The Inedible Veal

Kiruna and Beyond

2008-11-20T22:14:00.004+01:00

I booked my first ever train ticket to the arctic circle this week, it got me quite excited! I absolutely love trains anyway (seriously, I really prefer it over every other form of travel, it's civilized, elegant, has very low CO2 emissions, and is just plain enjoyable), so the fact that it's the cheapest way up to northern Sweden is a great plus.

Mid-February my master's program switches from here in Würzburg to a semester in Kiruna, Sweden (yes, way up north inside the arctic circle) until the end of June. So how exactly can you go from southern Germany all the way up to northern Sweden with less than a week off to do it?

- You can pay about 300 Euros and fly from Frankfurt to Kiruna with a layover in Stockholm (boring, non-environmentally friendly, and you can only take 20kg of luggage, so EEHH!)

- You can rent a car with 4 other people and split the bill 5 ways, so maybe 3-400 Euros apiece. Great option, you see some wonderful sights, but I've been through Germany lots of times, and quite frankly after 5 months in Sweden I'll probably see all the wildlife and scenery from Scandinavia one can take for a while. So coupled with the trouble of getting people to commit, worrying about insurance, and how to actually drive in -45 temperatures (even though I'm an engineer and should care about whether it's F or C, i conveniently leave it out because at -44 the two scales are the same, pretty cool eh?). You can also bring a good deal of stuff if you're willing to carry it on your lap for 30 hours, but in the end, no.

- You can take the BEST option and go the whole way by train. So the train i booked on the Swedish rail company, whatever it's called, was only 524 Korna (close to 60 euros) from Stockholm ALL the way to Kiruna, about 1200 km, how cool is that? It includes a sleeper car since it's a night train. Chaching!

Notice that's from Stockholm of course, so the plan is now to get a super cheap advance ticket straight from here to Copenhagen on maybe a Monday or Tuesday, spend a day or two there, take a quick cheap train up to Stockholm, another day or two there (including a nice Sabbath in Stockholm, not a bad place to be right?), then Saturday night hop on a 6 pm night train to Kiruna, and voila, I'm there Sunday morning ready for classes on Monday.

So in total you assume 40 euros to Copenhagen, 20 more to Stockholm, maybe 60 to Kiruna, toss in 200 euros for hostels, food, and fun in Scandinavia, and for a measly 300 euros I get to where I need to and see some absolutely amazing cities on the way, does life get any better?

I might add my trusty companion on my trip will be Gao, a fellow SpaceMaster I live right next door two. We've become quite good friends so it should be great fun traveling up together. Since he has to go back to China in the summer to see his family anyway we've thrown around the idea of a nice train trip all the way from Sweden to where he lives in Nanjing, but that's just a though for the moment : ) (my wheels are always turning for travel plans...).

Enough of this for a while, off to bed. I've finished the assignment for class tomorrow ("Spacecraft System Design", or lovingly SSD) so I just have to wake up, do some laundry, and sit through lecture in the afternoon and then enjoy the weekend. Very nice life here at the moment, happiness abounds quite often when I really think about it : )

(A rough visual of the trip)

Starting up again...

2008-11-18T20:40:00.003+01:00

Ok, after a veeeery long time away I really want to start blogging again, I need a nice record of the next couple years so here goes.

Ok ok, not yet since I don't feel like it now, but better than nothing no? In the meantime here's a picture at least, it shows the whole group of "SpaceMasters" (that's the master's program I'm doing, I'll talk more about that later...) in front of the Informatiks (computer science) building at University of Würzburg, Germany, where I'm studying at the moment. A second one as well, in front of the humongous "Residenz" downtown, a great old baroque building we took a tour of our first week here.

Whew, yes, much more to say about all that but no fun to give all details now. I've been here since August 31st, and other than a week in Austria for the Feast I haven't left Germany. I'll go home (if there is such a place, it's sort of England at the moment since my well-traveled parents are there) during the winter break and then in the middle of February transfer to a mysterious place in northern Sweden until the end of June. Yes, much more to come, you just wait....

Nothing new. Yet...

2008-02-07T04:01:00.000+01:00

It's been May since I updated this, so here's something for my own satisfaction. I'm about 1/3 done with my very last semester of undegrad, can't believe how fast it's gone and I know it's simply going to fly by the next 10 weeks. My departmental honors project (mini-thesis) is going fine, I made a big breakthrough with my data analysis method and basically have that part straightened out, I have 4 weeks to write the thing and it feels wonderfully manageable at the moment.

