First lectures already started...
After having visited some course introductory talks I went to my first lecture called ‘Informatics 2A: Processing Natural and Formal Languages’.
It looks like it is going to be a very interesting and well prepared lecture, let’s see what happens! On Monday I signed up for the The University of Edinburgh Computing and Artificial Intelligence Society and will try to take part in some of their activities. For Saturday I signed up for a trip to North Berwick organised by the ISC (International Student Center). Looks like a really nice day trip – I hope that I will have a nice story and many pictures of that trip up by the upcoming Sunday so stay tuned.
Today we had really nice weather so I decided to go running around Hollyrood Park. You can take a look at a live webcam which is located somewhere in Holyrood Park. Tomorrow there is going to be an Informatics Colloquium by Professor Sir Tim Berners Lee about the Semantic Web. I really hope to get tickets for that event so that I can actually get to see it live!
BBQ@Robertsons and lunch with Christian...
Last night we had a pretty cool BBQ (barbecue) thing going on at Robertsons Close. It was organized by Will, a really cool guy from New York (cheers Will). So we had hamburgers, hot dogs and even marshmallows! I also got to know a lot of new and interesting people from many different countries like France, Italy, Brussels, Spain, Mexico…
Today I finally booked the flight which get’s me home over the christmas holidays so for all of you guys@home: Watch out! I’m gonna be there from the 21st of decemeber until the 3rd of january. I also finally had the chance to talk to Ralf over Skype (*cheers to Frostburg :) *)!
In the afternoon, Christian, a really cool guy from the ETH in Zurich, called me up and so we decided to cook a late lunch and enjoy some local beer brands. It was pretty cool and you can see the result right here.
Ohh, and I got a really sweet package from Austria :-) thanks Christina, you just made my day!
Getting Organized
I arrived on moday, the 12th of September 05. The flight went pretty well and around 1:30 local time I arrived in Edinburgh. From the airport I took a double decker bus in order to get to waverly station which is in the middle of Edinburgh and really close to where I live. From there on I walked with all of my luggage through parts of the old town and finally arrived at:
| Address: | 9/3 Room 2 Robertsons Close Cowgate Edinburgh EH1 1LY |
..which kinda is my new address now :). So I picked up my keys and moved in. What I found was pretty much OK, I knew it’s not gonna be a five star hotel ;) so I didn’t push my expectations to high. Before I unpacked anything I went and looked for a store where I could buy some food, something to drink and some stuff with which I could clean up my room. Guess which store I found – LIDL. I thought that was pretty funny, now I went to a foreign country and the closest store to my student flat is the same store which is closest to my flat in Linz.
So after I settled down, there was a bunch of organisational stuff I had to get done like:- Meeting with my DoS (Director of Studies) to discuss my course choices
- Matriculation
- Opening a bank account
- Registering with a doctor
- ...
Most of this is done now, and I can finally concentrate on other things :)
Starting from Scratch
Finally I found some time to finish setting up my Blog software so that I can keap track of what I’m doing over here in Edinburgh. An obvious side effect of this blog is that you can also catch up on what I’m doing if you are interested :)
So let’s start with some pictures of my room first. Unfortunately I did not have the time yet to make any more pictures but this will change very soon!
The good lookin guy on the first picture is me ;). The other pictures show my room from different perspectives. Here you can find some more pictures I made of our flat.
