A whirlwind of 10 months

Well it's been since last April that I did a post and to be honest, I had lots of time available just never could get my thoughts together and feel motivated enough. Here's then to a big update on what has been going on with my life from last spring to this winter.  

Icefields Parkway, Alberta, Canada

Karneval, Eindhove, Netherlands

After determining my masters research, I could focus on finishing up quarters 3 and 4, where I co-wrote a lengthy paper on the "State of Estuaries" (quite depressing sadly), walked around and fell in mudflats, visited Shell's headquarters and lots of coffee breaks during lectures

After my trip to Istanbul in February, I visited Germany twice to go to Berlin and Hamburg (love the Eurail pass!), went to Karneval in Eindhoven, and London for St. Patrick's Day, the famous Keukenhof (think lots of tulips and hyacinths) in Lisse on Easter weekend, and Queen's Night in Utrecht. Come May, I went to a Liberation Day festival with a good friend and her boyfriend (May 5) that was lots of fun  - beers/whiskey-colas, eating Döners and listening to Pearl Jam covers while WWII airplanes flyover.

Now comes my whirlwind where I basically live out of a suitcase from end of May - mid November. Ready? :P

Bodrum, Turkey

We had a long weekend in March so met up with a college friend in Dresden and Berlin since she was visiting family in Poland. Dresden was such a chill city and there happened to be International Dixieland Festival during that time so was able to relax on some steps with a beer in hand, listen to the bands and take in the scene. The city did a wonderful job rebuilding post-war.

Fieldwork in Brest, France

June, when I think of that month I do not remember where I honestly got my energy. It went something like: weekend in Paris, 4 full days of class, weekend to Bodrum, Turkey to meet up with NJ friends, have 4 hours to unpack and go on vans down to Brest, France (Brittany) for a 2 week fieldtrip for my Field Geochemistry class. Our days filled with eating baquettes at 6:30 am, full day out in the field or working in the lab, make dinner, talk about what we did, play volleyball/swim in the ocean/play Bang! and go to bed around midnight. Then work hard on a report and making lots of Excel graphs, jetset to Rome for a weekend and try out couchsurfing (definitely recommend), pack everything up and leave for North America on July 4.

Rome, Italy

Southern California

Needless to say, at the end of Independence Day weekend where I was back in New Jersey, I was so devoid of energy and jetlagged I ended up sleeping pretty much 24-30 hours straight. It was a fun weekend of course with catching up with all of my NJ friends, going down the shore, and just being able to sleep in my bed.

So July consisted of me driving down to Washington, DC to visit college friends, go into NYC at least once, experience a massive thunderstorm in downtown Manhatten (it was glorious) and fly off to California for a week to see my mom's side of the family. It was nice to see my Opa after a year since while I had been away in Utrecht my Oma had unfortunately passed away. 

New Jersey, Photo courtesy of Cleo Chou

Now the real fun begins! Fly back to NJ, next day pack for 3 months and pick up my Dutch fieldwork partner, sleep and set off by 10 am heading due west! So if you want to see the massive 13,000 miles (21,000 km) trip we did, look at Tripcolor, which is a cool app I found that would track your iPhone photos and plot them on a map. Anyways, it was awesome driving and being able to see family, Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, Rockies, Oregon & California coasts and the Grand Canyon.

Wyoming

Two highlights of the roadtrip itself would have to be:

(1) Getting up early in the morning to drive to Lamar Valley and watch the wolves and being able to listen them howl in unison. It is one of the purest sounds you can hear and fulfilled a childhood fantasy of mine.

(2) Watching the sunset into the Pacific Ocean while in southern California and then swimming in the ocean right after because it was so warm. Ah, I really do miss the salty sea air, the crash of the waves and the feeling of the sand beneath you. 

Grand Teton National Park

Horseback Riding in Cariboo Mountains

In Canada itself, I was able to see the vast majority of my dad's side of the family in Alberta and Vancouver, which was wonderful. Of course the main objective of the trip was to collect sediment samples in the Cariboo mountain region of interior British Columbia. It was wonderful living out there for 2 months and take a step back from the business of life that I had known from growing up in NJ and going to school in Washington, DC and Utrecht. 

Swimming in Quesnel Lake

 Some highlights of being in Likely, British Columbia would include:

(1) camping next to a river and abandoned mine town

(2) seeing bears every week driving to and fro our sample sites

(3) hanging out at the local (and only) pub and playing pool listening to a old jukebox

(4) horseback riding for the first time and seeing the most breathtaking view

(5) driving really into the woods to a lake to just take the afternoon to relax and enjoy nature

Ghost Lake, Photo courtesy of Ben Anderson Millington

Big Sur, California

Needless to say I was quite sad to leave because of the above and enjoying the group of people I had met there. Had a fun time driving back to NJ via the West Coast and stayed there for another two weeks before flying back to Europe. Spent a fun weekend in Manhatten and in Jersey City catching up with friends, before my last week made more interesting by the landfall of Hurricane Sandy and the subsequent loss of power and gas shortages. 

