pics of spain

There are some new pictures here.

just in case...

just in case anyone cares:
Finally I uploaded some of my pictures, taken on the trip from Anchorage, Alaska, USA to Vancouver, Canada. You'll find them here:

Alaska and Western Canada

good morning sun

Every once in a while the weather in Zurich is really nice. With really nice I don't just mean sunny or cloudless, but a day without fog and mist. When I go to work in the morning there is one little spot on the track where you can see the mountains from the train. When the weather is really nice you can actually see the sun rising over the mountains and it is incredibly beautiful.

Anyway, at the moment we do have some nice weather here and when I woke up this morning, I thought about taking some pictures. Now some of you might call me crazy or whatever, but I got up today (a sunday) at 6 in the morning and hiked up a mountain. In the woods it was kind of dark, but I have gone the way before a couple of times so I was pretty sure where I was going.

Unfortunately it was misty so I didn't expect to take great pictures, but when I got on top of the mountain at around 7 o'clock I experienced a wonderful sunrise. Most of the pictures look pretty much the same but the scenery was just too inviting to take photos and so I have quite a few of these. Maybe you like some of them and maybe you should think about becoming an early rising person because this was over before eight, before any tourist has crossed my way... So good morning sun!

New Years

Before I start writing about how I celebrated the beginning of 2008 I want to say "Happy New Year!" to everyone I haven't yet had the chance to say to. I don't really have a list of people that I want to greet and I kind of lost track of the people I have already seen or talked to since last year, so please don't be angry at me in case that I have "forgotten" you.

Back to the story how I arrived in 2008: The last post ended with Barbara and me arriving in Zurich and staying there for one night. The next day we got on a train and went to a city called Wädenswil, about 30 minutes outside of Zurich. There we met with Andrea, a close friend of Barbara from High School, Ines and Ian some other random friends that Barbara met while she was in Australia and that are also friends with Andrea.

Anyway, it was us five and we went to the mountains, close to the city Schwyz. Since this place is a little higher above sea level than Zurich for example, there was a lot of snow. We actually wanted to hike a little and our aim was to get to a small cabin on the mountain, but we got a little lost. Thus, we ended up in a different cabin, got some hot tea and went back to the car. After that we made a quick stop at Andrea's parents who live in Einsiedeln and then drove to Worb, a small city close to Bern, where Andrea lives.

The next few days were filled with a lot of talking, watching movies, cooking and eating, going for walks, doing some sightseeing in Bern and so on and so on. We didn't do anything spectacular, but it was really nice, just the right mixture of relaxing and actively doing something. Basically that's all we did. On New Years eve we had something typically for Germany oder Europe or I don't know, something called "Bleigießen" (translates into "lead pouring"). You basically take a piece of lead and melt it in some kind of spoon over a candle. When it's all melted you simply pour it into a bowl of cold water and voila, there we go. The shape the lead has at the end is supposed to say something about you or your life of the next year. As far as I know though, you need to have a lot of fantasy to see anything in the new shapes. To be honest my piece of lead looked a little like a huge sperm - but the pieces of the other people looked similar...

Anyway, we spent some nice days in Worb and on January 2, the vacation was already over. After exchanging all the pitures, Barbara went back to Germany from Bern because she had a doctor's appointment, Ian had to catch a flight to Great Britain from Zurich so Andrea drove him there and I was able to go along with them as well. Last but not least Ines had some more days of vacation and stayed in Worb a little longer with Andrea who also had some holidays.

I for my part had to work on January 3 and there I am again, working and having as much fun as possible.

With that my blog is up-to-date and I wish you once again a 'Happy New Year 2008!'

Winter Wonderland

Before you even know it, it's Christmas. Well, not really, the chocolate santas have been in the stores for months and at the end auf November the light pollution increases tremendously, but anyway, the last few weeks before Christmas pass like a flash.

Over Christmas I went to visit Barbara and her family. Barbara had just arrived from the US a few days before and is now Master of Science... (actually she could go and earn the money now and I would become the houseman). Anyway, since Barbara hasn't been home for about 16 months we decided to spend Christmas Eve at her family. A colleague of mine at Hocoma is Dutch and drove with his car home over Christmas and since my girlfriend lives close to the border to the Netherlands it was perfect for me.

