Bone Church

A classmate and avid traveler, Todd, tipped us off to make a half day trip out of Prague to the small town of Kunta Hora to the “bone church”.  While we were skeptical, Todd was so insistent on the excursion that we trekked out to Kunta Hora.  Wow he wasn’t kidding.  The Sedlec Ossuary aka the bone church is an ossuary that is estimated to house the skeletons of 40,000 – 70,000 people.  The ossuary had been a popular burial site in Bohemia and was overrun with bodies during the plague in the 14^th century and Hussite Wars in the 15^th century.  A new family purchased the chapel in the 1800’s and hired a local woodcarver to arrange the bones.  The result is both morbid and fascinating.  See for yourself in the pictures below.   

Chris & I underneath the chandelier

Chandelier had every bone in the human body

A crown of skeletons to commemorate the king

We returned to Prague to accidentally encounter the taping of Mission Impossible 4 which was quite a departure from starring at 40,000 skeletons.  

Foray into Eastern Europe

Little did I know all those years singing Christmas carols, the Good King Wenceslas was a real prince who ruled over Bohemia.  At present day, King Wenceslas’ land is the Czech Republic solidified in 1993 by the Velvet Revolution and subsequent Velvet Divorce.  I learned all these fascinating facts (and many more) on a private walking tour we ended up on by happenstance shortly after arriving in Prague.  We flew in at the crack of dawn to maximize sight-seeing time and conveniently stayed right off the main square pictured below. 

Main square of Prague

Our local tour guide spun tales of love, revolution, and history as we wandered from sight to sight.  We began in the main square to watch the changing of the hour from the astronomical clock.  It was fairly amusing to watch throngs of people gathered to see a small parade of apostle and a bell-ringing skeleton.   

Astronomical clock

The biggest tourist site of Prague is the elegantly formidable castle on the hill that overlooks the city.  We trucked up the hill with our guide to view the grounds and take in the soldiers who guard the gate similar to those in front of Buckingham palace.  Other fascinating tidbits from the tour included seeing the Prague Castle window where two Habsburg councilors were thrown in the early 1600’s.

Prague Castle

After the tour we walked across the famed Charles Bridge.  It spans the river from the Castle to the main city center of Prague and was built in the 1300s.  Another official was thrown from the bridge for disobedience and it is considered good luck to rub his foot on the statue the marks his last spot. 

Good luck here I come!

One morning while the rest of the group went shopping, I went to check out Josefov – Prague’s former Jewish Quarter.  The Jewish Museum is consortium of former synagogues and a cemetery.  I found the graveyard interesting.  The disheveled appearance came from a practice of burying one generation of people on top of the next.

Jewish graveyard

We of course sampled much of the local food and beer.  Everybody always raves about Czech beer and it didn’t disappoint.  Given the cold weather and how much time we spent walking around outside, I loved the gluwein (hot wine). Though I enjoyed the litany of dumplings, my favorite Prague gastronomic treat however was beef goulash. 

Oktoberfest

Celebrating Oktoberfest in Munich has always been a bucket list item akin to Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Halloween in Salem, or New Year’s in Time Square.  Check another item off the list!  The Switzerland crew and I headed to Munich the other weekend for the last two days of the bicentennial Oktoberfest (way to up the bucket list ante huh).  A group of MITers made the trek across the ocean to meet us for a long weekend of debauchery, lederhosen, oopmha bands, and general shenanigans.  Here a few of them are in their lederhosen and dirndls.        

All decked out in their German finest

Although the inaugural Oktoberfest was to honor the marriage of King Ludwig I and Therese of Bavaria, these days its devolved into a celebration of German beer.  The festival grounds house 14 tents each staffed by a Bavarian brewery serving their own brew in addition to an enormous carnival of rides, games, and food stalls.  I was expecting the Mardi Gras like atmosphere to permeate the event and was surprised by the number of families at the Oktoberfest grounds.  However the grounds were packed and unless you’re going in the morning during the middle of the week, I would not recommend taking small children.     

