| More from Berlin |
[Jan. 3rd, 2007|08:27 pm] |
After a day of recovery consisting of only sleep, food and a marathon session of "Pimp My Ride" on MTV Europe, I was almost fully recovered. The next day was spent wandering around Berlin, checking out the sites and buildings. We went to the Guggenheim there, and to be honest, I didn't really like it at all. We saw the Brandenburg gates, various other impressive buildings, the condos that were built over hitler's bunker, a 1001 Horsepower car, the remnants of the wall.. but I think by far the most impressive place there was the Holocaust Memorial. It's a series of stone blocks, all different sizes, on very uneven ground. As you approach it, it looks like a sea of blocks roughly 2 feet tall, but as you walk between them, the ground quickly drops and you realize that some of these blocks are massive. We arrived there at dusk and emerged when it was completely dark. It's hard to do it justice by writing about it, truly something to see if you ever go.
That night we went to Victoria Bar, a very chill lounge were we just relaxed for our last night in Berlin. They also were the first bar during my entire trip to actually have Captain Morgan, so I did my part to catch up on lost drinking time. On the ride home, we passed some lighted street and I asked if it was Checkpoint Charlie, to which the cab driver indicated it was. He then took a left turn and stopped the cab.. in front of our hotel. Apparently, we had been staying about 3 blocks from the Checkpoint the entire time. Who knew?
We went to the Checkpoint today during the day to see what was there and buy some touristy crap. We then went to the Olympic stadium and off to the airport. We're all back in Basel now. Tomorrow we're heading to Interlaken for the day, off to see the glaciers.
I've pretty much stopped taking pictures since Greg and Ryan arrived, since they have better cameras and know how to use them a lot better.
Greg's Pictures
Ryan's Pictures
enjoy.
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| Broken in Berlin |
[Jan. 1st, 2007|11:23 am] |
Ryan and Greg arrived a few days ago. We wandered around Basel the first day, took them to see the sights, including the Muenster (sp?) which is an old ass, big ass church. We climbed to the top of it, which was pretty cool, it may be one of the tallest buildings in Basel.
The next day, we headed down to Saas Fee to go snowboarding on the Alps. When we arrived in Saas Fee, we realized our hotel was in fact, not there. It was two towns over. Luckily we were able to walk into the closest hotel and find an availability.
We got pretty torn up the first night.. since we arrived with only an hour left for the slopes, we started boozing early. The music embargo against europe is in full effect in Saas-Fee. At one point, a swiss guy walked up to Ryan and said something incoherently german. When asked if he spoke english, he replied with "a tiny bit" then said "do you have papers I could use for rolling a joint?" .. apparently "a bit" involves asking for drug paraphenalia now.. I remember when it was limited to asking for women of loose moral fibre and beers.
The next morning we hit the slopes. They hit me back. Hard. Within the first 15 minutes I had dropped full weight on my tailbone. After a few hours I had made it down the beginner slope one full time, almost broke my wrists and generally won't be confused for a pro. But, I learned how to snowboard on the alps, did you? No. (If you did, I don't actually want to know, so I still feel special)
That evening, we headed back to Basel. The next morning, right around breakfast something bad happened inside me. I am not sure what, but within the hour I was pacing and mumbling incoherently carrying a plastic bag. What happened next will only be described as "probably food poisoning". It was very very unpleasant. And we had a plane to catch to Berlin. Eventually I managed to pull myself together enough to follow everyone into the airport, ingest some nausea drugs and make it to the hotel. I tried to join everyone for a beer, but I made it about 20 minutes before I gave up and went back to the hotel.
I didn't sleep well that night, as everything that could go wrong with my body seemed to. The next day (new year's eve) I stayed in bed until close to 6pm. At this point, I had recovered from some of my maladies enough to make the most I could of the night. We ended up, after a terrible Irish pub, in east Berlin and a giant party/park/what have you that had about 10 rooms. It was tons of fun. Alcohol made me feel a lot better. We got in at 7am, making it a 12 hour new years bonanza!
