Browse Tag

travel

Munich

  • Aug 12, 2010
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Pictures from this day can be found here.

It was a little tough getting up after such a heavy meal the previous day, and we decided to forgo the hotel breakfast (although the price was a factor – 21 Euros each – no way…). Instead we went to the station and bought a vegetarian sandwich and an orange juice to split. We took the sandwich with us as we found the right train, and bought a one-day pass for travel within Munich for 9.40 Euros. It turned out to be a good deal. We also saw a guy freaking out with frustration at one of the ticket machines. We felt the same way sometimes with the European train ticket machines, but weren’t quite ready to be driven to madness. The guy ran screaming up the stairs and out of the station, and I don’t know what ever happened to him after that.

We started our day at the BMW museum because of the rainy weather. The idea was to avoid the rain inside at the museum, and then later see some outdoor sights with the hopes that the weather would improve. The BMW museum was recommended by one of my students, so after eating our vegetarian sandwich (again, great bread!) we walked in and started looking around. The exhibits were well-designed, and it was fun to look around. There wasn’t a whole lot to do besides interact with the exhibits, and unfortunately the factory was closed for the summer holiday, but we did get to see some rare cars and have a cup of coffee at the café. Another bonus was free Wi-Fi, so I wrote a few emails in the hopes of making some plans for Zurich with Roger.

After the museum the weather seemed to be letting up, so we took the train back to the center of town, and another tram on to Schloss Nymphenberg. A huge garden surrounded the castle and we walked through the castle to the “back yard” which stretched as far as we could see. It was nice to leisurely stroll around and wonder how many groundskeepers they might have. Very impressive, and we were lucky with the weather to avoid the rain.

We came back to downtown Munich by tram, and then headed to the Hofbrau House, the defacto beer hall in Munich. The place was lively at lunchtime, but we managed to squeeze into a table opposite a friendly looking German couple. Kuniko took another crack at ordering in German from the menu, and we ordered some beers. I just ordered a beer and received one liter of beer in a monster mug. Kuniko wisely asked for a small size, and ended up with 500 ml. Behind us they had a traditional German band playing songs, and the servers were wearing the traditional outfits with the scoop necks. Quite the experience.

Once the food arrived we found out just what we were in for. The pork dish that Kuniko ordered was a huge joint of pork meat on the bone, with two round dumplings soaked in sauce. I had ordered a mixed sausage platter with sauerkraut, and so it looked like we had just about enough beer to kill off the food. It was the first time that I had to carve the lunch before eating it – the pork on the bone was so tender and delicious, but it took some good knife work to get the meat off the bone. Maybe my favorite dish of the trip – so good.

One thing led to another and the atmosphere had me ordering another liter of beer to go with all the great food, and we staggered out of there after lunch pretty well lubricated. Back to the hotel, and it wasn’t long before I passed out on the bed snoring while Kuniko patiently did sudoku waiting for me to wake up. A couple hours later I did, and we headed out for a little research at the train station to figure out the best timetable to use for a trip to Fussen the next day.

They had a special line at the station for English speakers, so we lined up and had to wait a LONG time to ask a pretty basic question. The clerk there told us that it might be tough to get to Fussen the next day because of a lot of construction on a section of track, so we should be flexible with our plans. After taking his advice we bought some simple things for dinner – a sandwich for Kuniko and a chicken curry calzone for me, and then a couple of beers at the supermarket before taking them all back to eat in our hotel room. Our strategy of a big lunch and small dinner paid off, but it is hard to believe how much food we are eating on this trip compared to what we eat in Japan.

Brussels to Munich

  • Aug 11, 2010
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Picture from this day can be found here.

We got up early the next day and checked out of our hotel, and headed out on foot for the Brussels train station. There we caught an Inter-City Express (ICE) train for Cologne, and then on to Frankfurt. We changed trains at Franfurt, and then continued the journey on to Munich. The train ride was very comfortable – the ICE trains are very modern, and we had first class seats so there was food service, so we had hot coffee and hot chocolate at our seats while we traveled.

They had a restaurant car as well, but we had prepared for the trip by shopping for food at Carrefour Express, so we set up a little picnic at our seats. We did much the same thing the last time we were in Europe – it is a good way to save money and also enjoy some local foods. This time we had a big block of stinky cheese, roasted turkey, and crackers to enjoy. We weren’t prepared with a knife, though, so we used a wine opener that we brought with us to slice pieces of cheese onto crackers. Yum.

