Beaches. And nothing else.

Last weekend a few of us went to Nice, France to hang out at the beach and have a legitimate vacation. We also took a nice little trip to Monte Carlo to check out the casino and cards and to pretend like we actually had money. Being a legitimate vacation, I have no elaborate narrative for this trip. We didn't go to see museums, we didn't go to explore a city's history, and we didn't go to further our education in any way whatsoever. We went to lay on beaches. And succeeded. So instead of reading through my delightfully witty anecdotes, sit back, relax and enjoy the pictures.

Though I would suggest listening to this while viewing:




Alternatively, you can just loop this actual video I took of the beach in Nice, though it's significantly shorter and having just uploaded it I realize that there's really no way to tell it's actually from Nice and not any random beach anywhere. Just trust me on this, it seemed like a good idea at the time:




Now then.

First views of the Mediterranean from the plane. Very promising.

And this is where we spent most of our time. Gorgeous.

Linnea and I lounging

Beach babes. Nancy is a babe too, just snoozing

Dinner. That was a freaking mussel genocide, they didn't stand a chance

Beach at night

And now for a quick trip to Monte Carlo!

Landscape

Attention Tourists: Please Wear Some Goddamned Clothes. Thank You - Monte Carlo

The harbor. These weren't even the biggest yachts

Monte Carlo had a lot of sweet cars as you can imagine. This is only the first

The world famous Monte Carlo Casino. I'm sure 007 is in there right now at the Baccarat tables, but no way they would let us in

Nancy and Mariella in front of the Monte Carlo. Nancy is pulling a classic Nancy here

A closer view of the awesome convex mirror in front of the casino

Monte Carlo coastline

View of the harbor

Another shot of the coastline from the harbor

Mariella, Linnea, Nancy and myself

Awesome Audi

Linnea's Smurf and bubble gum flavored ice cream cone. Contrary to popular belief, Linnea is, in fact, six years old


Ok, too much walking. Let's go back to Nice and just lay on the beach all day.


Nancy practicing for her Sports Illustrated debut. Or trying to cross the rocky beach without wrecking her feet, I can never remember

With no LEGOs available, I was forced to use rocks. With no table available, I was forced to use Linnea.

One last shot of the beach

Ok one more

A Fun Mess of Budapest, Graz and Munich (Again)

It's been a while since I updated, I know, sorry. I've been busy. In 8 days I went on trips to three different countries. First up: Budapest!

Beautiful Budapest is the capital of Hungary. It consists of two half cities on either side of the Danube, Buda on the west and Pest on the east. They have awesome goulash. Rolling in after a quick train ride from Vienna, we quickly hunted down a restaurant. The desserts were pretty solid:


Then for sightseeing.

Royal Palace

One of the lions on the Chain Bridge connecting Buda and Pest, with the Royal Palace in the background

Me up on the fortifications in the Castle District overlooking Pest, Parliament in the background

One of the huge towers at the Fisherman's Bastion

Beautiful view of Parliament, it was a stormy, overcast day and there was a tiny gap in the clouds that was shining right on it

View of Fisherman's Bastion from the front

Danube and Chain Bridge

Eagle statue in front of Buda Castle, looking over the river

Me in the Labyrinth, which was awesome (and mildly terrifying, it was pitch black down there) until halfway through when we realized it was basically constructed completely for tourists and was not real at all. Super.

The next morning, before our train ride in the afternoon, I went to go check out the large park on the outskirts of Pest. However, I was immediately distracted by a Hungarian street fair I found. It reminded me a lot of street fairs I had been to in Seattle, only... more Hungarian.

MEAT

Marzipan

Not pictured: The awesome Hungarian wine booth with the woman who barely spoke English but was super excited to talk to me about what I thought of Budapest and kept feeding me wine

Good times


Onto Graz!

Graz is back in good 'ol Austria. It's about where Schwarzenegger grew up, though unfortunately the locals don't sound like him when speaking English. I know, I was upset also.

Old clock tower on a hill overlooking the city

Me, in dire need of a haircut

Stairs leading down from the hill

This guy was surfing in the river. Apparently you can do that.

From the Obama Bar. Really awesome picture

Schloss Eggenburg. Yes, that is a peacock. There were a ton there

Weird little bastards

Last, and never least, we once again have Munich. You may remember from a previous blog entry that Munich is basically my favorite place on the damn planet. One of my big goals for this trip was to watch a German World Cup match in Germany. This is my dream being realized. I seriously made a day trip to Munich to watch Germany BRUTALIZE Australia 4-0. It was an amazing game, made much cooler by the fact that I was watching it in a 700 year old beer cellar:

Great place to watch a game, right?

I also determined from this trip that my German speaking skills are heightened if any of the following conditions are met:

- I am drunk
- I am drinking beer out of a liter mug
- I am talking to cute German girls

And when all three are met when I'm in a beer garden watching football, that certainly doesn't hurt.

So there's a good summary of the last couple weeks. It's really weird to think that I only have about a week left in Vienna... then I go on my absurd three week tour of the rest of Europe, including at least a few days in Paris where I'll see KATIE!

Tomorrow I take a plane to Nice for the weekend, which should be amazing. There's a good chance I'll head to Monaco for a day also. Time to work on my tan and show my nuclear-white Norwegian skin who's boss. Bonjour, bitches.

