DC, no AC!

It’s the third evening in Washington DC right now, and the last before the flight that’ll take me back to Germany. We’ve spent two days in the vicinity of the US capital and have taken away a widely varied range of impressions.

Contacts are everything, and as luck would have it, one of my fellow Aacheners was in DC at the same time: The head of the network team of my student dorm, no less – it’s the German world conspiracy, get used to it. There’s always a contact. After arriving rather late from Philadelphia (we staid a little bit long, and we had a coffee break in Delaware), it was 9 PM and nothing more was going down except to use some Wifi. That’s what I thought! Suddenly, Mr.X (name protection activated) is online and reveals himself to work only one metro stop away from us, in a local subcenter called Silver Spring. We agree to meet, head it down to the metro station and arrive successfully. Introductions move us into a billiard place, where dinner, beer and smalltalk is had. As Germans are wont to do, we spend some quality time complaining and ribbing the americans (note: this does not mean we’re unhappy). The evening winds down with a decision to meet for cinema next evening.

The second day is spent mostly outside the actual city. We start off with the cryptological museum at NSA, Maryland. The museum is a little small and mostly demonstrative (“this is the bomba, which brute-forces ENIGMA using known plaintext. No, we won’t tell you how that actually works mathematically”). It’s still a good visit, though. The second stop was the Smithsonian Air&Space Museum at Dulles, Virginia. Quite a drive between those two, especially if you take the non-toll road to Dulles, which doesn’t allow you to go to the museum (not mentioned on their website!). Driving around on local routes ensues until we finally swerve into the parking lot. The museum is pretty much worth it though: Excellent exhibits both spectacular and sophisticated. A Concorde, a Blackbird, a Spaceshuttle remake, satellites, cruise missiles, girocopters, helicopters, ultralight planes, WW1, WW2 – basically everything. We came out hours later tired and satisfied.

The drive back proved problematic, since at certain times of day the beltway around DC is pretty much walking speed. The reason for this is the american way of building highway junctions – you shift a four-laner down to two lanes, do this with the other, incoming highway as well, put them together, then turn the resulting four into three lanes. Result: Unless many people want to take the last exit before that, it’s eight lanes to three! Jams are to be anticipated. We nevertheless made it to the cinema and watched “You don’t mess with the Zohan!” Deliciously 80s, a little bit phallocentric, but good natured and screwy. It’s not gentleman’s humor, but it’s quite a laugh.

The last day was dedicated to downtown DC. A walk past the White House and down the Mall (very hot, very sunny), then into the Museum of the American Indians. Unfortunately, it’s peripathetic, unstructured and mostly unedited. Not to mention that it permanently casts them into a victim role, strongly projecting guilt at every person going through the exhibition. Most of the actual texts were quotes from recent curators of various tribes. In other words: A main source of the museum’s explainations were direct quotes from contemporary politicians, with no second opinion or editing! That is quite unsuitable for a scientific museum, I thought.

So that museum wasn’t so great, but now it was lunch time. Union Station food court provides! A try to get into the Washington arboretum fails, because it’s pretty far even from the closest metro station – too far to walk in the hot Washington sun. So we head back to the Mall and instead go into the botanical garden, which proves balmy, pleasant and also very interesting in many ways. Definitely worth a visit. However, at 5 PM, all museums close (why so early?), and we leave to walk through the city. The nearby canal attracts my brother, and we do some boat watching, noticing a number of house boats and discussing the virtues of catamarans and keel-boats. This leads us to the tidal basin, where we manage to rent a pedal boat – yes, one of those bicycle driven paddle wheel boats. We have some fun driving around the basin with that, despite the sun baking us pretty good.

Afterwards, we take the metro to Silver Spring, in the hope of finding another good movie in the cinema. That hope is for naught, so after browsing the local bookstore a little, we leave for the motel, to clean up a little bit (and to blog). In retrospect, Washingon (at least the part we saw) was not the equal of Boston or New York – it seemed like an administration city with a very boring downtown, and a sub-optimal metro system. Silver Spring was a nice contrast – lively, multi-faceted with viable entertainment options. Maybe there are more places like that in the outskirts. But without leads and a map, we didn’t dare venture into the suburbs too much.

Concluding thoughts: Visiting the US has been great. Most people are pretty nice (albeit slightly superficial). Boston is a place I might really like to live (oh yeah, postdoc at MIT), while Manhattan is more interesting as a concept – a very very strange city, that. DC didn’t really knock me over in any way. I saw some benefits to the way of life here, but also some disadvantages. Amongst other things, my calorie intake was probably way too high, and driving much less fruitful than in Germany – too slow, the cars burn too much cars and hardly anybody can bloody drive. Between Boston and DC, I’d say I’ve seen quite a part of the country (it’s not much on a map, but it encompasses quite a number of different environments). It might be a while before I set foot here again, but I won’t hesitate to come back. Although the constant security checks do suck.

