... so apparently I'm pretty good at pictures

Dutch food is not a barren wasteland!

There is good Dutch food! It just all happens to be mush or dough. And mush is tasty, but you can only take so much; dough is tasty, but it will kill you. For example:

Mush
Erwtensoep (thick pea soup, usually with sausage)
Stamppot (potatoes, onions, kale/other greens, whatever vegetables you want, mashed up in a pot, with sausage. Also my favorite Dutch word.)
Hutspot (potatoes, onions, carrots, mashed up in a pot, with sausage)
Hachee (a thick stew that includes beef... I've never actually made this correctly or eaten it, so I'm not sure, but it sounds mushy)
Vla (yummy pudding)

Dough
Pannenkoeken (pancakes, very big and floury)
Oliebollen (I've already raved about these donutty guys)
Wafels (okay, they're Belgian, but especially here in Limburg (south Netherlands) they're popular)
Stroopwafels (these are Dutch, I think. Thin little waffles. Still waffles.)
Poffertjes (apparently they're like little pancakes)
Vlaai (not to be confused with Vla. Vlaai is a simple pie.)

Herring
Okay, so herrings are not mush or dough.

The point is, how did the Dutch survive all these years?! How are they not all bored of food and fat? And why don't they, you know, get a little creative? (the same applies to the Germans, but I think their food is a little more varied. To be fair, they do have a lot more land to work with.) Also, I need a few eaters who don't like to cook. I can only eat so much food myself. (I'll really try though!)

Hey, Janet, Mike, and Zach again...

I guess I'm not going to see this band after all.

Bummer!

Attitude adjustment

I think I've been seeing people's flaws too much. Maybe I should open up more. I tend to get this way when the ol' social order has been established, though. Like before I know anyone, I play this game of who's cool and who's not, and whom I should hang out with, and whom I should make eye contact with when I'm talking, and so on. A lot of it's unconscious. (Unfortunately, a lot of it is conscious too.)

But then, once I get to know people and people get to know me, and there's some respect flowing back and forth, and I start feeling socially comfortable again, I start to think "hey, everyone's my friend, no worries" etc. The people that I don't like have sort of filtered themselves out of my company, while the people I do like have filtered themselves in. So I relax this whole social climbing nonsense and act like myself.

For example, two months ago, I would pick out every flaw of the American students here. (Maybe that's because I subconsciously indoctrinated myself not to like them because I didn't want to hang out with Americans all the time.) Now, for the most part, they're friends that I would very much enjoy traveling with. It could be the mere exposure effect (where I like them more just because I've seen them more). Or, it could just be that I'm relaxing my mind's little rules.

And who knows, maybe this is all working out for the best. Maybe if I was so open to everyone at the beginning, I'd make friends with the wrong people and then get all fed up in a couple months when I couldn't stand my "friends."

Probably not, though. I think it's just a social quirk of mine, and I should mostly drop it.

This is pretty funny

And I think everyone else has probably seen it already:
RIYL: Yacht Rock
Also, in my book, Justin Timberlake has completed his transition from crappy boy-band has-been to pop hero, if only because of this video.

I had all my non-American friends over for dinner last night, meaning 4 small groups of acquaintances, and it all worked out pretty well! It then morphed into a huge party being held by the Italians across the hall. Today I saw the Netherlands American War Cemetery, had a great lunch, and walked through confusing tunnels under Maastricht for a long time, all c/o the CES. Hey, if you like economics, law, psychology, or other things, you could do a lot worse than going to Maastricht. The folks at the CES are really great. By "the folks" I mostly mean Nathalie, who's in charge of coordinating a lot of stuff.

I'm feeling good.

Another Dutchism

"Sneeuwwitje stikte in de appel." - "Snow White choked on the apple."

Apparently, in the Dutch version, when the evil witch gave Snow White an apple, she didn't just fall into a deep deep sleep until her true love came around and gave her a kiss; she just choked. I'm hoping this is a shining example of Dutch humor.

Sorry, korfball

I appreciate the effort. You were kind of fun, at least in principle. Plus, all the korfballers (and the coach/trainer guy) were really helpful and welcoming. But you just weren't fun in practice.

Plus, you're absurd. So you're like basketball, except there's no backboard, you can't dribble or run with the ball, there are 4 offenders and 4 defenders per team (of which 4 are male and 4 female), and there field goes behind the basket too. That's cool. So the practices are across the river, and you use a soccerball when you clearly should use a basketball... that's fine too. The tricky part is that the practices always consisted of lots of crazy drills that I never understood (partially because they were always yelled out in Dutch, partially because they were too complicated for my simple mind). You go here, you go there, throw the ball to him, he throws it back, then you shoot at the basket, then she gets the rebound, then you become the new rebounder and then go to the end of the line. Aaagh! I'd be confused for about four minutes before I understood, and then a minute later, they'd start a new drill.

