D-Mang's Travels

Rollin on dubs in Dublin!

2011-01-30T05:14:00.000-08:00

Yet another country and city come and gone, but this time I found somethings a little too familiar...

For example, the first pub I see in Ireland is the Beaumont House! Really? Okay...

Of course one has to become acquainted with local news, just to get the mood set. But really? Drink driving? Come on, that doesn't even make sense!

Easily one of the most impressive things in Dublin I saw right away, the 'Long Room' library at Trinity College. Something like 200 years old, dozens of huge bookcases filled with I think 200 000 books. The entire place is wood paneled, all warped and tilted, very cool. They even have the oldest harp in Ireland that the national symbol is modeled after. You'll have to excuse the picture, you're not really allowed to take pictures, I had to be ultra sneaking and the lighting isn't very good for photos, but I think you will get the idea.

Just outside the library was something I could have sworn I've seen before. Turns out that the Vatican had given the college an identical, but smaller, sphere to the one located in the Vatican museum. This one also spins (I tested).

Turns out that the Irish have a sense of humor:

The next day, on the way to a famous and historically relevant jail, I managed to take the wrong bus... 40 minutes in the wrong direction! Opps!

But on the positive side, I got the best seat on the double decker (same buses as London, just yellow) and an extended tour of Irish suburbs. I don't think I saw a single piece of grass. As you can see the roads are narrow (lots of parking on the curb) and the 'yards' are mostly all paved into driveways.

Heading back into the city (on the correct bus), you get a great view of the Spire of Dublin (originally called the millennium spire, but having been finished several years late, it didn't seem to fit...). I guess its the tallest 'sculpture' in the world, whatever. I think what it's best known for is a reference point for drunk people stumbling out of bars, as it has a bright light at the top.

I learned a lot about the history of English prisons at the Kilmainham jail. Mostly that if jails were as bad as they were back then, we would have far less criminals. But as there are rules as to how you can treat prisoners, they created this 'Victorian style' cell room, which I think you will agree is pretty bad ass!

Moving on the the Dublin castle, which isn't much of a castle, as they managed to blow it up in a fire a while ago. But what is left is very castle-like, if you ignore the parking lot around it...

This box is pretty amazing. It used to hold the city seal used for making official documents. It's six-sided and has six keys. All six keys need to be turned at the same time in order to open the box, which is impressive for being built in the middle ages.

Having used to be under British rule, the Mayor of Dublin is actually called 'Lord Mayor' and has to wear this dress and huge gold and silver bling. Imagine in Edmonton, we would have: 'Stephen Mandel, Lord Mayor of Edmonton' hahaha!

Below is I guess a very iconic location for pictures and whatnot in Dublin. But it has a hidden purpose. What it is actually used for is as a helipad for important guests, such as Hilary Clinton.

A perfect example of the attitude toward the current state of Ireland's economy:

I managed to find a 14% beer (yes it's still beer!). Surprisingly it didn't really taste that strong, but you could really feel it!

I had to share this, just lovely!

And now for final thoughts.

Going to Ireland was both fun and enlightening. The pub scene there is amazing. To get real Irish food, you have to go to a pub, as there is no such thing as an 'Irish Restaurant'. Learning about Irish history was great, as it's a story of struggle for freedom and independence. I really developed an appreciation for the emotion that I observed speaking to some locals about politics. From what I understand, people get very involved and emotional when there is an election. That's because not so long ago, they were not their own country, and the British were trying to remove Irish culture from the Earth (a lasting result of that is that English is dominant language, not Irish). Also, the two major political parties are descended from the two sides of their civil war after separation from the British, which makes things tense I suppose!

So once again, I leave more knowledgeable (hopefully that means wise) than when I arrived!

Triumphant Return!

2011-01-10T11:48:00.000-08:00

4 planes and 24 hours later, I have arrived back in Trondheim. With the help from my boss I've fully moved into my new room, entirely covered in wood paneling!

While my luggage is still in Amsterdam, I should get it tomorrow, I hope my stuff hasn't been replaced with weed!

Being back in airports, I remembered the ugly twins I saw last time and if I haven't shared this with you before here they are!

Enjoy the snow!

How I $pend My Time

2010-12-05T12:35:00.000-08:00

O dear, I just love puns. You get five points if you can correctly identify how many I put in the title.

This post goes out to all my fellow engineers, who share my love for excel.

Now that I have done a considerable amount of traveling, and my habit of making excel sheets to keep track of data (you know what I mean), I have decided to share my travel graphs.

I’ve kept track of the time that I spend on different forms of transportation: trains, buses, boats, and planes during my trips.

And here are some nice figures showing that data, Enjoy!

*The following data only contains time of travel, it doesn’t include waiting time, which is considerable. For example, my plane was cancelled once and the next one was a 2 hour bus ride and 6 hours in a different airport away.

The bar graphs gives you a nice overview of how much time I've spent in transit.

I put in a pie chart cause really, who doesn't like a pie chart, even though they are stupid because they are qualitative. Is the blue one bigger than the green one? Is the yellow one half the red one? The bar graph knows!

This one is my favorite. It shows how much travelling I have done and when, but also how my travel mode habits have changed. While its not exactly what I wanted, its pretty close.

Peace out!

I left my gloves on a bus in London

2010-12-01T11:50:00.001-08:00

Ello ello ello there.

I’ve now been to both capitals of the two countries that founded Canada so long ago, and I will say that the English side has won me over. While Paris was awesome, London always kept me laughing, for example:

Since it was a Saturday I went out on a pub crawl for some London partying, some of the bars were douchey and lame, but it gave me that chance to chat up some locals, a nurse and a political adviser to the US military in Iraq, pretty sweet! It finished off at the Ministry of Sound, self described as the best dance club in London, with perfect acoustics and humidity controls, blah blah blah, whatever, the bass was insane!

The sweet sign projected on the wall outside.

After a great night of clubbing, of course there is parliament building to see. Great weather made walking around London rather comfortable, and the late time of year meant pretty much no tourists.

Just incase you forgot they do everything backwards here, a convenient reminder.

And some great flying buttresses at Westminster abbey. Its in such great condition because they charge 15 pounds to get in, unless you go in for worship that is…

Buckingham palace, pretty unimpressive, apparently it wasn't made to be a palace… ya okay… The Stockholm palace is much more impressive.

Some afternoon sun presented with some great lighting for pictures.

The Clock Tower, often wrongly called Big Ben, which is actually an informal nickname of the largest bell inside the tower.

The back side of Parliament.

And to keep up with tradition, some evening pull ups on what must be the worlds largest sundial, on the summit of Tower Hill.

