Inverse Tachyons

Time to say goodbye

2010-06-19T08:42:00.002+02:00

Well friends, the time has come. The change to my layout was designed to invoke change and a renewed sense of vigor to my writing but I find myself so constrained in format and style. I've wanted to make the jump for some time and frankly I didn't want to lose all of the stuff I've been posting for the past 1075 days. But, I found that there is a simple way to transfer all of my blogs from one blogging site to another.

As such my friends, please update your links if you care to continue following my lunatic ramblings in the future because I have moved to Wordpress. Here is my new blog site:

http://chevron7locked.wordpress.com/

I hope you'll keep reading and thanks for following this long. Thanks also to Blogspot for getting me started.

Shakin' it up

2010-06-12T14:48:00.003+02:00

Well friends, I felt the need for a change. I hope it doesn't bother anyone too much. I apologize now for the formating chaos this will wreak upon my old posts that have pictures and commentary. Also, if you find that the color of a link is vague or confusing in my posts, be sure to let me know. Being incredibly blessed with OCD, I can't see that happening. That's all I have. Carry on!

Eager Beaver

2010-06-11T07:01:00.010+02:00

8 weeks and 4 days and then I'll be back in the States again. I have to say, I'm really excited. Although the advent of Spring here in Giessen has caused the days to go by faster, in reality, they seem to be slowing down. There is a drag on my life clock like an electron beam slowing down ion beams to reduce their energy spread. What can I do about that? Not the ion beam but my life clock. Write more? Well with the nice weather, Rachel and I will be going out more often and for longer periods. I guess I could tell of a few adventures we've had in the past week or so.

There is a castle that one can see from the train station in Giessen. It looks close but is really 8 km away. Since seeing it the first time we arrived in Giessen, we have wanted to walk to it but never got around to doing it. We had a nice day forecast, made some lunch, grabbed our water and went out the door! I had done some searching using Google to figure out the general path and it was crazy. The path wound across big roads and whittled down to dirt paths through farm land. Oddly enough, it didn't seem as far on the way back. We figured that's because we definitely knew how far we had to go still. The picture from the top of the tower is facing towards Giessen.

In other news, a large group of my friends, an equal number of Americans, Germans and French, decided to attack the restaurant known colloquially as the XXL restaurant. It was actually Der Waldgeist and it has some of the largest plates of food you'll ever see. The burgers were at least 6 full size restaurant burgers put together. Knowing my limits, I settled for 600 grams of currywurst, which was amazing. My friend Jeff on the other hand was going for the burger and very nearly made it through it. People from other tables were watching him as he tried to finish it. Finally, he got smart and stopped before he killed himself. He did have 2 liters of beer to finish as well. Another friend, Gökhan, was not so lucky with his burger. I'm sure he is posing in this picture, but the feeling was there in all of us. Needless to say I'm thinking I won't need to visit again anytime soon. Whew!

And finally, on Sunday Rachel and I went to the Botanical Garden to hear a live band from Kassel play. I believe it was a fundraiser event for the garden. The band was called "Beat That Chicken" and don't ask me to explain the name. A soul/blues band with a full line up of instrumentalist: horn, bone, alto/tenor sax, bari sax, guitar, bass, keys, drums and two vocalists. And they were pretty good. I bought their CD and love it. It was really interesting listening to the in-between song talking, in German, and the song lines, in English. The female vocalist has a really good voice and the male seemed to be using a unidirectional microphone since I couldn't hear him half the time. He was a little rambunctious and whenever he moved his mouth away from right in front of the mic you couldn't hear him anymore. There is a free swing band concert on the 4th of July that we're going to hit up and a jazz innovations trio on the 20th of June. Should be a fun summer concert series.

That's the latest from Giessen. More after the break. Prost!

Perplexed

2010-06-01T17:13:00.003+02:00

Ah! June. It comes after April showers and May flowers. One might think that for a large portion of the Earth this leads to continuous sunny days. But I can tell you that the number of warm sunny days this year I've had here in Giessen can be counted on 2 hands. From what I hear, my home of Seattle has also been getting an extended winter. Oregon and Montana as well. What gives? It's overcast and about a high of 19°C today. This is not June 1st weather. Does anybody have a handle on this conundrum? I fear that spring will be glossed over altogether and I'll be forced to adapt to 32°C temperatures immediately. Oh well.

In other news, today marks the day I first began counting down the days until my return to the States. T-minus 69 days and counting.

Stupid Questions

2010-05-14T07:21:00.003+02:00

I just read a post on io9 that asked a question that irks me to no end regarding money and science. Is it worth spending a crap-ton of money to prove [insert some science-y thing here] right/wrong? That's the question? I never really had a good counter argument that I really liked until I saw a fellow reader's comment back. It went along the lines of "if we can spend crap-tons of money on movies that suck, why not on something more constructive like furthering humanity's knowledge." Booya!

Now, don't get me wrong. I enjoy a beautiful CG romp of mayhem and destruction as much as the next guy, but if the plot is going to be crap it just isn't worth it. This guy listed, among others, Transformers and the Star Wars prequels and I have to agree. Big movies and all the money went into big names and fancy CG. So what do we have? 2-3 hours of cool special effects, bad plot and a coaster (if you bought the movie). I just wish that whoever funded these works of suck would consider sacrificing one movie's budget to fund a science project. (Note: if they already do this, let me know and I'll apologize).

To summarize, it is a ridiculous question to ask when so much money is spent on other less useful things. But it does not have to be just on science either! Sacrifice a movie and feed some people for a month or restore a poisoned water supply or anything like that. I would love to hear about that happening as well. It's just that this article was related to science so that is the first thing I thought about.

GSI Facility in Darmstadt

2010-05-08T08:47:00.012+02:00

No, it isn't some fancy acronym from a Command & Conquer video game. It's the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung (Center for Heavy Ion Research) in Darmstadt, Germany and I went to visit it Friday afternoon. They have a linear accelerator (UNILAC), the accelerating synchrotron (SIS), the Experiment Storage Ring (ESR) and Fragment Separator (FRS). It also has several other experiments set up along with a tumor therapy room. Lest all this sound uninteresting, this is the place that put elements 107-112 on the periodic table! Meitnerium (1982), Hassium (1984), Darmstadtium (1994), Roentgenium (1994), Bohrium (1996), and Copernicium (1996) were all created/discovered here. Ha! And I stood next to the machines that did it. It was astonishing.

That tumor therapy contraption was pretty interesting as well. Heavy ion beams are shot at a person's head for example. The beam is made up of carbon ions, instead of the old X-ray, and these ions release all of their energy at one particular point. Here is a picture of the Bragg Curve courtesy of Wikipedia.

This particular curve is for alpha particles, but X-rays don't even have that peak. They only gradually die out in energy. Carbon ions, on the other hand, have an even sharper peak than the one in this picture. That means the technicians and scientists know exactly where, distance-wise, the ion will release all of its energy after leaving the vacuum area of the accelerator. If they hold your head still, they have millimeter precision with targeting and destroying a tumor. Kind of crazy when you think about it. I would feel a little nervous about having my head at the butt end of a particle beam that just got up to 90% light speed in 2 seconds.

This picture of the facility (sorry it's a little hard to read) was taken from the GSI page linked to here. In it you can see the blue part is the existing facility which I got to walk through (mostly). The red is the future and it will be awesome. With the things they can already do, I can only imagine what they'll find out with more experiments and more powerful accelerators. I said 'mostly' earlier because they had experiments going on at the time we were there, meaning the accelerators were active and that means everything was bottled up because of radiation. A few experiments were not being used so we did get to see some of the detectors up close and personal. The other experiments were trapped behind locked gates with radiation 'airlock' rooms and meters worth of concrete walls. I'm hoping to get to go back and see it again. I still don't get particle physics, because I'm just a simple astronomer, but I do appreciate the complicated stuff they do here to better understand the universe.

By the by, the tumor therapy room is just below and a little to the left of the ESR ring.

Pseudo Anti-Deuterons

2010-05-05T17:17:00.007+02:00

Today in my Methods and Applications of Atomic Physics class, we discussed antiparticles and CPT symmetry conservation (Charge conjugation, Parity and Time reversal). The CPT thing is not what I'd like to discuss.

I know that having a particle interact with its antiparticle results in mutual annihilation accompanied by a release of energy. I asked my professor what the possibilities are for gaining energy for free by using our available energy to create an antiproton that would then collide with a proton that we didn't have to work to get. In case that made no sense this is what I meant: (No energy expended proton source) + (some energy expended antiproton source) = More energy than we put in coming back. He said that it takes a crap-ton (rough estimate) of energy to make antiparticles currently. Also, the number of antiparticles the world has thus far created, although numbering in the millions (if not billions), would hardly heat a cup of water if allowed to annihilate. Drat.

My second question was a little more abstract. I began with making sure I understood the matter-antimatter combination. An antiproton will only annihilate with a proton, a positron will only annihilate with an electron, and so forth, right? He didn't sound so sure but I asked my next question anyway. What would happen if you could put an antiproton with a regular neutron? A normal proton and neutron form the nucleus of deuterium also know as heavy hydrogen. 45 years ago we had already made antideuterium (antiproton with antineutron), but I want to know what would happen if you could mix different matter and antimatter particles. He said he did not know but he guessed it would be bad (his words!).

I really don't know what the point of such a particle would be, but I suppose that since the antiproton is made up of antiquarks the annihilation would come from the quarks messing with each other. Just wanted to share those thoughts. Does anybody know anything about this? Has it been done?

At it again...

2010-04-26T14:12:00.001+02:00

School has started back up and that can mean only one thing: despairing over homework. Of course this is only natural so there is nothing new to report. I've only three courses on my plate for my second and last semester abroad here in Giessen, Germany. Let's see:

Methods of Atomic Physics - a romp through practical applications of knowledge of atomic physics. Things like tumor detectors and busters, energy from nuclear fusion and fission, types of radiation detection and so on. Taught by an instructor from last semester and the class size is small. Four of us non-primary-German speakers in the room means a vote by the German students have this class being taught in English. Interesting.

Experimental Physics 6 - Atomic, particle and astrophysics. That's all I know at the moment since this was a late addition to my schedule and I haven't been to a lecture yet. The first homework assignment though is about particle accelerators so...yeah.

Quantum Mechanics - that which I have feared the most. The very nearly non-intuitive subject that haunts my dreams. I will be trying desperately to approach this class purely from a mathematical standpoint. I also must pass this class since I do not want to take it again in the States. Taught by the exchange coordinator who also taught our Nuclear Astrophysics course last semester. He, let alone the subject matter, are nearly impossible to understand. I do wish I had taken more German before coming here, but alas I did not know I'd be coming until 5 months before I left.

That's all I'm taking. On a lighter note I got a frisbee today so that I can relax outside in my own way. Jeff has already promised to play with me. I imagine calling him up on the ol' Skype and saying, "I need a break from homework. Let's play." In other news, the beer gardens are open again and spring is in full swing. Cheers!

Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Part 2

2010-04-19T10:21:00.006+02:00

The final day and associated times spent in Amsterdam were ones of wandering and walking. Rae and I both like markets. We are also both interested in living on a boat and/or houseboat someday. Luckily, Amsterdam had both of these items in plenty. We spent the third day visiting several open markets, one of which was devoted to nothing but tulip bulbs and other assorted flowers and bulbs. Strangely enough the price decreased as you approached the center and then increased again as you headed for the other end. So if you were patient and could stand to pass through about a thousand people before buying your tulips, you could save a euro or two. Rae had done her research and there were about 3 different markets she wanted to hit. Our next stop took us beyond the tulip market to a very long stretch of stalls that was probably 3 or 4 city blocks long.

This really long market had everything! It was snack time. Raw fish on a bun with onions and pickle was the appetizer followed by fries with ketchup and mayo with onion. For later, we picked up some more cheese and an entire smoked mackerel. No joke, the whole fish. The guy picked it up, slapped it in a newspaper, bagged it and handed it to us. Good times. Now every market we've been to has it's own peculiar quirk. It may be a layout choice, it may be the times they're open or it might be a particular kind of stall that shows up. Here in Amsterdam it seems the bath and body section of your local Walmart can only be found in the outdoor market because that's the only explanation I have for why stall after stall would be shampoos, conditioners, razors, hair coloring kits and a whole assortment of bath and body products. It never ceases to amaze me the oddities that markets have. If I ever design one, I'll have to remember to throw in a subtle strangeness.

After all this wandering through crowds of people, Rae and I headed back to our home base and dropped off the wares we had purchased. Then we went out to the neighborhood of Jordaan and simply walked around the canals looking at the converted house boats. It was so nice and so peaceful. There weren't a lot of bikes or cars or even city sounds for that matter. We walked for hours away from all the people and talked and talked. So many of these houseboats were converted freighters or haulers. Now they haven't moved in years. Some of the little coots (a duck like creature is my best description) have gathered dozens of twigs, sticks and other rubbish together to make their nests on the canal wall side of these houseboats. The turbulence from passing canal tour boats is lessened there. One such nest already had the couple exchanging turns on 7 eggs. It was pretty adorable seeing them interact. We sat and had a beer for a while and watched them.

All in all, our final time in Amsterdam was spent enjoying the food and the atmosphere of the quieter neighborhoods. Many more chocolate covered waffles were consumed along with more fries, bread, cheese and beer. We caught the train for Frankfurt and headed home with 4 beers and 2 packs of stroop waffles. I can safely say that we should have brought more stroop home with us.

Leiden, The Netherlands: A Cyclist's Look

2010-04-17T13:33:00.009+02:00

It seems that everybody in the Netherlands bikes. They have special lanes for bicyclists and heaven help you if you're in their way. Well, that's not quite true. They are very nice people and I only heard the ding of a bell a few times. I think it is terrifying because of the speed with which they zip around. Their presence goes before them and makes me run out of the way. But I digress. On Rachel's birthday we joined the ranks of the cyclists and went out into the country. She really wanted to see the tulip fields, of which the most famous is Keukenhof 17 km outside of Leiden. Normally people take a bus to get there but we aren't normal. 7.50 € later and we're riding through some neighborhood towns on the way to Keukenhof.

Beautiful scenery, quaint and quiet suburbs, lush gardens, ducks, chickens, and bees all were sights to see. A little windy on the way out there but that just meant it would be smooth sailing on the way back. We only had a general map of the area consisting of 120 square kilometers give or take. It definitely did not show well defined roadways let alone bike paths so we merely followed road signs to each town listed between Leiden and Keukenhof on the map. Once we reached one town, I looked on the map for the next closest town on the map and said "keep an eye out for such and such because that's next." It worked and though it wasn't exactly as scenic as I'm sure it could have been, our path eventually took us to the fields.

Unfortunately we were either too early or too late for a vast majority of tulips. Many many daffodils were there though and were sprouting in vivid colors. Hyacinth were also blooming creating an aromatic sensation on my nostrils. Though there were only a few tulips it was still beautiful to see. After about 17 km we wound our way off the main streets following signs towards the main entrance of Keukenhof. We had no plans to go inside since we didn't want to spend the 14 € on the entry fee. We stopped next to some fields in the woods and had some lunch. We brought along our cheese, bread and apple repast that had worked so well the night before. After that, we continued along and instead of doubling back, we made plans (based off of the vague map) to come back via a main roadway that passed different towns.

The way back was much more off the beaten path than the road we took to get out there. Several times the bike path disappeared altogether and we trusted that by making our way through an apartment complex's parking lot we would find our way could continue. It did, but then the road was under construction and we had to take a detour that involved going along a one way road that was now being used as a two way path for both cars and bikes. Several times I feared I'd get driven off the road into a canal. Also on our way back was a farm with Shetland ponies and a Wallaby. Kind of odd to run across but I would love to have a Wallaby. They are incredibly cute and I don't mind saying that.

All in all we biked for about 4.5 hours over 35 km with absolutely gorgeous weather. Once we dropped off the bikes, we decided that we would have Rae's birthday dinner at a pancake house we had spotted during our wanderings of Leiden earlier that day. Take a look at the picture and tell me this pancake doesn't look amazing! Mine was brie, honey and bacon while Rae's was apple, bacon and cheese. The pancake itself was flavorful in itself but the toppings took it over the edge. It is safe to say it is on the 'Top 5 Things I Ate in Europe' list. The waitress who helped us was very nice and enjoyed how much we enjoyed the pancake.

We took the train back to Amsterdam and swung by the amazing beer store (more on that later) and grabbed a few beers. We ended the day sitting on a bench near the canal drinking a beer and just being together. Happy Birthday Rachel!

Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Part 1

2010-04-15T08:06:00.006+02:00

Amsterdam is filled with a lot of nice people. Most everybody speaks English there and it is really easy to get comfortable and adjusted to the city. The city has been called the Venice of the North and I have to agree. Only they should have said the much nicer Venice of the North. Having just recently been to Venice I can say that Amsterdam is both cleaner and prettier than Venice (in my humble opinion). Although the trees were not leafing we were still able to enjoy the sites of the area.

We were able to find some deals for the high speed train and made it to Amsterdam from Frankfurt in only 4 hours. It was early afternoon and we immediately attacked the town. I think we wanted to get some parts of the city out of the way the first day since they were the more touristy and we dislike multitudes of people. However, the first thing we did was to find a pub near a canal so that we could have a beer. With the sun out and warming everything we spotted two chairs (no table) and pounced on them. We had good timing and the server was there immediately. We ordered our beer and then moseyed the chairs right to the edge of the canal with everybody else behind us and out of view. For the next hour and a half we sat with our feet nearly dangling over the edge watching canal cruise boats go by us. It was a pretty good start to a stay in a city. Four or five more hours of exploring and we wind up back at our place laden with three kinds of cheese (sambal, smoked and hollandaise mustard), bread, apples and chocolate covered pearl sugar ladened waffles.

Our lodging was one of the cheapest places we could find and it wasn't too bad. It was in the red light district but that just gave it some character. It was an extremely narrow building, as they all are, and the room was noticeably listing to one side, which was a little weird. The ceiling was shorter than I am and had beams so I was always watching my head.

The next day was Rae's birthday and we began by heading back to the train station to grab a train to Leiden, a good sized town 40km south of Amsterdam. It is the jumping spot for getting to the tulip fields so it made Leiden a pseudo-tourist town. Our plan was to bike ride to the fields but the weather was very cold and cloudy dreariness. I had wi-fi in our room though so I saw the prediction that by noon it would be partly cloudy and warmer. So we had coffee and explored Leiden for a few hours in the morning. I exercised all my will power to the weather and blue skies started peeking around 1100 and by 1145, it was nearly completely clear! We were very happy we decided to not wait for the weather to clear in Amsterdam first. We finished our wanderings of Leiden and had a pre-bike ride beer at this cool restaurant with a cat. Then it was off to the train station to put a deposit on some bikes. More to come...

Finally it begins again

2010-04-14T07:24:00.002+02:00

So I never mentioned on here that I was going to be visiting Amsterdam last week. The whole trip came up quite suddenly in fact. It was Rachel's birthday and she is Dutch. Two and two together mean we went to Holland for her b-day and it was awesome. She loved it and I loved it and I will write about soon. Lots of good things to tell about that place.

Meanwhile, school has finally started again this week. It's about time is all I can say on that. Two whole months off is not fun if you don't have money or things to do. I can't tell you how often I've missed my 'library' from home. My good friend Trevor sent me a box with, I think, 7 books in it and I've mowed through nearly all of them. But that is beside the point now. Now we have school and homework again so hopefully I won't be as lazy as I have been. Also with the weather turning nice again, there will be more time for reading outside, and that is fun with any kind of book.

Time has Velocity?

2010-04-01T06:21:00.001+02:00

The period between school semesters is fraught with peril. It would be like a ship of the line (circa 1857) traversing a shoal known for harboring Reefs of Peril®. If you don't keep your mind active it's going to crash. In an effort to stave off the intake of water followed by certain ingestion by a shark I have been reading The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene. It is a good read but somewhat slow at times. I did want to share something briefly that I came across and in conjunction with a previous post I did on time travel. Greene was explaining relativity and the effect that moving clocks run slower. I have often times had difficulty with these subjects since I have trouble identifying who the observer is at the moment. If you were to look at a situation from the point of view of the other guy (the moving object), you would have a completely different problem. Anyway, this is not about that.

The thing that Greene mentioned was about how time and space work. The top speed in the universe (so far) is lightspeed (that speed from Star Wars that would make the galaxy the size of our solar system). Also remember that one moves both through 3D space and also through time from one second to the next. Greene wrote that one's total velocity through space-time is equal to the speed of light. Wha? Your speed through space plus your speed through time is equal to the speed of light. Basically, if you're sitting still and not moving at all your speed would be 3 times 10 to the 8 meters per second. Alright? Now, start moving. Since your total speed in space-time can't exceed lightspeed, some of your velocity in time must be transferred to your motion in space! Whoa! Thus your watch starts going slower. Get going faster and faster and a crap-ton of your temporal velocity gets stolen by the space motion. That's why if you approach lightspeed in your ship, turn around after a few years (by your clock!) and come back to Earth that you'll find many a decade have gone by (according to the Earth clocks). I believe the real explanation would be nothing like this, but it was the best description for the reason moving clocks go slower that I've ever seen. How cool, eh?

Disclaimer: After writing this post I notice that I used speed and velocity, but being too lazy to fix it, know that I meant velocity with every instance of the word speed.

Venice, Italy: Part 2

2010-03-28T11:11:00.013+02:00

Let's see... For sure the first full day was the most epic, merely because of the walk that Rae and I went on all day. Another activity we performed was taking the 'bus' from the beginning of it's run all the way out to the island of Lido. The bus was of course a boat and we picked it up at its first stop so we were able to get seats up front. The number 1 goes along the whole Grand Canal and then out through the bay to the island of Lido. There were about 15 stops and it was a nice day on the water. This is probably the most frequented boat since it ran every 10 minutes or so, but there were still a ton of people all the time. Thank goodness we had seats up front. The stops criss-crossed the canal so if you wanted a particular side, you might have a bit of a walk from your stop to where you need to be.

We had been told also that Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie were at a particular section of the Grand Canal filming a new movie called the Tourist. Unfortunately, we did not find or see them. Oh well. The island of Lido is pretty much a strip of land that separates the island of Venice and it's bay from the Adriatic. As such, we walked the entire width of it and visited the Adriatic. My sisters and Rae actually took their shoes off and waded. I'm told it was very cold.

