My first couple days in Germany have certainly been busy! I've spent a lot of time just exploring various places nearby and trying to familiarize myself with the area. Let's jump in!

After finishing my post yesterday, I decided to explore some more on foot. I realized my hostel is pretty close to the Brandenburg Gate, so I decided to head in that direction. Along the way, I crossed a bridge that had a view of the Berlin TV tower.

I got to the gate about an hour before sunset, and managed to nab this super cool photo!

From there I decided to head west, since I was interested in seeing the west half of Berlin. Although that didn't really go quite as planned, since I just started walking through the Tiergarten for a while instead. For those who don't know, it's a large park that ends at the Brandenburg Gate. And I didn't realize just how large it is until I started walking through it. I got less than a quarter of the way through before deciding to head back, otherwise I would have been out way past dark.

But the park itself is quite nice! There are a couple roads that run through it, but they're easy enough to get away from. The paths I walked on were very quiet, despite a relatively large number of people commuting through on foot, bike, or scooter. There were a few groups having picnics and playing frisbee, it was a nice area to be in.

​After heading back, I decided to visit Checkpoint Charlie. I don't know a lot about it, but decided I'd at least visit to get a picture. It's definitely one of the stranger tourist attractions I've come across, since it's just been left in the middle of a road that's actively used today. It felt a bit out of place, there wasn't much around to indicate it's there.

On my way to Checkpoint Charlie, I found an awesome street: Friedrichstrasse. A long section of it has banned cars, and it was so nice to walk through! The center had 2 lanes for bikes going each direction, and the sidewalks were expanded into the rest of the road. The local shops also expanded into the street a bit, such as seating for restaurants or these greenhouse-looking things in the image below. Despite how many people were there, it was incredibly quiet, you could actually hear people from across the street! Crossing the street also felt way safer than crossing a road full of cars, since the most dangerous thing here is bikes. This has definitely been one of my favorite areas so far!

One thing I would love to know is how to find more places like this. I only happened to stumble across it in my adventure, there aren't any obvious indications that it existed. Even Google Maps shows it as a normal car road, which I guess means this is something new. I would love to find more of these.

I went back to my hostel, and decided to check out the social area to try and meet some people. I found a group that was very welcoming, and had people from a variety of places including the UK, Ireland, France, and Egypt. They were mostly fun to hand out with, though I was a bit put off by a couple things, including drinking, smoking, talking about hard drugs, and going clubbing later that night. Those are all things I tend to avoid, so I found it a bit difficult to socialize. I expect I'll meet more people like that on this trip, but I do hope I can meet some people who are not quite so fond of those things.

After that, I pretty much just went to bed. There were 4 other people in my room who were pretty quiet and kept to themselves. I was a bit interested in talking to them to learn more about them, but I'll take quiet roommates over rowdy ones. The sleep wasn't too bad, except for one person who packed up at left around 4am (!?). The beds even have curtains that slide across so you can have at least some privacy.

Each dorm is locked behind a keycard, which has a bathroom inside. Except this bathroom only has a sink and a shower, no toilet. For that, there's a separate bathroom accessible from the hallway. Both the dorm and hallway bathroom are locked behind keycards, so if you need to pinkel in the middle of the night, you'd better not forgot your key card!

I didn't take a shower this morning because there's no soap or shampoo available, and I haven't bought any. But from what I could tell from the others using the shower, it only runs for 10 seconds before shutting off! I actually timed it, it's 10 seconds! So you have to keep hitting a button over and over for the entire duration of the shower. I understand wanting to save water, but that's just ridiculous!

Okay, enough gripes about cheap accommodations. This morning, I finally bought a Eurail pass. I was intentionally waiting until I got into Europe, just in case something went wrong so I wouldn't have to deal with the refund process. Normally your pass has to be shipped to you before you travel, but Eurail has an app that you can store your pass on and gain access to it immediately.

I bought a Global Pass, which allows me to use almost any of the trains in any EU countries (plus a couple others, such as Switzerland). It covers 15 travel days in a 2 month period, which is perfect for this trip since I'll be visiting just over a dozen places by the end of October. I've heard the Eurail pass can sometimes be more expensive than booking directly with individual rail companies, but that's only if you book at least a month in advance. Train ticket prices seem to be fairly similar to plane ticket prices, where it gets very expensive closer to the travel date. Similarly, longer routes tend to be more expensive too.

And since I need flexibility on this trip, the Eurail pass seems like a no-brainer to me. The pandemic has already caused my trip plans to change, so I won't be surprised if that happens again. Plus it's a lot easier if I don't have to deal with learning each country's rail websites, it's a lot easier to just work with through the one app.

I also took some time to finally create a more detailed trip plan using the Eurail app. This will likely change, but it at least shows the places I'm intending to visit while I'm here.

In addition to buying the Eurail pass, I bought a day pass for the public transit in Berlin. I had considered the bike and scooter sharing services, but there were a few things that made me decide against it. I don't know where you're allowed to ride, I don't know who has right of way in various situations, there are multiple companies that each have their own rental rules and prices, etc. Taking public transit solved a lot of these issues, so I found it easier to just go with that.

There's a company here called Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe (BVG), which runs basically all of the public transit in Berlin, including the busses, trams, S-Bahn and U-Bahn (which are just above and underground rail lines). Any BVG passes allow you to take any of these transportation modes, which gives a lot of flexibility. And all their vehicles are bright yellow, so they're easy to identify.

Additionally, BVG has an app that you can use to purchase tickets, find time tables for any station, plan routes to any destination, and even shows where all the ride sharing scooters are. I've not used it to its full extent, but it looks like a really good app.

Tickets aren't checked frequently, you can hop on and off any vehicle wherever you like. Occasionally a staff member will come through and check tickets, which very nearly happened to me today. The ticket checker was coming through as my train pulled up to a station. A guy near me hopped off the train, and this ticket checker was determined to check this guy's ticket. So he hopped off too, and the doors closed before he finished. I was pretty amused by this. And yes, I had a valid ticket with me!

