10,000 views!

YO.
I have photos of my trips and in Germany on a webshots website. Yesterday the views of my 2,000 photos reached the 10,000 mark. Right now my photos have been viewed 10,054 times.
Check out the photos at this link http://community.webshots.com/user/markrcpde

and, hopefully there will be another 10,000 views.

Eurovision Song Contest

Finland's Lordi singing "Hard Rock Hallelujah" at the Eurovision Song Contest. By the way that's the coolest hat I've ever seen. So apparently this is a pretty big contest, but I haven't heard of it before here. This is a pop contest for 24 countries in and around europe. It was on a few days ago, and with the exception of Lordi, every song was awful. Like it was painful to watch at times. Salmiakki Kossu helped. It's not that the song is good either.. the lyrics are hilariously bad, but the song is catchy.

The funniest thing I think is that before Lordi went on stage, they had a special announcement on German TV telling parents that Lordi was up next and they should decide whether or not to move the children from the room.

HARD ROCK HALLELUJAH! :)

Bierlauf Results

Well, the Bierlauf was a much larget success the second time around. This time there were around 12 teams, when there were like only 7 last time. We all got official Columbus Bierlauf shirts - so that was really fun.
They changed the rules from last time though. Last time it was really just basic. You have the beer and the finish line. This time they added stupid things like a balloon to the bottom of the crate, and if you set the crate down it would pop. If it popped, you got 5 minutes added to your overall time. Most of the balloons were gone at the end. Ryan Scott and I were doing fairly well, but about half way through, ryan put a bottle back in and the mouth of one beer bottle chipped, and the resulting tiny glass piece fell and popped the balloon. After that we kinda just gave up on winning. We took our time and drank the beer.
We were about 500meters from the end when we decided to sprint to the finish. Ryan told us he was going to vomit, and 2 seconds later he spewed beer while running. I made it to the end before I found a bush to throw up behind.
Then there was a party with free bbq and beer put on by the restaurant. It was a very fun event.

Revisiting my Travel Goal

Way back in November I published my travel goal for this year abroad in Germany. My goal was to travel to every european country. (excluding Bosnia and Herz. Serbia and Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, Belarus, the Ukraine, and Moldova). Partly because its hard to get a Visa, and then the balkans have nothing to see and don't really have accessible airports.

I've modified it a bit because I added more countries to visit.
So we've got: Iceland, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, England, Wales, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, Italy, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, and Malta

I'm planning on going to (as in I booked stuff) to Lithuania, Latvia, Hungary.

That leaves these countries that I haven't travelled to:
Iceland, Wales, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Cyprus, and Malta.

Of this group, I'll most likely visit Greece or Iceland next.

BIERLAUF v.2.0!

For those of you who have read this a long time ago, way back in the first semester we participated in a Bierlauf. It's a fun social activity put on by a student restaurant-bar where teams of 3 compete against each other to run around campus drinking 24 Beck's beers (8 liters total, 2.4liters per person, or 90fl.oz. per person) and a heavy plastic container and see which team can do it the fastest. The first, second, and third teams all win prizes.

Last time, each team had to run 3.8KM (like 2.2 miles) and the fastest time was 38 minutes. My team (me, Scott, and Ryan) won our category of team with 44 minutes.

This time, each team has to run 4.5KM (like 2.8 miles) with the same amount of beer. But this tim there are more teams because it's more popular.
Some teams:
"The Deciders" (reference to G.W.Bush... American team...) - Me, Scott, Ryan
then there is an American/Canadian team: Stuart, JP, and Petar
then there is another American/Canadian team: Dennis, Matt, and Dan
there is also a girls team.. but they probably wont finish.
There are other teams besides these, but those are the internationals.

by the way, this Bierlauf is going to be taking place this Thursday after classes. It might also be raining!! coolest thing!

Next travel trip: BOOKED!

Ok, so I just booked another trip this morning. We have a week off for some stupid Christian holiday in June. So anyway, with my schedule, I get June 2 - June 13 off.
I had two travel plans in mind. I try to find places that I haven't been to, and then pick either the more interesting one, or the really cheap one.. depending.
The first travel plan was 10 days in Dubrovnik, Croatia, Sarajevo, BosniaHerz, and then Split, Croatia. It was going to be 4 days in Dubrovnik, 2 in Sarajevo, and 3.5 in Split. I hear everyone likes Dubrovnik, but after Rijeka it seems a little too familiar. Sarajevo I just wanted to go to because it's really different.... when are you going to fly from California to see Sarajevo?

The other trip, which I picked, is this:

June 6th, fly Stuttgart to Vienna. 4 days in Vienna.
Train to Budapest, Hungary.
3 days in Budapest
June 13th, fly Budapest to Stuttgart

I haven't been to either of these places, and from what I've read and heard from other people, they are two really cool places (well.. Vienna is better but yeah.)

