Hitting the road

Hitting the road today.

Price of gas in Boston: $2.97

Stopped at the IMAX to see ironman 2 with Joyce matt Scotty and dan.

Next stop: Germantown, ny
Miles logged: 87.7

Prague speed blogging

GeoTagged, [N50.07999, W14.42955]

So I fell behind on blog posts again. You may or may not have noticed. So here is the quick all at once not so quick verson.

Saturday:
Arrive, trains to hostel. Czech love stairs apparently. Settle in, walk down to restaurant area for dinner. Huge beers (awesome) and they are cheaper than water (more awesome). I got some bangin mussles and that basically made my night. Came back and tried to watch Hooligans online, fell asleep in the first scene. Oh by the way, the beds like sleeping on a set of 1' gapped ribs. And the room has no ventilation. Smells musty. Its nice though. Free breakfast, internet, and exercise because we are on the 5th floor with no elevator.

One note on Prauge this time of the year. It says that the sunset is at 9 but the city is still light until like 10:30. and to boot, the sun comes up around 4. Our room is on the top floor with skylights and some poor excuses for shades so the combination of ribbed beds and early sun is a GREAT alarm clock if you dont ever feel like getting any sleep.

Sunday:
Explore day. We woke up and I looked up one of those walking tours where they just give you a PDF with directions and explanations of what you are looking at when walk along their directions. It was alright. kinda short and we didn't find the oldest store in Prague (apparently its a famous gift shop but used to be a iron mongrel place). It was Sunday though so there was like NO one out. We did get to step into the St James Chapel during a service. Let me tell you, I didnt even spend more than 5 min in there but that was the most ornate church I have ever been in. I recommend if you are ever here to stop in there. Then we just happen to walk up on the astronomical clock (most rediculous clock in the world) at noon time to catch the little performance that it puts on. We definaly lucked out on that one.

After that we got lunch by the Charles Bridge (beers and kabab), took a water sample in case the ones from Monday became an issue with travel and then pushed on to the Prague castle. Dana busted out the storming the castle line from princess Bride. First time she has used a line from a movie on me. Usually its vice versa. Honestly, not that impressive after traveling through the cities that we have seen before. The vienna Palace has basically ruined my expectations for any imperial castel ever beause that place was re-dic-u-lous.

After that it started raining (first time on the trip after two weeks it was too good to be true) but it actually felt pretty good because the sun was still shining and we were huddled under a umbrella drinking water and coffee trying to wake up after walking so much. then we went down through a shopping and Dana got a really pretty ring for herself. Made from a rock mined right outside of Prague. I was impressed.

Tram back and I had a message from Jiri our contact here asking us to call him. We schdaled a meeting to discuss our events for Moday at 6 and it was like 4:30 so guess what ...P-A-S-S out time. We woke up just in time to go meet him in the lobby and as soon as he walked in and I introduced myself he responded with "Professor Andy Crawford?" I knew this was going to be an issue. He was basically expecting a whole class and thought that I was the professor. Yeaaaa nooo, want some carmex, yeaa yeaa nooo (south park if you dont know). I explained to him our situation and all he wanted was to collaborate with someone in the US about his project so i gave him Ferdi's info and I think we came to an understanding. I kinda knew ssomething like that was going to happen because of a few of the emails i got but i was jsut hoping that it wouldnt.

Anyway we were going to try to go to a show at 9:30 but it turns out you needed to get tickets by 3 and we missed that easily so we ended up just going to dinner at this local place. They didnt like us at all for some reason. I got some goulash and it was ok. nothing to write home about. We got out of there pretty much as fast as we could and then stopped at the square closer to us for some drinks. Aka I had some beers and Dana had half a Pina Colata thing and said her legs felt funny (...lightweights, what can you do). And we came back, she passed out and I worked on questions for tomorrow since I really didnt want to make Jiri look like a fool because these people were going to be expecting the same type of group so i wanted to be as professional as possible. Too bad i didnt bring a tie or jacket or anything. OHH well, what can you do.

