Time to say goodbye

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

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

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

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

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

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

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...

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

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

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

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

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.

More on Amsterdam soon.  Promise.

Time has Velocity?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!