A guy down the way had completely passed out while taking the train, and at the time we thought it was the loudest that we had heard anyone snore. But that was before our flight home two weeks later. He stayed on for most of the journey, and I think he would have been embarrassed to hear how loud he was snoring.

Finally, after about four hours we pulled into Munich station, and from there it was an easy walk across the street to our hotel (NH Hotel Deutsch Kaiser Munich). The hotel’s close proximity to the station had me worried while planning that perhaps it would be noisy, but our room was on the eighth floor, and absolutely silent – so silent I had to strain to hear any noise at all. The room was very nice as well, maybe the best hotel room of the trip.

After dropping off our gear we set out to explore the old town part of Munich, and I’ll admit that I was at first a little disappointed that there were so many people and so many shops. It felt like walking through an American shopping mall. Towards the end of the street in Marienplatz things got a little better, however. More cathedrals, more historical buildings, and more people. We shared a little table in front of a streetside restaurant with some German people and ordered some beers from the menu, and after a little practice, Kuniko ordered some white sausages in German. The couple cheered his efforts speaking in German, and it was pretty impressive. She is really good at picking up languages, and she really did well with the pronunciation. The sausages were great, although we ate them with the skin on, which I found out later is a faux pas. Locals apparently eat them by skinning them first. Oh well… they were still delicious.

After beer we walked around some more and took in lots of sights. It really is a beautiful city once you get away from the touristy areas. Dinner was at a traditional German restaurant that Kuniko’s guidebook recommended. It was a little bit of an early dinner, actually. The dinner was pretty traditional as well – sausages, pretzels, sauerkraut, beer, beef and pork. Not light at all. Very delicious, but we retired to our hotel completely full.

Brussels

  • Aug 10, 2010
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Pictures from this day can be found here.

Today we slept in a little bit, and then headed downstairs to try out the (included) hotel breakfast. This breakfast was better attended by the guests of the hotel, and they had a much bigger selection of foods. We ate a pretty big breakfast, and then set out to explore the city.

First stop was across town to see the Grand Palace, situated in old town. The route to get there was a little tricky, mainly because we didn’t spend much time looking at maps, and also because the design of the city hides the Grand Palace until the last minute, creating a dramatic discovery. It was quite effective, too. We spent some time kicking around the palace taking pictures and watching the preparations for some kind of festival in the square, and then went south looking for Mannekin Pis. Mannekin Pis is kind of the symbol of Brussels (or so the guidebook said) – the little boy peeing into the fountain. It certainly is a frequently seen symbol around Japan, and so we thought we ought to check it out. When we finally saw it, well, it was smaller than we expected. But I’ll bet he hears that a lot. For such a popular landmark we were one of only about four people that turned out to see it at that hour. Just early-risers, I guess.

The weather continued to cooperate with our travel plans, and we had clear skies while we explored Old Town and the surrounding areas. St. Michel Cathedral was especially impressive, as well as the European Union’s new headquarters. After a couple hours of sightseeing we were getting tired and ready to take a break, so we followed a guidebook suggestion and found a restaurant/brasserie called Le Atomme near our hotel. The place was well decorated, it had young, friendly staff that spoke English (and even translated the menu for us) and a wide(!) selection of Belgian beers. We tried a couple of new ones with lunch – Kuniko had a rabbit stew, and I had a beef one. Both were excellent, but the Kuniko’s soup was really good – definitely a taste that I’ve never experienced before.

Back on the sightseeing trail we used the free Wi-Fi at McDonald’s to check some messages and organize a plan to meet my aunt Nancy’s friend Roger in Zurich, as well as have a Belgian waffle for dessert. We even made a stop at one of the many chocolate shops in town to have some intense chocolate truffles. We also hit one of the Carrefour Express convenience stores to stock up on supplies for the next day’s long train trip to Munich. Carrefour Express was great – lots of interesting stuff, and as usual, the wine, cheese and dried meats were ridiculously cheap. Why can’t somebody in Japan do something like this?

All this walking around, drinking and eating was pretty tiring, so next stop was a long nap in our hotel room, with the window wide open to hear the sounds of the city. It was one of the highlights of the trip for me – the view from our room was great, and the breeze blowing in the strange sounds and smells made for a very relaxing nap.