Big things will happen for me in the next year or two. I graduate May 4th, 2008 at 2:00 PM EDT at UTC's McKenzie Arena with my Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering (and maybe a minor in Physics, it's all up to the petitions committee whether they count a thermo class or not).

I've applied for another internship in Germany for the summer, 2 positions with Bosch and 1 with BASF. Also applied to three different Master's programs in Europe through the Erasmus Mundus program. Two in aerospace engineering, a third in energy management. If I get one of those I'll live in 2-4 European countries for the next two years.

If not..., well I don't have much of a plan for that yet. I've applied to no US schools, so no fall back options there. I'd ideally like to work for a few/several months, save money and make a massive world trip, dwarfing any of my previous travels in all respects. Then once I've gotten that out of my system apply for more grad schools for Fall 2009. Work just isn't what I want to go straight into right now.

Enough of that, I'll probably update this again when I find out what will happen to me for the summer. If that works out, and doubly so if a Master's does, I'd like to do some video blogging and keep a much more up to date written journal on here or a new blog, since for all intents and purposes I'd be severed from most of my family (but not as much as you'd think, haha, [end prophetic statement for my future amusement]) and all my great friends and acquaintances I've developed the past 10 years in Chattanooga :(

Although... I'm not sure why, but last semester (Fall 07) I was definitely not ready to graduate, I was sad and sentimental and just plain liked being in school. This semester I'm much more focused and am getting much more out of my classes, and somehow all the nostalgia is gone, I'm mentally ready to move on past undergraduate studies at UTC to something else, whatever that may turn out to be....

All Over Again

2007-05-14T15:58:00.000+02:00

Time is fleeting at the moment, but I feel the need to fill a few lines in form of an update. I left Atlanta on May 6th at 6:35 pm and arrived to London shortly after 7 in the morning. Immediately making my way north across town (at the terrible price of 20 pounds!), checked in for my Eurostar train to Paris and had a couple extra hours to tour around a bit. London Eye, Parliment, 10 Downing street, Westminster Abbey; all within easy walking distance of Waterloo station. Wanting about 6 pounds storage per bag, I rather carried my backpack and suitcase several miles through the streets of London, not fun but very cheap.

I arrived to Paris a bit after 5 in the afternoon and went north to Pont Ste. Maxence to stay with Courtiols for 3 nights. We made several day trips, the best of which was to Beauvais to see one of a famous series of astronomical clocks. Absoltely amazing; the mechanism, guilding, craftsmanship, all of it a wonder.

On Thursday the 10th of May I traveled on to Bonn via Cologne, and met Zoltan to get the key for my new apartment. Everything's gone fabulously since then, my 7 semi-room mates are from Afghanistan, China and Germany. Some adventures in the past few days have consisted of being locked out of my office and apartment for an entire night, popping the back tire on my bike, and braving the smells from the manure based exerimentation going on in the shop next door.

Life is good, but grocery stores close early so I must...

Web Picture Album

2007-01-04T00:33:00.000+01:00

Pictures from last week's YAW and the Colorado ski weekend. Also, have added the Feast in Tulsa, Paris, Vienna, and hunting in South Dakota. More updates eventually, enjoy!

Dan's Web Album

(Thanks to whomever reminded me to actually post the link!)

Not Again

2007-01-03T03:06:00.000+01:00

The more I think about traveling the less I want to recreate certain aspects of the trip this summer. I'm hoping to go back to Europe summer '07 and then somewhere else in the world in spring '08, so I've put lots of thought into my traveling philosophy. The best times I had this summer were with other people, that's one big point. The other is that I don't want to just go more places to see nice landscapes and structures, take pictures, and do dancing videos.

I want to experience things and people, not take pictures of scenery. Well, I DO still want to see scenery, but to the extent that it dominated my travel philosophy to the exclusion of (or even simply disinterest or apathy toward) the actual experience of being in a place, I'm sorry. So maybe that means I'd rather...get thrown in jail for a week in Nepal and live to tell about it than dance in front of the Sydney Opera House? Maybe.

2006-10-23T03:45:00.000+02:00

Ok, here it is, the long awaited dancing video.