Anyways, my first trip of the day involved visiting TU Berlin. As I've mentioned before, I'm interested in doing a PhD in Europe, so I want to visit various schools on this trip to get a feel for them. And after visiting TU Berlin, I'm not a huge fan. I was expecting to see lots of students around since I went near lunch time on a Tuesday, but there were very few people around. Maybe they're operating differently because of the pandemic? Or there's something about German schools I don't understand?

On top of that, I don't really like the architecture around the campus, which is very similar to the rest of Berlin. All the buildings are huge, each made of large gray concrete bricks. Entrances are often hard to find, buildings are only sometimes labelled with what's in them, and everything is a depressing color. Plants are rare, almost everywhere has been paved. This architecture just doesn't feel inviting. And given Berlin's history, that might be the point.

Another off-putting aspect of the campus is that there's a major road running through the middle of it. So if you need to get to the other side of campus, you have to cross 6 lanes of traffic. This road also creates a lot of noise pollution, so it's not very pleasant to be around. Although one nice aspect is that it's well built for multiple modes of transit, including cars, bikes, and pedestrians. There are physically separated routes for each transit mode, including a separated parking area so traffic isn't slowed down by people parking. Neat!

On that note, I've noticed a few places have dedicated bike roads, usually denoted as a red path. In the places where these exist, they look pretty good. They're often physically separated from the car traffic with more than just a painted line, and pedestrians know to stay off them. Though it seems that at each cross road, cyclists are dumped into the intersection with all the cars, and the only separation is a painted line. On top of that, there's a lot of places that don't have any bike infrastructure whatsoever. It's possible that there are specific roads that cyclists are meant to take like in Amsterdam, but I don't know. I can at least say the bike infrastructure here is the best I've seen in person so far.

I did explore areas of the campus away from the main road, and there are some nice pedestrian areas covered by trees all around. These were nice and quiet and well shaded, so going between buildings is pleasant despite my other complaints above.

After exploring TU Berlin, I decided to try out the public transit some more, since I bought a day pass. There wasn't anywhere in particular I wanted to visit, so I found the nearest bus stop and hopped on the next bus. I then hopped off next to an U-Bahn station, and got onto the next available train for a couple stops. Both were really easy to navigate, and rides come every few minutes so it's not a huge issue if you miss one.

On top of that, most of these vehicles have screens showing the next 3 stops, plus all of the connections that can be made at the next stop. And there are a lot of connections! Each stop usually had a dozen or so busses nearby in addition to other U-Bahns running at that station. I checked the BVG website, and they have over 200 different bus routes! The only thing I haven't tried yet is the tram, but I assume that's very similar.

One downside I've found to the public transit is the noise. The trams that drive by have a constant high pitched whine to them, the busses have very loud engines, the S-Bahns make a lot of noise when they go overhead, and the U-Bahn stations echo all the noise to an uncomfortable level. But that's the only complaint I've found so far, I'm impressed with the public transit here!

After my random public transit adventure, I decided to head to a specific destination, which is another hostel I'm thinking about staying at tomorrow night. It's themed like a space ship, where all the beds are "capsules", and it seems like something I should try once. I wanted to check it out in-person since I had time for it, and it gave me an excuse to use the public transit more.

The nearest U-Bahn station was on the other side of the block, so there was a short walk to the hostel. This happened to be another very quiet area away from car traffic, and it was very pleasant to walk through. One intersection had a nice little park area with seats, a fountain, and a few hundred pigeons. Someone brought a bag of seeds, and all the birds were flocking around her. It was pretty fun to watch.

Something else interesting I noticed while I was there: you could hear and feel the U-Bahns underneath as they went by, it felt like a tiny earthquake. Makes me wonder how much space there is between the tunnels and the ground...

Speaking of underground, there was a main street between the station and the hostel, which could be traversed by an underground pathways for pedestrians. So you don't have to risk your life by walking in front of 2-ton death machines, you can just go below them!

That's pretty much everything I've done in Berlin so far. I know I haven't been here long enough to talk about it like a local, but I think I've seen enough to have a few conclusions.

The public transit here is really good, and I wish more places had services that came even close to BVG. The places where you can get away from cars are awesome, I love how quiet they are despite all the people transiting through them. And some of the local cuisine is awesome, I've had some really good food here.

But it feels a lot like a typical US city, except with very large concrete buildings that don't feel very inviting. There may be some bias in my view of Berlin based on where I happen to be staying, but that's the general feel I've gotten so far. So many of the buildings here are inhumanly large, and have dull colors to them. Cars still dominate many of the streets, and make so much noise all the time.

I also have to admit, I'm already missing some of the niceties and familiarity of living at home, which may be influencing my views of Berlin. It's been a bit stressful trying to figure out everything on my own, especially while having to use a different language. But I think I'll get used to adventuring by myself. I think another source of my stress could be caused by Berlin being such a busy city, and I may feel more calm in other places. I'll keep pushing onwards! I'll be in new places soon, so there's new things to look forward to!

Ok yeah, technically the journey began a couple weeks ago, but I'm finally in mainland Europe! This was the main objective of this trip, so I'm counting my arrival here as the beginning.

Before talking about that, I've got a couple more things to note from my last day in the UK. I've heard about England having separate hot and cold taps everywhere, but didn't come across any in all the places I visited. They were all single mixer taps like every where else in the world. Although I did discover one other difference in the showers: thermostatic controls. These have separate knobs for controlling water pressure and temperature.

In my experience, I've usually come across either 2 separate knobs for hot and cold valves, or a single knob that controls both by rotating in 2 directions. I've never seen controls like this, so I was very confused the first time I used these thinking they were hot and cold knobs.

