Sidebar

Some may not have noticed the little things in my sidebar to the right, so for them, I’d just like to explain a little. This is all Web 2.0 stuff, which sounds much more intimidating than it is.

Up at the top where it says “My Events” is an RSS feed for the events I’ve listed on Upcoming.org that I’ll be going to. For all of you who know me in real life, I suggest making an account and adding me as a friend so we can all see what concerts/shows we are either “watching” or know that we’re going to. It’s a pretty cool idea and the site implements RSS feeds very well.

Second, under “Music” I have a window showing my most recently played tracks in iTunes through last.fm, a sort of social music site where you can find other people with the same tastes in music. Pretty cool (and free) so another thing to add me as a friend if you’re up to it.

Third, I have my 10 most recent del.icio.us posts. Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site which lets you see who else has bookmarked the same things as you, but also is convenient for accessing your bookmarks from anywhere.

Fourth are the archives, which are simply just archives of blog posts.

Fifth, under “Blogroll,” is my list of links to my other sites and to my friends sites (check em out).

Sixth are the categories I list my posts under.

Seventh is my 10 most recent Flickr photos. Flickr is a social photography site in which you can look at other peoples pictures, comment on them, create groups or pools, etc. It would take too long to list all the cool things you can do with Flickr.

And lastly, my hits and my calendar of posts.

Get out there and discover the revolution which is Web 2.0.

Technorati Tags: del.icio.us, flickr, rss

Basel: July 12

I woke up at about ten a.m., ate some breakfast, packed my bags, and I was off to the train station. I had a lot of fun with both Tessa and Moritz, and I miss them both sorely. But I’m sure we’ll all get together again as soon as possible, with Jen too (another Japan exchange student from NY).

Then another ten hours on the train and I was back in Florence by nine p.m.

Basel: July 11

6 a.m.

Finally back in Basel and time to go back to sleep…

3:30 p.m.

I slept almost the entire day away, but since it’s summer, dark won’t be coming around anytime soon!
I borrowed Robert’s swim trunks to go swim in the Rhine with Tessa and her friend that I met during the sausage roast, Julie. But first we had to wait for a good forty-five minutes in the Basel SBB train station to buy my tickets back home to Florence.

We got to the Rhine, put our bags on the lawn, and headed into the river. It was freezing cold, despite it being so hot out, and the current was unusually strong to me. I was dizzy when I got out of the water to find out that Julie’s bag had gone missing! We went right over to the police station to report it, and sure enough, the next day they found it.

We just relaxed for the few hours left after eating kebab’s at the edge of the Rhine for dinner. There wasn’t too much else to do, but it was very nice nonetheless.

Munich: July 11

2 a.m.

Time to switch trains.

Munich: July 10

The last day in Munich. Today was the day for a bit of shopping. Tessa went off on her own to shop while Moritz and I went to find some cool clothes as well. I went and got myself and official Germany World Cup jersey and a nice corduroy jacket while Moritz got a jacket and a few shirts for himself. At around four we headed down to the train station to see Moritz off. Tessa and I both missed him a lot, he’s a really fun guy. But we’ll all see each other again soon.

Tessa and I were dead tired from all of the walking we did in the past two days combined with the heat, so we went and saw “Over the Hedge” in English at the nearest cineplex. Afterwards we just wandered around, killing time until our train was due to arrive at ten p.m.
We found a nice place to sit outside of the Residence to just sit and relax for a while. We knew we had a long night ahead of us.

It was time to catch our train so we went back to the station and got a nice little room on the end of the train where we would spend a good four hours.

Munich: July 9

None of us awakened before twelve in the afternoon, which was perfectly fine with me, but we definitely needed some lunch.
We managed to pull ourselves out of bed and go to the only grocery store open in Munich on a Sunday next to the train station to buy lunch and bring it to the English Gardens to eat.

Once our lunch was finished, we went to the beer hall of the world, the Hofbrauhaus. It’s so famous that they made an exact copy of it in Las Vegas.

The Residence of the old Bavarian king wasn’t very far away, so we decided to take a look around in there and not only was there pretty cool artwork from around the time of Napoleon Bonaparte, but the royal jewels were there as well. They were truly magnificent and shiny beyond belief.

It came time for dinner and we all ate good German food (although since I ate wienershnitzel, I technically ate Austrian food). But we needed to eat it fast since it was almost time for the final World Cup game to start. We even found a karaoke bar that would have karaoke right after the game! So off we went to an Irish Pub in the middle of Munich where I discovered first hand how horrible Guiness beer really is. The game was disappointing because, although I was living in Florence, Italy, I was rooting for the french to win. It was also sad to see Zidane, one of the world’s greatest football players at one time for the french team, end his career with a red card for head-butting the italian Maserati.

All that aside, however, the karaoke was a lot of fun. Moritz sang first with “My Way” by Frank Sinatra, the Tessa sang “Wonderwall” by Oasis, and then I sang “Californication” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. It was great fun, although I was a little bit nervous to go up there at first.

Again, we caught the last train home and got some well deserved sleep.

Munich: July 8

Tessa and I barely made our early morning train, but we boarded with just minutes to spare. We had to leave early if we didn’t want the day in Munich to be wasted.

We arrived in the late afternoon and checked into our hostel, which was much nicer than I thought it would be. Just as we were heading back to the lobby, Moritz walked through the hallway! I hadn’t seen Moritz for as long as I hadn’t seen Tessa; he was another exchange student at our same high school in Japan. Now we were all together and ready to go out enjoying what Munich had to offer.

We all went to the famous English Gardens right in the middle of Munich which also had the beer garden in Germany, if not the world, where we ate dinner and had good German beer.