The Tower Bridge, next to the Tower of London, just of Great Tower road, ya I know, very original naming sceme. Really impressive construction techniques for a 120 year old brigdge. It’s a steel suspension truss brigde that opens with an upper walkway for pedestrians, very cool, but I don’t believe it opens any more.

Next stop the British museum, to see some world famous Greek and Roman sculpture, which I seem to have developed quite a liking for. The Greeks were much more skillful than the Romans, and like the current Hollywood, almost all Roman Sculpture are copies of Greek work that doesn’t exist anymore.

And instead of showing you dozens of statues and pieces of buildings, which you can’t really appreciate, I’ll show you the roof! Its really sweet, made for the Queen or whatever.

A return to the Tower of London during the day was next. While its quite pricey to get in, they keep the Crown Jewels here so kinda a big attraction, what with having a 530 carat diamond the size of a golf ball! There’s also the lesser, 300 carat diamond, small by comparison.

Ahh and here is what most of the London tube looks like, escalators and lifts, cause that baby’s deep! The amount of stairs you have to take to get to the tubes is in the range of 200!

I also got lucky and happened upon a tube strike the second day, so it was time for the bus, which was insanely busy, as was the rest of the city since everyone had to walk to work that day.

I hung out with some Aussi’s I met on a tour who were quick to point out my terrible pronunciation of British words, such as ‘Leicester’ is said ‘Lester’, which is stupid.

Until we speak again...

I'm in East Berlin!

2010-11-05T15:01:00.000-07:00

Hallo hallo!

So I am finally on my last leg of the trip (and i don't say that with any sort of non good feelings) and I am now in Berlin! We've done the free tour today (New Europe) and it was really informative as always, learning about the history of Berlin from 100's of years ago to the present day.

This will just be a short check in, but my initial impression of Berlin is that is it a city that has many layers, like the scene in Shrek, if you want to, this city will never get old. So far (0.7/3.2 days) it has given me the impression that it is it's own entity and that it has almost and endless amount to offer. We've got a lot ahead of us and the following posts should be amazing! ;)

Celebrity Status!

2010-10-27T03:16:00.000-07:00

Turns out that Backpackers are a hot topic in Norway. I was just interviewed by a local newspaper about how backpackers travel in Norway, specifically if I would want to walk to the airport. I guess many people do, as it is only 3 km to the town, and there is no walking path. Pretty cool, my third interview by a newspaper!

The second interview I haven't blogged about yet, and was on my boat trip to the Russian border. I had an informal interview with a German travel reporter on the bridge of the MS Polarlys. The bridge was kick-ass, and I might get a mention in a Berlin newspaper!

Just thought I'd mention that, only 3 hours till take off!

Torp Sandefjord Lufthaven

2010-10-27T01:20:00.000-07:00

I am 'en route' to Germany for what should be an epic 2 week adventure, punctuated by the last launch of space shuttle discovery on Nov. 1. And you shouldn't be surprised that I will be watching the live stream from Frankfurt.

But before then, I have a 5 hour wait here at Torp Sandefjord Lufthaven, which is a strange name for an airport, even though it is an accurate description. Getting here only took 10 hours by train, which isn't bad at all due to the rather nice trains in Norway. One day (probably when I'm back to Canada) I'll make an info-graphic detailing how much time I've spent going to places, rather than being at places, cause I'm sure it's a stupid amount.

Although, I really don't mind, as you might have guessed, this airport has free wifi! And my plane tickets were only $28 return!

Rome in Heat?

2010-10-21T22:12:00.000-07:00

Ello ello, been a while. Taking a step back, to times of greater warmth and more pizza, here's the details of notre excellent voyage a Roma!

Starting off with the Colesum, of course, we practically ran towards it from our hostel, despite being lost, and rather tired from the hot and gross 8 hour train ride through the night with no sleep, but I digress.

Here it is, or first view of the Colleseum, it looks exactly like you would expect, and its more impressive up close, a great way to jump feet first into ancient Rome!

But noooooooo, Chris had to pee before we could go in, and here is proof if he try to deny it. :)

I must also draw attention to the photos, a lot of them are way to bright so they aren't the best, but I like it cause it shows how damn hot it was, easily 35 degrees mid day and I don't think it dropped below 25, but we had air conditioning! :)

We arrived early in the morning so there were relatively few people in the area, which was nice. It was really quiet and gave the place a nice atmosphere, before the fat tourist families started running around yelling at their wives and children.

You might notice that the walkway through the center is gone, well thats if you like to memorize details of ancient monuments like I do... They are doing some renovations and improvements, like adding more levels so you can go to the top and look out over Rome, or sit in some replica seats, but they weren't open yet. For me it was almost just as good to watch them being built.

And of course the ongoing archeology, which I'm sure i was the only one who noticed. Looks like they are doing some tunneling...

And heres the subject, peering out at what was once a place of untold death and suffering coupled inexorably with celebration and joy; the juxtaposition painfully obvious, yet somehow gracefully in its bitter irony, those who fight for their freedom only to have it taken away at the turn of a thumb, how a civilization so advanced can harbor such blatant barbarianism while the greatest science, architecture, and literature builds cities held up by warfare and imperialism by an empire that once stretched from here to London, which left ruins as a tribute to its greatness spread throughout Europe like flags claiming territory, or perhaps like disintegrating tombstones, chronicling, and maybe as a warning to the ultimate fate of those who flaunt hubris...

No, just kidding, I don't that crossed my mind once!

I did walk on one of the oldest roads in existence, to which Chris promptly inquired, "I wonder if its original?"

(its a posed walk, which is why it looks rather awkward)

After visting such advanced civilizations as Sweden, the public transit here was astonishing. Every train car had huge graphity which often covered up the windows! It think they have given up somewhere trying to prevent it.

For not being allowed to take pictures, we sure got some good ones at the bone church! The history of this is just umm well lots of monks died and I guess they got bored. I will be so bold as to say that it was an experience.

Instead of showing you the Trevi fountain, I am showing the clusterfuck which was around it. When you can't approach or even walk away from something due to the mass of people who want to get a picture which will inevitably be filled with other people taking pictures, ahhhh I don't get it. But the fountain is pretty bad ass, and a revisit at night was definitely worth it.

Moving on to the main event, the Roman Forum! For being so huge and impressive and the pinnacle of Roman history and culture, neither of us knew it existed... opps. Heres a view of the Colosseum from the forum, including a triumphal arch, one of many.

I won't show you all of the Forum, so it will be a surprise when you eventually make it to Rome so here is one of the biggest and baddest structures. A bath house on Palentine hill. While an open pit now, it used to be covered, supported by marble columns and buildings several stories high, all decked out in colored marble inlays. Its very impressive just how big of a complex this is. The whole hill is one big building, having been increased in size with each successive Roman emperor.