This will be the first travelling I will be doing on my own. I figure I should at least get a short trip in by myself before I go for a month alone (except for Finland) in August. It'll be fun.


We are also thinking of going back to Amsterdam from June 15 (another holiday) to June 18th, the Sunday. I think we're going to make it work... just have to decide things fast.

Back from Krk, Croatia!

So again, I went to the island resort town of Krk, Croatia with 5 other Finns (them being Krister, Jaakko, Perttu, Ville, and Teemu) -- ah my head still hurts from thinking of all the drinking that we did.
The trip really started when we first had a beer in the airport before our plane was being boarded. We took a little longer than we thought, and before we knew it, we were the last six people on the bus headed for the airport. I was in last place going through passport security, and the airport attendant yelled at me "hurry up Mr. Roberts" - all the Finns apparently thought it was funny because they were not dead last. We all ran to the bus after security.

Once we got onto our HLX air taxi to Rijeka, the crew played us some music. I don't know if it was on purpose, but they chose Tom Petty's "Learning to Fly". I don't think I would choose a song by that name, especially when there are lyrics in it that go "what comes up, must come down", when you're "learning to fly". Anyway I thought that was awkward.

Once we got to the Rijeka airport, we took a 30km taxi ride through the middle of nowhere to our apartment. Once we got to the kick-ass apartment, we unloaded speakers, a laptop, and some vodka. Needless to say, 5 Finns and I weren't going to let a Tuesday night in Croatia go without a party, even if it was just us. I remembered some of the songs the Finns played from the F1 race car drive, but there were many other good ones as well - they basically played 15 Finnish songs for 6 or so days. Anyhow, we went to a bar that night.. or morning, I'm not exactly sure, but what I do know is that I woke up at 10am to blasting Finnish music. awesome? "HARD ROCK, HALLELUJAH" was one of the songs that made it on my "remember these things list"... probably because I can't spell the finnish track names.

Along with having to (well it wasnt THAT bad) listen to Finnish music, I wanted to learn some more Finnish phrases. Jaakko taught me (im guessing here on spelling) hyvä tissit, which means nice tits... Ville apparently also calls breasts in Finnish balls, so when he said "nice balls" in english, he got a few "....WTF?" looks. Still pretty funny.

The first night we kinda broke the glass top to a coffee table, and we reported it to our travel agency person. She was fine with it but we still were going to have to pay for it.

After the first night, we kinda walked around the town and noticed there was a complete lack of things to do. We picked up some 2liter Löwenbräu bottles (yeah seriously... never seen those before), and parked ourselves on a beach for a while. I ate too much at lunch, and along with the beer I decided to make myself throw up so I would feel better. Tuna pizza and beer coming out sucks.

I think after the second night, when we went to the bar again, I was thoroughly exhausted. There was nothing I could do to get energy.. I slept about a day. I don't know exactly which night was which here, they kinda blend together and its really not that important anyhow, but here goes some explaining. One night we went to a bar and they were closing, but Teemu didn't want to leave or something, and kinda got kicked out right before closing time. After that we went to the infamous "Jungle Bar" on the island.. From what I remember that night, I forgot my wallet in the apartment, and after ordering a Beck's, I was like.. "uhhhhh Ville.. do you have any money?" He spotted me and that was all ok. After that, I knew I was just going to be sober at the club/bar, so I basically watched Teemu agressively get the girls to dance with him, and wait for a fight to break out and then help Teemu fight some German dudes ;). In the end, we all went back and had a good time. I don't remember if it was this night or another,... yeah I think it was, but Teemu and I ended up partying until 7AM at the apartment. We only stopped when Teemu wanted to go outside to the balcony and lay in the sun.... but it was after 12 or so hours of partying and I guess he didn't notice that the window door was closed. He kneed it, and it kinda shattered. He patched up his knee and we both figured it was time to go to bed.
During the days we would grab a Kiste of Beck's and lay on a rocky beach and BBQ. That's really about all we did. There wasn't too much to do on the island, and if we wanted to go into a town, the bus fares were outrageous. Might as well just BBQ on a beach.

Aha... also, we had a screaming contest -- who could reach the highest pitch and volume... I of course sucked.. that was given.. What I didn't expect was that Teemu would beat us all so badly. For a Finnish guy who's around 6'3" and works out and plays basketball... he really screamed like a little girl :). One of our neighbors about 100m away started yelling at us in Croatian because Teemu was so good.

We had to get up the last morning at 7:30 to get our taxi to the airport. Everyone was still drunk when we got to the airport, and I kinda threw up there at the airport. outside.. but it didn't stop some security guard from yelling at me:) he should be happy it was outside at all.

