Ghent, Belgium

Since my next few weekends are going to be rather busy with Paris next week and London the week after, I decided to take it easy this week and not venture too far away from Leuven. Throughout the past month, I've explored the majority of the touristy cities in Belgium, including Brussels, Antwerp, Knokke, and Bruges. For today, I decided to scratch off the last major hotspot in Belgium, Ghent.

Ghent is situated northwest of Leuven, the same direction as Bruges. The train ride from Leuven to Ghent took about 1 hour. I think I'm starting to get used to the transportation system here. I'm much more familiar with the general destination that I need to head to and I think I'm starting to look less like a tourist, minus the fact that I always have my camera in hand snapping pictures.

The medieval architecture throughout the city center here vaguely resembles that of Bruges. Ghent is much less lauded upon than Bruges, and as a result there are far fewer tourists here. Although they are present, the street-blocking mobs of tourist groups were thankfully absent.


The picture above is of a fountain right in front of the train station.

Unlike most of the cities I've been to so far, the train station in Ghent is a little bit of a trek to the city center. It took me about half an hour to walk to the center. Visually there was nothing really appealing to see during this brief walk. My guide book actually suggests just to hop on the tram and bypass the 1 mile journey to the city.


The Leie river runs through the city and that's what you can see in the background here along with one of the many bridges that connect each side.

My first stop for the day was the 14th century gothic St. Bavo's Cathedral. The highlight here is a 24-panel alterpiece of The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb.


I had to paste this image from google images since taking pictures of the original was prohibited. It was completed in 1432 by Jan Van Eyck and is considered one of Belgium's masterpieces. The entire framework was at least 10 feet tall. Adam and Eve are featured in the top left and right panels, respectively. The Virgin Mary and John the Baptist are symmetric about the central figure, who is either God the Father or Jesus. Van Eyck experts have yet to identify the central male figure, since elements of both God the Father and Jesus are represented.


In the background here is the town hall.

The above structure is the Castle of the Counts. It was originally built in 1180 and is surrounded by the Leie River. Over the last 2 centuries the castle has been restored to its original figure. This castle was known to have an active torture chamber. Inside the castle is a small museum dedicated to these torture devices.

The above picture shows original torture devices, a noose and a cleaver used for the detachment of limbs. A guillotine was also on display.


The framework of this guillotine is not original. Instead, it was based off a model and built in 1913. The blade, however, IS original. It's kind of creepy knowing that lives were lost due to this blade sitting in front of me.

In addition to torture devices, this castle also had a prison chamber.


I'm assuming prisoners were thrown down this hatch and left for dead. The pit is enclosed by 4 stone walls with a barricaded door on one of them. Definitely not the place to be.

The number of sites to visit in Ghent are far and few. It's relatively small in terms of touristy attractions. There are 2 popular art museums that feature Belgian artists, however due to the combination of me not recognizing the artists and the unstimulated artistic appreciation part of my brain, I decided to pass on these museums.

Aachen, Germany

After spending the night in Cologne this past Saturday, I took a train over to nearby Aachen, which sits on the border between Belgium and Germany. This is a very small city best known as the favored residence of Charlemagne in the late 8th and early 9th centuries.

The first landmark I passed was this city gate. Only two gates remain throughout the entire city. All the others were destroyed during the eventual wars that arose.

After passing through the gate, I made my way to the city's main cathedral.


This cathedral was originally built in 786 AD, however, additions were made to it after it suffered damage throughout the years. Charlemagne's remains are stored inside. Unfortunately I didn't get to view it. Seeing that it was Sunday, there was a service inside that prevented tourists from entering. Here's another picture from the opposite side of the cathedral.

Placed directly in the city square, I found a Starbucks.

From what I've noticed, the franchise has very few stores throughout all these medieval cities. All throughout Amsterdam, Bruges, Antwerp, and Brussels, I failed to notice any of these chain coffee shops. I'm assuming the primary reason Starbucks has few locations over here is because of the fact that much of the architecture throughout these cities are rather medieval, and there is little room for commercial expansion. In order to preserve the history in these cities, I feel like renovation in these ancient buildings is restricted.

