The flight out of London was uneventful. The couple next to me seemed to spending a few days there, and had guide books about the city. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that they should have gone to Stockholm. I was rather bored this flight (having already read my Herald Tribune) so I mostly listened to music and thumbed absently through the in-flight magazine (the same one which was on the earlier flight). We landed in Copenhagen 20 minutes ahead of schedule with a lot of snow on the ground. This time they also had an extendable passageway so we didn’t have to walk across the tarmac. The whole airport was really empty, being only about 4 hours till the New Year. I made my way quickly to the baggage claim, but alas my bag didn’t come until much later. With my bag I went over to the trains. Buying a ticket proved difficult, with the machines once again refusing to take my credit card or my Nordea card. I tried three different ones and others were having the same trouble. I finally tried my Wachovia debit card and it worked. I informed any others in line that if they were going to Sweden they could use the other machine (which was not in the same area as the other ticket machines). I walked a guy through the process and later on the train (I went to the wrong platform like three times) I met up with him again and we chatted a bit on the way to Malmö. He had a Swedish girlfriend and was spending New Years with her. In Malmö, I saw the next train to Lund wouldn’t be for another 30 minutes, so I had to kill some time there. Rather boring, but my mp3 player helped. I saw a lot of other college students going to Copenhagen. Some, who were on the train to Lund with me, were carrying alcohol and fireworks. In Lund, I stopped at the 7-Eleven to break a 100 note, in case my train ticket wasn’t good for the buses. Lund, to my surprise, had a heavy dose of snow, and it was everywhere. I dragged/pulled my bag to the main road so I could catch the #4 bus to Delphi. Unfortunately, the buses were running on a limited schedule, so 20 minutes and 6 other (wrong) buses later, #4 finally came and I made it back to Delphi. As I was waiting at the bus stop, some Swedes were in the middle of the university campus (with multi-story buildings at the Lund Cathedral around them) and were sending off large firecracks into the sky. A bit of snow and ice would fall from the trees above me everytime a shell exploded.

I changed my clothes and checked my email and such, then finally went into the kitchen where Lishuang was waiting. We greeted each other and talked about our trips a bit. I was feeling hungry so I had a frozen pizza and before we knew it, it was already 12:00am. A very large and well put together firework show started to go off in what looked like a field right next to Delphi. They were so close to us. This show went on for about 15 minutes before dying out. Feeling tired, we called it a night and I went to bed.

The Deutsches Museum is something I have wanted to visit ever since hearing about it my German language class in middle school. It is one of the largest museums in the world dedicated to science, technology, and engineering. It was funny to see Christian’s eyes light-up when we mentioned the DM. They actually three campuses, one is their main one but there is another dedicated to aircraft and another dedicated to automobiles. The DM is something you can easily spend two days exploring, at least. As it is situated on an island in the middle of the Isar river that runs through Munich, we had to cross a bridge. We went down to the riverfront, walked under the bridge, then back up on the road and then across the bridge we walked underneath! Heh. After giving our coats to the garderrobe, we proceeded to explore the museum. We had about 2.5 hours before it closed, so we had to move fast. We first went through the electric power and machinery, with Sapana and Sachi wondering why this was all so interesting. For me, I could relate it to the internship I did at Progress Energy just this summer. We moved on then to something more excited – aeronautics. The Germans led the world in pioneering the jet engine, so there were many exhibits on jet planes. This area of the museum, which spanned three levels, reminded me very much of the Smithsonian Air and Space museum (the crown jewel in my opinion of the Smithsonian museums in Washington). We wandered upstairs to the astronautics, where they had a model of the Mercury capsule and a whole line-up according to scale of large rockets. I expressed my love and admiration for the Saturn V, explaining to Christian how I was the kind of guy who could name every Apollo astronaut. We saw a special exhibition on medical technology, so we ventured there and here is when Sachi’s eyes lit up. She got really excited here, and looked with fascination at this video of a procedure to replace someone’s heart valve. I only saw maybe 1 minute of it, but afterward I was honestly feeling a little queasy. I did see a demonstration on the EKG and I actually knew something about this cause of Dr. Snyder in ECE 301. On our way up the stairs we also saw the DM’s Foucault pendulum, which pretty much any respectable science museum has an example of. We continued onward to chronometry, saw a life-size model of one of Gutenberg’s printing presses, telecommunications (I was surprised at how informative it was…reminded me a lot of the digital communications course I took this semester), weights and measures, and into astronomy. As we were walking into another wing, Sachi caught a look outside of a wonderful sunset over Munich, with the red sun lighting up the horizon. The pictures I tried taking of it didn’t do it justice. Alas, it was time to go. We tried passing the Foucault pendulum on our way down but they kept shutting doors off, and finally we got to the aeronautics center where Miriam was reading her newspaper. She wasn’t there, so we went over to the garderrobe and picked up our things. Pity the museum isn’t open longer, though I do not know how long the Smithsonian museums stay open. I really must come back to the DM and see it entirely…especially the aircraft and automobile museums. We left the DM and headed to the metro, where we went to Marienplatz. It was about 5:20pm or so, so it was nighttime. We made our way over to the Hofbraühaus next. The Hofbraühaus is perhaps the most famous beer hall in the world, and as a result is so incredible touristy. The hall is enormous, which large long tables. It’s not uncommon to share a table with strangers (as we did). A lot of smoke and loud talking and waiters quickly walking through the crowds with enormous glass mugs in their hands. At first it didn’t look like we would find an open table, but Miriam spotted one and we quickly sat down. For being the Hofbraühaus, they serve maybe six kinds of beer. The classic of course it the house light brew, served in a mass (one of the ridiculously large 1 L glass mugs). Miriam, Sapana, and Sachi got one mass to share and Christian and I each had a 0.5 L weissbier. I was telling Miriam and Christian about how we’ve been trying to get Sapana to try a lot of beers but how she’s never liked any of them. Surprisingly, she actually liked the brew! We have a good picture of her hoisting the stein. Christian hadn’t been in the haus for around 10 years, and I could understand that entirely. There seemed to be more foreigners than Germans, though we did see people wearing the traditional hats, even some groups of elderly people around a table enjoying a drink. This was also the first time in my life that I could consciously feel the alcohol having an effect on me. Before this I had drunk 0.5 L or just a bit more, but it was always with a lot of food. Today, it had been five hours or so since I had eaten and we had been on our feet walking around the whole time. After we left, we stopped at a bakery and I got a pretzel to try to absorb some of the alcohol. We made our way back to Marienplatz and it was here where we said goodbye to Christian and Miriam. They had been so generous and helpful taking us around Munich and afterward I was feeling very down, realizing that it would be a long time before I see them again. My sisters were also feeling sad too, and they told me that I was right – all of the friends they had met were amazing people. From here we did some of our last souvenir shopping; we bought two steins, one for Sunil Uncle’s relatives and one for the O’Connors. I bought some more of the addictive roasted mandelnusse (which we actually determined after asking Christian were almonds), and as we made our way to Karlplatz we went into the Kaufhof and bought a German stainless steel Thermos. Sachi said mom and dad already bought a thermos, but I figured if they don’t use it, I will. Then I can start the story again of a cherished German thermos which I lost, and maybe my kids will go and buy me another one from Germany too. With the beer inside of us and some pastries from before, we weren’t feeling that hungry so Sachi and I picked up some falafel for take-away. We went inside the train station to check how tomorrow’s S-Bahn trip will go, and Sapana went to buy a tomato-mozzarella baguette (she had had enough falafel for the trip). Later at the hotel, the falafel turned out to be very spicy. We finished off some of the other food and did our packing while I was showing Sachi and Sapana some of radiohead’s songs. They think radiohead is a bit weird, which they are. I went down later to the lounge to check and write some e-mail, and when I got back (my sweater still smelling of smoke from the lounge), mom called us to check-in before we went traveling. We talked to them a while then finally went to bed. I was checking the photos from the day as I was lying in bed and couldn’t stop from laughing when I saw how many of Sapana’s shots were completely crooked. I then started looking at some ‘NichtLustig’ comics and had many a good laugh too. Brilliant stuff.  It was getting late, so at my sister’s insistence I shut down the computer and went to bed.

It was such a terrific way to end our European trip.

We walked east from the Hauptbahnhof towards Marienplatz, which the idea of turning northward and swinging by the Residenz and Operahaus. That didn’t quite happen cause we kept watching eastward along this really nice and wide shopping street. We saw this really great deal on fleeces and I bought one for 9 euros. We continued to walk (the sun was going down fast, and it was very cold) and I bought some mandel nusse (roasted brazilian nuts) which were just delicious. We were looking for a café but this proved moretable where the girls were finishing up. Suddenly one of the restaurant staff comes up and asks me with a troubled look where I bought that soda. I pointed at the store next door and she looked sort of worried. She asked for the receipt (all in German, by the way) and of course it was in the last pocket I checked. She grabbed the soda and receipt and went over to the store’s counter, got the money back for the drink, then went over the restaurant’s register and ‘re-bought’ the soda, this time charging 10 cents less ‘lebensmittel’ tax, then handed me the soda. I was completely bewildered by the entire thing. We left rather quickly (the sisters were finished) after that. I think it must be something where if you buy bottled soda at a restaurant there is less of a tax involved than if you purchase a drink separately at a normal store. In any case, it was a different of 10 cents. Whew.

We walked east from the Hauptbahnhof towards Marienplatz, which the idea of turning northward and swinging by the Residenz and Operahaus. That didn’t quite happen cause we kept watching eastward along this really nice and wide shopping street. We saw this really great deal on fleeces and I bought one for 9 euros. We continued to walk (the sun was going down fast, and it was very cold) and I bought some mandel nusse (roasted brazilian nuts) which were just delicious. We were looking for a café but this proved more difficult than expected. There were some souvenir shops so looked around a bit to comparison shop. I think I can get my Bayern pin for 3.55 euros. The cuckoo clock we want to get for the O’Connors might be something like 25 euros, pretty steep. The stein’s aren’t any cheaper either. We actually made it to Marienplatz and it reminded me a bit of the square in Brussels or Bruges. We turned a bit north from here and ultimately made it to the Residenz and Opera house before we realized it, and found this interesting café place were I got a coffee, Sachi got a hot chocolate, and Sapana a panini. Neat place. We find Maximilian strasse, but here I think Frommers has it completely wrong cause it didn’t seem like a shopping street at ALL. I said screw it and we started heading back to the nice street that we came in on. Suddenly Sapana points out the Dallmayr store. I had mentioned this place to them on the train from what Frieder and Christian told me and she had found it. We went in and explored the place a bit – fine foods from chocolates and jams and teas and coffees to even meats and such. I bought some whole coffee beans and Sachi bought some Weihnachten Schokoladen. I decided later to give them to Christian as a gift, so tomorrow we will come by here and buy more coffee and chocolate, this time for home. We continued onward and went by the mini Christmas market they had setup with an ice-skating rink. We looked at the skaters a bit (it was due for a Zamboni session that’s for sure) and then spent time on the Kaufhof. This is a huge department store that puts the ones we have in the malls to shame. We finally located the thermoses and did some comparisons. We’ll probably buy it tomorrow with Christian showing us Viktualien platz. We walked back to the hotel and decided to have dinner at this Italian restaurant just at the beginning of Senefelder strasse. The prices were pretty good, but the food was ok. The waiter didn’t seem to mind us much either I think. Tourists. :\ We got back to the hotel and went upstairs. I came down a bit later with Sachi to use the internet terminals and to try a beer, but we discovered that they had FREE Wi-Fi access in the lounge. We brought back down the laptop and tried to log-in, unsuccessfully at first cause the lady at the desk told me a log-in of ‘EuroYouth’ when it was ‘euroyouth’. We logged in and checked email, the weather, ACC basketball schedule, our credit card statements, and some other random stuff. I composed a long letter to mom and dad, but not sure if it finally went through at the end. Sachi and I came back upstairs, I transferred pictures to the laptop and worked on this journal until falling asleep.

Tomorrow will be busy but fruitful – Marienplatz, lunch and touring with Christian, the Deutsches Museum des Wissenschaft und Technologie, and the Hofbrauhaus.  Gotta get some sleep; gute Nacht.

After the Kunsthaus we went back to the hotel and did some packing and writing of postcards. I wanted to check my e-mail to coordinate with Christian in Munich, and thought we could go to the Starbucks where we saw a Wi-Fi access sign. Sachi bought a coffee and Sapana a hot chocolate. I was able to connect but was hit with a payment page. It sucked, you had to enter in your credit card information and such, and the rates were terrible. Disappointed, I went back to the hotel to use their kiosk in the smoke-filled lounge (they say the hotel is non-smoking, but all the workers in the lounge smoke and it wafts up into the floors). Happily, I saw an e-mail from Christian and his idea for a meeting place and time ended up matching perfectly with the plans we were sketching out for Munich. I sent back a letter, then the girls came back from Starbucks and after dropping off our jackets in the room went the 10 steps from the hotel door to the Indian restaurant that was in the same building as the hotel. Sachi had a glass of red wine and  I had one of white wine; Sapana just had water. We ordered an aloo appetizer, then chana masala, palak paneer, and a mushroom shahi curry dish, and a mixed bread basket. Switzerland is so freakin’ expensive. We were easily at $25+ per person for this meal. But it was good. Back in the room we had some of the chocolate we bought earlier, and continued to work on journals and pictures. I had my laptop on the bed at an angle due to the blanket and suddenly USB 2.0 was working! The transfer speed is SO MUCH FASTER. Excited, we connected Sapana’s iPod and started transferring songs. We also wanted to backup the European trip pictures so we started a transfer of 1700 pictures. Just as it was ALMOST finished (after 20 minutes or so of optimizing and transferring) the USB 2.0 suddenly cut out and it re-connected at USB 1.1. The iPod didn’t save ANY of the data that was previously sent, so instead of around 1600 pictures it only showed 24. Sigh. I’m gonna make IBM/Lenovo fix this when I get back to the States. I paid like $300+ for an extended 3-year warranty for this laptop, and it BETTER cover this. It’s a system-board problem. It used to work just fine, then it suddenly quit. I think they know about it too – some problem with electro-static-dust buildup inside the system mainboard. I’ll call them up and ask if there is a safe way I can blow it or something.

