Category: Travel
Ich bin ein Berliner
I recently wrote about the first leg of a European trip, which found me and a team of colleagues working and exploring Geneva and its neighboring French countryside. For the second leg of the trip, we hopped on an EasyJet and flew over to Berlin to spend a few days filming a series of interviews with Joachim Schmid.
We worked the majority of the time we were in Berlin, but I was able to escape one morning and spend a few hours exploring this beautiful city. My entire photoset is up over on Flickr, but here are a few of my favorites.
I was initially suprised at how green and infused with nature Berlin was. For some reason, my notions of the city had been industrial, rigid and grey. I couldn’t have been more wrong with my assumptions.
Our hotel was in the Tiergarten neighborhood, which holds a huge urban park of the same name. It reminded me much of New York’s Central Park, but bigger and with more secluded pathways. During my morning walk through Tiergarten, the sunlight was piercing through the tall trees, creating laser beems of light all around me. It was beautiful.
On the other side of Tiergarten, I emerged in Mitte, the city center, at the foot of the Brandenburg Gate. I must say I was caught somewhat off guard by its lurking enormity, just adjacent to the tranquil Tiergarten.
Just through the Brandenburg Gate is Pariser Platz. It was certainly beautiful, but I was struck by the commercialization of the square. Just out of view, to the right of the frame, is a Starbucks and a retail train of tacky souvenir shops.
From there, I continued on to Museum Island. Kind of strange for a museum guy, but I didn’t visit a museum. Not enough time.
Walking back through Tiergarten, this discarded poster caught my eye. Having just spent several days interviewing Joachim about his work with found photography, I was compelled to document this find. Translation: Money for Grandma.
In the neighborhood surrounding our hotel, an artist is leaving bronze placemarkers at the residence locations of Jews who were removed from their homes during the Holocaust. As you walk the streets, you see these little memorials outside the doors of many buildings. I’d love to know who the artist is. If anyone has information, please leave it in the comments below.
I couldn’t leave Germany without taking in some of the tasty brew! Luckily, there was a fantastic Biergarten about a block from our hotel. I’m not sure which was better at this place, the beer or the food. Highly recommended if you’re in the neighborhood.
Vague, but Exciting!
I’ve spent the past few weeks traveling around Europe for work. While that may sound super glamorous and exciting, it really wasn’t. We worked nearly around the clock and that left very little time for exploring or sight-seeing. On a few occasions, however, we did manage to put down the work for some quality extracurricular experiences.
The first leg of our trip brought us to Geneva, Switzerland. The city itself was so picturesque. Almost too clean. You can definitely see it’s been a country that’s kept itself out of conflicts and military altercations.
Lake Geneva was simply breathtaking. Nestled up right next to the historic city center of Geneva, it provides an amazing juxtoposition to the jagged Alps that lurk out into the distance.
Our official business in Geneva brought us to CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. Being a technologist, this was almost like making a religious pilgrimage. My mind was blown so many times during our time at CERN, I acually lost count. Here is a record of some of the most mind-blowingest moments:
We got to go 300 meters underground to film inside the ATLAS Detector.
An iPhone panorama shot from the observation deck inside ATLAS. It’s hard to see from these photos the enormity of this machine. It’s essentially the world’s largest camera.
The CERN Fire Brigade escorted us to the top of this water tower – the tallest point on the property – so we could get some arial/landscape shots. Only two people could fit in the elevator to the top, so we had to make several trips with the crew and equipment.
The view from up top was breathtaking. To the left is CERN, and to the right? Yep, that’s the French countryside. What’s that in the distant middle? Oh, just Mont Blanc, the tallest point in the European Union.
CERN is also the place where, in 1989, Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. I couldn’t leave this place without geeking out a bit. We got to see one of the world’s first two web servers. It’s just a NeXT desktop, but to think of the ripple effect this single machine caused is awe inspiring. We also got to see the office in which Berners-Lee worked on the project. Apparently his web project was described early on as “vague, but exciting.” Amazing.
Even though our work was in Switzerland, our hotel was just across the border in France. We got a tip one night from a local that there was going to be a Bastile Day party in the neighboring town of Ferney-Voltaire. Turns out, the party was taking place on the lawn at what was once Voltaire’s chateau! There was music, food, bocci and fireworks. A really great evening.
As usual, all my Geneva photos are up over on Flickr.
Viva la France
Jilly and I recently had the opportunity to spend a few days in Paris. One of the things we love to do together in a new city is set out early to walk, eat and drink our way through the unfamiliar streets. We usually tackle a different direction or neighborhood each day. This approach allows us to get a feel for the local culture and discover the pockets of communities that give a city its life. It’s amazing how quickly the streets become more familiar.
This recent trip to Paris was particularly wonderful. We were celebrating our ten-year wedding anniversary, the weather was perfect and some good friends from London made the trip across the channel to hang out for a bit.
I kept my camera close the whole time, and these are a few of my favorite shots from the trip.
