year++;

January 1, 2006 in Uncategorized by alalonde | No comments

Another arbitrary point in time has passed, and we must now increment the last segment of our written dates. But really, it’s 2006, and the year will frame quite a few significant events of my life…my return to the States, college graduation, and introduction to the wide world of real work. I don’t like the fact that my first awakening in 2006 was accompanied by a myriad of cold symptoms, but I’m trying not to treat it as an omen…

For tomorrow I hop a train for Bad Gastein, Austria. Apparently I waited too long in reserving train seats, for my first and second choices for routes were both full from the ICE connection between Hannover and München. I managed to get a seat on one of the earliest trains, which bumps my departure time up to 6 AM from Osnabrück. Yet due to the magic of train travel (just hop on and go, no security checks, zero wait) I can actually take the bus down to the Hauptbanhof rather than walking the 1 km+ with all my baggage like earlier this break to get to the bus stop on the way to the airport…I have been totally psyched for this trip for about a month and tomorrow will mark by introduction to the Austrian Alps….sweet.

A few days ago I returned from a week-long vacation with my great-aunt and uncle Louise and Ernest in southeast England. I had a marvelous time spending the holidays with them, from seeing my first Pantomime (in all of it’s sexual ambiguity) to the annual Quality St. Christmas party. All of these events were interspersed with fine dining throughout and some delicious meals from the ever-modest Louise. On the 23rd I ventured into London again solo, and saw Westminster Abbey and the Tate Modern. Both were great, Westminster Abbey being especially spectacular. Their photo ban was a bit annoying, but surely helps preserve the incredibly rich, ancient atmosphere. On the last evening I was treated to a performance of “Once in a Lifetime,” a comedy that I truly enjoyed. It was quite interesting seeing British actors/actresses portraying Americans, complete with our accents (which were very well done and usually not over-the-top). Thanks again Louise and Ernest for your hospitality!

It’s been very quiet here in the apartment as only Christina and I are around…last night I attended a new year’s party at a friend’s apartment, which was very nice. It was just a quiet get-together with seven of us total. Just past midnight we wandered down to the street to shoot off the obligatory fireworks, which were a riot. Apparently there aren’t any restrictions on fireworks in Germany because the street was like a war zone, with bottle rockets and firecrackers going off at a chaotic rate…it seemed like every single resident was down on the street setting off fireworks, to the dismay of passing motorists! Being a bit of a pyro I had a lot of fun *mischievous grin*.

May 2006 bring everyone good health and good times!

Shut the Hell Up and Play the Game

December 27, 2005 in Rants by alalonde | No comments

Time for a good ol’ rant…

I was watching highlights from the English Premier League matches on Boxing Day (today) and was very entertained with the exciting football that had taken place.  However, I was sorely disappointed with the emphasis on officiating placed throughout the show.  During an hour and a half of highlights the commentators managed to criticize a referee’s decision for just about every game.  Yeah, handballs happen, as do controversial tackles in the box and not-so-innocent nudges during cornerkicks, but remember that the referees are at just as high a skill level (in what they’re doing) as the players are.  Referee decisions are a part of every sport, and in the long run, these decisions always even out for any team.  What pisses me off is the constant complaining by players and managers alike.  During the highlight shows, for instance, after each match is a short interview with each team’s manager, no more than 20-30 seconds.  Yet somehow, the managers always focus this valuable time on criticising the referee rather than commenting on his team’s progress or performance.  For instance, after the Aston Villa/Everton match (in which Everton were thromped 4-0) the Everton manager spent his entire interview bitching about how the first goal should have been disallowed because it was a handball (it grazed Milon Baros’s arm), blah blah the first goal is very important in a game, yadda yadda it was the worst decision I have ever seen in my 40 years of managing etc etc…well maybe you should shut the hell up, and realizing how your team got it’s ass whooped, comment on your team’s atrocious defending instead of whining like a little girl.

