Tobi's Geeky Bloggy Thing

World Famous in NZ (just like L&P)

2008-02-27T21:09:00.006+13:00

Hey,

Long time no update.
But I've been way too busy... and I need to do a big back date which is going to take some time. Eeek.

Anyway. Life is fantastic for me right now.

Bought the Mercedes car for my research (with Uni money of course)... a 2007 A-Class.... oooh... aaaah :-)

We had a conference last week related to my research, and somehow Campbell Live found out about it. They came along and found out about lil ol me.

So they did a story on me and my research :-) Exciting huh?!?!

You can see the story here:
Cars that drive themselves

Home Safe and Sound

2007-11-20T21:11:00.000+13:00

Hello everyone,

Just thought I'd give a quick note to everyone that I've made it back to NZ home safe and sound.

For anyone traveling, avoid LAX at all costs. It is a stupid airport which has increased my hatred towards the USA.
You think that if you are flying with an airline, on a connected flight, that everything will be sorted out with your check-in luggage and it will be a quick walk to the connecting terminal... however, in LAX, this is not the case.

They want you to go through customs (so you are actually leaving the airport) then get your bags, and re-check into your connecting flight.
On top of this, the boarder security are not very nice, no room for jokes.
Then you have to run to your other terminal... after missing your original flight... which is about 1km away!

I can't even be bothered explaining how crap this airport was. Just try to avoid it.

Other than my LAX experience, the rest of the trip went by smoothly. Debra was at the airport to collect me, which was great to see my first friend back in NZ :-)

Got home back to mums. Went to "We Will Rock You" in Auckland. And that is about it really.

Don't currently have a fixed abode, or a cell phone. So to contact me, email is the only way really.

See ya'll soon.

Alive and Well

2007-11-09T21:03:00.000+13:00

Hello,

Just a quick update to say that I am alive and well.

Contiki was great. Saw a lot and had a good amount of fun. Our group was pretty "tame" compared to other Contiki tales. Little to no hook-ups as there were a lot of couples / people with partners back home. Also, not much drunken madness... only a couple of nights :-)

Saw a shit load of sites though: Amsterdam, St. Goar, stayed up Mt. Pilatus, Litchenstein, Innsbruck, Venice, Rome (LOVED ROME!), Vatican City, Florence, Pisa, Nice, Monacco, Lyon, Avion and Paris.

Was pretty shattered yesterday so did SFA.

Oh and this morning, I tried using the "lovely" London public bus service to get to my flight. I used the website, which gave me exact directions. The bus drivers had no clue... which is strange, you think they'd know how to get to the connecting station for a major airport????

Anyway, long story short, they told me to get off at the wrong stop, then no bus driver knew where I was trying to get to, so I had to call Anna to come get me (god bless her). In the end I missed my flight back to Germany and had to rebook for tomorrow.

Oh well, it's only money... just pisses me off how crap the buses were. When in London... stick to the trains!

Tschau and see you all shortly.

Sorry for the lack of updates

2007-10-08T20:44:00.000+13:00

Hello,

Ok I have actually had the busiest time of my entire trip over the last two weeks.
Summary:
- Full on week finishing my paper. For those of you brave enough, you can see it online at: http://www.citr.auckland.ac.nz/techreports/show.php?id=206
- Went to Lisbon and had a fantastic time.
- Went to Oktoberfest for a few full on days
- Went to Strasbourg (France) for a day trip... watched the AB's lose, bugger. The town went nuts though!
- Went to Volksfest (Oktoberfest in Stuttgart) for a day.

Now, do you want to know why I haven't updated you on these things?

In Munich, I was going up an escalator on my way to a Crowded House concert... and I got 2 of my fingers caught between the rubber rail and the metal. Don't worry, I came out ok. I only got two huge slices in my fingers... so went to hospital and it was only a couple of stitches, no broken bone and no damaged tendons.

But as a result, I can't really type... so I'll write the full updates at a later stage. In fact, I'm not going to get a chance to write anything up until I get back to NZ.

So once I'm back, you'll get some stories coming through, starting with Lisbon.
You may even hear the stories from me before reading them, hehe!

Really busy last week at work this week... then I'll be off to England via Barcelona.

Last day in Turkey

2007-09-23T12:00:00.000+12:00

Up at 9:30am (just woke up… I was running on adrenaline or something), had breakie with Sheena, then got ready to go. Ollie also decided to join us to go see the Topkapi Palace.

This palace was where the head of the Ottoman empire was located. It was really impressive. On of the main highlights was the crown-jewels. There was an 86 carrot diamond!!! It was the size of my palm. And also a crest with a ruby and two emeralds, each about 5cm in diameter. Soooo much wealth in there, if anyone knows any good thieves, that’s where they should be hunting.

The other highlight was the harem. This place has very nice designs on all the walls and some magnificent bedrooms. It also had a lot of boards with text explaining the whole thing. The sultan had a band of eunuchs (guys with their nuts chopped off) protecting his harem (bunch of chicks who “serviced” the sultan). From the harem, the sultan had 4-8 “favourites” whom he shared his bed, and 1 Queen Mother (main wife). The Queen Mother had the power to choose who the sultan could and couldn’t have, and also had lots of political power, sounds like a fair system.

Anyway, after 4 hours wandering around the palace, we were toured out. So we went somewhere for a traditional Turkish lunch… kebabs :-P
Ok, this was actually traditional. They give you the meat and all the veggies, and a plate of flat Turkish bread, then you make your own. It was really yummy, and quite cheap.

After lunch we all went our separate ways to do stuff. I went to the Grand Bazaar again to get a couple more things. After the Grand Bazaar, I was very sick of people harassing me to buy stuff… and people using their favourite phrase “My friend… where do you come from?”

Another thing that was very strange about Turkey was the traffic. It was so chaotic and pedestrians had no right to cross when they had a green walk symbol. You risked your life everytime you were near a road! Oh and they so desperately want to be part of the EU, they even have the EU number plate design, with the EU stars missing :-P

So I got back to the hostel: touristed out, shopped out and sick of crowds. I decided I wanted a simple evening, so found one of the three bars in Istanbul that was playing the NZ rugby game. It was good fun to watch (especially coz NZ kicked Scotland’s ass), and met a random Kiwi living in Denmark (Sam), and a German girl living in Munich (Bea). Ended up talking with them for a couple of hours after the game.

I got back to the hostel around 10pm and caught up with Sheena an Ollie again. We ended up heading down stairs to have a few drinks with the people in the hostel, including the bar-tender. It was so funny, we would ask for a drink and he would make jokes like “can’t you see me working hard here?” (while he was sitting at our table drinking beer with us).

It was a fun way to end the night, as at mid-night I got picked up by the shuttle. I slept all the way to the airport (1 hour). Then got through customs et al, and started chatting with a couple of random girls who I met in line waiting for customs. One was Polish and the other Latvian… both living/studying in Zurich. It was a good way to kill some time, then got on the plane and had a couple more hours sleep.

Train ride back to Stuttgart was interesting, the train broke down in the middle of the track for about an hour. I didn’t mind, I just dozed while they fixed it.

So got to work at 10am… nice and “fresh” with a few hours sleep.

Good weekend though. It was so different to everywhere I’ve been so far. Well, kind of a mix of China meets Europe, with a friendliness that is hard to describe.

Day two in Turkei

2007-09-22T12:00:00.000+12:00

I got up around 9:30 as I was meeting Tolga at 10:30am. I had another traditional Turkish breakfast (at the hostel) with Sheena (Canadian girl I met the night before). Chatted about all sorts and then I left to meet up with Tolga.

He was with his girlfriend and they wanted to show me more of the city. Also, the dinner was cancelled for some reason, so he wanted to come tell me in person. His girlfriend was training to be a tour guide of Istanbul… for Turkish tourism. She could speak English (but was shy about it) and some German.

We headed over to Taksim, which is the “really” European part of Istanbul. The tram took us to the bottom of the “hill”… then the metro took us to the top. This was a cool metro system, it was all up-hill, and they don’t use a motor in the metro. It is pulled up the hill by a big pulley system. As one is going up, the other is coming down… cool huh?

We wandered down the main shopping street of Taksim and had a look around. At the bottom of Taksim, there was a pedestrian underpass to get to the other side of the road… in here there was a gun market. Was really strange to see.

We wandered back along the bridge, and again through the Egyptian Bazaar. We walked around the city for a bit, then Tolga and his girlfriend went on their way. He was such a friendly guy and just couldn’t do enough to help me :-) He told me to ring him if I had any problems at all… it was a really kind gesture.

Anyway, after they left, I went straight to the Grand Bazaar. This place was absolutely packed to the brim! I spent about 4 hours wandering around, getting haggled and doing a bit of shopping. It reminded me much like China… except they could speak English here and were not as pushy. Ended up spending quite a bit, but getting some really cheap stuff: couple of casual jackets, socks, belt, t-shirt, jeans… all the essentials.

After my shopping, I went back to the hostel to unload. I met up with some Slovenians and a German guy in my room. The Slovenians were heading over to Taksim for a beer, so the German (Ollie) and I joined them. On the way out I bumped into Sheena again and made half a plan to go see the Topkapi palace the next morning.

It was a pretty casual night, wandered around the main shopping street, which was absolutely packed! And stopped in a bar for a few drinks… then eventually went back to the hostel. Once we got back, the Slovenians went off to bed, so Ollie and I went down stairs for a couple of beers and watched Oceans 13.

I was in bed around 4am… which was much later than I thought it was!

Big first day in Istanbul

2007-09-21T12:00:00.000+12:00

Well… travelling there was a major journey. I left work at 7 to catch the train to Frankfurt (about 3 hours away). I managed to get a couple of hours work done on my paper during the journey. My flight was at 11 pm… arriving at 3am… eek :-P

It was ok, I got a couple hours sleep on the plane. Then a friend of a friend picked me up from the airport, named Tolga (friend of Ersin). It was really great… I got a ride to his home where his mum had prepared breakfast/dinner and a bed for me. So I ate breakfast/dinner at 4:30am, then had a couple of hours sleep. After freshening up, I was invited to Tolga’s sister’s house for breakfast. They just kept feeding me :-) It was traditional Turkish breakfast: tomatoes, olives and cucumbers from the garden, with different cheeses, eggs, sausage and Turkish bread.

Tolga’s mum took a real liking to me ( don’t even mention the yo mama jokes peoples :-P ), even though she couldn’t speak a word of English. They invited me to a big family gathering and dinner the next night, of course I accepted.

Tolga and I started our journey from Asia to Europe. Istanbul spans two contents, and he lived in a small city just outside Istanbul on the Asian side. It took an hour for us to get to Istanbul. During the train ride, people would jump on between stops and walk around the train selling stuff: pens, watches, all sorts. It was common practise in Istanbul, so sayith Tolga.

Istanbul is HUGEMUNGOUS! (I know that’s not a word). From 20 mins into the train journey… we were in the outskirts of Istanbul. Upon arrival we had a wander around the Asian part of Istanbul City. There were lots of souvenir shops and stuff. Tolga knew half the owners… but they didn’t have anything that tickled my fancy.

(Sultanahmet from the fairy)

After that we headed across the water to the European Istanbul via fairy. The views were cool and you could see a panoramic view of the city. Upon arrival, we quickly made our way to the hostel so I could check in and drop off my heavy pack (laptop adds a bit of weight). My hostel was in Sultanahmet, which is the main tourist part of Istanbul. It was a strange experience… anytime you even thought about reaching for your map, someone asked “Can I help you”. The Turks are extremely friendly and helpful… which is lucky because their streets don’t have road signs! So the map was pretty much useless except if you had view of a landmark.

After sorting myself out, Tolga guided me around Istanbul. It was the middle of Ramazan, a Muslim period where they can not eat or drink (nothing! Not even water) during sunlight. So everywhere you went, the restaurants were empty. Also, Tolga didn’t have much energy because of it… but he still showed me everything.

The first stop was walking around the outside of the Blue Mosque and Aya Sofia. They were spectacular, very very different to what I’ve seen so far, so they still had the wow factor on me ( unlike Catholic churches nowadays :-P ).

After that, we wandered through the gardens of Topkapi Palace. There wasn’t much there really… really quiet and not much beauty about it.

Next destination was the Egyptian Spice Bazaar. This place was a bustling Bazaar that sold gold, spices, sweets and honey. Every 5 steps you walked, people gave you free samples to try. It was great… if you’re a slight bit hungry, go here and you soon will be full!

We wandered through the city, then caught the train to the University near Sultanamet. This was a pretty cool looking uni… but it was guarded, and security would only let you in if you were a lecturer or a student of the uni. The Uni was also close to the Grand Bazaar, we just walked past and had a quick look. It was packed with people... sooo many people.

After this, Tolga had to leave, so I said good-bye and I would see him tomorrow.
Upon Tolga’s departure, I visited the Blue Mosque to see the inside. This was a cool experience. You have to take your shoes off when you go in… but it is great because the carpet is so soft that you sink into it. Inside was beautiful. Really different. I took my photos and sat around for a bit. Probably spent an hour there. It was free to enter as well… their religious buildings aren’t perverted by tourism yet, like some other places.

Nachste halt, Aya (Hagia/Saint) Sofia. This was a bit church built during the ….. and was converted to a Mosque during the Ottoman empire. It was now a museum. Going inside was really different. You think that when you convert a church you would completely change it to meet your religion… but here it was something special. There were still mosaics of Jesus and Gabriel on the walls, along with big Arabic inscriptions and shields. A mix of Catholism and Islam…. Really different.

I wandered around this place reading everything, learning the history and admiring this strange construction. Spent over two hours cruising this place. I then went back to the hostel to chill.

The next few hours consisted of writing my paper (I know I was supposed to be on “holiday”) , watching pirated movies on the massive screen at the hostel and chatting with randoms. Ok, it was more of the latter two, but I still did some work :-P

Oh did I mention how awesome this hostel was? It had its own bar, along with a massive plasma screen and surround sound system, with a bunch of pirated movies to watch. The staff were extremely friendly and one even joined us for drinks quite often :-) If people go to Istanbul… then stay here: “Istanbul Hostel” (I know it’s a hard name to remember).

I went out for a couple of hours in the evening to see the Blue Mosque and Aya Sofia by night. There were also thousands of people out on the streets, eating and having fun. Apparently it is always like this during Ramazan, everyone comes out to party in the evenings because they are allowed to eat!

It wasn’t too much of a late night, I was in bed by 1am.

Last day in Hungary

2007-09-16T12:00:00.001+12:00

Today I got up at a reasonable hour of 10am.

Had seen pretty much all I wanted to see of Budapest, so decided to head to the flea markets.
I took the directions in the travel guide, and couldn't find it when I got off the bus! Also, I left my infamous Highlanders hat on the bus.... many good memories gone with that hat :-(

I think the markets were closed though. I had conflicting information from different sources. I couldn't be bothered wandering around a section of the city, without a map, looking for something that may or may-not be there. So got back on the bus to head back to the city... over-all a pretty crap start to the day :-P

Anyway, I got back to the city and checked out a massive building in the south of Pest. It happened to be the Grand Market Hall of Budapest. There was heaps of stuff in here: meat, alcohol stores, souvenirs and all sorts of knick-knacks. There was a restaurant in there called "Fakanal" hehe. After wandering around for a bit, and getting some yummy fruit, I headed to the Statue Park.

After a bit of a mission (catching about three different buses/trams) I arrived at the Statue Park. This thing was truly weird. After the communist occupation of Hungary, they decided it wasn't a good idea to have all these Soviet Communist statues around the city. So, instead of destroying them, they packed them up and moved all of them to this park that's about 45 minutes out of the city! It was really cool and some of the statues were massive! There was even a flower arrangement in the shape of the Communist Star :-)

Back to the city, chatted with some fellow travellers on the bus (Americans + Aussie). I walked up toward the National Museum, which was quite an impressive site from the outside. During my walking, I bumped into a huge march of Hungarians, all waving flags and chanting. I asked one of the locals what was going on, and it was a right-wing protest against the current government... I guess it was the same thing at Heroes Square the day before.

It was kinda cool to watch for a few minutes, then I got over it. My last stop was the Cow park again. Just to see this truly weird and memorable exhibition. The best one was the "Rubik's Cow"... chosen so because the "Rubik's Cube" was invented by a Hungarian (bet ya didn't know that!) I found it out from a store vendor, who was selling the "secret boxes" designed by Mr. Rubik's as well. It took 7 steps to open this keep-safe box, which was pretty cool.

I made my way back to the hostel, stopping for a bite to eat. Checked my email (for the first time) and found out that Justin (American from Krakow) was also in Budapest! If I had actually bothered checking my mail I would have been able to catch up... oh well, shit happens.

Left for the airport and that's about all she wrote.

Oh, talked to a random Hungarian dude named Czaba (Pronounced "Chubba"). He was living in Germany and could speak English and German. Kept me entertained for the flight home, got his contact details just in case I was heading down to Freiburg in my travels.

Got home and half unpacked before crashing... as I didn't get back home until just after mid-night.

Overall, Budapest was alright. 3 days was plenty for it though, and after seeing Prague and Vienna, it wasn't as impressive.

Next weekend is a big flight though... Istanbul! The largest city in Europe (depending on which rankings you look at of course). Looking forward to it.

Day two in Hungary

2007-09-16T12:00:00.000+12:00

Woke up at about 9:30... felt like lunch time though!

It was a slow start to the day and it wasn't until around lunch time I actually left the hostel. I managed to get a couple of tag-alongs to keep me company throughout the day, Laura and Alice (Pommy girls that I talked to when I got home).

So, started the marathon of a walking tour and got to the waterfront of the Pest side (Budapest used to be three cities: Buda, Pest and Obuda). Saw the main things down there: Parliament, Chain Bridge some pretty awesome buildings. Very similar to Vienna and Prague, but lesser impressive, with lots of traffic around.

We crossed along to the Buda side of the Danube and wandered around the Royal Castle Hill, which was quite nice. Hardly any people about, you didn't even feel like it was a tourist destination. It was very peaceful and very nice to walk about.

After Royal Hill, we decided to head up to the Citadell... where the best views of the city could be obtained. It was a bit of a hike, but I'm glad I've still got most of my fitness about me. The views were great! We sat up there admiring the view for around half an hour. There was also this massive statue of a chick holding a feather.

After that we wandered around the top of the hill as there was a nice walking path. Then walked back down the hill and across to the Pest side of the river again... along one of the other bridges. We were taking lots of photos everywhere, as there was quite cool stuff all over the show.

Eventually we made it to the main shopping street. I was the "bad" conscience and gave the girls that little edge they needed to buy some scarves they were looking at :-P

At one of the main metro stations, there was this strange little set-up with all these painted cows! Very artsy fartsy, but cool to see. And a club that had a water fountain above it... so when you look through the roof you see this rippling water, very interesting.

The girls had to book their train for Krakow, so we wandered to one of the main train stations... which happened to be the wrong one, so had to make it to the other one (quite far east of the other one). The train stations themselves were quite impressive. And one thing you have to love about European cities, you can walk everywhere! Everything is centrally located, which is great!

(Train Station)

So after our massive day of walking, we decided to go get some Hungarian cuisine for dinner :-) Met an Aussie girl in our room who had just arrived and she came along with us. The restaurant was quite cheap. For four of us, with drinks, mains and side dishes it cost 9000 forints ($NZD 70)

We got home and the girls went off to bed as they had very early trains to catch: 5:50am and 6:30am.

I started chatting with the Swedish girls and the American guys from the first night. We ended up heading out... just for a drink at a pub on a Sunday :-)

We never made it to the bar as we bumped into a couple of Hungarians on the street. They started chatting with us and we ended up drinking with them on the street! A real random experience. Oh, btw, Budapest seemed really safe at night, even with the molesting prostitutes :-P

It was a fun night, just getting some drinks from the local 0-24 and chatting with them. The two-Americans plus the Hungarians were musicians. They ended up doing some freestyle beat-boxing and rapping on the street. Our group grew when some other randoms joined us, an Irish guy and some Aussies.

The Irish guy was, I hate to say it, very stereo-typical. He was pissed and looking for a fight. He ended up having a bit of a scuffle with one of the Hungarians, which I found most amusing. After that, our hostel-crew left and went home to bed.

Such a random night but heaps of fun. That's something you can't really do in many places isn't it! I'm loving Europe's loose drinking laws.

Day one in Hungary

2007-09-15T12:00:00.000+12:00

Well hello kids.

Skip the boring stuff (no hassles at all)... and arrived in Budapest at 1pm.
I had read the guides and had a minor idea of what I wanted to do.

The hostel was a little hard to find, and turned out to be a quite little 3 bedroom one in this random apartment. It was still good and the staff were extremely friendly. Oh... and once I got back to Germany I realised I had double booked myself at hostels in Budapest! Luckily they only charged me for the first night... ooops... I guess I just lost track of which places I had booked.

Anyways... upon arrival I met two Swedish girls (they seem to be everywhere!) named Isabella and Julia. They had just arrived as well and were going to check out the local baths. It was on my list of things to do, so I tagged along with them.

Walking up to the baths was quite cool, I walked through the Oktagon which had the museum of Terror (didn't visit it but heard it was cool). Also walked through Heroes Square which had a protest going on against the current government.

Arrived at the baths and realised I hadn't changed any Euros over... so they sent me on a wild goose chase to try and find an exchange. There were none around the area! I then actually stopped to think for a second and used my credit card :-P

Anyways, the thermal baths were quite nice. The hottest they were was 38 degrees, but it was a big outside pool that you could just relax in. Pretty cool atmosphere with people playing chess in the water! They also had a sauna, which had a 16 degree pool right outside. You hoped in this freezing water for a few minutes then went in the sauna. It was a strange experience.