I arrived in Bedburg-Hau some days before Christmas and tried to get used to my "jet-lagged" girlfriend. We did a lot preparation for the different Christmas dinners and I was able to help some in the kitchen with the cooking and so on, which is more an honor than anything else to me.

One day we had really nice weather and made an awesome walk in the winter wonderland. I uploaded some of the pictures and see for yourselves - even without snow this is incredibly beautiful. The day before Christmas eve, the whole family came together and we went to Bochum to see the musical Starlight Express. It was a surprise of Bärbel and Udo (Barbara's parents) and it was really really nice, even though they sang in German.

Christmas Eve was one thing and that is long. We had Raclette for dinner around six and went to church around nine. Usually the service at church is earlier than nine, but due to some church changes in the area, there was only one service and that was at nine. This is not really a bad thing, however, the service ended around midnight... After that we went home and had a Feuerzangenbowle and started to unpack the presents. There were quite a few people and thus there were a whole lot of presents which were unpacked one after another. We finished with all the presents around 3:30 am and went to bed. The next day some friends of the family came over and we had a brunch and ate and talked some more.

The next day Barbara and I went to my parents' place and after that to my grandparents before we drove with my brother and my sister in law to Stuttgart. From there we took the train to Zurich, where we stayed one night and the next day we rode the train to a friend of Barbara's -- but more about that in my next post.

Zurich, Switzerland

When you go to another country and stay there for a while there is always an issue with friends that want to come and visit you. Well, many really do want to come for a visit but most of them never will. This is not because they don't like you or they've forgotten you, no, it's because the time you spent in the country is over faster than people can imagine. Even though I've spent more than six months in Canada these six months seemed to have been over in a blink and "suddenly" I was back in Germany. Actually, I can't complain, there were three close friends of mine visiting me in Kingston and that are three more than I have expected. Janine visited for a day, which was not a lot but was really nice, Dave came for a few days and we did some fun things and when Sebastian passed through Kingston, I haven't been around but anyway, he tried.

When I came back from Canada and announced that I'll be doing an internship in Zurich, Switzerland, many people told me how nice it is and that they'll visit me and have a cheap holiday. Well first of all, there is nothing cheap in Switzerland, alomost everything is a little or a lot more expensive than in Germany (but on the other hand, people also have a higher salary).

However, I never thought that a lot of people would actually drop by, although Switzerland is much closer to Germany than Canada. Maybe when I'm still around here for the European Championship in Soccer next summer, some people might show up, especially since I live just a few blocks from the stadium where group C (the Netherlands, France, Italy and Romania) will play.

Anyway - just a week before Christmas Steffi came around for the weekend. She is doing her internship at Daimler in Stuttgart and had a colleague who lives in Zurich and drives there every weekend. So she was able to go with him and I picked her up at his place. We did some fun things, finally drank a few bottles of wine (something we wanted to do for a long time again) and talked a lot. We also took a quick glance at Zurich, walked around downtown and took a look at the Zueri See. The next day we hiked up a "little" hill called the Uetliberg and had a nice view over the city. Unfortunately it was not really clear so that we couldn't see the "big" mountains in the south. Anyway, it was a fun weekend and it was really nice to have someone visit me. Some of the pictures we took this weekend are as usual on picasa and you can check them out if you like. You can also send me an email and we can schedule a weekend for you to visit me as well, if you like...

another post

My dear diary, ...
Well it almost feels like an electronical diary. The last few nights I sat down at my computer and typed what came to my mind - at least kind of, I wanted to give you an impression about the things that happened the last few months I have spent in Canada and the US. Don't worry, I am aware that this is not a real diary so you can keep on reading, I won't reveal any secrets that you might not want to know and I try not to bother you too much with some weird feelings and dark thoughts of mine.

When I came back to Kingston in late September I just had a few more days before a plane took me back to Europe. This time I basically used to finish my thesis, pack my stuff and to say good bye to a few people. Especially the people from the DES lab, i.e., Sarah (and Ben), Lenko and Christian, and of course Karen my supervisor became really close friends to me. The day before my flight left we had our last DES Meeting and they even made a cake for me and had a present. I really enjoyed the time I spent with them, but my road made a turn again and brought me back to Germany. I remember a poem we had to learn some day in school. It is called "The road not traveled" by Robert Frost and goes something like this:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
but sorry, I could not travel both ...

