Vienna (or Wien)

We stayed in Vienna for only 3 days, but we got a good glimpse of the city.  If I went back I'd be sure to see some music, since that's what I really missed out on this time.  The buildings are impressive, the Belvedere Garden was amazing, even in winter, and we went to a cool museum, The House of Music.

The first day we went to the House of Music.  There were exhibits for composers, the Philharmonic Orchestra, the Science of Sound, and Modern Ways of Making Sounds.

Marcio in the Sound Brain room - crazy place.

Take off shoes and scan hand to calibrate...

Then the device reads your motions and generates sound based on them.
Wow.

After that we saw the museum of an artist/architect there.  Finally we went to the gardens at the Belvedere.

Moholt vs. Weird Architectural Drainpipe

The Belvedere Gardens

Marcio ice skating in front of the City Hall.  Sweet.

We left Vienna by train and slept one night in Budapest before catching a flight back to Eindhoven.  Then we took a bus, then a train to get back to Delft!  We met Aline here, and that's where I am now!

Tomorrow more of the gang shows up (Bojan, Shirin, and Isa), which kind of marks the beginning of the semester for me.  We've got to start Winter School on the 30th.  Here we go!

Budapest

From Delft I took a train to Eindhoven station then a bus to the airport, and finally a plane to Budapest, Hungary.  It's really a beautiful city.  The Danube cuts it in half; on one side there the huge, ornate parliament building, and on the other there a castle up on a limestone hill.  Connecting the two is an impressively carved cable bridge.

Monastary in the rocks

Moholt and the City (looking from Buda to Pest side)

Moholt finds love

St Matthaius Cathedtal

Me at the Castle (Buda Side) 

The Buda-side Castle District

The city was beautiful, but one of my favorite things in Budapest was the caving.  The city lies on sediment from the river, which overlies old limestone from the Tethys Sea.  That limestone is where Marcio and I went caving.

Crawling through the caves

Marcio in the caves

After the caving it was off to Vienna, the last new city on our list!

Oh, My Belgium!

Jose Ruben lives in Ghent, so we went there to see him.  We spent a few days in that city, seeing the town and drinking the beer.  Yum :)

Me at the Ghent Castle

The cathedral from the Belfry

Moholt learning to drink beer

 We also spent a day in Bruges, which is absolutely beautiful.  It's tiny, too, so you can see it all in a day!

Bruges Tower 1

Bruges Tower 2

Alex in Bruges

Moholt's Castle
A little girl ran up and tried to steal him while I took this photo.

Finally, we spent a day in Brussels so Marcio could head down to Paris in the morning (I went back to Delft).

As for food, they have a lot of French Fries (and other fried stuff) in Belgium.  However, the best part was having Belgian waffles, of course!  They'll smother then in warm chocolate if you ask, too :)

Moholt vs. Burger & Fries

The Classic Belgian Waffle

Green Apple Waffle.  Wow.

And from there it was off to Budapest!

Delft at last!

When I arrived in Delft, I still had all my things, so I had to trek to the hostel carrying around 50 kg (which is a lot for you English-units folk).  That done I was free to wander around the old city center and canals, then the University.

The University Library

Maritime, Mechanical, & Materials Engineering Building
Yeah; it has it's own canal.

Canal in Delft
Those are giant Harry Potter Snitches up there,
and they light up in gold & silver at night. 

I spent a few days here before continuing on to Belgium with Marcio to visit Jose Ruben.

Oh, Amsterdam

We arrived in Amsterdam just after the New Year and settled in a hotel near Museumplein, in the south of the city.  That's where the Rijksmuseum and Van Gogh Museum are, about 30 min walking from the center with all it's Coffee Shops and Red-Lit Windows, for those who've never been there.  Once again we did a lot of wandering and exploring.

I don't actually have a lot of photos from this trip, but I was able to scrounge together a few from Lisa's collection.  One of the coolest things was the Troppenmuseum (cultural stuff), and it's definitely worth a visit, even though I don't have any good photos.

Lisa - 1
Tree - 0

At the monument on the central plaza

After Lisa headed back to California, I stayed a couple more days on my own.  I walked around a couple museums and parks and stayed in a hostel in the city center, which was a lot more wild than the south-side hotel.

Beautiful Canals in Amsterdam 

Moholt vs. Iron Velociraptor

Playground and greenhouse.
Find the Moose!

Note where the cables from this light post go...

Finally, on 11 January, I made my first trip to Delft.

Viva la France!

Lisa and I went to Paris to visit with Brian and Ines for New Year's.  We climbed the Eiffel Tower, walked through the Louvre, and visited the Pantheon, Luxembourg Gardens, Notre Dame, Sacre Cour, and Montmatre.  And that was just the city!

Lisa, Alex, Brian, & Ines at the Eiffel Tower 

Moai - one of the lesser known statues in the Louvre Collection

The Arc de Triomphe

From there we went up to Blonville (in Normandy) to spend New Year's Eve at Ines's family's summer home.  It as beautiful, if a bit gloomy, and there was a really neat WWII German gun entrenchment site up on the nearest hill.  We also walked to the Zero Meridian.

The Blonville House 

Where the Seine meets the Atlantic
(from the old German bunkers)

The meeting of East and West

After New Year's, we came back to Paris for a couple days then headed north to Amsterdam!

Exams

Oh, my!  It's been a while!

I stopped writing when Exams began.  I had 4 exams with an average of about 3 days between each.  In Trondheim, there are only 4 hours of daylight in December, so I spent much of my time studying in the dark hours of the day.  It was pretty rough.

I finished the exams, though!  And now I know I passed as well.  A few hours after my last exam, Lisa arrived in Trondheim!!!  We did lots of walking around (when it was daylight) and made delicious food for the holidays.

Hiking by Trondheimfjorden

Lisa crossing the gateway to the fortress overlooking Trondheim

After Christmas it was off to Paris!