Roman’s Blog

I had a really great week in London with even better weather (yes, I actually was in London, UK!).
I saw almost everything I wanted and also visited my potentially next university.

Because I currently do not have much time only a very short trip report (or even more a personal sightseeing listing):

Wed 5 Aug
At 11am I took flight BA903 (FRA-LHR) and arrived in London Heathrow on-time. I really the modern, lightish design of T5. I bought a one week oyster card and took the tube to the hotel for the following four days:

Copthorne Tara, Kensington

Größere Kartenansicht

The hotel is quite old and the facade is really ugly. Nevertheless it was quite cheap, clean and the location was quite good. It’s a five minute walk to the “High Street Kensington” tube station where you can take the circle and district line.

After a short break in the room, we went to Holland Park, the Science Museum, the Imperial College Campus and Royal Albert Hall. At the evening we had dinner at wagamama. It’s nothing special, but you get quite tasty Asian food for very reasonable prices.

Thu 6 Aug
Great weather on this day. Went to House of Parliament and Big Ben before visiting Westminster Abbey. The Abbey is really impressive. I think I’ve never seen so much art, ornaments etc. in a single church. The audio tour took us almost two hours but it was definately worth it.
After the Abbey we went to Downing Street and Trafalgar Sq (witrh the magnificient Admiralty Arch) as well as Leicester Square, Covent Garden and Chinatown.

Fri 7 Aug
At the morning we went to Piccadilly Circus before heading to Buckingham Palace in order to watch “Changing the Guard”. It never expected so many people watching the ceremony … Walking through Green Park we went to Hyde Park corner and went to Harrods. On the way back home we went to the Museum of Natural History (very impressive building!) approx. 20 minutes befoe closing and only visited few parts of it. Last sight of the day was the Kensington Palace (not so impressive).
At the evening I decided to watch a movie at the “largest screen in the UK” and went to the BFI IMAX to watch the sixth part of Harry Potter. Especially the 3D part of the movie was stunning!

Sat 8 Aug
Every single tube line heading to Westminster was closed this Saturday (maintenance work) but we still wanted to visit the Tower and took the bus (which took us at least triple the time of the tube). At Westminster we bought a Thames Cruise ticket to the Tower. It was sunny, quite hot and I really enjoyed it – you have a nice few on lots of sights. The Tower was smaller than I expected it to be (especially in comparison to Tower Bridge), but it was quite interesting. We did a Yeoman Warders tour and had a look on the crown jewels.
After the Tower we took the DLR to Canary Wharf, a large business and shopping area in the Docklands before we went back to Bank to see the Stock Exchange, the Bank of England and St Paul’s Cathedral (which closed the moment we were arriving).

Sun 9 Aug
We left Copthorne Tara and moved to our hotel for the last two days, the

Hyatt Regency – The Churchill

Größere Kartenansicht

It was a fantastic hotel on a great location. Lots of the guests where people from the Middle East (including some sheikhs on vacation from Kuwait who brought their cars from Kuwait to London: a white Ferrari and a black Lamborghini).

After a small breakfast we went to the Hyde Park, more precisely: Speaker’s Corner. I loved that place where lots of people are telling their options about religion, politics or economics and discuss about that with the surrounding attendees. After that we went to the Marble Arche and Oxford Street (with a side trip to Selfridges).
At the afternoon we took the tube to Warwick Avenue and went to Little Venice and walked along Regent’s Canal to Camden. It’s a veeery hip area with lots of young people.

On the evening we did a London Eye “flight” (ridicolous term if you ask me). We had a great view (especially on the Houses of Parliament) and really enjoyed it.

Mon 10 Aug
On this morning we went for a walking trip to Chelsea and the Battersea Park starting and arriving on Sloane Square. After that walk the next agenda item was Bloomsbury where I did a short trip to St. Pancras and King’s Cross before visiting UCL (where I’m maybe going to study).
At the evening I met a friend – who’s been in London at the same time – for dinner and had a great evening.

Tue 11 Aug
The last day of the London trip – unfortunately. We visited the British Museum and had gread Korean food (I had bibimbap with raw beef) at BI WON (24 Coptic St) before heading to Heathrow (this time using the Heathrow Connect train) and flying back home to Frankfurt. It really was a great trip and I really like the city!

Photo album (on Facebook)

I already finished my Chicago trip report when wordpress crashed and almost all of the text was lost. Because I’m currently quite busy I haven’t had time to write it again. But I promise I’m gonna do that.

