Our week in Europe (part II: Jena, at the institute)

From Zurich we took the train with our new tickets (but supposedly the same reservations - see previous post) back to Frankfurt so that we could catch the train to Jena. We had to transfer trains in Stuttgart, which I remembered from my original reservations, but we had 1.5 hours to kill there, which I definitely didn't remember. Still, it gave us time to have a nice picnic in a sunny park near the station. When we went back to the station to board our train, we realized to our horror that he'd actually booked us on a train back to the Frankfurt airport, which would arrive 40 minutes after our train to Jena left the downtown station. We thought of going to the ticket counter right then when we noticed, but we had no idea when the next train from Stuttgart to Frankfurt would be, so we figured it was better to get to the airport station late and go to the office there, hopefully even finding the same guy who'd sold us the wrong ticket last time. We were just hoping that this wouldn't end up with us buying more full price tickets for us to get to Jena.

So we went to the counter and found not the same person, but an incredibly helpful woman, who sent us on the next train heading in that direction, and wrote a note on our tickets that they were still valid despite the fact that we'd missed the train we were supposed to be on. She stressed that the train we were to board was leaving at 19:01, and gave us directions for the fastest way to the tracks. We thanked her profusely, and she rather curtly sent us on our way. We sauntered out, remarking to ourselves how well that had worked out. Then I looked at the clock in the station, and realized that it was already 18:59, and that was why she was trying to rush us out so quickly. This led to our sprint up 5 flights of stairs (the escalator was clogged and too slow), back down 2 flights of stairs, and down several hallways. I had the smaller backpack, but poor Jeremi did all this with our suitcase held over his head. We made it onto the train but then had to spend the next half hour wheezing and sweating in recovery. But at least we made it on the train!

We got to Jena that night later than we'd planned, after 9:00, and we opted to take a cab right to the institute rather than try to figure out the bus system at night. Once we arrived at the institute I had instructions for how to get the key for the guest apartment out of the buzz-board at the entrance. We were told to find the board, press a series of numbers, and then push on the box at the bottom, and the key should pop out. The secretary who sent the instructions mentioned that it could be really tricky, and even provided me with her cell phone number in case we really couldn't get in. I didn't figure we'd have that much trouble, and besides, I didn't want my first impression to be one of incompetence.

So we got out of the cab and headed toward the main entrance. It's a fairly building, maybe about 10 years old, and very modern-looking. I was impressed with the lit polished granite that was inlaid in the bricks in the front sidewalk. Or at least I thought it was polished granite. It was actually a pond, with the water level exactly flush with the rest of the sidewalk. It was a really clear night, and I honestly couldn't tell that it was water, so I walked right into it. Needless to say, I was thankful that only Jeremi and the cab driver witnessed this. Even at the time, after a long day on the train, both of us found this quite funny. We didn't have a camera with us of course, so we tried a couple of days later to reinact the incident for the sake of the blog, and this is what we got:
See? Doesn't that sort of look like it might be some sort of polished stone or glass or something?

And of course, I'm not always the most coordinated, especially after a few beers, so I almost ended up in the pond all over again.

So then we went to try to get the key out of the buzzer-board at the front of the building. We spent about 10 minutes punching in the code and pushing on various parts of the box, all to no avail. There was a button that had a picture of a key on that which we tried pushing before or after, but nothing was working. Then we decided that we might not be at the right entrance after all. We found the stairs that went around to the back door to have a look.

Lo and behold, there was a buzz board there too that seemed like it might have a box at the bottom that could contain a key. It was also right next to a door that said guest apartments on it, so we figured we were in the right place. It was a bit tricky, but it only took 10 minutes or so for us to coax the keys out of the buzz-board. There was one normal-looking key, and one key that came from the future, with grooves and bumps unlike anything we'd seen before, and they were both on a chain with a small plastic tag with the room number and a plain black plastic key chain. The key-from-the-future actually fit in the door to the guest apartments, as well as in the door to the lobby of the institute, but neither of them would open. We tried everything - pushing the door in while turning, pulling it out, wiggling the key, turning the knob in different directions, even trying every other door on the exterior of the building. And nothing.