I think the breaking point was when the coach called out something that sounded like "fifteen dollarball!"* and everyone started practicing underhand layups. Ask me to show you some korfball techniques sometime, it'll make for a good laugh.

* I later found out it was "vijftien doorloopball", or "practice fifteen times the walk-through-ball", and really, calling it a "walk-through-ball" makes just as much sense as calling it a "lay-up."

All that said, though, I do like the sport in theory. It's like team handball or basketball without the whole macho charging-into-the-lane thing that frightens pansies like me. Or like Ultimate Frisbee, except you don't need to know how to throw or catch a frisbee.

Hey, uh, Janet, Mike Yin, Zach Harris?, and all the other hipsters who might read this blog and care about this:

I'm going to see this band in Cologne on April 1.

I'm excited!

Not worryin' about it

My initial plan for this weekend was to use up a couple of Railpass days making a voyage through France. Hit up a town that everyone's heard of but nobody actually goes to, like Dijon or Lyon or Strasbourg. Taste some French food and French wine. And then be confused about what I was going to do, because I don't know what people do in these cities. Nobody wanted to go to France, though, so I talked to one of my friends here and we decided to go back to Amsterdam. But then we realized that, for a "short weekend trip", that was pretty expensive. (plus my friend's on the no-budget plan) So we went to Belgium instead, because traveling through Belgium is real cheap. ($4.50 from any Belgian city to any other) We picked Antwerp, pretty arbitrarily.

So I was a little disappointed. But that didn't make any sense; I'm going to a new Belgian city! That's cool! So I decided not to be disappointed, and to just take it really easy, and just not worry about anything. Not plan anything, not read about it in my guidebook, not think "oh no, I'm missing all this cool stuff"... just exist, walk around, do whatever sounds like a good idea.

We got there at 3 pm or something, spent a couple hours looking for a hostel, with no luck. We found a double hotel room for $50, but like I said, my friend was not about to spend any more than he absolutely had to, so we decided to head back that night. We wandered for 4 hours, probably missed every Antwerp landmark, saw a couple of cool pubs and other neat things, almost had The World's Most Exclusive Beer, and so on.

So what's the end result of this trip-and-travel-style-experiment? I don't know. Was it enlightening? A little bit. Disappointing? A little bit of that too. I wish I'd planned a room in advance anyway. Once we had a map, things made more sense. I still can't decide if I want to travel like my dad- planning things out at every step along the way- or like a carefree person who just stumbles along and happens to run into cool things. I think I like planning things. But again, not too much! If you spend all your time planning, you see all the tourist sites, you never get a feel for a city at all.

I guess the best thing to do is to find a balance. Surprise!

Oh yeah, also, I went to the TEFAF. Check my photos!

I get pretty manic depressive about coding

When a project is working, and I'm making progress, I'm on fire. I get totally wired. Almost jittery. I could do it for hours and hours, nigh-nonstop. That's probably a sign that this is actually a good career path for me.

However, when it's not working, and especially if it's not working because of some stupid issues, like a method in an external library isn't doing what it's supposed to, or I don't have the right documentation to find what I want it to do, or I just don't understand someone else's code, it's the worst. It sucks a lot. That's probably a sign that I will have a lot of difficult times in this career path.

However, I'll have some GREAT times too, especially if I have some equally enthusiastic co-workers (as I do on this Intelligent Systems robot maze project), so I guess it turns out well in the end. I'll let you know how this project goes.

This train is going 251 km/hr. That's faster than I've ever gone on land, including the Top Thrill Dragster at Cedar Point.

If we're comparing European cities that I've seen to American cities I may or may not have seen, and I'm not saying we are, but if we were, and if we said maybe Paris is San Francisco, Amsterdam is Vegas (which is unfair to Amsterdam, but remember, we're not comparing these cities anyway), Rotterdam is Pittsburgh (in 20 years...), and Brussels is DC, Berlin is definitely New York. Besides Paris (which I saw under crummier circumstances), it's the only city that, to use a trite iceberg metaphor and an awkward sentence structure, I didn't see beyond the tip of. I didn't even see the whole tip. If Berlin is a dartboard, I only saw the 50-point bullseye, the 9, and maybe the double-17. If Berlin is one of those donuts from Dunkin' Donuts (which abounded here, by the way...) with a little extra nub so you can hold it while you dunk it in your coffee, I just ate the nub and called it a day. If Berlin is creme brulee, I ate the crispy top.

