Two weeks ago, Sean and I went to Heidelberg. While I spent days in session at a conference, Sean wandered around the city and took lots of good pictures for me to blog with.
Heidelberg is a cute little city on the Neckar River, a 2 and 1/2 hour train ride south from Bonn. It's also one of the biggest tourist attractions in Germany. On the right side of the pedestrian bridge, there's a the Philosophenweg, a narrow path that winds it way up the hill: very cute.
On the left side of the bridge, the old city is full shops, restaurants, and beer. The main street, Hauptgasse, is a pedestrian walkway. A block from our hotel (loud at night with people on the street and cars roaring up the narrow street, but quiet during the day), we went to a place that brewed their own beer (one was 33% alcohol) and I had a weissbierbowle (beer, champagne, and strawberries); I don't care what people said, it was quite yummy.
Above the city is Heidelberg castle. 
It was pretty cool, a mix of different periods and all rather ruin-y. 
You could go down and walk through the moat, which was pretty cool.
And one of the towers was split in two with half sunk on it's side. 
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
Heidelberg
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Post Backlog
I know I've been very negligent in (not) posting in the past couple weeks. But I intend to make up for it next week -- with a glut of posts about Heidelberg, my new apartment, and Budapest. In the meantime, I carved out 8 hours last night (it was a long night) to read the last Harry Potter book. I'd like to read it again when I have more time, since I was mostly motivated by the urgency to find out what happened before I accidentally found out from other sources. My first reaction is that it's a good solid read, but not exactly mind-blowing.
Sunday, July 08, 2007
Rheinkultur
This is it. All four labels: one ultimate post. I must say, I'm quite proud of myself. And on the day after my birthday. (By the way, I've decided that if 27 is the year of 'perfection', the motto for 29 will be 'all business.' Watch out world.)
Yesterday, on my birthday, I went to the Rheinkultur music festival: one day, 5 stages, free entry. The plan was to meet some people at the Ollenhauerstr. stop of the S-bahn at 5:30pm, a few stops before Rheinaue, the festival location, and walk the rest of the way. It's a five minute ride from the Hauptbahnhof (the main train station) which is a few minute walk from my apartment. When I got the station, it was packed (average age of the crowd: 19, and in typical German fashion, they're all drinking bottles of beer) and they weren't letting people onto the platform. My friends called and I said I thought I'd be 20 minutes late. I waited for 30 minutes before I got onto a packed train. At each stop, the train would briefly stop and the people standing on the platform would look sadly at the packed train as it started again without picking up a single person.
At Ollenhauerstr., the train stops briefly and no one moves and I'm 20 people away from even attempting to get off the train. I have just enough time to wave to my friends as the train starts again and takes me to the next stop. When I get there, the doors actually open and I manage to push my way off the train. I try calling: no luck. I wait for the next train: nope. I walk the few block back to Ollenhauerstr.: there's no one there. This is not promising.
I'm pretty far from home and I need to use a bathroom, so I figure I might as well keep on going and see what's what. I follow some people in the vaguely right direction until I'm there.
I'm at the top of a bowl, where there are a bunch of biergartens and people picnicking on the lawn. You can see that one stage is behind the trees on the left and another stage is further on the right. Between the stages are food and drink stands and off to the left is a crane that takes people up for bungee jumps. All in all, the crowd is pretty mellow -- I didn't see any people who had a few or 12 too many and I didn't smell any illegal substances. And after weeks and weeks of rain, it was clear and 70 degrees the whole day. After a visit to the port-a-potty (I chose the line with the prissiest looking girls, figuring it'd be slow but less vile) and wandering a little bit, I come to a decision. I've been to the 4th of July at the Esplanade in Boston and I've been to the Taste of Chicago and I've never totally lost everybody. 150,000 is not a problem. The easiest way to solve a math or physics is to guess the right answer. The easiest way to find 2 people in a crowd of 150,000 is to go to where they would be. It's 7:30pm and I stumble upon a guy handing out maps. I snag one. They're not biergarten or picnicking peple. And I know that at very least at 8:50pm, they're going to be at the blue stage watching Calexico. There are people sitting on the grass, while people closer to the stages are all standing. They're standing sort of people. I wander to the blue stage, close enough to get to the people standing. And there they are. They, by the way, had run from our meeting point to the Rheinaue, assuming I wouldn't be able to get off before then.
