Middle Age Romance in Goslar

Goslar is such a small and peaceful city that it seems to escape the attention of the world. So why did I decide to visit this place at first? Well, Dortmund, Cologne, and most of the northwest part of the Germany suffered from heavy bombardment from the allied forces during WWII. Even though these cities all have very long histories, but they have nothing left that can display to the world its past glory. So I decided to visit a place that somehow was not touched by the War. Goslar, situated at Lower Saxony and being relatively close to Dortmund, came as a top choice.

The city's fate is tightly bound to the mining history at the Harz mountain. At 11th century, the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Henry III, decided to build a imperial palace here so that he can oversee and control more tightly the important resources of copper and silver. He loved his new palace so much that he visited Goslar so many times, and on his deathbed, he demanded that his heart shall stay in Goslar forever. Unfortunately, with the rise and fall of the mining industry in the region, the city also underwent through times of prosperity and poverty. By the 19th century, it has lost its importance and hence its imperial status. So, quietly, this old city went to the backstage of history, which is a huge blessing for the city because it was able to skip the eyes of the Allied forces during the WWII.

Today the city is still not very well-known, even to Germans. Honestly there is nothing very exciting in Goslar, and I guess that's one main reason why there are not a lot of tourists there. This, however, allows the city to preserve its most original self. An unbelievable feeling of the Middle Age is so contagious in every corner of the city. The stone-paved narrow streets are lined up with stone or timber houses on both sides, and under the blue sky the green Harz mountain, the holy mountain for the city, is overlooking the small town. It's a place where time stops and life remains in the medieval tranquility.

There are, for example, many small, cozy, and charming boutique shops, candy stores, and bakeries. On many houses there are curly-written old German words (actually they look like the writings in the movie Lord of the Rings). And you can see local people just enjoying beer, ice cream or desserts at the old market place. The city also has an air of fairy tales. The witches in the sleeping beauty and other fairy tales all came from the Harz mountain area.

For my photos, please visit www.flickr.com/photos/pohanchen to see the beautiful town.

Two German Joke

1.
"You can throw a German bread at someone and the person would fall down."-quote from one PhD student in my lab.

2.
A German exchange student meets her American host family.
German student: I want to have a pregnant experience during my stay in the United States.
Host parents: ......???!!!
(in German, the same-spelling word "pregnant" means significant)

Friday night

In terms of thouroughness of training, I think this summer is much better than last summer. Although a lot of things are really obvious to me now, there are still other things I didn't quite know before, such as designing primers, building constructs, performing expression tests, and I believe there are still a lot more. Moreover, there are more uncertainties involved in my project because nobody has tried it before either. So I feel really excited. The environment at the Max-Planck-Institute is extremely cooperative, and my PhD mentor is patient and knowledgeable. I believe my technical skills will improve quite a lot this summer. Still, I really want to learn some biophysical techniques and how to co-express proteins for a complex molecular machine. There is always so much to learn but so little time.

Tonight I'm going to the city with my co-worker to this cocktail bar. Hopefully it will be a good time. I haven't quite experienced the night-life of the city yet, so I'm quite excited. Tomorrow morning I'm going to this beer tour, and on Sunday I'm going to visit some castles in the Münsterland region, which is said to have more castles than any other places in Germany. There are many other places I want to visit, like Berlin, Münich, Kassel the city of art and fairy tale, Göttingen the famous university town, Köln for the fantastic collection in its fantastic art museums, and the picturesque and wine-producing region of Mosell.

Okay, that's all for now. Time to have fun on Friday night. Tschüss!

First group meeting

Today I attended my first group meeting of the lab, in which people in the group talked about their progresses on their projects . I was not expecting Dr. Eschenburg, my boss, to ask me to talk about my project though, because she just gave me the project yesterday and then she asked me to present it today. But it went fine actually. What I'm really concerned about is that I really don't know how to make a progress report. I didn't do it that much at Yale, so now it's a good chance to practice. I think I'll ask my mentor and other people in my lab tomorrow. If you have any suggestions, please let me know too.

The group meeting was actually conducted in German. I was very worried at the beginning that I wouldn't understand anything. Nonetheless, I'm familiar with most of the concepts so it was not particularly difficult to understand at the end. In addition Dr. Eschenburg was very nice and she volunteered to serve as my personal translator. My grasp German is getting better and better everyday. I think the most important thing is that I need to be very confident that I know most of the words people are speaking, because after all there are only <3000 words that German people use most of the time.