In addition to Starbucks, there are significantly fewer fast food restaurants here. I can count the number of McDonalds and Burger King restaurants I've seen over the past month on my 2 hands.

The picture above is of the city square from the direction of the city's town hall.

After relaxing and sitting outside Starbucks for half an hour, I decided to go on a tour of the city hall.

It was built in the 14th century and is the place where Kings were coronated. Once I walked inside, I was given a tour via an audio device.


This device was actually an iPhone. When I accidentally reset it, I saw the iPhone interface and the T-Mobile symbol that indicated it was connected to the network. Since this device had GPS, whenever you stepped into a new room, a prompt of audios would appear specifically for that room. Fourteenth century architecture, meet 21st century technology.

These stairs in the city hall have been ascended by kings and nobles of centuries past.

Once you get to the top of the stairs, you can see copies of Charlemagne's relics.


Centuries ago the original relics had been stolen. After recovering them, they were stored and these copies (forged in 1913) were put on display.

Once I left the city hall, I made my way to the Elisenbrunnen. It's a neoclassical hall surrounding one of the city's fountains. I actually didn't see the fountain itself. I didn't find out there was one until I got back to Leuven.


Anyway, that was my trip to Aachen in a nutshell. It's a very small city and there are very few sites to see. As a result, few tourists roam the streets.

Changing of the CEOs

I still have a post to write about Aachen, which I visited last weekend, but I figured I'd make a quick post about today. There was a reception today at IMEC, where the current CEO stepped down to join the board of directors and appointed a new CEO. There was a large reception in the cafeteria where all types of orderves were served, ranging from cheese, salami, sushi, lumpias, some sweet interesting yogurt with dried shrimp in it, small pieces of cake, and a small assortment of meats.

What surprised me about this reception was that there was an open bar of beer in addition to champange. It's 3:30 in the afternoon and people are helping themselves to an endless supply of beer during work. The perception of alcohol here in Belgium, in addition to much of Europe, is much more relaxed than the states. It's very common here to have a beer or two or three with your lunch and it's not frowned upon in the least bit. Whereas in the states the addition of alcohol to complement an early meal is generally taboo, it's widely accepted over here. I was just surprised by the relaxed atmosphere with respect to alcohol that I figured I'd mention something about it.

Cologne, Germany

I spent this past weekend on the west side of Germany. The country's bigger cities, like Berlin and Munich, are on the east side of Germany and are a little too far to trek to for a weekend. I would love to visit either of those cities, but it takes over over 7 hours to get there from Leuven and I'm not quite sure when I'll have time for that.

Anyway, on Saturday morning I left Leuven for Cologne. I caught a train from Leuven to Liege and then from Liege to Cologne. It took less than two hours to get to the city. The weather forecast for this day was overcast, with several sprinkles all day long. As long as it wasn't pouring all day, I was fine with the cloudy weather.

As you can see, I was pretty excited to head over to Germany.

The second I step out of the train station, I find the Cologne Cathedral. It's Cologne's most famous landmark and the largest gothic church in northern Europe.


I think I'm getting used to the whole self-portrait thing, even though I tried taking this picture at least 5 times.

The construction of this cathedral took over 600 years to complete. Construction began in 1248 and wasn't finished until 1880. The cathedral contains the Shrine of the Three Kings.

The opening of the shrine in 1864 exposed human remains along with 2,000 year old clothes. It is believed that the remains are those of the Three Wise Men. Throughout the entire cathedral are stain glass windows depicting religious events. I'm not well versed in biblical history, so unfortunately I can't make sense of their meanings.


This structure was right in front of the cathedral. I'm not quite sure of it's significance.

After walking around a little bit, I was starting to get hungry since I neglected to eat breakfast. I stopped by this crowded pastry shop. (It was crowded during the day anyway. I came back later at night to take this picture.)

At this shop I picked up 2 berliners for 1 euro, exactly what the sign says. After looking for a definition of a berliner, I found that it's a traditional German pastry made from yeast dough, filled with a marmalade (in my case strawberry), and topped with conventional sugar.


