Update

It goes without saying, but it's clearly been a while since I've posted anything. What began as simple procrastination during a beautiful summer was exacerbated by a complete lack of free time and (sadly) outright laziness.

On the positive side, Emilie and I have gotten in some great trips since my last update. In late-June we visited the Normandy and Brittany regions of France. What began as a weekend trip for Emilie's cousin's wedding evolved into a week-long road-trip through Northwest France. I have always been interested in WWII history, so the highlight was definitely our visit to the D-Day beaches.

In July we headed back to the U.S. for my friend Matt's wedding. Though the trip was a bit short, it was great to see all my friends back home and get to celebrate such a special occasion with them. I also got to spend some quality time with my cousin and her daughter, who were in town during the visit. The only negative was that my parents weren't there. They were actually on a cruise in Northern Europe with their friends, so we more or less had swapped time zones for a bit.

In early August Emilie and I headed back to France so she could further expose me to "the most beautiful country in the world" (her words, not mine...though with each trip it's getting harder and harder to disagree). This time we visited two départements in Western France: Gironde (home of the Bordeaux wine region) and Dordogne (famous for its medieval castles, foie gras, truffles and prehistoric cave paintings).

September brought with it two major highlights. The first was a week-long visit from my friend Matt. We took full advantage of his time in Switzerland with some great hikes (most notably above Interlaken, where we saw the massive Aletsch Glacier) and plenty of local specialties (e.g., fondue).

The other September highlight was a two-week vacation that Emilie and I took to Japan. I could write for hours on this experience and hopefully someday will. But for now, let me just say that Japan is an unbelievably beautiful country with amazing people, food and sights. And although we packed a lot into our trip, we barely scratched the surface and I'd love to go back again someday.

I spent most of October in a political haze, obsessed with every development in the presidential election no matter how small. The only respite was a weekend trip to Paris to see Radiohead. The show was absolutely amazing and definitely one of the best concerts that I've been to.

As for November, it was fairly relaxed compared to the summer / early-Fall. The highlights were some gatherings with Emilie's family (including a fantastic post-Thanksgiving / pre-X-mas dinner) and a weekend trip to the city of Reims in the Champagne region of France. We also devoted a lot of time to our new favorite TV show: Homeland. After hearing about the show for the past year, we finally started watching it, are fully caught up, and now anxiously await each new episode.

And now here we are. Christmas is fast approaching and soon Emilie and I will be heading "home" (well, at least to what I still consider "home") for some quality time with friends and family over the holidays. Hopefully the weather is a bit warmer than in Lausanne, where this morning it snowed. But not too warm.

As for this site going forward, I need to figure out a more sustainable way to keep it updated. And one day I hope to get caught up and post some pictures / details of the highlights mentioned above. In the meantime, I think I'll probably just plan to start fresh with updates as of the new year.

Les Cornettes de Bise

Today we went hiking with some of Emilie's family in an area called Les Cornettes de Bise, which is in the Alps along the border of France and Switzerland.

Here's the view that we had shortly before reaching the summit. The altitude wasn't that high, so we were surrounded by plenty of greenery.

We stopped for lunch above a picturesque alpine lake (or perhaps "pond" is a more accurate description). I was surprised by how many snow patches remained despite being June.

As we continued our trek after lunch, we spotted a bouquetin (ibex) in the distance. The animal's horns really stood out with the snow as a backdrop.

It turns out that there was a group of nearly 40 or so (just counting the ones that we saw), including these two juveniles that were play fighting on a nearby rock.

At one point, we had to pass through a group of adults and their massive horns were pretty impressive (albeit a bit intimidating as well). They didn't seem to mind our presence, but definitely kept an eye on us throughout.

At one point we had a nice view of Lake Geneva, though there was a bit of haze. We were basically in the mountains on the side opposite Lausanne.

Throughout the hike we were accompanied by a local dog that took a liking to us. He just tagged along for most of the route and every once in a while ran off to a snow patch in order to cool down a bit.

At lower altitudes, the dog took advantage of a couple of streams that we passed in order to cool off. He clearly knew all the good spots, so I presume that his owners simply let him roam free during the day and he just followed hikers in what he must have viewed as his own backyard.

Shortly before finishing up, we passed by a group of dairy cows that the dog seemed to take some interest in. This made me think that perhaps it was a farm dog that was used to help herd the cows whenever it was time to move them to a new spot.

Amsterdam

This weekend Emilie and I headed to Amsterdam, marking my first visit to the Dutch capital (and the Netherlands, for that matter).

There were a number of highlights over the two days, with perhaps my favorite simply being the time we spent walking along the canals. It was nice taking in the scenery given all the interesting buildings and tree-lined streets.

