On French Automobiles

During my time in europe, I have had the chance to drive to drive a variety cars: Audi, BMW, Volvo, Land Rover, Seat, Fiat, VW, Mercedes, Opel, Alfa Romeo, just to name a few. But there is one group of cars that fill me with dread when I pick their keys up at the rental counter: french cars. Renault, Peugeot, Citroen, I've driven them all. Of them, Peugeot tends to be the most normal, but in general they are all weird cars. Weird in a variety of ways, including being weird looking or having oddly and asymmetrically positioned side mirrors. One car had pedals that seemed a bit to the left of center relative to the seat and a steering wheel a bit to the right of center, giving you the feeling of being slightly twisted. Others have had the radio controls on the turn signal stalk, so you can't change stations without accidentally signalling. Increasingly common on french cars seem to be complicated cruise controls that can stop you from speeding up, no matter how hard you try (until you figure out how to switch it off). But, my all time favorite is putting the instrument panel in the middle of the dashboard. That way you have to turn your head away from the road to check your speed or rpm. If you want to check your fuel or see the turn signal blink, you practically have to look out the passenger window. Who thinks of these things and then thinks they sound like good ideas? Only french car designers apparently. Worse than all of that, they have typically been pretty poor handling cars too.

From experience, I can say cars do tend to reflect the places they come from:
-British cars come from the midlands and embody the sense of "that'll do" with their rattles and gaps and ancient technology.
-Scandinavian cars all have sleek, stylish interiors, but little personality.
-German cars are all solid, precise, technically accomplished, and lacking cupholders.
-Spanish cars seem fairly ordinary, except they do it at a higher rpm.
-Italian cars are nice to look at and are mad to drive, when they are working.
-French cars are just weird.

Weekend in Oslo

On a recent Friday afternoon, a friend who was unexpectedly in town for the weekend called me up and asked if I wanted to do something crazy that weekend, like go to Oslo. Being the seasoned adventurer, I of course said yes, but didn't expect the reply to be, "how about tonight?" Six hours later, hotel booked, car booked, bag packed, tour book in hand, I was on a flight to Oslo.

Despite being the biggest city in Norway, Oslo is still easily walkable except for a few museums that are better reached by bus. It is also one of the nicer cities in Norway, alongside Bergen. While not as cold as the recent trip to Ottawa, it was still between -5 and -10C most of the time. Quite comfortable for walking for those willing to wear a hat.

One of the major cites to see is the fort.

From Oslo

To my surprise, they actually had guards (and thus a changing of the guard).

From Oslo

The other good place to see in Oslo is Aker Brygge, an area along the harbor that has stores, restaurants, seals

From Oslo

and some funny statues.

From Oslo

Of course, the other really important thing to see in Oslo is Munch. The National Gallery has The Scream, and some other really good paintings, mostly by Norwegian artists. I like when museums have good art from people I've never heard of instead of showing lesser quality works by people with famous names. The other place to see Munch is at the Munch Museum. It's a lot smaller than I expected (especially considering the size of the building). It has several good pieces, and you can see the evolution of his works, but if you aren't big on Munch or don't have much time, the National Gallery is the better choice.

There is also the Viking Ship Museum, which as you'd expect contains viking ships. They are in pretty good condition considering they are 1000 years old.

From Oslo

Another stop was the Kon-Tiki Museum. Again, as the name suggests, the museum contains the boat from Thor Heyerdahl's expedition, along with various artifacts.

One of the longer stops was at the folk museum. It had a nice layout, with the buildings from different periods grouped together, but with enough open space between different period buildings to make a nice walk.

From Oslo

From Oslo

To my surprise, they even had a stave church.

From Oslo

The last stop before returning to the airport was at Fetsund Lenser, an old site where they would collect logs that had been floated down the river. I'm sure it is considerably more interesting outside of winter. But, being their, alone, with the frozen stillness was a cool way to end the trip.

From Oslo

I also draw your attention to this map image.
Yes, we were standing in the middle of a frozen river.