That said, it was a tasty crispy top ("mmm... lekker!" as the Dutch would say. or "heerlijk!"). I'm not going to say Berlin exceeded all my expectations, but it exceeded the meager expectations I had before I read about how great it was. It wasn't all communist grit (although it had some of that), Holocaust apologialia (although it had plenty of that too), and wursts with sauerkraut (surprisingly little of that).

First, I had a great time there culinarily. I had a nice lunch today of artichokes and feta fried with mushroom sauce, with noodles and awesome bread-with-tomatoes at a vegetarian cafe called "Cafe V". (you know, like that movie, V for Vegetariendetta.) Yesterday, I awkwardly sat at the tables that I think are meant for people waiting for take-out, while everyone else ate in the nice restaurant upstairs, and ate some nice Indian food ("rogan josh"- now I know what that is) for dinner. (oh well, at least they didn't turn me away like the first place I tried to go to. Come on, restaurant, you clearly weren't full, and I clearly could have eaten at the bar. Plus, it's not like you were trendy and exclusive. If you don't like my tourist jacket, haircut that might have been rebellious in the 60's, or, well, lack of dining companions, say so!) I had some yummy yummy spaetzle Friday night for dinner, in a quiet but German cafe whose name I don't remember. But the best was yesterday for lunch: a hip medium-sized vietnamese place called Monsieur Vuong. It was packed at 2:30pm. But I found a seat, chose from their something-like-4 choices of food, and received a curry dish that rocked my tastebuds. You know how they say Southeast Asian food is about balancing sweet, sour, salty, and spicy? Yeah, this did. I can't even explain the flavor, except to say it sure did have coconut milk, lemongrass, and (I think) lime leaves (among other things).

None of my awesome meals cost above EU$10, including a drink. Plus, my hostel cost EU$20 for two nights! Berlin sure is affordable. Hey, also, thanks for letting me slip the word "apologialia" past you two paragraphs go.

Second, they have neighborhoods, and that's a thing about cool cities: neighborhoods. I'm not sure if distinct neighborhoods cause a city to be cool, or coolness causes neighborhoods, but cool cities tend to have them. I got to see about three of the neighborhoods, but I can tell you this: West and East are glitzy and gritty respectively. But not overly so! West Berlin (Charlottenburg, for example), is like New York's Midtown. Not quite so upscale, but equally commercial. They have all the big names, from H&M to Gucci, and so I mostly stayed out of this area.

Meanwhile, Kreuzberg (in the East*) is like New York's Lower East Side. It's the kind of place that actually appreciates a super-cloudy day or a sunset, because the low light airbrushes over the graffiti and bits of trash in the street. It doesn't do so well in the harsh light. Like the Lower East Side, though, it seems like you'll find the best record shops and cheap food options there. It's got a "counter-cultural" reputation. That's where the Cafe V was, and also the Jewish museum. (which was cool! see photos)

Prenzlauerberg, in the northeast, would have to be Greenwich Village then, but it's not quite as cool. Okay, I'll confess, I went there because there's a Beirut song named after it. (well, that's as good a reason as any; if it's that memorable, there must be something good about it) It was nice- it had its fair share of cool restaurants. Also, there were a lot of police cars relaxing after (apparently) a day of arresting protesters, and a spontaneous art installation (but more about that in the photos).

*okay, it was in West Berlin. But it's geographically in the East, and it feels sort of Eastern.

Third, it have good public transportation. Now there's a cause of coolness. It's not The Best: a couple stations had work being done, and it's not like Paris, where you see a metro everywhere you look. Also, some of the trains are called S-bahns and they go above ground, as opposed to U-bahns, which go underground. Sometimes U-bahns go above ground too, particularly in the East, and an above-ground U-bahn is ugly and badly-named. Minor gripes aside, it's great public transport, and a day pass costs EU$6, which is not bad.

For the record, I forgot to mention, but Rotterdam also has great public transportation, including a two-line subway and lots of trams. Good for them! Pittsburgh, Cleveland, every city who wants to be something, are you listening?

Finally, it had street performers (a few) AND markets, two more defining characteristics of cool cities. 4 for 4, Berlin.