On the way back from Lido, we got off the boat at San Marco and braved the extreme mass of humanity that inevitably goes to the famous places. I'd like to draw your attention to the lamp stands and their pink glass. Interesting. San Marco was quite large and our search for an exchange place for my sisters led us up an alley, which then sent us on some exploration of the surrounding areas of the San Marco neighborhood. We made our way down to the Rialto bridge and had an early dinner. And then we had more gelato. *thumbs up*

That dinner was the only time I had a pasta dish while in Italy. All my other meals were pizza and gelato and beer with crisps. Yes, here in Venice we found the most delightful pub to frequent and frequent it we did. I had my choice between a Martin's & Gordon Red or the 9% Carlsberg Special Brew. Oh mercy! The last time I had a beer I enjoyed this much was in Scotland in November and before that it was August in Seattle. The beer came with free crisps and our relationship became so good that we even got free sandwiches one time, no charge (plus more crisps). Huzzah! Rae was enjoying Campari spritzers that were very tasty. When we weren't having beer at this pub, we were enjoying the extreme variety of pizza toppings that Venice had to offer. One such topping I must recount. Fries (or chips since I seem to be using UK versions of potato foods). Yes, fries were placed on top of a cheese or pepperoni pizza slice. Astounding. I will be trying this at home. I had never even imagined what potato and pizza would taste like but it works. Try it.

Our last few hours in Venice were spent at a Irish pub (they were heavily advertising football and Guiness) people watching. Espressos or lattes all around and all four of our seats were facing out to the walkway. The pub came with a very cute guard dog who did not want to be petted at all. I let him be and we named him Max.

We watched as street peddlers vended phony high end bags, sunglasses and such. One time and quite suddenly, 7 of them came tearing from our left through the crowd with about 3 bags on each of their arms. It was like a scene from a movie. My head casually followed them from left...to right as they kept glancing back. Another person in uniform shortly came tearing after them. Wow! About 20 minutes and another espresso later, we see some of those guys come moseying back. I can only assume the weaker of the herd was taken down.

Venice is a city of wandering. No cars or buses, except for boats, means you're walking everywhere. It was nice to get off the beaten paths and away from the people. That way you get to see some of the more interesting things and even to try and imagine living there. I'm glad I visited. It certainly was a sight to see.

Venice, Italy: Part 1

2010-03-25T08:50:00.010+01:00

A little over a week ago my sister and her best friend came out to Germany to visit me. For the first two days, we wandered Giessen and visited Marburg. After that we went to Venice since we reasoned it would get really boring for them to be in Giessen for a week. Train travel being expensive if you don't have a pass, we planned a trip to a place we all had been wanting to visit. All parts of the plan to get there went off without a hitch. We flew Ryanair again which means flying into an out of the way airport. In this case, it was Treviso. An hour bus ride and a very long bridge to the island and we were in Venice.

"Ah...Venice." I just had to quote Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when I got off the bus. We quickly followed the directions to our hostel and left the realm of cars and buses behind us. There was the Grand Canal right off the bat! A huge bridge too, which consisted entirely of steps, but we were not to take that bridge. Let me just say that the streets had us licked from the very beginning. We didn't have a good map with us yet and the word 'street' means something very different here. Alley would be the more appropriate word. Thankfully Sarah, my sister's friends, isn't afraid to speak so we asked a restaurant proprietor where the street was that we sought. We kept an eye on our surroundings and saw that there was a bakery and a pizzeria right next to our place so our first night involved having pizza and a little wandering around.

There is a lot more concrete and roadway than I was expecting. I pictured canals between every block and sidewalk-like walkways on each side. But there were entire sections where you could walk 5 or even 10 minutes and not see any water. There was also a persistent odor that was very slight and I could imagine that in the summer it would be worse, thus confirming the smelly Venice I've also heard about. Thankfully, the temperatures were cool enough that I never noticed it again. Moreover, an army of gnomes appears to have been unleashed with spray cans because there was graffiti everywhere! No joke. I was astonished. We wondered if they paint over it in tourist season, but then thought this town is a year round destination. Oh well. I got over that quickly too.

Our first full day found my sisters (my sis' best friend is practically another sister) wandering by themselves while Rae and I took to the city like madmen. By madmen, I just mean that we were going out and had no intention to come back until our 5 pm rendezvous time. Two of my goals for this city were to find the Church of San Pantalon and the Church of San Barnaba. At San Pantalon, there is The Martyrdom and Apotheosis of St Pantalon by Gian Antonio Fumiani, a massive ceiling painting. Fumiani died painting it when he fell from the scaffolding. I wanted to see it because it was mentioned in a book I recently read, The Solitudes by John Crowley. It described the painting's way of going up into infinity and it certainly did. Here is a link to a Wikipedia picture of the ceiling. My next place was actually in the line from our hostel to Pantalon so we continued walking and eventually (I say eventually because we zigged instead of zagging and came around the long way) arrived at the Church or San Barnaba, the outside of which was used for the library in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Here is a picture of me in front of the structure.

The inside was hosting a da Vinci inventions thing. They had about 50 miniature versions of his inventions on display. I glanced inside and can say for sure that the interior shots from the movie were a set. Whatever, I liked the outside.

From there, Rae and I continued east, I believe, and began a very large loop around all of Venice. We wandered to the San Marco area, out to a peninsula point that had some sort of art museum, around the point, up and over the Grand Canal, out to a Bastion wall, back up to another bend in the Grand Canal and down to the Rialto Bridge. We sat finally and had some beer at a table on the water right next to the bridge.

There was a very amusing guy on his boat directly in front of us while we were drinking. He was on his cell phone, gesticulating wildly (I gather as Italians do, no offense), and walking up and down the length of his boat. His pacing was the amusing part as he appeared to be quite drunk. I kept expecting him to tumble overboard. He would walk right to the edge and lean out and then lean back all while talking and moving his arms. Eventually, he started up his boat, his buddy got on and they took off. His pal barely missed hitting his head on the bridge as they went under. Yes, the other guy was still on the phone. I was sad to see them go.

There was also much gelato to be had while in Italy and we definitely had a lot. If it wasn't pizza, it was gelato. So it goes. Our first day ended with going for pizza and gelato. I shall tell more in a subsequent post shortly. Out.

Concluding thoughts

2010-03-24T10:04:00.000+01:00

Addendum: I have uploaded photos from all the places we went on our Balkans trip. The captions I've put have a few extra thoughts and I hope you enjoy the selection. Thanks for reading and traveling with me. As always, should you have specific questions about these places, just comment and I'll get back to you.

Hello all. As you can see, the current (as of 3/17/2010) posts are all about the trip I took through the Balkans region. I am planning on posting about 5 pictures per place that have a story or are simply pretty after I get back from visiting Venice on the 21st. Of course I'll also be posting thoughts and pictures from there as well. The pictures will come with captions that will tell more than I could in a quick blog. So until next week, cheers!

Photos: Bratislava, Slovakia

2010-03-16T22:15:00.000+01:00

Picture 1: A square in the old town. It sucks that it was such a dreary and rainy day. I think this place would be nice to see or hang out in during a sunny day.

Picture 2: The Photographer. Of the 3 famous statues I mentioned in the blog post, this guy gets the picture here since he is the picture taker. I like the angle that Rae got but if you’d like to see the Watcher, he is there, down by the door on the corner.

Picture 3: The feast we inadvertently ordered. Looking at the menu of the place I picked, the three of us decided to share a combo meal since it would be just as expensive as individual meals that we would have shared bites of anyway. But then this plate comes out with a layer of french fries on the bottom, a huge hunk of meat on the bone in the middle, calamari rings, toasted cheese bread, sandwichs, wursts, chicken wings, and a variety of dips/sauces. Amazingly enough we cleared this plate that was made for 4-6 people.

Picture 4: The UFO bridge. Rae has told me that the Soviet regime dismantled one of the oldest cathedrals in the area to get the materials for this bridge. It is the creepiest bridge I’ve ever seen and I would not want to drive over it. That’s all.

Bratislava, Slovakia

2010-03-16T22:09:00.005+01:00

Whew! We have made it to the last place on our journey before our return to Germany. Bratislava met us at the train station with a blast of cold air. Rain was brewing and it wasn't long after we got off the train that it was lightly sprinkling or drizzling. We were again disoriented and wished desperately that large street maps came with compass roses on the ground. With that said, our wish to get to the old central area was confounded by street turns and our path was more circuitous than we intended. But because of that we again got to see a part of the city that a normal traveler wouldn't have seen. I remember remarking to myself, "how hard can it be to find a cobblestone old town next to a river?" I guess pretty hard. All of us were quite hungry and so I snagged a local travel guide and looked up Slovakian cuisine. A pub popped up that looked promising for beer, but something caught Rachel's eye before we could get there.

We were in the square with the Frenchman, a statue of a man leaning on a bench (I will include the picture). Let me say now that Hungary and Slovakia, along with the Czech Republic since I've been there too, are statue addicts. If you were a sculptor, come sell your stuff here. Anyway, the Frenchman is, I guess, a famous statue along with the Watcher and the Photographer. I suggested we search for the other two after eating, but on the way to the pub, I spotted the Watcher. He is half a guy leaning on the edge of a manhole in the street. Seriously, it is an interesting sculpture just because of its positioning. He is facing towards the Frenchman down a street. Making a 90 degree angle with the Watcher at the vertex, one can spot the Photographer down a different street. He is leaning around a building with a huge camera pointed in the general direction of the Watcher. The cafe/restaurant at the corner he is at is appropriately called Paparazzi. Scratch three famous statues. On to food!

The pub was a nice respite from the relentless drizzle. Inside we found the local beer to be quite delicious and decided to share a combo meal designed to feed 4-6 people, not 3. Out comes a huge chunk of meat on the bone still surrounded by various dips, cheesy and garlic bread, various sausages (one wrapped in bacon), mushroom and cheese sandwich halves, calamari rings and fries filling the rest of the space and acting as a blanket for the plate. It was the most incredible display of food I'd seen in a while. We ate our fill, needless to say, and enjoyed two beers each. It was a good way to stave off walking in the rain, which let up while we were in there.

We walked along the river, snapping photos and people watching. We came upon the UFO bridge, which was built with the stone from a synagogue the Soviets tore down. It was a strange looking bridge, specifically the cable supports, and it did not sit well with me although it was an epic bridge. I think it was the UFO part. Anyway, we felt that we might as well head for the airport and so we turned and followed the map up the way we should have come in the first place. Just a quick little stopover before our flight back to Germany. I won't go into boring details of the flight and what not but I will say that we were able to catch the last bus from the Hahn airport to the Frankfurt main train station. Unfortunately, and as expected, the last train to Giessen had already left. It was 1:30 in the morning 18 days after having left Giessen and it was probably -3 degrees Celsius in the bahnhof. But we persevered and were napping a siesta by 0800. Cheers to a successful ending!

Photos: Budapest, Hungary

2010-03-16T13:25:00.000+01:00

Picture 1: The incredible tomato basil soup I had the first day in Budapest. It had smoked cheese in it and the toasted white bread had melted smoked cheese on top. It was amazing and everybody should have soup this good.

Picture 2: Another statue that comes off the pedestal. This one had the figure of a woman fawning over the bust. This statue is in a park of statues next to the river.

Picture 3: The Parliament building. This picture does not do the size and grandeur of the building justice. It is so elegant and decorated that I can’t believe people actually work inside. I wish we could have gone inside to see.

Picture 4: An image of Buda from the Pest side of the river. The clouds this day were doing incredible things. I wish the ambient temperature had been a little warmer, that way when the Sun was covered up it wouldn’t have gotten so cold. After this pic was taken, we wandered over the bridge and hiked up and around the whole riverside Buda, from the government buildings on that side to the Fisherman’s Bastion.

Picture 5: From left to right, Palinka, Hubertus, and Havanna Club 7 year. The Palinka was amazing and I have definitely come to love Balkan brandys. The Hubertus was a bitter and Rae really likes bitters. She enjoyed it quite a bit and Jeff of course had to have some rum. Since we were splurging a little, he went with the 7 year.

Picture 6: Jeff and I walking around the Great Market of Pest oblivious to Rae’s camera. As I think I said in the blog, the stores repeated themselves after every 4th stall or so. It continues to baffle me how every stall in a touristy area stays in business when they all sell the same stuff.

Picture 7: The tank on a pool of nearly still oil in the Terror Museum. The images on the wall are of victims of the Nazi and Communist regimes in Hungary. This was the only place we could take pictures. The mirroring pool of oil had two sources underneath the tank and the oil very slowly pooled over the edge and fell down to the basement. It was a strange effect.

Picture 8: The Heroes Square. Very, very large. If you look closely near the center, you should be able to see Jeff and me. Rae was so far away to take this picture. The 14 statues along the back range from the 10th century up to, I think, the 19th century. There were large gaps in the dates but I guess the other leaders or guys didn’t make hero status. It was very interesting to walk along from right to left and see the change in clothing on each statue as the years went back.

Budapest, Hungary: Part 2

2010-03-16T13:20:00.000+01:00

We were still pretty exhausted, especially since our trip had been going on for a bit. We only did the market and walked around the river up to the massive Parliament building the second day. The second night there, we were going to try and have another stab at the soup at the bar but it was completely packed. Apparently Tuesday night is the night to go this bar. Instead, we decided to attack one of the various Western eateries we had seen on our walk in which included BK, Mickey D’s, Subway, Pizza Hut and KFC to name a few. Burger King was also packed for some silly reason and prices seemed high. We settled on Pizza Hut and were soon terrified. Pizza Hut in Budapest is like some sort of sit down place! I couldn’t even glance at the menu in the huge room for the prices before I was being ushered to a seat and encouraged to take my jacket off for the coat hanger. I didn’t even know if I wanted to eat here but it seems we were trapped. We each ordered a medium and three guys (yes, 3) came out with our pizzas and served the first slice onto our plates for us. I can’t say anymore, the experience was just bizzare. I fear for any Hungarian who goes to a Pizza Hut in the States expecting all that.

The third day there we visited the Terror Museum, a building that is now a monument and the previous headquarters of two different terror regimes: Hungarian Nazis and then Soviet Communists. Walking through was pretty rough at times. They had movies of people telling their experiences and images from both regimes. The museum even reconstructed the old holding cells in the basement and gave people a chance to experience what prisoners experienced including a room filled with 2 inches of water, a room that had a ceiling 4 feet off the ground so you couldn’t stand up straight and a room barely larger than your body so you couldn’t even sit let alone lay down. We were there for several hours just absorbing everything. We even sat for 15 minutes and watched the tapes from the war crimes trials. It was hard to believe of course that this building had been the headquarters but it had been and instead of tearing it down, the people preserved it as a legacy and a reminder of how things should not be.

We grabbed a bite to eat and then took a brief siesta before traveling up one of the largest roads in Budapest that led to the Heroes Square. This giant pavilion area looked like it could host two farmers markets every Saturday. 14 huge statues commemorating the heroes of Hungary partially encircled a central pillar that stood watch over a tomb to unknown soldiers and heroes. I’ll include the large picture soon. Two museums, for art I believe, mirrored each other at each end of the pavilion. It was already dark by the time we got there so we did not stay out long. We grabbed food stuffs again from the market and had a snack dinner of cheeses, bread and meat with the remainder of some palinka and wine we had picked up earlier.

The next morning, we were already packed up and ready to go to the train station. Interestingly enough, it had snowed and was still snowing as we left for the walk. I’m certainly glad it waited because it was cold and dreary. It’s probably a given that we will try to return to Budapest in the future and this time in a better time of the year. I will say it was nice to not have a whole host of tourists around and that has been a defining aspect of our trip. The train station greeted us as it always does and we got on what was the nicest train so far. It was warm and had comfy seats. We bid farewell to Hungary and continued to the final location in Slovakia. More as always in the pictures once they’re up. Cheers!

Budapest, Hungary: Part 1

2010-03-16T12:47:00.000+01:00

Another night train out of Belgrade brought us to Budapest. We arrived quite early and, amazingly enough, the folks in charge of the hostel/apartment were going to be up already at their bar next door. We take the quick walk through downtown Pest to the spot on the map and find our host. He takes us up through what seems a maze of building hallways and multiple keys to a nice room for the three of us. Exhausted from two night trains in a row, we crash for a few hours with plans to take it easy the first day by visiting the Terror Museum and eating downstairs in the bar. Turns out the museum is not open on Mondays so instead we did what we had planned to do on Tuesday and that was to wander the other side of the river in the part of town known as Buda.

A beautiful and partly cloudy day was with us as we headed towards the river. Of course, we got a beer first at the bar along with some gulash and tomato soup with smoked cheese. I think my tomato soup was the most amazing thing I’d ever tasted in a soup. I think it was the smoked cheese. Anyway, we wandered the river side on Pest a bit, admiring the river and view of government buildings and Fisherman’s Bastion on the Buda side. We crossed the river and decided we didn’t want to spend 4 euro on the funicular up the hill and instead hiked up the side. It sure was higher than it looks and the view was amazing. Of course it got extremely windy and chilly way up high but we wandered all along the castle through the business/touristy area (1 euro postcards, bleh) to the Bastion and then back down. Several hours later, we crossed the river again and swung by a market for some food stuffs for dinner and breakfast the next day. We had access to a kitchen, computer and a TV! So over pasta with tomato sauce and bread, we watched American television with German dubbing. Wow.

The second day greeted us with seemingly fairer weather although it was still chilly. We decided to head out and mingle at the large market that is well known. I love markets and Rae was interested in hitting it for some paprika. We tramped down a different way through downtown and found the huge building with the market in it. Inside it looked like it should be a train station. Huge paned ceiling with multiple stories and walkways crossing over from side to side had me wondering if a train would come through. The market was a little repetitive in that every fourth stall would start the pattern of stores over again. First was the alcohol (various brandy’s, palinka, vodka) and paprika store, second was the meat seller, and third was the actual fruits and veggies stall. Interspersed, but with much less frequency, were baked goods or cheese/pate stalls. Downstairs in the basement was where they hid the more aromatically potent stalls, which seemed counterintuitive since the stench was overwhelming. We didn’t stay down there long. The second floor held the trinkets and fast food stalls. We partook of Langos which is a deep fried bread with various toppings. So good with just garlic butter and cheese but you could also have it with the works. Let’s carry on in Part 2....

Photos: Belgrade, Serbia

2010-03-15T09:40:00.001+01:00

Picture 1: Some of the castle grounds. From this side we could see the intersection of the Danube and Sava rivers.

Picture 2: A sandwich that is one of the most incredible things a person could ever eat that is fast food. It is called Pljeskavica and I have no idea how to pronounce it. The patty is as big as your heart and it was a chore to eat it but oh so worth it.

Picture 3: The friendly waiter at Le Petit bar and our free homemade rakija. This guy was awesome and I hope he gets that job on the cruise ship that he wanted.

Picture 4: The largest orthodox church in the world. The inside was so vast that I still felt like I was outside. You know that difference you get when you’re inside? Maybe for me it’s a very minor form of claustrophobia but inside this structure, I didn’t feel it at all. I think the couple pigeons soaring through the inside felt the same way. I’d like to go back and see it when it’s finally finished someday.

Picture 5: The remains of a building that was bombed by NATO. The residents have not torn it down but instead have let it be. It just has a fence around it but it does mean something since they haven’t demolished the building. Perhaps they are planning to turn it into a memorial.

Belgrade, Serbia

2010-03-15T09:36:00.006+01:00

Jeff was so hyped up after his encounter at the border that he spent the next 3 hours smoking and chit chatting with some other smokers in between the train cars (the only place you can smoke, which by no means helps the other passengers if the door is left open). There he made several friends, most notably a Serbian who was returning home from studying in Montenegro to work in a casino. Well, this individual offered to show us around and he only asked that we give him a chance to shower and change. We asked if there was someplace with free wi-fi and coffee and he led us several blocks away from the train station to a coffee shop that was probably the Starbucks of the region. On the way, some other associates of Jeff were directed to a eating place that our friend insisted was awesome. This is important to mention since we'll come back to it later. Recall also, this was Sunday.

So for the next 2 or 2.5 hours, we sat at this coffee shop enjoying the largest mocha I have ever seen. Yes, they had mocha on the menu and it came out in a giant soup bowl thing with two handles. Wow. Internets at last again and I was able to see all the birthday wishes on my facebook which lightened my spirits since I was pretty tired and down. We hung out for some time past the meeting time for our friend (yes, you can tell I never caught his name) but eventually we decided something either happened to delay him or he wasn't coming because he was already late and he thought we wouldn't have stayed. Either way, 40 minutes after the meet time, we headed off on the pedestrian way to explore ourselves. We walked towards the castle or fortress thing which turned out to have a great many statues in and around it. There was also a military museum and there were enough various artillery batteries on display outside to wage a war. We were pretty hungry by this time and recalled where our friend had sent the others. Since nothing else was open, this would be it anyway and let me tell you something! This was a monstrosity of meat and flavor and you'll have to wait for the picture. I couldn't finish and if I had, it would have been bad.

We stumbled our way in the opposite direction now from the initial coffee shop and went deeper into downtown looking for a bar or something for a beer. Our end goal was the huge orthodox temple at the end of the road. But first, the bar for a break. Inside Le Petit Bar we met a very nice waiter who is hoping to work on a Danube river cruise ship. We talked with him for most of our beer, during which he gave the Lucky Strike brand ashtray to Jeff (just for kicks), and after our beer he asked if we knew what rakija was. Well of course we said yes and he gave us free shots of the owener's homemade rakija. He even had one with us. It was very cool to still be meeting people like that. We said our goodbyes and kept walking to the temple. In our Lonely Planet this temple is labeled as the largest orthodox temple in the world but there was no mention of when it was completed. I pointed this out because I was curious how long it took to build. When we walked in and saw a great host of construction, we realized it wasn't renovation work, it was still under construction. National Socialists and then Communists coupled with a lack of funding had delayed and is still delaying construction. Still, it was a sight to see and I invite you to look at some pics once they're up.

We took a different street back down the hill by the advice of our friend at the bar. He said there was a ruined building still standing from the NATO bombings that took place. There were two buildings, one on each side of the street. I'd never seen a real bombed building. It was pretty heavy being there and looking at the damage. With several hours to go until our train for Budapest departed, we went and bought our tickets, saw what funds we had left and decided to go have coffee again at the coffee shop we started the day at. We stayed and read for many hours and then just after it got dark went back to the train station. There we discovered a train where our train should be but it was dark and scary looking with no identifiable marks to show it was going to Budapest. We waited in a heated waiting room.

This room was for lack of a better word uncomfortable. It was large and square with one ceiling light, one heater in the corner and seats only along the walls. Smoking seemed to be allowed inside and there were homeless arguing near the heater. Some other youths opposite us were listening to their conversation and laughing at their responses to each other. 3 police officers came in about 5 minutes after we did looking both tough and menacing, two things I dislike cops to do. They chatted with the homeless folk and escorted them out and then went and chatted with the youth group and they got up and left too. I was terrified they would talk to us so I kept my nose in my book. They passed us by.

Finally, tired of being in that room and with the train still parked at platform 1, I went out to examine the other cars. There, I saw lights on and signs on the windows that indicated this train would be going to Budapest. The back two cars had no power I believe, though they were connected, and I believe this was what several people were investigating as they continuously made rounds about the train with flashlights. We decided to get on and just sit in the dark, if there was a problem and the train started moving before it was supposed to leave, we would know we were on the wrong train and we'd jump off. Other people joined the train in the dark and we eventually received power but no heating. The time of departure came and we were off. Thus was our day in Belgrade.

