Ryan Hellyer

Google Glass

Thanks to the lovely Sophia Dominguez for letting my try out her Google Glass. I had the pleasure of meeting her as she was touring around Europe writing about her experiences with Google Glass.

They were surprisingly easy to use and the screen was relatively non-distracting. I don’t think I would make much use of the photography functionality which seems to be one of the primary uses people find for it, but I love having a constant feed of information and I love walking, so having a constant feed of tweets and whatnot whizzing past the corner of my eyes could be quite useful on my way to work in the morning.

Check out Sophia’s Google Glass blog at sophiathroughglass.com.

Christmas in Berlin

Berlin is by far the busiest city I’ve ever been in at Christmas time! The place was cranking full tilt with hundreds of restaurants, shops, bars, cafes, malls, stalls and everything in between open the whole day.

Artwork at Lier sykehuset

We found quite a bit of graffiti on the walls at
Lier sykehuset, but I was actually surprised how little there was. Considering that the buildings have been abandoned since 1985 and are just sitting there with no lock or secure fence around them, I assumed they would be filled with abusive graffiti and general idiocy.

There were a lot of pentacles painted on the wall

Label on the toy room door

Label on the womens bathroom door

One of many rooms riddled with graffiti

Lier sykehuset destruction

During our visit to Lier sykehuset, Alice and I checked out building A, which was unfortunately being destroyed. There was a small warning sign in front of the building, but it was rather obvious that entering was horridly bad idea, since half of it had been pulled down already :/

View from the front of block B at Lier sykehuset. It looked fine from this side, but a quick look around the other side of the building revealed a different story.

This building was clearly marked as being dangerous.

They weren’t pulling anything down when were there as it was the weekend.

Lots and lots of bricks!

The former morgue at Lier sykehuset

My time in an asylum

My friend Alice and I visited the Lier sykehuset in Norway. It was a mental hospital built in 1926 and operated until 1985.

Between 1945 and 1974, staff at Lier sykehuset conducted experiments with LSD, performed lobotomi’s and tested new drugs which the pharmaceutical industry were not allowed to test. They also performed experimental research with radioactive isotopes on patients. Patients were known to have been placed in isolation and inflicted with prolonged use of belts and straitjackets.

Most of the buildings now sit abandoned and are due to be knocked down. Two of the buildings were fenced off and had warning signs, but two of them had an entrance way through their surrounding fences and an open door for entering the building through.

Alice looking around the outside of the building

The exterior of block B of Lier mentalsykehuset

Alice looking for interesting things in an old kitchen

Me, standing outside block B. Thanks to Alice for taking the photo 🙂

The past 22 years of decay has left the paint in a sorry of state of disrepair

Alice standing in the hallway

After walking around the exterior of the building, we found this warning about stuff potentially falling off the roof

Reichstag

The Reichstag is a spectacular looking building in Berlin, which was used by the German parliament from 1894 to 1933, then was gutted by fire. The German parliament moved to Bonn until reunification with East Germany in 1990, then they moved back to the Reichstag in 1999 where they are still based today.