Global Colgate

How about I just don't leave London? Sounds like a plan.

So I am officially a terrible blogger, but I swear I have a good reason for going missing for the last few weeks…well month.  Spring break was great, but ever since I’ve been back in London I’ve had a mildly absurd workload.  My history thesis draft took over my life, but that’s done and gone, then I had a few more papers and a speech on my thesis for my seminar. I finally have a little time to breathe before I make my draft into a legitimate thesis paper and finals (gross).  I really really don’t want to leave London! Spring here is so pretty. The air in Regent's Park smells like flowers.

             Sunny Spain was absolutely lovely.  I came back from ten days in Barcelona and Valencia all freckly and sandy.  The beach was definitely the main attraction.  My friend Becky welcomed me and my travel buddies into her Barcelona flat for a few days and got us acquainted with the city.  It didn’t take long to adjust to the sun, sand, siesta, and sangria lifestyle.  We swam in the Mediterranean and I, of course, got beautifully sunburned.  Getting lost and finding our way back was our favorite sight-seeing strategy.  It brought us up a hill and over a fence to the Gaudi mosaics in Park Guell.  Later we wound all over Montjuic, and even up an orange tree, before we reached the Castle for a scenic view and came down to see the magic fountain lit up in the Plaça d’Espanya. 

            On St. Patrick’s Day, we hopped on a train to Valencia for Las Fallas, one of Spain’s most unique fiestas.  If I had to describe Las Fallas in a few words, they would be fire, fireworks, firecrackers and more fire.  For the feast of St. Joseph, neighborhoods throughout Valencia spend all year supporting the construction of fallas monuments, paper mache structures as tall, or taller, than buildings.  In the climax of the festival, the days of my March visit, there are extravagant mascletàs, concussive bombardments of firecrackers and fireworks, parades from roughly 9 a.m. to 2 a.m., and everyone takes to the streets.  The squares are so packed with people that there is little point in trying to walk anywhere quickly.  It is better to just abandon the idea altogether and follow the crowd.  At midnight on the last night, the fallas monuments are set on fire!  Right next to the buildings!  In the middle of the street!  Las Fallas is a sensational onslaught of bangs, booms, smoke, sparks, and…churros.  Firecrackers were constantly going off, surprising unsuspecting pedestrians, including myself.  Locals filled the streets in traditional costumes.  Street vendors sold delicious churros, buñuelos, and vats of paella.  Just about everything I owned reeked of fireworks smoke and I’m still surprised I didn’t lose my hearing over those few days. 

Where has the Semester Gone?

It's hard to believe that we have fewer than two weeks left in London.  We are all frantically trying to finish our coursework so that we can enjoy our last days here.  Last week, my friends and I went to see Les Miserables.  I had never seen it before, and I thought that it was incredible.  I absolutely loved the music, actors and stage props.  I can definitely understand why Les Mis is the world's longest running musical.

Lately, the weather has been beautiful in London.  My friends and I have been spending as much time outside as possible.  This morning, we went to Portobello Market.  This market sells everything you can possibly imagine.  There are people playing different instruments on every corner and the streets are mobbed with people.  We went into a bakery called The Hummingbird, which is famous for its cupcakes.

This week in Cardiff...

    On Wednesday, my study group met with Nobel Prize winner (in Physiology and Medicine) Sir Martin Evans.  Evans is a British scientist who has done seminal work on stem cells and knockout mice.  He talked about the work he has done and answered our questions on a range of topics, from his career to stem cell regulations to future directions in science.

    This week I went to St. Fagan’s Museum of Welsh Life (twice – once with my parents and again with my study group).  Scattered around the outdoor part of the museum were re-erected Welsh houses and buildings.  They ranged from houses that looked like huts to post-WWII pre-fabricated homes.  Many of the buildings were fully furnished as they would have been at the time.  My favorites were the old Welsh shops that displayed the items that the shops would have sold at the time.  They also had some of the cutest sheep I’ve seen yet – very adorable.

Munich, Exams, then Barcelona!

In the last three weeks, I have been working during the week at my internship, studying for exams, and travelling on the weekends.

The weekend after the G20 Summit, I travelled to Munich, Germany. It was early in April and the weather was beautiful. We drank huge flagons on Beer at the famous Hofbrau Haus (see the picture below), we went on the free New Europe tour and learned about Munich's Nazi past, we walked along the Isar river and sat along its banks in the sun, and we stopped by the English gardens where we saw people surfing in the river. The food and the atmosphere and the sun made Munich one of my favorite locations. This picture is from the market place.

