London: Visitor from and visit to
Ben, a good friend of mine from college is doing research for his PhD in London for a few months. Since London is a lot closer than the US, we decided to visit each other. Two weekends ago he was down here visiting and last weekend I went up to London to visit him. Lots of fun all around.
When Ben was here it was the weekend after thanksgiving. He arrived at the airport Saturday morning and we spend the day going around the old part of Geneva and then walking around the big botanical garden. That evening one of the people from our church had the young adult group over for a big thanksgiving dinner. Ben and I caught a ride out to the guys house with a friend of mine from CERN who also goes to church, Erkki.
Sam's house (where we were), is amazing. Apparently it used to be a chalet out in the French countryside at the foothills of the alps. There are 10 bedrooms, three ovens, and a dinning room that could serve 100 people probably. The 30 of us (all of the age 18-35) sat at a big long table and had a LOT of food. Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, peas, corn, sweet potato, cranberries, bread, wine, pumpkin and apple pie with ice cream, and coffee to finish it off. It was really really good. Especially since I was craving pumpkin pie at the time. After words we hung around in front of the big fireplace for a few hours and talked and relaxed. All in all it was a very nice evening.
Sunday Ben and I went and explored around CERN for a few hours then took a bus back to Geneva and went to Battelle to look around there. (Battelle is where Ben worked for years in Columbus and they have a Geneva branch). We had some good Thai food for dinner and then wandered around some more of Geneva. Finally we ended up at the train station where we bought some amazing chocolates for desert and then headed back to CERN for some more coffee and chocolate before walking home. Ben left that morning for London and I was sick with the flu. Apparently half the people at the thanksgiving dinner ended up with the flu, Ben caught it Tuesday morning. Boo for germs.
After a week of working, I left Friday to go to London to visit Ben. Getting there was, ahem, an adventure. My flight left at 9, or rather, should have left at 9. It left about an hour late. Then going through customs took another hour. There was one guy there for all non-EU passports. He would chat with each person about what they were doing, how they were, stamp some stuff, chat some more...... It literally took an hour. Now I went into one of the regional airports around London because it was dirt cheap that way. The downside was that I had to take a train a little ways into London. At the train station in London I was meeting Ben and we were going to take the underground (subway) to his place.
The train ran every half hour. I figured if things were right on time I could catch the 10:30 train and be in London by 11:20, more likely I would catch the 11:00 train and be there by 11:50, or if I was late, catch the 11:30 train and be there by 12:20. We had to be on the subway by 12:30 or it closed. Well I was walking out of customs as the 12:00 train left. The next one, of course didn't run till 1am. I couldn't reach Ben on his cell phone due to some weird pay phone issues so I just got on the 1am train. At 1:50 I walked into the empty train station but there was no Ben. After walking around the train station, subway station, bus station, and back a few times, then trying to call Ben a few times, I called my mother. I figured I had the wrong number for Ben and asked her to look up his number, or his home number and call him. I called her back after a bit, and she was able to call his cell with no problem... stupid pay phones. As it turns out, the 1am train that I was on was the last train till morning. Ben waited till it came in, but no one got off. Then he went home, somewhat wet (as it was raining all night) and more than a little worried, figuring I would be calling him and we could figure it out. Why he never saw me get off the train we could never figure out. We can only think that there must have been another train coming in a minute or two earlier that the station conductor said was my train (Ben asked him 'is the the train from Luton airport?' and he said yes). In any case, I managed to take two buses and show up at Ben's place. It was hard to say who was more glad to see the other actually existed. It was now 4am. We went to sleep.
We got up the next morning and Ben took me down to where he works which is by a lot of museums. We went through the V&A museum which had an exhibit on Davinci where they had about 100 pieces of his notebooks and sketches. It was just amazing to see the things he was drawing and thinking about. After that we walked around some of the rest of the museum and then went sightseeing some more. We took the tube down to Trafalgar square, and from there walked about some to Piccadilly Circus where we had dinner at a good Italian place. The new Bond movie was playing at the theater there and we were both tempted, but the price of ~$25 was just a bit high for a movie ticket. It would be cool to see a Bond movie in London though. Instead we took the tube down to the Mi6 building and walked along the Thames river for a bit before walking back to Ben's place.
The next morning we got up and decided to go to a church service at St-Paul's Cathedral. That was amazing. The building was huge and very very ornate. Everything was curved and domed and gold. The service was very nice, though the Anglican service is quite a bit different than the type I normally go to. The music, however, was AMAZING. I blame the acoustics of the building. First off, any note sung just resonated an hung in the air forever, you could practically hear the harmonics resonating and it was very rich. But all that reverb didn't get muddy, it was a clean sound the whole time. A note just floated for about 2 seconds. All of the music was also in a minor key and the organist played loudly. There was one piece where the organ was loud, in a minor key, and evil sounding while the choir was just angelic but powerful and they just fought till the choir won in the end. It was all Latin of course, but it was some arrangement of the standard parts of mass I think. I think it was the Kyrie but I'm not certain. The organist also kept doing this fun trick during the hymns where after each verse he'd pull another stop or two till the end it was quite a powerful sound with flutes and trumpets and 32' pipes all going at once.
