We took the train to London from Paris, and I slept through
most of it! I remember hearing about the Chunnel when I was little and
imagining it was like one of those tunnels in aquariums that are made of glass
so you can see all the creatures. I had wised up to what it would actually be
like several years ago but still felt a little disappointed that my childhood
imaginings were false!
We stayed with friends of my parents in a part of London, we
arrived just in time to crash a dinner party they were holding for a couple of
Ph.D. students from with one of their departments and their plus ones. So we
had a lovely evening talking shop with health professionals, a philosopher, an
economist, and us with our brain stuff!
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| The Brandenburg Gate |
You will be disappointed to know that the next day we just
slept in and hung around home, we were absolutely shattered, and it was such a
lovely home to relax in so we took London as our recuperation time. I had never
experienced jetlag before and was feeling pretty lousy! We saw SQUIRRELS!! I
had never seen a squirrel before! They are very cute; we watched one stalking a
cat for about 20 minutes! Easily entertained!
The next day was UCL, where my Love was giving a talk,
followed by a tour of the facilities. The lab we visited there was pretty
impressive! We were pretty impressed, and the talk went fine, we stuck around
after to discuss research particulars with a couple of researchers there.
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| The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe |
Then
we did a bit of wandering and caught up with a friend, before heading out to
dinner at one of the local hipster pubs down the road from where we were
staying. Yummy, I opted for the beef burger despite all the horse meat drama
that was running through the UK at the time, the night before we had been out
for fish ‘n’ chips at another local pub.
We flew to Berlin and there was a Bachelor Party of 26 drunken meatheads going there too! So the flight was mainly filled with outrageous
sexisms and moronicisms being spat out left, right, and centre, but we got
there in the end!
My first reaction to Berlin was to the transportation, I
don’t know why people rave so much about the Paris Metro, Berlin’s system is so
much better - well I preferred it anyway!
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| Plenarbereich Reichstagsebäude |
We spent 5 days in Berlin, and did a bit of sight seeing
here and there, but mostly I just wanted to get the feel of the place and visit
my future Ph.D. lab! We saw the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, which
is an experience worth having.
We also saw Brandenburger Tor and Plenarbereich
Reichstagsebäude with all its bullet-hole scars and patches where they tried to
bandage the damage caused by the fighting around it.
Berlin is a vibrant city and is very easy to get around when
there aren’t WWII bombs being deactivated too close to the trains requiring
everything to be redirected (apparently this doesn’t happen very often though!)
and I am very much looking forward to getting to know it better! The bread won
me over on the first day, and I managed to get used to the beer coming in
half-litres!