We catch part of the set of Lambchop, an alt-country group from Nashville, and a little bit of Mother Tongue (at least I assume that the right link).
For me, the highlight was probably Calexico (and here, or here to listen), an alt-country band from Tucson, AZ. I tried to take a picture, but I guess it didn't turn out (there's a bunch of pictures of the crowd, Calexico, and the last act, die Fantastischen Vier, here). And for being 5 foot tall and living in Germany, I could actually see the stage at least part of the time, which I think is good for me. They sounded excellent and I'd highly recommend seeing them live. They have a little Mariachi in them, featuring a couple trumpets and/or horns. Here's two of the songs they sang (recorded at other events, though, and linked here and here):
From Lambchop to Calexico the the last act, the crowd steadily grew. The final act was die Fantastischen Vier, a German rap group. My understanding is that they're a big deal. They've been around for 18 years and the crowd knew the lyrics to most of their songs. Here is a video (up on YouTube today, taken yesterday) in which you can hear part of a song and see what it was like being there but not see the group:
And here's one of their videos (It's very old; don't worry, they weren't dressed like that live, and it turns out at least one of them must work out a lot).
The crowd was incredible: jumping up down and singing along and packed like sardines (by the way, when you're wedged against 4 people and they're jumping up and down, you'd better be jumping up and down too). I couldn't see anything and some girl was grinding into my right hip. Air temperature was probably 60 degrees, while crowd temperature was approaching 85. Crazy.
The concert was over at midnight, but all the food and drink stands were still open (guess they're not worried about drinking and driving) and all the public transportation packed. We ended up walking to one person's apartment and then he drove me most of the way home. By the time I got home at 1:30am, I'd been standing for 7.5 hours and had nearly nothing to eat or drink since I left at 5pm.
Friday, July 06, 2007
Feast or Famine
I finally caved and created a 'music' label for my blog. For a long time I figured it was unnecessary, but if I can have 6 posts labeled 'random videos,' then 7 posts for 'music' should be justified. Now, of course, decisions must be made about what qualifies for labeling. The Eurovision Song Contest? Well, it has the word 'song' in the title, so I suppose it has to be included. And who I am to give the OK to the Eurovision Song Contest and deny singing football players or a rap about George Washington? So I guess I'm going with an inclusive (non-judgment-valued) definition. Enjoy.
Anyway, the title of the post refers to (for a record third post! I'm not obsessed, I swear) Cotton Mather. A month ago, I had a measly two mp3s of their songs in my iTunes. Today, I have a robust 41. Wikipedia has even stepped up its game: someone created a page for them 2 weeks ago. Per the post below, the floodgates opened for me two days ago when a copy of Cotton is King showed up in my office. It's a fun album and the best track is still "Payday" which I discussed previously (and thankfully comes right after one of the weakest tracks). But Cotton is King is their first album; how could I rest without the second album, Kontiki, the album that the guys from Oasis were reportedly obsessed with? Retail seemed out (every place that lists it at all has it on 'back order'), no current eBay auctions list it, and it goes for approximately $30-100 on Amazon. Thankfully, I stumbled upon this blog and this blog post. The post is over a year old, but people (like me) keep finding it and commenting. It's definitely worth a read and when you're done you can download the French tour version of Kontiki, including the bonus tracks you hear on this myspace page, and some other rarities. The sound quality seems pretty poor (although maybe that's just a byproduct of their DIY ethos and not the rip of the CD), so I'm still going to keep my eyes open for a hard copy of it or stuff from their later work (they have a third album and a couple of EPs). They never stop sounding like the Beatles, which is a little uncanny, but the songs are good: "My Before and After" (the other song I mentioned previously) is a great song but not even my favorite. And the bonus tracks (mostly alternate versions) are as good or better than the album tracks, so don't skip them thinking they're filler. I was going to say a few more things about Kontiki but I would need to take a couple more listens.
After this odyssey, I feel like I should share the wealth, so if any of you, my friends, have a burning desire for some Cotton Mather in your life, drop me a line (you could probably also bug my partner-in-crime, Eugene, too) and I'll see what I can do.
Thursday, July 05, 2007
Go Eugene!