And now the Piece of Resistance, I mean the best thing. My favorite, the Pantheon! This picture doesn't really do it justice. The people offer some sort of scale, but really its a place you need to visit to understand. Couple that with the fact that it is 2000 years old and it really becomes amazing! Honestly I could have spent hours in there.

Here is the front, with 16 giant granite columns. As you can see, a great day, although I hear watching the rain pour in the roof is pretty cool too.

Rome is an interesting city, as a river runs straight through it, a big river too, and it is bridged by awesome arch bridges with statues and carvings, yet there is no focus on the river at all. For example, in Amsterdam, the canals are obiously very important to the city and are well used and integrated into everyday life. In Paris the bridges are famous for their history and as meeting places, and the banks of the river are always filled with people. But in Rome, there is no one walking by the river, no shops, walkways, benches, or anything. It is almost like it doesn't exist, which is strange...

To finish of this post, here's a nice sunset over a 'mini vatican' as I believe this area was based upon the open round space in front of Peter's Bascillica.

PS. those statue people begging for money are everywhere, like pigeons. Perhaps they serve a purpose like the Peruvian pan-flute guardians...

Beer Drinking... Uh, I mean Munich's cultural, heritage, uh something.

2010-10-03T11:53:00.000-07:00

I've gotten a lot of inquiries about Munich, specifically about the Royalty we partied with. So skipping the rest of Italy (for now), OKTOBERFEST!

Another 12 hours of train and plane travel and this time without having to sleep in a bus station! So, with a full 10 minutes until my train leaves for Munich from the airport, I have my first Munich beer. A half liter of Radler, 3 euros, the cheapest beer I've had since Italy, much cheaper than the 10 dollar beer in Trondheim, is my choice. Turns out its like beer with liquid sugar, way to sweet, bad for drinking fast. Yuk!

After the two hour train ride with hundreds of German children, (really, I was the oldest person on the train, as German kids get free train travel within a couple hundred km's of their school) and after having 3 10 year old girls stare and giggle at me for 40 minutes, before saying, "bye bye" and running off the train giggling, I get to the main station. First site? Two monks looking for their train, awesome!
And now onto my 'hostel'. I'm not going to say how much it cost, but it wasn't cheap. Definitely the worst place I've ever stayed in, not a single positive. You can see for yourself what is was.

Myself and some American girls came to call it the 'Hurricane Katrina Hostel,' as you can see below, an accurate description.

But now on to something a little more positive, the first German graffiti I've ever seen!

Can't say its the most elegant work I've seen, or even the most relevant, but unarguably German.

Now the real stuff!

I met up with Chris in the old town center and stumbled (not literally, not yet anyways) upon the most famous brewhouse (just fyi, my spell checker wants me to type whorehouse instead of brewhouse... ok) in the world, the Hofbrauhaus.

This place is amazing, its a permanent beer house with several connected buildings and an outdoor beer garden. As you can see it was packed!

And here is what Munich is all about, a mass of beer, 1L. I suppose it is necessary to say that the beer they brew for the festival is not normal beer. It is actually 2-3% stronger than regular, depending on the brewery. So that gives beer with about 6-7%, in 1L glasses!

We had our masses and went to dinner with Chris's German acquaintances. Verdict, German wieswurst(white sausage) and sauerkraut is amazing! All with another mass of beer!

Of all the places to go, Chris finds an Irish pub. Perhaps its cause of the company he finds inside?

Anyways, that was the beginning of one strange night...

But moving on to day two, before meeting up with the gang, I had some hours for site seeing. Here is the old town center, from St. Peter's tower, a great view!

I made my way to a market that has been going on for 100's of years. It is a spice market, fruit market, meat market, wine and cheese market, and farmers market, a really great place! With the world's best sauerkraut I might add!

He's got the keys to your babies!

A fast food bakery?

This one is going to be out there, but I think this is where characters from Final Fantasy buy their clothing. Honestly, this looks like the clothes from my party in FF8, all they need now is a weapon shop where you can pick up a gun-blade, some potions, and maybe some items.

And now to the good stuff, the event that brought me here, Oktoberfest!

Using some sweet German connections, lets see, a know Chris, Chris knows Alex, Alex has a girlfriend, the girlfriend has a friend, and that friend knows Gunter, and Gunter is the VIP organizer for the Hippodrom, the most famous beer tent in Munich. So yes, we got in and promptly were offered a mass of beer from a waiter.

As you can see, its packed. Opening day of Oktoberfest, everyone is excited and the band is playing traditional music, punctuated with "Hey Baby" every 10 minutes.

And here is what all of the questions have been about, the German royalty. One of the Germans we were with was telling us about the famous nature of the tent we were in, and then pointed out some Royalty that she recognized. They were right next to us, and looked very royal, nice and posh. They were drinking the same beer as us, 'normal' people, but were not dancing on the tables. The pictures not the great, but you get the idea, it just added to the awesomeness of the night.

I forgot to mention the best part, FREE BEER! Yes thats right, for this special night with all of the 'important' people, the beer is free, and boy did Chris want lots!

We stayed until we were almost forceably removed. Its not our fault really, they close the tents rather early, at 10:00 they have last call, then start closing at 10:30. I suppose its for the best, cause they open at 10:00am and we really didn't need anymore beer. :)

Little known fact, Oktoberfest used to be a festival about wine, horse racing, and shooting. The first festival was in 1810, also the only year to have shooting, I wonder why.... 1 L beers and guns... ya.

But Chris managed to find one, and man that gun did not shoot straight, Chris couldn't hit a thing. But I managed to get 2/2...

Sorry for this next one, very blurry, but here is Chris flanked by two of the lovely Germans whose company we enjoyed.

God thats a bad picture....

And now moving on to the next day, by this time Chris had left with his German troop, and I had another full day before my train/bus/flight/flight/bus/bike ride back home.

A great fountain.

Today was the 2nd day of the festival, so why not have a parade that lasts 6 hours? Sounds good to me. The most people in a parade ever. Dozens of marching bands, horses, historical soldiers, ladies, guys, young people, old people, and things I don't even know, such as the bearded men below.

Each of the six breweries had a horse drawn cart with traditional beer kegs.

Hunting is pretty big I guess, lots of stuffed animals, and even freshly dead ones (that I presume get cooked). But the coolest was the eagle/falcon brigade! Yup thats right, they had about 10 people with HUGE birds of prey on their arms, I had no idea how big they were. The wing span on the one below was easily as long as that lady is tall.

After about an hour, I got the idea that parade wasn't going to end, indeed, it went on for 4 hours more. Pretzels are big here, oooo nice one Darcy. They are both huge and hugely popular, even used instead of bread!