Ended up staying around 3 hours before leaving. Overall impression was ok, NZ's thermal baths are slightly cheaper and you have more variety in temperatures. These baths were just bigger. I wouldn't complain about the $5 they charge at the Mt. Hot pools anymore :-P We do have it quite good in NZ and I'm realising it more and more while I'm over here.

After the pools, the girls went off to the supermarket to get some dinner. 1 was vegan and the other vegetarian, so found it very hard with the Hungarian cuisine. I decided to go check out Heroes Square and City Park. It was a nice walk with some strange art exhibitions around the place.

I eventually got back to the hostel around 7pm and cracked open a Hungarian beer while watching some basketball. Started chatting with some people from the hostel and eventually there was a large group that were heading out on the town (2 American girls, 2 American guys, the 2 Swedish girls, and me). Went to this really cool bar that had vines growing all over the walls. It was really strange but awesome! I ended up chatting to a couple of Pommy boys at the bar for a bit then joined the rest of the group.

After a few beers, bed was calling me (I was shattered!) so I left and walked home. Got lost for a bit and had to get my drunken sense of direction with my map. I got accosted by a prostitute on the way home. They are pretty full on, she flat out grabbed my crotch and told me 2500 florints ($NZD 20). When I said no and tried to walk away she grabbed my belt, so had to basically force her off! They must be desperate for money when they are only charging that amount!

Anyway, after my escape from the STI machine I got home and was in bed :-) Talked to a couple of Pommy girls who came home just after me then promptly went to sleep as I was shattered.

Heidelberg

2007-09-14T12:00:00.000+12:00

Ok, I’m here for a gathering of geeks guys. It’s an international conference for Pattern Recognition (among other image analysis techniques). So boring to most of you, but interesting to me.

Monday night stayed in a pretty nice hotel.

Tuesday, went to conference all day. Then went for drinks with some of the people there. After that I checked into my new hotel which was closer to the venue.

Wednesday, In the evening, did a guided tour of Heidelberg.
Was pretty cool little city, but I think I heard more Americans than I did Germans! It is one of the places that Americans like to visit. Mark Twain visited here when he was writing his novels.

Also, learnt a bit of history. Heidelberg went through a shitload in the past. The biggest one was the castle being destroyed several times during the 30 Year War and it has been left in ruins. It has got one of the thickest walls out of any medieval structure... 11m thick!

There were some pretty cool views of the city by night!

Thurs, conference then the conference dinner which was pretty cool.

Friday, conference, then on the train home. Writing my paper at every spare moment I had!

Anyway… short and sweet. I’m going to try and keep up with my blog but I’m pretty flat out with writing my paper and stuff. May not be as detailed as I have been in the past :-) Head down bum up until I leave.

Next destination… Budapest! Woohoo.

Half a day in the Polski Capital.

2007-09-10T12:00:00.000+12:00

Got up and had breakie then out the door as I only had 4 hours to visit the city!

I went to the Old City…. well what was left of it! In fact, the old city that I visited was mostly rebuilt after the war. It was a flying visit and then I went to the Uprising museum.

This museum was pretty good, the main focus was about the Warsaw / Polish uprising near the end of the war. It also explained how the Nazi’s tried to eliminate Polish culture completely during the occupation. Banning Polish language and destroying Polish history / cultural literature.

It also explained how the Polish combated the much superior Nazi forces using guerrilla urban warfare. They lasted quite well until Hitler wanted to make an example. If people want to see the summary / Hollywood version of it, see “Uprising”, I thought it was a good movie and the museum just helped fill in some gaps missed by the movie.

One major thing… Hitler wanted to make an example to Europe showing what happens when you stand up to the Nazi empire… so he ordered the complete destruction of Warsaw. The entire old town was blown up and 30% of the city was levelled… this is not including the amount of buildings destroyed during the battles. Warsaw was just ruins after the war! After the war, when the soviets were in power, they rebuilt the main town square and the old city.

Just outside the museum was the “wall of remembrance” which has got the names of the Polish people that died during the uprising… it wasn’t a small wall.

After this I didn’t have much time, so it was a quick trip back to the hostel to grab my bag then off to the airport. I didn’t get a chance to get to the top of the “Palace of Culture” to see Warsaw from a vantage point… but oh well.

I arrived at the airport about 15 minutes before I needed to check in (which is usually plenty of time). I found out that my terminal wasn’t the main one and was a 5 minute walk away. When I arrived there were people queuing out the door. Luckily, some other people were in the same boat as me so we pushed through to the front and checked in… with 1 minute to spare!

Got through the customs checks (got another stamp) and got on the plane. Arrived back in Stuttgart where the pilot got claps for the landing because of some minor-turbulence. In Germany, they seem to applaud the pilot in the most minor of turbulences. But I guess anything is a soft, easy landing after my Croatian flights!

So, as you can see… that was the most disorganised, badly planned, losing things, almost missing every bloody train/plane/everything trip I have ever done. And it was fantastic! I really loved Poland and want to go back at some stage (next time round). The time I spent there was defiantly not long enough. Don’t know why it was so great… it just was.

This week I’m off to Heidelberg for a conference.

Krakow to Warsaw

2007-09-09T12:00:00.000+12:00

I got out early enough to try and enjoy the day. I walked around the old city of Krakow and did the touristy thing.

My next stop was the police station to report my camera… of course, they didn’t speak English, but they managed to communicate I needed to sit in this room and wait to be served. After about an hour (time for me to do some more work) they had a translator on the phone. I explained that I just needed to make a report so I could make an insurance claim. They said they could do it and they arranged an appointment at 5pm to see the translator.

So, I went out and enjoyed the rest of the day. I walked around in the overcast / semi-raining day. I saw the Old Town and Castle (which were pretty cool).

The main church in the old city had one of the most impressive interiors I’ve seen in a church. On my way back to the hostel I randomly bumped into Rachel and Richard again… such a strange coincidence!

I got back to the hostel about 4pm… just as it started to piss down. I started talking with the girl on the desk (who was the one that joined us the first night) and told her about my camera… and she said “this one” and pulled out my camera from the desk. So yay! I got my camera back… and even got her to call the police station to cancel my appointment so I didn’t have to walk in the rain. It was such great news!

I ended up chilling out at the hostel chatting with Justin for a couple of hours until I needed to go to the train station and head to Warsaw. I didn’t want to leave Krakow because I thought it was a fantastic city! Don’t ask me why, because I can’t put a finger on it. It’s just a great city… good atmosphere, not too many tourists, yet it’s tourist (English) friendly. Just a great city and I want to go back. Oh also, Poland has lots of great eye candy for me… those of you who know me know I’ve got a weakness for dark hair with blue eyes… which was a plenty in Poland.. Heaven :-P

Anyway, I arrived in Warsaw and it was pissing with rain. I walked to the hostel and got pretty wet, well I had my rain jacket so not too much. Two most useful things in my travels so far: my snow-jacket and my big back pack (thanks mum!)

I couldn’t be bothered facing the rain again, so I sat down and chatted to some guys in the hostel. We watched the final of the US Open and watched Federer win for the 4th time in a row. Then I went off to bed.

If anyone goes to Poland or Romania, stay in a “Nathan’s Villa Hostel”, it is the greatest hostel I have ever stayed in. You won’t believe how good until you stay in one! It’s the cleanliness and convenience of a hotel, with the atmosphere and friendliness of a hostel.

Auschwitz

2007-09-08T12:00:00.000+12:00

Welcome to the most depressing day ever!

First, I woke up at a reasonable time and got ready for the day. My camera case was open and my camera was gone. I went to the front desk and they didn’t have it. So… I assumed it was stolen. I was surprisingly not too upset, travel insurance would cover it, but I was gutted that I couldn’t take any pictures.

Anyway… can’t let that hold up my day. I tagged along with a couple of people from my dorm room as they were heading to Auschwitz (if you don’t know what this is then I don’t know what hole you’ve been living in) as well. Chatted with them on the 2 hour bus ride and then went our separate ways when we got there because I wanted to do a guided tour. Today happened to be the only day with semi-reasonable weather… still cold but at least it wasn’t raining.

Now, this was probably one of the most morbid experiences of my life. The tour started with a 15 minute documentary explaining how Auschwitz was run. It had live footage of when it was liberated by the soviets and other such stuff. After the movie, people were crying walking out.

We started the tour… first we got given these badges and then the tour guide let us through the main gates. It turns out the badges we were given were used to mark the Auschwitz prisoners… and we got lead through the gate like people were back then… it was really strange.

I managed to get some pictures of the complex using my phone camera. Some places I didn’t feel comfortable taking pictures though. Anyway… I’m not going to go into too much detail on this but you can read a lot on Wikipedia and other such stuff on the Holocaust. I am just going to let you know some of the morbid details that really hit home fore me.

1 - 1.5 million people (men, woman and children) were exterminated at Auschwitz during the time it ran from 1939 – 1945, most being Jews. It was the largest Nazi extermination camp. When a train arrived containing a load of passengers, the fittest men were selected to be “slave labour” the rest were sent straight to the gas chambers… about 75% of each trainload was sent there. Most slave labour people lasted less than 3 months due to poor conditions. The burners there could burn up to 2000 corpses in 24 hours… yet some days this wasn’t fast enough and they had to burn piles of bodies. Over all the extermination camps and Ghettos, 6 million out of 11 million European Jews were murdered during the war… and almost 100% of the Polish Jews were exterminated.

I only cried twice during this tour (which surprised me how little). The first was the room showing the medical experiments that were performed on children, seeing their deformed malnutrition bodies was just horrible. Most of them were then executed or tortured to death, then autopsied to see how the experiments affected them. The second was the story about Father Maximilian Kolbe. A prisoner escaped, and as punishment, the SS selected 10 men to die in his place… by starvation. One man that was selected cried because he had a family on the outside. The Monk heard his cries and chose to go in his place. After two weeks in the “starvation chamber” the monk would still not die and had to be executed by the Nazi. The man who’s life he saved survived the war and lived to a good age.

The gas chambers did not affect me as much as I thought they would. They were pretty bad… but still not as bad as I imagined.

The whole experience I could write a LOT about… as it really did affect me. Not a pleasant experience, but I’m glad I did it. With seeing the Nazi museum in Nuremberg and Auschwitz, the events tie together… and it’s still hard to believe such an atrocity happened.

Anyway… got a bit teary even writing the above passage.

I met a couple of people on the tour and started chatting with them afterwards, they were heading back to Krakow by car. I caught a lift with them. It was a Scottish lass (Rachel), an Irish bloke (Richard) and a Polish guy (can’t remember his name).

I ended up going to dinner with them at a random town pizza place that was in the basement of someone’s house! They were really cool and I’m going to try and make it to Glasgow to catch up with them.

I got back to the hostel after dinner etc, and the Poms and Justin were there, along with another Pommy girl (Tori). So, we got some drinks and after a few hit the town. Got home and went to bed eventually.

So a bit of a weird day really… I fully recommend that anyone go to Auschwitz if they get the chance. It’s just so unbelievable you just have to do it!

On my way to Poland

2007-09-07T12:00:00.000+12:00

Well, I didn’t do much this week. I have started writing my paper now so I’ve been pulling 12 hour+ days at work to get it done on time. At least I’ve got something to write about and I’m confident that I will be able to get it done on time :-)

Friday morning I started my journey to Poland… now just to let you know, this was the worst planned everything going wrong weekend I’ve done so far :-P but it was still fantastic!

First, I had booked my flights in and out of Warsaw… as soon as I had booked them, everyone said “Warsaw’s shit… you should go to Krakow”. More about that later :-P

I got on my bike and just made it to the train station in time. I biked as fast as I could and ran as soon as I got off my bike, and the train just pulled up…. Whew!

So, from there everything was ok and I got some work done (reading that I’m doing at the moment) while on the train and on the plane. Checked in and arrived at Warsaw no problems. It was raining in Stuttgart, but above the clouds the weather was lovely.

Even though Poland is part of the EU, everyone still needs to go through a control point (which I haven’t had to do much)… I got another stamp in my passport! Woohoo.

Ok, so I got on a bus and went to the main train-station…. to head to Krakow :-) It wasn’t too expensive and only a 3 hour train ride. It took me an hour to get a ticket though because I had to find someone that spoke English, then wait to be served for ages.

Fast forward 4 hours (getting some more reading done) and I was in Krakow…. Where it was PISSING down!

I walked to my hostel, got some beers, and sat down with some of the people in the hostel and proceeded to drink quite a lot. I met some Poms and an American named Justin. Also, the girl on the hostel front desk for night shift joined us for a drink and some conversation… running to the door to let people in when need be.
(Justin)

That was my first day: travel, rain and mayhem… I could have planned this soooo much better, oh well.

4 Corners of Praha

2007-09-02T12:00:00.000+12:00

Today I was up and out of the dorm by 9am. The others in the room were not so awake, as I heard the Portuguese guys and the French girls come home at 6am... another big night for them!

Today I wanted to do all the things I hadn't done yet, well... within reason :-)

The first stop was the Czech markets, to the east of the city. This was pretty much the same as any other markets I've been to, but it was pretty big. I couldn't find much I wanted to buy, so I only got some boring stuff: undies, socks, bike light and a new back-pack. It was all quite cheap too which was nice. I did walk around checking it out and ended up spending a couple of hours here.

Next stop the Jewish Museum. Now, the Jewish Museum is actually. The actual museum itself is just an admin office, and all the exhibits are inside the Synagogues spread out all around Josefov (Jewish Quarter). So I got the ticket to see everything except the New-Old Synagogue (the oldest Synagogue in the world). But I took pictures of it anyway, just couldn't go in.

Jewish cemetery: This was pretty morbid. The cemetery was about the size of a small city block, and there were 12,000 grave stones (and more buried than that!) The Jews were denied any more land to bury their dead, so they build a wall around the area, covered it with dirt, then buried more people. They did that several times. The result is:

Klausen Synagogue: This one didn't have much to offer, some silver collections and books and stuff.

Ceremonial Hall: Again, lots of books and stuff. Had some quite impressive massive silver crowns... but you weren't allowed to take pictures.... so I did :-)

Maisel Synagogue: Can't really remember what was in this one, silver pointers and things I think. Didn't leave much of an impression.

Pinkas Synagogue: This one has been turned into a holocaust memorial with a difference. The walls are painted white, then over that is 80,000 names printed on the walls. They are the names of the Jews from Bohemia (area of Czech that Prague is located) that were exterminated during WW2. This is only 80,000 names, and it covers every wall from top to bottom, 3 rooms, 2 stories. Imagine how much 6,000,000 would take up! On the top story there were 4,000 pictures from Jewish children. They were collected by someone who used to entertain the children (well try to take their mind off things) at Terezin extermination camp... out of the 10,000 children there only 242 survived. Pretty morbid huh.

Spanish Synagogue: This one was the most impressive. It's not actually Spanish, but is named so because it is as beautiful as another one located in Spain. The inside was painted in dark colours, with gold trimming everywhere. Very impressive. It also had one of the larger collections of Jewish Silver.

That was the end of my Jewish tour... onward and upward (literally). I was heading for the Petrin Observation Tower, which is a small replica of the Eifel Tower (Paris), only built ontop of a hill. It was West of the city, and along the way I stopped at a set of gardens (don't even know what ones). There were peacocks and peahens wandering around, even had an albino one which I have never seen before. It also had a massive fountain with heaps of goldfish in the water. I then started my ascent and got to the top of the hill (took a while), then started my ascent of the tower (366 steps)... but it was worth it. You could see for miles around every direction of Prague... and further! Got some nice panoramic shots of the place.

Next stop... the big swinging pendulum thingy. Yip that's right :-) It was to the North of the City so a bit of a hike. The story here is once Czech was freed from Soviet occupation, they ripped down the Stalin statue... and had an idea to put a massive metronome in it's place.

From here I headed to the TV Tower to the East of the city... by Metro this time. This building was just weird. They decided to put babies crawling around on the outside of the building. I went to the top of this and chilled out over an expensive beer (for Prague anyway... cheap by any other standard). I watched the sunset from here which was quite cool. I was one of the only people in the cafe, so I ended up talking to the bar-girl for a bit as she was also bored. I stayed until it was quite dark and you could see a really cool view of Prague by night, simply stunning.

I left here around 9pm, and took some photos of Prague by night along the way. I hadn't actually seen Prague by night yet... and it was amasing. Check out the photos in my gallery and you'll see.

I got back to my hostel (south of the city) around 10pm... and after a shower + talking to a couple of people I was on my way to the bus station. I couldn't find it at the Metro stop and I almost missed my bus :-) I got there in the end and that is the end of my grand tour of Prague... all 4 corners in one day.

Vysehrad and Czech Locals

2007-09-01T12:00:00.000+12:00

Well... because of the late night (early morning) I didn't get out of bed until noon.

I got ready then half organised to do dinner at 9pm with the Portuguese guys and the French girls in the room. Then we all headed our separate ways to see the sites.

My first stop was the National Museum and the Opera House. The museum was especially cool. Now there's a lot of really cool stuff in Prague, so most stuff blends into the background... but not this.

After that I got on the Metro and headed to Vysehrad, a big church complex to the south of the main city, Old Town and New Town (which was founded in the 1400's so isn't that new).

I was walking beside two people most of the way to Vysehrad... my Aussie-dar went off again. I had a quick chat with them, an Aussie dude and a Czech chick. After we arrived we walked around and saw different things. The church was pretty average on the inside. and up close it doesn't look nearly as spectacular as from a distance. The grave-yard was pretty cool... lots of interesting style grave-stones and stuff.

I ended up walking around the parameter of the complex because it was a really nice walk with beautiful views of Prague (Vysehrad is built like a fortress on top of a hill). I ended up bumping into the Czech and the Aussie again, so I joined them for a beer.

The open air bar was really random. There were tables of people sitting around, and a lot were getting stoned. Not something you usually see... I later found out that Czech doesn't really police it as there's much worse things out there. After the beer with Johnny and Katerina, we had a walk along the streets back toward New City. Took some photos along the way... then we stopped for some dinner, pizza and beer :-) Now if you like beer, you will like Prague.

Over dinner we talked about all sorts. They told me about a Indie-Rock concert that was going on in a local park. It wasn't really a touristy thing and it was mainly going to be locals... which I thought was cool! So off we went.

We eventually found the park, which was a difficult task, even with a translator. And met up with some of Katerina's friends. There were probably around 100 or so people, so it wasn't a big concert. We lined up for beer... and it took about 45 minutes to get to the front... so we got 2 each :-P Murphy was playing tricks on me again, as we walked up to the field I stepped into a little hole in the field, fell over and lost most of one beer :-( I did pretty well to keep that much considering I fell right over.

We chilled out listening to the music, and again you could see and smell the pot coming off the crowd. It was pretty cool just chilling out drinking beer and listening to Indie-Rock. One really cool thing that happened was this little girl got up on stage with the band and starting dancing around... it was really cute!

The concert finished just before 10, and there was an after party... so we went to that. Now this was a REAL underground party. What I mean is... it was in an old bunker! So we went down into the ground about 4 or 5 stories. It was really interesting. We hung out here until about 1 or 2am then we left and caught the tram to our separate homes (gotta love European public transport!)

It was a really random day and I had a lot of fun. It's good to, because Johnny lives in Sydney, so I'm going to catch up with him when I head over there at the end of this year. And Katie is probably going to head out to NZ at some stage... so that's one of the most random encounters to date :-P

Grand Tour of Praha

2007-08-30T12:00:00.001+12:00

For those of you wondering, Praha is the local name for Prague.

Right... today I woke up pretty early considering. I was up and out on the streets by 9am. Today I decided I would do the "Free Walking Tour" and get an overall view of the city. So off to the centre of the Old City to get to the meeting point.

We weren't meeting until 10:30am, so I decided to watch the Astronomical clock go off at 10am (it goes off every hour dusk - dawn). It is a really big build up to something that is a little bit of a let down. When the clock goes off, 12 saints appear through these doors at the top, then go away... yip as good as it sounds. The clock itself is quite cool though... try reading it, I think there are 7 hands! I only found out how to once the tour guide explained it fully.

So after that I took some photos of the Old Town then waited at the meeting point. I wasn't the only person from our neck of the woods. There were about 4 other Kiwis (older people) and around 8 Aussies (older people again). The younger people on the tour were from England, Italy and Spain. Our tour guide was Nicole (a German born Czech), but she had a Billabong bag, with a Paua Kiwi attached to it. She had lived in Aussie for 6 months or so.

Anyway, first she showed us the Astronomical clock and explained it all (no I'm not going to write an explanation). After that the tour went like this: headed around the back streets of the Old City to see some more sites, then the Jewish Quarter, then over Charles Bridge, past the John Lennon wall (which is the only wall you're allowed to tag on in Praha), past St. Nicolas Church in the Lesser Town, then up to the Castle, a quick walk through the castle and done. It doesn't sound like much but it took over 4 hours.

The highlights for me were the story about Josephov (Jewish Quarter). Basically, one of the queens kicked all the Jews out using high taxes and other such methods (poor Jews)... then once she started kicking them out she realised that they were a bunch of her revenue (tax etc). So she got her son to start the Jewish Quarter and invite them back. I'm sure you can guess what his name was :-P

Throughout the tour I was chatting with Nicole about all sorts. Also chatted quite a bit with a pommy chick and an irish lad (ummm... Kate and Toph... I think... too many names in such a little time). Who had been to NZ and Canada to work for some ski-seasons. I learnt a bit about Belfast and the tank-like-police cars that were kitted out during the IRA days :-P After the tour they took off to catch up with his parents for dinner.

