The city of Monopoly Money

We got to Budapest by train and once we got off the train, three different "taxi" drivers asked me right away if I needed a taxi. When the first one asked me i just thought it was a nice geusture but after the second and third time I knew these guys were hustlers.

Ferdi had a master plan where everyone got a bus/subway ticket and we take a bus to the place. turned out the buses in Hungary only come once every 30 min or so. While we were waiting I got really uneasy about scams and theft. Ive never felt so uneasy about something like that, not even in NYC, and I think that is saying a lot coming from me.

We ended up walking after waiting around for about on hour while people got/exchanged cash, got train tickets, and oriented themselves. I wanted to take a taxi really bad but Ferdi had his plan.

We ended up walking to the hotel because no one wanted to wait that long. I dont blame them.

Hungary is a part of the EU but is not on the Euro as of now (hopefully by 2010 someone told me) so $1 = 209 ft. Basically Im a 22 year old millionaire. I knew it would happen eventually but I was hoping it would be in American money.

Once we got to the place I straight up passed out. After a night where I only got 20 minuets of sleep all I wanted to do was sleep. I found my bed and then I was dead to the world for about 3 hours.

The place we are staying is a hostel with bunks. The 9 guys are in one room, with beds seperated by walls and curtains. The place has a small common room with 3 couches and some guide books and games (chess cards etc). The beds are comfy though. I got the bottom bunk with

When I woke up it was close to dinner time. Close enough that I only had time to shower and get ready and then we were there. The walk there was a great line through the city because I'm pretty sure we saw a lot of the bigger attractions. The opera house is only like 500' from our hostel.

Vienna-Budapest Train

Yesterday morning we had to catch a train to Budapest early in the morning. Miami Vice by the end of the night had gotten a little crazy so i had stayed up late to help out Lovett who got sick and cut his finger. August and I basically played nurse with him because he couldnt function. As a result I ended up with 20 min of sleep that night. Also I only had like 15 min to pack my bag in the morning so I ended up leaving my shampoo in the hotel room.

Rough

We all had a nice quiet walk to the train because a lot of the people who went out were hurting because we had to wake up so early. I had my headphones on for most of the time because I was awfully cranky and I didnt want to end up taking it out on someone.

On the train, the group got seperated into two groups which was ok by me because I sat in a coach closed room with Nick, Roc, Brick, Trav, and August. Most of the time we talked about the previous night, recapping all the events and touching on the most hillarious parts of the night. Sleeping was tough because the sun was beating down on the train, making the small room what seemed to be 100 degrees. also there was pretty much no leg room since the room was situated with three seats facing each other so Travis and I tried relaxing by just putting our knees against each other. It worked okay for a while but then we just got too stiff since the ride was about 2 hours. All in all it was a good train ride.

Vienna was awesome. In the sceme of things I would put it as my number 2 favorite European city behind Amsterdam, but that could be because I had such a good time there. Highlights were definatly the Summer Palace, the Dom tower we went up, Club Felx, the Wolfgang bar we found, and Augusts adventures in the city.

Budapest, whatchu got for us?

Danube testing round two

I'm on a train to Budapest right now and I can't sleep unlike the 5 other guys in the train room. Luckily I have this app on my phone to keep me occupied. On of the best $2 I have ever spent.

Yesterday was a very long day so I didn't get a chance to write anything about what we did. First we got going at around 8 am and we had gone out the night before until 6 am so this didn't feel exactly great but not bad. We were going to meet with the department of the government that tests the bathing areas in Vienna, which is pretty impressive that Ferdi could line something like that up. The people knew English and gave a presentation on the regulation and how the EU will be getting more strict on the regs soon. It was a pretty good presentation but I have noticed that pretty much everywhere in Vienna, air conditioning is not used, including this place. It was a hot day too so the place got really stuffy.

After two presentations they showed us their whole facility. It was like a 5 story building with about 3 labs on each floor. Most of the microbiological stuff that they talked about was pretty far over my head but I could follow along. Absorbing the knowledge is a totally different story. Mostly they bowed us the different ways they have for testing (water samples, fish, stuff like that).