Also, I had a Jaffa Cake on my last day in England! It wasn't spectacular, just tasted like orange chocolate really. I was also convinced to try some Marmite, and I actually sort of liked it. I don't think either will be a top choice for me in the future, but it was fun to try them!

My flight out of the UK was just before 9am, so I had to wake up at 5am this morning. Could do with some more sleep, I'm feeling a bit tired right now. But getting through Gatwick was pretty straightforward, didn't have any major problems. Though I did notice a couple differences from what I'm used to while going through the airport.

At the security checkpoint, there are designated places for multiple people to unpack their bags and other items to be sent through the x-ray machine. This allows multiple people to unpack everything in parallel, whereas security checkpoints in the US can be completely held up by a single person. And all the bins are automatically transported between each side, making for a super efficient system. I want more of these!

One other difference at the airport is that my ID wasn't checked at security, but it was checked at the gate. I'm not sure which system is better, but it was certainly an interesting difference.

The flight wasn't anything super special, other than announcements were made in both English and German. I listened to both, and was only able to pick out a few words in the German announcements. Definitely need more practice!

Most of the flight was cloudy so there wasn't much of a view while flying over the channel. But we did fly right over Berlin as the clouds were opening up, and I managed to get a good picture of it.

That's a lot of letters and numbers I'm not familiar with, I've got no clue what the difference is between RB and RE and FEX and U and S. I can make some educated guesses, but adding to my confusion was the fact that many of the signs around were written in German only. I took the recommended route, which is a train that goes directly from the airport to the center of Berlin. It was labelled RE7, not RB14, maybe they're different trains that take the same route?

Anyways, getting to the right platform for the train was another source of confusion, because the signs only indicated the name of the final destination for each train, which I didn't know. I eventually managed to find the right one and hopped on after buying a ticket. The train ride was fairly pleasant, pretty similar to the train rides in the UK.

From there, it was roughly a 10 minute walk to the hostel I'd booked, called St Christopher's Inn. It turns out there's 2 in Berlin, and I went to the wrong one! So I had to walk another mile or so to the correct one. I probably could have taken a bus or something, but I decided a walk would be easier since I don't have experience with the public transit here yet.

I got checked into my room, which is alright. There's 3 bunkbeds in it, which are reasonably comfortable. Although this room does smell a bit like someone's been working out in it. Shouldn't be too bad since I'll only really be sleeping there, I'm intending to spend most of my time elsewhere anyways.

Once I'd settled in, I was getting desperate for lunch, since I hadn't eaten anything in about 7 hours. While I was walking to the correct hostel, I passed by a shop selling currywurst. I've heard about currywurst before, so I knew I had to go there. I hopped in line, and almost managed to do the entire order in German. I got lost when I was asked if I wanted it spicy or not, but the guy taking my order knew English. He commented that my German was pretty good, which I think is mostly a result of having learned proper pronunciation and grammar in high school. My main issue is that I just don't know enough words.

I went to pay with my card, but apparently they only accepted cash. And in my rush to get food, I hadn't yet put any Euros in my wallet, so I only had British pounds on me. Oops! Fortunately the guy let me have it anyways. And I have to say, it was really good! I'll definitely have to get this again, it had really good flavor combinations.

I've been looking at how people get around here, and there's certainly a wide mix of transportation methods used. I'll probably have more detailed info once I've seen more, but common transit methods I've seen include walking, cycling, driving, busses, trams, and scooters. There appears to be bike and scooter sharing services around here, where you can just pick one up for your commute and go. And the scooters are electric, so it looks pretty easy to get around with them. I'll have to look into these more!

As for the city itself, I've not seen enough to make any firm conclusions yet. I've only seen a bit of the east half so far, I'll look around the west half later today. From what I've seen so far though, this doesn't look like the nicest area to live. Streets are noisy, sidewalks are a bit dirty, and the old soviet architecture isn't very pretty. But like I said, I've not seen a lot yet, so my opinions may change. That's all for now, I'm gonna go explore some more!

​Been a little while since my last update! I've been spending a lot of time with family, so haven't had much time to sit down and give updates, but I do now!

​Everyone has pretty much gone home over the last couple days. It was definitely hard to see everyone go again since we don't visit often, but the time we did spend together was great! On the last day, we had a walk through the woods nearby with my grandma, that was a nice way to spend the last day with her.

Anyways, I've got other places to visit, so I had to get going. Definitely looking forward to the next time we visit!

As I mentioned before, I'm visiting some cousins near London before I leave the UK. I took a train ride here yesterday, which was good experience navigating the train system before I do it in another language! I had a transfer in London, which required me to change stations. The train into London dropped me off at Paddington, and my train out of London left from Victoria, so I had to take the underground to get between them.

Something that was very confusing to me was the ticket system. I was expecting to have different tickets for each train, but I only got one at the Cheltenham station that appeared to cover it all. The stations here have automated ticket checks, where it scans a bar code on the ticket and opens a gate for you. They're super quick and efficient for those who are familiar with them, but as a non-local, I found them a bit intimidating. There are times when hundreds of people are rushing through, and I didn't want to be the one person holding everyone up if I messed up somehow.

Fortunately I didn't have any major issues, my one ticket got me through all the ticket checking machines, except for 1 at Victoria. Luckily there wasn't anyone around for me to hold up, but I needed a staff member to let me through. I'm not sure why it didn't let me through, makes me wonder if I'd done something wrong somehow.

Other than that, the trip was pretty easy, I'm really liking travelling by train! It's much more pleasant than cars or planes, though it does require some familiarity to get around here, it doesn't seem to be built for non-locals. This is definitely another thing I'll be looking at in detail during the rest of my trip, a good train network is great to have!