Ok, I think that's enough of the stories that I want to tell right about now. There are more, but I think they're better left for us.

Formula 1 Race at Nürburgring (European GP)

Hey!

So I just got back from the Formula 1 race (European Grand Prix) at Nürburging in Germany. I went with a couple of Finnish friends (Teemu, Janne, Krister, Matti, and myself).

The race itself wasn't that spectacular - we were situated on a sloped field with a giant screen, but we could see cars racing by. Ive been to an American Le Mans Series race at Laguna Seca, but these cars were ridiculously louder.

I was surprised by the fans that came to this race - when you see how the drivers carry themselves during interviews, along with the millions of dollars pumped into the sport, and the global scale that this sport competes on (5 continents), you could expect the fans to represent it.




In the area that our tickets seated us at, there was every American NASCAR stereotype to be found, but not nearly as bad as this guy:

But there were of course 10's of people who could have had the biggest beer bellies I've ever seen. Some Germans brought their own mini kegs instead of buying cups from the vendors. There were people who were covered in tattoos.

Of course there were also the people who flew in from the UK, or drove from France or the Netherlands to see the race - the people who you would expect to be at these races.

In the end, I thought it was a pretty good race. I was rooting for either Michael Schumacher (my favorite since Dan from CA got me interested in the sport), or Kimi Räikkönen (thanks of course to the Finns.) At the end, Michael Schumacher ended up winning, and Kimi ended up in 4th out of 22.
With that being said, I think that was one of my last F1 races for a long time. If I were to go to one any time soon, it would have to be the Monaco Grand Prix.

We went up and back from the F1 race in Teemu's car. With that being said, there's really no car ride that can compare with a 3 hour ride each way filled these Finns. It's a good group of people, and with my complete lack of knowledge of Finnish, a little insane at times. We started with German radio at the beginning of the trip, and there was actually decent music on (that means it was current American music), but then the signal faded out, and we started listening to Finnish music. Leevi and the Leavings was the band name.. it may sound strange at first, but you just have to like a band with such memorable song titles as "Matkamuistoja" and "Kerro Terveiset Lapsille" and "En Ei Olla Niinkuin Ennen", I mean that goes without saying.

The music is what you would think when you say "Finnish folk music", but apparently the genius is in the lyrics (of course that wasn't my opinion). The songs apparently range all the way from drinking a lot, to fucking, to love, to drinking even more than before.

After about 4 hours of Leevi and the Leavings and other finnish music, I had a few favorites that I am going to download in the next few days to add to my collection of "Spanish music that I have no f'ing clue what the words say", and "Bulgarian music that I have no f'ing clue what the words say".

All in all, I really enjoyed the daytrip and am really glad that I went to see a Formula 1 race.

Anyway here is a photo from the Finns waving their flags in front so that everyone behind them had to see :)

NEXT:
Tomorrow I am going to Croatia to the Island of Krk with none other than... 5 Finns.. this is going to be great. I am going with Ville, Krister, Teemu, Jaako, and Perttu.

May 9-14 is the trip.

Google Picasa kicks ass

After taking just a few shy of 2000 pictures since I've been here in Stuttgart, I've only recently learned of Picasa, a free photo touch up program by Google. I know Adobe Photoshop can do all this crazy stuff, but if you don't know how to do it, it gets a bit overwhelming.
Within 3 minutes of using Picasa, I figured out how to make my photos better. Here is one example.






The left side was the original picture that I took of the Bosphorus in Turkey. On the right side is the new touch up.









Here are the Cliffs of Mohr in Ireland. On the left side is the touch up photo, and on the right side is the original picture










It's freggin' unbelievable. Now I might have to touch up all my photos.

Greetings from Portugal's Coast

Deutsche Post sucks.

So back in March I sent my keys back to me from the Stuttgart airport to my apartment here. Well apparently the Airport Guard sent it to the post office, and then the post lost my keys and swiss army knife. I still havent resolved this with our Hausmeister. I have already had to spend 100€ on the key, but I will have to spend more, I'm sure of it.

And then recently I sent Jason (buddy from back home) a package of glasses and shot glasses and a few beers from Prague back to California to him. It cost me 62€ to send it. I went to Portugal, and when I got back, the package was back here. Apparently they dropped my package a few times, one of the beer bottles that was well wrapped broke. The broken beer bottle made the package wet and two liter mugs fell out of the bottom. Then on the returned package they said I did not sufficently wrap the contents inside to protect them.

Thats bullshit. Since when do half liter bottles break from putting them in the post. Its still a holiday today so tomorrow I have to go to the post office and make sure that I at least get 62€ back from them, and hopefully compensation for the two broken mugs. But this is Germany.. who knows what they'll pull.