I live in Alaska again!

As most of you know I made the BIG move from Santa Rosa to Anchorage, with the help of my amazing parents. I am lucky enough to have gotten a room with one of Sam's friends from school, and the rent could not be better.
Last week my the rest of my things arrived by barge, and I have started the next process of figuring out where all this stuff is supposed to go (i.e. my room looks like a battle field). But I've been settling in pretty well, and I promise to post some pictures when it doesn't look like Hurricane Kelsey went through it.
Sam and I have been going on adventures, and we decided to start a blog about it. Originally I told him we could put it on this one, but then we realized it might be a little strange if some of his friends and family wanted to look at it, and then saw Sandlin's science-ing blogs, or Noel's cat memorabilia (which we all enjoy, but others might not appreciate the brilliance). Our blog is www.anchoragealtitudeadventures.blogspot.com
I've joined a student symphony (like beginning students), which has been enjoyable. I've been helping out with section things, and leading the second violins. The conductor has asked me to possibly take a couple of her students in the fall, because she gets really busy and suddenly everybody wants to learn how to play the violin when school starts again. I'm also probably going to look into the Anchorage Symphony to see what their rehearsal schedule is like, because that would be pretty awesome to play with adults too.
I start work on the 12th of July. I'm still not sure exactly what I'll be doing, but I'm ready to join full speed ahead.
I joined a gym for $15 a month, which is pretty great on my limited budget. I've started getting back into the habit of going every morning, though I'm sure it'll be slightly more challenging when I have to wake up early so I can get to work on time.
That is all I can think of for now. Love to all!
-K

Exciting archival package!

In tidying up her house, Nana told me that she unearthed a ledger she kept as a newlywed of the household expenses. She said later it was too tedious to keep- but she maintained it fastidiously form 1942-1949. Rather than pitch it, she mailed it to me, and I've had the great joy of leafing through it.

Of course I am shocked by the price of things- in 1944, they spent $4.75 every month for moorage- that is RENT people! And Tuition, at the UW, cost $44/ semester. But I am also impressed by how carefully Nana kept this ledger. There are notes in it for $0.25, mouthwash, $0.30, shoeshine. I probably can't claim to be a newlywed myself anymore- but I don't have nearly this handle on the cash flow of our household.

There are some mysteries too. In 1944, there is an entry for Puppy, and then later dog food- but only a few month. What puppy? And for a while, there were entries for cigarettes, and then abruptly not. Why did Papa quit?

There is also the paper trail of real life too. In 1946, there is a huge sum to a Frieght company, and then the household expenses include paying A L&P (Alask Light and Power- same as in Juneau today). The 'College Expenses' Chapter is relegated to the back to make way for a 'Baby' Chapter. There are some chapters that Papa maintained in his neat handwriting, like Household Maintenance. And the chapter on recreation denotes all the shows, ballets and ball games, and even the ferry trips and vacations of most of a decade.

After some more investigation- I'll share anything else cool I find. In the meantime, I'll take care of this in case anyone else wants to see it someday.

Comment Moderation is a GO!

So if you click on the comment link for the post below this you'll see that there are four comments...and three of them are random, Chinese comment spam. What this means is I've turned on comment moderation. Feel free to comment as much as you like, it's just that now before those comments show up someone will have to actually look at them and verify that they are done by human people and not annoying Chinese robots.

For those of us that actually post things on the blog...which I think is actually all of us...you can just sign into the dashboard and give a thumbs up to your own comment to that it gets posted, but we don't actually use comments that often so I doubt speed is that important. Anyway, just thought you should know.

And just because I'm writing...I was sick this weekend. I picked up some sort of bug from my office mate who was only in the office with me for about an hour before he went home. It looks like Jessie has it now, but she's still at work for some reason. I'll see if I can chloroform her and drag her home later.

Other than that, little to report.

-N

You need to know about Video Games

Okay, maybe you don’t, but it is becoming a more and more common medium in our society (yes, facebook games and Papa’s computer solitaire both count) and I, dear family, am the reporter for the job.

E3 happened last week. The Electronic Entertainment Expo. It’s essentially a big media event for the games that are coming out over, theoretically, the next year. Most of the games shown there are still things that won’t trickle down past people like me, but there is some more general, interesting news that you might want to hear about.

-Microsoft is putting out a new peripheral for their video game system. It’s called Kinect. It’s essentially a body scanner, it’s supposed to be able to read the position of your entire body in real time. The games associated with this new technology are still in an early development stage, but the technology is promising. If this sort of control scheme makes sense, we may be controlling computers ‘Minority Report’ style sooner than you think. Or not. It may turn out to be a huge waste of time, too. That’s what the future is for!

-3D DS. I’m guessing everyone knows about the Nintendo DS at this point, or at least you can visualize what I’m talking about when I mention it. Well Nintendo is rolling out a new version that has a 3D screen. Presumably what this means is that it knows where your face is and can send one TV image to each eye. The feedback from the people that have actually tried it is that it’s really quite good.

This is important for another reason, too. Remember how the big thing for the past several years has been ‘HD TVs’. The big, flat-panel ones that everyone was buying? Well the new wave of TV technology is 3D TV. That’s right, people, 3D is back! Or at least, major TV manufacturers are betting that it’s the next big thing. You can get 3D TVs right now if you want, but, once again, the technology is pretty new and you have to wear dorky glasses in most cases. Also it gives some people headaches. But who knows? In a few years it’ll either be like DVDs (how did we ever manage before everything was in 3D?) or like Laser Disks (Man, that was a dumb idea.)

I got a new wedding ring. I’m still hovering around between 200 and 205 pounds (trying my best to lose more) but my wedding ring keeps almost falling off, especially when my hands get wet. So I got a new ring, a half-size down. It’s made out of tungsten and it’s pretty freakin’ huge. Looks neat, though. And it’s big and obvious, which I think Jessie likes because she’s always afraid someone is going to discover how great I am and try and move in on her milkshake. She likes that I have this lady-repellent on my hand.

I’m mostly just excited that I got a cool new ring and that I’m all skinny now. Relatively. I still look pretty huge in that trapeze video.

Oh, yeah, recovery from the trapeze class has been pretty rough. Jess has been SUPER sore for the past couple of days, while I have been less achy. At least my hands have recovered pretty well. Great exercise, but not something we could do every day. I had to skip Judo on Monday (well I didn’t *have* to, but I did) and Jess wasn’t even able to go skating yesterday. We’re both back to something like normal today, though. At least now when people come to Austin and ask ‘what is there to do?’ we have another thing we can recommend.

-N

My Life, Online

Many of you will remember Matt's roommate in college, who was a Chinese immigrant (from here on out, I'll refer to him as my Chinese brother). We were very close in college, and after he moved away, he often came back for visits, and since we've away, he still comes to visit. He has been living away from his family since he was 16, so he isn't willing to just give up long term friendships since some people moved across the country. We chat online often- sometimes about nothing, sometimes about really deep stuff, sometimes about topical things. Today he caught me at work while I was in the middle of a temper tantrum with my work (seriously science, I thought we had an understanding!). I took a moment to vent, then got up to finish my work (with a vengeance).

When I came back an hour later, he had left some really encouraging words for me. I soakeed that in while I watched Noel's trapeze video (which was AWESOME), which I hope you all saw ended with a patently Noel goofy hoorah move. Even though I am the only one who even knows I am watching, I blush and think NO-elllllL. And I started feeling better. Spending some virtual time, with my virtual family- while not as good as the real thing- is a sight better than nothing at all.

