Berlin: Poor But Sexy

The former mayor of Berlin, in an attempt to attract artists, musicians and other creative professionals, described Berlin as arm aber sexy or poor but sexy. The slogan worked and attracted artists from all over the world. But it also attracted tech workers and entrepreneurs. People who were neither sexy nor poor. And in a way it attracted me too, as I moved to Berlin in 2020. The planning started in December 2019, but it took until Oct 2020 for me to move, due to the pandemic and the subsequent lock-downs.

Berlin has a unique charm, thanks to its unique history. After a tumultuous 20th century, peace has finally reached Berlin. Berlin has constantly had to reinvent itself over the 20th century. At the start of the 20th century, under the rule of Kaiser Wilhelm I, Germany was the most powerful of all European countries and Berlin, it's capital, the center of all European and world politics. However the first World War and the subsequent German defeat brought an end to the aristocracy and monarchy. The Weimar Republic was established. Berlin was the capital of the new republic, with a constant threat of a coup by both the far-left and the far-right. 

During the 1920s, Berlin became the center of arts, literature, cinema and science. German Expressionism in arts and cinema reached a peak. German cinema was far ahead of contemporary Hollywood, as German cinema dealt with far more "intellectual" topics compared to the action-adventure and romantic movies of Hollywood. The great Alfred Hitchcock spent some time in Berlin working on a movie in 1924, and left with a German influence that lasted with him for a lifetime. Sciences too rose into prominence. Albert Einstein won the Nobel Prize in 1921 while living in Berlin.

The Great Depression and the subsequent rise of the Nazi Party brought a great change in Berlin. Berlin became the capital of the Reich. The Nazis labelled all art from the Weimar Republic decadent and hedonist. The Second World War was an eventual disaster for Berlin. Almost 87% of the city was destroyed in the second World War, with Berlin hit by around 68 thousand tons on TNT. At the end of the war, the city was split into Eastern and Western blocs, which eventually became part of two countries - the capitalist West Germany and the communist East. The 60s saw East Germany build a wall around West Berlin to prevent it's younger population from fleeing to West Germany. The two German states were a front of the cold war and Berlin was at the center of it. The fall of the wall in the 1990s and the subsequent reunification of Germany and Berlin undid the damage of the cold war to some extent. Berlin today is the hub of innovation, research, arts and tech.

Living in Berlin has been a unique experience for me. The restaurants, cafés and museums are shut due to lockdowns. Most of the tourists are missing, which means that you can explore the city in relative solitude. It also means that I have no clue what actual Berlin looks like. But it is certainly different to any other place I have ever been to. Whether it's cycling along the Berlin Wall, or having lunch by the Spree or jogging in the hunting grounds of the former Prussia kings, each experience has been an enriching one. Every building or street has a unique piece of history attached to it. The Brandenburg Gate is a relic of the era of Prussian kings dominating Berlin and Europe. The Berlin Cathedral, adorned by statues of Martin Luther and other protestant reformers, all pointing to the scriptures, is reminiscent of Berlin's protestant past. The TV Tower, Karl-Marx-Alle and the Soviet styled communist apartment complexes symbolic of the Soviet Influence. The "Little Istanbul" of Kreuzberg and the Dong Xuan Center are a reminder of the various ethnic communities in Berlin.

The building that encapsulates 20th century Berlin the best is Detlev-Rohwedder-Haus. Built under the Nazis in 1936, it was the largest building in Europe. It housed the Luftwaffe, the aerial warfare branch of the German forces in the Second World War. Post WWII, the building became the seat of power of East Germany and after German reunification, it houses the Berlin branch of German Finance Ministry, the Ministry that is responsible for revenue administration. Some buildings are destined to be used for evil.

Berlin today is not poor, it is liberal, non-judgmental, culturally diverse, artistic and still sexy.