I'm staying in my cousin's house for a couple days before flying out to Germany. There's a couple other things I've noticed about houses in the UK that are different from the US. For one, every bathroom has the light switch outside of the bathroom. I've seen this on rare occasion in the US, but I still find it very odd. The only good reason for it that I can think of is that you're less likely to get shocked if you have wet hands. But that's really stretching for a reason, I think they're a bit silly to not be in the bathroom. What if you have malicious friends who decide to turn out your lights while you're in the shower at night time? Then you're just fumbling around in the dark!

Another common thing is hot water radiators in every room. I believe there's a central hot water system that runs hot water to a radiator in every room for heating. Most of what I've seen in the US is a central hot air system that blows hot air into each room, so this is definitely new to me. I'd be curious to learn about the efficiency of each system, because I think water loses less thermal energy on the way to the destination, but they're probably slower at transferring the heat into the room due to lack of moving air.

I think the water radiators could be improved by having a fan blow air through the radiator to get more heat transferred. On top of that I think the central water heater is probably just some kind of direct heating (gas powered, resistive heating, etc.), but that could also have higher efficiency by implementing a heat pump. Those are just my thoughts on heating from the last few days, thought I'd write down somewhere.

Technically I'm not posting this on the correct day, so I'm cheating and pretending I posted this 2 days ago. Not a whole lot has happened over the last couple days, though I haven't really had a chance to sit down and write until now.

We decided to take a trip down to Bristol, primarily because a YouTube group my brother and I watch are based in Bristol. This group is called Yogscast, and their headquarters are called YogTowers. So we decided to take a day trip there to visit and have lunch. We took a train over there, which gave me a chance to experience how well the trains here work.

The tickets to Bristol were booked in advance through the website, so we could quickly pick them up at the station. Interestingly, the website allows you to reserve seats, but you can't select specific seats. Instead we got to choose whether we wanted window/aisle seats and table/airline seats, then seats got selected for us. So we ended up not having seats next to each other, which kind of defeats the point of reserving seats in the first place. Fortunately the train was pretty empty, so we could just sit wherever we wanted.

The train ride was pretty pleasant, it's a much nicer way to travel than a bus or plane. Busses are usually crowded, have less comfortable seats, loud, the busses get stuck in traffic, etc. Airplanes are very similar, except you also have to spend a couple hours in an airport before and after your flight. The train was quiet, spacious, quick, moderately comfortable seats, and it was great to see places passing by outside.

Once we got to Bristol, we were able to walk to YogTowers pretty easily, and took the obligatory awkward photo in front. Obviously we didn't try to go in, because that would be pretty invasive if every fan tried entering. Plus there's a pandemic going on.

There's a nice courtyard outside that we sat in for a little while as we looked around for lunch. This courtyard was away from traffic, and I really noticed how quiet it was. There's a small road running around the courtyard for cars to park, and there were a couple times when a car came through. The cars weren't driving quickly, but I was surprised by how loud a single car is compared to the near silence beforehand. I'm sure the noise was increased by the rough road surface and reflected by the surrounding buildings, but I'm still astounded by how much noise in a city is created by cars. I'll definitely be looking for quiet places during the rest of this trip, they're so nice to be in.

We found a cafe nearby to have lunch, and I noticed the fridge with drinks had orange Fanta available. But it didn't look like the Fanta I'm used to in the US, so I ordered it. Fanta in the US has a vibrant orange color to it, but this Fanta was more pale like normal orange juice. And that's exactly what it tasted like; fizzy orange juice! Fanta in the US has a clear artificial and sweet taste to it, whereas this tasted much more like the fruit. The bottle also had a funny shape on the bottom half, maybe it's where you're mean to hold it?

Another observation I've made is that a lot of major roads and motorways here have foliage grown on either side of the road. This helps dampen the noise pollution coming from the road, and keeps it hidden from those who don't want to see cars constantly outside their house (and prevents drivers from seeing into their homes). This is such a sensible thing to do, I'm surprised I haven't seen this technique used in other place until now.

Another big difference I've seen is how recycling is done here. For reference, in my experience in the US, trash is separated into recycle and non-recycle bins, and that's about it. I have seen dedicated compost bins occasionally, but it's pretty much just those 2 different bins. The non-recyclables go into a landfill, and the recyclables go... well... actually I don't know. It seems to depend a lot on where you live, but some places actually sort out the different materials, some places just export the recyclables to other countries, and some places just throw them into a landfill. Recycling in the US is a joke.

What I know about recycling in the UK only comes from my grandmother, so this may not be a general explanation for all of the UK. But the recyclable materials actually get sorted out into different bins rather than all being lumped together. This makes way more sense to me, since the person throwing out the trash can quickly determine which bin it goes into. Lumping all the materials into 1 bin is harder to sort, since things can get tangled up together, and someone seeing the trash for the first time has to spend time identifying what the material is.

On top of that, the recyclables have to be clean before they can go into the bin. In hindsight this sounds obvious, but I've never heard of anyone washing takeout boxes until now. Really gave me insight into how bad recycling is in the US, that's something else I'll be looking at in different countries.

One last thing to cover here: outlet adapters. We've all brought some obviously, but I found quite the spectacle the other day. Someone's laptop charger required a ground plug, but many adapters don't have a hole for the ground plug. The only adapter they had with a ground plug was a transformer, which had an EU plug on the other end. So another adapter was needed to connect the EU and UK plugs. On top of that, there was a USB power charger connected to the converter. So the chain of plugs goes UK (240V) -> EU (240V) -> US (120V) -> USB (5V). That gave me good giggle.

I went in to downtown Cheltenham today to have lunch with a friend whom I've never met in person before, which was pretty fun! We ate at a pub called Wetherspoons, and both decided to get fish and chips, because, you know, England.

After that, we decided to walk around town a little bit because I wanted to explore. I considered it to be a bit of a warm up before I visit places in mainland Europe, so I get a better sense of what to look for since I don't normally walk through towns. Along the way, we popped into a few shops, and I ended up buying a few sausage rolls. We also stopped into a Poundland, and I ended up buying some chocolates!

