London & Berlin

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!

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. 

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!

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!

Paris: Take-One

Paris Day One

As we started our descent into Paris the pilot let us know that it was snowing in Paris, and as the plane landed the turbines blew the snow up off the ground so that it looked like we were landing in a snowstorm! The flight was supposed to take 14 hours, but we were two hours early, landing in Paris at about 2:30 am, we gathered our gears, walked past some security people – this is considered to be customs in Paris, nobody stamped our passports, and we were free to go! However, the trains into the city don’t start until 6 am, so we sat around for a while! This meant that we had time to choose the best deal for our train ticket!

We were in Paris for 3 days to start with and just getting from the airport to the hotel on a single ticket would have been upwards of 15 euros each! So we each got a 3-day Paris Visite ticket, which gives you pretty much unlimited access to the whole of Paris. I really recommend this if you are going to be seeing all the sights because it gets you to all the main touristy things! We didn’t do Versailles this trip but I think the Paris Visite ticket can get you there as well.

We arrived at our hotel at about 7:30am and of course check in isn’t until 2pm so even though we were shattered we had to wander the streets of Paris for about 6 or so hours (not too much of a chore really). Thankfully we were able to leave our suitcases there (although not entirely securely) so we left our belongings and took the metro to Notre Dame. We were still pretty dazed, but as we climbed the stairs up out of the metro there she was, surrounded by snow and only a couple of other people in sight La Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris stood there to welcome us.

When we first planned this trip we expected it would be filled with lab visits and meet and greets with other neuroscientists in our fields of interest, as it was supposed to be our way of scouting for jobs/PhD positions. So I had resigned myself to not doing a whole lot of sight-seeing, but I had said that Notre-Dame was the one thing in Paris that I absolutely had to go and see, so it was nice that she was the first to welcome us to Paris.

We were really lucky with our timing as there were only about ten other people around and inside the church, so we almost had it to ourselves. 

After looking around the church we decided to head over to Montmartre where we had crêpes and coffee. We then wandered over to the Sacré-Cœur Basilica, where the views weren’t great due to excess cloud but it was nice to wander around the neighbourhood. 

We also saw Café Des 2 Moulins from the film Amélie, we saw the Moulin Rouge, L’Arc de Triomphe, and La Tour Eiffel. By this time 2 o’clock was fast approaching and we were almost dead on our feet and freezing cold so we headed back to the hotel and waited to be checked in. Then once we were all checked in we slept through to about 4am

Paris Day Two

We woke up early, and figured out how to get to the lab we were visiting that day, then stupidly hit the metro at rush hour, which was awful! But we made it there and my Love gave his talk to the neuroscience department, followed by questions and a tour of the lab facilities. After the lab tour they took us out to a beautiful restaurant for lunch, so nice that we went to it again for dinner on our last night in Paris.

After the lab we did a bit of wandering around the Latin Quarter before we had some dinner and headed back to the hotel. We spent most of the day with the lab team, so there wasn’t much time for tourist-ing that day!

Paris Day Three

Wasn’t really a full day in Paris, we woke up, had breakfast, checked out of the hotel, did some shopping, then caught the chunnel to London!

About International Long-Haul Flights

International travel is so uncomfortable! But there are some things that make it more bearable, so I will try to remember all of the things I thought of while travelling!

Noise-cancelling headphones! I didn’t have a pair but my darling father lent me his set for the trip, and I am going to invest in some before my flights to Berlin in two months time! They just cut out all the background noise, which is awesome for me because too much noise can stress me out and make it difficult to sleep. They take a bit of getting used to if you want to get comfortable enough to sleep in them, because obviously having giant ear extensions isn’t a normal sensation!

As far as seating goes, I had no idea when it came to choosing where to sit so we just left it up to the travel agent. The only advice I did have came from my father and was “Have you ever seen a plane back into a mountain?” which is a valid point, but I find that the further back you are the less likely it is that both dinner options will still be available by the time they reach you! This does lead into another of my suggestions though, which is eat in airports if you can afford to, I’m not generally a picky eater, but I only really ate half of my airplane meals because some of it was a bit slimy or vomit inducing. So instead I would get a meal at the airport about half an hour before take off, and usually that plus half of my plane meal would keep me going. Plus if you are in international airports in foreign countries it is a really good opportunity to try some of their cuisine!

Also about seating – I was stuck in a middle seat for both of our long haul flights so got up to walk around quickly once per flight, ideally I would rather have done a bit more moving because those seats are a killer for your lower back! Also when I got up I went to the bathroom and washed my face to make me feel a bit fresher, which helped, as after a long time in travel limbo you start to feel pretty gross!
Also when you get to your destination – look at your ankles! I’ve never been too self-conscious about my ankles but holy crap! Once you see swollen ankles caused by flying - your normal ankles look pretty damn petite in comparison!
Also, this was my first international travel experience in about 6 years, and the entertainment stuff they have is so much more than what it was back then! I had loaded up my laptop with a bunch of recent comedy films and series that don’t require too much attention, and half of them were on the planes mini tv sets! So I still had a couple of things extra on my laptop that weren’t there, but mostly I entertained myself with what was available on the plane.
On a sappier note, I watched the Pixar/Disney film ‘Brave’ about a rebellious young princess who believes that she should be able to decide what her destiny is and not just conform to the expectations of a Princess to be married off etc. etc., and at the end there was a voice over that said:
Next post will be actual destination stuff :] not just travel limbo stuff!