Laugh, cry, marvel at my bravery for handing strangers my camera to film me, do whatever just as long as it brightens you day and maybe even broadens your horizons and expands your mind a bit.

And never, ever stop dancing.

The final tally

2006-09-22T03:35:00.000+02:00

The earth's circumference is roughly 24,901.55 (thank you about.com).

During 100 days in Europe plus a few days extra before and after in the US, I traveled very roughly 21,000 miles. That's pretty cool!

Averaged, that's roughly 210 miles per day. So that's the equivalent of getting into a car every single day and driving on the highway for about 3 hours, for 3 straight months!!

I finally picked a song for my dancing video. I don't know if it's the perfect one but it should give the effect I want. Upbeat, bordering on annoying, and sure to get stuck in your head for days! Not sure if I'll get something put together before the feast but it will certainly come eventually...

A few thank you's in no horribly particular order. Just everyone that comes to the top of my head. 90% of these people will never read this post but I feel like writing it anyway.

Thank you to....

My parents, for giving me the best home I could have ever grown up in and for raising me to think big
Peter, for being the first person to greet me on my trip, for getting us lost in Bristol and having an awesome time with me climing barbed wire fences and walking through cow pastures to get home, and for becoming one of my best friends in one short week with a very... interesting dorm : )
Roberts, for taking the afternoon off to take me and Pete to Bath
Winchesters, for adding me to their 4 mile long list of people they've put up for a few days
Donald, for taking me to the Tate and a tour or London even though you've done it yourself thousands of times
Mel, for taking me to Britain's ultimate medieval experience (Warwick) and then going medieval with me on Britain's best theme park (Alton towers!!), oh and for helping me find a cheap ticket to France! : )
Mrs. Harradine, for hosting me when I was unexpectedly homeless in the UK for a few days and for taking me to Oxford to see the world's COOLEST ever natural history museum
Steels, for being the coolest young couple ever and the best example on the planet
Fritzes, for being great hosts and cooking me many a dinner over the summer, you're no longer just my parent's friends, you're MY friends
Gutmanns, for letting me spend a relaxing Sabbath with you and taking me around Wiesbaden
Ulmers, for hosting me 2 straight weekends and taking me to the most incredible lake in the middle of nowhere in the black forest with the freshest, cleanest air in the world
Zoltan, for taking my application for the summer program and letting me travel pretty much whereever and whenever I wanted
Ishtvan, for being the biggest Hungarian born German soccer fan on the planet, and for telling us the story about almost getting punched because of your blue shirt after Italy lost!
The Eaton student, for letting me randomly meet you on a platform a hundred meters off the coast of Monaco on a floating platform on a gorgeous day on the French Riviera
Sara, for letting me into the tour of the Vienna parliment, biking sooo fast I could hardly keep up, and eating ice cream with me every day I was there : )
Alex, for giving me a tour of the world's oldest zoo and letting me feed my first giraffe, that was AWESOME!
Angelika, for hosting me even when you were dead tired from incredible shifts at the hospital and for having one of the coolest decorated apartments on earth
Elena, for accidentally making me miss the 4:40 to Milan, and the purposefully missing your 5:30 to Pesaro : )
Gary, for completely owning Alex in the whole Arsenal-Barcelona debate
My campers, for being a great bunch of guys even though you almost killed me and Peter : )
Daniel, for being the best first time camper in the history of camp
Paolo and Adriana, for being incredibly gracious hosts and inviting me in for coffee, sorry I lost your address, I'd write you otherwise
The carful of Swedish guys, for giving me a ride, enjoy the camera case I accidentally left in your trunk
Every single person who held my camera for a dancing video and at least pretended to be amused

And thanks to everyone I met, saw, and talked with, for the best three months of my life.

Pictures from last week in Bonn

2006-09-08T23:29:00.000+02:00

Ok, no real order to these pictures. You might like to know while I'm composing this post I'm listening to "I'm Yours," an absolutely awesome song by Jason Mraz. Search youtube.com for it, it'll make your day.

Me with Zoltan, great guy, he's been in school for the last 27 years! I had lots of fun with him, he just got married after I left in August, I'll be working with him for the next year and a half on my thesis.

Me at my desk at the Institut fur Landtechnik, Uni Bonn

Zoltan at HIS desk. Exciting stuff!