Oktoberfest grounds

We woke up, took the train, and were at the festival grounds by 8:30AM to be in line for when the tent doors opened at 9:30AM.  Wow how grossly we underestimated the throngs of lederhosen-cladden people.  Our lot hoped to spend the day at the Hofbräu-Festzelt tent, waited in line in a crush of people for about two hours, and then were saved from near claustrophobia when Karla paid off the doorman and got us all in.  Thanks Karla!  After our unwelcomed two hour interlude in line, we were eager to join our classmates who had gotten up at 5AM, arrived way earlier, and managed to hold us seats at tables inside the tent.  Each tent holds 3K – 7K people so seats can be tough to come by.

Allen & I enjoying our beers

Oktoberfest is a highly entertaining event.  At least two thirds of the people in the tent were dressed in traditional attire.  Waitresses scurry between drunken hordes miraculously carrying ten liters of beer.  Waiters hoist half chickens, pretzels, dumplings, and wurst through the air at hungry patrons.  The band takes the stage in the middle of the tent playing lively oophma music.  The Hofbräuhaus in Munich actually inspired what seems to have become the Oktoberfest theme song "oans, zwoa, g'suffa" (Bavarian dialect for: "one, two, drink").  Every twenty minutes or so, the band breaks into the above song and the cheering crowds jump to their feet on benches or sometimes tables, hoist their beers, and scream.

Hofbrauhaus Band

A few liters of beer, half a chicken, a pretzel, and many rounds of singing later, the tent was closing for the evening.  Somehow we managed to spend fourteen hours at the Hofbräuhaus tent and went back the following day to try out a few more tents and further soak up the Oktoberfest culture.  I have no idea when, where, or how I acquired the hat below.

Decked out in our new hats

Fête des Ménétríers

Two American, two Indians, & a German went to a Renaissance festival in a little village in France.  Though it sounds like the beginning of a joke, a few Sunday’s ago we rented a car and wound up as probably the only tourists at a local Renaissance festival in Ribeauville, France.  Luckily my lovely German friend Tanja translated everything for the language impaired amongst us.    

Me & Tanja overlooking the parade

The Fête des Ménétríers seemed to involve the entire town.  Men in tunics chased corseted young maidens around cobblestone streets.  The royal sound of trumpets filled the air as the king and queen made their entrance.  Jesters and fire breathers took turns exciting the crowds.   

How does one realize they're a talented fire breather?

Wood carvers peddled their wares.  Women stirred cauldrons of stew over open flames.  A pig was roasted upon a spit.

Just like a southern pig pickin

Later in the day, an endless parade of competing, costumed marching bands commenced.  The bands were interspersed with the villagers and elaborately constructed floats. 

Medieval marching band

We enjoyed the music, food, regional wine, and general ridiculousness of the festival.

Where's the Factory?

Ah the smell of cow dung & ammonia – last week on a business trip to Kundl, Austria I learned that rural manufacturing is strikingly similar across industries and continents.  Need to locate a rural factory?  Just follow that prognostic smell. 

Another comforting similarity was the friendliness of the locals and their eagerness to make sure all your needs were attended too.  I found the Austrians warm, inviting, amazingly accommodating, and zealous to share their country.  They wanted to walk me to and from the train station, watch my delight at sinking my teeth into the first bite of Mozart chocolate, tell me the best places to try Wiener Schnitzel, and teach me about the traditional style of dress.  

Bayan with Kufstein fortress

I also had the pleasure of getting to catch up with my friend Bayan who lives nearby in Kufstein.  Bayan came to my rescue Sunday night when the only hotel in the village was closed and the factory guard couldn’t find the key that was supposed to have been left for me although that may have been partially due to my limited German and minimal charades ability.  I was beginning to have visions of sleeping in a hay bale or barn.  Thanks Bayan!

Innsbruck

Innsbruck is an hour and a half from the factory by train.  Bayan generously took an afternoon off and we walked all around the old city, visited the town’s cathedral, ate lunch at an outdoor café, and people watched in the main square.