After the rest of the tour we went outside for some group photos because this as going to be some kind of publicity for the organization (MA 39). We took cabs to this place where is one of the most popular vacation spots in Vienna. The name of the place tranlates to Goode Island and it has been around for like 100 years. We get there and it's like the skies opened up and shows us the way.

It was so sunny out and we were surronded by every type of pool immaginable. Wave pool, lap pool, natural water, kiddie pool with flow valves, and that wasn't even the best part. They gave us free lunch and then we listened to the manager talk about the history of the place.

It was cool but we were all dying hot and wanted to go swimming. First the goverent people wants to show us how they tested water and get some photos again. After that we were starting to get antsy becuase it as like 80 degrees out. That's web the managaer hooked us up and allowed us to use lockers, go on the climbing course, a bunch of post cards, and stay all day for free.

Me august roc justin travis and lovett jumped on the climbing course first and it's a good thing too because it was pretty difficult, even for us. It was wicked fun but I was cautious because of my shoulder. The guy that was training us was named manuel and e was ok at English but we had to help him along. The climbing oil about 3 hours because there were some really young girls on the course ahead of us. The obstacles were either a balance thing or a zip line called "the flying fox". By the end of the course we were dying of dehydration, sweaty, and super hot. We took so long that when we got to the swimming areas, every other person in the group was getting ready to leave. We stayed until around 8 and tried out the water and some vollyball. The water was so nice after the climb that we didn't want to leave.

When we got back to the hotel, we got ready to go out one last time. We started drinking in the hotel but once we got too loud we headed out. We went to this place called Miami Vice which was a total dive bar but it was fun and of course good beer.

Danube and wine tasting

Today we started our testing of different rivers. We went down to the area of the Danube that is commonly know for swimming and took some samples. Each group is responsible for one of the locations that we are going to be at for a group and the Rachael, Taylor, Lovett group was responsible for testing today.

We went swimming a little bit, some more than others. I went in up to my neck but my shoulder was still bothering me so I took it easy. We all sat there and talked to some Turkish young men who shared some of their tea. After swimming we split up the group and started trying to get people to take our survey.

Surveying was an interesting task because we had to try to ask people, most of which didn't speak a lick of English, to answer these questions for our random American survey. Not to mention Ferdi kept telling us that the perception of America is not good in Austria. The only thing that saved us was that the survey was both in English and German. Still I had some interesting experiences.

I was in a group with Stacey, Gary, Abe, Dana, and Elizabeth but somehow it seemed like i was the only one who encountered people that just talked German. I had a couple ask me about 6 questions and I just gave them the blank stare back but for some reason they still took the survey. One guy I asked was a close talker and didn't speak English. Now this doesn't sound to bad because everyone has encountered some close talkers in their life but when you have no idea what they are saying to you right in your face, its a bit awkward. Eventually the guy said America and I was just happy that he wasn't telling me off. I'm pretty sure that all the guy could say was "thank you" and "good" in English because once he found out I was American he just kept saying thank you and shaking my hand and laughing.... sounds like something I would to if I was trying to talk to a German person. The best part about that guy is that he still wouldn't take my survey.

While we were out taking surveys, we ran upon a water slide and apparently, Gary and Stacey cant walk by a water slide twice without going down on it. It seemed kinda odd by me but they were very enthusiastic about it. Me Abe and Dana were waiting by one of the turns to see them go by and we were noticing that kids were going down this thing quite often. Apparently in Austria they just allow you to go down the slide if there are people on it or not. No checking to make sure the bottom is clear for safety or anything like that.

First we heard Stacey coming because she was yelling at this kid that was apparently slowing her up. When she came around the corner, this kid in front of her had this terrified look on his face because he had this foreign girl yelling at him behind her, just barreling down on him because she couldn't stop. I mean its a water slide so what did you expect from her. That was hilarious so I went down to the bottom of the slide to help her out and ask her how it was and such. While were were talking Gary poped out of the slide, immeadly stood up with a look of dissapointment on his face and then 6 little kids poped out of the tube TIGHT behind him like pouring olives out of a test tube. Apparently Gary's shorts did not work well with the cracks in between the pieces of the slide because he said his shorts just kept weggie-ing up more and more as he hit each crack. That wasnt even the best part.. he claimed he was too heavy for the slide because he had accumulated these kids behind him who wanted to go faster but Gary couldnt help it so they just started kicking him in the back to try to speed him up. He started yelling at the kids but he was obviously yelling in english and these kids were around 5-6 so they definatly did not understand and just kept kicking him down. Abe has a great picture of both of these situations. I will defiantly be getting them.