This isn’t even mentioning how in all professional sports (footballers are especially guilty) athletes routinely criticize every decision by an umpire, referee, linesman, or whoever.  A typical sequence of events might be…

1. midfielder plays a thru-ball up to a forward, who controls it in mid-stride, fires and scores, then goes wild in celebration
2. linesman raises his flag, indicating the forward was offside, as agrees the referee
3. player runs over to the referee, shouting obscenities in a tantrum and carrying on like a three-year-old
4. referee calmy explains why he was offside
5. player continues whining like a little bitch, manager goes hoarse yelling obscenities
6. player throws the ball or kicks something/someone
7. referee awards player a yellow card
8. (repeat steps 3-5 until player walks away or is ejected)

Post-game whining is simply an excuse for a (player’s, team’s) performance that could’ve been better.   An extra effort on a midfield run to reach that low-crossed ball at the goal mouth, a lapse of concentration in the penalty box allowing an attacker to slip behind, a misplaced shot, poor defensive communication; these decisions and performances will decide the result of any given game, not a single refereeing decision.  So shut up already.

…Transition…

December 20, 2005 in Uncategorized by alalonde | No comments

First I want to apologize for any access problems this past weekend…Typepad was having some issues which involved them relying on a 2-day old backup that was older than my Amsterdam post.  It took them quite a while to get my Amsterdam pics back on track, too, but all is well now.

I’m currently at a transition point.  Classes ended for the year last week and I don’t fly to England to see my wonderful Aunt and Uncle until Wednesday.  Most of my friends have embarked on their holiday vacation adventures so it’s been fairly quiet the last couple days here in Osnabrück.  Mine will start oh-so-soon, and I’m very excited.  The last week of break will find me in the heart of the Austrian Alps, enjoying some of the finest skiing in the world!

With all this free time I’ve been trying to stay moderately productive, which means revisiting past projects and studying some German.  This, of course, means revisiting HarmoGen, my AI class-turned-personal AI project which I have been working on sporadically throughout the year.  HarmoGen was recently published as part of RIT’s First Annual Conference on Computing and Information Sciences so I put together a web site hosting it, which can be found here.  There I detail some of the updates I’m working on, notably converting the input/output to handle ABC musical notation.  Well this hasn’t been as easy as I had imagined, and involves writing a lot of not-so-fun conversion functions, so it has been on the back burner since Fall.

Anyway, over the next month I’ll be posting plenty of pictures capturing my holiday vacation travels.  For now, a very Merry Christmas to all!

Amsterdam

December 13, 2005 in Travel by alalonde | No comments

This trip had been envisioned for quite a while…from the first time I looked at a map of Europe and found Osnabrück. Amsterdam is about 3 hours directly west (via train), tantalizingly close to Osnabrück. I decided that if I was ever going to get there for a decent price I would need to organize everything myself, which is exactly what happened. We needed six people to get the group discount (50% off) and managed to spend only 40€ apiece for the train there and back. The group consisted of me, two other Americans, two of our Swedish friends, and a friend from China. Quite worldly.

Having experienced the Netherlands twice now, I can say that it is thus far my favorite country in Europe. Their attitudes towards so many social issues align with my own. Amsterdam is well-known as the most liberal city in the world, and it was quite apparent. Prostitution is legal and regulated by the government, soft drugs are sold in shops, and pornography is almost entirely unrestricted (it’s kind of weird looking for magazines at a newsstand and seeing porno mags on the shelf). This is not to say I indulge in or even recommend such things, I just believe that individuals should have the freedom to do whatever they want to themselves. These policies were adopted for the betterment of Dutch society, and it shows. Amsterdam is a remarkably safe city with hardly a trace of the homelessness that terrorizes with an icy grip of black death the large cities of the US.

On to the adventure. We took off from Osnabrück around 3 PM or so and arrived in Amsterdam in time for dinner (I love trains). Upon leaving the train station I realized I had never looked at the directions to the hostel, just where it was on a map. No worries, I thought, and wandered around for a few blocks. Eventually I bit my pride and asked directions; on the second try we were successful and checked in to our hostel without a hitch. Next we got a bite to eat, then decided it was time to have a coffee or two. Well the coffee ended up being pretty strong (albeit delicious) and the time came to do some wandering. Unbelievably, nobody had the initiative to lead so I took it upon myself to, uh, guide us around the city for a few hours. My sole objective was finding a canal to follow; luckily, that’s not difficult in Amsterdam since just about every other street is parallel to a canal. At this point I was pretty wired from the coffee and almost incapable of meaningful communication, but somehow found our “destination.” The canal took us through part of the red light district (unbelievably surreal!) and at some point we wandered back to the hostel due to Lina’s map-reading skills. There we met up with Kevin who had been unprepared for such caffeinated coffee and went back early. The rest of the night was spent playing foosball, pool, and having a few pints of Heineken at the hostel. At some point we met a couple of coffee-enthusiast Aussies and chatted for awhile.