Anyway, the next day, or lets say two days later, I stepped on German ground. I stayed at my parents' place for about a week and had my defense of my thesis. As soon as I was done with that I traveled to Zurich, Switzerland, to search for a place to live. That was not as easy as expected or lets say it was much harder than expected. However, after almost becoming desperate I fond a place (right on top of a sex shop...) and in November I moved to Zurich to do an intership at a company named Hocoma. On Hocoma's webpage it says:

Hocoma is the leader in robotic rehabilitation therapy for neurological movement disorders. We are a globally active medical technology company based near Zurich, Switzerland. We develop innovative therapy solutions working closely with leading clinics and research centers. Our products are applied successfully in renowned clinics and research institutes worldwide in the field of rehabilitation medicine.

The company and the people working there are great. During my intership I am working in the research and development department as a software engineer. My main tasks is to help with control issues of the Lokomat a gait orthosis that automates locomotion therapy on a treadmill and improves the efficiency of treatmill training. The work is really fun and I learned a lot since my first day at Hocoma.

More about that and maybe even some pictures from Zurich in the next post.
Good Night!

Washington D.C. and Philadelphia

After returning from eastern Canada I stayed a few days in Kingston, did my laundry, and off I were again. This time I visited Barbara once again before flying back to Germany. The first few days we spent in Terre Haute, I had some stuff to do for my and Barbara for her thesis. However, I still don’t want to talk about work so let’s get to the fun things we did while I was there.

Since Barbara had not yet been in Washington D.C. and Philadelphia we wanted to do a trip to these two cities. Besides that I always wanted to visit my former host family in Potter County (north central Pennsylvania) and it seemed to be good to combine these things. So one day before we wanted to leave for D.C. I called my host mom and she was totally excited to hear me again after what must have been two years. Through her caller ID she also knew that I was in Indiana and after I told her about our plans she was very happy to be seeing me again (and of course the girl I take along) soon. Also she told us that my host sister Dawn lives in a city very close to D.C. and that we might be able to stay at her place. So I called Dawn and asked her if it would be ok, if we would show up in 24 hours and as American are it was not the slightest problem.

The next day we started with Silent Bob (Barbara’s car) to drive. After about 650 miles we arrived in Falls Church, Virginia, and were welcomed by Dawn and her fiancé Adam. Their apartment was just 20 minutes by train to downtown D.C. and it was perfect for us. Within two days we tried to see as much of the US capitol as possible and I can tell you it was a lot of walking. But that was not too bad since we got really lucky with the weather and had sun most of the time. However, after these days we had to say good bye to our wonderful hosts and went to Philadelphia. On the way there we made a quick stop at Rehoboth beach in Delaware and arrived in Philly around eight at night.

In Philly we stayed at Sandy’s apartment. Sandy is a woman we got to know through the internet (www.globalfreeloaders.com). Her apartment was just a few blocks from the city hall and she is one of the sweetest persons Barbara and I have ever met.

The next few days we explored Philadelphia and saw pretty much everything the US has to offer in terms of “early” history. All the sights were in walking distance so that we didn’t even have to buy tickets for public transport. Altogether I have to say that I did not expect a lot of Philly, but at the end was really surprised what a nice city it is and I think it is one of my favorites in the US. Everywhere you can find streets that are so narrow that it is not possible to fit a car through there and the whole city had a very nice flair that was awesome to experience.

Nonetheless, after a few days we had to leave and went on the long way to Potter County to visit one of my homes. After about six hours driving we were there and I passed the driveway… So we turned around and I was “back”. The rest of the day we spent talking with Wanda (my host mom) and George (her husband) and with a visit at my former High School and the store I used to work in. Also we went to the house of my dear friend Ashley who just got married a few months ago and had a little baby boy. However, we didn’t find anybody at her parents’ house.

The day after we had to hit the road to get back to Terre Haute in time so I can catch my flight back to Toronto. Before we started though, we went one more time to Ashley’s parents’ house, but she was not there. However her mom and sister were there and we were all really excited to meet again after all these years. We were then able to call Ashley and decided to meet in Wellsboro, which was not really on our way, but also not too far off. So we met Ashley and her husband Randy as well as little Matt in Wellsboro and went for a walk. We talked a little about how life has treated us and decided that we will never ever loose touch. Nonetheless we had to head back to Terre Haute so we said good bye and several hundred miles later we arrived at Barbara’s apartment and fell asleep in no time.