While perhaps the blog is a mother's day gift, I think we can agree that others benefit as well (Dad?) in a similar- wow, My kids write a lot- kind of way. But, I guess I never realized how much I benefit from a central space online. So, yeah, thanks for reading, friends and family.

Trapeze!

So this weekend Jess and I went out to Austin Trapeze with one of our friends from work and learned how to swing on the bar and everything. Hard exercise, and really rough on your hands, but at least I've got this to show for it:



Pretty cool, eh?

You can also watch it by clicking on This Link. That way you can see the whole thing. It's a little truncated on this page.
-N

Attack of Impostor Syndrome

I first heard of impostor syndrome when I came to graduate school. For those not familiar, it is "is a psychological phenomenon in which people are unable to internalize their accomplishments" according to Wikipedia. It manifests as thinking you are the dumbest one in the class, that you were only admitted to graduate school by mistake, left to your own devices you'll surely fail. It undercuts feelings of success, makes one shy away from challenge and flinch at criticism. While I recognized those feelings in myself, I always thought that this was really an issue for me, especially if I could remember that others feel the same.

But, this has been a bad month for science. My collaborators want me to finish some simple sounding assays so we can publish. This would be my first manuscript, which I am conflicted about because I feel like my contribution (purifying a lot of protein), is quite small relative to the amount of work performed by others (screening 300,000 compounds in 3 or 4 assays). Now the final assays are not working for unknown reasons and I've spent weeks repeating the same assays that just won't budge.

And while I was focused on getting that working, I nearly forgot about this stupid poster I was supposed to put together for a campus wide retreat on cancer research. So I slapped together a poster with the data I do have, and grudgingly stood around. Fortunately, my undergrad had a poster quite nearby, so we chatted about hating the failures of science while not a soul stopped by to look at our posters. At 7pm, I left. The poster session would go on for another hour- but it was a long an exhausting day and I made plans with friends. I got a text from my undergrad later that he had spent 30 min with someone explaining both of our posters, but no one else had come by when he left at 745. At 930, I got a phone call from the organizers to congratulate me for winning third place in the poster contest, and would I please come for the award ceremony the next morning?

My first response was to laugh, but then I got worried. I hadn't spoken to anyone about my work, surely the judge must have thought my undergrad was me- he did all the hard work of explaining it, and I don't want him to think I've stolen this prize for his efforts. And what if I get there in the morning and the judges don't recognize me and call me out? And how am I going to explain to my boss that I didn't answer any of the judges questions because I left an hour early? And of course, I can't just never mention it again (which was my first thought), because there is a $100 prize, and the awardee is invited to speak at a seminar series at the Cancer Institute. I was panicked! What is the right thing to do??

I called my undergrad and left him a message to tell him and thank him for sticking it out for both of us. And then I fretted about it- I couldn't sleep. I chatted online briefly with a friend who didn't understand my panic ("the award is for all the time and effort that goes into the poster, not the 10 min you talk to a judge about it"). This was the WORST thing that could have happened- and now I am in the awkward position of having to make it right for all parties involved. Ugh!

In the morning I told some of my coworkers about it, who laughed but also didn't understand my misgivings ("But I got an award without even being there!"), but suggested I could split the award with my undergrad (who did do part of the work, and was credited on the poster), if it would make me feel better. By the time he did arrive, I thought I would be sick- but he described the way the rest of the evening went. I no longer think that this person judged my poster- I think they were judging his. And he thought it was great that his work got an award, even if it went to me. And yes, he would let me by him a beer in gratitude. He wanted to sit right up front at this award ceremony, but I insisted we sit in the back (so we could slip out later- sure). And after a quick picture taking, and exchange of a GIANT heavy plaque, it was done. No one shouted that it wasn't me, no one insisted on proofs of identification. The gals at the registration desk asked for my info to make sure I would get the money (sigh), and no one said anything about this talk. I was starting to believe that maybe they had meant the award to go to me- and even if my poster wasn't the best one at the whole poster fair, I would try and be graceful and ponder times I thought I was more deserving and was passed over for award. Ok, karmic balance, fine. I'll give my undergrad as much credit as possible without ever bringing up this ridiculous episode again.

And when I got back to my desk after the ceremony, there was a message on my phone from the gals at registration- my heart sank. Surely they were calling about the confusion, and I hope they didn't get mad at me for getting my fingerprints on their nice plaque- but it wasn't. They were calling to find me and get my info. Again, no anger, no shouting. That's when I realized I was having an acute attack of Impostor Syndrome.

I hope I never feel so conflicted about good news ever again. It was terribly stressful, and I felt like the whole thing reflected very poorly on my character (Why did I leave early? I wouldn't feel so conflicted if I'd have just stayed the whole time. Shouldn't I have said to the woman who called me that she had the wrong number? the wrong poster? ) My boss was out of town, I was dreading him coming back to have to explain that I hadn't gotten much done, and now I feel like I have to explain away this whole poster prize thing too. I know I am being irrational- but it would be easier to be rational if I felt like I was a good scientist. I want to graduate and put all this emotional turmoil behind me.

World Cup Soccer

For as sports hungry as people are in this city, it is surprising that no one gives a whit about world cup soccer. Actually, it's not that surprising, given how many other teams there are to focus on, a few games played somewhere you can't tail-gate aren't likely to make much of a splash.

That being said, I work with mostly people who aren't from Pittsburgh, including one former college soccer player. So in my lab, we care about soccer. We've got brackets posted, we've found out how to stream the games and scheduled experiments around them.

I've heard several people say it is insincere for most Americans to suddenly care about soccer once ever four years. I disagree. (I also don't think that the vuvuzela should be banned- deafening though it may be) While a fair chunk of the motivation is to get behind something that is rather exotic, I can't honestly say I care about biathalon or most other Olympic Sports more than once every four years. Even then, it's a chance to think about the different places these players come from, and see how that plays out for them on the world stage.

I got really infatuated during the Brazil vs. North Korea game. I have great affection for a lot of Brazil's players - as did the sea of yellow in the stands. Even though it could never be, it was exciting to see the North Koreans come out and play against the world's best. No one out there knows their names, they've never been out of the country, which means the best players they've ever SEEN are each other, there were a only few Chinese "volunteer fans" to cheer them on, and if they didn't win the game would not be shown (or possibly ever mentioned) back home. Can you imagine the pressure? The confusion? All that, and they are playing a bunch of world class divers who are using them for passing drill practice! It was pretty fantastic to see them score in the last minute of the game, to bring the score up to 2-1. Sure, they still lost- but it was a tremendously important moment for those players to not feel like they'd been completely abandoned and embarrassed on the world stage.

The US doesn't have any hope of winning, but if you can't watch every game, it makes sense to watch the games of guys you might see again. Matt and I went to a bar to see the UK vs USA game last weekend. I can't pretend I know that much about soccer, but you know how fun it is to be in a bar with a bunch of fans when your country ties the score? Yeah, I'll keep watching- even if it is only ever 4 years.

Europe Part 22: Home!

Almost done! So! On our last day, we had breakfast in the hotel which was a bit overpriced but worth it just because it meant I got to have Jessie stop and eat something in the morning. If we had to ‘look’ for somewhere to eat we wouldn’t have stopped moving until we were at the gate. Anyway, it was walk, metro, metro, metro all the way to the airport. I was actually really impressed that we were able to get all the way from Paris, back inside our house in Austin, *all without ever stepping outside*. I messed up the airport metro tickets a bit, but I wasn’t the only one, clearly. So we just sort of slipped out with other people at the exit turnstiles.