It also prompted an interest in the History of Germany under the Nazis and World War Two, I thought that it was really amazing that cities in Germany and elsewhere, like here in London, were basically rebuilt after the war from scratch. The city of Cologne (Kohln) was 95% destroyed, and the bombers left the cathedral towers in all the cities because otherwise they would never even be able to find the decimated cities from the air. Munich's atmosphere is one of an old charming European city, but it has such a deep dark past.

My other trip couldn't have been more different. After we finished our last Economics exam, myself and four other students on the Economics trip travelled to Barcelona to celebrate. Once again we were blessed with amazing weather. We toured the Gaudi creations like Casa Mila, La Sagrada Familia, and Park Guell. We went to the beach and Las Ramblas, a popular tourist street. My friend Mindy and I even took cooking lessons to learn how to make Paella, Sangria, and Tapas! We ran into other Colgate Students studying there and I even ran into a friend from high-school. I later found out why, there are over 600 students on one program alone studying in Barcelona! By the end of the weekend, I understood why it is so popular. It is a unique city in that you can go to the beach, climb a mountain, and enjoy unique old-world charm all within 20 minutes walking.

My favorite part about this trip, and one of my favorite parts about being abroad so far, was meeting travellers from all over the world. We met a Finnish engineer, Irish college students, a 19 year old Canadian oil rigger, an unemployed Australian traveling the world, a middle aged American couple, and an older German truck driver. Each one of these people had an amazing story to tell, but my favorite was the truck driver we met on the train back to the airport. He could barely speak english, but tried very hard, and when we said we were American replied with a smile and simply, "Barak Obama!". He told us in his broken english all about his travels and his dream to "come to the US with his 'woman' (we later corrected him-wife) and drive on route 66." He was warm and friendly and pointed to his truck with pride out of the train window as we approached the airport. 

Now the semester is winding down and as much as I want to stay in London and do all the things I havn't done yet, I want to make the most of my long weekends as well. I plan to go to Scotland once more and see the Highlands, and to Wales to visit one of my roommates, Tana, because it would be a shame not to go somewhere so close by! I am looking forward to going home probably more than most, but now that there is only a little more than 2 weeks left, I am torn between my feelings of what home is. For the last 3 or 4 months, home has been London, so hopefully I won't miss it too much the way I miss America now.

Berlin... and Freiburg!

I am now in Freiburg! Sorry for the lack of posts for the past couple of weeks- I was in Berlin, and on the go pretty much all of the time. The month of travel with the group is now over, and I am finally no longer living out of a suitcase! Before I tell you about my first impressions of Freiburg though, I need to update on Berlin.

Berlin was absolutely great. I wish I could have stayed longer. We did so much in the two weeks we were there, but I still feel like I have lots of things to see, and lots of reasons to go back. We stayed at a very nice hotel, a little way out of the main city, but in a nice neighborhood and very convenient to the S-Bahn and U-Bahn. The coolest part about the hotel was the owner, Christa Moog. She is an author who grew up in East Berlin but moved to West Berlin when the wall was still up. She told us all about her experiences in East Berlin, the process of applying for a visa to move to West Berlin, and how difficult it was to leave her family and friends behind when she made the move. It made it so much more real to hear her tell her stories rather than reading about this part of Germany’s history in the textbooks.

Family Week

My family came to visit last week, which gave me the opportunity to visit some of the tourist attractions in London that I had not yet seen.  We went to Windsor and walked around the town before heading to the enormous castle.  Windsor Castle is still used as one of the Queen's residences.  We were able to walk around the castle grounds and to see some of the rooms, such as the King's bedchamber, the ballroom and dining room.  In one part of the castle, the bullet that killed Lord Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar is on display. 

We also visited the Britain at War Experience, which is an attempt to recreate the feeling of living through the Blitz as a London citizen.  After watching a video about the sheer destruction throughout the city, we walked through a room that is designed to look like a part of the city that was blitzed. 

New Zealand!

Hello again! It has been awhile since I last posted but my time here just flies by so fast and I lose track of time. Last week was already my mid session break. I went to New Zealand with several friends for nine days. New Zealand is an incredibly beautiful country. The mountains are breathtaking and it was very cool to see some of the snow-capped peaks (although I was quite relieved that it didn't actually snow while I was there!). We flew into Christchurch which is located on the south island. While in Christchurch, we went to a wildlife park where I got to feed a giraffe! The wildlife park was really nice. It was quite unlike a zoo because the animals had a lot of space to move around in.

It almost seemed as if the animals had been transported to New Zealand along with a large portion of their natural habitats. After the wildlife park, we left Christchurch and headed for Franz Josef, the location of one of New Zealand's several glaciers. We actually climbed the glacier which was a really cool experience. I personally had never seen a glacier before but my friend Nina from Norway was not as impressed as I was. It was a pretty intense hike to the glacier and then up it but it was worth it. We got some pretty incredible views of the glacier itself and of the surrounding area. After climbing the glacier, we headed to a smaller town called Wanaka.

