Forgot about this for a while

Hey Hey.

I was wicked busy when I got back to Canada and didn't remember my password for Blogger.com. HAHA.

As you may have guessed I survived the trip back. I'm currently back in School working towards my M.E.Sc. in Environmental Engineering. People keep emailing me because they've found this. I won't be updating anymore. If you want a similar commentary of my brother's adventures while teaching and traveling in Korea visit http://judgeholden.blogspot.com/

Basically, all these Weekend Adventures, and the whole trip was made possible because of my Advisors at Western as well as Stuttgart. If you know anyone wishing to study and travel in Germany http://www.yorku.ca/ontbw/ is an amazingly supportive program that is just getting started.

Thats all from me. Hope you enjoyed it.
Chris

Paris (France, Not Texas)

This is probably the best picture that I've taken on my whole trip, I love it. Good old "Camera on the Ground" works every time. I'm getting ahead of myself though, that was near the end of Paris. You've got to suffer through the rest first, and don't just scroll down to the Eiffel tower either, thats not cool. haha
I spent Two days and two nights in Paris. Paris is huge, and quite expensive so i didn't eat much. I spent the first day exploring most of the sites around the outer parts of the city, did a lot of walking, but actually saw a lot. This is the Bastile in the early morning.
I walked through a few of the beautiful gardens on the way to and from the other sites. People seem to hang out in these park areas at all times of the day. I guess there are a lot of artists in Paris that have this kind of time, also people have such small appartments that they treat public parks like their backyard. There are large fountains in most of these gardens where there is always a guy renting toy boats. Little kids push the boats away from the edge with a long stick and it actually catches the wind and sails across the pond, or fountain. This particular park use to be the herb garden of Louis XV. Thousands of different species of flowers and plants. My dad (and avid gardener) could have spent hours here probably.
I saw one chruch that apparently hosted a few scenes in the Davinci code. Nerds from all around were taking pictures of it. I don't think it was very popular before the movie though, so they can't be complaining. The Louvre also had a special tour that you could take that went to all the nerdy Davinci code sites. I didn't take it because I have a life. haha. These are actually human skulls resting on thousands of bones. The catacombs were actually not as creepy as I imagined. It would help if they didn't have as many lights. My favourite part was the sign at the start which had the "rules" of the tour which included "please, do not steal the bones"
Notre Dame, The real one, with the hunchback. I didn't go in because there was a huge line up and I don't like waiting around in lineups. They really need to Lop down some of the trees close to it too. One could easily be standing right beside it and not see it, not very good for the tourists.
My Civil classmates would find this building both amazing and a headache at the same time. The Centre Pompino sp? is a relatively new hang-out square for portrait artists and buskers. The building is so cool though. Its a maze or trusses and rarely used connections. Also the corners have chords that pull down on levers that hold up the rest of the building. Really interesting. Wouldn't want to design it though. Oh, and the vents, electrical, and plumbing is on the outside of the structure too.

This is the Champ-Elysees. Where over a million people pooped themselves when France won the world cup. This is where all the best stores in Paris are. You could probably break a 1000 euro bill pretty easily here. Unfortunately I didn't have much money at the time, so none fo you are getting gifts from anywehre near this place. I beleive I was on the Arch de Triomphe at this time.Yeah, pretty great view of the Arch from the other end of the Champs Elysees as well. Interesting little fact: the reason that Paris has such wide streets in places is apparently the work of Napoleon. He tore down houses to make roads wider after he came to power so that Rebels could not baracade the streets. Wide boulevards are harder for small forces to defend and this significantly decreased the effectiveness of smaller resistances.

While we're on the topic of Napoleon, Guess who is in this MASSIVE tomb. Correct, its Napoleon. Housed in the Hotel Invalides a massive complex that was build to house all of the veteran soliders "Invalids" from the revolution. Now its the Military Museum and collection of medival armour as well as the tomb of the little fella. One neat thing in this complex was their collection of flags hanging in the Soldier's chapel. Apparently France saved the flags from every place that they've ever invaded or conquered. Neat idea, I thought.