Once I filled my belly with a snack, I was ready to start the rest of the day.

I made my way to a perfume shop.

Cologne (the perfume) was invented here in 1709 with the Eau de Cologne, a spirit-citrus perfume. This original formula was used by nobles of the time. To this day, the original formula is still produced. The recipe, however, remains a secret. Inside the shop, there is a fountain that circulates the formula, which apparently you can take a sip from. I didn't realize you could drink from the fountain until after I got home to Leuven. I wish I knew this fact beforehand.

After stopping by the perfume shop, I made my way to the Lugwig Museum.

The musuem features works from the 20th and 21st centuries and has one of the largest Picasso exhibits in Europe. Since I'm not much of an art buff, I can't really elaborate on my opinions of the artwork. Honestly, I had a really hard time trying to find the inspiration and meaning behind the majority of the works here.

There were suppose to be paintings from Andy Warhol, but I didn't find his exhibit here.

After shopping around along the streets for a little bit, I decided to head out to dinner. I went to a place called Gaststatte Bei Oma Kleinmann where I ordered a schnitzel and a locally brewed beer. The beer tasted vaguely similar Corona light.


It consisted of a huge slab of breaded pork stuffed with potatoes, grilled onions, bacon, and cucumbers. This piece of meat was gigantic. It took me about 40 minutes just to finish it.

After dinner, I made my way to a hostel.

I was hoping to find other travelers or backpackers to chat with and perhaps go out to a bar, but this place was mostly vacant. I checked the lounge, kitchen, and downstairs cafe and only saw one person using one of the computers. Right when I entered the room and said hi, he just left. My room had two bunk beds and a locker for each person.

Cologne is a city of cathedrals and art museums. Besides the main cathedral that I showed earlier, there are 12 Romanesque churches. If you're a fan of churches and cathedrals, this is definitely the city for you.

Eurotrip Planning

My work at IMEC this past week mimicked last week fairly well. I've been running models and simulations in order to determine a viable structure to then bring into reality when we fabricate these 3D self-assembled plasmonic nanostructures. In addition, I've been communicating with the technicians that operate the instruments over here so that I can try and ease the transition from the equipment we use at Hopkins to the equipment at IMEC's disposal. Just as I had assumed earlier this month, transitioning between equipment facilities is the hardest aspect of this research experience.

One thing I've noticed while being trained here at IMEC is that it helps immensely to have a background in microfabrication. Going through basic safety trainings in the clean room, it's almost assumed that you're familar with lithography and all of the steps and equipment involved. Luckily I've been working in the Gracias lab for the past year and half, so my transition to the research here has been fairly smooth. I don't mean to imply that you have to have a background in microfab to be able to work here, because that is absolutely not the case. It's definitely feasible to learn about lithography through means provided by Hopkins (like Dr. Gracias' Micro to Nanotechnology class or the Microfabrication lab offered by the BME department) or through literature.

Anyway, onto the point of this blog post. Seeing that I'm in Europe until the end of August, I'm trying to plan weekend trips to different cities. As I've shown in my earlier posts, I've mostly been traveling throughout Belgium and a little bit of the Netherlands. This weekend, I had originally planned on making a trip to Paris. This past Tuesday, I booked a hostel in Paris for Friday and Saturday night. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of not booking a train ticket first. I went to the Leuven train station on Wednesday to buy a train ticket to Paris (via Brussels) for Friday night. Lo and behold, the trains were fully booked the entire weekend. So there goes that plan. No trip to Paris. I immediately canceled my hostel reservation and began looking for somewhere else to go. The lesson I learned from this was that in the event that I need to take one of these high demand trains, I need to do it in advance. For future reference to anyone planning on vacationing in Belgium, if you plan on taking direct trains from Brussels to Paris or Brussels to London, be sure to purchase your ticket at least a week ahead of your planned departure date. To be safe, book your ticket a couple weeks (or even a month if possible) before you intend to leave, otherwise you'll be departing later than you had intended.

This fully booked train scare encouraged me to plan my trips further in advance. Accordingly, I've already booked train tickets to Paris in 2 weeks and London in 3 weeks.

