Vacation!

I leave this weekend for a two-week vacation in Europe, so I won’t be posting here (or elsewhere) for a couple weeks. The trip last month was an unexpected work trip; this trip has been planned for many months and is pure fun for the wife and me.

We fly into London and head strait to Bath for a few days. Next we have a bit of time in the Cotswolds and the North Wales – we stay in Conwy. After Wales, we hit Scotland and will be in Edinburgh for several days before heading south to York. After York, we finish the trip in London.

I’ve not been to Britain before, so I’m looking forward to some time off and that wonderful European experience. This will be my wife’s first time in Europe and I know she’ll love it.

Anyway, I’ll not bother with the internet while I’m on vacation, so expect no posts or reviews. I haven’t decided yet what I’ll take to read, but they will be relatively light reading and paperbacks that won’t bother me when they get travel worn. Right now I’m thinking it’ll be some Tad Williams, Terry Pratchett, and Charles de Lint. I may just take the chance to finish the Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series.

Cheers!

A Few Pictures From Recent Travels

Well, I've said that I'd post a few pictures from the travels, so here they are. These made the cut from the 200 hundred or so that were taken as a nice summary of the trip.


St. Goar along the Rhine in Germany from the Rheinfels castle.



The central square in Olomouc, Czech Republic. A very nice little city that is totally off the tourist map.



The Prague Castle.

The library at Strahov Monastary. A great visit - I wish I had a picture of the dodo. Oh well.

Homeward Bound!

Well, I’ve left the Czech Republic. Yesterday I flew from Prague to Frankfurt and I am there for a day before heading home on Wednesday. The work has been interesting and exhausting for me, but certainly good experience – another ‘war story’ and nice addition to the resume. However, the insane schedule left me almost no time to enjoy being in Europe – all told I will have been here for 4 weeks, and in that time I’ve had only 3 ½ days off.

Yesterday evening I walked through Frankfurt in search of the Irish pub I spent New Year’s Eve at 8 years ago. I think I found it, but it seems my memory is hazy for some reason. Anyway, I had a few beers and noted some oddities. First, the ‘house beer’ at this Irish pub was a local German pils – I guess I shouldn’t be surprised since the price is less, but it still seemed a bit wrong. And second – this one was really odd – I watched a local order a pitcher of Guinness and instead of a glass, he asked for a straw. Afterwards I had to ask the bartender if this was a common way of drinking it and he emphatically said no and then got a bit more derogatory about Germans not appreciating their beer properly.

I anticipate that I’ll finish The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco on the plane tomorrow. No promises on when I’ll get a review written and posted – probably next Monday. On a side-note, it looks like I’ll be doing an occasional review over at Fantasybookspot. Yes, in some ways, it’s little more than a blatant move on my part to get free books, sometimes before they are released. But, I’m happy to be on the team over there. I’ll mention any review I do for them here.

Highlights of the trip include:

- A boat ride up the Rhine
- Olomouc – a really pleasant Czech city
- Pivo!
- 2 days in Prague
- Visiting a monastic library and seeing a dried dodo bird
- Driving adventures in rural Czechia and Prague
- Pivo!
- Having lunch cooked for me by Satan over a campfire on the jobsite
- Oddities in a Frankfurt Irish pub

I’ll post some pictures sometime in the future.

Nothing Lasts Forever

Well, my ‘weekend’ break in Prague will be cut a bit shorter than initially planned (no surprise to me), so on Saturday it’s off to Olomouc again for a day. Then back across the country to another site on Sunday.

Prague has been wonderful. I spent yesterday walking around by the castle and in Hradčany then down across the bridge into the old town. The castle is so crowded that it’s hardly worth it – since I’ve been there before I didn’t stay long.

I visited the Strahov monastery and library – this just might be the best thing I’ve visited so far. It is incredible to see a library where 400 year old books are nothing of particular note since there are rooms full of books much, much older. This visit is all the more timely since I’m currently reading The Name of the Rose by Eco; I was inspired to read for an hour or so in a park shortly after the visit. At least as interesting (to me) as the books was the collection of dried/preserved animals. Have you ever seen a dried stingray? They look utterly alien – it was way cool. Even better than the stingrays was the dodo bird – yes, they have a dried dodo bird on display. Very weird looking.

