David's Blog

Just down the road from where you clean your rugs was a really really really tall crane extending over the sea, where for 80 euros, you could jump off of it tied to a rubber band. My health insurance is supposed to work in Europe too, but why find out. I'll just make a video of someone else screaming really loud.

Labels: finland, helsinki

Posted by David at 11:56 PM | Share this post on:   facebook   del.icio.us   digg   StumbleUpon     | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

Where does one go to clean a rug? In Helsinki you go to this spot on the shoreline equipped with sturdy tables and drying racks. Place a rug on the table, use detergent and water, then let it dry. Wouldn't it be easier to use a steam cleaner or carpet cleaner spray at home? I guess not. This facility seems to be quite popular.

Labels: finland, helsinki

Posted by David at 11:42 PM | Share this post on:   facebook   del.icio.us   digg   StumbleUpon     | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

Advertising has found its way into everything. In addition to all the usual places, it's on the back of receipts, it's in the box that Amazon shipped me, and AMD found space for their logo on Lance Armstrong's butt. I thought opportunities for signage were pretty much saturated. What else could exist that no one's thought of? ... Napkins! Every time you ever used a blank napkin to wipe your mouth, blow your nose, or whatever else you do with napkins, some corporation out there missed out on a perfectly good branding opportunity. And every eating establishment that ever provided free napkins, totally missed out on a subsidy. It's a win-win situation for everybody. But what does a Sony Vaio laptop have to do with food? At this restaurant, there were a couple Vaios near the entrance for people to play around with, so it's not totally irrelevant.

Labels: ads, finland, food, helsinki

Posted by David at 11:28 PM | Share this post on:   facebook   del.icio.us   digg   StumbleUpon     | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

I apologize for not providing a picture of something (actually, two things) you won't see in America. It didn't occur to me to take pictures of the sidewalk or a price tag. Helsinki, like any city near the arctic circle, gets very cold. But it is also a very productive and advanced city. The streets have to be open, trams have to run, and people have to walk around. Solution: in the city center, there's heating coils under the streets and sidewalks. Don't plow it, melt it! Feel that radiant heat in your feet as you walk along in the sub zero temperatures. Coincidentally, Los Angeles also has a system for keeping the streets warm and dry in the winter with radiant heat ....from the sun!
Secondly, in America, you won't see chicken for $9 per pound. Yup, at 15 euros per kilogram, the good folks of Finland (and Sweden too) pay a huge price for chicken. Beef is also expensive, but not much more than chicken. Must be more cows than chickens that far north.

Labels: finland, helsinki

Posted by David at 12:16 AM | Share this post on:   facebook   del.icio.us   digg   StumbleUpon     | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

Nokia isn't the only big company in Finland. There's also Kone, one of the world's largest elevator manufacturers. Seeing as how I've never been given a choice in elevator brands, I wouldn't know a Kone from an Otis. The next time you're in an elevator, take a close look somewhere, it might be made in Finland. Their corporate headquarters, therefore, should be a shrine to elevators. Here you have it. 5 elevator shafts, glass walls and doors, completely transparent, with all the innard exposeds to the main entrance.

Labels: finland, helsinki

Posted by David at 11:13 PM | Share this post on:   facebook   del.icio.us   digg   StumbleUpon     | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

I went to Finland not knowing much about it, except of course that it is the homeland of Nokia, their female president looks like Conan O'Brien, and they are really good ski jumpers. The first thing I learned/observed is that Helsinki has really nice architecture. It's not like Amsterdam where every building has the same style and is from the same time period. Every building in Helsinki has it's own character, and they're still building more. This church is one of the most prominent buildings because it's on an elevated mound on top of a hill. You can see it from everywhere. There's a large open square in front where a military/police marching band was playing on this day. The statue in this square is not of a great Finn, it's of Czar Alexander of Russia, and it's been there since the 1800s. This statue has seen St. Petersburg renamed Leningrad and back again. Usually the fall of a ruler or dynasty leads to the fall of their statues. I would bet there is no place in Russia or the rest of the world with a statue of a czar. The moral of this story is, be very nice to a neighboring country (or more accurately, grant autonomy to a region you control) because when your own country revolts, your neighboring country will remember you fondly. This statue also serves as a wonderful bird perch. A bird, which can be seen in the picture, was sitting on top of his head the entire time I was there.

