I am safely back in San Francisco, and none too soon! The news this morning said that most flights in and out of SFO were seriously delayed or cancelled due to the storm.
Our final few days in Paris for New Year's were excellent. It was a nice way to say goodbye to the city. Hopefully I will be able to upload a few pictures from the end of our journey with some description of what we did soon, but right now I'm trying to unpack, repack, pick classes, and generally pick up life where I left it on September 22.
One major development in my repatriation is the acquisition of an American cell phone, which I took care of this morning. You can now call me on my spiffy new phone at:
(650) 799-9703
This number is different from the one I had before I went overseas, so you'll need to change your entry for me if you already have one.
Friday, January 4, 2008
Friday, December 28, 2007
Geneva, basically
Greetings from (basically) Geneva:
(Logic tells me that this keyboard should have an exclamation mark but I just can't find it. You should at least be happy to know that I finally found the apostrophe.)
We're actually currently in France, but the nearest major city to us is Geneva, Switzerland, and it's more exciting to write from another country. Besides, we did spend most of the day in Switzerland.
Our Christmas in Sweden was wonderful. We did lots of traditional Swedish Christmas things, such as:
Open gifts on December 24
Watch the Disney Christmas Eve special
Eat multiple types of pickled herring
Eat multiple types of salmon
Drink Julmust (Christmas soda)
Drink Schnapps
Drink glugg (Christmas wine)
Drink Christmas beer (There's a Christmas variety of every kind of drink)
Eat rice porridge
Go to church at 5 am on December 25
Did I mention that said church dates back to the 12th century?
All in all a good experience. Katie commented later that she'd never before appreciated the full meaning of "Swedish fish."
On the 27th we boarded a train at 6:20 am. We spent the day on trains, actually, finally boarding a night train for Switzerland at 8:45 pm. Our compartment on this train had only chairs, no beds, and 5 occupants (all under 25). We decided to arrange ourselves as best as possible for actually sleeping some. After a few suspensful moments when we thought we might aquire a sixth occupant, Katie wound up sleeping on the floor with a German guy we'd never met before, I curled up across two seats on one side of the compartment, another girl curled up on the two seats opposite me, and the final guy stretched himself over the remaining two seats (on opposite sides of the compartment). Katie's description of these sleeping arrangements was best: we looked like a game of human pick-up-sticks. But we did get far more sleep than either of us expected when we first realized that we had no beds at all:
We are now at the home of a friend of mine from Paris. Tonight we are headed out salsa dancing. Katie wanted to learn a "useful French phrase" for the evening. The original idea was to teach her one that would be an amusing way to refuse an unsolicited advance, but somehow the phrase she ended up learning was "Salut, beau garç." (Roughly: Hey, hot stuff). I suspect this phrase will not prove particularly useful...
Tomorrow we are headed up to the Alps for an afternoon of skiing. I am very excited, yet lack the appropriate punctuation for making this sentiment clear.
(Logic tells me that this keyboard should have an exclamation mark but I just can't find it. You should at least be happy to know that I finally found the apostrophe.)
We're actually currently in France, but the nearest major city to us is Geneva, Switzerland, and it's more exciting to write from another country. Besides, we did spend most of the day in Switzerland.
Our Christmas in Sweden was wonderful. We did lots of traditional Swedish Christmas things, such as:
Open gifts on December 24
Watch the Disney Christmas Eve special
Eat multiple types of pickled herring
Eat multiple types of salmon
Drink Julmust (Christmas soda)
Drink Schnapps
Drink glugg (Christmas wine)
Drink Christmas beer (There's a Christmas variety of every kind of drink)
Eat rice porridge
Go to church at 5 am on December 25
Did I mention that said church dates back to the 12th century?
All in all a good experience. Katie commented later that she'd never before appreciated the full meaning of "Swedish fish."
On the 27th we boarded a train at 6:20 am. We spent the day on trains, actually, finally boarding a night train for Switzerland at 8:45 pm. Our compartment on this train had only chairs, no beds, and 5 occupants (all under 25). We decided to arrange ourselves as best as possible for actually sleeping some. After a few suspensful moments when we thought we might aquire a sixth occupant, Katie wound up sleeping on the floor with a German guy we'd never met before, I curled up across two seats on one side of the compartment, another girl curled up on the two seats opposite me, and the final guy stretched himself over the remaining two seats (on opposite sides of the compartment). Katie's description of these sleeping arrangements was best: we looked like a game of human pick-up-sticks. But we did get far more sleep than either of us expected when we first realized that we had no beds at all:
We are now at the home of a friend of mine from Paris. Tonight we are headed out salsa dancing. Katie wanted to learn a "useful French phrase" for the evening. The original idea was to teach her one that would be an amusing way to refuse an unsolicited advance, but somehow the phrase she ended up learning was "Salut, beau garç." (Roughly: Hey, hot stuff). I suspect this phrase will not prove particularly useful...