It was Nicole's last day doing the tour as she had a new job. She got some photos taken during the tour so I'm going to be famous (along with everyone else on the tour)! I ended up talking with for about half an hour about all sorts after everyone had left. She said she might head out to NZ and got my contact details (hopefully I can remember all these people when they come calling on me). She then had to run off because the boss was taking her out for dinner.

(Me and Nicole)

Anyway, I would recommend the tour, once again the "Free Tour" (you tip what you want) was great. The tour guides seem to be more passionate about it than on the paid ones for some reason. It wasn't run by the same company as in Berlin, but was still pretty good.

After that I wandered down to see the inside of St. Nicolas Church... which I was told was impressive. Now, Prague has got soooo many churches, and throughout Europe I have seen many many more, so it had a lot to live up to. It was pretty cool, but I have seen others that are just as great.

I was then walking down the street... and I bumped into two Asian fellows that I had helped at the metro station on my first day (the day where I almost got caught!). They were heading to see the "Baby Jesus"... which I had no idea about. So I tagged along with them. And it was exactly that... a little doll of a very young Jesus.

I was a little tired (shock... horror) so took a walk back to the hostel to relax. I had been walking around for 9 hours so I thought I deserved it. There was one guy asleep in my room... so I took a nanna nap as well :-P
The sleeping-guy woke up when his mate arrived back. So, I started chatting to them. Two Portuguese guys named, Filipe and Miguel. We ended up going out for dinner then hitting the town. I found out they live in Lisbon (where I'm heading in 4 weeks time) so they offered themselves as tour guides for me... looking forward to it!

We went to a club that had 5 different dance floors, each one playing different styles of music. Ranging from hip-hop to 70's disco. The hip-hop floor was quite funny, there were guys on the dance floor having dance battles. They also had two live dudes rapping on stage. Which was pretty cool.
On the top floor was the "chill-out" room which had bean-bags and comfy sofas to lounge about in... we headed after a bit (well, Filipe and I, we lost Miguel as soon as we got there).

After a few minutes, I wanted to test my Aussie-dar (which is pretty accurate now). I walked up to these random chicks and asked them what part of Australia they were from. I was right on the money :-P 2 girls from Perth (Sam and Naomi) and 1 from Sydney (Jules). Ended up talking and hanging out with them the whole night. Had a lot of fun... and may bump into them at Oktoberfest... along with the other millions of people there :-P

We got home around 5 or 6am and we crashed.

Onto the Czech Republic

2007-08-30T12:00:00.000+12:00

Hello Kids,

It's story time again :-)
This week was a very short one for me... Monday night I booked a 4 day trip to Prague leaving Wednesday night... how's that for last-minute planning! I'm becoming a pro at it now... hehe.

So busy busy Mon and Tues updating blog and working. Then Wednesday night.... the overnight bus to Prague... woohoo and oooh damnit all in one breath. The overnight bus is not fun.

Onto the travels.....

I arrived at 5:30am after getting a couple minutes sleep the whole night. I had this lovely old Indian dude sitting behind me who loved to cough then spit out whatever he was coughing into a bag.... yummo.

I got onto the Metro (subway) on my way to my hostel. Now, I didn't have any Czech Crown (currency) and there were no exchanges open, so I had to get on illegally. Now, what does Murphy's Law say? Some metro police got on board and started flashing their badge around checking tickets. Luckily, my stop was next... but those 30s seemed to go on forever and my heart was racing. I managed to get off just before they got to me... phew. That was an adrenaline rush for the day! Who needs coffee for a wake-up call? :-)

I then got off and started walking trying to find my hostel. I couldn't find any landmarks as I was surrounded by massive old buildings (kind of like Vienna). I wandered around and then found I was walking the complete wrong way. I had managed to walk half way to town before I realised :-P

Anyway, got into the hostel and checked in. The hostel was run by this lovely middle-aged woman and her son. She was very friendly and really willing to help. It was too early to go into my room (at 7am), so she gave me a map and told me of all the places I can go. So I left my bag with them and headed out for adventure!

My first views of Prague were simply breathtaking. I walked along the river and you could see the magnificent views of the Praha Castle, the biggest castle complex in the world! Now, before visiting Prague, Vienna was the most impressive city that I've seen. I think Prague topped it as a first smack-smack-in-the-face impression of a city.

There are so many old buildings around the aptly named "Old City". Prague was not bombed during the war because of the Munich Pact (whatever that is) so everything is very much intact.

I walked along the river taking in the grand architecture of the place and headed straight for the castle. Over Charles Bridge which is a medieval bridge with statues along the side. Then up the hill to the top. I got an audio-guide and wandered around the castle for about 6 hours (yes it is just that big!). It was very very touristy, but was an entertaining way to spend a day.
It was not cheap though... Prague has two extremes: the touristy area - where everything is way overpriced, and everywhere else - where you get $1 beers from a bar! I'm not going to bore you with too much about the castle as the pictures speak for themselves (check out my online photos - when they are ready). The St. Vitus Cathedral was very spectacular though and a randomly cool thing I did see was a guy doing some blacksmithing with some old gear which was pretty cool. Oh Chris (my brother-in-law) would have loved it. There was an armoury of all sorts of medieval forged war-gear, which could be purchased :-)

After the castle I headed back to the hostel. I was pretty shattered and just wanted to chill. So I grabbed some Chinese (really cheap as I wasn't in a touristy area) and some beers then went back to the room to eat.

I talked to some random Pommy chicks that were travelling, then 2 of my room-mates came home. It was two Polish people named Luke and Ewa (Eva for us English folk). They were pretty cool and we talked about Polish politics.... now I know what you are thinking. But this was good. Polish politics are a complete joke, the stuff they were saying was just so funny. In Poland, if you commit a crime, you can't leave the country or do almost any job (teacher, etc.)... but you can still become a politician! They have got one leader who went to jail for... "raping a prostitute"... how silly is that!

(Luke and Ewa)

I also learnt a few Polish swear words... 1 of thousands. Polish has the most swear words of any language. They even have a Polish swearing dictionary that is 500 pages. A lot of Polish people use the word "coorvah" (bad name for a whore) as a comma in their sentences :-P Also a word that sounds like "who-ya" is a really offensive saying in Polish. So they laugh when they hear it in English songs. Oh, and the Czech name for girl... is the Polish name for "prostitute".
Random huh?!

Anyways, after talking half the night we managed to get to bed around 2 or 3... so was a long day for me :-P

Farewell to Anna + Alex :-(

2007-08-26T12:00:00.000+12:00

Today was Anna and Alex’s last day in Stuttgart.
We woke up at 9:00am… and eventually got up at about 10. I caught up with Le Fourgue and Janath, who wanted to join us to see the Porche museum.

We were on our way via S-Bahn at 11… with a quite bite to eat at subway (which is almost exactly the same here).

We arrived at around 12:30… and we only had 1 hour and a half before they had to leave. We hoped we had enough time!

Walking into the museum, we realised we had plenty of time. The Porche museum is nothing compared to the Mercedes museum. It is one room with about 30 cars around the sides… a bit minor to the 7 stories that is the Mercedes museum. We did notice they are building a new Porche museum… which looks like it will be bigger than the Mercedes one. Car companies and their competition huh?

So after about an hour we were done. And on our way back to the S-Bahn. I saw Anna and Alex off at the Hauptbahnhof and said our see yaz (I’m going to see them in just over a month… so not goodbye yet).

Le Fourgue, Janath and I had some late lunch then headed back to the dorm... where we all had a nana-nap :-)
Janath cooked dinner for all of us this night... our own resident Indian cook, yummo!

That’s about the end of my weekend. It was very nice… and great to see Anna and Alex again. Reminding me of my friends at home. I will be back in a couple of months… and I have a lot of destinations to visit before getting there :-)

Oh… last week I planned a whole bunch of weekends and firm bookings on flights. So I have a massively busy travel schedule now… check out "My Planned Calendar" in the right hand panel to see, or just click on my map for those of you interested. :-)

Tschau

Mercedes Museum and Ludwigsburg

2007-08-25T12:00:00.000+12:00

Today we woke up at 10am and headed out for the day. Had some bakery food for breakfast along the way, then straight to the Mercedes Museum. We arrived around 12. The building was pretty big… so we thought it should be good.

We were not disappointed. The museum was English friendly, with audio headsets and every sign being in Deutsch and English. We ended up spending nearly 5 hours in there! Very entertaining way to spend a day.

Timeline:
As you went through the floors, it worked its way forward in history. As you went between the floors there were snippets of major events in history and it showed where Daimler fitted into everything.
Daimler invented the first ever combustion engine to power a horse drawn cart. It went a massive 18km/h. And was called the “Grandfather Clock”

Daimler were involved in the World Wars, creating planes and other weaponry. They even had forced labour using POWs to do their manual labour.
After WW2 they admitted their faults and turned the image of DaimlerBenz around. They created their safety first approach and headlined the automotive industry… and still do today. They invented and were the first to commercially install ABS (anti-lock breaking system) and airbags. Also, they were the first to initiate crash testing.
They merged with Chrysler for financial reasons (and now have recently split after a massive loss in the company).
They are still producing a large number of cars, and are number 2 in Germany for car registrations (after VW).

Highlights:
The guy who founded Porche, was a designer for Daimler in the early days.
The Pope-mobile was designed by DiamlerChrysler.
Mercedes are still headlining the safety systems research for automotive companies… and that’s what I’m working for guys ;-) I even saw some people I work with, and software that I have seen on display in part of the museum, which is quite cool.

After this most of the day was gone… so we decided to grab some dinner then see Schloss Ludwigsburg by evening light. This time we got into one of the restaurants Alex wanted to go last night and had some traditional German food… really, A&A had schnitzel and I had pork roast.

We made it to the Schloss around 7pm. It was quite pretty by the evening light and seemed like a really new castle. You could walk through the courtyard for free… then you had to pay to go see the gardens. There were hundreds of people heading there and we had no idea why. We found out that there was a fireworks display on tonight. So we decided to spend the evening here… why not?

The evening was pleasant. We found ourselves a seat and enjoyed a couple of drinks. The entire place was lined with tea-light candles and reminded me of the lantern festival in Auckland. Shortly after dark they started the fireworks… to the songs of Queen… random. They didn’t last too long, and weren’t overly exciting. But they were still fireworks!

After that, we found our way to the S-Bahn and made our way home… straight to bed because we were shattered. It was a really pleasant day, and a nice way to spend the evening.

Another Taste of Home

2007-08-24T12:00:00.000+12:00

Hello peeps.

No real news from the week. Did my work as per usual, Wednesday night I played Squash and had a sauna, other than that... status quo.

This weekend Anna and Alex were coming to visit me in Stuttgart… and this was going to be my last weekend in Stuttgart for the rest of my time here :-P

So… I left work early on Friday afternoon to meet up with them at the Hauptbahnhof (main train station). After the hugs and greetings we went on to see Stuttgart.

The first stop was lunch, we had some traditional German cuisine… Doner Kebaps (hehe). After our hearty meal we decided to head up the Stuttgart TV Tower. This is the oldest TV tower in the world. Now I didn’t have the “local” know-how of the city that one should have… as I had only spent a couple of days in Stuttgart, and hadn’t done any of the touristy stuff yet. So we had to muddle our way through the map to find out which U-Bahn to catch etc. Luckily we had Mr. German Alex who could translate anything perfectly... finally a use for him ;-)
We got there in the end. The view from up there was pretty cool. The day was absolutely beautiful and you could see for miles. Unfortunately… there isn’t much to see in Stuttgart. Lots and lots of orange/brown roofs that all look the same, and some of the factories. Stuttgart was bombed heavily in WWII so everything is relatively new. One of the things we found amusing was the “Anti-suicide” barriers… which were these massive spikes. If you didn’t make it over… you weren’t going to be very happy.

After this we headed back into Stuttgart. We had a wander around the city… I got lost a couple of times trying to find some gardens I had been told about, and in the end we gave up. We did find some small “gardens” and we aptly named these “Tobigarten” :-P

We walked back into the main part of the city and found ourselves at Schlossplatz. We stopped for a drink and ice-cream. This square of Stuttgart is beautiful.

We wandered around the city for another hour seeing some of the side-streets and then found our way back magically at Schlossplatz, no matter where you go you always seem to end up here! It’s like the city wants you to go here. We sat down for a little while enjoying the sun and catching up. (Don’t ask me what we talked about… but it was good to see them again).

Dinner was the next stop, and all the restaurants that we wanted to go to were either way too expensive, or had no tables free. Eventually we stopped and had Pizza Hut, which was nice anyway.

A final walk through Stuttgart by night, we walked again past Schlossplatz, then found our way to the Hauptbahnhof. Went on our way back to my place.

We spent the evening having a couple of drinks and catching up and talking about all sorts. We were in bed by 1am.
This was my 2nd taste of home in 2 weeks :-)

Auf Wiedersehen Berlin

2007-08-20T12:00:00.000+12:00

Today was my last day... and there was only a couple of things I really wanted to see today.

We headed to the first touristy destination, the Reichstag Building. This is the the main government building of Germany. It has a really cool design with the glass dome on top. The architect designed it as such so that anytime the people of government need reminding who's running the (democratic) country, all they need do is look up and see all the people above them. It's free to go up and have a look... it also offers a premium panorama of Berlin. Unfortunately... everyone wants to see it so it took an hour and a half queueing to get in! The time flew by though, because Ruth and I started chatting to a couple of Americans, father and daughter; Bob and Claire, who were "touristing" (my new word) Berlin. I found out about one of the places that I missed in Berlin which is where there are a bunch of palaces. Oh well, next time. The wait was worth it because inside the dome was pretty cool and the view was amasing.

We walked from here through the Tiergarten, and saw the Soviet monument... which had tanks and artillery! Cool huh!
We also walked through the Sony Centre where there is a massive giraffe made out of Lego.

After this we left the Stadtmitte and headed out to Schloss Charlottenberg, which is the only remaining castle within the central city of Berlin (the rest being bombed or demolished). This was a "relatively" small palace and we had a quiet walk around the gardens... we were pretty tired after our full on last days.

After this we went back to Ruth's place and went out for a final drink. I had to try the Berliner-Weiser, which is a famous Berlin beer with green syrup (Waldmeister, kind of like spearmint only not) in it. It was a bit too sweet for my liking.

After that, I got my things, walked down to the U-Bahnhof and said my farewells to Ruth. She was a great host and I had a fantastic time in Berlin.

I got to the airport with no dramas... and slept on the plane. Back home and in bed at about midnight... ready for a week of work :-)

I highly recommend Berlin as a place to visit... sooo much history there and you can feel it because some of it is so recent.

Sunday in Berlin

2007-08-19T12:00:00.000+12:00

Now after our big night out, we didn't get up until 2pm. That was ok, we still had plenty of time to make it to the walking tour. So 1 breakfast + a bus trip later, we were at the meeting point.

Just to summarise this walking tour... it is fantastic! It is FREE and probably the best guided tour I have ever had. Well, it's not actually free, the guides work for tips... so they are very very good because otherwise they don't get tips.
Their website is here: http://www.neweuropetours.eu/ and I recommend people go if they are heading to London, Paris, Berlin, Munich, Amsterdam or Edinburgh.

Ok now onto the tour itself. We met our tour guide Katie, who was an over-energetic very-excitable extremely loud American... and that description is an understatement. But, once you got used to her, she was very well informed, entertaining and passionate about Berlin. I learnt so much on this tour that it would be half a novel to write it all down :-)

We started at the Brandenburg gate, which is one of the most famous things in Berlin. It has been around since the Prussian-Empire, and was part of the Berlin wall.

We then went onto the Jewish Holocaust memorial which was quite cool. Nothing in your face, just a bunch of blocks. Then straight onto Hitler's bunker... which was a parking lot :-P The soviets destroyed it when they took over East Berlin. We then walked past the Nazi Luftwaffe headquarters where they were still doing some filming for the movie. And again saw Checkpoint Charlie, which Katie called the "Disneyland of Berlin" because everything about it is fake. The only original thing left is a sign saying "You are now leaving the American Sector".

This was the half way point (after 2 hours) so we stopped for a bite to eat. The cafe we stopped at had an English menu... it had the UK and USA flag (normal) + the Aussie and NZ flag, I felt proud for our nation to make it onto a Berlin menu :-P It was at this point I realised there are only 4 main countries with English as their primary language... so you wonder why it is the international language now don't ya :-P

The tour continued through Potsdamer Platz which is a new part of Berlin. It was pretty cool, after the fall of the wall, this place was empty. So they decided to let a bunch of architects go nuts and make all these cool high-rises there. The most famous building is the Sony Centre.

We then walked to the main concert house of Berlin. There were identical churches either side of it... strange. Katie explained the story. The Swedes invaded in the 16th century and killed a lot of Berliners. They used evil ways such as tying a bunch of Germans together and having competitions to see how many they could kill with one bullet, and forcing them to drink the "Swedish Cocktail" which consisted of raw-sewage (which of course will kill you). After the Swedes left the population was decimated, so they got some French Huguenots to help repopulate. The Frenchies demanded something for their efforts... which was church #1. The people of Berlin wanted something too since they had to go through the atrocity... so they built the exact same church so no-one would be offended :-P

We walked through the square where the famous Nazi-book-burning took place, there is a memorial that is simply empty bookshelves. The tour ended in the Lustgarten where Ruth and I were the night before. I learnt a bit about the place here too. This is where the tour ended... but first we heard the best-part-of-the-tour (Katie had been talking about this all the tour). It was the story on how the Berlin wall came to fall.

Now the Berlin wall officially was opened in 1989 (only 17 years ago!), and it was all a mistake. To make a long (and very entertaining presentation ala Katie) story short. A new "travel policy" which would allow travel from East-to-West. The proper policy was supposed to involve so much paperwork that nobody would actually ever be able to travel. Günter Schabowski, the person who held press releases, had not been properly updated about this as he was on holiday before the press release. During the live press release, they asked him some questions about it and he mis-read the quote. Thousands of people swarmed the boarder guards and in the confusion, they all got through. This event triggered the government to allow travel because once the people had been let out once, they couldn't keep them caged anymore.
(That is the very brief version)
It's amasing how recent the history of Berlin is... in our lifetime this occurred peoples!

Anyway, that was the end of the tour, so Ruth showed me around some of the Eastern Quarters, a bit off the tourist track. I got to see some of the soviet buildings and statues which are quite different to the German ones.

We stopped here for dinner, which was Chinese Hot-Pot (very yummy). The owner was very friendly. He was retired and decided to start this restaurant just for fun, because he liked the cuisine when he was in China. He lived in West Berlin during the Berlin wall days and told us about the times then. It was party time for West Berlin, everyone had "reverse-tax", i.e. you got 10% more than you earned from the government. And everything was made easy to keep people in Berlin! A vast contrast to the communist East Berlin.

After dinner we checked out a small cocktail bar and had a drink. Walking on our way home, we stopped at a "horror-rock" bar, which was cool! It was called "Cathedral"... and was anything but. Skeletons on the wall, and skulls on the beer taps. Main clientèle were of course Goths.

After seeing this part of the city we found our way home via bus... it was a relatively early night and we were home in bed at about 2 or 3.

First day in the Deutsch Hauptstadt

2007-08-18T12:00:00.000+12:00

Ok… so I had only seen the German Capital’s nightlife so far… and we got up eventually at 1pm :-P Had a nice traditional German breakfast consisting of bread rolls, cheese and jam… all bought from the local flohmarkt (flea market), was very nice.

Out to see the day, starting by seeing West Berlin. We walked past some of the common shops you can see in parts of Berlin: leather clothes and sex toys. It was good because my last gimp costume was getting a bit old :-P

The main shopping street of West Berlin was pretty nice. We wandered around, went into the big shopping mall which was 7 stories up. There was a massive chocolate bear… oh the bear is one of the symbols of Berlin, so there are lots of them about the place.

(Ruth with the massive bear)

We saw the church that was bombed in the war as well. There are many places in Berlin that they have left the same since the war as memorials, this is one of the main ones.

We wanted to try and catch the last walking tour of the day, but it was getting too late so we would have missed it. I took this as an opportunity to see more of the West. We wandered around some of the not-so-main streets. Saw a Anne Franke museum… it was very sad and we only stayed for a little while. I felt a little too emotional in there. (Not sure how well I’m going to handle Auschwitz when I go in a couple of weeks)

Also saw a photo exhibit by Peter Lindbergh, who is a very famous fashion photographer. One photo was of a bottle of water… and was worth $30,000.

After wandering for a bit, we headed into East Berlin… well the Stadtmitte (city-centre) anyway. We got off the bus near Check Point Charlie… the street just up the road was full of smoke, I was curious so of course went to check it out.
Turns out they were filming the controversial "Stauffenberg" movie, which is about the Nazi General that tried to kill Hitler. This is the one that Tom Cruise stars in, and because of his Scientology beliefs, they were not allowed to film this in the original locations. However, it was still a cool sight. A bit strange seeing a street full of smoke with the Nazi Swatzstika flags raised high and people in SS uniforms doing the Nazi salute… probably a once in a lifetime thing to see in Germany. For those of you who don’t know, it is illegal to wear or bear any Nazi memorabilia… an imprisonable offence. It’s amazing what you can get away with if you are in Hollywood.

We wandered down past Checkpoint Charlie… probably the most unimpressive famous thing I have seen. I didn’t really want to see too many of the main stuff in the city, as we were going to see it on the walking tour the next day. We headed into some of the not so touristy areas of Berlin’s centre. I learnt about the “Ampel Men”, or in English “pedestrian crossing traffic light symbol” (isn’t German easier?). The East Berlin ampel-men are quite unique. They were designed to be cartoon like so children would take notice… and for those of you wondering… that is his arm!