Once we found our gate, we spent a lot of time shopping at the duty free store, mostly getting chocolate. We still have some of it, in fact. Good stuff. The plane ride across the ocean wasn’t too bad, actually. We had the middle seats, three of them, to ourselves, so first I took a nap on Jessie’s lap then she returned the favor. She even played with my beard and my bald head while I rested, which always feels really nice. She’s a great wife.

Oh, and two more adventures. Before customs in Dallas, where we landed, I was using the bathroom and saw someone leave their passport by the sink. Well I picked it up, found the guy by his face in the passport, and gave him his papers back. He was quite relieved, and I felt good.

Then, while resting at the gate in Dallas, Jess was reorganizing our backpacks for the flight. When it was time for us to board, I looked around our seats to check for anything left behind, and it turns out it was a good thing I did. We nearly left the CAMERA. I gave Jessie very stern looks for that, you can be sure. Very stern.

Past that, not much to report. Flights are never that exciting, at least you generally hope they’re not. Then we got home, relaxed, and spent the next several days trying to get over jetlag and the next several weeks blogging about it.

And that was Europe.

Europe Part 21: Paris, again

Paris made a bad first impression, and Rome a bad last one. Given how early our flight was, and how busy airports can get around flight time, we actually ended up waking up for our flight at 3:45 in the morning. Yowza. We managed to get checked out okay, but the walk from the hotel to the Train station to look for a Taxi was a little overwhelming. All dark, we counted:

-Two prostitutes of indeterminate gender
-A rat
-A bunch of 5 or 6 young guys trying to pickpocket a sleeping homeless guy

All in the space of the three minute walk. That’s a pretty high density of sleaze. And the crazy didn’t stop when we got into the taxi. The streets were pretty much empty and the guy drove like the cops were on our tail. I started to count how many red lights the guy would run, but I stopped counting after reaching “all of them.” It was a quick trip, though. Unfortunately, all that efficiency meant we got to the airport 3 hours before our flight. A little excessive, but at least it meant we had time to write. And the airport had a cat, too, just hanging out. He liked attention.

Our flight was pretty normal, we got checked in, waited, and flew right up to paris with a whole bunch of Italian people. They applauded when we landed; I’m not sure if that’s normal. Then we took a bus into Paris proper. We navigated the metro to the Champs d’Elise, the area near which we were hoping to find a hotel. Our first several attempts got us nowhere, all the rooms were booked. We were starting to get nervous when we finally made it to one of the placed we had found on hostels.com that had spare rooms, or at least it did a few weeks ago when we checked. Lucky us, they did have a room available for us. Cheers! Plus, it was cheaper and the room much better than the other place we had been planning to stay. But more on that later. We ditched our heavy backpacks and strolled around Paris a little bit more. Our first stop was the Rodan Museum. We took the metro and when we exited we were in the middle of...something. We’re still not sure what. There were a whole bunch of African-Amer, uh, I mean African-french guys, all standing around while some people played rhythmic music and some other guys asked for donations. We walked along the street and eventually we got past the black guys and then past the Riot Cops. No idea what was going on, but if I had to guess, I suspect it was a planned demonstration for...uh...something. I doubt the riot cops really needed to be there except in case everything went bonkers. Everyone was way too laid back to riot.


What was the name of this statue again...?

Anyway, Rodan museum. It was a really neat place because of its focus. We got to see a lot of really neat statues, including the famous ‘thinker’ and ‘Portal to Hell’ as well as a bunch of other really interesting pieces and a lot of history. Especially after so much classical and neoclassical artwork it was sort of a relief to get to something more modern. There were a couple of other artists there, too. One of Rodan’s contemporaries who had done some really neat sculpture in a very similar style, and another guy who did crazy actual-modern stuff in steel. He had the Mr. Clean logo on a metal gate. He also put tattoos on pigs. That kind of modern. I remember him mostly for his brochure, which, summarized, said: “The artist is so cool, the artist is so out there. You can’t even begin to understand how smart the artist is.” Cool steel structures, though.


My celebrity look-alike.

After completely burning Jess out in the museum (though she did let me sit and read some stuff that I found intriguing) we got some lunch at the museum cafe. Real food. We had been subsisting off of cookies and other backpack-munchies for pretty much the entire morning. Getting some protein seemed like a good idea.

After that we went back to the Champs d’Elise for a bit. It’s a big, fancy street with L’Arc D’Triumph at one end (neat, but under construction) and a whole lot of stores along the way. If we had been into fashion we clearly would have *completely flipped out*. But we’re not, so we just window shopped, mostly. The one really neat thing, though, is that the street also houses car companies, at least showrooms where they show off prototype cars and all sorts of fancy vehicles. We took a lot of pictures. Matt would have been pleased. One of the highlights was a camera-and-TV system that would video you holding a card up to the screen and would then superimpose a 3-d car onto the video feed on the camera, like you were holding it in your hands. Neat effect.


I'd drive that.

Then back to our hotel, where we entered the *smallest elevator in all of europe.* Capacity: 3 people. Or two with backpacks. The room itself, though, was magnificent! We had a balcony that looked out onto the street, a TV that worked, our own bathroom, and even a *TUB*. Such luxury after three weeks in hostels! Jess went right to work taking a nice long back while I stared out the window for a while, wrote, and caught up on some world news. I had been pretty much cut off for the whole time we were over there.


How's that for a view?

We played some more rummy, talked for a while, and took a stroll out later in the evening when I wasn’t quite ready to go to bed yet. Most stores were closed, but we did find a market with some munchie-foods to take on the plane with us. And then Jess layed on my chest and we went to sleep.

-N

Europe Part 20: Random bits of Rome

We woke up a little bit early this day to prepare for our crazy-early departure from Rome by Plane the next day. We were planning to hit up some Roman Museums and other random sights today, but the museum didn’t open for a while so instead we started the day at a nice cafe down the street where I ordered a cappuccino. Actual coffee. It was not bad, really. The milk and a little sugar really mellowed it out. We had some pastries, too. I felt very continental. I still don’t like coffee very much, though.

We did a few more morning things like printing out boarding passes and the like, and eventually the museum opened up and we were one of the first people in. The national museums have several branches in Rome, we went to the best one first, affectionately nicknamed, by Jessie, the marble head museum, for obvious reasons. The highlights were definitely all the busts of all sorts of people and the very detailed and interesting descriptions below. They had some larger statues, too, including a couple of huge bronze statues with intriguing histories and structure. The upstairs had slightly less interesting mosaics and frescoes, but the downstairs had the single most impressive coin collections I’d ever seen. Coins from every era from ancient Rome on to modern Italy and the Euro. They also had them mounted under glass with a neat motorized magnifying glass to check them out better. Very cool.


I am very concerned about these coins.

After the museum we were *starving* so we ate at a couple of different places. I wanted to eat at a Donner Kebab place, I’d seen them around and I was curious. I still don’t know what kind of meat it was, but it was pretty good. Then we swung by a Trattoria to get some pizza by the square. It was hyper-greasy, but we saved some of the meat and crust and went back to our hostel for a bit to feed the kitties. Once we started throwing meat for them they got really excited and all four of them came over. We tried to give a little to each, but ‘bold kitty’ got the most. May have been pregnant, it’s hard to tell, and rude to assume.


That's 'bold kitty' in the front. Slightly bold kitty behind, white kitty, and scaredy cat way in the back.