They unfortunately got a bit squishy due to the heat today, so I've got them in the fridge now. Which reminds me, air conditioners are not super common around here. Normally that's fine, but it gets a bit too toasty at times. Should have tried to get ice cream or something to cool down.

Anyways, the main thing I wanted to talk about in this post is infrastructure, the most exciting of topics! But seriously though, this is actually something I'm very interested in, because I think the US does a lot of it in bad ways. In particular, the US is heavily dependent on cars for transportation, almost every other method of getting to places is infeasible much of the time due to a number of things. Let me explain:

Like most places, the US has zoning laws dictating what can and can't be built in various areas. Unlink most places, the US does this in a ridiculous way. You'll often find suburbs several square miles in size, in which the only thing that's allowed to be built is housing. In these housing regions, the only type of transportation network that exists is roads with tiny sidewalks.

Now suppose you're at home, and you want to go somewhere. If it's your neighbor's house, great! As long as they're nearby, you can walk there. If you want to go anywhere else like a store, well... you have to drive.

Walking is infeasible, since the closest store is usually a few miles away. On top of that, you usually have to cross a few dozen roads just to get there, and each road will have at least 5 lanes of traffic, because pedestrians aren't prioritized. So not only will it be a long distance to walk, but you'll also spend a lot of time waiting for your turn to cross. Plus, US roads are tremendously dangerous for pedestrians, over 6000 were killed in 2019 due to traffic crashes. Given how rarely people walk in the US, that's an alarming number of people!

You could also try cycling to your destination, if you like getting hit by cars. Honestly, I've felt worse about cycling in the US than walking, the infrastructure for it is horrendous. The most popular solution I've seen is to paint a bike lane in the road gutter, since riding your bike on the sidewalk is illegal. So only a few feet separates your handlebar from a car zooming by you at over twice your speed. No thanks!

Another alternative is to take the bus, but, good luck with that. In my experience trying to take the bus out of a US suburb, it's nearly impossible. Whatever bus stop is closest to your house will probably be going the wrong direction, so you'd have to make a connection in the middle of a city, meaning you've already gone the wrong direction if that wasn't your destination. On top of that, I've found busses to be unreliable, often coming late or even early sometimes. Late busses are tolerable, early busses are not!

There really isn't any other possible mode of transportation in my experience, since things like rail lines are fairly uncommon. Thus you're pretty much forced to drive, whether you like it or not. Don't get me wrong, driving has its perks. You can get to your destination much faster than walking or cycling, you're in a climate controlled environment, you can carry lots of stuff with you, etc.

However there's a lot of downsides to cars too. Cars are very expensive, usually tens of thousands of dollars for a new one. Then you need to buy gas on top of that, which adds up a lot faster than you might think (don't forget the carbon emissions that are killing the planet). And because cars have thousands of moving parts that will eventually fail, maintenance costs build up quickly. All of this is on top of insurance, another constant money drain. Compare this to a bike, which would be a few hundred dollars.

Cars are also incredibly dangerous. Cars are basically 2 tons of metal flying down a road at 60+ mph, that's a heck of a lot of kinetic energy! When you get into a crash (when, not if, it's basically expected to happen to everyone), there's a good chance you'll sustain some major injuries, or even be killed. How often do you hear about bike crashes being that severe? Now you've got huge medical bills and repair bills for your car, I hope you had insurance for that!

Here's an example that illustrates everything I've talked about above. This is an intersection in Manchester, New Hampshire where I did an internship a few years ago. I had to cross this intersection every week or so to get groceries. This is clearly designed exclusively for cars to get through, not for anything else. Pedestrians, busses, and cyclists are physically able to get through, but it's really not designed for them. Pedestrians have to wait for the cars to go first, and hope that no one runs a red light. This intersection has no bike lanes, so cyclists can choose to block cars by riding in a lane, become a criminal for riding on the sidewalk, or dismount and become a pedestrian. Busses get held up by the cars since there's no dedicated bus lane. This is extremely typical for US intersections, they just don't prioritize anyone other than cars. 

That's a pretty dramatic difference. The UK image has several stores spattered throughout the housing area, a handful of bus stops, and even a rail station. The US screenshot has a landscaping company and a school. That's it. It's also got a giant 5-6 lane road to cross in the middle!

It just feels so much easier to get to where you need by foot, whether it's a grocery store, a pub, etc. Obviously not everything is in walking distance, but it's certainly a lot more than the US, and there's no scary roads to cross over. It looks to me like major roads have pedestrians just go under the road, which is so much more sensible than forcing people to cross what is effectively a highway with a stoplight.
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As for busses, they're actually a feasible way to get around here! The stop outside my hotel has a bus coming by every 5-10 minutes or so, which is way more frequent than the 30 minutes I'm used to in the US. And there are dedicated bus lanes in lots of places, so busses don't get held up by traffic as frequently. The ticket price is pretty reasonable too, it was £2.40 in each direction for my trip today (could have saved some money if I'd bought 1 ticket instead of 2). Considering the cost of fuel here, that's cheaper than driving.

I've heard comments from locals that the busses aren't good due to not arriving on time, but so far it's better than what I've experienced in the US. And with how frequently busses come, it's not a major issue if you miss one. My biggest complaint is that the stop names aren't called out, so you're just expected to know where your stop is.

As for cycling, I don't think I've seen enough to make a firm conclusion, but it does seem a bit better. Cycling on the sidewalks is also illegal here, though it sounds like it's not really enforced. There isn't much infrastructure for bikes on the roads that I've seen, but I have seen some cyclists using other routes. Hard to comment on since I haven't seen a lot, but it's certainly not popular as primary transportation.