We continued walking and saw the Döm of Berlin which was cool. We stopped at the location of the ancient Berlin Royal castle.... which was now a square with carnival + eating stuff. The Soviets destroyed it during their occupation of East Berlin. We stopped here for a Currywürst and Beer, can't get too much more German than that!

After our snack, we went back to Ruth's to have a rest before heading out for the evening. We had been walking around for about 7 hours so I think we deserved it :-) After sitting around and chatting for a while, Ruth cooked a very nice dinner. By this time it was about 11pm, so time to go and see a Berlin Electro club!

We went to a club called Tresor (means wall-safe in French), which is one of the famous clubs of Berlin. We arrived around mid-night, and things were just about starting up properly. This club was really cool! There were 3 different dance-rooms in various locations throughout the building. To get between them you had to go through a maze of stairways and tunnels. The main one we stayed in was the "hard-trance" genre. The lighting was fantastic, the sound was good, the atmosphere was pumping. Unsa-unsa :-)

I met some Pommy guys that were on a stag due. Also met a local Berliner who could barely speak English, so between my bad German and his bad English we managed a conversation :-) Also had several dances with a couple of girls... they just come up and start dancing with ya... that doesn't happen in NZ. We danced the night away until 6am, and we didn't even have much to drink (or take anything else for that matter).

Leaving the club we were more awake than when we were on our way to the club... but as soon as we got home we both crashed :-) Fantastic night!

Ich bin ein Berliner

2007-08-17T12:00:00.000+12:00

On Friday I left work at 5pm to get to the airport on time. Checked in and got to my gate… just to wait an hour because the flight was delayed! Damn TuiFly… again. Don’t fly with them if you are in Europe, GermanWings are much more reliable.

Anyway… flying into Berlin was pretty cool. They had massive windfarms filling the countryside. It was dark flying in and the warning lights on the wind-generators looked fantastic. One farm of about 30 wind-generators was in sync, so the entire lot would flash at once… pretty cool.

Arrived at the airport, got my public transport map, then headed to Ruth’s place. I met Ruth in Stockholm. I told her I wanted to go to Berlins so and she offered her place for me to stay + herself as a free tour guide… of course I accepted. She lived very central in a nice place. I dropped my stuff off, had a catch up over a glass of wine, then we went out to see some of the Berlin nightlife.

Ruth told me that we were going to a club near the Stadtmitte we went down this street and stopped outside an iron gate. She talked to the bouncer but they wouldn’t let us in… so she had to call her friend Mark… who had to call his friend... who was the owner… so we got in through the bouncer.

We got in and the club was this chic club built inside an old Berlin postoffice. The roof was a massive dome, and the doorways were very high, it was pretty cool. The club was full of artists and all sorts. It was a private club so you had to know someone who knew someone to get in… a new experience for me.

We spent the first hour chatting and having a couple of drinks. Then the dance floor started up. Things got going pretty nicely. Of course I had a massive dance. Ruth had done dancing lessons before so her and I carved up the dance floor if I do say so myself :-)

It was about 5am by the time we left. We had a walk through the Stadtmitte in the early daybreak. It was pretty nice. We got home at about 6am… and pretty much crashed. Was a good first night introduction to Berlin.

News from last week

2007-08-16T12:00:00.000+12:00

On Monday I got a new room-mate. It was killing two birds with one stone, my workmate Daniel needed a place to live, and I got a room-mate that I knew :-)

On Tuesday, the news wasn’t so good. Mum has started her chemo now. It’s not as fun as it sounds… headache, nausea, the works… mum doesn’t recommend chemo as a recreational drug. Bummer because I was looking for some on the street the other day :-)
On a serious note, she is feeling like shit but still keeping her sense of humour about the whole thing. Her and Brenda are shocking the doctors with their comments, you gotta laugh at morbid humour, what else can ya do?

She has to go through two doses, the first 9 weeks is the hair-falley out one and has the worst side affects. By the time I get home, mum will have completed the “worse” part of the chemo and of course be bald. She will be going through the more mild part of it which has less side affects for another 9 weeks.

Anyway. Drop mum and email if ya want: helen.heuvel@clear.net.nz
I’m sure she’ll appreciate the messages. And if anyone is in the neighbourhood, feel free to drop mum a visit. I’m sure she won’t mind someone taking her mind of things for a bit.

Brussels day 2

2007-08-12T12:00:00.000+12:00

We got up at about 9:30… missed breakfast because Chugs’ alarm was still set for London time… the extra hour of sleep probably did us good.

We got out of the hostel about 10:30am and headed to the part of the city where the flea-market was held. There was supposed to be some good food places around. It took us about 3 different shops until we found one that was serving food and not just drinks.

The one we found was really cool. It had a guy playing an accordion and singing different songs. Random people in the café would get up and start singing and dancing as well. They were all laughing and having a good time. We weren’t sure if it was they were pissed on a Sunday morning (we were the youngest in there) or that it was just what they did. Some cops even walked (with guns on their belt) and started drinking at the bar. The atmosphere is something too hard to describe… but it was really cool.

Today we were using the public transport because we had done a lot of walking yesterday! So we got on the metro and headed out to the massive church a bit out of the city. It’s the 5th biggest church in the world… and it is HUGE! We were all a bit dumbstruck seeing it… as you approach it just seemed to get bigger and bigger.

We went in and had a look around the church and then went to the top. From the top, the panoramic view of the entire city was simply spectacular. We could see all the places we had visited and also see how big Brussels actually was. We had only seen a fraction, but it was the main part which had the old city and touristy stuff.

We saw the Atomium from the top of the church… and that was our next destination. Back on the public transport system to the Atomium… this was really cool. It was created in 1958 for an exhibition. It is an artistic view of an iron crystal, magnified 25 billion times. It was only supposed to last for the exhibition, but its popularity was so high that it is still a major tourist destination.

We didn’t go up because it was too expensive… and we had already seen a good view of the city. James had to take off to catch his 3 flight back to Norway. So we said farewell and realised that it’s not going to be too long before he catches up with us all again.

After a quick bite for late-lunch, we headed back to the city so the guys could get some Belgian chocolates to take back with them. By this stage the day was almost gone. So we headed back to the hostel. The guys packed up and we walked down to the train station so they could head off to the airport. Said bye and they were on their way… was a good weekend :-)

I just killed a couple of hours by chatting to a couple of Scottish dudes and playing some cards, then I went to the bus station for my overnight bus. I passed the psychedelic tunnel… which Chugs had pointed out earlier :-)

Overall impression of Belgium is very impressive. They seem to have a lot of history and all these massive old buildings, although I don’t understand where from? I can’t recall hearing anything about them in any history conversations at all :-P If anyone can enlighten me I would really like to know.

The overnight bus was ok, it left at 11pm and arrived at 6am… I didn’t sleep much, but kept my eyes closed the whole time. Straight into work at 6:30, I am doing some interesting stuff at the moment, so ended up doing a 13 hour day.

That’s all from me.
Au revoir

Esci Grand Tour of Bruxelles (Brussels)

2007-08-11T12:00:00.000+12:00

Just to educate you a bit on Belgium, they speak 3 official languages: French, Flemish (Dutch) and German… and most people I found spoke English, but it’s not an official language. Almost everything has to be in Flemish and French, so the street signs are bilingual, as are all menus etc… I think it is required by law!
Belgium is the home of mussels, waffles and they invented French Fries.
Brussels also has the headquarters of the European Union.

We got up about 8… because Chugs set his alarm for that time. So we got up and had the free breakfast at the hostel, it was same as every other hostel: jam, bread, OJ etc. Then we got ready and headed out for the day. We decided to follow the HostelWorld recommended daily itinerary, which involved walking around a lot of the city.

We started our day by visiting the Grand Place. It was pretty much in the city centre. When we got there, there was nobody around and there was a very airy feeling about the square. Kind of hard to describe. It was very impressive, all these massive old buildings surrounding the square.

From there we walked around and found Royal Place, after a few wrong turns and side-tracks to see other things… like the “Little Pissing Boy” of Brussels. At Royal Place there was… you guessed it, the Royal Palace! It was quite impressive from the outside. And it was also free entry to go in.

On the inside… wow! It is the most impressive interior I have ever seen, that includes Neuschwanstein! Every room was HUGE and was painted/plated with gold trimming, and had multiple massive crystal chandeliers. There were massive paintings and all sorts in every room. Unfortunately, they take your cameras off you at the entrance and you get them back when you leave, so no more photos. Near the end there was this really cool room (well for us geeks anyway). They had all these hands on exhibitions you could play with. You could stick your head in a guillotine and get it cut off, they had this spindle that rolled up hill, and a lot of optical illusion displays.

After the Royal Palace we were quite hungry, so decided to go for lunch. What else do you get in Brussels? Mussels of course :-P We headed back near the Grand Place, it now felt more touristy with heaps and heaps of people about… we were glad to see it by morning with the airy feeling. We found a place to eat… and have our first beer of the day, which was after beer-o’clock :-( We got a lunch-time deal with was a three-course meal. We all got Mussels-in-Brussels for our main. And the other starters ranged from tuna-salad to escargot (snails, which I had… they were quite nice).

(Mussels in Brussels!)

When we got the bill, we were a bit shocked because they charged ridiculous amounts for the beer… but we figured it was to compensate for the “cheap” meal. Oh well, we learnt for next time :-)

After lunch, we went down to the Palace du Justice… this was the biggest building in the world up until the late 19th century. It was pretty cool… but we were over the sight seeing by this stage… this weekend wasn’t supposed to be too much about sight seeing :-P
We stopped right by the palace and tried another Belgian beer… a cherry one, which was very refreshing.

Back to the city centre to see the Delirium Café. This is the world record holder for the most commercially available beers in the world, over 2000 beers available at any stage! Cool huh. We didn’t stay long because we wanted to enjoy the sun while it was still out.

We wandered to what we thought was going to be a park and grabbed some beers along the way. On the way there was a strange place with urinals on the side of a church… it’s not every day you can say “I pissed on the side of a church”… well most people can’t :-P

It was dinner time by the time we finished our beer. So we found another place to eat. We struggled to try and read the menu which was in French and Flemish. Using Ben and James’ knowledge of French we could get half. With Brad and my knowledge of German, we could half interpret the Flemish menu. It got a bit tiresome trying to figure out what to order… so we eventually asked for the English menu. It was a good 15 minutes entertainment anyway :-) After our traditional Belgian dinner of rabbit, duck and chicken… all with French Fries of course, we wandered to a part of the city which was recommended for its night life.

The streets were packed because the Belgium summer festival was on. There was a live band that was playing really good music. So we drank in the streets and chilled out listening to music until it finished about midnight… then progressed onto one of the nearby bars to continue drinking. Several beers later and a lot of conversation, the outer-bar shut down, we got invited inside to continue our drinking. We stayed until they stopped serving us… because of their liquor license just to be clear ;-)

(The fun of beer stacking in the bar... it was a good idea at the time)

We wandered home, getting a really good kebab on the way. We got home about 4am. James went off to bed, and the rest of us headed downstairs to have a whiskey or two. Chugs even went behind the hostel bar to get some glasses for us :-P
We got sent out of the common room at 4:30 by the guy on the desk, so that was our bedtime.

Pretty good day all up.

Onto Bruges and Ghent

2007-08-10T12:00:00.000+12:00

Now onto the trip.

Friday morning at 6am I got off the bus after probably an hours sleep. I couldn’t be bothered thinking so got on a bus to the hostel. I wasn’t allowed to check in until 7:30, so I sat in a chair and slept with my head on the table for an hour. I was wondering what to do for the day as the first member of Da Esci Boyz wasn’t turning up until 8pm. I noticed a sign for day trips to Ghent and Bruges… so that was me sorted.

Started talking to a Canadian named Macool at the bus stop. That was my temporary friend sorted for the day :-P
I chatted with him all the way to Ghent which was about an hour away. He was working in Copenhagen for Microsoft. Found out some new destinations to add to the list of places to go, the main one being Iceland.

It was a guided tour, so we drove around Ghent and saw a lot of the places. Then got out and walked around. It was a really nice city and it is famous for its flowers… but not at this time of the year :-)
Ghent was quite old and heaps of churches. One church we went into was pretty cool, it had new age art integrated into the church.

We got some time to ourselves so Macool and I walked around the city and saw some of the other parts of the city. One statue that was quite interesting was the one pictured below. It symbolised charity. A man was sentenced to death by hunger, his daughter came to visit him and feed him from her breast… well yeah, a lil incestuous, but you can see the point. I imagine death by hunger wouldn’t be the most pleasant experience in the world.

After Ghent we got back on the bus and headed toward Bruges. It was another 60km and about an hour away… so I got a little nana nap. I had heard a lot about Bruges from various people, and now I see why.

It is a spectacular little town, with a romantic ambiance hanging around the place. Walking into the old town there is even a place called “Lover’s Lake” where you can wish for good luck in love… but it’s only valid for 1 year so you gotta keep coming back :-)

We had some free time to grab some food and we were supposed to meet at 2:05 (well so I thought I heard). So I got a really nice focaccia cheesy thing and some Belgian chocolate (yummo), then wandered around the city. I headed back right on 2:05, and of course nobody was at the meeting point. I figured I had it wrong, so decided to wander around the city by myself and meet back at the bus when it was going to leave.

I wandered around the canals, which were extremely touristy. The water was polluted and there were heaps of tourist guiding fizz boats going around the city. It was still rather nice just walking about the place. There was a very entertaining busker playing a winch powered music-box. He was extremely friendly and just looked the part. And also this older lady in “traditional” clothes doing some weaving. I got a video of it because her fingers moved so quickly you could hardly see them.

The rest of the afternoon I spent walking around and took a heap of pictures, a selection are in my gallery. I also tried a couple of Belgian beers... one was 11% and tasted like white wine mixed with beer, wasn’t particularly nice.

I met back at the bus and arrived before the rest of the crew. I asked them if I got the time wrong, and sure enough I had. But at least I was getting a ride home. I had another nana nap on the way home and got dropped off at the hostel.

It was now 7:30 and James (one of Da Esci Boyz) was going to arrive some stage soon. The hostel had an onsite bar (fantastic!) so I had a couple of beers with Macool while waiting. When James arrived, we had a couple more. The rest of the evening consisted of going out to dinner and then having a few more beers.

By the time Ben, Brad and Chugs turned up (about 11:30) we had a good catch up and quite a few drinks. Of course, once they arrived, we had a few more… then eventually checked into our room about 1am. We were in a 6-Bed room… so we felt a bit sorry for the other guy in there as we came in and had to make our beds, while a little intoxicated :-) Went off to bed and that’s it.

Week in Summary

2007-08-09T12:00:00.000+12:00

Well another week another destination :-)
First… weekly highlights of the non-travelling life.

Monday, came home from work and just outside my dorm there were some guys having a BBQ. I stopped and had a chat to them. They turned out to be Germans who had lived in Aussie/NZ, one even had an Aussie accent! I had a few drinks and eats with them, didn’t get into my room until midnight. I still had my laptop bag with me :-)

Tuesday, I was “forced” to take the S-Class Merc out for a spin. I had to test an algorithm I was working on. It’s a very very nice car to drive. Most powerful thing that I’ve sat behind the wheel, and comfortable too. The results of the “test drive” were good as well.

Wednesday, it was Thom’s leaving drinks. He and his flat-mates were heading back to Sheffield. So had a few drinks at a local pub in Boeblingen. Only went until about midnight.

(Thom, me and Greguar)

(Heidi, K1 and Jonny)

Thursday, straight to the bus station from work to catch the overnight bus to Brussels. I don’t recommend them, I don’t think I slept at all, more rested my eyes… too uncomfortable... but it got me there so that’s all that counts :-P

Athens to Stuttgart

2007-08-06T12:00:00.000+12:00

Today we got up at 8am, packed up and checked out. Headed into the city and had a little bite to eat. Then got on the bus to the airport.

The flight back was no where near as packed as the flight over. I slept on the plane, but Lefourgue took lots of pictures from his window seat.

We arrived back at 12:40pm and managed to catch the convenient S-Bahn (metro) back to Hulb. So we were back and at work by 1:30pm. It felt strange coming from such a relaxing weekend straight from the airport to work.

The trip was fantastic, probably my favourite trip so far!
I would recommend Athens to anyone for various reasons. You can everything you need in 2 days, but could also stay for a week or two for a more “relaxing” stay.

Next weekend shall be very different. I’m heading to Brussels to catch up with the Esci boyz! (Well 90% of them) Really looking forward to it :-)

Bis später

Last Full Day in ΕΛΛΑΣ

2007-08-05T12:00:00.000+12:00

We got up around 10am, the people that were staying in our room had already departed, so we had a slow get-up and get ready. We were not meeting up with Lena until 1pm so gave us plenty of time.

We got into the city around 11:30, got some breakfast, which was these amazing sesame-seed pretzels. They were kind of sweet, but not, really strange taste but extremely good.
We stopped by the Parliament Building during the changing of the guard. They were some really weird stuff… but they let you take pictures with them :)

After that we walked around the city checking out the souvenir shops again. We found a t-shirt shop that did in store screen printing of all these different designs of shirts. I wanted to buy so many… but was very restrained.

1pm rolled on quickly, so we headed to the meeting point at the Hadrian’s Arch, which is kind of hard to miss right outside the Temple of Zeus. As soon as Lena arrived, we got on the tram to the beach. This time we got off at the second beach, which turned out to have more people. The water wasn’t as nice as the beach the previous day, but it was still wet and refreshing :)

We stayed there for a few hours talking about all sorts of things. Sunbathing and taking the odd dip in the water to cool down. This time I was prepared and had sunscreen :)

At 5:30 Lena had to leave to catch up with her friend, Steph, who had arrived at some stage throughout the day. We decided to head back to the city as well. The tram ride back to the city was rather interesting. As soon as the doors opened we heard a big, “WOOOOHEEEEEY”… and saw that it was packed right up to the doors. We had to squeeze in and find a spot. It was sooooo humid and hot with the amount of bodies in there. It turned out that there was an international juggling convention on the beach, and they were all heading to the city to perform a parade. After a long almost hour standing, barely being able to breath, we made it to Syntagma Square. It was a great feeling stepping of the tram and getting a breath of fresh air…. Even the temperature outside seemed cooling compared to the tram :-)

We walked Lena to her hotel and met Steph. Instead of saying our goodbyes, we decided to catch up for dinner at 8:30pm. They were doing a Contiki and had to be at a meeting from 7-8:30. So Lefourgue and I headed into the city to do our final souvenir shopping. I bought a couple of t-shirts which I found most amusing. Lefourgue bought some football paraphernalia. Then we headed back to the hotel to grab the girls and head out for dinner (we were starving).

We met them in the lobby and also Jasmine joined us, who was doing the Contiki with Lena and Steph. I played tour guide and led the group to a nice (and cheap) restaurant that I had noticed during my travels. We sat down and had a pleasant dinner (Greek salad and a cheese pie… yummo! I really liked Greek food). Talking about all sorts of things.

We walked the girls back to their hotel taking the scenic route around the edge of the Acropolis and down to the Temple of Zeus. I never stopped being impressed by the site of these monuments by night. I think we stopped every couple hundred metres to take photos.

We got back to the hotel at a reasonable hour of 11pm. The girls had to get up at 6am, so went off to bed. We said our goodbyes. It was rather sad saying bye to Lena because the three of us got on like a house on fire and we got to know her really well over the past two days.

Lefourgue had started talking the these two American girls in the lobby, mainly because a football game was on the TV :-) They were also doing the Contiki. We ended up talking for just under an hour. One of them wanted my contact details because they were thinking of heading to NZ. I’m always open to visitors :-)
We did manage to catch the last metro back to the hostel, and were in bed by about 1am.
It was a really nice day, very relaxing and fun.

3rd Day… Visit to Pireas

2007-08-04T12:00:00.000+12:00

The girls had to get up at 11am and check out, we so we said goodbye as they were off to Kreta for the rest of their trip (An Island off the coast of Greece). After they left, we got ready to head out for the day. We decided to go into the city for another look around. Lefourgue was in heaven with all the football shops around. I think we stopped in almost every one :)
There were also all these cool shops selling t-shirts. Some even selling my favourite kind, really un-pc and/or funny t-shirts. We were both trying to be restrained and not spend too much on anything, and wait till our last day. After a couple of hours wandering around the main street, we walked up and saw the town hall. Just outside were the meat-markets (not sleazy clubs… but actual butchery). All these butchers with their white aprons smeared with blood, wielding big cleavers and smashing chunks of meat off for their customers. It was actually really cool to see.
There were also pet shops around with cute puppies, hamsters, and other little creatures. I didn’t recognise some of them as we don’t have them in NZ.
We stopped at a supermarket and bought a bunch of fruit for lunch.

(See a resemblance between the two??)

Lefourgue wanted to head to Pireas and see the harbour. So we got onto the metro line and headed for the harbour. We got off the train and bumped into Marion. She invited us to sit with her and Bérengère, so we stopped for lunch. It turned out to be a couple of hours and a few cold drinks before we even moved. It was hot yet again (anyone seeing a theme here?). We finally decided to walk around the harbour. The girls joined me and Lefourgue because they needed to go to their pier anyway. Poor girls had to carry their backpacks in the heat as well. Yes I did offer my services as a pack-mule, but they didn’t take it :-)

The harbour was pretty ugly, just concrete everywhere and the water looked extremely polluted. After walking the girls to their pier, we said our farewells (again) and headed back to the city.

