Snow, and a haircut

Fun stuff has been happening this past week. One: I gathered up all my courage, and got a haircut from a German! It was scary, but it came out well and now it doesn't take forever to wash and dry my hair. Two: it snowed a couple days ago and a couple days before that! Pretty thick too, at least thick enough to get in your eyes as you are riding down Plock (a road for bikes where we can ride really fast). It only stuck on the ground for a little bit during the night, and it was on some cars and the roofs of buildings. Nothing to write home about, so stop reading this, quick!

London

I can see it all over the London papers:

'Geekiest moment in history: 21 year old anonymous male runs up to platform 9 3/4 at the King's Cross Station and puts his backpack and jacket in a trolley that is half-embedded into the wall and pretends to walk through it, all the while giggling uncontrollably and trying to speak in a British accent.'

As you can probably guess, that was me, and I felt like a goof, but not for the first time and certainly not the last.

Last weekend I went on another excursion with my fellow band of travelers who went to Paris with me last month: Jenna, Rachel, Jim, and Jeff. We went to London via Ryanair, a cheap airline here in Europe. On Thursday, the 6th, we caught the Hahn Express (an inexpensive charter bus) to the Frankfurt Hahn airport and it was a 2 hour drive to the airport. It is a very small airport because it used to be a military airport, but now serves Ryanair and other cheap airlines. It was fun because we had to walk right up to the plane and go up the stairs into the plane rather than most airports that have an enclosed walkway to the plane. Since Ryanair is so cheap, the airline makes cuts on certain things like luggage amount, free food, leg room, and assigned seats. We had to just run in and grab a seat, and luckily we were all together, but it was very cramped and I was very glad that the flight was only an hour long.

We took off from Frankfurt at 11:40 pm, and got to London Stansted at 11:50 pm (The U.K. is in a different time zone than the rest of Europe). Once we got there, we had to go through customs and we were questioned and scrutinized, but finally allowed to pass. By this time, it was really late and we were in danger of missing the last bus to get to our hostel. We got on it ok, but it was also really cramped and BOILING hot (the driver had the heat on way too high and refused to turn it down) and we had an hour drive into downtown London. Once we got there, we had to walk for an hour to get to our hostel. We got there at about 3:30 AM, and fell into our beds exhausted.

We woke up Friday morning at about 8, had breakfast at the hostel, and then went to the Wellington Arch to meet up with our first free guided tour. It was a beautiful, sunny day and our tour guide asked us if we could name that bright thing in the sky. He said that we were really lucky to have the sun because it rains so much in London. The tour was the same company that did my free tour in Berlin, and it was really great. We went on the Royal London tour which took us to: Hyde Park Corner, Buckingham Palace (the queen was IN!), The Changing of the Guard, Churchill's War Cabinet Bunker, The Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Trafalgar Square, Nelson's Column, Wellington Arch, St. Jame's Park, Horseguards, Whitehall, Big Ben, and some more. It was a 3 hour tour and when it was done our group split up and did separate things. Jim and Rachel changed into nice clothes and went to a fancy place for afternoon tea. Jeff went walking around by himself, and Jenna and I went and got lunch and then went on the London Eye, the largest ferris wheel in the world. It is not really a ride, as it is so slow that you can barely tell you are moving. It is 135 meters high, and it takes about 40 minutes to ride it. Each pod fit about 20 people and it had amazing views of ALL of London, and we got some great pictures. After that, we all met at the Royal Festival Hall for the London Philharmonic concert that we had tickets for. Our seats were right behind the orchestra, in the choir seats. It was amazing because we were really close to the musicians, and we got to see the director really well and it felt like WE were the ones he was directing to. They played Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 2 and Tchaikovsky's Suite No.3. This was by far the best concert I have ever been to, partly because of the location, the music, and where our seats were, but it was also just incredibly performed. After the concert, we headed back to our hostel and went to bed tired and beat.