After the service we walked around that part of London some more. Down the Thames to see the reconstruction of the Globe theater, then down to the banking district in town. We had lunch in a tasty Greek place before taking the tube down to Westminster.
At Westminster the first thing you notice is Big Ben. It is impressive. Along with the parliament building and Westminster abbey. We went sightseeing around there, but as it was Sunday evening, most things were closed and we couldn't go in. That was ok because we were planning to go to an organ concert at Westminster at 5:00 anyways. We did get a chance to walk all around there and take some pictures. At 5:00 we went into Westminster Abbey for the concert.
Westminster Abbey is just big and then bigger. The roof stretches so high, and it just seems to go forever in all directions. The building here is a lot different than St-Paul's. There were no domes and everything was very angular. It was still very pretty and VERY ornate, but I think I liked St-Paul's better. The organ piece was one by Mozart. Bach is my favorite, but Mozart is up there on the list of composers I like. The only downside is that this piece was very much like a lot of Mozart, lighter, a bit technical with more depth, but not so much of the huge chords and throbbing resonating bass. That's not to say that there weren't a few times when the organist pulled a few more stops and stomped on the peddles and keys, but it was only a few. The concert was still amazing though, even more so in this fabulous building. I noticed one thing though. At St-Paul's the resonance was very smooth sounding, but here it had a bit of a vibrato to it. My guess is that the building was so large that you could actually hear individual reflections from roofs and walls (you could actually hear some of them fairly clearly). This was probably made more pronounced by the angular architecture. I have to say, being able to listen to two amazing organs in one day and compare them like that was nifty.
After the concert we went to dinner, walked around some more of London then went to the train station. While my plane flew early Monday morning, the trains didn't run that early so I had to spend the night at the airport. I brought a good book and read there till 4am then checked in, read till 5am, got on a plane, napped a bit on the trip home, and went to work that morning. Well I only went half a day really. By 3pm I was pretty tired so I came home and did a bit more work from here before falling asleep on my couch till 4am then falling back asleep on my bed till morning. It was a good trip.
Sorry, no pictures up yet, I'll touch them up soon and then put the online.
When Ben was here it was the weekend after thanksgiving. He arrived at the airport Saturday morning and we spend the day going around the old part of Geneva and then walking around the big botanical garden. That evening one of the people from our church had the young adult group over for a big thanksgiving dinner. Ben and I caught a ride out to the guys house with a friend of mine from CERN who also goes to church, Erkki.
Sam's house (where we were), is amazing. Apparently it used to be a chalet out in the French countryside at the foothills of the alps. There are 10 bedrooms, three ovens, and a dinning room that could serve 100 people probably. The 30 of us (all of the age 18-35) sat at a big long table and had a LOT of food. Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, peas, corn, sweet potato, cranberries, bread, wine, pumpkin and apple pie with ice cream, and coffee to finish it off. It was really really good. Especially since I was craving pumpkin pie at the time. After words we hung around in front of the big fireplace for a few hours and talked and relaxed. All in all it was a very nice evening.
Sunday Ben and I went and explored around CERN for a few hours then took a bus back to Geneva and went to Battelle to look around there. (Battelle is where Ben worked for years in Columbus and they have a Geneva branch). We had some good Thai food for dinner and then wandered around some more of Geneva. Finally we ended up at the train station where we bought some amazing chocolates for desert and then headed back to CERN for some more coffee and chocolate before walking home. Ben left that morning for London and I was sick with the flu. Apparently half the people at the thanksgiving dinner ended up with the flu, Ben caught it Tuesday morning. Boo for germs.
After a week of working, I left Friday to go to London to visit Ben. Getting there was, ahem, an adventure. My flight left at 9, or rather, should have left at 9. It left about an hour late. Then going through customs took another hour. There was one guy there for all non-EU passports. He would chat with each person about what they were doing, how they were, stamp some stuff, chat some more...... It literally took an hour. Now I went into one of the regional airports around London because it was dirt cheap that way. The downside was that I had to take a train a little ways into London. At the train station in London I was meeting Ben and we were going to take the underground (subway) to his place.