Border Crossing into Serbia

2010-03-12T20:18:00.000+01:00

So we had just been to Kosovo the day before heading to Serbia and right now there are some tensions between the two entities. Rae had definitely done her research and in hindsight, trying to go from Kosovo to Serbia would no doubt have resulted in our being turned away at the border. Going through Macedonia first though was still charting unknown waters and I think it is safe to say we were all very interested to see how this was going to go. This trip had my first land border crossings and everywhere else I’d been so far in the world outside the US didn’t really check the passport thoroughly. I was not accustomed to the border guard actually thumbing through and looking at where I’d been. Every time I felt they were going to call me off the bus and ask me questions. How much more so for Serbia!

So we’re on the night train from Skopje to Belgrade and we know that most of the trip will be through Serbia. Only an hour or so into the trip and we easily pass out of Macedonia, the exit stamp clearly made. A little ways more down the track and we reach the moment of truth. It’s late but we’re wide awake. I think the best way to picture the guard that we got is a guy of bulk build but not fat, gruff to the point of irritated and angry but not quite. This is my interpretation and he might just have been tired or recently lost a game of poker. Who knows? Well he takes Jeff’s passport, glares at it and him, stamps it (I think he stamped it right then) and then makes a vague motion suggesting he needs to check something and put it in his pocket! The same went for Rae and me. Another guard goes by and they jabber something and I swear there were glances our way. Well the guard continues checking everyone else and is gone for about 5-10 minutes. It could have been shorter but when you’re trying to pass into a country that has some tension with your own plus one you just came from, it makes you nervous. The same guard comes sweeping back in and, to my worst fears, taps Jeff on the shoulder and motions him to follow him off the train. Rae and I start to get up thinking to follow but he says we should stay. Hoo-boy.

Another 10 minutes or eternity goes by in which we wonder what they asking Jeff. I imagined questions pertaining to politics that I’m not comfortable answering in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere. Jeff comes back smiling then chuckling and then laughing quietly out loud while handing our passports back to us. He tells us that he followed the guard a ways down the station as he met up with two other guards. They proceed into a guard hut of some kind but when Jeff tries to follow, they say he should stay outside. He has no coat and another person is there and Jeff merely says, “passport?” and they nod. Jeff says the guards were inside not really doing much and then they were laughing. Near the end of the time frame we were waiting in the train, the original guard just opens the door and hands the passports back to Jeff and motions to go! Wha?! Jeff thinks it might have been some sort of joke or game they were playing. After he told the story to us, it did seem that was probably the case. We were still strung up on adrenaline but the train was moving and we were in Serbia. Our passports that had both an entrance and exit stamp from the Republic of Kosovo now had an additional stamp over them – the nullification (in the Serbians eyes) of the stamp and our having ever left (or entered I guess) Serbia before then. I’ll include a picture when I have it. So there you go. The rest of the trip involved trying to get some sleep as we made our way to Belgrade.

Photos: Skopje, Macedonia

2010-03-10T07:53:00.000+01:00

Picture 1: A view from the castle grounds. The visibility was amazing and the valley that Skopje is nestled in made me think of Middle Earth. I’m not sorry that makes me out to be a nerd but its the best way to convey the way I felt.

Picture 2: Another view via a great hole in the outer wall. I think that yellow building was some sort of museum, but unfortunately I can’t confirm that.

Picture 3: This stone bridge is over 300 years old. This is where we were when the gypsy kids accosted poor Jeff. While exploring down along the river, Jeff and Rachel spotted the bronze statues of divers. If you look, you can see a pair of feet in front of the other diver. Sometimes the river covered them up and it took us about 10 minutes to see them.

Picture 4: An interesting statue near the stone bridge. Something I would notice later in Budapest as well is the tendency for statues in the area to come off the pedestal. Most statues I’ve ever seen are confined to the base they are placed on. This particular one is of a human form with its arms becoming branches and one leg becoming a root that encircled the pedestal. Very interesting.

Picture 5: Rakija from the Rakija bar we discovered nearly by accident. Good stuff. Nice people.

Skopje, Macedonia

2010-03-10T07:46:00.002+01:00

The bus ride from Prizren to Skopje began as I said with frigid temperatures and snow and ice on the ground. The bus station was miserable and though there were a great many buses waiting, none said Skopje. None that is until I figured maybe it is spelled completely differently from what we’d expect and sure enough the bus was already there waiting. O blessed warmth! All of the border crossings, by the by, have been easy as pie but of course we still had the difficult one ahead, but I digress. Macedonia greeted us with yet another abrupt change in scenery. Every country’s border has been a natural border between different climate/scenery/feel/look. It was a little unnerving since to my eyes it was as extreme as changing from a blue room to a yellow room. Well, maybe more like a dark blue to a light blue room...but still way different right after the border. Ack! Alright, to Skopje we go.

We were completely turned around when we reached the bus station. We had no idea which way was downtown nor which way we had come in. The Lonely Planet map we had with us was only giving a rough idea of landmarks and we didn’t even know if we were on the map. Our first course was to identify the train station since our travels would now be exclusively by train. After walking back and forth around the blocks surrounding the bus depot trying to follow some signs that said “Railway Station,” I reached another snapping point in shyness and just up and asked for the Railway Station. Turns out it was directly behind and above the bus depot. I had seen the tracks but didn’t know where the station was. I wish I had space to describe how different and yet the same each station or depot was from each other. After getting our bearings, we headed for the river to explore the large bazaar, fortress, and surrounding river area.

At the fortress, Jeff was accosted by a man selling knee braces and perfume/cologne. He literally followed us up two set of steps up into the outer grounds of the fortress stating that he knew English well and so we couldn’t say we didn’t understand him. I ignored him all the more after this since his snobbery would not help his sob story inspire me to buy things I did not need. After escaping, we were treated to beautiful views of the valley we were in. It was a partly cloudy day and quite comfortable. We wandered down through the bazaar again towards a stone bridge which had been there for some time. Across the bridge we found an ice skating rink set up and a host of people skating to music. We explored the river’s edge for a bit and then on our way back up from the edge to the bridge, two gypsy kids, aged 8-10, were suddenly among us, invading my personal space like nobody’s business. Their single phrase “give money” still haunts my ears since it was practically said with harsh, demanding anger. Poor Jeff. The kids were centimeters away from putting their hands in his pockets. I guess Rae got away because she’s a girl and I am pretty tall. They finally left us alone as we crossed the bridge again. I tell these two instances, not as a negative review of Macedonia, but because I want the reader to understand that our day trip to Skopje was not going so well and we were not having a good time. What can cheer up a not good time? Coffee and beer. Or in this case, coffee and rakija.

We hesitated outside a cafe on the edge of the bazaar area for the briefest of moments and in that moment, the owner came out and invited us in. We decided we might as well and were treated to a stone, brick and wood beauty of a bar and floor area with an upstairs that was just as nice. To describe the place with a word, we chose ‘comfortable.’ It felt like it belonged in Seattle. We sat upstairs and started with espressos. Later, we decided to try some hard alcohol since we had nothing else we really wanted to see and still had 4 hours to kill or so before we needed to be at the train station. Turns out we had entered a rakija bar. We told the owner some things we thought we’d like to try and it was amazing! We stayed for an hour and a half or so and on our way out, it seemed it was a dead time since the waiters, owner and I assume some of the owner’s interest partners were having dinner and drinks. Well, one of the partners said to us out of the blue if we’d like anything on the house - food, drink, whatever. Tongue tied briefly, we replied that we would but wanted to go get a postcard before any of the places closed. Less than 5 minutes later we walked back in and sat downstairs at a table next to them all and were then treated to a carafe of their homemade rakija (2 5cl shots each), not one but two helpings of incredibly seasoned potato slices with a kind of local goat cheese on top and fun conversation. All free. Turns out this place had been open for a week. Basically when we started our Balkans trip, this place opened. If I lived in Skopje, this is where you would find me. If you visit Skopje, I recommend this place and their potato slices to you. I’ll include a link if I find one.

We said our goodbyes and headed back to the train station, but the hidden generosity of Skopje was not quite done. While waiting for the train at the station, we entered a pastry store to order some tea. We sat outside so Jeff and Rae could smoke and the lady behind the counter came out and made conversation, asking why we were sitting outside (there was nobody in the small diner). So we went in, talked with her a bit, and then (I’m not sure how it happened) were given a pastry each, wrapped up for eating later! Well I left Skopje with a better impression than I would have otherwise. But now came the hard part of the journey: the border crossing into Serbia.

Photos: Prizren, Kosovo

2010-03-10T07:15:00.000+01:00

Picture 1: This is a view across the river that was right outside of the hotel we found to stay in. The cafe that we would frequent is just past the mosque. There were a great many eateries that way as well.

Picture 2: The hill above Prizren had interesting ruins. I have no idea what it used to be since it was just walls and they were very nearly gone as well. Lots of space though. It also snowed during our walk up there and this was the pretty sweet view that we got on top of a thick portion of wall that was still there.

Picture 3: A public fountain. You can occasionally see people cupping their hands and drinking out of it. I’m not sure I would have only because it was really cold and my gloves were always on. This square was also very near the cafe we went to a lot. While people watching, we were astounded by the number of young people that went by in both directions. I joked that it may be the same group of people going around and I may have been right. It felt like the entirety of Prizren’s teenage population had gone by us.

Picture 4: The local beer of the area. I include it because it wasn’t half bad. Because I seem to have a problem with German beer and desperately miss my microbrews of the Pacific Northwest, this beer is honored with a photograph because it was awesome in comparison. Should you go, order a Peja.

Prizren, Kosovo

2010-03-10T07:05:00.005+01:00

So I was pretty nervous about Prizren after Pristina. It wasn't that I disliked Kosovo, it just didn't seem to be ready for 'tourists' (I hate that word) just yet. Prizren was very different from Pristina. Imagine something like a turkish quarter or two to three story buildings with many alleys and narrow streets with markets and meat vendors dotting the storefront along with open markets at central locations. That was what the whole city was like. Quite a difference from the city we came from of skyscrapers, large streets, and a university. Upon arriving in the bus station and not finding any hint or tell of hostels or even hotels in the area, I reached a breaking point in my shyness and began asking anybody for information because I didn't want to wander what appeared from the bus to be an even more confusing town. Hostel? Hotel? That's how it went and finally one guy in a travel agency spoke English well and advised us to try the Hotel T*****. He said it was about 20€ a night which was better than nothing and as I said before, it seems Kosovo wasn't ready for travelers yet so they might not have hostels at all. We headed for city center and every 500 meters or so I would ask a person for the hotel and we would receive additional directions...that weren't working. Jeff noticed a lot of people delivering tea, just like we would see mailmen or pizza delivery people on foot. Having come from a background like that, he suggested we snag the next delivery guy we see and sure enough, the directions from him were impecable. Kudos to Jeff the Idea Man.

We see the hotel sign and walk hesitantly up the steps and into a room that has tellers sitting at stalls with a few people talking to them and a man in a suit at the door. "This is a hotel," I say haltingly as we look around and the man at the door says, "no, this is a bank." Seriously, the dialogue and rhythm of speech was right out of a movie. We chuckled, apologized and the man told us it was the next door over. To be fair, the hotel sign was directly above the room we were in but also over the bank sign. We get to the hotel, speak with the gentleman, who we believe in retrospect spoke better German than English, nail down a price and get 3 beds for one night, later to be two nights. It was raining now outside so we took a late siesta and hoped the rain would stop. It didn't really but we went out later anyway and found ourselves at a little café run by a very nice gentleman. We settled on machiatto's with Bailey's regardless of price because we were tired and wanted some alcohol and caffeine at the same time. Friends, right now, a large coffee with alcohol is 1€ I kid you not. We got another one and then headed to a pizza place for dinner which had an amazing calzone and the Kosovak beer for 1€ (I mean the beer was 1€). Thus ended the first day in Kosovo (don't forget Pristina). This day was also my birthday and I turned 27 while drinking and eating in Kosovo. Cheers!

The second day, it was snowing. I prefer snow actually over rain only because it is easier to deal with. Your shoes stay perhaps drier than stepping in puddles and you can dust yourself off when it accumlates too much on your jacket. As such, we braved the weather and climbed the hill to the fortress ruins above Prizren. It was a nice hike and quite peaceful in the snow. There weren't a lot of people about and the visibility was not too hampered by the snow. Afterwards, local lunch and a dessert followed by more coffee. Since traveling always involves a budget, I was pleased with how cheap things were. We wanted to try some brandy but they said they only had whiskey. Whiskey all around then while watching dubbed Discovery channel! We splurged and ate out again at the pizza place and had the same waiter. After eating, paying and tipping him, he came back less than a minute (seriously that fast) to ask if we would like anything on the house, espresso...whatever. A little confused at first, we politely replied that we could go for an espresso. So again we were blessed by the generosity of the people here. We shook hands with him on the way out and thanked him heartily.

Saturday morning comes around and there is now ice on the ground. Our hotel host advises that it is better to take a taxi to the bus station for our 0845 bus to Skopje. It was only 2€ but the problem was the taxi driver didn't seem to know what a bus station was. I guess I thought that was a universal phrase like coffee (kafé, kaffee) or beer (bier, bire). We tried "bus, skopje" and another taxi driver tried interpreting and eventually they figured out where we wanted to be going. A little later and we're on a comfortably warm bus, heading out of Kosovo and into Macedonia. Pictures to follow.

Photos: Podgorica and Pristina

2010-03-09T15:20:00.000+01:00

Picture 1: This was a park in Podgorica. It was just outside of and across the street from the Mall of Montenegro. We sat and enjoyed the view of a school packed with kids and the peacefulness of being off the bus. We also ate some Jaffa brand cookies that tasted a little like the smell of lemon dish soap.

Picture 2: I just had to include this. It is somewhere on the way to Pristina on the night bus. This was the overnight bus that decided people don’t need or want to sleep on a bus that travels all night. The loud music played all night and the lack of any kind of ventilation gets a 7 out of 10 for uncomfortableness. But at the second of two bathroom breaks, the establishment had a little display up. This little guy was in there along with some deer and an enormous bear.

Picture 3: In Pristina, they have the main university for Kosovo and this is their library. It’s pretty much a normal building but the outside has additional metal work that makes for a really cool effect. I imagine it as being a product of a grad students final project in metal art or architecture or both.

Picture 4: Also in Pristina, and one of the primary reasons we stayed so long since we couldn’t find lodging, is a monument to Bill Clinton. Yes, the former president of the US. Not only is there a monument, but there is also a huge billboard with his face and the street is named Bill Clinton Boulevard. It was amazing. He is honored due to his role in the independence of Kosovo.

Pristina, Kosovo

2010-03-09T15:13:00.005+01:00

So our first stint in Kosovo was the capital, Pristina and unfortunately seemed to be a continuation of the capital syndrome first observed in Podgorica (e.g. not a lot going on here). There was one thing we wanted to do here since it was just a stop over on the way to Prizren, but during the trip we decided to try and find a hostel for the night. The one thing we knew we had to see here was Bill Clinton Street. Yes, thanks to our former former President's actions with regards to Kosovo, he got a street named after him here and it was a must that we find it. Well let us start with Pristina was a little hard to navigate. And on top of that, for all the pomp and talk about it, there was not a lot of english or german being spoken around here and communication was dicey. There was also no map of the city available at the bus station. So we picked a direction and started walking. This isn't exactly a travel blog so if some traveler is reading this just comment that you'd like more info and we can email.

It was a nice enough day in that it wasn't freezing and there wasn't a strong cold wind. We walked for a spell heading towards what appeared to be Lady Liberty on top of a squat cube shaped building. On the way we passed many US flags. It was quite interesting. Liberty was sitting on top of an international hotel that looked too expensive for our meagre budgets, so we pressed on and found another hotel that looked shoddy on the outside but the inside turned out to be lovely...and expensive. Discussion ensued and it was decided we should find Bill Clinton Street and then proceed to Prizren that day. Recall please we have no map. And we're looking for a street and we hesitate to try and talk with anyone. Errrr. Let's keep walking this way! (Have I mentioned yet that eastern Europe enjoys not putting up street name signs?)

Down the street, some interesting graffiti leads us to the University of Pristina's library...which when I walked inside had an "American Section!" Rae and I stay outside and elect Jeff to go in an try to find a map. He is gone so long that Rae and I begin planning what the rest of the trip would be like without him. Little did we know he would come back in sparkling triumph. Ok, so he wasn't sparkling for real, but he was triumphant at getting a map, information about the possibility of student housing...and the location of Bill Clinton Street! The student housing thing sounded iffy from the beginning so we only gave it a half-assed attempt because we were already in the mindset to get to Prizren that day (which turned out to be good, but that's told later). We looped up and around the block and came down to Bill Clinton Boulevard (yeah, not a street). Jeff really wanted a picture next to it but when we passed the first sign, which was tiny and in the middle of the road, we kept walking past and didn't see another street sign again. We did however find the statue of Clinton which was backed by a ginormous poster of him on his street. Then we saw (finally) another street sign and now have photographic proof there is a street named after him in Kosovo.

We headed back to the bus station via a neighborhood and more of downtown and that's really all I have to say on Pristina. We hopped on a bus in the early afternoon and headed for Prizren and hopefully a place to sleep. I admit that with the first city in Kosovo down and all that I'd heard from Rae about this place, I was thinking that I wasn't going to like it here. Let's get to the next blog to find out why I was mistaken.

Busing to and out of Podgorica, Montenegro

2010-03-09T14:37:00.005+01:00

We left Kotor in the morning, catching a bus to Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro. It is a town that is on a plateau/valley in the mountains and I think the only reason anything is there is because they needed something to be there on the way from the coast to somewhere else inland. Podgorica, as of the time of this writing, is unfortunately not a very exciting place. The bus ride there had some final beautiful views of the Adriatic coastline and then a windy path up into the mountains. Once at the bus stop, and seeing that there may not be a whole heck of a lot to see, we began walking with the intention of getting cold medicine (since Rae and Jeff finally got what I got) and a new memory card for Rae's camera. We swung by the apothecary and had fun trying to describe a head cold so we could get medicine. We kept walking wherever our feet and pictures took us since our bus to Kosovo was not for several hours.

The walking eventually led us to what looked like a mall, but which was in fact an unfinished mall. The Mall of Montenegro, while largely incomplete, had a working Target-like store where we procured a new card for the camera and some munchies for the road. There was also a large indoor market/bazzar going on with an entire room devoted to eggs. There will be a picture. We wandered just a bit more outside and then settled at a coffee place for cheap espressos while we waited the next few hours.

Making our way back to the bus station, we took a different turn (since we hate exploring the same way twice) and found that the streets of Podgorica are not very nicely linked. We wound up walking past the bus station one block down, probably half a mile down we get to cross up and past the street the bus station is on, then double back all the way down past the bus station again only this time a block above it. There was no other way to the station then the path we took leaving it the first time. Anywho, who should we spot at the bus station restaurant but the two gents from our Kotor hostel! They were waiting for a 2330 bus to Sarajevo. We chit chatted a bit more while waiting and then hopped on our night bus for Pristina. I was secretly hoping that we'd be able to sleep, but that was not to be. The bus was more packed than I thought it would be, was quite dusty leading to allergy problems, and apparently (after a vote which we didn't understand) we would be listening to music the whole time there. All night long.

The border crossing into Kosovo was amusing. I believe we were the only Americans on the bus and when the passports were being handed back out (since they collect them all for stamping off of the bus) Rachel got hers back near the beginning and Jeff and I were handed ours back last. The guy distributing them was all the way at the front of the bus acting really confused. The guys behind us were laughing at him and making motions towards us probably saying things like "dude, they're right here." We chuckled as well. Several hours and a couple rest stops later and we arrived in Pristina, Kosovo.

Photos: Kotor, Montenegro

2010-03-09T08:40:00.000+01:00

Picture 1: This was a hole in the wall at the top of the big hill we hiked. It was the only opening from the way we came up to the other side of the hill. As soon as we passed through to the other side, all the sounds of the city down below were cut off. The deep valley we were looking into was quiet and peaceful. The small church or chapel was down below and we hiked over it to it next.

Picture 2: A look at the Montenegro flag and Bay of Kotor. It was a great day for a hike even if it turned to misting a few times. We were very nearly within the cloud level.

Picture 3: A view of the walled city (where we stayed) during an early part of our hike up the hill to the ruins.

Picture 4: The street outside of our hostel. That is the hill in the background we hiked up. The streetlamps were very pretty especially with the wet ground and cloudy dusk. The mist on the hill was also beautiful to watch.

Picture 5: One of the first sites we saw when we arrived in Kotor. The crystal blue-green pond water looked clean enough to drink. The vastness of the hill was also in the first impressions. I think I would definitely enjoy coming here again.

Kotor, Montenegro

2010-03-09T08:34:00.005+01:00

After the wonderful 3 days in Croatia our little crew made its way down into Montenegro. I had never seen a fjord (nor do I even know how they are defined) before, but I always imagined it would be beautiful. I was not disappointed. The bus into Kotor, which itself sits at the end of the fjord, follows said fjord for a long time. A deep water channel with steep mountains on each side that disappear up into the clouds...it was like being sent into some sort of fantasy world. A normal person shouldn't ever get to see something so cool. Our hostel was located within the walls of the old city and unfortunately our arrival coincided with some lower clouds that brought rain. A brief tramp from the bus station to the hostel gave us a chance just before the rain started to get a feel for the city. It seems that the car horn is used differently in ever place we'd been so far. Frankly it was irritating as hell in any form now but I would eventually get used to it. When we got to the hostel, I finally saw what I had been expecting a hostel to look like the whole time: a single hallway - two rooms on either side of the hallway with 4-6 beds, a bathroom on one side, a kitchen on the other - that ends with a common room with couches, main desk and a computer with internet. The girls working there were very nice and I was excited to use the computer, as the posts from Sarajevo and Dubrovnik were written there. But, about the layout or image if you will of a hostel in my mind, this place finally fit the bill. Sarajevo didn't have a common area or computer and the main desk was a city block away and Dubrovnik we were actually living with a family. Moreover, here in Kotor we met two guys (one from Pasadena and the other from New Zealand) who then shared our room.

Due to the inclement weather, we started just by wandering around the Bay of Kotor. I loved seeing the deep water and all the boats moored there. It got me wishing that I owned a boat. Since it isn't tourist season at all, we found a small restaurant on the water that was open and had a coffee machine as well. We sat down, ordered what turned out to be a crap load of meat *giant thumbs up* and then sampled some of the local beer. Speaking of which, I will be posting separately all the different beers and food we tried since I think it would get out of hand here. Anyway, something odd happened afterwards. We tipped, because that's what we do, and then stepped outside to where it was still drizzling to have a smoke. Basically you could say we were loitering. Not one minute in and our waitress comes out again and in her pretty good english asks if we'd like an espresso. We had money so we naturally said yes and thank you. We sit down outside and start petting the local kitties when out comes a fantastically pulled shot and some sort of gelatin dessert. It was quite tasty. When we tried to pay, she said no it is on the house! Thus we were first introduced to the generoisty of the area. I don't know if it's because we tipped, tipped to much, they're bored, or they really are that generous, but it was much appreciated.

