So,
After finally achieving internet, I got on CouchSurfing and found someone to hang out with ^_^
The poor victim was Tao Wu and he was forced to buy me delicious German beer at the local pub ;)
We had a great time and I started regretting that I only had a few short hours left in Baden-Baden (an unexpected turn of event). We ended up making plans to visit the legendary hot springs once I drop my mom off at the airport (I might be a day late for Oktoberfest, but I'm not particularly worried :)
At the morning of ... today actually, we packed up our stuff and left Baden-Baden for Geneva. It was a wonderful 5 hour drive (with a short stop at Bazel for some Ramen o.O) with the best landscapes I've seen in my life (yes, I'm a sucker for parentheses and landscapes - Pix incoming).
Tomorrow the plan is to climb mont-blanc and trek for a few hours to an iceberg thingy in the middle of the mountain, I can't say no to that :P
I'm also pretty tired and drunk from red wine and real champagne, so I'm sorry if I'm not making much sense.
I'm going to climb a mountain tomorrow!
Nathan
Friday, September 10, 2010
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
It's going to be Legen ... Wait for it ... ZONDEC!
Thinking about the beginning of the last trip, I realize that it has been a Zondec-fest from the get go. This trip, however, started out pretty damn smooth.
There were no delays or overbookings, the plane arrived on time, we got our lugage quickly, got our rental car quickly and set out for a 2hr drive to Baden-Baden. We knew we had to take Route 5 but I was still adjusting to the new car and German driving habits so I missed the first turn to route 5. "A-ha!", you think, "Here comes the Zondec". But alas, what we actually missed was the wrong turn and actually ended up saving ourselves a lot of hassle.
[One things I have to mention about German driving habits is that I don't get them at all. Most of their roads have a speed limit of 120kmph but on their roads which only have 2 lanes, the right lane crawls at about 90kmph and left lane flies at 150kmph. So either they're all sissies and criminals or there's something I'm not getting. And when you go at 120 on the left lane, nobody honks, flashes, or tries to pass you from the right, the just line up behind you in a neat line and wait for you switch lanes and then zoom past you at relativistic speeds.]
With hardly any delays we got to our friends' house in the picturesque town of Baden-Baden. They were very friend and hospitable and we had a nice lunch and a lot of local wine. The weather outside was partly clouded with slight drizzles and a temp of around 17C (which is neither cold nor hot). Life was good.
It is at about that time that I started to feel the Zondec creep up on me.
I asked them if I could use their internet, but apparently they don't know the password to their wireless network, don't have any network cables, and the only computer they have just lost its screen in a terrible accident. I tried to log into the router with the cable it uses to connect to the modem but everything was in German and they were useless at translating technical terms to me so I just gave up on that.
When we go to their son's house (where we are supposed to spend out 3 days in Baden-Baden) I was shocked to discover that for some reason they disabled their Wi-Fi and there are, again, no cables to connect to the router directly. The son, wife and the kids are on a vacation somewhere far far away and I've been requested by their technophobic parents not to touch anything. BLEH. And so, at the point of writing this post (On the second day of the trip), my laptop has yet to see a Wireless German Network.
The rest of the first day we spent walking about town with Alexander (One of the friends) being our tour guide and spewing a load of tour-guidy information at us. The plans for day 2 were as follows:
1) Visit the local Casino (Which is apparently some great tourist attraction and holds its own guided tours).
2) Rent bicycles and ride around town.
3) Go to some uber-famous Spa called Caracalla.
In theory, that sounds pretty awesome, but you have to remember that I'm hanging around with a group of 4 Russians about my mother's age (or somewhat older) and most of what they care about is Russian culture and history (which Baden-Baden seems to be full of .. Damn Russians). So my first priority is actually finding a working wireless network, getting on CouchSurfing, and finding someone decent to hang around with.
[Apparently, once the Zondec hits you, there's nowhere to run, and by the time I wrote this post for the first time, Notepad crashed on me :( Who even though that's possible?! so I had to rewrite this post from scratch. Also, the biking part was canceled due to rain and the casino part was canceled (at least for me), due to me caring more about sleep than an old people's casino.]
Now, I'm finishing this post from Baden-Baden main shopping center (which is about as big as one isle in Azrieli and, guess what it doesn't have ...). I could probably continue to add rants to this post every time I open my laptop and find no internet, but I'll just leave it at this and save any extra happening to a later post. Right now, I'm going to go out of this center and wonder about town (in the rain) in hopes of finding an internet.
Have a better time than me,
Nathan
EDIT: I walked around town all day (across the damn thing) and found no internet to speak of. We ended up buying our friends a new monitor (my mother felt obligated) and now that she no longer does, she gave me full permission to mess with the house router - woohoo! I CAN HAS INTERNETS!
There were no delays or overbookings, the plane arrived on time, we got our lugage quickly, got our rental car quickly and set out for a 2hr drive to Baden-Baden. We knew we had to take Route 5 but I was still adjusting to the new car and German driving habits so I missed the first turn to route 5. "A-ha!", you think, "Here comes the Zondec". But alas, what we actually missed was the wrong turn and actually ended up saving ourselves a lot of hassle.