Then we took the metro up to Piazza del Populo, another famous square that, on this day, was being taken over for the anniversary festivities of the Italian Police. They had all their sexiest cop cars out, including a Ferrari and one helicopter on the ground and another circling in the air. We didn’t spend too much time there before deciding to head up to a nearby park, with a gorgeous panoramic view of the city. We relaxed in the park for a bit before wandering along random roads for a bit and, eventually, stumbling upon the Spanish Steps.

Historically significant, the steps are mostly a meeting place for tourists and locals alike. Lots of people sat on the steps, hawkers strolling between them all. When we walked down the steps a trio of guys ran by us carrying wares in white cloths. Jess called it: those were the guys selling fake Coach Bags and other knockoff stuff, and there were cops approaching. I just assumed it was skeezy, I didn’t know it was illegal, too.


Resting, but resting *historically*.

We sat on the steps and rested for a while, then wandered through some more streets. We got more gelato, a guy in front of his store let me know he had some fresh noodles and slapped me on the shoulder, which was fun, and I found my souvenir at a garden store. They had a whole bunch of terra cotta and stone figures, like angels and cherubs and other such things inspired by old roman ruins. I got a little vase with a lid that had been decorated with the sort of details and cherubs that I’d been seeing all over Europe. Evocative, cheap, and a container. Even better, not made out of plastic. Good find.

We made our way back to Piazza de la Republica and this time went into a nearby Church: Santa Maria degli Angeli. Very big, like St. Peters, but much less busy, the silence was nice. We wandered around in there looking at the decorations and the borderline-insulting display about Galileo that was doing its best to assure everyone of the compatibility between science and faith. The church had some huge arches, big paintings, and a lot of neat stuff to look at, including some sort of star chart on the floor. We couldn’t really figure out what it represented.


This is one of my favorite pictures from the entire vacation.

We exited and wandered into one of the other national museums, but a much less impressive one. They had a lot of random stone fragments and, oddly enough, a tree that had been, presumably, planted by Michaelangelo but had been so damaged that only a few tendrils actually led into the ground. Weird. We didn’t spend a lot of time there, but we did see another cat.

We rested back at the hostel for a bit then went out for a nice dinner, a big fancy affair for our last night in Rome and the beginning of our journey back home. We found a place down the street that had some nice set menus and sat down for a many-course meal. I had the fish meal, of course, and Jess had regular pasta and stuff, but between all the bread, pasta, salad, and dessert, and house wine, we felt very well fed and like we had capped off the city quite well. Cheers!


That was a really good dinner.

We came back to the hostel after that, relaxed and played rummy for a bit (Tie!) packed up our stuff, showered, and did our best to get to sleep before our preposterously early wake-up call the next day.

-N

More modern News

A few more notes, just while Jess finishes up some more playing in rock band, about stuff that's been happening, you know, recently.

1) We took off this Friday to go tubing with people at work, a tradition three years at this point. There were slightly fewer of us, and it was a little overcast, but that just made it easier to organize and less likely for us to get sunburned as far as I am concerned. Good times.

2) Inspired by Nana, we had a local neighborhood get-together grill. We didn't get *everyone* showing up, but we did get to meet and re-meet some neighbors, and we did get to see a lot of them when we handed out our little 'announcement fliers', though we had to convince some people, first, that we weren't there to tell them about the latest issue of The Watchtower.

The grill went off pretty well, although I made *way* too many hamburgers. Turns out grilling is pretty easy, I'm getting halfway accomplished at it. Lots of fun, lots of food, really hot, and we got a lot of 'thank yous' for organizing it. Next time, we may have to try Ice-cream, or maybe just have it indoors. It was pretty toasty.

Also, Rock band three has been announced, with the following upgrades:

a) A real keyboard
b) Upgraded Drums
c) Upgraded guitar
and, most importantly:
d) A version called 'pro mode' where you are pretty much playing the real guitar, drum, and keyboard parts. I could be learning how to play the keyboard! And the drums better (they'll have cymbals on them now) and the pro guitar, which is optional, has a button for every string and every fret now, and six strings to strum. How's that for realistic? I'm excited.

3) Jess and I are seriously considering joining the new century with sexy new smart phones, but being a good nerd I'm researching the possibilities. As in previous tech revolutions, the hardware is getting outdated every couple of months, but considering we're upgrading from really, really old phones, pretty much anything is acceptable.

4) Jess is still playing...what else...

5) We're trying to plan our vacation time for the rest of the year, which is pretty limited being as we burned pretty much all of it in Europe. We get more every month, though, so we're trying to figure out when we can go see Jessie's family, which we haven't seen for a really long time.

And that's about it. We've got a few more days of Europe and then we're done. It's been a pretty big writing project, and I'm *still* way behind Sandlin on the post count. Heh.

-N

Europe Part 19: Really big church

Today, we visited the Vatican. Does this count as another country? We woke up and after a little bit of work getting our reservation ticket sorted out and figuring out where the museum actually was, we ended up at the Vatican Museum at Precisely 9:00, right when our reservation was. As it turns out, we got to skip the entire line (significant, I assure you) and were one of the first people in the museum.

The layout of the museum is mostly linear, though there are detours to all sorts of interesting collections. Most people won’t see them, though, because they just want to head right off to the Sistine Chapel. We took our time. We went through a lot of areas and saw massive collections of all sorts. The collections of roman statues were particularly impressive, they had big famous figures like emperors and little sculptures of kids and rich families. A lot to take in. Also big collection of animal statues, from the exotic to the mundane.


Muscle statue!

The tapestries were another highlight. Rivaling some of the big paintings in the Louvre for size, they spanned the entire hall from floor to ceiling. And when you got up close, you could see some very impressive details in the stitching. Then we got to one of the other ‘things to see in the Vatican museum’, the Raphael Rooms. Very detailed and complex, and very full of people. It went for room after room. Pictures do it better justice than words, though.


Raphael Rooms: Now that's how you paint a wall.

Next up was the ‘modern art’ area, which most people passed because the Chapel was *so close*. We went, though, and I’m glad we did. There were a lot of neat pieces, including some by Dali and a few others that looked really nice. Then it was time for The Sistine Chapel.

Which was pretty uninspiring. Sure, it was neat to see *the* frescoes, but honestly everything else was way to distracting. All the people mulling about and taking pictures while curators repeated every 10 seconds “no pictures please be quiet” over and over and over again. Then the speakers came on and blasted “QUIET PLEASE” in 5 languages which would keep people silent for all of 10 seconds. It was a mess, and it wasn’t even as busy as it was when Jess saw it. At least we weren’t shoulder-to-shoulder with everyone.

The rest of the museum was pretty nice, too. I liked seeing some of the church artifacts: crazy old chalices and host-holders with ridiculous detail. The gift shop was fairly interesting, too. Aside from the normal bits and pieces, they also had replicas of the seals that old popes used to seal correspondence. If I was into seals, or popes, I might have gotten one. We passed the “Early Christian art” display because it was just a whole lot more Marble and we were getting pretty tired. So, MANY hours after entering, we left.

After a cafeteria lunch, we headed over to St. Peters basilica. There was a GIGANTIC line in front, and we were initially concerned, but it moved quite quickly and we got in with no worries. The church has a lot to see inside, though some of it was blocked. There was another famous ‘Mary and Jesus’ statue by Micaelangelo, this time with Jesus just down off the cross.


You could fit several significant other churches *inside* this thing if you wanted.