Moving on, the next day was a nice morning, partly cloudy and we decided to climb up to the old fortress at the top of the hill that the old city is built at. Mind you, this isn't to the top of the fjord, but it was still pretty stinkin' high up there. It was quite the trek but the view as we continued to ascend was amazing and I can't wait to post pictures. Once we made it to the top and had explored the ruins, we discovered that this hill was separate from the real fjord mountain and so on the back side, there was a steep drop that led to small valley before proceeding vertically again. Nestled in this valley was the remnants of a small cloister or chapel (I'm not sure on the word) and the ruins of what could have been a village. We climbed down, explored and made our way back to the bay by a different path that zig zagged down behind the first hill. It began sprinkling and raining again by the afternoon and so our exploration of the Kotor was limited to the old city.

Earlier that morning, before the trek up the hill, I had inquired of our hostess if there was a bakery nearby for some breakfast. She told me of a place that had just opened, was cheap and really good. She was not lying! We walked into this hole in the wall place and our glasses instantly fogged up and our nostrils were blessed with the savory aroma of fresh bread. Our breakfast was so good, we decided to come back in the afternoon for lunch. The couple who owned the bakery were from Slovenia and they were so nice to us. The owner visits New Jersey every year to visit some family so his English was great. We talked to him for a bit while having our lunch and he up and gave us a free beverage from his cooler! If you should ever go to Montenegro, contact me and I will tell you how to get there.

Although our stint in Kotor was only two nights, we felt that we had seen what the old city had to offer. Had we stayed longer, we would have explored some of the other small towns along the fjord and perhaps hiked more up the mountains. I left with a good feeling since we were blessed with two free items from different establishments. Pictures and more specifics to follow.

Photos: Dubrovnik, Croatia

2010-03-01T17:59:00.001+01:00

Picture 1: Outside the old city's walls. The beautiful Adriatic on an absolutely fantastic day. The Sun was out, it was slightly cloudy, and everybody was about their business. Winter seemed to be a thing that never happened. You can see a fisherman in this pic. I'm not sure if he was looking for anything specific, but a few other people were out on these rocks fishing. We saw one guy catch a fish, unhook it and chuck it behind him into an alcove in the rocks. I felt bad for the fish and wondered why the guy didn't put him out of his misery, but I guess to each their own, culture-wise that is.

Picture 2: A view of the old city and a nearby island on our way up to the old fortress and museum at the top of the hill. It seems the first three places we were going to be at (Sarajevo, Dubrovnik and then Kotor) were going to have impressive hills that would provide awesome views. Can you make out the walls of the city?

Picture 3: The bay for the old city. Lots of little boats. This view is from up on the wall. You can actually take a tour of the city from the walls but it cost more than we wanted/had to spend so we were only able to be on a portion of the wall. Thankfully, it was one that gave a nice picture.

Picture 4: Outside the walls on the sea again. This time looking the other direction than the fisherman picture. Not much to say other than that there was really blue water below me.

Picture 5: The terrifying pigeons of a square in Dubrovnik's old city. It seems that everyday at noon, these pigeons will get fed a ton of feed. Starting about 1115 when the bells of the church ring every 15 minutes, every pigeon within earshot flaps its way to this square. This was the indication to me (thankfully) that they could not tell time. They came, they left. But then, it was noon and they came and so did a guy with a huge bucket who very ungracefully chucked it on the ground. The pigeons swarm to the very small area the feed is covering and I can only assume many are smooshed in the ensuing chaos. It is so chaotic that the feed is kicked up and moved around and so there is a wave of pigeons taking off and then landing and then taking off and landing and the whole group moves in one direction.

Dubrovnik, Croatia

2010-03-01T17:47:00.000+01:00

Days 4-6 of our trip through the Balkans found us in Croatia. Our hostel turned out to be a full on family owned affair. Mostly because, I think, it was the off season, we were treated as VIP's. This means we were on the floor that they live on and our common area room was their living room and kitchen! Basically the mom got 3 more kids for 3 nights. Firstly though in case you missed it, I posted a separate blog just before this one that is a tiny story about the trip between Sarajevo and Dubrovnik. Upon arriving at the bus station, we were met by a couple people who were staking out the station for backpackers. We unfortunately had to tell them that we already had a place but thanked them for the offer. Our host came and picked us up, was very nice and excited to meet us. Something we were told about but not offered in Sarajevo was the welcome drink and when we reached the apartment, honey brandy was poured into my small pewter shot glass. I may have found my favorite hard alcohol. It was so sweet, smooth and easy to drink...I bought a half liter off of them before I left. :) This family was amazing and so loving. They just loved having us there.

We were situated 30 minutes by foot away from the old walled city. The afternoon/night we arrived was stormy and rainy, complete with lightning. But the next day dawned bright and fair and huddled nearly all day at a comfortable 15 degrees C. We walked around one of the hills and then made our way very nearly along the coast down to the old city. We had purchased the night before a loaf of fresh bread, some pepperoni meat and a smoked cheese and we ate this in a garden area on the coast around 1130. Wandering through the city, we noticed (as it had been mentioned to us by our hosts) how the city is half venetian and half ottoman in that the lower part closest to the coast is more haphazardly arranged, unlike the upper area which is very even and uniform in building distribution. A little treat awaited us at noon in one particular square of the old city: feeding time for the pigeons. It seems that everyday (unless the pigeons can really tell the difference between days) at noon, the church bell rings and somebody from one of the restaurants surrounding this particular square comes out with a huge 5 gallon barrel full of feed and just throws it onto the ground. The pigeons know this and they wait. They were on every roof but I only noticed the several dozen on the ground around the central statue. Noon tolls and every stinking one of them takes off at once while simultaneously the ones from the roof and any straggler in the city comes rushing into the fray, all hovering and flapping 7 feet off the ground. I thought they were spooked until a man came out and dumped the feed. Instantly the air was clear and a mass of distracted pigeons was on the ground. Crazy. I'd never seen pigeons act like that before.

We did not take the tour of the wall but we did find a portcullis if you will in the wall that led to a stepped area outside on the rocky coast. It was so beautiful with sun out and the sea blue and calm that we took our siesta there. We doubled back there for the sunset and my hopes were high with the clear skies for a chance to see the green flash. Alas, there were some clouds far out at the horizon that obstructed the final setting. Oh well, it was still beautiful from that spot.

The next day was cloudy and much cooler so we hiked down to the bay near to where we were staying. It was a nice walk around the bay looking at the boats. They had some older style boats moored there as well. We wandered again to the old city, had coffee and ice cream at a cafe we'd seen in pictures (a weird feeling being at a place one had only seen in pictures) and then went outside the wall at our spot again. That night we enjoyed a gnocchi dinner, more honey brandy, the Croatian Who Wants to be a Millionaire(in Kounas) and then a movie with the family called Bottle Shock, starring Chris Pine (the new Kirk), Bill Pullman and Alan Rickman. It was actually a very well done and interesting movie about the Napa Valley in the 1970's. We had wine while watching it and it just seemed right.

Lastly, our host's son took us up to the old fortress on top of the hill, which gave us a magnificent view of not only the city below us, but Bosnia and Montenegro as well. I'm learning a lot about the history of this area and that tour was very insightful. I found a piece of shrapnel while walking around. It's hard to believe what the state of these places was less than 20 years ago. All in all, Dubrovnik is a beautiful city, even in the off season and if we had been staying directly in the old city we may have wanted to stay longer. As it was we felt good about all we had seen and gotten to do, not to mention the incredible hosts we had. As before, I'll post some pictures as a separate post and you can search for a link here or by keyword Dubrovnik. Cheers!

Bus from Sarajevo to Dubrovnik

2010-03-01T17:32:00.002+01:00

So our plan from Sarajevo to Dubrovnik was supposed to take us to the city of Mostar in Bosnia for a few hours first. Unfortunately, it seems life wanted to throw us a curveball for this one. The lady at the train station in Bosnia was so helpful for getting us two separate tickets for Sarajevo to Mostar and then Mostar to Dubrovnik. It just wasn't what I was expecting. The first thing that caught me funny was that the bus was actually just a large van with seating for 13 and standing room for 2, assuming no large amounts of luggage. It was amusing. The 'bus' had many stops and people would come and go, paying as they got on the bus. About 30-45 minutes in, we passed by a landslide that had occured. Police had the 2 lane road down to one as they cleared the road. The reaction of the woman next to me as our driver talked to the police suggested to me that somebody had been injured. Moving along though, we continue and begin to follow a river with misty hill tops. It was very pretty but pretty soon it began sprinkling. This would eventually become the storm that accosted us our first night in Dubrovnik. Anyway, about an hour in to the trip to Mostar and what turned out to be 45 minutes from Mostar, the traffic slows down and comes to a complete stop. People are turning around ahead of us and our driver gets out, lights a cigarette and starts jabbering with some other drivers. One of our passengers actually gets out and starts walking down the line of cars, which disappears around the corner of the mountain. Our driver gets in, pops a U and we head back. I wondered what we were going to do about the other guy and also how I hadn't noticed any other signs or way to get to Mostar. Our driver pulls off at a restaurant on the river. There doesn't seem to be any town associated with this restaurant. He says something to us all and gets out.

Jeff goes up to our driver after about 10 minutes of us pacing and wondering what is going on. He tries English first but the driver doesn't speak it so he trys German. Bingo. Turns out German is your next bet after English in Bosnia. Anyway there was another landslide and we might be at this restaurant for a couple hours! Our layover in Mostar was only a couple hours but seeing as how there was nothing we could do, we got espressos and then some food along with the other passengers. I bet that waiter wasn't expecting that much work right then! We keep our eye on our driver and a little over an hour later he head motions to us and we carry right on to Mostar. Luckily the bus we were going to connect with was also delayed (for the same reason? most likely) and so we did not miss our connection to Dubrovnik. That bus was uneventful. Pictures to follow in the future. Prost!

Photos: Sarajevo, Bosnia

2010-03-01T00:05:00.002+01:00

Picture 1: There was nothing finer than beginning a day with some coffee and here it is primarily Turkish coffee. I tried looking up the actual name for the method of preparation and it seems to really be called Turkish coffee. While in Bosnia though, it was called simply kahve or Bosnian coffee. The cup came filled with Turkish Delight, sometimes doused in powdered sugar and sometimes with coconut. The individual serving would fill the cup twice, although by the end the dregs were a substantial portion of the cup. The coffee was always served with water, no matter where we went and as far as the coffee went, it was perfect every time.

Picture 2: This is the view from one of the many cemeteries dotting the hillsides around Sarajevo. We met the groundskeeper and spoke with him for a while in German. After chatting, we made our way around the grounds. There was this structure overlooking the valley and I do not know what it was for. I saw no plaques or writing. It just was. It was hard not to think about the history of the place when standing there looking down on a city still recovering in some areas.

Picture 3: This is just a part of a normal, heavily trafficked sidewalk that happens to have shrapnel or explosive damage from a grenade or other device used during the 4 year siege of the city. The residents, instead of repairing the damage, filled in the holes with a red resin as a reminder/memorial. We spotted them all over the city and also other holes that weren't filled in.

Picture 4: Sebilj fountain and Bascarsija Mosque. They say if you drink from this totally potable fountain that you will always come back to Sarajevo. Rachel drank from it. I took a picture. The mosque in the background, according to the friend we met who then took us on that tour of the city, was commissioned to be the leader's mosque. Upon arriving though, he mistook a different smaller, but perhaps more elaborate, one across the river as the mosque for him. It was a funny story and I have messed up the details no doubt, but the idea is there.

Picture 5: The local beer of Sarajevo at the brewery. It wasn't bad. We went there two nights in a row. The establishment had a large central room with alcoves in various places for additional tables. The ceiling was vaulted brick and quite cool. Large bar and moderately friendly staff. I recommend at least going for the beer. We never ate there. Oh well.

Sarajevo, Bosnia

2010-03-01T00:01:00.000+01:00

Thankfully, I have access to the internet here in Croatia and can begin writing the blog posts for the various cities I'm visiting on my epic adventure. Pictures taken by my beautiful girlfriend Rachel will of course have to wait for another time. Also, I will try to hit the big points of the trip (since so much happens that is worthy of mention) and as such my flow or style of writing may be hindered. So let's go!

Our journey began like any other in that we had problems with the train system. Instead of flying out of Frankfurt-Hahn like we normally do, we flew a different airline and flew out of Köln. Landing in Sarajevo was a little freaky as it's in a valley. A pretty tight valley at that and there were quite a few wind shears shaking the plane around. I am usually ok with pitch and even roll, but when yaw comes into play, that just freaks me out. Needless to say, I'd like to not ever fly to Sarajevo again. Once there though, we pace back and forth outside the airport trying to find the bus that we know would take us directly to our hostel. Instead, we finally give in and pay for a taxi (which turns out to be pretty cheap and quick, i.e. a good choice) and arrive at our hostel.

I should also mention briefly that I am sick and got sick one day before leaving. Fantastic. Anyway, Sarajevo is in a valley surrounded by beautiful mountains and cliffs that are dotted with houses. The signs of the recent wars are still visible. Houses are pock marked with bullet holes and there are depressions and blast patterns still in the streets and sidewalks. Many houses all around the city are still abandoned and we were taken one time into a neighborhood named the Court of Maria which had a large 3 story structure with no floors or roof. Only the walls remained. There were many vivid contrasts, old Eastern Bloc architecture with new constructions all right next to each other. There are a great many mosques. There was one every few hundred meters. Every now and then, depending on where we were, we would hear the calls to prayer. We visited the area where there is a mosque, cathedral, synagogue and orthodox church all within a hundred meters of each other. Really cool.

We hiked up both the north and south 'hills' and visited several of the cemetaries. The view from up these steep mountain sides was breathtaking and imagining how this city was under siege with artillary and snipers all along the mountain tops was moving. The local beer and brewery, which is made with a spring underneath the brewery, was amazing! We went two days in a row and paid, it seems, top dollar for this tasty dark beer. It's funny. We did not know how much English might be spoken here, but the first night we were there, we found the brewery and walked inside. We sat at the bar and Rachel and Jeff hesitated for just a moment when the barman came up so I blurted out the universal word: beer? He came back with "dark or light?" to which we said "dark." Then he said "big or small?" Of course we said "big." So there you go.

On our last night in Sarajevo, we were heading towards the brewery for a third time when Rachel stopped to take a picture of a church which is perhaps 70 meters from the brewery. A young man of our age (28-30) came up and commented on us taking a picture and how this church was one of his favorite spots. He was 'happy' drunk we think and before long we were talking about all manner of things and he was telling us all about his city. It was amazing and I will admit my initial hesitation to following him around but after a while I realized he really loved showing us around. We started on one end of the city, didn't go to the brewery (because he was going to take us somewhere better), and ended up walking through nearly the entirety of downtown and surrounding Sarajevo with this fellow for the next 2 hours. I wish we'd found him sooner, but now if we ever go back, he said he would put us up.

All in all, we enjoyed our trip to Sarajevo immensely. We learned a lot about how to get there and what to do while there. 3 days was a good amount of time and we do hope to go again. Once I have pictures, I will include a link or you can search the labels for Sarajevo.

Big Trip

2010-02-16T11:00:00.003+01:00

So Rachel, Jeff and I have a big trip planned. Next Tuesday, the 23rd, we will begin a 16 day trek through 7 countries. We will be visiting Bosnia, Croatia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Serbia and Kosovo, Hungary and Slovakia. Our tentative itinerary is as follows:

Sarajevo, Bosnia - (arrival) by plane - 3 nights

Dubrovnik, Croatia - by bus - 3 nights

Kotor, Montenegro - by bus - 2 nights

From Kotor to Prizren is currently going to involve an overnight bus from Podgorica, Montenegro to Pristina, Kosovo and a bus from there to Prizren.

Prizren, Kosovo - by bus - 2 nights

Skopje, Macedonia - by bus - day trip

Belgrade, Serbia - by overnight train - day trip

Budapest, Hungary - by overnight train - 3 nights

Bratislava, Slovakia - by train - day trip

Many of the hostels we've looked at, and have pre-booked, have internet so I hope to be posting tidbits of what we're seeing as we go. That way I won't have so much to do when I get back, since my return to Giessen on March 11th is only 3 days before my sister comes to visit me.

Struck Out

2010-02-11T13:02:00.003+01:00

Well friends, it seems a third time has come in my experiment where I did not write during the day. Alas, I think I'm done. The deep drive to see if writing was something I could do has revealed an appreciation for conversational writing styles, but nothing in the way of ordered writing. It is beyond me, but I will continue to exercise my wit and humor as best I can through pleasant monologue discourse (I think there is an oxymoron in there, but he's hiding).

Day XI - 108 Weeks

2010-02-09T17:24:00.002+01:00

So my continued life plan for living on a boat isn't exactly coming to fruition, but it is progressing. I've given myself until my 29th birthday to make it happen and that happens to be in 108 weeks, give or take. Why did I choose weeks? Mainly because counting months would be to slow and counting days would be too tedious and silly. Of course, you might say counting weeks is silly. Well, so be it but I will make it happen. There will be space enough for me to stand up straight (I'm a little shy of 2 meters) and there will also be a barbecue. There will be cold beer, cats, and good times. Mark my words. In 108 weeks, there will be a blog here detailing my new boat. I thought I should let you know now.

Day X - Cold

2010-02-08T21:55:00.002+01:00

It was -5 degrees celsius today and I needed to go grocery shopping. It was a classic example of sucky timing. A little bit of wind chill helped us along as well, plus the still remaining pockets of compressed snow-ice. Needless to say it was treacherous. I think I may have been looking at my computer screen all day except for the two hours I was away shopping. My head is a little on the pained side and my eyes are doing funky things. It's probably a bad sign and so I'm now deciding to type with my eyes closed. Note to self: be sure to do a spell check.

It's a funny thing to type with the eyes closed. I find that I drift away from conscious thought, in a sense, and start typing on automatic. Typing whatever comes into my head at that moment. I become more conscious of my inner monologue. Kind of like free writing. That is what it's called, isn't it? When some writing instructor tells you to just write exactly what is in your head as it pops up there. For example, while writing that sentence, I started thinking about Winston from 1984 sitting in his corner of the apartment away from the telescreen so he could write in his journal. Who knows where I would have gone next.

As you can no doubt tell, another unremarkable and uneventful day has transpired here in Giessen. A forecast of plans include Marburg on Wednesday and Frankfurt on Thursday so let's hope I'll have bloggable material to swoon and stimulate your imaginations.

Day IX - Missed Again

2010-02-08T08:43:00.002+01:00

Well friends I botched another day. And this time I don't even have the excuse that I was too busy and not on my computer. I was simply lazy and forgetful. I think I've come to the conclusion that I won't be a writer. It is just not my artistic method. I'm a musician and therein has always lain my gift of expression. Sure, I've written a few poems and started or participated in a short story fiasco once or twice, but I enjoy writing the most when I'm just being conversational. Like right now. Blogging seems to be such an easier format. Not being constrained to any formal boundaries of what is and what isn't appropriate form to write in is freeing. I can talk like I normally do but in words, projecting as best I can the thoughts running rampant in my head. I will finish the experiment but after that I will return to a normal frequency of blogging. Thanks for bearing with me in this test.

Day VIII - Blah

2010-02-06T17:16:00.004+01:00

I picked a heck of a week to start trying to write. There is nothing going on here. I did start working on the story, but I feel weird writing it. I think I'm trying to get too much back story while simultaneously trying to introduce characters as well. Of course, a real short story will probably be several pages and it would be silly to post such a thing here in pieces. I guess I'll keep putzin' away at it in a Word document.

Meanwhile.

Today in my longing for home I came down with an intense craving for relish and onion on top of a ballpark hotdog. A baseball game along with it was also part of the craving. So strange. And that is the order of the craving. First it was relish, then that made me think of onions with it on top of a dog. Then of course baseball. Rachel then mentioned a bagel dog, the cream cheese and grilled onion topped polish dog in a big warm bun. You get those after the game at the stand on 1st Avenue. Hoo doggie.

It's my friend's birthday today. He is the other person from the physics department at the UW who came with Rachel and I on this exchange program. He's a lot like me when it comes to birthdays. We don't really want a big hubbub. We just want to bond with close friends doing something we all enjoy. Since I moved to Seattle, my thing has been going out to a brewery with a small group and hanging out. He's coming to my place now and we're going to have a beer. Cheers!

Day VII - How to Start?

2010-02-05T08:43:00.004+01:00

I'm finding it very difficult to get my thoughts in order for a short story. Where do people come up with ideas? Maybe I'm just having an off day, but I can't seem to get it together. I've gone through half a dozen ways of getting to the end of my story and can't pick one that I like the most. I've read hundreds of short stories in my life and now that I'm in Germany, away from all my books, I can't even look at them to get an idea for how they're laid out. I'm not going to give up though. Some piece of fiction will be written so help me. I'm afraid this is all I have for today.

On second thought, it's possible my lethargy, apathy or whatever else my block may be is derived from a feeling of homesickness. The past couple days have been a little more difficult than normal. Oh yes. I am homesick every stinking day. I'm excited to be abroad, yes, but am most definitely thinking of the Pacific Northwest all the time. I guess we'll see what things are like tomorrow.

Day VI - Simple Things

2010-02-04T17:52:00.003+01:00

It might be one of those days where I don't have much to say and must resort to simplicities. I'm listening to the soundtrack from The Dark Knight. I really enjoy how well Zimmer, the composer, not only manipulates his previous themes from Batman Begins into something new but also folds in music from the original movies. I believe he did the same in the first but more subtly. My favorite track from the album is "I'm not a hero." It's long and contains many different motifs.

It finally stopped snowing here. It hasn't snowed in at least a day. Yesterday it was primarily rain but we've had a lot of clear skies finally. There were even several halos produced on the clouds. They were so vibrant that the refracted light partially reformed into a second sun if you know what I mean. It was quite bright.

I think I've come up with a short story idea. It's nothing to dramatic or over the top, just a simple story. In fact, it's more like an excerpt if anything. I just want to jump right in and get to my climax. I'm going to use the last week of my 2 week experiment to write the story in parts. If it doesn't take 7 parts, that's alright. As a little teaser, my idea takes place on Mars, probably 200 years in the future, give or take. I have to do a bit of research first to make sure I get a terraforming time frame right. Or I may just screw it and say humanity created some new technology that allowed terraforming on a much quicker scale. And like I said, nothing dramatic. There are no bad guys. If anything I suppose it's a moral story. Hope it works. Starting tomorrow!

Cheers!

