Flat Tire

As those of you with whom I've been in touch may know, I had an exciting weekend touring (in Istanbul! More on that in a later post). That being said, today's post is a bit more mundane.

I realized today just how dependent I have become on my bike. My tire sputtered out of air with a dramatic "pffft. pffft. pfffft. pfffffffffffffsssss...." at about 9:05 this morning as I was heading to West Cavendish from the Trinity post office and I am now, temporarily, without wheels. I am finding my reaction to be an interesting study in perception. Not having a bike in Cambridge has left me feeling land-locked and constrained by distances. However, in Istanbul, Rene (my travel buddy) and I happily explored the city by foot all weekend long, covering much larger distances than I cover with my weekly errands.

(For the record, I'll be fine for the next few days. I plan to get the tire sorted on Wednesday when the Spokes van comes to do bicycle repairs at Churchill and, in the meantime, my walk to work is only about 15 minutes.)

Take me back...

There's a song by They Might Be Giants that closes with the following lyrics:

So take me back to Constantinople
No, you can't go back to Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Why did Constantinople get the works
That's nobody's business but the Turks

Despite the song, during the last weekend of November, I certainly tried to go back to Constantinople. I'd wanted to visit since I saw a video about the city in Mr. Pringle's 8th grade history, a dream I finally realized when I headed to Istanbul and its warmer climes for a long weekend.

Rene, another advanced student at Churchill, and I arrived in Sabiha Gökçen airport in the late morning on 27 November. It was a beautiful day there, so after we found our way to the city we decided to get oriented (and placate our growling stomachs) by strolling down the busy İstiklâl Caddesi, a primarily pedestrian street that runs roughly between Taksim Square and the ancient Galata Tower, and stopping for kebap... then for dolmades... then for baklava... then for Turkish coffee... You get the idea.

There were two foods we did not stop, however: the chestnuts and oysters that seemed to be on sale on every corner (and multiple places in between). It seemed that no one was buying the relatively pricey chestnuts, and the oysters looked dodgy (especially when we saw the same people with full trays late Friday night again with full trays on Saturday morning).

Some of the delicousness from our stay in Istanbul, including Turkish red tea (top left), the anise-flavored local drink, raki (middle left), the ubiquitous yogurt drink, ayran (bottom left), and other beautiful food from the kebap restaurants we visited!

Our stroll ended up in a determined trot as we neared one of the two bridges that join the halves of Istanbul; the sky was turning beautiful colors through the buildings. We hit the bridge just in time to see the sky fade from pink to yellow to deep blue with a panorama of minarets, Roman aqueducts and the river Bosphorus.

Overlooking the city--and the cars--as we neared the bridge over the Bosphorus at sunset.

After the sun set, it was time for a bit more exploration of the local foods; Rene and I headed to a nearby area that our tour guides suggested as a good place to spend a few hours at night. The narrow street so full of people spilling out of pubs that we could barely squeeze by. We were glad when we found two seats (just after they were vacated by another group) at a local pub that claimed (in English) that the New York Times suggested that very location as the best place in all of Istanbul to try Raki, the local anise-flavored spirit. We were happy to find seats, watch the people around us, and take slow sips from our raki and water glasses.

Saturday started early with a determined stroll in the direction of the Bosphorus. My voice had disappeared overnight, so conversation was limited during our quick breakfast (tea and fresh rolls) and for the rest of the day. We were originally going to take a tram to Topkapi Palace, our first destination of the day, but with clear skies and no tram in sight, we decided to walk it.

In the three hours we spent at the palace, we just scratched the surface of their vast treasure collections and beautifully stylized buildings. This was one place where not doing our homework paid off; our jaws dropped when we saw an 86 karat diamond, bowls full of emeralds and a suit of armor decked out with pearls and rubies in the treasury and religious relics we didn’t know still existed (such as Mohammad's cloak and the proported rod of Moses) in the Chamber of Sacred Relics. The buildings, too, were nothing to sneeze at; the walls were covered in intricate tile work.

the sofa pavilion at Topkapi Palace

After leaving Topkapi Palace, we had a full day. We got lunch and tickets to see Whirling Dervishes, then went to see the Blue Mosque and arrived just in time to hear the call to prayer, which meant the mosque was closed to tourists for 30 minutes. We spent our time admiring the nearby Obelisk of Theodosius, already old when Theodosius had it moved to Istanbul from Egypt in 390 AD, and the scant remains of the Roman hippodrome that once surrounded it.

