day 2- Aushwitz

It was an hour and a half-ish ride to Aushwitz-Birkneau.

We got there at 1230, just in time for the tour at 1. First we say a movie with very graphic imagery. Then the tour started. It was very intense. It lasted about 4 hours with breaks!

This is the entrance to the camp. The words read, "Work sets you free." Note the first B was welded backwards by the prisoners.

A Halt sign.

The original ground where the prisoners walked on.

The buildings had some of the most horrifying exhibits in them. We were not allowed to take pictures in the buildings. Many people did but I wanted to respect the rules. One example is a whole room filled with 50,000+ heads of human hair! The Nazis used it to make rugs and such. There were also rooms with eyeglasses, shoes, and luggages- they believed they were being moved to a new settlement, not a concentration camp.


A memorial.

A guard tower where a Nazi would stand during the long roll calls during inclement weather.

Electrocuted barbed wire.

Gas chamber #1 where the Nazis led prisoners in, made them strip, and told them they would be taking showers. Instead in the dropped Zyklon B and murdered hundreds of thousands of innocents this way. They couldn't burn the bodies fast enough.

Looking into Birkneau. It is just a few miles away from Aushwitz, and is a much bigger campus.



Train tracks leading into Birkneau.

Rows and rows of barracks.

This is the spot where Nazi doctors would play God. If they deemed you healthy enough, they pointed to the right, and you would survive. If he pointed to the left, it was off to the gas chambers, immediate death, and there would probably be even no further existence of yourself.

A memorial. This is where the tour guide told us about the 'beast in the heart of all of us', and how we should remember all the tragedies that happen in the world, not just Aushwitz. Fortunately we cannot process this suffering or our hearts would cry all the time.

When the Russians were coming, the Nazis blew up the gas chambers. It is very difficult to keep ruins as they are.

More ruins.

Another memorial.

Ruins of gas chambers. Gas Chamber #1 is the only surviving one.

This is where the prisoners lived. About 6 to a bunk.

This experience was the most heart-wrenching experience I have ever had in my life. I will never forget it.

I go to Prague soon. So much traveling, I am behind in posts. But I will catch up one day.

Krakow- day 1

So, I was dreading the 7 hour busride to Krakow. But it wasn't that bad at all. The bus was very well-equipped, with tv's and comfortable seats, and water and coke (cheap too!) to purchase on board. The only bus I've taken in America is the Greyhound, for this long of a trip too, but there the seats are not nice, there are no tvs, and there are frequent stops. The worst part of this trip was probably having to get up early.

We stopped off in Slovakia midway.

Somewhere in Slovakia.

Our bus!Pierogies for lunch! They are tasty!

We wandered around Krakow, and some of us went to Wieliczka Salt Mine. It was very impressive. There were salt sculptures, running water (even saltier than the Dead Sea!) and an majestic chapel room where weddings occur!

Down the stairs.

Most of my pictures didn't turn out so good since it was so dark. But it was a cool experience. There was a statue of Copernicus near the beginning- he even visited the mine.

One of the many tunnels. With the hour tour, we visit only about 1% of the mine since it is so big.

A salt-chandelier that hangs in the wedding room. There is a replication of 'The Last Supper' on the wall in this room. There is also a large new statue of Pope John Paul II. He visited as well- he is Polish and spent much time in Krakow.

Then we trekked back home. This was about 30 min or so outside of Krakow.

Our hostel was nice. Sleep was a much needed respite. The next day- Saturday, our plan was Aushwitz.

back to BP

So i'm back in my cozy little flat in Budapest.

I couldn't wake up for my early class today, sadly enough, but I got caught up.

I got home and I was quite bored. I didn't feel like doing homework at all. So I sat there and finally got distracted with math.

Last week when I was distracted I was playing with the Goldbach conjecture. I got a cool-looking sequence related to it, and I noticed the On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences did not have it. I added it, wanting to get it done, and today I surprisingly checked, and there was my entry!! I wish I could work on this topic for my thesis, but it is probably headed nowhere. So today I spent a few hours looking at the percentages of the numbers in my sequence which are prime, finally programming code in Maple checking for it. The numbers fit quite well to a power curve, which is so cool! Ah math makes me happy~~

So I will post pictures tomorrow. And I go to Prague Wednesday morning!! We have a four day weekend. Life is exciting!