Eugene Lim has a PhD in astrophysics, a spiffy new job lined up in NYC, and a trip to Iceland in his future, but most importantly he tracked down a copy of Cotton Mather's Cotton is King and mailed it to me for my birthday. This Herculean feat involved searching through a pile of old CDs at Cutler's in New Haven, some sort of interlude involving a supplier in Australia, and a spin through eBay. Go Eugene! (Might you be 'da man'?) Kick back, relax, and bop along to "April's Fool." You deserve it.
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Germany. Awesome.
A few things in Germany that are better than (or can't be found) in the U.S.:
1.) bread (and there's a bakery on every corner)
2.) beer (mm, Kölsch)
3.) apfelschorle (half apple juice, half soda water -- brilliant. Although, this is also a country that serves beer-Coke, beer-Sprite, beer-Fanta, red wine-Coke (!) mixes, so it's not surprising that they'd hit at least one good combo.)
4.) Fanta (it doesn't taste like it tastes in the U.S. So much better ...)
[06.07.07: By the way, I tried Kölsch-Fanta the other day. It was pretty good.]
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Ahrweiler
Last Thursday, the International Scholar Services office at the University (yeah, I didn't really know they had one either) organized an excursion to Ahrweiler. Ahrweiler is the old half of a town south of Bonn, 10 km from the Rhine (Rhein). The other half is called Bad Neuenahr, where there are mineral water springs and where Apollinaris water is bottled. Here are a few pictures of Ahrweiler and town wall.
Just a little outside the town walls is the ruins of a Roman villa built in the 2nd or 3rd century. They built a building over it!
The villa had an extensive set of baths, with water running through this canal:
Afterwards, we went to Mayschloss, a winegrower cooperative. Here they make both white and red wines, growing the vines along the steep valley slopes:
And, of course, there was a wine tasting.
All in all, a pretty good way to spend a Thursday afternoon.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Late Nights
I went to a party last Saturday and spent most of the evening on the balcony (conveniently, they had a fridge out there), realizing that I'm not even in Northern Germany and, yet, so much further north than Chicago.
To illustrate, in Chicago today, sunrise was at 5:15 am, while sunset was at 8:27 pm. Here's a picture of Bonn at 8:27 pm today. 
Notice something? Yeah, that's the Sun. And here's another from 9pm of the light reflecting off my office window and into my eyes. 
Sunrise in Bonn was at 5:18 am, while sunset was at 9:45 pm. That's an extra 75 minutes of light. Sitting outside, it wasn't totally dark until midnight and started to get light again around 3am. I know this because I stayed until 4am and, yet, was not even close to the last person to leave (someone reported staying until 7am!).
Totally unrelatedly, I'm having a terrible run of breaking dishes. I've broken two in the last few months (I don't think I broke a single dish in the 6 years I lived in Chicago). The worst part is that the dishes have been such innocent parties in the incidents. I haven't dropped them while moving them. No, they're always just sitting, minding their own business, on the counter or in the sink when I drop something on them.
Monday, June 11, 2007
Random Thoughts about Random Covers
Flying around the world is an excellent excuse to plunk down $10-20 on new music. For the last couple of months, however, I've managed to avoid the airport. I still accrue new music, just slowly and haphazardly (mostly off of music blogs -- very addicting).
A couple days ago, I found myself listening a live version of the Futureheads' cover of Kate Bush's "Hounds of Love" (I'd link it if I could only remember where ... hey, here it is!) and I realized that I have a great fondness for covers, the more random the better.
For example, here is Dynamite Hack covering N.W.A.'s "Boyz-n-the-Hood" (I think the link has a better quality video than the embedded youtube video below):
It's no George Washington, but what is?
And here is William Shatner with Joe Jackson and Ben Folds doing Pulp's "Common People" live (the song is on the Shatner's Has Been album where it's less sloppy):
Getting back to the Futureheads' cover of Kate Bush's "Hounds of Love," here's the video for the version on their album.
I love how the drummer (in addition to reminding me of a certain astrophysicist -- feel free to guess which one) looks out-of-place in the video, like he showed up to deliver a pizza and they gave him a drum and told him to stand in the woods and now he's thinking 'okay, I'll just play along and maybe I can score some of that pizza when it's over.' Do drummers always look out of place? Is that a thing? I thought maybe I could discern a trend (the astrophysicists rulebook says that I need just 3 to make a trend). The only thing I thought of, however, was the video for Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger:"
All the guys are dressed in jeans and leather jackets trying to look (hee!) menacing, except for the one guy with glasses wearing a white sport coat and loafers (is that right? it's a blurry video and my memory is fuzzy). As it turns out, he's well below even the drummer on the rock band totem pole: he plays the keyboard.