We could hear some people up above on one of the balconies, and I actually figure out a few phrases in German to yell up and tell them that we couldn't get inside. Unfortunately, they chose that moment to go inside, and no one heard me yelling. While I was screaming in German, Jeremi was looking some more at the buzz-board from which we got the keys. There were two flat panels, one that said "Institute" and one that said "Apartments" (but in German), with a couple of LEDs, and no obvious purpose. It was at this point that the Radiation Hazard Officer applied all of his advanced radio-frequency knowledge, and realized that that plain black plastic keychain was actually an RF tag. When he touched the tag to the flat panel that said "Apartments", the LED changed colour. We tried opening the door then, but it still wasn't working. Fortunately, after a few more tries, we managed to get in the "Institute" door. All in all, it only took us about an hour to get in the building.

We found the room without too much trouble, and it only took us about 5 minutes to figure out how to open the deadbolt on the door, which had two different stages of locking. Once in the room, we found that everything was automated, with a set of switches that controlled not only the lights, but also the exterior shutters on the wall of windows. The room was sort of wedge-shaped, as it was in a round tower which is part of the building. Here you can see part of the room and our view, with Jeremi sitting on the bed reading.

Incidentally, I'm going to be staying in one of these guest apartments when I go over in February, at least for the first month or two until I find an apartment. At least it's good and close to work, though it's about 10 minutes from the city by bus.

The next couple of days were really busy at the institute, as I met with many of the group members to discuss their work, and what I would be doing there. On Friday morning I presented a talk there, which Jeremi attended as well. As such, there are actually a couple of pictures. I brought him along to help me get set up, which was particularly helpful as this room was also fully automated, and it took us some time to figure out how to lower the screen and get the projector working. Here's a picture he took once we were all set up, and waiting for people to arrive.
The talk went well, and they gave me an official job offer. I was also offered the job in Zurich, much to my surprise. We ended up deciding upon Jena, despite the fact that it's much more isolated. At least there we'll definitely get to (or have to) learn German, and I think that it will be a bit easier to get Jeremi a visa in Germany. The pay was much higher in Zurich, but so is the cost of living. European cities are also a lot more crowded than we're used to, so a smaller city might be a bit easier to get used to. And finally, the people in Jena think they might be able to find Jeremi some work there, at least in the short term, doing some hardware engineering on instrumentation. This would be a huge help for us, and not only financially.

Our week in Europe (part I: Switzerland)

Hello all! Now that we've been back in Canada a few days, I'm starting the process of posting some pictures from our recent trip to Germany and Switzerland. It was a really busy trip, visiting three cities in a week, spending lots of time on trains, and all with 9 hours of jetlag. This is a really long post, but I'm trying to explain what our trip was like in some detail.

We arrived in Frankfurt around 17:00 on Sunday, September 10th. We flew Air Transat from Vancouver as it was much cheaper, but this meant that our journey started with a few hours on a bus and an hour and a half on the ferry, arriving at the airport 3 hours early due to the ferry schedule. Sometimes living on an island is a bit irritating. The flight was fine, with only one stop in Calgary, and the food was even pretty good. However the seats were incredibly tiny, even for me, and Jeremi suffered a bit for this. I actually managed to sleep for a bit over 6 hours, completely missing all three movies, but Jeremi was not so fortunate.

The first stop in our journey was actually Zurich though, and I had to be in Zurich for a meeting with my former supervisor Ulrike at 9:00 Monday morning, and ready to give a talk at 10:00. This had to be done so early on Monday as Ulrike was leaving for a conference at noon. As such, the first thing we had to do was get on the train to Zurich.

I'd planned much of the trip beforehand, and bought all our train tickets ahead of time on line to save some money. For the tickets from Frankfurt to Jena they just sent me an e-ticket that I could print out. But for the tickets to Zurich, because it was leaving Germany and thus was using two different railroads, they had to send me an old-fashioned paper ticket. I was concerned that it wasn't going to make it through the mail on time, but we got it in less than a week. (This is faster than mail across Canada most of the time.) Unfortunately, we then neglected to bring it with us. We realized once we were at the airport in Vancouver, but there was no getting it then.

So the first step was to go to the Deutsche Bahn office to plead our case. All they were able to do was sell us new tickets at full price, which was a whopping 324 Euros (~$475) for the two tickets, almost twice what I 'd already payed. Apparantly we can now mail in the unused ticket and try to get a partial refund, but there are no guarantees. In any case, Ulrike reimbursed me for the more expensive ticket, though not for Jeremi's portion of course.