We had to get up at 5am to catch the train to Munich the next day, so we went to bed early. It was an interesting 21^st birthday.

We wanted to also see what has become the symbol of Geneva – the Jet d’Eau, or just, the ‘Jet’. It is a huge fountain that sits in Lake Geneva and shoots out a plume high in the sky. But, as it turns out, it closed at 4pm cause it’s winter, and we reached the lake at 5pm. You have to realize though, the mindset that we were at. We had just come from magnificent Paris, and frankly any city would be hard pressed to match its grandeur. Also, despite seeing the sun on the way in, there were low gray clouds that covered the sky, and it was colder than it had been in any of the other cities we visited. Also, after finishing the Red Cross museum, we tried (being the honest citizens we are) to buy a tram ticket to get back into town all the way to the Altstadt (old town). However, unlike the well-run transit systems of Sweden, Denmark, and what we saw in Holland, in Switzerland you have to buy your tram tickets before boarding the vehicle. However, not all stops have a ticket machine. So first you walk to the nearest big stop. Then, having just arrived in Geneva in the past four hours, we did not have a sizeable Swiss franc coin collection. The ticket machines don’t accept bills, and exact change is required. Basically, we couldn’t buy tram tickets. So we walked back all the way to the lake. When you take into account all these factors, we were in a pretty flighty mood. My sisters and I were not unhappy by any means, in fact we were in quite a nice mood. We were simply acknowledging the fact we just didn’t get out of Geneva what one would get if they were here in June on a sunny day. Sachi was trying to defend it, and wanted to cross the bridge to see the Altstadt. It was already 5pm, and sunlight was fading. The bridge is quite far, and when I looked across I just saw hotels. Sapana and I started giving Sachi a hard time, jokingly of course, of what was really worth seeing in the Altstadt. She started reading stuff and unfairly, we were making comparisons left and right to bigger cities and places and ruled them out. Reading down the list, she said how there was this big ramp where they could bring their horses up….and we lost it. The very idea that we were reduced to a horse ramp of finding things to see was enough. Poor Geneve, this was just not your day. We strolled back up to the small shopping area in front of the main station and meandered through H&M. I bought a long sleeved shirt. After doing some window shopping of watches and Swiss Army knives, we then scouted out a place to eat (Italian, of course) then went back to the hotel. I got on the internet to check my e-mail, the weather (it’ll be snowing in Zürich), and such. I have to catch up on my journal then pack up for tomorrow’s train at 7:45am.

Paris is truly a grand city. It has the royalty of Vienna, but with a sense of grandeur and completeness that few cities can match. It is the only city I can think of that is deserving of the title ‘Capitol of Europe’. The metro system was also such surprise. Easy to read maps and plentiful signs make finding the right connections and trains a cinch, the trains run often and are clean, and throughout the stations there are maps showing the detail Paris city metro map, the greater Paris area, as well as a detailed look at the area of Paris just surrounding the station, to help you get oriented as you leave a particular station. They would also give free maps, so I made it a point to pick one up nearly everywhere we went. My wish was that we could have stayed one more day to see more museums, like the Musee d’Orsay and the Musee Rodin. Ah well…it gives me a reason to come. What made our stay in Paris the best was that Laure, Kahina, and Eddy came and met with us. Sapana said to me as we stood by the Arc d’Triomphe at night that meeting Saket’s friends was the most wonderful part of visiting Paris. I couldn’t agree more.

We started by driving the American Cemetery at Colleville. This is the cemetery for the American troops that died in the Normandy region, on D-Day but also through the war. It is a very moving experience seeing the rows and rows of grave markers. 9,400 soldiers are buried there, some that are unknown. All face east, towards America. The cemetery is actually American soil, because the families wanted their sons to be buried in American soil, not French. The cemetery sits on the bluff overlooking Omaha Beach, so that was our next destination. We went by one of the exits where an anti-tank casemate sits that had be neutralized before the exit could be opened. This casemate can be seen in a famous picture showing American soldiers moving up the beach. We then drove down the length of the beach towards the western end of it, where we got down and were able to walk onto it. Off to the side stood the only remaining part of the dock from the artificial harbor the Americans built. What struck me about Omaha beach is how long it really is. Films and video games makes you think otherwise, but in reality the beach is five miles long. And unlike the other beaches (we went to Utah later), a bluff rises above the beach after several hundred meters from the sand. Another thing I had to visualize was the width of the beach itself – we were there at high-tide, but when the Allies landed the sandy part was more than 700m wide. With no cover, with an entrenched and prepared enemy on high ground in front of you, that would seem the distance from the earth to the moon to a soldier. Sapana was mindful enough to pick up a rock, which we’ll give to Nader. I wish I had thought to bring some plastic bags, so I could bring sand back. Anyway. We got back in the van and drove to the part of the shore that juts out and divides the Omaha and Utah beaches – Point-du-Hoc. This is on very high ground and the Germans had put in a well-armored battery of guns that could strike targets anywhere on Omaha beach. The Rangers were assigned the task of tackling this battery, which involved scaling a practically vertical cliff with Germans lobbing grenades down at them, then coming to the top and fighting hand-to-hand, then being surrounded by a mine-field. The Allied bombers heavily bombed the area three months before the invasion. Point-du-Hoc is arguable the most compelling because one can see the enormous impact craters that are easily 10-12 feet deep and 18-22 feet in diameters all over the landscape, dotted with smashed concrete slabs from the fortifications. Some of the massive casemates with six foot armor still remain, the 155mm guns removed. There is also one of the bunkers in which we could do down into where the German soldiers slept and such. It was kind of eerie, because Sachi and I had virtually attacked these bunkers in video games, and I could vividly see Tom Hanks leading his troop of men against bunkers very much like these in Saving Private Ryan. The tragic part was that the Rangers suffered a 60%+ casualty rate in taking Point-du-Hoc, yet they didn’t find any of the guns there. The Germans had moved them back into the country for protection. From Point-du-Hoc we drove to Utah beach. They have another museum setup here but it was closed due to the off-season. They had a Sherman tank and a Higgins boat outside on display. I didn’t know this but the Higgins boat was made out of wood except for the steel front door. Compared with over a 2000 dead at Omaha beach, there were 200 dead at Utah Beach. There is no tall bluff overlooking the beach. We also saw these markers that are apparently all over France which markers the date that the place was liberated. As we drove on some of the narrow back-country roads, we also saw these distinctive kilometer markers the Allies would place down as they took back more and more land. Using these markers they were able to call in more precise airstrikes. Our attention moved next to the US paratroopers, who were dropped behind enemy lines six hours before the invasion began (at 12:30am) to help disrupt the enemy’s response during the invasion. We saw the bridges that had their doors open to flood the fields behind Utah beach, and we then swung past St. Marie-du-Mont, a small village which was the designated gathering point for the 101^st Airborne Division. As we drove past the village, we saw a stately manor house that Commander Taylor of the 101^st chose as his headquarters for Normandy. I also got excited when he mentioned Brecourt Manor. It may be kind of obscure, but I really enjoy the ‘Band of Brothers’ story by Stephen Ambrose and the story he tells of Easy Company of the 502^nd PIR of the 101^st. In ‘Band of Brothers’, Lt. Winters leads his men on an assault of four large artillery guns that were setup on a field at Brecourt Manor. These guns were striking Utah Beach. Outnumbered in manpower and firepower, Winters was successful in neutralizing the position and he has his men were awarded for their gallantry and bravery. It also provides the context for a particularly intense and fast-paced action sequence in the miniseries Band of Brothers (episode 2, ‘Day of Days’). Olivier our tour-guide drove us by the manor and I got out and took some photos. In a way I felt silly, cause really it was just a field with some trees marking its borders, but it was sort of a thrill to be near the spot where these men that I have read so much about were and fought back in 1944. From Brecourt Manor we drove to St. Mere-Eglise, the rallying point for the 82^nd Airborne. What makes this church famous is that a soldier named John Steel got his parachute caught in the steeple and remained hanging there for several hours. He pretended to be dead, which proved especially difficult after being shot in the leg. To commemorate this, there is a mock-up of an airborne soldier hanging from the church. The members of the 82^nd grew quite close to St. Mere-Eglise. For the 50^th anniversary they paid for new stained glass which showed paratroopers falling from the sky with the Holy Mother and the church in the center. It was quite interesting.

I wanted to buy some souvenirs but was rather discouraged because of the off-season. Olivier helped find a small shop across from the church but all I got were some post-cards. In the summer all the stores are open. Pity, cause I was going to spend some money there too. That concluded the tour, so Olivier got on the highways and took us back to Bayeux. There were stores still open in the downtown and instead of waiting at the lonely train station for an hour for our train, I asked to be dropped off there and we killed off some time window shopping there. It really is a small town. We bought some food at the grocery store and later walked to the train station. We boarded a train that was going from Cherbourg to Paris St. Lazare, so we were all set for the entire way back.

It was a really great day trip. Actually being there in the places I’ve read about was such a thrill. I was happy that the weather stayed cooperative, a bit of sunshine, no rain, and it wasn’t that cold. What struck me the most about the entire tour of Normandy was how large the area is in reality. Somehow that point never got into my mind in the books, films, or games I’ve played. Omaha beach is really long. The distance between Point-du-Hoc and St. Mere-Eglise is 20 minutes by van on decent roads. The entire land area that was involved in the Normandy operation is so much larger than I had previously realized. I only wish that I could have also done the tour with friends like Nader and Craig with me. Maybe in the future though. J

We arrived in Paris just fine and made our way to the metro. My mom says that when we were in Paris ten years ago, she was surprised at how easily we had navigated the Paris metro. After so many other cities under our belt now, it was no problem. We found the hostel soon enough and checked-in, though we couldn’t enter the room until after 5pm. The lady at the desk was quite weird…I asked if we could leave our bags somewhere and she just pointed at this sheet of Rules and said to read it first. I mean, this isn’t the first hostel we’ve stayed at. After I read the rules, I asked again “where is the luggage room” and she pointed me to it. Silly. We then went back out to the metro and we had about two hours to use up before meeting up with Laure. To the Eiffel Tower! We took the metro again to Bir Hakim and got out of the station and immediately the Eiffel tower loomed above us. It is quite an arresting sight. We walked towards it snapping photos every five minutes. It was partly cloudy, but as we moved out down the Champs de Mars, the sun began to break out above the clouds and slowly the entire tower was bathed in light. It was very nice. We walked towards the south-east, trying to find a café or something to have a cup of coffee, but no real dice. We didn’t have a good map, so we just wandered a bit. I spotted this building with its gold-leafed dome glinting in the sunlight. It is called Invalides, and it is a grand hospital that Napoleon built for his injured soldiers. Finally it was about time so we took the metro to St. Michel. Laure said for us to meet in front of the fountain at St. Michel, and we got there a bit early. Promptly at 12pm, I spotted her walking up the street. She had to quickly finish a call with her father then I introduced her to my sisters. She told that me that Kahina was coming too, so we waited a bit. Kahina then came and was so kind to bring some chocolates. I wish I had bought some flowers for them, but I forgot. I’m sorry! Hungry for lunch, they led us through some of the side streets where university students in Paris often frequent. Laure and Kahina helped decipher some of the menus and we found a nice place. We talked about Brussels and Amsterdam and our previous trip to Paris, and I touched base with them about people leaving in Lund. Marion and Helene were flying back today on the same flight from Copenhagen. Kahina brought this handy guide and she and Sachi looked through to see which museums were opened on Christmas Sunday. Laure and I sketched out a plan for the day, so we gathered up our things and headed out. We first headed north, across the bridge to the Cite, a small island where the city of Paris began. Kahina made an excellent point about train reservations for Caen and to Geneva. Kahina led us to this huge shopping mall where she knows of a SCNF office. It was amazing. Kahina led us down this maze of escalators and crowded hallways (full of holiday shoppers) and into the SCNF office. We got to the desk and Laure and Kahina talked with the clerk in French. She would look up some information on her computer, tell it to Laure and Kahina, then they would turn to me and translate it to me. I would respond, then they would tell it to the clerk. The best part was when Laure turned to me and started speaking in French, then suddenly caught herself. I really wish I knew French at that point. Poor Laure. She and Kahina were so amazingly helpful to us. Kahina had to leave us at this point, so we said goodbye. L Laure still had some time before another meeting, so we walked over to the Louvre. I forgot how truly enormous the museum is. It sits in the grounds of the palace that Louis XIV was raised in. We entered the Louvre and explored some of the wings.

