful: colourful houses and pastoral fields. Also impressive are the Dane’s colossal bridges, which connect their islands to one another and to Sweden.

The trip was a little too short to tour the palaces or see the great Viking museum, so I will have to be back for another visit (and some more pastries).

Amsterdam and Belgium

2006-08-15T00:31:00.000-07:00

Another adventure! I took a trip out to Amsterdam with my friend Hanyue from McGill and we met up with some others from Berlin…

Amsterdam’s highlights: Canals; gabled houses; red lights; “Coffee shops” and sweet scents; public urinals on the not-so-clean street corners; the Heineken brewery; happy gay people; the Van Gogh and Rijksmuseum; stores selling wooden shoes, tulip bulbs, “herbs”, and Rembrandt postcards; and Anne Frank’s house. What a place!

Amsterdam

On to Brussels the next day to see the great square and the statue of the little boy peeing, and, of course, try some of the handmade (and extremely expensive) chocolates. The mussels were way overrated, but the light show in the square lived up to its reputation.

Grand Place, Brussels

Finally a quick side trip out to Bruges to see Belgium’s medieval town. I think I’ve done too much travelling this summer: I was a little disappointed; when it comes to medieval towns,

Germany

’s are much better (e.g., Lübeck, Rothenburg, etc.).

Bruges, Belgium

Lots more photos: www.ece.ualberta.ca/~stsoneff/Amsterdam_Belgium/

Remember where you parked.

2006-08-13T06:15:00.000-07:00

Wo ist mein Fahrrad?

One of the things I like best about Germany is that so many people use bicycles!

Euros

2006-08-13T06:10:00.000-07:00

Valid throughout Western Europe (except the stubborn countries of Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, and the UK) ... each country has its own coin designs ... the notes each have an architecture theme ... the larger the note, the more it is worth ... the big ones don't even fit in a Canadian wallet!

Sailing on the Baltic Sea!

2006-08-08T03:33:00.000-07:00

Last weekend some friends from Berlin came up to Kiel ... we had a busy day! We biked through the countryside, over the canal to the Olympic Sailing Marina (Kiel hosted Olympic sailing events in 1936 & 72), and spent the afternoon on a sailboat in the Baltic with a couple of skippers from the University. Fantastic fun!

The Crew

Then we made our way to Travemünde Beach near Lübeck to see the circus-themed sand sculpture park, alit at night with bright colours and topped off with fireworks!

Some great pictures…

Travelling: Heidelberg and the Rhine

2006-08-08T01:12:00.000-07:00

Around the middle of July, I was in Heidelberg in central Germany for a conference of all of the students in my exchange program, about 150 Americans and 60 Canadians. The hostel was a busy place and I met a lot of new travel buddies ... a few pictures here….

Our time was filled with presentations from the German Academic Exchange Service, the embassies, and German industry, including tours … some people got to see exciting things like cars being built by Mercedes-Benz in Stuttgart (though I ended up at Heidelberger Druck, a printing press company, where building a two million-Euro printing press is certainly impressive, but not quite as exciting as an S-Class Mercedes…).

Heidelberg is a nice university town filled with old buildings, a castle, and lots of tourists … we spent evenings wandering around the city and through the hills, touring the ruins, and visiting the city’s “cultural brewery.”

Heidelberg

I took a leisurely trip back to Kiel, stopping first in Frankfurt to see Germany’s skyscrapers, then on to the Rhine River. The Rhine gorge is a beautiful stretch of the river in Western Germany as it flows north toward the Netherlands and North Sea.

My first stop was Mainz, an imperial city during the time of the Holy Roman Empire. It is the place where Gutenberg printed his famous bibles in the 1450s, several of which are in the local museum, which I stopped at for a second round of printing presses….

From there I took the train to a little medievalish town on the banks of the river called Bacharch, where I jumped on a tour boat making its way down the river. The view in this area is quite spectacular: the gorge is green with vegetation, while old towns line the river banks and castles top the hills!

The Rhine

I stopped at the town of St. Goar to visit a few of the castles, including Burg Katz and Burg Maus as well as Burg Rheinfels … once the River’s largest castle, but now only ruins (thanks to the French). I stayed overnight in the town and hiked up the valley, here you can see a spectacular panorama with all three castles (and a fighter jet, which came roaring down the valley just as I took a photo).

I also detoured down the Mosel River briefly to see one of Germany’s oldest towns, Trier, near the border with Luxembourg. Trier was a Roman capital and boasts gates and churches that are nearly 2000 years old!

One last stopover in Cologne for a final picture of the Rhine with the city’s famous cathedral, then some sleep as the train made its slow way back to Kiel...

Check out the best-of photos here…

Cologne and the Rhine

Here, There, and Everywhere.

2006-08-01T23:39:00.000-07:00

Nothing like a little bit of America juxtaposed with an 800-year old European cathedral...

A Tower with a View

2006-07-30T04:09:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, I visited the tower at Kiel's Rathaus. With my photoshop skills, I pasted a dozen pictures together to make this 360 degree panorama of the city:

(click here for a closer look)

And I also had some fun at the beach...

I live in a Fußball nation.

2006-07-25T23:55:00.000-07:00

Not so long ago, there was a world cup championship in

Germany

… the Germans got quite worked up about it:

Revellers watch in the streets...

Fans watch from the trees...

