Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Goodbye German Food

It's my last day in Germany. Hard to believe a whole summer has somehow passed by. Now I'm writing last minute (literally) post cards and baking... sugar cookies. Because that's what the ingredients we had left over were the closest to combining to make. (don't ask)
What a trusty workstation- we went through it all together
When inspiration was lacking, the view was nice at least
Surprisingly devoid of students at the moment
Subway conveniently located centrally to the campus
Pedestrian bridge to keep students from playing in the traffic
The meeting tree. Many a minute was spent awaiting people here.
The subway: magic portal to the rest of the world
Can't forget the library; clearly the most important building around
The cookies needed caramel too. That and we had to get rid of some ice cream
We got creative with the shapes. Or tried to. Results varied.
I think I've probably been in denial this whole week that I was actually leaving. I'm definitely not ready at all. I've had an absolute blast learning more about German culture (and language) and it's been an amazing experience. Vielen Dank und Bis Später!
One last look at campus
Flying far, far away
A final German meal: breakfast sandwich
and a buttered pretzel. Now I'm back to American foods

Schokolade: The Obligatory Mention

I would be remiss if I went through an entire summer in Germany and didn't mention chocolate at least once. To make sure I've got my bases covered, I made a trip down to the Ritter Sport factory. And got lots and lots of chocolate to bring home. I hope it doesn't put by luggage over the weight limit.
Look at all that chocolate. Yummy!

Charging ... Charging ...

For our final institute tour at the University of Stuttgart, we visited the institute of Electrical Energy Conversion. Walking through all the EE labs, it definitely reminded me of all the projects I have sitting in various states of completion on my desk at home. Except my projects are significantly less entertaining.

Using inductive charging they had a proof of concept demo for wireless electric car charging stations. (Although we've all seen the idea of induced current a bunch of times, it was still amazing to see the light bulb light up when the second set of coils was moved over the driven wires. Yay science!)

Along with new projects, they also had quite a collection of old instruments and equipment including a machine that could mechanically take the Fourier transform of a signal. What?!? Pretty crazy.

Taking the Project To the Next Dimension

I finally got to see the Hexapod! I've been working on programming a computer model all summer, and today I finally went out to Metzingen to see the actual structure.
The hexapod!
It's really awesome. Instead of working on programming it's movement, today I helped connect cables to get the whole contraption set up. Turns out the hexapod I was working wiht is only a part of the larger picture. You take the independent hexapod and mount it to the end of a three axis crane system and then run a small tube of concrete through it. Think large scale 3D concrete printer.
One tiny section of the cables that needed connecting
Despite getting the system closer to fully set up, I'll have to leave before it makes it's fist test run. Clearly, this means I"ll have to come back and visit to see it fully operational.
Eventually the hexapod will be mounted to this crane

That School Thing Still Exists... Go Figure

Today I started to notice how close I've grown to the other program participants over the summer. As we sat down for lunch, our group of now only five (soon to be further reduced to three) was much quieter than the energetic crazy group of seven to ten exchange students that we used to be. It's hard to believe that this summer is already drawing to a close, but my email inbox full of notes from classes I've registered for tells me that the start of the fall semester is closer than I'd like to believe.

Problematically Probalby Punctual

What's better than Monday morning final presentations? (scheduled at 10am. Who even DOES that?) Final presentations on Monday morning when that morning is the same morning you're returning from Venice on an over night train in which who booked a seat, and therefore basically didn't sleep at all. And the train arrives only and hour before the presentation. This train is also 75 minutes late.

YAY MONDAYS!

So yea, I'm having super great luck with the train system this weekend. Luckily, the presentation wasn't all that formal so they pushed it back until 3 pm giving us enough time to get back on campus and catch our breath. (Though not quite enough time to nap.. three guesses as to what I'll be doing today after I finish presenting...)

Lost and Found

The tour of Italy continues, today in Venice! I love Venice. Probably the most romanticized city in literature. (besides London, perhaps) I can't help but get excited to see for myself where some of my favorite stories took place.