Then there were Mosaics, copies of famous paintings made with tiny, tiny pieces of glass. But the hall was generally dominated by these Preposterous statues, in marble, of old Popes or brothers or cardinals or something. It’s honestly a little off-putting, these brooding old men looking down on you with grumpy faces and condemning eyes. “How dare you enter my house, you sinner.” The altar, which is also huge, by the way, has a statue of St. Peter that you’re supposed to be able to kiss his foot. I’m not sure if they still let you do it, because it’s blocked off, but so many people have that his foot has been worn down to a nubbin.

After that we walked back through the catacombs which let us get a look at where, presumably, St. Peters original remains are housed, right underneath the altar. Pope Paul was interred down there too, still receiving flowers and prayers. After that we considered climbing to the very tip-top of the cathedral, but decided to pass. We shopped around a little bit for a Chalice, and we did find a store that would let us look at them, but after all that...churchitude...I was pretty burned out on holiness. It’s not accidental that I don’t go to church anymore, and I found the whole experience kind of upsetting, especially when I learned where all the money to build that church came from. Anyway, I decided to skip the cups.


Jess resting afterwords in the square out in front.

We got dinner at a restaurant where I tried Spaghetti Carbonara. Which, as it turns out, isn’t my favorite. Glad I tried it, though. We took the Metro back to our hostel in rush hour traffic, but nothing like as bad as Rush hour metro in Japan, so we managed. Back at the hostel, we planned out our next day a little, relaxed while it poured rain outside, and I gave Jessie a foot massage. I like being the best husband in the world.

-N

Europe Part 18: Old Old Old Rome

Our first full day in Rome had us wandering the old parts. The *really* old parts. We had a sort of list of things we wanted to see, and we mostly did it on foot. Good exercise for pizza and gelato.

Our first major stop was the Colosseum. We saw a bunch of random neat stuff on the way, but if I try to describe every single neat thing we spotted, we’ll be here all week. Anyway, the Colosseum was really impressive. I liked wandering out into the center and imagining a roar of the crowd as I appeared. It must have been quite a sight. They had some displays around the outside with historical notes and archeological findings. My favorite was the descriptions of the games the crowd would play during and between fights. Rolling the bones, and such. Jess wanted, of course, to go explore the area down beneath the floor where the stages and lifting cages would be. It wasn’t open, though. We did wander all around to get a sense of the size of the place, though. Truly an engineering marvel.


Gladiator muscles! Arrrrr.

We got some underwhelming but nourishing street food from a vendor after that and then wandered to The Palantine Hill, a large, sprawling area with a boatload of ruins of an old castle. We poked our heads in all sorts of corners, we especially liked the bathhouse area because we walked up on the third floor. That area must have been gigantic. We also saw the very famous, very old Circus Maximus which wins the award for most underwhelming ruin in all of Europe. It just looks like a big field with a dirt ring worn in it. I could imagine high schoolers playing flag football there on the weekends, but nope. Big famous ruin. Ben Hur and all that.


A statue pose on Palantine hill. Not bad, if I do say so myself.

After quite a long time checking out the Palantine Hill ruins (mostly brick) and then wandered to an overlook of the old Roman forum (mostly marble). Very little of it remains intact, but there are a few really impressive buildings all within a block of each other. A couple of historic arches, the location of several important temples and even a few columns that have stood, despite the attempts by guys trying to get some cheap marble, for thousands of years. I also liked how there was so much ancient roman marble that they just left it lying around in piles. You could sit on it, sketch it, whatever. Just ancient stuff. We have it all over Rome.

So after the ‘really old rocks’ tour, we found ourselves outside the ‘monument to victory’ building, which, I’m told, is also famous. Then we wandered around the Parthenon again. I considered getting a Church chalice as my ‘container souvenir’ for europe, after all, we did spend an enormous amount of time in churches of one form or another, but the cool looking ones were all way too expensive, and the cheaper ones weren’t preposterously elaborate enough. They had a whole bunch of church gear around the Parthenon, though. Kind of like outlet shopping for catholic churches, I should think. Kind of like going to Belgum to get your chocolate or Germany to get your beer. You want the real crazy chalices, you go to Rome.

After some more wandering, we went ‘square hunting’. Lots of historic squares to see in rome. We settled in Piazza Navone and had some pizza outside and stared at people and fountains to recharge the ol’ batteries. Then we went south to Campo Di Fiori, another famous square, but the market there was just wrapping up and it was just all full of half deconstructed market booths and old vegetable matter. It didn’t look particularly famous, but what do I know? We got some more gelato there. Yum.


Yum. Yum yum yum. Yum. Good way to fuel up for all the walking, too.

We made another random stop when we walked by a museum that said it had a bunch of DaVinci stuff. Being good engineers, we felt like checking it out. It was pretty great, they had a bunch of his old sketches and had actually recreated a lot of the things he had sketched and designed, including crazy things like a tank with 16 cannons around the outside and really fundamental things like *ball bearings*. Pretty neat little distraction.


Ball bearings, for crying out loud! What a role model for aspiring engineers.

We wandered through some random back alleys (always a fun pastime in Rome) and found ourselves at the Trevere River. We sat and watched it flow for a while, and then wandered back north to the main area of rome through an alley covered with graffiti and still full of tourists. Neat highlight. Our plan, after that, was to walk along Via Del Corso, but we decided instead to be tired. We still had to walk all they way back to the hotel, though, and we saw the four fountains of San Carlo. If Rome has a checklist, we must have ticked a lot of boxes.

Back at the hostel, we checked out the alleyway behind a window in the stairway and the cat brothers came over to see what was going on. Turns out their are four of them, and they get all excited and big-eyed whenever we came to the window, but the never came close to let us pet them. Then a bunch of writing and dinner at a restaurant near the hostel that was well reviewed in the guidebook. It wasn’t bad, but we had good food all over, really. Then resting and writing. Trust me, we took a lot of notes, it took quite a while each day to write it all down.

-N

Europe Part 17: FAST trains

[Hey, I added some pictures to Part 16. Yous should go check them out.]

We got up pretty darn early and hoofed it down to the train station. (Of course we packed the day before...we’re professionals.) We spent some of our franks on postcards and stamps to send some more letters home. The trains were all pretty normal until we got to Speitz. That train was fairly packed. But remember how we got some reservations before? Yep, this was one of those trains. We had to kick some fellow travelers out of our seats, but they got kicked out of several seats before the ticket-takers came around. She got it sorted out eventually, though. Anyway, we just holed up in our seats, read, and munched on chocolate and trail mix. I think we just ate out of our backpacks all day. At least until dinner. Good thing we stocked up.

I had read the travel guide for Rome and, what with the long passages about pickpockets and scams, I entered with a bad first impression and my hands in my pockets over the camera. Our transfer to the fast EuroStar train in...some city or another went off without a hitch, though. And that train is pretty darn fast. It cut a couple of hours off of our travel time, and that’s time we got to spend in rome. So, nice.

So our train pulls into Rome, and all paranoid about all the pickpockets, thieves, con men and bad singers the guidebook had told us to look out for, we locked down all our valuables and prepared to run the gauntlet. Of course, when we got out there, nothing. Just people, as it turns out. Not much more likely to rob you here as anywhere. Especially when you travel with a guy as determined-looking and bestowed with gristly strength as I am. *Flex*. *Flex*.


Would you pickpocket this man? I didn't think so.

