Een blaag.

Cairo

2011-07-27T14:36:00.000-07:00

On Sunday I flew to the last stop on my tour of the Middle East, Cairo. The thing that was most striking about Cairo was how third-world it was. For some reason I had always pictured Cairo as a pretty developed place, maybe because of its long and storied history, but that was definitely not the case. Driving down the highway you saw literally hundreds of abandoned high rise buildings that were broken down and dirty, despite the fact that some of them didn't seem very old; there was trash in the streets everywhere and even filling up the waterways at some points in big piles of burning rubbish; and driving was an adventure – people don't really use traffic lanes and use the horn and hand gestures instead of turn signals and regular driving etiquette like you might see in the US or Europe. On the ride in from the airport, which was late at night, we were in a huge traffic jam caused by a bunch of trucks that were serving from lane to lane and generally causing chaos. Each had probably a dozen teenage boys standing in the bed of the truck waving and yelling and seemingly almost falling out at some points. I don't know if this was related to the protests that have been ongoing since the revolution in February, but the general situation of the country was definitely endemic, not just a one-time thing.

Mmmm, burning trash in the river

Slightly overloaded truck

Because of the protests and general unrest in the country I didn't stick to my usual itinerary of exploring the city by walking around the different neighborhoods and experiencing the culture first hand. Instead, my dad and I stuck mainly to the more touristy sites and relied on taxis to get from place to place. Of course, this was still a pretty cheap way to go as hiring a taxi driver for a full day only cost 250 Egyptian pounds (a little over 40 USD). One British guy we met actually said that his IT company has started outsourcing to Egypt instead of India because the labor rates were now cheaper – that was really surprising to me.

On Monday we went to the Citadel, which contains the walled city of Old Cairo in what is now known as Islamic Cairo. It contains a large mosque, a bunch of ruins, and some buildings which have now been converted into a Police Museum and an Egyptian Military Museum. We went through the Military Museum, and thought it was interesting that when we got to the modern history area there were still paintings and exhibits of Mubarak on the walls, even though he was ousted in a revolution a few months ago and is apparently on his death bed awaiting trial. I wonder what they will do with that in the future. After that we headed out to a different hotel in Giza and relaxed for the night.

Cairo at night. Tahrir Square, where all the protests are going on, is actually right behind the big building.

Mosque in the Citadel of Old Cairo

The very smoggy skyline

In the morning, we got up early and set out on a day of pyramids. We first went to the Giza Pyramids, the site of the Sphinx and the Great Pyramid (among others) which was just down the street and walked around the site for a couple of hours. The vendors here may have been the most aggressive yet, trying to sell camel/donkey rides, little pyramid sculptures, water and whatever else they could get some money for. Even the guards would try to get you to let them take a picture of you with the pyramids in the background and try to extort a tip from you afterwards. There were even guys standing between the ticket window and the gate that would falsely claim they were the ticket takers to try and take your tickets away from you before you actually got to the entrance. I don't really know how they make money off this – maybe they try to get you to buy it back from them after they've taken it or something – but I didn't want to find out. Again the amount of hassle from the vendors took away from the experience quite a bit, but it was still really cool to see the only remaining "Wonder of the Ancient World". The Sphinx is pretty eroded from both the elements and from opposing armies taking shots at it with their guns, but the pyramids are pretty much at their full height and are massive. It's pretty amazing to think of how these huge structures were built almost 5,000 years ago.

Giza Pyramids

After Giza we went to Saqqara, a site with more Egyptian tombs and the first pyramid ever built, the Step Pyramid of Djoser. While not quite as impressive in terms of size, it was cool to see the "original" pyramid. There were also some cool tombs on the site where you could walk in and see the well-preserved hieroglyphs on the walls. It was actually surprising how they let you walk in the tomb with the 5,000 year-old hieroglyphs while there was nothing protecting them from someone who wanted to touch them or deface them. We also went down the road to Memphis, the site of what I guess was the original city combining both North and South Egypt in the ancient days, and what (at least the Egyptians say) is one of the cradles of civilization. It was a pretty small little site, but it did have the large statue of Ramses II which had originally stood in the city. After that, between the heat, the hassle and all the walking around, we were pyramid-ed out and went back to the hotel. We chilled at the pool the rest of the day, but at night we went back to the Giza Pyramids for the "Sound and Light" show that is projected on the pyramids, Sphinx and tombs. It was pretty cheesy, like the Stone Mountain laser show for you Atlanta folks, but did provide some cool pictures and some background on the pyramids since they whole site didn't even have a museum or tourist office or anything.

Step Pyramid of Djoser

Little sphinx in Memphis

Statue of Ramses II

The "Sound and Light" show

And then today, the trip is ending with a flight back to Amsterdam (where I'm writing this up). Despite the hassles with airport security and with the aggressive vendors everywhere, it was a really awesome trip. One of the reasons I wanted to come to the Middle East was because I had never been and wanted to experience a new culture – and I definitely got an abundance of that. On top of that I got to see some of the biggest "must see" monuments in the world and got to meet up with friends and family while doing it, so all in all I really have nothing to complain about.

And sadly, tomorrow will be my last day in Amsterdam. I'll spend the day packing up and wrapping up loose ends, and then it's back to the US for Pi Reunion weekend in Vegas and a weeklong road trip through some national parks in the western US. While my European time will be done by then, I'll probably throw some updates up here since it's all pretty much part of my trip home anyways.

Istanbul

2011-07-26T14:40:00.000-07:00

Due to a flight delay I arrived in Istanbul Thursday night around midnight. A combination of the time, the exhaustion from traveling and my run-ins with airport security had me opting to go straight to bed once I got in, but in the morning I got up fairly early and met up with Lauren, another US BCGer that's been working in Stockholm the past year. Becky was arriving later that day, so we decided to pass the time doing a boat tour of the Bosphorous, the body of water (it's not a river, a strait maybe?) that runs through Istanbul dividing the European and Asian sides. We made our way to the old city, where we hopped on the boat and made the 1.5 hour journey up to the town of Anadolu Kavagi where the Bosphorous opens up into the Black Sea. The boat ride had a bunch of really cool views of the city as well as the mansions, palaces and other buildings lining the water. When we got to Anadolu Kavagi, which is a really tiny town - maybe less than a thousand people, we hiked up to the old fort/castle, which had a good view of the sea, and then back down to the town to get some fish for lunch. We were hoping to find some lokma, little balls of fried dough that are supposed to be traditional Turkish treats, but apparently they only sell them on the weekends (?). After about an hour there, we made the trip back to the city, and got some of the highly-recommended chocolate baklava and lemonade-and-mint at the Four Seasons while waiting for Becky to get in.

the North side of Istanbul from the water

View of the Black Sea from the castle

One of the little fishing villages North of Istanbul

Once Becky got in we regrouped and then went up to the Bebek area for dinner - but before going to dinner we made a stop at the Starbucks. We had heard from multiple people that this was "the most beautiful Starbucks in the world", and they may very well be right. It's right on the water with 3 levels and an outdoor patio extending out towards all the boats docked in the Bosphorous. The place we went to for dinner had a similarly awesome location, which made for a really cool setting for my first real meal in Istanbul. After dinner and some drinks we headed across the street to a hookah place (they call it nargile) to hang out for a while before heading back to the hotel.

The next day we got started early for a big day of sightseeing. We went to the old city and first saw the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia. They were both really huge and both really intricate on the inside. The Blue Mosque is still a functioning mosque so we saw some people praying while we were walking around, but the Hagia Sophia is just a museum / tourist attraction now. It was amazing to think that such a large building was built 1500 years ago and that 1000 years later when they went to build the Blue Mosque to symbolize the strength of the Ottoman Empire they basically just made one that was the same size. They both also had some lighting inside that made the atmosphere really cool. After that and some lunch we walked through the city to the Grand Bazaar and the Spice Market. The Grand Bazaar was, according to what someone said, the first indoor mall - it's basically an indoor souk or market with a bunch of small stalls selling jewelry, touristy trinkets, food, etc. Becky and I found a place inside to grab some Turkish coffee. It's basically an unfiltered espresso, and by unfiltered I mean the coffee grounds and sediment are a sludge in the bottom of the cup when you drink enough of it. It was a little weird at first, but I think it grew on both of us. The Spice Market was pretty similar to the Grand Bazaar actually, except that it was outside and it had more food being sold. We took the chance to buy some Turkish Delights, some lokma (which we finally found) and some other goodies before leaving. Then, since we had some time before dinner we decided to try out a Turkish bath. It was quite an interesting experience - the girls' and guys' baths were separate, and you essentially end up getting a sauna, a body wash, a massage (from a big old Turkish guy), an exfoliating scrub, and some tea when you're all done. It was a little strange at first, but after it was all done I was quite refreshed.

Blue Mosque

Prayer area inside

Hagia Sophia

Grand Bazaar

Spice Market

That night we went to Reina, which is like a cafe-restaurant-bar-club complex right on the Bosphorous. We had heard about this place from a few different people as well and it didn't disappoint. We had dinner at the restaurant on the water, and had a view of one of the bridges over the Bosphorous which was lit up with some pretty cool lights at night. Then, gradually, the place morphed into a club with tons of people coming in and, obviously, still the same cool surroundings.