10 Things I love about France

1. The art – Paris boasted an amazing collection of art spread across several major museums.  As shocking as the sheer size of the Louvre was and the unbelievable amount of art that it held, I was most impressed by the architecture of the building itself.  Many of the rooms I entered (which consisted only the slimmest percentage of the museum) suited the art it held perfectly.  Less daunting was the Musée d’Orsay, which held paintings more to my liking than did the Louvre.  This museum, which used to be a train station, held enough impressionist paintings to allot a room to many of the major artists in that category.  Perhaps the most stunning, however, was the Musée de l’Orangerie, which had two oval-shaped rooms that each featured four extremely large Monet water lily paintings curved around the walls.

2. The artists – Not only were the museums in Paris impressive to say the least, traveling around France offered the chance to follow in the artists’ footsteps.  In a small town on our way to Fontainebleau (where Napoleon and others lived for some part of their lives), we passed a small town where Millet’s studio once was.  In Arles, we walked around the city, spotting several scenes that van Gogh painted, including his “Café Terrace at Night” painting.

Obama in Praha!

My friend and I just returned from a terrific weekend in Prague.  The weather was sunny and around 70^o every day.  We spent our first day exploring the city.  We walked along the river into the city center.  The buildings bordering the river are all painted different colors, which gives the city additional charm and personality.  We also walked around the oldJewish ghetto.  Unfortunately, the synagogues were closed, but we were able to get a sense of the history of this portion of the city.  We went into St. Nicholas Church, which is an 18th-century Baroque church.  The pink marble balconies and gold statues were particularly impressive.  

Afterwards, my friend and I climbed the Petrin Lookout Tower.  This tower is based on the model of the Eiffel Tower (only it is much smaller!).  We climbed to the top, which offers an excellent view of the city and the surrounding landscape.  

A week of traveling around the UK

One week of Easter Break down, two to go!  I just got back from a study group trip around the UK.  Much of the beginning of our trip was on the educational side.  Our first stop was in York, England, where we stayed in University of York flats (the rooms are enormous – about the size of a Colgate double but for a single person and with a bathroom attached…amazing) and met with researchers who specialize in stem cells or related areas.  These researchers included Harv Isaacs, Paul Genever, Richard Gardner (or rather, Sir Richard Gardner), and Henry Leese.  They discussed their work with stem cells and the context and implications of their findings.  The most interesting presenter, in my opinion, was Paul Genever, who makes matrices to remodel bones.  On our way out of York, we made a quick stop at the beach.

                        

G20 Rioting in London

Today in London thousands rioted across the City against the G20 summit. Most of the anger and frustration was aimed at Bankers and professionals were told to dress casually today and pack a lunch to avoid any confrontation with rioters. The Colgate Economics students have internships on Wednesdays, many of us in financial centers. Because of the uncertainty, many of us were given the day off.

This morning, we watched the news for a while before deciding this was too historic to miss. We made our way down to the Bank of England to see the rioting for ourselves. The riots were all over the city, and we saw characters of all types (many in costumes), but nothing compared to the riot at the Bank of England.

Many of the protesters seemed to think the scene was more of a party than a meaningful political event. Many were drinking beer, dancing, chanting, street-performers took advantage of the crowds, and a large number of people were dressed in ridiculous outfits that had nothing to do with any of the issues, such as a cat-in-the-hat costume and a couple girls with fish-masks on. 

The atmosphere felt more like a carnival than a protest, but every once in a while we were reminded of the issues. At one point the crowd shouted "Shame on you" repeatedly, apparently a message to the bankers. Amazingly, the police did a great job of containing the protesters and keeping people safe. They resisted the aggressive provocation of the drunk and disorderly crowd.

Many of the bankers did dress down, some remained in suits, apparently out of defiance. It seemed at first that the protesters had successful scared the Bankers for the day. However, we stumbled upon Leadenhall market near Lloyd's of London and found that life for the Bankers went on as usual. They were all dressed in suits, drinking beers in the afternoon, enjoying the jovial atmosphere. 

Overall, I felt very lucky to be in London at such a Historic time, but walking home from the long day around London, seeing the largest police presence i could ever imagine, I realized how lucky the protesters were to live in a country like the UK. They are allowed to speak their minds, and the police and the government invested so much time, energy, and restraint to allow this to happen. In a time when budgets are stressed, the government paid for an unprecedented police presence all over the city and basically financed these protests. It makes one think how the money could have been better used during a recession, especially because so many did not take the event seriously.