Today has been a day of recovery and rest. And for the second day in a row, nothing is open in this city. Why? why are there not even slightly convenient stores?
-cam |
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| What the deuce have I been doing? |
[Dec. 23rd, 2006|10:20 pm] |
Yesterday.. I went rock climbing with Iain and James.. it's been a long time and really something I need to pick back up when I get back to the ATX. So anyone interested, hit me up. After a few hours break, my brother arrived and we rejoined Iain and James dowtown to get retardedly drunk, mouthing off to total strangers as is customary when drinking in a foreign land.
Today was spend christmas shopping. I think I've reached the point where I no longer have any idea whatsoever of what is a normal price range for gifts. (hint: high maintenance ladies, get your wishlist in before I learn).. but I finished the bulk of the holiday shopping today, with minimal subterfuge. After my evening nap, craig and I went to a local bar for a few drinks with his swiss friend Andre. Once we had enough to drink we agreed to go to a local dance club called A2. A2 is like the worst of the canadian cottage/dance bars with a room dedicated to shitty german techno and top hits from 1994. I got to groove to Rhythm is a Dancer, and the song from night at the roxbury. It was so tragic that it was amazing. I also learned that you can get shot down by a girl, despite not speaking the same language. Over, and over. And over. The women of switzerland can be somewhat attractive, but for the most part, it's nothing to write home about.
The craziest thing about tonight was the club doesn't take cash. You get a card when you enter, and it's a credit card. you pay as you leave. 6 drinks cost about 50 CHF. By drinks I mean beer. Which isn't that much, but I was trying to keep it reasonable. If anyone wants to open a bar using this method of payment, I would gladly help run it. We'd be millionaires by february.
I <3 me.
-cam
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| Milan |
[Dec. 21st, 2006|03:54 pm] |
I just got back tonight from a 2 day trip to Milan, with a stop in Lucerne. Pictures are here
The creepy skeleton pictures are in Lucerne, at the death bridge. Unfortunately, I forgot my memory card, otherwise I would have more of them.
Milan is an interesting city, in that it's really just a normal city with older buildings covered in dirt and graffiti. There are some nice ones, but you can't look at them for too long or a random driver will probably hit you. Regardless of where you are standing. Everyone there also honks their car horns non-stop. Probably because they all suck at driving.
The fabric store Ryan found online had closed down, so I wandered the streets looking for the perfect pair of eurotrash brashionista sunglasses. Naturally, I ended up at D&G. Let me tell you, they get worse than what I ended up with, but that's only because I couldn't find any jewel encrusted ones for men. I also checked out the Versace store, and found a really nice dress shirt, for only 450 euro. I didn't buy that.
Other things I noticed in Milan:
- I by far wasn't the best dressed, but I wasn't the worst either.. fair-to-middlin to be precise
- Witch shoes aren't going anywhere
- Hair is going to be shorter than long, but longer than short in Austin in the year 2012
- Ragged cut t-shirts are still on the way in, so I was right. Not that anyone listened. Also, I don't know if I mentioned that out loud anyways.
- Stores with glass elevators are expensive.
- Everyone smokes, sometimes two at a time.
That's it. I could write more, but I'm tired and if you cared you'd ask.
...wouldn't you?
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| After sleep catches up... |
[Dec. 19th, 2006|04:59 pm] |
So I did eventually arrive in Switzerland. After 18 hours of planes and planes and another plane. I did however, once again, almost fuck it up. This year I made it through ticketing, through security, to the gate, and then fell asleep. Luckily another friendly traveler woke me at final boarding to ask if that was in fact my flight I was about to miss. It was, I woke up and then began the long journey.
Only one thought from that ordeal, if asked if you want chicken, or vegetarian indian food, say indian.. the chicken is shitty. Oh one more thought, if you fly overseas, don't even hope for a good movie. I saw a movie about an inner city foster kid learning to dance with art school douches and an animated movie about talking cows then I finally managed to fall asleep to cirque du soleil.. wtf thinks acrobatics makes for a fun plane ride? and why show a kid's movie that has no appeal to anyone else at 2am? seriously.. also.. ALL COWS ARE FEMALE.. don't pretend some are male.. bulls are male.. they even had a bull at the end, so they know bulls exist. wtf.