Two days later I flew back to Toronto and took the bus back to Kingston to spend a few more days there before finally leaving the North American continent. But I will write more about that and what I’ve been doing in Europe after my return later on.

Last but not least I want to provide you with some pictures so you can see how much fun we had and get an impression of all the stuff that we have seen.

Eastern Canada

If I take a look back at all the things I’ve experienced while I was in Canada it is hard to imagine that all this happened within such a short time. Besides traveling all around the country and to the US I also did some research and wrote a thesis. When you read the last and this and maybe the next entry in my blog, you might wonder when I have done all this. To be honest I don’t know. However, since it is neither interesting to write about work nor to read about it I don’t want to extend this excursion into my research. I just want to remember that by the time Lenko and I left for our next trip which is the topic of this entry I had finished a draft of my thesis and it was the work of many endless seeming days and nights and I got seldom more than five hours of sleep.

Anyway, on August 21^st of the year 2007 Lenko and I started our trip to Eastern Canada. We rented a car (Toyota) and the plan was to drive east and see as much as possible. The final destination was St. John’s, the capital of Newfoundland and Labrador. We traveled six different provinces of Canada and have seen and experienced so much that it is impossible to write about all of it.

First we went to Montreal and Quebec City. After a more or less glance at Quebec City we went up north to Baie-Ste-Catherine where we saw some minke whales. If we would have more time we would have gone on a whale cruise in the Parc Marin Natl Saguenay-St-Laurent where it is even possible to see blue whales.

However, we drove on through New Brunswick to Prince Edward Island (PEI). PEI is the smallest of the Canadian provinces but it is beautiful. Especially for a person like me who loves rough weather and light houses it was amazing. Due to a high percentage of iron in the soil the beaches of PEI all look kind of reddish but you can see that more clearly on the pictures. After a short stop in Charlottetown, the capital of PEI, we went on to Nova Scotia, visited Lunenburg and Halifax and a few days later we arrived in Sydney (Cape Breton) to catch the ferry to Newfoundland.

Unfortunately we didn’t have a reservation so we had to wait one night for the next available spot on a departing ferry. The ferry trip to Newfoundland was six hours and we arrived in Port aux Basques around mid day. The next day we simply drove along Highway 1 straight to St. John’s and Cape Spear the eastern most part of the North American continent. We took a few hours to do a whale cruise on the Atlantic. We didn’t see any whales on this cruise but instead thousands of puffins.

After we’ve seen everything of interest (or let’s say the most interesting things) we turned around and were on our way back to Kingston. We stopped at Gros Morne National Park, Newfoundland, and did a hike up the highest mountain/hill there. On this hike we’ve met some caribous, a moose, and a bear and so on… We got really lucky with the ferry and left Newfoundland.

Back in Nova Scotia we drove around Cape Breton and went to Cape Breton Highlands National Park. There we met a few more moose and whales but it was just a short stop on the way back to New Brunswick. There we stopped at Hope Well Rocks, a nice rock formation created by the force of the tide. However, time was pressing so we drove on, visited Fredericton and Edmundston, NB, raced through Quebec and arrived September 1^st in Kingston.

I have tons of pictures from this trip and a few of them I published here. If you have time take a look at it and book the next flight to Canada!

Lemoine Park and Bancroft

Although the last published entry is more than five months old it doesn’t mean that nothing interesting happened in that time. Actually there is quite a lot that has to be said here to give you a glance of the road I’ve traveled.

Since I don’t want to bore you to death I try to make it a brief summery of the different things worth telling. Let’s start with July and August. After the barbecue at Paul’s place we (Lenko, Christian, and me) decided that we want to see some more of the wild-life of Canada. This in mind we started to a biking tour which wasn’t actually a tour but more a day of biking. Anyway, we went to Lemoine Park which is about an hour biking from “downtown” Kingston. Although nothing spectacular happened it was a nice day off and we saw some squirrels and a lot of chipmunks.