Innsbruck square

One of my favorite events of the day was watching an oversized game of chess in the park.  The two men playing attracted quite a crowd and it was a lively atmosphere.

Chess in the park - the farther gentleman emerged victorious

American business trips will never quite feel the same.

Vienna

Another weekend, another pilgrimage to a famous European city.  A few weekends ago, the destination was Vienna.  MITers flew in from all over Europe and Clarke prepared himself for “a very nerdy weekend”.  

Vienna crew in front of one of the many royal palaces

Ahem Clarke we only made a few Schrödinger jokes and just thought briefly of visiting his grave several hours outside Vienna.  For my non-science loving readers, Schrödinger is a famous Austrian quantum physicist and we encounter t-shirts like this on a daily basis at MIT.  Clarke and I got in before everybody else and had a chance to explore the old town Friday evening.  What a beautiful city!  As is the family traveling tradition, we wandered around aimlessly, following both the melodious strands of street musicians and the distant glow of a palace displayed in its finest evening splendor.   

Vienna has a plethora of picturesque statues and fountains

Karla, our resident LGO tour guide, had a slew of sites for us to hit on Saturday.  We walked through Hofburg Palace, Rauthaus, St Peterskirche cathedral, Stephansdom cathedral, and the astonishing painted ceilings of Karlskirche which may have been my favorite site of the day.  The church set up scaffolding so visitors could walk up to the top of the dome to see the collages from a few feet instead of several hundred.  Since middle school art was a challenge for me, I looked at the painted ceilings with pure wonder. 

Karlskirche ceiling

My classmate Kacey brought her husband and their two year old son Nolan which certainly added a foreign element to the trip for a bunch of twenty & thirty -something unmarried people.  Nolan's a gregarious, sweet kid and Clarke and I both had fun chasing him around to tire him out and give his parents a well-deserved break.  I think Clarke made a friend for life.

Clarke and Nolan

Sunday we journeyed out to Vienna’s number one tourist attraction Schönbrunn Palace which is the former imperial summer residence of the Habsburg.  Wow beyond the impressive physical palace, the estate has a gloriette, roman runins, hedge maze, large zoo, a litany of sculptures, and the most impressive gardens I’ve visited in memory.  You could easily spend all day on the palace grounds and not see half of it.

Siblings in front of th palace

Not that we didn’t try!  I marveled at the imperial quarters, got a kick out of running around the maze trying to beat my friends (if only Donovan wasn’t 200+cm tall), trekked up the hill to the gloriette to see the palace aerially, and sipped a Viennese coffee at one of the cafes on grounds.  A fitting ending to another fun trip.

LGO ladies w/ city backdrop

Liechtenstein

Liechtenstein – a country about the size of Manhattan, a population around 35,000 people, accessible solely by bus, & only a few hours from Basel.  When we learned that on Liechtenstein’s National Day, August 15^th, the Prince opens up his mountain-top palace for celebratory festivities, we had to attend.  Our group of three MIT alums, my friend Jessica, Clarke, & I stayed at the only hostel in the country. 

Mountaintop royal castle

On the bus into the capital city of Vaduz, we made our first Liechtensteiner friends.  They told us stories of banking haven scandals and the challenge of foreigners immigrating to Liechtenstein and we wound up in the town’s bar sampling the local wine.  The royal family has their own vineyards and their famed rose was mighty tasty.

Jessica, Stephanie, & I with the Royal Guards

The National Day festivities kicked off at 9AM the next morning with a mass, speech from the Prince, & traditional dancing in a field.  Since nobody in the group spoke much German, we all waited with baited breath for the processional up the hill to the castle that would signal the opening of the royal gates.

Siblings preparing to enter the royal castle

Royal band playing ceremonial music in front of the castle

The Prince sponsored a celebratory party with a band, smorgasbord of local breads, sandwiches, & fruits, and all the local beer you desired.  We enjoyed our brush with royalty, members of Parliament, and local Liechtensteiners alike.