In addition to the difference in price, he also sold us tickets on a different routing. You can depart toward Zurich from either the Frankfurt airport station or the downtown station. I'd initially booked our tickets from the downtown station since I didn't realize this, but now that we were at the airport the Deutsche Bahn employee sold us tickets leaving from the airport, which was more convenient as we didn't have to take the subway downtown first. I explained that on the way back we wanted the same reservations because (a) the seats were already reserved for us, and (b) we had a connection to make for the train to Jena. (I booked two return tickets, Frankfurt-Zurich-Frankfurt and Frankfurt-Jena-Frankfurt, partly because it made it easier to claim the costs from the two separate sources.) So he booked the tickets for us, indicating that we had the same reservations on the way back as on our previous tickets.

One of the stereotypes we had heard about Germans is that they're very punctual, and that everything is on time. This proved to be untrue when it came to the trains, at least on the first leg of our journey. The train from Frankfurt to Mannheim was late, but then so was the train from Mannheim to Basel, so it sort of worked out. From Basel to Zurich we had to catch a later train, so we didn't get in until around midnight. With the initial ticket that we'd left at home we had seats reserved throughout the journey, which would have been nice. The first two trains (which took over three hours) were completely packed, and we and dozens of others were left sitting or standing in the aisles and in the space between the cars. It was really terrible, especially after such a long flight. We were really very happy when we got off in Zurich.

We were staying there at "Hotel Splendid", which didn't entirely live up to its name. We've stayed in nicer hostels, but it had a good central location and was only 100 Swiss Francs (~$90) a night, which is a bargain in Zurich. It was just funny to travel for 26 hours to arrive at such a shoddy-looking room. While I reviewed my talk and added in a couple of slides Jeremi went out and found us some food, a falafel pita for me and an incredibly delicious donair for him. I have to say, the donairs we had there were way better than those in Halifax. I finally made it to sleep around 3:00, which gave about 4 hours sleep before the church bells and the jackhammers outside the window started. Still, better than nothing.

While I went to ETH to visit with Ulrike, Jeremi went to the train station to meet our friend Gerd. Gerd left Victoria in July and started working in Lausanne, Switzerland, at the beginning of August. He took the train in for the day to see us, as it's only about 2 hours away despite being near the other end of the country. Europe is surprisingly small to our Canadian sensibilities, but Switzerland is downright tiny. Then Gerd and Jeremi came to ETH to hear my talk at 10:00. The talk went well, and afterwards we went for an early lunch with some of Ulrike's students, one of whom I knew from Dalhousie. Afterward Gerd and Jeremi set out to explore, while I toured some of the labs, talked to people about their research, and then had a 2 hour job interview with another researcher working at ETH. I was finished around 15:30, after battling through the worst of the jetlag with far too much caffeine. (The job interview started at 13:30, which my body thought was 4:30 in the morning. Not a good time to come across as intelligent and engaging after only 3 hours of sleep.)

In order to counteract the caffeine we thought it would be appropriate to start drinking, so we sampled some of the beers around town. We headed over to Zurich-West for some supper and some more drinks, and then back towards to centre of town to a beer garden on the banks of the river. By then it was around 21:30, and we headed toward the train station so that Gerd could get back home by midnight or so.

While waiting with him at the train station we realized that we hadn't actually brought our camera with us, so we had no photographic evidence that we were actually with Gerd in Zurich. But of course he had a fancy cell phone with a camera in it, so he was nice enough to take this picture at the train station, and send it to us. (Finally, a picture, for those of you good enough to actually read this far.)


The next picture is from the next morning over breakfast as we were leisurely making our way back to the train station to leave for Jena. I was miserably hungry and sleepy, so Jeremi thought it would be funny to record this for posterity. In my defence, we were only about 10 m from crews working on the cobblestones with jackhammers, to the point that conversation was near impossible. It seemed like all of downtown Zurich was under construction while we were there. And while all the cobblestone streets are very lovely, it seems to be quite difficult to get them up to do any work below. On the upside, my breakfast of Bircher muesli with fresh fruit was delicious!And here is a picture that Jeremi insisted should be here - a Coop in Zurich. While not directly related to Coop in Canada, both "Coop" and "Migros", the two main grocery chains we saw there, are co-operatives of some sort or other. But Coop doesn't stop with groceries - they also have banking and what seemed to be a department store as well. We went in as well, to pick up some food for lunch on the train, and to check out the general price of groceries. While going out for food there was very expensive compared to here, the groceries weren't so bad. What was a bit more discouraging was the lack of non-European groceries. They had one half-aisle that had some overpriced items, but it would take some looking in specialty shops I think.