After that day we got “hungry” to see more and since Algonquin National Park, one of the most beautiful National Parks in Canada, is only about a three hours drive from Kingston, we wanted to go there. However, it came different. We were a little short on money so we decided to follow the invitation of Paul to go to Bancroft a town more or less close to Algonquin where his family owns a house. We rented a canoe from the outdoor club of Queen’s university and left K-Town for a weekend. It was fun and since I’m an early riser, I was able to take some pretty nice pictures of the sun rise and a lot of fog and morning dew. The pictures from Lemoine Park and the Journey to Bancroft can be found here.

barbecue at Paul's

As promised some recent news from Kingston and my life...
Just last weekend we (Christian, Lenko, Mathis and me) were invited to a barbecue at Paul's house. You might know Christian and Lenko from my previous posts, they are the guys from my lab, but I don't think I ever mentioned Mathis or Paul before. Well, Mathis is a German writing his Masters Thesis here in Kingston. By now I believe he is already on his way back to Karlsruhe to defend his thesis. Paul on the other hand is the facility manager of our building at Queen's. He is a nice guy, he likes to talk and he likes coffee as well. So we started having a coffee with him every once in a while in our lab. Last week he called us and invited us to a barbecue at his place.

Since he lives a bit outside of Kingston and none of us has a car, he picked us up at the university. After arriving at his place we took a look around at his house and at his huge yard. He has four dogs so we started playing with them, throwing frisbees and we also started drinking beer pretty soon. Especially Mathis needed the beer quite bad, since he had a bad hangover and there is no better way to get rid of a hangover than by just keep on drinking...
Since Paul has a hot tub in the backyard we soon decided to jump in there. It was set on 100 degrees Fahrenheit and had some jets and all this fancy stuff. It was really nice to sit in there, getting a water stream massage, drinking beer and talking. Well, after some time our skin was all wrinkled and so we decided to get out of there and go to the party room in the basement of the house. We had some more beers and then started preparing some corn. The corn was really good and after that we started the barbecue, prepared the table and each had an awesome steak. Of course there was much more beer, I don't really know how much we drank this day, but it was quite a bit. Anyhow, after dinner we went back to the hot tub and relaxed some more.
Soon though the day was over and it was time to go. Ryan, another grad student who joined the "party" later, was still sober and so he drove each of us home and I for my part had a liter of water and went to bed.
Altogether it was an awesome day, I didn't get any work done, but sometimes you just have to take a break. Hopefully we can repeat that some day.

Here you can find some more photos.

to indianapolis and back

Just a few days before my birthday I went to the US again to visit Barbara in Indianapolis. She's doing an internship at a company called ProTrans in Indy during summer break and so that was the place to go. After some fun and a lot of waiting at Pearson Airport, Toronto and a rescheduled flight from Chicago I finally arrived in Indy.
Since Barbara had to work until 5 pm during the week I had lot's of time to clean the apartment, to do the dishes, to the laundry, etc, and of course to do some research for my thesis. During the first weekend we wanted to go to Southern Indiana to visit some nice cities and some caves but due to the weather we kind of canceled that an went to the nice town Columbus, IN. Even though you might not know this city it is kind of famous for it's architecture. A lot of 'well known' architects build some houses here so we walked around in the city and took some pictures.