Tomorrow we are headed up to the Alps for an afternoon of skiing. I am very excited, yet lack the appropriate punctuation for making this sentiment clear.
Monday, December 24, 2007
Videos : A novelty
So my camera also takes low-quality videos. I haven't used that feature much because it's so much easier to just snap a picture, but I did take a couple of videos that are worth sharing.
This is a video of some of the mechanical nativity figurines for sale in the nativity market in Sevilla, narrated by Carl.
And this is the video I took of the light show in the Grand Place in Brussels. The video doesn't do it justice, of course, but it does give you an idea of what it was like.
This is a video of some of the mechanical nativity figurines for sale in the nativity market in Sevilla, narrated by Carl.
And this is the video I took of the light show in the Grand Place in Brussels. The video doesn't do it justice, of course, but it does give you an idea of what it was like.
Pictures Pictures! Read all about it!
At last, photographs!
Katie and I finally got our cameras hooked up to a computer here in Sweden. We discovered that between the two of us we have over 900 pictures from the past two and a half weeks. Needless to say, we won't be posting all of those here... If you want to see them all you'll have to come find one of us when we're safely back in the States. I had to make some painful decisions to figure out which pictures to post right now, but I think it's at least a decent overview of my travels thus far. There is at least one picture per city.
I started out in London, if you recall, visiting Angelica. Here is a picture of us posing with ancient Greek sculptures in the British Museum. I had to beg Angelica for this picture. She did not want to take a touristy picture in "her" town.
After London, I took Carl's brief tour of Cambridge. Here he is with his beloved math department! It looks like something from outer space. (Math nerds are so other-worldly...)
In Seville, Katie let me try on one of her school's flamenco dresses. So cool! Ah! Big skirts!
We weren't really allowed to take pictures in the Reina Sofia museum in Madrid (even though I did take one quick, illicit picture) so instead I took a picture of Katie in their courtyard.
Here's me rowing a boat in the middle of Madrid in December! Not exactly what I was expecting to do, but it was fun.
Ok, and here is Katie getting ready to brush her teeth on the overnight train from Madrid to Paris. Can't you see the excitement radiating from her? Ironically, she had trouble sleeping that night because she was too excited about the prospect of sleeping on a train.
Long arms come in handy when you have only two people! Here we are in front of the Arc de Triomphe all aglow.
Brussels has two important landmarks : the Grand Place (which will be featured in a later post) and Mannekin Pis. This statue's name is self-explanatory, I think... Yes, he is peeing.
Despite the cold, cold weather (or what I thought was cold at the time) I put ice cream on top of my Belgian waffle. You only live once.
So, it turns out that cold in Belgium was nothing compared with cold in Germany. This picture was taken at sunset in Munich, and you can still see the frost on the ground! You can also see the silhouettes of all the major Munich landmarks on the horizon.
Maybe the most important thing that happened in Munich was that I made Katie drink beer. She actually liked one of the ones I made her try, too! (Not this one, though. This one she thought was too bitter.)
In Hamburg, we found a statue of Martin Luther. As it turns out, Hamburg marked our departure from Catholicland and our entry into Lutheranland. This made me a bit too giddy for my own good.
As it turns out, frost in Munich was NOTHING compared to frost in Hamburg. This picture was taken in the middle of the day for the top of St. Michael's church in Hamburg.
Hamburg was as cold as it got though. This is Nyhavn in Copenhagen, right across from where Hans Christian Anderson lived.
During one of our many train rides, Katie was musing about how long it had been since she'd made candy and describing the process to me. Then our first night in Sweden Cecile recruited us to make candies!
It's now Christmas Eve here, which is the big Swedish day of celebration. Merry Christmas!
Katie and I finally got our cameras hooked up to a computer here in Sweden. We discovered that between the two of us we have over 900 pictures from the past two and a half weeks. Needless to say, we won't be posting all of those here... If you want to see them all you'll have to come find one of us when we're safely back in the States. I had to make some painful decisions to figure out which pictures to post right now, but I think it's at least a decent overview of my travels thus far. There is at least one picture per city.