Now on to a more serious side of Munich. Unlike Berlin(its monuments are huge), Munich has chosen to remember the Third Reich with small, subtle memorials, very custom and very personal.

The one below is a path of golden bricks on what was 'Dodgers Alley' for the people who refused to salute a guarded Nazi monument, which was required by law. The act of walking down the alley was made illegal, and people were arrested and sent to Dakou, the concentration camp outside Munich.

There are marble hand bills placed in the street around the University. This is to commemorate several students, a brother and sister and their friends, who were caught handing out sheets of paper with anti Nazi content. They were tried and executed for it. This one really struck me, as I can't imagine current comfortable 'American' youths taking such a risk. But this also made me think of how great our country is.

There are almost weekly protests and gatherings at the Parliament building, and it is completely legal, and sometimes the government actually cares. But whether or not the government cares, or even if the cause is stupid, the fact that the people can do so if they choose, without being murdered by the government is fantastic.

Back to site seeing, those memorials are rather heavy.

Another great day of weather, perfect sky, about 15 degrees and sunny!

Of course the beer didn't stay distant for long, I went on a 'beer appreciation tour' and hung out with about 8 Aussies, 2 Canadians and a Greek girl who couldn't handle her beer and really got annoying, fast!

Augustiner, everyones favorite year after year.

We got into a tent no problem on the 2nd night, just walked in and found a table, no hassle at all. Well, I think we kinda stole it but whatever.

I suppose I should say, they aren't so much beer 'tents' as they are permanent structures, ha.

On our way out, there was some blurry drama. I swear, its not the camera, it actually looked like this!

PS. pretty sure thats a body bag.... gross.

And now, for the end of the trip. The trian ride to the airport was slightly long at 2 hours, but the German country side is great, not as great as Norway, but almost flat like Canada. To show how ahead Germany is in the 'green' thing, here is one of many solar power plants along the train tracks. I have no idea what the smoke stack is, but I think its a great juxtaposition! I also passed towns and villages where every roof was covered in solar panels, really neat!

And that is Munich. I hope you made it to the end, this was a really long post. Stay tuned for some more of Italy, and then I go to the Russian border by boat, a 4 day trip north on the Norwegian coast!

Venice is full of water!

2010-09-23T21:43:00.000-07:00

So, almost a month since my last post, geeze, what a long time. Well that just means that I have more to tell. Since then I've been all over Italy and just got back from Oktoberfest in Munich, Germany.

So here's something about Venice.

For the most part, Venice is all about walking around, as there are no cars, not like we would have rented one or anything. Which is relativley great, but Venice isn't built for the number of overweight tourists that lumber and plod through the narrow streets and skinny bridges. But I digress...

Lets start 'er off nice a simple, here's the all important creater of this blog, and just look at him. Finest example of a human I have ever seen! O ya, I'm on one of the only 3 bridges that cross the grand canal that effectively divides Venice in a ying yang sort of way.

Inside the basillica on Saint Marco's square, your not allowed to take pictures, I think they have a copyright on the gold covered walls or something, whatever, their Basillica floods every day! The 'W' I'm letting fly is for "why not?" by the way.

Being awesome, Chris and I searched and found a Leonardo Davinci exhibit displaying recreations of some of his mechanical inventions. Most of it was pretty impressive, but he was a victim of his time, and some of them were just stupid. I was particularly fascinated with his take on the Archimedes screw, shown above with one of his flying machines that you would have to be an idiot to think would actually fly.

My favorite bridge happens to be the very first one I saw in Venice, right outside the train station. It also crosses the grand canal, meaning there is one more bridge that crosses, the Rialto Bridge, which is the most famous. For what reason I don't know, I am really curious to know who dictates what things are 'Most Famous' where ever I travel, because most of them are overrated or stupid. I won't show you that one, leaving some for you to see for the first time if you ever make it to Venice. Anyways, I like this bridge from how thin it is, under-crowed, and all together elegant and bad ass. From what I can tell it is all masonry, and building that is an achievement.

Our hostel was tons of fun, with the exception of it being run by several stupid travelers just for several weeks, waiting for the 2 bathrooms for 40 people, o and the insane infestation of bed bugs, still recovering from those bites. Rachael gets a shot out, cause I definitely didn't understand how awful those bites could be.

But staying positive, the people in the hostel made up for all of its misgivings. We had a great pasta meal and then drinks with some ladies from Ireland, Scotland and American. A great mix, and the cultural (mainly accents) lead to much laughter!

As is so much in Venice, the ambulance is on water!

Instead of public buses, they have water buses, which are really just for the tourists. But it's a great way to see Venice from the water, and pretty cheap, however it does take a long time. As you can see, it's a blast!

Do NOT causally stroll between the boat and dock!

Drawn by the sound of Vivaldi, the next exhibit was a string instrument display. Venice is famous for its history of string instrument craftsmen.

The worst thing about Europe is the disgusting sky rats. And I guess a reason they are so prominent is that tourists think its amazing to feed them and have them crawl all over them. I am just disgusted with this, and cannot understand who would let themselves be defiled by these horrible creatures. We have now seen them here and in Paris, it couldn't be everywhere could it?

The tallest structure in Venice is the bell tower, and keeping with tradition, we climbed it. unfortunately you have to take the elevator. But we lucked out and got there just as the noon bells started, and man were they loud! Check out the video at the end.

And of course I was the only one who wanted my picture underneath the deafening bells.

The view is quite nice, you almost can't tell there are canals between the buildings.

The oars that the boatmen use are quite large, as Chris models.

A typical Venetian residential canal, with private boats and little bridge.

And that sums up Venice. Again, sorry about such the long delay, hopefully I haven't lost my few readers, feel free to post or ask questions, even requests!

Of course I promised something.

2010-09-23T13:24:00.000-07:00

So I did say new post today, after almost a month of what I'm sure was unbearable silence, but I will have to postpone it until tomorrow. I might take some time during work to finish it up, so I supposed stay tuned, and hopefully it's worth the wait!

New post soon!

2010-09-22T09:50:00.000-07:00

I'm writing my next post, but just found out that I left my power cord at work, and my comp's almost dead, so tomorrow for sure!

Just one pic for fun!

Of course it me climbing an old castle turret in Bergamo, a small town west of Milan, Italy.

The Rest of Paris

2010-08-25T07:34:00.000-07:00

O man, 2 weeks since my last post...

Well here is some more of Paris, hopefully I haven't lost too many of you.

We made our way to Versailles, of course, which wasn't too far away from where we were staying.

The weather was great, which was perfect for touring the gardens, probably the best sky of our entire stay in France!