We got organized and headed out once again to Mannekin Pis, because someone I know had recommended a bar across the street with a good beer list, and I was looking forward to trying more Belgian beers. We found Mannekin Pis completely swamped by tourists this time, and we settled into a bar across the street to watch the mayhem and sip our beers. It was a little tricky ordering beer because I was just shooting in the dark. The bartender wasn’t too helpful – I sensed that he was teasing me a little with a regular sitting at the bar. Still, I would probably do the same if the roles are reversed, and it is enjoyable to make fun of tourists. I used to do that a lot in California.

For dinner we found a place called Taverne du Passage, which was in a touristy area but had friendly enough staff and a traditional Belgian food menu. Not knowing much about Belgian food we wanted to at least try something local, but as we discovered Belgian food draws a heavy influence from France. Not that it is a bad thing, but we wanted to try something uniquely Belgian. The answer was what Kuniko ordered – waterzooi. A cream-based chicken stew, it was a little light on flavor, but it made up for it in volume. Not bad. I was craving eggs for some reason, so had a ham omelet that was simple, salty, but quite good. We dodged some raindrops on the way back to our hotel, but managed to avoid some heavier rain that began after we got back.

Koblenz to Brussels

  • Aug 09, 2010
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Pictures from this day can be found here.

Waking up was a little tough after such a long start to our trip, but we weren’t on any tight schedules so we could sleep in a bit and enjoy the comfortable beds. We had breakfast at the hotel because it was included in the price, and they put on quite a feast. There weren’t many people staying at the hotel to enjoy it, but Kuniko and I certainly did. Again the breads were great, and they also had lots of variation of yogurt and cereal. Sometimes they were combined already, so it was a bit of an adventure to try some new things.

We checked out of the hotel and then went on foot to the station. On the way we found a couple of supermarkets, and so we stopped to buy some shampoo and conditioner (because you can never be sure if hotels will have them) as well as some other supplies. The supermarket was much different from Japanese ones – about 60% meat, 30% cheese, and 10% everything else. I bought some ibuprofen on my own using an app that I downloaded for my iphone that led me to a pharmacy, and another app that told me how to say “Can I buy something for a headache?” in German. The iphone was very useful on the trip, but there were some drawbacks. I turned off data roaming and 3G to avoid big charges to my account, so that effectively turned off my GPS – I couldn’t really use the GPS to navigate unless I happened to be near a Wi-Fi spot. Luckily there were plenty of wi-fi spots around, it is just a pain to take time out of your vacation to go look for one. So the iphone was a mixed success.

We caught a train to Brussels that passed through Luxembourg. The scenery on the way was very nice, mainly following the river. Once we arrived in Luxembourg we passed a huge building on a hillside, overlooking some other smaller places down below in a river valley – we went by so fast we had no time to take a picture but it was one of the more dramatic things we saw during the trip and we had no time to really go and check it out. More research is necessary to figure out what it was.

We had about an hour to kill transferring in Luxembourg, so we went out into the town to get some sandwiches and drinks to take on the next leg of the train trip. Big surprise that shouldn’t have been – everybody there spoke French. I was just getting used to speaking German and now it was all French. That caught us off-guard, but all in all my French is probably better than my German, and both of them are extremely limited anyway. There was always English to fall back on, and I admit that we did that quite a bit this trip.

On to Brussels, and we arrived after another couple of hours on the train. I spent the time dozing off, watching the scenery, writing in my journal, and enjoying not having to do much of anything. It was a good way to travel.

My first impressions of Brussels – very old, but liberal. The city was fun to walk around in, and the people around us seemed to be slightly more eccentric than what we found in Koblenz. I liked the feel of the city, but it was very crowded and there were a lot of cars like any big city, and that kind of detracted from the old feeling I got.

From Brussels station we walked across town to find our hotel (NH Hotel Brussels City Center), after a few wrong turns. It was in a good location, and also very clean. The staff were a little flaky, though, and they couldn’t figure out how to process my credit card correctly. Turned out that the machine was out of paper… huh. We unloaded our stuff and went to look for something easy to eat close by. Ended up on a touristy street eating at a restaurant called Montenegro. Eastern European food that was nothing special, but the beer was good and the atmosphere of eating on the street was fun. Some street entertainers walked by now and then and included transvestite magicians and a sax player. How’s that for liberal?

We headed back to our room and enjoyed one of the bottles of wine from Rudelsheim, and then crashed out. Another day, another two countries.