Day V - Missed It

2010-02-04T12:56:00.003+01:00

Yep, that's right. Day 5 was actually yesterday and I missed it. But, my excuse is simply that I was on my computer for all of 5 minutes yesterday. I had my test yesterday and, frankly, it didn't go so well. Besides having difficulty translating the questions to a point that I understood the problem, the gentlemen who were proctoring the exam did not provide a lot of help. One went so far as to say he wasn't allowed to answer questions. I didn't want to ask a question about the problem, I wanted to ask what the problem was. After that, there was only time to eat a quick lunch before my next class started and it wiped me out so much so that during the hour and 45 minute break, I took a nap. Then with the end of class finally around 6, I went and hung out with Jeff, one of the other students from the States who also took the test, and we ordered pizza and watched Seinfeld. Then I went to bed. All in all, an exhausting day that didn't start out too well and ended with simple fellowship due to extreme weariness. So, I try to make up for missing yesterday by writing about yesterday. I hope that'll still count since I will write something different for Day 6.

I started reading a new book. It is Solitudes by John Crowley, the first book in a tetralogy. I'm looking forward to it and will keep you posted.

Day IV - Nothing

2010-02-02T19:28:00.002+01:00

Can one write about nothing? Definitely not because of course by writing something you've written about something, correct? I have no idea. I guess it depends on your at-the-moment concept of nothing. I start with this since I couldn't think of anything to write about, but the experiment must go on! There was a funny show on during the 90's that I never heard about before coming to Germany. It's called Newsradio and had Phil Hartman in it before he passed away. In an episode just recently watched, he made the point about the phrase "it's nothing." "'It is nothing' implies an it, which is something." Of course the way Phil Hartman said the sentence is much funnier than just writing the same. So then my first sentence of this post means the same thing, no? Well, I added the word about, didn't I? You can not write nothing, but you can write about nothing and I did just that. Sorry to have wasted your time, but it won't be a waste if you try to check out that show I mentioned. It is a great diversion from physics homework and it's silly stupidity is refreshing in such serious times as these.

Day III - Finals

2010-02-01T17:34:00.005+01:00

It's finals time...finally. After a grueling 4 months, we've come at last to the moment of truth. And what a moment it is here in Germany. Typically, there are no tests at all during the semester. The only thing providing any measure of accomplishment in class are homeworks and frankly I've not had the best ones while here. Usually there are 3 maybe even 4 tests during the quarter at home and they scale in such a way that bombing one doesn't mean a complete failure. Sometimes one is even dropped. Here there is no chance of that. You bomb this, you bomb for good. It's so much pressure! There have been 12 in class practice problem sheets and 12 homework assignments for one class and no indication by the teacher what might be the 'big problem' on the test. You know, the one that should take 20 minutes and call upon a great deal of what you've learned? No idea what I should really focus on and there isn't enough time to really review everything in the fullest. There are so many equations, so many formulas, so many relations, tricks, and concepts that need to be known just to do the homework. I take an hour just looking in textbooks and online for the tools I need to do a problem. I'm not even sure what the equation sheet that will be provided for the test will look like. How will I be able to take a test?

I knew that school here would be more difficult. It seems that since moving away from California 4 years ago I've been progressively increasing the difficulty of my schooling. First changing majors, going to a community college, getting accepted to the University of Washington for astronomy, doubling my major to include physics and now studying abroad during a critical time of my physics education: EM and quantum. I know taking quantum mechanics will be difficult, but now I'm revamping my position to saying it will be near impossible. I do not look forward to taking it this coming semester. What will the test for that class be like?

Day II - End of the Universe

2010-01-31T12:47:00.004+01:00

What is an interesting thing to think about if you're a long term thinker? How about the end of the universe? Apparently, a new calculation of the amount of entropy in the universe has revealed much higher numbers than originally thought. Of course the researchers can't put a number yet on when exactly every particle in the universe is around the same energy excitement level, but they assured us that it would be after the sun has done its red giant blossoming thing.

I wonder if this 'heat death scenario' is the same as another end of days theory I've heard about? It involves the expansion of the universe eventually leading to a point, the 'Big Rip,' where no matter will coalesce and form new stars anymore. Everything in the universe - stars, planets, moons - will be smeared out to elementary particles just floating in space. They'll never get back together for a reunion party in a star's core or a planet's crust because everything will be too spread out. Boring! Of course before that happens the expansion, which increases, will cause every galaxy to disappear from view. That's right. They'll be so far away the light won't reach us. The only stars will be those in our own galaxy and of course those will be going out as the galaxy evolves and no new ones will form...and it leads to particle butter scraped over too much bread!

Day I - Falling Snow

2010-01-30T13:54:00.008+01:00

I'm from California. I'm sure you've heard of it. It's that place that has sunshine nearly every day of the year and where snow only falls high in the mountains. Specifically, I'm from Sacramento, which is down in a valley. Snow there is a 30 year or so rarity. It doesn't rain much there either and so 4 years ago, I moved to Seattle. And contrary to popular belief, it is not always raining there - it just seems like it does. Since Seattle is at a higher latitude, I asked locals about snow. They said it doesn't usually snow. I guessed then there were winters where it never snowed. Imagine my surprise when for the next 3 years, not only was there snow but it was so cold that the snow compressed and froze, lingering for a week if not more. It only snowed once or twice but boy was it beautiful and special.

Now I'm living in inland Germany. It is winter and it has been snowing at least a little bit nearly every day for the past month. Naturally I am rather tired of it by now since it hinders my mobility and makes for depressing walks to the grocery store. But the snow is still beautiful and special even though it falls every day. Watching the snow gently come down and cover the local cat's footprints while also coating the trees in white is a daily event. The pleasure of sipping hot tea and reading a good book is also augmented by the regular precipitation. It's just so funny to realize that I've seen more snow fall in the past month than I had in my whole life until now.

Outraged

2010-01-29T12:05:00.005+01:00

While reading the XKCD for today, I read on the mouseover that NASA pretty much threw in the towel on the Mars rover Spirit. My best understanding of what has happened is that Spirit got stuck and has been immobile for some time. NASA now calls it a "stationary research station" and expects dust buildup on the solar panels to eventually force a final shutdown. Of course, this little rover has been active for 5 years more that it was supposed to be so big kudos to the design gang. Wanting to get the full story though, I performed a search for 'NASA news' and the first thing to pop up was this. Obama is canceling the Constellation program!? I am so pissed right now. First Bush cans the shuttle program thereby removing any independent method for the US to get people into space, and then this guy cancels funding for the next generation of space-faring craft. Instead the government will outsource ISS trips to other governments and encourage funding for private sectors to develop spacecraft or some crap like that. I can understand canceling the shuttles; they're old and we need something new. But scrapping the new plan is stupid. Also don't misunderstand me in that I think it's great that other countries are getting to develop their own manned missions. I'm just angry that we (the US) won't have one anymore. The article also says that NASA will be encouraged to focus on Earth-based science like "monitoring climate change." Huh? Doesn't the government already have somebody (who is already getting funding) doing that? I suppose the next step would be to shut down satellites that do silly non-climate-change-sciency things. What does 1/4 of NASA stand for again? Space.

**Disclaimer after the fact: I apologize for my poorly researched rant. Should anything I've said not be true, please inform me nicely.

Here is the story about Spirit though.

An Experiment

2010-01-29T09:56:00.004+01:00

Recently, I read a post that dealt with being a prolific writer of short stories. I have had an interest in short stories, largely sci-fi, for some time and have wondered it I may have the ability to put ideas to paper. The post suggests that in order to prolific one should write a complete story every week. I don't know if I would even be able to start there, but I do have an idea. Since I already have a blog, I propose to practice writing here first. Rachel pointed out that like most things in life, to get better at it one must practice. I am going to try and write something here every day for 2 weeks. Even if it is merely me describing the music I'm listening too and what is happening outside my window, I will write it down and work on writing. This post I read also mentioned that most if not all of one's short stories may never be read. That's fine by me. So prepare yourselves.

Edinburgh, Scotland

2010-01-14T10:50:00.010+01:00

It occurs to me that I have never posted any sort of info or news about my trip to Scotland. Shame on me, yes? Rachel and I went to Scotland ummmm.... I'm not quite sure now when but we went there to visit a friend we made from the UW. She had been an exchange student in the physics department and now we were getting to visit her. Needless to say I was quite excited to visit and see a place that I had always wanted to visit. Moreover, they speak English there and it would be nice to be surrounded again by conversation you could understand (if you want to drop some eaves of course). The first experience of Scotland was wet. It was raining and looked simply miserable outside. I loved it. Everything was green, rain was gently falling, the sky was lit but overcast gray...it was beautiful. And then of course there was the sign in 6 languages as you were leaving the airport reminding you to drive on the left side of the road. Ha! Those were the first impressions.

I would have been completely okay if the weather had remained like so for the duration of the trip, even though hiking around Edinburgh would have been wet nastiness. But the next day let me tell you. Clear skies, light wind, comfortable outdoor walking temperature and amazingly dry ground! Let's just say we spent the whole day hiking walking around. Since it was such a nice day, we decided to hike up Arthur's Seat. Why it's called that I never really found out but it was quite the hike up a very steep hill and it got windier and windier. By the time we reached the top, I thought for sure that I would get blown away if I jumped. From the top, you could see all of Edinburgh and opposite the city, was the sea. It was the first time seeing the ocean since going to Germany. It was nice.

There was a ginormous field called the Meadows next to our friend's place and the first thing I thought was frisbee. Oh yes, lots of frisbee could be played here. This picture hardly does it justice since it was about 4 or 5 pictures worth of flat grass.

A store nearby had a wide variety of beers (microbrews!!!) including a ginger beer. Very crisp and tart. I couldn't drink it and stuck to my first IPA since coming to Germany. It was so unlike anything Germany has to offer. But as you can see, I was more astonished with the Kettle chips! I couldn't believe. They are my favorite chip and they were here. I thought I'd be waiting the whole year to see them again. Alas no! Ha.

We visited the Royal Mile which has a very old cathedral that is being renovated. It was amazing inside. And though I wish I had more to say about the rest of the mile, I believe we will be visiting again and I'll get to talk more about it since we would like to visit Mary King's Close.

I do apologize for not talking about this sooner and will be better with my next visit which will be in late March and will also include the coastal town of Elgin.

Christmas Day 2009

2009-12-28T20:11:00.013+01:00

Had you asked me a year ago what I would be doing Christmas Day of next year, I would have said being in Sacramento with family, eating lefse and reading a book next to a fire. Only a few months later, I would learn that I'd be going to Germany to study physics for a year and that flights back and forth would not be a likely option. Then, several months after that and we'd find that my girlfriend has this crazy idea to go to Croatia for the holiday. That didn't work out, but the backup plan did - Italy. Spending Christmas on the island of Sardinia was an intriguing experience and I have to say my most unique Christmas so far. Who knows what the future holds?

Not having a tree, a fireplace in the flat where we stayed for 5 days or a region 1 DVD player, let alone any of my holiday favorites to play, made for a different kind of Christmas. I woke up like any other day, realized it was Christmas and proceeded to have breakfast. Outside, it was a blue sky, partly cloudy and 60+ degree day. Perfect. Rachel and I had decided that if it was a nice day we would take out the free bikes that were offered as part of our cost of the room. So we chose our bikes and headed off down the street. Our plan was to ride along the coast north. The next town is called Fertilia and is about 6 km away. But before we got there, we were treated to some beautiful coast line. We parked the bikes a couple times to walk to the water and see what we could see. Sandy beaches, eroded rock formations, palm and pine and other sorts of trees, green shrubbery... it was a beautiful ride.

We crossed over a bridge next to a small harbor and found ourselves in a very small town. The coast and sea here were just as vast as in Alghero and we took the time to just sit and stare, listening to the waves. Surprisingly, there were many people taking walks or being out and about. There was even a cafe open. We would have continued on, but it had been a while since we had ridden bikes and the 6k back seemed it would be a good stopping place. Unfortunately, I had chosen a bike that had a temperamental chain, which when given too much pressure enjoyed slipping off. I must have stopped 10 times on the way back to put it back on the gears. Oh well.

An afternoon siesta with a early evening walk to our favorite rocky beach spot to catch the sunset. It was the perfect ending to the day. The waves crashing and the Sun sinking behind the waves made me hungry. Our dinner was the most flavorful fresh gnocchi with pesto sauce and mozzarella that I'd ever enjoyed.

Alghero, Italy

2009-12-28T09:08:00.012+01:00

So I think I'm going to try a couple posts here back to back so make sure to catch them all avid reader. Here I'd like to recount a few experiences of the Sardinian coastal town of Alghero. First off, it was the off season so I'm pretty sure that Rachel and I were the only tourists on the island or at the very least in Alghero itself. Flying in to probably the smallest airport of which I've ever flown in or out, we find ourselves on a rickety bus that probably can't go faster than 40 mph (note, that's miles, not meters). It first takes us to Fertilia, which you can read a little bit about here, and then on to Alghero. Rachel found this amazingly good deal for 5 nights of lodging for a total of €200. We quickly found the address with the help of a map from a travel desk and discovered how perfectly located it is. Pick any direction and you're 80% sure to heading towards the beautiful Mediterranean. The grocery store was just up the street and downtown was only 5 minutes away. Since we had a kitchen, we went shopping for food at the store. I just want to say that it's quite amusing when you realize you're shopping in a grocery store in another country. I don't why.

Alghero is very beautiful and old. The sea wall has seen some many centuries of wear and tear and the buildings have few to none modern brothers. This town screams old and settled in its ways. It was also very sleepy. The off season is definitely for me I think. No tourists everywhere, the beaches (sand and rock varieties) were devoid of all human life, save for the occasional local walking their dog. Lots of dogs in the area that like to get walked it seems. The old city sector had narrow streets, a sprinkling of Christmas decorations and a great many shops. Nearly all of these shops were closed from 1 until 3 in the afternoon. We concluded it was siesta time so we also would take siestas in the afternoon. Anyway, these old city streets also had many alley ways that were kind of scary in the dark but exciting to explore in the daytime.

The harbor was filled with boats of all kinds and I pined over several of the sail boats I saw. One day...one day. Next to the harbor, Rachel and I found a commune of wild cats. No joke. It was a little surprising. I saw one cat (thinking of course this is no strange thing) and went up to it to try to pet it. It scurried slowly around a corner and when I came around, there were about 10 cats visible amongst the rocks. I briefly feared that I'd been led into a trap, but they were content to sit and stare at the human. We realized these 'feral' cats must be getting fed and taken care of since they came right over to us after a few seconds, no doubt seeking food. Walking along the harbor wall and looking down into the breaker rocks, I could see several more cats between the stones. Who knows how many were there?

Staying in Alghero off-season for 5 days for Christmas was simply quite relaxing and the perfect amount of time. We would wander the city for 2 hours or so, come home, eat, nap, go out and wander again, come home, eat, sleep, repeat. We saw a lot of the city this way. We now even have favorite spots, plus a place I'd recommend if you were thinking of traveling here. Did I mention that the owners of this place are vintners and included a bottle of their wine for us!? All in all, I could see myself going back.

Nürnberg, Germany

2009-12-13T09:40:00.007+01:00

Holy Cow. It seems there is just something about Bavaria. That's two times now, once for Oktoberfest in München and now, that I have traveled by slow train into Bavaria and it was as nuts as last time. Of course, last time we didn't have seats for a two hour leg...but that's part of a different story. Rachel and I really want to see a lot of Germany while we're here and a trip to Nürnberg's famous Christmas festival seemed an ideal time to visit Nürnberg and if you glance at the first paragraph of the linked story, you'll know that weekends are a good cheap time to travel. So we were kind of expecting a ton of people. What we weren't expecting was that there would also be a Football game going on and apparently some sort of anime convention! The train for the latter half of a 5 hour trip was stuffed with furry-eared costumed 15 year olds and boisterous-red-and-white-clad drunk 20 sumthin's banging drums. And of course, it seems that the game didn't start right away so the football fans were wandering the market for a while. Well, whatever. On to the market.

Wow. It was huge and spanned block after city block. Stalls filled with food, drink and crafts everywhere. And a crap-ton of (~50 billion trillion) people. Nürnberg is home to the Nürnburger which is a small roll with 3 small bratwursts stuffed in it. Add a little mustard and it's the most awesome little snack. They must do something different with their brats because it was really good. Lots of chocolate covered fruit, roasted nuts with different toppings, waffles with all sorts of toppings, dumplings, potato poppers and of course hot chocolate and glühwein.

Stall after stall. It looked like it was divided up into sections and one such section had stalls with different city names and countries on the signs above the stalls. Rachel noticed it first that these were Nürnberg's sister cities selling things from their lands! So, what were some of the cities? Glasgow in Scotland, Venice in Italy, Nice in France, Kraków in Poland and...Atlanta in the US. Atlanta? Well, whatever. We wandered over and saw Oreos, JIF peanut butter, Reese's, in fact a great many things that we haven't seen in 3 and a half months. Guess how much the JIF was costing? Go ahead. €15- !! Holy cow! I want some peanut butter but that's ridiculous!

To get out of the mass of people, we decided to go up and visit the castle, which turned out to be different than one I've seen since being here. I could not tell which structure was the 'main' castle building. This castle had a great many buildings and appeared to my minds eye as a mini-city. It looked very functional. We took in the view and then wandered down again, winding our way down some side streets, ducking back into the main market area when it suited us, and generally heading back the way we came. Of course we grabbed a few more snacks on our way out. It was then just a matter of a 5 hour train trip back to Giessen. Overall, it was a great trip to Nürnberg and I think I'd like to go again when there isn't so much hubbub.

Addition: I forgot to mention the music. There was a bandstand setup that was hosting a choir when we first got there and later a brass band of young kids with a few adult members. They were both doing traditional carols. Near the sister-city section, a group of about 7 were singing with accompaniment from a drum, jingle bells, clarinet and recorder. They were from Romania and, I assume, singing Romanian carols. It was cool.

Einstein Field Equations

2009-12-03T19:53:00.005+01:00

Here in Germany I knew I would be probably yearning for some English, especially in my schooling. As such, I signed up for a Nuclear Astrophysics class as some of you dear readers already know. Also, this is a graduate level class. I knew, or at least had heard, of the Einstein field equations and how they were supposed to equal 42 or some such thing...alright that last part is a lie. I had heard of them before though. So it turns out that this class seems to me to be more Cosmology than Nuclear Astrophys, especially since one of the first things mentioned in lecture was how we would develop the tools to solve the field equations in the first few weeks. Here we are almost 2 months in and we recently got there.

I was amazed. Why? Because I was able to follow the steps. These are 10-coupled equations. You start with defining the metric which I think describes how the space-time you have should work. On second thought I'm pretty sure that's wrong, but please roll with it for the purposes of this blog. Anyway, you have to have this metric so that you can find the Christoffel symbols. With the Christoffel symbols and the metric, you calculate the Riemann-Christoffel tensor and from that tensor, you use the metric to contract it to the second-rank Ricci tensor. From the Ricci tensor, contracting with the metric again gets you the Ricci scalar. And with all these pieces you solve the equations. I was wowed. I'm still not sure exactly what these equations tell us, but I'm pretty sure they describe the universe. Holy cow.

On a related note, I discovered today that I am definitely a theorist, not an experimentalist. Sure, I like to think I have a little engineering in my blood, but that's just from watching too much MacGyver as a kid. I definitely prefer math and the cosmos to experiments with circuits or particle accelerators and what not. I'm happy sitting at a computer analyzing light from start thousands of light-years away or manually calculating Fourier transforms. Is that wrong?

No. Cheers!

Three Months In

2009-12-02T19:11:00.004+01:00

It has been over three months since I moved to Germany to study physics for a year. You may ask, "Hey Brian, how's it going?" To which I would naturally respond with "great!" or "it's different, but alright." But of course, on the inside there is something else that is going on that isn't quite on the level of 'great.' Inside I'm a spinning turbine of unknown energies and power.

What does that even mean!?

Got me, this is more of a free-verse-poem-prose-write thing than a normal post. -rant, I forgot -rant as well. So what's got me all riled and contorted into some weird brain fart thing? Well...

I once knew a man in Reno,

who was very tired of Dino

and went from bored to crazy

with a great big oops-a-daisy

cause he didn't know what he said!

So I lied about the free and -verse and -poem part. Anyway, it's the fact that my classes are in German. Yes, I hear you laughing from here when you say, "but Brian, you knew what you were signing up for, didn't you?" Of course I did! That's not the point. The point is in the crappy verse I just wrote. Imagine spending two hours on a hard wooden seat while somebody who you know is intelligent and has something important to tell you jabbers on in a language of which you can follow about 50 percent at best. This is what happens every class period.

I take notes and notes from boards or powerpoints have always made sense nearly immediately, be it straight math or straight physics. The real beauty of my notes is from notes I make to the notes themselves, and that comes from the extra things the professor says while he isn't writing on the board. My notes are crap! because of how little extra stuff I'm able to write down. I'm borderline twiddling my thumbs sometimes when there is no writing happening on the board. Thank goodness these professors don't have any odd mannerisms or I'd be caught staring to the point of mesmerization.

I'm not saying the my German hasn't improved because it has indeed. It's just that it's not at the point where I can learn as well as I know I can. And I hope that made sense cause this is a rant and there is no time to correct typos or grammar. So there.

Cheers.

p.s. Additionally and aside from missing Mac&Cheese, IPA, Kiss Cafe, small and intimate coffee shops, regular interaction with animals, my friends and my family, I have no complaints about living in Germany at all. It's beautiful and the food is great.

Praha, Czech Republic: Part 2

2009-11-22T17:15:00.009+01:00

Where did I leave off? Ah yes! We stayed at the all night café until about 0430 and then migrated to a McDonalds to grab a bite and await the coming of the Starbucks opening time of 0700 (can you believe that!?). Greeting them with a hearty "Mornin',"since morning it was and we were the first, I grabbed my first peppermint mocha of the season and we walked towards Charles Bridge to cross over to the old city and visit the castle. The plan had been to watch the sunrise on the bridge as it lit up the buildings on the other side of the river, but gray skies meant that we just watched the gray get a little lighter. Oh well, next time. The statues dotting the bridge were amazing. They were so diverse and detailed that it took us probably 30 minutes to cross this bridge, and half of it was under renovation so half the statues were inaccessible. Getting over to the other side, we begin by walking around a park area bordering the river. Turns out there is an art museum there and a strange restaurant with a large row of bright yellow penguins. I have no idea what use they have. None.

Heading farther away from the river, we walked south of the castle and wandered an orchard there, which along with the fruit trees also resembled a large field that was tilted at a huge angle. It was quite the hike but afforded an amazing view. The castle was filling the view but it was still several streets away. I glanced at my map and realized that a little idea I had been toying with was going to bear fruit. Several embassies were in the immediate area on the way from the orchards to the castle proper including the US one. All I know about them is from movies or what not and I think I heard from a non-movie source that you can go visit and just say hi if you wanted. Thinking this was not too dumb an idea and finding it amusing to stand on US soil again, we wandered over. We walked up and saw our flag flying high. A couple guards outside I could tell were looking our way and we simply walked up to one and asked if we could just go inside. They said that all we could really do was visit this anteroom but not actually go in. Inside behind some glass was a young marine and we yakked with him for a bit, basically telling him we just wanted to say hi. It was fun.