Reina

The next day was our last day there, so we made a short trip into the city to get lunch, see the Topkapi Palace and then went to the airport. All in all, I think Istanbul was one of my favorite cities that I've been to and one of the few where I've felt like I didn't have enough time to see everything I wanted to in the time that I was there. Most cities I wouldn't mind spending more time there, but here I felt like there were chunks of the city that I didn't get to see or experience (also probably because Istanbul is pretty huge). Regardless it was a great weekend. At the airport it was on to Cairo, which I'll update on later!

Petra

2011-07-25T13:13:00.000-07:00

So, after some time in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem it was off to Jordan. I had met up with my dad in Tel Aviv, and we took a flight to Eilat, Israel and crossed the border to Aqaba, Jordan on foot. The border was interesting, walking across felt like you were walking through the DMZ (and I guess maybe it was a demilitarized zone) - you go through immigration and exit the gate from the Israeli side, walk across about 100 meters of barren desert by yourself, and then enter the gate into Jordan and go through their immigration. It felt kinda weird.

Once in Aqaba we just chilled at the hotel for the day. There isn't much to Aqaba, it's basically just a dinky (and seemingly poor) little town with a few 5-star hotels on the beach, so we kept mainly to the beach and just went into town for some meals and things. The beach also wasn't the greatest in the world and it was a little rocky, but the view was pretty great. I had always pictured the area just being flat desert sands, but it was actually really mountainous and the mountains ran right up to the beach, leaving just a little space for the city.

Aqaba

The huge Jordanian flag at night

The next day, we set out early on our trek to Petra. It was about a 2 hour drive from Aqaba, and I had decided to rent a car and drive myself to save some money and be able to go on our own timeframe. Acquiring the rental car turned out to be a bit of an adventure (apparently the term reservation is used very loosely there), but we were able to get one the night before and leave the hotel at around 6:45am. After the 2 hour drive on the Desert Highway and through the mountains we made it to Petra and started the hike into the park.

The beginning of the park starts downhill through some small ruins (with, of course, dozens of people accosting you to buy trinkets or camel rides, etc) and eventually you come to the Siq, a 2km long narrow canyon that snakes its way towards Petra. The walls have basins dug out of them to allow water to flow toward the city and there are also some ruins and monuments along the way. The winding pathway and the patterns of colors in the rock made it a pretty cool walk. Then, when you come out of the Siq it opens up to the Treasury, which is the huge facade carved out of rock that is the typical image of Petra (and also in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade). I had obviously seen the pictures before, but it was pretty breathtaking in person. We continued on to see many of the other tombs and ruins (and get accosted by more vendors...) and decided to make the hike up to the Monastery, which is another Treasury-like building but on the top of a mountain. It was a rough hike in the heat, but the Monastery and the views from the top were pretty awesome. We also talked to the Jordanian guy that camped out with his little shop at the precipice, which was interesting.

The Siq

The Treasury

Dad by some ruins

The Monastery

It was a pretty awesome and pretty unique daytrip. After seeing most of Petra we headed back to Aqaba and spent the rest of the day and the next morning at the beach, and then I made the trip back across the border to Eilat for my flight out. It was supposed to be an uneventful day travelling back to Tel Aviv and then on to Istanbul, but Israeli airport security had another idea about that... In the Eilat airport when I went up to passport control the kid took my passport and gave it to his superior, who gave it to her superior, and then another guy came in to ask me some questions. I thought it was going to be the usual "where are you from", "where are you going" and "did you pack your own bags" stuff, but it turned out to be a three hour interrogation by three different people, ending in me getting all the stuff thrown out of my bags and x-rayed and me having to get down to my shirt and shorts and get patted down and searched. They basically asked me a bunch of pretty simple questions about where I had traveled previously, where I was going on my trip and some personal questions, but they asked them all in a really aggressive manner and repeated them over and over and over. Then, they made me check all my bags and wouldn't even let me get my book out so I had something to do on the flight. It was really frustrating, but they let me out just in time to get my flight (helpful travel tip - never get to the airport early in Israel. According to other people who have gone through the same thing they always just hold you until just before your flight leaves no matter how long it is) so I thought it was all over after that... and then I got to Tel Aviv, went to the other terminal to get my flight to Istanbul, started going through security and the exact same thing happened all over again (even though it had been all of an hour since I got out of the last one). This time, they even said my iPod had an "indication" so they had to check it. I wasn't checking any bags, so instead they packed it with bubble wrap in a 16in x 24in x 8 in box to send by itself. Pretty ridiculous (and how many thousands of iPods go through an airport in a day with nothing happening...?) Man I was pissed. Not only did I have to go through all of this twice over, but because I had planned to eat at the airport in Eilat I hadn't had a meal since like 24 hours before. Thankfully, they didn't keep me the full 5 hours until my flight left this time, which gave me enough time to get some food and calm down from all the hassle.

I'm usually pretty lucky with my air travel, as some of my coworkers could attest to, but that was definitely not the case this day. Luckily, it was on to a great weekend in Istanbul to make up for it... more on that later!

Tel Aviv and Jerusalem

2011-07-20T11:30:00.000-07:00

Last week was my last week at work before business school (!), and now it's been on to a two week vacation in the Middle East! I've never been to the Middle East before, so I am incredibly excited about seeing something new. The first stop was Tel Aviv, where I spent 4 nights, and while there I also made a fill day trip to Jerusalem, which is just a 30-40 minute car ride away.

Tel Aviv isn't a place with lots of huge sights to see, but it's a very cool town nonetheless. I was expecting a more metropolitan city, but I actually liken it more to Miami. It's a beach city with miles of beaches right near downtown (and is incredibly hot and humid as well), but it's also quite big with a lot of business, culture, nightlife, etc. The first couple days I was there I basically just wandered around, got a better feel for the town, tried some falafel and hummus, checked out the beach and experienced the culture. One highlight was visiting Old Yaffe, the old town where the city started near the port, and also the port where Jonah supposedly set sail before getting swallowed by a whale. The second night there I also met up for some drinks with some fellow new HBS students that I'll be in class with in just over a month.

The next day I took a shared taxi (for only like 6 bucks!) to Jerusalem to check it out. I basically walked through the city just a little, spending the majority of my time in the Old City where most of the religious landmarks are. The first thing I visited was the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the spot where Jesus was supposed to be crucified, buried and resurrected. Next I went to the Western Wall, which is the western wall of the Temple Mount, the temple(s) that were built by Solomon, his ancestors, and eventually Herod, and one of the holiest places in the world for Jews. Then it was to the Dome of the Rock - the Islamic mosque which stands on top of where the aforementioned Temple Mount used to stand, and also on top of what is supposed to be the Foundation Stone, a stone where the inner room of the Temple and the Ark of the Covenant used to be located. According to Wikipedia it is the holiest site in Judaism, and Jewish tradition views it as the spiritual junction of heaven and Earth. Three of the holiest places of three different religions all crammed into a space less than a kilometer from each other. It was weird to stand there and think about the countless people that had died in wars trying to take control of the place where I was just standing and taking pictures.

Outside of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre

Inside

Western (Wailing) Wall

Dome of the Rock

Shops in the Old City

One thing that was kind of disappointing was the number of touristy shops lining all of the streets in the Old City. It was basically like all of the souks in Marrakech lining all of the small pedestrian streets, except the vendors were (slightly...) less aggressive. Kind of took away some of the charm. Regardless, it was still a pretty incredible day trip, seeing so many sights that are so important religiously, culturally and historically.

That night my dad flew in from Atlanta to join me for Petra and Cairo, so we grabbed some dinner and the next morning it was off on a flight to Eilat, Israel and a border crossing to Aqaba, Jordan. More on that later!

Broken bike :(

2011-07-20T10:59:00.000-07:00

Sadly, as my last days in Amsterdam were approaching and as I was planning to sell my bike, it promptly broke. And it didn't just break, the left crank arm (the piece of metal that connects the pedal to the bottom bracket of the bike) actually sheared off. I was crossing an intersection and needed to step on it as the light was changing, but instead of getting some extra speed I looked back and saw a piece of my bike lying in the intersection. Oh well...

Venice

2011-07-13T14:36:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I went to Venice - I had already been to Venice before, but it's a really cool city, it was Becky's birthday and she had never been before, so I was glad to go back. It was crazy hot, but the sun and humidity was kind of a nice break from the rain and relatively cold temperatures that have been in Amsterdam and Hamburg lately.

On Friday night Becky's flight was delayed (it was her birthday, they couldn't have accounted for that!?), so we didn't leave the airport for our hotel til around 1am. After a taxi to the island and then a cool nighttime water taxi ride through the city we finally made it to the hotel and crashed immediately. Saturday was much more eventful though as we went for a run along the lagoon in the morning, had some delicious pasta for lunch, roamed around the city quite a bit in the afternoon, hit up a wine bar and had a really cool dinner on the water right near San Marco square in the evening, and had a drink at the speakeasy-looking bar in our hotel while a big wedding was going on there at night.

view from the hotel

San Marco, with the Campanile and Basilica

Ponte di Rialto

Venice was much like I remembered it from 3 years ago - very warm, quite a lot of tourists, but also incredibly unique and a definite must-see. A city that doesn't have any cars is unique enough, but the mix of canals and narrow alleyways that make up the city's structure you can't really find anywhere else. The city is basically some islands of buildings clumped together in no particular arrangement with crooked alleys and canals connecting everything and a large square with a church in it every so often to open the space up a little bit. There's also a really strange mix of old, very genuine Venetians and obviously foreign tourists - with nothing in between. No businessmen, no expats living there, just true Italians and blatant tourists.