The next few are from an outing around Bonn the Thursday before I left (July 27th I think) Everyone's taking pictures....

Great view of the Rhine behind me from the top of THE Loreley (not one of those, uh, fake imitations)

On the ferry crossing to the other side of the Rhine. Right is Tukta, my first Thai friend! She had an internship there from July-August. Left is another guy's girlfriend who was visiting from Bulgaria.

This is at a monestary still in use by REAL live monks, I shook the hands of one of them. Middle is Zoltan, me just left of him, Tukta on the far right, and the other two are Chinese girls from I don't know where, they just appeared for the tour and supposedly had something to do with the Institut, I think they were really spies. The guy in charge knew them, but that must just mean he was a spy too.

A view of the warehouse of the Institut. I'm probably not even supposed to post this picture since all the equipment and (very fun!) toys are a bit classified till they're patented, so don't look too closely ;)

Holland! This is where I spent my very last Sunday in Germany. The back yard of Queen Wilhemina's Palace, Het Loo. Gorgeous gardens, I got a dancing video here!

Another shot of the back of the palace, it's made of good'ol fashined bricks.

There was a big collection of sleighs, this was one of my favorites. Looks comfy doesn't it?

Picture of Alvin and me in the car in Wageningen, he's one of only a few members in Holland.

That's all for the moment, I'll try to add more within a week. Enjoy!

Some Totals

2006-09-03T02:39:00.000+02:00

Life is settling down quite a bit. I guess not for two long since it's barely a month till the Feast though! Go Tulsa!

Quite the trip I just had, I need to go back and fill in my personal diary a bit more with all my thoughts, impressions, feelings, etc. and then sort thru my thousands (4,400 to be semi exact) of pictures so I can show people when I see them without boring them out of their minds with the 4,200 bad ones : )

I'm not sure what will become of this blog, I really don't think a ton of people read it, and those who do read it probably email me once in a while anyway so I'm not terribly motivated to keep it up, but I will try to add more posts eventually with more pictures. As far as much writing goes though, I'm going to say probably not much will be goin down here for a while, so I'll leave it at to be continued in summer 2008...

A bunch of random numbers from my trip:

-100 days (cool!)
-76 trains rides
-10 missed train rides
-dozens and dozens of car rides
-20 bus rides
-4 Major undergounds (London, Paris, Milan, Vienna)
-25 City-train (Stadtbahn) rides
-$ X,XXX dollars spent
-14 Sabbaths, kept in 11 different cities (only repeats in Bonn, Vienna, Coniston), but not a single one alone!
-0 Saturday nights in my apartment in Bonn (no, not because I was out partying, I was at somewhere else every single weekend!)

And the coolest numbers:
-9 different countries (in order, England, the Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Wales)
-6 plane rides for about 9,000 miles

I'd really like to include the total number of miles for the WHOLE trip but I'm a bit tired at the moment so I'll edit this post later.

AND DON'T WORRY, THE DANCING VIDEO WILL COME. Hopefully before the feast. Relax.

I have maps!!

2006-08-27T05:22:00.000+02:00

Here's a map of my trip I made up. I spend half an hour and made a trip profile in TravBuddy which automatically makes a map for you! Enjoy.

Warning: The map takes a while to load! Click the icon below and you can find a bigger, faster map (hopefully anyway) in my TravBuddy page. Click on my "Europe 2006" trip and then click the "Trip Summary" option underneath the map.

The End is Near

2006-07-26T14:53:00.000+02:00

Only a few more days of work left, and I do mean work! I wrote 1,400 words for a paper for my student today, all before lunch. Yesterday I was in the middle of a field for 8 hours, it was quite fun though, even though it's hot (95F, 35C!) I'd rather do that than be inside and stare at a computer screen. So I was in Vienna last weekend, this weekend I will see a little bit of Holland, then next Tuesday I leave for Coniston. I'm going to see some people in Cologne for dinner today, tired of taking the stadtbahn that stops every 60 seconds so I'm going to bike. 25 km each way, I think it'll take about 75 minutes. Wait, that's assuming I don't get lost, which will invariably happen because I get lost for brief moments of time even in Bonn within a mile of my apartment all the time... better plan on 2 hours : ) Oh, and while at the field yesterday I got to drive a tractor! My first big tractor driving experience. Istvan (the guy I was helping) also let me drive the VW van across the field as well. Not quite the autobahn but close enough to make me quite happy. Ok, I need to keep writing. The real stuff.