I started out in London, if you recall, visiting Angelica. Here is a picture of us posing with ancient Greek sculptures in the British Museum. I had to beg Angelica for this picture. She did not want to take a touristy picture in "her" town.
After London, I took Carl's brief tour of Cambridge. Here he is with his beloved math department! It looks like something from outer space. (Math nerds are so other-worldly...)
In Seville, Katie let me try on one of her school's flamenco dresses. So cool! Ah! Big skirts!
We weren't really allowed to take pictures in the Reina Sofia museum in Madrid (even though I did take one quick, illicit picture) so instead I took a picture of Katie in their courtyard.
Here's me rowing a boat in the middle of Madrid in December! Not exactly what I was expecting to do, but it was fun.
Ok, and here is Katie getting ready to brush her teeth on the overnight train from Madrid to Paris. Can't you see the excitement radiating from her? Ironically, she had trouble sleeping that night because she was too excited about the prospect of sleeping on a train.
Long arms come in handy when you have only two people! Here we are in front of the Arc de Triomphe all aglow.
Brussels has two important landmarks : the Grand Place (which will be featured in a later post) and Mannekin Pis. This statue's name is self-explanatory, I think... Yes, he is peeing.
Despite the cold, cold weather (or what I thought was cold at the time) I put ice cream on top of my Belgian waffle. You only live once.
So, it turns out that cold in Belgium was nothing compared with cold in Germany. This picture was taken at sunset in Munich, and you can still see the frost on the ground! You can also see the silhouettes of all the major Munich landmarks on the horizon.
Maybe the most important thing that happened in Munich was that I made Katie drink beer. She actually liked one of the ones I made her try, too! (Not this one, though. This one she thought was too bitter.)
In Hamburg, we found a statue of Martin Luther. As it turns out, Hamburg marked our departure from Catholicland and our entry into Lutheranland. This made me a bit too giddy for my own good.
As it turns out, frost in Munich was NOTHING compared to frost in Hamburg. This picture was taken in the middle of the day for the top of St. Michael's church in Hamburg.
Hamburg was as cold as it got though. This is Nyhavn in Copenhagen, right across from where Hans Christian Anderson lived.
During one of our many train rides, Katie was musing about how long it had been since she'd made candy and describing the process to me. Then our first night in Sweden Cecile recruited us to make candies!
It's now Christmas Eve here, which is the big Swedish day of celebration. Merry Christmas!
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Now in Stockholm
Hello hello! This is another pre-written blog entry courtesy of lots of time spent on a train.
Our journey north is progressing slowly but surely and by the time I post this we will have arrived in Stockholm. (Yea verily.) With a little luck, we may get snow, though there's no sign of it yet. Merry Christmas!
Germany was great. We stayed with my uncle Gene's sister and her family. They were very welcoming and made us feel right at home. On Thursday and Friday we explored Munich during the day then went back to eat dinner (bread and cheese and salami) with them.
What struck me most about Munich was the frost. We just don't get frost like that in California! If Katie hadn't corrected me, I would have thought it was snow. Everything was white from all the ice! It looked spectacular, but it was literally freezing cold.
On Thursday we went into the Residenz, the former seat of the Bavarian government. It's a palace far too big for its own good. I don't know how many first and second waiting rooms we saw. I think everyone who ever lived there built their own wing with a new bedroom/throne room/etc. We waltzed in the beautiful grand hall, in honor of Edwin. :-)
On Friday we went to BMW world in the morning where we "test drove" a BMW on a simulator, posed on motorcycles, and became unnecessarily excited about liquid hyrdogen. After lunch we went to the Deutches Museum and stayed there until closing. It is an enormous museum with a litle bit of everything. Katie actually got lost for 15 minutes trying to get out of the astronomy exhibit, it was that big. We didn't see most of the museum, even though we spent hours there. But we did see ships, airplanes, space shutles, glassware, experiments demonstrating the various properties of light, a flight simulator, and a math coerner. The math corner tried to explain this magic trick with rings, but we could never make it work right.
After the museum, we went to the Haufbrauhaus, which is an old, historic brewery turned restaurant/bar. Most of the people there were drinking beer out of the biggest mugs I have ever seen. I ordered the smallest beer on the menu (it was only half a liter...) and even Katie admitted that it was pretty good beer.
---end pre-recorded message---
We're in Sweden now, which is great. It's ridiculously dark, though. The sun set about 3:30. We spent our evening doing laundry and making candy. All around a successful day, I'd say.
Our journey north is progressing slowly but surely and by the time I post this we will have arrived in Stockholm. (Yea verily.) With a little luck, we may get snow, though there's no sign of it yet. Merry Christmas!