Saturday was a bit more tame. We had breakfast next door at this restaurant and I had a downright weird “Naturel” omelet with a cup of tea. From there we walked to the Rijks Museum, which had been recommended by an old German dude we were talking to on the train. It was expensive but I was quite impressed with the paintings on display (mostly Rembrandt and his students, all Dutch). Afterwards we got some pizza at a shady back-alley Italian joint and I elected we go to a pub and watch some football (apparently nobody else had any sort of decision-making abilities, so I was appointed “fuhrer” and sole decision-maker). Several pubs on our street were showing English Premier League games so we took a seat and watched Chelsea take on Wigan over a couple pints of Heineken. There we ran into a large group of drunk British arseholes (they seem to be everywhere, there’s even a group in Osnabrück) which started to tick me off. Why come to Amsterdam if you’re so damn intolerant and completely un-chill? After the game we wandered around a bit and found a Chinese restaurant for dinner, where Han ordered us some Chinese specialty. Twelve plates of food later we were ready to dig in. It was damn tasty, but to the flavor of 90€. Afterwards we did some more wandering and eventually ended up hanging around in our increasingly-cooler hostel, playing cards, foosball and pool. Most people were drinking coffee at the other tables, it was pretty late so I couldn’t really figure out why. I wasn’t really thirsty so I decided to have a poorly-crafted coffee-stick instead, and we lounged about until it was time for bed.

Sunday was warmer albeit busy. Han wanted to experience the sex museum, so we did. It was pretty funny, and surprisingly full of actual historic elements. We also wandered about a bit more and did a little shopping before making our way back to the train station. Then we boarded the wrong train (ours was going the same place but two hours later) so the conductor kicked us off in Amersfoort. There we sat around in a coffee/tea shop reading magazines and drinking tea until our train came. The rest of the trip went off without a hitch (well except the unexpected 1.5-hour wait in Bad Bentheim) and we were back in Osnabrück by 930 or so.

Christmas in Germany

December 7, 2005 in Uncategorized by alalonde | No comments

Weinachtsmarkts, Feuerzangbowle, Glühwein…some of the many German traditions I’ve encountered over the past few weeks:

Glühwein
Basically a spicy red wine that is warmed up in a kettle.  Very nice on a cold December evening.  Sometimes you can order it with Amaretto or Rum for an extra kick.  You pay a deposit on the mug, so you can keep it if you wish.

Feuerzangbowle
Another wine-based Christmas beverage.  The feuerzangbowle we made for our apartment party had chunks of lime, orange, and cinnamon floating in a large pot of red wine.  Then, a large cone of sugar is placed over the pot and covered in rum.  The sugar is then ignited and melts into the pot.  Quite fun to prepare, and delicious!

Weinachtmarkts
The english translation is simply "Christmas market."  In Osnabrück we have an especially nice Christmas market which is very popular in northern Germany.  Vendors selling small Christmas gifts, crepes, candy, chocolate, Glühwein, Feuerzangbowle and other treats are all over the place.  The entire market in Osnabrück is decorated with Christmas lights and is right next to the Dom, the largest church in the city.

Weihnachtsfeiere
Christmas parties, where each attendee brings a small wrapped gift (something cheap, often that you have just lying around the house).  The process of exchanging gifts varies, for one party we played a dice game which distributed the presents over 15 minutes or so (sometimes unfairly, haha) and for another party we just picked numbers out of a hat and matched the number with a present.  It can be really fun, the more outrageous the gift the better!

As you can see the Germans really get into Christmas, which is great.  It’s been a fun past couple of weeks. 

This weekend I’ll be in Amsterdam.  Next week will be my next post..

Weather, part II

November 30, 2005 in Uncategorized by alalonde | No comments

It appears that I recently witnessed a very rare event here in Osnabruck: a snowstorm of more than a couple inches. I was actually in Wolfsburg for most of the day and missed some of the fun, but apparently the power went out several times for up to an hour at a time. Dr. HP Bischof (Our RIT study abroad coordinator) was in his hotel when it happened and he claimed that in eight years of living in Osnabrück he had never experienced a power outage of more than a couple minutes (kind of amusing for someone who has endured several-day power outages back home). Guess that explains why nobody did a damn thing about the snow, either. It’s still everywhere five days afterwards. I can’t say it was bad for everyone, though. Snowmen were everywhere the day after the storm and I had the urge to play in the snow, too. So Kevin and I headed to Heger Tor (where there’s a 15-foot high stone balcony with a 30-foot ramp leading up to it) where I had the brilliant idea of rolling a gigantic snowball down the ramp to collect into a ridiculously huge one at the bottom. Unfortunately one side of the ramp had been shovelled, and when I pushed the behemoth down it rolled to the right, jumped off one of the small stairs and smashed into four pieces on the stone. Bummer.