I also got a new faster lens for my camera, which I had to test out a bit.

Becky and bokeh

So Sunday we did a little more eating, a little more seeing the city, and then it was off to the airport (on a ferry straight from the square to the airport, no cars involved!). It was a nice relaxing weekend, which was much appreciated.

San Marco from the water

Next, it's my last week of work, then two weeks of vacation in the Middle East!

A couple weekends, a wedding, a race and Hamburg

2011-07-08T06:30:00.000-07:00

A (not so) quick update on the past two weeks:

A couple weekends ago was uneventful except for the fact that a few recent HBS graduates, including EWren, were passing through Amsterdam and we met up for dinner and drinks. After dinner we went to the Holland Casino, which was actually my first time there, and then proceeded to drink more than I have in a while. If this is any indication of what HBS will be like I'll need to start training…

Then it was another workweek in Hamburg before my whirlwind trip to the US. On Friday, I flew from Amsterdam to LA for Evan's wedding weekend, getting in at around 7pm (4am Amsterdam time) after about 14 hours of travelling. I was obviously pretty dead, and not too many people were in town yet, so I just crashed when I got in. I usually don't get too jetlagged since I'm used to travelling, but the 9 hour difference did me in pretty good, so I was wide awake at 4:30am the next morning. It was great weather out though, so I decided to run over to the Rose Bowl as I was staying in Pasadena. When I got over there I took a look at it from the outside, and eventually found a way to sneak inside the gate and climb up a scaffolding to get a view of the field from the top of the stadium. The sun was just rising and no one was around because it was like 6am, which made for a pretty cool view.

After that I chilled around Pasadena for a bit, checked out the Caltech campus, then picked up CWong from the airport. We headed to Evan's pre-wedding dinner party at his parents place where I got to see a lot of PKTs and other MIT friends I hadn't seen in a while, which is always fun. That night and the next day more friends continued to get into town, which made for some fun shenanigans, including partying in a San Gabriel hotel room and getting some bubble tea and dim sum. On Sunday night was the wedding reception which I sadly only got to see a part of because I had to leave for the airport. However, what I did get to be there for was pretty awesome, especially the androgenous emcee who only spoke broken English, sang in addition to his emcee duties and was very obnoxious about the games going on during the reception… It was my first Chinese wedding, so that was an experience as well. We did the traditional bouquet and garter tosses (though for some reason when Evan was "finding" the garter the emcee had Spencer and then Jeff hold the blindfold onto Evan's head…) and then when I was leaving they were doing a game where Evan and King basically get as much money as they can from their friends and make necklaces/sashes out of it. From the sound of it there were more ridiculous games and karaoke after I left too, good times.

we gather around to watch the hilarity

The reason I had to leave was because I was getting on a redeye flight back to Atlanta to run the Peachtree Road Race in the morning. Oddly enough JonJon and his girlfriend (wait… fiancé) Tiff were also doing the same thing and we were on the same flight. I landed at about 6:40am, got picked up by my parents, and was running by 7:40. Because of my recent injury troubles I wasn't even expecting to be able to run the whole thing (I had run maybe twice in the previous two months), but my calves ended up doing ok and I was able to finish in a time somewhere under 50 minutes. Then after a good southern brunch and some time with the family during the day it was back on another redeye to Amsterdam and then another flight to Hamburg for work. The back-to-back redeyes were brutal – I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, and plan to try my hardest never to do it again.

In Hamburg my case is winding down, so I finally had a little time to walk around the city and see some of the sights. It's a really nice city with lots of old buildings, nice shopping areas and some historical landmarks too. One of them is the warehouse district, which is basically dozens of identical brick warehouses lining the canals and waterways of the river and the harbor. The harbor obviously isn't used in the same way it was in the 16th century, but many of the buildings are still occupied by shipping companies and manufacturers, which is pretty neat. The other distinctive thing about Hamburg is the churches – pretty much every European city has big churches, but the interesting thing about Hamburg is there were a ton of them and they were all very unique. The skyline is dotted with literally dozens of steeples, but they don't seem to follow a consistent architecture like you see in a lot of cities. I also stopped by the St. Pauli neighborhood, but sadly I can't say that I saw the St. Pauli Girl (I didn't even see the beer anywhere either now that I think about it).

The Inner Alster lake and fountain

Warehouse district

Justin wasn't around unfortunately

So on Thursday I said goodbye to Hamburg for the last time, and now I'm in Amsterdam doing a little work and looking forward to the upcoming weekend in Venice!

More PKTs dropping by

2011-06-25T01:16:00.000-07:00

It was a really hectic week at work so I'm a little late with this, but last weekend I had some more visitors crashing at the apartment. Ryan King, Dan Paik (and his brother) and Logan Daum coordinated their separate trip to all meet up in Amsterdam at the same time - Dan and Logan were on a multiple week backpacking trip through Europe, and Ryan was on a separate weeklong backpacking trip through France, the Alps and ending in Amsterdam.

The weekend got off to a slightly rocky start as my flight back from Hamburg was delayed for 3 hours and I missed the time that I was supposed to meet Dan and Logan at my place. They had to stand around for a few hours, which I'm sure was a blast, but we eventually got in touch via my landlord and all was well. On Friday I had to work and let Dan and Logan wander on their own, but then Friday night Ryan got in and the weekend had begun. We basically spent the weekend doing the typical tourist thing - lots of walking around, seeing the sights, eating and drinking. One of the things we went to was the World Press Photo exhibit, which started it's 2011 tour in Amsterdam. It was held in the Oude Kerk, what I think is the oldest church in Amsterdam, which made for a cool setting, and the photography was pretty great.

By Sunday I think they had all gotten a good feel for the city, and they were all scheduled to leave in the morning. It was a fun, but tiring weekend. Unfortunately I seem to have lost my small camera, so I don't have any photos from the weekend, but maybe Dan Paik will send me some of his when he gets a chance (hint hint, Dan).

Marrakech

2011-06-13T14:21:00.000-07:00

After a rescheduled trip 3 weeks ago and some finagling with my work schedule I finally made it to Marrakech, Morocco. There's only one direct flight from Amsterdam, which is not terribly convenient, and the majority of connections cause obscene amounts of travel time, so I'm glad I was eventually able to work it out.

Marrakech was a really interesting place, and was unlike any of the other cities I've been traveling to within Europe. It's actually very small, just a dot on the map in the middle of the desert and the entire city is within walking distance pretty much, but it's still the 4th largest city in Morocco. Instead of the big boulevards, churches and government buildings that usually define the European cities, Morocco was more defined by markets that cover the city's squares and narrow winding walkways. The city did have it's share of mosques, but they didn't really stand out the way churches seem to in most of the cities I've visited. The traffic was quite an experience as well - it seemed like the majority of people were travelling on bike/scooter/motorcycle rather than by car, and you would see people zipping through crowds and through narrow alleyways filled with shops and people. Horse carriages, camels and carts pulled by donkeys also were not a rare sight. And of course, the dress of the people was quite different. I saw local-looking people wearing anything from normal Western-looking clothes to the long robe-like items that men wear to the super traditional garments that cover everything but the eyes (for women).

Camels

Probably the most striking thing, for better or for worse... actually it's definitely for worse, was the amount of badgering and scamming that the locals impose on the tourists. Whenever you walk through the square are through a market all the owners/performers/random people yell at you to come to their shop, buy their stuff, or just to walk in their direction. At first it's unique and seems kinda neat, but after a while it really gets irritating. At first I thought it was probably just in the main Jamaa El Fna square, but it seemed to be there everywhere I went, and I walked through pretty much the whole city. The funniest thing was when a sketchy guy would approach you, ask if you needed directions/wanted to buy something/whatever and then when you kept walking by he would invariably ask "Hashish?" to see if I want some drugs, as if that's what would win my trust - and this happened with probably about 50% of the people that approached me.

But... frustrating streetfolk aside, Marrakech was really cool. When I got in on Friday I went straight to the Jamaa El Fna square and it was a mad house. I guess I didn't have any expectations going in, but when I arrived it was quite a chaotic scene - it's packed with people and there are no overhead lights lighting the square, so it's basically dark except for these beacons of light that are street performers surrounded by an audience (and of course, they accost you for money even if you just stand for a second to look) and then a sea of lights at the other side of the square that is about a hundred OJ stands, fruit/nut stands and cafes/restaurants/food stalls. A combination of the smoke coming from the cooking and the lights, makes it look quite crazy, and the sounds of all the different musical performers makes is sound equally crazy. It was late and I was starving, so I stopped in at one of the food stalls to have some rather tasty meat, bread and tea. The tea they serve was a cinnamon-ginger tea that I had never seen before but was really good.

View from the room

Jamaa El Fna square

The food stalls / restaurants

Where I had my first meal

The fruit, nut and OJ stands

It had been a rough week at work, so after checking out the scene and getting some food I headed back to the hotel to crash. The next day I headed back to the square to catch it in the daylight. Not nearly as hectic, but still some interesting performers around... (props to my dad's telephoto lens for allowing me to take these pics from a distance so I wasn't accosted for money to get them)

Snake charmer... that's a snake on the ground in front of him, and under that blue pot is a king cobra

Dude with his monkey.