Waking up reasonably early (for those on vacation at least) we started out the day by attending a church service at St. Mark's Basilica. The inside of the church was gorgeous, and of course the music from the choir was amazing.
Walking along the shore front you could see a good ways out
We thought about gondola rides, but they're expensive
After refreshing our spiritual selves, we heeded the calls of our physical bodies and looked for a good place to eat lunch. As Venice is practically swimming in fresh seafood, we didn't have to look long before finding a restaurant offering us all the best tastes of Italy. I normally try not to talk about food- but the spaghetti I got with muscles and shrimp was AMAZING. Everything was so fresh!
Doesn't that look tasty?
Through the afternoon we wandered along the waterfront simply enjoying being near the ocean. When the sun finally proved too oppressive we turned inwards towards the city choosing alleyways to wander down on whims, only getting seriously lost once (so fine maybe not all the alleyways end up connecting, but a lot of them do)
Hiding from the sun by crouching near stair railings proved to be ineffective
More artistic laundry I believe can not be found
We ended up here... Now if only we knew how to get back
To finish off the tour of Italy we stopped at a Pizzeria for dinner. (It's like a requirement, right, to get pizza while in Italy?) Although people always say how pizza in Italy is so different from American pizza, I personally didn't find that many differences. Maybe the crush was a bit thinner, but really the only difference I saw was that people all got their own pizzas instead of getting one larger pizza to share.
We're not lost, I promise...
Wonder what time it is.. A bit difficult to read
If we had visited the top first we likely wouldn't have gotten lost
What was really different, however, were the cannoli. After wracking our brains trying to come up with a suitably Italian dessert, we landed on cannoli. But the ones I've had in America were much lighter (from the crust to the filling) than the ones we found in Venice. Either cannolis get changed drastically by their journey across the Atlantic or we were in the wrong part of Italy for cannoli. Luckily, their lemon gelato tastes wonderful. I think I may be addicted.
Eating dessert as the sun sets. Can't get much better.
I stand corrected. This is better. ;)

Milan: Closed For Rest and Relaxation

I'm in Italy! with my last weekend in Germany (my stay here is almost over- so sad!) I set off down to Italy. More specifically, I'm in Milan. Which during planning, didn't strike me as a particularly touristy destination. I now know why. Where other cities would welcome visitors with open arms, making visiting exciting and easy, we had to walk for ~30 minutes from the train station before we found a single store (a restaurant) that was open. I know Italians are laid back- but shouldn't some places be open for lunch around noon? (It's too unreasonable, right?)
The confusingly ambiguous indoor/outdoor street was empty
So, as we all had very little idea bout what was in Milan, we were all blown away by the giant, whit e church. Even though it wasn't as tall as the Cathedral of Notre Dame or the Kölner Dom, the church had an immediate awe factor that out did any other cathedral I've seen so far.
So much detailing
Extensive detailing continues inside as well
After admiring the church's amazingly brightly colored stained glass windows and playing with the pigeons, we headed toward Milan's gardens. We were waylaid, however by a giant fountain in front of the castle in the gardens. Seeing the cool water was too much of a temptation on the hot day, so we took an early afternoon break to cool our feet in the fountain.
What a nice place to sit back at cool off
The good part about having a city with nothing open and not many people around was that it gave off a very relaxed feeling- we took the opportunity to take a short break in the park (and became a feast for mosquitoes) The bad part was that finding food became complicated.

As we walked all over the down town area it became clear that the only things open were the street vendors and the few restaurants in the precise center of downtown which were full of all the city's tourists. Well at least like this we won't have to worry about sticking out.

Public Transit Luck Debunked

I'm actually surprised something like this hasn't happened to me sooner. I've been all over Europe now, and this is the first time I've had a serious problem with the transit system. I should've known it wasn't going to go well when my first train from Stuttgart to Munich was 40 minutes late. This made my connection negative minutes.

I was reassured however, as they said that the train to Milan would wait for us to transfer over. After sprinting across Munich's train station I looked forward to sinking into my bunk and relaxing until we arrived in Milan. I also looked for my bunk. It wasn't there. Where it should've been there's a bike car. It's going to be a looong night..