While most of the buildings stood out for their architecture, the ones that seemed to have concave faces that literally leaned out over the street really caught my attention. The building on the right in the picture below is a good example.

Another highlight was our visits to the Rijks and the Van Gogh museums. The Rijks is full of paintings by various Dutch masters and the Van Gogh museum, well, is basically a lot of Van Goghs.  My favorite painting of the two visits was Rembrandt's massive De Nachtwacht ("The Night Watch"), below, which was housed in its own room at the Rijks.

The most moving experience of weekend was definitely a visit to the Anne Frank House, which faces the canal in the photo below (it's just left of the large tower). After reading The Diary of Anne Frank years ago in high school, it was interesting to tour the building described in the book. Needless to say, it's hard to imagine what it was like "living" there for over two years while the consequence of being discovered was almost certain death.

For a nice mix of relaxation and sightseeing, we decided to take a canal tour on one of the many tourist boats. It lasted about an hour and was a great way to get a different persepective of the city. We were fortunate to have a good captain who was able to add a lot to the tour through his commentary. He really seemed to like his job and I think this made a big difference.

During the canal tour we passed under / by countless bridges. And at one point the captain stopped the boat so that we could take a picture of the bridges below -- a set of seven in a row that cross the same canal. I'm not sure if we were really able to see all seven from the boat, but Emilie and I walked by them after the tour and confirmed that there were indeed seven.

As for the other more memorable elements of the city, it's hard to overlook the omnipresent "coffeeshops" and general pot / mushroom / etc. dispenseries. Given the decades-long failure of America's "war" on drugs, you have to wonder whether Amsterdam's model (or at least something in that direction) would be a more effective solution. It's hard to imagine that it could do much worse.

The city's "Red Light District" is also worth mentioning. "Window shopping" takes on a whole new meaning in this area. As such, we had to be a bit careful with our photo-taking. One minute you're passing a church like the one in the photo below and the next you're literally turning a corner and are face to face with a naked woman staring at you through the (door-sized) window to her "studio".

Perhaps the most common sight in the city is the bicycle. They're literally everywhere and as a tourist you have to be careful to not accidentally stray into a bike lane while admiring the city. I think Amsterdam may compete with Copenhagen for Europe's most bike-friendly city (at least among those that I've visited). Supposedly, there are enough bikes in the city to account for 80% of the population. There's even a bike-specific, multi-level parking structure next to the train station (it looks like it's for cars...).

Though not as numerous as bikes, the roughly 700 houseboats permanently moored in the inner canals of Amsterdam also catch your attention. As the number of mooring permits is fixed, houseboats are very expensive -- particularly given that they typically have all the conveniences of a modern home (plumbing, electricity, central heating, cable, wifi). Apparently there are even some houseboat hotels, which would make for an interesting stay in the city.

Mariage Jurassien

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This weekend we were in France for Emilie's sister Cecile's wedding. And as is customary for French weddings, it took place in the region where the bride is from (in this case, the Jura). Don't feel bad for the groom, though, as the "civil" wedding took place in his hometown of St. Nazaire (northwestern France) back in September.

As this was my first French wedding, I didn't know what to expect going into the weekend. Things definitely started off on a good note, though, when we arrived at the "château" in Syam where the wedding party would be staying for the evening. It was built in 1818 by a wealthy industrialist and its design was inspired by a Renaissance Villa in Northern Italy. 

Here's the view from the front door. It's pretty hard to compete with natural beauty such as this.

The interior of the château was equally impressive, with a central rotundra that was the focal point of all four floors.

The wedding took place at a small church in nearby Gillois. The ceremony lasted about an hour and was fairly consistent with a Catholic wedding ceremony in the U.S. (aside from being in French, of course). 

Here's the bride and the groom shortly after the ceremony began. The photo also gives a nice feel for the church interior, which was pretty much everything you'd expect from a centuries-old church in the French countryside. While it may be normal for the French to attend a wedding in a place such as this, it was definitely a unique experience for me.

And here are the newlyweds outside the church after being presented as man and wife.

After the wedding we headed back to the château for the the reception, which was held in another building on the property where we were staying. This is where I began to experience the marathon nature of French weddings.

First there was the cocktail reception, which lasted a couple of hours and included all of the guests from the wedding. Basically, French weddings have two tiers of guests: those who are invited just to the cocktail reception and those who are invited to the cocktail reception and the subsequent dinner reception. You'd think that having two tiers of guest would make things a bit awkward, but apparently not.