In the end, Berlin hits #2 on the "cities I didn't see and I want to see again" list (after Paris), although time will tell if I actually am going to see either of those cities again. I mean, I can get to Morocco for EU$100, and my railpass has only one more trip on it... (after somewhere-in-France and the Black Forest)

On another note, if you've ever talked to me for any length of time, when I'm in a great mood, I'm sure I've gotten all starry-eyed and told you about how my life is like a movie. I used to be pretty sure it was the Truman Show. Now, I think it's an episode of Mr. Bean. I mean, on Saturday I found myself wearing shoes that hurt my big toes because I hadn't broken them in yet and my toenails were too long. (meanwhile, I left my nail clipper at home, despite repeatedly reminding myself to bring it, just in case) So I search all over, passing apothecaries and restaurants, but finding nowhere that would have a nail clipper. Then I found one, but I had to search for a restroom where I could clip my nails. I didn't find one until the Pergamon Museum. So here I am, in a museum bathroom stall, clipping my toenails.

The good thing is, Mr. Bean's life is pretty awkward, but it's also eventful, and I've always idolized That Guy (or girl, to be fair) who manages to have amazing things happen to him, wherever he is. You know, like he'll be in a restaurant on the way to a concert, strike up a conversation with some guy who happens to be the webmaster for the band, and he'll hang out with the band afterwards. Or he'll be hiking in the woods and wander over a ridge and just happen to see a caber tossing competition. Or whatever. And the more I do, the more I realize that that kind of stuff just happens, and all you have to do is be there, and be ready for it. The more outgoing you are, and the more languages you know, the more this will happen, and I'm pretty poor in both those categories, but that can only improve with time, eh?

Just a thought.

Goin' to Berlin, right now

Not right now, but in like 8 hours. Eurailpasses let you travel at the drop of a hat. Or at the drop of a "why not travel this weekend?" Further on the list of "being comfortable traveling by myself", I offer you this: despite none of my friends here going, if the Eurailpass lets you travel for free, and two nights hostel costs me EU$20 (total!), why not go?

Signed, flying by the seat of my pants and loving it.

Vindication!

Well, sort of.

Yeah, so 7up got slammed a little bit for their "100% natural" nonsense. But now Coke and Pepsi are making diet sodas with a few vitamins, and marketing them as "healthy."

Arrgggh! That's not how it works! Here's why:
1. Just because something has zero calories, that doesn't make it healthy. I mean, a rock has zero calories, because you can't digest it. (right?) Windex has zero calories. Battery acid has zero calories.
2. If a drink has a few vitamins, that doesn't make it healthy. If it's like 7up plus and Propel, the current "healthy soda" leaders, it'll have like 10% RDA of a couple different B vitamins. Hoo-ee.
3. Even if the drink had a lot of vitamins, say, 100% RDA of 20 different vitamins and minerals, that doesn't make it healthy either. I could crush a Flintstones multivitamin and sprinkle it on ice cream, but that doesn't make it healthy.
4. Caffeine is still not healthy.
5. Whatever acids and chemicals they're putting in there are still not healthy.

Rotterdam? More like Betterdam!

This weekend gave a big boost to the ol' "trust your muse" school of thought. (You should trust your Muse, too, because they will make absurdly grandiose rock spectacles with lots of lasers, and you can count on that) I sort of hatched the idea of seeing some other Dutch city last week. You know, somewhere besides Amsterdam, the tourism-and-joints capital of the world, and Maastricht. But by the time Saturday rolled around, I got up at noon, nobody else wanted to go, I was feeling a little bit sick, it was raining like a big rainy thing, and I had no hostel reservation.

So of course I went. I decided to go to the train station, see if it's cheaper and easier to get to Rotterdam or Utrecht, and go there. It was about the same (read: EU$40 and an annoying train-bus-train connection because of rail line work), but I had heard about these windmills in Kinderdijk, near Rotterdam, and I thought that that sounded cool, and also I don't think I would be allowed out of the country in June if I didn't see any windmills. Rotterdam ho!

How'd it turn out? In two words, very well! I got in at about 5:30pm, after all the museums and stuff closed, and I thought I'd have nothing to do all day. Surprise, it's Museum Night! All the museums and art galleries (about 40 in all) were open from 8pm to 2am, having special exhibits, DJ's, parties, drinks, etc. Next time I complain about my rotten luck, remind me of that time I went to Rotterdam and it was Museum Night.

So I saw a bunch of museums with cool art, some neat galleries, some over-the-top pretentious modern-art galleries, a church with organ music, people out on the streets, and architectural wankery. The next day I went to see some windmills, which was not quite so good.

Classes are still pretty easy (although I have no idea if this project we're working on is ever going to come together... urrghhh projects), I got into a Dutch language class (I got into level A2, instead of A1, because of all that reading I did on my own, proving that it wasn't a waste of time after all), I'm still in the acting class and it's not bad, and I'm looking for a trip this weekend. I'm thinking Berlin, but I'm not sure.

