Belgium & Luxembourg (January 25-28, 2007)

Complete Set of Photos

Isaac and I had discussed taking a weekend trip to Belgium one of these weeks in January or February, and then we found out that our friend Pieterjan from Brussels, Belgium, was going home for a few weeks because his semester was over. He made us a good offer: we take him home for free, and we can stay at his place in Brussels. It was very nice of him and made our stay in Belgium more enjoyable! We also decided to pay a quick visit to Luxembourg, because it was a new country that none of us had been to before and it was on the way home to Stuttgart.

Once more, we rented a car to go there. When traveling with a group of people to farther-away places, it usually is more economical and convenient to rent a car. This time, we ended up with a Volkswagen Passat station wagon! This still had a navigation system, which is essential in Europe. Roads aren't in nice, neat grids like back home - they're all randomly laid out and it is very confusing to drive if you don't know where you're going. In the car were me, Isaac, Pieterjan, Jessica (from St. Louis) and Matt (Holland, MI).

Pieterjan's apartment was a nice little building in a typical neighborhood in Brussels. It had one of the largest bathrooms I've seen and a cool view out of the back windows. He told us that Brussels is not the real tourist center of Belgium and that Brugge is a much better choice. So, that's where we headed the next day!





Brugge was about an hour or so drive from Brussels and is located fairly near to the ocean. It's a very nice historic type town, with many tall churches, old houses, and even rivers/canals so it looks a bit like Venice! We climbed the really tall clock tower (Belfort) and got a really neat panorama of the whole city. There was also an intricate bell system and we even got to see the drum spin and the assorted bells ring.


For lunch, we stopped at a fast-food stand and ordered a vast assortment of various Belgian foods which Pieterjan recommended to us. We had some french fries (french actually refers to the cut, fries are from Belgium!) with American Sauce (don't ask, I'd never had it back home before!), some sort of deep fried wurst, and others. We also had hot chocolate, which consisted of a glass of hot milk and a piece of Belgian chocolate on a stick for dipping!

After visiting Brugge and walking around some more, we drove in the car to Ypres, the site of three separate WWI battles in western Belgium. All that we found here were secluded cemeteries out in the woods. There were no trenches or anything like in Verdun that we saw. There were many, many authentic "Flanders Fields" though. I did spot a funny road sign!

That night, back in Brussels, Pieterjan took us to a university movie theater that his friends work at, so we got to see the movie "Smoking Room" in Spanish with English subtitles, in the French/Dutch speaking region of Belgium! Pieterjan explained that Flemish is not the language, just a nickname for the Dutch spoken in that region. Dutch is similar enough to English and German that I could read most signs and stuff, but I couldn't understand it when it was spoken. We also went to some bars to samples some of the world-famous Belgian beer (some of which was almost like champagne!).

The next day (Saturday), we were guided around the city of Brussels. We visited the Atomium, some crazy sculpture/building from a 1950's exposition, and saw some of the sights of the city center. In the tourist area, where there are a bunch of restaurants, we saw how every restaurant has a person employed out front whose only job is to talk to the tourist and get them to eat at their restaurant. It was funny to mess with them (we were making food that night, it had been previously planned). Here we also sampled real Belgian waffles, saw a statue of a peeing kid (actually really famous!)

Back at Pieterjan's apartment, we made very typical Belgian food with some of his roommates: mussels, beer, and fries! We had about 20 pounds of mussels to clean (meaning sort out the dead ones, pull out the rock-attachment thing and scrape off the mud). We steamed them in pots of beer and vegetables and then enjoyed them with french fries with mayonnaise (really!). Both the mussels and the fries were very good - it was only the second time that I had ever eaten mussels.

After waking up late on Sunday morning, we loaded up the car (minus Pieterjan, of course), and the four of us piled in and headed to Luxembourg. The only thing anyone really wanted to see in Luxembourg was the American cemetery from World War II. I had found in my family genealogy that I had a very-distant relative who was killed in the Battle of the Bulge (which took place in the France/Luxembourg/Belgium/Germany region) and is buried in this cemetery. Before we visited the cemetery though, we bummed around the city of Luxembourg (the capital) a little bit. It was very small, but very nice, and was located on high ground with a park running around the center like a moat of sorts. I wish we would've had some more time, but maybe I can go back and check it out some more.