After all that we went back to the hotel and had some time on our hands before a group dinner. I took a shower and just ran cold water over my shoulder because no place that sells ice is open on Sundays (lame).

We were going to this Beethoven Wine place. When we got there it basically looked exactly like what everyone imagined historical Vienna would look like. The walls were like a smooth stucco or grout but also had a weathered look to them like that had been though a few centuries. There was no roof on the place, just a grid of grape vines that acted like a semi roof. The place didn't even really have a menu. The way you got food is you went up to a room that was basically the best deli (but not a big selection) I have ever been to. I got 1 piece of pork with hash browns and sauteed vegetables. I could even finish my plate, and for anyone that actually knows me, that is really really impressive.

We all had a good time after that, just talking and sipping on wine.

Club flex

The first night we were here, Ferdi met up with one of his friends who is a local to Vienna. We asked him what the best place to go out was and he said this place called club flex.

Last night the group decided that we would go out and since we didn't know of any other place, club flex it was.

To be honest, I hate clubs but I figured that this would be as good of a time as any to experience the euro techno scene. This was a place that came recommended by a local too so I figured it had to be fun.

First of all we had no idea where the place actually was but we knew it was in the Dow town area so we just hopped on the train and tried to find some English speaking locals, or not even locals but just people that had heard of this place.

After quite a bit of wandering (we had pregamed quite well too so we didn't really have our wits about us) we found some people who knew where it was.

When we got there we all got beers (4 something euros a beer. I need a better exchange rate) but there wasn't really a club anywhere. Nor was it really packed. The place was down on the water, and the bar was open to the air, so it didn't really have any doors.

Turns out the dance part as in the basement and it was pretty much what I would expect from a place called flex. Lot of "un-ch un-ch" bass heavy music, a ton of strobes and laser lights, and it was about 120 degrees.

We formed a little pocket for ourselvs and got to danceing. It was really fun too. I could hear a thing from what anyone was saying but who cares. I spent most of the time stepping in on guys dancing up on girls from our group because the girls wanted none of that, so they were always happy to see me. We did also get up on some stage somehow and then a 5' 5" bounced started shoving me and yelling at me in german so I got down.

Since the trains were not running we had to walk back. As it turns out it was Andrea's birthday once the clock hit midnight. Now Andrea claimed she weighed 100 pounds (I'd say maybe if she was wet) and she was teching me and August salsa dancing before we went downstairs, so I gave he a piggy back ride which some turned into on my sholders. Everything was fine until I tried to walk down a grassy slope and then I bit it (boat shoes = 0 traction on grass). Andrea was fine, I was fine but this morning I defiatly felt the effects of it. My right sholder is killing me and I can't really move my arm without pain (I'm sure I'll be fine for those who worry about me).

The moral of the story is Andy was an idiot again while drinking so for like the thousandth time in my life, I'm vowing never to drink again. I might last until lunch with this one.

Vienna palace

Today Is a free day. To some that meant sleep in because they were up all night talking (and waking me up at 5 am). Nick had prepared several walking tours of Vienna so we decided we would go to the palace and to do "the essential vienna" tour. So far we have been to the palace and right now we are in karlsplatz waiting for food and of course, bier.

Let me just startby saying that the palace is very very large. When we got there, the courtyard at the entrance was buzzing with people and the line to go in the palace was about 400 yards. We decided to go around back, to the gardens. When you enter, there are millions of flowers. Every bush a different type of flower. A rose trellis with roses 6 inches in diameter covering the whole thing like the winning horse of the Kentucky derby.

All of those flowers and thing were just on the side of the palace.

Then we went around to the main attraction. Luckily I got my reaction on tape because I was walking with my camera on, but let's just say.... Wow. Nick compared it to the grand canyon I would say it more like nothing I've ever seen. The perfectly groomed lawns with floral arrangements all over. Massive fountains with intricate scuptures of soldiers and their mighty steeds in a posiden type theme all over. Gives me goose bumps just remenering it.