A morning view of Cité, with the Eiffel Tower in the distance.
The Louvre was too crowded to enjoy or spend any quality time with the collection. This image captures that sentiment well. We saw the Mona Lisa because we felt we needed to, then promptly left to check out some other museums.
I didn’t realize how massive the Eiffel Tower was until we were underneath it. I mean, I knew it was big, but for some reason I was surprised by its delicate enormity.
I love this alley for some reason. It was super quiet and lovely. So Parisian.
The street art was great. Interesting stuff everywhere. I spotted these octopus pieces in a few neighborhoods throughout town. Anyone know who the artist is?
By chance, we stumbled upon 59 Rivoli, an amazing artist residence/squat in the beautiful neighborhood of Le Marais. There were so many great and friendly artists working when we stopped by. Reminded me a bit of the Mattress Factory.
A portable art gallery on the street of Montmartre. What a great part of town. It was quite a hike (we walked the whole way!), but well worth it.
And the Sacré Coeur! So beautiful. Quite a reward for making it all the way to the top.
The entire set of images is up over on Flickr. As usual, everything is CC BY-NC-SA.
A Week With Techno-Archeologists
I’ve spent the past week in Mountain View, California, hanging out with a group of Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) hackers who are working out of an abandoned McDonald’s on the NASA Ames base.
For more than five years, LOIRP technologists (or techno-archeologists, as they prefer to be called) have been reverse-engineering analog tape drives and developing new software in an attempt to unearth some of the first images of the moon that were taken by unmanned lunar orbiters in advance of the manned Apollo missions of the late 1960s.
Upon entering the building (affectionately called “McMoon’s” by those who work within it) for the first time, I was greeted by familiar architecture. The drive-thru windows, menu light boxes, stainless steel counters, fiber glass tables and the ghosts of corporate brand ephemera all remain. However now they coexist under a jolly roger with a literal mountain of vintage 2-inch tape reels that contain trapped data, refrigerator-sized Ampex tape drives, an army of Mac workstations and a seemingly endless supply of analog tape decks, monitors, cables and soldering supplies.
A recurring theme running through my discussions with LOIRP hackers was a concept they coined called techno-archeology. The success of LOIRP hinges on the group’s ability to free image data housed within the obsolete medium of 2-inch video tape.
In order to do this, they were required to excavate and replicate the processes and hardware utilized by technologists more than 50 years ago. We’re talking about an era in which the world’s largest super computer housed a fraction of the power our consumer laptops now possess. One might think today’s computing power would make this task an easy one, however the team is operating completely at the mercy of five-decades-old tech.
The LOIRP team at McMoon’s is doing some amazing work and I recommend anyone interested astronomy and technology check out what they’re up to. Big thanks to Dennis, Keith, Austin, Ken and Marco for hosting us.
If you enjoyed the photos in this post, you can see the full set over on Flickr. For now though, I’ll close with an image that isn’t mine. This Earth Rise image is one of my personal favorites of the lot recovered by LOIRP. Seeing this image in this ultra-high resolution makes me long for outer space with childish abandon. It also makes me realize just how small our place in the universe is.
The Nova Scotia Summer
I remember it being dark. Not eyes-closed dark, but complete absence-of-light dark. And cold. The unforgiving brisk that only the Nova Scotia summer can deliver. The pre-dawn chill cut straight through my coat down to my shaky, scattered bones.
We gathered in clouds of breath and the blinding glow of headlights as we prepared for our ascent. We were all here — some rested after an early night to bed, some having never slept, others the victims of that 4am in-between state of asleep and awake. The not-so-nuclear family. I had sick-to-my-stomach nerves, but I tried keep cool.
Sometimes letting go is harder than hanging on.
As we caravanned the winding stretch of road the passengers remained silent. Words were somehow not appropriate. Out of place, if anything. Memories instead filled the van with a web of thoughts words could never penetrate. The road winded and stretched upward to the cavernous hole that was the night sky. We were getting closer.
Up and up we rode until the trees got small and the lavender air became so pure it took my breath away. The night had almost expired. We didn’t have much time. Hurried and tentative, we found our place facing east. Eyes on the emerging horizon.
At first sight of the distant ribbon of light, my brother and I, forever bonded by our duty, stepped forward and released two souls back into the universe. This was their wish.
As the minutes passed, the sun raced toward us with furious velocity. It sprinted across the water and jumped the shoreline with reckless abandon. When it hit the mountain’s base I felt the wind shift toward our tearing cheeks. The line of demarcation grew closer and the brilliant angles of light met our tired eyes head-on.
The wind now took my breath away. Blinding bursts shot across the east-facing cliff like wartime bullets of hate. But there was no hate here. We became enveloped in the new day’s light, a blanket of bright comfort to strengthen us for the days and years to come.
As we emerged, we found ourselves in a place calm. A place of peace. A place of acceptance. There were no more tears. There were no more thoughts of sadness. There was only love.
Sweet, beautiful, warming love.