We are currently planning on taking the 9:30am train to Belgium scheduled to arrive in Brussels at around 12:30. We will go to the hotel, drop off our bags, then immediately head out into the city. Brussels is not as big as Amsterdam, so it should be easier to see. The following day we will take a day trip to the city of Bruges, which is lauded for its charm and beauty. I desperately need to check my internet. I have not yet found one of those internet cafes that isn’t in a drug haze filled ‘coffee shop’. Sigh. Maybe tomorrow. We need to call home tonight too.

After a mad dash to the 7-Eleven to buy pepparkakor and julmust for my sisters to try, I boarded the train to Copenhagen. The airport is a good airport – airy, clean. It was extremely busy when I arrived, with a very long line stretching out from the SAS check-in desks. This was the first airport I’ve seen were they show you which ticket counters you can go to for your particular flight. After trying one of the computer kiosks, I was resigned to wait in line, but it was surprisingly efficient. After only 30 or 35 minutes I was at the front and the check-in went smoothly with no problems. After security, one fines many many shops and tax-free shopping. They had a lego store too which I thought was a nice touch for the kids. As I boarded the plane I picked up a complimentary copy of the International Herald Tribune to complement the latest issue of The Economist that I had bought back in Lund. Flight was fine, with a group of middle school girls cheering when the plane touched down to the amusement of the adults and more seasoned travelers in the front. If I thought CPH was nice, the Schipol Amsterdam airport is quite a sight to see. It is easily the best airport I have been to in Europe. There are enormous, easy to read instruction signs everywhere with English as the primary language. The airport is never feels crowded, looks sleek and clean, and offers well laid out and spacious shops. The area above the trains is enormous…difficult to describe. There is also a full fledged grocery store there too. I checked up on which receiving area my sister’s EasyJet flight would be arriving so I camped out near the entrance.

Sachi and Sapana’s plane arrived a bit earlier and I finally met up with them right as they were coming out of the doors clearing customs. It was nice to finally see them again. Sapana’s bag was ridiculously heavy and unlike Sachi’s, did not roll. I hoisted it on my shoulder while Sapana took my rolling back. We talked about their morning at London and Luton and how Sapana’s first impression of the residence hall was. While Amsterdam’s Schipol airport is spectacular, it’s city train system definitely leaves something to be desired. I found it a bit confusing and not as well run as the airport is. Kind of curious. We got off at the Centraal Station and first located a map of the city. We quickly saw that the metro doesn’t serve our part of town, which would have to be only accessed by trams. We walked over and after some hunting around find the right tram number. The trams here at 1.60 euros and they are valid for 1 hour. So you can go someplace, check it out, then take another tram ride in under an hour. We got to the Leidseplein, a big, bright, active square with lots of restaurants and shops. The nice tram driver repeatedly said ‘Vondelpark’ for us to inform us that it our stop. Oh yes, while we were looking around for the trams a lady saw us and asked if we needed any help, then she did. It was kind of weird to see that. The optimist in me was happy to see such a nice person, the cynic in me thought she was a distraction for some pickpocketers. Anyway, we made it to the hotel fine. We checked in and went up to the room. The room is kind of small but entirely functional. It’s better than a hostel room, let’s put it that way. We did some unpacking and I had some debhra that Mom packed with Sapana and they had some pepparkakor and julmust. They realized what I meant when I said how pepparkakor goes by really really quickly. They also couldn’t wait to see Klovvika so I showed them the movie too. Great reactions, especially to the DVD. Sachi loved Yuko’s screaming after she got possessed. We then watched the outtakes, and they had a good laugh. We wanted to do something so we got dressed and walked over to the Leisdseplein. We decided to have a bite of falafel so we walked down this street (a little shady, yes) and went into this store. A nice looking cat sitting on the stool and an elderly person took our order. They had their own system and manner of doing it. He carefully cut the tomatoes, lettuce, and onions, then slowly made each falafel. They weren’t the ‘burrito’ style you find in Lund, but they were filling. We got them to go and went back to the hotel to eat. As we got into the lounge, they were showing the Indianapolis Colts vs. the San Diego Chargers on TV. I was excited cause it was the first time I got to see NFL football live since leaving the US and it was the Colts at that, who are undefeated. And guess what. They LOST. Poor Peyton Manning. Anyway, we finished the falafel and went to bed. I forgot my pajama pants in Lund on accident so I will have to go buy some here or in Brussels. I haven’t find a suitable store yet. Maybe on Tuesday.

After coming back we chilled for a bit then went outside to burn the Christmas goat! It is of course a Swedish tradition! Frieder found this Swedish song, and outside once we finally got the straw goat to start burning, we locked arms in a circle around it and started dancing and singing this silly Swedish song. Ahh, these crazy Swedes.

Afterward I went into the lounge to spend time with people, and the French girls were having a pre-party. We talked a bit, and then Amalia came in and we said goodbye, because I won’t see her tomorrow morning. After everyone else left for the nation parties, Frieder and I had a long talk first reminiscing about our experience here then to a wide range of more serious topics….the aftermath of WWII in Germany, war in general, the middle east, etc. I will really miss talks like this.

I leave for Amsterdam in 12 hours. I’ll head to the train station at around 11am tomorrow, then catch a train to Copenhagen airport. Sapana and Sachi are in-flight now towards London.

Though some ‘goodbyes’ have started, I’m NOT ready to say goodbye yet! It’s going to be hard.

There will likely be no real updates on this site until January 1st or 2nd. I will be writing my notes each day of my European trip then I will upload them all to this website with pictures once I arrive back in Lund. See you all soon!

I’m going to finally finish this term paper of mine. I finished off the ‘Religion for the Palestinians’ section yesterday, and now have the ‘Religion as a Means to Peace’ section left.

My working title is “Pslams and Suras, Shields and Swords in the Holy Land”. It’s kind of long, but I like the alliteration. However, it says something about my state of mind regarding this topic when I just KNOW that someone is going get offended by the parallelism in that title. I mean, I’m instantly conscious about these kinds of things now.

I’ll add more later.

I woke up late on Saturday and rather than actually lengthening my essay, I spent the time doing even more reading for it. The sad part is that while I’m current on other literature for the essay, I don’t remember in much detail what is in the book we’re supposed to reference in our essay; namely because unlike the rest of the class, I finished it nearly 3 months ago. But on Sunday I reached the halfway mark of my essay so I’m pretty pleased with. That night we also watched Pirates of the Carribbean.

On Monday we had our last class of Role of Religion in the Middle East Conflict. We were to discuss our essays so I went out at 2pm to the E-huset computer labs to print out what I had. One hour later, I had nothing. In two rooms, some jerks were holding up the printer printing out a whole BOOK, in the other Windows room none of the open terminals were working, and the printer in the UNIX room was disabled. After one of the guys had left, I discovered he left the printer out of paper, and there were no extra reams or a sysadmin to restock it. An extremely irritating experience. Oh, print.ncsu.edu, I could have used you! The class was nice. Dr. Åberg brought these St. Lucia cakes, pepparkakor, Julmust, tea and coffee for us to enjoy. We discussed our papers in small groups, and it was a nice discussion. Most people haven’t even started theirs yet, and Vaibhav actually finished his and submitted it the day before because he’s leaving for Stockholm/Kiruna on Wednesday. He read maybe five chapters of the book then sat down and 7 hours later had his essay. Clicked sent w/o any proofreading. Heh. Afterward we watched this late 80s film about an Israeli soldier who gets captured by a Palestinian guerilla group and they eventually find a common bond through their love of football. Neat story, but absolutely dreadful execution. All I could think about while watching it was how much BETTER Frieder and I did with our movie. The movie had terrible keyboard synthesizer music that never matched the mood of the scene, the dialogue could have been much more revealing, and the pacing was bad. Oh well.

I’m happy to say that as of 6:20am this morning, Klovvika has ‘gone gold’! The DVD is finished and now we just have to start burning them. I went to bed at 7am and woke up at 10:15am, because I thought I had my laundry time at 11am. Turned out it was at 3pm. So I got ready, had a small lunch then biked down to the city center to look for the DVDs. After visiting several stores, I found one that sold the DVD+jewel case for 10kr a piece, came back to Delphi, and now I’m writing this entry.

Tonight at 6pm a group of us is going to the St. Lucia choir concert at the Allehegona Kyrkan, which should be nice. I will also work on getting Christian’s Lund map ready for his student guide project, and work on my essay a bit more. Busy night, will check back later.

See, today was the big premiere for Klovvika, the movie we filmed in Norway. And of course when Frieder, Christian, and I set out to do something, we’re going to do it right. Which means renting a projector and setting up Christian’s speakers in the lounge so as to have a movie screen 12 feet across. It was pretty awesome. We were playing hockey and FIFA on it and such during the afternoon. It was very funny to see people come in the lounge, say hello, then as they turn their heads to look at the seating area, their eyes widen and jaw drops as they see the huge screen. Frieder and I had finished the DVD late last night. Adobe Encore DVD has been the MOST frustrating program to use. It does not feel or act like any of the other Adobe programs, and we found out later that Adobe had bought the program from another company. There were so many bugs that Frieder had to overcome. The last one was that for each subtitle track we had, Encore would add in a 2 second delay between menu transistions. Why it would do this is incomprehensible. But Frieder was brilliant in fixing it. So we had our DVD (though still not finished completely…the French and Japanese subtitles are coming soon).

We also started to cook, because it was going to be a big dinner. The whole dinner started out to be a good-bye dinner for LiShuang, who will be leaving tomorrow for some European travels. However, the scale and quality of the dinner increased by the hour, so we elevated its status to be one of the big official good-bye dinners. LiShuang asked that I make pizza, and I happily obliged here. The dough was troublesome though — I added too much yeast (I hate the American system of cooking measurements…it’s so inconsistent!) and so it was like working with inflatable dough.It was crazy. But what was truly amazing is how everyone came today to contribute something. Never before, out of the five months we’ve been here, has the kitchen been so full of activity! In every inch of the counter dishes were being prepared. LiShuang and Wenyuan were cooking Chinese food for their professors, because whenever these professors come to Shanghai, they dine at the home professor’s house. So LiShuang wanted to do the same. They later came in an cooked Chinese chicken with mushroom and some cucumber and eggs for me. I was tossing and kneading my pizza crusts on various pans while Laure was making a ham and onion dish. Christian was baking his wonderful Red Wine Cake, while next to him Yuko and Masao were assembling an elaborate Japanese sushi dish, with seawood rolls, Japanese rice, salmon and tuna and these interesting tofu like pouches. Marion mixing together a French quiche and by the stove Amalia was stirring a traditional Greek soup made with lentils (I recognized them from a dal my mom makes), tomato, onion, garlic, and spices. Next to her Judith was coring apples for a festive looking (and great tasting) Apfel dessert, served warm with a dollop of vanilla ice cream. Eddy came in and carefully made a French rolle cake, and Frieder was able to find some stove space to make his German Milk rice. Pablo and Pepe came in and made a Spanish potato dish with cream and ketchup and some toast with potato-salad like topping for appetizers. As all the dishes were nearing completion and everyone’s mouth was watering, some desks and tables were brought in from the rooms and a long banquet table was created. Candles, flasks of cider, and a running picture slideshow from our Norway trip projected on the wall perfectly accentuated what was turning out to be an impressive show.

The movie premiere was special so many of the girls dressed up and were all looking radiant. Eddy wore a sharp blazer and I took the opportunity to actually use the nice set of clothes I had brought.

As the elected President of the Corridor (that’s a whole other story I should tell) I happily announced the opening of the buffet and everyone began. It was a great dinner, with many different types of foods. I was happy that my pizzas came out ok despite the trouble I was having with the dough. Amalia’s soup was excellent and the sushi was remarkably good. Despite everyone feeling full, we then brought out the desserts. Judith and Christian started to warm up the apples and top them with ice cream and we passed them around the room. At this point it was around 10:15pm, past our scheduled premiere time of 10pm. More and more people were coming at this point for the premiere, but it was ok because they got to have some dessert. Nancy from digital communications came and brought some friends, and Franz from the hockey team was there too.

As dessert was winding down, we began to clear away the the tables and start getting the room in order for the premiere. The projector was a little strange in that it would tilt naturally upward, so we had to keep it quite low in order for it to fit on the wall properly. Couple this with 40 people crammed into the room, and we had some problems. Christian, Frieder, and I worked up a solution using Christian’s large law books (rather, tomes) and we were in business. Our great DVD menu was on the screen and before starting Frieder and I addressed the crowd to say a few words. As we navigated through the menu to turn on the partial English subtitles, the crowd oohed and awed. The movie then began with a raucous applaud. Frieder and I stood in the back with Christian to watch it, though we were more watching the crowd. The three of us, along with of course Paul, had spent a great deal of time watching over the movie. It helped that the crowd was comprised of friends of all the actors, so there were cheers when they got to see their friend’s on the screen. They responded perfectly to the budding romance between Paul and Marion, and exclaimed when they saw our top effect shot — the Frieder mirror scene. As the credits rolled we got a huge applause, and afterword we navigated to the outtakes reel Frieder and I put together and everyone had a great laugh watching all the mistakes people made.