And some colorful musicians

I then headed off to the south of the city towards the Royal Palace. On the way a man told me that I was going in the wrong direction away from the Medina. This was of course a little strange because he had no clue where I wanted to go, but he told me if I took a left it would take me to the "tannery district" where all of the leather manufacturers are (I use the term "manufacturers" loosely here) and, of course, he could show me the way. I was fairly certain he would want some money for this, but you have to have someone show you through the tanneries anyways because there aren't any organized tours, so I decided to go for it. After walking with the guy for a while (and the crowdedness of the streets getting lower and lower) I started to get a little concerned, but we finally made it to the door where an older man showed me through the 3 tannery buildings. It was amazing to see how it's all handmade and done in extremely non-scientific fashion. He was describing to me the process of making the different leathers and it basically went like "we put it in this lime bath over here for 2-3 days, then put it in the water bath for a day, then we scrape it, then put it in the finishing bath for a week...". They obviously knew what they were doing as the product came out well, but it was striking to see how "third world" the process was.

The field of baths that they process the leather in... and tons of leather in various states of progress lying around

Workers dunking the leather in the pools

Some of the brown leather drying

A worker laying the leather out to dry

After the "factory tour" the guide led me to the guy who finishes the leather into products... and sells the products to customers. This ended up essentially being a selling pitch (where I guess he has some deal with the first guide to lead customers there), but it was actually kinda nice as he sat me down in the shop, told me a little about how he makes the stuff, gave me some mint tea and then negotiated with me a bit on the price of a wallet. After leaving there the first guide then said he could take me to a space shop, no doubt another place he has a deal with, but I told him I would be on my way. Of course, he asked for some money for his troubles, which I thought was fair since I was looking to do a tannery tour anyways... so I gave him about half the price he was asking for. What I didn't like was when I was walking back towards the square the guy that originally brought me to the tannery joined up with me again. He asked if I was going to the square I said yes, and then he started "leading" me even though I knew the way. This is apparently pretty common as I saw quite a few tourists getting in disputes with the locals about have to pay for being "led" somewhere they were already going. After a while I just turned around and went towards the palace that I had been meaning to visit earlier, and when he chased me down and asked where I was going I told him. He then asked for 100 MAD (that's the common theme here if you haven't noticed yet...). I told him I'd give him 10 because that's all I had in my pocket, though I did have more in my wallet (that's about $1.27 - he did originally lead me to the tannery after all). He wasn't too happy about that, but I wasn't to happy with him and his friends at this point either.

So after that adventure, I did some more exploring. I found a palace that I toured, just walked around the streets a bit, saw the Koutoubia Mosque in daylight this time and checked out the adjacent gardens. Then I headed back to the hotel to relax and explore a different gardens that was close by.

Spice shop

Typical Marrakesh street

El Bahia Palace

more El Bahia

Koutoubia Mosque

At night I went towards Jamaa El Fna again to grab some food and tea, mill around and check out the souks - the small shops that surround the square. I was pretty exhausted from the day in the sun though, so after some time in the square I headed back to the hotel to rest for my last day.

On Sunday I decided to find a photography museum that I heard was good and also go through the souks in more depth as they are one of the more famous parts of the city and I hadn't spent much time there yet. The photography museum was a bit difficult to find - I actually went in another museum first thinking it was the photo one before finding out my mistake - but once there it was pretty cool. There were lots of historic photos of Morocco showing Marrakech from back in the day, but the coolest part of the rooftop terrace where they had a little cafe and a nice view of the city.

Marrakech skyline. Not too many skyscrapers.

They also love satellite TV there apparently

Then after that I planned to walk back through the maze of souks, maybe buy some souvenirs and then go back to the hotel to check out. Now, I pride myself on my sense of direction and usually have no problem finding my way even in foreign cities, but as a testament to the chaos that is the maze of souks even though I intended to walk straight through to end up at Jamaa El Fna on the other side I eventually came out at exactly the same point that I entered. I still have no clue how that happened, but after one more attempt I was able to make it through and get back to the hotel.

Overall it was an exhausting by fun few days. I found the city to be quite hectic in a variety of ways, but as a result also very lively and interesting. Despite my whining about the aggressiveness of the merchants there, I really enjoyed my trip and thought my first trip to Africa was a good one.

Parents in Town

2011-06-05T13:46:00.000-07:00

Both this weekend and Sunday of last weekend my parents were in town. Unfortunately I had to be in Hamburg Monday through Wednesday for work, but it worked out well as they just made a trip to Ghent and Bruges while I was gone. It was a good couple weekends and I got to see a lot of those things that I've been telling myself I'll do sooner or later but never get around to doing because they seem so close by.

Last Sunday we didn't do too much as I think my parents were pretty wiped out from the jet lag. I showed them around a few different parts of the city and we grabbed a drink in a cafe and then dinner at a place on Utrechtsestraat. They then headed off to Ghent and Bruges, where they seemed to have a really good time, and met back up Wednesday evening for dinner.

On Thursday we hit up a bunch of museums among other things - the Rijksmuseum (and the Iamsterdam sign), the Albert Cuypstraat market, the Amsterdam Historical Museum, and the Anne Frank House. I hadn't been to any of those museums, so it was good to finally get a chance to see them. We also had pretty perfect sunny weather, so it made for good walking-around-the-city weather.

On Friday I had to go to work, but first we had to see the Aalsmeer Flower Auction. It's a HUGE building (second largest building by square footage in the world!) by the airport where every day millions of flowers are flown in, auctioned off and flown out to their destination. There's a good chance the last time you bought flowers they went through that building. But, since speed is key to get the flowers to their destination before they start to wilt the auction occurs very early - every morning starting at 6:30am - so that the flowers can be on the first wave of flights out. Because of that, we got up really early, headed out to Aalsmeer, and even made it back in time for me to be not too late to work.

The building was pretty amazing - it was just huge, had colorful flowers all over the place, and had people zipping around on carts every which way. The auctions themselves were also really cool. All the buyers sit in one of 12 auction rooms, which look essentially like an auditorium with computer screens in the seats and two large projectors on the wall. On the projectors flowers are constantly being auctioned off and the actual flowers are brought along the front of the room for people to see. However, the auction doesn't work like you would assume - instead of multiple people bidding up the price the price starts high, then is lowered and lowered until someone makes a bid, and the first person to bid gets the flowers. Essentially like a game of chicken seeing how long you can wait before someone else takes what you want. It's not quite as dramatic as it sounds because whenever someone bids and gets some flowers there's usually more of the same that can be bid on right after, but still a very interesting process. After someone successfully bids on the flowers, they are zipped around the warehouse to the buyers cart, then the full cart is zipped of to a plane, train or truck to start the journey to their destination.

Flowers

...flowers

FLOWERS!

Flowers moving all over the place

Buyers in the auction room

The auction board and flowers being brought through

So, after flower spotting early in the morning it was a day of work (while my parents went to some sights I had already seen) and then a casual dinner with the parents. On Saturday, it was back to sightseeing in full force as we did a little people watching in Leidseplein, went on a canal boat tour, went to the World Press Photo exhibit in Oude Kerk and did some more people watching on a cafe in Spui.

Canal tour

You can see 7 bridges through here

Beach volleyball tournament in Dam Square

Chillin'

We called it an early night on Saturday, so we could get up early Sunday and go on a bike ride before it was forecast to rain at noon. Unfortunately it started much earlier and was already raining when we got going, but since it never rains too hard here and my parents really wanted to see the countryside we went anyways. It ended up being very cool despite the rain and I think my parents really enjoyed it. I took them on a route I've biked a couple times before - out of the city and up the Amstel river. Mom and I ended up going all the way to Uithoorn, which is about 20km away, so not a bad ride. The scenery is really cool and pastoral out there, and you get to see a lot of cool houses, boats, windmills and little towns. I also think it's amazing how the river is at a higher elevation than the surrounding land - the river is just supported by dikes on both sides so that the land can be solid enough to building and farm on (I still haven't quite figured out how the river flows out to the sea when Amsterdam and a good portion of the country is below sea-level though, so if any of you does let me know).

After that the weather was still a little gloomy and we were all pretty tired, so we just hung out, ate some lunch and watched the French Open final. All in all a busy and fun couple of weekends. It was good to see the parents for the first time since Christmas and I'm glad I got to show them around my hometown of the last 7 months. They had a lot of the pictures from this weekend so I'll have to get them and put them up here as well.

Madrid

2011-05-22T13:02:00.000-07:00

I had originally intended to go to Morocco this weekend, but due to the only flight from Amsterdam to Marrakesh leaving at 3:30pm and a meeting for my new project (which is in Hamburg) being scheduled on Friday until 3:00pm I had to make some adjustments. It turned out alright though as I was able to switch the weekends of my Madrid and Marrakesh trips to get the flights to work for a pretty small change fee and will still (hopefully) be able to visit both of them.

I was a little nervous before going because there had been stories in the news all week about protests brewing and a showdown coming on Friday at midnight (right when I was getting into the city) when a government ban on protests was set to take effect. Something about students protesting the government over the unemployment rate – doesn't quite make sense to me why you protest something that is a statistic and is largely uncontrollable, especially in the short term, it makes about as much sense as protesting a low level of GDP per capita or a low average life span, but I won't pretend to know too much about what was going on – but regardless it ended up being a very peaceful and kind of fun set of protests. No violence, just lots of hippie students sitting around a square with signs, playing music and the like.

