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