Shanghai, The Rhine River, Koblenz

  • Aug 08, 2010
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Pictures from this day can be found here.

Our holiday started with a meet-up in Kobe after Kuniko finished a half day of work. We met in Motomachi, and then went to a restaurant that served yo-shoku, supposedly “western” food like omu-rice, fried shrimp and hamburg. It was pretty good and there was a short wait because it was so popular at lunch hour. From there we went on to Kansai airport and caught a flight to Shanghai shortly thereafter.

We arrived in Shanghai at around 6:30 with about five hours to kill, and a new airport to explore. It started off innocently enough, with a margarita and a do-it-yourself vodka tonic at a nearby bar. Actually there were several similar bars located throughout the airport, but they staggered their closing times, with the central bar (we found out later) open 24 hours.

We walked around looking for an open restaurant, but it seemed like everything was closing around 8 pm. With a departure from the airport schedule for 11:55 pm, we had lots of extra time, so we ended up finding one last open restaurant to have a Chinese feast. The food turned out to be pretty good, but the restaurant was overstaffed, and with just a few customers in a giant restaurant, it was a little unnerving to eat with so many staff standing around watching you (and they did watch you carefully). Also I accidentally over-ordered, so we could finish only about 60% of the meal. Luckily, the food was very cheap thanks to the exchange rate, and so overall it was a marginal success. The staff all tried to speak to Kuniko in Chinese, a fact that was increasingly amusing to me (not to her, though) the longer we were at the airport.

Only after we finished dinner did we realize that there were some other shopping areas and restaurants around, so we ended up having more choices than we knew about. Oh, well. After dinner we had a lot of time to kill, so we walked around the huge airport, and we even had the option to leave and come back – thanks to a strange international transfer system. Normally I need to pay big money for a travel visa because I am an American, but they let me out into the real world, so with a little planning next time we could take the train into town and have some local food. By the end of our stay in the airport we were pretty exhausted, so we were half asleep as we boarded the plane to Frankfurt at midnight.

We flew on China Eastern airlines, which was almost the cheapest flight (only Aeroflot was less) and had a reasonably positive experience. Mainly we slept. The flight lasted about 11 hours, and I slept through five of them, so that was a new personal record for me. The highlight of the trip was the cabin attendants leading group exercises during the last hour of flight. Good idea, interestingly implemented.

Upon touching down at Frankfurt airport we looked out the window and saw rainy conditions, and so that had me a little worried. The first day called for a day on the river cruising and tasting wine, and doing it in the rain didn’t look like fun. Immigration was surprisingly easy – no forms to fill out, just a passport check, a stamp, and then we were in.

We caught a bus from the terminal we were in to the other terminal that had a train station connected, and then found the intercity trains. This was the first time in a long time that we had used European trains, so we were a little confused about the process, and it was a bit stressful finding the right train and the right platform. Looking back at it now we did almost all the right things, but at the time we were feeling a little stress about it, despite all my planning and some support documents that I had brought along.

We ended up on the S9 to the town of Mainz (pronounced Mine-z) but we noticed that the train bypassed our station completely and went to another terminal station. We got out, looked around the station, and realized that we should be back on the same train we came in on. Rushed back to the train and took two stops to the Mainz station. Not sure if we were supposed to do it that way or not, but it only took a few minutes and a little bit of confusion before we got back on the right path. I would suck at the Amazing Race, that’s for sure.

At the station we stopped into the local convenience store to buy “Troy the Sixth” the latest in a long line of small folding umbrellas that we have bought while traveling overseas. Troy the Sixth did a great job, and earned a trip home with us to Japan – a solid purchase. He certainly lasted longer than Troy the Second who died a quick death in Dijon, France.

From the station Kuniko navigated us on foot through the quiet town of Mainz. It was Sunday morning around 8 a.m., so most people were at home sleeping, and almost every shop was closed. Our destination was the Rhine river at the edge of town, and while walking there the rain got heavier and heavier. When we arrived we saw our ship waiting for us Рthe KD cruise line Рand we rushed to catch it just in time. We set up inside in the caf̩/restaurant and had some hot coffee to warm us up, and soon after the ship departed and started cruising down the river.