Germany was great. We stayed with my uncle Gene's sister and her family. They were very welcoming and made us feel right at home. On Thursday and Friday we explored Munich during the day then went back to eat dinner (bread and cheese and salami) with them.
What struck me most about Munich was the frost. We just don't get frost like that in California! If Katie hadn't corrected me, I would have thought it was snow. Everything was white from all the ice! It looked spectacular, but it was literally freezing cold.
On Thursday we went into the Residenz, the former seat of the Bavarian government. It's a palace far too big for its own good. I don't know how many first and second waiting rooms we saw. I think everyone who ever lived there built their own wing with a new bedroom/throne room/etc. We waltzed in the beautiful grand hall, in honor of Edwin. :-)
On Friday we went to BMW world in the morning where we "test drove" a BMW on a simulator, posed on motorcycles, and became unnecessarily excited about liquid hyrdogen. After lunch we went to the Deutches Museum and stayed there until closing. It is an enormous museum with a litle bit of everything. Katie actually got lost for 15 minutes trying to get out of the astronomy exhibit, it was that big. We didn't see most of the museum, even though we spent hours there. But we did see ships, airplanes, space shutles, glassware, experiments demonstrating the various properties of light, a flight simulator, and a math coerner. The math corner tried to explain this magic trick with rings, but we could never make it work right.
After the museum, we went to the Haufbrauhaus, which is an old, historic brewery turned restaurant/bar. Most of the people there were drinking beer out of the biggest mugs I have ever seen. I ordered the smallest beer on the menu (it was only half a liter...) and even Katie admitted that it was pretty good beer.
---end pre-recorded message---
We're in Sweden now, which is great. It's ridiculously dark, though. The sun set about 3:30. We spent our evening doing laundry and making candy. All around a successful day, I'd say.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Arrival in Munich
I wrote the following blog entry on a train from Paris to Stuttgart earlier today.
Today is day 12 of my travels, and it seems that socks will be the limiting factor to my ability to live out of one suitcase without doing laundry. I thought it would be underwear until I found a stash of clean ones at the bottom of my backpack. Believe you me, I have never been so happy to come across underwear before!
The past three dazs have been nuts. In general, travling for so long is a bit crazy, but especially these past days. In 3 days we saw the capitals of 3 different countries: Madrid, Spain; Paris, France; and Brussels, Belgium. (Yes, I know Brussels wasn't on our original itinerary. If thereäs one thing I´ve learned from this trip, it's that you can never trust an original itinerary. Even now Iäm hesistant to say exactly where we're headed because things may still change.) Now we're en route to Munich, our fourth country in four days and fifth city in five. I cannot vouch for our sanity. If you want to keep playing the number game, then there's a period of 22 days (that is 22x24 hours) during which I will have touched the ground in 9 countries. Granted, that onlz has about half an hour each in England and the USA, but you get the idea. Lots of places, short amount of time. I feel vaguely like I'm playing a video game, collecting a star every time I visit a new place. Ding! Ding! Ding!
I can't remember if I had time to write about Madrid when I was in Paris... We spent most of the day in museums and part of the afternoon in a rowboat.
In Paris, I spent the morning running errands - dropping off luggage, checking my e-mail, closing my bank account, buying train tickets (a never-ending task). We grabbed baguettes for lunch and ate in the freeying Jardins de Luxembourg. Our whirlwind half-day tour of Paris also included the Pantheon, Notre Dame, les Galeries Lafazette (a big, fancz department store with a huge Christmas tree in the middle), the top of the tour Montparnasse, and a thwarted attempt to tour the opera house. That makes twice now that the opera has been exceptionally closed when I wanted to visit. The people we're staying with in Paris are extremely and unbelievably nice. I'm very grateful.
Yesterday was another cold, cold day, but in Brussels, quite a contrast from sunny Spain. It was wonderful, though. The town was all decked out for Christmas with lights over all the streets and on all the buildings, Christmas trees, tons of nativity scenes, and hundreds of stands selling gifts and food. In the evening, they played opera music in the Grand Place and had a light show projected onto the already amazingly beautiful Town Hall. I took a video of part of it that I will post assuming I eventually get mz camera attached to a computer.
How am I doing? I'm hanging in there. I'm not sick which iws great. I'm walking a lot and eating a lot without really reflecting on the consequences to my nutrient intake or monetary expenses. Muscles that I didn't know I had are now sore. In sum, it's nice to be sitting down right now.