As the lights came up the reaction was positive. Eddy said some great words for Frieder and I and we got a nice applause. My thanks and admiration goes out to everyone who was part of the movie, cause we all helped make it a success. We used the opportunity to take cast photos that we might be able to use for an eventual DVD cover. Afterward people mingled with the ‘actors’, and came up to us and said encouraging words. A word I heard often that gave me great satisfaction was ‘professional’. I learned a lot while working on this movie (indeed, it was like my fifth class here!) and had a blast doing it.

I had to tend to some things in my room, and the French left to go to Malmo nation for a party. I came back later to the lounge and felt bad I had missed out on the starting of the clean-up. We tidied up the kitchen to the tune of a Strauss Waltz, and after the floor was dry Judith and Frieder did a waltz for us. Some called it a night, but we still had the project until 1pm the next day, so the rest of us decided to watch a movie. We picked The Fellowship of the Ring, and in the beginning I asked to see the German dub. The voices are pretty good, though I’m so used to the originals it’s a little weird hearing something else. I also found out that some names are changed, which was funny to hear. Also, it’s not as distracting as one might think of hearing German though the actors are speaking English. After the movie ended, it was 4:20am and I was quite sleepy. I learned later that Frieder stayed up the entire night and watched all the extended editions back-to-back. I came in the lounge in the morning at around 11:45am, and the final battle at the Black Gate was underway.

In about an hour I’ll be going with Christian and Laure to Copenhagen. We will visit Tivoli (the amusement park) for a while then go to the Franz Ferdinand concert at 8pm. So far I had done pretty well at spending my money. But now I’m seeing my spending accelerating. The football game last Sunday, the projector, Tivoli, concert, and of course shopping for back home. And this is all before I leave for the European trip! Heh, I had better keep an eye on it. :)

Christian and I have developed a plausible explanation for this Swedish college custom, though some might call it a ‘conspiracy theory’. IKEA (which as a design center right here in Lund, so it KNOWs college students) develops cheap affordable furniture that is easy to assemble (and thus, disassemble) and has a lot of stores everywhere in Sweden. The state-run alcohol system, Systembolaget, restricts the sale of alcohol so instead of it being mainstream and normal, Swedes go crazy with alcohol. They thus drink a lot at one sitting, becoming very very drunk. Combine drunken I.Q.-lowering group behavior with cheap furniture in a student dorm area, and the natural outcome is the wanton destruction of said furniture, often with flames involved. So much of Sweden is forested, so wood is not a problem. Efficient Swedish recycling returns the wood to the soil, and the cycle begins again. It’s a rather ingenious scheme for a self-sustaining economy.

Anyway, today was a good day. We went to Copenhagen and saw the FC Copenhagen vs. Viborg football game.

More pictures can be seen at http://www4.ncsu.edu/~srvora/pics/fc_copenhagen
It was good. Copenhagen demolished the other team 3-1. Me, Christian, his friend Jorge, Frieder, Laure, and her boyfriend Laurent (who had flown in from London) was there. Afterward we met up with Paul at the central train station and Laure and Laurent went back to Lund. We walked over to the pedestrian district and stumbled across an Indian restaurant. The Germans were up for it so we went in. I had baigan burtha (though the Chana Masala was tempting..but I can make a reasonable chana masala at home), Christian had Lamb Sabzi, Frieder at Chicken sabzi, and at my recommendation Jorge had butter chicken. I ordered mine spicy but it really came out spicy. The food was fairly authentic, the naan too not like that Indian restaurant in Lund. I ate very well (see Mom, I’m eating here!), and for $26 for myself it was ridiculously expensive but good. I mean…$26. Whew.

Yesterday I busted out close to 3-4 pages of my essay, and I’m just getting started. Hehe. The topic is endlessly fascinating. Everyone should read “From Beirut to Jerusalem” by Thomas Friedman. By this Friday I aim to finish it, a good ten days from the due date. We have our last class tomorrow evening. I am also going to check in with my advisor about my course transcript, mail back a package with some things I want to send home (like my souvenier and rather realistic fake plastic gun), buy a Lunds Universitet hoodie, and prepare for the Europe trip in more detail. Oh. And cut my hair. It’s atrocious now. Oh, and a Franz Ferdinand concert in Copenhagen on Friday! Ahhhhhh. :)
On Thursday we are having a goodbye dinner for Lishuang, then at 10pm we are having the premiere for our movie. After that Frieder and I will finish up the DVD production and start burning copies. Whew. Busy week ahead! Bye.

Anyway, it was a very interesting and informative lecture. Nothing though that makes me convinced that peace is just around the corner though.

Yesterday was busy. I went to the Christmas market at Kulturen with Frieder, then bought some mittens at Stadium and then went to the Lund Giants hockey game. To our delight, Franz got 5 to 7 minutes of ice time and even had a few good chances to score. The Giants won, but it was humorous to see the other team’s goalie pissed off. The Giants onced scored off a face-off with a slow puck! Anyway, due to part of the rink getting damaged we got out of the game a bit late and then met up with Christian, Norra, and Lishuang for dinner at a Chinese restaurant. We then met Laure at Filmstaden at 9pm to watch the Harry Potter movie. Funny thing about Swedish movie theaters: You first reserve your seats well in advance, then go to the theater to pick up your tickets. The theater itself is nicely furnished, but I thought the sound was certainly deficient compared to theaters back home. Only stereo sound from the front. There were Swedish subtitles. First impression of the film? Rushed. They were really anxious to get through the plot points. I wanted to see more time spent on the champions from the other nations. But the graveyard scene was done well.

I’ve also discovered that my entire approach to winter wear has been totally wrong. All this 100% cotton stuff isn’t actually the best, even though it’s more layers. I think I’m going to go shopping tomorrow and actually spend (gasp!) some money. I think honestly I’ve done fairly ok since coming to Sweden. I’ve bought a pair of mittens, two knit caps though I lost my good one in Norway :(, a Lund t-shirt. I also want to buy one of the cool Lunds Universitet hoodies i’ve seen, and another t-shirt and sweatshirt for gifts back home.

Anyway, some more movie and reading work to do tonight. Bye.

On Wednesday morning Eddy, Helene, and Marion left for their one week trip to Russia. They are going first to Stockholm, then a ferry across the sea. The corridor has been more quiet because of their absence. On the other hand, the rest of us are doing more things together, just a bit. Pablo had his family visit and Amalia went to Barcelona and Madrid for a few days with her boyfriend. The best part of their trip? The sun. :)

On Friday night I watched Sleepy Hollow with Frieder and Christian. In my mind I thought it was better, but now it seemed over-the-top in too many places. Tomorrow we will go see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire at the cinema. It will be a busy day: Frieder and I will go visit the Christmas Market at Kulturen, then from there go to the Lund Giants hockey match against Astorp, then we’ll meet Laure, Lishuang, and Christian for dinner, then see the movie. Busy, but a welcome change.

I also haven’t been eating much these past few days, but together with the help of Mom I made vegetable biriyani. It does the body good to have some familiar spices and food in you, and it was the most filling meal I’ve had in a few days. Christian is a remarkable chef, and made some Rötwein Kuche, or Red Wine Cake. He used the shape of a bundt cake, and it came out truly extraordinary. Not overly sweet, with a hint of cinnamom and hazelnut. And made with 1/8 litre of red wine, of course. I have the recipe, don’t worry.

It snowed here yesterday, and while the snow was not heavy it continued to fall for many hours. Today the ground was still white. In two days time it will likely disappear. The AF-Bostader (the care-taker for Delphi) also put up a large Christmas tree in the central courtyard and put white lights on it. It adds a very pleasing touch to the area. At one point, I saw the tree shaking violently and discovered that some drunk people were trying to topple it over. Frieder and I ran out to the balcony but when we got there they were already running away.

Progress has been made on the movie, though it has been slow. The key trouble has been the opening title sequence. It seems easy, but we’ve had great difficulty getting it to a point where we feel satisfied. Eventually we decided to re-cut it and insert some more footage, and I rendered what should be the final version earlier. Frieder also noticed that movie studios also have a logo animation that plays before the film starts. On a whim, we did a Google search for images relating to ‘Delphi’ (the name of the studios and the housing complex where we live), and found a picture of a three columned structure at the real Delphi site in Greece. Add a 15 minute dash of Photoshop and we got this: Not too bad! Much time has been spent now in finding a nice logo animation.
The big things still left with the movie is 1) the sound mix; that is, balancing the dialogue, source audio, added sound effects, and musical score 2) the subtitles; which still need the Japanese from Yuko and proper syncing 3) the DVD production of it.

We’re targeting the 2nd week of December as the premiere.

That’s mostly it for now. Oh — next Sunday Frieder, Christian, his friend, me, Laure, and her boyfriend will be going to the FC København vs. Viborg football match! I’ll post about that later.

On Saturday I went to the city center and bought a new toaster for the corridor. Earlier that week, I had forgotten to pop the toast three times, causing smoke to fill the kitchen and forcing us to spend a few minutes flapping towels around clearing it out the windows. (Our smoke detector clearly doesn’t work). Frieder and I also worked quite a bit on the movie today, working really late into the night. He cut together a great looking trailer, and I polished off a special effect that I’m quite proud of. The movie is set for release in the first week of December.

On Sunday I woke up rather late, and went to the lounge for some coffee. At the same time, our corridor elections were being held! Earlier that week, in response to one of Christian’s chickens being stolen from the fridge, Christian and Frieder wrote up a constitution for the corridor. It quickly snowballed into a rather intricate affair, and we were having elections for the various positions, like representatives of the people’s chamber, judge of the state, president, foreign affairs minister, party minister, etc. Frieder set up quite an elaborate voting station up, with registration via photo ID, a voting booth and ballot box. After many dubious voting irregulaties (I’m going to stage a revolution), the results were in: Christian, Frieder, and I make up the people’s chamber. Eddy is the president, and he appointed Yuko as foreign affairs minister and Helene (of course) as party minister. Marion is the judge of the state.

Later that day Frieder and I went to see another hockey match at the Ishall. It was a good game, with the #1 and #2 teams playing. It was tied 0-0 until the last 56 seconds, when the other team scored a goal. The Lund Giants lost 0-1. The worst part of the night was actually our fingers. They were freezing. We’re talking like the you-can’t-get-it-out-your-mind pain on the bike ride back up to Delphi. It was crazy. If fingers could cry, mine certainly were.

Since my last update I’ve also been watching the show Arrested Development. I never got around to watching this show while it was on, and decided to give it a try. And I’m glad I did. This is the best live-action comedy I’ve seen since Seinfeld, and it’s better than Seinfeld. This show is top notch, with brilliant writing and great characters. And wouldn’t you know it, Fox CANCELLED it. Sigh. So far just seven more episodes to go. Seriously everyone: watch this show. Start with Season 1, because one of the greatest parts is that the show builds upon itself. Watching episodes knowing the earlier episodes makes them so much more enjoyable.

Anyway, it’s about 4:40am, and I had better get to sleep. Our plane tickets for the December trip are booked, and my two essays for SAS 116 are finished. I will email them to Bo and Andreas tomorrow. Gute nacht.

Tomorrow we are having a birthday party for Christian, though admittedly rather belated. I will be making pizza so I will have to make the crusts tomorrow morning. AND work on my Harry Martinson essay! Didn’t get much done today that’s for sure.

On Wednesday we were presenting our papers for Scandinavian Culture, and one girl completely butchered Niels Bohr. She said the play Copenhagen was a musical! Ahhhh, my eyes were burning. It was also hilarious to see how no one understood what it meant to give a five minute summary of their paper. They would ramble on for two minutes, then announce “my paper has five parts” and proceed to list all five. The professor had to cut off so many people and we wasted time asking people if they could do it in five minutes or not. Sheesh.

For the third time this week I burned toast in our dysfunctional toaster and caused smoke to fill the room. So tomorrow I will go to the Lund city center and buy a new toaster for the corridor.

This Sunday Frieder and I will go to another hockey game. Later.

Norway was incredible. For natural landscapes, it is one of the most beautiful countries I have ever visited. It fit what mental picture I had of Scandinavia when I saw the Norwegian landscape.We had a large entourage. From our corridor, we had me, Frieder, Eddy, Helene, Marion, Judith, and Yuko (the last two came later). Eddy’s friends Geoffrey and Yahia came, and Frieder’s friend Paul came too. Paul and Eddy drove us all the way up from Lund to the house where we stayed, a good 7 hour drive. Helene had found a secluded house that was about 45 minutes northwest of Oslo. The house blew away any expectations we had. It was actually two houses, a large one and small one. Each were completely furnished with full fledged kitchen, spacious living areas, comfortable rooms, and house stereo, tv, dvd player, everything. It was located just 5 meters from the Tyrifjord/lake. They had boats and canoes and we could use all the equipment. It really was amazing, and all for an extremely affordable price because we were there during the off season.
It was mostly a time of relaxation for everyone, and relax we did. Woke up and had coffee while gazing out over the fjord with its fog shrouded mountain ridges. Went out onto the lake with the boats and admired the Norwegian landscape.
Watched movies and played games at night. One day we took a day trip north of the house to explore more of the country-side and do some hiking. Another day we went to Oslo to see the town. It’s a modest unassuming capital. Another huge thing we did was to film a scary movie. Frieder and I thought of the idea before leaving, and we worked out loosely the story we’d tell. And during the stay there, we used everyone and did a lot of filming. It was a little tricky to manage it at times, because it was supposed to be a vacation but doing the movie does take work to do. We filmed everything there and currently we are working on finishing the movie. It so far runs at around 21.5 minutes. We’re going to eventually make a DVD of it. But we also had a lot of fun while filming it too. It was great fun. Back here in Lund the weather has finally turned wintry. It has been overcast/rainy with heavy winds. It is getting dark here too very early like it did in Norway. At around 4:30pm it is completely night. I have to write an essay in the next few days for my Scandinavian Culture class, which is ending in about two weeks. I am presenting the essay I finished before Norway on Wednesday. I also need to start working on the final essay for the Role of Religion in the Middle East Conflict class. That will be about 10 pages long, but there is a lot of material for it.