I feel like an old man. I walk around a city and some windmills for 24 hours, and my legs were sore the next couple days. Also, I always look like I'm dying, mostly due to the big dark bags under my eyes. ("You look like a, um, dead thing, um, what is the word... a zombie" commented one of my fellow actors yesterday) More importantly, I often feel very tired, no matter if I sleep a lot or a little, exercise or not, eat well or not, drink coffee or not, take Claritin or not. Huh. Nothing new, really. Still, it'd be nice if a doctor or someone could tell me what I'm doing wrong.

But other than that, life is smiley and nice. Well, that's not true either. Life's not "pleasant"... it's certainly turbulent. But in a good way; in an "I'm meeting a lot of new people and trying new things and going to a new city every weekend" sort of way. I like it.

This makes me wish I was back in America

I mean, not really. But it would be a cool thing to do if I were in America.
Dismemberment Plan Reunites
These guys played the best concert I have ever seen. (Although Tally Hall comes in a close second.) If you're in Pittsburgh, it's only 4 hours away. Look, I took a 4 hour trip this weekend, and that was just little old me traveling on train-bus-train and staying in a hostel, going to a city not much bigger than Cleveland because I thought maybe I should see some windmills. (More on this trip later.) You don't have much of an excuse not to go to this show.

Plus you could go to Plaza Garibaldi.

Crash and burn.

My phone interview with Google, my big chance to talk to an actual person at Google (which is rare enough!) just ended. One design question, one estimation question, zero actual answers from me, a lot of me being all over the place, and a big pile of ugh. I'm not cut out to be a project manager at all. At least, not yet. I don't actually have any PM skills.

Please, please, Google interviewers, if you're reading this because you Googled me (ironic, and maybe you did) to dig up some dirt on whether or not you should talk to me again; don't disregard me for an engineering position just because I'm kind of a ditz when it comes to designing anything! Give me an algorithm, I'll tell you its runtime, big-oh, big-omega, whatever you want! I'll make a chess computer that beats Deep Blue and Garry Kasparov at the same time, blindfolded! I'll prove P=NP! I'll solve the halting problem! I mean, I've been instructed by Klaus Sutner himself, and that has to count for something.

A story that I believe should be told

Because I forgot to tell it earlier, and it was kind of funny, and I don't want to forget it. It happened like a month ago in a Paris subway, and I was dragging home a friend who was really drunk and throwing up. Needless to say, I was a little annoyed, and a little in that frame of mind where I'm saying "Hey, God! Check it out, I'm doing a Good Deed! There better be some good karma in this for me!" which of course makes it insignificant and not really a good deed at all.

So we're going through the subway, right... we have to go about 4 stops, but there's a transfer in between, so we come off one train and this guy has to throw up. We find a trash can, he does his thing. Then a French guy sees us and motions and somehow mimes that he can get us water. I think he said "l'eau." (of course I felt proud of myself for recognizing a French word.) So I don't know what to think, but he's pointing the same way we're going, so I just start walking that way, and he walks with us. My drunk friend is going "Hey Dan, should I trust this guy?" and I'm trying to play it cool, so I kinda don't answer, but eventually I just go "I dunno" and keep walking. Eventually we get to a little water faucet. My friend washes his face off, and the French guy looks very satisfied because HE did a Good Deed. I say "merci!" and we walk away. But he's following us.

Suddenly we turn a corner and I realize: - French guy's friend has joined us, and - nobody else is around at all. And we go to walk away, but French guy stops us and says something that, in my paranoid state of mind, sounded like "Hey hey... let me teach you some karate." And with that, he puts his leg between my friend's legs and goes to do the stage-combat flip. You know, where you kinda grab their arm and toss them over your hip. At this point, I pull him away and go "Non!" so he tries again, and goes "okay, okay, hey hey hey... karate!" as if this would convince me that it's a good idea ("oh, karate! well, go right ahead!"), and I yell repeatedly in progressively louder voices, "NON!" So he backs away and lets us go.

At this point, I was pretty convinced that we were just about to get mugged, and I had saved us both. In retrospect, that's, uh, probably not the case. If they wanted to mug us, they could have, well, mugged us. Either they were just jerking our chain a little bit (in which case they probably got a big kick out of the fact that I was so scared) or they were trying to teach me how to carry him or something (in which case they were probably a little miffed that I was so rude). At any rate, it makes for a good story. At least, I thought so.

Parlez-vous Ski Bum? or, Heidi and Rin Tin Tin do not live in Verbier, or, Ow ow ow ow

First of all, let me say thank you to every person, place, thing, circumstance, happening, and bit of money that allowed me to go skiing not once but twice in the Alps. This is the first year that I've made multiple trips to big mountains, as well as probably my first 10-ski-day year. If everyone were able to achieve their goals and dreams so easily, we would all be pretty lucky.