That was about it! We finished the drive back to Stuttgart (it was only about 6 hours from Stuttgart to Brussels and about 3 hours from Luxembourg back to Stuttgart) and took the car back to the airport.

My Roommates

Complete Set of Photos

Soon, two of my six roommates will be moving out. Jerome is finished with school and got a job "in the real world" and Annika is moving to London to do an internship with Lufthansa. We decided to go to Hacienda, a Mexican restaurant downtown, but at the last minute, Jerome couldn't make it. When the five of us returned home, he was there, so we sat around and socialized for a while. This is something we don't actually do much, because everyone has a different schedule and pretty much the only time we're all here is at night when we're sleeping. We did manage to get a group picture though!

From left to right: Me (USA), Justin (Canada), Nils (Germany), Jerome (Germany), Martina (Germany), and Annika (Germany).

Schloss Neuschwanstein - Füssen, Germany (January 20, 2007)

Complete Set of Photos

This Saturday I travelled with the AEGEE Stuttgart group to Neuschwanstein, Germany's most famous castle and most-photographed building. This is the castle that the one in Disney World is based on. Neuschwanstein was built only in the late 1800's and is located in the small town of Füssen, only a few kilometers from the Austrian border. My goal for this trip was to get a good picture for the photo contest I have to participate in when I get back to Tech - I think I got some good ones! Here's one of just the castle:

We left the Uni in Vaihingen at 7:00 that morning, and it was still very dark, so most of us slept in the tour bus for the 3-hour drive to Füssen from Stuttgart. In Füssen, the bus dropped us off at the base of the mountain that the castle is located on. We had to walk up this huge, steep hill to get to the castle, but it was very nice when we got to the top. We also had a guided tour of the castle, which was very short (it's a relatively small castle), but pictures inside weren't allowed so I don't have any. It was just covered with paintings and stuff with a lot of marble pillars, fancy furniture, and so on.

There was a bridge on a neighboring peak at an even higher elevation than the castle with a bridge going over a waterfall where you could take some nice pictures. The group went over there for a while, because everyone wanted some pictures of this! I purposely wore my MTU T-shirt, so I took my jacket off and didn't really need to put it back on! It was very warm that day - you can see the lack of snow! There's actually a ski resort to the right of this picture with grass slopes!. Here's one of the better pictures here. The whole area was very nice, with grassy fields, alpine lakes, and waterfalls.

After visiting Neuschwanstein, we piled back into the bus and went to the town of Füssen to eat lunch. We had less than an hourto eat, so we had to hurry! Back on the bus, we drove for about 2o minutes to Steingaden to visit the Wieskirche (Wies Church), a UNESCO heritage site. It had some really neat paintings in it. This is located in the middle of a field way off of the main road - the bus driver did an excellent job of navigating that huge bus through trees and stuff on a winding one-lane road! He even came on the intercom to tell us that he knew what he was doing!

We then drove back to Stuttgart. Once again, everyone slept on the bus! We got back at 7:00 PM, but it had been a long day and college students are always tired!

Oh yeah, I almost forgot the "coolest" thing of the trip! At the rest stop between Ulm and Füssen, I saw the coolest toilet ever. Here's a video of a similar one. You flush it like normal, the toilet flushes like normal, but then an arm thing slides out of the back. It lowers down to the seat and squirts out cleaning liquid. Then, the seat actually spins around while the arm thing cleans the whole surface. Then, when the seat had made a complete loop, it stops and the arm slides back into the toilet which waits for the next user. Cool!

Pickled Eggs!

Last night, I made a small batch (20) of Slick's style pickled eggs. Two of my roommates are moving out soon, and I want to make sure they experience this American food first! Pickled eggs are also a typical food around Michigan Tech.

Just like everything I've made in this country, I had to improvise. We couldn't find jalapeno peppers at the store, so I bought a jar of green and red peppers that looked like they could work! Vinegar even is harder to find. I ended up with a super-concentrated salad dressing bottle, so we had to dilute it for the eggs. There is also no pickling spice in Germany, so I improvised with what I could find in our apartment! I rescued the jars from my neighbor's recycling pile and rounded up some eggs (eggs are even metric over here - they come in cartons of 10)!!!!

