Cologne

I'm having a wonderful end of my summer. There are so many things I want to write about. I want to do them all justice, and time is not my friend right now, so you'll just have to wait. (I'm currently in Madrid, about to head to the train station to catch an overnight train to Lisbon, Portugal).

So two weekends ago was Belgium's national holiday on Monday. To celebrate, Wassim and I left for Germany to visit the nearby Cologne.

It was a really fun trip. We didn't "do" all that much. Our train left very early on Sunday (so we didn't have much sleep because we got back late from Ghent). It took about 3 hours to get to Cologne. The first day we walked around the city. We went to a chocolate museum that was really nice and informative. We then headed back to the hostel to take a nice afternoon nap. We went back out to walk around a bit and eat a bit of dinner.



That night we hung out at the hostel talking to folks. We met a nice girl from London who was going to tour the cathedral the following morning.

I should of course mention the Cologne Cathedral! It's massive! Definitely the first and most memorable thing to notice in Cologne. As my guide suggested, we walked past it at first because it really takes a few hours to do it justice. We headed back the following Monday morning with our London friend and another Canadian backpacker we met. We had a full tour which was nice. It's famous for having the bones of the three magi. It was my first tour of a cathedral. It's kind of neat to get the history behind things. It was worth the money, but I probably won't take one again.





The afternoon was spent walking around the other, newer, part of the city. It was raining which is no fun! I wish we had had more time to explore some of the surrounding German areas such as Aachen or Bonn.

Overall I had fun. Unfortunately, I think Cologne is the most "American" city I visited. There were tons of American restaurants and stores. I think this is mostly due to the bombing it withstood during WWII. Most everything there is new and modern.

All pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.com/wcleveland/Cologne
Time to jet! I've got a train to catch :-)

Ghent Summer Festival

This past Saturday I returned to Ghent for the day. It was the first day of the 10-day street festival, Ghent Fests. It was a lot of fun to walk around the city. They had parades and music. I think Ghent may be one of my favorite cities in Belgium.

I went with Wassim. He's a stagiaire from France, originally from Algeria.



I didn't take very many photos. You can see them here: http://picasaweb.google.com/wcleveland/GhentFestival

Stagiaire Party

So this past Thursday, July 17, 2008 was a very important day (in case you weren't aware, that was the day I turned 21). To celebrate, I threw a party for all of the interns here at the VKI.

It was a potluck party, where everyone had to bring a dish. At first no one seemed interested, but as the date got closer, more and more people began talking about it during the breaks. We ended up with 25 or so people there (and we have about 30-35 interns), so it was a great turnout.

It was a nice opportunity to sample some different dishes from everyone's region.

I didn't think to take photos until after the food was all eaten. Here's the damage:


My few photos from the evening here: http://picasaweb.google.com/wcleveland/StagiaireParty

Paris!

Last weekend I went to Paris! It was an awesome trip. I left Friday after work with Javier, my Spanish roommate. We got off the train and his friend from Madrid picked us up. We drove around through the city a bit on our way to the other side of Paris. We stopped, walked a bit, and then ate dinner at a nice fondue restaurant. Afterwards we walked around for a while and tried to go into a club, but we were not adequately dressed. Finally we drove out to stay in the dorm of Javier's friend at Ecole Polytechnique.

The next day we woke up late, took the train into the city and dropped our bags at the hostel. We walked around the city a bit. We walked by the Place de la Concorde, and saw where President Sarkozy was going to be for the Bastille Day parade. I went up in the Arc de Triomphe for spectacular views of the area.



Afterwards we walked a bit more and made our way to the Eiffel Tower. I went up to the top, by way of stairs. It was a nice journey and it offered great views of the city. I went up at sunset, which is definitely a great time to go.



The next day, Sunday, we woke up and walked to Sacre-Coeur. It is a beautiful church, and it's on the highest part of Paris so it overlooks the city with more spectacular views.



We walked down from there and across town to Place de la Bastille, the site of the beginning of the French Revolution. After meeting up with Javier's friend and walking a bit more, I split up for the evening. Javier went to meet his father and spend time elsewhere, while I took the train out to the Palace of Versaille.

I got there a bit late in the afternoon. I did not get a chance to go inside, but I walked around outside and in the gardens for quite a while and they are beautiful. I had fun watching some children feed ice cream to some of the fish for a while too.



The next morning, Monday, July 14th (the national holiday), I woke up and began walking around the city. I went to the Opera de Paris which is a beautiful building. Definitely made me think of Phantom of the Opera. Next I walked around and watched the parade a bit. They had a lot of military marching in one area, but I found another section of parade where every few minutes they'd have about six military vehicles come through: tanks, supply vehicles, hum-vee's, camouflaged construction vehicles, and lots more. That was kind of cool to watch. It's quite intimidating how loud and fast a tank can fly down the street.



The afternoon was spent in the Louvre. It was free as part of the national holiday. I walked around for quite a long time, and I think I made it into almost every room. Mind you I didn't spend very much time in any of the rooms. I found it interesting that most everyone is there just to see the Mona Lisa. There are signs throughout the museum directing you to that picture. Of course, I did go and see it.