Monday:
Wake up. Get ready. Pray these People speak english. Meet Jiri and he daughter in the lobby. Walk to the place. Not a lick of english. His daughter has to translate everything for us and she is pretty good but not perfect. Anyway i dont think I made us look like fools but Im not exactly sure. We talked about the Vltava for a while. I tried to keep them on their toes with interesting questions. We talked for almost 2 hours. I got 4 pages of notes. BOOM perfect. That is exactly waht I needed.

Next, Jiri's daughter took us to a bunch of sites (upstream of Prage, Central Prague, and Downstream) to do some water samples. 5 in total.

Eva was her name. Super nice person. Has two kids (6,8) and she works with her dad about the drinking water problem that Prague has. Appareanly the watershed (groundwater area that drains to their drinking source) is 1200km^2 so they have an issue with agricultural runoff contamination. interesting but it was a long day traveling from one side of the city to the other. let just say I totally understand their rail and metro system now which i had NO clue before what the tickets did, and i was doing it totally wrong. 1 ticket is not for 1 ride, its for an amount of time in case you ever come to prague.

After that we went back and got food on the way. Did the samples, and took naps. We went out again and explored. We picked up tickets for the Aspects of Alice show that we missed last night and ended up hanging out on the Chalres bridge people watching and listening to the jazz people that were playing for about 2 hours. I could get used to this.

Tuesday (today)
We got u

Links

I uploaded a bunch of links! Czech them out!

Athens

Well when we got off the boat we took a subway to our near our hotel and then had to walk a bit.

The subway was crazy. Before we got on the train, a lady working for the subway company warned us about getting pick pocketed. She was not kidding. Ferdi got his back pocket unbuttoned and nick caught a guy with his passpor in his hand. The guys standing around me all had scars on their face similar to the one on my forehead. Athens must be a rough city. It is definatly very dirty, and not maintained very well. Every sidewalk was cracked up and broken, the streets were all rutted up.

I got a delicious gyro, used some Internet, and then fell asleep around 5. Some people went to go see the ancient metropolis but I passed.

I woke up just in time for 7 for group dinner but honestly I was in no mood to be in the group and I was still tired. August and justin were skipping to sleep so I did not feel bad dropping out.

Woke up around 10 when nick got back. Used some more Internet to figure out my stuff for getting around prague. Fell asleep again at like 11:30. Just in time to get up at 3:20 for a 6:40 flight. I was the first one to the bus to the airport by far but i was only 10 min. early. I used the extra time to go get a sub and coffee. Both were delicious. Best 3,40€ i spent on the trip.

Now I'm waiting in the airport and since iwas so on the ball I checked in early and got the exit row. Boom headshot.

Looking back I'm kinds liking myself that I didn't go to see the historic Athens witheveryone but I rationalize it because I know that I will be going back to the Greek islands sometime soon. I can go see it then.

Gonna miss Greece, that is for sure

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Im on the ferry back to athens right now. Just took a test on the presentations at the conference and I feel pretty good about it because some people only got through 4 out of 6 questions but I just got cut off at the end of question 6 but I got what I had to say in.

Leaving greece was actually tough becuase everyone is so happy here. The sun is always out and the act that I got that quad really put me in my element getting around and stuff. After the trip around the island though I turned in the little quad and got a 250 from a different guy. Which was prerfect. This one actually had a spedometer and I got it up to 90 kmh. You can do the math on that one.

Me Dana nick Gary stacey and Elizabeth went for another ride up the coast, dana on the back of my quad and Gary took stacey on his moped. I could do that kind of thing all day.

After that ride I passed out hard in nicks double bed with air conditioning. Which just made it that much harder to wake up for the Galla dinner which was at 8. I think I fell asleep around 6 so that was the equivalant of a nights sleep I guess.

The Galla dinner was cool. It was at a place up in the countryside with an open roof very similar to the wine deli in Vienna. People got to meet back up for like one final event and exchange numbers, cards, and facebook info. The food was excellent again. They had a tradional greek band playing, and after the meals there was a performance of some sort of tradional Greek dancing. The Greeks we had been parting with came over and dragged us out of our chairs and we got dancing in the mix of the real dancers. The dance was kinda like the conga in that you hold the person ahead of you an behinds hand and but it's more a dance in a circle around the table. Dimitri, one of the Greeks, said this is how the Greek digest their food. I could get used to it.