Krakow

So I'm in Krakow. Yesterday we visited the salt mine. Today- Aushwitz. Tomorrow, back to Budapest.

Life is very good. don't have much time so i will post MUCH more later.

Later-

I just can't say no.

So. I couldn't resist. I have decided to go to Krakow and Aushwitz. I need to travel. I'll be bringing my functional notes with me so all will be well.

Class has been good. I'm going to audit my hardest class- character theory, since it is too hard. But I still think its great.

Number Theory has been good as well. Its a bit weird- we never went into the proof of the chinese remainder thm (we did that in algebra last term!) since my prof doesn't like it. But we did show today that x^4 + y^4 = z^4 has no solutions, which was fun.

Set Theory was good as well. The professor had fallen down so he had a sling on his right arm. He is a very resilient guy, but there was some difficulty writing with his left hand. We did Sierpinski's decomposition of the plane, anyway. (If the Continuum hypothesis holds).

Had a fun food adventure. Went to a vegan restaurant by my friend's apt- for the first time. It had really interesting decor. I had some sort of wheat-potato pasta with cabbage. It was quite tasty! My friend tried the ginger drink, which turned out to be quite good as well. Everything was organic.

This weekend I will have many more adventures. I must get up at 4 in the morning tomorrow! Siigh.

i've been good

supremely productive on some days- such as saturday, and not so much on others- like yesterday.

I forgot to mention that last week i DID beat Commander Keen 4, which was niice to get out of the way. I did download FIFA international, and spent some time this weekend on it, bringing back more memories, but it got bothersome, when I played a game and had 50+ shots on goal but never scored.

It was sad- there was no soccer this weekend!

And Sunday I spent a lot of time looking at travel sites. I probably won't be able to go to Poland next weekend, even though I bought tickets, since I have class on Saturday (!!!)- Functional, as a makeup, and that will be the second to last class before the final. Oh well, now I'm thinking Vienna after the term is over for a day or two. I'll come back one day~

Last night I was over at some friend's, who had a Passover dinner. It was the first time I had jewish food, and it was rather tasty as well.

Today was impressive since I actually turned in my Combinatorics homework on time. This is the first time~~~

Now we're doing a lot of graph theory. I have pages of graphs scattered on my desk- I'm trying to find a 8 vertex graph which is isomorphic to its complement. I enjoy the guess and check method! I'm actually getting curious about graph theory. We did some cool stuff about planar graphs on Klein Bottles and such. I think functions on graphs would be unique.

Functional is good. Last class we were talking about some rather interesting stuff related to dynamical systems (shift spaces are cool!). Today we did the Radon-Nykodym derivative.

Today was rather productive- I even did two loads of laundry. It is so hot here so things dry fast. I have opened the window but there is no screen so I am hoping there will be no major bug problem. Last night I had minor trouble sleeping because of the hot-ness.

Watched Rob Roy tonight- it feels a lot like Braveheart, but it really is very different (maybe a bit more Hollywood-ized), but there are definitely some amazing sword-fights. Part of me felt like- this is where Qui-Gon learned how to light-saber!

Tomorrow- class from 12-6. eww

I made it through another week!

So, of course the math has been good.

We started the study of arithmetic and multiplicative functions in number theory. We also did a very cool proof about the probability of seeing a squirrel in a forest, where the forest is the first quadrant of integer (a,b) values, and you're standing at the origin looking out.

Character theory has continued its intenseness. Our next homework involves a lot of questions involving generators and relations, which I'm eager to study.

In combinatorics we're continuing graph theory, which I haven't explored enough of yet to come to a decision.

And in Logic, it is becoming less and less logical and more and more not-fun. I should have listened to my prof about not taking this class..

Functional is good as well, today we talked about dynamical systems, and talked a bit about chaos, in memorium of Lorenz.

I survived! my 8-10 hour day yesterday. Going to bed at 10 PM on wednesday night really helped. The talk on simple groups was pretty good. I hope mathematicians can eventually understand how to create groups from the simple groups. I hope I can one day understand just a few of the weird simple groups that are out there. It still baffles my mind that there are only a finite number of the sparse ones...