The next weekend we went to Ohio to CedarPoint, the rollercoaster capitol. In this amusement park are 17 roller coasters and I don't really remember how many we rode, but there were a lot and the fingers of my two hands were not enough.
We started the day with a ride in millennium force. It was freaking high but since the engine was pulling you up really fast it was not possible to enjoy the sight. After that we rode some other rides including the Gemini, Mantis, Mean Streak, Cedar Creek Mine Ride, Iron Dragon, Corkscrew, Magnum XL-200, Raptor and so on. But there were some other rides that are not roller coasters. There was for example a huge swing, the SkyHawk, and this thing just scared the shit out of me. It looks like a swing and that's basically all it is, but it takes you up higher and higher. We also did the free fall thing and almost at the end we even felt ready for the Top Thrill Dragster. You get into a 'Dragster' and then you start and the thing accelerates up to 120 mph in 3 seconds. After that you go 420 feet up and then you basically just ride straight down again. This is something I have never seen before in an amusement park and it's probably one of the shortest rides you can Before you know it the ride was over but it was freaking awesome!
Since the park is about 5 hours away from Indianapolis we (about 12 people) stayed at a motel over night and the next day we went back to Indy.
That was the second weekend. On Monday we went back to work again but it is kind of a short week. Since July 4th is THE American holiday and Barbara was off work on July 3rd as well we had some time to go to Southern Indiana. Luckily the weather was really nice and so we went first to a little town called Nashville, IN. But we drove on, visited the towns Salem and Corydon, the first state capitol of Indiana took a look at the Ohio river and went to a cavern. At night we arrived in Louisville, Kentucky and met with Aaron and Angie. We had some barbecue and watched some fireworks. After the fireworks we drove home and arrived there around two o'clock. So we slept in on independence day and since we were invited for a barbecue at some friends who work with Barbara at ProTrans we went there. The 'party' was really nice, there was lots of food and we had some fun talking to the people and playing cornsacks or however they called that game. Unfortunately we had to leave the party early because we had tickets for the baseball game. The Indianapolis Indians were playing against Louisville. It was our first baseball game and it was kind of interesting to see how many families with little kids were there sitting on blankets. We almost had the impression that the people were not really going there because of the game but because of the socializing with other people. The game itself was kind of boring and to avoid 'rush hour' and to avoid getting wet, since some dark clouds were coming closer and closer, we left after the 7th inning and went back to Plainfield to watch some more fireworks.

Now I am back in Kingston and work hard on my thesis. The simulation is slowly getting along and I'll start writing pretty soon as well.

There are some more pictures, which you can find here.

Montreal

Once again, I have to apologize for not really keeping you up to date and not uploading the pictures I've taken during the last few weeks. I'm kind of lazy publishing here but I'll try to do better for the remaining few months. Although I don't think that there will be a whole lot worth publishing within the next few weeks since I'll probably stay in the lab from early morning to late at night.

Anyway, some weeks ago I went with Christian and Lenko to Montreal. A former roommate of Lenko lives in Ste-Julie so we had a place to stay over night. Before arriving in Montreal we went to Laval to go to an Apple Store since Christian wanted to buy an iBook. After that we left the car at a subway station and went by train into the city. We walked around in downtown and the older part of the city. Montreal is really a nice city, it's amazing to listen to people talking to each other. One asks a question in French and the other one answers in English and adds some more information in French, the language only depending on the mood of the people, I guess. Most of the people though like to speak French more than English and we even had problems in some stores but usually there is at least one bilingual person working at each location.

At night we met with Sebastian, a friend of mine from Magdeburg, and some of his friends and went to the beer festival. You had to buy some coupons and then you could try from hundreds of different kinds of beer. It was really fun and the place was packed with people. Unfortunately we didn't have much time so we left the festival and went to Jonathan's (Lenko's friend) house and fell asleep really quick.

The next day Christian had to back to the Apple Store because he discovered a bad pixel and wanted to get a replacement for his laptop. So Lenko and Christian went to Laval while Jonathan and I went to the Olympic Stadium of the '76 Games. It was really awesome and looked futuristic especially if you remember that they build this more than 30 years ago. At the stadium they also had the flags of all participating nations and German Democratic Republic (East Germany) was one of them.

After that we met with Christian and Lenko and climbed up the Mount Royal to take a look at the skyline of Montreal. Mount Royal is the highest point in Montreal and houses are by law prohibited to be build higher than this hill. Anyway, the view was really good and was worth the struggle of climbing all the way up. Since it was pretty late already we had some food at a restaurant called Reubens which is supposed to be famous for their roast beef sandwiches and finally we had to head back to Kingston.

Just a week after that we decided to go to Montreal again. This time we just wanted to do a day trip. Besides the three of us there was also another German called Jörg and Marika a girl from Finland. We basically just walked around in the city again. This time it was packed with people since it was Formula 1 Weekend and a lot of events were on the streets. We saw hundreds of Ferraris, Porsches and all kinds of other expensive cars. After climbing Mount Royal once again and having dinner at some restaurant there was a concert and a big party on the street. Finally we drove back to Kingston and arrived here around 3 am.