Berry Picking

2006-07-09T23:42:00.000+02:00

I picked strawberries today. I spent the weekend in Stuttgart and very shortly Munich for services. I stayed with Ulmers in Stuttgart, we went for all went for a nice run this morning, kicked the soccerball around a bit, and then off to a strawberry field! I was a couple of acres and completely full of the most delightful strawberries. You pay a slight premium for picking them yourself (it's evidently cheaper to just buy them), but I found out it's because you can eat them as you pick. The world's best all you can eat buffet! They were absolutely wonderful: ripe, red, veramente delicioso (really delicious!!). We picked about 5ish kilos, had quite a few during lunch, and I took some home for the train journey back. Also went muchroom hunting for a short time in the woods, unfortunately our search was a bit fruitless, but I was kept occupied by some raspberry bushes on a nearby path...

Next weekend I'll be in Heidelberg for a conference of all the people in my summer program Thursday and Friday, then back to Stuttgart till Sunday. And then just two more weekends in Germany!! I can't believe how fast the time has gone, I have three weeks of work left and it's adios.. uh, aufwiedersehen, to the fatherland. The last weekend I'm hopefully going to Holland for a short time, and I'm not sure about the weekend 2 weeks from now. I'll be using the last two days of my Eurail pass so I will definitely go out in style wherever it is, ie, a long long way away by train. Anyone want to spend a couple months in Thailand next summer? Just a random comment....

MAJOR Picture Update: Genoa

2006-07-03T21:01:00.000+02:00

Ok, here's a major picture update (click on the thumbnails for a bigger picture). They'll be another one coming soon, I was in Berlin yesterday. The last three weekends I've been in Vienna, then Genoa, then Berlin. Wow, I literally can't believe it. I'm so glad I bought a Eurail pass, it was a bit pricey to buy all at once but no way I'd be doing these trips without it, I can hop on any train I want in days that it's valid. I need a reservation for night trains, but as long as you book just a week (or 1 day as I found out!!) there's almost always a spot.

Ok, so Italy. Left on a night train Thursday June 22, arrived in Genoa on Friday. Wasn't at all impressed by the actual town, after walking around Friday afternoon I'd had quite enough and didn't see any more that it had to offer (ahem, I say that with a bit of sarcasm). The one really fantastic thing was a free concert on Friday evening in the Palazzo Bianco in downtown Genoa. Heard about it purely by chance, was inside the museum there during the day and some guy comes up and says "would you like a free concert?" Yea!! Ok, actually he said it in Italian but you know what I mean...

It was inside an absolutely fantastic room with mosaics and frescos covering every inch of the wall and ceiling. Truly amazing, one of those special things you have a 1/1000000000 chance of stumbling into.

Sabbath was spent in Portofino, just 30 minutes east. Amazing place again, but quite hot. Right on the coast on a bit of a peninsula that juts out into the northern Mediterranean. The entire peninsula is basically a mountain so you can only hang out on the coast. There's a great walking path a bit higher up that you can take as well, gives quite a view. The road wound itself along the water, absolutely gorgeous, very typically Italian as well, I love this picture with all the mopeds.

Quaint street.

People fishing in harbor.

Fantastic views at night as well, you could see shimmering nights miles away across on the mainland.

And I love playing with cameras at night!

So then Sunday brought Monaco. Really the pictures can speak for themselves. It was fantastically cheap to get to, 10 euro return ticket even though it was about 3 hours each way. Here in Germany I can get about about an hour down the track one way for that price, waaaaay too expensive.

This was the mall, not bad eh?

This is inside the theater, best part of the day. We stumbled into it looking looking for another building. There was absolutely nobody inside. Scattered on the floor were pamphlets from graduating ceremonies the night before for the international university in Monaco. And who better to have as a guest speaker than Prince Albert! We were standing there less than 18 hours after the event, very cool.

Me standing under the train station sign, just to prove I was there.

Me trying desperately to look French.

Then Monday thru Wednesday (was supposed to be Tuesday, I'll get to that in a minute) was Cinque Terre. Almost no one I talk to has heard of it, but it was gorgeous and the approximately 4.9 billion American tourists there had obviously also heard of it. Was still great though, the scenery was unbelievably amazing and there's plenty of room in the 5 little towns for everybody.