And here is Jeremi sitting by the side of the river while we waited for our train. There aren't really very many benches anywhere, particularly in the train station, really encouraging you to loiter elsewhere. The river really is as turquoise as it looks here, Gerd claims due to the limestone, but the Moira in Belleville never looked this colour in its all-limestone bed. An oceanographer once told me the colour has something to do with silicates, but I don't remember the details. Jeremi also took many pictures of the swans and ducks along the river, but they didn't come out so well.

And so we've reached the end of possibly the longest post ever. Congratulations if you made it this far. The next post will deal with our time in Jena.

Jer's selling his car

Well, after a couple of years of sitting under the apple tree, Jeremi decided to sell his car. In preparation for this he got it so beautifully clean and shiny that I thought you should all see the pictures. He even managed to pull out the worst of the dent in the door with a suction cup from Canadian Tire that cost about $4. If only we'd known at the time that these things existed, it probably would have looked as if it had never happened. (We did try a plunger, but it's not quite the same.) And now we have this cool suction cup that apparantly we can use to move large sheets of glass, if we should ever find ourselves needing to do this.

Nice family photos from the wedding

Here is me and my immediate family. From left to right, me, my dad (Paul), my brother (Nic), my new sister in law (Cathy), my mother (Betty Ann) and my sister (Marlene).

And here is the rest of the crew. This is all the family on my brothers side that was present at the wedding. all these pictures were taken in front of the old shed which used to be connected to the house. Earlier this summer, my parents had the shed detached from the house and a deck there instead. The shed, which until this looked quite derelict, was given a face lift now looks very nice (espesially when decorated). This was all finished before the knowledge that there was going to be a wedding there emerged, thankfully. The point of all this is that my parents thought it hilarious that alot of the wedding pictures were taken in front of the old semi brocken down shed.

Me and Julia looking pretty for the wedding.

Lots of dancing at the wedding

So here are the beautiful bride and groom (and for those of you who have not met him, that's my brother Nick, not me) dancing the first dance of the night.


This is Nick and our slightly shorter mother, Betty Ann, up next on the dance floor. The dance floor being my parents backyard which served quite well. By this time Marie had wept a single tear under the huge emotional tension which in turn made us laugh at and Rishad disowned her for showing such sentimantality. We then proceded to shun her for the rest of the evening... well mostly Rishad with his superhuman drunken shunning powers. (We didn't really shun her.)



Next is Cathy and her father. Cathy is the first of three daughters that John has given away. One of her sisters is younger,Wendy, and the other, Christine, is older which is relevant in the next picture.
This is me (Jeremi, and not my brother) with Christine getting ready to dance. We are standing in an improvised pig trough. Why you may ask? Well, Acadian have a tradition that is called "Dancer dans l'auge" where when an elder brother(such as I) has been lapped in ways of marital status he must dance in the pig trough for all to see during the wedding night. Promoting equality as usual, I decided to exend the opportunity of experiencing this long standing tradition to the Christine, whose seniority over the bride had until then remained a secret. Our intense jig was a bit too much for the sturdily built trough though, and we soon sent planks full of protruding nails flying in all directions. Notice the small children around, they were quickly removed, but not until the first few planks went flying.

Nick and Cathy's Wedding

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So here are the wedding crashers, Marie and Rishad. Since we were going to be in New Brunswick for the weekend anyhow, we thought it would be a great time to get together, since the last time we were all in one place was in Marie's apartment in Seoul. At least they'd both met Jer's parents before, though they didn't actually know the bride or groom. Still, they worked their asses off setting up and putting things away so as to earn their keep, so I don't think anyone minded.

Here they are, at the start of their journey down the river of beer. Yes, it really is a canoe filled with beer and crushed ice. Cases upon cases of Keith's, Keith's Light, and Keith's Red were supplied for the wedding.

