After a tip from my friend Nick, Kat and I took a tram out to Delft to watch the Delft University Flugtag event. I was vaguely familiar with the concept because I believe Red Bull sponsors something similar in the states for marketing purposes. Basically, the Flugtag is about the school's aeronautical engineers trying to design a non-powered, manned aircraft (a glider, let's say) to be launched down a huge ramp over the town canal. The goal of course is to 'fly' as far as possible over the water. The fun here is that no matter how well your glider flies, [View Full Entry]

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Yay! After 5 some-odd weeks apart, Kat's made it across the pond for a week-long stay. After picking her up at Schipol Airport, we went up to Amsterdam to visit the Anne Frank house, Heineken Experience brewery tour, and of course walk around the 'scenic' red light district. Kat was less than impressed with the quality of the ladies who were out and about during the mid-afternoon hours, but hey, I guess if you're particularly lonely, the friendly lady with poor dental hygeine and fat rolls on her forearms might be the kind of company you're looking for. The Anne Frank [View Full Entry]

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Now keep in mind that by Day 3 of the 4-day weekend, I was pretty beat for several reasons 1) I walked more than I have ever walked in my life over the past 2 days in Brussels and Antwerp, 2) I only had 5 hours of sleep to rest up from said walk-a-thon across Belgium, and 3) I made the mistake of going out for a karaoke night at an Irish pub with Eugene and his party animal friend Ryan. Hungover at 9:15 in the morning is where our Rotterdam adventure begins. I make it out of bed and to [View Full Entry]

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The Antwerp train station is amazing. All the platforms are in a massive glass-canopied structure, and the glasswork and architecture of the central station were almost catherdral quality. Good stuff. I wandered around forever trying to find the visitor's information center only to learn that all the signs pointing me around were obsolete, as the center had been relocated into the central station lobby. There's 1.5 hours of my life I'll never get back! I took in the massive Catherdral of Our Lady and the 4 gigantic Ruben's works inside, toured the Steen Castle and the naval museum the [View Full Entry]

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Due to an unexpected 4-day weekend, I had to come up with decent plans for maximizing the travel opportunity. I decided to do Belgium; hitting Brussels on one day, Antwerp the next. Brussel's main attraction (besides the beer in general) is Mannekken Pis, who is about 2 feet tall, naked, and peeing. What a great reason for everybody to congregate from around the globe! I also checked out some dinosaur bones at the natural science museum and soaked up some art by Rubens at the Fine Arts Museum. Still don't know what dinosaur bones have to do with affordable timepieces. Arfeo [View Full Entry]

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I toured the Escher Museum and the Gevangenpoort (Prison Gate) Museum. It was really great to see all the classic original Escher works such as Night and Day up close and personal. There was a Virtual Reality section of the exhibit where you were navigated interactively through some of the puzzling pieces done by Escher such as the one where all the stairwells connect in crazy ways. The Gevagenpoort museum was cool, but the tour was all in Dutch. I got to see something like 3 holding cells and 3 different torture areas. That's a high torture to holding cell ratio, [View Full Entry]

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Word of advice: Dutch restaurants use the term 'Mexican Food' very loosely. After being woken up at 9am with a searing hangover to move a washer/dryer combo into my apartment, I decided that the Queen would appreciate the celebration I put forth the night before and went back to bed until about 4 pm. This brings us to Queen's Day-Evening, where a bunch of the usual suspects met up in Scheveningen (the beach town) to have some dinner and watch the fireworks display on the beach. The fireworks were great. The 'Mexican' dinner was not so much. Note to restaurant: Ketchup [View Full Entry]

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Queen's Night in Den Haag - An all out Dutch street party roughly equivlent to turning every street into Bourbon street for Mardi Gras. Excellent. I bought a silly orange hat, as you do, and wandered around the throngs of celebratory Dutch with Shruti, Eugene, Jen, and Adam. At some point in the debauchery the question hit me, 'Hey, where am I, and who are all you strange people?" [View Full Entry]

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Yesterday was the going away party for a guy named Gordon, whose a cool Scottish bloke in our group. We started off with some company-sponsored drinks at the Half Moon (excellent) and then took a tram to Delft for a tapas restaurant. Holy geez...tapas is awesome. It was something like 12 different dishes we had....cream chese filled tomatoes, chorizo, meatballs, smoked salmon, potato wedges, jalepeno cream cheese poppers....and on and on and on. To top it off was a totally excellent dessert platter with fried ice cream, mango sorbet, ice cream cakes, the works. Definitely worth the tram [View Full Entry]

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SA-WEET! I got the keys to my new place today so I'm official! This place is hella cool and probably something like 900-1100 square feet; but aparently there's no way to find out because Europeans don't do real estate like that. Not even in square meters...they just don't count. I asked about how big it was and the realtor was like, well you saw it...what more do you need to know?! Crazy... Anyways, all good....lots of space, hardwood floors, great lighting, but for some reason the toilet and the bathroom (with the shower) are separate....how much sense does THAT make? Crazy [View Full Entry]

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