The train ran every half hour. I figured if things were right on time I could catch the 10:30 train and be in London by 11:20, more likely I would catch the 11:00 train and be there by 11:50, or if I was late, catch the 11:30 train and be there by 12:20. We had to be on the subway by 12:30 or it closed. Well I was walking out of customs as the 12:00 train left. The next one, of course didn't run till 1am. I couldn't reach Ben on his cell phone due to some weird pay phone issues so I just got on the 1am train. At 1:50 I walked into the empty train station but there was no Ben. After walking around the train station, subway station, bus station, and back a few times, then trying to call Ben a few times, I called my mother. I figured I had the wrong number for Ben and asked her to look up his number, or his home number and call him. I called her back after a bit, and she was able to call his cell with no problem... stupid pay phones. As it turns out, the 1am train that I was on was the last train till morning. Ben waited till it came in, but no one got off. Then he went home, somewhat wet (as it was raining all night) and more than a little worried, figuring I would be calling him and we could figure it out. Why he never saw me get off the train we could never figure out. We can only think that there must have been another train coming in a minute or two earlier that the station conductor said was my train (Ben asked him 'is the the train from Luton airport?' and he said yes). In any case, I managed to take two buses and show up at Ben's place. It was hard to say who was more glad to see the other actually existed. It was now 4am. We went to sleep.
We got up the next morning and Ben took me down to where he works which is by a lot of museums. We went through the V&A museum which had an exhibit on Davinci where they had about 100 pieces of his notebooks and sketches. It was just amazing to see the things he was drawing and thinking about. After that we walked around some of the rest of the museum and then went sightseeing some more. We took the tube down to Trafalgar square, and from there walked about some to Piccadilly Circus where we had dinner at a good Italian place. The new Bond movie was playing at the theater there and we were both tempted, but the price of ~$25 was just a bit high for a movie ticket. It would be cool to see a Bond movie in London though. Instead we took the tube down to the Mi6 building and walked along the Thames river for a bit before walking back to Ben's place.
The next morning we got up and decided to go to a church service at St-Paul's Cathedral. That was amazing. The building was huge and very very ornate. Everything was curved and domed and gold. The service was very nice, though the Anglican service is quite a bit different than the type I normally go to. The music, however, was AMAZING. I blame the acoustics of the building. First off, any note sung just resonated an hung in the air forever, you could practically hear the harmonics resonating and it was very rich. But all that reverb didn't get muddy, it was a clean sound the whole time. A note just floated for about 2 seconds. All of the music was also in a minor key and the organist played loudly. There was one piece where the organ was loud, in a minor key, and evil sounding while the choir was just angelic but powerful and they just fought till the choir won in the end. It was all Latin of course, but it was some arrangement of the standard parts of mass I think. I think it was the Kyrie but I'm not certain. The organist also kept doing this fun trick during the hymns where after each verse he'd pull another stop or two till the end it was quite a powerful sound with flutes and trumpets and 32' pipes all going at once.
After the service we walked around that part of London some more. Down the Thames to see the reconstruction of the Globe theater, then down to the banking district in town. We had lunch in a tasty Greek place before taking the tube down to Westminster.
At Westminster the first thing you notice is Big Ben. It is impressive. Along with the parliament building and Westminster abbey. We went sightseeing around there, but as it was Sunday evening, most things were closed and we couldn't go in. That was ok because we were planning to go to an organ concert at Westminster at 5:00 anyways. We did get a chance to walk all around there and take some pictures. At 5:00 we went into Westminster Abbey for the concert.
Westminster Abbey is just big and then bigger. The roof stretches so high, and it just seems to go forever in all directions. The building here is a lot different than St-Paul's. There were no domes and everything was very angular. It was still very pretty and VERY ornate, but I think I liked St-Paul's better. The organ piece was one by Mozart. Bach is my favorite, but Mozart is up there on the list of composers I like. The only downside is that this piece was very much like a lot of Mozart, lighter, a bit technical with more depth, but not so much of the huge chords and throbbing resonating bass. That's not to say that there weren't a few times when the organist pulled a few more stops and stomped on the peddles and keys, but it was only a few. The concert was still amazing though, even more so in this fabulous building. I noticed one thing though. At St-Paul's the resonance was very smooth sounding, but here it had a bit of a vibrato to it. My guess is that the building was so large that you could actually hear individual reflections from roofs and walls (you could actually hear some of them fairly clearly). This was probably made more pronounced by the angular architecture. I have to say, being able to listen to two amazing organs in one day and compare them like that was nifty.
After the concert we went to dinner, walked around some more of London then went to the train station. While my plane flew early Monday morning, the trains didn't run that early so I had to spend the night at the airport. I brought a good book and read there till 4am then checked in, read till 5am, got on a plane, napped a bit on the trip home, and went to work that morning. Well I only went half a day really. By 3pm I was pretty tired so I came home and did a bit more work from here before falling asleep on my couch till 4am then falling back asleep on my bed till morning. It was a good trip.
Sorry, no pictures up yet, I'll touch them up soon and then put the online.