At the castle we picked up some sort of deep fried mass of cheese placed between two soft warm buns. It was a most welcome treat especially for the trek up to the top of the hill that the castle sits upon. At the top, a beautiful view and at least two tour groups awaited us. Oh well. Getting to see the entire area from way up high is always a hoot. I enjoy getting the bird's eye view. Rae and I are frugal travelers and we will only occasionally pay to go into somewhere, which is why we did not go into the inner area of the castle. Perhaps next time. After walking down from the castle hill, we roamed the surrounding area some more, finding little nooks and crannies and random streets. In truth, we were trying to find our way over to the river just to walk along that park again and then cross the bridge. Nothing much more happened for some time besides walking along and taking in the city until we started to get hungry. We also started thinking about moving along back to the airport.

We both decided on an early dinner/late lunch and so commenced a search for the cheapest place with local food we wanted to try. We must have wandered for an hour at least just looking at every restaurant's menu we passed for prices or deals. Lo and behold! We stumble on one of those nooks I previously mentioned. A restaurant sequestered down an alley with a 'tourist' special that included starter, entrée, and dessert. But that wasn't the most interesting part. It was that its a jazz restaurant and jazz music was playing from speakers in the courtyard. Whoa. It may have been early but we were hungry and this place just seemed to unique to pass up. In we went and old instruments, posters of the great jazz musicians, and wonderful aromas greeted us. We were the only people there in the area they sat us and our meal was prompt and well timed (salad done, there's the main course). Overall a really good experience.

I cannot continue to ramble on, this is too late in coming to you already. Suffice it to say, once done with dinner, we moseyed the city one last time and then returned to our subway, bus and plane combo. No large hassles greeted us that need be told here. Perhaps I'll get a chance to rant about a slight experience we had on the return train to Giessen one day. Regardless, my apologies for dragging out my first foreign foreign country experience.

Rae and I at the top of the castle hill.

Those penguins. I don't know what purpose they serve at all.

Just makes you think, doesn't it?

Praha, Czech Republic: Part 1

2009-11-17T14:39:00.008+01:00

Yes, part one. I don't want to bore people and I think an extremely long blog post would lose people's interest at interesting times. Therefore there will be 2 posts about my visit to the Czech Republic and more pictures will be with the second post.

Rachel and I found our journey beginning with a late lunch of döner immediately followed by a walk to the Bahnhof and a free trip down to Frankfurt by train. Once there, we sought and found the bus that would take us on the 1 hour and 45 minute trip to the airport in Hahn. Little did we realize that this bus would cost us 12€ each! Gar. The trip on the bus was less than interesting but it got us to the airport. There we encountered our first real excitement: security at a non-US airport. I admit to being very curious as to how it would be and I was not disappointed. Shoes could stay on but you had to take off all your tops down to the t-shirt and to be safe (I learned afterwards) everything out of your pockets. I had a chapstick and my belt on still when I came through the detector. The man who waved me through had me put my arms up and I got the wand...which promptly goes off for my belt and once that was off, my chapstick. The man removed the cap carefully while asking what it was and then proceeded to run my belt and chapstick through the scanner. Rachel was similarly scrutinized by a female. But wait! I had a flashlight in my bag which they did some sort of swab test on with a paper in a plastic bag! During this, I calmly stood there and tried not to have a smirk on my face from my bemusement. Anyway, we got through.

The flight was on Ryanair and I hear tell they are based out of Ireland, which means that all of my inflight instructions were in English first with German second. The flight was supposed to be an hour but we had a 130 km/h tail wind which got us to Prague in 30 minutes. Shortest flight I've ever been on. From Prague airport, we bussed to a subway station and took the S-Bahn to the center of town! The time is 10:30p. We step up and out of the subway to buildings that look old, weathered and chock full of history. Spires dot every other structure and a tenth of them are lit up by large soft colored floodlights. We pick a direction and mosey that way. A huge promenade greets us. It is dotted with Glühwein stands that also sell sausages of all kinds. This mall way slopes gently up and at the top is a huge old structure that is now a museum but at one time I could have seen it as a capitol building. But it could have always been a museum, I don't know.

Rachel and I proceeded to zig-zag our way from there to the river and in 2 hours we had seen very nearly all of the new (new being 400ish years old) city. Around 12:30 we decided to head back to a small alleyway we had walked through that had several 24 hour bar/cafés that looked just right for college kids like us. We picked one that looked nice, sat down and stayed there for the next 4 hours. It was amazing. We had failed to really learn any phrases in Czech but I managed to order 2 coffees (hold up two fingers, say coffee with a 'please' in my voice). The bartender was very nice in that he didn't talk to us but kept on eye on his customers and was ready to help anytime. I liked that. The coffee was incredible. It bordered on Turkish coffee because it was very thick and rich. I ordered a second round. About an hour into our stay, a soft pop followed by the lights going out interrupted my reading of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The barkeep comes out and starts jibber jabbering with some of the ladies at another table. They sound like they're all joking around about the lights and the atmosphere of the place is one of amusement only. The barkeep grabs a flashlight and is looking around and makes his way downstairs, all the while cracking jokes (we think) in Czech which just sounds awesome (think of Zelenka from Stargate: Atlantis). Well, the lights come back on after about 5 minutes and life at 2 in the morning in Prague goes on.

to be continued...

One of the statues near the top of the promenade.

One of the many kiosks dotting the area. Yum!

Marburg an der Lahn, Germany

2009-11-07T09:18:00.005+01:00

On Friday, Rachel and I went up to Marburg, which is north of Gießen, for a date day/night. It is only a 14 or 30 minute train ride (depending on if you get the fast train). We had gone before already but the trip had not been for long and there had been other people. Last time, we left the train station and took a turn that consisted of step stairs leading towards a cemetery and small chapel. We saw that the path continued and so we continued climbing until we reached the summit of one of the hills of Marburg. Looking across the valley from way up high and surrounded by trees was very cool. Quite peaceful as well since there were no other people around.

On this trip though, Rachel and I started making our way to the castle immediately. We passed St. Elizabeth's Church, which will be performing Verdi's Requiem soon (I'm thinking of attending). Marburg has retained its older architecture and road style and as such is very new for me. Roads twist up and down, stairs connect different street levels, building seems skewed based on the angle of the road and multiple generations of cobblestones pepper the ground. Beyond Elizabeth's church is a quiet group of streets with small shops and cafes. For a Friday, the streets here seemed oddly quiet, but I'm sure the dreary weather was a contributing factor. We stopped in one of these cafes and had chai lattes (amazing!) and a snack. After that, we worked our way step by step up to the castle. There are some pictures I hope I'll get to post once Rae gets them up because otherwise I can't say much. It's large, old, has grounds that you can wander (which we did), and is dominating this hill with a view to kill for. I promise pictures will be forthcoming.

After the castle, we made our way down the hill and went to a central plaza area for that shopping area I mentioned. There we sat and had some beer in a local establishment. There weren't a lot of people in there and it was nice to escape from the sprinkling rain for a time. A second round was inevitable and we talked for over hour. We then decided we were hungry and the most important part of date day/night was upon me - dinner.

We had passed a place earlier in our wandering named Barfuß, which means barefoot. Inside was a small, well lit and quiet restaurant. We were seated and Rachel immediately wanted Auflauf, which it seems (additional research pending) is a local dish and resembles a casserole. Needless to say I was nervous but we ordered and split the Spinach and Lachs Auflauf. Oh. My. Goodness. I hope that says it all. Having smoked salmon with potatoes, cheese, and spinach all cooked together was the most amazing thing ever. Of course, I didn't think it would fill me up so we also ordered two more entrees for us. One wiener schnitzel and filet mignon with accompanying fried potatoes and green noodles in a mushroom cream sauce (respectively) and we are pretty much dead. We don't know the policy, or if there is one, for doggie bags so we ate as much as we could. It was amazing though and I'm getting my own Auflauf next time.

We waddled our way back to the train station and caught the train home. All in all a pretty successful date and visit to another city. I hope to have those pictures up soon of the castle. Bis später!

Let the classes begin!

2009-10-13T08:42:00.000+02:00

Guten Morgen everyone! I trust you had a lovely evening back on the western hemisphere. Here, it's 9-ish and my first class starts in an hour. The university here in Gießen employs two primary types of physics classes-theoretical and experimental. Both are lecture classes but I assume just a different take on the physics. I signed up for the 3rd semester experimental physics class, which focuses on atomic, nuclear and particle physics. I've taken some of this before, but I didn't think I would do to well in the 5th semester EP class which was titled core and particle physics (but a different word for particle, go figure). I am also going to take the electromagnetism course this semester with plans to take the quantum mechanics class next semester. I haven't actually gotten into the EM class but that kind of thing happens all the time at UW too. In the meantime, if our calculations are correct, we will be needing a third class and I am hesitantly thinking of trying for a masters level nuclear astrophysics course, which covers the beginnings of the universe through the formation and death of stars. Relativity, thermodynamics, and quantum mechanics are key players. I'm scared but it's the only astronomy related class. So in the meantime, I'm going to read a quantum mechanics textbook I brought along. I'll learn it myself dangit!

Additionally, I sure hope to find the motivation to learn a programming language on my own this semester. What I really need is a project (like homework) to focus on, otherwise I'm just learning the language and never using it in practice. When I took a computer science class, they had us doing projects every week and gradually increasing our abilities. So, it sounds like I need another text book with homework problems in the back. ;) I'll just keep you posted I guess.

I have to admit, I'm nervous about taking classes in German. Yesterday we went to the department's meet-and-greet which turned out to be more like "let's go over the schedules and what's coming up just so you all know." Naturally it was in German and I understood less than none. This is probably going to be very bad. I can only hope the homeworks are straightforward and not word problems.

The Real Oktoberfest...

2009-10-06T15:25:00.001+02:00

...was absolute chaos. Our journey began in Gießen around 5:40a when Jeff, Rachel and myself walked to the Bahnhof (train station) in order to catch a 6:20a train to Frankfurt am Main. Once there, we changed trains to go to Würzburg. Once there, we again exchanged trains for one that was going to Nürnberg. And finally, there we decided the next thing to do was to change trains for one going to München. At last, we made it to the Bahnhof in München after about 7 or 8 hours of traveling. The reason it took so long was because we wanted cheap tickets and on the weekend, a "happy weekend" ticket is good for up to 5 people and costs only 37 euros. The catch, is that you can only take the regional, i.e. slow, trains. Regardless, we got there. And now let the madness begin.

Being an introvert, I have a hard enough time with groups of people exceeding 10 persons, even if they are my friends. So when I heard that weekends at Oktoberfest draw in millions (please note the plural) of people, I naturally grew nervous. But not to worry! The recent announcement by terrorists about possibly attacking Oktoberfest the weekend I was going helped to shy away many of the masses. Only 2.4 million people showed up. HA! (sorry for the histerics.) We weasled our way through the fair grounds, deftly avoiding medical personnel as they rushed to some poor soul lying on the ground and narrowly missing the hordes who didn't know which way was left or right. After seeing the main sites and popular, old tents (which as an aside are not 'tents' but are in fact solidly built wood structures), we took a chance on getting close to a table in an outdoor beer garden adjacent to a particular tent. 40 minutes later, after standing and watching more people than I thought existed pass by me, the beers had not arrived. We cut our losses and moved to other feeding grounds. By now all 3 of us were just wanting to have a beer in our hands. We didn't care if we were actually sitting at a table. Plenty of other people were wandering the fair grounds with their beers, why can't we?

Victory came when we arrived a second beer garden, this time we squirmed through the masses to a table on the outskirts of another outdoor beer garden. Jeff leans over and in German, which I will translate to English, gets this far -- "Hello, my German is not so good, but could you..." -- before they were sliding over and inviting us to sit down. Jeff's intention was only to ask if they would order us beers but an invitation to sit was not something we could refuse. For the next 3 or 4 hours, we sat with the individuals from northern Germany, specifically the Köln area.

We practiced our German and they practiced their English as litre after litre passed us by. People came and went at the surrounding tables. I believe a con artist was also in the area. Sounded British when he spoke English and had some underlying dislike of Americans which only alcohol would bring out. I was scared yet terribly amused at the same time.

Anyway, after wandering a bit more when I was confident in my legs again, Rachel went off and rode the Ferris Wheel and ate some Ox. Yes, ox. It was getting late and the tents and fair were closing down. We made our way back to the Bahnhof with the knowledge we had come and seen the real McCoy. The next 5 hours would involve waiting in the Bahnhof for the 5:04a train that would mirror our trip here. The Bahnhof was filled with people doing the same thing we were doing, that is waiting. Jeff and Rae were pretty tired and I seemed to be on my second wind so we all sat down and I watched over their bodies. I'm laughing just remembering back to the scene. I should also mention that we got Burger King at about 12:30 or 1:00a along with more people that were dead on their feet. The next four hours passed slowly and steadily and we eventually got on the train and headed for home. We arrived in Gießen around 11:30 and were back in our dorm rooms by noon. All in all an exciting 30 hour day.

I just want to say that I will never go again unless I have a reservation at a table that has at least a meter clearance on every side. I have gone and seen. I'm afraid it kicked my ass. But at least I've been. Prost!

Oktoberfest

2009-10-02T13:09:00.002+02:00

Tomorrow I'm going to Oktoberfest and I have nearly no idea what I'm about to get into. Saturday morning, at a time I like to call bright and early, we are leaving for a 3 leg, 6 hour trip. Upon arrival we will spend the rest of the day at the festival grounds until the tents close up around 11p. Then we will stay up all night for our return train at 5:45a PDT+9, which also happens to be a 3 leg and 6 hour trip. It's going to be a little crazy I expect and I will keep you posted....

Stuck in Wonder

2009-09-17T08:28:00.000+02:00

Last night was a birthday party for a friend that I've made here. She is from France and turned 21 yesterday. I was under the impression that we were throwing her a surprise party. Rachel and I helped our other friend from France to make her a cake from scratch (which I never saw again at the party which makes me think it didn't turn out). I should also preface this little story by saying that the dormitories at JLU are spread out and each one leads somewhat to segregation in the student population. Obviously my dorm has the coolest people in it and the others can just live with that. See what I mean. Anyway, surprise party, right? No.

Rachel and I show up to Jeff's dorm area and in the common area are already more people than I thought I knew and more and more people from the summer course kept coming through the door. Turns out this wasn't a surprise anymore and that about 35, maybe more, out of 55 summer course students plus 4 of out mentors made the trek to come to our dorm building. Not being very good with large groups of people, I promptly placed myself outside with Victor where we could have pleasany discourse and smoke a pipe. Topics included The Doors, spirits, pipes, karaoke, Romanian drinking practices, beer and more.

The real point of my story is the following. While standing outside watching the people inside talking, I realized that I was in Germany listening to conversations around me in English. Then I noticed that our mentors and some Russian students were talking in German, while the other Russian students were speaking Russian. Looking in I saw the kids from Spain speaking Spanish or Catalonian. I also knew we had several people here from Poland that were gathered together at that moment and I'm sure the birthday girl and the other girls from France happened to be speaking their native tongue at that moment. It was just a very interesting revelation of what a diverse... I don't know... thing I'm doing. There were more that 6 languages being spoken in an area no larger than 30 or 40 square meters. It was cool and gave me pause for a moment.

Second Week Down

2009-09-11T14:12:00.000+02:00

I've been in Germany now for 2 weeks. I'm not sure if I've fully acclimated yet or not since I had my first "I want to go home" moments today. I think I did pretty good by making it to 2 weeks. Last time I mentioned I'd finally been to the Lahn river which goes through Gießen and I was getting ready to do laundry. Well, I went with Rachel and together, with some knowledge from friends who had done laundry already, we managed to each get a load of laundry done and dried. I don't think I'm going to look forward to laundry day ever. I have to go to a different building in my complex, down a flight of stairs and into a scary room with only 6 machines. My predication is that it will be absolute chaos in there when the buildings are actually full of students instead of a quarter full for the summer.

It's been really hard to be motivated to do anything the past week. The 9 week intensive course of German I took before coming here pretty much wiped me out. The 5 days after the class and before I flew here went by in a blur of packing and making sure I had everything. Then this international summer course started and at the end of the second week, it's just like it is the 11th week of the intensive course. I need a vacation because I'm completely burned out. That and a nearly complete lack of money means that I am getting some good reading time in since I can't afford to go out.

We go to Heidelberg tomorrow and it is probably a 1.5 hour to 2 hour bus ride down. I hear from multiple sources that it is the most beautiful place in Germany. I guess we'll see and I will get pictures out hopefully on Sunday or Monday. No other news I guess at the moment except I'm still working on getting a link set up to pictures so everyone can see. Until later...

Welche Sprache sprichst du?

2009-09-06T10:28:00.002+02:00

Okay, finally done with one whole week. It's astonishing how long it feels it's been when it's only been 8 days or so. So much has happened that it feels like a month has gone by already. The summer course goes well. Quickly, here is the way my week will go for the next 3 weeks. Everyday there are language tutorials/classes for 1.5 hours followed by a half hour coffee break. Then another 1.5 hours of tutorials followed by lunch. On Monday and Wednesday lunch is 1 hour followed by 2 hours of instruction that focuses more on culture and what not (still in German though). On Tuesday and Thursday lunch is 2 hours followed by 2 hours of a workshop. I picked the Zeitung, or newspaper, and will be writing a short article on the history of Gießen. On Fridays classes end at lunch. Yay!

I've wandered much of Gießen now and must say it is a very interesting city. The combination of rural and urban is extreme. I live on the outskirts of town, give or take, and have two giant fields and a forest (nearly) to walk between on my way to a major street with a McDonalds, Burger King, gas station and 3 large stores plus many smaller stores. There is a large river, the Lahn, flowing through the upper part of the city which I finally went and saw on Thursday I think, maybe it was Wednesday... I just don't know.

Today I need to figure out where and how to do laundry since I used my last pair of socks on my Frankfurt excursion yesterday. There, I had my first Starbucks since getting to this country and it was also the largest cup of coffee I'd seen yet. Folks, just be prepared when you get here for nothing bigger than a tall when you order coffee. I've been around this town and every place has the same kind of automatic (but freshly ground) coffee machines and the largest cup is a stinking coffee cup size. I want something bigger!! Anyhoo. I'm still working on getting a Picassa thing going so non-Facebookers can see all the pics. I'll figure it out soon enough. In the meantime, go here and select the Gießen album or any album name from the places we'll go. Hope the link works. Let me know if it doesn't. Until later....ciao!

Willkommen: Deutschland

2009-08-28T20:18:00.000+02:00

Well, the big day finally came. I am sitting in my apartment/dorm room in Gießen, Germany...finally. After all the buildup and anticipation for coming here since winning a spot in this exchange program, I have made my way at least by plane and by train to this medium sized university city. I AM TIRED. 15 or so hours of flying with 2 connections but no break (our planes landed, we ran, the next plane took off), made for a very rough travel day. But, because we flew into and through the night, our arrival plus lack of sleep made us think that only a normal 9 or 10 hour day had gone by instead of the 17 or 18 hours from first take off to arrival in Gießen. Thus, I slept just fine Thursday night and awoke refreshed Friday morning. There is much that happened just on the way here but I merely include pictures that hopefully will reveal what has gone on. But I'll come back to those. :)

So, first full day in Gießen! What happens? To start, I haven't had the internet and have really been aching for it, which just goes to show how much I must be addicted. Secondly, since this is a summer LANGUAGE course, we had to take a test first thing (before Coffee!!) to determine which level group we should be in. They are trying to make sure that beginners aren't stuck with more advanced speakers of German and vice versa. I won't find out my results ever but will be told what group I'm in on Monday. It was interesting and just like the tests I recently was taking at UW, but there were words that I didn't understand. Moving on and please forgive the length, I want to say a bit.

After the test, we had a Kaffeepause or Coffee break. I met some new people there and would like to say a few words. Victor, or as he is called at home Calin, is from Romania and does not know Germany very well, possibly at all. He is here to learn. His English is great and is an example of how messed up our country is when it comes to languages, but I digress. Victor is a slow talker, not because he doesn't know how to say anything, but because he doesn't like to repeat himself. Awesome. Then I met two guys from Estonia (don't know where that is? look it up). Pritt and Sander are interesting guys who also don't know German and have a thicker accent than Victor when they speak English. On the train with Rachel, Jeff and I was a exchange student who will be here all year too named Yasmin. She is from Turkey and has difficulty with German and English. It has been interesting trying to talk with her. Today, I tried to describe what 'humid' was. It was difficult!

After we were done with being introduced to the itinerary of the course, we were set loose for the day. Rachel and I both didn't have internet in our rooms so we decided to head downtown and find an electronic store to get some CAT5 cabling and Victor, Pritt and Sander came along. I will have to tell more about downtown on my subsequent blogs so be ready for them. But I will tell you that outside the store we found our cabling in was a Biergarten. Yes, I had a beer with Rachel, Pritt and Victor. I had a dunkel or dark half-liter beer on my first full day in Germany. It was right I think. It was amazing sitting in an actual German beer garden drinking German beer and thinking, "Oh my gosh, I'm actually in Germany which is in Europe. What am I doing!?" So, pictures ensue since I don't want to talk too much. Love you all out there and if you're one of the anonymous readers, I thank you.

Pic1: Rae and I after 10 hours or so of flying.

Pic2: Jeff and I after 10 hours or so of flying. (Honestly, no clue what the Icelandic flight attendant was doing.)

Pic3: A view of the building I'm in (it's the middle one in the back). I have a view to a wooded area. It's nicer than the courtyard and the room is nice too.

Pic4: My first beer in Germany with new friends Pritt (left) and Victor (middle).

Rediscovery

2009-08-19T02:14:00.000+02:00

With only 8 days until the great grand adventure, my panic attacks have begun to come more frequently and even while I sleep. The intensive language class is ending this week and since it has slowed down considerably (i.e. all homework is now completed, 3 days ahead of schedule), I have discovered something amazing. Well its actually a rediscovery.

I like science. I mean REALLY like science.

It's like a festering scab wound thing that you just have to itch and it makes it worse but it feels so good and you just have to itch it one more time because of some weird feeling it gives that makes it feel better than when it is festering, scabbing... i think you get the idea. I just read the two latest issues of Discover and Astronomy magazine and I'm borrowing the May issue of Science (very fancy) from the Physics department. And I'm reading almost every article. Geography, Chemistry, Biology, Psychology, Physics, and yes Astronomy. I can't get enough. Just one quarter without taking any kind of science class and I find that I can barely contain myself. I want to be doing two research projects and learning how to present my work with new computer programs. I can't wait for these plane rides so I can just sit and read magazines. If only I could get my hands on the Astrophysical Journal I'd be set. Alas, that costs quite a bit.

Anyway, this just makes me feel better about the choice I made in picking the Sciences. Even though it is really hard at times, I enjoy it and just need to find that special niche where everything clicks for me. I know that I'm not going to be a super genius, but I still love reading up on everything. Jack of all trades, master of some - that's what I'm aiming for. Prost!

Holy Cow!