In Bruges

What's the best way to spend two months locked up at home, when the world is grappling with a pandemic and there are no guarantees when normal life will return? I wish I knew the answer. I am trying to think about happy times, like last year, when I had one of the most memorable experiences of my lifetime. I travelled alone, to a different country, for the first time, and it was wonderful. I thought I had seen a lot of things. I had lived in 8 different cities across 4 states in India, each state with a different language, all different from the one I spoke at my home. I am from Kerala and right from my childhood I had learnt that no place is more beautiful than Kerala. I thought nothing in the world could surprise me. I couldn't have been more wrong. 

I was in Belgium for a two day conference. But at the last moment, at the advice of a coworker, I decided to skip the second day of the conference, to visit a small city near Brussels, a two hour train ride away. And yet it is years apart from Brussels. 

Bruges is a city in the province of West Flanders, in the Flemish region of Brussels. The city is beautiful and the city centre is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. From the early 12th century to 15th century, the city was a strategic centre and formed an essential part of the trade routes of Western Europe. Bruges' golden era declined during the late 1500s and by the early 16th century, the rise of Antwerp caused a decline in trade. It gradually descended into slumber and became a ghost town, with population falling to 50000 by early 1900s. The Germans occupied the city during WWI and WWII but did not destroy it. Even the Germans couldn't bring themselves to destroy this beautiful city.

At the same time, Bruges became one of the world's first tourist destinations. The city has preserved most of its medieval architecture. Once in Bruges, you are transported to a time when life was simpler. The houses resemble the ones in fairy tales and the city centre is stuff of Bollywood dreams. The brightly coloured houses, the arced rooftops, and the many churches can make anyone look a great photographer. The city is connected by canals and one can take a ride in boats across the canals. Only later, when I read more about Flanders, did I realise that not only is Bruges one of the best places in Europe, the entire region of Flanders is an absolute beauty. (If you wonder why red poppies are a symbol of remembrance for soldiers fallen in WWI, read about the poem "In Flanders Fields").

I spent around 4 hours and decided to return to my hotel in Brussels. I had imprudently forgotten to charge my phone. Not a smart thing to do while travelling in a country, where you don't speak the language. One of the worst things about visiting Bruges is that you will have to eventually leave. 