Pompousness aside, let me give you a short narrative on how those 3 days skiing actually went.

First, Carnival ended Tuesday night. I was sad to see it go. The closing ceremony was really kind of bittersweet. The prince gave a little speech, they sang some sad songs, the Mooswief came down, the oliebollen stands closed up, and that was that. I mean, people still partied all night, but that was sort of that.

Wednesday was train day! And I'm not kidding. Let me trace out my route for you:
Maastricht-Aachen (bus)
Aachen-Koln (train)
Koln-Freiburg (the Aachen-Koln ran late, so we missed the train from Koln-Mannheim. But this train from Koln-Basel was running late, so we got on it. Since it was running late, however, it didn't go all the way to Basel; it stopped in Freiburg.)
Freiburg-Basel SBB (not to be confused with "Basel Bad.")
Basel-Biel (of course we were off schedule, so we were going to go via Morges per the train station people's advice, but then the conductor said we should get off in Biel. Fair enough.)
Biel-Lausanne
Lausanne-Martigny
Martigny-Le Chable (on the "St. Bernard Express")
Le Chable-Verbier (bus)
Total: 9 vehicles, over 12 hours. Anyone who tells you train travel is easy is not correct. Well, that's not true; train travel is easy for certain things. If you're going from big city to big city, it's no problem. But if you're going from small Dutch city to small Swiss city, it's a bit of a trip.

Something about train travel, though: why is route planning hard? When I get off schedule because one train is running 10 minutes late so I miss my next connection, I go and talk to the Train Station People, and they give me a route with all the connections and times mapped out. But a couple times, I've gotten suboptimal routes- like they go an indirect way, or they start an hour in the future, or something. First of all, why don't they have their magic computer out at a terminal somewhere, so I can use it? Second of all, why don't they give me the best route? It can't be an algorithmic problem, because hell, I could make that program. There must be some hidden variables (maybe they're trying to load-balance on their trains, or maybe they're trying to find me the fewest connections instead of the shortest route, or something), but I'd like to know what they are, and how I can just ask for the fastest path.

Okay, so about Verbier. I wasn't so enchanted with it as I was St. Anton. Something about it just seemed more exclusive, less fun, and more resorty. In retrospect, I think it was mostly the prices: 68Sfr for a lift ticket, 45 or something for rentals, and every place except the Bunker was really expensive to sleep. We found a pizza place for about 20 francs each, and a crappy burger joint for 10-15, but other than that, everywhere cost 35-40 euros (edit: whoops, I mean 35-40 francs) for a main dish. Of course, a franc is about 80 cents US, but there's still some sticker-shock there, all the time. It's mostly psychological, I'm sure... those 35 franc meals wouldn't have seemed like so much if they had been 21 euros. All the same, it was enough to make us live subsistence-style, buying bread and peanut butter, stocking up at the free breakfast, etc. I don't think I got the sense that I was in Switzerland, magical Switzerland, land of snow-capped Alps and Toblerone and fondue and watches and neutrality and the good life that everyone else is missing out on. I felt like I was in a ski resort. Which was true.

Speaking of bare-bones living in a rich town, did I mention the Bunker? That's where we stayed. Check out my pictures (link on the right) to see more about it. It was pretty minimal. 30 bunks in a room, concrete floors, etc. But it did have a hot tub and a restaurant, a fun atmosphere, and it cost 25Sfr per night. Graffiti on the walls, etc. Most of the inhabitants were ski bums. I liked it a lot, and I'm glad we didn't stay there any longer.

Speaking of ski bums, let me tell you about my traveling companions:
4 guys who came to Verbier a few days before us and skied for a week; 2 Coloradoans, 1 Aussie, and 1 Pole. The Coloradoans skied like 30-some days a year. One of them raced. Of course they were pretty much Too Cool for School. But they didn't act like it.
2 Indianans, former football players and so on, the kind of guys who think it's funny to buy a Jack and Coke, because they sell it in a can, at 10AM on our first train.
1 economist who liked to start conversations like "To you, what is it that adds value when you buy a product?"
1 girl from Toronto who, first of all, had to have a lime in her beer, and second of all, was afraid that she'd get some disease when she cut said lime on the floor and then put it into her beer, and therefore never drank the rest of said beer.
Guess who I liked traveling with the most? Well, the 2 Indianans, really. Goes to show, I don't know what the hell I like in travel companions. The 4 guys were pretty cool too, but they were pretty much ski bums, and I can't deal with that whole lifestyle.