Besides the protests, I really enjoyed the city. I felt it was very similar to Lisbon (which I also thought was very cool) with similar architecture, great warm weather, lots of narrow cobblestone streets and squares and lots of cool bars and cafes overflowing with people and serving capirinhas and mojitos late into the night. You hear a lot about the nightlife in Spain – how it is very lively and goes very late, and it definitely turned out to be true in Madrid. The bars are packed with people, even older folks and families, past midnight, and clubs apparently don't even get going until 1 or 2am. Maybe the nightlife was kicked up a notch by the protests, which were occurring at night, but I still get the feeling it's like this all the time as it seemed to be the case all over the city.

On Friday night and a bit Saturday during the day I checked out the protests, and after that I went to do some sightseeing. There aren't really any iconic Eiffel Tower-like sights in Madrid, but there were still lots of cool things to see.

Plaza Mayor

Royal Palace

Palacio de Oriente with Almudena Cathedral behind

It is the middle of the large bullfighting festival in Madrid, so I also went out to the big bullfighting arena, Plaza de Toros de las Ventas, to try and buy some tickets for that night. Unfortunately, the cheapest tickets available were EUR 55, which I didn't think was quite worth it. I was pretty bummed about not being able to see the spectacle, but hopefully I'll get a chance some other time. After striking out there, I went back towards the city, checked out the La Latina and Lavapies districts, and then went to the large park, Parque de Retiro, to hang out for a bit. The park was pretty great – really large with lots of different things (a pond big enough for rowing races, some monuments, an open air orchestra stage, lots of trails, botanical garden, etc) and lots of people making it lively. It also helped that the weather was pretty perfect while I was there.

Bull fighting arena

Another thing I thought was cool about Madrid was the number of markets around the city. There was a very cool, upscale indoor market called El Mercado de San Miguel near the Plaza Mayor with lots of tasty food, a cool open-air used book market that I found near the Banco de Espana, and I also checked out the El Rastro market. The latter is a huge market that goes throughout all the streets in the La Latina/Lavapies area only on Sunday mornings with lots of touristy stuff, used/antique goods and other random stuff. I also took to the Spanish schedule of eating, getting some delicious food during the weekend, all a few hours after the time I would usually eat it.

Fruit stand in the San Miguel Market

Fountain by the outdoor book market

Overall I found Madrid a really cool city, definitely near the top of my list as far as European cities to hang out or live in even if it's a little light on super-famous sights to see. Now, it's back to Hamburg for this week and also looking forward to a visit from my parents the next two weekends!

New camera!

2011-05-15T05:23:00.000-07:00

When I was in Moscow a few weeks ago I decided it would be worth it to get a nicer, DSLR camera to capture all the cool stuff on my upcoming trips. I'd thought about getting one before, so now seemed like a good time. I actually got it (a Canon EOS 550D) a couple weeks ago, but didn't use it during Queen's Day because I didn't want to bring it around and have someone spill beer on it or something. Some of the Budapest pictures were taken with it, but I took it out this weekend to play around a bit and figure out how to better use all of the features. So far I'm really liking the better quality (higher resolution, much much better in low light, a lot more variance in depth of field) and especially liking the increased control over the shooting specs. Makes it a lot easier to take the shot you want.

Below are some of the pics. Picasa compresses them so some of the quality is lost, but here they are anyway.

Budapest

2011-05-08T13:48:00.000-07:00

This weekend was another trip to a European capital city, Budapest, Hungary. As usual, it was very cool to see a new country and culture, and Budapest proved to be a nice relaxing town for a weekend trip.

I got in late Friday night, and after finishing up a little work and waiting for a little while, Becky got in and we headed into the city. It was too late to do anything then, but they next day we got an early start by heading to one of the city's famous coffeehouses, Gerbeaud, and grabbing some coffee and breakfast. Then we headed to St. Stephen's Basilica and up one of the nice shopping streets of the city, Andrassy ut, to Hero's Square and the city park.

St Stephen's Basilica

inside

Opera House

Hero's Square

After some nice drinks in the park we headed to the Danube River and down, seeing the Parliament building and the "shoes" memorial - a pretty cool and simple WWII memorial. After a little rest we went a a traditional Hungarian restaurant in the city center, which had a "gypsy band" playing and some delicious Hungarian food. The gypsy band idea sounded like it might be kind of annoying, but it was actually really cool - not too loud and not obnoxious, actually provided some nice background for dinner. When we were done we went out to the river to check it out at night, which was cool with all the bridges and buildings lit up. We also stumbled upon the BCG Budapest office!

Parliament building

the shoes memorial

BCG!

Buda Castle at night

Sunday ended up being pretty grey and rainy, but that was ok because we were planning to go to one of the public baths in the city. They're Turkish style baths with lots of indoor and outdoor pools of varying temperatures and saunas and everything, a remnant of when Turkey ruled the country. It was a very unique and pretty cool experience - it's a big stately-looking building with pools everywhere inside and out. We started in one of the warm outdoor pools then went in and sampled a bunch of the different pools and saunas. It was a really large complex, and there were actually a ton of people there. Afterwards I was super relaxed which was good after a day full of walking around the city before. We then went back to Gerbeaud to get some delicious ice cream, and checked out the Buda side of the river (the west side is Buda, the east side is Pest) for a bit before heading to the airport.

the Szechenyi baths

Parliament from the Buda side of the river

Another cool weekend, another awesome city!

Queen's Day

2011-05-01T13:13:00.000-07:00

There was no traveling this weekend, and that's because it was one of the biggest holidays in the Netherlands - Queen's Day. Before the day came I kept hearing about how crazy it was, but didn't really know what to expect. Turns out that everyone's descriptions weren't exaggerations and it was a pretty crazy day.

Joining me for the weekend were Job (who's here for a week), Becky, Venkat and Venkat's friend from work David. Together we had a nice American (and Australian) contingent for the Dutch holiday. We started out the weekend by going out Friday night once Venkat and David got it. There were already people everywhere and some stages set up with DJs and music playing, but it proved to be nothing compared to the scene on Saturday. On Saturday it seemed like every street was packed with orange-clad people. Roads were closed, beer and food was being served everywhere, and there seemed to be a stage with a band or a DJ every 100 meters. It was really amazing how many people there were - it seemed every single square was packed shoulder-to-shoulder and most streets were crowded if not packed to the same extent.

The group sets out for the day, appropriately clothed

Heinekenplein - one of many squares with a stage and packed with people

And more people...

We walked around to all the main squares and each was more of the same. Music blasting and tons of people (mostly dressed in bright orange) packed in a big mob. Museumplein had a huge stage, much bigger than the rest, and thousands of people. The other crazy thing was the canals - there were boats filled with people everywhere, and at one point the canal was so packed with boats that it almost just looked like a paved street with people standing on it it was so crowded.

big stage at Museumplein

Orange people all over the Iamsterdam sign

crowded canal...

and an absurdly crowded canal

After a day full of walking around, eating and drinking we came back and crashed for a bit. Then, once we were recharged we went back out for the night. It seemed rather calm after the crazy day (I think everyone was probably passed out), but there was still a good crowd out that night. On Sunday it was weird to walk outside and have it be so peaceful after the chaos of Saturday. The only thing left over was some of the trash from the day before. Quite the experience, and definitely some good Amsterdam memories made this weekend.

Moscow

2011-04-25T14:32:00.000-07:00

After a horribly complex visa process, dropping a larger chunk of change than I would have liked and doing a 3 hour red-eye flight (that's right, an overnight flight that was only 3 hours, landing at 4:30 in the morning), I finally made it to Russia. That sounds like complaining, but it was totally worth it as visiting Moscow was an awesome and unique experience.

I'll start off before my trip with the visa process. For a person to visit Russia not only do they need to pay a little cash – they need to get an "invitation" and visa voucher from someone in the country, usually a hotel or a travel agency. Then they need to get a passport photo (even though the visa doesn't even have a photo on it…?). Then they need to get verification that they have health insurance that is valid in Russia. Then they need to fill out a visa application form, which for US and UK citizens is twice as long as the regular form and includes questions like "list every country you have been to in the past 10 years". Then they have to turn this in to the Russian Consulate either by paying another visa assistance firm to do this for you or going to the Consulate yourself, which for the Netherlands is in The Hague (about an hour away for me) and is only open from 9am to noon. THEN, to pick up the passport with visa you have to come to the Consulate from noon to 1pm – a one hour window! Needless to say, this process was a little annoying and probably means I won't fool with going back to Russia any time soon, but regardless I think it was worth it to go for the first time.

So, after my Friday night flight and getting in at 4:30am I thankfully made it through passport control without a hitch and made my way into the city. The first thing I noticed was how weird it was trying to navigate the Russian signs. They use a Cyrillic alphabet which uses a combination of normal English-type characters as well as a bunch of Greek-type symbols that I'm used to only seeing in math equations. A lot of the characters are the same, but are used for different letters which makes looking at the language very strange – you feel like you should be able to decipher some of the words but after looking closer it's all just looks like gibberish. As far as I can tell the only letters that are completely the same are A, E, O, T, and K. The rest are basically switched up – a "C" is used instead of an "S", a phi is used instead of an "F" or "PH", "P"s (uppercase) or rho's (lowercase) for "R"s, "H"s for "N"s, "N"s for "I"s… very confusing. I think after 3 days I was starting to get the hang of it, but still very weird.