“Some say fate is beyond our command, but I know better. Our destiny is within us. You just have to be brave enough to see it.”

Which resonated with me, I’m not feeling particularly brave about this move to Potsdam, but it’s one of those things I’ve always wanted to do – two of the things I’ve always wanted to do actually, live in Europe and do a PhD! So it would be pretty sad if I wimped out now just because it was a bit scary!

Anyway, our travel went like this:

4 hour drive from Dunedin to Christchurch

1.5 hour flight from Christchurch to Auckland

10 hour flight from Auckland to Tokyo

12 hour flight from Tokyo to Paris

We also had a really interesting tour around Christchurch thanks to my Aunty and Uncle, as it was the two year anniversary of the February 2011 Christchurch Earthquake. The damage is still really apparent around most of the city and they are still deciding which buildings to demolish! I can’t believe it was two years ago!

PhD/Post-Doc positions acquired!

We have been boozing – so forgive any mishaps spelling/grammar-wise! Tonight was a night for celebration! My Love has received an offer for a postdoctoral position at Stanford University, I have accepted my PhD position at Potsdam University, and we were also celebrating our engagement, which happened a while back but we hadn’t yet celebrated with my sister!

We also have some travel in the near future to get excited about! Today is Wednesday, and on Saturday morning we are flying out to Paris! This trip was supposed to be an opportunity to scout for positions in neuroscience labs in Europe, but now that we both have jobs that we have either accepted or will have accepted by tomorrow, it will be a good opportunity to just relax and meet some researchers in our fields, with no pressure of finding a job/PhD position!

As soon as we get back from this trip we will be in organisation-mode, filling out visa application forms etc. but for the next two weeks we will be travelling through Europe! I have never been to Europe before, and have been waiting for this opportunity for more than a decade now. I just always felt that my studying was too important to put off for travelling, and I guess that is about to pay off!

Our plan is to fly into Paris for a couple of days, then to London for three days, then to Berlin for about a week, and finally back to Paris for three or four days before we come back to NZ. We will attempt to update this blog as we leave each city with photos etc. I am planning to keep blog posts to about an A4 page long, but I may go over this in our Paris blogs, because I have dreamed of visiting Paris for so long now I wouldn't want to skimp on the details for you!

I will be living in Berlin, Germany, and my Love will be living in Palo Alto, USA.

This is going to be a big year! 

Decisions decisions ...

We are SO nervous!! It has been a pretty full-on week, My Love has been offered a Post-doctoral position in Quebec, Canada and I have been offered a fully funded PhD position in Potsdam, Germany! (I received the email at 5am this morning and 14 hours later I am shattered – but too anxious to nap!) my Love also has three more interviews over the next week and I have a meeting with my dream lab in Paris looming in the coming weeks!

So, you might be wanting some background information now, we are two Neuroscience students from New Zealand. My Love has just submitted his PhD in which he studied hippocampal place cells, researching the mechanisms behind the coding of time in episodic memories. I have just submitted my Master’s thesis, in which I was looking into the effect of food and food-related hormone Leptin on anxiety. I have to be honest – I’m a stress eater and was just trying to scientifically justify my need to eat Thai Red Curry on my most anxious days! So now we are onto the next step – a Post-doc for my Love, and a PhD for me!

It is a weird feeling of being in limbo, we have been applying like crazy for so many positions and pulling our hair out when no one has offered us anything solid. For the first month or so you just get interviews and ‘we are processing all the applications, we will be in touch shortly’ and then the ‘we are really interested in you but do not currently have funding for another Post-doc/PhD student, we will keep in touch’, they all seem to show interest in you but none of them are giving you the ‘Yes! We want you in our lab and we have the money to pay you! Jump on the next plane!’ …. Okay so you're never going to get that message exactly, but a yes is all we were waiting for!

Now we each have a ‘Yes’, and I almost feel nauseous at the thought of saying yes and therefore cutting off any future offers, or saying no and waiting for these future offers that may not arrive. As for my Love  he has an interview with Stanford this weekend! Stanford! The first thing that comes into my mind when I think of research at Stanford are the Stanford Prison Experiments – but that doesn't stop it from being ranked the 2^nd best research University in the world! So he has postponed accepting his position in Quebec for a week to see how that interview goes! His other interviews are for Singapore and Trondheim, Norway.

I have been trying to nap all afternoon to catch up on the minimal amount of sleep I got – but every time I close my eyes I just get so nervous about moving to Germany! So we have bought two bottles of German beer and a bottle of cider so that hopefully I can sleep tonight! So my Love, Taco (the pet rat), and I are trying to relax tonight, and get ready for some travelling. This weekend we are dropping Taco at her Grandparent’s house and the next weekend we are flying into Paris!

Oh and the funniest thing about me getting a position in Potsdam and my Love getting one in Quebec? I speak French and my Love speaks German – not the other way around!