For those of you who haven't met any, a ski bum is an interesting breed. He/she (although almost always he, although there are a few girls) loves skiing, obviously, and skis as much as possible. Sometimes he gets a job at a ski resort for the winter, just to be there to ski. And here's the paradox: he's usually young and sort of poor. At least he plays up the "poor" angle a lot (by, say, buying bread and eating sandwiches 3 meals a day). But he wears nice ski equipment, has his own skis, and, well, skis so many days per year. You can't do that if you're poor! So, probably, the average ski bum is a guy like me, in or out of college, who decided to spend all his money on the slopes. He also likes to party a lot, and drink, especially beer. Somehow he's able to ski a lot without sleeping a lot. And when he skis, he's pretty amazing, going backcountry a lot and so on, and also spending a lot of time in the terrain park.

So why is that not me? Maybe it's a bit too bohemian, maybe it's a bit too party-oriented. I like my 8 hours of sleep, especially when I'm skiing. Drinking comes later. Clubbing comes last. Especially in ski resort towns, where the ratio of guys to girls is about 10 to 1.

Speaking of the ratio of guys to girls, we met this ridiculous dude. He was staying in the Bunker too, and he asked us if any of us had any fudge. "You know, it's a hair care product." Turns out, he's right. We couldn't help but think it was a code phrase for something. He did tell us about "Le Pub", though, or the "Pub Mont Fort" where we all spent an enjoyable evening. Cool place. A big beer and I had a nice moment together. What does that have to do with the ratio of guys to girls? He made a comment about it, and also referred to some of us as "good looking." He must have been hinting at something.

And, as a final note about skiing: It was not an easy trip. Well, first of all, the Bunker didn't allow for ideal sleep. But besides that: my left ankle was killing me, my whole legs hurt after a day, my boots didn't fit, and I couldn't turn well at all. Snow was icy or hard, visibility was poor on the last day, and to top it all off, I feel like I'm losing my yen for skiing. Or at least my jonesing for skiing. It used to be the one thing I always wanted to do, and now, if you said I could go this weekend, I'm not sure if I would. I think I just need to take a lesson, get my own skis on again, have a couple nice days, go with friends, etc... but all in all, it's another reason the ski bum lifestyle isn't so appealing as it used to be. It's disillusioning. But it's like anything else I guess: after your initial euphoria subsides, there'll be a down period, and eventually, if you really like it, you'll grow to appreciate it again, and then you'll truly enjoy it. My initial euphoria for skiing just so happened to be about 10 years.

But anyway. It's now a few days later, and life is flying by. I should schedule some trips. I should work on my project. Did I tell you about it? It's a robot programming thing: get a robot to go through a maze. Bleargh. But that's life, and people do that sometimes, and maybe the only reason I don't like robots is that I haven't done anything with them, and if that's the case, I am in the right class for sure.

As for trips, I'm adding some more ideas for destinations:
1. Utrecht, or Delft, or somewhere Dutch this weekend. Hopefully something a little bit authentic, at least. (I keep searching for this vague "authenticity", as if some places that I go are somehow not real. I guess what I mean is I want somewhere without souvenir stores and bus tours. But why do I, with my big ol' American coat and camera on my belt, deserve that any more than the next tourist?)
2. Berlin next weekend?
3. Krakow, or Budapest, or Prague, or all three
4. Somewhere in Italy where they have great food (i.e. everywhere, but you know, somewhere particularly great)
5. Somewhere in France where they have great food (i.e. everywhere, but you know, somewhere particularly great)
6. Iceland! I would love to go there.

So the list is getting huge. And I feel like I'm just collecting capital cities, and I'd be better off just getting to know the Netherlands, maybe, or taking a trip to the lesser-known destinations in a particular country.

Or maybe that's just my handful of worrying that I do all the time, and I should stop it right now. (surprise!)

And on the Dutch front, I have been meeting some non-American people, and it's fun! Monday I had my acting class again, which seems full of people who are pretty neat. Tuesday, the ESN (Erasmus Student Network), who puts together a lot of events for us, invited like 80 of us for a typical Dutch dinner, and so of course 3 of us showed up, and we had typical French quiche. The girl who cooked for us, and her housemates, very nice though! They just hung out with us all weekend and talked about whatever, (although The Economist who also happened to be in Verbier tended to steer the conversation towards nonsense about the EU and so on...) fed us great quiche and lots of wine, and acted like there's nothing they'd rather do than hang out with a bunch of naive Americans. And then, I even had a positive club experience, as this bar played pretty good music downstairs. (It didn't hurt that I was with two beautiful ladies, one French and one Greek)

If I write anything more I will get nothing done today. Check my photos if you want more detail. (Please do; some of them are very pretty!) Rock over London, rock on Maastricht, Rauch fruchtensaefte: "Ich brauch mein rauch!"