We all had one liter glasses of some of the best beer I’ve ever had in my life along with traditional German food such as a big hunk of roasted pork leg and a giant pretzel, and the not-so-German food which consisted of spare ribs and french fries.
I pretended to drink like a German at one point.

But the truth was more along the lines of this.

Afterwards we headed off to the Olympic stadium to watch the third place World Cup game between Germany and Portugal. It was fun being in a gigantic crowd of people all watching the enormous television and rooting for Germany to win. The mood was electric to say the least.

Germany won easily three to one, causing all of Munich to gather in the streets and celebrate. It was a gathering like none I’d ever seen before.

But soon we became tired and some Pizza Hut sounded very good. So we ate a huge pizza and then started asking policemen if they knew any good places to sing karaoke. This wasn’t a decision on a whim, one of our goals was to sing karaoke together again like we did so many times in Japan. I was astounded by how nice the policemen were. They would gladly help us find a good bar for karaoke, even while this enormous crowd was celebrating right in front of them. Unfortunately, because of the game there was no karaoke so we decided to look the next night.

At that point we were dead tired, so we took the last subway back to our hostel at two a.m. and climbed into our bed, not to awaken for at least ten hours.

Basel: July 7

My stomach ailment had gone away by the morning, so I could finally eat again! Two days was the usual length of time for it to dissipate.

We didn’t do very much in the morning that day, but towards the evening Tessa and I hiked up to the ruins of a medieval castle where we were to meet two of her friends and roast sausages, a very typical Swiss outing. After about one and a half km of hiking, we made it up to the top of the ruins. The actual castle was in France, but over the edge we could see Switzerland and the mountains in the background beyond were Germany.

Then was the arduous task of collecting and breaking firewood. But it was well worth it for the delicious traditional Swiss sausages we ate. But by the time it became dark, it started to shower again so we headed back home.

Basel: July 6

I get a bit sick when traveling to different places; it feels a lot like someone tickling me from the inside of my stomach. I can understand if that’s a tad hard to imagine because this is certainly no normal stomach ache. Some people carry stress in their neck or back; I carry it in the pit of my stomach. Luckily, there isn’t much pain involved in this predicament, just lack of eating, which in turn causes me to become tired rather quickly.

Nonetheless, it had stopped raining in the middle of the night and I was off with Tessa to see the sites in the morning. We took the world’s longest narrow rail train (long in terms of distance) into the city and started walking around. Our first stop was a music store so I could get an idea of what Swiss music was like. I was surprised to see such a variety of music in German and French, as well as their Swiss variations, and English.

Next Tessa took me to see the Tanguili fountain in the middle of the city.

Tanguili is famous for creating works of art out of materials he found in junkyards and then adding motors to the pieces to make them move in interesting ways. The fountain moved of its own accord, spraying water in this way and that way, all the while keeping a certain rhythm and unique motion that gave it aesthetically pleasing qualities. All of the pieces were individual, yet came together as one when put in perspective.

Afterwards we went to the Munster church, which is famous for its spectacular colored tile roof. At this point I needed a bit of rest due to lack of being able to eat, so we sat in a park behind the church for a little while overlooking the Rhine, a river that rises in the Swiss Alps and flows for 820 miles to the North Sea, forming the German–Swiss border. A little later we got up and took a ferryboat across the river. However, this ferry boat had no motor in it, it went back and forth across the river while attached to a cable which prevented it from being pulled downstream by the current.

I was so impressed by the Tanguili fountains, that I decided I wanted to see the Tanguili museum, which Tessa (and my father) recommended I see. The museum was a lot of fun because each installation had a button to step on which would make it move. One installation in particular was very interesting, although it was not done by Tanguili. This installation was called “Instant City” and it was cool because it consisted of a light sensitive table, translucent blocks, and ambient speakers. Depending upon where you put each block, where they were placed in relation to each other, and how many were placed either on top or next to each other, different sounds would be generated from a composition created by a composer of one’s choice. It was fun simply placing blocks on the table and finding out how to make a certain sound. We even placed them like dominos to see how it might change the sound!

It had started to shower a little so we decided to head home and eat a little dinner before attending a children’s circus. When I arrived home I met Tessa’s family and the exchange student Robert, from Syracuse, NY, who was staying with them. I had not met them the day before because they were staying in Berlin. After dinner, Robert, Tessa, and I headed into the city again to see the circus. This circus was small, but it was very interesting and fun. Every performer was from eleven to seventeen years old and the tricks they performed were incredibly professional looking.

By the time it was over we all were pretty wiped out so we headed back to the house. But before the train reached our stop, we decided to ride it all the way to the end of the line and then back again, which wasn’t very far, but we went in and out of France twice in the process.

Basel: July 5

I seem to bring rain wherever I go. Not metaphorically of course, but literally; it’s just a minor annoyance I have to go through when traveling to different places.

I arrived in the main Basel train station (Basel SBB) at around eight p.m. on Wednesday, July fifth coming from Florence connecting in Milan. Although, I would have been there an hour earlier if my train from Florence to Milan wasn’t forty-five minutes late. Luckily for me, the train from Milan to Basel runs every hour, so I only had to wait in the station for about twenty minutes. After two weeks of sunshine and heat in Switzerland, it began to rain and hail just as my train was halfway through the country. Lightning, thunder, the whole nine yards.

Upon arriving in Basel I was greeted by Tessa, who was the reason I was going there in the first place. Tessa and I met in Japan on the exchange program we were on. We both went to the same Japanese high school, although I was only there for three months while she was there for ten. We’ve been planning to get together ever since I left Japan in June of last year.

Tessa invited me to stay at her home while I was in Basel, so we headed right to her house in a small town outside of Basel on the border of France. It was getting late when we arrived so we reminisced on old times for a little while before getting some sleep. I was tired after being on trains for ten hours.