The opera was pretty excellent. My seats were great, I was in the 18th row. It was a bit odd since they changed Don G's out after intermissions- it seemed like the first guy was not having great luck with his voice- the orchestra was drowning him out. But Leporello was excellent. This was a action filled piece- from acrobatics on stage, to the crashing of a concrete statue, to eating of food on stage, and the opening of champagne on stage. I finished the translation Wednesday night, and that helped with the understanding. The ending was done quite cleverly as well, and it seems like in a unique fashion.

This time I was actually under the chandelier!

More pretty-ness.

Today was a rather exciting day since there was an ALL-day transit strike. That meant walking to class. Our character theory class was canceled for this reason.

After class, I had a great Schnitzel Mac at McDonalds (it's the special of the week!) and decided to walk to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences to see Laszlo Lovasz talk about Convergent Graph Sequences. Our functional Prof had been playing this up, and I was eager to go.


It was a 45 minute walk, but I had plenty of time to kill, so I decided to revisit St. Stephen's Basilica, and this time see the hand of St. Istevan.

This is the hand. They don't let you take flash, and you have to pay 100 ft to get the light turned on. It is pretty unique though- it is a 1,000 year hand of the first king of Hungary. For a better picture, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Sztjobb.jpg . I've seen mummies before.... but never just a hand! It was really creepy when the tour guide directed me to the side of the box, and then preceeded to make a fist, which looked exactly same as the fist the hand was making.

Lovasz's talk was excellent. I didn't understand everything that was going on, but the most awesome part was when he kept on referencing Gabor Elek, our functional analysis professor, who was sitting out in the crowd with us. He studies convergent graph sequences as a research topic.

Talks like this make me think, "When I grow up, I want to be a real mathematician!" Out in the crowd there were many of them, including Renyi faculty, and the Renyi head, Peter Pal Palfry, who gave the simple groups talk. I can't wait~

seeing Dima the mammoth

So today I've been doing loads of work to make up for all the fun I've been having recently- such as Commander Keen 4 and watching Hitman yesterday (which wasn't all that good...). I went to the National History museum- there is a special exhibit there. A REAL wooly mammoth, found nice and preserved in Russia in the 70s was what I came to see. It is 40,000 years old. But there were lots of other fun things as well.

I like wolves.

These eyes were very creepy

I always enjoy the action poses.

Some kind of ice age rhino.

Saber tooth tiger.

A mammoth eating. In Dima's stomach, scientists found pretty much only mud and clay which seems to indicated the mammoth's struggle.

This was cute. It was really sad there were no mammoth stuffed animals. In America you can bet there would be tons of statues, postcards, stuffed animals, toys, and the sort. Here- nothing!

This is Dima. Its pretty cool because you can even see some of the original hair left on the body.

I think this means ice age.

Its been fun. My next exciting day shall be Thursday. I have class from 8-4. Then I wish to attend an exciting talk about the characterization of finite groups. Then its off to the Opera to see Don Giovanni, a 4 hour opera.

Bye!!

life goes on-

So- I guess I haven't written in a while. I didn't really want to bump those Gellert photos down and not have people see them.

What have I been to? Well- the usual.

Classes have been going pretty well.

In combinatorics, we started doing the pidgeonhole principle, then Ramsey Theory and the beginnings of graph theory.

Character theory is awesome, as always. We proved some awesome theorems. The best was "Let G=G' and suppose tao is an involution with a centralizer dihedral of order 8. Then the order of the group is 168 or 360." This shows the power of character theory. I spent a long time on the last homework- until 3 AM Friday morning, but I made considerable progress. I realized finally that the Frobenius groups we are studying are nothing more than the weird gamma groups we briefly discussed in intro Algebra. That was definitely satisfying.

Number Theory- quadratic residues and Legendre symbols. The proof of the flipping rule was a lot of fun- as is applying the rule itself.

LOG has been a continuation of Godel numbers. Next week we shall prove the incompleteness theorem.

And in functional- we just did the open mapping theorem, which was an interesting proof.

Budapest has been pretty exciting as well.