We went back to the hostel to have a shower and head out for the evening. It being a Saturday night, I wanted to see the nightlife, and dragged Lefourgue along with me :-) We ended up walking all the way from our hostel to town. It took about an hour, yet only 5 mins on the metro. We stopped at several little convenience stores along the way to grab a beer or other cold drink.

We got to the city and walked around and saw the city by night. The Acropolis by night is absolutely beautiful. In fact, all the monuments were almost better by night. There were floodlights highlighting them and it was very impressive. I took heaps of photos by night, but the don't really turn out very well because of the slow shutter speed.

We got dragged into one store at one point and Lefourgue bought some books, postcards and playing card. The cards were of Greek mythology and sex :-)
The shop attendant here was amazing. She could speak 7 languages including; French, English, Greek, Arabic and Spanish. It was a family owned store (as most Greek ones are) and she just learnt the languages by herself, only learning languages that she liked the sound of… and had to learn English for the practicality. I asked her for directions to the nightlife, and she told me that the city nightlife is basically closed for summer and you need to go to the beach.

So we started our walk to the tramway. On the way I saw a girl walking towards us looking completely lost and pulling a wheelie suitcase behind her. Just before I asked her if she needed any help, she asked us for directions. Lefourgue being his French self asked his standard first question, “Hello, do you speak French?” in English of course. She blurted out “Wee, blah blah something else in French”. Turned out she was French-Canadian and could speak both fluently.
I told her we would walk her to her hostel because I’m not sure how safe the backstreets of Athens are for a solo-female. Her name was Lena, from Montreal, Canada. We talked the whole way to the hostel, me speaking in English and Lefourgue in French, was strange hearing someone switch between two languages so quickly.
She was by herself for the evening so we ended up hanging out with her. First I played tour guide again and showed her the city by night, then we stopped in a little bar at about 1am to have a drink. After another hour or so of chatting and drinking (water mainly… coz it was hot) we walked her back to her hostel. She had the next day free as well, we told her we were heading to the beach and she could join us if she wanted. So we arranged to meet up again the next day.

Lefourgue and I had to walk home because the public transport finish at midnight. It was a very pleasant walk and actually discovered some different areas of the city that were quite nice, and those that weren’t. We walked through a park that had lots of comatosed drunk people, and also people cutting up cocaine with a credit card and snorting it. There were several police in the park that were sorting it out, so we felt relatively safe, considering some of the police are armed with sub-machine-guns. We ended up getting home about 4am and went to sleep rather easily.

To the Acropolis of Ancient ΕΛΛΑΣ

2007-08-03T12:00:00.000+12:00

(ΕΛΛΑΣ, pronounced Ellas, is the Greek name for Greece)
We didn’t wake up until about 10am which was nice. And our 4 bed room now had 2 girls in it that weren’t there when we went to bed. After we all woke up I started chatting to one of the girls… and surprise surprise… she was French :-P Lefourgue was very happy because he could speak French to his hearts content… in fact, English was not very fluent with the girls… so most of the conversations were in French with Lefourgue as a translator.
After chatting for a while we headed out for the day with our new found friends, Bérengère and Marion. We were heading to the Acropolis + other Greek monuments for the day.

I was playing guide for everyone, which I am getting used to doing now. The first stop was… a bakery to get some breakfast. Got some cheesy, olivey, mushroomy, tomatoey pastry thingy which was really nice. Then straight to the Acropolis. This place is pretty cool. Heaps of photo opportunities and lots to learn about the history. Athens was the panicle of Greek culture and the centre of their empire. I saw the areas where the philosophers used to sit and discuss.. stuff.

The Parthenon was very impressive, as was the Nike of Athina. Also, the view of the city from the top of the Acropolis was simply spectacular. Athens is HUGE! I did not realise the scale until up here. We were in the blistering heat, it was the hottest day while we were in Greece, so was probably not the best idea to be in the baking sun. Luckily there were water fountains everywhere I could wet my hat and continually fill up my waterbottle.

We headed from the Acropolis down to the Ancient Agora with anther amazing Temple. We looked through the museum located in this area which had lots of old statues… most of them were headless which I didn’t quite understand. After this it was just to hot to walk, and we were a little hungry. Not as much as we should be, the temperature just killed your appetite.

A little Greek restaurant we found in the backstreets of Psiri was where we ended up. It was just outside the hustle and bustle of the main area, and the prices were pretty good. The girls and I got a Greek salad each, Lefourgue got a pork dish. The food took a while to come out, but it was worth it. It was fantastic! We ended up spending just over 2 hours sitting, chatting, eating and drinking LOTS of iced water.

We finally got up and I was again chief guide. We checked out the Keramikos, the ancient Greek cemetery. It was relatively boring compared to what we had already seen. Oh… but there was a tortoise just wandering around in the sun.

After that we took the rather long walk to the Temple of Zeus… we arrived just in time before they cut off entry for the day. I really liked the Temple of Zeus, and found it on par with the Parthenon in the grand scale of coolness.

The only negative point I can say about the whole “Ancient Architecture” is it was very touristy, and 75% of it was fake. They have started major reconstructions to get it looking like it is “supposed” to rather than leaving it in ruins like it should be.
But Athens is built around the Ancient Monuments, so you can be walking down any street and see something really old. The Acropolis is basically located in the city centre!

After all this walked, we headed back to the hostel for a little rest… and to shower because we were all lovely and sweaty :-) Also, Marion was extremely burnt so was putting burn cream on repeatedly. I was a little burnt, but not too bad.
We chilled out for a bit, then headed to a local part of the city to have some dinner at 11pm. We ended up being boring and having KFC, I felt a bit guilty being in a country of such fine cuisine and eating western fast food. It was good though and we were the last customers allowed to order as they were closing.

We headed back and it was just too hot to sleep. We stayed up until about 1 or 2am chatting and listening to music.

On our way to Athens

2007-08-02T12:00:00.000+12:00

Guten tag meine fraunden.

Last week I had a double black day on Tuesday. My room-mate Stepan finished at DaimlerChrysler so left back to Konstanz. We got on really well so I will miss his company.
Also, Thom left the research team I work in. So my English speaking companion is now gone… I spent Tuesday evening chatting with him at work until about 8:30pm before he took off to catch his bus. I will catch up with him in November anyway :-)

Wednesday, Lefourgue and I stayed up late getting ready for Athens, didn’t end up getting to bed until midnight, with the alarm set for 3:30am :-(
Up at 3:30am Thursday morning, and on our way, starting our walk to the train station at 4:15am… we had to catch the first train at 4:58 otherwise we would miss our flight. Exciting times! We made it, checked in and the flight was completely full… we ended up sitting in seats not next to each other, but it didn’t matter because I slept the entire time anyways.

So after the 3 hour flight we arrived at 9:40am… not to bad for getting on the plane at 6am (+1 hour time zone for those of you trying to figure it out). We got off the plane and didn’t think it was too hot… well… it was only about 30 degrees. We got on a bus and headed to the city. It took about an hour and dropped us off in Syntagma Square, which is the epicentre of the Athens, and where the main government is located.

We had a suitcase that we wanted to check in… so after wandering for an hour asking several people we eventually found it… it was not clearly marked. The Greek alphabet is not the same as the Latin alphabet that we use, funnily enough it is Greek :-) Lefourgue and I could read most of the Greek because of our math background (geeks… rhymes with Greek doesn’t it, I wonder if that is where the origin came from?). Most of the street signs were subtitled in English for when we couldn’t read a sign.
Once I had a map though… we were right as rain. I’m getting very used to quickly learning a metro (underground train) system and also studying city maps. So only a few stops up the road we checked into our hostel. It wasn’t too far from the main city. It wasn’t the cleanest… but it was pretty cheap so you get what you pay for.

Lefourgue and I headed into the city to check out the main bustling shopping districts. The city was full on… heaps of people about and the temperature was now hot, around 40. We wandered around for quite a while checking out various shops… the shopping streets reminded me a bit of China. People on the streets ushering you into the shop and people pestering you to buy things.
Also, the amount of illegal items that were on the streets to be sold was incredible… lots of fake Prada, Gucci and Armani bags etc… mainly for the girls. The people would have these big sheets with knots in the corners which they would use to lay the bags on. As soon as the police showed up they grabbed the 4 corners and mad a knapsack, then very quickly scuttled off to setup shop in another street. I sometimes wonder how much of it is real, and how much of it is for show, so people think they are getting the real deal.

We stopped at a little shop and had a drink in the middle of the day. I had a nice cold Greek beer. It tasted similar to a NZ beer, so not the German standard that I am now used to… but it was cold and wet and was good. I ended up talking to this Spanish couple (Augustine and Patricia) that were sitting beside us and talked about their adventures. After our drink we walked around the city and saw the Acropolis from the streets… it was pretty cool. But we planned to see it up close on another day.

After wandering for a few hours… we stopped at the info centre and asked how to get to the beach. It turned out to be an hour away by bus or tram. It was still very hot at 5:30pm so we decided to go. We got off at the first beach we saw. It was nice, with a bar on the beach and people playing soccer, volleyball and other sports all around. We went for a quick dip then had a bit of a sunbathe… I fell asleep for about an hour :-)
We left at sunset which was beautiful.

After that we decided to head back into the city. We wandered around for a bit, grabbed a quick bite to eat, then decided to have an early night because we were both shattered. We were back “home” and in bed by 11pm. We had a quick analysis of the room… and I made a bet with Lefourgue. I said “I bet we have two French girls staying in our room” he thought an American couple.
Outside it was at least 30 degrees in our room, so we had to sleep with the door open. And Athens doesn’t rest! People were up all night on the streets making noise and all sorts. We were in part of the suburbs, so removed from the city centre as well! I don’t think I got much sleep but definitely slept at some stage.

Zurich und der Rheinfall

2007-07-29T12:00:00.000+12:00

Next morning up at 8am to have breakie... the food was quite nice, the usual bread + jam + cheese you get for breakfast, good coffee though and a nice selection of cereals. The triple S and we were out of there to head to Zürich.

Arrived at Zürich at 10:30am. Had a walk down to the lake, and fed some swans. Then wandered around the city for a while, took lots of pictures of the city. It was quite nice, nothing special but still a pleasant walk. We had a look at the National Museum, it was relatively boring, nothing that stood out as special, except for this big f**k off sword that was bigger than Janath... we were wondering how anyone would pick it up.

After the museum we stopped for lunch by the river. It was very nice, we fed the swans here as well. They came very close and did not bite you when you were feeding them.

We continued our walk around the city, it was quite nice... except the weather packed in and we were walking around in a light drizzle. We found one thing that was quite amusing, which emphasised the Swiss snobbery... a seat that said "Nur für Steuerzahler der Stadt Zürich" which translates to "Only for taxpayers of Zurich"... so of course we took a photo of us sitting on it :)

During our walk we went up the Gross Münster (biggest church in Zürich). It was a good walk up and very much worth it. The view of the city was definatly cool.
We were getting bored of Zürich, so we decided to head out of the city and see the Rheinfall.

After driving an hour or so we parked up and got out of the car. We could already hear the waterfall in the background. A 10 minute walk and we arrived... it was very impressive. We took many photos and videos of the waterfall. You could get so close you were almost touching it. We even took a boat ride to the centre of the waterfall where you could climb up some steps and onto one of the tall rocks in the middle. My camera battery ran out just after taking a movie in the centre... so that was the photos for the day :)

After the Rheinfall, we decided we wanted to go to an Asian restaurant for dinner... so we searched the GPS and found a Vietnamese restaurant in Vallingen. This was a nice little restaurant called Saigon. The owner could speak German and English very well (he was Vietnamese of course). Both Janath and I asked for our meals "very hot". The owner said "I have something for you to try"... he brought out this bottle of sauce, got Janath and I a toothpick each, dipped the tip into the sauce and gave it to us. We touched it to our tongue and nothing happened. Within 10 seconds your mouth was completely on fire... even Janath couldn't handle it! My eyes and nose were running for at least 10 minutes and my mouth didn't stop burning the entire time I was there. If you guys wanna try it go to this website: www.chilliworld.com
We had the "Da' Bomb Ground Zero" which is a measly 235 000 Scoville units, out of a possible 16 million!

Got home just after 11... so crashed and that was the weekend. Nothing too major but was a very nice relaxing weekend.

Trip to Luzern

2007-07-28T12:00:00.000+12:00

Got up at 7am and got ready to head to Lucerne. It was by car this time. The travelling party was: Le Fourgue, Janath and me. A quick stop at the supermarket and we were on the road at 9am on our way to the Swiss boarder.

Arrived at our hostel at lunch time, and we couldn't check in until 2. So conveniently we had lunch outside to kill an hour. Then we had a drive around the city to check it out, it was really cool so we decided to head straight back then walk into the city.
While waiting to check in I got talking to a pommy guy named Adam. He was taking a 1 month trip around Eastern Europe, and stopping in Switzerland on the way. Also got talking to a yank, Josh. He actually studied in Christchurch for a year, so wasn't ignorant of the rest of the world. He was taking a 12 day holiday to visit Switzerland (from the USA).

(Adam, Josh, Le Fourgue and me)

So after we checked in the 5 of us walked into town. The first stop was the "Dying Lion". This is a famous statue (which I knew nothing about until Josh mentioned it to me) of a dying lion (funny that), that symbolises the Swiss mercenaries that died defending the king and that were guillotined during the French revolution. It was a very impressive statue.

After that we walked around some of the city, took the compulsory stop at the church (so many massive churches in Europe!) where a wedding was taking place... we tried not to get in any photos ;-)
Then we headed straight for the waterfront. The views on Lake Luzern were breathtaking. The mountain backdrop with the sailing ships on the lake were fantastic... except the fact that they were Swiss sailors (I'm bitter about America's Cup... grrr). It kind of reminded me of Queenstown. On one of the mountains you can even stay in the hotel up there... the views would be amasing!
We had a walk around the board walk... you could just feel the wealth of the locals oozing out. People were wearing very flash clothes and all made up like they had somewhere to be. I felt a bit like scum, all unshaven and wearing my ripped jeans... was fantastic :)
After walking for a bit we chilled out in the sun which was nice.

Next stop the old bridges in the city. It was pretty nice, wooden bridges with paintings in the ceiling. At one point all the church bells in the city were going off, it was pretty spectacular with a surround sound going throughout the city.

There was a music festival on, tonight was the last night. So after walking about for a couple of hours, we headed in to check out some music. One of the guys we saw playing was staying in the hostel the night before and Josh stayed up listening to him jam. So we checked out him for a bit, then checked out some of the other stages.

Eventually, we grabbed a few beers and sat down by the waterfront and chatted with the music in the background. After that we had a walk around the city by night which was very nice. The city was quite beautiful by night as well.

It wasn't a very late night and we were back at the hostel and in bed by midnight.

My overall impression of Lucerne was very nice. The kind of city you would want to take a girlfriend, or to just chill out on the waterfront, there was plenty of eye candy.

Week in summary

2007-07-27T12:00:00.000+12:00

Hello kids,

Last week was a relatively busy one for me.
Skip this if you just interested in my travels :-P

Tuesday night... Jan (workmate) had a box of beer which had to be drunk because he was leaving this week. So Jan, Stefan (room-mate) and I stayed up and finished the box of beer.

Wednesday night: Jan's birthday. So of course, most of the people from work met up at a biergarten to enjoy a few fine German beers. I learnt some new German phrases which was quite fun. The main one was: "Ich möchte diesen Teppich nicht kaufen, bitte", which translates to "I don't want to buy these carpets, please". You can use it to order beer :-P as there is a commercial with this phrase and the people get given beer. I tested it and it worked!
Oh, and after much pestering (and the help of a couple of beers) they got me to do the Haka for them. Now I haven't done it since primary school, so I was a bit rusty on the words... but the actions came naturally. I even got Jan up to teach him how to do it which was quite fun.

Thursday: Jan, Andreas (workmate) and I headed out to a fitness centre called "Pink Power" to play squash. Now you know how much I am one for innuendo, so the whole week I had been playing on the fact "three guys are heading to pink power to go into a room together and sweat... etc etc"
All jokes aside, it was good to have several games of squash. I was very rusty, but still managed to win every game. Afterwards we had a sauna. I haven't had a sauna before, strange experience going into a room and 'sweat like a pig' for 15 minutes at a time. Andreas was a sauna expert, so we had to go through all these phases, like dip your feet in cold water, then hot water, then rub salt on yourself to increase the sweat. Didn't get home until midnight, but it was very relaxing and tiring.

Friday: Jan left work today. I really got on with him and he will be missed. He will be back in 2 months, just before I head off. That night, I went out with Thom (workmate) and Jon (Thom's flatmate) to an English pub for a drink or two. Was pretty casual and I caught the 3am bus home because I had to get up at 7am on Sat.

My Job... in summary

2007-07-24T04:33:00.000+12:00

Well... since I didn't have much to write about the weekend I have decided to give people a run down on what I'm doing for work. Next weekend I'm going to Lucerne and Zurich in Switzerland, so will probably have a bit more to write about.

I have had many people ask "are you actually working or just writing a travel guide?" and also several requests to write something about what I'm doing. So... here goes... I'm pretty sure most of you will think "geek" and will go to sleep during this :-P

First a bit of a summary of what I'm doing here. I'm doing a PhD in Computer Vision: getting computers to see the world as humans do. This is a massive field, so my primary focus is; free-space detection in construction scenes for driver assistance systems using binocular stereo vision. (In English: using 2 cameras to look at the road, in road-works situations, and tell the assistance system where the car is allowed to go)

I am working at a DaimlerChrysler (Mercedes Benz for those of you not familiar) in a research department. The business model is very different here, basically they are doing the work that their suppliers should be doing. So if they generate anything beneficial, it is given freely to their suppliers. The company only gets a 6 months first to market advantage, then the other car companies can just use the same products.

The first few weeks here I spent setting my my laptop and learning the framework of the software that I am going to be using / writing. Basically learning how everything fits together and how the analysis works with the camera system. There is 20 years of research / development that has gone into it, so I was only scratching the surface. I hadn't touched coding in over 2 years, so it was a drop in the deep end and getting my head around things.

I also learnt how advanced they are in research. The research is about 10 years ahead of serial production. So the systems that are coming out now which you may be familiar with (auto-parking, ABS, anti-slip systems, collision avoidance) were started 10 years ago. They have already got cars that can drive themselves in certain situations, e.g. following another vehicle and grid-locked traffic. Of course, our main focus is the algorithms for the systems, I.e. designing "how a system works" as opposed to "designing a working system". So kind of the opposite facet of what I was doing in my Engineering Degree.

The next few weeks I spent writing manuals on what I had learnt. How to set up a laptop from scratch, and also overviews on the whole system aimed specifically at Camera Calibration (taking the left camera and mapping it onto the same coordinate plane as the right camera). It was during this time that my supervisor (Prof. Reinhard Klette) needed some assistance for setting up the project back in NZ. We are applying for funding so we can set up a "basic" car in NZ to record and analyse data. The aim is we will have a small research facility in Auckland that is compatible with the research here at DaimlerChrysler.
I was very comfortable with this part of it as, it was similar to the organisational stuff I had to do at COGITA. A nice way to ease me into my stay here.

The last couple of weeks I have actually started getting my hands dirty back in programming. Remembering how everything works with computer software and trying to read other peoples code. I got a lot of assistance from Clemens (guy at work that knows everything) to get me up to speed. I have started producing some real results now, working in my research area. The theory is starting to settle in, and because it is all on-screen visually, you can see your work immediately which is nice.

The rest of my time here will be continuing my research and increasing my theoretical knowledge about computer vision. Also assisting the Masters Student back in NZ when he is having trouble with the software. I may be going to a conference or two, so I can network and get new ideas on what types of algorithms / methods I can apply to my area of research.

In my final weeks I will be concentrating on learning how the car computers communicate to each other, and how to get the information out of the car. The aim is to get enough knowledge so we can set up the car back in NZ. The aim of this task is I will be co-supervising a Masters students who will do the car set-up with me assisting when they get stuck.

When I get back we will hopefully have some more PhD and Masters students, who I will be working with and co-supervising, so we can expand the project.

Hopefully that brief summary of what I am doing didn't go over your heads too much... and I won't blame you if you went to sleep and/or skipped half of it. I know I'm a geek... and better start accepting the fact ;-)

Bis später (see ya later)

Work Trip

2007-07-22T12:00:00.000+12:00

On Sunday there was an organised work trip to do a "GeoQuest Challenge". Its something I only heard about over here. Basically, you go to a forest with a GPS, a list of questions, coordinates and challenges to do along the way. It was organised by Heidi (work mate) and her boyfriend Tobias. They did a great job and it was an entertaining way to spend a day.

So, we turned up at Tobias + Heidi's house in Reutlingen. Had a drink then headed off to the forest. We were divided into two teams and we went on our way.

Everything was in German and so I just cruised along for the walk through the forest. I helped search for some clues, but basically was dead weight :-P

The 3 hours it took flew past... only felt like an hour. In the end our team ended up winning... woohoo!!! So we went back to Heidi and Tobias' house to start the BBQ. German BBQ's are different to the Kiwi one. It involves starting a fire and cooking on the embers.

The food was really nice, it's been a while since I've had a good BBQ. I stuffed myself and really enjoyed it. After we had all finished, the other team turned up... we had beat them by about an hour.

The evening passed by with eating and of course, a few beers. At home and in bed by 11:30.

So the weekend was a pretty quiet one. The next 6 weekends are going to be a bit more full on me thinks.

Schloss Neuschwanstein

2007-07-21T12:00:00.000+12:00

Well the week just gone has been pretty good.
My room-mate Stepan finished his final exams on Tuesday and arrived back at the dormitory on Wednesday. We decided to have a few drinks to celebrate his achievements. It was pretty low key, just Stepan, Jan (guy from work), Michel (Frenchie) and myself. Had a few beers, a few whiskeys and talked crap for a while. Got to bed about 2am so it wasn't too late.