A random canal with some houses in the background

The canal with the Bell Fry in the background

A beautiful arched bridge

Discovery of Karnataka

Towards the end of last year, a few friends and I decided to explore the South Indian state of Karnataka. Some folks in the group were planning to migrate to other countries, and others going back to school. This was the one big party before we all went our separate ways. There was little hope of meeting everyone together again and very little hope of traveling together for 10 days. The trip began with almost zero planning. The idea was to figure out the travel plans along the road. We rented two cars and started our ride on a Saturday evening, three days before Christmas. The first stop in our journey was Kodagu, better known as Coorg. Kodagu is a hill district on the Western Ghats, with thick forests, rich wildlife, and world-famous coffee. Madikeri is the district capital and the principal town. The district lies between the state of Kerala on the south and Karnataka on the north. We reached our Airbnb around 2 in the night and crashed on whatever we found. The next day started with a heavy breakfast, complemented with some of the best coffee I have ever had. Our first stop in our "itinerary" was Abbey Falls. It's a cliched waterfall, which gets a lot of tourists every year. We spent the afternoon exploring the areas surrounding the waterfalls. The aim was to get away from the crowds. The evening plan was a night trek, which involved a 3 km trek in a thick forest in complete darkness. Of course, we had a guide with us. It wouldn't be wise to let loose a bunch of concrete jungle citizens in an actual forest. The night trek ended with some rabbit hunting. Most of us choose to avoid, more so because of fatigue rather than any love for animals. On the morning of Christmas Eve, we resumed our expedition. We checked out some other places around Madikeri. One of the prominent places in Kodagu is Raja's seat, a beautiful garden on a hilltop. The view from atop is very beautiful and one can see all the different hills that make up the Kodagu district. By afternoon, we started the journey to our next destination, Mangalore. The drive down from Kodagu mountain ranges was beautiful. It started raining too, disturbing the serenity of the hills, and creating an aesthetic marvel. So much so, that even the lazy ones started to volunteer to drive. -:) Mangalore is a port city in the Arabian Sea. It is one of the earliest places where European merchants landed via sea, the first being Vasco Da Gama in 1498. Unlike him, we reached Mangalore, via road, at around 6 in the evening. And this is the place beyond which we had no plans. We spent some time looking for hotels, till we found a cheap hostel for the night. At 200 a night, it wasn't all bad. For starters, we had running water in the bathroom. But that's where the luxury ended. We spent Christmas Eve at St Aloysius Chapel. Italian Jesuits built St Aloysius Chapel in 1880 and painted the interiors in 1899. The upper arches depict the saints of the Church. The lower arches depict Jesuit saints and the sloping ceilings depict the Apostles. Some of us attended the Christmas service, while others were busy devouring the rum cakes. The next day, on Christmas day, we traveled to St Mary's Islands. St Mary's Islands are a set of islands in the Arabian Sea, off the coast of Udupi in Karnataka. The subvolcanic activity led to the formation of the island more than 88 million years ago. The only way to get to the islands is via a 6 km ferry service from Malpe. The ferry ride is a different experience altogether. One can find people partying and dancing on the boats. We joined the people dancing at the deck and did not shy away at all. We spent the afternoon at the Island's before resuming our nomadic voyage on four wheels. Our stop for the night was at a hotel 20 km south of a small town called Bhatkal. Next day, Boxing Day, we started early for the temple town of Murudeshwar. Murudeshwar is a temple town from Hindu mythology. It is famous for it's Shiva temple and the world's second-tallest Shiva statue. The statue depicts Shiva sitting in meditation, with his back to the Arabian Sea. Some devout believers went inside the temple. By afternoon, we were traveling again, this time towards the coastal town of Gokarna. The drive to Gokarna was scenic, the roads sandwiched between the rocky Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea. We reached Gokarna around 2pm and spent the rest of the day at the different beaches around Gokarna. Gokarna is another temple town, and a popular holiday destination, with many isolated and unexplored beaches. We spent some time at Om Beach, named so because of the protruding land mass giving it an "Om" shape. Some of us bought some cheap souvenirs, before proceeding to Half Moon Beach. The only way to reach Half Moon Beach from Om Beach is by navigating a tricky climb over a small hill. It was every bit worth it though. We were all alone at this beach, left with the vast sea all for ourselves. If you have been to other Indian beaches (I look at you, Goa and Kovalam), this is a pristine experience. We spent the evening playing frisbee volleyball at the beach and floating in the ocean. It was only after sunset that we realized we had to navigate back the treacherous terrain, in the dark! Thankfully we found some fishermen, who gave us a ride on the motorboat after some haggling over the fare. The dinner was at Kudle Beach, with some wonderful seafood and some fine quality rare herbs (wink wink). The dinner went late, very late into the night and by the time we came back to our rooms, sleep was the only thing on our minds. Next stop in our journey was Dandeli. Dandeli is a town famous for its Dandeli Wildlife Sanctuary and the Kali Tiger Reserve. The Wildlife Sanctuary is home to Panthers, Elephants and various species of birds. We had planned to visit the Kavala Caves. Kavala Caves are tiny in dimensions. One has to climb around 400 steps to reach the entrance and then climb down. There are prior permissions required from the Forest Department for visiting the caves. We had to skip it and move to the next item in our "agenda" - rafting in the Kali river. The usual rafting trail stretches for about 12 km which starts at around 9 am. We missed it, so we had to settle for the smaller trail of about 5 km. The trail has grade 2 and grade 3 rapids. Three of my mates bounced out from the raft, and we sprang into action. One of the fellow rafting groups caught hold of one of them. We chased down the other guys, one of whom was floating on his back as per the instructions. The last guy found a rock and climbed on top of it and stayed there till we reached him much later. The rest of the day was quite uneventful. Nothing could follow this. We left Dandeli late in the afternoon for our final stop at Hampi. We stopped at a small town called Haliyal for our dinner at a roadside hotel named Hotel Baburao. Baburao is one place with some amazing food and the world's best lime soda. After a ravishing meal, we resumed our journey towards Hampi. We reached Hubli at around 11 pm and decided to stop at Hubli for the night. After searching for a hotel for some time, we found a place, and we decided to end our quite eventful day. The next morning we resumed our voyage to our final destination. We reached Hampi by 3pm in the afternoon. Hampi is a beautiful ancient city from the Vijayanagara Empire. At the height of its fame in 1500 CE, it was the world's second largest city after Beijing. In 1565, a coalition of Muslim cities attacked the Vijayanagara empire. They destroyed the city and it has been a ruin ever since. UNESCO declared it a World Heritage Site in 1986. The Tungabhadra river separates the city into two areas- the older ruins and the new "Hippy Island". We spent the evening exploring the newer part of the city and then climbing the Anjaneya Hill. There is a temple on top of the hill and it has a breath-taking view. The climb to the top is about 600 steps. We enjoyed the sunset and took some mandatory wanderlust pictures before coming down. Our Saturday plan was to explore the ruins of Hampi. The plan included the Virupaksha temple, Underground Shiva temple, and the Vittala temple. Vittala temple is famous for its musical pillars. The pillars produce the seven musical notes when hit at the right spots. It is also famous for the stone Chariot which is also found on the back of a fifty rupee note. We left Hampi by 6 in the evening. We stopped at Anantapur for our dinner. We were famished and devoured the food like hungry animals much to the amusement ( or derision?) of the hotel staff. We reached our homes late Saturday night, exhausted by an arduous trip. Along the way, I found out that Liverpool thumped Arsenal 5-1. What a way to end the year!

