Brief Travel to Germany

Back in Leeds, after a brief travel to Germany. I left Leeds on Sunday evening, returned on Wednesday evening. The weather was nice and sunny. Like here in Leeds actually. The usual end-of-April warm weather period has arrived about a week ago and has warmed Europe up, after the long winter.


Good food - in Germany is now the season for asparagus. In many countries, the green asparagus is popular. But in Germany, the white asparagus is the most widespread. The green one is harder and has a "heartier" taste, whereas the white one is softer, can sometimes have a bitter off taste, but can be exquisitely delicious - especially the thick ones!







(disclaimer: the above pictures were not all taken at one single meal :) )

Resuming Blog Posting

These past few weeks I have been posting nothing on this blog, although I would have some things to post: a heavy flu, a small bump received by my Smart car from the driver behind me (no damage), a few weekend excursions, riding on the footplate of a steam locomotive, taking pictures and videos, and being very busy at work with both the regular routine activities (marking of student work) and trying to get funding for my research and development work. I have resumed active software development for Windows Mobile, .NET, C#, video capture, network access. I also visited a highschool career event and represented our uni there. A group of our PhD students from Austria visited us in March for a Mini-Symposium.

Lately I did a statistics: I looked at the work emails from about 3 days and collected the ones that relate to actual tasks for me: there were about 20 different task strands, linking to a variety of immediate actions to be done. And that were only things related to immediate work - none of my other projects were included there (e.g. my music activities, the impeding web presence update, the work on my book, ...). Usual, what a person can handle simultaneously is about 7 parallel things. So it appears that I do have to do one important thing: prioritise my activities. Well, that is what I did, so I was quite slow in responding to personal emails, in updating this blog, and in getting my photos sorted on Flickr. I hope to have more time in the next few weeks for more frequent updates and for staying in contact.

Desctruction of the Cologne City Archive

It has been briefly in the news on TV here in the UK that on 4.March in Cologne a house crashed down as a consequence of subway construction, but I only found out more details when reading Spiegel Online: The building which had collapsed was the city archive of Cologne. Two people died. The archive had contained the complete documentation of the city, starting from the 12th century. Many 10,000 of documents, books, historic materials are lost. The legacy of nobel laureate Heinrich Boell which just had been moved recently into the archive, is lost. The cultural damage is immeasurable.

This leads to the question why such documents were not stored appropriately in safe-like conditions, in metal containers, or something that would prevent damage. It also raises the question about the subway construction in Cologne which is highly controversial. Maybe it should have been built deeper, or not underneath the historic centre of Cologne. Now a lot of protest against completing this subway line is starting to appear.

New types of blogs

In December 2007, I had thought about the possibility to create a modification of the usual "web log = blog": the "news log = slog". It has not yet caught on... a google search did not reveal any deep insight, except that slog is a term in cricket sports. Interestingly, one site defines slog (among other very interesting definitions) as a boring blog (like this one here...). So it might not be a good idea to call anything related to news logging "slogging".

There are actually already other derivations from the usual blog out there: a "plog" is derived from a variety of meanings: Poem blog, project blog, portfolio blog, private blog, according to Wikipedia. One could also add another version: "past log = plog". This would be a unique use of blogging: to use post-dating (editing posting dates to represent a much earlier posting time than the actual post is made) to write now about events in the past. Somehow this would of course defeat the real purpose of blogs, to be a true log of current events. But it sometimes is necessary to change the date, as the entry into the blog can sometimes not be made immediately, but only later (e.g. because of unavailability of online access). In that case, the blog entry would rightfully have the date of the event itself, not the date of the posting. I do this here sometimes, when on travel: write a blog entry offline and just store it on my laptop, then post it later when back home.

But this could be even taken further: Blogger here allows to put posting dates starting from 1.1.1970. One could now create blogs from old journals, or could even make completely fictional blogs. This would truly be a new literary form, as the blog author can now, at this time, write and post as if (s)he is in the past. And this could actually be a form to tell a story, completely fictional. It would be interesting if writers would start to experiment with this and write stories that are told as blogs. This would have two audiences: the people who would follow this blog, live as it is being written and posted, and others who would read the whole blog, once it is finished, as a kind of narrated story, based solely on the blog entries. One could envision developing stories that are followed and read, even as they are not yet completed - really a new way of accessing literature!

Anyone aware of such efforts by someone? If I had some writing talent, I would try this myself...
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Just found out that these kind of blogs actually exist: "Fictional blog = flog". There are quite a few of those out.

A busy week...

This week has been very busy, for me, with a tight schedule. I was only able to devote to the iCamp which was running this week every day at the Old Broadcasting House two afternoons. Monday I was chair of a PhD viva. First time I attended a UK viva. In the evening I attended a Town Hall meeting in Pontefract, where Brian Lewis presented the project of rebuilding Pontefract Castle. Tuesday I visited Opera North, together with a group from Yorkshire Universities. Wednesday was a meeting about Post-Graduate delivery, within the framework of the new Carnegie PostGraduate School. Yesterday I was in Harrogate, giving a presentation at the St.Aidan's Highschool. Different audience for a change. In the evening I attended the Creative Networks event at Leeds College of Arts. Today I will be at the iCamp this afternoon.
A few deadlines are today as well...