Long story short, I've made plans to visit Germany this weekend. Tomorrow morning I'm catching a train to Cologne where I'll be spending the entire day walking around the city and sight seeing. On Sunday morning, I'll leave Cologne and head to Aachen for the rest of the day before returning to Leuven on Sunday night. The current weather forecast predicts rain in both cities this weekend, but hopefully it changes for the better.

Amsterdam

This past Thursday, I decided to make a trip to Amsterdam. Earlier during the week, I was debating between going to Paris or Amsterdam. Each passing day I was monitoring the weather forecast for each city, seeing which one would be better. On Thursday night, I decided I was going to go to Amsterdam. I went to a BBQ that night with some of the other interns, so I didn't get back to my studio until 11:30 pm.

Planning on spending the entire weekend in Amsterdam, I forgot that I needed to book a hostel. I scoured the internet for hostels in Amsterdam and I come to realize that either they're all booked or they are 3+ miles away from the city center. Also, one thing I didn't realize is that most hostels require at least 2 nights stay on the weekends. However, I couldn't even find a hostel that had a bed available on Friday and Saturday. Instead of spending the weekend in Amsterdam, I decided that I would try to make it a day trip. If I wanted to go back, it's easy enough just to hop on a train.

I forgot to mention how I'm managing my use of the trains. Before I left for Europe, I bought a train pass called a Eurail Global Pass from this website. With this train pass, you can travel on each eligible country's national rail line without any extra charge. There are 22 countries where this pass is valid and the only trains the pass does not cover are high speed trains. With regard to the cities I currently plan on visiting, I should only need to pay an extra charge to go to Paris and London. These extra charges are actually discounted as well, since I have this type of rail pass. When I say I'm hopping on the train, I'm doing just that. This rail pass allows me to evade the ticket lines to purchase individual tickets. I just arrive at the train station, park my bike in the parking garage, wait for my train, and then hop on.

The train ride to Amsterdam took 3.5 hours and included 1 change over. I traveled from Leuven to Brussels and then from Brussels to Amsterdam. To get the most out of my day, I boarded the 5:30 am train to Brussels and arrived in Amsterdam around 9:00 am.


Once I arrived in Amsterdam, I bought a city map. There was absolutely no way I could have navigated the city without one. It was incredibly helpful, however, my navigation skills could use some improvement . Immediately after I stepped outside the train station, the first thing I noticed were the canals that spanned the entire city. These canals cover over 100 kilometers and include over 1,500 bridges.



I planned that the first stop of my day would be the Anne Frank house. On the way, I stumbled across some coffee shops offering cannabis. Although visually they were easy to identify, the unique stench emanating from the store was much more noticeable.

Side note: Although cannabis is legal here, it doesn't mean that everyone uses it. Before coming to Amsterdam, I had the impression that a large majority of people in the city were users and that these coffee shops would be teeming with people. From walking around the city all day, I noticed that these shops were relatively empty and that more people smoke cigarettes than cannabis. I feel like a lot of mainstream movies give a false interpretation of Amsterdam.

Anyway, I eventually made my way to the the Anne Frank house.


When I got there, it was about 9:30 in the morning. After waiting in line for a little more than half an hour, I finally was inside.
This is the outside of the Anne Frank house. Taking photographs is prohibited inside, so unfortunately I can't provide pictures. Once you're inside, you can walk through the moving bookcase and peruse throughout the entire house. The hideout actually consisted of two floors, each with several small rooms. On display, they had Anne Frank's original diary flipped open to a page where you could see her handwriting and the edits she made throughout it. Throughout the house, there are news clippings and pictures posted onto the walls, which are still intact from when the house was raided in 1944.

After the Anne Frank house, I made my way to Rembrandts' house. His artwork wasn't actually on display. This month, there is a traveling exhibit of his friend, Jan Lievens.




This spot is where Rembrandt worked on his paintings. I was a little disappointed that I didn't get to see Rembrandt's works, but oh well, there was nothing that I could do about it.

After Rembrandt, I found my way to the Van Gogh museum.