I left on one of the first busses because I had to pack my stuff but after hearing what happened after I wish I had stayed. I hate when that happens. I was going to go out with everyone but I never found out where the party location was so I ended up just going to bed. August came back around 7. He had the better night by far.

Whipping on quads

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Ok it's thirssay and I'm back at the water conference because it's the only place I can get Internet amdbthe only time I really have. Yesterday, everyone rented mopeds and due to my previous history I decided to rent a quad. The sad part of this is that they only rented 150 quads which could not even get me up a hill. I dealt with it for the day because I already paid for a day but the thing was a piece.

The night before we definatly went out buy thanks to Ferdi's great being, he let us miss the conference for the day ad long as we went to the party which the Greeks hosting the conference were organizing. It was 20 euro to drunk all u can drink and consideing that a beer was 5, after 4 drinks I was all set.

Ok, I'm all over the place now but I wanna go back to the quad phenomonom. After we woke up, nick an I decided that we wanted to try to see as much of the isalnd as possible but this idea spiraled out of control becuase everyone wanted to come with us. Let's just say, some people are ametures.

Age had some trouble the day before on a moped but he decided that taking someone withhim would be a good idea for me and the first thing that happened once Lovett jumped on is that they instantly crashed. Now I had andrea on the back of my whip because caroline couldn't turn on a quad with someone on it. As soon as age crashed, that was enough for me. I was not about to put up with rookie moves like that all day, so I took off and shoe we followed me was able too keep up. Turns out that was only Gary. Andrea was hesitant for the first part of the day becuase she wanted to ride with Caroline but I just hushed this until she stopped worrying because I told her, we were all meeting at a certain beach on the other side of the island. This was true but before we left, nick and I were the only ones to organize out plans.

Gary and I were doing fine until we came up on intersections. We had a map but the roads didn't have names so we had to just follow. Signs towards towns. The problem was that the signs didn't always have names of cities that lathes my map. At this point Gary and I decided that we would wing it.

One thing you joule know is that my quad was a 150 (very small for a guy my size) and then andrea was inthe back which made going up jumped an issue. Gary wasn't very confident on the moped so we plugged along until out of the blue, Nick ran into us in the middle of the island. I van only explain this by some ok d of ESP between Nick, who was alone, and I because we ended up taking two completly different roads and the intersections were a coin flip for us. Either way, nick was so happy becuase he had gone to register for the party last night because we heard it was required sand that's when the mayhem started with abe and lovett. Unforunatly for him he wasn't aronud when I took off becuase he is one of the best riders of the mopeds.

When he showed up, it was time for andrea to switch riders because I was defiantly the slowest(and heaviest). Once andrea was off my wheels, we started going quote fast. I led because I was still the slowest on uphills (yea I'm fat) but because I had a quad, I could take turns much faster and we set up a beep system to warn the bikers of on coming traffic and hazards in the road (sand, significant potholes, and animals in the road). The quad was so slow that I could go full throttle down hill around hairpi turns just by shifting my weight siginificantly. This is what saved the day for us because I could make time on the mopeds here because there were a lot, lot of hairpin turns.

We got up to a point where we were basically in the clouds (3000' above sea level, which is where we started) and the temperature drop was rediculous. It got cold and andrea needed to wrap herself in towles in order to stay warm (I do not get cold easily).

Some highlights of the trip: we stopped many times to ale pictures. At the first spot we stoppped (we saw a sign for a "tower") the road litteraly turnned into a gutter so skinny I had to ride 1 tire inthe road and one on a curb. We got to the top of this thing, the only person with a camera was Gary and as he went to take his first picture, his batteries died (ROOKIE). Now one can only imagine being in the Greek countryside with I my an iPhone camera and a video camera. Very dissapointing. Eventually we found a place where they sold batteries but did not speak a lick of English. It took Gary about 20 min just to combine he lady in the store what batteries were. This only added to the excitement when nick showed up because he was rocking his SLR and he defiantly knows how to use it.