Versailles grows oranges that you can get squeezed into juice. After eating the small limes that turned out to be non-ripe oranges, we 'obtained' an orange. Hella tasty!

Here's mini Versailles, built for the Queen when she 'needed' to 'get away' from the 'hectic' life in the main palace... gimme a break. While it wasn't in as good of shape as some of Versailles, it was built with pink marble and granite, which was very cool. On that note, most of Versailles you can't access. The part that everyone walks through is maybe 30% max of the total palace, so it makes me wonder what kind of condition the rest of the palace is in....

While taking a break along the grand canal, we noticed the huge fish! They had to be about 3 feet long!

A feature of the gardens are the 100's of marble carvings of Roman gods, royalty, animals and huge vases. There is almost certainly dozens of lifetimes worth of work in these carvings as each one took between 3-5 years to carve. This one is of some dude and his three sons, all naked, wrestling about 6 snakes.

Now you probably want to see the gardens, so here they are:

Yup, about 80% of the 'gardens' are just giant hedges with a dirt path... really not impressive. Although they are laid out in geometric patterns, which I suppose is great... if your in a helicopter.

But now onto the gardens you hear about.

The part of the gardens that you expect to be great really are, they contain hundreds of rare and imported flowers and trees and shrubs from all over Europe, which I think is an impressive feat in itself.

The geometric patterns you can see are really cool, most of the potted trees are the orange trees, with gross not-ready oranges on them.

I suppose I'm not going to show you any of the Palace, I don't know why. But to sum it up, dozens of rooms completly covered in gold and gigantic murals. Tons of imported granite and marble, insane hardwood floors and furniture. My favorite in royal excess is entire rooms dedicated to 'the king dressing in the morning'.

Rachael took us to a spot on the river one evening where people gather to listen to music and dance. There are several distinct 'pits' right on the river where people were dancing to ballroom music and folk music. We found a little more upbeat brass band close by, awesome!

This bookstore was great. It felt like it belonged in Harry Potter's world. I think the only thing that wasn't covered in books was just enough of the floor so you could walk.

Notre dam is cool I guess, but was a little spoiled for me cause I couldn't get an up close look at the flying buttresses and the HUGE slow moving line/sea of people inside the cathedral.

But that didn't stop me from finding something to hang off of!

Next stop the Louvre

While the Louvre was just what you would expect, it is a museum, therefore not a carnival so I needed some bad coffee from Starbucks, where I proceeded to watch an American woman yell at the French girl who got her huge complicated order wrong.

Opinion, don't expect to be blown away if:

you've been to a museum before

you expect to be entertained

you don't dream about art which portrays people you don't know painted by people you don't know

And 2-3 hours is probably all you can take, cause really, its just a giant museum which lacks a general theme or feeling cause its got EVERYTHING in it!

Here is some of the oldest human writing in existence. My thoughts, too small.

Two statues from Easter Island, wait.... no, one of them is Chris.

I'm not showing you the Mona Lisa cause this is better and you know what it looks like, and it looks exactly what it looks like. Here's several hundred people with their cameras taking pictures from 20 feet away. THE best way to appreciate the most famous painting in the world, through a 2 inch lcd screen and then 20 blurry zoomed in photos! The best part were the people who pushed to the front to 'contemplate and appreciate' the painting.... ya ok.

I can't wait to photoshop that fat guy out of this picture! :)

So this pyramid shows the difference between architectural design and engineering. The architect promised that the pyramid would be see through and you wouldn't even notice it was there. His reasoning? It's made of glass, you can see through glass

The reality? Glass is heavy, and not 100% transparent, it's 'see through' but not transparent.

The result? Large amounts of opaque steel support structure obscuring the view and diminished visibility looking through several panes of really thick glass. Exactly what what designed!

And for Rachel's Question, yes, me and Chris made excellent use of the French train system. We took the metro around the city often. We wanted to try out the high speed train, which we did. As you would expect, it doesn't really feel like your going really fast, like an airplane. We also used the suburban train network as well to get from Rachael's place to the city, so I think we got them all covered almost. It really makes me hope that the Edmonton-Calgary commuter train line gets built(Ha! ya maybe in 50 years!), it would be a great addition to Alberta.

Anyways, hope you've enjoyed, the nest post will be either from or about Italy, cause I leave tomorrow!

Paris

2010-08-10T10:15:00.000-07:00

Here's some of Chris and I's travel in Paris, and France, probably be the first of 2 or three parts, depending on stuff. Enjoy!

I got to Paris the night before Chris did, so nothing too exciting happened, just hung out with Rachael, who, very kindly, let us stay at her place while we were in Paris.

Of course our first stop was the Eiffel Tower, but because it took us almost 2 hours to find the grocercy store, cause we got lost, we had the first of, ummm i don't know, 35 french lunches which were meat and chesse sandwiches on bauggettes. And while the chesse and bread was awesome, it gets old...

Chris, why the face?

And here was our lunch view, pretty awesome, we got to check out the Eiffel Tower, without the thousands of tourists we would find at the base of it later.

We had to check out the Arc, which is really cool, as you would expect. Whats not cool is the 9 euro they want you to pay to climb up it, umm yah, its like 4 stories high, i could get a better view of paris from any building. But the real attraction is the traffic circle around the arc, yah pretty much madness. We saw SOO many close calls in a few minutes. Apparently the circle isn't covered under some insurance compaines....

Rachael took us out to the Pont Des Arts, a walking bridge that is a big pinic spot for the locals. Its right next to the Louvre and our night consisted of pretty much what you see below.

About half of the pinic crew, as it was still early.

Haha, and here is Chris being awesome in front of Notre Dam, at about 12:30.

I'm going to do a bit of time traveling here, but later in the the week we went to the coast, St. Malo to be specific. It is the town were Jacque Cartier left some 400 years ago to discover Canada and blah blah history.

And here's me hanging off a statue that ISN'T Jacque Cartier, at which Chris asked, "why do you always want to hang on stuff?"

"I could look for stuff on the beach all day!"

The old city of St. Malo is a walled city, with a huge stone wall all the way around it, very cool, I'm told it's one of few. You can walk all around the city on the walls, pretty neat.

More time travel...

We made our way to Mount St. Michele, which I think by itself would be a reason to come to Europe, I have no idea why i didnt know it existed, it's straight out of FF9! You've undoubtebley seen my FB pics, so I'll spare you here. The best and worst part about the town was the narrow streets, the best cause it was awesome, the worst cause about 2000 overweight middle aged people were trying to do the same thing with their tiny dogs and strollers....

Soooo me and chris took a street they couldn't...