Once again, photography was strictly prohibited. Van Gogh's works were organized chronologically such that you could see the evolution of Van Gogh's style. Some of the pieces on display included Wheat Fields, Wheat Fields with Crows, The Harvest, and Skull smoking a Cigarette. Pictures of Van Gogh's work in books pale in comparison to the originals. Most of Van Gogh's work is oil on canvas and what you don't see in books is the intricate texture that each brush stroke provides.

Walking around Amsterdam still, I found a Chinatown!


Continuing on with my travels, I found myself in the Red Light District.

In the Netherlands, in addition to cannabis, prostitution is legal. The windows on the left are where the women watch the world go by and try to grab customers. The scene is suppose to be completely different during the night hours, however, since I wasn't able to find a hostel, I can't attest to that.

After walking around all day, I decided to find somewhere to eat for dinner. I went through my travel book and found a place called Kantjil & de Tijger (Antelope and the Tiger). It was a modern Indonesian restaurant just outside the city center.


Tonight, I tried the nasi goreng Kantjil, accompanied with a dutch beer called Hertog Jan. The food consisted of fried rice, topped with pork kabobs, spicy stewed beef, pickled cucumbers, and vegetables. The food was delicious and pretty cheap too! The total bill was almost 14 euros.

After dinner, I had to make my way towards the train station to head home. My first train was from Amsterdam to Brussels. The train schedule was altered at the last minute, some stops being removed and others added. I ended up arriving in Brussels 20 minutes later than I was suppose to and in the process I missed my train at 10:56 pm to Leuven. The next (and last) train heading to Leuven would leave at 12:10 am, so I ended up having to wait in Brussels until then.

IMEC Update 6/19/09

I realize I haven't discussed much about my research over here at IMEC. The major reason for this is the fact that the first couple weeks have been rather slow.

The work atmosphere at IMEC is similar to a research position at a university. The company structure is divided into departments that are then subsequently divided into groups. Each department has a department leader and each group has a group leader. For example, I'm in the Bio-Nano Electronics department in the Functional Nanosystems group. The work day is very relaxed. You can essentially come to work whenever you want, as long as you put in 8 hours a day. I've typically been coming in around 9 am and leaving around 5:30 or 6 pm. I imagine once the research starts picking up I'll be staying later in the evening.

The company places itself as a link between university and industry. Almost all of the students who work here already have their Bachelors or Masters degrees and are either here for an internship, like myself, or working towards a PhD. In my temporary housing, the age of the interns ranged from 21 to 28. Only two of us did not have a degree.

IMEC's link to industry stems from their collaboration with other companies. Several third party companies conduct their research here and fabricate their products using IMEC's facilities. This 3rd party presence has contributed to the slow progress of my research. For the past 2 weeks, I've been trying to get approval to use one of the instruments, specifically a plasma etcher. One of the companies that conducts their research here depends on this instrument for their products. As a result, the IMEC technician for the instrument was hesitant to let me introduce a new process into the mix. Yesterday, I finally got approval to use the instrument, so hopefully the research starts to pick up.

So what have I been up to these past couple weeks? I spend a lot my time getting trained on the procedures here. One aspect about university research that I miss is the ability to use instruments on my own, whenever it was available. At IMEC, a lot of instruments are serviced, meaning that technicians, and only technicians, operate them. Coming in to this internship, I expected technicians to be responsible for the instruments. With a single technician, the company saves itself a significant amount of time in training each employee on the tool. Additionally, the company saves money. People who aren't well-trained on a piece of equipment are more likely to have an accident and not know how to remedy the situation.

In addition to being trained on procedures, I've been learning how to use a simulation program for electrodynamic modeling. Before we physically fabricate some structures, it's important to know what we should expect and if it's worth investing time in fabricating them in the first place. This past week I've been running simulation after simulation hoping to get some usable results. The structures I'm currently modeling are a combination of the cubes we fabricate in the Gracias lab and plasmonic nanostructures developed over here at IMEC. In these simulations, I'm looking for localized charge distributions and resonance wavelengths. Within the next week or two we should be physically fabricating these structures.