This is all just right in back. Next we walked up the massive hill behind the palace to what seemed to be a structure just for viewing.

It definatly accomplished that. It was 1,30 euro to go to the roof but since we hadn't spent a dime all day, it was well worth it. We could see the entire city of Vienna and the Alps surronding it, not to mention the reduculous ornate gardens right at the base of the hill.

All for now. More later.

Planes and "Wien" day 1

When we landed in Zurich pretty much everyone had for at least a doze off on the plane (that's what I was working off) and we had about an hour and half layover. Once we got together we had to go through security again into a small area with a couple shops, about 4 terminals, a bathroom and no air conditioning. Our solution to this was to try to hug the marble (or some other type of hard material) floors to cool off this method worked quite well and I actually got about a half am hour of sleep right on the floor.

The flight to Vienna was only about an hour so that wasn't so bad. Once we got there we met up with our final member who flew direct from NYC.

In Vienna we had to take public transportation and since we were going to be here for 4 days, we got a 72 hour pass. When we got on the train the man that came around to heck tickets, he told us that it was more money becuase the airport was outside the city limits. The conductor had to go around and collect from each one of us individually but once Ferdi realized that it would be more and we were close to our stop, he told the de people who were talking to him to just stall him. People started handing him American money, asking directions, and just standing in his way. It helped that at every stop he had to get off and start. Necking tickets again. Only 4 of 21 ended up actually paying.

We got to our hotel and it turns out we fill up the whole place so we are the only ones here....party. We only had a few hours until we were going out to a barge to go swimming in a pool on the Donau.

We obvioiovsly went and got some beer immeadiatly.

After some relaxing, unpacking and drinking we headed over to this "barge" not exactly knowing what to expect. Turn out the pool was awsome. A little cold but it had a bar so everything was ok. Every person went swimming surprising enough (we have some fussy girls that were sceptical).

Straight from the barge we went to dinner in a down town area, where that picture is from. The reseaunt was awesome. Totally brick. Made in 1100. Really traditional food not to mention we were like three stories below ground. Greta and I split a bottle of wine and then I had a beer with dinner. Wienschnitzle of course. After dinner, some people went out and some just came back. I came back.

Crash.

Planes and "Wien" day 1

When we landed in Zurich pretty much everyone had for at least a doze off on the plane (that's what I was working off) and we had about an hour and half layover. Once we got together we had to go through security again into a small area with a couple shops, about 4 terminals, a bathroom and no air conditioning. Our solution to this was to try to hug the marble (or some other type of hard material) floors to cool off this method worked quite well and I actually got about a half am hour of sleep right on the floor.

The flight to Vienna was only about an hour so that wasn't so bad. Once we got there we met up with our final member who flew direct from NYC.

In Vienna we had to take public transportation and since we were going to be here for 4 days, we got a 72 hour pass. When we got on the train the man that came around to heck tickets, he told us that it was more money becuase the airport was outside the city limits. The conductor had to go around and collect from each one of us individually but once Ferdi realized that it would be more and we were close to our stop, he told the de people who were talking to him to just stall him. People started handing him American money, asking directions, and just standing in his way. It helped that at every stop he had to get off and start. Necking tickets again. Only 4 of 21 ended up actually paying.

We got to our hotel and it turns out we fill up the whole place so we are the only ones here....party. We only had a few hours until we were going out to a barge to go swimming in a pool on the Donau.

We obvioiovsly went and got some beer immeadiatly.

After some relaxing, unpacking and drinking we headed over to this "barge" not exactly knowing what to expect. Turn out the pool was awsome. A little cold but it had a bar so everything was ok. Every person went swimming surprising enough (we have some fussy girls that were sceptical).

Straight from the barge we went to dinner in a down town area, where that picture is from. The reseaunt was awesome. Totally brick. Made in 1100. Really traditional food not to mention we were like three stories below ground. Greta and I split a bottle of wine and then I had a beer with dinner. Wienschnitzle of course. After dinner, some people went out and some just came back. I came back.

Crash.