Some Russian on my tickets

Anyways, I made it into the city and to my hotel bright and early and luckily was able to check in and take a nap to recharge before heading out for the day. My hotel was in a great location right next to the Kremlin and Red Square, so I got started on all the famous sites. Red Square was very cool with all the unique and historic buildings around. I went into the Lenin Mausoleum first, which was pretty cool and really creepy. It's basically a square black marble building with one dark main chamber where Lenin's body is lit on display in a glass box. Supposedly it's actually his preserved body sitting there right in front of you, but there's plenty of speculation that it's just a wax figure – to be honest I couldn't really tell (you couldn't get that close and, I mean, I don't really know what preserved bodies look like after all). After that interesting introduction to Russia, I continued on to St. Basil's Cathedral, which was even cooler in person than in all the pictures I'd seen. It's kind of surreal, seems like it was taken out of Candyland or a fairy tale or something, but really awesome.

Kremin walls and towers

State History Museum on Red Square

Lenin Mausoleum

Trinity Tower - Entrance to the Kremlin

St Basil's Cathedral

After that I walked around a bit looking at a few of the churches which dot the city. I was really surprised at the number of ornate, gold-domed churches around. Even the small, not-famous ones were very cool to see. This was one thing that was very unique about Moscow – most European cities I've been to have pretty "standard" (though also very neat) church architecture which is more or less similar across countries, but Moscow's multi-domed, colorful churches were very different and all over the place. On this jaunt I also stumbled upon The Church of Christ Our Saviour, one of, if not the largest church in the city.

Cool lookin' church on Red Square

Church of Christ Our Savior

Cool domes

.. and more domes

Then I came back to the Kremlin and went inside to see what that was all about. Inside there are many large official-looking buildings which you can't visit, some more crazy churches, some museums and some gardens that you can explore. I went to the Armoury, one of the museums, which houses a bunch of the relics from the Russian Tsars – lots of really ornate and ostentatious jewelry, some crazy blinged-out bibles, royal carriages, thrones, robes, crowns, armor and swords, all from around 1400-1800. Pretty cool stuff. After that I checked out all the cathedrals around the appropriately-named Cathedral Square, which were again very unique and stunning.

Tsar Cannon and The Assumption Cathedral in the back

Annunciation Cathedral

Ivan the Great Bell Tower

Cathedral Square

Tsar Bell. They had to one-up the Liberty Bell I guess...

The Church of Laying Our Lady's Holy Robe

That was a pretty full first day, so I crashed for a few hours and then had a relaxed night of sampling some Russian fast food and finding a sportsbar/sportsbook that was showing soccer and the NBA playoffs. They had a line listed for the Washington Wizards (NBA) vs. NY Rangers (NHL), but I decided against pointing this out to the Russian bookie. I figure that was a good decision. I also took some cool night photos on Red Square.

This is actually a big mall, though it looks much more stately

On a beautiful Easter Sunday I started off by travelling a little ways outside the city center to go to a Russian café that had been recommended. It was very much worth the trip as the russian pie, borscht and coffee were all delicious. I then spent about 2 hours riding around on the Metro, which may sound like a mistake, but it was actually intentional (it's the #3 sight to see in the city according to TripAdvisor!). The Moscow subway stations are very nice and some of them are incredibly ornate. All of the stations are very spacious and clean, and particularly on the circle line many of the stations have chandeliers, paintings, sculptures, mosaics and stained glass windows decorating the walls and ceilings. You can see some of the cooler ones below.

mmm meat pie

At the conclusion of my Metro tour I popped out and walked down Arbat Street, a pedestrian street with street performers, vendors and the like. This was definitely one of the weirdest moments of my trip – the street was filled with thousands of teenagers dressed in costumes (many of which included cat ears and cat face paint, I don't know why) and walking around with signs saying "free hugs", "kiss me" and many Russian ones that I couldn't read. At points there were rings of kids dancing, singing and playing some sort of games. I had no clue, and still don't really have a clue, what was going on. After some internet searching the only thing I could find was an event called "Dreamflash" that occurs on Palm Sunday every year and apparently involves everything I mentioned above as well as lots of blowing bubbles (?), but Palm Sunday was last weekend. I still haven't figured out if this just happens every day/weekend there, or if I just stumbled into some Dreamflash-like thing the week after, but either way it was quite interesting. Needless to say, I felt a little weird with all these 14 year olds walking around me with signs that say "kiss me", so I got out of there pretty quickly, haha.

After a little more walking around the city I rested for a little bit then went and got some Azerbaijani food for dinner. Delicious, and another new experience, so that was cool. I was pretty exhausted after the two days of sightseeing, so after dinner I just dropped by the same sports bar to check up on the games and have a drink and then headed back to the hotel. On Monday I only had a half day before flying out, so I checked out this Russian chain called Moo Moo (spelled "My My" in Russian) for lunch, strolled around a part of the city I hadn't been to yet, and then just chilled for a while in the sun outside the Kremlin. The weather was amazing the whole time I was there – mid to high 60s and sunny every day – so I couldn't have asked for much more there. Now I'm writing this on the plane back, having successfully made it back through Russian passport control.

Moo Moo

Overall I really enjoyed Moscow. It was certainly very unique and it was really cool to see a country, a language, a cuisine, a culture and historic sites that I had never seen before – and I made it back without any broken bones, so that counts as a win in my book. Now before I go and for your viewing pleasure, I've compiled a barrage of American restaurant/fast food logos looking very strange written in Russian. Enjoy.

Papa John's

McD's

Cinnabon

Sbarro

Starbucks Coffee

Subway

TGI Friday's

Chili's

Bruges and Antwerp

2011-04-17T14:23:00.000-07:00

I thought it was a little strange that I hadn't spent any time in Belgium yet since it's so close by, so Saturday I did a little day trip to Bruges and Antwerp. It was great weather yet again, and they were some good cities so it was a nice day on the go.

I went to Bruges first. I'd heard really good things about Bruges, and it definitely lived up to expectations. It was a little like Amsterdam - there were quite a few canals and riverboats, and some similar architecture with the narrow houses and tall skinny windows - but also a little different. It's a really small city (although there were still plenty of tourists all around) so it's a little quieter, and it definitely had a little Brussels feel to it too. The two main points of the city were the Church of Our Lady and the Belfry, which were basically two ginormous towers in this tiny little town. The Belfry is also on the Markt square with lots of shops and restaurants and cafes around. I took the opportunity to grab a chocolate covered waffle and grab a beer while I was around there (chocolate, waffles and beer, that's what Belgium does...)

the Markt square

the Belfry

nice scenic view of the Church of Our Lady

They did have some delicious Belgian beer pretty much everywhere you turned. I found this one place which had what seemed to be every Belgian beer in a case on the wall. It's pretty funny how in the US these are pretty much delicacies and here it's just normal fare.

all the Belgian beers...

and just another beer store...

After a good chunk of the day in Bruges I took the one hour train to Antwerp (where I had actually transferred through in the morning) and spent some time checking out that city as well. I think Antwerp was a little less unique as a good portion of the city was urban and modernized, but the old town center was still really cool. They again had a completely out-sized tower (Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal) and a neat square with the Town Hall and a bunch of cafes and restaurants and such. They were actually setting up for the Antwerp Marathon the next day, which I didn't even know about. The flags and banners kind of got in the way of my pictures, but oh well.

Town Hall and a statue of Brabo (?) throwing a giant's hand into the Scheldt River (?)

obligatory huge tower

Het Steen (literally "The Stone")

Overall there didn't seem too much to do in Antwerp, but that was ok because I was pretty tired after travelling around all day. I decided to call it a day as it was already pretty late. On the way back though, I did see the pretty strange site of a huge inflatable monster lizard. It was some sort of haunted house type thing right in front of the Central Station where you walk into the mouth and through the thing. Ironically it was right next to a pink merry-go-round for the little children.

the monster

cool-looking Central Station

An exhausting but fun day. Now hopefully on Monday I'll get my passport back so I can make it to Russia next weekend...

Rotterdam

2011-04-10T11:39:00.000-07:00

My passport is currently with the Russian Consulate in The Hague getting a visa, so I can't leave the country - but that turned out to be perfect because the Rotterdam Marathon was this weekend. It's one of the fastest marathons in the world, with I think 4 of the 5 fastest times ever or something like that, so I was excited to see it. It was also great weather and there were 7 elite runners running, so there was a decent chance of seeing a world record.

The leaders at around 16 miles

Winner - Wilson Chebet

Waving to the crowd after the win

It didn't turn out to be a world record performance (it was a little hot actually), but the winner still ran 2:05, so very fast. It was also a good atmosphere - maybe not as fun as Boston, but still cool.

Afterwards I met up with a friend from work who lives in the city and he and his girlfriend showed me around. We first walked through a pretty cool neighborhood, one of the few that wasn't bombed during WWII, so it's one of the few with the typical, traditional Dutch architecture. The rest of the city is actually very modern compared to Amsterdam or The Hague because it all needed to be rebuilt. We also went to the EuroMast, this big spire that was built for a World Expo or something about 50 years ago. You can take an elevator halfway up, and then the rest of the way you can ride a rotating circular elevator that gives you some very cool views of the city - downtown, the ports and the big bridge.

After that we took a boat taxi to the Hotel New York, which is actually housed in the old Holland America building. Holland America is a cruise line that started doing voyages and shipping to the US back in the 1800s. Now they just do cruises I think and they're headquarters is in Seattle, but the building was cool and the weather was perfect for a cold beer.