On Friday night, I was planning on having an early night... but Stepan was out celebrating once again. So I headed into town to catch up with him. Didn't do anything too exciting. I was kind of the party pooper because I couldn't walk very far without stopping for a while... wearing shoes with a sore toe is not that pleasant. We only went out until about 2am, and Stefan continued back to his home town for the weekend.

On comes Saturday morning... well late morning. I got up at 10am and got ready to head to Neuschwanstein Castle. In German they have two words for Castle: Schloss (new castle) and burg (old castle). Neuschwanstein (New-Swan-Stone) is one of the most famous castles in the world... you will recognise pictures of it if not by name (I didn't know the name but recognised it). It was a candidate for one of the 7-wonders-of-the-modern-world (didn't succeed though).

I went with 2 guys from work, Jan and Andreas. It was only a 2 hour drive down to the Bavarian Alps, very close to the boarder of Austria. Driving into the small town, Hohenschwangau, at the base of the mountain you could see the side of the castle. I was automatically captivated by the sight of it, and I hadn't even seen it up close. The backdrop of the Bavarian Alps with low cloud made the aura of the place feel like a fairytale scene.

There were actually two castles in the area: Neuschwanstein Castle and Hohenschwangau Castle. Hohenschwangau was the "main" castle where the Bavarian royalty lived for their vacation home. Neuschwanstein was built late 1800's as a pet project of King Lutwig II. The place was very touristy and there were 100's of people about.

We decided to get the "Royal Ticket" to make us feel important... well actually, it was just a fancy way to say "you can visit both castles in one day". The first tour of Hohenschwangau was first.

This castle was pretty small, and not very inspiring at all. The rooms were small (for a castle/palace) so you could tell it was not a main living place. The main purpose was a "hunters" getaway for the royal family. The guided tour was ok, but you were not really amazed by the inside of it. And you weren't allowed to take pictures anyway. There was one cool fact where the servants and king/queen were completely separated to the point where the stove-fires were fed from passageways in the walls. So the king/queen were kept warm without having to see the servants working away. Brings a new meaning to snobbery doesn't it :-)

The tour of Neuschwanstein was not for another couple of hours. We we sat down and had a drink to kill an hour. After that we continued to hike up the mountain which took about 40 minutes to reach the top. We stopped at Marienbrücke (bridge behind the castle) to see the spectacular view. The bridge itself was high above a river and cave system that was quite spectacular.

This castle was much much better than the other castle. The outside is spectacular and I took heaps of photos. This castle was built in a time that it fulfilled one purpose, to look good. No practical purpose of defence... and you can definitely tell and appreciate the toy project of Lutwig II that was built in honour of Richard Wagnar (composer).
The tour of the inside was good, the inside was more just as beautiful as the outside, if not more so. The "kings room" was amasing. They had 14 wood-carvers working for 3 years on that room alone, and you could tell. The top of the bed had spectacular carvings of other castles from around the world.

Our tour guide was funny, she kept getting her dates mixed up and getting numbers confused. In one room she mentioned the ceiling had 69 compartments... we counted and there were actually 96. So afterwards, we went up to her and Andreas made a bet with her about some of the facts. She messed up the numbers because of the translation of German numbers to English (in German you say 9 and 60, instead of 69). So it was understandable. Andreas achieved his goal anyway and got her email address (she was quite hot) and bet her an ice-cream for her answer on the number of steps in the castle.

By the time we finished the tour and got back to the car it was already 7pm. On the way home the weather was atrocious! Heavy rain and hail. Cars were stopping under bridges just to stop being pounded. We just drove through it.

We stopped at Ulm on the way home for Burger King. Ulm is a famous city because it has the worlds tallest church, the Münster. It was quite cool, but didn't stay too long. Got home at 10ish so had a quiet evening watching a movie or two.

Onto Bratislava.... almost

2007-07-16T12:41:00.000+12:00

The next day I woke up early again and it was very hot. After having breakfast I caught up with the pommy girls. They had done the exact same things as I had yesterday, they even bumped into David (the pommy guy) on his way out.

I had decided to head to go to a museum for the morning then head to Bratislava (capital of Slovakia) for the afternoon. It was only an hour away... so why not?

First I stopped at Stephensplatz and decided to get a good look at the city. So up I went to the top of the Stephenplatz Dom. 343 steps up and it was 37 degrees... wasn't the most pleasant experience... but the cathedral was well ventilated.

I went into one of the main Museums in Vienna. The Sisi Museum, Royal Apartments and Silverware museum (they were all in one place). It was an audio-guided tour, which I am starting to get used to now. The silverware part was quite boring as you would expect, but the Sisi museum was good.

It talked about Queen Elizabeth (Empress of Hungary) who was nick-named Sisi. She was very famous for being absolutely stunningly beautiful, and also for being assassinated in the early 1900's. The museum explained how she came to be Queen by marrying her cousin (... it was normal back then). It went through her life and how she became increasingly depressed when her only son committed suicide. And eventually went on to explain the assassination. Here is a dress she wore.

The Royal apartments were quite good too, you got to see where Sisi and King Franz Joseph lived. You were not allowed to take photos... and they had a woman that was telling people off who took photos... what a crap job :-P

After this I headed to the Südbahnhof (South Rail Station) and got on the train that was about to depart for Bratislava. Now here is where I made my mistake... I decided to use the bathroom.
I was standing there and someone knocked at the door. I said "someone in here", as you do. Then the door was unlocked and a cleaner opened the door. The door was that perfect height and clipped the top of my toe.... which ripped the toe-nail straight back so it was only attached by the bottom. Not the most pleasant experience you can imagine. All the cleaner could say was "Entschuldigen... ach scheißen". At this point there was blood all over my flip-flop so I covered up my toe with some toilet paper and washed my shoe off.
Eventually the cleaner came back with some bandage and tape to tape my toenail down with. At this point I decided it wasn't the best idea to go to Bratislava right now.
If you wanna see a picture of my toe... click here. It's not very pleasant.

So I cancelled my ticket then headed to the Krankenhaus (hospital). The health system works here. Within 2 hours I had filled out a form, had an preliminary exam, had an x-ray, and had my toenail stitched back on by some ER surgeons. And I would consider this a minor injury. They told me that all they could to was stitch it on for now, and wait for the nail to fall off in a weeks time. The most painful part of all of it was the actual injections for the anaesthetic.
I am really getting my money's worth out of travel insurance, because that escapade was 220 Euro ($440NZD).

So, instead of going to Bratislava, I spent my afternoon in a Hospital.... it was air-conditioned which was nice, as the weather outside was near 40 degrees.

After all this I didn't feel like walking about... well it was difficult. So I went back to the Hostel.

I sat down beside a random couple and started chatting to them. They were two Canadians, Nathan was half American, Isha was half Japanese. They had been living in Japan teaching English, and were travelling on their way back to Canada. Nathan was really into movies, in fact he was going back to complete film school in Canada. Now I am also passionate about movies so we talked about all the strange little movies we have seen and talked about our opinions on great actors, directors etc.

It was actually film festival time in Vienna, and they were heading out to watch the 1958 original "The Blob", and asked if I wanted to join them. It sounded like a perfect thing to do... not much walking. We hoped on the U-Bahn and got there. There were heaps of people and it was an open air movie right beside the fanfare.

The movie was cheesy as you would expect for a 1958 Sci-Fi horror. We really enjoyed it and also the audience all clapped at the over-dramatic cheesy ending :-P

After that, we left and went home to bed... I had to get up at 5:30 to catch my plane.

Overall... I enjoyed my time in Vienna, even with the minor hiccup today :)

Next day in the Austrian Capital

2007-07-15T12:13:00.000+12:00

Up at 8:30... because it was already too hot to be in bed. After a shower etc, I went off to breakfast. I bumped into Ben (the Aussie from Perth whom I met in Nürnberg 2 weeks earlier) which was just weird. So I sat down with him and found out what he had been up to. Some other people joined us who he had gone out with the night before. 2 Pommy girls, 1 Pommy guy and a French-Moroccan dude. They were all shattered after getting in after 5am.

They told me about the Viennese night clubs, saying that all the people were wearing Gucci, Prada, Armani etc, smoking their cigars, and looking down upon the plebs. They said it felt really snobbish.

I told them I was heading to the palace and they were welcome to join me. They all said yip and I told them to meet up in the main reception. In the reception area while waiting, I got talking with an American guy that had just checked in. Asked him if he wanted to tag along. At 10:30 when I wanted to leave the girls were busy on the net booking hostels for their next destination and Ben was a no-show.

So off we went: A Kiwi, a Pom, a Frenchie and an American. We got to the Palace late, around 11:15am... it didn't matter because the Canadians were running later than me :)

The palace was pretty spectacular, and we decided to walk around the gardens. This place was well kept. Very beautiful and we walked around here for a couple of hours. Everyone getting to know each other a bit better. The French-Canadians got talking with French guy speaking in foreign toungue ;-)

We went into the city after this and got something to eat. Again, traditional Austrian food... a Bratwurst in a hotdog bun :-P They were really good... or maybe I was just really hungry. Then the compulsory icecream for the hot day.

Again, it was just too hot to do anything at 35 degrees, so we went to the Alte Donau again. This time we were prepared (well the girls and I) and had our togs (or swimmers or bathing suit... they don't use togs anywhere else Kiwis!) The water was good. Cold enough to cool you down, but warm enough to stay in for a while.

Fast forward a couple of swims and a few beers and a couple of people heading off to other destinations, we ended up back in the city outside the Rathaus (cityhall). There were all these food stands with different cuisines at each one. I ended up getting a chicken curry. There was Opera music playing the the background to add to the Ambiance and infuse the theme of Vienna. Caroline, Catherine, Will (the Yank) and I were the only ones remaining. We enjoyed dinner and a fruity beverage. The girls then left to get ready for their departure the next morning. We said our goodbyes and it was just Will and I remaining. We got a coffee then headed back to the hostel. My plan was to get out of my sweaty clothes then head back into town (with new clothes on... of course hehe).

On arriving back at the hostel Will and I got chatting with some Poms. They were quite interesting and we talked American and British politics. The war on Iraq, the Bush fiasco, Tony Blair etc... So I assume most of you are asleep now after reading that? It was quite in depth discussions and we talked until 1am... so I went to bed and didn't make it out.

Last minute trip to Vienna

2007-07-14T12:20:00.000+12:00

Well,

I had semi-plans for this weekend but nothing was confirmed by Thursday. So I took some initiative and decided to just go somewhere rather than wait for others to make their minds up.
I got on the net and booked some flights to Vienna, Austria. People had told me it is a nice place to go and the flights were relatively cheap at 85 Euro.

I left on Saturday morning, I had to get up at 4:30am to be at the airport by 6:00am as my plane flew out at 7am. I'm getting used to the "get up and go to the airport" routine now.

There wasn't much of a line to check in and also the flight wasn't very full. This is the 4th different airline I have flown with since being in Europe, called Germanwings. They were pretty good. They are a low cost airliner that act kind of like a bus service :-) i.e. you don't get allocated a seat, you just get on-board and sit down. Makes things a bit easier.

The flight went well and only took an hour. So I was in Vienna and on my way to check-in to the hostel at 8:30am! I couldn't check in so I just left my bag in a locker and went into the city.

Up until this time I hadn't seen the city yet, I had been on the underground subway since the airport. My hostel was half an hour out of the city, and an hour from the airport. So it's strange being on a train for an hour and not actually seeing any of the city :)

I stepped out of the subway and saw daylight... it was now about 30 degrees at 9:30am. Wow... is the only way I can explain my first impression of Vienna. The buildings are huge, and extremely old.

You forget that Vienna was once home to the great Austro-Hungarian Empire, and before that the Holy Roman Empire, both of which controlled most of Europe. The city speaks for itself thought with it's grand scale of architecture and the number of monuments erected around the place. Everywhere I walked I was awe struck with the impressiveness of the place.

I got lost at first because you can not see any landmark, wherever you are you are surrounded by at least 4 storied buildings, most of which are hundreds of years old. I eventually found the Info centre and got some map and an idea of what I wanted to do.

I started with a self-guided walking tour where you can see most of the main sites. I ventured off the "directed" path on the map because there were just amaising buildings and sites to see at every turn. The pictures in my gallery show some of the main sites... but I took so many photos.

My favourite site was the cathedral in Karlsplatz.

After walking for several hours, I realised what the time was. I noticed these stands with bicycles locked into them. Me being my nosey self, walked up and investigated. It was a public bike system that cost 1 Euro to register, then taking the bikes was free. The catch was you had to return it to a stand within an hour, but then you could grab another bike. The public transport system in Vienna is just awesome!

So I got on my bike (hehe), then continued my "walking" tour through the city. I got even more distracted because I could now get further quicker. Saw many amasing buildings in the Museum Court and cool little streets everywhere I went. I lost track of the time and realised that it was almost the time a guided tour of the city was taking place... so I cycled back to the info centre (getting lost several times along the way), found a bicycle stand to lock the bike back up, then tried to find the guided tour. I found them, just in time. In fact, I didn't even have to pay because I was late and turned up after the money collection time... oops ;-)
(I think I should write a "dodgy" guide to travelling... because I can see how you can exploit a lot of the systems around Europe, especially public transport)

Anyways, the guided tour was not bad. You didn't get to see too much but learnt a bit about Austrian culture. Why the coffee shops are expensive, and we got a guide around a cool cake shop. I got chatting with a few people on the tour and discussed some of the things we were being shown.

At the end of the guide most of the people said byebye. I was still talking to some Canadians. They said they were heading to the river (because it was f***ing hot) which the guide had told us about. They asked if I wanted to join them.

So off we went to the Alte Donau (the old river that runs through the outskirts of Vienna) it was about 15 minutes from the city by U-Bahn. They had made this little beach on the side of the river and it was a really nice place to sit and have a beer. You had to pay to enter, but it was worth it. So we got chatting and found out about each other. Summary: 2 French-Canadians, Catherine was an English teacher and Caroline was a French teacher, 1 English-Canadian, Ryan who was working for the Canadian Embassy in Serbia. We had a couple of beers to cool down, and the afternoon flew by.

At this stage we were starving, so we went into the city to find somewhere to eat / drink. Ryan lead us to a micro-brewery which he had found in his previous travels to Vienna. I ordered some traditional Austrian food, sausages and sour-crout. Ryan and I worked our way through the various different beers that they brewed there. It was relatively quiet there and we had 4 waitresses to our table... we would constantly have different people coming up to us and getting drink orders... it was great!
The waitresses all spoke English, and one even said she was an American. We were a bit confused because she had a strong German accent. She had been living there for 4 years... but in the end we came to the conclusion, she can't be lying, only an American would ever admit to being an American :-P

At about midnight we decided to call it a night. Ryan was heading back to Serbia in the morning so I swapped contact details with him. The girls and I decided to meet up at the Schönbrunn Palace in the morning.

I headed back to the Hostel to finally check in :-)
I was a little hazy eyed after trying most of the beers on the menu, but found the hostel, unpacked and got into bed at a reasonable hour.

Pretty good first day, and it was still around the high 20's at midnight... just ridiculous.

Tag Zwei in München

2007-07-08T12:08:00.000+12:00

The next morning Noel and Mohammed got up at 7am to go for a run through the park.
Michel and I did the smart thing and staying in bed until 9am.

We had some breakie then headed out for a day at the Deutsches Museum.

This place was very impressive. It was 7 stories high plus basement and had 55 exhibits. They ranged from Petroleum and natural gas to paper to musical instruments to astronomy. Each exhibit had lots of hands on stuff... so you could play!

It was an engineers dream. Anybody that has an interest in the way the world works would absolutely love this museum! One of the things I found very cool was a small flowing river with foam bubbles on the surface. You could change the shape of the river using all these different obstacles. It showed how they effected the flow and explained about eddy-currents and all the other nerdy things that my engineering friends will understand.
Also in the chemistry section, you could push a button and watch experiments happen in front of you. Most of them were ones you have done at school, like putting potassium dichromate with alcohol and watching it go from orange to green (In laymen terms: the crystals in the breathaliser bag).
I loved the aeronautical section, they had dozens of planes and models for you to look at. Everything had a board so you could read about it (half of them were in German... so didn't understand those ones).

There was way way too much to see in one day. Mohammed and Noel got tired and decided to sit down while Michel and I did a flying visit to some of the upper floors which we missed.

If anyone goes to Munich and has a spare day, I suggest they visit this museum. I'm sure there is something you will find interesting. And it was quite cheap to visit as well.

After leaving the museum, we headed back to Mohammed's place because we were all a bit shattered. We packed up and headed back to Böblingen.

(Michel, Mohammed and Noel looking pretty shattered after the day at the museum)

This weekend was a pretty relaxing one. Although, the other guys seemed to think it was full on?
It was good to see Munich during Summer and not in a drunken haze. It will be a different experience during Oktoberfest for sure!

The Bavarian Capital... München

2007-07-07T12:05:00.000+12:00

Well... on Friday night I went to town with the guys from the dorm.
It was Wayne (Yugoslavian), Janath (Indian), Rui (Chinese), Jan (German) and myself.
I was driving and also recovering from being sick. I had to take Mon/Tues off work to see the doctor. So only had a couple of drinks. It was an ok night wandering around the bars, nothing eventful, but got back home around 4:30am.

I got up at 8am (body clock woke me up) so I went to the kitchen where Le Fourgue was with his mate Noel (French) having some breakfast. They asked if I wanted to come to Munich with them. After only 4 hours sleep I wasn't quite with it... but I said "sure". I had 20 mins to get ready... enough time to have a shower, get packed, have something to eat, then get to the car :-)

The trip there was ok... I lay down in the back of the small Citreon and had a bit of a sleep. The trip took about 3 hours because there was a bunch of traffic and accidents along the autobahns.

We arrived in Munich just before lunch. We were staying at one of Michel's mates, named Mohammed (from Tunisia). They were all spoke French... so had to listen to French all day :-P but it was a nice change from listening to German all day. Have I mentioned before I hate not knowing what the conversations around me are about?!? I'm actually starting to now say in some conversations... "what are you guys talking about?". I usually get a translation, but still miss the conversation. Anyways... back to the trip at hand.

We started our adventure by walking into the city along the scenic route through West Garten. It was very nice and only took about half an hour to get to the city. The first stop was Marienplatz, which contained the Rathaus (old city). This place was spectacular, but there were hundreds of people around and you were constantly trying to avoid walking into someone. I took lots of photos of course.

We walked all around here and saw the sites. We then walked through the Englischer Garten (huge park near the city centre). This place was interesting. There were many naked people sunbathing along the riverbank, so I guess it was deemed ok, because there were kids around and everything. Most of them were men, so seeing naked penis everywhere was a little strange. I couldn't help but imagine how bad sunburn would be..... well yes.

It was a lovely park anyway with some very beautiful scenery (try not to think dodgy thoughts). We ended up at a big biergarten in the centre of the park. You could definately tell you were in Baveria when there were people sitting around drinking in lederhosen. I was in Munich... so I had to get "ein grosses bier bitte!"

After that we decided to head home and have some dinner. Mohammed made us some yummy Arabic food, then we got ready to head out to a carnival. I got ready in 5 minutes flat, the Frenchies spent half an hour looking in the mirror and making sure they looked good. They were like girls (no offence to either party).

We headed out to the Olympic stadium to a carnival. It was nothing special, lots of people about, food, drinks etc. But you paid Munich prises for everything... $8 for chocolate fruit on a stick.
We stayed until about midnight then went home to bed.

All in all, a pretty relaxing day. What I needed while I'm still recovering from being sick.

The Nazi Fairgrounds

2007-07-01T12:00:00.000+12:00

This day was the more educational and interesting of the two. Not too much spectacular views, but a lot to take in.

We woke up and got out of the hostel at midday. We had talked about the Nazi Fairgrounds with the guys last night, so decided to head there and check it out. It was a few kilometers out of the city, so we decided to drive there.

We knew we had arrived because of the monolithic stadium before us. You can see a picture of it below. This stadium has a lot of history behind it. Hitler wanted to build a monument, so impressive that it would not be recognised in the year 2000, but thousands of years in the future like the Roman and Greek ruins. He wanted the world to know that Germany was a superpower above all others.

Attached to the side of this monolith was the "National Socialist Documentarium" (Nazi Museum). This place was very interesting. You pay 5 Euro and you get this thingy to carry around. There is very little to see, you walk around the place and look at a few photos, and watch a few movies. Every photo though has an audio commentary about it. We spent over 3 hours in here.

This history behind this was just spectacular, I would recommend anyone in Germany visit this place. It goes through the history of how Hitler rose to power by forcing his way in through peaceful and non-peaceful protests. There is also a lot of history on the importance of Nurnberg and the Nazi fairgrounds to rally the Germans and to orchestrate the entire event.
- How he wrote "Mein Kumf" while in prison, which is the book he founded German society on.
- How he made himself out to be more of a God than a man.
- It goes through the detailed steps on a time line, showing how the segregation of the Jews + Gypsies happened. The systems put in place to trace them easily.
- How he was allowed to take over Austria and Czech. Republic with the permission of France/England. But war broke out when he invaded Poland.
- Onto the methods of tracing and rounding up the "bad-blood" into concentration camps, then specially designed extermination camps.

During some parts of the museum I shed a tear or two just in shear sadness about how something so horrific could happen, and how the whole thing was planned from the start.

The whole impression I got from the museum is that Hitler was a man with exceptionally good manipulation and organisational skills. But was misplaced and used for inhumane means. A great man, but very evil.