The next day, Saturday, we got up at about 8 again, had breakfast (which was in our hostel again, and we basically just went into a kitchen and grabbed whatever we wanted; cereal, milk, toast, etc.). The weather on Saturday was drastically different than Friday. It was POURING rain most of the day, and we got soaked even when we were using our umbrellas. We went to the meeting place of our tour at 10 AM, and took our second free guided tour of the Old City of London. In this tour we saw: St. Paul's Cathedral, London Bridge, Tower Bridge, The Tower of London, Shakespeare's Globe Theater, The Millennium Bridge (The Wobbly Bridge), The Church of the Knights Templar, Mansion House, World War II Blitz, Convent Garden, HMS Belfast, and some other stuff that is lesser known. Despite the cold and all the rain, this was a much better tour than Friday because our guide (Paul, or "Pool" as he said it) was funny and more entertaining. He even made our whole tour group sing "London Bridge is Falling Down" when he was giving us the history of all the London Bridges. When the tour was over, Jim, Jenna, Rachel and I went to do some of the really touristy things while Jeff met up with a friend. We went to find the largest bookstore in Europe (Waterstone's) so that Jim and I could buy the original version of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. We got there, to find that it didn't have the book in hardback! Baffled, we were referred to another large bookstore a block away, and there we were able to find exactly what we wanted, and what's more, the bookstore was the one that the queen goes to, supposedly. So after Jim and I were satisfied sufficiently geeked out, we all went to the Hard Rock Cafe for lunch. From there we went to Harrod's, the HUGE (to put it mildly) mall, store, thing to buy some souvenirs. Everything was really expensive so I didn't get anything, but Jim and Rachel bought some stuff for some of their friends.
From there we hopped on the London Underground, or "The Tube" (which, by the way, was the way we got around the whole weekend, and it was really fun and easy). We decided to go to the Baker's Street station to pay tribute to a personal hero of mine: Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who lived on 221b Baker Street. Rachel is also a big Sherlock Holmes fan, so we had a lot of fun taking pictures next to all the Baker Street signs, and ALL over the station there were Sherlock Holmes silhouettes on the walls, and there was a huge statue of Holmes outside the station on Baker Street. It was really fun, and you can see more in the picture album I will have on facebook. From there we went to the King's Cross station to seek out Platform 9 3/4, the famous platform from Harry Potter. Now, platforms 9 and 10 are not next to each other like they are in the movie; that is, there are two tracks between them, so the Harry Potter tourist site of Platform 9 3/4 is in the general area, but not exactly between the two, but close enough for us geeks. From there, we split up and Jenna and I went to Shakespeare's Globe theater so that I could call myself my mother's son, but it had closed! So I was unable to to buy anything, sorry mom! At least I got to walk around the building.... By that time we were so exhausted that we went back to the hostel and we all went to bed at 9 because we had to get up early the next morning.
Sunday morning, at 3:30, we took a cab from our hostel to the bus stop. It was so much fun to ride on the other side of the road! And taking the bus to the airport was trippy because the slow lane on the freeway was all the way on the left. Weird. We then had an uneventful flight back to Frankfurt, and then the 2 hour bus ride back to Heidelberg, getting home at about 12:30 pm, exhausted. It was fun though, and I highly recommend London.
Here is the link to my Facebook album: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2068865&id=56902422

Berlin

I took a train to Berlin last Thursday through Saturday. I went with two of my roommates, and our main reason for going was to see the Berlin Philharmonic. On Friday, we went on a free walking tour of Berlin, and it was great because our guide was really funny and it was a nice long tour and free! I tipped him of course, because he deserved SOME kind of pay. In the tour we saw pretty much all the big sights in Berlin: the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, the Holocaust memorial, parts of the Berlin wall, Checkpoint Charlie, Humbolt University, the site of the book burnings during the 1930s, and we also stood on the spot where Hitler's bunker is still burried 6 meters below ground. You know, the place where he committed suicide after WWII. It was great.

That evening we went to our concert at Philharmonic hall, and it was spectacular. I have never heard such a perfect performance. I wish I was more familiar with the pieces that they played (an English Violin concerto and a 5 movement piece by Bartok) but I enjoyed it nonetheless. The bass trombone player had a little solo in the Bartok piece; it was a big, weird sounding gliss and it was very comical, and the other trombones immitated it. It was just funny to hear. What made the evening interesting was that we had been having dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe, and we were late in getting back to our hostel to change, and so once we had our nice clothes on, we had to RUN to the performance hall, nice dress shoes and all. It was crazy, and we were all out of breath and sweaty once we took our seats. Not so fun, but once we calmed down, we were able to enjoy the music. 

So the next day, Saturday, was our travel day and I am glad that we decided to see Berlin on Friday because Friday was the beautiful, clear, sunny day but Saturday was very cloudy, gloomy, and cold! We were so glad to leave that behind us as we got on our first train (the first of 5 trains to get back). We had this cheap group ticket that got us back to Heidelberg for only 11 euros each, but the catch was that we had to take several different trains and we had to exchange trains 4 times and sometimes in the middle of nowhere. That was kind of weird because a couple times we had to wait about 20 minutes in a completely deserted train station, save the few people who were waiting with us. We were nervous about our train not showing up or us missing it or something because we had no idea how we would get back if that happened. Luckily our trains were all there on time and we had no mishaps, just 10 hours of sitting on trains...

Paris

I went to Paris this weekend (hence the Eiffel Tower as my main picture), and I just got back. Four friends and I rented a car (my roommate has an international driver's license) and we drove there Thursday afternoon. We had a GPS unit, but it wasn't updated so it could only get us TO Paris, but nowhere specific, so I was the official navigator, or the "NAGivator" as I called myself because there was a LOT of this going on all weekend. I am selling the rights soon.

So here's what we did:

Thursday: Checked into hotel in the evening in a city next to Paris, went to McDonalds (this wasn't YOUR trip), drove to the Eiffel tower and took lots of night pictures and then we went up it. It was amazing to see Paris at night from the Tower!! And the beams of light that shine from it like a lighthouse look like giant blue Lightsabers. We also got to see a cool light show (a bunch of flashing white lights on the Tower that made it look like it was sparkling) at 10 pm and 12 pm. We got back to our hotel at about 1:30 AM.