Clarke, Zach, Jerome & I enjoying our feast on the Prince

Berlin Beckons

Last weekend I journeyed to Berlin to visit my friend Adrienne.  She’s in Germany for six months as part of an international development course sponsored by my former company.  I never made it to Berlin during my light bulb stint although I did have the opportunity to sample every restaurant in St Marys, Pennsylvania at least twelve times.  Beef on wick and pierogies both really grew on me after the first year :)

It was wonderful getting to catch-up with Adrienne and she very graciously toured me around her new city.   In our old lives, we often went running during lunch with another friend.  After I arrived on Friday evening, we probably walked for miles to see Berlin in her lite-up splendor.  The picture below is of me in front of the Brandenburg Gate. 

On Saturday we hit all the Berlin highlights from the East Side Gallery to Hitler’s Bunker to the Holocaust Memorial.  The subdued feeling of Hitler’s Bunker took me by surprise.  The former bunker’s ruins have long since been demolished and in its place are innocuous looking apartment buildings.  The picture below is of Adrienne in front of the East Side Gallery which is a memorial stretch of the wall near the center of Berlin with over 100 paintings. 

My favorite tourist attraction was the Checkpoint Charlie Museum.  It’s an entire museum dedicated to stories of creative and daring escape attempts from East Germany.  The engineer in me wandered around in bewilderment at the ingenuity of some of the devices on display from the hot air balloon to the hollowed out cars to the mini-sub.  You would love this museum Dad.  See me below with the Russian and American guards in front of the checkpoint.

As with all my weekend trips, the time to return to Basel for work came all too fast.  Thanks for hosting me Adrienne!  Mary Beth - really you can't come up with any business trips to Germany?  See all the fun you're missing ...

A European Sports Saturnalia: Le Tour de France

As World Cup fervor recedes, Europeans are shifting their attention to Le Tour de France.  During morning coffee, we now debate whose countryman will not only emerge in the yellow jersey along the Champs Elysees but also who will clinch the polka dotted jersey (apparently this is awarded to the “King of the Mountains”).  As an aside, my co-workers found it hilarious that I had no idea there were other competitive facets of the Tour de France  After consulting the route map, I realized that the 2010 Tour passed within a kilometer of Geneva and hastily organized a LGO reunion (my dual degree program) there for last weekend.  Pictured below are Karla (Turgi, Switzerland), Chris (Liverpool, England), Kevin (Basel, Switzerland), Dannielle (Sienna, Italy), me, and Todd (Marburg, Germany).

We spent the bulk of Saturday sightseeing and aimlessly wandering around Geneva.  While we were taking an afternoon rest with our feet in the lake, we heard a great deal of commotion.  Turns out our trip to Geneva coincided with their annual Lake Parade which can best be described as Mardi Gras coupled with a gay pride parade.  I won’t sear anybody’s eyes with pictures so instead here’s one of our customary MIT shots with Geneva’s iconic Jet d’Eau water cannon.  By the time I graduate, I feel as though I’ll have a coffee table book’s worth of these poses.    

Sunday marked Stage 8 of Le Tour; the alpine stage between Station des Rousses and Morzine Avoriaz.  I had strategically booked rooms literally on the Swiss – French border (France was 1/3 cheaper) so all we had to do on Sunday was roll out of bed and walk 10 minutes to the Tour route.  The group looked a bit skeptical when I had us all plop down under a tree in the middle of a roundabout in the French countryside but within 30 minutes we were joined by a hundred or so other spectators.  A hour before the first riders come through, an endless caravan of sponsors whizzed by throwing out everything from water to gummy bears to hats.  

We got decked out to show our Tour spirit and cheer on Lance.

I was surprised by the speed of the first group of riders.  The lead sprinting group of five or six riders was a good ten minutes ahead of the peloton.  Unbeknown to us at the time, Lance had fallen at the beginning of the stage but by our position had recovered to leading the peloton with Team Radio Shack.

