Category Archives: Cities

Copenhagen under water

Copenhagen

Last weekend we experienced an interplay of various weather conditions of the finest kind. While having visitors over the weekend we spend some time sun bathing at the beaches in the north of Sealand, but also witnessed the worst rain storm I have ever seen in Europe.

We had more than 40 mm of rain per hour for at least two hours … the city was completely drowned in water.

 

We have seen cars floating in ponds that filled up under bridges and thousands of basements got flooded quite badly. Also our institute suffered quite a lot, with some of the lecture halls flooded and some walls pushed inside in the server hall.

Fortunately our basement was spared …

As that was not bad enough, we had yet another heavy rain fall on Sunday … not quite as bad, but still it added up quite a bit …

Sankt Hans aften

Copenhagen

Yesterday we spent the evening celebrating “Sankt Hans aften”. The Danish way of celebrating midsummer, or the longest day in the year.

Typically they light up some large bonfire and sing the traditional midsummer hymn. Yesterday we also had a gospel choir and a funk band playing some tune by the harbour .
The old tradition of burning witched to send them to Bloksbjerg (Brocken in Germany) came a bit short though ;)

More Athens

Athens

After the workshop ended on Friday I had some more time to explore the city and its sights.
I walked more than 15 kilometers on Friday and only slightly less on Saturday … man my feet hurt now!
In general there are many nice things to see in Athens, though the city itself is not too beautiful. A lot of houses are semi-modern and in non-optimal conditions, though on average the inner city look slightly better (as usual).
I had some very nice dishes in various non-central places in town, typically as the only-non greek in the place.
And of course I saw almost all the ancient temples, markets and places along with the according museums …
If you ever considered to visit Athens and you are still a student, you should do it as long as you still have your student ID.
You and up paying half or nothing (if from within the EU). That aside, the prices for adults are still within reason!

Athens update

Athens

As some of you might have seen on the news, there is a few things going on in Athens these days ;)

As the Danish institute is quite close to the parliament we could here the demonstrations and such since they are quite focused on one square they did not really affect us.

What did affect us though was the fact that, after we had lunch on the roof terrace of the Acropolis Museum (which is quite reasonably priced), we wanted to go up and see the Acropolis itself and could not because of the strike :(

So we only had a little walk and went back to work …

In the evening we spent some time on the roof garden of the institute watching the lunar eclipse andhad a reasonably nice dinner in a small restaurant in town with loads of tzatziki :)

Today we plan to spent our lunch break in the National Archaeological Museum to have a look at the Antikythera mechanism amongst others …

CPH – FRA – SXB – FRA – AHN – …

Athens, CERN, Niels Bohr Institue

Finally in Athens!

After flying from Copenhagen to Frankfurt on Sunday, driving to Strasbourg with a rental car, spending two days at C.N.R.S. to look at CMOS sensors, driving by to Frankfurt by car and taking a flight from there to Athens, I know finally arrived at the Danish Institute in town.

To be a bit more precise, I went to Strasbourg to discuss a possible new project to get involved in and to have a look at CMOS detectors they build at C.N.R.S. that we wanna use in the experiment.

And now I am in Athens for about a week for a SMP (stable massive particles) sit-in!

On the plane to Athens I met Cédric a swiss pilot working for Aegean Airlines (greetz) and his lovely colleague who’s name I unfortunately forgot who recommended a few places in town that we might check out during the week …

Btw. the picture shows part of the Acropolis as seen from my balcony when I arrived in our apartment (about now)!

For those of you who can read German: the place shown in this article is exactly where I left the subway yesterday … quite a surprise!