After walking through the Documentarium, you walked onto a gangway leading into the inside of the Arena. Here you could see what Hitler had planned. It was supposed to have a ceiling, but production on the arena halted after the war.

We left the arena to go see the rest of the Nazi fairgrounds. The entire grounds are 11 square kilometres. And are the largest collection of National Socialist monuments still around today. We walked down Grosse Strasse (great street) and down to the Zeppelin field (where Hitler held the Nazi rallies, more than 400 000 people were on the field and up to 3 million at each rally!)

After that we walked back to the car and went to Room 600 of the court house where the 23 remaining leaders of the Nazi's were tried, most commonly referred to as the Nuremberg trials. They are very famous because it was the first time political leaders were tried for their crimes against peace and humanity, making them responsible for their actions. 11 were sentenced to death, 7 to major-life imprisonment, 4 were acquitted and one committed suicide before the trial began.

This day was a history lesson and a half... it was a good day, but I don't think the words "enjoyable" or "fun" are quite correct here. It was just a very interesting day.

After this we drove home and went to bed... we were all shattered.

And to the Nazi Capital... Nürnberg

2007-06-30T12:41:00.000+12:00

This weekend we planned to go to Nürnberg.
Before my trip I had no ideas about Nürnberg except that it had a race track :)

We hit the road on Saturday at 9am. My travel companions for this journey were Guillaume Michel and Janath Kumar. Guilleume is a French-man from the Dorm, nobody can pronounce his first name correctly, so we call him either: Michel, William or Le Fourgue (Fourgue is something given to you that is useless or unwanted... lovely nickname huh).

("Le Fourgue", Janath and me.)

The journey there was all along the autobahn, so lots of rolling German country-side trees, hills grass, the odd wind powered generator. We also had a DVD going for the trip, Harry Potter (the first one). But there was too much light and the sound wasn't very loud... so we read the subtitles and watched the brighter scenes. Kind of like reading a book.

We arrived in Nürnberg and you could immediately see the history of the city with the age of the buildings around the place.
We headed straight for the hostel to check in and park the car. After talking to the hostel person, we found directions to the old city. She recommended to walk around here and see the sites. The hostel was located just inside the walls of the old city, so it was a brilliant location.

Here is a view from the room in our hostel:

We wandered around the city to find about 3 or 4 cathedrals/churches, 5 or 6 watch towers (in the huge wall surrounding the city), a massive castle and many other buildings. You'll have to check out my photo gallery to see everything, because there was a lot to see. The best sight was probably from the top of the castle, where you could see the entire old city. Here's a picture below.

After our walk, we were all a bit shattered. So we headed back to the hostel. We were going to have a nana-nap, but ended up going into the common room. I had a sleep on the couch while the others played on the internet.

After an hour or so, others started turning up into the common room. This is where we met our going out group for the night. We met Ben from Perth, Ramsy from Detroit, and Dima + Ilnan from the USA (but were both born in Russia).

The two Russian-Americans were probably the most interesting (because I meet Aussies and Americans everywhere), they lived in Russia until they were 7, then their family moved to the states. The culture they explained was a little different. Apparently, Russians stick to their own communities when in other countries. Also, they both spoke English with no accent (well an American one) and Russian with no accent. When they travelled they both spoke Russian, and slagged off American tourists... which I found quite amusing.

We had several hours of chatting and sharing stories about where we'd been and where to next, while drinking the local beer. Now the beer at the hostel was amasing! Probably the best beer I have ever drunk. The hostel attendant said... "don't ask for a beer... ask for 'THE' beer". Which I may have to agree with. It was bottled and brewed locally, and you could only get it in very few places... one being the hostel.

After this, we headed out to see the nightlife. There was a big Romainian festival going on, but they were singing English songs. We walked to a pub near the castle and stopped in there. Had quite a few beers, talked more, had a few more beers, stumbled home.

All in all... it was a fantastic day.

Rijeka to Stuttgart

2007-06-26T07:58:00.000+12:00

I had to get up at 5:30am to go get my plane. I caught the bus to the main bus station to get my bus (where I was dropped off). Only to find it was not where the bus departed from, go figure. There was only 1 bus per flight, and I had 5 minutes to get to the other bus station (which was a 10 minute walk). Luckily I managed to flag a taxi and get there just in time... a nice bit of excitement for the day, but the best was to follow :-)

The flight to Stuttgart was ok, I slept most of the way, only an hour but still some sleep. Now coming into Stuttgart, there was MAJOR turbulence. The plane was tilting about 45 degrees either way and shuddering quite badly. It was very exciting! Coming into landing I don't know how the pilot did it, but he managed to steady the plane long enough to get it on the ground... of course, it wasn't the most pleasant landing in the world, but we were still in one piece. The entire cabin again applouded and cheered for the pilot. Once the plane had come to a stop, one of the passengers got on the intercom and thanked the pilot for getting us safely back to Stuttgart (in German of course). Again he got a well deserved round of applause.

Stepping off the plane into 15 degree Germany was a very major change. I had to chuck on a jersey straight away. I got through boarder control and got on a train... straight for work. Nothing like starting work at 11am after catching a plane from 620km away :)

Onward to more adventures... you can see my new feature on the right hand panel now. It's a travel map which shows where I'm going and where I've been. Pretty cool huh.

Back to Rijeka

2007-06-25T07:30:00.000+12:00

Note: for those that don't know, in every European language I have encountered, except English, "j" is pronounced like a "y". Also, the vowels are pronounced: "uh", "aye", "ee", "au", "uu", very similar to the Maori vowels. So the city is pronounced "Ray-yee-ka". Croatian seemed to be a mix of German (I recognised some words), Italian and Russian.

Anyway, today I woke up at 7am and it was HOT! I tried to keep sleeping for a bit, but ended up getting out of bed. I went and had breakfast with Scott, Roy and Steven (Aussie, and Scotts respectively... pretty ironic really... Scott hanging with the Scotts). After breakie I went for a swim as the day was already heating up.

At 10:30 the boys decided they were going to head to Rijeka, so I scored a lift with them. The journey we went was not the same route as when I came to Pula. It was further inland and along the motorways. The scenery was not as nice, still pretty cool though.

We arrived at Rijeka and checked into the hostel. It was stupidly hot at this stage, 38 degrees! We had a little siesta because it was just too damn hot to do anything. After 2 hours we decided to get up and venture out into the world. Roy found someone had broken into their car (smashed the window) and stolen a bunch of stuff out of their car. They stole 3 bags of clothes, and a receipt which had their credit card details. I felt so sorry for them because it is such a crap thing to happen. They had to get the police down (who didn't speak English) and get fingerprinted etc. I just left them to it and said I would catch up later (a bit stink... but oh well).

At the bus stop I met a bunch of Kiwi's who were travelling. They were obviously kiwi, donning all black t-shirts, hats, greenstone, the works... good on em! One was a newly graduated doctor who was taking her boyfriend and younger sister + brother on a European trip and bankrolling the entire thing. They had been quite a few cool countries and were seeing a lot of Eastern Europe. I thought that was really cool. I tagged along with them while they wandered around Rijeka, finding some interesting sites in the city. It was 5pm now and still 30 degrees!

We went back to the hostel and the Kiwis headed off to catch the bus on their way to Dubrovnik via Split (both in Croatia). The beach was calling me, so I got in my togs and walked down there. Scott was just coming back, but decided to go for another swim. The little beach was packed, but the water was so refreshing and nice. We stayed for just over an hour then went back to the hostel.

We caught up with Roy and Steven who had just got back from town (getting drinks and stuff). We all decided to go out, get something to eat and grab a pint. We hadn't eaten since breakie, but we weren't that hungry. The heat just killed our apatites. A pizza and a beer later, we were shattered. So we went back to the hostel, swapped contact details and went off to bed.

Onto Pula.. and Roman ruins

2007-06-24T23:05:00.000+12:00

Up at 8am... well 9am, pack, catch the bus to Rijeka city centre.
Straight onto another bus, heading to Pula (I was told I should go there by Wayne, I took his advice).

I was going to have a sleep on the bus... but again the scenery was too spectacular to sleep through. I was taking photos half the time (I took over 400 photos in my trip to Croatia). I also got chatting to this older British couple. They were telling me some things about England that were interesting (politics, economy, etc... so probably boring to most of you). The main person I was talking to was Sheila and she was telling me about how her daughter is travelling the world as well. They offered me a bed to stay in just out of London if I need it which is cool. I offered my place in NZ (when I get back) if their daughter ever travels over those ways.

View from the bus.

Once I arrived at Pula, I jumped on a bus. Now the people of Croatia are extremely friendly and welcoming. Just about every time I was at a bus stop they would ask where I needed to go and let me know which bus to get on (in broken English usually). It's hard to imagine that as little as 15 years ago they were at war.

I headed straight for my hostel to check in. Now this hostel is the most amasing accommodation I have ever stayed in, as well as the cheapest. It was 10 metres from the water, and it had it's own bar 10 metres the other direction. The photo's explain all. I checked in, but there was nobody in my room. So I went down to the beach for a swim and a little sleep on the beach. I enjoyed my swim, but it was 30 degree and I wasn't wearing sunscreen (naughty boy). So I got extremely sunburnt in the process (well only my stomach, chest and underarms).

Oh did I mention all the topless sunbathing? Young, old, fat, skinny, about quarter of the girls were topless. I felt like a pervert for just being at the beach.... hey I wasn't complaining though.

After a couple of hours, I decided to head into town and do the tourist thing.

There are a lot of Roman ruins around the area, the main one being the Roman Amphitheatre, the largest Roman ruin still around today. It was pretty spectacular to think how old it is, we just don't have anything of that scale in little ol' NZ. I wandered around the city for several hours and took heaps of photos, check them out in my gallery if you want to see them all.

I arrived back at the hostel at 10pm, I straight away heard an Aussie, saw him wearing Rusty shorts and a Billabong hat + t-shirt. I walked straight up to him and said, "so... you from Sydney?" I got it right as well :-P
He was with 2 Scottish lads that were extremely burnt from the day (much worse than me) so we decided to have a few drinks.
We ended up sitting down at a table with a Swedish and a Norwegian girl. Ended up talking about all the places we have visited and traded war stories. Stayed up until around 1am chatting and drinking before we decided to all head off to bed.

Off to the Mediteranian

2007-06-23T23:21:00.000+12:00

Well after the night out... I had to catch a plane to Rijeka, Croatia. Luckily it was at 4pm, so I didn't need to get up until lunch time.
I arrived at the airport 90 minutes before my flight was to depart. There was a massive queue and only one person checking-in people! After an 80 minutes, they called all people flying to Rijeka to the front of the queue. I rushed through security checks and hurried to my gate, only to find that the plane was going to be delayed an hour. So I wondered around the airport for a while then sat down and waited. After an hour and 15 minutes, we got to go through the gate and onto the bus that goes to our plane. When the bus arrived at the plane, they were still refuelling and packing luggage! Another 15 minutes later, they let us on the plane... I guess this is what happens sometimes with budget airlines!

The flight over was the second worse flight I have had in my life (the worse one was on my return trip, which will come later). There was quite a lot of turbulence throughout the flight, especially coming into the Rijeka airport. The landing was pretty hair-raising, the plane was tipping side-to-side only about 20 metres off the ground. Then the landing was HARD! As soon as the plane came to a reasonable speed the passengers all clapped and cheered for the pilot. Was the first time I have seen that!

I stepped off the plane to a hot Croatian day, 27 degrees (which was the coolest day I experienced while in Croatia). I got on an air-conditioned bus for the half hour trip to Rijeka city. The journey followed the coastline, and let me just say the view was fantastic. Beautiful coastal scenery with rolling mountains in the background and greenery everywhere. It was stunning to say the least. You can see some photos in my gallery (pictures paint 1000 words alright!)

I arrived at the city centre and had a look around the city. It was now 8pm and the sun was still hot. I headed to my hostel, which was very nice. The reception could speak very good English and the insides were new and clean. I checked into my room and straight away got talking with my room-mates: two Mexicans and a Yank. They were heading down for a swim and I tagged along with them.
The beach we went to was very different from what I am used to. It was a huge cliff with steps going down to the beach and instead of sand they had rocks, decent sized rocks. The water was warm too, but cool enough to cool you down. The swim was just what we needed.

After getting back to the hostel, the guys said they were going to head off to bed because they had a 5am train to catch. I used my powers of persuasion (and a little help with my friend Mr. Jäger) to encourage 2 of them to join me for drink then head into town. We went to an open bar to have a drink, I struck up a conversation with some locals. Their English was very good (again, it comes down to English TV). At about 2am the guys went home and I went to another bar. At about 4am I walked home, I passed them while they were walking toward the train station :-)

I got home and crashed, I was heading to Pula the next day and needed to be up at 8.

Night Life in Stuttgart

2007-06-22T23:08:00.000+12:00

I went out on Friday night with Janath, Rui and Wayne (from the dorm I stay in). We were joking because we had an Indian, an Asian, a Yugoslavian (respectively) and a Kiwi heading out to town, all we needed was a black guy to complete the race mix.
It was quite a good night, we ended up going to several clubs and having a great time. I met a group of Germans (who could speak English) and ended up hanging out with them for a couple of hours. They had to catch a bus at 3, so got their contact details and left them to it.
After that we continued on the town until 6am when we came home. I'm starting to learn the better clubs to go to now, but they all have cover charges.

Latest Blog Feature - Calendars

2007-06-21T23:09:00.000+12:00

Hello,

I have just created 2 public calendars which you can get to by clicking the links in the right pane.
One is my tentative schedule; it contains no firm bookings but my plans.
The other is my firm schedule; the trip is already booked or planned.

This part is mainly for the European folk, if you guys wanna come travel, look at my bookings and free weekends.
If you wanna join me for any tentative booking, let me know. Even with the firm bookings, I'm usually staying in a youth hostel which is easy to get a bed for.
Also, if you wanna go somewhere different, let me know and I'll join ya.

Tschuess,
Tobi

Mum's Test results... gulp

2007-06-21T22:55:00.000+12:00

I thought I would let everyone know that mum has had her surgery and it was successful.
They removed all the lump from her breast and it doesn't need any further surgery... woohoo!

But... the biopsy results on her lymph nodes were not good news. 6 out of 16 lymph nodes removed were cancerous. So, the radiation treatment is on hold, and mum needs to have 9 months of chemo-therapy! I session every 3 weeks. She will lose her hair, and may get quite sick after a session. Then after that she will have her weekly radiation treatment for 6 weeks. Not the best news in the world, it's a lot to go through.

She does have Brenda looking after her playing the role of in house nurse, which is great (funny how roles reverse isn't it). Also Oma and Che are being very supportive while mum is going through all of this.

I have been given strict instructions from mum that I need to enjoy myself over here and not to worry... especially don't think about heading home. So that's what I am going to do, plan my trips and enjoy my time. She will still be going through it all when I get back.

If anyone wants to pass on their thoughts, her email is helen.heuvel@clear.net.nz

Little update

2007-06-20T08:49:00.000+12:00

I just realised I didn't have many pictures around my dorm.
I went for a walk last night and took a few pics. Check em out at my gallery.

Only other new news... off to Croatia this weekend. This one is planning to be a very touristy, relaxing weekend.

On the way back... via Frankfurt (why not?)

2007-06-17T23:39:00.000+12:00

We had to check out of the hotel at noon... I was still shattered/hungover/probably still drunk. But managed to get up have a shower and get in the car.

We had a final walk around Köln, had some lunch on down at the waterfront (by the Rhine). Then we started our road mish to Frankfurt. The guys (Thom, K1 and Johnny) had never seen sky-scrapers before, so it was exciting times for them :-)

I slept all the way there (2 hours) and woke up to the awesome skyline. We went for a wander, and eventually went to the top of the Henninger Turm, which is the tallest building you can go up to view the city. The view from here was pretty cool if you wanted to see the city. We stayed up there for an hour just checking out different parts of the city. For full views click on the picture and head to my gallery.

After this we headed down to the streets and got something to eat. And then took off for our trip back to Stuttgart. The stupid sat nav lead us around in circles for about 20 minutes for some reason or another. After "negotiating" with the damn thing, we got it working. And we took off from Frankfurt. I got a final photo on our way out. Pretty nice skyline. But I don't think I'll go back to Frankfurt. It's just a commercial city, not really a party or scenery town.

It was a bit grid-locked coming back... but I didn't mind because I wasn't driving (therefore I slept). We made it back to Stuttgart 5 minutes after we were supposed to return the car, luckily the attendant was still there.
Took the S-Bahn home and crashed... was a pretty fun and busy weekend all in all.

Weekend Trip to Köln

2007-06-16T23:13:00.000+12:00

First point, you can go to my gallery which has got photo's updated here. They all have captions and are in chronological order, so tell the story in more detail.

Thomas (workmate) and I planned a trip to Köln this weekend, with his flatmates tagging along. We were going to visit Alex (another workmate).
Well this trip started early Saturday morning (well 7:30am on a Sat is early). We got into the car that we hired from the airport the night before and set off for Köln. Turned on the sat nav. to point us to our destination, thank goodness for this piece of technology. I don't know how we would have made it without it. Google Maps is good... but not that good.
This was my first time driving on the autobahn... and man I can tell you it is fun. Even in our piece of crap, I still got it up to 190km/h... but the Mercs and Porches made us look like we were standing still :-)

We arrived after just under 4 hours. We parked up and had a wander around the city. Saw a really cool church called the Dom. It was massive! Take a look below.

After we had a bit of a walk and something to eat, we drove and checked into our hotel. It was quite a nice place, it cost 30 Euro each (which is not bad around these parts). Straight away we hopped on the S-Bahn (i.e. Stadt-Bahn or city-rail) into the city. We met up with Alex and a couple of his mates. Also we met up with Steph, who was one of Thomas' mates. A quick stop at a dairy to pick up a Kölsch (beer from Köln) and we were on our adventure.We started at the Sky Beach which was a cool little bar on top of a parking building (see below).

After that we walked around the city, picking up beers from all over the show: dairies, ice-cream parlours, sweet shops... you gotta love Germany! hehe.
Now just so you guys know, in Germany, they consider 4.8% a "lite" beer. That's what we were drinking... but still... a lite beer?

It was a lovely day until we started walking to the brewery. Right outside it started to piss down so we ran in to one of the many breweries of Köln. The beers they serve there are only 200mL, but they keep them coming like they are water. If you are drinking too slowly, the waiter will come along and drink a beer, then put it on your tab :-) Which in Köln, the tab is simply a coaster on your table with pencil marks on it. It was a really interesting experience.

After leaving here we were all rather smashed... at 6pm, so we headed to get some food. Jumped on the S-Bahn and headed for the student part of town. There we met up with Alex's girlfriend plus some other mates of his. I ended up having a conversation with the table next to us, they were trying to teach me more German. I think it worked.

After we were fed on pizza (and more Kölsch), we headed to a club. The first club we went to was a Karaoke club. We drank a few drinks here... and I even had a bit of a sing. I was absolutely terrible, but had a blast!

After this we headed to a German rock club, which was good. Trying to get in, one of Alex's mates got stopped for wearing sandals... but one of the other people with us (a 14 year old sister of one of the guys) convinced the bouncer to let us in.

I didn't get back to the hotel until 10am the next day... but woke up with a very sore knee, so I must have injured myself somehow... hmmm. Anyway. Had a fantastic time and will probably go back again for a weekend.

Update on things

2007-06-15T19:53:00.000+12:00

Howdy,

I have uploaded a bunch of photos from Sweden... not all because I took about 400. I have also gone through my photos and updated them all with captions. Click the link on the side of my page, or just click here. For those of you with a slow internet connection (dial-up peoples) it may take a while to view the pictures. Probably the best think to do is view the "thumbnails" then choose what photos you want. Also, if any of you want high-resolution for any photo, let me know.

Note: I do have a cell phone number... but my cell phone is broken (read the post about me crashing off my bike... hehe) I don't expect people to contact it, because email is just as effective. It is: +49 176 68037214.

My last day in Stockholm was simple: get up, have some food, pack, chat to some people, go off to the airport and catch the plane. I practised my German with the air hostesses, asking for my drinks plus sandwich in Deutsch. It worked... hopefully I will not be limited to that in 5 months time!

I got back to the train station at Hulb (my stop) and somebody had played a trick on my bike. They had closed this latch thingy, which I didn't know I had, which locked my spokes. I didn't have a key for it so I walked into work, but there were no tools for me to use. So I walked home, unpacked, did some washing, went to bed (all exciting stuff hehe)

Wednesday I walked to work and one of the guys walked in carrying the bolt to the latch that was locking my bike. He told me that he told his landlord the story, so his landlord went for a 1 hour walk with some bolt cutters, and cut the lock for me. Very nice... but a little weird :)

Nothing else this week really. Played badminton, went for 3 beers afterwards (which is 1.5 litres in Germany!), so had a good sleep that night. I have been working long hours now that I have some motivation... the break to Sweden was what I needed.

I'm off to Köln (Cologne in English) this weekend. We are hiring a car and driving there... I think it's about 5 hours. I am one of the drivers... so autobahn here we come!

Archipelago Tour

2007-06-11T19:50:00.000+12:00

Today I got up early and headed out for a boat tour to the archipelagos.

It was a whole day trip from 9:30 till 5:30. Very good if you like nature, but I was tired so fighting to stay awake the whole time.

You go through some very narrow and shallow canals to get there. And the further you get from Stockholm the colder it got. I had to wear my polar fleece on the boat because the wind was very cold.
If you want to see more picture click on the picture below and you can go see my entire album.