The highlight of the cocktail reception (at least for Emilie and her aunts) was the bouquet toss. Surprise, surprise, but guess who caught it? Yep...Emilie. I don't know if "caught" it is the right word, actually, as she used rugby-like tactics to take out the opposition and ensure she came down with it. Perhaps a formal protest with the bouquet-toss governing body is also in order given that the bride throwing the bouquet was her sister. Interesting how it ended up in Emilie's hands. I think the fix was in...

The dinner consisted of countless plates (appetizer, multiple main courses, cheese, dessert) and all were great. And throughout, there were various "animations" -- basically speeches with photo slideshows by the best man, the maid of honor (Emilie) and a couple of others.

After dinner, the reception went late into the night. And during this time I noticed a couple clear differences with many of the U.S. weddings that I've been to. First, as the wedding was in the countryside, there was no time cut-off. People stayed as late as they wanted as there was no one to complain about the noise.

Second, the bride and the groom closed down the night. Normally, I feel like the bride and groom are gone before you know it. In this case, however, they were the ones giving the late-night requests to the DJ when few others still remained. I think they definitely did it right.

Englischer Garten

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After three hectic days of sightseeing across Bavaria, we decided to set a much slower pace for our final day (particularly given the 5+ hour drive home that awaited in the late afternoon).

 
As such, we began with a relaxed brunch at a restaurant that one of my friends from work had recommended. It had an outdoor patio, which was perfect given the beautiful weather. Here's a picture of a church that was near the restaurant.

We spent the balance of our visit walking around the Englischer Garten, a public park in central Munich that was created in 1789 and is larger than Central Park in New York City. The park's name (I presume no translation is necessary...) comes from the general style of landscaping that was used when it was created.

The park has plenty of open areas that people were using for sports, sitting around with friends or simply laying out in the sun. There is also large lake where you can rent boats to explore if you so desire. We didn't have the time, but it looked like a nice way to spend the day.

The Englischer Garten is also home to a couple of beer gardens. One of which is adjacent to the Chinesischer Turm, a pagoda-like wooden structure visible in the photo below. 

We walked around the park for a couple of hours and really only scratched the surface. Like Central Park, it would take days to fully explore. Nonetheless, I think we had a nice introduction and were able to see how many of the "locals" make the most of their city on a beautiful Spring day.

Munich

On our way to Munich on Saturday morning, we stopped in Dachau to see the WWII era concentration camp. It was definitely an eerie feeling to walk around a place where such cruel and inhuman acts took place.

Here's a photo of the infamous gate with the (loosely translated) phrase "Work Liberates". 

Before visiting Dachau, I wasn't really aware of the distinction between a "concentration camp" and an "extermination camp" (Dachau being an example of the former; Aushwitz-Birkenau, the latter). As demonstrated by the absolutely devastating pictures on display in the museum, however, the distinction between the two camp types seems to have been fuzzy.

I don't know if there's any way to really describe the camp other than pure evil. I can't imagine how people found the will to "live" while facing such conditions.

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We arrived in Munich to a much more festive atmosphere: Saturday night was the UEFA Champion's League Final (basically the Super Bowl of European soccer) between Bayern Munich and Chelsea (London). And similar to the Super Bowl, the host venue rotates irrespective of the two teams that have reached the final. Thus, it was purely coincidence that Bayern was able to play the final in its hometown. This definitely added to the craziness.

We began our Munich visit by walking to the Neues Rathaus (New Town Hall), which was built in the late-19th century and faces one of the city's major plazas -- the Marienplatz.

For a better view of the city (and to escape the rabid football fans for a few minutes), we decided to head up to the top of the building's main tower. And at nearly 300 feet, the tower indeed offered a fantastic view. Here's a photo of the nearby St. Peter's Church (Peterskirche), which is the oldest church in the city center and dates back to the 14th century.

We then walked around the city a bit to get a better feel for it. As with the other Bavarian towns that we visited, the architecture was very interesting. And perhaps most impressive, a good deal of it had to be completely restored after being destroyed by Allied bombing during WWII. To the left of the picture below is (part of) the famous Hofbräuhaus.

As we continued our self-guided tour of the city, we saw a number of churches (most notably the Frauenkirche and the Theatinerkirche). We also passed the National Theater (pictured below), where we had tickets to see I Capuleti e i Montecchi (an opera version of Romeo and Juliet) later in the evening.

We finished off our sightseeing on Saturday by visiting two of Munich's famous art museums -- the Alte ("Old") Pinakothek and the Neue ("New") Pinakothek. The first houses a vast collection of works by the "Old Masters" (pre-19th century European painters, I subsequently learned), while the second contained works by 19th century painters.

The general area around the museums is known as the Kunstareal ("Art District") as there are a number of other museums to visit there as well. The area is also home to the Königsplatz, a square that was often used for Nazi rallies during the Third Reich.