So then I made it to Zurich, in and through customs quickly. When I arrived at my parent's apt, we set up the room I am now sleeping in. Not right now, I sleep there later. Then we wandered down to the rhine, and downtown Basel, saw my mother's horse in the village where they are moving to. At which point I became comatose. Not sleeping eventually catches up with you.
Today I woke up being fairly allergic to my parents' cat, then we walked around and this time I remembered to bring my camera. After this, we drove to Kayserburg which is a village that looks like it's from a disney movie, but it's a real village. I think. The coolest part of this was really the drive through part of France. There's some windy roads. No, really windy. I doubt you can imagine the actual windiness of these roads.. take four steps forward, then turn 89 degrees then 8 steps the -87 degrees.. see? like that.. and there was ice. the views were amazing.
After we got back, I went for beers with friends of Craig's that my mother introduced me to. It was nice to talk to someone other than my parents, and have a beer outside of this room.
Ok, it doesn't sound wicked-awesome yet, but hey.. I'm in switzerland and you aren't.. so take what I give you AND LOVE IT.
Tomorrow Milan, although I haven't been able to find out where to buy fabric there yet, I may just settle for very expensive clothes instead (sorry Margot, I know you're disappointed).
Pictures are HERE: http://flickr.com/photos/58976646@N00/sets/72157594428700417
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| burnt cornflakes |
[Dec. 16th, 2006|06:43 am] |
After a week of sleeping in far too late, I decided earlier today that the best way for me to not end up on standby this year was to pull an all nighter and sleep on the plane. Unfortunately, I did not also have enough will-power to stay in all night as well. After several cans of coke, three 5 minute naps, two international phone calls and re-watching DWMC for the eleventy-billionth time, I am both awake and starting to sober up at this point in the morning. My bags are packed and I'm ready to bust out. All that is left is for the airport taxi to arrive in half an hour and me to try to remember what it is I'm forgetting to bring this time.
passport - check
visa approval papers - check
laptop + power cord - check
swanky clothes to impress or at least fit in - check
three different hair products - check
nicotine patches - check
cold weather gear -check
... [this is where I'm positive I'm forgetting something] ...
Zurich, Basel, Milan, Zermatt, Berlin... here we come.. the question is: are they ready for the texanadian experience?
.. Is it possible that we were so wasted last night that we bought a lifetime supply of pudding and forgot about it? ... I'd say it's *entirely* possible ..
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| just fyi |
[Dec. 1st, 2006|03:41 pm] |
When
you buy four plane tickets from Zurich to Berlin on an american credit
card, then go to Chick-Fil-A for lunch the bank will flag your account
and disable it until they can verify your identity.
Another side effect is that you are now broke.
(sidenote: I just got a firefox plugin to do my blogging for me, so we'll see how well it works.)
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| When you make up as much shit as i do.. |
[Nov. 17th, 2006|11:20 am] |
So a long time ago, I realized that if you say totally ridiculous things with a straight face, people have a tendency to believe you. This has two consequences, the first one being hilarity by the fact that you can smugly know that you have totally messed with someone's world view. The other being the fact that you have no idea where to draw the line and end up spewing so much bullshit that you start to forget what you made up and what you didn't. The overall effect is that you're somewhat of a total asshole, but as long as it's entertaining, who cares?
Now apparently there is a third consequence. Eventually, if your crap seems plausible, one or two things end up actually being true. I generally have a good sense of direction for no real reason, when asked why by various people I'd make up some shit about how people have iron deposits in their nose which reacts off the earth's magnetic fields and apparently I had more (sometimes I'd attribute it to drinking Guinness).. I guess I wasn't that far off...
From The Register (www.theregister.co.uk):
Do humans have a compass in their nose?
