Berlin

Several cool things have happened in the lab the past couple of weeks.  We got a Tesla Roadster in our lab a couple weeks ago and we all spent significant time bonding with it.  It's amazing to see it plug into the wall just like a cell phone.  And looking under the hood was shocking too because it's extremely small and there's not much there because there's no motor.  But when you open up the back hatch, you can see like 3 or 4 huge batteries in a stack.  It's also quite a good looking automobile.  About a week ago I also got to ride in a Porsche 911 with a guy who I helped with a measurement.  Another really cool thing is that we got the Formula One car driven by Sergio Perez that crashed two weeks ago at the Monte Carlo track in Monaco for the qualifying rounds of the Grand Prix.  Here’s a video of the crash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0j6TX9MYoY I've also been able to begin working on my own project doing photogrammatry on a BMW motorcycle, and I am the first one to ever do these kinds of stiffness tests on a motorcycle at BMW.

Since we had a holiday on Thursday, 9 of us from UC decided to take Friday off too and spend a 4 day weekend in Berlin.  My trip there started on Wednesday night when I took a train to Kitzingen, near Würzburg where Ben and Corey live and stayed with them for the night.  Then the 5 of us packed into a car that Joey got from work and we were off around 7AM.  We decided to stop along the way at the Castle Church in Wittenberg where Martin Luther nailed his 95 thesis to the door and started the Protestant reformation.  The church is beautiful and it was pretty surreal to see the original doors they preserved inside the church and to see Martin Luther's tomb where he is buried.  After that we had lunch at an Italian restaurant where I ordered a pizza and a Berliner Weisse, which is a drink Berlin is famous for that contains raspberry juice mixed with wheat beer.  It was very tasty.

Castle Church in Wittenberg

The original doors Luther posted his 95 Theses

Martin Luther's Tombstone

From the bell tower

After that pitstop we got back on the Autobahn and made our way to Berlin, where we checked into our hostel and joined the others.  It was a pretty cool hostel that was pirate themed and had pool tables and foosball tables.  The first thing we decided to do was take the train to Alexanderplatz, which is the main shopping area and walk down Unter den Linden, which is the famous street that leads toward the Brandenburg Gate.  Right away the first thing we saw was the TV Tower, which is a gigantic lookout tower that is the highest structure in Europe.  Then we walked by the Rathaus (Town Hall) and a cool fountain until we came to a Volkswagen automall.  Here I saw my first ever Bugatti Veyron, the fastest road car in the world. 

TV Tower

Rotes Rathaus

Friedrichswerdersche Kirche

Bugatti Veyron

Berlin is famous for inventing the Currywurst, which is a combination of pork sausage and tomato paste mixed with curry powder.  It sounds strange, but it’s really a wonderful clash of Indian and German cuisine deliciousness.  It’s served all over Germany in just about every restaurant and is a cultural phenomenon and we all happen to be big fans of it too, so we decided to visit Currywurst 36, which is famous for having the best Currywurst in Berlin where it was born.  Turns out, it was delicious as promised.

After dinner we walked to the Brandenburg Gate, which is probably the most recognized symbol in all of Germany.  Then we walked onward into the Tiergarten, which is a large park in the middle of the city similar to Central Park in New York.  Here as the sun was setting, we saw large groups of youngsters picnicking, grilling out, and just being rowdy in general.  In fact we saw that someone had lit the nearby dumpster on fire.  We walked onward through the thickly forested park where we came across a fox and several statues until we came to the large Victory Tower.  After that we walked all the way back to the Brandenburg gate to get pictures of it at night with the lights illuminating it.  After that we were pretty worn out from not getting much sleep the night before and from walking around so much, so we went back to the hostel and hung out in the lobby for a little bit.  I played a little foosball and went to bed.

Brandenburg Gate

Victory Tower

On Berlin day two, we set out for the DDR museum, which helped me learn a lot about life in East Germany.  The museum lies right along the Spree river and across from it is the Berliner Dom, which is one of the coolest looking churches I’ve seen here in Germany.  After that we set out for the Berlin Wall. We found one of the few remaining sections of the wall next to what used to be the Gestapo headquarters that is now preserved with an exhibit.  It was surreal to see the wall there and think about the people who died trying to escape Eastern Germany.  After that, we headed to Checkpoint Charlie, which is the original gate in the wall where US allies and ambassadors passed from the US side of West Germany into Soviet East Germany and vice versa. 

Berliner Dom

Berlin Wall

Had to jump the barrier so I could touch it

There it is right in the middle of the city.  Unbelievable.

Checkpoint Charlie

Then we went to the Jewish Museum and spent several hours in there learning about Judaism and about the families that suffered in Berlin within the last century.  There were many abstract things in there that made you think and reflect on the horrors.  After that we got dinner and we all ordered German ravioli called Maultaschen that has meat and spinach in it, which was very good.   

My jaw dropped

After that, we visited the Holocaust Memorial, which is made up of over 2000 blocks of different heights that when you walk through it are designed to make you feel confused and lost, an abstract concept to help you imagine what it was like for the Jews.  Below the blocks is a memorial with all of the names of all of the Jews that died in the Holocaust.  Right next to the memorial, we found the U.S. Embassy with the American flag waving from it. 

Holocaust Memorial

We finished off the day by taking a tour that Justin reserved for us in the dome on the roof of the Reichstag, the German Parliament building.  This was probably my favorite site we went to.  The dome has a bunch of glass mirrors designed to reflect the sunlight into the room at angles that don’t create glares and also the heating and power is all run by solar panels on the roof.   It had a spiraling ramp that went all the way to the top with a guided audio tour that talked about all of the different buildings as you circle to the top and see views of the city in every direction.  We could also look down through the windows and see the seats and podiums where the German Parliament legislates. 

Reichstag

On Saturday we visited the East Side Gallery, which is the largest remaining section of the Berlin Wall that has been painted from artists from all around the world.  Many of the paintings were very good and thought provoking.  After that, we visited the Charlottenburg Palace, which has housed royalty since the 17^th century.  We spent some time walking through the palace grounds and enjoying the weather.  Once we were done with that, we visited the Olympic Stadium that was built for the 1936 Olympics, during Hitler’s reign. 

Schloss Charlottenburg

Olympiastadion

Then the group split up and decided to do different things for the rest of the night.  I went with Corey, Ben, Justin, Michael, and Liz to a the club Magneto for a hardcore rock concert which turned out to be really fun because the bands were really good and I got to let out some energy with some moshing haha.

On Sunday, we left around noon and the 4.5 hour drive turned into 8 hours because of the traffic trying to get out of Berlin and on the Autobahn because everyone was traveling back from the holiday weekend.  My train ride after that was another 3.5 hours, so I didn’t get back until midnight.  After 12 hours of traveling, I was pretty tired to say the least.  It was a fun weekend getting to see everyone from UC again and Berlin was totally worth visiting J.