A consortium of engineers, including researchers at the French-speaking Free University of Brussels (Universite Libre de Bruxelles), have been developing a Swarmanoid system of robots who work together to retrieve a book from a high shelf. With co-ordinating flashing lights, the eyebots, footbots, and handbots work together to carry out the retrieval operation. It might seem like a lot of effort for a single novel, but I hope to see these little helpers in our libraries of the future.

Today we moved from a first-storey furnished rental in Leuven into the our first home of our own, on the 11th floor in Brussels. In Australia, there is always room to maneuver, both inside and outside homes. Not so here in high density living. Last week, we had to go to the Police Station and the Department of Public Works and pay to have temporary “no parking” signs placed outside the residences. A few days ago I went to Ikea and managed to shift 500+kg of furtniture back to our new place. Then, as the elevators are too small to accommodate most items, we had to hire an external crane to shift all our items out of one place:

And then up eleven stories to the new place. While the movers seemed to know what they were doing with the lift, there really didn’t care about packing. We packed most things ourselves, but left the paintings, frames and iMac out so that the movers could pack them more carefully. However, they just dumped all of these things straight on the lift, and Adrian had to hold me back as I watched my iMac precariously navigate up and down the lift without a spec of padding. Luckily, everything survived.

They moved everything into the living room, which now looks like a sea of cardboard.

Adrian has had Ikea Madness, and in the afternoon managed to assemble six chairs, one dining table, one desk, one bed, two bedside tables, and one couch. He is a determined and efficient little robot. Thanks to his efforts, our bedroom looks like this:

And our study looks like this:

So we have our priorities right. We can sleep and surf the web.
Tomorrow: unpacking, shopping, cleaning, assembling.

On Saturday we took a day trip to Köln in Germany. A day trip. Without even leaving the ground. Transnational rail trips still astound me. I had booked the tickets many months ago in order to snag the cheap fares – 30 euro each for a return trip to Köln. The best part was using my Thalys ticketless card – as if international rail was so common for me that I never bothered with the paper tickets.

I had a delicious long nap on the hours long ride, broken by Adrian repeatedly waking me up to show me beautiful and interesting vistas from the window. Once in Köln I begged Adrian to take me to the Chocolate Museum. We trekked through the city to arrive at our destination, when Adrian realised that he had instead taken us to the Memorial Gestapo and Torture Museum. So instead of a fun-filled journey through the history of cocoa, we walked minuscule prison cells that had held 20-30 people at a time. We could still see the hundreds of inscriptions on the walls, and I listened to the translations – prisoners writing of their loved ones, their torture, and their imminent execution. The floors above were an archive of the history of the Nazi movement. It is good to see how much Germany has come to terms with its past atrocities. Perhaps one day the USA will have a Abu Ghraib memorial.

We then strolled through the pedestrian mall of Köln, picking up a beautiful Orthoceras cephalopod fossil from Morocco. Wikipedia tells me these fossils may represent post-mating mass deaths. It is now sitting on our bookshelf at home, a beautiful remnant of a now extinct species. The Lego store was also lots of fun – one side laid out like a lolly shop, with Perspex bulbs filled with eclectic Lego pieces. Some of the models looked like so much fun – I loved the European city scenes with canals and corner stores.

Finally, finally, the chocolate museum. There was a small theatre playing ads for chocolate from 1926. Alas, the parents had a thin child who refused to eat. They tried beating her but she was still stubborn and thin. What to do? Stollwerck hot chocolate happily transformed their daughter into a plump strong creature, and the father no longer had to beat his child. Stollwerck chocolate – muscle fortifier.

This building combined two of my favourite things – chocolates and robots. And such dedicated robots too, diligently producing and packaging delectable Lindt squares and truffles. I was even able to sample a truffle while watching fresh ones come into creation on the conveyor belt, made with micron precision and electronic diligence. Robots make the best chocolate.