We made our way to the nearby hostel on foot (crossing the street in Rome is always an adventure: walk with purpose, time your crossing with others, and don’t stop walking). Turns out we made a poetic transition from the best hostel we’ve ever stayed at...to the worst. We had been ‘upgraded’ to a better room, which mostly just meant we couldn’t pay by credit card, and it made me fear for the downgraded version. We still had one shared bathroom, the room had one light with an exposed bulb. There was a kitchen, but the fridge was broken and, oddly enough, no silverware. Plenty of plates, though. Ants in the hallway and a silverfish in the room. I didn’t tell jess until after we left. She hates silverfish almost as much as I hate things that give my girl the heeby-jeebies.

On the plus side, it’s cheap, near the train station, and we found four cats in the alley behind a window in our stairwell. But first, hunger. We wandered around to an Itallian restaurant (shock!) and ordered some foodstuffs. I had sort of a mission in mind that I wanted to find one of the old-school pizzas. Flat bread with tomatoes, basil, and fresh Mozz. cheese. Never did find it: their pizzas have gotten pretty Americanized, but who can blame them? American pizza is pretty great. I did try the Margherita Pizza which was pretty good. Jess got some pasta. Not bad for a first meal, all told.

It started to rain, and we had our coats, but the city sprouted this army of clearly-not-from-itally-but-I’m-not-sure-what-country-they’re-from guys who would be glad to sell you an umbrella for a euro or two. I wonder what they do when it’s not raining? Anyway, having a little extra time before we had to turn in, we started to just walk around the city some. Rome is a joy to walk around. There’s some thousand-year-old building or gorgeous architectual masterwork around pretty much every corner. I stopped and gawked at a lot of buildings that may or may not have had any important historical significance.


I'm not sure what this building is. It's probably important.

We walked by the Palace of Exposition, the Colonna Tralana, and the Parthenon. The Parthenon was the most impressive, even though part of the outside was under construction. The inside had been under construction when Jess had come before so she got to see some new stuff.


The newly renovated interior of the Parthenon. And us.

Then we got some Gelato (I think I like Amy’s better. Don’t shoot me!) and wandered over to Trevi Fountain, where everyone had their picture taken last time Jess came to Italy. We got our picture taken in the exact same spot. Also, behind Trevi fountain is just some building or another. Probably someone’s house. Imagine the HOA on that building.

Oh, also, we had this exchange, which I liked:

Jess: Do we have any coins to throw in the fountain?
Noel: Not really. Just some big coins from the Gelato.
Jess: Oh, okay.
Noel: ...
Jess: ...
Noel:
Jess: No, it’s okay.
Noel: You know, you don’t think I can read your mind. But I can.


Same Picture Jess got the last time she was here. I like being included this time.

We scoped out the fountain (us and about three different school trips. They were all over. What’s with Europe and school trips?) and sort of meandered our way back home through Plaza De La Republica. Apologies for not describing more of these landmarks in detail, but we saw so many that If I describe each one we’ll be here all year. We got some food at a market (always good to stock up) and came back to the hostel to sleep.

-N

Europe Part 16: Gear-tracks

It’s after Judo and I’m tired, but let’s see what we can do to finish off Switzerland, ja? (I think I'll skip the pictures for now. It takes a while and it's late. I may add them later, though, I'll let you know.)

Oh, and on a happy note, our Cuckoo clock from Germany finally showed up! It’s up on the wall and ticking away. It’s also *really* high up. Those 8 day weights hang REAL long. I’ll put up pics later. So...

Our third day in Switzerland was as pretty as the second, mostly, and this day we wanted to head up the other side of the valley to the highest train station in Europe near the top of the Jungfrau Mountain. After lightening our day pack (less hiking, more train rides) we toddled down to the train station and bought our tickets two minutes before the train left. Nice timing. The trains on these mountains are special: because they gain so much altitude there is actually a gear on the trains that runs on these teeth in the middle of the track. Keeps it from slipping during steep and wintry ascents and descents. During the assent out of the valley we shared a car with a Chinese tourist family. There are few things louder than old Chinese ladies speaking Mandarin.


Jess at the halfway point.

The views on the way up were spectacular: slowly climbing the side of a mountain with the valley and Lauterbrunen spreading out below us. And with no clouds, we got to see a lot more, this time. The midpoint of our journey happened at Kleine Sheindig, clearly on it’s way out from ski season. The slopes looked like so much fun it made me wish I could ski. We could also see down over the other side of the mountain, toward a city named Grindelwald. We never got down there, but it looks very pretty from above. Then we transferred to he final train which climbed a little bit more and then disappeared into a tunnel. This tunnel is nearly 100 years old. The train system was actually built nearly 100 years ago by a thousand men, tons of dynamite and drills, and a pre-winter food drop that would make Costo jealous. It took 16 years and opened in 1912. How’s that for modern convenience?

On the way up the tunnel, the train stopped a couple of times to let us off at observation points: places where the tunnel meandered close enough to the side of the mountain that they had built windows for us to see down into Gimmerwald and over near some glacial formations. Impressive engineering, that. Their aim was pretty dead-on.



I took this one for dad. It's a snowblower. You want?

At the top, there is a lot to do, you just have to make sure you do it carefully, because you’re at 3454 meters of altitude. It’s easy to get winded. Our first stop was the Sphinx observation tower. They actually did have an observatory up there. Great views of the mountains with little clouds in the way. We were also surrounded by wires in what turned out, later, to be a Faraday cage. That’s what they put you in when you may get struck by lightning. Evidently it happens quite a lot, and without those wires, we’d be in real danger. With them? Safe as houses.


Jess outside. Always with the danger.

After that, we go to go OUTSIDE. It was really cool. My favorite part. When we first walked out it was cloudy and hard to see much of anything. There was a trail, though, so we wandered along for a couple hundred meters, then turned around when the clouds broke. We got to see the observatory and mountain top...and the sledding slope! They had disks there and a nice hill you could just ride down for as long as your altitude-weary legs could take you. Jess went once. I went three times, wearing myself out so much I had to take off my coat. Sledding on top of the highest mountain in Europe, though? Highlight.


That's the observatory behind us.

Next was the Ice palace. Probably more impressive during proper tourist season, they still had a pretty neat array of ice carvings in this structure that was literally just melted out of the ice. Can’t imagine how it’s so stable, but it is. My favorite structure was this big block of ice that people put their hands in to wear down hand prints. I did my part melting down a millimeter at most. Oh, and the ceiling and walls are all ice. So was the floor. We saw a couple of kids slip and fall. After that we went outside, again, to the ‘terrace’. A flat viewing area that was pretty cloudy when we went out. The entrance was also hyper-slippery with everyone walking on it. We wandered around and waved at the web cam.


Jess in the Ice Palace

After that, Jess was pretty worn out, so in an attempt to refuel we got some food. They had a cafeteria up there that had some decent faire, considering it all had to be brought up on a train. Jess had chicken and fries, and I had curry chicken. We put the spare curry all over everything. We watched another cheesy ‘multivision’ movie (the blinds closed automatically again. Kind of odd) and walked through the souvenir shop again but Jess clearly had ‘mountain burnout’ so we took the train back down. Jess was smart and got us seats on the downhill side because that meant that we were leaning back in our seats during the ride down, and pretty much everyone but me was taking a nap on the train. The nice couple across from us would fall asleep and then start to fall forward. Jess had to suppress giggles. Then she fell asleep, too.

We considered doing some hiking when we reached Kleine Sheindig, but Jess was pretty worn down so we just took the train. Jess slept some more and I listened to Chinese tour guides talking about things I couldn’t understand. Jess woke up near the bottom and told me I could sleep if I wanted, but I wasn’t tired and, evidently, that makes me superman. We wanted to get some food when we got back to Lauterbrunen but, If memory serves, it was Sunday afternoon and pretty much everything was closed. So instead we just had an early dinner, wrote a whole heck of a lot in our journal and Jess kicked my butt at rummy again. She did that rather a lot.

