Denmark

I'm now staying in Copenhagen with my friend Marie, who was a Danish exchange student at RPI last semester. Marie's dorm is really awesome- the whole floor is extremely friendly, and they have an extremely smooth running system to share meals and cooking duties. I was treated to an excellent dinner and they also had a huge party the night I arrived. It was about 10x better than any RPI party I've ever been to... bonfire, live music, really cool people, and good beer.

After getting over a slight hangover, we went out to get lunch with some of the people from Marie's hall. Then Marie and I went on a walking tour of the city, and climbed one of the tallest towers to get a view of the city.


Copenhagen is a beautiful city.

When Danish high school students graduate, they rent old military vans, drink heavily and drive around town all day honking and shouting. This has been going on the whole time I've been here!

Bike shed outside of Marie's dorm. I'm one of like 10 people that bike year round at RPI... but here EVERYONE bikes. I borrowed Marie's old bike (she has 3) and toured around the city today checking out the major landmarks and an Industrial Design museum which was fantastic.

Berlin Street Art

Berlin

The trains here are excellent. This is the high speed train I took from Belgium to Frankfurt. Even the sliding glass doors inside are smooth engineering marvels.


Berlin is a very cool city, its too bad I only had a couple days there. Lots of history, loads of museums (free 6-10 on Thursday) and lots of other cool stuff to do. I started off at the Reichstag, going up the glass dome for a great view of the city.


After waiting in long lines you can take an elevator up to the new glass dome for great views of the city and government officials working down below.

View of the city. They have one of these helium balloons in Hamburg too.


Huge Holocaust memorial in the center of the city.
I took a "free" walking tour of Berlin, which was excellent. Behind our guide here is the hotel where Michael Jackson dangled a baby out the window. Condi Rice was staying there in the special rocket proof room during the tour, and there were tons of police around.


The next day I met up with Avital, a friend from the Israel trip I went on a couple years ago. She's been doing an exchange program teaching English in Berlin for the past month. I had a great time going out to lunch with her friends who spoke German and were able to translate the menu. Then we explored some more of the city searching for this great ice cream place.

Me and Avital in front of a cool mural. There's lots of great graffiti and street art in Berlin, especially on whats left of the wall. Maybe Ill post a gallery of just street art.



Germany is very excited to be in the Eurocup fnals so there's lots of crazy stuff like this. In Berlin they shut down a major 6 lane road setup 4 giant screens, a ferris wheel and tons of food stands just to watch the game. Supposedly half a million people were there to watch it. I walked through about 2 hours before the game and it was already a madhouse.

I decided to relive my childhood and go to the Legoland discovery center. Sadly, my camera crapped out. I think I was the only person there between the age of 12 and 35, but I enjoyed it. The miniland Berlin section was my favorite. Unlike the other legoland minilands, this is built to minifig scale which I liked better, but probably none of you reading this are dorky enough to even know what im talking about.

Cool architecture at the Sony Center where legoland is located.

GOOD Magazine

Travel issue: http://www.goodmagazine.com/section/Features/the_travel_issue interesting stuff, check it out.

Germany

This hostel doesnt have wifi, but it does have a free computer. The onlz annozing thing is that its a german kezboard, so some of the kezs are switched. ßöööö. §ü ännoying.

Frankfurt was a nice city. I stumbled upon at least 4 street festivals with loads of traditional german food, beer and apple wine. Also a massive 6 block long flea market along the Rhine river and some sort of multicultural parade. I went to an architecture museum, which was lame. Ive been to better exhibitions at RPI, and most modern architecture makes me mad because it completely ignores the natural landscape and often puts form well ahead of function. My first full day in the city, I decided I was sick of cities. My mediocre hostel didnt have wifi, so I went to the only other hostel in the city, pretended I was staying there and used theirs. After 30 mins of research, I decided to setoff to Rostock in the North which has nice beaches and UNESCO world heritage spots nearby.

If I had done everything right I would have arrived in Rostock around 19:30, plenty of time to find a hostel. I got mixed up by the a/b multiple trains per rail thing in Hamburg, and missed the second train. To make a long story short, I got to the hostel I had picked out in Rostock at 2:30 in the morning. They were closed. Some university students walking by offered to let me stay with them. The one guy was German, and the other two guys were from upstate NY! They seemed trustworthy, and my other option was to walk 2km back to the train station and sleep on a bench and put up with the drunk people who thought the echos of a nearly emptry train station were hillarious, so I stayed on their sofa bed. The world would be a great place if everyone were this kind to strangers.