The Louvre at night, a lot more peaceful than the louvre during the day. The world's largst museum is always packed. Its an absolute maze too, quite hard for most to navigate without a tour.I didn't have much trouble finding my way around after a bit. but they could make it easier i think. Most of the art is by people that I've never heard of, I'm not sure that it is the best quality gallery in the world, but it does have some very famous pieces, The mona lisa was getting lots of love, and there are a few statues that are pretty busy as well. If you only go to see the mona lisa though, you should really just stay home and look at it on the internet: you can't get very close to it, and it is small. Also, there are so many flashes going off around it you can't get a good look at it. The louvre, the building is actualy quite impressive. The new entrance with the pyramid is swell. This spiral stairway without any supporting columns was really neato. The center silver tube isn't actually attached to the stairs. Its a Pnematic elevator, so it just rises from the floor, they wouldn't let me go on it though. It was because I wasn't in a wheelchair, thats like Reverse-Handicap-ism.
The weather: not so good on the second day. This is the tourist scene in the Jardin de Tullinaries, just before I got to that egyptian spire at the end of the park I got owned by a thunder storm. I hid under a medium sized tree until it ended.

This is the Church of the Sacred Heart, quite far north of the city center. It is on Montmartre hill looking over paris and it has an amazing panoramic view. Also a big enough stair/hill area in front of it to warrent a lift. All the old and fat people took the lift to the top which wasn't even 150m long. Quite funny. Inside the church they had about 10000 candles burning, I beleive that one of their beloved ministers recently died. However this did not stop sony from holding a downhill bicycling competition on the hill right in front. hehe
I took a big detour out to a district on the west side of the city. La Defence is where all the modern and tall buildings are located in Paris. In the middle of all these tall buildings is a massive open area. Crowning this open area is the Grande Arch. A 100m tall building with a huge hole in it. Probably the coolest modern building that I've seen in Europe.
Alas, on sunday night I went up the Eiffel tower. Basically you line up to get to the second deck, then you line up on the second deck to get to the third, and highest deck. I started this great adventure at about 9:30pm and by the time I got to the second deck the sun was just going down. At the top it was just past 11pm and it was completely dark. The best thing about it was you could still see all the sights because they are so heavily lit at night. It was hard to take good pictures from the top, but I was really glad that I went up at night.

I sat around on the Champs de Mars in front of the Eiffer tower for the remainder of the night watching the lights sparkle at midnight. It took rock climbers 2 months to install thousands of leds on the outside of the Eiffer tower and every hour during the night they are set off randomly. It looks amazing. I also learnt that the Eiffer tower shrinks up to 12cm every winter when the rivettes contract.

Rome: The End

Sorry about the delay, my loyal readers. Been a bit crazy over here in the last few weeks, Finishing up work and tying up some loose ends. Not sure if that is the right spelling for Tying, but, hey, Egal (that means "whatever" in german: it also may be spelt wrong). For some reason blogger.com is in german all of a sudden, which normally wouldn't be a problem, I know what the most common buttons mean in german now, but the spell check doesn't work. BOOOO

The collusium is absolutely amazing. To tell you the truth I thought that it looked kinda fake from the outside, though. Non the less, it was a must see for me in Europe and I think that other than the Vatican I spent the most time at the Colussium.
It costs about 11 euros to get in, which I thought was a lot. Great view inside though. I still don't know how they got boats inside this sucker either. The stupidest thing about Rome is that most of the attactions have reduced prices, not for student, or seniors, or kids, but for "People from the EU.".......... WHAT?........ I really couldn't make sense of this, Its like they didn't want me to be there. Not very impressed Rome, making me spend my hard earned money. I couldn't convince the cashier man that my German Residence Pass inside my passport made me a EU citizen either. I really wasn't convinced myself, maybe thats why it didn't work. First time ever that the Canadian Passport has worked against me. If there is one thing that is better than the Colussium during the day, it is the colussium at night. Its almost like they paid a bunch of artists to place the lights perfectly so that tourist could take great pictures. It was really impressive at night, I have numerous shots very similar to this one. I sat around in front of the colussium most of the evening on Sunday. I met a bunch of young American girls that made me take a bunch of pictures of them and I watched the people try to sell Fake gucci bags and little touristy trinkets all night. I felt really bad for them though, every once in a while the Police would drive by and they would have to pick up all their stuff and scramble. A few times the cops would sneak up on them and drive all around the sidewalks and pathways chasing them. Try to run from the cops with 30 Gucci bags in a bed sheet over your shoulder.

On the last day I got really unmotivated and tired. I originally intended to rent a vespa scooter and zip around the city. The rome streets are kinda like the auto-bahn but with moving targets, it looked fun. I ended up buying a Paris tour guide book and walked around the city reading it. I also waited around for my night train for a while at Rome Termini Train Station, one of the larger stations in europe. I had to wait in line for my reservation forever, never doing that again. Also they had a full time staff of people driving around on Zamboni looking machines sucking up garbage off the floor. It was a lot more entertaining than you would think, I actually threw garbage on the floor to get him to drive close to me. haha, not really. I'm not a jerk.

