skoda, castle and medieval pub

Today was a looooong day. The alarm went off at 7:00 and by 8:00 we were standing in front of the rectorate waiting for the bus. Todays bus was even older and more beat up than yesterdays, but our driver seemed much more aware of what was going on. Our first stop was the Skoda Museum. It was fun to see all of the old cars, and watch a video about how they're made, from start to finish. We were all starving though, so when it was time to move on, we were ready. Oh yeah, it was raining again, all day.

The next stop was another castle. It wasn't the one we had originally intented on going to, because it was raining and the other required a 5k hike over rocks to get there. It was really fun to see all of the leaves turning in the forest surrounding the camera. After a tour inside of the castle, we spent some time wandering around the outside of the castle grounds. I'll try to find the name of the castle sometime later. The last stop was to a medieval pub. If any of you have heard about Medieval Times in the states, it's the european version of that, where anything goes. They had mock witch burnings, fire dancers and eaters, people dancing on the tables and sword fighting. We arrived there at 6:00 and stayed for five hours. Dinner was of course, served without silverware, and chicken bones were to be thrown on the ground. All in all, the whole thing was pretty convincing.

pilsner urquell brewery

We met for the bus at 9:00 this morning and headed for Plzen, Czech Republic. This is the home of the Pilsner Urquell brewery. The bus ride there was interested. The rain made us uneasy about riding in an ancient coach bus, and the fact that the windshielf wipers kept falling off didn't make it any better. Watching the bus driver run around in the freeway trying to fix the situation made up for it all.

The tour of the brewery was nice, despite the rain. Seeing the bottling facility was particularly interesting for me, since material handling solutions is primarily what I worked on this summer. The tour lasted around an hour and a half and then we went to the cathedral and climbed up to the top using the sketchiest stairs ever. By this time, we were all pretty much read to move on and get back to Prague. After visiting a beer museum and then walking back to the bus in the rain, we had the chance to get off of our feet and get back to Prague.

All in all, it was a really fun day. I was glad I went on the trip, even though the rain made it a bit less enjoyable. Tonight we'll just rest and sleep early, because tomorrow at 7:30 we're leaving to go see some castles and a medieval tavern.

wandering continued, again

Let me preface this entry by saying that with all of the chaos, I haven't taken pictures of any of the orientation events. So all of the photos you see are from a four hour walking tour of Prague this afternoon.

The first half of orientation week has certainly taken a toll on all of us. Early mornings and late nights [read: early mornings] have meant not getting much sleep even after a very full day of walking, talking, meeting, registering, navigating, touring, shopping, etc, etc, etc. Monday began with a group meeting of all exchange students (400 of us). After the recieving a crash course in Czech survival, the rest of the week was laid out for us. This meeting, while informative, could have been a fourth as long.

We spent the rest of the day getting logistics figured out. We found a vodafone store and bought prepaid cell phones which was actually incredibly easy. The language barrier here is not nearly as difficult to overcome as in Zug or Weinheim. Tuesday was the day we were all dreading. Registering for classes here is a notoriously chaotic process. This year was no different. After three hours of literally just standing around for no apparent reason, a younger professor signed my course book and sent me packing. Huh, weird. Union will only accept certain credits from Czech Technical. One engineering credit comes from Advanced Strength of Materials, and various electives come from the other classes.

After this, we hurried to the registration office to get our student ID cards, so that we could get transportation passes. You get a number when you enter the building, and watch the screen for your turn. There was a 5 hour wait. Luckily, we figured this out the day before and made a reservation for noon, so we got right through. At 4:00, we had another group meeting; awesome. Four hours later, after the most outrageously unorganized free-for-all of a trip signup, we all left the building. Phew.

Today, we went on a long walking tour of the Prague Castle and everything else. It was a nice walk, and we got to see some things we may not have found otherwise. Admittedly, I didn't listen to a word the tour guide said, but kept busy taking pictures. I can't possibly describe all that we saw, so I'll let them do the talking.