Thus we have unfinished business. Bring on another snowstorm!

Wolfsburg, weather

November 27, 2005 in Travel by alalonde | No comments

It’s sunday afternoon and the snow has diminished to 3-4 inches. I have been told countless times how Osnabrück (and most of Europe for that matter) hardly ever gets snow, and when it does, it melts quickly. Well I am currently witnessing the latter, but the former doesn’t seem so credible. On friday I took a bus east to Wolfsburg to tour VW’s Autostadt there. It had snowed most of thursday night so there were a couple inches already by the time we left. By the time we returned (a 3 hour bus ride turned into 4.5 on the way home) there were 6-8 inches of the stuff. Lord knows I’m no stranger to the white stuff, but apparently the Germans are. Three days later our road still hasn’t been plowed. Apparently their only defense is salt, and lots of it.

About the Autostadt…what I got out of this was a grandiose attempt by VW to sell more of their cars, and their subdivisions’ cars. I did thoroughly enjoy everything, though, and will post pics soon. The Autostadt is this large complex with dozens of different “pavilions” (some built half-underground and covered by a mound of earth), towers, museums, and restaraunts. Each of VW’s subdivisions (Seat, Lamborghini, Audi, Skoda, Bentley, Bugatti) had their own pavilion to show off their cars. Think a lot of snazzy architecture, dim lights, lasers, fog machines, and shiny spinning prototype cars. Some were more interesting (Bentley) while others were just downright weird (Audi). I am partial to Audis but was a little disappointed by their presentation. All glitz, little substance.

The most interesting building of the complex was the auto museum. It’s this skinny, 4-5 story glass building showing off both VW and other autos throughout the 20th century. I could have spent all day in there reading about the history, and there were probably 100+ models to guide you through the museum. Naturally, this is where I took most of my photos :)

All in all a fairly interesting weekend…stay posted

New Photos

November 20, 2005 in Uncategorized by alalonde | No comments

Finally got around to posting my photos from Bremen and Hannover….enjoy!

Well I suppose I should make this a real post…I have seen three different films over the past week due to AEGEE’s European Day of Languages…Friday’s film was L´auberge Espagnol, and by far the greatest of the three films I have seen this week. It revolves around a French student’s time spent in Barcelona as an exhange student, and really hit home for me. The film is mostly comedic yet with fantastic cinematography. I’m not sure if a version exists with English subtitles, but if so I highly recommend it.

Three cities, one week

November 13, 2005 in Travel by alalonde | No comments

I’ve done quite a bit of travelling in the past week, going to three cities in the span of seven days. It all started last weekend when I suggested going back to Bremen to see a bit of the city. The Akademische Auslandsamt had organized another trip to go to Bad Iburg, a tiny hamlet fairly close to Osnabrück. I never signed up because I had zero desire to see a place smaller than Osnabrück. So instead, Kevin and I returned to Bremen. After barely missing the train (it left literally 5 seconds after we boarded) we arrived to a nice sunny day in Bremen, one of the three city-states left in Germany.

The day was mostly uneventful, we wandered around and eventually made our way to the Beck’s brewery (it’s freakin huge), but unfortunately all the tours were booked for the day. So, since I had donned by newly purchased Werder Bremen hat, we decided to see if we could catch the game in a pub nearby. After some random wandering we stumbled upon a completely packed Irish pub with several TV projectors. Werder was playing Bayern München for the top spot in the Bundesliga. Unfortunately Werder’s lack of defense killed them again and they ended up losing 3-1. The crowd was noticeably subdued for most of the match.

Last week I had almost zilch homework to do so we ended up going to a bar and/or club every night of the week. On thursday I went with a group of AEGEE’ers (this Europe-wide club promoting European integration) from our Osnabrück chapter to a party across the border in the Netherlands, Enschede to be precise. Unfortunately it was raining so we only hit about 90 mph on the autobahn, but made it there in 1.5 hours or so. I was amazed at the complete lack of border control, you literally just drive across as if entering a different state in the US. At that point I realized Germany would never have a shortage of marijuana or other soft drugs.