-N

End of Phase III...

As noted by Sandlin in a recent "Nana" post, we have been proceeding through the phases of Kelsey's transition. Phase I, graduation, was well attended and a lovely experience for us all to meet again as a family, bless you all. Phase II, rotation to Anchorage and car swap went OK. I managed to buzz up the coast with trailer in tow behind Kelsey's Ford Focus while Mom and Kelsey flew to Juneau and picked up the Old Subaru for the drive to Anchorage. They did well, being suitably impressed with the vast wonders of the AlCan highway before arriving in the Anchorage Bowl on Wednesday. I got to Seattle early enough to off-load the trailer to the Barge Company, return the trailer, and buzz over to Spokane a day early. Got a nice Nana visit, unwound some Phone issues, made a visit with the Assessor's office to set the stage for a property tax break next season for Nana, and settled the car issue that we thought might be improved by udgrading to Kelsey's newer vehicle. Turns out that Nana's old Camry is an All-Trac model which will always be a better winter option than the lightweight front-wheel drive option the little Ford presents.

After settling that decision, we dropped the newly washed and waxed Focus with Uncle Wayne, tapped out a Craig's list ad and went up to Anchorage to meet the group for Phase III, acquiring stuff. That mostly constituted getting a Bed and assembling a Knockdown desk for Kelsey's room in her new place. Given her status as an Officially Poor Person with Americorp, she couldn't have landed in a better situation. Her landlord-roomate is a friend of Sam's who just bought her first place, a modest but newly refurbished Condo with an extra bedroom for Kelsey. The roomie has worked for the Army Corp of Engineers for 5 years and seems very solid. Kelsey has a parking spot with a plug-in for her newly installed block-heater. They are both moving in/unpacking today and will have a chance to arrange things just the way they want.

We are back in Juneau, a little frazzled from all the driving, blessed with some beautiful weather, and proud of the accomplishments of all our children. We are starting to see the end of our time in Juneau as closer than ever but we still have much to accomplish here and at work before we get to contemplate Phase Next for ourselves in whatever form that will take. But it was very satisfying to see life moving on for our biggest blessings.....

Europe Part 15: Surprise Paragliding!

We decided to sleep in a little bit so we closed the blinds on the foggy eve the night before and crashed pretty well. When we woke up in the morning we tossed open the blinds and the view was SPECTACULAR. The clouds had cleared, the sun was out, and everything was shades of amazing. We had planned to go up to the other mountain on this day...but with the weather so unusually nice, we decided to figure out if we could go paragliding. Well the lady at the front desk of the hostel called them up for us and it turned out that they had a slot open in just another hour, and with the whether so nice we decided there could be no better opportunity to go up in the air. So we signed up.

We hung out around the hostel for a while and I saw a kitty! I think he belongs to the hostel. He was pretty old, but very affectionate. I gave him the patented ‘scratch petting’ which just pulled tons of hair off of him. He loved the attention and the cleaning. He did the little paw-kead thing on the concrete, even. I saw him a little later, too, napping in a box. He meowed at me to come over and give him more attention. So I did.


Swiss Kitty.

Before long our driver/pilot showed up and took us to our takeoff point over by Murren. (Which is up on the top of the cliffs where we had lunch the day before. The big empty city.) We milled around while we waited for the gondola to come down and pick us up, watching paragliders come over the lip of the cliff every two minutes or so. There are, reportedly, 20,000 registered paragliders in Switzerland. It’s kind of like getting your sports pilot license. And if there were places to glide around in my neighborhood that looked this good I’d probably get my license, too. Anyway, they all clearly knew what they were doing so we had nothing to worry about. So we took the gondola up the hill and then walked about 10 minutes further up the hill to the takeoff point. Kurt, my pilot, had all his gear on his back. That’s a workout.

Kurt started setting up his gear, very methodically, and Jess ended going with another pilot, Beni, just in front of me. She also took our camera, but all the pilots had these cool little cameras-on-a-stick that they would use to take pictures and movies of ourselves while we went.

Jess and Ben went first, and their takeoff was a little rough. They had to run down the hill a bit to get the momentum they needed. Kurt was much less rushed, and we just waited for a gust of wind which lifted the sail and then we stepped off into the air. Murren was really pretty from the air, the cute little village all spread out in front of us. We took a right and ended up hanging out over some trees with pretty dramatic thermals that kept lifting us higher and higher. We spiraled around for a while, gaining altitude pretty much the whole time, and then we went out over the cliff.

From Preecs Place: The family blog

Jess and her pilot.

So beautiful! The entire valley spread out before us in picturesque detail. It was a sight to see. We strolled around up and down, looking at the mountains, the waterfalls, and just taking it all in. Kurt took a bunch of pictures of us too. We ended up buying the pictures afterwards. They just gave us the memory card, which was a pretty slick way to go. Jess took some pictures, too, mostly of me from above and below.

From Preecs Place: The family blog

Me and my pilot.

Eventually, the demands of altitude meant we would have to land. Kurt, having done this a thousand times, at least, knew exactly *exactly* how to land. Jess had landed before us and was already out of her harness with the camera, so Kurt took us down right beside Jess and dropped the sail right on her head. The whole thing was just a blast.

Back at the hostel, we decided to head out to a supermarket for lunch. Some sandwiches, Madelines (delicious cookies) and 3 bars of chocolate later, we were back at the hostel in our kitchen area and eating. After the food, Jess felt like nap-vampiring me. That’s when she doesn’t need me to take a nap with her necessarily. She just wants to lay on my chest and have *her* take a nap. We relaxed for a while, but I woke her up when I had to sneeze.

After that, we had energy for some more activity, and w had a map of the trails around Lauterbrunen, down on the cliff floor, so that we wouldn’t have to take a Gondola up to the top of the cliff. So I sort of picked some routes, we gathered up the day pack, and we were on our way.


Jess discovers how I like my hikes: steep.

So as it turns out, I like picking the hardest possible hikes. If there’s an uphill fork and a downhill one, I’ll pick the uphill one, and *man* was this uphill. We didn’t get up to the top of the cliff, but the trail we were on evidently wound up there eventually, and we got about a third of the way up in altitude, by the look of it. *Very* steep. We walked by a waterfall, got a great view of the city below, and I *soaked* my shirt with all the sweat from carrying the backpack up the hill. Jess felt bad that she was getting tired after merely a short hike, until I reminded her that she was hiking the Swiss Alps, which is pretty much the english idiom for ‘doing something really hard’. She felt better after that. And after we started going downhill again. We saw some more cows, and a hell of a lot of firewood stacked up in cords. And then goats! When we were almost all the way back down we saw some goats and a llama hanging out in the backyard of someone’s farm. We stopped and looked at the little baby goats while the moms bleated at us to leave the children alone.

After getting back to ‘ground level’ near the train station, we took a (much less steep) hike up the other side of the valley, mostly through the town. Lots of pretty views of the river and peoples houses and gardens. We saw another cat walking kind of parallel to us, and eventually our paths crossed. She was a sweetie, but clearly on a mission. She let us pet her, but she had a route and she needed to get it walked. So we wandered along with her, stopping every once in a while to scritch her ear. She seemed to like the company, and got *really* into nuzzling my shoes. Eventually she wandered off into a field, presumably looking for lunch. We saw a lot of cats on our trip.