My project is going kind of slow because, 1) my PhD mentor has another undergraduate to take care of, and 2) he has his own project to do, but he himself needs help from other people too. At the end, he only got a limited amount of time for me. I was familiar with most of the techniques actually because I learned them last summer, but I was hesitate to tell him because after all I'm still not very used to the protocols at this institute.

Cologne

My trip to Cologne was full of surprises. Before the visit I thought it's probably just another big city, plus a gigantic Cathedral. It turns out I was mistaken. The Cathedral, the lively art scenes, and the rich history all give the city a very special personality that you can only experience it once you are there.

One element that every great city has, at least in my opinion, is its history, which instills in its people a special sentiment or attachment to the city. It's difficult to talk about Cologne without mentioning its Cathedral-the Köln Dom. Just existing the main train station I was stunned by the sheer size of the world's most gigantic Gothic complex. You might imagine, the building of such a great complex was of no easy path. The Dom has stood in its current place for 800 years since the Middle Ages. It quietly witnessed the rise of Cologne as a medieval trade center, its decline, the terror of bombardment during WWII, and now, the modern world. I was in trance, imagining many historical figures and noble souls that had stood where I was.

Just as Rome was not built in one day, the Dom was actually built over a period of 600 years. In 1164 Archbishop Rainald von Dassel transferred from Milan the bones of the Three Magi to Cologne with a golden box (you can still see it today behind the high altar in the Dom). The famous relics soon drew the faithful from all of Europe and Cologne became one of the most important pilgrimage sites of the Middle Ages. In 1248, the Cathedral Chapter decided to build a new structure suitable for such important relics and pilgrimage purpose. Instead of the traditional German Romanesque style, the chief architect decided to use the "modern" Gothic structure of the French cathedral. The construction has to be stopped in 1560 because of financial difficulty. Only until 1842, under the generosity of Friedrich Wilhelm IV from Prussia the construction resumed, and the original blue print was followed. In 1880 the final stone was placed on top of the southern spire, and the complete Gothic cathedral finally displayed in front of the world.

After looking at the Dom, I decided to go around the city, away from the tourist groups. I strolled down the rocked-paved roads, and every now and then I could see the ruins of city walls from the Roman empire, with the oldest one I could find dated back to 50AC, during the reign of the fourth Roman emperor Claudius. Today the city quarter is consist of small shops and beer gardens, and it was difficult to imagine almost 2000 years ago, on one side of the wall is the civilized Roman world, and the other side the dark forests and in it resided the barbarous Germanic tribes.

Beyond its rich history Cologne was also a center of art in Germany. The Wallraf-Richartz-Museum has a fantastic collection of masterpieces by Rembrandt and Monet (I was very surprised after I browsed through the local travel guide). The Museum Ludwig also contains a rich collection from Picasso. Too bad that I didn't have time to visit these museums, but since Cologne is only 1-2 hours away by train, I'm sure I can still come back if I want.

Of course, Cologne also has its own local brewery, and I couldn't resist the temptation to try some local Koelsch beer.

Holiday Entry

Today is a German national holidy (Corpus Christi...must have something to do with Jesus Christ but I'm not sure about the details). I just got my internet access at my dorm, therefore I have the material and time-why not writing something.

I started my internship this week and it's not very stressful. The people speak German at work, but at the same time they speak amazingly good English. Although I've learned it for two years I still don't understand what they are saying most of the time, but I think it's good because it gives me a chance to improve my German and forces me to reach out to people more often.

Dortmund is a lively city with great night life. It's an old city with its foundation dated back to 1100 and was once an imperial court for one of the Germanic kingdoms. During the WWII the region is the center for weapon manufacturing, therefore almost all the city was burned down by the Americans. As a result, most of the buildings one see here are no more than 100 years old.

The stores here close fairly early; that means I have basically nothing to do at night unless I go to downtown, where a lot of beer gardens, bars, and night clubs are situated. But often I am too tired to do so after work, and it's really boring to just go by myself. The Germans are quite sociable actually. They throw a lot of public, outdoor parties in which you can meet a lot of people and drink as many beers as you like (the beers are not free of course).