The scenery was really quite nice – the Rhine is quite a large river and there was plenty of traffic going both ways. There was lots of shipping up and down the river, so it was much busier than I expected. After cruising for about 15 minutes the rain let up, and we went upstairs to enjoy the view from on top of the cruise ship just as blue sky started appearing. By the time we started seeing vineyards, it was sunshine and blue skies, and our spirits rose accordingly. After consulting our guidebooks and some timetables we decided to make a stop at the wine town of Rudelsheim.

Rudelsheim at first glance is a touristy town on the edge of the river surrounded by vineyards and wineries. There was plenty to do while we were there Рwe tasted wine at several places (and bought a bottle of wine at each place to take with us because the prices were so much lower than what we are used to) Рand we also took a gondola up the hillside to enjoy some spectacular views of the river and the wine region. At the top of the hill there was even an old organ grinder guy with a fake monkey. Like I said, it was touristy there. Since we had three hours to kill before the next boat we also enjoyed some (giant) beers at a caf̩, did some shopping and had some delicious sandwiches at a bakery.

The sandwiches looked delicious in the shop window and tasted even better. German bread turned out to be one of the big surprises of the trip – every time we had German bread we were impressed at how delicious it was. Some had dark grain, some had olives or nuts, but all were consistently good wherever we were in Germany.

We were really enjoying taking in the town – interesting architecture, easy to travel by foot, and plenty of surprises around every corner. Eventually we figured it was time to go, so we caught the next boat down the river and continued our journey.

We procured some good seats on the roof of the boat, and continued to enjoy the sunny weather. Our energy level was still high despite being awake for such a long time – which was good because there were still several hours ahead on the boat before we reached our destination.

The next stretch of the river had lots of castles mixed in with all the steep hillside vineyards, and it was interesting to turn the next bend and see another dramatic old castle perched on the mountains. It was a great way to see everything at a slow pace. By late afternoon the day started catching up us, however, and we retired to the restaurant downstairs to enjoy the view through the windows instead of being in the weather. As it turns out it was a good idea – a squall came throw soon after we took a table downstairs, and suddenly the tables around us filled up completely as people came out of the rain.

Finally we reached our destination about halfway down the river to Cologne at a mid-sized town called Koblenz. The boat stopped at the Deutsch Eck, a waterside area that was under some construction when we arrived. From there we walked across town through a large street festival to find our hotel. It was a simple, clean business hotel and it was nice to unload our backpacks (finally) after carrying them around all day. I guess it didn’t help that we bought a couple of bottles of wine during the day – those are heavy.

After dropping off our gear and cleaning up a bit we asked our hotel clerk for restaurant recommendations, and she suggested a great local restaurant called Alt Koblenz. It was just down the street in the corner of a city square, and they served lots of local specialties. We had some local wine by the glass and our first dinner in Germany: Kuniko had the weinerschnitzel with egg on top as a variation, and I had “Deutsch Eck Toast” – grilled pork with mushrooms served over toast with coleslaw. Very delicious, and after a failed search for an open supermarket we retired to bed to get some much-needed rest.

Trip Planning Continues

  • Jun 29, 2010
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Day by day I am making an itinerary for our trip this summer. I’m expecting that internet access will not be generally available, so I’m doing what I can to gather the information I need and to be able to use it offline, in either paper form or on my iPhone. Softbank Japan charges an arm and a leg for overseas data usage, so it is either find a WiFi source or don’t use it at all.

Luckily, there are a few applications that help in this regard. The best I’ve found is CityMaps2Go, which downloads gigantic maps of major cities around the world, and then lets you place bookmarks, use the built in bookmarks, and use GPS to navigate the maps, all without any connection to the net. How useful…

I also managed to get a free version of the Lonely Planet Munich application. Usually the Lonely Planet apps are almost the same price as the book (although much lighter). The app is really well done, and again it provides a ton of information and maps offline. So as long as we’re in Munich it should be plenty to get us around.

The last is kind of Euro-centric, but I downloaded an app called EuroTrains, that allows you to search trains and connections between every station in Europe. The nice thing about this app is that you can save the journeys that you find, so they are available offline. The app gives a lot of detail – which platform, how long you have between trains, etc. Totally worth the 400 yen price tag.

My students at work have also

She’s Back

  • May 30, 2010
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On Saturday afternoon I made the trip into Itami airport to meet Kuniko and escort her home after a week in Canada. The students and teachers arrived at the gate and after exiting they performed the traditional closing ceremony (because there had been an opening ceremony before they left). Speeches were made, photos were taken, and then we were free to go. Unfortunately one students’ mother was about an hour late, so we all waited patiently for her to show up before we could leave.