Family Vacation to Jamaica

 

Coming back to Utrecht, I was without a room as it was impossible to search for a room back in the spring/summer (remember my crazy June??). But during my first week back found a temporary room for two months and go off to Stockholm for a quick weekend before starting up another class I decided to take. During this time I was figuring out labwork for my Canadian sediment samples, but was still able to go Aachen for another fun-filled weekend of visiting the Weihnachtsmarkt and drinking Glühwein. Then before I knew it, it was holiday break where I went to: Germany for Christmas, Jamaica during the week, one night in Utrecht for New Year's Eve, and England/Wales for the first week of January. (At the end of this, I did realise that jetlag and I are really terrible friends and I should refrain from such intensive traveling across timezones in short intervals..attempt to at least :P)

Austrian Alps

End of January comes, my labwork finished, the last final taken, I move into a new room and leave promptly on a night train to the Austrian Alps for a week of skiing with Contiki. For years now I have wanted to go back into skiing since I gone for two winters during high school and had enjoyed myself. Things always seemed to get in the way though, like living where there weren't "real" winters, university classes, waitressing my butt off for a year and traveling elsewhere. Well, 8 years went and enough was enough, it was time to bite the bullet and do something. I ended up taking 5 days of lessons with an awesome Austrian ski instructor (who would ski to and from work since he lived on the slopes) and hanging out with mostly Australians (had no idea that Contiki was such a big Aussie thing). Definitely was sad on the train ride back up north to leave all the snow and mountains.

View towards Hopfgarten, Austria

That should bring me up to speed to the current date where my main focus is thesis writing and also obtaining furniture. Also setting up my internship with Deltares, details to come later!

Paris: The City of Light

A week after I arrived back in Europe after a 2 week vacation in the United States, I hopped on a few trains down to Paris for the weekend.  A friend I met during my freshman year of university was studying in London and then spending a week in Paris with her extended family and invited me to come along! This would be my second time in Paris as two years earlier I went on a trip to Berlin and Paris, which unfortunately ended with both members of the party getting sick then stuck in Paris due to small amount of snow and eventually leading to buying a whole new plane ticket home.  I was hoping that this time around would be a different experience and it definitely was!!

On my first visit out, I was able to see the Louvre, the Orangerie, part of Champs-Elysses, Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, and eat at various restaurants.  This time around I did not really have too many preferences of what I saw, I was happy that I was not sick this time around!  I had decided that I would only take the fast international train from the Netherlands to Paris (Thalys) only on the return journey for two reasons: (1) 34 Euro seat reservation despite having a Eurail Pass (for comparison the most I have ever paid for a seat reservation was 2 Euros for the Deutsche Bahn) (2) There were no more seats available that are set aside for those with a Eurail pass so I had no choice.

Saturday morning I decided to start my 6 hour journey taking local trains starting at 9 am.  As luck would have it, NS (the Netherlands train system) was have problems due to some signal problems and I had to first travel north to Schiphol before traveling south towards Antwerp.  On my journey day I did have to make one seat reservation for the train from Lille to Paris and by traveling to Schiphol, I would get in an hour later….so tried to make a new reservation at Schiphol for a train leaving Lille an hour later and the lady at the service desk was so unhelpful, sheesh. I decided to try my luck at Antwerp.

 When I arrived at Antwerp, I discovered I was at track 22 and needed to get to track 1 for my next train leaving 50 minutes later, except….I couldn’t find it at first and then I looked up. In this city they decided to stack all the railroad tracks in three/four levels instead of spreading them out on one level.  One had to climb these long stairs or escalators.  It was actually an impressive sight to see and once you reached the main level you could see remnants of the older train station.  I located where track 1 was and then went to the service desk to have a second attempt at making a seat reservation for the last train to Paris…and success! The man at the desk was really nice said that it was no problem at all!  I have no idea why Schiphol they said nothing was available…perhaps since it was the day of, I had a Eurail pass and she didn’t fill like checking?

So two trains later (Antwerp to Lille and Lille to Paris Nord) I arrived an hour later than anticipated but in time to meet up with my firend, Pisei, who took the train from London, and her family.  Pisei’s parents, aunts and uncles were originally from Cambodia but most, if not all, had left and immigrated to Australia, France or Maryland, USA.  This was the first time in a long time that she had been back in France to see her family there so it was really nice of them to let me stay for two days with them as well. 