ROME

Rome: The Capital of the World. It all started out with a quick little train ride (11hrs) through Munich, Innsbruck, Bologne, and Florence. I slept most of the time, which worked out really well even though I was scared that I was going to sleep though the stop and end up in Naples. One the night train I took to Vienna, the conductor had to wake me up because it was the last stop. Opps. Everything worked out ok though. It was almost 9 by the time I got to the Vatican City. I was really groggy so I basically hung out in St. Peter's Square for a couple hours. The line to get inside was way too long and the place didn't even open til ten. While I waited for the initial surge of people to go in I drank water from the fountains, which I'm hoping wasn't holy water. One of the things that I'm going to miss about europe is the satisfaction that I get when I find a place to take a leak for free. Take that Vatican City, I owe you 40-80 cents depending on how clean your washroom is, haha. I saw the Vatican Museum (which is ritzy, why do they still need collection) and the Sistine Chapel. No picutes allowed in there though, although that doesn't stop Americans. It is pretty amazing though. I scaled St. Peter's Bresilica, which has some of the most clostrophobic passageways I've ever been in. Sick view of Rome from the top though.
I think I spent about 6 hours in or near the Vatican. I sent a postcard from inside. I didn't expect it to be so fort-like though. But It has been constantly under threats from different groups. The Sistine Chapel was specifically placed in the center of this insane group of buildings to protect it. There was also a Castle nearby with secret passageways leading to it so that the religeous dudes could escape if needed.
By mid-afternoon I was Vatican-ed out and strolled around to some of the famous squares. (or Piazzas) The following is a typical strole along one of Rome's streets:
Walk,
Look, there is a bunch of Nuns,
Walk,
Huge Church with tons of gold inside,
Walk,
No thanks, No Fake Gucci Bag for me today sir, no I don't want a rolex either, No
Walk,
Roman Ruins
Walk
10 Rome Police reading the paper
and Walk.

Above, The Monumento Nazionale a Vittorio Emanuele II on Piazza Venize: which commemorates Italy's Independence as well as the WW1 memorial. It is huge though, and some people don't like it because they built it on ancient Roman ruins, and they made it out of the whitest marble known to man. so it really sticks out and takes away from the ruins right beside it, but its exactly the kind on monument that I would build. I would probably call it something like "The National Monument to Chris's Awesomeness" , haha just kidding. I don't have that much marble anyway.
Yeah, Rome has got to be one of the most densely packed group of Churches in the world. I was actually a fan of the little streets though, some you probably couldn't even fit a Hummer down, and thats not counting the two rows of parked cars. Rome's streets are Dangerous too. It only took me about two life threatening experiences to get a feel for the insane drivers. But still, I really don't think they use lanes, and apparently scooters don't have to stop at red lights, which really makes it fun when they're electric and you can't hear them.
Above, The Pantheon.

The largest Dome in the world for about 1700 years, not bad. The concrete in the Dome varies from 4m thick around the edge to about 1m thick at the top. The hole in the top is also a design feature, they didn't run out of light volcanic rock to build with.

The Trevi Fountain, its a fountain the size of a three story building, on the side of a building. People hang out here all day long, and its a cool spot to chill at night as well, I met a Dutch guy and his wife here one night and talked for about an hour. Good times. Its good luck to throw coins in to the fountain with your right hand, over your left shoulder. I saw a ton of people doing it wrong too, impatient americans never read the fine print in the travel books. There are all kind of theories about how many coins to throw in. I threw One, because it either "brings me good luck" or "means that I will one day return to Rome." and I can live with either. Apparently they pull out about 3000 Euro in coin from the fountain everynight.

The Roman Forum, the center of the Roman Empire. Where it all went down for the greatest civilization in the history of the world. It includes over a dozen buildings, most of which are really just piles of rock. But you can really feel how great it was at one time. The whole area has this "Wow, I'm in Rome" kinda feel to it.

Rome was amazing, But thats all I'm writing for now. I'm tired and I need to go to bed. Two points for the person who guesses which part of Rome I've left out until tomorrow.

Versions of Chris

You probably know what I look like in real life. These are two pictures that I made online by uploading my picture.This is what I would look like if I were in the Simpsons. Made at www.simpsonsmovie.com . Not sure where the tie came from.

