Category Archives: Cities

Beijing

Beijing, China

It’s been two and a half days now in Beijing, so time for a first blog entry.

I am actually going to start even before Beijing, since for some reasons I ended up in the Premium Economy class on my flight from Istambul to Beijing. Nothing too special, maybe besides the wide sleeping seat and plenty of nice food (smile), but I felt like I had to share.

Anyways … Beijing! First impression: man it’s muggy! It’s been above 30 degrees and around 80% humidity. And of course Beijing has one of the nicest haze bells (thanks to smog) I ever experienced. But that all aside I found my way to the hotel, using the very nice and fairly cheap metro system, and started exploring the neighbourhood. I finished the day with a typical modern Chinese dish … chicken burger at KFC’s … I thought I gotta start easy on myself.

Yesterday, after being woken up by the cleaning staff (thanks to the apparently still present jet lag), I went into town to see the Tiananmen Square, the Monument to the People’s Heroes, the Forbidden City, the Jingshan Park and the Beihai Park. All quite nice and impressive sights, though especially in the Forbidden City it often seems to be quantity and not quality that counts … or better counted. In terms of food I went a little wilder and had some sort of peanut-chicken rice with a dumpling in the Forbidden City. After ordering it I noticed that it was re-heated ready-made food … anyways, we are getting there.

Today, again after being woken up by the cleaning staff, I went for the Summer Palace and the Yuan Ming Yuan Park (Old Summer Palace). Two huge parks with temples, shrines and pavilions or at least ruins of them. I certainly fulfilled my walking share today and … right, got yet again a bit more crazy on food … this time it was beef noodle soup (with thick noodles) with chopsticks, sausage on a stick (plain stick) and some fried-egg sandwhich (no stick).

Let’s see what tomorrow brings :)

Maybe one side comment on the metro system, as it has cost me some extra Yuan already: I have not been able to buy a multipass from any of the service employees so far. And I had to learn (the hard way) that it does not make sense buying multiple single tickets at once (to avoid the queues), since they are only valid on the day AND the station you buy them … luckily one ride is only 25 Euro cents.

Copenhagen, Mittenwalde, Berlin, Beijing

Beijing, Berlin, China, Copenhagen, Family & Friends, Mittenwalde

Another weekend, another trip … this time it’s good old Berlin, with a little detour to Mittenwald, and then Beijing.

The programme is friends, the school enrolment of my godchild, family and friends and the 20th International Conference on Supersymmetry and Unification of Fundamental Interactions at Peking University in Beijing, China.

And it all starts this afternoon/evening.

Ohh … I’m looking forward :)

Home sweet home

Australia, Copenhagen, Sydney

I finally managed to find the time to write a few lines after returning to Copenhagen, home sweet home.

Last week we finished our (very nice) Australia trip with yet another slightly annoying two-days-without-sleep trip from down under to up here. Actually it also had it’s nice moments: on our flight from Abu Dhabi we had comforting two four-seat rows and a baby bed for the three of us. There were only in total 60 passengers on a plane with 280 seats. Dunno how this works out for the economics of the airline, but I wanna fly this way all the time now. Unfortunately our six hours stay in Düsseldorf and the subsequent flight were already much less pleasing. Well, the flight was actually fine.
Arriving in Copenhagen we actually had worse weather than when leaving in Sydney (remember it’s winter down there these days). It’s good to be back ;)
Well actually it was not all good, since I was fighting a mixture of lack of sleep and jetlag for the past days … but I think I finally defeated it today.

Maybe to add a few more lines about Australia, Sydney in particular …
We had a couple of days in Sydney after the end of ICHEP. Which we basically spent with walking half of Sydney, the Manly peninsula and various beach/costal walks.
Same as Melbourne, it’s a really nice city. The weather was quite a bit better and we actually got slightly sunburned (once again, it’s winter down there).

I put up a few panoramas in my gallery’s Cities and Nature folders … maybe I’ll add a few more later.

Destination: Australia

Australia, Melbourne, Outreach, Physics

For those that didn’t know yet, I am currently in Melbourne, Australia. The main reason is probably the 36th International Conference on High Energy Physics (ICHEP) that currently takes place at the Melbourne Convention Centre. Another reason is the first public display of my ATLAS model in the Melbourne Planetarium during the same time (actually longer than that).

And since I am going to spend about three weeks in Australia, we decided to make it a family trip, so Heike and Erik joined in.

Flying Berlin – Düsseldorf – Abu Dhabi – Melbourne, we spend about two days in planes and on airports to get to our first destination in the centre of Melbourne. Still fighting with a bit of jet lag I went to see the folks of Melbourne University (cheers to Caroline and Dave) and Tanya from the planetarium on Friday. After getting a bit of an introduction to University and the Centre of excellence for particle physics in Australia, I went to see the exhibition and the ATLAS display at the Planetarium for the first time. Quite a nice casing and setting as well as some nice posters and videos in the installation (they also made a time-lapse video of their build in Melbourne about three weeks ago).

On the weekend we managed to get a bit out of town to see a wild life parks (with Kangaroos, Koalas and all that), some national parks (with actual ‘wild’ Koalas) and the Great Ocean Road. We actually rented a car and I had my first left-driving experience, which was quite nice due to the (at least for me) surprising fact that though everything is opposite in local cars, the pedals are the same way as in right-driving cars (accelerating right, breaking middle/left).

Today ICHEP finally started – which is the reason why I managed to write this blog as I didn’t have (affordable) internet before :( – and it started with a blast: they/we found the Higgs, well we found some boson that is compatible with the/a Standard Model Higgs, to be politically correct (or what you call it). Anyways … quite some excitement, both here and at CERN, where the results were actually presented (we just got a live feed here). But after that the reception seemed to be more exciting for most people (mainly because many people might have had an idea before the actual presentations).

One minor detail that was interesting (at least I thought so) … CERN’s press release on this issue was released already after CMS’ presentation and not after ATLAS’ results were shown as well. Also this time the release quoted only one spokesperson (CMS’) instead of both.
Hmm? But meh …

We’ll see what else this ICHEP has to offer, starting tomorrow morning …