Actually, we could barley take it, it started about 3 feet wide and narrowed to the width of our shoulders, way cool! And it lead to a bunch of stairs and a quieter way up to the top where the gothic cathedral dominated the summit.

The cathedral offered great views of the ocean and the cliff's of Normandy, were D-Day happened, which we didn't have to pay for cause Chris is a smooth French talker with all the ladies!

I like to go where I'm not supposed and pose.... there was pigeon shit everywhere!

Later!

Almost there....

2010-08-09T10:14:00.001-07:00

Hello, tomorrow, I promise there will be a comprehensive post on my Parisian travels.

No excuses, but I have been a little sick latley.

Just a little taste, heres the Effiel tower at night, viewed from the Pont des Arts (i think)

Postcards early in the Morn.

2010-08-03T14:35:00.000-07:00

Bonjour, comment ca va?

Pardon?

O, yes that's right, I'm not in Paris anymore, I'm in Norway, lets try again.

Hei Hei.

Hvordan har du det?

Unshill? Oooo, du forstordikke enilsk!

Opps, wrong language again, being cultured is hard!

So at 4 in the morning, on my way to the Metro to get out of Paris, I relaized that I'm not the only one moving around. Lots of people have moved to Calgary, different places in Edmonton, or are going to grad school, getting houses and what not. Chris reminded me that sending postcards is way more awesome then facebook or a blog, so if you wanna get a postcard from me from somewhere in Europe, just email me your address, or message me in facebook, or comment, and then just wait by the mailbox!

Paris, Paris, Paris, Paris, You're not in Paris!

2010-07-29T01:26:00.000-07:00

Cause I'm in Paris.

Me and Chris have been hanging around Paris, keeping it real, kickin it old school, and staying fresh.

Those things take a lot of time and effort, so this post won't be very long.

How about a Parisian Haiku?

We are in Paris

There is nice weather today

Me and Chris speak French

Stockholm is SOOO last weekend!

2010-07-24T06:46:00.001-07:00

Stockholm is a great city and I recommend anyone go there if the chance arises. This is another trip thats better told in pictures, so here they go!

I took a night train for the first time, VERY Harry Potter! (going to see that in London when it comes out by the way, awesome 22nd birthday I think!)

Here is the room, I couldn't get a better picture cause its really small! But there are six beds, and there was only two of us, which is awesome cause it got damn hot! (I think that it had to do with the train car being several decades old!)

I guess to make up for the hotness!! :0 they had a bunch of tiny boxes filled with water, strange...

My bunk, complete with safety net!

I couch surfed for the first time, and here is the couch, it was in a nice Swedish guys apartment, very small but in a great part of town.

I checked out a Swedish war history museum, it was really cool. Outside they had all of these cannons, which are hundreds of years old. I guess they are war trophies that the Swedish had won over the years. And from that great history class, they are Bronze, which is why they are green now, and they are really expensive, which is why they are displayed as trophies and not iron cannons. The More You Know!

Inside they had a bunch of guns which people might recognize, and the famous people who used em, neat!

And while they didn't have a caption on this gun, I'm sure that everyone knows this is the gun used by all of the Stargate teams! Including the most famous, SG1!

The City Hall of Stockholm is where they give out the Nobel prizes (except for peace, that is given out in Oslo, and the Swedish hate the Norwegian for giving one to Obama, they feel he didn't deserve it and that it has reduced the value and prestige of all Nobel prizes, which may or may not be true, but come on, really)

The wall in the city hall chamber, reminds you of some game.... which was invented for 70 years later...

This is the city hall chamber, with the Tetris walls. The architecture of this room is bad ass, the ceiling is supposed to represent both an upside down viking ship and an old viking hall underneath the night sky!

Probably the coolest thing in Stockholm is the Vasa war Galleon, which sank a full 20 minutes after it was finished in 1627. They raised it up in the the 60s, and put it in an old dry dock and built a museum around it. Its gigantic and is 95% original, and has been restored fully. Its very impressive! I could have put up dozens of pictures of it, but I didn't...

Ahhhhhh!!! Dead people! Ya, unfortunately, the ship wasn't empty when it sunk.

(PS, the new walking dead tv show is going to be sweet, see, even Olaf here is smiling!)

And i guess they felt that the governator was appropriate to put in the Vasa museum too, ya ok....

And the classic lunch in Sweden, Swedish meatballs and potatoes with gravy and that weird berry jam you get from IKEA, but much better!

I don't know who this statue is of, but some Swedish person decided to fit that lady with a pig mask. And believe me, that mask is larger than life and very good quality, more than just paper mache, someone went through a lot of trouble to do that, which is awesome!

This is a chest that used to hold the royal jewels and stuff. Its cool cause its 300 years old and has a really intricate spring loaded locking mechanism. I really hope you enjoy this picture, cause I got in shit for taking it. No cameras in the treasury, Opps! I bet I was the only person they stopped taking pictures of the empty chest, when there is treasure everywhere else!

This is the Swedish Kroner, 8-1 for Canadian dollars, and its even worse than the Norwegian Kroner. Just look at those different shapes, and yes, the 50 is almost a square!

The changing of the guard is a HUGE tourist attraction, something I failed to remember, and got suck in a huge crowd with a bike... but the marching soldiers and marching band were pretty cool. It was in an enclosed hemispherical space behind the Palace and the music echoed off the stone buildings a couple times so it sounded really cool.

Some guards marching around the palace.

This is the Royal palace, its huge and doesn't look like much from the outside, but the inside is pretty spectacular, but pics aren't allowed :(

Here is the great result of globalization. The first advertisement I see in Stockholm is how many Mcdonalds there are in the historic center, how depressing.

So, hope you enjoyed this post, sorry for the delay, my research is getting good, and I am still rather lazy.....

But my 14 hour bus ride to the airport leaves in a couple hours. I still haven't packed. Where are you going, you ask...

PARIS for 10 days!!!

Tupperware Gaurantees and: "Norway, Return of the Jet Lag"

2010-07-11T05:47:00.000-07:00

This is a quick post before I make my trip to Stockholm, I am really excited to take the night train, cause it saves me 2 nights of paying for accomodation, and I get to... sleep on a train!!

So here is a piece of tupperware I found in my place.

Now, don't get me wrong, guarantees are alright, but 30 years?! For tupperware? Come on, who do you acutally think will call out that guarantee 30 years from now? Considering that that label is about to come off, and this container is a couple years old, max, and there is no brand on it, if the label comes off then you don't even know what brand it is. How would that conversation go, "Um Hi, tupperware supplier, I, uh, I found this tupperware in my parent's attic, the lid dosen't fit anymore, and uh its kinda stained, and half decomposed, could you replace it?" Phone response, "Sure, as you know, we have the longest guarantee in the universe for tupperware, all we need is you to mail us the tupperware, complete with the crappy label that was on it at the time of purchase, and the original receipt, signed and dated at the time of purchase." Guy on the phone, "Uh, yah, well as you can imagine, I don't have those, and the shipping is more than the cost of a new tupperware, so I'll just go to walmart..." So if anyone has some spare time at work, you could call up rubbermaid and ask how many people actual use that guarantee approaching 30 years...