Return from Athens

In the morning I head off again towards the antique sites near the Acropolis. Walk around, then pass by the parliament building, where at 11:00 the guards are marching by in their costumes.

Then back to the hotel, check out, take metro and suburban train back to the airport. A brief snack, than the flight leaves back to Amsterdam, then to Leeds. A long line at the border control at Leeds airport: it seems that several flights have arrived at the same time, and there is only one person to control all the passports.

All the pictures I took during my stay in Athens are here on Flickr

A Day at the Ruins

On Saturday I get out of the hotel around 10:30. Head straight for the Acropolis entrance. The combination ticket costs 12 Euro, entrance to several sites is included. Quite impressive, these remains! The weather is great: blue sky, a bit chilly, but pleasant enough.
Not many tourists, although at the entrance to the Propylaia seems to be a crowd. I took two series of pictures, for the photosynths below (works only with MS Internet Explorer):


Entrance to the Acropolis: the Propylaia.



Theatre of Herodes Atticus, Athens.

I spend some time on top of the Acropolis, look at the remains of the temples. A lot of reconstruction is going on there. Then walking down, to the hill of the Areopag and to the Agora. I am very thursty and abandon for a while the antique ruins, in exchange for the shopping streets around the area. There are actually many nice things to buy, I consider to get a replacement for my laptop bag (another one for my collection of squarish laptop bags), but then decide not to waste time with shopping. Accidentally I come to the flee market: great stuff that is offered there! Many chairs, old clocks, books. For some reason there are a lot of brass instruments for sale: trumpets, horns, and some strangely shaped ones. After having filled up on liquids I visit Hadrian's library and the Roman Forum. There is a part of wall, with a piece of lead cemented in. Original from Roman times? Or just put in there for protection recently?

Around 14:30 the smell of fried calamares makes me hungry, and I stop for a break. Sit outside with a view of these ruins and the Acropolis. The sun is now behind clouds, it starts to feel slightly cool again. As I move on again, the sites are then closed. So I will not go to the Olympian Zeus temple, just take a picture through the fence. I will still have a short time on Sunday morning.

After I return from my walk through the city, I am very tired. Fall asleep. Then when I wake up again around midnight, I post much of the 480 pictures I have taken today to Flickr.

Evening

At the hotel I decide to have a brief rest. But I fall asleep, and wake up at 21:30. Damn, missed the dinner! Quickly rush out, should be a 15 minutes walk. Since I have a day ticket for the public transport, I jump into a bus that comes by and appears to go in the right direction. But at the next street it makes a turn and drives down several 100 meters. When I get off at the next stop, I have to walk all that distance back again...

Dinner is nice - I have Souvlaki. Afterwards, one of the local guys offers to drive us up to the Lykavittos Hill with a gorgeous view over the nightly Athens. First I think that they have switched off the nightly illumination of the Acropolis, but then I see that we are so high above it, it melts together with the other lights.

Working Day

Friday is working day. I calculate that I will need at least 1h 15 minutes to go from the hotel to the site, and I am right: the metro takes quite a while, as at some stations it waits, not sure for what. At the station where I get out, I can choose to take a bus, or to take a taxi. The bus is already waiting, I enter, but there is no driver. Since I do not know the schedule, I decide that I will take a taxi instead. Arrive at the site 7 minutes before the meeting begins. The two other main meeting participants are not here yet - they arrive 30 minutes later.

The meeting goes until 17:30. We agree to meet at 21:00 for dinner in the city.

Walking along Antiquity

After dropping my stuff in the hotel room, I rush out to use the remaining day light for a brief exploration of the city. First I grab a Gyros Pita at one of the food outlets - costs just 1.90 Euro. The hotel is within walking distance of all relevant sites. I head towards south, through non-descriptive narrow streets with shops. Then arrive at the site of Agora, the old centre in antiquity. A metro line has been built straight through the ruins...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/reinholdbehringer/3298351011/in/set-72157614077249007

All archaeological sites appear to be closed after 15:00. I follow the signs to Akropolis, but decide that I will go there on Saturday. Back through the old town centre of Athens, the Plaka.

A short rest in the hotel, then again going out later in the dark. Take a few pictures of the illuminated Parthenon, but is too far away. Have a pizza in the hotel restaurant, but it is a bit strange: too hard dough. This is not a pizza. Similar to the "pizza" in Barcelona. I guess that only Italians can make good pizza! (And of course New Yorkers, and Chicago too).

Go to bed not too late, as I will have to get up early on Friday. The time difference to UK is 2 hours.