Last Thursday Frieder, Paul, and I went to another Lund Giants hockey game. It ended in a tie, but I got a game puck that flipped out of the rink after being deflected off the goalie’s pad. It is a great souvenier. Poor Franz didn’t get any ice time, but we’re hoping he’ll play next game. Lishuang is off traveling through Germany, Austria, and Italy. Eddy, Helene, and Marion are heading to Russia and Estonia next week. We are having a birthday party for Christian next friday. Today was very strange. I woke up at around 11am or so after going to bed at 3am. I felt ok, but fell asleep again. I woke up next at almost 3pm! It was crazy…really heavy intense REM sleep. I really haven’t been dreaming much while I sleep over here, but I guess today my brain just said enough is enough and did a LOT. Really weird…

Anyway, make sure you check out my Norway pictures here: http://www.saketvora.com/photos/norway/index.html and email with how you are doing. Leave comments!

I have spent today watching the Panther’s football game that my parents send and a West Wing episode. I also cut my hair (myself) and had a cup of espresso+milk with Pablo. The remainder of this evening will be spend studying Swedish for the test on Friday, and possibly watching another West Wing episode…or two.

During the past weekend I ended up working a lot on my essays and got one of them about 70% complete. I’ll work on that too tonight as well. On Sunday I went with Christian, Laure, and Marion to the Lund Giants hockey game. It was awesome. We paid 30 kr for the ticket (like $5) and we were right there against the class. Great seats, and it was exciting! The Lund Giants won of course. I compiled a video of it that you can see here: http://www4.ncsu.edu/~srvora/pics/hockey2.wmv (right click this link and select ‘save link as’).

Yesterday I picked up a care package that my mom and dad sent, and there was sooo much food! Chuckree, chevdro, laddu, spices, and lots of instant-gravy for all sorts of meals. They also put in DVDs of the NC State and Carolina Panther football games. Mom and Dad: You are AWESOME.

Today was really stormy…high winds and overcast skies. It will rain tonight I think as well. Alright, back to work. Swedish language awaits!

Most of the leaves are on teh ground already, and winter is coming pretty quickly. The autumn was beautiful while it lasted — the trees turned nice golds, reds, yellows, and oranges. Wow I might be repeating some of this. Not all the leaves have colored at the same time though, there are still some green ones left.

I’ve been on a West Wing episode binge here…it’s not healthy. I need to really stop and get cracking on some of these essays I need to write. The Swedish language course is coming to a close at the end of October, so I’ve got that test soon. I want to try finishing up my essays for Scandinavian Culture class before I leave for Norway, cause soon after I return (like, 2 days) the presentations will begin. I’ll be doing a paper on the history of science in Sweden, and luckily I found a nice resource published by the Royal Academy of Science titled “Science in Sweden”. Heh.

What else is going on? Lots of stuff going down politically back home. Wilma is bearing down on Florida. Sapana is going to King’s College in England in the spring, and our paths might cross in transit. Sachi is off in Charlotte doing a project for Hunger Lunch. I registered for courses yesterday, didn’t get one I wanted but I might later. Oh, and Jessica sent me a delightfully unexpected and lovely care package! I’m feelin’ great. :) Thanks Jessica.

Earlier today after a lot of studying I went and played frisbee with Frieder, Christian, Paul, Marion, and Lishuang. It was great fun to finally play some frisbee, except my hands got cold by the end of it. The last point was made when Paul recovered a deflection from Marion at the gold line and flipped it to me.

We’ve been playing some more poker here, Texas Hold’Em style. Frieder has a really nice poker set. I won one night, but have lost the other two. Yesterday Christian brought in his Powerbook and got some lounge music going. I’m getting better at the game. Good times.

As for my other classes, in Swedish Language we are picking up the pace now that we have under 2 weeks to go. The exam is on October 27 or 28. I have found my essay topic for Scandinavian Culture class: Science in Scandinavia. I want to examine some of the key figures in Swedish, Norweigan, and Danish science. I found a book in the library titled “Science in Sweden: A history” so it seems like a good start. I think the other essay will be on Alfred Nobel and his affect on Sweden’s standing in the world now. Role of Religion in the Middle East Conflict class is going good. Our professor is quite engaging, though his English isn’t the best. Last lecture was on Judaism, and he brought Matzah, a type of unleavened bread they eat, prayer shawls, and other items used in ritual. Last week it was on the eve of Rosh Hanah and he brought a plate of apple slices with honey, because you normally eat something sweet on that day to welcome the new year.

Autumn has fully arrived with slightly colder days. The best part are the leaves turning color. A wonderful array of golds, yellows, reds, and oranges are sprinkled among the trees. They all are not turning at the same time, so it’s very pretty here. The skies this whole last week were completely cloudless, which is causing Swedes here to start wondering what the heck is going on. They are really surprised at this weather; we are loving it.

I heard yesterday that Sapana was accepted to King’s College in England for the spring. Congrats sapana! You have to stop by here in Lund for a day or two before going to jolly ‘ol England. Our kitchen’s new counter-tops looks really fancy, and Dad out of the blue bought $300 worth of golf clubs one weekend. Looks like he’s getting geared up for retirement! Hehe.

Random cultural observations:

1)People that know a bit about America say that while my accent is certainly American, if they were to guess they would say I come from the Northeast, like Pennsylvania. They are surprised to learn that I have never lived above North Carolina in my life.

2) Some people went down to Oktoberfest in Munich two weekends ago. They started drinking at 9am and went until 1am. Some even smuggled out the 1 liter glass mugs.

3) In Christian’s European Union law class, they had to give their final presentations last week. Two Americans did their presentation on the Patriot Act, terrorism laws in the US and in the European Union. They started by describing some rights given in the US Constitution. The two they named as examples were “the freedom of speech and freedom to bear arms”. The entire class broke into laughter. The Americans stumbled a bit, wondering why all these Europeans were laughing at an American placing such importance on the right to bear arms. Out of the entire bill or rights, there are far more important rights worth mentioning than the 2nd amendment. I’ve gone on several rants about the current state of governance back home, so my corridor mates know where I stand. I asked them if they have met an American that supports Bush, and all of them said no. Hmmm.

4) Lishuang and Wenyuan told me that in China, KFC is more popular than McDonalds, because in China they say it’s healthier to eat animals that move around more. So chicken wings are considered better than cows.

5) When we were playing frisbee, Christian went running hard to grab a frisbee that went off course. He yelled ‘nein!’ as he couldn’t get to it. That instantly made me remember a Birbal story I read when I was a kid. Birbal is this advisor to King Akhbar, and they had a series of comic books that describe how Birbal solves mysteries or problems or sorts out complicated affairs for the king. Anyway, this polyglot comes to the King’s ourt and challenges them to figure out where he comes from. The court people quiz him in all eight languages he knows, but the man is so fluent in all of them and speaks with no accent. Finally Birbal follows the man to his home, and instructs a boy to wait outside his window and to throw cold water on him in the morning. The boy does and the polyglot wakes up suddenly in surprise and yells. The boy tells Birbal what he heard and Birbal knew the mother tongue of the man. When people are surprised or have to react on instinct, they will fall back their mother tongue, and Christian did exactly that.

6) Speaking of accents, the Germans have all sorts of accents and overall speak English quite good, but as a whole not as good as the Swedes. The people of the Romance languages (Spanish, French, Italian) have a harder time with English, and nearly all retain an accent, especially the French. It’s interesting.

The next stop was a very small town on the coast called Rungstad. This is where the Danish author Karen Blixen (in the States known as Isac Dineson) of Seven Gothic Tales and Out of Africa fame was born and lived. This part got quickly boring because we already heard almost everything about her life in class, and there is not much to see. They was a nice bird/nature sanctuary behind the estate. But we ended up staying there for nearly 3 or 4 hours. So long that we had a shortened time in Copenhagen. We split up there, Bo taking a group to the art museum and Andreas taking people on a tour of downtown Copenhagen. I’ve already seen Copenhagen so I went with Bo. The city art museum has a very modern architecture, with very expansive openings and clean lines. The art was pretty good too, mostly all Danish painters. In one area of the art musuem they had two dozen bean bags, very large pillows, tables serving beer and wine, and a small electronica/trance band. Thirty or so college students were sprawled out, just chilling out in the museum. Thought it was a neat idea. They had a modern art wing which to me was just dumb, as you can see below:
Afterward myself, Tim, Nancy, and Frank headed into Copenhagen and stopped by a pizzeria to eat. They said they would accept Swedish kronors but we had to literally teach them how the conversion works. Pretty silly. The food was ok.

The rest of the weak went fairly uneventful. Friday was pretty chill because I didn’t have any class, so I played Kubb with Frieder, Paul, and Frieder’s girlfield Mika. Afterward we played around 2 hours of poker. I’m still rubbish at the game, but I’m getting better. Frieder has this very professional feeling poker chip set. His parents came into town that evening as well. I also started catching up on the Firefly series. It’s not bad. I think I’ll see the movie when it comes out over here. I also did some more studying for my digital communications class. The exam is in 13 days. I talked to Frederick the TA this morning, and he said to pass the course we just need to answer 2 of the questions correctly on the final exam (you have 5 questions, and 5 hours to do it). That’s pretty good, and if you can take a crack at all five questions you should be able to get enough partial credit to eek out a passing grade. I have three previous final exams and I’m going to set aside a five-hour block and see what it’s like doing the final. It should give me an idea of the level I’m at. Judging from the other exchange students I’ve encountered so far, I think I’m more ahead than they are.

On Sunday I made another Indian dish that has cauliflower and peas. I followed what my mom told me and it actually turned out really really good. And it wasn’t even that hard. Tomorrow I’m going to try making vegetarian Swedish dumplings, called palt.

I saw the Panthers won last night, which makes me happy. We’re still just 2-2 in the NFC South, and the Bucs are 4-0 and the Falcons are 3-1. I still think we’re the better team…we just need more consistency.

Tomorrow I’m taking a trip with my Scandinavian Culture class ‘around the Sound’. We travel north to the Swedish town of Helsingborg, then across the sound to the Danish city of Helsinore, famous for the Kronberg Castle, which Shakespeare used as the setting for the famous Hamlet. Hopefully, nothing will be rotten in the state of Denmark tomorrow (I’m hoping it doesn’t rain anyway). Afterward we travel south down the Danish coast to Copenhagen, where we will probably visit some museums. We end the trip by crossing back over to Sweden via the Øresund Bridge. That is a shot of the bridge from Lund…which is about 12 miles northeast of it. It’s the longest single bridge carrying both cars and trains. It’s almost 10 miles long and marks the first physical connection between Sweden and Denmark in 7,000 years (when there was an ice bridge). It was built in just 2.5 years too. Impressive!

I’ll post pictures and write about the trip tomorrow. For now, goodnight!

Last night I made some teriyaki stirfry with vegetables and rice. Tonight I fell back on the old staple of spaghetti. I need to go tomorrow to buy groceries. I went over to Tim and Nancy’s place (two Canadian students that in my digital communications class) to work on the pre-lab. Apparently we were supposed to sign up for a lab sport last week but I didn’t know. I’ve been saving all my receipts so far and did some expense tallying. So far I’ve spent about $700 for groceries, household goods, traveling, etc. This does not include the rent though.

Other observations:

- Here in Sweden they round bills to the nearest 0.50 cents, due to the fact that the smallest unit of currency available is the 50 öre coin. I never quite noticed it until I started looking at the grocery receipts.

- In France, there are far fewer minutes of commercials on the television compared with the states. For example, they would see an episode of Lost as 42 minutes of uncut video. If a 2 hour movie comes on TV, they might get 10-15 minutes of commercials, and that is usually just at the end of the program. Their sport matches also only show commercials either during halftime or at the end of the game. The idea of showing 2-3 minutes commercials every 10 minutes is strange to them, and actually having ‘TV timeouts’ during sports game is downright shocking.

- In France and Germany, it is often the intellectuals (associated with the university) who go on to run for political office. Angela Merkel, who ran for the chancellorship of Germany with the Christian Democratic Union party, is a practicing physicist at the German National Academy of Sciences.