As for driving infrastructure, it's quite a bit better here than the US. There's a number of things done very well that keep cars moving. For example, intersections are almost never crossroads, they're almost always either T-junctions or roundabouts, and traffic lights are fairly rare. From what I've seen, this does an excellent job of not making drivers wait at a traffic light, even though an intersection is empty.

The image below is one example that illustrates a few different techniques used in the UK. The A40 is the main road running from left to right, Whittington Road joins from the bottom, and Telstar Way joins at the top. For those who drive on the right, remember that the UK drives on the left. Both of these illustrate the main types of T-junctions I've seen (note that this isn't a crossroad, since you can't get from Whittington to Telstar).

Whittington only connects to A40 on the bottom, heading left. From Whittington, there is no way to go right on the A40. This prevents drivers from crossing multiple lanes of traffic, which holds up cars behind them as they wait for a clearing on both sides of the road. Also from the A40, you can only get onto Whittington if you're going left, not right. This prevents drivers from clogging up the A40 as they wait for the other side to have a clearing. Given that there's 3 lanes of traffic on each side, clearings big enough to get through are uncommon.

Telstar is a bit different, it connects to both the top and bottom of the A40. This introduces the problem of drivers waiting for traffic to clear as I said above, however this is mitigated in a simple way: adding an area in the middle for cars to wait. This doesn't solve the problem, since drivers still need to wait for a gap in lanes of traffic, but it means drivers don't have to wait for both sides to have a clearing when trying to enter the A40. Similarly, drivers getting off the A40 have an area to pull off, meaning they're not holding up an entire lane of traffic as they wait for a gap on the other side.

This is pretty similar in principle to the suicide lanes commonly found in the US, where cars can wait in the middle without blocking others. The main difference is that the UK has physical barriers in regions where you can't cross. I think the physical barrier has beneficial psychological effects, such as making people drive slower than they would if it were all a big road. Plus is foliage all over, it's nicer to look at.

Also note how in each junction design, the small road connecting to the bigger road curves the lane in the right direction. This allows drivers to change their speed outside of the main road, further helping prevent clogging of traffic. This is unlike most intersections in the US, where each lane intersects perpendicularly to the connecting road. This means drivers getting onto the main road aren't up to speed by the time they're on it, which can slow down cars behind them. And drivers getting off the main road have to slow down all the cars behind them in order to safely make the turn. Now that I'm looking at this closely, that's a bit ridiculous!

Of course, we can't talk about intersections in the UK without talking about roundabouts! I must say, they're done really well here. They come in many shapes and sizes, each designed for slightly different applications. There are tiny ones in small housing areas, and there's large ones used on main motor ways. There's even roundabouts with traffic lights on them!

Roundabouts are great with low to medium density traffic. Those who are on it have priority, which helps keep things flowing. No traffic lights are needed to keep the flow in these cases, humans can manage that easy enough just by following a few simple rules (wait your turn, follow the painted lines, use your indicator, etc.).

The problem with roundabouts is when you get to high density traffic. Most likely, there will be one entrance with loads of cars coming on, meaning there's never a gap for anyone else to get on. This is where the roundabouts with traffic lights come in, they give an opportunity for those drivers on smaller roads to actually get through it.

Another aspect I've noticed of the larger roundabouts with multiple lanes is that the lanes spiral outwards. So if you want to turn right, you get into the rightmost lane, which eventually spirals outwards and pops you out at the correct exit. Brilliant! You can see how the dotted lines in the image below make drivers keep going out one lane each time there's an exit. There's even labels on each lane for which exit it will take you to. I personally find this amazing.

Fun fact: did you know there's a tiny hole in your eyelids that runs down to your nose? It's useful for clearing tears from your eyes, but not so useful for keeping your face clean.

Light heartedness aside, today was pretty heavy. As I mentioned before, my grandfather recently passed away, and today was the day of his funeral. There was a great service to commemorate him, though to respect the privacy of others, I won't go into any detail about it here. So it's just this short post for today.

Going to miss you, Gramps.

I got much better sleep last night! We'll see how tonight goes, but I seem to be acclimating. In general, I feel awake and sleepy at the correct times of day, so I think I've adjusted time zones pretty quickly.

​I've been working on booking travel to mainland Europe. Before I leave the UK, I'll be visiting some cousins in Purley for a couple days, which is just south of London. I looked around at a few options for getting there, and train sounds like the best option. I'll head there on Saturday, then fly to Germany on the next Monday.

Figuring out travel restrictions for getting into Germany has been a bit confusing, as I've heard conflicting and incomplete information from various sources. The German government website is not written as clearly as I'd expect for Germans, there are several times when the information I want is a couple paragraphs below where I'd expect, so it's not feasible to quickly skim the website. It's also not helped by the recent EU recommendation against US travelers, which is made more confusing by the fact that I've got US and UK citizenship, have a US vaccine and live in the US, but am coming from the UK. So it's not clear to me the best way to get into Germany, but I believe I can get in safely if I claim US citizenship on arrival without having to quarantine.

I'm not yet sure where in Germany I'll fly to, anywhere in the north half is fine with me. I will be visiting someone in Leipzig at some point, which could be before or after I visit the Netherlands. Once I'm there, I'm intending to stay in one place for a couple days, such as a youth hostel, Airbnb, or a hotel (depends on prices and quality, I'll be looking). Then I'll hop on a train to the next place, stay for a couple days, repeat.

Anyways, that's all the travel updates I have, the rest of yesterday was pretty quiet. Although I did make a wonderfully bad typo that messed up our dinner plans. We were hoping my brother would cook dinner, and he was out at a climbing gym. So I sent him a text asking "Are you okay cooking dinner tonight? If so, do you need stuff from the store?"

Instead of "cooking," my phone replaced that with "coming." To which he delightfully replied "Yep! Actually, shaving cream would be nice"

I hadn't realized my typo, so I was very confused at that point. We had some shaving cream at the house, so I figured we'd just wait until he got home to decide what we needed from the store.

