The things that anger me in Europe

This is a list of things that I don't enjoy and/or never want to see in Canada when I return...

1. High prices for stuff. This is self explanetory.

2. Mullets/Rat Tails . There are way too many mullets over here, and not hick mullets, quasi-fashionable Milan inspired mullets. It could also be football player inspired mullets too, not completely sure about that one. I am however scared that these will somehow make their way across the atlantic someday soon. My guess is that Justin Timberlake will try to claim it as his Idea, but no, I saw it here first, go back to singing like a girl.

3. Justin Timberlake. I listen to a lot of internet radio over here because I like to listen to music while I work and its really easy. I think every station, whether it be european, north american, whatever, plays his songs, and they're all really stupid.

4. Converse Allstar shoes, yeah, didn't those happen like 40 years ago and 10 years ago. YES, so why does everyone pay 50 euros for them. I probably still have some in my closet at home and I'll never wear them again, I should have brought them and sold them.

5. McDonalds, Leave me alone Mcdonalds. Around every corner, geeze, I'm not buying a big mac menu

6. Stupid weather. Hot/Cold I don't care either way, just make up your mind. Its about 10 deg today and I almost had to wear pants, it angered me that I even had to think about wearing pants during the summer.

Thats all for now. Look forward to the list of stuff that I want to bring back with me because they are enjoyable.

Grindelwald - Switzerland

On Saterday morning I took a train to Switzerland for the weekend. It took about 6 hours. Zurich, Bern, Interlaken, then Grindelwald. I arrived at the train station in Interlaken in the early afternoon where I had to switch to local mountain trains with special gears on the bottom that would have to stop and go at the steep hills rollercoaster style. I ended up getting on the wrong part of the train, and little did I know the train split in two half way up and went to different towns. So, I had a a little detour and was slightly late getting to grindelwald. Saterday wasn't a really nice day anyways: you really couldn't see most of the mountains anyways.
I basically just hung out on saterday night on the balcony of the hostel, which looked out at the valley and surrounding mountains, very beautiful. When I woke up on sunday morning it was a beautiful day, great visibility, so I decided to go hiking. I took a gondola to First (pronounced Fear-st), which was 2300m. I only intended to hike for about an hour to bachalpsee (an alpine lake about 2400m) because I really wasn't dressed for hiking and I was concerned my shoes wouldn't hold up on steep slopes.
When I got to Bachalpsee I kept going for another hour an a half up to Frauhorn (about 2600m). It was pretty arduous and I was pretty tired so I rested at the top for quite a while. I left because it was pretty chilly and I was running low on memory anyways. I made my way back to First, rested for a while, then took the gondola back down.
The whole adventure took about 5 hours round trip and I got a nasty sunburn (which I blame on the snow) but it was totally worth it. The view from First as well as Frauhorn were probably the best I've ever seen. I've been up the Empire state building, The Sears tower, and the CN tower, which are all pretty high. All three of these buildings put together would come about 3/4 of the way up the mountain. For those of you who are use to discovery-channel distances, I was 17 football fields above the valley floor.
I headed back to Stuttgart on monday morning. Switzerland was a pretty impressive looking place and the town of Grinelwald was really cute and full of expensive things to look at. I think over half of the stores in the town sell victorianox knives, and I went into some stores which made the prices in novacks (outdoor store in london) look like a Biway.

Black Forest Retreat

Thursday and Friday of last week the students in my institute in Stuttgart had a meeting to share their projects and discuss results with their partners from Universities in Holland and Belgium. I was invited to go with them. I really didn't have much to do at this meeting so I pretty much chilled out the whole time. It was in Fraudenstadt, which is a little town in the black forest. It was pretty cool, they put us up in this little chalet outside of town, which was really nice. I had a room all to myself. I basically relaxed for two days and watched presentations of phd students.

I also experienced television for the first time in a while. The only channel that was in english was CNN, so that sucked, but I could understand what was going on during the teletubbies, and also the german version of mtv played a few videos on english, although the songs were sub-par. Nevertheless, It was cool to watch tv, even if it was only for an hour.

This picture is of my supervising professor for the summer. He's really funny and quite hyperactive. He's always joking around with his students, its pretty hilarious. He, as well as this other super-smart professor that was there from Utricht were always joking around and they have really great personalities, but then when it comes down to business they're total brainers, its amazing.

On thursday, after all of the presentations were finished for the day we took a tour of the town. Our tour guide reminded me of debbie-downer from SNL, she would start out saying something and make it sound exciting then it would turn into a really lame story. Two cool stories came from the tour though: 1. Apparently when they were building Amsterdam way back in the day they used trees from the black forest as piles, so most of historic Amsterdam is still sitting on trees from the black forest near Freudenstadt. 2. The tour-guide-lady told us about when the Americans were moving through the area near the end of WWII they bombed the town and it completely burned to the ground except for one street. We walked down this street, and apparently the residents saved their housed by putting out the fires with their own human excrement. Now, this street was pretty long, which begs the question. How did these people gather enough .... stuff .... to put out a house fire. It also didn't stink anymore

Still in Nurnberg

I was in Nurnberg for what seemed like forever ( actually only about 10hrs) because there was a lot to see, so it deserves two post, DEAL WITH IT. After the Nazi Rally grounds I headed into the old city, which has historically been one of the powerful cities of Germany.

The whole old city has a moat and walls, which made for some nice shots. The city was also quite empty, even for a sunday. The reason for this I will tell you later. So... Nurnberg was once two adjacent towns with fortified walls around them. Then the towns realized that it would be easier to defend if they merged and took down the center walls.

at the top of the hill, in the northern boundary of the old city sits Kaiserburg Castle. A version of kaiserburg has sat on the site for over a thousand years. Even up until the 1900 the castle was the residence for royalty and nobelmen when they visited Nurnberg. Nurnberg's historically Imperial over germany was the perfect backdrop on which Hitler superimposed his third riech campaign.