I'm pretty happy about the title, I think its witty, I hope you get it. So we all know that Empire was bad, and no one really expected it to come back after Luke distroyed the first Death Star. But, Vadar did get away and Mr. Lucas wanted more money, and we know what happened. Now why does this matter, well Jet Lag is evil, like the Dark Side, a distabilizing force of distruction. Here's my story.

So I was pretty tired when I first got here, and for a couple days was kinda out of it, like I said before, you don't realize how bad jet lag is until you don't have it. And I did a lot of important things in the zombie state I was in. One of them was getting my student smart card so I can scan into all of the buildings and such (foreshadowing..). Right after taking my awesome photo, I had to do a very important step. Now for a couple of weeks, I wasn't able to use my smart card, and I couldn't figure out why, and it was becoming more and more frustrating. I couldn't get into my lab, get into the building (which closes at 3), get into the metallography lab, use the library, etc. This resulted in me being trapped outside for an extended period of time, waiting for someone to open the door... All the while, thinking of why it wouldn't work.

So after asking many people what to do, with no solution, I went back to the card office. Upon entering the office and approaching the desk, I see it. Its the little keypad that I put in my pin code for my card so it would work! Ya, there was nothing wrong with my card, I just wasn't using it right. That evil jet lag prevented me from remembering that I set up a pin for my card. Its not like I just forgot, I saw other people use their card to let me into places, entering their pin and going, "hmm they have a code, I don't..." It just wasn't in my memory. My Luke Skywaker(with the robot arm) was that pinpad. I didn't even need to speak to anyone, I just face-palmed and returned to my office.

Whew, glad that's over.

Now here's some photos I wanna share.

A sunset at 10:00pm by my place.

For some reason this rusty pully was in the middle of that parking lot at student residence, and made for a cool picture.

These are a pair of locks that were on a fence outside of Oslo Gardemon (the airport) by my bus stop. Again, kinda weird but a cool picture.

And finally...

Evil, evil three pronged forks!! These were promptly thrown into the metal recycle bin outside my house, gross!

//Guess this post isn't so short after all...

Brussels is Awesome!

2010-07-07T10:59:00.001-07:00

I made my way to Brussels over the weekend, it is a pretty cool city.

In comparison to Amsterdam, it has a very different atmosphere. Old Amsterdam is pretty much maintained for rich people and tourists, whereas Brussels was pretty destroyed in WW2 and the old sections weren't really kept, so it is mostly just a functioning modern city. IT does have plenty to see, and I spent a good 1.5 days being entertained.

I got a new computer at work with a gigantic screen, so its easier to upload pictures now, so I will show you a bunch now!

This is the Atomium from the 1958 expo, they refurbished it in the last couple of years so its hella shiny now!

Here's me in front of the Basilica de something...

I could have taken the elevator, but that wouldn't be any fun.

Look what they have done to this poor dinosaur, I guess that is supposed to help attendance at their museum...

The SS logo is a skull, kinda disturbing.

Here's a Nazi uniform

The triumphal arch, which was built in 19 something to signify the independence of Belgium, it has the German flag hanging from it cause they won the day before, thats how much they like football!

Throwing out garbage, Brussels style!

Here's death on a tomestone, whith a bed sheet over him... and its all white marble, pretty bad ass!

Heres probably the most famous Brussels statue other than the Grand Place square, its a little boy peeing, and they dress him up, ya ok...

Here are some restored guild houses(the Nazis bombed the hell out of em)

I don't like how this is spelt.

I found Tintin! Pretty awesome!

Now this one is a very special picture for me, its my first view of a nuclear cooling tower in operation, on the top 5 things I saw in Brussels for sure.

The disgusting interior color scheme of Ryanair, but its alright cause you can pick whatever seat you like, so while everyone rushes toward the center, I sit at the end and get to leave the plane first :)

This is a view of the side of Grand Place, the whole square is shiny cause all of the buildings are gold painted!

I took a video panorama of the square, just cause photos wouldn't have been enough.

Apparently the first hostel I was at wasn't very popular, so I moved to the Van Gogh, which is in a building that Van Gogh used to live and work in, yay...

I met some really cool people, two Canadians, one from Toronto who has made Sweden and now mainland Europe home, and a Montrealer. There were two girls from California and Lithuania who hung out with us too, and made me pasta! My roommate for the night was an American on leave from Afghanistan, his job is to fly around Apache helicopters, way cool!

Until next time...

Amsterdam take 1

2010-07-01T06:15:00.000-07:00

This post comes straight from the Flying Pig hostel in downtown old Amsterdam!

Amsterdam's pretty awesome, as one would expect. The best thing I probably did was go on a free tour walking around the city, our guide was an Aussi of course, and pretty good. Joe (our guide) showed us a bunch of really cool things, and went into a bunch of the history of Amsterdam too, he knew alot about the city, which was awesome.

I've got some pics I'd like to share below:

They do have some cool tags, like everywhere, but this one is really common. The three X's have been associated with Amsterdam for hundreds of years, and no one really knows where they came from exactly. But they are put with skulls quite often, and are found on lots of things all around town, like light poles, man holes, buildings, bike racks, buses, clocks, pretty much everything.

Here's the pipe organ in the 'New Church' which is actually hundreds of years old. If you can see the people for scale, this thing is huge, and really impressive when its open! Those people were practicing for a concert that night, so the atmosphere inside the church was amazing!

We also listened to the 'guardian of the pipes'( no kidding, thats his title) play a concert, and realizing that the organ is 300 years old, its awesome that it could have been built.

This is a view from tallest church tower in the city, and it specifically shows the Anne Frank house. Can't see it? Well was meant to be hidden. It is the small black triangle above the black building in the front, about 40% in from the left of the picture, connnected to the white house with a triangular roof.

I had to take a picture of this sign!

The bricks on this building failed and is condemned I assume, but they put paintings on the windows, pretty cool.

So the buildings here lean, and usually there solution is to straighten the floors, and then forget about it. Here's the eventual conclusion! Notice how the building next to it is still occupied, even though it, itself is using the failed building to support itself.

Here is an excellent view of the variety in the buildings. The heights, design, and width vary, with no standards, its amazing!

O yah, did I mention the buildings lean? Check this one out, thats crazy!