(Rauch = "smoke", and also the brand name of the fruit juice company. The slogan means something like "I need my Smoke!" which is funny when it's an Austrian Olympic skier telling you that.)

Carnaval's almost over...

Hey. I'm not going to post much about things that happen or things that I do here, if there are photos to go along with them, because those will be on the photo site, and if I have to reiterate stuff, I'll get bored and one of the iterations will probably suck. So check out the photos, because there are a bunch of Carnaval now! Also, this little castle that I saw. And more to come, of Carnaval in Koeln (Cologne).

Speaking of Carnaval, it's about over, which means a couple of things:
1. I can get back to eating at least somewhat normal and healthy foods. Although, man, Dutch/European carnival food >> American carnival food. Here are some things that are good:
- waffles
- herrings
- big ol' fried fish sandwiches
- sausages
- oliebollen, which are The Best, and which are fried up fresh and filled with tasty delights. Wow. Donuts usually don't do it for me, considering how they're about the least healthy thing in the world, and if I'm going to indulge, I want to indulge on something awesome. Fresh donuts, on the other hand... man. I think if you go to heaven, you get a lot of these. Or maybe that's just in Fat Heaven.
2. I might have to get back to some sort of responsibility. Like cleaning my room, for example.
3. I'm going to Switzerland tomorrow! It's a long train ride. But it will get me there, and I will ski on Thursday, and that is neat.

And this is unrelated to Carnival, but here's a question: what's the appeal of the typical bar->drink->club cycle? This seems to be the way you are supposed to have an evening. Go to a bar, get drunk (or at least get happy), and go dance in a club. I can understand how drinking is a pleasure. (it's a little less of a pleasure if you're drinking the same beer the whole time) Being in a bar, though, is not usually so good, because you can't even talk, because it's so loud. Then the dance club, the big prize at the end of the tunnel, right, is not even fun! I could understand if you, say, went salsa or swing dancing, or something with a little structure. Maybe if you went to a bocce ball club and played bocce ball. Or listened to jazz and chatted. Or went to a house and played drunk Taboo all night. (or Boggle! Now that would be fun.) But club-dancing, which seems to me like bouncing back and forth to a LOUD hip-hop/techno beat, is not fun. It's boring! You do it for 5 minutes, you've done all there is to do!

Now you will say to me "it's about the ladies; you're not just dancing by yourself, you are surrounded by attractive members of the opposite sex." Right, but so what? I'm not going to go home with someone I met in a club. Look, I'm not a non-verbal communicator here. If I find a girl attractive, I'd much rather talk to her, or play bocce ball or listen to jazz or go salsa dancing or play Boggle with her than press my body against hers, bouncing back and forth to the 4/4 beat of "SNAP YOUR FINGERS!" in the hope that she thinks "wow, I am quite attracted to this slightly-good-looking stranger. We should exchange phone numbers and go through the cliched courtship ritual based on nothing other than his hottt dance moves."

Note that this is unrelated to Carnaval. For the last few nights, just wandering the streets has been entertainment enough for me.

A couple things about this past week that I didn't mention yet:

1. Korfball. This video explains it all, I guess. I looked at the sports that they offered, and Korfball is the only one I hadn't heard of, so I went to their practice. There were about 15 Korfballers there, and they were all suitably confused as to why I would be there. You know, cuz, um, well, you know. Then we started practicing and they'd keep saying things in Dutch and some of the other players would try to interpret for me and it was a little confusing but it mostly worked out. It's a kind of fun sport: like basketball without the dribbling or the backboard, or like team handball except you have a basket instead of a goal. And sometimes they make goofy underhand shots or some nonsense. They seemed like a fun bunch, though.

Note that Korfball is mainly Dutch, but saying that the Dutch like Korfball is like saying that kids like playing with yo-yos: some do, but most think it's dumb. Likewise, saying that the Belgians like Korfball is like saying that blind kids like playing with yo-yos: they're just not very good. And saying that any other country likes Korfball is like saying that kids like playing with manila envelopes: false. There was one guy who made a living off Korfball, but he had to quit because he had to play like 40 hours a week.

2. I rode my bike to a castle the other day. This castle. Okay, so it's not Neuschwanstein, but wow! It was in Belgium; I rode my bike to another country. I love this continent!

3. Carnaval started today/yesterday. I promptly ate so much fried food and drank such a hodgepodge of rather stern drinks that my stomach was killing me all night. God has blessed me with many things; a cast-iron stomach is not among them. I'm also not the smartest guy in the world. But it's very neat! Streets full of revelers = happy me.