Almost the same as that bridge in Boston - or at least half of it

The Holland America building

We then did another water taxi back towards the downtown area and hung out with some of their other friends on a rooftop terrace for a while. All in all it was a cool day with beautiful weather, and it was great to see a marathon and another Dutch city.

My blog is not so big business...

2011-03-29T14:01:00.000-07:00

Hmm, so far I'm over half way done with my time in Amsterdam, but only about a third of the way to hitting the minimum for getting some cash from my blog's ads. Guess I'm gonna have to start upping the posting rate these next 4 months, haha.

Back in Austria and London

2011-03-29T13:54:00.000-07:00

The past two weeks have been pretty busy ones. Two weekends ago was our office ski trip, titled Sneeuwwitje (Snow White), in Fiss, Austria, rather close to where I skied last December. I think there were about 70 people from the office there, so quite a crowd. We started off after work on Friday by making the ~8 hour drive to Ulm, Germany and then continued on another ~2 hours to Fiss in the morning. When we got there it was snowing and foggy, so visibility was about 20 feet - trying to ski down the mountain was kind of surreal, basically just skiing into white nothing-ness. After an afternoon of that, we continued on to the apres ski, which was unlike anything I'd ever seen in the states. I know there's plenty of bars on the slopes where I've been before, but in Fiss, there is a full-blown club right on top of the ski rental place at the bottom of the mountain, and it's absolutely packed every day. The place was called Hexenalm, which I think means "witch" or something in German, and featured a DJ in a booth above the dance floor who would occasionally swing out over the crowd on a rope, jump up and start dancing on the railing, or hoist a beer up from the bar with a pulley system - quite interesting. People are in there dancing the night away in their ski boots. Ridiculous.

Apres ski #1

Actually, dancing the night away is a bit of an exaggeration because the place actually closes at 7pm and immediately turns into a quiet restaurant, kinda weird. Once that happened our group would go back to one of the large chalets for dinner together and then proceed on to another bar/club for the night called Hexen Keller (something like cursed basement - not sure what's up with the witchcraft theme...). This was pretty much how every day and night went - very fun but very tiring as well.

Apres ski #2

Luckily, after the first day, the weather was absolutely perfect for skiing - clear skies, temperature above freezing by a few degrees and some nice snow (higher on the mountain at least). It was awesome to see the great scenery, get some fresh air, get in some good skiing and see all of my coworkers out in a different setting on the mountain. Couldn't have asked for a better couple days in the snow.

awesome.

The one bad part of the weekend was the huge drive to and from Fiss. After the very tiring weekend we had what ended up being a 13 hour ride back on Tuesday. About 9 hours of driving (including a stop and 120 euro fine in Austria for not having a driving vignette), plus 2 hours of being stuck in standstill traffic in Germany and another hour train ride since we had to return a colleague's car and take a train back to the city. Other than that though, really awesome.

Then, after another busy week at work, this last weekend was spent in London. Venkat, a friend and coworker from the Atlanta office who's starting a 4 month stint in Rome, was there, so me, him, Becky, Katie (another former BCG ATLer) and two of Venkat's friends all made it to dinner one night. We also managed to catch almost all of the March Madness games with a bunch of other Americans, which was great since I had to miss a lot of them the week before. Gotta love March Madness. Since that wasn't very London-y, we went to some good London restaurants and also went to The Boat Race - the annual rowing race on the Thames between Oxford and Cambridge. It was actually pretty crazy as hundreds of thousands of people show up to drink, socialize and watch the race. Pretty cool event.

As you can see not the greatest weather, but hey, it's London. It actually was really nice on Sunday though, which was a good way to cap off the weekend. Now it's been a new week starting to ramp up on a new case. It seems to be really cool content and there's a chance that I'll get to go to Hong Kong over the course of the next 7 weeks, so I'm pretty excited. Other than that I'm just enjoying the weather as it gets a little warmer, enjoying the sunlight as it's now bright much later, and trying to get some more travel plans finalized.

Til next time...

A busy two weeks

2011-03-13T08:47:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've updated, but that's because I've been pretty busy with a broken hand, a trip to Boston, finishing a project at work and having Buddy, Grebs and Alex over for a week. But, now that I have some time, here's an update:

As I said last time, I broke my hand in Lisbon. After a week in a cast that covered all four of my fingers and my entire forearm I went back to the doc and was able to get a smaller cast. The doc actually thought that he might have noticed a 2nd fracture in the bone, which would have required surgery, but luckily a CT scan showed that there was only the one fracture (phew) and I would be out of the cast after 4 weeks. I'm scheduled to get the cast off this Tuesday, which I am incredibly excited about, and then our office ski trip is next weekend so hopefully I don't break it again... I'll definitely be taking it easy on the slopes.

smaller cast, but still quite annoying...

A couple weekends ago and a couple weekends after I broke my hand I went to Boston for a long weekend. I spent Thursday and Friday going to HBS's admitted student weekend and Saturday and Sunday chilling with some old friends. The Harvard weekend was really cool and got me excited to be going there in the fall (despite the harsh reminder of Boston winter weather - we got some sun, some rain, plenty of wind and about 6 inches of snow while I was there). We got to see the housing options, check out some classes, hear a lot about the school from various people and, probably most importantly, meet all the people that I could be in school with in a few months. The rest of the weekend was spent visiting some old haunts like Buko's and Pour House and seeing some MIT friends, which was really fun. It was also nice just to be back in the States for a bit, it had been a while. Unfortunately On Sunday I took the red eye back to Amsterdam, landed around 7:30am and went straight to work for one of our more intense weeks on the project.

But, luckily, our project cooled down a bit the following week, just in time for Buddy, Grebs and Alex to get here. Again it was nice to have some Americans around, and we spent the week seeing the sights, eating, drinking and getting the Amsterdam experience. I had to work during the week, but I was able to make it back pretty early every day so I think that worked out well, except maybe for my lack of sleep. They also got pretty lucky with the weather as it was pretty clear (only rained one day!) and even warmed up a bit. Actually, the day after Alex and Grebs left it was even warm enough for a nice long bike ride, so I took advantage and took some photos of the city.

Rijksmuseum and Iamsterdam sign

Olympic Stadium (the 1928 Olympics)

I've been to 6 cities that have been Olympic hosts since being over here (actually 7 if you include Atlanta)

River lined completely with houseboats

Well I think that's it for now. This week is the last week on my project, and after that I have no clue where I'll be. I do know, however, that this coming weekend I'll be on the slopes in Fiss, Austria, so I'm looking forward to that!

Lisbon

2011-02-19T09:24:00.000-08:00

It was quite an interesting time last weekend in Lisbon. It was a really cool city, I enjoyed all the sites, and I also ended up with a broken bone... but we'll get to that later.

I got in late on Friday so I didn't get started seeing the city until Saturday morning. I went first to Belem, a few minutes west of the city center by train. It was a quiet part of town but had some cool sights. One of them, the Belem Tower, was apparently where many of the ships set sail during the Age of Discovery (it was built too late for Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama, but was apparently around for Magellan). There was also the Jeronimos Monastery which had some really cool architecture going on.

Belem Tower

Jeronimos Monastery

Lisbon's version of the Golden Gate, it was even the same shade of red

After that I headed back to the center of the city to wander around, specifically the Baixa and Chaido districts. I really enjoyed Lisbon because a lot of the city was really old and had a lot of character. There were San Francisco-style hills and old-school trolley cars, a lot of really old churches, monuments and other buildings, and a bunch of areas where the houses were just stacked on top of each other like pueblos. A lot of the narrow alleyways reminded me of Venice or Florence, which I guess makes sense since they're all kind of Mediterranean cities. After a bit of walking around I grabbed some food from this little whole in the wall place, which was pretty delicious.

Foz Palace and the Restauradores Monument

Rossio, with the National Theater in the background

I think this was an entrance to the central train station. Not sure, but it looked pretty cool.

The city center with Castelo de Sao Jorge on the hill

Arco da Rua Augusta and Praca do Comercio

Lisbon Cathedral, very Notre Dame-esque

typical narrow alleyway in the Alfalma district

On the way back to the hotel I stumbled upon a really weird-looking circular building. It looked like an arena except it was decorated in a kind of Middle Eastern / Arabic fashion. Coming closer I found that it actually was an arena and it was holding pro basketball games which I had seen on the tv in the restaurant for lunch. Tickets were only 5 euros for all day, so I decided to check it out... and it was quite an experience. First off, the arena was decorated in a really elaborate Arabic fashion, and I got the feeling it was probably used for bull fights at some point in time. Second, it wasn't even Portuguese basketball, it was Angolan (Federacao Angolana de Basquetebol). Apparently there are quite a few people from Angola in Lisbon because there were plenty of fans waving Angolan flags and everything, however there weren't enough fans to fill the arena, and they made everyone sit on the side opposite the tv cameras to make it look crowded (never seen that before...) Then, the cheerleaders basically just wore t-shirts and booty shorts, and during timeouts they danced in a circle with no routine or anything around half court - and one time one of the girls even grabbed a mic and started belting out a song, it was chaos. Lastly, despite being a huge basketball fan, I couldn't even figure out all rules. For every foul I saw except one they shot free throws technical style, with no one around the lane. Sometimes they got possession after the shots, sometimes they didn't - I couldn't figure it out. On top of all this it was actually an awesome game. The white team was winning big, but then the red team went into a 2-3 zone and the white team was pretty useless - they ended up tying and going into overtime with the red team pulling out a win in the end.