Saturday, June 02, 2007
The Things I Do for the Blog
Last week, I went to my first German nightclub. After getting rejected by several places (seriously, who'd think that Bonn would be so discriminating?) that I highly doubt were particularly full, we ended up at some place called Carpe Noctem. By the time we arrived it was well past 1:30 am, Friday morning. And while I have plenty of reasons to think that this was an anomalous experience, I was amused by how closely it hewed to what you might expect the Saturday Night Live parody version would look like.
In the 2 1/2 hours we were there and over a wide variety of music, they never once played a song which I would consider dance music. Getting drinks, they played "Wonderwall" and "Bittersweet Symphony," while later in the evening featured some classic 90s alternative music. But when we first hit the dance floor, they played several songs in a row of depressing, but vaguely industrial music that I didn't recognize, but the locals seemed very familar with, and I started to wonder if I was in a dark, basement club with a bunch of Germans rather desultorily dancing to Rammstein or something. If only everyone had been dressed in black, the illusion would have been complete.
The evening must have been a hell of a lot of fun though, I didn't feel tired at all while out and didn't make it back to my place until 4:15 am. That's way past my bedtime, so for my own piece of mind I tried to convince myself as I walked home that the sky seemed so bright due to city glow and not at all because of impending dawn.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Blogging the Eurovision Song Contest
Saturday night in Germany, time to watch the finals of the Eurovision Song Contest. This is the format:
1.) All the songs are performed with breaks for little skits that show life in the host country, Finland (1 hour, 45 minutes). The skits have tiny plots, some of which I would swear are plots from porn movies, and on the whole make life in Finland look cold and scary. There are 24 songs (I won't go through all of them) and there are no commercials.
2.) Everyone votes (15 minutes).
3.) The results for each country are very slowly presented (1 hour). And for some reason, Santa Claus shows up ... no, really, it was very odd.
I tuned in a couple minutes late and missed the first two songs, but dutifully watched the rest of the show. For comparison, BBC News describes and handicaps the acts.
The winners:
The winner was Serbia. Straight up power ballad, but the singer has a nice voice. What's up with the backup singers with Farrah hair? All in all, not bad:
The first runner up was Ukraine. Yes, that's a man in drag. Entertaining, but I'm not sure if it qualifies as a song.
Third place was Russia. Not good or interesting. Are those singers wearing 'slutty nuns' costumes?
The absurd:
U.K. What?!
France. Hilarious and highly entertaining, especially the bald guy with the fake cat around his neck who seems to be channeling Andy Dick or Andy Dick impersonating William Shatner.
And some of the rest:
Belarus. Terrifyingly bad. Pre-final speculation put this song close to the top and I saw one comment that said it sounded like something that would appear on the U.K. pop charts. I weep for the U.K. Commentary does rightly point out that it sounds like the theme song to a James Bond movie. It also has staging out of the David Copperfield oeuvre.
Greece. The Greek Ricky Martin, but dressed like someone's homemade Tin Man Halloween costume. Seriously, dude, you should have stuck with some basic black.
Armenia. He sings in English, but not like he knows how to speak English, which makes the song seem like bad karaoke.
Moldova. Electronic violin. Hold me, I'm scared. And, really, shouldn't this be the theme song to Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome or something (not that I want to bring down the wrath of Tina Turner on me).
Finland. The Finnish version of Evanescence.
Sweden. Glam rock, but not really fun enough. The refrain to the song is "Baby, I'm the worrying kind." That's not right. An act like this should have a fun song, like the Fratellis "Chelsea Dagger" (not that they're a glam rock group).
Saturday, May 12, 2007
On Choosing a Name for Your Indie Band
I was going to blog about the finals of the Eurovision Song Contest, but I'm waiting for clips of the performances to show up on YouTube. In the meantime, I thought I'd offer some advice for budding musicians: don't name your band after a historical figure unless you're sure that you're going to be more famous than whomever you're referencing. The key is the first result on a Google search of the name. One one hand, Franz Ferdinand. On the other hand, Cotton Mather. (You do better by adding "music" to the search, but why ruin a perfectly good blog post with logical thinking?)