Overall I had a lot of fun. This was a great weekend!

All pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.com/wcleveland/Paris

Leuven

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. I've been a bit distracted! (It's a good thing ;-). )

When I last left you readers, I had just returned from the gliding week. On Tuesday of my week back, I went to Leuven with Javier, my roommate.

We met up with two of his friends from Madrid. They are spending next year at the university there for their ERASMUS. They were in the town to rent their apartment.

Gliding Week

Last week I took off a week of work to participate in the summer VKI gliding week. It was an incredible experience!

All pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.com/wcleveland/GlidingWeek

On Sunday we left the VKI at noon and began the drive to the middle of Germany, with Michaelangelo driving and Rosario navigating. Destination: Laucha



As soon as we crossed into German borders, the weather became very pretty. The countryside was filled with wind turbines. Also, it was very common to look up and spot one or two gliders in the air. I later asked about this, and was told that gliding is a very popular sport in Germany. Similar to the popularity of golf in the U.S.



We got there Sunday night (after ~7 hours of driving), just in time to watch the Eurocup final game: Germany vs. Spain. Spain went on to win the match.

The next morning we woke up and headed to the hanger, to discover it was completely packed with gliders. They had a LOT!



They didn't crash in there, that's just how they pack them in so that they can store so many. (The picture is actually after we've taken one or two out).

It wasn't long before we began flying. When I fly in the US, it's always done with aerotow: an airplane carries the glider up to ~1500-4000 feet and you can begin gliding. However, this is more expensive (aviation gasoline). The very common way in Germany is a tow using a winch.



It is an incredible ride up. It lasts for 10-15 seconds and you disconnect at ~250-400m.

In the ASK13 glider, getting ready for departure:



Most of my flights were in the ASK21, which is very similar to the PW-6 that I fly in Starkville.

The winch cable is 800-1200 m long, so it's quite the operation to launch. There is a vehicle which two cables get attached to and are driven to the flight line.



One cable is set to the side, the other attached to the plane. After the launch, another plane is made ready and launched with the second cable. They also had cars for ground towing of the planes from the landing site to the flight line. It was all very fast and efficient, when things worked.

Unfortunately, because of various circumstances (winch broken, too hot, wind awkward, etc), the number of flights was less than ideal. Even still, I had a lot of fun and managed to take a total of 15 flights. I began flying at MSU in October and had 18 flights before the week. It was very nice to nearly double my number of flights in one week. I am now able to control the plane nicely during all aspects of flight: take-off, turns, thermal-ing (using natural thermals of the hot air rising to stay up longer), and landing.

On Thursday we woke up at 4am in order to have sunrise flights at 5am. It was a lot of fun! The afternoon was too hot so we went kayaking on a nearby river.



Wednesday afternoon I took an aerobatic demo with the aerobatic flight instructor. As soon as we came off the winch, he dove to gain speed and started doing aerobatics: loops, rolls, clover leafs, humpties, and everything else that I could imagine.

My last and longest flight (on Sunday) was one hour and thirteen minutes and we reached a peak altitude of 1100m. My instructor helped with the thermal-ing. Also, after we had reached the peak altitude, I asked the instructor if I could try flying a loop. I had the aerobatic instructor with me again and he is a fantastic pilot. He said the loop was the simplest pattern to fly and let me do it: you push forward, gain speed to 200km/h and then just pull back. The trick is you have to commit to it and keep pulling back so you don't get stuck part of the way through. It was really easy and very cool. The rest of the flight was spent with us discussing aerobatics and him demoing them for me. (We had to tighten our seat belts super tight in the air because of the maneuvers). We did one, a negative loop, that was quite painful. Normaly for a loop, you dive and then pull back. I asked him if we could dive first into the loop. He said it was painful but he would show me. We dove down and you are pulled out of your seat, with all of the blood going up to your head. I could feel it for the next hour or so. During this flight, everytime we went in and got ready to land (around 250m), we ran into another thermal and went back up into the air. It was incredible.

All pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.com/wcleveland/GlidingWeek

Brussels, Antwerp

This past weekend was fun. I spent Friday going into Brussels and walking around with my roommate Javier. He was meeting a German friend who is an Au Pair in Paris. We walked around, ate dinner, and I practiced a bit of French.

Saturday I woke up and went to Antwerp with Vagelis and one of his Greek friends. I really enjoyed the city. We walked around a lot. They seemed to have a lot of festivals going on. I'm not really sure what most of them were about. One was an Indian festival with people dressed up and things for sale. It was pretty cool to see.

We also went to a naval museum that explained how Anterwerpen was the departure point for many Europeans leaving for America. The museum was pretty cool.

A few photos from Antwerp: http://picasaweb.google.com/wcleveland/Antwerp

Sunday I woke up, packed, and headed to the VKI. We departed for Germany at noon. More to come on that!! :-)