The Taste

Here is some more trip stuff.

We hit up the Danish Design Centre. A rather small musuem with functional art. There was an exhibit about how we are always being bombarded with ads and don't have our own time. It was set up like a grocery store where you could buy bottles of "temporary offliner" or tins of "ad free creme." My photos of that don't do the exhibit justice.


This was by far the neatest exhibit. There was a big sign that said "have a seat" and after wandering the city streets in the cold and rain for 5 hours, that is exactly what we wanted to hear. The man who created this invented the bubble chair. He is a Finnish man, we watched an interview with him where he discusses how he made the bubble/egg chair. There were quite a few interesting looking chairs there. We weren't quite sure how to sit on any of them.


The big comfy couch. The couch was made entirely out of cardboard. The artist is an African man. His entire collection was rather inventive and environmentally friendly. That little white paper says "Do not sit down."


The changing of the guards at Amalienborg, the main castle of the Danish dynasty.
Here is audio treat. Hit link and it will be faster, I think.
The audio track is an explanation of the above, I think. See the thing is about Denmark is that they speak Danish. The thing about Danish is that it sounds something like German, so my native German travel compadre (aka Ina) and I would think we understood what was going on and then bam! It all turned to gibberish. In any case, it was a rather funny language to listen to. Hej! is hello and tuk is thank you.

Just Hamburg left after this, I promise.

Check out how to use a lifevest in Denmark.

"I'm a merman dad, merman!"

Elevator express. Ok I know this is immature, but would you act any different?


So many things like this in Denmark. It was awesome.

The Scandinavian Delight

Here is the continuation of the trip. There is some more of Copenhagen, which I will eventually get to posting. Here are the hilights, I suppose.

After returning to Ulm from Munich, I spent the night with my friend and her family again, before we both headed off to the train station at 6 AM the next morning. Three trains, one ferry and 12 hours later, we found ourselves in downtown Copenhagen with no clue on how to do anything.
Eventually we found the bus and made our way to the hostel, which was down an alley. Some memborable times were had and interesting characters met at the hostel.

The day we got there, around 6 PM, we headed out to downtown to find the Little Mermaid, whose home is in fact Copenhagen. One hour later, in the bitter and rainy cold and after a lot of cursing, we saw her:


On the way, we walked through Nyhavn, the famous port.


The next morning we headed out to Christiania - the hippy neighbourhood. I don't have any photos because it is forbidden to take pictures there. I wouldn't mess with those hippies.

That evening we went to the Tivoli, the city year-round fair.

The Break

And now, some breaking news:

No paradox for time travellers

THE laws of physics seem to permit time travel, and with it, paradoxical situations such as the possibility that people could go back in time to prevent their own birth. But it turns out that such paradoxes may be ruled out by the weirdness inherent in laws of quantum physics.
Some solutions to the equations of Einstein's general theory of relativity lead to situations in which space-time curves back on itself, theoretically allowing travellers to loop back in time and meet younger versions of themselves. Because such time travel sets up paradoxes, many researchers suspect that some physical constraints must make time travel impossible. Now, physicists Daniel Greenberger of the City University of New York and Karl Svozil of the Vienna University of Technology in Austria have shown that the most basic features of quantum theory may ensure that time travellers could never alter the past, even if they are able to go back in time.
The constraint arises from a quantum object's ability to behave like a wave. Quantum objects split their existence into multiple component waves, each following a distinct path through space-time. Ultimately, an object is usually most likely to end up in places where its component waves recombine, or "interfere", constructively, with the peaks and troughs of the waves lined up, say. The object is unlikely to be in places where the components interfere destructively, and cancel each other out.
Quantum theory allows time travel because nothing prevents the waves from going back in time. When Greenberger and Svozil analysed what happens when these component waves flow into the past, they found that the paradoxes implied by Einstein's equations never arise. Waves that travel back in time interfere destructively, thus preventing anything from happening differently from that which has already taken place (www.arxiv.org/quant-ph/0506027). "If you travel into the past quantum mechanically, you would only see those alternatives consistent with the world you left behind you," says Greenberger.
“The most basic features of quantum theory may ensure that time travellers could never alter the past”
"This is a very nice idea," says physicist Avshalom Elitzur of the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel, who also suggests that further work in the area could help to clarify the nature of time itself. "Time is a very mysterious thing."

The Gravity

More! I don't care if you're sick of these, but there are just a few more photos...well 3 more cities. I realised something, the less photos I have, the more stories I have to tell.

The following are photos from Dachau, which is near Munich. We took a day trip out there. Dachau is where the first concentration camp was established in Germany. It was a political camp at first. This was my second visit to Dachau and it was no less shocking than the first.


The main gates. "Arbeit macht frei" - "Work frees" / "the work will set you free"

By the barracks:




Four person prison cell:


Where the prisoners gathered for roll call.


The larger crematorium.

I took many other photos of it, but I would rather not post them as they are quite moving. If you are interested in seeing them, I can send them to you.

The end.

The Continuation

Here is part II. Jetlag has hit me quite hard, which is annoying because I was fine until yesterday, and by fine I mean going to bed at 9 PM and waking up around 6:30 AM.

So after Nuremberg, it was off to Ulm, which is home to a close friend of mine and the highest church tower in the world (as far as we know).


This is the view from the base of the Ulmer Münster. You can't actually get a shot of the entire thing because it is too high and there are buildings in the way.

700+ steps later, we reached the top.

Part of the city


None of us could figure this out, but hell, it was funny. The town marketplace is at the base of the church and well there was a bright red couch in the middle.


The city building; über modern. The interior looks like the inside of an ibook.

After two nights in Ulm, it was off to Munich. We visited the German museum which had an exhibit about Albert Einstein (who was in fact born in Ulm, but his family moved from there when he was a few months old. There is a monument where his house used to be, but is now directly next to a McDonalds.)
There are no interesting pictures to report from our first day in Munich.

The next day we went to Schloss Nymphenberg - one of King Ludwig's many castles. It was ridiculous, but not particularly impressive.





6/25 paintings of the most beautiful women (according to Ludwig)

The Images

I have returned mostly unharmed. It was an adventure. It was like speed sightseeing. There is talk of starting up our own tour company: europechaos.ca or europechaos.de because that really describes how things went, for the second half at least. I apologize for the different sized photos.

I did Paris in 5 hours thanks to a very helpful tour guide (i.e. ex-roomie). To clarify, there was a 10 hour lay over, but because Charles de Gaulles airport is outside the city and ridiculously large it took me awhile to make it to the city.





Then it was off to Nuremberg. I was greeted at the airport by my cousin's wife. She took me to their house (there was a change of plans and we would be staying with them) where I was greeted by my cousin, my cousin's daughter, my uncle and my brother. I sat down and was promptly poured a glass of beer, weizen, which is damn good (it is 'yeast' beer). There was lots of catching up and translations and beer.

The next morning we went to the Germanisches Museen - the Germanic Museum. Here is some of what we saw:

(historic chairs)

(art in the old cathedral part of the museum, on either side are grave stones)

(Street signs)

There is more to come. A lot more.