Don't forget, you can view a larger version of the photo just by clicking on it.

settled in

We arrived in Prague a few days ago after 9 hours of train rides. You apparently haven't lived until you've hoofed it through the Frankfrut train station with 70lbs of gear with under a minute to get to your next train. Arriving in the Prague (Praha, here) train station, Jon's buddy, Lukas found us and delivered us to where we're staying.

In the past couple days, we've just been exploring and figuring out the public transportation system. Yesterday we happened upon an extreme sports exhibition. There we some pretty good bikers, skateboarders and scooterers (?).

The metro stops running at midnight, leaving us to find our way back last night by tram. After around 2 hours, we made it (and beat the people with little faith, insisting on walking). Orientation starts tomorrow, and it will surely be a busy day.

(The top photo is the view from our window, and the lower is the front door to our building and the bottom is at the pub we ate at last night.)

wandering continued

After visiting the supermarket again this morning, we spent the afternoon walking around Weinheim and taking pictures. The crisp, cool, sunny weather made it a great day for wandering.

lounging

Today was spent just resting and hanging around. The rain/hail was one and off all day, making biking tough. There really isn't much more to say, other than that it was good to catch up on some sleep.

frankfurt international motor show

Today, the alarm went off at 7:00 and after showers and breakfast, we made the 8:00 train to Frankfurt. This brought us to the doors of the show under an hour after they opened. We didn't know how important this was until later in the day. Hailed as one of the largest and most important auto shows in the world, the Frankfurt Auto Show (IAA) takes places on a huge campus of 10 halls. Not even these halls can contain the chaos that takes place daily for almost two weeks in September.

We spent all day walking methodically from one building to the next, snapping a combined total of nearly 1,000 photos. As the day went on, the halls got more and more crowded and uncomfotably hot. Luckily the size of the show forced more than a few trips outside.

Around 3:00, we stopped and had some food and then continued on. After becoming sufficiently lost in this complex of buildings (mapless, of course), we made our way to the exit only to find the single hall we hadn't visited. After convincing ourselves that we hadn't come all this way to leave after seeing almost everything, we entered. As it turned out, we had left the best for last. Already incredible cars, tuned by the worlds leading companies lined the walls and halls.

The train back went fast and after the bike ride back to the apt, we left with empty backpacks for the supermarket. This ride went quickly (all down hill), but the ride back was a bit longer. Leaving the supermarket, we quickly realized the two things had happened. The sun went down, and it started pouring. Oh well, we made it. Dinner time now.

zug to weinheim

Today was spent just traveling. After an early train to Zurich, we hopped on the ICE and took it to Weinheim, Germany. The train was a nice ride for a couple reasons. The ICE is a very comfortable train and the scenery (mostly vineyards) was great. We arrived at the train station in weinheim and after getting some help figured out where we were, and where we needed to be. About 45 minutes of hoofin' it later, we reached our final destination.

Tired from carrying 70lbs of stuff each (clothes, cameras, computers, etc for the next 4 months) around Weinheim, we went to the market in town for dinner and then called it a night early. To decent pictures to speak of. We were both far too tired to lug a camera anywhere.

zurich

We decided to go on a shorter trip today, as tomorrow could [and will] be a long day of traveling to Weinheim. We got on the 10:58 train to Zurich and spent the afternoon walking around. Being a warm, beautiful Saturday, it was pretty crowded and bustling with people. We didn't do any shopping (obviously), but had fun people watching and checking out the expensive shops and nice cars. We had a late lunch and started feeling pretty tired early, so we began walking back towards the train station.


