Lancaster & UK

T minus four days....

I am relishing in my final days of misery; yesterday (a sunday) I send my second version of the thesis to my prof; around 10pm. Week-ends are no more different to work days, apart that the secretaries aren't in; and a few colleague who get the work-life balance right. Plenty of obstacles make their way to oppose my plans: submission on Thursday. I have always hoped the day might come closer and I get my life back; but things have changed, my mind has changed. The PhD is no longer the enemy of my life but rather part of it which I fear to miss dearly on Friday. Overall, how am I supposed to indulge myself in procrastination without having a  thesis to write. ... well, for now I concentrate on "T minus four days". I am determined to graduate this year.

National Arboretum

A little outside of DC and not easily reachable by metro is the National Arboretum. This is somehow a huge garden and you can spent easily a whole day there ( but you should like gardens). We went there to see the Bonsai Exhibition. They have Chinese and Japanse Bonsai; their collection is truly amazing. One of the oldest Trees is from 16xx. And there are plenty of others, aging between 20 and 80 years.

Just opposite the entry of the Bonsay exhibition is the Herb garden. We could spot the plant who produces the Wasabi J and found also a black pepper plant there; plenty of mint plants. A pity I cannot take a  sampling home L unless I want to argue with the border police. They have also a huge rose garden of old rose types that almost don’t exist in common gardens. It was fun walking through, though the heat almost killed us.

Last but not least: they had a little pont with Koy fish. These fish are amazing: you can buy food for them and feed them. And they go crazy. Have you ever seen fish jumping upon each other for some food?  I couldn’t believe my eyes.

More fotos can be found here

Basilica of the National Shrine

The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception is located in Washington DC and dedicated to Our Lady (who btw is the Patroness of the United States). This church is the largest church in the United States and apparently the 8^th largest religious structure in the world (I haven't checked the sources). It claims to be the tallest building in DC (however the Washington Monument as well as the National Cathedral make the same claim… not so sure about this information either ;-)

The Chruch has a Neo-Byzantine Architecture and the interior of the is Greek-Styled (not necessarily my favorite). There are huge mosaic pictures on the ceiling of the basilica. No question, they are impressive but lack a little bit of style (but that is the humble opinion of an European tourist!). It is worth taking a tour offered freely. The tour guides give you some information on the many Mary Chapels around the church.

The Church felt nice and cool (the weather ouside was sunny, and terrible [unbearable] hot). More photos can be found here

Mount Vernon

If you take a little bus ride you can visit George Washington’s estate. Once there, you can immediately see that he had a  sense for a good place. The view on his terrace is magnificent… you look out to the River from a hill. Really nice.   The various houses have little rooms with items in it (like the shoemaker). There the tools are placed, with some description to give you an idea how people lived there. Did you know that he made most of its money by producing Whiskey?

Very interesting is the house where he lived. IF you are unlucky you are guided through in a long queue. In each room, there is a person, telling you the story from the room ( if you were lucky he/she is telling you an Anecdote.) They kept repeating their content time and again (probably a very boring job).

George W. was also an inventor. He improved the way we get the wheat out of the ear. Before him, people placed the ears on the ground, and horses run over to get the grains. He billed a clever building. On the ground floor, you could collect the grain, on the first floor, you placed the ears. Horses would run over and the grain would fall through a grid to the ground floor. Nice idea. Regarding his farming, he always tried to improve. He wasn’t much at home, but kept writing something like 16pages long letters to his farm keepers with instruction. Imagine you happy they must have been, when another letter arrived.
I took some more pictures… just follow the link.

The Holocaust Museum

The museum is done very nicely… though the content of the museum is though. The bottom floor focuses on the Olympics in Germany during Hitlers time. It was very strange looking at the press reports of the time. There were some words of boycott, voices that pointed at the Antisemitism at the time in Germany (and also how well they covered all  up). I couldn’t help comparing it with the Opening of the Olympic Games (that just happened to be a couple of days ago). The “good” impression China left after the games (very similar indeed).  I know, basic human rights for all are  dreams for the idealist.