Rest of NYC and Philly

We decided to activate our family connections a little bit and met for dinner with my sister-in-law’s best friend (note: my eldest brother married an american). Said friend lives in Brooklyn with her husband and was quite happy to tell us a little bit about living in New York, as well as interpreting some of our experiences so far. Over dinner (later on branching into belgian beer at a local bar), we digested Boston, the trip down through Massachusetts and Connecticut, the particularities of Secaucus, the commuter belt around Manhattan and the economic inanity of actually living in Manhattan. Apparently, great living can be had in nice places right over the river – for a fraction the cost of a barely tolerable space IN Manhattan. We went on and on like that, mostly talking about this extraordinary (and rather mad) city.

The next day would be our last in New York, and so we decided to finish off with a great sight: A tour through Grand Central Terminal (available Fr+We only), the monumental stone building from the late 19th century that has since WW2 declined from the heart of the long-distance train system to a mere commuter subway station. The building is grandiose, and despite having an extremely overenthusiastic guide (he seemed to think it one of the seven wonders of the old world, not just very nice), it did rarely disappoint. Repairs are done in a historically conscious manner, and the overall look is maintained well.

After the tour, we took the train over to Brooklyn (it’s probably the heart of New York, with its 2.5 million inhabitants, but we never went there before). The goal was the Murakami exhibition at the Brooklyn museum – I got to know this japanese pop artist through my old flatmate in Norway, who was very keen on his work. I must say that his work is often deliciously subtle and ironic – yes,  despite the art being cartoonish and flat, the parodies and social comments are quite refined in many works. I would definitely consider it worth viewing.

This ended our time in the big apple; the night was booked in a Motel near Philadelphia. The trip was beyond uneventful, and we closed the evening by browsing the local food store and having a laugh at a few of the products there. Laughing at groceries is something that you can do for quite a while in America!

We planned to give Philadelphia a quick look, not having gotten very enthusiastic comments about it from our intel network. We started with the Independence Seaport Museum, which, beyond offering a rather interesting exhibit on local maritime industries, also sports a live submarine from WW2 and a cruiser from the spanish-american war to visit! Both are excellently maintained and very instructive to see. We dedicated two more hours to walking into Philly, having the famous cheesesteak (filling, tasty, but as always in America, where’s the greens?). The downtown didn’t really convince me; it seemed a little lackluster, vacillating between busy shopping streets and shady-looking roads very often.

More on our drive to DC (where we are now) and the exploits there in the next post!

NYC 2.0

After spending yesterday getting our first bearings on New York City, today passed in a much more controlled fashion. We had breakfast in our hotel room (supermarket remnants from two days ago, still not too bad), then took the car to Secaucus train station and took the next train into Manhattan. Our primary event for today was the New York City Zoo, which is located in the Bronx. The subway ride takes a while, but the zoo makes up for it: A large area with extremely varied attractions and animals. A mouse house, reptiles and amphibians, all sorts of bird, asian large animals, giraffes, african wild dogs, a tiger park, an entire house dedicated to nocturnal animals (photography: difficult). The entire thing was varied and cool, and we ended up spending over four hours there.

After our return downtown, it was pretty much too late for any museums, so we went to the Empire State Building instead and went up to the observatory on 86th floor. A little bit pricey, but a great view over Manhattan. We’d finished thoroughly disecting the view to East, South and West when an incoming thunderstorm forced us inside and spoiled our view to the north. Despite some waiting, no lightning struck in the vicinity. Eventually, we went back down and had dinner. Transit back was uneventful, although we did discover an interesting candy store that sold unusual stuff like sour candy spray. Uhuh.

Tomorrow will bring a meeting with a friend and some more museums. Hopefully, it will also bring a slightly earlier start. We have already booked accomodation for DC and a one-night stay near Philly.

Holiday, let’s hit it!

It’s been a few days since last post, and, as might be expected, lots of things have happened. I didn’t blog before because this is the first time I have internet and nothing that’s going to happen if I spend 10 minutes on a post.

On Friday, we left Boston, left the Hostel, even left the nice people we’d met there (bye, Lawrence, Howard and Ronald). Well, except for my brother, who cribbed some girl’s e-mail. Hehe. After picking up the car at the rental, I got my first experience with SUVs, automatic shift and american interstates, in that order. Our car is a “medium-sized” (meaning: small beached whale) SUV. For two people, a total waste, and I suspect massive fuel wastage. The cruise control is nice, and was our best friend after leaving greater Boston. Before we did that, we located a mall and got some affordable groceries – a much more cost-efficient way of feeding yourself, and healthier to boot.