One minor disappointment of our trip was that the Grand Bazaar, where we headed next, was closed. The Grand Bazaar is a huge covered market where carpets, ceramics, spices and all sorts of goods have traded hands since 1461. We had bought our plane tickets over the summer and hadn’t realized that, in this instance, cheap flights corresponded to a national holiday in Turkey. Skipping ahead a few hours, we managed to partially satisfy Rene's desire to barter despite the holiday-related setback; we found out way back to the Blue Mosque--and the small turistic bazaar set up there--before heading towards the Whirling Dervishes.

We had a bit of time before the performance, so Rene and I decided to look for the university campus. We didn't make it to the university; instead, we ended up deep in conversation with one of the salesmen at a ceramics shop where we stopped to ask for directions. He couldn’t be much older than we are. He told us that his formal education ended after high school; however, he speaks four languages fluently (English, Italian, Spanish and Turkish) and is learning a fifth (Japanese) from a regular customer. Many of the languages he claims he learned ’on the job’, bartering with customers in the Grand Bazaar. We spent a good half hour at the store (and were served delicious tea) chatting with him about life, the universe and his sales.

We next headed to the Hodjapasha Cultural Center for an hour of 'Turkish Mystic Music & Dance'. While fascinating, I left the 'performance' feeling like I had seen something I shouldn't have seen because the religious ceremony came across as an intimate, personal journey for the five men participating. You can learn more about the ceremony we saw (with pictures--which the audience wasn't supposed to take) at the Culture Center's website. The event ticked two items off the 'must see' list in Istanbul; seeing the dervishes whirl and being inside a Turkish bathhouse (the building was a veritable Turkish bath from sometime in the 1470s until 1988).

When we returned to the hostel after the performance, we made a new friend of one of our roommates, a Brazilian dermatologist detouring through Istanbul on his return from a conference. With a conversation going as well as that one was, it certainly called for a trip to the pub...

the view from our balcony table over yet another crowded street where
Rene and I learned about exotic skin diseases from Wagner and enjoyed a delicious beer

It was pouring on Sunday morning, but Rene and I were determined to see one last sight before bidding goodbye to Istanbul. We headed to Hagia Sophia, a historical once cathedral, then mosque, now museum that has been a part of Istanbul's skyline for over 1,470 years. Despite rain gear, the longer-than-we-remembered-it walk had us drenched by the time we entered into the cavernous interior of the building.

Seeing Hagia Sophia from the inside was worth every bit of water that I subsequently wrung out of my clothing. I can't do justice with words to the awe and feeling of connection with the past that I got when I walked over the threshold of that ancient space.

the exterior of Hagia Sophia, taken on sunny Saturday

Our time exploring Hagia Sophia-and our brief, full stay in Istanbul-was over too fast. Soon we were back in an airplane, looking at the gorgeous orange interior of an easyJet plane, listening once again to We Might Be Giants singing Take me back to Constantinople.

Protection from the Airraids?

Along with the British Museum, I spent two hours last weekend touring the Cabinet War Rooms on a special tour that went 'behind the glass'-quite literally-with the museum director. The Cabinet War Rooms were where the British War Cabinet met during WWII. 12 feet underground a few blocks from Parliament, the War Rooms were barely protection from the airraids they were supposed to protect against; even analysis at the time showed that the ceilings would have collapsed under a near-direct bomb hit. Nonetheless, but the time that that analysis came out, the War Cabinet had established themselves there and Sir Winston didn't want to move--so they didn't.

behind the glass in the Cabinet War Rooms
(props to Peter for the photo)

It was a wonderful tour; however, that being said, I'm certainly going back. We had an important lunch date and only had 15 minutes in the vast museum devoted to Sir Winston that followed the Cabinet rooms.