When he did come home, of course he didn't realize we wanted him to cook, and it was already getting late. We realized we had food vouchers from the hotel we were staying at, because of some booking mistake. The vouchers were for £75 per day (yes, that's a lot, it wasn't a cheap booking mistake), so we decided to get food from the hotel.

We asked the person at the bar to order for takeout, who told us to order at the front desk. We went to the person at the front desk, and said we needed to order at the bar. Hmm...

The person at the front desk agreed to just take our order for us, which she then had to enter into the computer at the bar. Really not sure why the person at the bar sent us to the front desk if they have the system for entering food, but at least the order was placed.

Rather than waiting by the bar or the front desk for the food, we were told that we'd be called in the room once the food was ready, and we'd have to come back to the front desk to pick it up. No room service, which is fine, but it's just a bit silly that we had to go upstairs just to go back downstairs.

While we were waiting, we wanted to give the people back at the house an update, but realized we hadn't grabbed their phone numbers. We looked through our contacts and discovered that we had multiple numbers for each person. None of us were able to call due to international calling plans, and we didn't know which numbers were correct. I eventually found a correct WhatsApp number, so we were able to give them an update.

Once the food was ready, we went back to the front desk to pick it up. We were going to take the food back to the house, but it was instead served on plates on a couple trays. We asked for the food to be put into boxes, which triggered some confused looks at us. It really wasn't helping that we had American accents. I hope I've reached my quota for being the annoying tourist!

As they were boxing up the food in the back, we managed to make friends with the person at the front desk. The food was pretty good, albeit a bit cold once we finally ate like half an hour after the food was cooked. We'll likely order from there again in he future, but hopefully give the hotel staff a bit better instructions this time!

Apparently my time zone adjustment isn't going as well as I'd hoped. I slept great the first night, went to bed around 10pm and woke up around 10am. However last night I couldn't fall asleep until about 7:30am, maybe I slept too much the first night. Regardless, I only got about 2 hours of actual sleep, but I'm forcing myself to be up during normal hours to hopefully get acclimated more quickly.

We did try visiting the Cheese Rolling Hill yesterday, but it's not very easy to get to. We got close, and instead decided to visit the Gloucester Cathedral. I personally don't much care for historic tourist attractions, but I at least took one photo to put up here. I didn't take any other photos, since there are better ones online anyways.

Once we got back, we had dinner, then browsed through some old photos of my older relatives (we got up to great-great-grandparents, these photos go back a long ways). Nothing else major happened, was a bit of a slow day for people to get acclimated.

This morning we took our Day 2 COVID tests. The tests I've done before are either saliva samples or nose swabs, however this one was a combined throat and nasal swab. So we first had to gag on a stick, then shove it up our noses and sneeze. Fun time! It's a bit weird shoving saliva into your nose, but it's probably better than shoving boogers into your mouth.

Since this post is a bit short so far, I can give some more insight into what I'll be doing in the next countries. As I said in the first post, I'm wanting to move to Europe, so this trip is to give me a sense of what it's like to live in these places. However I'm only going to be staying in each place for a few days, which really isn't enough time to fully learn what that place is like. So I'm going to instead focus on looking at universities in which to do a PhD.

I've been open to the possibility of doing a PhD, but never had any project in mind until now. For the last couple years, I've been a research assistant for a project involving shooting lasers at asteroids (dramatically oversimplified), which would actually be a great PhD project. I've quite enjoyed doing it (when it works...), so I think it would work well for me.

Doing a PhD in Europe for a few years would allow me to get a much better sense of what it's like to live here, since I'd be able to easily visit places I'm interested in during breaks. I've also heard that PhDs in Europe are shorter since there's no classes to take, unlike in the US. And since I've already been working on this project for a while, I might be able to finish in even less time than normal.

So that's the plan! I've got a list of universities to look at while I'm here, though I still need to get my exact route planned. I was intending to take the Eurostar from England to the Netherlands, however current travel restrictions require me to quarantine while I'm there, which defeats the purpose of me going. So I'll instead first go to the north half of Germany for a couple weeks, then to the Netherlands, then to the south half of Germany, then Switzerland. I'm intending to mostly take trains between places, but there are several options for getting to mainland Europe.

As the travel restrictions stand right now, I wouldn't have to quarantine at any point if I follow that route. I'm also trying to go from north to south so the weather doesn't get really cold. Plus I've heard that Switzerland in the fall looks really nice with all the trees changing colors, so that'll be something to look forward to. I would like to just book all my travel now and commit to something, but with how quickly travel restrictions change, I think it's better to stay flexible.

Is there an award for lasting a 9 hour flight without going to the bathroom on board? If so, someone owes me a medal.

Nothing too exciting happened on the flight, which is probably a good thing. The seats had screens built-in with a tethered remote control, the back of which had gamepad inputs! There were actually games available to play in flight, that's something I've never seen before! I played a few rounds of Tetris to pass the time.

I recently bought a pair of ANC headphones, which made a huge difference for the flight. It's amazing how much sound is cut out by these, definitely worthwhile. Specifically, I bought the Surface Headphones 2, which have really good ANC and pretty good audio quality (have to play with the equalizer a bit, the lows and highs need to be amplified a bit). They also pair with multiple devices really well, and can seamlessly switch audio sources. I also really like how each ear cup has a rotary wheel for volume and ANC amplitude, though I do wish they had mechanical end stops rather than just encoders without physical limits.

My biggest complaint about these headphones is the ear fitment. The cushions aren't deep enough, so my ears were constantly pressed against the speakers, making my ears sore after a while. On top of that, the bottom of the cushions didn't seal very well to my head, so some low frequency rumble still made its way through. Might be able to fix both of those problems with some aftermarket cushions, will have to look around.

I did manage to sleep for a couple hours or so, but got woken up by a flight attendant checking whether my seatbelt was on. Couldn't fall asleep after that, oh well. That might have actually helped me with the time zone adjustment, so there's a silver lining.