In the evening I did a pub walk with one of the local tour groups. It was nice and good to interact with people. There’s just something about drinking in 600 hundred year old basements. As I said, it was great fun.

This will probably be the last entry for a week or so as I begin work again. Hopefully the next entry will be my review of The Name of the Rose and probably a few pictures from the trip.

Ahh…Prague

Well, work has continued to be very busy, but now I finally get a break – for the last 3 weeks, I’ve only had about 1 day off and the typical work day has been somewhere between 10 and 14 hours long. So, this is a much needed break.

After a week over in laid-back Olomouc, where it was hot; and a few days in a small, way more laid back village kind of near Plzeň called Mirošov, where it was pleasant (even cool); I’m now in crowded, hectic Prague. Don’t get me wrong, it is immediately clear why this is such a popular place, but it is a big change from the rest of the Czech Republic.

I’ve been to Prague before – about 8 years ago (back in the college days) some friends of mine and I traveled through for a few days in January. The city was relatively empty, very cheap, laid-back, and simply a wonderful time. Well, Prague in summer is crowded and expensive compared to what I recall. I had a nice meal this evening on the main square – yes, I expect it to be relatively expensive there, but the price still surprised me. I could have eaten very nice meals in Olomouc for a week for the price I paid at this café. Of course, the price was for the setting, not the product, and it’s very difficult to find a nicer setting.

So, for the next 3 days I get to hang out in Prague. It will be fun and a needed break, but a bit lonely. It’s nice to make the wife a bit envious, but her company here would make things much better.

On the spec-fic front, it’s also frustrating. It looks like I’ll miss Jeff VanderMeer’s appearances here in Prague by just a couple days. Any regular readers out there going to be in Prague this week? First round is on me.

Well, bare with me as I continue with the travel blog – reviews will come again, I promise. I just need some reading time. I’ll also post a few pics when I get back to the States and can download the photos from my camera.

Ciao!

What Day Is It Again?

Still fighting a bit of the jet lag, but hopefully I’m getting past that. The real kicker in Frankfurt is the heat – air conditioning people! I live in Arizona, and it’s very hot there – this time of hear highs around 110 or more. But when it’s that hot, you just don’t go outside much, you stay in and enjoy the air conditioning.

In Frankfurt, highs are in the mid to upper 90s. Yes, cooler than Phoenix, but it’s more humid and air conditioning is sparse. Yep, my company’s office has no AC, my hotel room – no AC. It cools down nicely at night, but the sun doesn’t go down until almost 10pm – it makes it tough for someone going to bed early to fight jet-lag to actually sleep in a west-facing room with no AC and no fan. So, I’m a bit cranky due to the lack of AC. I look forward to heading to Czechia where it should be a bit cooler, though I imagine there won’t be AC there either.

Goal for the day: Don’t get on the wrong train when going back to the hotel!

I started The Name of the Rose on the plane. I’m enjoying so far, but it is not going to be a fast read. It’ll probably be a week or more before I get another review up. So, please don’t abandon me :) - keep coming back for the nice travel experiences of this typical spoiled American traveling and working in Europe. And by typical I’m referring to my wonderful language skills of English – no other languages for me (my mostly forgotten, broken Spanish doesn’t get me far in Germany).

Travel

One of the many things I enjoy is travel. Sometimes it's for work, more often, for fun. Anyway, I've found that I enjoy blogging about it. It doesn't fit into the 'mission' of this blog, but I don't care, I can post what I want on this blog. So, below are the entries that lend more to travel tales.

Europe

• A Room With a View
• In Sibiu
• A Quick Note from The City of Stupids
• A Few Obersvations/Comments While in Bucharest
• Bucharest
• Ahh...Prague
• Ahh...Olomouc
• What Day Is It
• Homeward Bound
• A Few Pictures - Germany and Czechia
• Nothing Lasts Forever
• Neth International

Hawaii

• Aloha
• Ahh...That Was Nice