montreal

Ottawa - Canada's Capital

Before Ottawa became the beautiful city it is today, it used to be a rough lumber town with roads of mud. They even used to hold races on Wellington Street, the road right in front of Parliament Hill. In 1857, after years of indecision by 'colonial' politicians, Queen Victoria chose this 'little lumber-town' as the capital of the Province Canada (consisting at that time of what is today Quebec and Ontario). Her choice of an unpresuming, yet militarily strategic city was an attempt to ease the political tension of the day. After becoming the capital Sir Wilfrid Laurier created the Ottawa Improvement Commission (OIC) in 1899, which was mandated to beautify and plan the Capital.
And nowadays it really is a beautiful city, but it is still a Capital, that is different than anything that we've seen so far. Who can imagine to have a farm in the middle of the city, just 2.5 km from Parliament Hill? And there are many other little things, that make this city special.
Anyway, you can take a look at the pictures and maybe you like it. For my part I would really recommend to come to Ottawa if you have the chance to do.
A view days before Barbara had to go back to the US, we visited Parliament Hill, walked around in nice little streets with lots of shops, restaurants and bars, rented bikes to ride along the Ottawa river and enjoyed the nice weather. I guess the pictures say more than I can write here, so take a look and enjoy it!

ottawa

i'm still alive...

more than a month has passed since I posted something, but I can ensure you, I'm still alive and lately there is even something worth posting...
The last few days of May Barbara managed to come to Canada again, before her US visa expired. After a couple of days of working (Barbara had some reports to write and I just kept on reading for my research) we had a few days of nice weather and we did all kinds of stuff. We made 3 hour cruise to the region of the thousand islands, which starts at Kingston. It was really beautiful and we enjoyed the tour really much and at the end of the day I had a sunburn, but not too bad. On the weekend we went with Lenko and Christian, who finally arrived from Brazil, to Frontenac Provincial Park and rented some canoes. The weather was really nice again, but this time we were prepared and brought some sun block. Of course only the freaking Germans needed it, since Lenko was pretty tanned from his stay in Brazil and Christian is naturally used to a lot of sun.
Out on the lakes it was really beautiful, it reminded me of my canoe trip to Sweden with Stephan a few years ago. We saw a lot of different animals and enjoyed the nature and the silence a lot. At the end of the day we didn't go home right away, but went to the Thousand Island Bridge which goes the New York State and there we went up to a look out tower and were able to take a look at the region from above. We took a lot of photos and some of them I publish here, but the pictures, even though you might think they look really nice, don't really capture the amazing impressions we had when they were shot. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the pictures anyhow.

cruise & canoe

housemates and other people

Although my housemates and most of the students of Queen's are leaving this week, I want to publish some pictures of these guys.

First of all there is Will.
Will is one of my landlords, which basically means that he owns the house I'm living in. Actually he and Scott, who is on an exchange in France right now, bought the house and rent the rooms.
Will is a major in Economics and loves to work out in the PEC (Physical Education Center). Besides that Will loves cooking more than any other guy in the house and he makes crazy meals, like pork chops with grilled Asparagus or other things that need a lot of time to cook and he does it when he feels like it, no matter if it's a Tuesday or any other day of the week.
Some of you might think, 'well that's cool', but sometimes it's just a pain in the ass, because everybody makes his own meals in the house unless you planned it together. So just imagine you come home from work, you are hungry and the whole house smells like steak and other tasty stuff and you don't have anything in the fridge...
(In the picture on the right you can see Will and his girlfriend Jenn.)

Then there is David. I don't really have a lot of pictures of David yet, because he is rarely at home. David is an undergrad in Mechanical Engineering and last month he has spent more time in the library than at home. So I haven't really had time to get to know him fairly well, because he get up some time around noon and doesn't return from the library before 2 in the morning. David is originally from Ghana and he is the only guy that will stay in Kingston for at least the next few weeks.
He is a fun guy, though, and I'm glad I'm not all by myself in the house. In the picture on the right hand side you can see David with Beth, a friend of the house, at a barbecue we had last week end.


Then there is Julian. Julian is originally from Toronto and the roots of his family lie in Italy. He is a major in Mining Engineering and History, doing a dual degree. Besides that he started learning Italian a year ago and will go to Italy this summer. After two months in Venice he'll travel around in Europe to visit Austria, Germany and the Czech Republic.
Jules works at a beer store and knows a lot about beers and is really looking forward to visit the Hofbräuhaus in Munich and Prague and have some of the best beers in the world.
One day after my arrival Julian turned 21 and so we celebrated his birthday and I had my first party a little more than 24 hours after entering Canada... In one of the pictures you can see Jules and Ruth, a friend of the house.
Jules likes cooking as well, he is kind of a pancake junkie and loves to barbecue.