The Wonders of the World

I love the jaw-dropping magnitude of the British Museum's holdings. They're truly stunning in quantity and quality. When I first walked into the museum's galleries last Saturday (14 Nov.) in search of the Elgin Marbles, I walked smack into the camera-armed hoards surrounding the Rosetta Stone. My direct route to the Marbles took me through three more rooms, which included the entryway from an Assyrian palace (with two colossal statues and, in galleries through the entryway, multiple complete rooms of wall carvings) and a complete monument lifted from Greece.

There's no way that the British museum can be 'done' in a day--or, for that matter, a weekend. I returned on Sunday to look at a sample of the recently discovered Staffordshire Hoard, a the largest single collection of Anglo-Saxon gold discovered to date, on temporary display in the museum. The small sample of the hoard was amazing to look at; the two cases had artifacts caked with dirt, clearly waiting with the rest of the hoard for detailed conservation and research work. The patina of dirt, however, only added to my appreciation of what was on display. While the majority of the collections in the museum are painstakingly preserved and often mounted with awe-inspiring recreations of the original objects, the Staffordshire Hoard invited imagination. My photos came out with unfortunate glare, so take a look at the hoard (and read up a bit on it, if you like) on the official website devoted to the hoard here: http://www.staffordshirehoard.org.uk/

I spent the better part of my Sunday in the museum but still barely scratched the surface of the collections--and that's just what's on display! Here are few of my personal favorites (discounting the 'big' items like a copy of the epic of Gilgamesh and rooms full of mummies):

• An automaton clock, the centerpiece of the two galleries of clocks and timepieces, that was used to announce dinner. Although it is no longer working, the mechanism of the clock, at one time, animated the complete crew of the clock and a small organ that would play music to accompany the figures marching about on the deck! Slightly less-photogenic favorites from the same gallery included a novelty clock that used a rolling ball as its regulator (instead of the more common pendulum, hanging weights or spring escapement) and a mechanical alarm clock in the shape of a book.
  
  
• Next to all the legalistic documents in cuneiform was this little wonder, a recipe for red ink that dates from 1400-1200BC with an older date in the text that was included to give the ink recipe more authority!
  
• This recreation of a Sumerian woman's burial headdress reminded me of the 'traveling crown' Mom and I saw this past summer at the Met's special exhibition of objects from Afghanistan's National Museum.
  

work hard, play hard

Despite the biased view I've been presenting in the two months (!) since I arrived in England, the time I've been spending here has not been all about traveling, eating and other cultural explorations. During the week, my time is focused around research and the rhythms of laboratory life.

My laboratory is part of the Cavendish, the physics department and physics laboratories at the University of Cambridge. The department moved out from the city center (the old building was near the Eagle and the Corpus Clock that I described a few entries back) in the 1970s to a site adjacent to the veterinary school that has been subsequently dubbed 'West Cambridge'. It's a 5 minute bike ride from Churchill taking a bike path through the back of the astronomy site, which makes the lab just far enough away to need a coat on autumn mornings.

The Cavendish is an institution with a full of history, including famous physicists like Maxwell (who opened the experimental laboratory in 1874), Rutherford and Thompson. There is a museum full of pieces of scientific history like Maxwell's desk, early electron microscopes and famous apparati sitting nonchalantly in a hallway near the laboratory complex's reception desk.

While I interact with the greater Cavendish a few times a day, through general colloquia, common resources like the student machine shop and the two lecture classes I am auditing, the bulk of my time is spent with the nine people that comprise my research group: my adviser, six doctoral students, a post doctoral student and a diploma thesis student. The group feels distinctly different from the rest of the Cavendish because it has heavy German influences. Some (obvious) examples: eight of the group speak German as their first language, our laboratory anti-static footwear are Birkenstock sandals (enforcing the stereotypical 'socks and sandals' fashion statement!) and we take a coffee break immediately after lunch, which my English friends find quite weird.

However, other than these social differences, the group functions very much like other groups I have worked with before. There is a great camaraderie between the older graduate students and I've been developing a nice rapport with my office mate, Hendrik, who is here doing his diploma thesis, a degree very similar to my research MPhil.