2009-08-10T23:30:00.000+02:00

So there are only 16 more days that I'll be in this country and then I'm gone for more than 11 months. I feel like there is so much to do and Rachel has even more that she has to get done. We're scrambling trying to finish our intensive German class, I'm praying that I haven't forgotten some important paperwork, and we're both still trying to get our crap organized and/or stored. In fact, I must be back to my homework. Prost!

Lernen Sie Deutsch!

2009-07-22T00:59:00.000+02:00

We're in the fifth week of intensive German now. Tomorrow will be the halfway mark and will also signal that only five weeks remain until my journey to Giessen. Hoo boy! I admit to being in a state of disbelief still. I also think my subconscious is secretly panicking. Who honestly signs up to be away from everything and everybody they love for a whole year? I must have been slightly crazy that morning when I decided to put in my application. I'm sure that when I'm dropped off at the airport it will finally hit me that I won't see (insert person(s) who dropped me off) or anybody for more than a year. I might cry, honest. And then when I land in Frankfurt...oh my. Nobody speaking English, all the signs pointing this way and that saying things that I have to think about first...oi! Thanks goodness Rachel will be there. Of course, I think I'd be pissed if I got there and I heard English in the first five minutes. It's an airport. I left surrounded by English speakers. I'd like to arrive surrounded by German speakers.

In other news, there is no other news because intensive German is occupying my life.

Rachel and I are watching the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica from miniseries to finish right now. We're only 6 or 7 episodes in but watching it, for me, the second time only serves to increase my appreciation for how well done the show was done. Yes, there were times when it seemed the stories sucked or that it was drifting away from it's original concept and yes, there was the ending but it was still a great show and I'm happy Rachel likes it and I get to watch it again with somebody. I love knowing everything and catching the hints and rumors of what's to come. Additionally, the new Stargate series will be starting in October. I still don't know what to make of this addition to the series. No matter what the producers of SG-1, then Atlantis, and now Universe have to say, I think they intentionally canceled Atlantis because they wanted to throw all their money into Universe. It pisses me off because for 2 years they ran two shows at once. If they really wanted Universe, they could have kept Atlantis and finished it off decently. Instead, we got hack writers for the last two seasons who didn't know a story from their dirty laundry. I could rant for a while but nobody wants to read that. In fact, I'm astonished you got to this sentence. Thank you.

Cheers for now!

How quickly can you learn German?

2009-07-07T01:06:00.000+02:00

Hi everyone.

I've started my third week of summer intensive German (the whole first year of German in 9 weeks), which means that at the end of this week I will have completed the first quarter, equivalent to German 101. Wow. There have been five chapters worth of vocabulary each with about 100+ adjectives, prepositions, nouns, verbs, seperable verbs, and other kinds of words. Once again, I'm thankful for my better than average memory recall. It's incredible how much we cover every class period. We meet Monday through Friday for three hours each day and the time flies by. It's nothing short of astonishing and Rachel and I often wonder how slow normal 101 must be since we're not entirely overwhelmed with the amount we're learning.

(I believe that since I last wrote my social status has changed. Rachel is my beautiful girlfriend and we have been together for 2 months. Yay! Here is a picture of us at my Mom's house in Oregon next to the Columbia River. The land behind us and on the other side of the river is Washington.)Anywhoo, plans are continuing to come together for our year long physics exchange to Justus Liebig Universität in Giessen, Germany. We have our plane tickets (complete with connection in Reykjavik, Iceland) and our acceptance letters. That's about it so far. No worries though because I'm sure we won't forget too much if both of us are thinking about what to bring. Unfortunately, Rachel and I think alike probably 90% of the time. Problem? Possibly but I'm not going to worry about it.

And now I must needs be getting back to meine Hausaufgaben (homework). Until next time....

Prost!

Wold Update

2009-04-22T05:37:00.000+02:00

Oh mercy! It's been over two months! Why did nobody say anything?! I just got done with my first legitimate all-nighter at school. I stayed up the whole night sitting at a table surrounded by friends and munchies and homework. I napped from 10-12:15 today after getting up at 6 yesterday. I begin with that so I can explain why I even have the time to blog right now. I still had homework that is due tomorrow that I just got done doing...at least for tonight. And since I still have a little bit of life left in me before I crash for (what I hope will be) restful sleep, I decided to come here and share as much of what I think is important that's happened in the past 2 months.

Where to begin? I've been accepted into a exchange program through the University of Washington to go and study physics (and other things) for 11 months in Giessen, Germany at the Justus-Leibig Universitat-Giessen. Wow, huh? A very good friend of mine is going along and we're going to pretty much have the most rockin' good time I think either of us may have ever had. I know I speak for myself at least. She's traveled off this continent before and is much more outgoing so she may not have as much of a shock as I do. I'm looking forward to sampling all the different foods...and beers. We're making plans for traveling around all of Europe, both together and on solo adventures. Now I can handle myself pretty well in a city like San Francisco or Seattle if I just get dumped in the middle of it somewhere. I could probably handle New York if I really concentrated. But a city in another country is I think going to be a lot different. Quite the learning curve.

This of course leads into a discussion of school. Summer courses will consist of one intensive German language class. It's the entire first year of German packed into 7 or 8 weeks. Needless to say, that'll be the only class I'm taking. Right now I'm taking 4 classes;

Astronomy 323 - Galaxies, Cosmology
Astronomy 480 - Observing
Physics 226 - Particles and Symmetries
Physics 321 - Electromagnetism 1

These classes are destroying my existence. Luckily there have been developments socially that balance the force of school (physics reference there if you caught it). Going out at least once a week for beers, doing homework away from the school with friends, and reading books not for school are just some of the ways I maintain sanity at the moment.

I've recently discovered the awesomeness of Pandora.com. If you put 2 or 3 artists in a playlist, you're going to get a pretty decent spread of similar music and I find it remarkable for finding all these songs I used to listen to on the radio when I was a kid. It's amazing. I put in Journey and Queen as my artists and I'm getting all sorts of other songs I recognize and new ones that I really enjoy. Same goes for my Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and Brian Setzer Orchestra combo. Anyway, that was kind of random.

And with that sentence, I must say farewell again. I apologize but I am now crashing. I promise to blog more even though more and more events get added to my schedule book (which happens to be a moleskin(R)).

Cheers.

p.s. upcoming events I'm interested in:

Third Day Concert May 7th
Seattle Beer Week May 7th-17th
UW Undergraduate Symposium May 15th (I'm presenting. More on that later)
Visiting Momma May 22nd-25th

Saturday Morning Musings

2009-01-31T17:41:00.000+01:00

I'm at a local independent coffee shop right now called Gretchen's Place. Their Americanos aren't bad and I would recommend you come early when there aren't a lot of people. The table I'm typing on right now is single stem style with four base protrusions and it's wobbling, making my screen bobble with every slam of my fingers on the keyboard. Thus why I always prefer three legged or three-legged-protrusion-single-stem tables. And if you can't figure out why that makes a difference, then we have a problem.

I just collected 15 hours worth of data on the hour on 2 separate days for 13 different asteroids. So that comes out to (15*2*13) lines I put onto my computer and organized in a neat orderly fashion so that later today, after orchestra and Battlestar Galactica, I can convert some of the data into other units and do some easy math to find out some cool stuff that I'll use later on to do more cool stuff. But honestly, I fear I may be over my head this semester. But that's another story. Tests may be next week in all three of my primary classes, but today it's all research (since I haven't done any in about 10 days and that's bad of me).

I'm planning on using some of the portions of my tax return to buy a good size whiteboard. A wha? Yes, you read right. I'm going to buy a whiteboard and hang it on the wall in my room over my bed. I want to be able to do practice problems of math and physics without having to look for paper and pencil. I mean, it'll save the environment and I'll feel like a BA while writing there. There is something special about doing homework or practice on a large board. You can step back, hold the pen in your mouth or something, stare at the board and just think. It's great and I recommend it. Trev, that goes for you. Try translating Greek on a chalkboard and tell me it isn't fun.

Well, I finished my Americano and now have to head off to play Horn. It's sectionals today and so you're more exposed. I hope I don't suck. Until next time everyone. Cheers!

Monday Night

2009-01-27T04:21:00.001+01:00

No, not football
But tax filing

with people by the giga-score

since the internets seem so slow.

While drinking Chai tea with sugar and milk

because I have so much to do

Along the lines of homework,
Planning the week and then....

Just wondering if I should plan "my-time?"
You know, when you sit and do something

you want to do?

I don't have that. There's no time.
Gosh, has that screen loaded yet?
Typical. I'm just as impatient as everyone else.

lame.

Oh, and then I'm listening to Dave Matthews

while working through integrals

of the type regular, triple, and contour.

And now I'm just talking.

Back to it!

As Promised...

2009-01-18T19:39:00.001+01:00

So I promised a story last time and as I took a brief restroom break from my homework, I chanced to read in the magazine Astronomy a brief article regarding "dark flow." Dark flow is a term coined by a researcher whose team discovered something I think is one of the coolest things ever. Alexander Kashlinsky, an astrophysicist at the Goddard Space Flight Center, and his team discovered that at least 700 massive galaxy clusters (a large number of galaxies relatively close together) are all moving as groups towards a single point in the sky!

Let me use a different example in case you didn't follow that. Imagine if 700 million people on Earth were all inexplicably pulled 20ft towards the Space Needle here in Seattle. It's something like that, only they keep moving. Can you imagine how crazy this is? At least 700 individual galactic clusters are all moving towards one point! It's hypothesized that there is a concentration of mass beyond the observable universe that is exercising a force on these clusters. It's rather beyond me the size of this mass you would have to have to be able to do all this. My mind is blown.

Kashlinsky named this phenomenon dark flow to reference dark energy and dark matter, two other great mysteries. Obviously of course, there is much research to do still and this might be a ginourmous coincidence. So, don't quote me. I just wanted to share an article.

Source: Astronomy January 2009 p.31

Sed-a-give!!

2009-01-02T21:16:00.000+01:00

Welcome everyone. I hate writing 9's so this year is already tainted. So it goes.

School is starting on Monday. Have I even purchased my books? No. Have I been keeping up with my studying? No. Am I totally doomed? Quite possibly. But I'm not worrying about it because it will work itself out. I need to take it easy while I still can. This quarter is gonna be hard. I'm taking two upper math classes, an astro computing class, and the second astro 300 level class on galaxies, of which I have no clue what things we'll learn there. Also, I'm continuing my research project on asteroids and will be devoting a minimum of three hours a week to that along with my orchestra commitments on Saturday. It's a good thing I'm getting up at 6 already.

Wow, but did you really want to know all that? Probably not but that's what a blog is for: to tell you all these wonderful things about me. Me me me. I feel so soiled right now with my presumtuous arrogance. I apologize. I will now entertain you with a story so you feel better about the time you've spent reading here.

...........um.........

How about I promise to tell a story next time? I can't think of one right now. I promise it'll be fantastic.

Time Travel

2008-12-06T04:16:00.000+01:00

So, about 12 hours ago, I saw a cool t-shirt online that was about Back to the Future. About 15 minutes ago that t-shirt popped back up into my mind spurring a random string of thoughts that I'd like to share. Now, for your pleasure, is a glimpse into how Brian's mind works when he is driving alone, thinking.

"that was a pretty cool t-shirt earlier. i really want to buy it cause i would wear it for sure. 88 mph sure is fast. the future. hmmmmm. the future.

you know, i've always thought about travel through time as a motion when really, just because relativity involves moving at the speed of light, it doesn't mean travel through time has to involve motion in the original 3 dimensions. hmmmmmm. That would mean that Wells' The Time Machine had it closer than Back to the Future i think. still. i don't think travel to the past is possible, but if you could unsync yourself from normal time, you could bypass a large chunk of time. but you'd have to somehow uncouple the interior of your 'time bubble' as well, otherwise you would experience the passage of time. argh!

let's see, somehow your time bubble would have to be 'moving' at relativistic speeds unless some hitherto unknown process could accelerate time around an object. hmmmm.

how fast can superman go? i saw an episode of the Batman Superman Adventures that had the flash melt himself out of ice by vibrating his body so fast the friction melted it. superman of course had heat vision. but still, if the flash and superman were racing and nobody was winning, that must mean superman can go pretty darn fast. if so, then could he (or the flash) vibrate so fast in place that they begin to 'move' at relativistic speeds and bypass time? this is where my idea of travel to the past as illogical comes from. one can only bypass time, not go back. at least that's how i see it......"

Blah, blah. So you see, those are the paths my mind takes. What you didn't see is that during all this I was being even more elaborate, singing along with a song, thinking about an intense dream I had last night, playing a movie clip of all my thoughts as they cued in my head, and pondering my dinner selection tonight. Not to mention driving. Cue discussion about time travel if you like.

A Little Blue...

2008-11-06T02:12:00.000+01:00

I am so upset! There are only so many authors out there that I would purchase their book regardless of knowing what the book is about. Kurt Vonnegut, Philip K Dick, C.S. Lewis, George Orwell, Richard Feynman, and Michael Crichton to name probably all of them. Sadly, I just read an article that said Michael Crichton had passed away. Oh my gosh! I had a dream of meeting him sometime in my life and now that dream is shattered. He was/is in my top three favorite authors. I must have read Jurassic Park 10 times in 4 or 5 years, I loved it that much. I’ve read all of his books except for his latest one, Next. Most I’ve read more than 3 times. Timeline is incredible and I remember getting Prey for Christmas and reading it that night. I can remember the first time I read the Great Train Robbery and Andromeda Strain. I remember where I was when I was reading Lost World and Terminal Man. And who could forget Congo even though I hate monkeys? Argh! I’m gonna miss you Crichton.

Anticipation

2008-10-31T04:21:00.001+01:00

So to make a long story short yet concise yet full-of-all-that-you-would-need-to-know, I am preparing my skill set to partake in analyzing data for a post doc at the UW. What? Well to undergrads like myself they call that research. Cool, huh? I have to say I'm very nervous yet excited. I know that research is an important part of being an undergrad and grad in the sciences so I've been wondering how I was going to get started. Imagine my shock when all I had to do was talk to our (the Astronomy Dept.) friendly program advisor who then took me over to the faculty member with the work to be done! Whew!

What skill set am I preparing you ask? Well, I'm a Windows guy. I like PC's. To use the current cliche, I'm a PC. What I don't know very well are any things that use command lines and stuff that's behind the scenes without a friendly desktop and mouse to help me around. The data I'll be needing are accessible by Linux or programs similar to Linux (which is similar to Unix [you got me on what that is]). This faculty member, whose name is Lynne, got me a link to a crash course in Linux and I'm studying it like a fiend, trying to get good at it so I can start this project.

And the project is, you ask? Well Lynne was taking optical (visible light) data of a patch of asteroids in the Asteroid Belt and at nearly the same time, the Spitzer Space Telescope was taking an infrared (measures the heat of an object) picture of the same batch of asteroids. Now if you have either optical or infrared data on an object like an asteroid, it's difficult (not sure if its impossible) to determine its size. But, by combining both, you can determine the albedo, a measure of the reflectivity of the object and from that you can determine size. What you do with the info after that is ... up to someone else at this point I think.

There is my news for the week. That and I've been sick with a cold. I also just finished my math physics homework which was more tedious than anything I've done in about 4 months, which was when I had to move.

3.3 Microseconds

2008-10-15T05:59:00.001+02:00

It's a full moon. I've started listening to Christmas music. I'm freeing up space on my computer. And this is my 60th blog (but technically my 59th posted blog). It seems only fitting I discuss an interesting matter that has been muddling around in the back and front and sides of my head (nooks and crannies are free of this thought).

Take a moment and consider light. Go on................ It has a velocity: 3.0 x 10^8 m/s (or verbally, three hundred million meters per second). That's pretty stinking fast you say. Duh, I know, I'm an astrophysicist (in training). Anyway. Now consider what light does for us. It illuminates things. Everything you can see with your eyes is because light is reflecting off of it. Shocking! If it were not for light bouncing off things, we would not see them, unless the object itself was a source of illumination. Now, put these two ideas together. Velocity and that things we see are because of light. We are constantly seeing the past.

Yes, we are always seeing the past. Never the now. A little meta-exi-physi-stensial for you? Well, I'm only putting it how I heard it and then thought about it. Light takes time to travel from an object to our eye. Thus, unless the object is in your eye, you are experiencing it as it was in the past (and we won't discuss neuron sensory path time). There is no now when it comes to visual stimuli. It's easy to say light from a star took 100 million years to get here because it's 100 million light-years away, but it's not something people think about when they look at a train coming at them from say....1 kilometer away. Do you know how long it took that light from the train to get to you? It's Math Time (insert intro credits to favorite TV show here).

Distance = velocity x time so t = D/v or t= (1000m)/(3 x 10^8 m/s)

t= .0000033 seconds

AHHHH! That train could have exploded and you wouldn't know it for 3.3 micro seconds!!!

So, cue a discussion if you like. Perhaps others are so adamant about the absurdity of my statement that an answer to life, the universe, and everything will come out of discusssion.

P.S. As an aside, or I guess more accurately a post script, I would like to point out the distance from the Sun to the Earth is 1.49 x 10^11 meters, which is 149 billion meters. Couple that with light speed and the Sun could explode and we wouldn't have a gorram clue for 8 minutes. Makes me chuckle just thinking about it.

Stupid Irony

2008-10-09T15:58:00.000+02:00

Just a quick little blurb about something I found on the internet. Yes, I know, I've succumbed to sharing things on a blog that I found while surfing. Well, this deserves it. Check it out if you want because it is really short. Here is the skinny. Some clock in New York City has been showing a running total of the national debt since 1989. The debt is now too large for the clock to properly show. What are we doing about it? We're getting a frakkin' new clock! Why in the name of all good and sensible things would we pay for a (no doubt cool looking, digital, fancy, atomic, large, very pricey for something so dumb, and pointless) new clock??!! Who cares? It's going to be ready in a year. Can you think of how much a clock thing that takes a year to build would cost? Even if it was ten dollars, I'd say, screw the clock and go buy that homeless man down the street a new sweater. I can't believe this country. Do you see the irony?

E-Ticket Dad

2008-09-24T05:04:00.000+02:00

Recently, I went on vacation. I needed one. That's why I went. So, there you go.

Let me start out by saying, if you don't know what an E Ticket was, go here. Briefly, an E Ticket was the bestest ride at Disneyland/World. It was the cream of the crop, the most exciting. It was Space Mountain, the Matterhorn, etc. I tell you that so you understand the title. My dad took us on an E Ticket ride through Brooklyn in New York. My only advice in case you ever find yourself driving there is two-fold: look at every traffic sign you can and look out for the pedestrians as they have no respect for the right of way.

Our vacation was a New England cruise and our departure port was Pier 12 in New York, New York. Being there a day early, we decided to attend church on Sunday at the Brooklyn Tabernacle. Perfect. We have directions to the church, what could go wrong? I was the navigator and it was my role to pay attention for things that perhaps the driver would not and inform him at the last possible moment about them (last possible so I didn't look like a backseat driver). Now, I'm looking for a church and so I imagine a church-like looking structure. I'm looking and don't notice that the street we're on suddenly decides to cease being a two-way and turn into a one-way... towards us. It was a required left or right turn and both my Padre and I missed it. I can't tell you how much you want to get to church when you're going down a one way street the wrong way with cars heading for you. Well, we turn off that road pretty quick, nearly running some people over. I say, "we must have passed it because the street numbers are going the wrong way." We begin to loop around the block looking for parking as well as the actual building. Swerving around Brooklyn on a Sunday morning in a rental car with Tennessee plates is really quite exhilarating.

The next big shock was when we thought we could make a left turn only to realize it was a bus only street (why do we have those so lamely labeled), which was occupied by a bus! I didn't know if it was a two lane road, or we were going down another one way the wrong way, but I saw another one way street that was a left turn so I shouted "over there!" We zoom around the bus and, you guessed it, almost hit another person and got off the bus only road. I felt I was starting to get the hang of the one way streets and remembered that there was a bus only road at such and such a turn. Now we're making progress.

On our fourth or fifth jaunt down the street that the Brooklyn Tab is supposedly on, I finally spot the (in my opinion) small block letters on a building that looks like any other building in the area. I shout "there it is!" and we now start the quest to find parking, while I look on to the location in my mind and become aware of any turn we make so we can find our way back on foot to the entrance. A couple of more turns later and we find the parking lot that goes with the church and we park. I was never so happy to go to church in my life. You really had to be there on that drive to understand. Words don't properly describe the sheer chaos. Did I happen to mention that there was a local police precinct across the street that was no doubt watching us violate dozens of traffic laws. "Crazy tourists. When they finally hit something we'll have to go out there and help 'em out." I'm sure that's not what they were really saying. Anyhoo.

How was church? Fantastic. The choir? Everything I thought it could be and more. I love choirs. I wish I could sing in one. The power, energy, harmony... I had pins and needles. The message? Right for me. Anyway, that was the first day of my vacation. I think you can imagine how the rest of it went. I hope to have time to tell a few more stories.

Kopi Luwak

2008-09-05T21:08:00.000+02:00

Ah, the Asian Palm Civet. Who would have thought that man would pay attention enough to the feces of this small mammal to notice the undigested coffee beans? I don't think I would have, but some people did and now for some reason the beans that have passed through this creature are the most expensive in the world. Who in their right mind would purchase these beans, or even a cup of coffee made from said beans before knowing if they would like it or not? Would you slap down fifty greenbacks for a 6oz. cup of Kopi Luwak coffee? I wouldn't. Thankfully, I don't have to now. Yes! It's true. I have now tasted this coffee with my own mouth, almost (being quite figurative here) straight from the Civet's rear. How? My roommate, the equitable Tyler J.S. Cronk has a friend from(or is) Indonesia(n) who gifted us with an entire bag. It may weigh a pound and thus, I was holding somewhere between $120 and $600 worth of Civet crap on Tuesday in my hand. Wow.

So, you're wondering what it tastes like? It has a very different brewing aroma than I'm used to and also has an even stronger smell in my cup. Doing my best to realize that what I'm about to drink has passed through the mouth, stomach, and anus of another animal, I gently sip the concoction. It has a seemingly floral and nutty flavor while at the same time not having either, if you follow me. I can't place it. It was definitely unique. Hold it! It was then that it hit me. After swallowing, I had very little to no coffee taste in my mouth. There was no bitter coffee taste. I was shocked by its strangeness. I sipped again just to make sure I wasn't mad and indeed, after four straight days, I can tell you this coffee does not leave very much taste in your mouth. I was amazed and so went to the Fount of All Knowledge and Wisdom (aka Wikipedia) to find out the reason. Apparently, the Civet's digestive track breaks down the protein responsible for coffee bitterness. Seeing my question answered satisfactorily, I stopped my research and so could be completely wrong. Oh well.

So, is it worthy of the title 'most expensive coffee in the world'? Well, I can see why it would cost so much due to labor and expense, but I don't think it's expensive because it is so frickin' good. It's your standard cup of joe with a different flavor, that's all. So if you're in it for the experience or are trying to impress some hot girls somewhere, go ahead and pay out the nose for a cup. But I don't think you'll be too wowed or amazed.