As Pisei’s aunt (and her family), who we were staying with, lives in a suburb outside of Paris, they had driven in to pick us up.  They decided to drive around Paris for a bit so we could see some of the sites, like drive around the Arc de Triumph (gosh that is a nightmare of a circle…and in America people freak out when they see all the circles in Washington, DC….hehe) and drive past the Eiffel Tower.  It was then decided we should take pictures by the Eiffel Tower.  This was nice because I had only seen it during the daytime and at this point it was evening and one could see the twinkling lights they had installed on the tower, which go on every once in awhile for 5 minutes or so.  Pisei’s aunt took lots of pictures of all of us, which was really kind of her to do, felt like I was at a mini photo shoot.

As Pisei and I were quite hungry, we decided it was a good idea to go for dinner somewhere. Pisei’s aunt and uncle dropped Pisei, her cousin and I off near a restaurant where we met up with her other cousin as well as one of the cousin’s boyfriends.  We found a nice place to eat and all had French Onion Soup, then Crème Bulee and a bread & cheese platter.  I was extremely stuffed by the end of that meal, but we all had a good time talking with my non-existent French, Pisei’s rusty French and the cousins’ pretty good understanding of English.  The boyfriend then drove us all back to the aunt’s house, where I promptly fell asleep.

Sunday, Pisei, her younger cousin and I explored parts of Paris all day.  We were dropped off by Montmatre, where we climbed up the hill and enjoyed a glorious view of the city.  As it was January, Paris was not super crowded with tourists, which is really nice, except the sun looks so deceivingly warm, you are almost surprised at how chilly it can be outside.  We explored the surrounding neighborhood for a bit and stopped for lunch at a Creperie, yum is all I can say!! 

Thinking about all this food makes me so hungry as I am typing this up two months later on 6 hour train ride to Berlin and I have not eaten since 6 am and it is 11 am….maybe I should have my apple now…only 2.5 hours to go!

Anyways, after the Creperie we traveled to the Cite Island, where I had wanted to see the famous stained glass windows of Sainte Chapelle.  In January 2009 they had been under construction and surprise surprise, they were still under construction! If I remember correctly though, within the next year or so they should be finished and then I can finally see them! (already decided I will be going to Paris a few more times at least).   Since that was a failure, we moved on to Champ-Elysses and walked to the Arc de Triumph and back.  Along the way we went to Ladure, which had a really short line, yay!  This is the famous patisserie and there are 4 locations within Paris.  Of course we went in to buy some of the famous macaroons.  I picked out four types – vanilla, blackberry, I forget, and rose – my favourite flavour ever!!

We then ended the evening by going to the Discovery Musuem, which turned out ok.  A lot of the exhibits are fairly outdated, but the one of light I thought fairly interesting.  They also had a temporary exhibit about hair so got to see my hair underneath the microscope and confirm that it was indeed straight with no hint of curliness. 

That evening, we enjoyed a fantastic dinner at Pisei’s aunt’s house.  Again I was so stuffed at the end of the night.  I tried foie gras for the first time and it was actually really good!  We also enjoyed some raclette, which is a type of cheese that is first melted (there are various ways of melting this) and in our case eaten with small potatoes. 

Monday morning we took the train into Paris, the younger cousin went to school while Pisei, her aunt and I went to another museum – this time the Grand Gallery of Evolution (part of the Museum of Natural History).  I really enjoyed this one and a nice plus was that it looked like it was recently updated.  


The exhibits were roughly divided by climates/region and had tons of old-fashioned taxidermy.  There was also an exhibit on endangered and extinct animals, so got to see what the Dodo bird looked liked.

Throughout the museum there were benches with information tablets in English, French, German and Spanish where you could get more information about certain species or topics, like bats, the development of wings and climate change.  On the topmost level were exhibits on man and technology and what to do for the future of animals.

 

For lunch we stopped off a what appeared to a popular bakery for some sandwiches.  I tried to pay for Pisei’s aunt’s meal as a thank you for her wonderful hospitality, but miserably failed….honestly their family was really nice and even invited me to come back and stay with them, which they definitely did not have to do at all!  Around 2 pm I  went to the Gare du Nord for the Thalys train back to the Netherlands.  This time around there were no problems and it took half the time.  The only thing I was confused about was the amount of empty seats as when I had made the reservation, the service desk in Utrecht told me that this was the first available train back on that Monday…I guess they really offer a limited amount of seats for Eurail passes, oh well, good thing to remember for next time!

I hoping to go back to Paris at some point in May/June either with friends or to meet up with friends from home.  This city has so much to offer and I really would like to explore it some more.  Now having been twice in the winter, I do look forward to seeing Paris in the warmer months and go to Disneyland Paris and Versailles!