Today is day 12 of my travels, and it seems that socks will be the limiting factor to my ability to live out of one suitcase without doing laundry. I thought it would be underwear until I found a stash of clean ones at the bottom of my backpack. Believe you me, I have never been so happy to come across underwear before!
The past three dazs have been nuts. In general, travling for so long is a bit crazy, but especially these past days. In 3 days we saw the capitals of 3 different countries: Madrid, Spain; Paris, France; and Brussels, Belgium. (Yes, I know Brussels wasn't on our original itinerary. If thereäs one thing I´ve learned from this trip, it's that you can never trust an original itinerary. Even now Iäm hesistant to say exactly where we're headed because things may still change.) Now we're en route to Munich, our fourth country in four days and fifth city in five. I cannot vouch for our sanity. If you want to keep playing the number game, then there's a period of 22 days (that is 22x24 hours) during which I will have touched the ground in 9 countries. Granted, that onlz has about half an hour each in England and the USA, but you get the idea. Lots of places, short amount of time. I feel vaguely like I'm playing a video game, collecting a star every time I visit a new place. Ding! Ding! Ding!
I can't remember if I had time to write about Madrid when I was in Paris... We spent most of the day in museums and part of the afternoon in a rowboat.
In Paris, I spent the morning running errands - dropping off luggage, checking my e-mail, closing my bank account, buying train tickets (a never-ending task). We grabbed baguettes for lunch and ate in the freeying Jardins de Luxembourg. Our whirlwind half-day tour of Paris also included the Pantheon, Notre Dame, les Galeries Lafazette (a big, fancz department store with a huge Christmas tree in the middle), the top of the tour Montparnasse, and a thwarted attempt to tour the opera house. That makes twice now that the opera has been exceptionally closed when I wanted to visit. The people we're staying with in Paris are extremely and unbelievably nice. I'm very grateful.
Yesterday was another cold, cold day, but in Brussels, quite a contrast from sunny Spain. It was wonderful, though. The town was all decked out for Christmas with lights over all the streets and on all the buildings, Christmas trees, tons of nativity scenes, and hundreds of stands selling gifts and food. In the evening, they played opera music in the Grand Place and had a light show projected onto the already amazingly beautiful Town Hall. I took a video of part of it that I will post assuming I eventually get mz camera attached to a computer.
How am I doing? I'm hanging in there. I'm not sick which iws great. I'm walking a lot and eating a lot without really reflecting on the consequences to my nutrient intake or monetary expenses. Muscles that I didn't know I had are now sore. In sum, it's nice to be sitting down right now.
Monday, December 17, 2007
Back in Paris
Katie and I are back in Paris, which feels a bit like coming home. It's nice to understand what people around me are saying again. On the other hand, we have typical Parisian weather here - lots of clouds and no sun. The sun in Spain was amazingly luxurious.
In Madrid we saw three museums: the Museo Reina Sofia (easily my favorite museum so far - lots of cool surrealist artwork and it was organized very logically), the Museo del Prado (like the Louvre of Spain) and the Museo de Jamon, where we ate lunch. Yes folks, we at lunch at the museum of ham. In the afternoon we went walking in this enormous park thing in the middle of Madrid that has a pond/lake/body of water in the middle of it. We rented a rowboat for 45 minutes and paddled our way in circles. It was lovely!
The night train from Madrid to Paris was pretty cool. Katie was unbelievably excited to sleep on a train. I cannot describe it for you. You have to see it to believe it. We shared our compartment with a Spanish woman who works in Paris. She arrived after us, and when she walked in, Katie and I had our luggage all over the chairs, there were open jars of peanut butter and honey, and we were halfway through eating an almond cake. In other words, her first impression of us was at our sloppiest moment.
In Madrid we saw three museums: the Museo Reina Sofia (easily my favorite museum so far - lots of cool surrealist artwork and it was organized very logically), the Museo del Prado (like the Louvre of Spain) and the Museo de Jamon, where we ate lunch. Yes folks, we at lunch at the museum of ham. In the afternoon we went walking in this enormous park thing in the middle of Madrid that has a pond/lake/body of water in the middle of it. We rented a rowboat for 45 minutes and paddled our way in circles. It was lovely!
The night train from Madrid to Paris was pretty cool. Katie was unbelievably excited to sleep on a train. I cannot describe it for you. You have to see it to believe it. We shared our compartment with a Spanish woman who works in Paris. She arrived after us, and when she walked in, Katie and I had our luggage all over the chairs, there were open jars of peanut butter and honey, and we were halfway through eating an almond cake. In other words, her first impression of us was at our sloppiest moment.
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