At Long Last

Everything works now! (Just in time too- my final presentation is on Monday) Turns out the errors I had were due to the signal I was generating being incorrect, not the calculation of the derivatives.

It seems like I was originally assigned this "simple" task ages ago, but now (literally) I have my results. A hexapod tracing out beautiful paths!

Beginning of the End

As the first members of our group are leaving to go back to their home universities this weekend, we had our final farewell dinner and presentations today. For the first time we got to look at the projects that the others had been working on all summer instead of simply hearing about all the parts that had gone wrong.

It has been a lot of fun living and researching this summer and I was sad that this marked the beginning of the end of my stay in Germany. (Don't worry, I've still got 1.5 weeks left- you can't get rid of me that easily!)

Ode to Döner

Although I initially made fun of the food in Germany, there are some foods I will miss. Like the variety of delicious, cheap bread. Also a fast food item: Döner. It's kind of like Schwarma (in that it has similar ingredients). It's kind of like a hamburger (in that you can hold it in your hand and it's likely to be unhealthy). It's also really, really delicious.
I'm getting hungry again...

Let's Do the Time Warp Again

What are you doing this summer? It's interesting right. Well what about warping time? Bet you're not doing that.

So I'm not actually bending time, but as part of my plan to get the motion of the hexapod to accelerate and decelerate at the beginning and end of its path (opposed to always moving at a constant velocity with abrupt start/ends) I'm stretching time a bit.  Makes everything a bit confusing. The cool part is, however, that I now have a section of code labeled "time machine". Yes, I know I'm a nerd.

Family, Food and Flora

Taking a break from my recent set of far-reaching destinations, today I went up to Mannheim to visit my uncle and his family. After becoming immediate friends with their adorable dog, Holly, we hiked up a mountain to get lunch. (Seriously, even though I've been here two and a half moths now, I still don't get how the hiking to a restaurant passtime ever got started)
We took the scenic route
Like any respectable restaurant in the middle of nowhere, the food was amazing (it'd have to be, to get people to walk that far for it; ~2.5 miles each way) The most delicious prize went to the Bee Sting cake I was recommended to eat for desert.
Unlike other cakes, this cake is best eaten upsidedown

When In Europe...

What's a stay in Europe without going to at least one music festival? Sensing that my time abroad was drawing to a close and my opportunities for music festivals were dwindling, I hopped on a train down to Zurich for Street Parade.

It was crazy. Basically too crazy to describe. I"m as of yet unsure if having my phone die (and there fore my ability to take pictures) was a good thing or bad thing. While it would've been nice to capture some of the more colorful and outrageous costumes people wore, I would also have evidence that I had aslo been at a festival where people wore such outrageous clothing. (not that that's really a bad thing)

The music was amazing and the excitement of the crowd was infectious making even a self-proclaimed introvert and anti socialite like me want to join in the dancing and partying. My only regret was that I had to leave early in order to not get stuck at a train station overnight.

Quest for a Shrubbery

Today I went in search of a plant. As I have been here long enough to know not to expect stores to have more than one type of item, I prided myself on not having foolishly gone to a grocery store to look for flowers. (There wouldn't have been any) Instead, armed with knowledge only Google could provide, I set out to find a plant.

Surprisingly, for such a green country there were not many plants in the flower store I visited. My hypothesis: since everywhere is so green, people don't feel the need as much to have extensive exotic gardens. This was actually good for me though, as it nicely narrowed down the choices so that even someone as indecisive as me could make a choice.
I think I chose a nice looking plant

Puzzling

I can't always be breaking my brain over frustrating partial derivatives, so in my limited amount of free time I break my brain over puzzles instead. This type of stretching my brain, however, I find much more enjoyable.

To help prepare for a puzzle hunt that my dorm will host during REX, I've been test solving puzzles. For people who aren't familiar with puzzle hunts, the puzzles are mostly logic and word puzzles grouped together in rounds such that the answers from a round together form a "meta puzzle" and then together meta puzzle answers lead to a final overall answer to the puzzle hunt. The idea is to reach this final answer before anyone else. I've participated in hunts since high school, but this will be the first time I'm helping to run a hunt. While I think solving the puzzles is still more fun than writing them, helping to run has it's benefits too... like plotting the demise.. er I mean coming up with enigmatic puzzles to solve.