Nice, huh?

Looking the other way.

More of the beach and rocks in background.

Cheap pizza place.

The best pasta I've ever had, somehow made with egg. Very simple with just pesto, but oh so delicious.

So here's the story. I was supposed to take a night train back to Bonn on Tuesday night at a little after 21:00 (9pm). All I had to do was take a train back to Milan from the La Spezia station and catch the night train, easy right? Well, Elena and I were both taking the train up to Milan and since we got there a good 30 minutes early went outside to sit in the fresh (boiling hot!) air for a bit. And then this really Italian bus driver came along and it was too much to resist taking his picture, isn't he Italian?!

And then we're like, let's have him take a picture of US in front of the bus, cool right?

Well, it was quite cool but a little after that I happened to look down at my watch and the train was scheduled to leave in 1 minute!! Almost every single train I rode in Italy was at least 10 minutes late, but this one happened to be right on time and it took off about 20 seconds before we got to the platform. I checked the connections (thank you David Anderson!!) for the rest of the evening from Milan and the only trains I could have taken had multiple changes in the middle of the night and didn't get to Bonn till the afternoon. I called Zoltan (the doctorate student I'm helping for the summer) and he said no problem so I just stayed an extra day!

The only hostel that had space was in a tiny place called Biassa a quick 30 minute bus away. Fantastic town, went walking that night and again the next morning and just oooed and awed at every single street. Another one of those completely surreal little adventures, couldn't actually believe places like that exist, every single street was like a hollywood set that was painstakingly decorated to look Italian.

Best part was being invited for a quick coffee by a couple we met on the street outside their house. They were so hospitable!! Here's to you Paolo and Adriana, if I ever go back we're definitely doing dinner.

So that's it, my weekend around Genoa. I'm just happy it wasn't a weekend IN Genoa : ) I got a ton of sun as well. During the winter I become a thin, scrawny, pale stickman. Now I'm a thin, scrawny stickman with a tan!!

Finally my friends, Pictures!

2006-06-21T17:31:00.000+02:00

Here we are, a little taste of the trip. Just a few words of commentary to go along with each picture...

Beach in Sarasota, FL

Maserati, in the Wal-Mart parking lot! Sarasota, FL

Me and my dad in the world't best Thai restaurant, Sarasota, FL

At Clifton Suspension Bridge, armed and ready for action, Bristol, England

Me and Pete, Bath, England

More of me and Pete walzing across the Bristol countryside

No group picture from London, this is the most people together I have. Left to right, Jon, Kathy, Dan, Ian, Isla.

A very unimpressive ride at Alton Towers, England...

Mel and I at least pretended to be scared. See more of this trip at www.melsweb.co.uk!!

What can I say, my British side just came out, Buckingham Palace, England

A random picture of Donald's back in a quaint London alley

Read the Oxford blog entry, I LOVED the Natural History Museum

From the outside, getting ready to dance

On the plane to France, I ate and drank quite well

Eiffel Tower, France

Absolutely the best building in Paris, Sacre Cour

Ahhh.... I waited 10 years to have that pizza!

Me and Elena looking very mean, Urbino, Italy

Next to a real, authentic San Marino traffic officer!

Finally in Bonn, a couple people from a barbecue at my dorm building.

In Vienna! Alex and Sara at a Friday evening picnic

Alex's Zoo, Shönbrunn, my long lost brother!

That's all for the moment, I could keep going all day. My "Summer 2006" pictures folder has 3,038 files in it right now. I've gone a bit nuts with my camera, most of them aren't any good but even if 10% are usable I'll have enough for quite the album when I'm done. Bye bye now.

More Bonnnnn

2006-06-12T23:55:00.000+02:00

Whew, everything's been quite busy lately. I'm trying to soak everything in but I'm getting a bit saturated. It's a touch late right now so I don't have time to add much, but the job is going well. I've only been here just over a week so everything is still getting settled, Germans are notorious (and righfully so I've found out) for ridiculous amounts of paperwork.

World Cup fever is in full pitch here. I was at least a tiny bit hopeful the US would do at least sort of well, but alas we lost miserably 3-0 today to Czechs. Oh well, I can cheer for Germany with everyone else!