Ok, I've Been Gone a While

I have been more than a little tardy in getting around to posting updates on my latest adventures. Busy may be true, but is no excuse. First up is Ottawa. This was also the first outing for my new camera. It is definitely an adjustment from the old and will take several photo outings to get completely used to.

After Christmas and New Year's, I and a few others took a trip up to Ottawa for a weekend to go to a wedding. The ceremony was short, well organized, and held at a cozy, comfortable venue. In other words, it was the exact opposite of the three hour mega wedding everyone (meaning me) secretly fears. Perfect.

While not busy with wedding-related activities, there was plenty of time to explore the city. It was about -19C, which was cold, but not at all unbearable for those of us who didn't refuse to wear hats. The main sight is Parliament

From Ottawa

including the statue of the lady having tea.

From Ottawa

Although the view of Parliament and the center is much better from further away

From Ottawa

near the statue of the giant spider.

From Ottawa

Downtown Ottawa is pretty interesting too, once you get past the drunks, the homeless, and the crazy people (mostly located on and around Rideau St., which is Canada's version of 5th Avenue). For instance there is the building with the antenna that looks kinda like the Eiffel Tower

From Ottawa

and the place that sells Obama Cookies.

From Ottawa

More importantly though, Zaphod Beeblebrox, former President of the Universe, has chosen Ottawa to open a nightclub, tastfully surrounded by a strip club and adult video store.

From Ottawa

It was a good trip and wouldn't mind seeing it again in a different season.

Italian Efficiency

Back in April, during my trip to Italy, I got a parking ticket during in one of the towns I visited. (I'm not going to argue whether it was right or not, suffice to say that I believe it wasn't). When I got home, I saw that the ticket could only be paid by a transfer from an Italian bank account, so I had no way of paying the ticket. So, I went to see some of the Italians at work to see if I could give them some money to pay the ticket for me. After I said ticket and before I got to the could you pay for me part, each of them immediately blurted out "Don't pay!" Being the good law abiding person I am, I was a bit unsure of that approach. Still, they all said the only thing to do is to ignore it. They said you don't have to pay until they send the bill to you in the mail. They stressed the importance of following the system. They also stressed that, because it was Italy, probably the system wouldn't work. Most likely, they said, the town would forget the ticket and fail to send it to me in the mail. If they did send the ticket, it would go to the rental car company. The said that surely the rental car company would either ignore it or forget to send my address to the police. They said that even if somehow the police did get my address from the rental car company, they would probably forget to forward the bill to me. Or, they might see that I had given a US address and would give up. I was assured by all the Italians at work that it would be impossible for everything to work correctly and for me to get the ticket in the mail.

Fast forwarding to September, a letter came in September saying the rental car company was sending my details to the police. Now, a registered letter arrived at my US address containing the official ticket from the police in the little town I was in. I brought this in to show all my Italian colleagues and find out what went wrong. All were absolutely amazed. They couldn't believe it was possible. They said I must be the unluckiest person in the world. And, they also all said, "Don't pay." They advocated ignoring it until the second notice arrives (if it ever arrives) or else appealing to the regional authority (who probably would have no time to look at it, thus cancelling it by default). This time, however, it came with information on how to pay it from outside Italy (though it still would have been very difficult to do from the US) and so I paid it. The process, while very slow, did work in the end. My impression of Italy is shattered.

Bavaria and Austria Rainout

Flew down to Munich to spend a week seeing parts of Bavaria and Austria with the parents. The plan was to see a lot of scenery before the weather started getting colder. This did not quite work out. What happened was the snowiest October in 35 years and eight consecutive days of rain or snow. Yuck. That meant we had to scramble as best as possible to find alternative indoor activities.

In Munich, it was finally going to the BMW Museum and later to the Deutsche Museum (no pictures). The museum is a very cool-looking modern building.

From BMW Museum

Once you are inside, the first thing you come to is a display made up of lots of balls connected to thin wires that move them up and down to make different shapes.