- Norway is perplexing. Have I already ranted at this? The country has 4.6 million people and is incredibly wealthy due to oil exports. It funnels the extra money into a Petroleum Fund that is valued at $150 billion. The fiscal debate in Norway is not “how are we going to balance the budget this year” but more like “how are we ever going to spend our surplus?”. Yet, despite all this, the country has crazy taxes. With so much money you can’t afford to give people a break? There is a sugar tax so Norwegians living near Sweden cross the border to buy chocolates and sweets. The cost of living in Norway is higher than in Sweden. Yet the ‘quality of life’ is so high that it often ranks top 3 in the world. Maybe for the citizens who can take advantage of the extensive social welfare system, but for exchange students and visitors it hurts the wallet.

It’s close to 1am today. I gotta go to a problem session for digital communications tomorrow (that class freaks me out…2 weeks to the exam and the exchange students have had approximately only 10 hours of professor-led instruction. That’s maybe 1/4th of what the Swedish students have had. And for those engineering oriented, -6 dB! It’s nuts.) and I gotta sign up for a lab. Sigh. Peace everyone.

Someone made a hacked version of DirectConnect that operates inside the Lund University network. Excellent. I have finally caught up on all the Battlestar Galactica episodes I’ve missed, and now will be anxiously waiting for the second season to resume in January. So far Battlestar Galactica has had a marvelous second season. It’s just a shame that many people thumb their nose at it for being in the ‘sci-fi’ genre and don’t even bother to take it seriously. Oh well. It’s their loss.

Well, I’m gonna go to sleep for now, and make Sunday very productive!

I’ve been picking up more interesting cultural things.

- In most of Europe I believe, attending a university is free, or costs less than 1000 euros. Some students are balking at having to pay 500 euros a year in some places. In Germany, textbook prices are the same as in the US, but in Greece, textbooks are free. That’s right. When you sign up for a course, the university will supply you the textbook. And you don’t have to give it back at the end. And you don’t have to stay enrolled in the course to keep the book. I would sign up for 30 classes, get my books, then drop all by 6. It’s incredible. No wonder Amalia was complaining at paying 50 euros for a textbook.

- The Chinese language has an amazing grammar system. The verb doesn’t change when you change the tense. To speak past-tense, just add a small word to the sense. The same with the future tense. The verb itself never changes. And if you change the subject (I, you, he, she, we, they) the verb doesn’t change either (Swedish does the same). That’s awesome. If I were to create a new language, I would definitely steal this idea from them.

- Swedish (and likely Danish and Norwegian) does something very strange with the definite article. If we take ‘house’ for example, in English it would be “a house” and “the house”. In German it is “ein Haus” and “das Haus”. Note the difference in saying “a ____” and “the _____”. But in Swedish, it’s “en hus” and “huset”. The definite article is added to the end of the word itself. Weird.

More to come later.

A great moment happened actually when most of the people left. The people living in corridor and a few close friends were left, and we all started to clean up. The result was impressive: with 12 people working together, we had all the pots, plates, glasses, pans, utensils, counters, and stove cleaned and dried and put back on the shelf, and the floor swept and mopped. The kitchen, after sustaining a huge party, looked ready for an open-house. We called it a night at around 3am, but I stayed up talking with friends until 4:15am. I went to bed and ended up getting up at 1pm. My internal clock has gotten so screwed so I’m gonna stay up the whole night studying and working engineering problems (just had two cups of coffe). At 5am I’m gonna bike to the hill and watch the sunrise over Skåne. The laundry time slot is at 7am too. By Saturday evening I’ll be exhausted and thus get back on the normal cycle.

Anyway. The Swedish language course has started and it looks to have homework every time. The lectures for digital communication have been fairly useless so far; I find it better to read the book instead, however theory & equation based it might be. We are learning some pretty neat stuff though.

This weekend I go to Stockholm. Even though other people’s schedules aren’t really matching up, I feel compelled to go this weekend because a) it is likely the last weekend of good weather we’ll be having, b) i’m told by the local Swedes that Stockholm is a summer town and is best seen with good weather, c) this is likely my last three day weekend until December, and since Stockholm is a 5 or 6 hour train ride away, three days are necessary to fully see the city. I have booked my hostels and will go tomorrow to get my stand-by train ticket. The train ticket costs around 350 SEk one way, and the hostels are coming out to be around $60 for two nights. I’m gonna be packing some food and when I hit a new city I go into ‘survival’ mode and can do for 8 hours w/o a full meal. BRING IT ON.

It’s around 12:15am and I gotta get back to Delphi from this computer lab in the E-huset. I hope my bike is still outside where I left it.

My next post will be on Monday or Tuesday, after I get back from Stockholm. I’ll be sure to put up pictures too. Peace.

Yesterday, a bunch of us in the corridor happened to congregate for dinner at the same time so we had a nice conversation there too, this time more on food actually then shifted to cars as we guys began drooling over the new Bugatti. I decided to post some things I learned from that:

- You can spend over a 100 euros for one meal at a very nice restaurant in France. One corridor mate spent 200 euros for a dinner…not including wine.

- Germans are extremely price conscious. They will tend to look at price over quality, and the idea of spending that kind of money for a meal is incomprehensible. You probably won’t find meals costing over 30 euros at German restaurants.

- At very nice French restaurants (where reservations are usually required), women are given different menus that have all the prices removed. This is to allow them to pick whatever they choose without fretting over the cost of the dish.

- I am probably the youngest person in my corridor, at age 20. We have many 23 year olds, 21 year olds, and Lishuang is 25! Helene has her birthday on 15 September, and Christian’s birthday is at the end of October.

- When drinking German Weißbier (white beer), you usually have to drink it out of a special glass or else it will taste horrible.

- Most of the corridor is now avoiding Swedish bread because it is too sweet. More and more we have started to buy our bread at the Saluhallen Market in Mortenstorget. I asked for a loaf of ‘German’ bread and it’s great.

- Laure and I shared a pot to boil spaghetti noodles and she prefers to put the noodles in the boiling water without breaking them in half. When eating the spaghetti, I began to cut the noodles to make it a bit practical. This was quickly pointed out to me by Helene, who told me that you should never cut noodles. This was affirmed by Christian, who told me that two Italian guys started to get really agitated when British tourists at the next table over started cutting pasta.

- The Fanta brand was created for the German market because of some problem with the Coke brand. Germans wanted the caffeine of Coke but prefered the taste of Fanta, so spezie was formed, in which you mix Fanta and Coke.

- Bugatti has created a 1 million euro car that has a 1001 horsepower engine. It can go over 230 mph.

- Volkswagen is apparently said to oversee Porche, Bugatti, Audi, and Lamborghini, just to name a few.

I better get to bed. Digital Communications lecture at 12.

I took the morning slow today; no classes and I didn't really sleep well last night. Not sure why. I met with an advisor in the EE department here and we had a really nice chat about courses, the department here, and even we talked about the catastrophe in New Orleans. It was the first real discussion I've had with people other than a few of my corridor mates. NCSU's EE department is now working through which courses I'd like to take over here will transfer batch as credit. I'm hoping I can take the photonics course because I've never done anything in that field and it sounds interesting.

I walked through central Lund again today. It is really getting filled up with all the normal university students here. I took out 5,000 kronors from an ATM and deposited it into my Nordea bank account. I was about to withdraw another 5,000 but then thought it might raise flags with Wachovia here. As I sat on a bench eating a falafel (falafel is really popular here) by the Stortorget (the main square) I watched this ice cream store. I've noticed since day one actually. It's just a hole in the wall but it must be tremendously popular. All around the Stortorget you can see people enjoying their ice cream cones and it is all from this one store. It's like an institution here.

Random observation about Sweden: There are no drinking water fountains. Not in buildings, not near bathrooms, not in public places.

I took the morning slow today; no classes and I didn't really sleep well last night. Not sure why. I met with an advisor in the EE department here and we had a really nice chat about courses, the department here, and even we talked about the catastrophe in New Orleans. It was the first real discussion I've had with people other than a few of my corridor mates. NCSU's EE department is now working through which courses I'd like to take over here will transfer batch as credit. I'm hoping I can take the photonics course because I've never done anything in that field and it sounds interesting.

I walked through central Lund again today. It is really getting filled up with all the normal university students here. I took out 5,000 kronors from an ATM and deposited it into my Nordea bank account. I was about to withdraw another 5,000 but then thought it might raise flags with Wachovia here. As I sat on a bench eating a falafel (falafel is really popular here) by the Stortorget (the main square) I watched this ice cream store. I've noticed since day one actually. It's just a hole in the wall but it must be tremendously popular. All around the Stortorget you can see people enjoying their ice cream cones and it is all from this one store. It's like an institution here.

Upon returning to the dorm, I worked a bit more on my computer. It's besieged by stubborn adware and malware. I'm writing here now from inside the Knoppix OS, which is a version of Linux that can be run off a CD (no install necessary). Alas, its default interface looks like something Fisher-Price would make, but at least there are no pop-ups.

I made some dinner (spaghetti with stirfryed vegetables) and then went to Frieder's room to play some NHL 99 on his computer. He has two game controllers, and it was tremendous fun. We also looked at the FIFA '06 and the NHL '06 demos. In between this I did the laundry and spoke with the family back home. Before we knew it, it was already 1:30am. We were in the kitchen/lounge having something to drink, when Christian and Laure and Marion came back one at a time from the party that Frieder and I were going to go to. After seeing their subdued reactions, I'm glad I didn't. Christian was compelled to get drunk just to see if the horrible music would get better, and Laure was falling asleep on the stairs. It was 'free' though.

I had best get to sleep. Tomorrow we leave at 8:30am on a day trip to the island of Ven, which lies between Sweden and Denmark. It is supposed to be quite beautiful. It was cloudy today but did not rain, and I hope the sun is shining tomorrow. I will post pictures when I return. I'm tentatively planning a day trip to Copenhagen on Sunday, but more on that tomorrow.

My thoughts are still with those suffering in New Orleans and Mississippi.

Upon returning to the dorm, I worked a bit more on my computer. It's besieged by stubborn adware and malware. I'm writing here now from inside the Knoppix OS, which is a version of Linux that can be run off a CD (no install necessary). Alas, its default interface looks like something Fisher-Price would make, but at least there are no pop-ups.

I made some dinner (spaghetti with stirfryed vegetables) and then went to Frieder's room to play some NHL 99 on his computer. He has two game controllers, and it was tremendous fun. We also looked at the FIFA '06 and the NHL '06 demos. In between this I did the laundry and spoke with the family back home. Before we knew it, it was already 1:30am. We were in the kitchen/lounge having something to drink, when Christian and Laure and Marion came back one at a time from the party that Frieder and I were going to go to. After seeing their subdued reactions, I'm glad I didn't. Christian was compelled to get drunk just to see if the horrible music would get better, and Laure was falling asleep on the stairs. It was 'free' though.

I had best get to sleep. Tomorrow we leave at 8:30am on a day trip to the island of Ven, which lies between Sweden and Denmark. It is supposed to be quite beautiful. It was cloudy today but did not rain, and I hope the sun is shining tomorrow. I will post pictures when I return. I'm tentatively planning a day trip to Copenhagen on Sunday, but more on that tomorrow.

My thoughts are still with those suffering in New Orleans and Mississippi.

Meanwhile I let Laure use my Internet cause she had to order books and her internet doesn’t work yet. After being back in my room for only 30 minutes, Frieder messaged me saying that Eddy and his French friends are in the kitchen making crepes. So I joined them and we spent the next two hours in the kitchen talking and taking turns making French crepes. We were flipping them out of the pan and over like pancakes too…Christian got really good at it by the end. It’s really like making dosas, only faster. I was pretty good at it. I have dosa mix that I will make one time. The flour was bread flour instead of pastry flour, so the consistency wasn’t perfect but they still tasted great.

After a while the conversation turned to cards, and Frieder explained to me a german game called Skat. I’ve always thought Bridge was the most complicated card game I knew, but now Skat is. Wow. Talk about a thinking game. It was crazy. There are elements like Bridge but the way you get points is totally different. After we played one round I showed them how bridge works, and we played one round of that. Then Marion (oh that’s right, we got our last room filled in the corridor: Marion from France. The French are taking over ) and her boyfriend explained Texas Hold’Em poker and we played one round of that. It was really great just sitting, talking, and learning new card games.

Anyway, must go to bed now. I’m meeting my engineering advisor EARLY tomorrow, then getting an ID, then going to my digital communication lecture in English, thankfully.

This damage has affected hundreds of thousands of lives not just in New Orleans and Biloxi, but family members and even businesses for these cities are industrial and commericial centers. It could take maybe two months before even rebuilding is possible, and surely years before the area has recovered.

In the short term, the region is turning into a humanitarian crisis. Lack of water, food, electricity; increase of illnesses and disease due to standing swamp water; and sadly looting by despicable people who shame the very idea of ‘citizen’. There is a special place in hell waiting for those who would use this terrible event to engage in criminal acts for mere personal material gain.

Even though I am far away now, my thoughts are on those who have suffered and those who are trying to help tackle to this incalculable catastrophe.

I bought an iron today (dry iron, $35, ugh) cause the driers here wrinkles my pants really bad. I also bought my digital communications book. Funny thing is that the lectures for that course are all in Swedish, but the prof will hold 1 hour a week in English for us exchange students. The exercise sessions are in English though.

The long corridor dinners continue to be the norm. Yuko has her Japanese friends over quite often because their kitchen pales in comparison to ours. One time she brought in a Canadian guy named Lloyd who was cool to talk with. He’s a math major, and he’s also a vegetarian because of environmental reasons. Frieder and Lloyd and I also began talking about the Millenium Problems in mathematics.