Flying

GeoTagged, [N42.36835, E71.01965]

Well I'm on the plane ride over the pond. Gary is on my right and dana on my left. We are at the very very back of the plane but that only means that the drink cart tales longer to get to us.

Gary is trying to take the tests that I took earlier today but he is too distracted because the plane has tvs. Not only does it have tvs for everyone but they have little remotes and a video game section. Gary is a sucker for tetris.

August is sitting behind me trying to get everyone who isn't drinking to ask for ops for him. Good form of you ask me. I just don't want to bother. More of a trouble than what it's worth.

The mad kayaker

GeoTagged, [N42.33340, E71.10133]

Tuesday, we took our first live water samples from the Charles. We went out to what used to be magazine beach and met Roger Frymeir, aka, the mad kayaker. This man is known throughout the river community as the most active volunteer enforcement personel. He was even involved with a lawsuit about an illicit connection dumping into the river againt the town of Newton.

He took us to five locations, including magazine beach, the esplanade and other locations that are possible beach locations for when the river is swimmable.

During the whole day we handed out surveys to people about the Charles. It asked questions about their personal experimce with the river. If they have been in it? Should it be cleaned? Do they boat? Questions like that.

Let me tell you. People do like surveys. We got 12 people to fill it out but that was out of asking probably 100 people.

On our last night in here in America and I haden't even started packing. The way I see things going, I'm taking basically clothes that are clean and I would want to wear anyway so I will revaluate my clothes situation tomorrow during the day.

Blogging with my phone

This whole trip I will be blogging from my phone. This will probably mean that some of the posts will be a little funny. I'm thinking of it as like a text message blog. So if at any point, it seems like my typing is getting a little informal, it's because I'm writing on my phone.

These phones are rediculous.

3 days till flight to Europe

Only 3 days until our flight to Europe and we have class each day until then. Today we also had some improvements in our arrangements for Prague.

We got a response from someone in the Czech sounding very helpful. His name is Vladimir Chour and he has a son Pavel who lives in Prague. I think they are both engineers who is familiar with policy so they should be very helpful to us.

August, Stacey and I finished the work on the sanitary waste water design project. Dana had stared an excel spreadsheet with calculations for each pipe (inverts, sizes, velocities, capacities). We finished that and then worked on the questions following the design calculations.

Pre Departure Classes... Id rather be on a plane.

Boston, Mass.
Vienna, Austria.
Budapest, Hungary.
Athens, Greece.
Naxos, Greece.
Prague, Czech Republic.
Venice, Italy.
Zurich, Switzerland.

Boy that sure seems like a lot for not even 30 days.

So far we have had two days of class.

It was our first day and the room which we were assigned was on the 4th (top) floor of Ryder. They must have been re-doing the roof because when I walked in the room there was dust on the chairs and tables. The roof was made of wood timbers and it couldn't have been very effective because you could see rays of sunlight shining through cracks. Sure enough, as class started, so did the machinary of the work crews above our heads. Ferdi actually tried to calm us down and convince us to stay in the room, meanwhile August sitting next to me is talking about how this is probably asbetos! The machinary started causing dust particles to fall though the cracks and that's when the TA went to find an empty room. She came back and moved us down the the third floor.

Yesterday we listened to Ferdi talk about contaminate properties and water quality topics. Maybe we should talk about air quality for a second? Anyway, good way to start.

Today we met in the 4th floor undergratuate environmental lab. We did the two different experiments to detect E. Coli in a water specimen. E. Coli will be our indicator of fecal matter in water for this trip. One experiment we run water through a filter and count how many bacteria colonies form. The other experiment we mix the water sample with a liquid and the two solidify to a gel (EZGel is the test's name) where bateria colonies could grow.

The labs did not take long. I got there at 9, screwed up one of the labs, and still left by 10:30. Since most assignments are group projects, Ferdi combined Dana and I with August and Stacey Gold (health science) in order to make sure there is more than 1 civil engineer in each group.

Dana and I also sent out two more emails to people in Prague because we do not have a water offical to interview for the Vltava yet. Professor Novotny of the Civil department is from Prague and has given us some contacts which he thinks should be useful. Hopefully we here back. The last guy Novotny gave us hasnt written back and it's been a few weeks.