After our hike, we stopped off at “Air Time” one of the local coffee bar/internet cafe/laundry/backpacker haven shops that are so much fun. We checked the internet while I looked at the book exchange and it was a good thing we did. Turns out our hotel in Paris the last day got cancelled. We tried to make another reservation but the place wouldn’t take our card, for some reason. We decided to just wing it. We’ll come back to this thread later.


Good beer. Big, too.

Dinner at Hotel Oberland again, which was our favorite place to eat, as it turns out. Jess got a steak that she *devoured* and I had rosti with sausage. After dessert, and finishing our beers, we came back to the hostel to relax and write in our journals about such an amazing day.

-N

Europe Part 14: The Little Mountain

We wake up in the morning and it’s a little overcast. Remember how I said Lauterbrunen is in the middle of a really steep valley? Well when it’s overcast it’s kind of like being in a box. Two big walls and a really big ceiling. It’s all still really pretty, though. The cliffs are beautiful, the waterfall is streaming...it’s a gorgeous sight. We wandered a bit and picked up some breakfast items at a nearby market and brought it back to the hostel...

Let me digress, briefly, to talk about Valley Hostel, which is, currently, my favorite hostel in the world. It’s got all the basics of what you need to be a hostel. It’s got good clean rooms, it’s got low prices that it subsidizes by having you do some stuff for your own darn self, it’s got shared bathrooms, the whole nine yards. But it’s got so much MORE, too! For starters, it’s got this whole locker room area downstairs where, if your bathroom is being used, you can head down and use one of three bathrooms or three showers that are never full and always available. It’s got a drying room for your wet or recently-washed clothes. It’s got a nice, clean communal kitchen area where we ate breakfast from stuff we could buy and families of chinese tourists made dinner every night that smelled pretty fantastic. Three of them, even! It had a window view of the waterfalls that was nothing short of magnificent at any time of day or bent of weather. And a cat! He was adorable, and very friendly, even though he doesn’t get enough attention, based on how much fur I got off him. Cute! Best hostel in the world, so far.


It was a little cold in the morning.

After acquiring breakfast, we noticed the coat shop was open, and they seemed to sell some quality-looking coats. So we stroll in and start looking. The first coat I look at is $740. Holy mackerel! That’s crazy! They’re no way we’re going to be able to--oh, wait, the rest of them are all totally normal, nevermind. We shopped around for another protective outer layer, something waterproof to go over my regular coat because we can see up in the mountain that we’re planning to hit up later in the day and thar be snow up there. So we find the coat, looks and feels and works great (and us Alaskans know our coats). Then we gear up with our gloves, our hats, our long johns, our coats, our day pack filled with trail mix and water and we HIT THAT MOUNTAIN.

First up was a gondola ride up to the top of the cliff that cast all of Lauterbrunen and the valley into beautiful relief. Then we ended up in the clouds for most of the rest of the ride and arrived at the top of the gondola. The traditional route is to take a train to Muren, but we didn’t want to take a train. We wanted to hike. So we did. The trail said it was about 1.5 hours long, and we weren’t even taking the direct route. We took another path that went pretty much straight up the foothills of the mountain and while we didn’t require any climbing gear or anything, it was a heck of a workout, especially with the altitude. Within just a few minutes we were walking among the snow with our coats around our waists and sweating.

Up and up we climb, periodically turning around to marvel at how much freaking altitude we’ve gained. The snow was just a light dusting for a while, and the path was a little thin. And then, after a little while, the trail got thinner and the snow got thicker. Sure, there were some footprints, but we didn’t know the area and we were the only people on the trail. I really didn’t want us to get lost or injured up in the snow following some adventurous quack by his footprints alone onto some trail we’ve never seen before. So, like smart people, we turned back. Luckily, the trails are pretty easy to navigate; we’re walking along the ridge of a cliff, more or less. As long as you don’t fall off the cliff or ‘accidentally’ walk over the mountain, you’re pretty much guaranteed to be going the right way.


Behold! Nature!

We walked around for a while and then we passed a waterfall streaming down the hills behind us and Jess got a really big smile on her face. That was really nice. We wander through forests and meadows and up and down really skinny trails cut into steep hillsides for a couple of hours, and then we get to Murren. It’s a tourist hub for the skiiers in the winter and the hikers in the summer. In the middle, when we were there, it’s *empty*. We did manage to track down one restaurant that was open and we refueled for the rest of our day. Our plan was to take the tram (really steep tram) partway up the mountain and then sort of hike back down, but the train was down for repairs so instead, we just got on a tram directly to the summit of the Schilthorn. The live camera on the top indicated that the clouds sort of broke up with enough altitude, so great for us! We got tickets and ascended to the top of the mountain via gondola. Nearly 3000 meters high. Much of the trip was made in the clouds, but that just made it more dramatic when we broke through the clouds and saw the summit and the cool visitors center. It’s a pretty cool place to visit.

We checked out the viewing platform, seeing little mountaintops here and there among the slowly shifting clouds. We also got really entranced by these little black birds that hung out around the platforms and would sort of cavort and dive through the unpredictably shifting winds. The interior of the center held a gift shop (of course) and this weird area where they showed a video with info and history about the mountain and especially about the James Bond movie they filmed up there. It wasn’t one of the good ones, though. When I pushed the button to start the video, all the shades in the room came down automatically. Pretty Bond-esque.


Us on top of the Schilthorn.

We spent a little more time up at the top, marveling at the views (which kept getting better as the clouds slowly cleared) and watching the birds, then took the gondola back down to Murren. We considered walking around on top of the cliff some more, but instead we decided to head back to the valley floor via another gondola, a good 1.5 hour walk from Lauterbrunen. So we did. Back on the valley floor, we took a bus halfway back to Jessie’s favorite sight of the entire vacation. Trummelbach falls.

Trummelbach falls is the results of presumably millions of years of erosion as this river that carries all the water from three glaciers up in the mountains has worn a furrow in the side of the mountain and populated it with a series of spectacular, underground waterfalls. So they built a series of tunnels between the underground waterfalls and lit the whole thing so that you can go inside and see. Let me tell you, it is a sight to behold. Each waterfalls is more spectacular than the last, and they’re all hidden inside this mountain. It’s dark and moist, the sun is visible only through a tiny crack in the stone overhead, and the sound is deafening and refreshing at the same time. We spend probably an hour just wandering through and staring at all these falls and doing our very best to try take pictures in the darkness. It was really cool.


Sorry the lighting is so bad, we were *inside a mountain*.

After that we had some extra time and energy so we walked back to Lauterbrunen. Only about an hour, and thankfully flat. We walked by some cows on the way home and fed them grass and let them lick our hands. Okay, I let them do that. Jess thought it was gross. We met a fellow american traveler there who was nearing the tail end of three months of travel. We helped her take a picture of a cow tongue. City folk.

Back at Lauterbrunen we had fondue for dinner. Jess was super-pumped about this all day, and the cheese was pretty great. We like more variety of stuff to dip in it, they mostly gave us potatoes and bread, but it was still mighty fine cheese. Good beer, too. And ice cream. Heck, anything tastes good when you’ve been hiking all day.


The view from the balcony of our hostel. Best hostel in the world.

We relaxed in our room for a while and I went out on the porch while Jess went to take a shower. Well it turns out that the other great thing about the hostel is that it has very thick windows, so Jess got stuck outside the room for about 15 or 20 minutes while I sat on the balcony and wrote. She got pretty nervous because she couldn’t find me until she thought to yell outside and I heard her from the balcony. I felt bad about that, but no harm was done. We cuddled just fine and slept really well.

-N