So after canoeing a ways down the River, Rishad and I spotted a mysterious box. What could be inside? we asked ourselves. We pulled the canoe over, and went in for a closer look. Here you see Rishad and I prying the lid off of the mysterious box, and seeing a treasure beyond our wildest dreams...










And here it is, the source of the river. Who could have known that the box would be half filled with crushed ice and more beer than we could drink (at least in one night)? We had to sample the booty so fresh and near its source.

Ah yes, the taste of ice cold treasure, tasting as it can only in the Maritimes.

This sequence of pictures was taken around 4:00, soon after the ceremony while Marie, Rishad and I were left to our own devices while Jeremi was doing official picture-type of things. Our own devices consisted mostly of drinking a great deal by the side of the shed, while people came and talked to us one by one. It was incredibly fun, but we managed to drink a great deal before supper, to the point that there were some (Marie) predicting that Rishad and I might be "tits up by sundown". She's a classy gal. To be fair, when the sun did go down at 9:00 I was incredibly shocked that I was actually still going. I was even more shocked at 4:00 am when I was still going, one of the last 3-4 people sitting around the fire. (Including a more sober Jeremi, who was making sure I made it to the bed.)

Maritime Adventure

The previous 6 post represent my(Jeremi's) trip to Halifax and New Brunswick last June. I was there for some work stuff but unfotunately Julia could not come with me. It's a little late but I hope you enjoy.

Maritime Adventure - Good Ole Ale House

Ah , the Ale House. Cheap pitchers and cheaper hangovers. Second picture is (from left to right) Gion, Laffy, Nick, Eddie and Ander having some of the Ale House ale. Taste alright going down but hurts the next morning. Good Fun.


Here we see Ander tiptoeing for an undisclosed purpose. And next Rishad laughing his head off also for unknown reasons.

Maritime Adventure - Hamachi House

Here we are at the Hamachi House, suggested by Laffy. We had all sorts of food grilled right before our eyes. It was delicious. The first picture is (from left to right) Waji, Gion, Sue and Laffy enjoying some pre-gorging beverages. The second picture is Sue, Me and Laffy. The Duke also came later.

Maritime Adventure - Cristy's Birthday

Yet another birthday. Cristy, Rishad's girlfriend, turned 25 last June. I stayed with them while I was in Halifax taking a course for my work (thanks again). This was to be a 80 retro themed party as you may be able to tell by Cristy's hair. However, she was the only one aware of this and so had to sport her coiffe solo. The fairy shaped cake was beautefully constructed by Rishad in honnor of her love of fairies.

Maritime Adventure - Giant Lobster

No trip passing anywhere near Shediac is complete without a photo shoot with the wolds biggest lobster. So, Voila.

Maritime Adventure - Fun in the "Chi"

I pick up Marie on the way to NB from the Halifax Airport and during our stay we went to see Erin in Miramichi. This is her with her cat "Pants".
We later went to the infamous "Opera House" where I assure you that no opera was heard. Erin then revealed to us that it was her birthday. We then promptly proceeded to order shots and a Fishbowl full of something they called grog (seen above).

This picture was Marie's idea. The reason for it will remain a mystery for all times, especialy to Marie. We finished of the night with a flurry of donairs and pizza slices. Fun had by all.

Maritime Adventure - Olivia's Birthday

These are picture I have been meaning to put up for quite a while now. This and the next couple of post happened back in June. Luckly, I was in the maritimes around Olivia's birthday for a course trough my work. Julia was unfortunately unable to come. You can see her above injoying her Winnie the Poo cake. Next is Olivia with her grand mother Joan (my aunt).

And finaly this is me and Taryn, Olivia's older sister and my goddaughter, reading about small furry animals baking pie.

The John C. Stennis

On Chris and Karen's last full day in Victoria we were going to finally show them around the city a bit. We'd planned for a nice long walk along Dallas Rd., right on the strait of Juan de Fuca, stopping at Fisherman's Wharf for some fish and chips, and ending up downtown for a couple of pints. Since we were going to be walking right by our friend Brian's place we decided to give him a call to see if he wanted to join us.

Now Brian is in the Navy, and though this was on the holiday Monday, he was on the base in Esquimalt when he answered his cell phone. Jeremi asked him if he wanted to go for a walk, and Brian asked us if we wanted to go on a tour of the visiting US aircraft carrier, the John C. Stennis. Knowing that this would entertain Chris to no end, we decided to go for it.