[One things I have to mention about German driving habits is that I don't get them at all. Most of their roads have a speed limit of 120kmph but on their roads which only have 2 lanes, the right lane crawls at about 90kmph and left lane flies at 150kmph. So either they're all sissies and criminals or there's something I'm not getting. And when you go at 120 on the left lane, nobody honks, flashes, or tries to pass you from the right, the just line up behind you in a neat line and wait for you switch lanes and then zoom past you at relativistic speeds.]
With hardly any delays we got to our friends' house in the picturesque town of Baden-Baden. They were very friend and hospitable and we had a nice lunch and a lot of local wine. The weather outside was partly clouded with slight drizzles and a temp of around 17C (which is neither cold nor hot). Life was good.
It is at about that time that I started to feel the Zondec creep up on me.
I asked them if I could use their internet, but apparently they don't know the password to their wireless network, don't have any network cables, and the only computer they have just lost its screen in a terrible accident. I tried to log into the router with the cable it uses to connect to the modem but everything was in German and they were useless at translating technical terms to me so I just gave up on that.
When we go to their son's house (where we are supposed to spend out 3 days in Baden-Baden) I was shocked to discover that for some reason they disabled their Wi-Fi and there are, again, no cables to connect to the router directly. The son, wife and the kids are on a vacation somewhere far far away and I've been requested by their technophobic parents not to touch anything. BLEH. And so, at the point of writing this post (On the second day of the trip), my laptop has yet to see a Wireless German Network.
The rest of the first day we spent walking about town with Alexander (One of the friends) being our tour guide and spewing a load of tour-guidy information at us. The plans for day 2 were as follows:
1) Visit the local Casino (Which is apparently some great tourist attraction and holds its own guided tours).
2) Rent bicycles and ride around town.
3) Go to some uber-famous Spa called Caracalla.
In theory, that sounds pretty awesome, but you have to remember that I'm hanging around with a group of 4 Russians about my mother's age (or somewhat older) and most of what they care about is Russian culture and history (which Baden-Baden seems to be full of .. Damn Russians). So my first priority is actually finding a working wireless network, getting on CouchSurfing, and finding someone decent to hang around with.
[Apparently, once the Zondec hits you, there's nowhere to run, and by the time I wrote this post for the first time, Notepad crashed on me :( Who even though that's possible?! so I had to rewrite this post from scratch. Also, the biking part was canceled due to rain and the casino part was canceled (at least for me), due to me caring more about sleep than an old people's casino.]
Now, I'm finishing this post from Baden-Baden main shopping center (which is about as big as one isle in Azrieli and, guess what it doesn't have ...). I could probably continue to add rants to this post every time I open my laptop and find no internet, but I'll just leave it at this and save any extra happening to a later post. Right now, I'm going to go out of this center and wonder about town (in the rain) in hopes of finding an internet.
Have a better time than me,
Nathan
EDIT: I walked around town all day (across the damn thing) and found no internet to speak of. We ended up buying our friends a new monitor (my mother felt obligated) and now that she no longer does, she gave me full permission to mess with the house router - woohoo! I CAN HAS INTERNETS!
Monday, September 6, 2010
Re-Start!
I like how this becomes a sort of tradition :)
It's been about a year (minus 5 days) since I've stopped updating this blog in the middle of my previous Euro(+US)-Trip and here I am again, in BenGurion airport, waiting for the plane which will take on a new journey to this Europe thing.
I don't really know why I'm writing this blog. Maybe it's because I want to stick it in your face that I'm on a real vacation to places you'd like to be at. And all other options aren't nearly as likely ;)
The outline of my trip:
Family Part:
Baden-Baden : 3 days
Geneva : 6 days
Frankfurt : 2 days
Real Vacation Part:
Munich (Oktoberfest) : 4 days
Amsterdam : 6 days
With the highlight of the trip shifting between Oktoberfest and the Official Opening Party of Nicola's and Michele's (and maybe another-dude-I-don't-know's) new restaurant Talia.
[Nicola is a dude I met near the end of my last trip]
When I have some time, I'll go over my posts from lat time and see if I can find inspiration for some more Start-Of-Journey material.
Until then,
I'm in Europe and you're not!
Nathan
It's been about a year (minus 5 days) since I've stopped updating this blog in the middle of my previous Euro(+US)-Trip and here I am again, in BenGurion airport, waiting for the plane which will take on a new journey to this Europe thing.
I don't really know why I'm writing this blog. Maybe it's because I want to stick it in your face that I'm on a real vacation to places you'd like to be at. And all other options aren't nearly as likely ;)
The outline of my trip:
Family Part:
Baden-Baden : 3 days
Geneva : 6 days
Frankfurt : 2 days
Real Vacation Part:
Munich (Oktoberfest) : 4 days
Amsterdam : 6 days
With the highlight of the trip shifting between Oktoberfest and the Official Opening Party of Nicola's and Michele's (and maybe another-dude-I-don't-know's) new restaurant Talia.
[Nicola is a dude I met near the end of my last trip]
When I have some time, I'll go over my posts from lat time and see if I can find inspiration for some more Start-Of-Journey material.
Until then,
I'm in Europe and you're not!
Nathan
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