Tübingen, Iron Man Shots, and Eurovision Excellence

Long, long ago, there was this awesome little German girl named Jane who came to Seattle on a study abroad program. She lived with friends of mine, and the times were good. Seeing as how I just happened to be close by, I decided it would be an awesome idea to go see her and check out her college town. I jumped on a train and made way for Germany. Seven and a half hours later, I disembark and see Jane waiting for me on the platform. With a couple beers ready to go. I should note here that Jane is awesome, this will be repeated later.

Tübingen is a total German college town. It really reminds me of Bellingham, except, well, really German.


A good chunk of the residents are students, which leads to a really friendly, laid back atmosphere. With lots of beer of course. Jane made sure I experienced as much German culture as possible, starting off with a fantastic German breakfast:

Weißwurst, awesome mustard and a pretzel. Sure beats cereal

Jane, my lovely German hostess

She took me around town and showed me the University. She calls this the Back to the Future building, for obvious reasons:

1.21 GIGAWATTS?!

The town itself is really nice. Here's an eating area right on the little bits of river diverted through the city:


And castle! Where Jane studies. Marginally better than Odegaard and Kane I think:



And for those of you familiar with Goethe and Faust, this should be rather entertaining:

Literally, "Goethe puked here." The man leaves his mark everywhere. Truly an idea to live by

There's a nice river flowing through the city that is a source of lots of entertainment. You can rent the little boats (which Jane tells me are extremely hard to steer... from personal experience) and float down the river. People can grill in the boats too and have a bbq on the water. Excellent. Every year there is a competition where teams of people race the boats down the river and whoever wins gets to throw a massive party where they're given thousands of liters of beer. The losers get kicked into the river and have to organize the event the following year.


Sounds like fun to me.

Jane and I at the river

Beautiful riverside

Notice the window that has a different color in the left building? The owner lost that room in a bet and joined it with the room in the next building over. Smashed down the wall between them and completely walled off the entrance from the other building. The different window color is to notify the fire brigade to the correct building to go to in order to get to that room:


Like any good college town, Tübingen has a lot of bars. Jane made sure to show me as many as possible. The, continuing with her trend of being awesome...

Iron Man shots. Yes. If you have to ask, you can't afford it

We also went to the Monastery on the other side of town, with its rather idyllic hillside view:

Salzburg, eat your heart out

Well this is a pretty cool dining hall

The garden

This place is OLD. We discovered a number of carvings on the walls of the garden. Turns out that even in the 1600s people tagged buildings. It's extremely strange seeing something carved into a wall saying "I was here" and then seeing the date of the carving is something like 1651.

People hundreds of years ago also got bored and defaced things

In addition to checking out the town proper, Jane showed me two very important aspects of German culture: Tatort and the Eurovision Song Competition. Tatort is a crime show similar to CSI and Law and Order, but it has been a staple of German life for 40 years. It has been running every other Sunday since 1970. It's so well-loved because it keeps things realistic (no CSI-style "enhance that security camera footage, I think we can catch the reflection off his retinas to identify the suspect" crap) and it takes place in various cities around Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Great for locals to see their city being the subject of a national show. Everyone watches the show in their houses or in bars, it's a great community activity.

It was slightly outclassed, however, by the Eurovision Song Contest.

This contest is similar to American Idol, but it includes entries from every country in and around Europe. It's a matter of national pride for many people in Europe. Any European will tell you that the music is awful (and I can tell you that 90% of it really is) but it's great fun to watch in a bar with rowdy people who cheer and jeer at the contestants. A good number of the songs are, while not necessarily really good, extremely catchy and funny. Here are some highlights:



Germany's winning entry, Lena with Satellite:



Germany got dead last in 2009, and boy do Germans hate being last. They carefully engineered their entry this year, hosting their own competition to determine who would represent the country. They then wrote three songs, which people voted on. Satellite won. It's incredibly poppy and Lena's forced English accent is rather hilarious, but the song is catchy as all holy hell (it's been stuck in my head for days. DAYS.) and Europe seemed to love it. Congrats, Deutschland.



My personal favorite, from France, Jesse Matador with "Allez Ola Ole":



This is what I consider to be Europop at its absolute best. When I think of European music, I think of this. Exactly. I imagine I will hear this in clubs when I go to Paris. It has a good beat, dancing, ass-slapping, pyrotechnics, acrobatics, everything. It's completely ridiculous and awesome. The comment at the end of the video captures it perfectly: "Oh go on, admit it, you enjoyed that."



Turkey's rather awesome entry, "We Could Be The Same" by maNga:



This is probably the only song of the night that I could actually imagine playing on the radio. Of course Satellite is everywhere now, but that's really more of a sign of its popularity and not quality.



Then Belarus gets the award for "Painfully Awkward" with its entry, "Butterflies"

(If you can't make it through the song, skip to about 2:00 to see the uncomfortable)



Oh god, the wings... the wings...



However, nothing can top the winner of 2006, Lordi with Finland's "Hard Rock Hallelujah"



Well that was just f#@king awesome.


Excellent way to round out my trip. Thanks Jane. I'm excited to watch Eurovision next year, I'll have to get some friends and beers together so we can see what other countries do to try and dethrone Germany. I think Finland just needs to pull some crazy metal stuff again, it worked really well 4 years ago, and it's way, way more awesome than

"I went everywhere for you
I even did my hair for you
I bought new underwear, light blue
And I wore ‘em just the other day"

Genius, Germany, genius.