When I got up to the Castle I looked over the edge and I realised why the streets were empty. Most of Nurnberg was sitting in the moat of the Castle Kaiserburg drinking beer. Nurnberg's Beer festival was just wrapping up, so I made my way down. For the remainder of the afternoon I sat in the moat of a 11th century castle, ate Nurnberg sausage and drank local beer and watched old ladies escort their drunk husbands out of the beer tents. It was really entertaining. Then I caught the train home.

On the train my feet really hurt, then I realized that I walked at least 30kms this weekend. Opps

Sunday in Nurnberg

Nurnberg is only a 2+ hr train ride away from Stuttgart which made for a perfect day trip. The early train got me in pretty early. I was at the Nazi-Rally grounds by 10:30.

This is the Nazi Documentation center. It is an amazing museum that tells the story of the Nazi's rise to power and continues all the way through the Nurnberg war crime trials. I spent about 3.5 hrs in the museum alone and I think I watched every movie and listened to every audio clip (I couldn't read anything on the walls, so the audio-guide telephone type device basically read the whole museum to me. It was really interesting though.

The Museum is build into the corner of the unfinished congress hall. Along with telling the story of the nazis, the musium really focuses on their intended plans for the Nurnburg Rally grounds. The plans were really amazing, and although only one part was completed (Zepplin Field) and several works incomplete (German Stadium and Congress Hall) the whole area is intimidating and on a scale that makes a single person feel insignificant. This was the exact intended purpose of the Rally grounds. They were to be a place where someone came to be a part of something bigger than them, not voice their own opinions.

Zepplin Field - Where Hitler spoke to 350 000 poeple each year in the drive leading to WWII. Much of it had to be reduced in size because it was not safe, but it is still a sight to see. I stood at the podium and felt pretty powerful, although I read that it is illegal in Nurnberg to do the nazi salute on the podium.

The grounds around the museum and Zepplin field are enormous. It was originally going to be 11 square kilometers of marching fields and parade grounds. and although much of this area now houses the FC nurnburg staduim and a few other buildings, much of the grounds was neglected for the past 60yrs. Now they are developing it into a recreational park (as it was before 1933, when the nazi's first used it). There are kms of perfect rollerblading and there are beautiful little ponds that formed from the foundations of the never completed buildings , like the 400 000 spectator German Stadium.

Last Minute Weekend Plans

I actually got a few days of hard work in this week. The week actually went pretty fast. On friday morning I realized that I wasn't sure where I was going this weekend. Long-range trains (paris or rome) are hard to book last minute along with a hostel, and I could probably find a hostel when I got their, but I'm lazy.

The result: Luxembourg

I got up super-early and took about 4 trains to get there. but it was worth it. I spent the first part of the day wondering around the outer ring of the valley. The whole city use to be a fortified valley. Many of the structures were destroyed over the past hundred years because the city was growing. But a few of the important forts are still intact and the walls of the valley still remain. In the early afternoon I visited one of the Casements (basically a fort that was build into the valley walls) apparently at one time their were tunnels at one time connecting most of the city that safely allowed passage under streets and out of casements if the aboveground escape was cut off.

Some of the stairwells were super-scary and slippery. I also think they were built for little people because my shoe did not fit on them. The casements were really cool but they were hot and phyisically demanding, and I was getting tired. The middle of the day was basically spent sitting around in the middle of town watching poeple. All of the signs were either french or german or both, so I really couldn't understand anything, but it was really beautiful. I walked past the Dutchy Resident (the monarch of luxembourg). There was a gaurd in front in full military get-up with a sweet rifle. I felt really bad for him though because all the japanise tourists were taking pictures with him.


This is the Dutchy palace, its kindof hidden in the middle of a number of buildings, but it is pretty big and has a lot of frilly gold and fancy exterior add-ons. Apparently the current monarch has a teenage daughter that is super-popular. I was going to ask her to marry my if I saw her, but no dice. I was kinda upset that I couldn't stay in Luxembourg for longer because Bryan Adams was playing that night in the village square. But I wanted to see the bottom of the valley, then another 5 hours on the train home so I could get up early on sunday.

First Few Days

The first few days have been pretty good. I was in Frankfurt for a day before I came to Stuttgart because my place here was not available. I got a super-cheap flight, thats why I came early. It worked out ok though. I found a place to stay in Frankfurt really easily. I got in at 5:50am and I was at the main train station by 7. I basically put my stuff in a locker and walked around for a while. Nothing was really open until 9:30 and by then I was super tired and needed to rest.

When I woke up there were a bunch of people hanging around the lounge and I met two Americans and two Austrailian guys and we went out for dinner, had a drink and looked around.

The train from Frankfurt to Stuttgart had a bunch of old ladies on it, and they pulled a full spread of food out of their bags and drank 4 bottles of wine at 10:30 in the morning. and they kept singing too.

I got to the University at 12:30 and the stupid international student office was closed, I was pissed. The hours are crazy. So I sqwatted outside of the office and one lady was nice enough to let me in after awhile. I was able to get me apartment key through them, so I was kinda lucky that I didn't have to stay in a hostel all weekend. In total it took me about 2 days today to get all the 8 things done that I needed to register as a student, and I really don't know why I need to be a student here because I'm only here for three months.

I basically wallked around stutgart looking for government offices for the past two days, which let me look at most of the city too, which was nice. Really annouying though.

Finally got a full day of work in today and tomorrow is Corpus Christi. Apparently I don't have to go into work so good for me.