It rained for the first time yesterday, and while it is partly cloudy today the weather is getting colder now. I’m watching football now (ahem, soccer) and this is a Champions League qualifying match. It’s really exciting. Tonight there is another big welcome party at the Kårhuset for international students. $10 entrance fee, and that doesn’t get you any food or alcohol. Seems kind of silly. It’s a moot point anyway, because I could not even get a ticket to it due to a long meeting with my engineering advisor when I learned that I did not get into an engineering course I had requested. Oh well. I’ll call up Andreas and maybe head over to Spoletorpe tonight. Later.

After arriving back in Lund, I went over the kitchen at around 7pm to begin cooking for our big corridor dinner. It turned out to be a tremendous time. Christian and I first tackled the dough for the pizza, while Laure began her Greek salad and Eddy started his pasta sauce. At first we were just going to have salad, pasta, and pizza but Lishuang came and started some Chinese meatballs, Yuko and her three Japanese friends came and made some ginger pork, and Pablo made a Spanish potato omlette. We also had chips and salsa and Frieder made some French fries. Along with a bottle of red wine and some beer, it was quite a feast! The food was overall quite good, except the oven shut off halfway through Christian’s pepperoni pizza and so it was a little strange.

The best part was the company. Having German, French, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Greek, and American people all around the dinner table talking is very enjoyable. The common language for everyone is English, and I am the only one to have it a primary tongue. Many times I was asked for the correct word or way to say something. We exchanged ways to say common phrases in all the different languages. I discovered that there might be a Bridge club here in Lund, and while none of my corridor mates knows Bridge, I hope to teach them! After the long dinner winded down, Christian brought his stereo system and Powerbook in and started some music going. He can actually DJ, but alas his mixing tables are in Germany.

Except for this internet hassle, everything else is going great. I have found hotspots that are only a five minute bike ride from my dorm. The weather has been unusually wonderful – everyone says that it should be rainy and stormy but for the past 6 days we have had clear skies, warm temperatures, and a breeze. We might get some rain on Thursday, but only temporary.

The vice chancellor of Lund gave a welcome talk to the international students today. The Lund male choir performed at the talk and were very nice, singing songs in German, Swedish, and Finnish. Afterward I met the vice chancellor and talked with him for a while.

Corridor life continues to be extremely pleasurable. On Sunday and today, when I went in to cook dinner, I did not leave the kitchen/lounge area until 12:30 or 1am, but people sit and they talk for hours about all sorts of things. One funny thing that happened was that Lishuang heard some Chinese that drifted up through the open window while cooking and went to the window and started talking to two Chinese students below. She came back five minutes later noticeably more excited, because she must have been quite pleased to finally hear a familiar tongue!

Tomorrow does not look to be very eventful. I will go to Vodaphone or Telia and buy a phonecard so I can call home. I received two calls from home but did not answer them because my phone was silent during the chancellor’s talk. I called collect but they were not home. As the conversation tonight shifted to credit cards, I suddenly realized like a slap in the face that I really need to check my credit card bill. All the commotion and the lack of handy internet access has taken it’s toll. I will check it first thing tomorrow. The wireless router at the AF building had its DHCP shot, so hopefully they have fixed it now.

Something I learned today: you cannot trust the sun to navigate. I also bought a bike today. Even though it cost more than I would like to pay, the vendor said I could come back next week when they are selling their next shipment and if I like something better I can trade. I need to buy a cheap battery operated rear and front light for it…they say the fine for not having it is 700 kr ($95). I found a store selling a cheap clock radio, priced at 200 kr ($27) but I will look around first. I have also decided to cut my own hair while in Lund. A normal hair cut costs 270 to 300 kr ($36 to $40). Yes, three times as much back home. I will see how much it is in Denmark.

The Internet for the dorm room is quite a hurdle to cross. You have to get a formed signed by the caretaker and by the international housing office, both which have limited office hours. Then the processing is done entirely by hand, so for us students living in the Delphi housing complex, we probably will not have an internet connection in our dorm rooms until late September. However, while this is quite an inconvenience, Lund has several free hotspots located in town, so tomorrow I should finally get a constant internet access.

The weather again was marvelous today; I’m hoping it stays this nice for a while. In my mentor group meeting today, it became clear that Lund is known for its partying. The social structure around here is formed with student ‘Nations’. These are student led organizations that provide a means for people to meet each other and to do activities together. Nations also have their own cafes and restaurants where you can get meals from. You have to join a nation to get your student ID card, and many of the nations offer the same kind of things. They also have a party or a pub night, and have galas or proms too. Nations can range in size from 4,000 to 150. One nation that caught my eye is the Smålands Nation, which is apparently known for being quite active in politics and such. It seems different enough from the others. Even though you join one Nation does not forbid you from attending other Nation activities. I do not quite understand the whole setup but I will once they start up. Tomorrow night there is a huge international welcome party with a 70 kr ($9.30) entrance fee. I will go to a) see what these ‘parties’ are all about and b) practically everyone else will be going too.

This evening I ran into Eddy as he was coming in and he and I brought all the appliances into the kitchen from the corridor and cleaned them. In talking with him I learned he has been to American many many times and has spent summers in New York, Philadephia, Boston, Miami, and Atlanta. Later on a lot of us came by, including Laure, Helene and her boyfriend (who is leaving tomorrow back to France), and Christian and Frieder from Germany. At one point Eddy, Philip, Laure, and Helene were speaking in one corner in French and Frieder and Christian in another in German. Quite cool. We decided to have a corridor dinner on Saturday evening, and it will give everyone a chance to meet each other and talk about what needs to be bought and such.

In closing, I will describe the diversity of our corridor.

Me – United States
Yoko – Japan
Judith – Austria
Laure – France
Pablo – Spain
Helene – France
Christian – Germany
Eddy – France
Frieder – Germany
Amelia – Greece
Lishuang – China

First impressions of Lund: it is a small, relaxed town with a campus feeling. The weather together was marvelous – low 70s, sun shining. My room is in one of the farther dorms from campus; I can get there easily by train but I will most assuredly buy a bike. In reality, it might not be so different than how far my apartment will be from NC State in the spring. I got out of the check-in procedure at around 11 and was given transport to the dorm. Linda (actually Lee-schwam..sorry for the butchered spelling), who is from Shanghai, and I were the first in our corridor and we did most of the initial exploring. This dorm was recently renovated so the kitchen and rooms are in terrific shape (particularly the kitchen..three refrigerators, two stoves, big lounge area) but there are no numbers on the doors. We played a game of trying to see which room was ours. Linda and I also set about the task of putting up some temporary labels to help the others move in. I also met Emily, who is from Melbourne, Australia and helped get her bag up the stairs. On the second floor of this building, there is a right corridor and left corridor. She is on the left while I’m on the right. Linda and I planned on heading out to the town after settling in to look for groceries and some basic items. Emily also joined us. Before left I called collect back home to let them know all was ok. I need to find a calling card. We found a Vodaphone store but they were out of their cheapest cell phone so I’ll go there tomorrow. Seeing no real grocery store, we headed to a place near our dorm called Willys, which is a full blown grocery store. As Emily and I walked around getting our bearings, another guy must have seen us and asked if we were exchange students. That was how Nick, a chemical engineering student at UC Santa Barbara joined us and we explored this strange new supermarket together. He also lives in the Delphi dorm complex, but he is in building X whereas Emily and I are building N.

Anyway. It is currently 9:45pm and I am having a dinner of sandwich bread, peanut butter, brie cheese, an apple, and orange juice from concentrate. While my mom is likely to be frowning, fear not: I’ve located an Indian restaurant, no fewer than 3 falafel places, an a Mexican restaurant. Besides, such meals as tonight won’t linger for long after we get our plates and flatware settled and we can christen to the kitchen with some real cooking. I have bought some spaghetti and pasta sauce. I’m going to learn Chinese cooking from Linda. My mentor group, who I might not be able to meet fully tomorrow due a conflict with my Swedish language course, is also extremely diverse, with 16 countries represented (including one from India). Australians are perhaps the most represented among the people I have encountered. Though we come from different backgrounds and cultures, we seem to all share the trait of openness and eagerness to interact with people.

I will go to bed early tonight. I want to get a good rest after all this traveling. The language program will start tomorrow at 9am. I will try to get the Internet working tomorrow as well. It is the most asked question in the corridor.

Because I was by myself, I shifted gears quite a bit while in Berlin. I would go 8 hours without eating if I didn’t feel hungry. I had to check out of the hostel on Tuesday morning and my train was not until 11pm that night. So I packed everything I had into my backpack and hauled it everywhere. I paid 9 euros and joined a walking tour covering the sights of the Third Reich, which was very good. Berlin is forced to deal with the painful history of the Nazis and as a result you do not see big prominent markers at key places (the spot above Hitler’s bunker is a ubiquitous parking lot…the subway station nearby uses much of Hitler’s red marble). The tour guide was able to point out many things that I would have missed entirely. We saw where Goebbels and Himmler and Speer and such had their offices, and learned a lot about the rise of the Nazis and more of the men. I went to the Checkpoint Charlie museum and the actual checkpoint has been preserved but it is entirely tourist-ized now.

I got to the train station early, at around 9pm, got my bags and then killed some time before the train arrived.

One day we visited the the castle on the other side of the river. There St. Vithus Cathedral is located and it is a great example of gothic architecture. It was more ornamental and not as oppressive as the high gothic church in Vienna, and had very intricate stained glass. A side façade of the castle was also very nicely designed. At the cathedral, Sachi and I climbed 287 steps of this small circular staircase to get to an observation tower. The views of the city were spectacular, with a sea of red roofs and the bridges crossing the Vltava river. In the Old Town section of Praha, where our hotel was, we went to the large square where the famous astronomical clock is located. This clock does not tell the time; instead it shows information about the solstices, sun and moon info, etc. It is an elegant structure. At each hour the masses gather to see a little show when some small statues placed by the clock move and dance. I’m expecting a neat show, but the end result was actually rather laughable. I thought: the masses gather to see that? Oh well. Charles Bridge is a tourist haven, and there are hawkers selling their wares all over this pedestrian river crossing. There are also musicians, and one in particular was very cool. He had a dozen crystal wine glasses filled with water, and he would dip his fingers in a water-oil solution then move them around the rims of the glasses, causing them to resonate and create sounds. It is hard to describe, but it was really quite amazing to hear it. Unfortunately, I don’t have any sound clips. He wasn’t playing just one glass at a time, it looked as if he was playing the piano with his fingers of both hands over many glasses and at different speeds and motions. Karlov street, which is a continuation of the Charles Bridge as it gets to the city center, is always full of people and a thousand souvenir shops line it. This country definitely plays up its Communist past, and you can get KGB and CCCP shirts, pins, even old style Soviet military hats.

The last major thing I saw was the Jewish quarter. There is some history with it; Hitler had apparently spared this quarter of Praha to make it a museum to the ‘extinct race’. During the war, the exiled ruler of the Czech organized an assassination attempt on the Nazi ruler of Czechoslovakia and two Czech paratroopers ambused the guy’s car and killed him. They were chased into a church before taking their lives to avoid capture. It was rumored that the paratroopers came from a town called Lidnice, and in revenge Hitler ordered all the men in the town killed and sent all the women and children to concentration camps before bulldozing every single structure to the ground. The Czech people have gone through a lot of painful times. What I really wanted to see in the quarter was the Jewish cemetery. I don’t have all the details, but the cemetery ran out of space so they put another layer of dirt and then added names to the tombstones. It is more than 6 or 7 people deep now. The tombstones are not neatly laid out either, they are more crude than one often sees in American cemeteries and they jut out of the ground. Seeing it produces a strange feeling indeed.

We might have approached Prague differently had it been the first city of our trip. But even though we took it slowly, it was still interesting to experience.