Cotton Mather is/was (are they defunct?) an Austin power-pop (and, no, I really don't know what power-pop is) band. I'm familiar with exactly three of their songs (admittedly all from watching the TV show Veronica Mars). And, you wouldn't know any of this from Wikipedia (why have you failed me, Wikipedia?). They have exactly one song available on iTunes. So, as a public service (one of their CDs would make an excellent present ... you know, to me), this is what I've collected from the internet on Cotton Mather:
You can hear some of their songs on a myspace page (put up, I suspect, by fans and not the band), including "Lily Dreams On," available on iTunes off Veronica Mars (Original Television Soundtrack) (it's the song that plays over the incredibly awesome dream sequence that is the second-to-last scene of the first season).
The two songs featured in the most recent episode can be found here and here. You can hear the actor Paul Rudd sing the first of these songs, "My Before and After," on this myspace page. If you're listening to the second of these songs, "Payday," and want to find the lyrics (and guitar tabs! hee!), I've tracked them down to here.
If you're too lazy to click on any of the links, let me say that "Payday" is an awesome song, a cross between the Beatles and Squeeze if they sang in the mid-90s, "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" for Generation X:
They don't have a future but they do have a wage
Cause a job's not one of those things that gets better with age
Monday, May 07, 2007
Wedding Stuff
Between being stuck at the Columbus airport on Friday (the 27th) and arriving back in Bonn on Monday (the 30th), I went to my sister's wedding.
On Friday, I flew into Chicago at 3pm, went to pick up my dress, check into the hotel, go to the rehearsal, go to the rehearsal dinner, and hang out with a friend and some cousins. Now people are always surprised that my sisters and I do not look very much alike. In fact, my friend Sarah -- upon meeting my sisters -- remarked that a random woman she's saw once on the train looked more like me. However, we do have one thing in common: the Chen smile.
How can you (too!) look like a Chen? It's simple. You take a regular smile, then drop your lower lip a little bit. Voila! Mazel tov. By the way, if you're looking for a place to have a rehearsal dinner in Chicago, the Maggiano's downtown seems like a good bet -- I've now been to two rehearsal dinners there.
The next morning, we all trooped down to Chinatown and got hair and makeup done, then back downtown to change and start taking pictures.
Both my other, non-bride sister and I had hairdos which I would describe as vaguely Wonder Woman on Paradise Island-esque, but it's possible that my memories of TV shows I saw as a kid are inaccurate.
The wedding was at the Palmer House, and there were some very nice flowers.
I've been to plenty of weddings, but this is the first for my family and it was pretty cool to talk to so many different people, some of whom traveled pretty far to come to the wedding: the groom's family, my sister's high school and college friends, my parents' friends and colleagues, and relatives from both my Dad's and Mom's sides of the family. My Mom is one of eight siblings and on that side of my family (my Dad is one of five, so that's a whole other story), I'm one of 3 cousins who were born in the same year (there's another cousin born within 8 months of me, but in a different year). The other two were at the wedding and both, of course, are doctors.
Some more family quirks: the man we refer to as "Uncle Harry" is my grandmother's cousin, making him my second cousin, once removed my first cousin, twice removed [10.05.07: clearly, I've haven't a clue] -- if I understand how that works in English (feel free to correct me in the comments). The man we refer to as "Peggy's father, ... no not that Peggy, the other Peggy" is my grandmother's brother and my great-uncle.
The wedding was lovely and went off without the hitch and the reception was very nice also. Congratulations, Jo and Darin.
The groom chased around a bunch of my little second cousins (all between 4 and 6 years old), who took a shine to him very quickly. And my parents danced to Black-Eyed Peas, "Let's Get It Started" (What is it with me and that song? And, no, I don't have a good photo of it, although I tried. And, yes, props to my sister's oldest friend, Wendy, who must have some magical persuasive powers.).
When it was all over, I pulled 26 bobby pins out of my hair, which didn't effect it as much as you might expect, resulting in me looking rather Medusa-like (my hairdo's industrial-strength powers extended to the shower, where the water just bounced off of it).
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Well, I'm Back
In less than 5 weeks, I've been on 16 different flights, gone 12 time zones in one direction and 8 in the other. I've been to 9 airports and 3 continents. I took four flights in 36 hours. The longest I went without going to to the airport was 10 days. I'm pretty sure that if I were a test rat, I'd be dead.