Labels: finland, helsinki

Posted by David at 10:42 PM | Share this post on:   facebook   del.icio.us   digg   StumbleUpon     | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

After being in Amsterdam for a month, I was not aware of any 11 story buildings. In a pancake flat city, surely something like that would be noticeable from everywhere. But there is one and a restaurant/club called Club 11 occupies the 11th floor. It's not exactly easy to find, but it's past the train station in the direction of the well known chinese boathouse restaurant. The 11 story building was used as a museum before and now looked like there wasn't much inside, and the outside didn't look too nice either. But sure enough as promised, there was a restaurant, with a pretty nice view of the train station and the river. You can't see most of the city because of another buildlng and construction cranes blocking the view, which is probably also why from the city, you can't really see this building. There was nothing special about the food, but worth a visit for its location.

Labels: amsterdam, food, netherlands

Posted by David at 5:35 PM | Share this post on:   facebook   del.icio.us   digg   StumbleUpon     | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

I locked my bike at the Central Station and when I came back several hours later, the bike was gone. I had just had a conversation with someone about how bicycle thefts were way down, and there was no way anyone would steal this bike in this place at this time of day. In spite of a multi-level bicycle parking structure (shown left), there is a shortage of bike racks at the station. I assume it's a safe bet to do what other people are doing, so I locked the bike to a pole next to the bike racks. Two other people did that. I did it too. Turns out you can't do that and a bike shop right next to the station gave me info on where impounded bikes are taken. Whether it was there or not, I had nothing to lose to check it out. I hate losing my own stuff, and more than that, I hate losing someone else's stuff. Luckily, the bike arrived at the impound lot right when I did. I signed the paperwork. Yes, the rainbow colored ladies bike is mine. Thanks to the well marked bike paths, I found my way back, but it took over an hour. It would have been a lot more comfortable if I had my road bike with clipless pedals. Before I left the impound lot I had to take a picture of this field of bikes. I've never seen this many bikes in one place....must be the size of a football field. Something tells me a lot of bikes go unclaimed.

Labels: amsterdam, cycling, netherlands

Posted by David at 11:59 AM | Share this post on:   facebook   del.icio.us   digg   StumbleUpon     | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

This is a cat named Mona that was staying in the same apartment as me in Amsterdam. While sleeping, it was the cutest cat in the world, as you can clearly see. While awake, it made a point to go exactly where I didn't want it to go. For example, walking along clothes on a drying rack with really sharp claws or trying to walk into the refrigerator as I'm closing the door. It also liked to make very abrupt movements. Like darting across the room right in front of you especially when you didn't expect it. Not knowing anything about animal behavior, I did a google search for why cats rub against you, which this cat did a lot of. Answer: to make you smell like the cat so that other cats know you're taken. In other words, it's marking you as it's territory. Not of all my behavioral questions were answered on the internet. For example, why does this cat love side-load washing machines:

You may have noted that I only refer to animals using gender neutral pronouns, such as "it" and "this cat". While there is no doubt that animals are female or male, I feel that the terms "she" and "he" are very personifying.

Labels: amsterdam, animals, netherlands

Posted by David at 10:49 PM | Share this post on:   facebook   del.icio.us   digg   StumbleUpon     | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

A very common touristy activity is a canal tour. Unless you want to bike a lot, this is the best way to see most of the city's highlights in about an hour. A number of companies run these tours on very low boats so they can fit under the bridges. But the top of the boats are glass so the view is not obstructed. The tours are less than 7 euros and leave every 15 minutes. If you walk out of the central station down the main street, Damrak, the boats will be on your left. The only annoying thing is that all the audio is played in 4 languages. French, English, Dutch, and German. Depending on the timing and your language, you may be hearing things too early or too late. To the left you get a nice perspective of 4 parallel bridges. To the right you see a sampling of the narrow houses along the streets in the city center. If you look closely you can see in all the houses, especially the one on the right, that each floor gets progressively shorter. The windows on the top floor are much shorter than the windows on the ground floor. If you're walking along the street below and look up, you would just think that the distance and perspective makes the higher floors look shorter and shorter. Was this a way for the builder to trick the buyer? Do shorter people live on the higher floors? Another thing to note is the huge amount of window space....how else do you bring in the furniture? Not up the insanely steep stairs.