The city center of Vienna is densely packed with enough museums, palaces, and sights to last three whole days for the dedicated tourist. Much of it, such as the Hofburg palace, the Parliament, the old Rathaus (City Hall), and Museum Quarter is situated on Ringstrasse (Ring street), which not surprisingly, resembles a ring. I had been briefed by this in my talks with Brandyn, and it helped quite a bit. It was interesting however that segments of the ring are named for the streets that protrude out through it like spokes in a wheel. For some blocks it is Kärtner Ring, then it will turn to Opern Ring. Walking through the center of Vienna brought most to mind the impression of a royal and grand city, more so than Rome, Paris, London, or Budapest. Well kept parks, fountains, noble architecture, and the ever present domes and spires of the palaces of the King all attribute to this. The first building we saw was the Opera House; fitting too because we visited the Budapest one just the previous day. The Vienna Opera House is larger, but the Budapest one is more ornate. Many of the rules that govern Opera Houses today were established first in this Opera house. One of this Opera House’s rules is that the same show can’t be shown on consecutive days. The demands of dismantling intricate sets and prepping for hundreds of costumes and such require the opera house to employ nearly 1000 employees. The backstage of the Opera House is immense – 60m high and 80m wide. The main stage can be lowered 11 meters. On the rear stage, the 2nd act scenery is already placed, and during intermission the entire main stage is lowered, the rear stage slides forward, and the main stage moves back and then up. Very impressive. The opera house was bombed by the Allies during WWII and much of the theater was reconstructed, therefore some rooms have a more modern feel than others. The seats here are also decidedly more expensive that the one in Budapest. Front row or box seats can cost up to 250 euros, but you can obtain seats in the standing section an hour before a performance for a handful of euros. The famous Viennese Ball is also held in this opera house, where the total cost of admission can each 15,000 euros. It is the only time that the opera house makes money. It is subsidized by the government. Our attractive tour guide was in fact a ballet dancer at the Opera, and has danced in Germany and the US. She was recovering from an injury. Members of our tour group had guessed she was a dancer by her immaculate posture and movement. During the night Sachi and I took the subway train ($1.50 euros per trip!) to the Danube Canal, hoping to find a lively and interesting river-front scene. Sadly, with the striking images of Budapest in our minds, we were disappointed. The following day we went to the Kunsthistoriche Museum (literal: Art History Museum) but is known as the Museum of Fine Arts. The building alone was worth the price of admission (7.50 euros for adults, 5.50 for students, I think). This building, whose construction was ordered by the emperor specifically for being a museum, was more beautiful than any other art museum in London, Paris, Rome, Vienna, or Budapest. I lack the words to do it justice. The Egypt section was cool to walk through, and my mood was instantly elated when I saw a tablet which proved the existence of a Stargate (I mean a Fahrgate, heh). The art galleries had lots of sofas where you can sit, rest, and take in the artwork, and the art itself was very good. I know little about art, but these were the Renaissance and Classical artwork. We saw Raphael, Rembrandt, and many more than I was not aware of. They had a section with sculptures and there was an exquisite piece which showed Leopold and Francies Joseph (I think) on horseback in ivory. Their capes were swirling behind them and the horses were raised – the way the piece captured movement was remarkable. The Kunsthistoriche Museum is an absolute must see while in Vienna. Next to it is the Hofburg palace with the Heldenplatz (Hero’s place or square) and in it there was actually a garden patch. It was in remembrance of how Heldenplatz was used to grow potatoes during the war. There was a beautiful garden just north of the Hofburg palace called the Volksgarten (People’s Garden) and here you could feel as if you were back in time. Great weather, great atmosphere, great views. The Parliament building was closed off and was under heavy construction; it seemed that a whole ramp leading up to the front was in rubble. Pity too, because the building showed signs of being absolutely amazing. We also saw the Albertina art museum that day which had an exhibit called from Goya to Picasso, and it focused heavily on the rise to modernism. My sister and Dad aren’t fans of modern art, and the more elitist private feel of this museum was a let down from the Kunsthistoriche Museum’s unparalleled beauty. The admission prices here were higher too. We were able to see a lot of Picasso, Degas, Van Gogh, and Cezanne. That night we also had Indian food for the first time on our trip. The food was not hot at all but it was good, and it marked the first time in our trip that we a) didn’t have to pay for water and b) actually got re-fills of water. It was a momentus occasion.

On our last day we took a day trip to Salzburg and got back at around 6:00pm. In Vienna, we saw St. Stephen’s church and took a look inside. In constrast to the one in Budapest, this church was definitely in a high Gothic style. The exterior, in my opinion, wasn’t much to look at and the stained glass was very simplistic. For dinner, we strolled to the Naschmarkt, a long eating, grocery, and shopping place placed on a wide median between two thoroughfares. It is a bustling place in the morning. We found a Mediterranean restaurant called Lokatta and the two guys running the place, young Iranians it appeared, were friendly and helped us find the vegetarian choices (which there were a lot of). The kindly moved a table away from the street for us as well. The prices were also great – you could order a starter and a main dish for less than 7 euros! The tomato soup was outstanding, and we all had falafel sandwiches which instead of pita bread came in a big thick flatbread pocket that the cook went to get fresh from a bakery down the street. The falafel was very good too. Mom asked the waiter for some hot sauce (she loves it) and he smiled and said “Of course, you’re Indian, you like spicy food!” and came with some hot pepper sauce. Near the end they even put in some Indian music in their stereos, and when they came by my dad asked how he got this music and the waiter said that he liked this music and Bollywood, and said how he watches the Indian movies on TV and in a local theater. Apparently Bollywood and Indian music is huge in Iran. In Vienna and Budapest, the usual tip is around 10%, but tonight I felt great and tipped them very well. It was the second best dining experience of the whole trip, with the best being the restaurant Absint on Andrassy utca in Budapest.

Compared with Budapest, Vienna is certainly busier because it has more people, more business and commercial and political activity, and is more on people’s minds when they think about touring Europe. It felt more regal than Budapest, but the traffic and particularly the construction made Budapest feel more pleasant and enjoyable as a complete package. There is certainly no shortage of things to do in Vienna, though. For a lover of the fine arts, Vienna has much to offer in terms of concerts, operas, ballets, art, architecture, and fashion.

Architecturally, the city is a joy to experience. The city has almost an imperceptible confidence in its appearance, daring people to place it right alongside the more famous cities in western Europe. Historically, Budapest exchanged hands between Christian and Muslim empires and the influence of both can certainly be felt. There are wide boulevards to stroll through, small side streets that often beg exploration, small squares that dot various intersections, and sections of parks throughout. Geographically, Pest is on the eastern side of the Danube river, and is flat and is where most of the commericial and ‘tourist’ scene is. Buda, on the left side of the river, is hilly and is where the old castle, St. Mathias church, and the palace that became the National Gallery of Art is located. While in Budapest we visited Heroes Square where the important figures in Hungarian history are honored and briefly saw the large city park Varösliget. Andrássy utca. (street) is a central boulevard in Pest where one can finds lots of shops and restaurant. The State Opera house is found here. The Opera house has an interesting history and is extraordinarily beautiful inside. While not the largest opera house in Europe, it has been ranked 2nd in acoustical quality behind the Scala in Milan and it’s beauty surpasses that of Vienna’s. It was built following a massive fire in another opera house, and thus was the first to feature new ‘innovative’ safety techniques. The opera is also tremendously affordable – front row center seats cost 75 euros, and you can find seats for 2 euros as well (in comparison, front row center seats at the Austrian State Opera House in Vienna can cost 250 euros). We visited St. Mathias church which has intricate woodwork and stained glass on the inside and provided a magnificent view of Pest from across the river. The old town on the main hill in Buda was nice to walk through, evoking a feeling of old Europe. The National Gallery of Art is housed in a former palace and is a striking building. Many of the classic Hungarian artists employed a very dark palette in their paintings; bright colors and shapes are often avoided. One of my favorite pieces of art was in the modern art section on the third floor – a eerie 15 ft. tall skeleton seated on a throne made of scrap metal that immediately brought to mind that I was seeing the skeleton of Saurón. On the Pest side, we visited St. Stephen’s Basilica, whose ornamental beauty is jaw dropping. I have visited cathedrals and basilicas in London, Paris, and Rome and I have never seen any church so lavishly decorated. Marble pillars, extensive use of gold leaf and intricate carvings, and great use of natural light. Rather than the high Gothic style used in Notre Dame for example, this was done in perhaps a classical or Renaissance style. While in Budapest we also went to the famous Gellert bath house. You pay to go to a public bath house, and man was it crazy getting tickets. Basically, you just have to keep nodding your head and giving money and just hope you’ll get some back when you leave. They were keeping $80 of our money as a ‘deposit’ fee for using their cheap $2 dollars. Anyway, my dad and I didn’t think it was so great, but we don’t really like saunas or things anyway. Paying around $25 per person to go to a pool and hot spa when we had one in our backyard in Austin for 10 years didn’t seem worthwhile, but the building itself was very nice. Next to the Gellert baths is the Budapest Technical University, where my friends Brandyn and Don spent the spring of 2004 studying. I tried visiting the campus but it was gated shut. There are three main bridges we saw that span the Danube river. The Freedom bridge, painted entirely green, is the southern most of these. This bridge will take you right in front of the Gellert bathes. It is followed to the north by a large white bridge which is the primary auto thoroughfare, and then above that is the famous Chain Bridge. A pedestrian bridge now, it is full of activity and shops and was the first permanent structure connecting Buda and Pest. One night we walked along the river bank and all the buildings and bridges are lit up in spectacular fashion. Budapest truly is a wonderful city to explore on foot.

We leave in less than 2 days! Tomorrow will be spent getting all the final preparations made. I need to pick up a pair of travel headphones…I have a nice set of ‘studio’ phones but that is not really efficient for traveling purposes. I don’t want to spend more than $15 on them…we’ll see. My ‘winter’ bag is completely packed and ready to go,and my other suitcase is 85% packed. I have to put in my towel and actually it looks like I’ve got some extra space to use as well.

I had dinner with Remi and Jordan tonight and it was good to touch base with them before leaving. Everything looks like it is going to be set when I get back on January 3rd.

Anyway, I’ll probably leave a post tomorrow or Thursday morning before we leave.

As for the luggage problem I was foreseeing, currently I’ll just bring with me a suitcase and a backpack. After I arrive in Sweden and know my mailing address, my parents will surface mail all my heavy winter clothing. Should work out ok.

I think that dumb 512 MB card probably just got to the buy.com warehouse in california. Then it’ll take probably 2 or 3 days to process the return. Then another 4-5 days to get back to me. Sigh. Nader said he might be soon in possesion of a 1 GB card. Maybe I could buy that from him too….it’s not an UltraII though. Oh well. ‘Till then.

This memory card has been a headache. Buy.com’s customer service sucks. They won’t provide a phone number, and unless I can start directing their emails to my work e-mail address, I can’t deal with it during the day. I’m gonna start giving them giving them bad ratings everywhere I can. I’ve ordered lots of stuff over the net, and nothing has arrived in such a condition.

Dave Matthews Band concert is on Wednesday…hope it doesn’t rain!

Peace.

With the plane tickets settled, we are now focusing on hotels. We have found some apartments in Prague and Vienna that can be rented for 3 days at a very agreeable price, and will commence a dialogue with them in due course.

Anyway. We’ve been dragging our feet on the whole Europe trip thing. We’ve got some price quotes for airfare and such, but as usual, everytime you peruse the Internet you’ll always find a slightly better deal. I’m at the point now where I just want to book what we’ve got. If it comes out $50-75 more per person, so be it. At least there’s the peace of mind that you’ve got something in your hand.

Anyway, sleep now.

The conversation around the house has shifted entirely to planning the pre-Sweden traveling. We are finally getting to the point where reservations can be made in the next 3 days. The plan so far:

Aug 04: RDU to Budapest
Aug 05: Budapest
Aug 06: Budapest
Aug 07: Budapest
Aug 08: Bratislava
Aug 09: Vienna
Aug 10: Vienna
Aug 11: Vienna (day trip to Graz?)
Aug 12: Prague
Aug 13: Prague
Aug 14: Prague
Aug 15: Prague to RDU Plane (Dad, Mom, Sachi, Sapana)
Aug 15: Prague to Copenhagen Train (Saket)
Aug 16: Copenhagen (Saket spends night), family arrives home
Aug 17: Saket arrives in Lund for Arrival Day.

I’m pushing Mom to get the plane tickets booked via the Indian travel agent. Hopefully that will get started today or tomorrow. Our hotels are the latest X-factor….we had a good call with Best Western and we might go with them. Surprisingly to us, Prague is gonna be most $$$, instead of Vienna as we had thought. We decided to nix visiting Berlin cause it just wasn’t worth it for the amount of money. So far this trip is coming to be approximately $11,500 (on the high side) for the entire family. Whew. At the moment my concern involves my luggage….for the traveling my family will be carrying only carry-on bags, but I’ll have my two suitcases for my entire semester in Lund. I’m exploring options of surface mail to Lund, so I just have to carry one suitcase, and that way will just get my winter clothing after I arrive in Lund. Or I can lug around the two suitcases. We’ll see.

Right now we’re trying to figure out how to do the pre-Lund traveling. My family is very keen on going. Due to work related deadlines, we’ll have to leave near the end of the first week of August. Targeting August 4th or 5th. I have to be in Lund on August 17th, so that gives us 10-12 days of traveling. I’ve been to London, Paris, and Rome, and I’d like to go to places that would be hard to get to while in Lund. I was thinking Budapest, Vienna, and Prague. Three cities, 10 days? It can be done, I think. Brandyn has been to all three, with extensive knowledge about Budapest, so I’m gonna get as much info from him when he comes back. Enjoy a cup of coffee while I’m at it too.

As for application stuff, I’m still waiting for official word from Lund. I have a residence permit form almost complete, but need to check to make sure it’s the right one. I’m hoping I’ll hear back within the next two weeks.

In other study-abroad related news, I’ve found the place I’m staying in for the spring 2006 — it’s a 2 bedroom apartment that Remi and Pat will be leasing for the fall down Avent Ferry. In the spring, while they are abroad, Jordan and I will stay in it. I’m glad that is worked out, though at some point I need to turn in that form.

I’ve got my ID photos thanks to Dad, and I need to get a check for that $200.00 application fee. Oh yeah….and the two essays I need to write. I’ll take care of that tomorrow or this weekend. I’ll turn in my application next Tuesday or Wednesday, before the due date of February 18th.

Also, I might have found a place to stay during the Spring 2006 semester. Jordan is looking for someone to take over Remi and Pat’s apartment while they are abroad. Details coming soon.