From the Onion, the best article of the year. They must have been saving this one for a long time.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Brussels
Last weekend, Sean and I went to Brussels. The week prior, we looked up the prices for the train online but went to the train station to purchase the tickets. There we got tickets for less than half what we were quoted online. It was a very nice surprise and we left feeling like we must have somehow gotten away with something.
The train (the Deutsche Bahn ICE) to Brussels was very nice. On the German side of the border, it was very fast, maybe 120 mph, and we reached the border in under an hour. On the Belgium side of the border, it was much slower, so in total it took 3 hours door-to-door, including switching trains in Köln. Though there was no stop at the border, the difference between Belgium and Germany was noticeable and not just from the differences in train station signage. Heading northwest from Bonn, the countryside changes from flat farmland to woods with pastures for cows. On the German side of the border, buildings are mostly plaster (over what I presume is brick) painted solid colors: white, gray, a light yellow, sometimes pink, etc. Crossing the border, the buildings feature rustic, exposed red brick.
In Brussels, the maps in our Lonely Planet guide were deficient and we constantly took the longest, most roundabout routes to places. We stayed in the middle of the city (inside the ring road) near the Grand Place with all cobblestone streets (which hurt my feet) and where all the other tourists stayed. Here are the highlights of Brussels according to me:
Atomium
>> Hey, look over there; it's a giant iron crystal thingee.
- Hmm, well, it looks kinda far and there's beer here.
Comics
Belgium is where many famous comic book/strip characters were created, such as the Smurfs and Tintin. Many buildings have cartoon murals on their sides. There are also many comics book shops in the city (you know what else there was a lot of? For rent signs. Odd, huh?).
Royal Palace
We went to the Royal Palace, which is free but only open during the summer. It was a strange mix of royal palace, art exhibit, science demos for kids, and Belgium science press releases. I really can't explain it.
Manneken Pis
This is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Brussels. It's also really small and unimpressive.
A Little Art
This is Pieter Bruegel the Elder's The Fall of the Rebel Angels.
Grand Place
The Grand Place is the old central market square in Brussels. Around the Hotel de Ville (the last two pictures) are the guildhouses, most built around 1700 after the French tried to destroy the Hotel de Ville and got basically everything but.
Food
We had mussels every day.
Sometimes this meant braving a gauntlet of restaurants and waiters trying to lure you in (we took the picture during the off-hours). (Also, at one restaurant, one of the waiters started beating up another waiter -- something you don't see everyday -- maybe Sean will provide the blow-by-blow in his blog.)
While the mussels were great, the frites were severely disappointing. So very sad. The little box of chocolates we bought, however, was excellent.
Beer
Did you hear? There's a lot of beer in Belgium. Sean worked on the Trappist beers, while I worked on the lambics. We liked this place below so much, we went twice.
This place had 2000 beers in their beer book.
While we were there, some people ordered this:
It's at least 5 L of beer.
Lambic beer is the real champagne of beer. Traditionally, it's produced by spontaneous fermentation (left exposed to the open air so that fermentation may occur spontaneously) and takes several years to mature. It's unique to one region of Belgium and has a distinctive sour flavor. Some varieties have fruit (such as cherries or raspberries) added to them. It's fantastic. I tried the gueuze (a mixture of different ages) and the raspberry from the Cantillon brewery (very traditional):
I also tried the Mort Subite Lambic Blanche, Framboise (raspberry), and Kriek (cherry) and the Lindeman Framboise. To round it out, I had some fruit beers (not lambics): apple, cherry, strawberry. I think. At the Cantillon brewery tour, they explained that the term lambic isn't protected, so any beer to claim to be a lambic, whether they use spontaneously fermentation, mature for several years and use real fruit not sweetners, or not. So which of these other "lambics" are the real deal? Well, the Mort Subite definitely had the sour flavor, while the Lindeman (while fantastic tasting, like a real raspberry down to the tart/bitter finish) wasn't sour at all. Sean and I both really like the brewery tour; if you find yourself in Brussels, it's totally worth a look.
On the ride back, we sat next to the empty operator's cab at the back of the train. It was separated from the cabin by a glass wall which would turn opaque when we approached a station. Weird.
Thursday, August 09, 2007
Budapest
Two weeks ago, Sean and I went to Budapest, Hungary for the weekend. Hungary is a recent EU member, which means they don't use the Euro sadly, but everywhere you look there are Hungary and EU flags (I never see either in Bonn). The flight from Cologne was 1.5 hours and from the moment you step out of the airport, you can tell that you're in a whole different world. It's a lot poorer than Germany. The public buses were loud, small, grey, and old, and seemed very Soviet era (I wish I'd taken a picture). The buildings tended to look rather ramshackle. Yet, they were also a lot more ornate than in Germany. For example, here's a couple pictures of buildings we saw:
My understanding is that the language is very difficult to learn (it doesn't resemble any other European languages except maybe Finnish). Thankfully, everywhere we went, people spoke at least a little English.