So, a slight recap. Started in Chattanooga on May 2, and since then I've been in Dallas, TX, Atlanta, GA, Sarasota, FL, London-Bristol-Northampton-Oxford in the UK, Amsterdam (airport), Paris, Milan-Bologna-Urbino in Italy, Bonn-Wiesbaden in Germany. I made some quick additions and I've traveled about 10,000 miles. The circumference of the earth is somewhere around 26,000 miles so I may not reach that, but I'll get at least 3/4 of the way there by the end of it all : ) I have more trips planned for the next few weeks, Vienna, Italy, and other spots around Germany. I've got 8 days left on my Eurail pass that are just begging me to be burned...

I'll give more details about the internship eventually, I've come across some really interesting projects. I work at the Institut für Landtechnik, which is basically mechanical engineering applied to agriculture. The clock has just struck midnight, time to go.

I'm Dead Tired

2006-06-01T23:17:00.000+02:00

But at least I'm in Bonn. Dead tired, all because the Italians have no equivalent for our word "late," just doesn't exist. I hope this post was inspiring, more next week...

Oxford and Eurovision

2006-05-21T14:12:00.000+02:00

...are completely unrelated, but I experienced both this week. Eurovision is this BIG deal for Europe, every European country fields a band in a singing contest. I watched it last night and the UK version likes to overlay the show with this wonderfully cynical commentary from a Brit who mercilessly (but deservedly) makes fun of the performers and, more importantly, the hilariously horrible hosts. Quite literally, they are so bad that anyone watching without knowing it actually is serious would think it's a complete spoof, a farce. Only sadly it's not! Evidently we have Eurovision to thank for the popularity of Riverdance and ABBA. ABBA won it one year for Sweden (or wherever they're from) and Riverdance was one of the halftime show type acts when their country hosted it one year. So anyway, congratulations to this year's winners, Finland's Lordi performing Hard Rock Hallelulia. The only reason they won was because of their rediculous costume geddup, they were otherwise dreadful. So actually I withdraw my congratulations, they were definitely not amazing.

Oxford was amazing however, I spent several hours walking around in awe of just being there. They have several free museums, the one I was able to see was the Natural History Museum, really cool place. Lots of dinosaur bones, whale jaws, stuffed leopards, and live 3 inch cockroaches. You know, the usual stuff. Their engineering buildings were pretty unimpressive though, they wouldn't even let me take a look around without an appointment. Here's my conversation:

Me: "Hi, I'm and engineering student from the US, would it be OK for me to take a look around some of your labs?"
Receptionist: "Now when would you be starting here, in the September or December term?"
Me: "No no, I'm not a perspective student or anything, I'd just like to take a look around"
Receptionist: "So do you know which one? Fall or winter?"
Me: "No, I'm not going to come here for school, I'm wondering if I can look in your engineering labs."
Receptionist: "Yes sir, you would have to set up an appointment ahead of time with one of the students to find out more about the university."
Me: "No thank you. Thanks for your help."

She didn't seem to get it, I'm not sure what her problem was. She would have probably signed me up for classes had I told her I was going to attend. Maybe I should go back... Last week I also saw Warwick Castle ("Britain's greatest Medieval experience") and Alton Towers ("Britain's best theme park"). Tomorrow I fly to Paris and will poke around there on Tuesday. I'm dancing either in front of the Louvre or the Eiffel Tower, not sure which one yet.

More England....

2006-05-18T00:09:00.000+02:00

Have had a very nice past few days. After services on Sabbath we had a picnic in St. James' Park, just a few hundred meter from Buckingham Palace (ho hum to everyone else, extremely cool to me). Sunday was spent wandering around Hampstead Heath, a very large green space. Inside, we went up "Parliment Hill" (no one actually know why is was called that) where there was a great view of the city from afar.

Monday was a travel day. Because... now based out of Northampton, I traveled north to Warwick Castle on Tuesday, self advertised as Britain's ultimate medieval experience. Not so sure about that, but it turned out to be very enjoyable. The best part was their Birds of Prey show, which I got to see twice. They had a huge bald eagle on display, it enjoyed clipping the crowd as it flew around waiting for the food signal from the, uh, bird guy. Then today was a trip to Alton Towers, where I confirmed it is England's best theme park. Lots of fun, some excellent coasters, it threatened to rain most of the day but held off so the lines were almost nonexistent, 20 minutes was the most we waited, wohoo! It began pouring a little after 4 but I was ready to pack it in by then.