​I also managed to catch the sunrise in the wee hours. I imagine that must have been great for the pilots since the plane was going directly east. Makes me wonder how they deal with that...

As we came in over England, it was overcast (typical England!) and I noticed the clouds had wavy patterns in certain areas. After a quick Google, I believe these are called undulatus clouds, though I'm not a meteorologist. My guess is that they're somehow caused by the wind moving over some hill on the ground, and causes repeating regions of high and low pressure, and thus repeating clouds. I'm not certain about this explanation, but since I couldn't find one, I made my own!

Even more interesting is seeing the plane's shadow on the clouds below. Or rather, just outside the plane's shadow. This is something I've noticed before on other flights, where there appears to be a faint ring around the shadow, and it appears to have a rainbow gradient. This is the best photo I could get, the plane was turning and I didn't have time to change camera settings. You may have to squint to see the ring more clearly, it can be hard to pick out.

Since I'm not even sure how to Google for this one, more speculation time! From looking at the ring, it appears the outside of it is red and the inside is blue, which is exactly what normal rainbows do. Normal rainbows are caused by light refracting through rain drops (simplifying a bit here), where the refraction angle depends on wavelength. Something similar seems to be happening here. I've only ever seen this effect when the shadow hits a cloud, which indicates to me that the cloud is necessary, and thus the tiny water droplets in the cloud are causing the light to refract.

In a normal rainbow, the light first reflects once off the back of the rain drops before exiting again. It just so happens that the angle between the incoming and outgoing visible light is about 42 degrees, which is why normal rainbows appear so large. I'd bet the effect seen above is caused by 2 reflections off the back surface, resulting in an angle much closer to 90 degrees (or 0 degrees, depending on how you think of it). I don't think the angle of a double reflection is twice that of a single reflection, but 84 degrees (or 6) actually seems like a reasonable estimate.

Anyways, enough about clouds. After landing, getting through the airport was surprisingly easy. Rather than talking to a security officer to get through border control, an automated machine scanned my passport and face, then let me right on through. Didn't have to talk to anyone, or even show my Passenger Locator Form to anyone at any point (even though they make a big deal about filling it out).

After a 2 hour car ride to my grandparents' house, I was finally done travelling! It was nice to sit down in a comfy chair and be with family for a while. Sounds like we'll be visiting Cooper Hill tomorrow, better known as the cheese wheel hill. If you're not aware, people race a cheese wheel down a hill. It's worth a Google!

That's pretty much it for today. I managed to stay up until 10pm local time, and can tell I'm fading pretty quickly. Hopefully this will get me onto the English time zone more quickly, I'd definitely prefer to be awake during normal hours!

Day 1, here we go! Hoping I packed everything I need, I'm getting on a plane soon, so can't really go back now!

I should probably explain this trip and where I'm going. I'm interested in moving to Europe for a variety of reasons (I'm not a fan of the way the US does some things), but I'm not certain of exactly where I want to go. Thus my goal is to explore a few places I'm interested in to learn more about them, and help me narrow down where to move. At the top of my list are Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, so those are the countries I'm planning on visiting on this trip. I took German in high school, which one reason I'm interested in these countries. Ich muss mehr Deutsch lernen!

I'll also be stopping in the UK to visit my grandparents since I'll be close by, although my grandfather sadly passed away recently, so we'll be having his funeral while I'm there. I'll be visiting a handful of family friends in various places while I'm in Europe, who have offered for me to stay with them or give me a tour of their area. I'm extremely grateful for those who are helping me out, thank you!

Let's also address the elephant in the room: it's the middle of a pandemic right now. Hopping between numerous destinations doesn't sound like the smartest idea in the world, eh? Well the reason I'm travelling now is that it's a really good time for every other reason. I just graduated college, and have been intentionally avoiding looking for jobs specifically so I can decide where to live first. It's easy to get locked into an undesirable place just because there's a good job there, and I'm trying to avoid that. It's possible to find good jobs almost anywhere, so I think it's better to first choose the best location, then find work there.

I'm also choosing to go just after summer, because the main tourism season is over and the weather is still nice. I'm intending to start in the north side of my destinations and work my way south so it stays relatively warm throughout the trip. 

Obviously I could take some more time off to wait until the pandemic is over, but there's no telling how long that will be. It was first thought that it'd be over in a few months. That was over a year ago. We've got vaccines now, but even with over 50% of people fully vaccinated in these countries I'm visiting, cases are still spiking (this website is great for viewing COVID data). My bet is that the pandemic will continue on at least through the end of this year, and I don't want to wait that long.

On top of that, I'm doing my best to be a safe traveler. I got fully vaccinated back in May, and I wear a mask whenever I'm in a place with lots of people. I wash my hands regularly and try to avoid touching stuff if I don't need to. I'll be doing my best to make sure I'm not spreading any germs, I want this pandemic to be over just as much as everyone else.

Which brings me to now. I'm sitting at the gate for my flight, and just had dinner. Found a combined Pizza Hut and KFC, so I got a small pizza and some chicken tenders. Haven't had either in a while, so it was pretty good! If you ever find yourself in Terminal A at the Denver Airport, it's tucked back in one of the corners.

My plane showed up as I was eating. I hadn't checked the type of aircraft beforehand, so I had assumed it would be a 747. The walkway blocked the view, so I first saw the wing come into view, followed by a single enormous engine. The phot below doesn't do it justice, that engine is huge! I quickly realized it wasn't a 747. A quick Google search later, and it's actually a 777. Haven't been on one before, so this will be a first!

 Anyways, boarding is starting so I should get ready for that. I don't know how often I'll post here, but I'll do my best to cover the major events that happen at least. Europe here I come!

PS - the WiFi at the airport isn't great, took like 30 minutes just to upload these 2 photos!