With all of the activity in the city, there were a lot of cars. We had a good time looking, watching and taking pictures. In the station, some kid was pinned to the floor by security. We weren't sure what he was doing, but as Jon put it, "He clearly did too much of it." A few minutes later, an ambulance arrived and cuffed him. We watching him resist and struggle and yell before moving on to the find out when our train was.

lucerne

Today we caught up on some sleep, knowing that our planned destination, Lucerne (Luzern, here) was only 40 minutes away. Taking the train there was quick and easy. The Lucerne train station is pretty big and was a cool building in general (much like many of the other buildings there). The city was much bigger than Zug and it quickly became clear that it was geared more towards tourists. We felt right at home. We picked a place to end up that was on the outskirts of town and started walking. We had planned on going to the Swiss Transportation Museum, so that's where we were headed. We walked across the Kapellbrücke bridge towards the end of town. This bridge connected the banks of the juntion between the Reuss River and Vierwaldstättersee (Lucerne Lake).


Following the lake, watching a geese (huge), dogs and other people, we finally came upon the big IMAX building (connected the the museum). The museum had all sorts of examples of early trains, plane and automobiles (fine, fine, bikes as well). The obvious favorite was the automobiles, but walking through the old trains and planes was pretty fun, as was riding a scooter around the entire museum. The lack of scenic pictures is made up for by the sweet cars. The above photo is of the Luzern Art Museum. Not a very visually appealing photo, but you can see the cool building.

P.S. I've found a new way to host pictures. You can click on the photos for a link to a higher resolution version. If you're interested in even larger resolution, let me know.

st. moritz

Today we decided to get up early and go visit St. Moritz. This meant a 4 hour train trip through the alps. We went ahead and bought Swiss Youth Passes knowing that we'd be using the train and buses around town for the next four days plenty to make it worthwhile. We took a standard train to Chur, where we switched to a smaller, single level train on narrower tracks for tighter corners. This was nice because we could slide the windows down in order to take pictures. This trip lasted 2 hours and was pretty incredible.


We wished we could have taken more pictures, but the old man behind us didn't like when the window was down (too loud, I suppose). Anyway, after arriving in St. Moriz, we were a little unimpressed. As a town, it was pretty scattered and that made walking through it difficult. We did some wandering and went pretty high up, where we found some insane houses. After lunch (note to self: panini = sandwhich here), we did some more walking and ended up at the train station at around 5:00. We spent the next 4 hours on the train back where we thought we might have good later afternoon light for photos, but as it turns out, the shadows cast by the Alps made it difficult to find uniform light anywhere. That was it. We got to the train station in Zug, got some dinner and walked back to Reidmatt. Here are a couple photos taken from the train (above), and one of where we're living (below).

wandering

Well, we spent today just wandering around Zug and getting a feel for how everything worked. Most people here don't speak english. Chances are though, that a younger person will know a little bit, enough to help you if you need it. We biked into town then spent the afternoon hiking around, taking pictures, going to the bank and getting some groceries.


We pretty much covered the entire city on foot. At around 5:00 we got on a bus for the first time (german only ticket machines make things difficult) and manage to reach our destination (where we needed to switch buses, from 6 to 11). Shortly after boarding the 11 bus towards Annette's house, she spotted us and hopped on the bus to grab us off. She had been shopping. We drove to her house, which was about 15 minutes outside of Zug.

Her place was incredible. The view she had of the mountains was like something off of a postcard. She made us "Swiss Pizza" and we sat and talked to her and her neighbor until about 10:00, when we finally made the long journey back to Reidmatt (where we're staying). Above are photos from Zug and Annette's house.

a long first day

Today (and yesterday, I suppose) were spent traveling to Zug, Switzerland. I left MSP international at 9:25pm on Monday and arrived in Amsterdam, Netherlands at just before 1:00pm local time. After hanging around the Amsterdam airport a little bit, browsing the endless supply of duty free shops, and wondering why on earth there isn't a single bench/chair to be seen, I made my way to my gate. At 3:30, my flight left Amsterdam and arrived in Zurich an hour and a half later. A 40min train ride to Zug left me in the middle of town, where I caught a taxi to my final destination.

After a quick stroll around town (quick enough to realize that walking to dinner would take forever), Jon and I hopped on bikes and rode just 2mi into town where we ate at a small pizza shop overlooking Zug Lake and a very large birdcage (expect pictures of this later).