We headed down to Plymouth to visit the Mayflower II, a rebuild of the ship the first english settlers in New England used. Next stop was a beach at Cape Cod for a relaxing walk, then onwards to a motel near Providence. Motel turned out to be cheap and comfortable, just very far out. The next day saw Newport, RI, and a lot of highway. We crossed Connecticut and New York into New Jersey, touched the NJ turnpike and headed into the little town of Secaucus. Despite being about 5 km from Manhattan, it’s a little thing with huge outlets in a swampy area. For some reason, nobody seems to use it for commuting. There’s a hotel there, which we booked for a little bit more quiet and higher standards than the barebones hostel in Boston.

After finding our drive across NY interrupted by a severe thunderstorm that flooded the interstate and caused 80% of all american drivers to go catatonic, we were pretty beat and wanted little more than to sleep in our beds. Note the plural, as we had booked two beds, non-smoking. Unfortunately,there’d been some problem, and we could only get a one-bed. Accordingly, the night was a bit… mobile. We were also annoyed by the noise of the central AC, 12 floors below our window but very audible. This is not how you build fans, people! Next strike happened when breakfast was not included, which is absolute standard in Germany, and I expected here as well, simply for 140$ a night… ah well. The last frustation was of our own making, though: Secaucus train station, which is the best way into New York, is somewhere on the other side of town. We decided to walk. After several re-directions and 90 minutes, we arrived sweat-drenched (hot and humid, thanks to the rainstorm before). A service lady that chatted us up replied “You walked all the way across stinking Secaucus?!?!” Yupp, we did, but only once. After that, it’s cab or car for us. So, if you know not to walk and where to find parking near the station (the station itself has NONE), then Secaucus is a smart choice to bunk. The hotel is still a little bit pricey, though.

Heading on… Manhattan. Pretty full, but not as much as usual, apparently. Supposedly, most of NYC is in the Hamptons or on NJ Beach. We got around pretty well, liked the subway, the streets, Central Park, the skyline… almost everything.  The Hudson river was very nice to look at. We visited the Jewish Museum, which has a pretty solid historical timeline supported by high-class exhibits. The Holocaust is actually only a side topic; most of the museum is about 1200BC to 1800 AD. Recommendable.

After that, we wanted to visit the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum, but the old aircraft carrier it’s on is apparently absent from its dock, and will return in 107 days. Or so the display says. That’s what you get for not using an up-to-date travel guide. We spent the rest of the day walking around and assimilating the flair of the city. After the return voyage, we bought 24h of Wifi access at the hotel, so we could plan the next few days and check opening hours and rates. We’ve got a pretty tight thing planned, but it’s going to be a lot of fun, too. I’ll post when able.

Adrift on Campus

We dedicated today to Boston’s most outstanding features: MIT and Harvard. This is probably what the city is known for nowadays, apart from a certain Tea Party. We took along Lawrence, a brit we’d met yesterday evening on a visit to Boston U’s observatory’s public star gazing. He was a pretty likable fellow, and he didn’t seem to mind being double-teamed by germans too much.

We started by walking across the river to MIT’s campus. Unfortunately, on campus, all you can do as an uninformed visitor is look at buildings, and since that grew boring pretty quick, we went down the road to the MIT museum. This is basically the place where MIT tries to tell everyone how clever they are, and they do a pretty good job of it: Genetic mutation experiments on zebrafishes, the car concept of the future (well, I’m skeptic), stroboscope fotography of very quick processes… it’s been quite fun. I even picked something up at the museum store:

http://www.fascinations.com/unique-toys-gifts/astro-blaster.htm

It’s a toy that couples several rubber balls to transfer the momentum from dropping it into the small top ball. The result is that when you drop the four balls, only the top flies away, but several times to drop height. It works as advertised, and when I’m done showing it to all of my friends, my mother gets it for her physics classes.

After a nice lunch at a student bar (named the “miracle of science”), where I got the first respectable hamburger on american soil, we proceeded to Harvard. We had even less orientation on campus, and after waffling around quite a bit, we went into the Fogg art museum. This is very posh and a lot less playful than the MIT thing: It’s more renaissance and sculpture and 19th century european art. We were a little bit tired by then, but it was still okay.

After finishing the museum, we picked up a map for our upcoming trip to NYC. We’re planning on visiting Plymouth, and if possible, the Norman Rockwell museum along the way. We’ll be sleeping at a motel once, before approaching NYC. I think it’s going to be great, over all.

Boston or Bust

In a brave new strike at experiencing the world, my brother and I have packed our suitcases, and changed locations to Boston, MA. We have 12 days until our return flight takes off in DC, and for the intervening time, we have our suitcases, a rental car, and very few plans. All of yesterday was dedicated to travel, anyway. From Aachen to Düsseldorf by train, the long flight to Detroit, and then a much-delayed flight to Boston. We located our hostel pretty easily and managed to snag jetlag with a well-timed six hours sleep after 24 hours on our feet.