I got back to Germany at noon Monday and kept myself busy with errands until 9pm on the theory that I should reset my internal clock as soon as possible. I guess I underestimated how sleep deprived I was. I slept for 15 hours, and only dragged myself out of bed when I realized that it was past noon. Sean had already sent me a worried email since I had told him that I would call him when I woke up and there was no way even a champion sleeper like me could have slept more than 14 hours.
Friday, April 27, 2007
Hawaii is Nice
10 days after my last vacation, I flew to Hawaii (that, by the way, takes 4 flights and 2 days). The plan was to meet Sean at the airport in Honolulu (he'd arrive from a conference in Florida at 2pm, I'd get in at 2:45pm). With bad weather in Florida, Sean was 90 minutes late for his connecting flight in Atlanta. After only being promised a flight to get in at 8pm the next day, he very luckily got the last seat off the standby list to get in to Honolulu at 9pm that night. So when I got to Hawaii, I took at cab to Sean's apartment where his roommate let me in and that night I picked Sean up at the airport. It went fine, but I suspect that exhausted, jet-lagged, having been carless for 4 months, in the dark, in an unfamilar city, being guided by cell phone, in the rain, does not constitute ideal driving conditions.
We lazed around Oahu (and went to some very nice beaches on the North Shore), then went to Maui for the last couple days of the week. We stayed in Napili in West Maui, where from the shore you can see the islands of Molokai and Lanai. In the wintertime, these waters are full of humpback whales, but the whales were gone by the time we visited.
Hawaii is the kind of place that's so beautiful that when you're not there, you can't accurately recall how beautiful it is. This is the view from the balcony of our hotel room.
From here, at sunset, you can see sea turtles hanging out in the water, their heads bobbing out of the water.
We'd heard about a snorkeling spot further up the coast and went to check it out. There are no signs, but must be pretty well known, since three catamarans full of snorkelers showed up while we were there. Driving along a winding cliffside road, we stopped and parked on the side, where a bunch of other cars had parked. A dirt path leads down to a closed gate with a sign that says "Private Property." The sign does not continue to say "Do Not Enter." Instead, it says "Enter at Your Own Risk," and there's a helpful footpath around the gate. The path goes through a tropical forest (it's also very pretty) and across a dry riverbed. The end of the path is an old concrete boat launch at this bay, Honolua Bay. Here's a photo.
(The other side of that cliff is another snorkeling spot, which is also supposed to be nice, called Mokuleia Bay.) Facing the ocean, the right side of the bay has some amazing canyons of coral and fish; the water is very clear. There was also a ginormous school of fish that would swim around you. I think that the left side of the bay is also cool, but further from shore. At one point, one the left side, however, the coral was so close to the surface that I was little worried about swimming over it. The only downside to the spot is that it's pretty difficult to get in and out of the water. The rocks are very slippery and the best way to get back to dry land may be to beach yourself on them.
Back at our hotel, 2 resorts over is Honokeana Cove. The sign at the street says "Private Property. No Public Access." If you ignore it, and walk through the resort to the cove (not that we ever did this), there's a concrete path with a railing down to the water and the shore has a sandy bottom amid the rocks (so it's pretty easy to get in and out of the water). The water is kind of murky and the coral isn't that great and there aren't as many fish. However, swimming just a few minutes to the right side of the cove, you'll see an area where the coral/rocks don't cover the whole seabed and you can see the sandy bottom. And there we saw around 15 sea turtles. When we snorkeled here a couple years ago, I saw maybe 4-6 turtles and thought that was a great day. The turtles sleep at the bottom, hiding between and under the rocks. When I first got out there, I looked down and saw one on the bottom. I waited a few seconds to see if he was going to do anything. It didn't seem like it, so I was going to move on. When I looked up, I saw a sea turtle which seemed to have giant barnacles stuck on it right in front of me. We also saw a ginormous sea turtle which was easily longer than me (and probably 6 feet long). At one point, the barnacled turtle was swimming below this big guy, and he reached down and smacked the barnacled turtle in the head with a front flipper. The barnacled turtle got the messaged and swam further down. A couple times, a turtle was so close to me, I had to stop worrying about getting close to the turtles and worry about how to get the hell out of their way. I don't have any photos from snorkeling, but pictures probably couldn't accurately depict how cool it was.
