sethbc’s (infrequent) blog…

At this very moment, I am on a train across Germany to Köln (Cologne). I don’t actually have internet access on the train, but I figure now is as good a time as any for me to write down my thoughts. On the train from Budapest to München I got a sleeper car. It was actually kind of expensive (21.000 HUF or about 105 USD). The train car was alright, it wasn’t really anything special though. I think I’ll probably opt for the 2nd class seats on those night trains unless I really want to get the sleeper. Right now however, we’re on one of the ICE trains in Germany. This thing is practically a work of art! It is beautiful and modern, and the 1st class cabin is absolute luxury. Right now we’re cruising through some mountains, I’m not realy sure what region we’re in. I think we’re somewhere between Ulm and Stuttgart. Regardless, we’re flying along at 157 km/h. Anyway, from Köln, we’re headed to Bruxelles to meet my mom and a colleague of hers from work. We’re going to spend a couple of days in Bruxelles, and then take the Eurostar back with them to London. After that the trip is a little more vague. We’re definitely going to go to Paris, and I’d like to go to Amsterdam and Luxembourg. I’d like to get in touch with Deborah in Paris, and maybe some CLS people if they are over there. That will probably round out our first excursion. I’m sure I’ll put some more info up on that when we’ve done more. I’ll tell you one thing though, my passport is going to be awfully full of stamps when I’m done here!

I haven’t been uploading any photos recently, I’ve definitely been negligent in my duties. Sorry, the last couple of days have really been pretty whirlwind. Let me give a little recap. We arrived on Friday, and stayed at the dorm a couple of nights. The dorm was really far away from central Pest, so we wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. On Monday we signed a contract for an apartment. The apartment itself is rather small. Its pretty much a studio with a separate kitchen and bathroom, but there is a loft upstairs with a second bed. The bed upstairs isn’t very comfortable, but if anyone wants to come and visit, t hey are more than welcome to it! The real attraction is the view. I’ve got some incredible luck with views of famous landmarks across rivers. Last summer when I lived in the shoe-box with Jackie we had a beautiful view of Notre Dame, and this year I have a gorgeous view of Buda Castle.

The other thing we did on Monday was get half finished with the stuff at CEU. We can’t register or anything yet, because they are still in their first module (from which we don’t take any classes). We didn’t yet get our CEU email addresses though. I’m hoping we’ll do that some time next week when we get back. Anyway, we moved in on Tuesday, handled our Eurail stuff yesterday, and got the train at 20:25 (that is 25 minutes after 20 O’clock).

I’m certainly going to be thinner after this whole trekking across Europe thing. I love the food over here, but the bag I’m carrying is pretty heavy, and I find I just don’t eat as much over here. Right now I’m at 90 kg, and I’m aiming for about 80 kg, thought I’m not really doing anything to get there. I’m just hoping thats where I end up . Maybe I’ll get down to a good cycling weight while I’m over here. I definitely wish I had my bike here, its just beautiful. I was thinking of possibly getting a crappy $100 bike in Budapest and riding it around. We’ll have to see.

In other news, I’m wearing a watch now. It’s just my old Nike watch, and it’s having some difficulties, so I’m going to have to get a new one. I want a digital watch, and I really like the Suunto ones I’ve seen, but I’m not sure I need something with all those features (or that expensive). Anyway, If anyone has any recommendation on a good, sturdy, full featured digital watch to pick up, please let me know.

Last but not least, I’m learning how to program in Cocoa while I’m on the trains. So far, Objective-C is an interesting language, but I’ve come across some surprises in reading the docs. The language doesn’t support overloading of operators! There are some other interesting design decisions that were made in Objective-C. Maybe I’ll go over them sometime later. Its like dejá vu sitting here reading coding docs and listening to In Search of Sunrise 3.

Anyway, I’m going to read some more docs. I’ll try and post when I can, and when I can’t post, I’ll try and blog by hand and upload the entries when I have a stable net connection.