FOSDEM 2019

I recently had the opportunity to attend FOSDEM. If you haven't heard of FOSDEM, it is a two-day conference held in the beautiful city of Brussels, Belgium. The goal is to promote free and open source software. FOSDEM brings together people from diverse FOSS projects. And unlike other open source conferences, FOSDEM is completely free to attend.

It was my first time attending FOSDEM and I was unsure of what to expect. And if I am being completely honest, I was a tad sceptical as to whether it would be worth travelling to Brussels all the way from Bangalore. I am glad that I was wrong. Along with attending some high-quality talks, I spent 3 wonderful days in the city of Brussels, visited the nearby city of Bruges and spent a couple of days at Amsterdam.

I met some very interesting people and talked to some very interesting projects. There were some very cool stands from some very popular projects like Apache and Mozilla. Being extremely popular, these were extremely crowded. I met some folks from the PostGraphile project, a really wonderful project that allows one to create a GraphQL API server instantly by pointing to an existing PostgreSQL. How cool is that! There were some guys who maintain the super impressive game 0AD. 0AD is a free and open source game like Age of Empires, only better. It's completely built by game developers all over the world. Imagine playing a strategy game written by yourself! There were some other popular projects too like GlusterFS by RedHat, a distributed open source file system. 

But the most interesting of all was the XMPP project. The XMPP project is aimed at building a set of open technologies for instant messaging, multi-party chat and a lot of other things. If one could send instant messages to other people, much like how we send emails now, without ever having to worry if the receiver is on a different email provider. So I could send a message over one of my messaging apps to a person on some other messaging app. The folks at XMPP were kind enough to answer the numerous ignorant questions that I asked.

I spent a lot of time in the open media dev-room. Dev-rooms are where people with a specific set of interests come together to talk about interesting projects in the domain. That is where I discovered GStreamer, an open source multimedia framework for building multimedia applications on top of it. There were interesting talks, with one in particular about using Rust to build multimedia applications. I also spoke there about combining OpenCV and CUDA to build video analysis tools. 

FOSDEM is a really special conference in that it is run by volunteers and donations alone. Brussels is a really nice place to visit, maybe February is not the best time. Here is a picture of ULB Solbosch, the venue.