Labels: amsterdam, netherlands

Posted by David at 10:12 PM | Share this post on:   facebook   del.icio.us   digg   StumbleUpon     | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

Like every other Dutch city, Leiden has canals and a big church. It's most well known for it's university which was founded in the late 16th century. For a college town with around 250,000 people, it's seemed remarkably quiet on this summer day. There were plenty of people around, but it lacked the hustle and bustle of other Dutch cities. No big buildings (big meaning over 5 stories), few cars, few tram/bus lines. Mostly narrow streets suitable for walking and biking. Given it's size and population, it must be at least 5 times denser than Santa Monica. How do they cope with all the traffic?...um, there's no traffic.
In the center of the city there's one big hill (man made as a fortress, I think) called De Burcht. There's a short tower on top from which you can get a nice 360 degree view of the city. Lacking a skyline and any other geographical features, you mainly see the variety of rooftops and the easily recognizable church that's about 10 times bigger than anything else.

Labels: netherlands

Posted by David at 12:12 AM | Share this post on:   facebook   del.icio.us   digg   StumbleUpon     | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

I can't say enough good things about the urban planning of european cities. Mixed residential and commercial buildings is the only way to have high density and effective public transport. But after seeing this in Paris, I decided that there are some exceptions. Namely, don't put a gas station on the ground floor of an apartment building. I'm no Erin Brokovitch, but if any kids live on that first floor of apartments, there's a good lawsuit brewing. Unless of course, the French secretly developed a form of uncarcinogenic gasoline that doesn't evaporate. When it comes to environmental issues, western europe thinks they're better than us. At least you won't see this in America. You also won't see these kinds of prices. This station charges 1.49 euros for 1 liter of unleaded. That works out to just over $7/gallon!!! Stop complaining!

Labels: france, paris

Posted by David at 4:31 PM | Share this post on:   facebook   del.icio.us   digg   StumbleUpon     | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

This cat is not dead. Like every other animal in western europe this summer, this one decided it's too hot to do anything else. Whether tied to a post outside a store, or hanging around Marie Antoinette's house, dogs and cats don't even bother standing. They're not sleeping, but you could run at them with really loud chainsaw and they wouldn't even blink their eyes.

Labels: animals, france, paris

Posted by David at 4:15 PM | Share this post on:   facebook   del.icio.us   digg   StumbleUpon     | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

When I think of 16th century Europe, I think about a lot of poor, sick, unhappy people. I didn't realize that kings and queens of the day squandered all their land's wealth on extragavant homes that even the most credit-unconscious American would think twice about. Unfortunately for those kings and queens, their dynasties were taken down, but their palace has long outlasted their reign. To the left is a chapel within the palace that has only recently been opened to the public. In this and every other room, there isn't a square inch of ceiling that isn't painted, decorated, or sculpted. It's not only the interior that's so extravagant; it's all the land around it that stretches so far, you can look to the horizon and see no other buildings. Just really nice gardens.
The French get made fun of over their lack of military victories, but this long hall (with really nice hardwood floors, by the way) is dedicated to paintings commemorating French victories. While none are recent, they did win their fair share back in the day.
Travel tips: 1. Get there early or get there late, but don't arrive around 10/11 AM, because in the summer, you could wait an hour just to get in and shade is not an option. 2. Around the corner from the palace, there's a nice little place to get lunch. The tip is, don't order the chicken and mayonnaise baguette sandwich. In fact, no matter where you are, never get something that says "and mayonnaise" in the name. That's because you expect some mayonaisse to be in any baguette sandwich. But if it's in the title, you're going to get way more of it than you want.
Left: Hall of Mirrors