Like I had before, the Amsterdamians had a really cool system of identification. They had cartoons on the buildings showing what the purpose was. Here's a really complex one, and in color. Obviously its been restored, but i think that they should bring this back!

This is a picture of what I have dubbed, the 'Wind Clock' cause I'm pretty sure it shows the wind direction, like that is really important or something...

So the big party night (you gotta have one of those in Amsterdam!) we started it at the hostel, as they had pretty cheap pitchers. Robyn, Me, and our new friend Matt (an Aussi) headed out to the red light district after a short while. And you all know whats in the red light district, ladies fo Sale! You can't take pictures so I can't show you unfortunately, but we did learn some valuable lessons.

For starters, the starting price is 50 euros, and then rises with increasing complexity, just be creative to imagine what that means...

We saw many people partaking in these services, and cheering when buddies came out to their friends, or awkwardly dashing away. The gross part is the turnaround, right after someone leaves, they are back to work, eying up people, gross!

Annnnd, you can get rejected if she doesn't like you, which is awesome, imagine how humiliating that would be!

An interesting fact is that the narrower the alleyway, the better the merchandise gets, which is why the ladies bordering on a little square with public urinals were sick and the ones in the 3 foot wide alley were jaw dropping! Hooker shopping was a great way to spend a night in Amsterdam!

Heres a funny story, we bought some food from the grocery store, including a bottle of wine. We didn't have baskets on our bikes so we split up the food and each put some under the spring holder things on the front of the bike. Now I had the wine and it was pretty secure for a couple hours. Later on in the day, I guess it had come a little loose. So going over some bumps in the middle of an intersection, the wine slips out of the bag, an shatters on the bike forks, splashing wine and glass all over me, and exploding on the ground, glass and wine everywhere! Now its not like I was going to stop and pick up all the wine and glass, with cars and bikes and people everywhere in the intersection, so I did the next best thing, started laughing hysterically and pedaled really fast to get out of there!! Cause come on, it was like this wine just exploded at my feet... in Amsterdam!!! It was really funny at the time! :)

Things I'll remember about Amsterdam:

Canals everywhere, pretty cool.

Cool old people who'll talk to you forever if you let them.

Really bad street performers.

Bikes everywhere, parked, in pieces, and all rickety and crappy.

Tourists everywhere, the places without tourists are way better!

Leaning buildings and awesome architecture.

Too much ice cream!

The best cheese in the world, and its cheap!

O of course, naked ladies in the windows and pot absolutely everywhere!

This is just part one, part two should hopefully be better organized...

Great Weekend in Amsterdam, but..

2010-06-29T14:51:00.000-07:00

So I know it has been a while since my last post, and Amsterdam was awesome so you should want to read it. While I've done some work on it, it won't be ready for a day or so. Annnnd, this turned out to be longer than I wanted, twenty minutes of sleep gone...

My plan was to do it up tonight, but... surprise! Another group meeting this week! This of course means free lunch and dinner, and as the Norwegians do dinner, its an all night thing with way to much wine.

Couple that with the fact that I got about 5 hours of sleep a night for 4 nights in Amsterdam, and then the amazing 2 hours I got last night on the concrete in the Oslo airport, I feel obliged to a good nights rest. :)

But heres some pics just cause I'm awesome like that!

This one will get some more later, but its for you Anthony. This has something to do with Guilds! Yes, real-life guilds, so cool!

I have no idea what this means, but it used to indicate the use of a building...

Now this is a European car, and that is a Canadian!

A bike parking garage anyone, theres gotta be thousands there!

George, you've been a bad boy!

Gotta bend it like beckham, hes actually a small guy, and check out who's with his small wife!

I've waited years.

School, Work and Architecture

2010-06-22T10:55:00.000-07:00

I've got a request to tell a bit about my work and some architecture too, so here it goes...(listening to Marky Mark and the funky bunch)

Some of my work in confidential, but I haven't signed the confidentiality agreement yet ;)

I'm doing some thermogravimetric analysis on the oxidation of a common aluminum magnesium alloy. It has applications for improving current methods used to recycle aluminum, which is neat cause it could have significant implications in that field...

If you remember the Vigeland metal from earlier, that is being turned into my samples, which I'll oxidize and collect valuable data... I think, I haven't done anything like that yet, but I should be getting into a good groove next week or so.

Now on to some pics.

I guess Norway is known for its wooden stave churches, and it just so happens there is one by my place.

They also have really strict rules about what new buildings can be made. The result is that all new buildings are really 'artistic', or cool in some way.

Like this condo building, I'd live here.

The power substation they've got by my place is also pretty interesting. It seems to be an old mansion turned into a power station.

My guess is that it is something left over from the war, as all of those occupation war items were either destroyed or turned into 'no-so-glorious' government buildings, like the sub pens they have in the bay which is now an archive for the government. They even painted it a hideous pink!

The university buildings also follow the same trend as the rest of town, and are pretty cool and modern looking, with some pretty sweet pedways. FYI, NTNU is mostly a materials science and engineering school with 30 000 students, thats a lot of Mat E's!

A cool dicotomy that is present here in Trondheim is that the buildings are either cool modern/industrialist or they are old stone, perfectly displayed by the main administration building, a stone castle-like building. Just compare that to the GSB (general services building) at the U of A!

Trollstigen and Trollveggen, bring on the Trolls!

2010-06-21T14:07:00.000-07:00

I took the weekend to go to see some great Norwegian Fjords, and man was I not disappointed.

I took the train (on Friday), which is awesome just in itself, but Norwegian trains are awesome, they are comfy, quiet, and you can walk around, buy six dollar coffee, and sit in the little restaurant car!

The rain was intense on the way there, not really encouraging, but it turned out to be a good thing because the waterfalls were intense!

Saturday rain was ridiculous, I got soaked on Friday on the 30min walk to the hostel from

the train station, and it hadn't stopped raining all night.

The only option was to take the bus to Trollstigen, or 'Troll stair'.

The 'less steep' part of the road, remember one lane in a coach bus makes for very tight turns!

Rain makes big waterfalls!

The bridge across the waterfall, a roman arch is memory serves me correctly.

The one lane on the bridge, not much room...

view from the bottom, you can just barely see the bridge.

Me at the bottom, after having conquered Trollstigen!

Yah I know, pretty cool right!

The Glorious Urinals of Norway!

2010-06-18T05:13:00.000-07:00

What is currently a growing collection of photographs I will share with you now. Of the things I have found different from Canada, one is the things that are peed in.

Ladies you may not find this quite as interesting as some, but heres a little taste of the various urinals and their arrangements; from the lone ranger or dangerous duo, all the way to the elegant trio of porcelain pee pots.

Enjoy!