Friday: Drove to Notre Dame in the morning, had breakfast (the best crepes ever!) next to it and then went inside and out around it in the gardens. Then we walked around the island that Notre Dame is on, looking in souvenir shops and stuff, then we went to the Arc de Triumph. Jim (our driver) had a lot of fun in the CRAZY traffice that circles the Arc, and we were all breathing pretty hard when we finally parked to walk up to it and take pictures. Then we went and had a picnic lunch at a lawn near the Eiffel Tower and we fed some birds there. It was a BEAUTIFUL day, and you should look at my facebook album I will  be putting up soon. Anyway, then we went up the Tower (again) but here's the fun part: WE. WALKED. UP. THE. STAIRS. You read me right. We walked up the Eiffel tower. Just relax, we didn't hike all the way, just up to the second floor (or third if you are thinking of it in American talk). But it was still 710 steps. Oh, and we saved about 5 euros. Ok, so we got done with that, took pictures and stuff, but it was really crowded and it took us forever to get up and down, so we had to walk quickly to get to our next stop: the Louvre, about 2 1/2 miles away. Once there, we got in for free because if you are under 26, you get in free on Friday nights from 6PM to 9:45PM. We walked around for 3 hours, and then we were so tired but hadn't eaten dinner yet so we asked a guy who worked at the Louvre where the Hard Rock Cafe is (I had been there before, but didn't remember, and it was a spur of the moment thing so I didn't have time to look it up) and he told us where. Problem was, the place where he told us it was was nowhere near the actual place, so we spent a long time driving around and asking people, so we settled on a fast food place at about 11pm. We were all pooped.

Saturday: we went to the Palace of Versailles. We got there at 11 AM and stayed till 5:30. We got audio guides which were really cool for the inside part of the palace. Way better than having a guide with a heavy French accent, like some groups had and I tried to listen but couldn't understand them. We ate lunch there too which was great, and I had the Napolitaine pizza. We also went to the Grand Trianon (a "smaller" palace on the grounds of Versailles) and the Petite Trianon (estate of Marie Antoinette). We ended our time there with a fountain show at the Neptune fountain. We then drove back to our hotel, got dressed up and went out to a pretty nice restaurant and had AMAZING food. Then we wanted to drive mast the Moulin Rouge, and on our way, we happened to glance at the Eiffel tower, and the whole thing was blue! (see above picture) It was incredible, and the most beautiful blue ever. Definitely a treat. We finally made it to the Moulin Rouge, but on the way had to drive past a bunch of bad stores and clubs, so that wasn't so fun. 

Today, Sunday: We checked out of our hotel at 11 am and went to the Hard Rock Cafe (found a flyer in our hotel) and then drove home. We got to go really fast at some parts because certain parts of the Autobahn don't have a speed limit. Don't worry mom, Jim was very safe and only did it for a couple seconds.

Austria: Vienna and Salzburg.

So as the post before says, I went to Austria last week. Well, I am back and alive, even though almost everyone in our group got really sick, and now I am sick, but getting better. I have decided that it is way too hard to post a lot of pictures on blogspot AND give descriptions of each one, so I just made a facebook album about my trip and here is the link:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2066063&id=56902422

Also, the picture that is at the top of my blog is in the album, but just in case you wanted to know, it is a church in Vienna.

Traveling...

So, I am going to Austria Wednesday morning and I will be there until Sunday morning. Therefore, there will be no posts till then. We are going to be staying on night in Salzburg and three nights in Vienna. Here is some of an email that our program director sent us about some of the stuff that we are going to be doing there:

Mozart's Birthplace in Salzburg (Mozart Geburtshaus)
Vienna State Opera (Guided Tour)
Musikverein Wien (concert with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra on Friday night)
Mozarthaus (Domgasse 5, Wien) This is the location of two of the most remarkable meetings in the history of music: where Haydn heard three of the string quartets Mozart dedicated to him and after which Haydn told Mozart's father, Leopold, that his son is the greatest composer he has ever known. The second is when the 16 year-old Beethoven came to ask Mozart if he could study with him and performed for him.
Haydn House (Haydngasse 19, Wien)
Zentralfriedhof (Central Cemetery where Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Hugo Wolf, Johann Strauß--younger and elder--, Schönberg, Salieri, Zemlinksy, von Suppé, Krenek, Bösendorder and Hanslick are buried)

I'm very happy to be able to tell you that our trip coincides with "The Long Night of the Museums" (Der lange nacht der Museen) on Saturday night in Vienna. This is an excited event: all museums in Vienna are open from 6 p.m. to 1 a.m. on Saturday night--one ticket and you can see any (and all) museum you want.

HDR (High Dynamic Range) pictures

Here are a couple pictures courtesy of my friend Jim Wang who is into photography and is learning how to use HDR techniques. Simple explanation is, you take a few pictures with different exposures and you blend them all together and do other magical things. Both these pictures are taken from the Heidelberg castle about 300 steps up behind where I live.