The arena

Doesn't quite look like Philips Arena or TD Banknorth...

and a half full crowd

After that I saw a couple more sights before resting a bit...

Elevador Santa Justa. Yes, it's basically just a freestanding elevator

trolleys

red roofs of the city, from the castle on the hill

At night I went to the Bairro Alto district of the city to grab some dinner and see what was happening. It's the place to be at night, as after about 10-11pm the streets become filled with people walking around, hopping from bar to bar and just drinking in the streets. The district is basically a bunch of narrow parallel streets that cover the side of a hill and are only big enough for pedestrian traffic. It reminded me of Bourbon Street in the way that it was just bar after bar and people were roaming the street with drinks, except this was a bunch of Bourbon Streets side by side. It was a really cool site, but unfortunately this was where my trip turned sour - while walking through the cobblestone streets I hit a spot with a hole and tripped and fell. I ended up landing awkwardly on my left hand in one of the crevices of the cobblestones and hurt it pretty badly. For a while I thought it was just a bad bruise, but after a couple days it was still really swollen and couldn't bear any weight, so I went to the hospital, they took some X-rays, and found out I had fractured a bone in my hand. So, now I get to where a sweet cast around, which makes work (and typing this thing) frustratingly slow. I made it back to Amsterdam fine, but obviously didn't do too much sightseeing on Sunday.

Tomorrow I go back to the doctor, and I'm really hoping I get a smaller cast or splint or something so it'll be less of a hassle to travel to Boston this coming weekend. Either way, it doesn't hurt too much, so that's good.

I don't have any European travel planned for a while, but I am going to Boston and some people are visiting in March, so I should have some good stuff to update on regardless.

Stockholm

2011-02-06T11:44:00.000-08:00

Due to some cheap tickets and the suggestions of a few people who had been there, I decided to check out Stockholm this past weekend. I've never been anywhere in Scandinavia before, so I was excited to check it out. I was expecting bitter cold and wind and snow visiting there in February, but it was actually pretty mild with temps around freezing, not too much different than Amsterdam this time of year.

There were a couple things that really stood out about Stockholm. One was that it was freakin' expensive. Pretty much everything costs an outrageous amount of money, even a short one-way ride on the subway costs about $5. The second was the really varied architecture and coloring of the buildings.Some of them buildings reminded me of Vienna, some of Paris, some of Amsterdam, and some were pretty unique... really all over the map. But it was really cool to see all the variety.

The concerthouse - or Konserthuset - with market in front, otherwise known as the blue one

Jakobs Kyrka (Jacob's Church), otherwise known as the red one

Katarina Kyrka, otherwise known as the yellow one

Street in Gamla Stan, the old city center

Square in Gamla Stan - more crazy colored houses

no clue what this is, but it looked cool...

Cool view of Sodermalm, the southern part of the city, over the frozen river

There's also a ton of museums in Stockholm. I didn't have time to visit many, but I did check out the modern art museum (Moderna Museet) and the architecture museum (Arkitekturmuseet). They had a pretty good collection with some Picasso and Dali and obviously quite a few Swedish artists.

some funky sculptures outside the Moderna Museet

While wandering around the city I also stumbled upon a few military ceremonies/marches, just like in Athens. I was actually taking a picture of the entrance of the Stockholm Palace when a bunch of guards marched right in the middle of my picture, whoops...

Swedish guard at the entrance

Glad I wasn't actually in the way of one of these guys, their knives looked sharp

On Saturday night I met up with Lauren, another BCGer (from Dallas) who's doing the same program as me but in Stockholm, and we went with some other folks to dinner and then out on the town. I got to try my fill of herring and cloudberries (actually a real thing and not something from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory believe it or not) to complement the Swedish meatballs I had for lunch. After dinner we went to a bar where one of the Bulgarian girls knew the bartender, who was also Bulgarian. He played some old school DMB while we were there - I'm not sure if it was because he liked it or because he thought the Americans would like it, but whatever. After that we checked out the Stureplan area (apparently Stockholm's much downsized version of Times Square) where lots of clubs and bars are, before calling it a night.

mmmm, elk meatballs

Stureplan, the poor, homeless, very destitute man's Times Square (it was still very cool though) during the day

Besides meeting a BCGer from Dallas and some others who went to school in the States, I also met a couple Harvard Med School guys at breakfast in the hotel - small world...

All in all, another good weekend in the books. Glad I got to visit Scandinavia while I was over here and check out what Stockholm had to offer. Now it's time to nap so I can watch the Super Bowl (starting at 1am over here). It's gonna be a tired Monday this week...

Visit to the homeland

2011-01-22T14:00:00.000-08:00

Posting this a little late, but last weekend I went to Scotland and checked out both Edinburgh and Glasgow. Becky met me up there, and on Friday night we went to a really good restaurant called the Witchery, just down the street from Edinburgh Castle..

Apparently this is actually where they used to hang all the "witches" back in the day, which is pretty intense (witch is pretty intense, hahaha ha ha). It was on the street called the Royal Mile. At the end of the street is Edinburgh Castle, then along the street are a bunch of government buildings, churches, pubs, touristy shops and Mary Kings Close.

Edinburgh Castle

High Kirk of Edinburgh

More churches...

Mary Kings Close was pretty crazy. Essentially the Old Town of Edinburgh used to be a bunch of really tall buildings that were really close together, and the only streets between them were alleyways only like 6 feet wide, called "closes". At some point they just decided to build a building *on top* of these buildings, and essentially bury the old closes. I still have no clue why they decided to do this - maybe it had something to do with all the plague-spreading going on in the closes. Some of the closes still exist, but many of them are buried, and are essentially just a hill now. We went on a tour of Mary Kings Close, which was pretty cool and kinda creepy. Along the Royal Mile there are also a ton of tourist shops, all of which have a ton of things with my last name on them (you know, Robert the Bruce King of Scotland being my ancestor and all...)

A booklet with the Bruce family history and the family tartan (plaid pattern) on it...

Bruce shot glass...

lions and tigers and plaid, oh my!

They are really crazy about plaid over there. Even the hotel room was decked out in plaid in every possible way...

On Saturday night we took the train over to Glasgow and met up with my high school friend Patchee and his wife Shona. We had a good dinner and some scotch and beer in a cool bar in Glasgow. It was good to see them since I hadn't since their wedding last summer.

Patchee and me

Shona and Becky

Oh and one last thing, what trip to Scotland would be complete without some bagpipes!

Wandering around Amsterdam

2011-01-09T13:30:00.000-08:00

For the first weekend in a while I had some time to chill in Amsterdam, so I took the chance to wander around and see some of the sites and areas of the city I hadn't seen. It ended up being a really nice, clear day, even though it was a little cold.

the usual canals, houses and houseboats

and some crooked houses...

ATL!

And of course, like in any European city, I found some more cool towers and churches.

Munttoren, used to be part of the old city gate

Zuiderkerk

Sint Anthonispoort (Saint Anthony's Port), another of the former city's gates, which now has a restaurant in it

There are also a ton of lights which are hung over various streets throughout the city. I think it's just a winter thing, and some of them were clearly Christmas related, but maybe some of them stay up year round?

Kinda cool. Also, as I was getting back to my apartment I saw a huge blaze at the end of my block. The first thought was that part of my block was on fire, which was a little terrifying, but it turned out to be something like a big neighborhood bonfire. I guess every year they take all of the Christmas trees from all of the houses, and instead of recycling them into woodchips or something they just set them on fire and bring their kids to watch the show. Whatever floats your boat...

Oh, and one more addition to my list of things people do on their bikes... pulling their luggage.

2011 is here

2011-01-06T14:24:00.000-08:00

It's been a pretty hectic first week back at work, so I haven't been able to update on the holiday happenings, but better late than never...

After a good stay at St. Kitts I went back to Atlanta for a few days to celebrate Christmas with the family and just relax a bit. Then it was back to Amsterdam, where my flight was connecting through Heathrow (which had seen tons of delays due to the same storm I hit when I was leaving) and was delayed a couple hours. Luckily, I was able to get on a direct flight flying standby, which got me to Amsterdam right at the same time as the one, the only, Jeff Chang!

Jeff came to visit for a few days and we had a good time bumming around the city, visiting coffeeshops and bars and eating lots of unhealthy food. We did also do some marginally intellectually rewarding activities like go to the Van Gogh Museum, which was pretty cool, but mostly we just hung out. Unfortunately I didn't remember to bring a camera anywhere, and against all odds Jeff didn't actually twitpic anything from his time here, so I have no pictures for you.

After a good few days we both left on New Years Eve for our separate New Years destinations - Jeff to Montreal and me to London. I met up with Becky and another of her friends and we went to a bar on the Thames to watch the fireworks over the London Eye.

there were definitely more people capturing the fireworks on their cell phone / camera than watching with their own eyes. kinda sad.

There were quite a few people there and the fireworks were really good, but I don't think they make nearly as big a deal about it as New York. Regardless, a very fun time, and it's always cool to see how they do holidays in other cities. The rest of the weekend was spent relaxing, eating at some good restaurants, and watching some bowl games (!), so no complaints there. After that the all-too-short break was over and it was back to work on Monday. I've got one trip to Scotland coming up, but other than that I should be chilling out a bit on the travel front and spending some more quality time in Amsterdam. Til next time...