All of Germany goes crazy as they move into the final four!

Poor little fussball-fan being pulled away from the action!

Putting my rail pass to use...

2006-07-24T23:54:00.000-07:00

I’ve done a little travelling over the last few weeks and met up with a few others in my exchange program. Some photos:

Hannover and Bremen … a day trip with my friend, Sofia, from Massachusetts
Lübeck … a historic old Hanseatic town with a beach on the Baltic Sea
Berlin and Potsdam … during the weekend of the World Cup finals

The Chariot of Victory keeps watch from
atop Berlin’s Brandenburger Tor

It's a nutty world.

2006-07-23T10:43:00.000-07:00

So I finally found a store that sells peanut butter:

But the Nutella had already found me!

Mmm … mmm. Sweet Chocolaty Hazelnut Deliciousness!

Gives peanut butter a run for its money … no wonder the Europeans love it so much!

Ich bin ein Kieler

2006-07-05T23:14:00.000-07:00

I have been in Kiel for almost a month. It is a great place to spend the summer: not as overwhelming as Berlin or Munich, but big enough to have a nice selection of stores and summer events.

Kiel is a busy German port on the Baltic Sea. There are a myriad of boats in the harbour, including historic sailing ships and giant ferries destined for Sweden and Norway. About a quarter million people live in Kiel. Besides a large, old university, there is a major canal to the North See, and a navy/submarine base. Kiel was destroyed during the Second World War, so few of the old buildings remain. The city just celebrated a gigantic sailing and summer festival, the Kieler Woche ... check out my pictures!

I live in a university residence, which, unfortunately, is rather sparse: not much of a kitchen, no Internet, small old rooms ... makes Lister look almost luxurious! The "nice" residences are taken by full-time students, so the latecomers and exchange students are out of luck—at least it's cheap (less than €200 per month ... €1 = $1.4) and there are lots of other international students.

My Room
The university in Kiel is large (~25 000 students), almost as big as the University of Alberta. The campus is very spread out, and, unfortunately, the Faculty of Engineering is on the other side of the harbour, almost six kilometres from my residence—a long walk. Someone at work lent me an old bicycle, but after a few flat tires, I gave up on it and luckily found a used mountain bike for only €60. Many people in Germany ride bicycles and I can whiz to the lab along the bike paths in about 20 minutes.

My Steed

The lab is not quite as fancy as those at U of A and the faculty is much smaller, but the people are friendly. I have met some interesting German students and, like Canada, there are many graduate students from China, many of whom speak very good English. There are three other exchange students in my lab: one from India, another from Poland, and a Chinese fellow studying at the University of Toronto!

Fellow Exchange Students from my Lab

The work is very interesting. We investigate various aspects of fibre optic telecommunication—I work with mode diversity signal multiplexing techniques over multi-mode fibre. (What that all means is a story for another day....)

Working in the lab...

I spend my free time visiting the stores in Kiel's Altstadt and harbour areas, learning German (ein bisschen Deutsch), and, of course, travelling. I've seen Hamburg with friends in my exchange program (pictures) and I tried lots of German food.

Leckere deutschen Kirschen!
(Yummy German Cherries)

I'm almost a resident. I have a German address, a German bank account (and think in Euros now) and a German mobile number (a cell phone is are commonly called a "Handy" in Europe ... you can reach me at +49 151 52046179) and I'm getting quite used to the German grocery stores.

The World Cup excitement is very intense … lots of cheering fans in the streets.

Bis Später!

A Pan of Kiel's Harbour

First Excursion

2006-06-20T23:56:00.000-07:00

I started the summer with a trip through central Europe with my Mom and Dad. We took lots of pictures ... read on for a (not-so-short) synopsis of our trip:

Intro
May 27: Frankfurt and southwest Germany; Zug and Lucerne, Switzerland
May 28: Lake Geneva and Bern, Switzerland
May 29: St. Gotthard Pass and Northern Italy
May 30: Venice
May 31: Austria – Hallein and Salt Mines
June 1: Salzburg and Schloss Herrenchiemsee
June 2: Munich
June 3: Rothenburg ob der Tauber
June 4: Lübeck and Kiel

We went a long way in our little Opel!

A Farewall to Waterloo

2006-06-19T23:52:00.000-07:00

After a great winter work term at Research In Motion in Waterloo, I finished up on May 26 with a (hectic!) last day. Luckily, I don't think I forgot anything and had plenty of time to catch my flights. I sure miss having a BlackBerry ....

Some of the highlights of the term:

a great research team to work with, lead by Dr. Bruno Preiss
a BlackBerry to play with
meeting some superb co-op students!
good times ... lunch at Mongolian Grill, St. Jacob's Market, admiring the Austin-Martin, bubble tea....

It's a BlackBerry World!

A few more pictures here

Summer Starts

2006-06-19T08:57:00.000-07:00

For Summer 2006, I am on an internship at the University of Kiel, near Hamburg in northern Germany, sponsored by the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD), the German Academic Exchange Service. Until September, I am doing some work on fibre optic telecommunication systems and, of course, travelling around Europe! Watch this blog for the latest on my travels and links to photo albums on my website: www.ece.ualberta.ca/~stsoneff.

I started the summer with a week-long trip through Switzerland, Venice, Austria and a few German cities before arriving in Kiel. You can check out the pictures here!

More coming soon...