Asked by Lee Staniforth of Manchester, UK
Some years ago scientists at CALTECH (California Institute of Technology in Pasadena) discovered that humans possess a tiny, shiny crystal of magnetite in the ethmoid bone, located between your eyes, just behind the nose.
Magnetite is a magnetic mineral also possessed by homing pigeons, migratory salmon, dolphins, honeybees, and bats. Indeed, some bacteria even contain strands of magnetite that function, according to Dr Charles Walcott of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology in Ithaca, New York, "as tiny compass needles, allowing them [the bacteria] to orient themselves in the earth's magnetic field and swim down to their happy home in the mud".
It seems that magnetite helps direction finding in animals and helps migratory species migrate successfully by allowing them to draw upon the earth's magnetic fields. But scientists are not sure how they do this.
In any case, when it comes to humans, according to some experts, magnetite makes the ethmoid bone sensitive to the earth's magnetic field and helps your sense of direction.
Some, such as Dr Dennis J Walmsley and W Epps from the Department of Human Geography of the Australian National University in Canberra writing in Perceptual and Motor Skills as far back as in 1987, have even suggested that this "compass" was helpful in human evolution as it made migration and hunting easier.
Following this fascinating factoid, science journalist Marc McCutcheon entitled a book The Compass in Your Nose and Other Astonishing Facts.
Stephen Juan, Ph.D. is an anthropologist at the University of Sydney. |
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| He's crafty, he gets around... |
[Sep. 3rd, 2006|12:51 pm] |
Thursday at lunch I finally bought my first sewing machine. It's a Huskystar C10, computerized with some interesting features and about 50 stitches I'll never use. The price was good and it felt comfortable.
So, later that night, I made my first tshirt. By "made" I mean I took two pre-existing shirts and cut them apart and sewed them together into a final product that fits better. The sleeves were a bit off from what I had hoped, but overall it's not something I'm embarssed to wear outside my apt, which is more than I could say for the white shirt the sleeves originally came from.
Pictures here:
and here:
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| Manifesto |
[Jul. 10th, 2006|12:19 am] |
---
Excerpt from my text messages "Sent Folder":
---
Reality as a whole has given way to the dull, the dreary, the "everyday" .. There comes a time in history, where this gives way to art and beauty. This is referred to as a renaissance. What we need is a reality renaissance, and it is our job, the group of us, to usher it in.
---
In the past week, I won 145 bucks in poker (as opposed to the generic losing everything), I dropped my sidekick in a river, rendering it useless. I got a new phone, which has been referred to as "the phone batman would use, if he used a phone, and wasn't a fictional character".
I've been getting a lot more sleep lately, but there's no physical evidence of this. Still look tired as hell. Still groggy in the mornings. But hey, what ya gonna do?
I saw Cut Chemist at waterloo park with the live video mixing thing that will probably be all the rage in years to come. Todd was there, so was another Todd, and Stu. It was hot, and dirty, but good. Later on, Cut Chemist DJ'd a set at Beauty Bar, which was fun, and hopping and all the cool kids were there. Well, I was.. which c'mon, really, what's cooler than me?
Any call that takes place at 3:45 AM after a fucked up friday night is bound to be odd. Last friday was no exception. What tends to be worse are long, drawn out goodbyes for no reason. The only thing worse than that is no goodbye at all. That lack of .. anything.. just tends to eat away at me. Maybe it's a personality disorder, maybe it's just other people being dicks. Whatever, I'm getting used to it.
I came to the realization this week, that despite my best efforts, my apartment refuses to learn to clean itself. I've tried being friendly, tough love, total ignoring and nothing. I'd ask the roomba for it's opinion, but it's been nursing that bottle of Crown all night and it's a bit of a surly asshole when it's drunk. So instead I gave in and cleaned my bathroom with my new found saturday morning.
-c
ps. I don't read the news or anything else with stories that make me sad, maybe I'm simpler for that fact, but just for the record.. no, I probably didn't notice whatever it was anyways. |
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