Tomorrow I’m leaving to London for a week. This time no promises about a trip report. If I’ve enough time I’m going to write one if not, not.

At the morning of June 7th my flight NW51 took of on time from Frankfurt with direction of Detroit Wayne County. It was my first long-haul flight with Delta/NW and I was prepared for bad service and worse food. First thing wasn’t that bad at all, the flight attendants were quite nice (although nothing for the people who only want to see flight attendants aged 25 or below – I’ll never get this). But the food was really horrible. If it wasn’t on a flight I think wouldn’t have eaten it. I had some arid chicken with some sort of vegetables I could not identify and something that could have been mashed potatoes. There’s also no second meal as on Singapore Airlines flights to New York (which isn’t really a problem – you won’t starve to death during a 9hr flight) but only a mushy turkey and cheese sandwich.

After approx. 8 hours we arrived DTW almost a full hour early. So my concern that connection to my flight to Chicago O’Hare with a connection time of 75 minutes could be very tight didn’t comply. The new McNamara terminal at DTW is an impressively efficient terminal. Immigration hall is bigger than at JFK and distances are very short. The terminal is quite narrow but very long and an express tram goes along the terminal bringing you to every gate in a shot amount of time. I can think with some luck you can even make connections with less than 40 minutes including immigration and customs. I reached the departure gate more than 90 minutes before my connection to O’Hare.
Oh and had a really really nice immigration officer. He was absolutely pleasant and started to chat with be extensively. About baseball, the White Sox and the Cubs, about Chicago and several other things. Hope there wasn’t someone behind me in line that had a close connection

Flight to O’Hare over Lake Michigan was a usual Delta domestic flight. Very tight seat pitch (it was a MD9) and no service at all – no snack, no drinks. After a bumpy flight of approximately one hour we reached O’Hare a few minutes early. ORD really is the complete different of DTW. Yes, I know this airport is somewhat bigger but anyhow it’s ugly and distances are huge. I think my walk to the baggage claim took more time than the flight from Detroit to Chicago.
At O’Hare I took the Blue Line with direction to Forest Park with the intention to leave the train at Clark/Lake and walk the remaining 10 minutes to Hyatt Regency Chicago. Of course it didn’t work this way. After a few stops there was an announcement that the train won’t go any further than the 6th or 7th station due to constructions at the track. At this station we were all transferred to buses which replaced the L-Train to Forest Park – really nice with three pieces of luggage.

At 5pm I reached Clark/Lake and I walked along Wacker Drive eastbound to Hyatt Regency. After I passed areas where I wouldn’t want to be alone a single moment during the L-Train ride, this was the first impressive moment in Chicago. Most of the skyscrapers are close to Chicago River and the skyline looks amazing.
After a 10 minute walk I reached my hotel for one night, the huge (two towers, more than 2000 rooms) Hyatt Regency. I notified them a week in advance that I’ll receive a shipping at the hotel and was asked if I had any other requests. I requested a high floor room with a nice view (something I usually don’t do by email) and that’s what I got at check-in automatically. I got a huuuge king bed room with armchair and sofa on the 32nd floor of east tower which is the highest possible there (33rd/34th are only suites).

View Larger Map

Hotel room view to Prudential Tower

I only put my luggage in the room and left the hotel to discover Chicago by foot. After a short walk I reached Millennium Park where the Chicago Gospel Music Festival took place at the impressive Jav Pritzker Pavilion.

Chicago Gospel Music Festival

I listened to the music for a while and then continued to walk along North Michigan Avenue, Rush and Clair Street passing Trump Tower, Tribune Tower and Wrigley Building (that’s what you can afford when selling lots of chewing gums).

Trump Tower

Wrigley Building

Finally I wanted to eat a famous deep dish pizza. Seems to be a great idea on a Sunday evening … I already read that in Chicago lines tend to be long, but this definitely was too much I started at Giordano’s and checked another five pizzerias in this area without any perspective of getting a pizza without a one to two hour wait. So I had dinner at McDonalds – yes, that’s exactly what I didn’t want.

After a very long day I returned to the hotel where I watched the second half of the NBA finals second game before falling asleep.