After finishing up with the museums, it was time to head back to the hotel to change for the opera. And In order to save some time, we decided to take the metro. This led to one of our more interesting Munich experiences, as a four-person rock group (singer, guitarist, bassist and drummer) got on at the first stop and started performing on the train (the drummer and guitarist are visible in the picture below).

I have to say that it was pretty cool and the other passengers -- most of whom were on their way to pre-party for the evening's football championship -- were loving it.

Our subsequent metro ride to the opera turned out to be equally interesting, as we ended up being on the same line that went to the football stadium. As such, the train was packed like sardines with sweaty, drunk fanatics singing their teams' songs at the top of their lungs. There were literally crowd control police at each metro stop in order to prevent stampedes. Fortunately, we were able to force our way off the train at our desired stop, though we probably smelled like we were coming straight from Oktoberfest.

Despite having to follow up our two interesting metro experiences, the opera managed to do a good job of keeping us entertained. I think it helped that I was familiar with the story of Romeo & Juliet. Otherwise, I would have been lost given the Italian lyrics and German subtitles.

After the opera we grabbed a very nice dinner and then headed to a bar to watch the end of the football champtionship. We arrived in time to see the overtime period and the shoot-out, during which the fans were going crazy. Here's a photo after Munich took the lead in the shoot-out.

Unfortunately, it wasn't meant to be for the local team. Shortly after the above photo, the momentum shifted and Chelsea won the shoot-out. I don't know if I've ever seen the collective life get sucked out of a city so quickly. But at least they handled the loss gracefully. I have a feeling things could have gotten a little ugly had Chelsea been the team that lost given the craziness that we had witnessed earlier on the metro. The word hooligan comes to mind.

The Romantic Road

On day two of our road trip, we decided to follow the Romantische Strasse ("Romantic Road") north from Füssen and stop in some small towns along the way. The road was originally a medieval trade route that linked important towns at the time, though its name wasn't coined until the1950s when travel agents looking to boost tourism. Apparently the route is very popular with Japanese tourists, in particular, as all the signs are in Japanese as well (see below).

The first town that we visited was Dinkelsbühl, which was founded in the 11th century and whose look is considered representative of a typical German town in the 15th - 17th centuries. The town is also notable in that it was a "mixed imperial city" during the reformation -- i.e., it had a joint Catholic-Protestant government with an equal distribution of Catholic and Protestant civic officials.

The city's medieval wall and towers were very well preserved, in part because Dinkelsbühl made it through WWII virtually unscathed.

Many of the towers were ultimately converted into small homes (or perhaps apartments is a better description), which we were a bit surprised by. It would have been really interesting to tour a few of the towers to see what the interiors were like, but that unfortunately wasn't in the cards.

We spent the majority of our time in Dinkelsbühl simply wandering the streets of the old town and taking in the main sights. I particularly liked the general architecture of the buildings -- basically a lot of angular, A-shaped rooves with interesting exterior designs.

Our second stop of the day was Nordlingen, another medieval town along the Romantic Road. Like Dinkelsbühl, the town's external wall remains completely in tact and you have to pass through a gate to enter. The town is a little older, though -- it celebrated its 1100th anniversary in 1998.

As with our visit to Dinkelsbühl, we spent most of our time simply walking around the city and enjoying the sights. As seen in the photo below, the buildings in Nordlingen were also characterized by A-shaped rooves and interesting designs in the walls.

We later learned that Nordlingen was the town shown during the glass elevator scene at the end of the film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Our final stop of the day was Augsburg, where we would spend the night before heading to Munich for Saturday and Sunday. By this point the weather had deteriorated a bit, but it was still nice enough to walk around for some sightseeing before dinner. Here's a view of the Rathaus (city hall), which is the oldest secular Renaissance building north of the Alps.

Like Dinkelsbühl, Augsburg was a mixed imperial city during the Reformation. This is evidenced by the St. Ulrich's and St. Afra's Abbey, pictured below, which consisted of both a Roman Catholic church and a Protestant (Lutheran) church. Needless to say, the interiors of the two churches were considerably different.

While walking around the city we came across the following building, which had the most colorful exterior walls that we had seen during our visit by far. I'm not sure exactly what the murals depicted, but I presume they had something to do with the city's history or perhaps some religious context.

Before calling it a night we stopped for dinner at a restaurant near our hotel. As a whole it was a rather uneventful (albeit good) meal, except for one thing: I was surprised by how many people were having beer with dinner at a nice restaraunt. Sure Bavaria is known for its beer, but I never expected it to play a central role during dinner (basically replacing wine). Then again, the heartiness of Bavarian cuisine clearly goes better with a nice, cold beer than a fine wine (at least based on my limited experience).