Another story: at one spot we stopped to take pictures and such, we saw a farm with orange trees. Fresh Greek oranges sounded so good along the story going with it convinced Gary and I to walk down through so much brush, and a stream just to pick these oranges. I cannot lie though. They were the juciest orage I've ever had but as the rookie(gary) said, it could have been the placebo effect in this case.

Overall the day was essentially perfect, with the meeting up of nick, the REDICULOUS beautiful country side and giggling andrea hanging out with us making us smile the whole day. As of turns out, just taking off as the best plan becuase the people that couldn't keep up with me, never stopped the whole day and only saw half of what we did while getting back around an hour after us. Given our trip took about 3 hours, this was a lot more than necessary.

Pictures

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I forgot to add this to the last post

IWA water conference

Ok I think today is Tuesday. Things have been very very blurry lately because I have been going out partying every night. Two nights ago I even missed dinner. Not good. Woke up hurting after that one but it did lead me to finding the best coffee I've had while in Europe. The key is to ask for filtered coffee. Who knew.

Anyway, Greece is rediculous nice. Yesterday I took a 4 hour nap to recover and then went to the beach. The water is so clear that when I was in 20' deep water, I could see the bottom as if it was only a foot deep. I did a swimming lap out to a bouy at the beach and the only complaint I had was the salt water, but I can get over that. After my swim (took about 30 min and I was not expecting that) I had to lay down and take a breather. Not cfor long though because mike lovett has a volleyball and I wanted to play. After vollyball I went back, showered, and went to dinner down by the dock area where we came in by boat. The gyros here are SO GOOD. I've had 3 in the two days so far. For dinner I had a skewar of pork and chicken and next on my list to try is the seafood.

I have to apologize for the previous posts if they don't make sense but I'm so pressed for time (it's all about priorities - class, partying, activities) that I am just making it so I can remember. If anything doesn't make sense, please comment for me on it.

More glorious news today. Since we have been hanging out with the Greeks that are hosting the confernce they are throwing a sunset to sun rise beach party (10 € all you can drink- things could get interesting) Ferdi said we don't have to attend the conference tomorrow if we go to it. Ferdi said it's for the IAF class. I love that man.

Frankfurt

Running on fumes, only Dana and I had both a 7 am flight (meaning we had to leave at 4:30) and we had a 9 hour layover in Frankfurt. We decicdsd the night before to just stay up the whole night instead of trying to wake up. That's the way this trip has just been going. We were determinded to get out of the airport though so before we left I pulled up the wiki page on the city and

Peace out budapest

Well Budapest was a hell of a city but I basically missed all the blog posts I as supposed to do for it. I'm on a plane with Dana to Frankfurt right now where we have a 9 hour layover. Woo! We are going to be checking out Frankfurt. I read on wiki that it has a couple of the tallest skyscrapers in Europe. Should be good.

Let's just recap Budapest:

The Spas:
The first full day in Hungary, we went and listened to a lecture on the stsatus of the Danube in Budapest. The talker, Dora, was a really nice girl. Seemed to be a grad student or something like that.

Anyway after her lecture we got to go on a tour of the under ground caves that the minerals in the water come from for the spas. It was reallly really hot down there so everybody started sweating bullets. August started stripping down cuz he didn't want to ruin more of his clothes.

After the tour, we got to go to the spa for free. It seems like everywhere we go, people want to give us free stuff.

Anyway the spa was awesome. It had 2 pools at different temperatures with mineral water, a steam room with a cold pool right out side the door, a wave pool, several pools for joint gender swimming, sauna, and fountains at every pool. It all the different temperature changes made the place so relaxing, it was amazing.

After the pool we came back and I passed out. Seems to be a reoccuring theme. When I woke up I was basically still dead to the world so I just started editing videos, working on the beginning to the movie I'm going to make after all of this.

FREE DAY
Breakfast good(egg sandwich) ringing ears from club, hungover

Tour, good local feel

Lady on hill, exhausting

Pass out

Collect pics

WATER TESTING DAY
4 hours sleep

Yesterday we got a tour of the new wastewater treatment plant

Presentation

Long, no lunch, straight to lecture, everyone fell asleep hard core,

No nap, work on pics, missed dinner, hummus bar, party, no sleep, plane, impossibleto get up

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.