The party was initially pretty tame, yet it was interesting being with a bunch of Germans who didn’t speak the native language. AEGEE’s official language is English, though, which made things easier. However the entire party was conducted in Dutch. The facilities were fantastic, at one end a band played and at the other was the bar, dishing out 80 cent beers. Midway through the night the Enschedens decided the crowd wasn’t lively enough and started handing out free beer. The tactic was quite effective, after an hour just about everyone was dancing. It ended up being a fantastic night filled with all sorts of boogeying. However we didn’t get back to Osnabrück until 4 AM, which made friday’s 8 AM class pretty awful.

Since most everyone had devoted the weekend to preparing for/attending the Uni-ball on Saturday (think prom, but a lot cooler) there wasn’t all that much going on in terms of nightlife. I declined to go to the ball since I didn’t have proper attire (I regret not going, it sounded pretty great). So instead Brittany and I headed to Hannover. The day involved wandering around the city and checking out what it had to offer. There were a few art museums I wanted to check out but we never ended up finding them. The city was laden with modern art sculptures which I enjoyed. Overall the day was fairly uneventful. Once again (two Saturdays in a row now) I found myself on a train filled with drunk football hooligans, carrying on and smoking the whole way. I didn’t understand how this had happened, since there weren’t even any games on Saturday, nevertheless there they were. Maybe they forgot there wasn’t a game and just went through the normal Sat. routine, who knows. I have had about enough of their carrying-on, incessant smoking, and general idiocy.

I think further travel will have to involve surveying the night life as well.

The Footy Match

November 4, 2005 in Uncategorized by alalonde | No comments

I took a train up to Bremen Wed. night with Kevin to catch a UEFA Champion’s League football (I try to avoid the term ‘soccer’) match.  Werder Bremen, the current top team in the German Bundesliga, was playing Udinese Calcio, the weakest of the Italian teams in the Champion’s League.  Werder is notorious for the high rate of goals they both score and allow, so I had anticipated a high-scoring match. 

When emerging from the Hauptbanhof in Bremen the city was quite slick and was drizzling a little bit.  We followed the crowd of hooligans, *ahem* supporters, to the S-bahn (Straßenbahn) which we took the stadium.  A good number of fans were hitting the Beck’s pretty hard the whole way there, and some were donning the empty boxes as headwear.  I would have joined in but I had a rather large presentation the next morning so I declined.  Oh, and as a clarification there’s no public drinking or intoxication laws anywhere in Germany, so you can just roam around and drink your beer as you please.  Quite convenient. 

We reached the stadium right on time with an enormous crowd of hooligans, *ahem* fans.  I decided to buy a beer at the stadium, but realized all they were selling were non-alcoholic varieties, which kinda ticked me off.  However I did understand the motivations behind it, especially in wake of all the incidents plaguing recent Champion’s League matches (players getting injured by flung coins, flares, fire hydrants, etc.)  So Kevin picked up the requisite bratwurst and we took our seats, fairly good ones in the lower tier at one corner of the stadium.  The Italian fans happened to be sitting right across from us, separated by huge barriers, where they chanted and exchanged obscene gestures with us hooligans, err fans, on the other side.

And the whistle blew.  Immediately I was ecstatic to be watching my first world-class football match here in Europe, and was quickly rewarded by a header goal within the first 10 minutes by Werder.  The crowd went wild and sang, errr chanted the Werder theme song.  A few minutes after that we scored on a loose ball in the box and we went into another frenzy.  Pretty much the entire game was like this, and it was awesome.

Somehow in the second half we were up 3-nil until, a flurry of "Sheiße!"s later, Udinese tied the game within about 5 minutes.  I couldn’t believe my eyes as the unmarked Calcio forwards pranced around the box and scored easily, again and again.  Luckily Bremen scored the go-ahead goal at around the 70th minute to eventually seal the victory.  It was really an up-and-down game emotionally for the fans, and was really interesting how our temperaments varied through out the match.  One thing was quite evident, though, and that is the passion the Europeans share for their beautiful game.  I had never experienced it before (however I’ve never been to a playoff MLB game either) and it was truly amazing.

Match highlights/recap/Champion’s League info can be found here.

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