Hanayama sensei gave us a ride home – his wife had also come to the airport, and she drove us to our doorstep. It was really nice of them – it saved a lot of time and hassle. As for Kuniko, she was tired, but it sounds like it was a pretty good trip. The students behaved well, and she really enjoyed the area. It turns out she spent most of the time on Salt Spring island, and although it was a little quiet it was a good place for the students to learn. She brought back a bunch of souvenirs, including some delicious smoked sweet salmon, a bottle of blackberry port wine, a couple of bottles of Cholula, and even some wasabi flavor kit-kats from Tokyo.

We slept in today and fit in a nap into our schedule, so we should be all charged up and ready for another week at work. Kuniko is marking papers as I write this, but I think she’ll be ready to go back to school early tomorrow morning.

It Happens

  • May 23, 2010
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Friday night two things happened that were blog-worthy – I met Yoshi in Tarumi and we had a very delicious meal, and Kuniko had a slight hiccup in the plans for her school trip to Vancouver.

While Yoshi and I were eating some very traditional foods in an izakaya in the backstreets of Tarumi, Kuniko was flying with her students from Itami airport in Osaka to Narita airport in Tokyo.

By the time Yoshi and I had started eating the sea bream head served on a platter one of Kuniko’s students decided that maybe this trip wasn’t the best idea for her, and asked to go home instead.

That meant that the other teacher on the trip took the students on the original flight, and Kuniko took the student who changed her mind back to Tokyo station to wait for her parents to come on the bullet train to pick her up.

Around midnight the parents arrived to get their daughter, and Kuniko had to go get a hotel and stay overnight in Tokyo to catch the same flight the next day.

She kept me posted on developments during the evening, and eventually she got a flight yesterday. It was just a trick to kill a day in Tokyo without adding to her luggage that she was already bringing.

As for me, I spent Saturday by myself doing the usual stuff: walking around town trying to burn calories, shopping for groceries for the week, doing laundry and listening to music. I grilled some chicken and pork for tacos, and an hour after I covered up the barbecue and brought in the laundry it started to sprinkle outside. This morning it is pouring outside, so it looks like my timing was good.

Today I’ll probably relax indoors and enjoy the sound of the rain in the background. Tomorrow it is back to work, and I’ll be on a media blackout until after I see the Lost finale.

Bon Voyage Kuniko

  • May 21, 2010
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Last night after work Kuniko and I happened to meet at the station coming home, thanks to some fortuitous timing. In these very rare cases (and because it was our last meal together for a while, and the fridge was empty) we usually end up at the local yakitori. We had a small dinner there eating the usual suspects – tsukune, negimi, kimo, shisomaki, and toridon. We recently discovered uzuratamago tsukune, which consists of two hardboiled quail eggs wrapped in ground chicken and grilled – excellent with spicy Chinese mustard.

After the yakitori we came home and Kuniko put the finishing touches on her packing, and then we had a farewell cocktail before watching some TV and heading to bed.

This morning she left the house rolling her suitcase behind her, and she’ll have to teach some classes today before gathering her flock and heading to the airport. This time they will fly first to Tokyo and change planes before heading to Vancouver.

As for me, I’m off to work soon. It will be a busy day at work as some of my students have double classes, which means there are a lot of things I need to do to keep them talking for 90 minutes.

After work I’m meeting Yoshi for a beer or two in Tarumi. He has a new izakaya that he wants to recommend to me, so we’ll meet and then go check it out.

Going Out, Planning Travel

  • Apr 23, 2010
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I taught the expression TGIF to a student yesterday in preparation for today at work – he promised me that he would use it with some visiting Americans. For some reason today is feeling like the end of a long, tough week – but at least for me it has been a perfectly normal week.

A couple of weeks ago I made plans for meeting Antoine tonight in Sannomiya. It has been a long time since we met, so I’m looking forward to catching up with him, and hopefully Sannomiya will hold a little adventure for us. Somehow with Antoine we usually end up going to a “girl bar” at some point – not sure if it will happen again tonight.

Speaking of going out, I was invited to dinner by some of my students next week, so it should be fun to go out and get to know my new students in a social atmosphere. I hear we’re having yakiniku, so that is always something to look forward to. Unfortunately it is on a school night, so I’ll have to watch my garlic intake.