Budapest is two cities -- Buda and Pest -- on opposite sides of the Danube River. Our hotel was on the Buda side (the left side of this photo), right on the river with an excellent view of the Parliament (the red dome on the right) and a few blocks from the Chain bridge (in the foreground). In the middle of the river, there's a huge park on Margaret Island, which you can also see in the photo below:
We arrived in the morning and spent the day on the Buda side, going up Castle Hill. There's a funicular railway that takes you up the hillside to the top, but, frankly, it's not much of a walk. At the top of the hill is a whole neighborhood, ringed by medieval walls and containing Buda Castle (now containing the National Art Gallery, a history museum, some pretty grounds and excavations of older buildings), Mattias Church, and Fisherman's Bastion. You can see Buda Castle as the dome in the background of this photo:
We spent the afternoon in the National Gallery (which has free admission to the permanent exhibits but, oddly enough, they insist you stand in line to buy the free ticket). On the other side of the hill is Mattias Church (informally named after the greatest Hungarian king) covered in scaffolding in the picture below, with Fisherman's Bastion in front of it and the Hilton next to it:
Inside, I got the first taste of how different culturally and historically Hungary is compared to, say, Germany. Everything is decorated.
Inside the Church is St. Stephan Chapel, dedicated to the first king of Hungary (crowned in the year 1000, and canonized after his death) with a replica of the crown of St. Stephan (used to crown the kings of Hungary from the 13th century). The real crown is in the Parliament (which we never got to). His mummified right hand can be found in St. Stephen's Basilica (which I'll get to later). The text around the replica of the crown of St. Stephan tries to very carefully prove that the real crown can be dated back to St. Stephan and somehow divines that it was originally crafted on the shores of the Black Sea in the 3rd century. Outside the church is Fisherman's Bastion; it's pretty cool to look at.
We were exhausted by the end of the afternoon. Luckily, a quick dinner could be had on the Chain Bridge, shut to cars for the weekend, it was lined with stands for food and trinkets, with stages for music on either end, and tourists everywhere. Here's a picture of it all lit up.
On the second day, we went to Pest to the Jewish quarter and saw Dohány Street Synagogue, the second largest synagogue in the world. By the way, if you're looking for a bathroom in Budapest, you don't need to pay to use the bathroom in the synagogue (it's before the ticket-takers). Also, the Inter-continental Hotel near the Chain Bridge (on the Pest side) has a side door right next to its lobby bathrooms.
The inside was pretty amazing, but you need to buy a separate ticket to take pictures; there's a bunch on the Wikipedia page I linked above. After lunch, we went to St. Stephan's Basilica; the most ornate building in the world (okay, maybe not officially ...).
After a good look around and at St. Stephan's mummified hand, we went to the roof (not the to top of the dome but very high). That's where the fourth photo in this post was taken. After this, we walked along the river, past the Parliament to Margaret Island and relaxed for the rest of the day. A quick dinner in front of the Basilica was capped off with one of these tubes of grilled sweet bread (-like thing) coated in caramelized vanilla sugar bought from a stand on the Chain bridge. We ate it standing by one of the stages which featured some rather good music (I'm blanking on what kind of music it was (jazz?) and only remember that I liked it).
The last day was cold and rainy (it was hot the previous two days). We wandered up Andrássy út to City Park and went to the thermal baths there, Széchenyi Medicinal Bath. Budapest is known for it's thermal baths and we could have spent several more days just exploring all of them. After going through a rather complex procedure for paying, getting a locker, changing, and getting towels, we relaxed in their many outdoor thermal baths and indoor herbal baths. It was fantastic, especially after two and 1/2 days of nothing but walking. After a few hours of soaking, we got some afternoon cake (there's a lot of really good afternoon cake in Budapest) and wandered down Váci utca, the main touristy, pedestrian street, stumbled upon a great deal (and good food) for dinner and called it a day.
All in all, Budapest was pretty awesome. I definitely could have used several more days just to get to all the places I wanted to see and two or three history books to figure out what it was I saw.
Thursday, August 02, 2007
New Apartment
I've changed apartments. My old apartment was a shoebox with wireless on a quiet and pretty street near the Zentrum and a block from the train tracks. My new apartment is a modest but respectable studio in Poppelsdorf. I've also got DSL up and running, although I've given up on TV (so no more blogging of the Eurovision Song Contest). The tenant the floor below and I share a washer, which is nice, but there's no dryer, so I'm not sure what I'm going to do come winter.
It's behind a perfume shop and has a small garden where one of the residents (my landlord's brother, I think) keeps and tends to birds and a koi pond. I've even seen chickens in the garden, although I don't know where he keeps them otherwise (there doesn't seem to be room).
The neighborhood is really nice, full of shops and restaurants with seating outside on the sidewalk (I don't have a photo, unfortunately, but I found the website for the restaurant 2 doors down and maybe you can extrapolate). I'm a few blocks from Poppelsdorfer Schloss and Allee.
A few random notes: I'll have pictures of my trip to Budapest up soon, I promise, and Sean's been blogging his travels in Germany using many of the same pictures (he took all of them) but better organized and with clearer text. Go take a look and leave a comment (he's lonely!).
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
Heidelberg
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. 
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.
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