From BMW Museum

I stayed and watched that for quite a while. Then, of course, there were plenty of cars and motorcycles. If anyone is wondering what to get me for Christmas this year, may I suggest:

From BMW Museum

The Deutsche Museum was also very good, but a bit like 30 museums in one. It is a very large and comprehensive technology museum. The exhibits are are very detailed. When you leave, you almost believe that you could build your own steam engine or make your own steel, if you had to. The only criticisms I have are that some topics are covered very well and other topics are just rooms full of stuff, and only some of the exhibits have english text with them.

After Munich, it was off to snow Salzburg. The old center of Salzburg is very compact

From Salzburg

which is great, because it was raining so much. Visited the castle and walked the town as much as we could stand. The next days were almost entirely seeing a couple small museums and driving around trying to find dry weather.

The last stop (for me anyway) was Franconia. We stayed in the town we used to live in an undisclosed number of years ago in the ancient past. The town is still small, but it has changed quite a bit. Visited the open air museum in town, the pictures of which I think benefitted from the dreary weather.

From Frankisches Feilandmuseum

From Frankisches Feilandmuseum

From Frankisches Feilandmuseum

The last stop was Nurnburg, which again was too rainy to do much of aside from the castle.

From Nurnburg

Hancock Pass & Alpine Tunnel

This edition of the blog is being published while riding on the Thalys at close to 300km/h. I've done this mostly for novelty value, but you have to admit that it is pretty cool. Below you can see my location and velocity.

Also, as you will see later, this is the first entry to include fully geotagged, gps-ified pictures. I picked up a GPS logger that allows me to tag all my pictures with their exact locations. I'm still working out the system (especially the ability to process the GPS from the road), but I'm hoping that it will be a valuable enhancement to the pictures.

Of course, neither of those are the reason for making an entry. The reason for the entry is trip over the weekend in Colorado. I went out with a friend and his new jeep to try it out on some 4wd roads. It was a great weekend to be out. The weather was perfect and the Aspens were at their peak. I've missed fall colors in europe, so I was really happy to see some spectacular colors over weekend.

From Hancock Pass & Alpine Tunnel

The trip started by driving to St. Elmo and then heading up through the national forest to Hancock Pass and down the other side. The route was rated as a strong medium in the guidebook, but more importantly it offered a great variety of scenery.

From Hancock Pass & Alpine Tunnel

Along the way there were old abandoned mines

From Hancock Pass & Alpine Tunnel

and probably the world's smallest ghost town. Only part of one building was left. Of course, there was lots of great views of the mountains.

From Hancock Pass & Alpine Tunnel

After passing Hancock Pass, we descended down the other side and drove over to Alpine Tunnel. The road there was a bit narrow in places.

From Hancock Pass & Alpine Tunnel

Alpine Tunnel is exactly what it sounds like, an old abanonded railroad tunnel high in the mountains. There was a small station near the tunnel with a few ruins of buildings and a few reconstructed buildings.

From Hancock Pass & Alpine Tunnel

From Hancock Pass & Alpine Tunnel

A nice, bit of beautiful desolation in the middle of nowhere. I really enjoy finding these old ruins and trying to learn a little about their history. After that, it was back to the main road for the long drive back to Colorado Springs.

Iceland: Day 10: The End

Today was the last day of the Iceland adventure. The plan was to spend the day exploring the Reykjanes peninsula (the area around Keflavik), which I did, seeing the lakes and hot springs.

From Reykjanes

From Reykjanes

But, the pull of Reykjavik was too strong, and so I went back for a few hours in the afternoon. I saw the museum about the earliest settlers to Reykjavik and the Solfar, a must-do photo in Reykjavik (and what you can't see is that the name of the ship out in the distance is Viking, which is very apt).

From Reykjavik

I think what I like about Reykjavik is its size. It is like a big city in miniature. It has all the things of a big city, but in a smaller, more approachable size (and with shorter walking distances). Hopefully I will get a chance to come back sometime. The same is true for all of Iceland. It was an incredible trip, with so many great things to see, and many more left unseen.