I finally nailed down the last hotel for our trip this summer, a small little place in the heart of Geneva, and that means I just need to take care of transportation and we’re done. We’ll be mainly using the train, so I’ll get a Eurail pass in the next few weeks to get us around. Half the fun of the trip is planning it – maybe I should have gotten into the travel industry.

All Your Hotel Are Belong To Us

  • Apr 19, 2010
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Pretty good weekend really – lots of relaxation time, got a lot done around the house, and ended with a birthday party for Kuniko’s dad (this one was the actual birthday, although we celebrated a while back).

For dinner I cooked some Costco steaks, and they were a big hit. They are about three times the size of Japanese steaks, and about a quarter of the price, so they make for a big meal. Halfway through the steak Niro was looking like it was time for the doggie bag, but he pushed through and ate the whole thing. We had wine, mashed potatoes, salad and some hors d’oeuvres that Kuniko made to round out the meal.

Over the weekend I just about finished booking the hotels for our trip. The final itinerary:

Frankfurt -> Rhine River cruise to Koblenz -> Brussels -> Munich -> Zurich -> St. Moritz -> Zermatt -> Gruyeres -> Geneva.

I just have to get a hotel in Geneva and then I’m done. Who knows – another volcano could erupt and throw our whole plan into chaos, so I’m not celebrating too much. The best laid plans yadda yadda…

Lost Break

  • Apr 15, 2010
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As usual, a little break in the action while I caught up with Lost. I find that I have to watch it as soon as possible to avoid episodes being spoiled in the news/internet. Good show, you should check it out sometime…

We’re closing in on the weekend, and I’m looking forward to a chance to relax and stay home for a while. Kuniko’s parents will come over on Sunday to celebrate her father’s official birthday with steaks and red wine, so we’ll get our carnivore on and get the grill going. I’m hoping the weather will cooperate – it has been weird lately. One day is 24 degrees and sunny and the next is 12 degrees and cloudy/rainy. Settle down and be spring, please.

Planning for the summer trip is moving along. I just made reservations for two nights in Brussels, thanks to some advice from another member of a secret society that I belong to. I highly recommend joining a secret society (or starting one up), as it is remarkably fun to say that you are a member of a secret society.

So after Brussels, I need to plan for 2-3 days in Munich, so that is my next research project. Any advice or recommendations would be welcome!

The Year of Travel

  • Apr 03, 2010
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Kuniko heard at work yesterday that she will officially join the upcoming school trip to Vancouver. That is good news – she’s never been, and it will be nice to travel on the school’s dime. We had a feeling that she would be assigned to the trip, but it wasn’t official until yesterday. The trip is planned for sometime in May, and she’ll be gone for about 10 days. Should be lonely around here, though…

Combined with our other trips that will have us visiting five different countries this year. Quite a few for a couple of full time workers. It is a good thing we don’t have many houseplants – we’ll need to hire a friend or relative to take care of them while we’re away.

I Guess It’s Official

  • Mar 12, 2010
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So we pulled the trigger on tickets for the summer trip. After much deliberation we decided to pass over a trip to India and a trip to Egypt/Turkey and ended up deciding on a Germany/Belgium/Switzerland combo. August 7-22, escaping the heat of Japan for the Swiss Alps. We’ll spend most of the time in Germany and Switzerland, and I’m hoping to reserve tickets on the Glacier Express for a trip through the mountains.

I’m starting my German studies today, but compared to some of the other languages I’ve studied it should be quicker to pick up. I have plenty of time to work it out.

Today is Friday and after work we’ll be hosting some of Kuniko’s coworkers for a BBQ party. We’ll be grilling steaks and opening the red wine, thanks to our Costco run last weekend. The rain has stopped and it is supposed to be much warmer today, so I’m looking forward to getting behind the grill.

Hopefully I’ll be in decent enough condition this weekend to blog the aftermath…

New Contract

  • Mar 10, 2010
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Last night after work I had a meeting with some people from the staffing company, and we reviewed and signed a contract for the upcoming year. There were a few little surprises, but they were to my advantage, so no worries. The good news is that all my holidays for the next year are set, and they are paid holidays, which is even better.

Now I’m doing research on the summer trip, which will probably end up being a recurring theme on the blog over the next few months. I’ll post some details at the end of the week.

That’s it for today – short post. More later!