Simplification Simply Won't be Simple

Turns out analytically solving for acceleration is a little more complicated than anticipated. This largely has to do with the fact that I now have a homogeneous transformation matrix, A, to rotate one vector from the frame of reference of the platform to the frame of reference of the base. The matrix is a function of the hexapod's position in space which is a function of the path variable (how far along the path the hexapod is) which is a function of time. And then you take two derivatives to get acceleration, and all of a sudden it's a giant mess of partial derivatives. A GIANT mess.

Driving On Air

We went on another tour, this time to a lab working to harvest wind energy. I had thought we would mostly be looking at various wind turbine blades and how certain shapes might be better than others (which we did), but to my surprise we were shown really cool projects highlighting what is possible to do with harnessed wind power. For example, drive a car. Personally, I had thought this was a bit like an impossible task (drawing from sailing experience as well as a failed experiment involving a wind surfing sail and a long board) but the box car they had set up was much more advanced (it even had a custom carbon fiber frame)
Where the carbon fiber frame was spun from

zzZZzzZombiedom

Pros of night trains: cheap travel
Cons of night trains: Arriving at 5 am and still having to wake up at 9.
I strongly suspect I approximated zombiedom today.

Definitely An Adult

We made it to Amsterdam last night! What we didn't plan on, was to be there the same weekend as their Pride Parade. Despite coming in around midnight, the parties (or after parties) were still going strong. As we were couch surfing (a wonderful invention for broke college students traveling all over Europe) with a host living a fair way outside of the city, we got a great city tour courtesy the public transit system.

Arriving at our host's bust stop, I couldn't help but notice all the stars you could see. It was a super clear night, and we were far away from any sort of downtown area, so light pollution was almost non existent. The only downside to arriving so late at night, was that we didn't get an opportunity to really get to know our host.

Waking up nice and early we set out for a full day of exploring Amsterdam. Our master plan: walk in a giant circle/ towards anything that looks interesting. The first interesting attraction? Breakfast! (yay, food!) Despite seeing many breakfast cafes on our way towards the main station, in the direction we decided to walk, they were few and far between. Luckily, there were excellent distractions (beautiful canal views, street markets) to keep us from losing our morale too early in the morning.
Could you imagine walking along here to work?
Meandering our way down towards Museum platz (? Something like that) we continued our campaign to be recognized as mature adults. To show our commitment to maturity we only ran through the fountain once. To further our claims to adulthood we responsibly chose chips and froyo for lunch.
We didn't even have to get wet!
Nice large place to sit in the sun and dry off
Indulging in the local food specialties
Unfortunately, perhaps, for my traveling companions we stumbled across an American bookstore. Even the hindrance of having to carry any acquired books for the remainder of the trip could not stop me from enjoying being in a bookstore full of English books.
Wonder who lived there...
My backpack now a bit heavier, we resumed our stroll through the city admiring canals and window shopping for postcards. Eventually though, our stamina for walking through the city was drained and we headed to the docks to get a canal tour in a boat.
Out in the harbor
Bridges with lights (hard to see during the day)
Bridges with bikes (plenty easy to see during the day)
The boat tour titled "100 highlights" only managed to highlight two things to me:
1. Amsterdam is really pretty.
2. I could totally live here.
Besides having canals all over the place, the other thing Amsterdam is littered with (literally) is bikes. As I have never gotten my driver's license (or really plan to), a city where you can get everywhere with a boat (I have my sailing card) and a bike sounds like the perfect place to live.
A bike garage. Nearly completely full too.
Boats need to be low to fit under the tiny bridges
As we left on the right train back to Stuttgart, I noticed something that was hidden by the night on the way there. The Netherlands are really flat. Seeing how completely flat the country could be, it became much more believable that someone could've once believed that the Earth was flat.
There may or may not be cows in the distance
We even saw a windmill! (From the train though)