The hostel Im staying in now is great. The beach is a 15 min train ride away, and its wonderful. The only other guy in the 8 bed room im staying with is a German professor who likes to talk a lot. We had a very one sided conversation, which mostly involved him giving me a detailed history of this area of Germany. The jet engine was developed near here! Now Im watching the Spain v Italy soccer match with the owners.

Brussels

The past 2 nights I've been staying with a colleague of my Dad's, Eric Boeckmans. His wife and kids only speak a little English, so it's been fun trying to piece together conversations. They've been extremely generous to take me, a stranger, into their home. Probably the best accommodations I'll have all summer... a big bed, no snoring hostel roommates, a tour of Brussels and great dinners! Me, Eric and Emilie (I think the dogs are watching the cat down the street)

Me, Mathieu and Emilie
Brussels is HQ for the EU. I saw several motorcades drive through the city flanked by police motorcycles stopping traffic. There were a lot of these barbed wire barricades around and I liked the sticker on this sign. Belgian truck drivers, farmers etc are on strike now due to high fuel prices and wages not rising accordingly. A lot of the police officers were carrying loads of ziptie riot cuffs, but nothing happened while I was there.


This is the Atomium building built for a worlds fair in the 50's. Each of those spheres is about 3-4 stories insight.

View from the top sphere. Down below is Europe in miniature... all the greatest cathedrals etc in miniature. They really love miniatures here... these sorts of places are all over. Unfortunately mini-antwerp was closed when I walked by, otherwise I could have "seen" the whole city much faster with much less walking.

No, this isn't a view from the millenium falcon flying through the death star II in Return of the Jedi. It's the elevator through the center of Antomium, and it was the fastest when built in the 50s. The ceiling is glass so you can see how fast it lifts.
Stairway up one of the diagonals.
This building was outside of the atomium. It's made of beverage crates.

In Brugges

I spent yesterday exploring the beautiful medieval town of Brugges.
This replica of a medieval crane was just down the canal from the hostel where I stayed. It's basically two human sized hamster wheels attached to a rope.

I also went to the diamond museum. Bling bling! I've always wanted to know how they cut and shape diamonds. The answer? With other diamonds.


This windmill was a few streets over from my hostel. I decided to climb the ladder, and it turns out there was actually a museum at the top, and for 1.5 euro I got to climb to the second floor and see the gears and brakes and grindstones while the whole thing was spining. As a mechanical engineer, I get pretty excited about this stuff.
Huge wooden gear with integrated drum brake. There were two of these, and two grind stones below.

Around lunch time I ended up in the famous Brugges farmers market which only happen on Wednesday so I got lucky again. I had an amazing Belgian waffle, and bought a box of the biggest raspberry's I've ever seen.

Typical canal in Brugges.

Pictures!

Sorry I'm getting lazy and don't feel like going back into old posts to add photos, so here's a buuunch all at once, not really in order. Woah the u key just stuck there, that wasn't intentional, but its funny so I'm leaving it.

Most bathrooms in this part of the world charge 50 cents to use. Sometimes this is on the honor system, but its often policed. For this reason, men like to pee in public. Amsterdam is cool because it's got special public urinals to alleviate the problem of people peeing on doorways. Belgium on the other hand just has heavy fines, and funny signs.

View of the Nemo science museum from the 7th floor Amsterdam library cafeteriaStudy pod
These were on every floor linked to a book elevator that puts books almost back where they belong.
Robo book sorter
Place your books inthe box to check out.

View of part of the libraryFooling around during the hour bike ride from Leiden to the ESA/ESTEC space center since the busses were on strike.
Me and Eric in front of an Ariane 5 nose cone/satelite mockup. Eric starts his job working on to p secret satelites at Boeing in LA next month.
Me playing in the replica of the ESA science module of the International Space Station.

MMmmmm Belgian cherry beer at my hostel bar


From an awesome art gallery installation in Rotterdam. I'll post a bunch more pics of that sometime.

Antwerp

Antwerp. I asked an old man to take my picture here, but he said he was afraid of digital cameras.
So I asked some young kid to take my picture here.