The first day was mostly spent on rough orientation and the Boston Freedom Trail. We now know how to handle american money (I maintain that it is a horrible pain in the ass: no 50 cent piece, no 2 dollar piece, and 1$ really ought to be a coin). We have also secured the bare necessities: Water to drink, a backup stash of bread and apples and deodorant after my axe spray was snatched by the airport security people. OK, they had a point, I ought to have put it in the suitcase. What shall I say, I forgot.

The Freedom Trail is a worthwhile thing to do – it’s a series of historic sites organized into one long walk. Most of them relate to the founding of Boston or the war of independence, but some stem from more recent times, like Old Ironsides, the first fully-armed frigate of the US Navy. She’s 200 years old and for some reason, still commissioned. We had a guid for the first two hours of the trail, drawing all and sundry with his booming voice, then to clarify that all recent adjoinders please pay the fee at the end of the tour. I think some of the people who had drifted into the group actually did just that. Personally, I was pretty satisfied with the tour. Evocative, detailed accounts of some persons and events surrounding the formation of the Sons of Liberty, so mostly the build-up to the War of Indepence.

After the tour finished, we had lunch (some local fish dishes in a food court) and headed on to a quarter on the other side of the river to look at the two military ships on presentation there. Old Ironsides – formally USS Constitution and a more recent object, a destroyer from WW2. The former had a guided tour by an actual navy sailor. After the ships, we walked over to Beacon Hill Monument, which looks rather like the Washington Monument, but commemorates the first battle against british forces by american revolutionary miltias. The top may be reached by stairs, which certainly got the circulation going. We were generally suffering a little bit from the hot weather: about 30 degrees, nary a cloud in sight, moderate humidity. At the end of the day, I’m very glad for the stop at the drugstore this morning that netted us some good sunscreen.

We are due to head out to Boston U’s observatory later this evening, and for tomorrow, we’re planning to visit the campus of MIT and Harvard. Expect more updates.

Frenetic

My choir had its big summer concert yesterday. We normally have a classical program in winter, and a modern one in summer, usually a collection of pop, rock and jazz songs with light show and choreography.

This time, we had went one step further and selected musical medleys. Phantom of the Opera, Les Miserables, High School Musical 2, Lion King, as well as a Best of Abba and My Favorite Things from Sound of Music. This required two things: Long, elaborate choreography and costume change between every act. From the animal costumes for Lion King to the suit and bowtie for Phantom, we had to keep six different sets of clothes backstage and actually switch in the time between songs. Mind you, we were in a permanent tent construction, with almost fifty people getting re-dressed. That was quite the hen house.

The choreography had been our bane for weeks ahead; we had a lot of trouble learning it. When you have to stand in a particular position, you take your neighbors as orientation – but not everyone came to every rehearsal. Bad. When you have trouble remembering the steps, you might practice at home, but not everyone, particularly not the students, have enough space in their dorm rooms. Bad. When everybody is so busy dancing, not a lot of singing gets done. Bad. Last, when someone screws up – happens often enough – they tend to make a “oh shit, I’m so sorry” face. This clues the audience in that something went wrong, which in many cases they wouldn’t have figured out otherwise. Bad.

So, right until the costume rehearsal one day before, I was convinced that we’d deliver a shoddy, half-baked wannabe musical program, replaceable and forgettable. What actually happened yesterday was something totally different.

• We had better sound: Full, confident, appropriate to the meaning of the current text. The sombre aggresion of the phantom, the summer holiday joy of High School Musical 2, the soft jazziness of My Favorite Things, everything was a lot more authentic
• We had better choreography: More people remembered to do the right thing than ever before
• We had better error control: When someone forgot, they improvized, and kept smiling. Drift off to the side, vanish in the group before you, just pretend to confidently do what you ought to be doing. The audience doesn’t know the “should”!
• We had better solos: All solists seemed particulary on the job, praise adrenaline. Confident, smooth sounds, gripping and and groovy, no complaints. Some solists even got scene applause, i.e. the audience couldn’t wait until the end of the song to applaud.

Most of all, we had excellent audience reaction. The applause was louder than anything I remember from a concert like that, the whistles were many, the cheers amazing. We filled the entire tent, which means over 300 in attendance. I assume that the combination of light show, solists, powerful choir sound and mostly correct choreography managed to distract from the various flaws that still remained. I was very skeptic about this program, because I doubted its realism, but the audience reaction was seriously a step above and beyond the usual. I am proud that this was my last concert with this choir, which I’ve been a member of since 1997. That’s a long time, and when I move to Bonn to start my PhD, I will not only find a new choir, I’ll take singing lessons! This is the musical experience I want to have – okay, I liked christmas oratorio and Elias a lot better, personally, but one must show a certain solidarity to the choir, or everybody would only sing the music they liked.