Conclusions:
- Food of Delta is as bad as expected but they take you to your destination
- Chicago has a great skyline, too
- Hyatt Regency Chicago is huge
- Hancock Tower does not look very impressive
- Trump Tower does
- Don’t eat pizza on a Sunday evening in Chicagos

There are only about 14 days of work between me and the longest vacation of my present life On June 7th I’m flying to Chicago (via Detroit) where I spend four days before heading to New York in the evening of June 10th. There I’ll stay until July 7th before returning to Germany. During this time I’ll do another three trips: to Washington DC (daytrip on June 12th), Philadelphia (daytrip end of June) and Boston/Cape Cod (4-day trip starting June 17th).
I plan to blog my travelogue during the vacation as I expect to have continuous web access.

Oh and last night I booked a one week trip to London in early August with my mom. I’m really looking forward to it as it’s several years ago since the last time I’ve been there.

So there are some (hopefully) really nice weeks ahead after a quite laborious year so far.

When I started the blog there was only one spam comment during the first week so I thought I could forbear from moderating the comments. Though I decided to install Akismet to filter some spam comments which turned out to be a good idea. I just had a look at the Wordpress Dashboard where there currently is a list of more than 730(!) spam comments!

I really hope it won’t filter one of your comments. If it does, please send me a message

Friday I got the results of my IELTS English test I had to pass with 6.5 (out of 9) in every category for studying at Imperial or UCL London.
I got an “Overall Band Score” of 7.5 with a 8.5 high in Listening, 7.5 in Speaking and Reading and 7.0 in Writing. I knew that Listening would be the best part (though I’m slightly surprised it was that good) but I thought Speaking would have been worse – this was the part I was most afraid of failing the 6.5 – especially because I got a quite difficult topic to talk about.

Overall I’m quite satisfied – it’s two grades (equals 1.0) better than requested.

I’m Microsoft Student Partner (kinda student support program of Microsoft Germany) at TU Darmstadt and as part of that we (Student Partners) are giving lectures or workshops about topics that are concerned with Microsoft technologies (like Windows Servers/Clients, .NET Development etc.) – and no, I’m not a Microsoft fanatic because of that, I’ve still a unbiased opinion about these things They’ve a bunch of cool software, but there are also some things that could be improved (a lot).

Today (yes, on Saturday – it’s almost impossible to get rooms during the week) we had a series of lectures about Windows Azure, SharePoint, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. There were about 70 students and (research) assistants who found their way to university – more than we expected and really great for a Saturday morning (& midday & afternoon). I showed something about upcoming Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 and the crowd seemed to be quite interested in that topic which was also confirmed by some interesting questions of some students after the talk.

Tomorrow I’ll hopefully finish my parts of the Master applications – so no real free time this weekend. But things are gonna be better – at the latest on June 7th when I’ll finally go on vacation!

At the moment I’m (hopefully) in the last term of my Bsc. Computer Science studies. I’m currently working on my bachelor thesis about Trusted Computing at Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology in Darmstadt, Germany. I hope I’ll finish the thesis until my US trip in June (another blog post topic) but that’s far from being certain. After my return in July I do not have any lectures anymore but I’ll have to write (and pass) my last three exams in September.

Simultaneously I’m working on my applications for my graduate studies. I’m applying to three different universities – one in French-speaking (but an English program) Switzerland (EPFL Lausanne) and two in London (Imperial, UCL). I already submitted my application to Lausanne where I’m supposed to get a result until the end of June, but I’ve still some work to do for my two British applications. I really hope this work will pay off and I’ll study abroad this fall.

I have thought about starting a blog for several months now and every time I wanted to do it, there was something preventing me (usually too much work to do). Now I found some time to finally do it!

First of all: I don’t know yet in which language I’ll blog in the future. I decided to start in English because there are some people that do not understand any German and could be interested in the (mostly not interesting) things I’ll write. Possibly there’ll be a mix of English and German posts – simply don’t know yet.

Now I should tell something about me. I’m currently 23 years old and studying Computer Science at TU Darmstadt, Germany. I’m (hopefully) going to achieve my bachelor’s degree in fall 2009. After that I intend to do my master’s degree, but that’s another story.
I love almost all kinds of ball games, especially football, soccer, basketball and baseball but unfortunately (due to a lack of time and possibilities) I watch these games much much more often than I actually play them.
Another huge passion is traveling. I love traveling, especially city breaks while I’m really not someone who enjoys lying on a beach for two weeks doing nothing. My absolute favorite is New York City, where I’ve already been two times (2007 and 2008) and where I’m going again in June. But more about that in a later post.

More to come within the next days.