As I was down in the kitchen boiling eggs and jalapeno-vinegar-spice mixture on the stove, Martina came in and immediately exclaimed "Ugh! Es stinkt wie Essig!" (it stinks like vinegar!). It stunk up the whole apartment making the eggs, but luckily it was about 60 degrees on January 10, so we just opened the windows. I haven't tasted the eggs yet because they haven't pickled long enough, so we'll see how German pickled eggs taste!

Update 01-29-07: They're delicious! The Germans found them revolting though!

Vienna, Austria & Bratislava, Slovakia (December 29, 2006 - January 3, 2007)

Complete Set of Photos

During the Christmas/New Year's holiday, I took my first solo trip out of the country. I didn't want to compromise or argue with people and I enjoy the independence and solidarity! I traveled to Vienna, Austria for three nights and then across the Danube to Bratislava, Slovakia for two nights. I spent New Year's in Vienna and took part in the celebrations there.

To get to Vienna from Stuttgart, I rode on an ICE train. These are the ones that can go 300 kmh, but that's only on certain sections of track. My train just went normal speed. It took about 7 hours to get from Stuttgart to Vienna, with one change in Nürnberg. The train was about as nice as an airplane and it even had headphone jacks in the seats, so I got to listen to classical music while reading! There were also some guys who had brought a mini-keg and some plastic cups with them and they were drinking all that beer on the train (perfectly legal, too!).

When I reached Vienna, it was already dark, so I just walked around and familiarized myself with the layout of the city. The hostel I had reserved was at the end of an U-Bahn line, so I caught that train and checked in at the hostel. It was actually pretty nice and new and it had a good free breakfast in the mornings. I could just barely fit in the beds though!

The next morning, I first went to the Zentralfriedhof (central cemetery). This is the largest cemetery in Europe by number of people in it and lots of famous people (musicians, scientists, etc.) are buried here. I saw Beethoven's grave, Brahms, the Strausses, a Mozart memorial, WW1/WW2 German/Austrian memorials, and many more. Falco is also buried here, but I did not find where he was.




After visiting the cemetery, I walked to the Simmering district of Vienna to see the Hunderwasserhaus. This is some weird, artsy apartment complex. It was made non-standard (floors are different heights, windows are not level with each other, there's a variety of different colors, and there's even trees growing out of some of the apartments. The pictures pretty much explain it! There is also one of these in Plochingen, which is a Stuttgart suburb.

The next stop was one of Mozart's apartments. He lived in a bunch of different places in Vienna, but only this one is still around. He lived on the first floor (so the one above ground level), but the whole building is now a museum. It's kind of cool knowing I was in the same room where he wrote "The Marriage of Figaro" and many other pieces!



That night, I took the train to the Gasometer, also in the Simmering section. These are huge old gas storage tanks and they converted into a large shopping mall. I went to the theater and saw "Apacolypto." The film was still in the Mayan language, but the subtitles were in German.

The first stop the next day (the 31st) was the Hofburg palace, where Austria-Hungarian emperors lived. There were museums there about their dishes and china (I saw the Archduke's wine glasses [his assassination started WWI]) and lots of other stuff. After than museum, we were routed to a place about the Queen Elisabeth who was murdered in the late 1800's, and then we got to tour the palace rooms (the Royal Apartments) themselves. It was all very nice like in the movie "Amadeus," but they wouldn't let me take pictures!

For the rest of the afternoon, I pretty much just bummed around, looking at various statues and monuments and parks, but also scoping out the plan for the New Year's party that night. There were stages set up all over town and there was live music and stuff all afternoon and evening. By the town hall they even offered group Viennese Waltz lessons. I mainly watched the musicians (rock bands, small string groups, ethnic music, and even Austrians singing English karaoke!).