Blogging From the Airport
The airport in Columbus, Ohio is a terribly small, boring place where you may find yourself trapped, like purgatory. Miraculously, however, they have free wireless, so in the ultimate travel geekiness, I'm blogging from the airport. I've back updated again -- that must be getting annoying -- with a March 31, 2007 post (still lacking one of the photos I wanted to add) and an April 13, 2007 post.
Friday, April 13, 2007
Don't Think That Japan Is the Only Place with Nice Flowers.
I saw these down the street from my apartment in Bonn.
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Tokyo (Tuesday)
Time to go home. After the traffic delays getting from the airport to the hotel, I decided to take the train back to the airport. It took a taxi ride to Tokyo Station and a not too short line to buy a train ticket (the Narita Express). After 10 very disorienting minutes where I couldn't figure out how to get to my platform (it's a big place!), I managed to find the right track and ask someone where to stand (the tickets have reserved seats). After that, the hour long train ride was very relaxing.
At the airport, I noticed that at the next counter there was a little girl dressed up like the English rapper, Lady Sovereign, with the side pony tail, the big round ring, a purple sweatshirt, jeans and gym shoes. She was pulling several pairs of gym shoes from one bag and putting it into another. (By the way, I know next to nothing about Lady Sovereign, except that she looks like this.) That's funny, I thought, she's not even that famous. Then it occurs to me that 12 year old girls dressed up as their favorite rapper are rarely 20-something year-old young women with lots of makeup on, traveling to London on BA with their posse, meeting their personal airline representative after ticketing. Yeah, I dozed off on that train ride, why do you ask?
After getting my boarding pass and returning my cell phone, I had some time for shopping. I'd bought some sweets to bring to work in Ginza the day before, but I was looking for some adorable Studio Ghibli stuffed animals to give to my friends' kids in Germany (okay, and a couple for me too). Jackpot. And luckily it cost basically what I had left in cash. I took a picture of all of them when I got home (I haven't had a chance to give out the presents yet, but I don't think 3 year olds read blogs, so I'm not ruining anything).
But now I had my shoulder bag and a little shopping bag. Heathrow still only allows one item per flyer. While a little shopping bag would probably pass muster, I really wasn't interested in taking that chance. But my shopping bag wouldn't fit into my shoulder bag or vice versa. I did have, however, a coat with 5 zippered pockets. That's right, I shoved stuffed animals into my pockets (it was even funnier when I arrived in Dusseldorf and it was cold and I put the coat on).
After a one hour nap on the plane and a layover in London, the trip was now running 21 hours and I still needed to get to Bonn from Dusseldorf at 10pm. 10pm at night means it's way too late to buy a train ticket from a human in Germany, so I was stuck trying to get the ticket machine to work at the airport as the minutes ticked down to the one train per hour leaving the airport. I just made it, but I needed to change trains at the Dusseldorf Hauptbahnhof before arriving in Bonn, walking home and falling into bed.
This is what I've noticed about train tickets in Germany. In the U.S., you'd expect that your ticket would say, what train(s) you're riding, what time(s) the train(s) is(are), where you're traveling from and your destination, at what stop(s) you are switching trains, and maybe the platform(s). This is what my ticket (at 10pm at night after 21 hours of traveling) read: today's date, where I was traveling (Dusseldorf Airport) from and my final destination (Bonn Hauptbahnhof), and how much I paid. Fantastic.
So that's it (mostly). From Germany to Japan and back again. After most vacations -- even if I really liked them -- I'd think to myself that now I can cross that place off my list because there are plenty of places I haven't been to yet. But that was definitely the best vacation I've ever had and by midway through, all any of us could think say to ourselves was "I have to come back here." So thanks gang, thanks Takemi and Kumiko, thanks Meg, and thanks Japan. See you next time around.
Monday, April 02, 2007
Tokyo (Monday - Shinjuku Park)
In the afternoon, we went to Shinjuku Park (200 Yen). Actually, some people begged off and shook their fists and me and Eugene later because they had wanted to go to this park instead of Ueno in the morning. But it was worth it to go to both. On the other hand, Shinjuku Park was perhaps the most beautiful park I've ever seen.
One side of the park featured large lawns.
I saw these flowers at every park we visited; they look like they needed to be drawn by Autocad.
Look at those trees!
On the other side of the park, there were a series of ponds. A Chinese style house stood on the side of one pond; I took the next two pictures from there.