Well then you go up to the first floor the exhibition guides you through material that shows the various stage of the pre-second world war up to the foundation of the state of Israel. Though material that helps to understand how 'it' could happen; (actually that one feels really scary as it could happen time and again... and humans are not famous for learning from the errors of others)...  Also America doesn’t look that good in the  museum. In order to get Asylum to America (as a Jewish person) you had to go through a ridiculous amount of paper work (they had economical difficulties and feared for their jobs due to new immigrants)… well getting out of Germany  was really difficult no country granted asylum… as I said, you won’t feel very happy after that visit; but still worth going there.
(image source: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/News/register/Nov5_01/images/holocaust.jpg)
This shoes: The last witness of the victims (before going to the gas chamber)…

Monuments by night!

Getting up on Saturday is clearly a heroic act (especially if some party was the previous day). Being the early bird has advantages, you can pick up the free cards for some attraction. Today we got some cards for the Monument in the Morning, went then straight to the Thomas Jefferson Monument and the FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) Memorial.

For the rest of the day, we just chilled out and went then on 8.30pm to the Monument. We had a fantastic view over the city. The only downside of the Washington Monument is that you cannot take any reasonable pictures from the tiny windows up there. We tried hard though :)

We couldn't help thinking that the monument looks a little bit like a robot (with two red eyes on each side) surveilling the city. Clearly, SciFi has some influence on the imagination.

National Gallery of Art: Afghanistan's Hidden Treasure

[Image from www.nga.gov ]This is a truly amazing exhibition showing bits and pieces of Afghanistan's history. For those who have read/seen the kite Runner (or even better, A thousand splendid suns [Khaled Hosseini]) this exibition gives an image to many places you have read about.

The treasures are truly amazing. I found a video on national graphic [Video]. giving some background information about the treasures. I found another video that shows more the items of the treasure. Just click on this Youtube Video (and ignore the voices).

The gallery has other famous works as well, just to mention a few artists: Picasso, Matisse, Giacometti, Lichtenstein, Miro. My favorite picture of this museum is a work from Picasso: La Tragedy.
A nice little place is the coffee on the ground floor: there is a little artificial waterfall. You can see it very close through a glass wall. Looks amazing.

US Capitol

I put myself up to go to the US Capitol this morning. Just before 8am, I arrived at the kiosk. There was already a little queue of about 50 people waiting there. Within half an hour, the queue grew bigger and bigger (and I was actually quite happy having been there :) ... My tour was scheduled for 9.30 am (much too early to grap a coffee from somewhere as everything opens at 10am).

The capitol itself is a cool place. The rotunda (dome) is really impressive. 'lying in state' happens to president (so basically one day Bush's coffin will 'lay in state') and people can come in for condolences... if you have not been president of America, but you have done something extraordinary, then you can 'lay in honor' (so your coffin will also be put in the rotonda). The first women that 'lay in honor' was Miss Rosa Park.

You can take photos inside and get a nice tour that explains the meaning of the images, pictures and statues. Unfortunately, on Saturdays the galleries are closed. The Americans seem to love the Greek ideals. There were plenty of them on the pictures.

My Group is on YouTube

Yesterday, we found the video my working group here produced on the last christmas party. You have to check this one out. The cool thing is that even my mentor is in it. Imagine your boss or prof would be part of it!
YouTube Link

Eating out in DC

Eating out here is much better than anticipated. In DC you have a huge choice in food: just on my corner, there is an Afghan restaurant, an Indian and a Lebanese restaurant. Unfortunately, all need still to be tried. For the friends of spicy food: there is a lot of Mexican food around. And hearing Spanish (pardon Mexican) in the street is quite common. Adam-Morgans (just a little walk away) has a choice of everything and the African food places there are recommended by many. Italian is very 'in' here (hence is far more in the expensive food region). In my guide list, there is even a German restaurant :)

The supermarket offer a good choice. And with a little effort you can eat your traditional food
So far, i have tried some Mexican food (nice) [trying out some grilled cactus leaves], Persian food (also very nice) and looking forward to many good dishes.

There is one thing that is quite nice here too: most of the portions are quite big (and there is now way that I can finish them) ... but you can ask for getting the food boxed without earning any of these special looks. So eating out once is most of the time two meals.