Fireworks are illegal most of the time in Germany and Austria, but it's legal for a few days around New Year's. Right after midnight, hell broke loose in that town! They didn't have a big organized show, it was the people in the streets (in the city center!) lighting off firecrackers, roman candles, and the ones that fly up in the air! After having firecracker go off right next to me and seeing a big firework explode on the ground in a group of people, I got out of there as fast as a I could! It looked like a war zone when I left.

New Year's morning, I went back to the town hall. Every year there is a large orchestra concert that takes place in Vienna. The tickets are always sold out a year in advance, but they had it on a big screen so I still got to see it. It's sort of a tradition in Europe, not as much so in the US because it would be at 5 AM there!

When the concert was over, I took a train over to Bratislava. It was about an hour away by train. On the way there, it was cold, drizzly, cloudy day. We rode past junk piles, dilapidated sheds, and communist block apartment buildings. It was a nice welcome to eastern central Europe! When I stepped off the train there, that was the first time I'd ever felt afraid in Europe. Not of crime or something, just because I was alone in a country were I had absolutely no idea about the language. French and Italian at least had some words that are similar to English or German, but not Slovak. Here's a language example: Vojaci sú vyrukavičkovaní a veliteľ je najnevyrukavičkovateľnejší! Somehow I managed to get 1000 SKK from an ATM (about 30€) and bought a tram ticket to go to the hostel. I actually made it on the first try!

At this hostel, there were actually friendly people around to hang around with. Everyone here I met was a native English speaker - me, a brother and sister from MN, and a girl from NY wandered around that night and went to a pub for dinner. Everything is much cheaper in Slovakia - I got a traditional dinner of sausage, bacon, cabbage, bread, and potatos with two glasses of beer for around 6€, which is super cheap, especially compared to Vienna!

The next morning, I went across the street to the Tesco supermarket (like a Czech/Slovak Meijers) and got some food. Then, the most important thing of the trip occurred: I finally found Mountain Dew! They also had Dr. Pepper. I bought some of both and took it back to Germany with me! I only had to go to Slovakia to get it...

I was only going to be in Bratislava for one day and it's not a huge, large city with tons of stuff for tourists, so I picked the Castle Bratislava, Michael's Gate, and the Town Museum. I ran into Ryan and Jocelyn while eating lunch on the Danube, and we went to the castle together. It's located on top of a hill where you can see the whole city. There was also a neat museum there with old Slovakian coins and such, some of which were from Roman times. The Danube served as the boundary between the Roman Empire and Germania. We could also see the communist apartment blocks in Petžalka across the river!

Michael's Gate is a tower in the city center that is the only remaining part of the old town wall. There is a statue on the top of the archangel Michael, hence the name. Inside there was a small but interesting museum of old medieval swords, clubs, and other newer weapons. There was a walkway around the top that offered really neat views of the city.





The City Museum in the old town hall was like a typical museum at first, but the coolest part was in the basement. The town's old dungeons were on display, along with torture instruments, execution axes, thumbscrews, balls on chains, medieval depictions of tortures and executions, and even dark stone pits like in Silence of the Lambs. It sounds really macabre, but it was really, really interesting! This part, however, was only written in Slovak so I couldn't read anything.

When I was making my travel arrangements in November, I overlooked the fact that I would have to get to the Vienna airport from Bratislava before 8:00 to catch my flight! Well, that meant I had to wake up at 4:15 in Bratislava! I was making OK time until I got to the S-Bahn in Vienna that wouldn't come for a half an hour, and then the ride took half and hour, and I only had one hour until the plane left! I ended up sharing a taxi with a Dutch guy in a similar situation and made my plane OK. I landed in Stuttgart and went home to shower and wear clean clothes!

Esslingen (December 27, 2006)

Complete Set of Photos

I was bored one day, so I decided to take the S-bahn to the neighboring Stuttgart suburb of Esslingen. This town is actually older than Stuttgart (it's about 1000 years old, I think) but did not end up as the biggest town. It's essentially just a residential suburb with vineyards around it. It's also situated on the Neckar River, which makes for some interesting architecture.



Many of the houses are the traditional half-timbered style as well. There are many old cathedrals and winding, cobblestone alleys. The town square has some fancy buildings, such as this red one here. This is the same place where the Esslingen Christmas Market is held, but now you can see pictures of it in the daytime!