We cheered our hearts out for Lance however he suffered two crashes later in the stage and is effectively out of the running for the yellow jersey and plans to retire at the end of this year’s Tour at least according to BBC aka the only English television channel I receive.  Who knows, maybe we witnessed a little bit of cycling history?   

Paris at Last

Though it's unclear if it stems from my love of crepes, the allure of the Eiffel Tour, or the lackluster Disney adaptation of Victor Hugo's Hunchback, I've always wanted to go to Paris.  That wish was fulfilled with an extended weekend trip last week - that's the best thing about not daily responsibilities, as long as I deliver, they're very flexible on work location and duration.  I met up with a friend who's working in Spain.  He had also never been to Paris and we must have walked a marathon during the trip just exploring the city.

Paris was as beautiful of a city as I always dreamed it would be.  I loved the history, the architecture, the food, and the general air of sophistication.  See gratuitous tourist shot below.

It's hard to pick one favorite spot or activity.  We visited all the major tourist sites, the Eiffel Tour, the Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre, & the Cathedral of Notre Dame.  We sampled the cuisine and wine, went on a cruise of the Seine, watched street performers, rode a ferris wheel on the lawn of the Louvre, and spent hours people watching at a cafe on the Champs Elysees.  If I had to pick, my favorite part is the hours we spent in the Louvre, audio guides in our ears, wandering around listening to the stories behind some of the world's most famous paintings.

Maybe my boss will let me work from Paris a week a month :)

Luxembourg - An Unexpected Delight

On the drive back from Belgium, we made an extemporaneous stop in Luxembourg.  I know what you're all wondering - why Luxembourg - but Carpe Diem right?  Luxembourg City is the capital and main attraction of the kingdom and was our natural stop.  A gorge intersects the city with buildings and escapements built up the sides and trees and a trickling brook running through the middle.  The result below was beautiful

 
We wound up traversing the gorge and stumbled upon an old-fashioned mini-golf course.  Though there were no windmills or fire-breathing dragons to overcome, it was the hardest mini-golf course ever.  I inadvertently launched my ball over a hedge on hole 4 into the great abyss and Asvin was convinced the course was rigged against him.  A three way tie amongst Kevin, Asvin, & I ensued - sorry Donovoan!

Luxembourg certainly exceeded everybody's expectations and was a nice break in the Belgium trip.

Boisterous Brussels

As promised, here's the highlights of the impromptu weekend trip to Brussels:

Within my first 48 hours in Basel, the other MITers and I decided to go on a last-minute weekend trip to Brussels.  An excellent idea since none of us speak French or German, no GPS's were available to rent, and only Asvin peripherally remembered how to drive stick (sorry Dad, I know you tried) from a friend ten years ago in college.  It took a few trips around the parking lot, perplexed faces & downright begging at the French rest stop / gas station called I kid you not "Flunch", and a healthy dose of luck but we eventually arrived in Brussels Friday evening.  Our first Belgium beers, waffles, and chocolate fountain sampling were consumed not long there after.

Saturday was a day of sightseeing and aimless wandering.  I loved the Grand Place - the central city square of Brussels.  It was adorned with flower shops, sidewalk cafes, a wedding processional, artists, one man bands, and living statues.  I could have been perfectly content sipping coffee at one of the cafes people watching for hours.  The picture below shows Kevin and I in the square.

No trip to Brussels is complete with seeing the Manneken Pis the inexplicably famous water fountain / statue pictured below.

Although viewing the Manneken Pis was rather anti-climatic, on the way to find his squatting sister we happened upon an American vagabond to hang out with that evening, the Delirium Taphouse with over 2000 beers on tap, and a youth travelers center with ideas of things to do in Brussels on post-it notes.  We grabbed a note to "lay on the floor of the Palace of Justice, contemplate life, then stare up at the ceiling".  Finding and attempting to enter the Palace of Justice was an entertaining ordeal that gave us the opportunity to see even more of the city.

The awesome day of sightseeing and meandering was capped off by an exhilarating evening of cheering on the US team to an unexpected tie against a higher-ranked English team.  I enjoyed Brussels and recommend the city to you guys.