Eugene remarked, and I agreed, that the whole place looked like a park of perfect bonsai and all of the people were shrunk down to fit into it. Also, we agreed that we had to come back to Japan.
Vacation was inexorably coming to an end; some of the people had already left for other parts of Japan. Most everybody else were taking off tomorrow. And we all split up for dinner. I ran off to have dinner with my old high-school friend, Meg. She took me to a restaurant that is part of the same chain of restaurants as the one that Prime Minister Koizumi had once taken President Bush. She had thought about taking me to a theme restaurant -- they have Alice in Wonderland, Romeo+Juliet, Alcatraz, vampires, and ninjas (ninjas!). Afterwards we all convened at Takemi and Kumiko's apartment for tea and goodbyes.
Tokyo (Monday - Ueno Park)
Monday, I decided that I needed to binge on cherry blossoms before I left town. We went to Ueno Park, which is what I bet people think of when they think of cherry blossoms in Tokyo -- wide avenues with rows of cherry blossoms trees and people everywhere.
We ate lunch in the park under falling cherry blossom petals; there were a bunch of food stands selling squid and noodles and other food, as well as drinks (including sake).
You can see that the end of the season is approaching; there are leaves on some of those trees.
I like how the flowers bloom straight out the trunks.
I've heard that for the hanami, the office will send out the junior member to save a spot all day. I saw quite a few blue tarps taken by suits (by the way, everyone in Tokyo wears a suit, it's uncanny) with red faces, drinking something alcoholic.
This is a very pretty tree.
Sunday, April 01, 2007
Tokyo (On Convenience)
One of the great things about Japan (well, East Asia, or maybe East and Southeast Asia?) is 7-Eleven. Seriously. Anything you need, you can get at the convenience store. It's the place to go if you need a quick lunch or snack, stationery, toiletries, an umbrella, a magazine, a shirt, to pay your bills, or more minutes on your cell phone. And it's open 24 hours.
In Germany, you can't buy aspirin at the grocery store (or the drugstore for that matter). Pharmacies are closed Wednesday afternoon. Everything is closed Sunday. Notice that you're out of floss Saturday night? Too bad. Many stores/offices close from noon to 2-3pm every afternoon. I'd think that many Americans would say that if isn't open during lunch hour, what's the point?
And, of course, in Japan there are vending machines everywhere.
Eugene, by the way, was obsessed with these cans of Coke (aluminum cans with twist-off openings).
Tokyo (Sunday)
On Sunday, some of us went to the Edo-Tokyo museum (i.e., local history) in the morning. The first thing you notice about the building is that it's behind the building you assume is the museum (a big square building with a bright green roof). The next thing you notice is that it looks like an AT-AT (just to refresh your memory).
Finally, you start to walk across the giant plaza with the building hanging over you and somewhere from the back of your head, you think "that's no moon, it's a space station" and you start to hum "The Imperial March."
That said, the museum is pretty neat. After catching some lunch at a noodle place (I got coupons if anyone is interested), we met up with Takemi and Kumiko and the rest of the gang in Akihabara. Akihabara Electric Town is well-known as the place to go to get all the latest electronics and computer stuff. It's also well-known for anime otaku culture. On the weekends (or maybe just Sunday), they close off the street and turn it into a pedestrian mall.
Somewhere in that crowd are a couple of men dressed as cutesy female anime characters. We stopped at a store (after a quick spin through a pachinko parlor). The top-floor was devoted to selling maid outfits. It also featured a maid cafe (waitresses dress up in little maid outfits and act the part) and a partitioned area where you could pay to take pictures of scantily clad young women. Classy.
After Akihabara, we hit Omotesando Hills (by hitting Roppongi Hills, Omotesando Hills, and Tokyo Midtown, my friend Meg remarked, we were going to all the trendy Tokyo shopping complexes) and then some souvenir shopping. After all this walking around, clearly we needed a drink. So here we are at the Park Hyatt, at the bar featured in the movie Lost in Translation (here's a still from the movie for comparison).
After, we had a very nice dinner at an all-you-can-drink (for two hours, off the drink menu) place, where we sang "Happy Birthday" twice: once to Katie and once to a fellow diner as we were heading out the door. We capped off the day with karaoke. Here's the view out of our room. I'll spare you pictures of actual singing.
Fine. Stop begging.