Yesterday, there was a big "flash mob" sw of the island. The story is pretty much this- a right winger tried to buy tickets to an ultra-nationalist band in a jewish section of town. They obviously weren't selling the tickets, but they were willing to go somewhere else to get the tickets, for a small surcharge. The customer got offended, calling the store keeper an offensive Jewish name. The store keeper quickly kicked the customer out. So he called up his Nazi friends and was going to protest the store. The opposition got voice of this and- the president of Hungary came to the store yesterday morning- telling they will be defended. One of my good friends went down to the rally- he came out alive, haha. A lot of times these things happen in Hungary. Now the government is in chaos as well because of other silly political things.

On another note- I saw an 18 year-ish guy get into a fist fight with a 30 year old on a bus taking me home. Needless to say, the 30 year old was promptly KO-ed. I'm sure the younger one offended him. It was weird- everyone just stood there as if nothing happened.

Onto arts:

Last night I saw Swan Lake at the Opera House. It was really very pretty. In this case, unlike La Boheme, I thought the ending was much better than its slow start. The costumes is what the opera house excels at, and the swans and- especially the outfit of the Queen, were super ornate. Of course the ballet and the music was great as well.

I had seats in a different angle as last time- here are the pictures. It was an awkward angle- I had to lean over the railing in order to see about 65% of the stage. Now my neck hurts and I think that may be the reason.

On another note, today we were all invited to the great Béla Bollobás' apt- he is one of the premier Hungarian mathematicians- he teaches at Memphis and Cambridge. He was really a great guy. I talked to theatre about him. I was wearing my 24601 shirt, and he made fun of me that I hadn't read the book. He had some really tasty wine at the gathering as well. He gave me a bottle of wine to open. I didn't succeed. He made fun of me some more and asked what I have been doing with my college education. He had a talk Friday afternoon- which I missed due to CHA. I told him, and he poked fun of character theory and said galois theory was more powerful. He did agree with the greatness of Prof Pelikan. It was a grand time, I think he will be doing it again another weekend.

And I've come dangerously close to addicted to the old video games I've played long ago. I just rediscovered http://www.candystand.com/ which is a good waste of time. I like bullpen blast. One day I will pitch a perfect game! I just found a website in which I can download Commander Keen for free! (Including many other old pc games. classic-pc-games.com) Has anyone else played it? I never beat the version I played- and I will one day! Today I wasted almost 2 hours on http://www.mccainblogette.com/ It is a very unique view into the political world. But I'm studying plenty too, haha.

I think that might be all. Congratulations to my college friends who are on Spring Break! I am envious. Tomorrow I have to wake up early to get some more homework done, then I shall meet a friend to discuss h/w, and then go play soccer again!

Gellert~

Is amazing.

So- the baths were an amazing experience.

I arrived there at 10:30 ish, after getting amazing directions off the BKV website. It was a little sketchy at first, since they locked my stuff away (I had a cabin this time)- and they kept the lock, not me, and I was afraid something might get stolen. But nothing of the sort happened.

This was the thermal baths. It was an older crowd than my previous bath, but the young people slowly came in.

This bath was the warmer one, 38 degrees centigrade.

That felt very hot after going into this modest looking tub. It's temperature is 15 degrees! People don't last long in there, but I enjoyed a lot of time in there.

I went to the sauna (first the 60 degree one, then the 77 degree one- that was EXTREME, I lasted about 7 minutes.) After cooling off I then did the steam baths. My glasses fogged up, and it was hard to see and I couldn't read the thermometer. I'm guessing it was in the high 60s.

This water was sooo tasty after being in the baths. In this experience- and feeling, I was reminded of the quote from Clockwork Orange. "Oh bliss! Bliss and heaven! Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeousity made flesh. It was like a bird of rarest-spun heaven metal or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now."

This was the pool. I actually didn't really go in here- nothing very exciting, but really pretty.

Spitting out water in the pool.

Near the entrance.

This is a hotel as well. According to wikipedia, it is the basis for the Hotel Baths level in Hitman: Codename 47. I don't even really remember that level very well, that makes me sad.

Well- the rest of the day was enjoyable, but nothing compared to that.

Why can't every day be like this? There are still many other baths left for me to explore!