Because the ship rather large it was anchored a ways from shore, and the small, invitation-only tour groups had to take a small boat out from the naval base to dock at the aircraft carrier. So we headed out to Esquimalt to meet up with Brian. There was a bit of miscommunication, so we ended up going on a later tour, but it was worth the wait. Even the trip on the boat out to the ship was worth the trip, on a beautiful sunny day with a great view of the harbour. Here's a picture of Jeremi, Chris, and Karen on the small boat.

Since the boat left from the base, we also got a great view of all the other Canadian ships that were in port, including the one sailboat, the Oriole, on which Jeremi's brother Nick spent his summer, travelling the west coast of BC. Here's a picture of the Oriole:















We then made it to the actual aircraft carrier, where we had a tour that was about an hour or so long. It was a very highly structured tour, with only a bit of over-the-top propaganda at the beginning, when we visited this little room that was basically a shrine to John C. Stennis, some US senator who worked in military appropration. Basically, he got a lot of funding for the Navy, so they named an aircraft carrier after him, or something like that.

Unfortunately the aircraft component of the aircraft carrier wasn't on board, as this was really just a fun trip for the sailors. So instead we got to visit an almost empty flight deck, where you can see us here:


All in all, it was a very fun day, and very unexpected! We still made it to Fisherman's Wharf for some fish and chips, though we didn't get to spend as much time downtown as we might have. Still, it was too good a chance to pass up.

A trip to Port Renfrew (part II)

Our trip to Port Renfrew wasn't all playing games and drinking by the campsite (though there was an epic Euchre tournament where Karen and I crushed Chris and Jeremi). We did actually make it out to see some of the spectacular scenery along the coast. We took a nice day trip for a little hike to Botany Bay and Botanical Beach, which is reknowned for its tide pools filled with aquatic life. Here are a just a few pictures from this outing.

At the left you can see a picture of a Stellar's Jay, perched upon a piece of driftwood. After many attempts, Chris finally managed to capture a good picture of this cheeky bird with beautiful dark blue plumage. It's a bit bigger than a Blue Jay, and it's the provincial bird of British Columbia.

A trip to Port Renfrew (part I)

So it's been a long while since we've posted, so we've got some catching up to do. Back at the beginning of August Chris and Karen came to visit us for a few days. In order to get a real "West coast experience" we decided to go camping over the long weekend, somewhere near the ocean. Since Jeremi and I hadn't yet made it very far along the southern coast of the island, we decided to head towards Port Renfrew, to see what we would find.

Port Renfrew is at one end of both the West Coast Trail and the smaller Juan de Fuca Trail, and only really shows up on maps because there's nothing else around. If you start driving west from Victoria, it's where the road ends. I knew that it was small, but also knew that it increased in size a fair bit during the summer tourist season. We didn't know exactly where we were going to camp, but decided to just get there and see if we could find a spot at a campsite (most don't take reservations), or ask at the tourist bureau.

So we drove and drove, passing other places where we might have camped, until we made it to a tourism office with a mural that said Port Renfrew on it. There wasn't really much other indication that we were in a town. At this point it was around noon on the Friday of the August long weekend, at the very apex of the tourist season, and the tourism office was closed. Not just out for lunch, completely closed. Luckily there were a couple kids hanging around out front who were able to help us. I asked them if we were in Port Renfrew, to which they replied: "Yes. You're in Port Renfrew right now." Something tells me that we weren't the first visitors who weren't quite sure if that's all there was. They also helpfully directed us down a road where we'd be able to find some campsites.

We drove down this road a few kilometers, not quite sure where it would take us, until we came to a T-junction with the following sign:


We turned right, and eventually found a nice site on Fairy Lake. (Not at all like the one in Newmarket.) It was probably good that we weren't on the ocean too, as it was cold enough where we were.

Much fun was had at the campsite, with a good deal of beer to help it along. A couple of highlights are featured here: the contest to see how well we could drink beers using only BBQ utensils, and a complicated baseball-like game involving hitting small green berries with beer bottles.







The second picture doesn't actually illustrate the game itself very well, but you do get to see how entertaining Chris found it.