And last but not least there is Malcolm.
Malcolm is a major in civil engineering and the youngest guy in the house. He is definitely a fun guy and kind of a ladies man, but although partying a lot, he gets really good marks. Malcolm will be doing his internship next year and won't come back to Kingston until September 2008. He is a crazy recycling guy and just loves everything, that has less packaging or a really good energy efficiency, just like low energy light bulbs or hybrid cars and stuff like that.
He also likes cooking and sometimes just hydrates 2 kg of kidney beans to make a bathtub full of chilli con carne. As you can see in the pictures he likes to wear costumes and is really creative in making them.

Altogether I love these guys, they are awesome and even though I just lived with them for a month now, I had a whole lot of fun with them.

Just last night we had a fight night, which basically means that Julian and Malcolm got their costumes from last halloween and wanted to fight against each other. Since Julian went to a different party than the other guys they haven't had the chance to fight each other so they made it up last night. We also had a lot of fun barbecuing or just running around in Kingston, hitting the bars and clubs or eating poutine.

two-weeks-report

After arriving in Kingston Barbara and I took a look at the city, but although it is said to be one of the nicest cities in Canada, the weather just didn't make it look like that at all. Therefore we were not really doing much this week, but it was nice to just relax and do nothing. What we did though, was cooking. Canada is a lot more European than the US when it comes to groceries, so Barbara enjoyed to have 'real' bread again and to go just foodseeing instead of sightseeing. We also managed to take some pictures and I finally have some pictures of my new home.
Unfortunately Barbara had to go back to the US after what seemed to be just too short a week. A day after that it started snowing heavily and we got 15 cm of snow over night. This made even Canadians freak out. They assured me that this is actually not supposed to be the weather for April. Anyway, I did take some pictures of 'my' house in the snow. The crazy thing about this, two days later we had beautiful weather with 15 degrees Celsius and sun, and the weather has been like that for almost a week now. Finally spring has arrived in Kingston and I'm telling you it is really nice outside and if you walk around you'll see almost everybody barbecuing or just sitting on the porches or roofs and relax/study in the sun and enjoy the nice weather.
That's basically what we (my housemates and I) did last week, barbecuing almost every day and do some activities outside like playing football, soccer or throwing a frisbee. Unfortunately this is the last week of exams here at Queen's and almost all of my housemates are going to leave Kingston at the end of the week. Malcolm is already leaving tomorrow and Julian and Will will be gone by Friday or Saturday. Only David will stay some more weeks maybe even some more months but even with two guys the house will be like a deserted place. Nonetheless I don't think it will get boring over here, since I have enough things to do and there are still some guys in Kingston to have fun with.

On Friday last week Janine visited Kingston for a few hours. She was on holiday, traveling around in the States and Canada with friend of hers. Since her friend's sister lives in Ottawa and since Ottawa is only 180 km away from Kingston she just hopped on a bus and I picked her up at the bus station. Then we were just walking around in Kingston, went down to Lake Ontario, to University, had a coffee and a cone of icecream and then she had to head back to Ottawa. It was a really short stay, but it was really nice having her over here and talking to her. By this time I think she's in Germany again and I hope she'll send me the photos she took soon, so I can share them with you.

Besides that there hasn't happened a whole lot here in Kingston.
Worth mentioning might be the sudden death of my laptop, which just stopped working on a rainy day a week and a half ago. The thing that drove me crazy was that Windows as well as Linux just died, so I figured it had to be something with the hardware and it just turned out to be the case. Fortunately Ben, the husband of Sarah (Ph.D.-candidate in my group), is a computer administrator at Queen's so I just went to their house and we found a bad stick of RAM, causing the problems. Now my laptop works again even though a little slower, but I'll get a new stick of RAM sometime this or next week.

That's all that happened within the last weeks that's worth telling you. I uploaded some pictures of the week after easter and you can take a look at them if you want.
I hope you have a great week and hope this finds you in good spirit!
Cheers!

easter in kingston