In the afternoon I arrived back and started chatting with a Brazilian named Bruno. He was very friendly, so we swapped details for when he heads over to NZ.

I was shattered so spent the evening chatting with people and couldn't be bothered going out.

Chilling out in Stockholm

2007-06-10T04:30:00.000+12:00

I had arranged to catch up with the Norwegians at the Vasapark again.
So after taking a quick walk around the city, I headed to Vasapark.

Again we just sat around chatting. In the afternoon, we decided to take a big walk. They hadn't had much of a chance to see the city (because they were all here on a 2 week training course for massage). I had seen a lot so I knew where to go and what to tell them. It was quite strange being a tour guide to them.

At about 9:30pm, they decided to go home because they had their course the next day. They all hopped on various subways, I decided to keep on walking about.
After about 20 minutes of walking... I saw the first cloud that I have seen in Sweden. Then there was a thunderstorm... it was strange going from 26 degrees to rain. The rain was not warm either... it was very cold, I guess that's what happens when you're so close to a polar ice cap.

I got home eventually ducking under various street covers.
Was a pretty casual day... but I enjoyed it.

Sun Bathing and Theme Parks

2007-06-09T23:11:00.000+12:00

Today I woke up around 9 or 10. So got ready and went out into the world.

Today was extremely hot... 31 degrees. I walked up to a local park called Vasapark. There is a big Astroturf where people play football (soccer), a pa-tonk area and lots of people lying in the sun.

I was walking around for a bit and spotted the Norwegian girls from the night before. There names are Siri, Sara and Kathrine (And none are pronounced how they are spelled, well in English anyways) So we started chatting again and after a few hours we decided to go to the them park "Gröna Lund".

This theme park is pretty cool, about half the size of Rainbows end... but with better rides. It's got a Fear Fall type ride that when you get to the top, the carriage tips front ways a bit, then you are slightly facing the ground when you drop. Also a reverse Fear Fall type thing that shoots you up first then you bounce around for a bit. The roller-coasters are fun too... pretty smooth but you don't go upside down. The final ride we went on is hard to explain, it is sort of like the Disney tea-cups but faster... and it is inside with disco lights going off and RnB pumping through the sound system. It was a really cool ride, perhaps the most fun ride I've been on... on par with the Scooby Doo ride!

We left the theme park around 10:30pm and went back to the hostel. Met up with another Norwegian named Fredrick. We decided to hit the booze.

We drank until about 2:30, then Sara and Siri decided that they wanted to go out... we tried to talk them out of it because the clubs were shutting soon. After walking around for an hour trying to find somewhere, we decided to head home. I walked Kathrine home and the others headed back to Fredrick's place to keep drinking.

All in all it was a fun day!

Day 3 in Stockholm

2007-06-08T23:36:00.000+12:00

Today was just a relaxing walking around day doing not much.
I saw the changing of the guard at noon... and that was pretty average. However... the brass band did play a Tom Jones medley: "It's Not Unusual", "Sex Bomb" and "Delilah". Kind of random for a royal guard to be playing don't ya think?
Then I met one of the people from the hostel there (Ruth) and we went off to the Nobel museum.

For those of you that don't know, a Nobel prize is the most prestigious prize you can receive in medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and of course peace keeping.
Alfred Nobel was the man who invented dynamite, and when he died he left his inheritance to the Nobel Prize pool that is still active today. Of course, he was Swedish from Stockholm (that I didn't know)

After the museum, Ruth had to go to catch her train to the airport. I continued walking around the city taking more photos.

I got back to the hostel and started chatting with Andreas and Natalia (Argentinian and an Alaskan). They were very friendly and we decided to hit the town. We had a few drinks first and a group of Norwegian girls joined us. In the end the girls stayed behind and just Andreas and myself hit the town.

We were looking for a place to go and everywhere had a line... so we waited in one line for an hour. They kept letting people in front of us as well. I asked the bouncer what was going on, he said that the owners policy is to let regulars in before anyone else. After talking with a few people they said that Stockholm is very snobbish... and I am getting that impression.

We eventually got into the club after an hour... and then it closed after an hour. So was a bit of a let down.

So tomorrows a new day!

Another Beautiful Swedish Day

2007-06-07T23:42:00.000+12:00

Woke up at 11am this morning. And got up to see the world.
By the time I had got ready it was after 12... so I missed the changing of the guards (at the Royal Palace) I will see it another day.

Again... it was 26 degrees. Oh from the previous whole day in the sun, no sunscreen,
my pathetic skin (as you guys know) I did not get burnt! I love the European sun... they have an Ozone layer! Its the greatest thing EVER!

Anyway back to the story. Walked down to the waterline and asked about boat tours around Stockholm (its very much a harbour town). They were running 2 hour boat cruises around the city at pretty regular intervals... so I decided I would take an afternoon one.

To kill some time I decided to walk to one of the museums (Stockholm has heaps of them). The one I went to was called the Vasa Museum. This is a funny piece of history for you. The Vasa was a warship which was build to be the pride of the Swedish navy. It boasted the most firepower out of any ship of its class in the known world. It was the kings pride and joy and he wanted to make a very bold statement about Sweden with this ship. On its maiden voyage, they went into the harbour, fired some gun solutes then headed out the channel. A light wind caught the boats sails, it tipped and sunk. About 50 people died on board. It was an engineering design fault that caused it. They used round stones as ballasts... which rolled to the side when the boat started tipping, which made it tip more and eventually water was coming in the gun ports, which made it sink. After 333 years it was excavated and preserved. Its the only ship from the 1600s that is on display. If you wanna know more just click here.
It was a very interesting thing to see.

After that I took my boat cruise. It was very pleasant. They had a running commentary as you went, so I learned a lot about the city. I feel so educated about Sweden's history now. I took a squillion photos... don't think I will upload them all because there are just too many.

Very beautiful city though, in summer at least. In winter it is exactly the opposite. Sun from 11am to 3pm and the lakes freeze over. Probably still looks awesome though.

Got back to the hostel and caught up with some of the people I met from the night before. Exchanged details with a German girl who lives in Berlin (Ruth is her name, she is a fictional writer by profession). She offered herself as a tour guide if I decide to go to Berlin, which is what I was planning to do anyways... so sweet :-)

I have also got a map of Europe now, so I will start planning my trips on my wall planner.

Anyway. Off to bed now, going to try and fight off this cold.

Hej då

Let the Swedish Flags Fly

2007-06-06T19:37:00.000+12:00

I arrived in Stockholm at noon after 4 hours of travel from Germany.
I flew via Berlin, which wasn't too bad. I quite like flying places.
Arrived in beautiful 26 degree perfect sunny weather.

Wow... what a site to see on my first visit to Sweden. It was Sweden's National Day, which is a public holiday dedicated to Sweden. Everyone had Swedish flags and was in a really good mood. The bridges were lined with flags, so were all the buildings.
There were sooooo many people as well. The streets were just packed. I didn't even know I was arriving on such an important day, so it was a nice surprise.
I took heaps of photo's which I will publish when I get back to Germany.

After the initial wandering around aimlessly I found myself at the Royal Palace (Sweden is a Monarchy... which I didn't know until now). Because it was National Day, it was cheap to go around and check out all the sights. I couldn't take many photos because it was a "camera free" zone. I took some sneaky ones though.

After my tour around the palace I walked through the main park in Stockholm. It was packed with heaps of people and food tents. I just walked through back to the hostel.

When I arrived back I sat down and started chatting to some randoms. Ended up going out to dinner with Hillary (American Jew that was teaching English in Russia) and Linus (a Swedish-born Korean raised an Australian... what a mix). Went to an Indian place which was quite nice. Then came back about 11pm... and it was still light!

We got back and the other two went to bed... I wasn't tired so decided to head to town (all on my lonesome). I found this a club that looked ok, so went in. I wasn't drinking because I had a cold and was dehydrated from the day in the sun. The bar had 2 parts... one dance/hip-hop and the other part karaoke. It was interesting.
I sat down for a while just listening to the music in the dance room, then I spotted some people from the hostel... random. So ended up spending the night with them. We also sat down beside these really drunk Swedes who were really friendly and talkative. They kept buying us drinks (I only had one though... it would be rude to say no). Ended up going up for karaoke with with poms... sang "Living on Prayer" which completely killed my throat.

After all that we left the club around 3... and it was light... I totally missed night. Sure I have done that in NZ... but you usually need to go out until 6 or 7. Very strange only having about 2 to 3 hours of darkness here.

Got back to the hostel and crashed... was a fun first day though.

Off to Sweden

2007-06-05T18:35:00.001+12:00

It hasn't been a good start to the week for me.
Yesterday I woke up with a cold. Wasn't going to go into work but decided I would because there is nothing to do at home anyway. On my way to work I crashed off my bike. Grazed up my knee, thigh, elbow, wrist, knuckles and shoulder. Also ripped my jeans and smashed my cell phone. Didn't hit my head though so I was quite lucky. Turned up at work looking a bit of a mess, so cleaned myself up and continued on the day.
Anyway, this weekend is a long weekend, so tomorrow I am off to Sweden until Tuesday. I'm going to Stockholm and perhaps checking out some other parts. Will let ya know once I get back.
Chugs was supposed to be joining me over there (tentatively) but now he can't make it. So I'll be travelling around on my lonesome... Let's see what sort of trouble I get myself in to ;-)

Stuttgart

2007-06-03T18:31:00.000+12:00

This weekend I went to Stuttgart again.
I caught up with Thom (a work colleague) and his flatmates. They were all Poms and we drank quite a bit. Then hit the town.
Met quite a few randoms and hung out with some random Germans for half the night.

Was a real fun night. Click on the picture below if you wanna see some photos of Stuttgart

Bread Bread Everywhere

2007-06-02T08:38:00.000+12:00

Well after just over a week, there I have found out some really cool stuff in Germany.
1. You can get bread everywhere! Bread rolls and all sorts of different varieties... mum you would love it :)
2. You can buy beer ANYWHERE!!! Even McDonalds and Burger King! It's almost the greatest thing EVER. (I'm sure Cam will agree)

I have tried quite a few of the local drops now. They are quite nice beers. I'm hoping my palate is not going to be ruined by the fine German bier :-P

Thoughts going out to Mum

2007-06-01T08:44:00.000+12:00

I have told some people already, but I want everyone to know so they can all put their thoughts out to mum.
Mum has been diagnosed with grade 2 breast cancer. She is going in for surgery in about a week and will need chemo therapy for 6 weeks.
It was very shocking news for all of us and I'm hoping that everything turns out ok.

I thank the people that have sent their kind words and I'm sure mum appreciates them to.

Love ya mum... wish I could be there.

Photos from Konstanz

2007-05-31T08:36:00.000+12:00

Well, Ersin sent me his photos from Konstanz, so all was not lost.
Here is an example, more can be seen in my photo gallery (click the picture to go there)

Trip to Konstanz

2007-05-27T18:40:00.000+12:00

Got on the train and met up with Ersin in Stuttgart. Caught the 3 hour train ride to Konstanz. Now just a point to note, public transport in Germany is not cheap. If you want to catch an ICE train (fast trains) it is often cheaper to fly! So you need to catch the slower trains. Konstanz is only 100km or so away and it took 3 hours.

Konstanz is a beautiful city, right on the German / Swiss border. In fact, you can walk to Switzerland. We wandered around the city taking photos. We came to a big cathedral (turned out to be the biggest one in Konstanz) and decided to climb to the top. Several hundred mini-stairs later we made it to the top. The view was amasing! Unfortunately, at this point of my trip my camera came up with a "CARD NOT INITIALISED" error. I still haven't figured it out, but my memory card is corrupted :( so I lost all my photos of Stuttgart and Konstanz. Oh well, an excuse to go back there again :)

After that we got a paddle boat (the ones you paddle like a bike) and went around the harbour for an hour. I was thirsty after all this so we stopped in at a biergarten. I had a Hefeweissen (wheat beer) and the other two had coffees. I recommend people visit here if they go to Germany, but I haven't seen much of it yet.
We decided to try and walk to Switzerland but none of us remembered our passports, so we couldn't go and have a look.
We continued walking around the city and then eventually caught the train home.

1st Real Visit to Stuttgart

2007-05-26T18:39:00.000+12:00

Went shopping in the morning and got all the essentials: bike, cooking stuff, food.
Then we went into Stuttgart (Nearest city to Sindelfingen/Boeblingen).
Stuttgart is a busy city with lots of people about. There were very cool buildings for the government. They were new but built to look old. The whole city looks fairly new, with a lot of the taverns built in old pre-WW2 architecture. Unfortunately I have lost my pictures of Stuttgart, but I will get some more.
We met up with Ersin (a Turkish friend of Janeth). We wanted to walk to the top of one of the hills and have a look, but it rained very hard so we didn't make it. Instead we sat inside a cafe and had a coffee. Managed to kill 6 hours wandering around doing not much.
Decided to make plans to head to Konstanz the next day.

Weekend Trip

2007-05-24T18:35:00.000+12:00

On Thursday I decided I wanted to go away for the weekend, because I just found out that Monday is a public holiday!
My room-mate suggested a website www.ltur.com which offers last minute trips from Germany.
Friday morning I went in with a bag packed ready to go anywhere. The site was all in German, so I had to figure it out. I borrowed another student to help translate for me. However there were no real offers available. But I did look at future weekends and have some ideas.

I came home from work a little disappointed. I went into the dining room and started talking with a few people in the room. One of the guys named Janeth (Indian that has been in Germany for 2 years) said he was keen to do something, so we made plans for the weekend.

German Bureaucracy!

2007-05-23T18:55:00.000+12:00

I woke up at some ungodly hour (3 or 4... don't know because I didn't have a watch or clock) then drifted in and out of consiousness until I got up about 7. Spent an hour fluffing about and getting sorted. Then another hour reading my Lonley Planet German Translation book (thanks Debra, good prezzie!).

In to work at 9am. I went into town with Stefan (my supervisor over here) to try and sort out a bank account. Man... German bureaucracy is a nightmare! It is unbelievably bad.

First, to get a bank account I needed to have my address registered with the City Hall. So we went to the city hall. I needed to fill out these forms to get my application processed. We went into a room to hand the forms in, but the room we went into was only for Surnames A-K. So we needed to go to another part of the building. Then we found out we also needed a photocopy of my VISA + Passport, so we needed to go to another part of the building to get that. We then got back to the correct room with the required documents. They ticked a box then gave us the real form that we needed to fill out. This one needed to be taken to another part of the building. Here is where we actually registered my address. I also found out I am here illegally in Germany. Not only are you required to have a Work Permit (right to work), a VISA (right to enter) and a registerd address. You also need another permit which permits you a right to stay in Germany. Am I making anyone else's head hurt here!?! So I still need to complete this part which requires a passport photo.

Anyway, after all of this the day was over :) And we still didn't have a bank account which is the main reason we went out in the first place!

The next day I went out to the bank with Heidi, because I need a translator just about everywhere official. Nobody really speaks English. Got to the bank and registered for a bank account. I get a Mestro card at some stage in the mail (which is similar to an EFTPOS card, but you can only get cash at an ATM). After we left the bank we got to the car which had some police officers standing around it. Heidi freaked out and had a panicked conversation with the police.
I found out afterwards that the car had started rolling backwards down the hill and a lady had put a stone under the back wheel to stop it going any further. The parking brake obviously didn't work. There were no fines or anything, just a panicked Heidi who couldn't speak English for a while (was in shock).

After all the above stuff, the next few days were pretty boring. Just installing stuff on the laptop and easing into things.

Flight to Germany

2007-05-22T18:21:00.000+12:00

I know this is backdated, but here is the summary of my trip over to Deutschland.
Didn't get much sleep the night before, I was quite nervous and tossed and turned the whole night. Got up early and made French Toast for Debra and I.
Then we took off to the airport and checked in. All went well, and said my final goodbyes to Debra and New Zealand at the gate. Was freaking out a little bit but managed to take my mind off things by buying European adaptors and knick-knacks.

Finally I got on the plane and sat down. On my flight to Sydney I sat beside a pom named Mark, a guy in his mid-thirties. I chatted with him most of the flight because the movie was crap (Becoming Jane). Found out some places to visit in England. When we landed he got stopped at customs for having a bottle of Southern Comfort in his bag. With the new liquid laws, you can no longer take liquids through connecting flights. So for those of you travelling, you can only get duty free at the last connecting stop!
I was wondering around Sydney airport and then caught up with David again. He gave me his contact details if I needed a guide in Birmingham. Wasn't much of a stop in Sydney, so I had a coffee then went off to my plane.

I found my seat and was sitting beside two Swedish girls named Anna and Therese. Their English was pretty much perfect. They had just been to NZ doing a medical internship for their course. They had free time in NZ so I talked to them about their trip.They said they really enjoyed it and were thinking of going back again. I got on with them really well, and spent most of the first leg (7 hours, Sydney to Bangkok) talking with Anna as Therese was sick and couldn't talk and was trying to get some sleep. We found out quite a bit about each other, it's always interesting meeting new people. They are pictured below (Anna on left, Therese on right)

Got off in the Bangkok airport, it is very pretty from the outside. On the inside it is very ummm like the inside of a hospital OR. All clean and stuff. Really had no character. Only a 1 hour refueling stop here, so just freshened up, brushed teeth and back on the plane. Swapped contact details with Anna and Therese for if they head back to NZ or I head over to Sweden (which I'm thinking of doing anyways).

This leg of my flight was the longest, 13 hours. I talked with the girls a bit but we were all shattered. Tried to sleep, but I mostly only rested my eyes. Watched a few more movies. Ate a couple of meals. This one was uneventful.

Got off the plane at Heathrow. Said bye to the girls as they headed off to catch their connecting flight. I had to catch a 6 minute bus ride to connect to my terminal. Heathrow has a bit more character than Bangkok.

Got on the plane for the final 1.5 hour flight to Stuttgart, Germany. I was absolutely shattered. I sat beside an American named Sarah who's parents lived in Germany. I was too tired to really communicate and ended up sleeping for most of this flight.

I defiantly knew I had arrived in Germany. No more English! The customs officers had no sense of humour. I went through got my bags almost immediately, then met Heidi at the gate. She was younger than I thought (about my age) and she was very friendly. Took me to my room in Sindelfingen and got me settled in with keys etc. Lucky she was with me because nobody I was dealing with spoke a word of English. I definitely needed a translator!

By this stage I was wide awake (at midday in Germany). So I decided to go into work with Heidi and meet everyone. They were all pretty friendly. Their English is ok but not perfect, and they all speak German in the coffee room. I felt very alienated at this stage :) Oh well, I guess I just need to learn German.

I got my contract sorted out and some other things. Then went home around 6. As soon as I got home I felt extremely tired. Unpacked my things, half meet my room-mate, then crashed at 7pm.
Here's some pictures of my room.

Goodbye to Opa

2007-05-14T10:59:00.000+12:00

Last night at 6:17pm my Opa passed away. We arrived at 5pm for a visit before I was to head back to Auckland. He had been asleep since 12:30am and the doctor came to visit at 5pm-ish and said he would probably not wake up.
He didn't expect him to go that quickly. It was peaceful and it was a relief that he went in such a way. He had motor-neuron-disease, so the death was not unexpected, but just happened more quickly than everyone thought. It was very sad but in the same time, nice to see him pass the way he wanted to.

So, my travel plans to Germany have been postponed. I should be at the airport right now, but I have had to cancel my flights til after the funeral. I don't know my plans yet, so watch this space.

Leaving on Monday

2007-05-08T16:36:00.000+12:00

Hello,

Just a quick note coz I'm going to be flat out until I leave.
I'm leaving on Monday for my 30 hours of plane travel.
I'm also giving my phone number back to work.... so from that time on, the only way to contact me is email.

I'll also update this site with my new contact details when I get some (or I may send out an email... not sure if I should put a phone number open for public viewing)

Last Day of Work

2007-05-01T10:25:00.000+12:00

Hello there,

I had my last day of work on Monday.
Was a pretty relaxing day. Finalised some work at a client's site. Then went back to the office for afternoon tea. Shirlee put on a German theme with Apple Strudel and Pretzels :)
Somebody thought it would be a fun idea to silly-string me, was entertaining, except for getting silly string in the ear :)

Becky gave me lots of hugs and the whole thing was a little emotional.
I will miss working with the COGITA family.

From Last Day of Work

Summary of my PhD

2007-04-28T17:00:00.000+12:00

I have been asked to summarise what I will be doing in Germany. Most people I have talked to have a general idea, so I will just explain it as simply as I can.

I am doing my PhD in Computer Vision.
Computer Vision is a field of Computer Science that is analysing graphical images and getting computers to see the world as humans do. The application of this is used for many things, such as automated driving and robotics.

Specifically, my research project is studying Binocular Stereo Vision with the purpose of achieving real time obstacle recognition. The application which I will be applying this to is in cars so they can detect when obstacles are in the path.

I will be in Germany for 6 months in an Internship with DaimlerChrysler. I will be using their proprietory software and equipment to start my reserach. I will be working with some of the top people in the industry regarding stereo vision. Very exciting stuff, a great opportunity :)

When I get back to NZ, I will be using the same software and equipment to continue my project. This will be my life for the next 3-4 years.

Hopefully that explains a bit to the people who didn't know what I was doing.

1st Post

2007-04-28T13:18:00.000+12:00

Hello,

I have finally submitted to the demanding peoples that I know and I am starting a blog.
The main purpose is to keep peoples up to date on my goings on in Germany while I'm there.

Latest update: I have got everything sorted out now, got my VISA and flights sorted. Woohoo!
I am leaving on 14th May at 1pm and coming back to NZ on the 11th Nov.

Getting really excited now.