Fount of All Knowledge and Wisdom Link

A Few Things...

2008-08-27T21:24:00.000+02:00

Firstly, I have a link here that is probably one of the most amusing articles from Cracked.com I have had the pleasure of reading. There is strong language but it is just too funny an article to pass up. I just had to share since I have an interest in science and the CERN Hadron super collider that will probably destory the world (sarcasm intended).

Secondly, I'd like to bring to your attention a previous post of mine. It happened to me again today and for those of you who missed it the first time around, here is your chance to experience it for the first time (obviously).

And finally I just want to point out I finally made it to my Baseball game goal for the year. Game number 5 was last night and we won. I hate to say it, but I was just a little shocked. Anywhoo, there you go.

Update

2008-08-22T05:25:00.000+02:00

So, today I read that Brad Wright, one of the head honchos for Stargate Atlantis, is completely fine with switching from a TV show to movies as the story telling medium. In fact, everything has been done with everybody's knowledge and acceptance. I would have preferred a headline that read "Writers, Producers, Network Executives Agree to End Atlantis." That would have been a lot easier to understand and accept as a fan instead of "SciFi Channel Cancels Stargate Atlantis." So, anyway, I'm taking down the petition and asking that you don't send feedback to SciFi anymore. Thanks.

Sorrow

2008-08-21T05:35:00.000+02:00

As if having Finals this Friday wasn't bad enough, I was quietly perusing the Internet when I ran across a post on a site I frequent, GateWorld (home of all thing Gate related). Lo and behold, they have canceled Stargate Atlantis, the successful spin off of Stargate SG-1. Although it was unavoidable, expletives great in number flew through my brain and were directed wholly at the Nielson (of the rating system) and at the SciFi network. They have canceled so many shows as of late and they are starting to hit close to home. I don't mind if a show's producers, writers, and actors decide to end a show, like Battlestar Galactica is doing, but I do hate it when they are canceled.

So who is to blame? Apparently ratings. And you know what, I just got my week old telegraph from my broker in New York about ocean front property for sale in Utah. COME ON PEOPLE! You can not use a live "night-of" rating system anymore with the power of the Internet out there. I'm sorry. I don't have TV, can't afford cable and so watch my favorite shows online. How dare a network cancel a show just because I wasn't watching their damned commercials?! I was so irate that I found the feedback email for SciFi and sent a very nice email basically saying that they're frakkin' idiots. Here is the address in case anyone wants to join in. feedback@scifi.com

I can't really say much else right now. I haven't been too impressed with the show the last season and a half but had high hopes for this season. I saw the mistakes that were being made but still watched, believing it would recover. But canceling it is just wrong.

Hysteria

2008-08-18T17:48:00.000+02:00

It feels like it's been a while since I shared. Yet it's been all of 17 days. I can only conclude that these seventeen days have either been so filled that I haven't properly fathomed the passage of time or they have been extremely slow days. Regardless...

It's Finals [feels like it should be capitalized] week. The nine week summer quarter here at UW is reaching its end. It's been rough, I'm not going to lie. Here's what it's been like in an analogy metaphor whatever form that should ring true with anybody that has ever visited Seattle.

*shimmering cross-fade* My first quarter at the U feels like I was walking along Pike's Market, minding my own business, taking in the sites and the people, smelling the flowers, getting those flavored honey stick things when all of a sudden... [thought I'd make you wait a sec on the edge of your seat] ... a giant fish slaps me in the face, stunning me into near unconsciousness! It had come from them fish throwing folk down in the corner and boy was it a big fish! I numbly get back on my feet when one of the dudes in the orange overalls comes over real fast, helps me don my own orange pant suspender doohicky and proceeds to throw me into the fray of taking orders and throwing fish. Fully recovered from my fish in the head incident, I quickly get the hang of taking orders and throwing fish. But then the lingo starts getting more complicated and the busy time of the day is here and I can't keep up and ... and........ I freak out! There's fish everywhere! Here fish, there fish. Crawdad things are crawling out of the tubs! Mini-fireworks shoot out of the ice packs! People are dancing in the streets and that blind guitar player is going to town! Dogs and cats, living together...Mass Hysteria! *cross-fade back*

That's what it's been like. I can only hope that next quarter will be a smoother ride the whole way through.

Up and Running

2008-08-01T17:57:00.000+02:00

Well, we're back. Not having the internet for...hold on let me check...12 days was pretty incredible (in an absolutely disturbing way). The lack of ability to do something really does show you how much you may have come to rely on that something. Not having the ability to check my email (what little there ever is) or my facebook (Lord forbid!) or my favorite sites like io9 or xkcd was just painful. On the other hand, not having the distracting power of the internet allowed me to get all sorts of other things done. Let me share.

The period during which my apartment was without internet was a busy time for schoolwork. There were two take home tests to complete, homework assignments to muddle through and readings off the wazoo that needed to be...well read. S without the distraction, coupled with my new favorite coffee shop also not having their free internet (!), I got a lot of work done. Wednesday, we were up and running again and let me tell you how much schoolwork I've done since that night. I've read two chapters out of my thermal physics book and most of that was while I was waiting for food to cook in the kitchen.

I'm a terrible addict! I hate it so much! What happened to the good ol' days when we were not all connected nearly instantaneously to each other? I can't even be at home without succumbing to the temptation of the 'net! I have to go somewhere else either without my computer (if there is internet there) or someplace with my computer that doesn't have internet (i.e. Barnes and Noble? [ah, but then there is the temptation of leaving with new books.]).

It's very important to recognize you're an easily-distracted-by-the-internet person. It's the first step on the road to recovery. Unless of course they pull a 1984 and are secretly watching me right now, will abduct me, reconvert me, and release me back to the public as an adoring fan of the internet... hmmmm. I love Big Brother.

Movin' Along

2008-07-20T17:56:00.000+02:00

I hate moving. All the packing up is fine and dandy at the beginning. You feel like you're always making progress, but then it seems that the more you pack into your car/s the more seems to still be left in the old place. Eventually you're hauling out bric-a-brac piece by piece because you don't have any more boxes or bags to put the stuff into. Then you're trying to clean the apartment of the mess of people who haven't lived there in three years, or the grime that's built up because it was a mess to begin with and you couldn't help but not care. ARGH! Moving stinks.

I've been living in Washington for two years now, and have moved twice since arriving (first last year, and now this year). I better be at this place for a good two years to make up for it. It might actually work out too because the new apartment is nicer than the one we were in before. Now don't get me wrong, we had good neighbors at our old place and I loved our landladies (if you call them that) to death. They were awesome. It's just that it was getting expensive and was a little small for our needs. Our current place is larger and less expensive and the only thing wrong with I can see is that spiders apparently enjoy the area too. *groan*

Anyway, back to moving. After you've moved everything into a vehicle, you have to unload it. And do you have time to do anything but just dump it in neat piles all over your new room? No, you put it into haphazard but neat piles in your new room. But after you're all out of that old place, and it's all clean (relatively) and you actually never have to step back inside, that's when you suddenly relax, look at the mess of boxes in the new place and say, now comes the fun!

Unpacking totally rocks! You're chucking junk you forgot you had, organizing everything in a new and unique manner and generally making everything perfect. I can't wait, except I have homework to do, obligatory events to attend, and did I mention homework? So I gotta go, but I just wanted to let you all know that I'm all moved to a new place. If you want to write me a letter (since we might not have internet for a little bit) my new address is 11400 NE 132nd Street #P108 Kirkland,WA 98034 USA. Cheers!

p.s. sometimes my people tracker thing over on the right side of my blog has shown people from around the world, or at least IP addresses from around the world glancing at my writing. This is an open invitation to anybody from anywhere: please comment on something and let me know you are real. I want to believe. Even if you hate my writing and want to say so, that's okay.

On Being Prepared

2008-07-03T21:17:00.000+02:00

I had a very interesting dream that seemed to segue into my work day on Wednesday and then a similar dream that started out my day today. Unfortunately, I don't exactly remember the dream...at all, but I do know that when these incidents happened, I remembered that I had dreamed it already.

The first instance was when I arrived at work after school on Wednesday. My co-worker was jesting with me and said it's appropriate to shave before coming to work. Now I have a beard and I like it. Suddenly, I had this recollection of being in, say, an alternate universe where facial hair was illegal. I didn't know how I got here, but I knew if I was to survive, I'd have to pretend I knew all about whatever they were saying to me, including the facial hair thing. I panicked just a bit at my co-worker saying this, fearing I had somehow slipped into this alternate reality for real somehow. He still had his hair though so I didn't panic for long.

So, I tell you this because I want you all to be prepared. Too many times, I've seen people (on TV shows and what not) be all dumb whenever they land in some alternate reality or timeline. They expect people to instantly be understanding when you tell them their [insert something here] isn't the way it is supposed to be. Stupid! You need to get with the flow right away and then work out where you are, how you got there, and what you're going to do or who you're going to tell about getting back to your home. Say somebody walks up to you and says, "Hey, what happened to your biometric facial interface?" You don't say "my what?" You say, "It's getting repaired," or "It just broke but I'm heading out to get another one right now." That's how you survive in alternate realities. Be prepared and quick on your feet.

Goals

2008-06-30T04:58:00.001+02:00

So last Monday, I completed a goal I had set for myself more than two years earlier. In early 2006, I said that I would become a student at the University of Washington. Monday, June 23, I had my first class at 9:40a. How did it feel? Well, I certainly wasn't really thinking that hard about it. I didn't feel any different, but it was pretty cool to say "hey, I finished a goal I set. How about that?" I'd also like to say, I'm very proud of being a Husky. Go Dawgs!

Now, on to lighter matters. Besides the (pretty much included in prior goal) goal of graduating in three, maybe even two years, I have a much greater goal that is going to take some thinking, planning, praying, asking, pondering, and on top of all that, much information gathering. Are you ready for my new goal? Maybe it's not really a goal since that suggests an actual, I don't know, tangible ending. A "something" you can hold on to and present to people saying here it is! (i.e. my student ID) Now this thing I'm about to reveal to you is probably more of an intent to do research to determine if a goal to implement said research should be announced. Here then is my research goal. Are you ready?

I want to live on a boat.

Liveaboarders is one of the terms I've come across so far. I also understand some communities shun them while they're also a close knit group. [Aside] Please don't mistake me. I'm not going to go sell my truck, take a loan and buy a boat tomorrow. This is my research goal. I am going to learn everything I can about liveaboarding and boating. [End Aside] This could take several years and I understand that. It has always been a dream of mine to live on a boat. Not tied down to any one place: if I so choose, I'm up and away (or, more appropriately, Anchors Away!) Well there you go. Thoughts, advice, and slaps to my face are welcome.

Beer Fest 2008

2008-06-16T04:57:00.000+02:00

Well. A contingent of my close friends and some friends of theirs (i.e. new friends to me) and I all went to Beer Fest today (Sunday, Father's Day) over in upper Juanita and it was an amazing experience. There were almost 200 craft beers there and, though it was the last day of the festival, there was plenty of selection. From porters and stouts to blondes and pales or reds and ambers. Oh gosh! I alone of the company went for the ten taster purchase with the others choosing to stay at a respectable six or seven, depending on their wives' preference to share tokens. I offer you here, a list of the beers I tried. All of them were new to me except for my ninth and tenth token. I wanted to end the night with something I knew would be good.

1. Mac & Jack's IPA
2. Elysian ESB
3. Kona Longboard Lager
4. Widmer Brothers '08 Crimson Wheat
5. Water Street Imperial Red
6. Georgetown 9 lb. Porter
7. Scuttlebutt 12 Year Anniversary Scotch Ale
8. Pike Belgian Tripel
9. Mac & Jack's African Amber
10. Mac & Jack's African Amber

I believe the taster sizes were between four and six ounces (imperial or not) and seeing as how I don't honestly know ounce sizes very well, you can do the math on all possibilities and see that I got a sizable portion of beer in the space of two hours or so. Let's go over my selections very briefly. You can let me know if you want details. Here we go.

1. Delightful start. Can't fault Mac & Jack's at all it seems.
2. ESB, not bad. I like the Elysian Stout, and I liked this.
3. Yes, they're from Hawai'i and it was fun.
4. Right next door to the Kona, how do you pass on "Crimson" Wheat? Really good.
5. This s*** messed me up. I thought I was gonna hurl with each sip/gulp.
6. I thought a porter would help me out with #5. It was good, but probably ill-timed
***took a break for funnel cakes and brats around this time. I had a brat, they all had an elephant ear***
7. Scotch and beer. Incredible! So smooth.
8. Plain old fun. The gentleman told me he had just tapped the keg and I was getting the best part of the keg, which is the first third, or king level I believe he said. Let's be honest, I'd had 7 pretty rapid tastes by then. I'm not sure what he said.
9 and 10. The African Amber. A staple of the Eastside and no mistake. I love it and had to end with it. I downed 9. and polished 10.

Let's see what else. It was named a festival, and rightly so. Unfortunately, I didn't see much of the rest of things. There was a kiddie area, food stands, fake tattoo stand things and what not. The tents for the beer were what I was interested in. The only thing I can be sad about, was that by coming on the last day, we probably missed out on the variety they might have had Friday night and Saturday afternoon. Oh well. Man, I can't wait for next year!

T+01:42:37

2008-06-13T21:25:00.000+02:00

Well, as of 7:12p last night, 1 hour and 42 minutes after official class time, I successfully graduated from my second community college. It was the final for the one class I was taking this semester. I'd say I completed it in a little over an hour and because I was waiting for my classmate to finish, I spent the rest of the time checking my work. I came up with a delightful way to describe how incredibly awesome this test was on the easy scale. It goes like this:

Brian walked in not exactly knowing what to expect. Finals can always be tricky and especially so if they're comprehensive. But when the moment of truth came and all the studying would be put to the test (pun intended), Brian gazed at the test for a moment and immediately sized it up. Quietly pulling out his six-shooter, he said "Okay Final, time to dance."

It was a beautiful test, with very delightful questions and I screamed through it at speeds unheard of by mortal man. It felt good. I was checked at one spot but came back later and gave it a what for. Several-variable calculus final, you got pwned!

The Ranks

2008-06-07T07:41:00.000+02:00

Thursday I discovered that on Tuesday I had most likely joined the ranks of such people as my good friends Trevor Barnes and Tyler Cronk. That of the Short-term Memory Recall brigade in the special unit of Test Taking. Quick back story. (ripply cross fading to a new scene)

It's Tuesday, the third of June, and I had just had a very busy weekend. I had both of my parents and their spouses in town, my sister who I adore, an orchestra concert Sunday night, and month end in accounting to deal with on Monday at my work. A test was scheduled for this (Tuesday) evening and I had very little (no) time to study. Did I want to study Monday night? Heck no. I was tired and wanted to just sleep. Oh, I forgot to mention that Tuesday morning from 7:45a to 12:30p or so I had an advising and orientation session for the U (Go Huskies!). So I needed my sleep for that and got off work a little late too. All that to say I didn't study Monday. Tuesday afternoon rolls around and I leave work to go to school about two hours early and get some studying in. I review all my notes several times, gradually got more and more tired, and eventually stopped studying ten minutes or so before class.

Test time. End of test and I didn't really like any of the questions. I had a 95.53% in the class so far and to keep at least a 92% I would need to get an 81 on the test. I said to myself, certainly I pulled at least an 81 and probably not much more than that. To be honest, I don't remember taking half the test as my mind was just exhausted. I think my eyes and hand were paying attention though because of what happened Thursday.

Thursday rolls around, the instructor says that there were 18 scores in the 90 range (crap, that ain't me this time, I thought) and that the highest was 96. My test comes back. 96. I turned the paper back over in disbelief and went on with organizing my papers for today's notes. Uncomprehending, I look again at my score and it says 96. Baffled beyond all recognition, I realized that somehow, my short term memory had blessed me this time around. I will not count on it all the time, but it is good to know that I have it along with a few others. Needless to say, I'm very happy that somehow we (mouse in my pocket and I) pulled it off. Now for the final...

p.s. for those who greatly desire more details, the class was Math 227: Several Variable Calculus, my instructors name is Sasha Malinsky, Kurtis and Anne sit to my right, and Jeff behind and to the right, and there are whiteboards, not chalkboards in the room.

3 Day Weak-end

2008-05-27T04:33:00.000+02:00

I tell you what, I need a vacation. A vacation from this three day weekend. If I don't have anything to do on a long weekend, I get so bored that I seriously feel like I need a vacation afterwards. Naturally, this problem has long been noticeable and the world has come up with a delightful solution: the work week. Yes, the work week was invented to counter a three day weekend that happened several hundred years ago. Some bloke got so fed up on his extended weekend and was too poor to take a vacation, that he invented the work week. In fact, he was so angry that he didn't want to have another three day weekend ever again, so he made the work week five days. There, a brief history of the work week.

Now, what did I do this weekend? Well, I watched 7 movies which is quite disgusting. Well, let's be honest, I watched more like 6.25. Here's how:

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Meet Joe Black (first time, incredibly moving movie)
The Matrix: Reloaded (only scenes in the Matrix)
The Matrix: Revolutions (only scenes involving action)
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
The Whole Nine Yards
Casino Royale

I did do a bit of homework Monday afternoon and purchased a few books at Half-Price books during a 20% off sale. That's pretty nice. I also picked up some friends from the airport Monday, so that made me feel like I was doing something. Not too much reading, which is kind of depressing but I just didn't feel much like reading, plus it kept putting me to sleep. I napped and slept a lot this weekend. *sigh* I'm actually looking forward to going to work tomorrow...sort of...well not really. That's why I need a vacation.

p.s. i'm not dissing three day weekends. Only weekends where I don't have anything to do.

Aluminum Cans

2008-05-24T21:15:00.000+02:00

Two days ago, I had a terrifying moment of clarity. I think clarity is the right word. What follows may seem silly, but I'm fairly certain that if people thought like this more often, the world might be a better place.

Most people, I believe, go through the day very glazed or uncomprehending of the world and even the universe around them. I fall into this as well nearly everyday. I think it has something to do with how much thinking power it would take to go on with existing if you were having to always fathom, say, the size of the Earth, distances between stars, how unbelievably cool trees are when they're alive and growing, or how many tons of asphalt make up the United States highway system. Things like that. Who thinks about those every single day? I don't, but sometimes it comes up, and it scares the crap out of me. Two days ago, I was looking at soda cans that we have at my work. We store them in the bathroom and they come in the 36 pack containers and what not and there were probably 8 or 9 containers there. Yes, that's 288 to 324 individual cans constructed of aluminum that very likely will not get recycled. Anyway, let me try to give you an analogy to describe what happened next.

It's like when you're on Google Maps and you're zoomed into your home address or what not. You can see the surrounding streets and that's it. It takes up the whole screen. All of sudden, somebody/thing comes along, takes your mouse wheel and scrolls back, zooming the image out, and out, and out until you're staring at the entire planet. "Well," you say "that's cool and all. What's the big deal?" The big deal comes from the fact that you're still cognizant of being that tiny person on that now minuscule street that you can't even see anymore. It's an incredible dichotomy of feeling. And that's as best I can describe it in so few words. That's what happened when I stared at these soda cans. How many businesses must there be in the US alone that have these many cans? Then the world? Then I thought about the manufacturing plants, spitting out all these cans! Where the hell (pardon me) do all these flippin' cans come from? How have we not run out before now? I'll admit, I freaked out a bit, but hopefully you can see why we don't think like this.

I like to think we block these thought processes because they would cause too much stress or, I don't know, positive action. This is not an environmental activist blog post, but I just want you to take a moment and really try to comprehend the finiteness of this planet. Go ahead...

...you there yet?...

...scary isn't it?

Dawn

2008-05-04T17:30:00.000+02:00

Bright are the stars on this morning fair
The veil between us had finally lifted;
Winter’s cloak had briefly drifted,
Leaving earth to the heavens’ care.

Stars now vanish as dawn comes along
Shielded from sight, a blindness within
Now all dim, allowing their kin
To warm the earth for now, not long.

Glancing down to the forest below
On this world's realm, a sight to see
The sun's new light on every tree
Ethereal mist on ground laid low.

A sea of trees and I an island
As morning fire warms my flesh
Renewed and revived, all is fresh
For my descent from this high land.

'Tween twig and tree, striding down
The only sound from beneath my feet
Is crunching snow, a pure white sheet,
Topping this land's upper crown.

All around, creatures wake

To glorious dawn and Winters heat.

The forest stirs as they all greet

A ball of flame that had to break.

Wishful Fiction

2008-05-03T03:37:00.000+02:00

Trimboldt knew he might very well be in trouble. Synkrindan had been hammered on for weeks by the New Age Plant council, pestered by the ever increasing population of small children who adored his shenanigans, and hounded by the Tax Collectors branch of the Enforcers Union. It had been inevitable that the balance would be tipped. Hardly anyone knew of Synkrindan's true power if he was unable to maintain that precious balance. Taking an afternoon hike in the woods to calm down, Trimboldt and Synkrindan had come upon an open glade where small shrubs and little woodland creatures were burrowing or furrowing the land, depending on their kind. Trimboldt had accidentally brought up the Enforcers Union when suddenly Synkrindan doubled over as if in pain. His already pale blue skin became more pale and began to shimmer and glow with an ever increasing luminosity. Trimboldt knew that the Good and Self-Control that Synkrindan always employed had finally been toppled by the immensity of circumstance. The balance was falling, and with it would come the potential for incredible destruction. Trimboldt could only hope this was one of the lesser episodes.

Knowing that to stay was to risk injury, possibly mortally depending on the ferocity, Trimboldt fled for the nearest large tree to seek shelter. He could see that the woodland creatures could sense the impending doom to their glade for they had all disappeared. Synkrindan was by this time glowing brightly; a halo of his body spreading outward concentrically was lit with St. Elmo's fire. Unable to contain himself any longer, he reared back screaming to the heavens as a shockwave of unmitigated power and energy coursed outward, decimating all in its path. Trimboldt barely managed to make the tree before the pulse passed him. He felt the tree shudder and pine cones rained down, only to be swept away in the blast. Synkrindan was still screaming, releasing his pent up rage. A good man, he had been cursed with the burden of so many others so that they could lead normal, good lives. The consequence was the inability to manage so much for any given amount of time. It was possible he would go weeks or even months without the need for the release; his containment was impeccable. But every so often, this happened.

Trimboldt heard Synkrindan suddenly grow silent. Turning around from behind the tree, he looked back into the glade and stood there aghast. Synkrindan was kneeling in the middle of a crater at least as tall as one of those small children who had hounded him. No shrub or blade of grass could be seen for several dozen meters. Glancing at the tree that had sheltered him, Trimboldt saw that the bark for several inches had been scorched or blasted off, for there was no sign of fire but for the heat of the tree. Slowly, Trimboldt went up to his friend and, laying his hand upon his shoulder, asked if he was okay? Synkrindan looked up with a look of both relief and dismay and only replied with, I pray every day for this not to happen for the effect it has on others.

*sigh* sometimes i wish i could actually release my pent up angst.