I think I like this one better. Its Chris as a kid in South Park. Made at www.sp-studio.de

Stuttgart

I really didn't have that much time to plan a trip for this weekend because my Professor visited and I spent most of the week preping for our discussions. We had a good day full of meetings on Thursday and basically decided what I'm doing for the rest of the summer and worked out some collaborative projects for the future. I was beat on Friday and decided that a last minute trip would be too much work. Also I really hadn't had a chance to see most of Stuttgart either so it worked out well. Saturday I visited the Mercedes-Benz Museum: a car lover's dream. Opened in 2006, this 8 story building follows Gottlieb Daimler's invention of the automobile right through to modern Mercedes models (you can even get in most of them, although I really don't fit well in the sporty ones.) It explains the company's involvement in the first and second world wars, which was really interesting. Over 90% of Stuttgart was destroyed by the allies because it was heavily involved in munitions manufacturing, most of which took place at Daimler and Mercedes Factories.

To most Germans the city is known as "Benz-Town" because there really isn't anything else famous to attach to the city, except maybe Porsche. There are no huge monuments of anything really historic to note that would bring tourists here. I haven't seen a tour bus yet downtown, and most people don't even notice the Stuttgart Logo (right) inside the Porsche Symbol (Left). The reality is that "Region of Stuttgart" was the birthplace of the automotive industry and has rebounded from the second world war to become Germany's 6th largest city. It is also the home of Germany's 2nd largest Stock exchange. A good example of Stuttgart's almost unnoticed wealth is in its Summer Festival. Summerfest, which I attended on Friday and Saturday night is a completely unique event. Instead of beer tents and sausages, this festival offered Champagne, Oysters, and Lobster prongs to a well dressed, almost yuppie crowd. These were probably employees of Daimler, Porsche, Bosch, HP, and IBM which all have head- or European-offices here. These and other tech companies generate 11% of Germany's R&D in Stuttgart making it quite wealthy. I took this picture from the steps of the Modern art gallery, where every night people sit and watch other people (usually there aren't this many though)
One of the most interesting things that I've learned is that Stuttgart has Germany's 2nd highest cost of living. But guess who is first? Berlin would be the easy answer, but as i mentioned before, Berlin's amazing buildings and attractions are all a result of Foreign and Government money being pumped into the city to revitalize Germany's capitol city. Munich is the most expensive place to live in Germany. Above is one of the music stages at summerfest in front of the state opera.

Non-Work Related things

I've noticed that there is a lot of graffiti on campus. However, its not gang related punk graffiti or people "Tagging" their names in illegible fonts. Its all politically motivated graffiti or artsy looking cartoon characters. There is a lot of G8 related stuff, but I think that the above picture is my favorite piece of graffiti. Its situated in the middle of campus on the way out of the cafeteria where everyone eats lunch. I've also seen people walking around in "More Trees, Less Bush" t-shirts. I kinda want to bring some home, but I can't find them
I've been hanging around with a bunch of internship students in Stuttgart. They are all on the same international program as Heidi, the girl that I knew from home, and ran into randomly in Stuttgart. They're fun because they only speak english and they always get together and go out to new places around the city that I would have never found on my own. This picture was taken at SkyBeach, a bar on the top of a building downtown. They basically put a bunch of sand on the top floor of a parking garage and bought a bunch of beach chairs, pretty good idea.
This is Heidi's gang of American and Canadians, From left: Sarah from South Carolina, Steph from Chicago, Kevin from Nebraska, Heidi from Ottawa, and Katie from Queens. We were lost in this picture on our way to this place called the brewery on Heidi's last night. It was way out in the boones but it turned out to be a fun little spot.
Heidi left last wednesday, which kinda sucks. I use to stop on the way home from work and knock on her window to get the update on the night's events. I'm still hi-jacking her friends though.

Life in Stuttgart

I realized that I had more Picture of Parties in Stuttgart than actual Stuttgart itself. This is not good, Especially if people are trying to take me serious. Anyways, These are a few pictures of serious things in my everyday life. Above is my workplace, The Institute for Hydromechanics and Hydrogeological modeling, which is in this large pimped out building. the offices are really nice and right beside us is this huge lab called VEGAS which is apparently world renowned for its huge scale testing facilities. I spend 10-12 hours here everyday, slaving over a hot stove, uphill both ways.
This would be my place. Its about 5mins walk from work. I share a flat in a student housing complex with 3 other guys. One is in Electrical engineering, so we never see him, but the other two are really fun, and like to joke around, like me. Its kinda messy right now, but thats ok. I've realized that I really don't have enough stuff to make it really messy.
I also have a sweet balcony where we bbq bratwurst a lot and hang out and watch the sun go. This is what it looks like most of the time. What you can't see is a cute little village in the valley. and the deer eating grass in the pasture. Well.. the part about the pasture is made up, but it is a really nice view. Yeah Stuttgart is pretty nice in general. Nothing huge and famous, just a nice place to live.