All this adds up to a nice work environment, which makes the long hours in the lab building up experimental equipment or (as of late) in the office trying to fit my head around the theoretical underpinnings of my piece of our experimental puzzle enjoyable. And, at the end of the week, I feel justified taking off to travel and to have the adventures I've been writing about. Work hard, play hard, right?

Velkommen til Norge

I spent this past weekend in Oslo, Norway in a trip reminiscent of the 24-hour travel marathons of last summer (e.g. Bern and Interlaken). I got into Oslo at 11:30 am on Saturday and left the city at 7 pm the next day, making for a packed 31-ish hours of touring.

I got my first glimpse of Norway when my early-morning flight descended through the thick cloud cover on Saturday. In the water below the plane was a picture that had me thinking immediately of the award that Slartibartfast had on his office wall in Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for his excellent artistry in making Norway's fjords. Douglas Adams knew what he was talking about when he chose to recognize Norway's fjords. Even though Torp (where my plane landed) is not particularly known for its natural beauty, the rugged terrain beneath me was reminiscent of the Alps, with rocks jutting up steeply through the water and outcroppings--the natural continuation of the ridges on land--forming one-house islands.

Torp is about 2 hours drive from Oslo, which--believe it or not--worked to my advantage. Even though the bus ride was on major routes, the autumn scenery gave me a taste for the beautiful Norwegian countryside. As a bit of an aside, I don't think I've ever gone through as many tunnels in one stretch of road as the coach did on that ride!

a view out of the coach window

After I arrived in Oslo, I headed off to Bygdøy (a peninsula to the west of the city center) to taken in a few of the museums there, namely Norsk Folkemuseum (Norwegian Museum of Cultural History--features traditional houses from all over Norway) and Vikingskipshuset (the Viking Ship Museum--featuring three well-preserved Viking ships and grave goods from the princely burial grounds where they were found). Other than the sheer awe I felt looking at the old, sea worthy vessels at Vikingskipshuset, my favorite highlights were a wonderfully painted one-room guest cottage at the Norsk Folkemuseum and bits of needlecraft (including Viking hand weaving looms and some extremely old fabric) found near a Viking princess in one of the ships now on display at Vikingskiphuset.

left: detail from the interior of a guest cottage at the Norse Folk Museum. All of the walls , the ceiling and the two built-in beds were covered with painting like this, including both decorative and Biblical themes.
right: a Viking princess's weaving cards and needles (from the Viking Ship Museum)

Dinner on Saturday was fantastic. It got dark around 4pm, and I was hungry, so after checking in at my (rather upscale) hostel, I walked around the pedestrian shopping street in search of traditional fare, which I found at Cafe du Bacchus, a cafe right off of the Market Square by the the Cathedral full of old-world atmosphere. I ordered a beer and a dinner of lamb leg, marinated in some sort of sweet red wine sauce, with mashed potatoes and green beans. It was melt-in-your-mouth delicious.

It was on-and-off drizzling on Sunday morning so, grabbing my poncho, I headed off to Vigelandsparken (Vigeland Park), another iconic Oslo site full of statues designed by Gustav Vigeland. His statues are interesting studies of human relationships, primarily investigating male-female relationships and, to some degree, the relationship between adults and children. Fair warning: almost all of the statues in the park are nudes, so I had to work to get a shot that's family-friendly (there are, however, quite a few bare behinds in this photo: Vigeland Park from the Monolith)!

After the park, it was a museum marathon, shuttling between the Oslo Museum, a museum devoted to Vigeland (helpful after seeing so many of Vigeland's sculptures), the University of Oslo's Historical Museum, the royal dress collections at the National Museum of Design and the ancient Akershus Fortress. In between, I caught the changing of the guards at the palace (quite modest compared with the hoopla London puts on!) and window shopped at a few sweater stores (with prices over 1440 Kroner ($300+), they were certainly out of my price range!).

part of Oslo harbor and Oslo City Hall from the Akershus Fortress

Even with the exhaustion of a busy weekend of travels and the crazy schedule, the trip was well worth it. I'd love to return to Norway's parks some day and see the Northern Lights and the more rural areas of the country that I got a taste of out of a bus window.