So can you tell I'm a bit tired? Bad sleep leads to bad writing. I'm over the jet lag completely, I've just been having to get up early. But no rest for the weary, I've got a schedule to stick to. A bunch of walking around London for Thursday, then Friday will be easy, in the afternoon I head over the Newbury where I'll be through Monday.

The Streets of London

2006-05-13T11:54:00.000+02:00

In London at the moment, staying with the $&*£(%&s after being with the £&*("'s all day Thursday and Friday (names were removed to protect the innocent, you just can't be too careful with identities on the internet you know). Got to see Bristol and Bath the last couple days, fantastic towns. The Roman Baths were closed to I just had to lean over the wall to get a peek but that was enough. There's this "royal crescent" in Bath that's very neat, a semicirle that looks over a park and the entire city of bath, everything's so green as well. I have a much better impression of the English countryside than I got last time I was here, not sure why. Well, off to services in just a bit so must go get ready, can't wait to see L&$*(£ and $&*(£", hopefully even &*$&£*("&$*" from the London congregation. I remember the last time I saw &$*(£" was at least $£ years ago, I'm sure he's at least &$ feet tall by now! Off to see parts of London proper tomorrow.....

Sarasota

2006-05-06T01:57:00.000+02:00

Down in Sarasota at the moment (yea, this is a cool trip). Spent about an hour on Siesta Key Beach, it's supposed to be the best beach in Florida and I absolutely can't contest that. Temperature was about 80 F, barely any clouds, breeze all around... It's enough to make you want to enter your happy place.

I'm starting a video project on this trip. Involves dancing in front of stuff I visit and eventually compiling all the dancing clips into a little montage. I have to give credit to Matt Harding, who is my favorite person I've never met before at the moment. He quit his job a few years ago and started traveling the world and is known around the internet and world as "the guy in the dancing video." Click on his name a couple sentences ago for a link to his video. Download it, love it. Anyway, I'm not very creative so I'm completely ripping off his idea and even though my trip is only to Europe, it'll hopefully be cool anyway. Rather silly, but hey, I'm 20 and have a legal right to do silly, stupid stuff : )

Dallas

2006-05-04T06:54:00.000+02:00

We made the trip from Birmingham to Dallas today, passing through Louisiana and Mississippi. Georgia isn't bad, Texas isn't bad, but the rural parts of the other two states are a bit scary. I'm getting used to them but it's still a culture shock everytime I step into a Waffle House there. Fairly mundane drive, east Texas is not an extremely exciting place. Tomorrow morning I fly out of DFW to Atlanta to get picked up by my dad. The pre-trip trip continues...

Life Began on a Tuesday

2006-05-02T03:48:00.000+02:00

Tuesday May 2, 2006, that is. I'm pretty sure that'll be my motto for the next little while.

That's the day I'll remember shoving off for Birmingham, on the way to Dallas with my sister. She just got a fantastic job out there, and I never turn down the chance to hitch rides out of Georgia. We're planning to drive all day Wednesday and get to Dallas by evening. She gets to stay and I take a plane back to Hotlanta on Thursday morning, where my dad'll pick me up and we then head down to Florida for the weekend. We'll come home either Sunday night or Monday midday, and then the fun begins.

I'll furiously pack some belongings for three months away from home, no doubt forgetting several important things that I'll have to buy in Europe. Ah, Europe. Two weeks in England, a few days apiece in France and Italy, then off to my semi-permanent home in Bonn, Germany. I got a fantastic engineering internship at the University of Bonn and can't wait, I'll be helping a doctorate student with his research. Is it bad that I have absolutely no idea what he's working on? Nah, Germany + Engineering = can't miss opportunity. I just got my apartment this past week, I'm less than 10 minutes from Uni and less than a mile from the downtown shops. Doesn't everyone live in shouting distance from Beethoven's birthplace?

I've never blogged before so this is pretty new to me. Theoretically anyone can read what I've just written, yet realistically no one cares other than me. That's pretty much the definition of a blog right? I may send this link to some people who know me so they can keep up with what I'm doing over the summer. Pictures, thoughts, maybe lots of engineering stuff, I have no idea what it'll turn into.

So there, I've said my piece and my life is ready to have a new beginning. On a Tuesday.