Labels: france, museums, paris

Posted by David at 2:12 PM | Share this post on:   facebook   del.icio.us   digg   StumbleUpon     | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

Would you know that this is the back side of the Notre Dame? Everyone's familiar with the inside and the front side, but didn't seem to be too many tourists on this side. It's a great view of the flying butresses and there's a nice park behind it with plenty of shady trees and benches.
Everything is expensive for tourists. Within 3 blocks of this place in any direction, I'm sure you can grab a can of coke for $4, not to mention the souveniers. Interestingly though, entering the church is free. Hopefully they get a cut of the souveniers.
When you think about how wealthy France is versus how much it produces and how much it taxes, something doesn't add up. That is until you realize that France has more tourists than any other country. More foreigners go to France in a year than to the entire US. I was suprised about this, but it's true.

Labels: france, paris

Posted by David at 12:52 PM | Share this post on:   facebook   del.icio.us   digg   StumbleUpon     | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

I never heard of the D'Orsay museum before, but everyone else has, because there was a line to get in. And quite a few people were wearing Phonak jerseys seeing as how it was the day after the Tour finished. Between July 24 and 27th, Floyd Landis and Phonak were having really good publicity. It was so insanely hot outside, and so well air-conditioned on the inside. A great place to spend some time. Just like with the Louvre, I really liked the building and the way it's designed on the inside. It was once a train station and this is the central hall. When you first walk in and look up, it's a nice view. This photo is from a high point looking down. Most of the museum is paintings, especially impressionist paintings by the usual crew of famous painters: Van Gogh, Monet, Renoir, etc. This just so happens to be the kind of art I like to see. Except a still life of a dead fish.
I didn't really care for it aesthetically, but I felt compelled to take a picture. Did this guy run out of baskets of fruits or bouquets of flowers? Did someone commission this? Was it a joke? Every painting has a story, but since I don't like walking around a museum with a handheld audio tour thingy, I don't know the story. If you do, please post a comment.
I've said it before, I'll say it again, the layout of museums is not efficient. Take this gallery room for example. I applaud the guy/gal who was in charge of lighting, but let's examine the floor plan. There's painting on all 4 sides of the room and on both sides of the central partition running the length of the room. I must enter the room from one side and exit on the opposite side. I arrive at the opposite side after having only seen half the room. I walk back along the other side of the partition. I've now seen the whole room, but I'm back where I started. Does anyone else feel my pain? On the top floor there's a nice place to eat and from the outside there's an amazing view of the city. While the view is free, a half liter bottle of water costs 2.50 euros, which works out to about $25 a gallon.

Labels: france, museums, paris

Posted by David at 11:57 PM | Share this post on:   facebook   del.icio.us   digg   StumbleUpon     | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

How do you build something so big that it's tiring just to walk thru it? How do you get so much priceless art to fill up the inside? I didn't see it get built, I didn't see the moving trucks bring it all in, but it's there, and it's impressive. Even if it were entirely empty I would have enjoyed seeing it just as much. Whether there's paintings on the walls or not, the building and the rooms inside it are so big and so elaborate.
A few tips for going to the Louvre are:
1. bring exact change so you can buy tickets from a digital kiosk instead of the insanely long line.
2. Arrive underground through the subway/metro. If you come from above you're just in a longer line to get to the same place. There are two consecutive metro stops with similar names: "Louvre-Rivoli" and "Palais Royal - Musée du Louvre". To confuse tourists, the Louvre-Rivoli station is really fancy and looks like a museum. But the stop for the museum is actually Palais Royal - Musée du Louvre.
3. Pray that the Da Vinci code is not popular anymore. It's a made up story people, now get out of my way, so I can see the freakin painting.

Labels: france, museums, paris

Posted by David at 3:27 PM | Share this post on:   facebook   del.icio.us   digg   StumbleUpon     | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

I suppose this might exist, but haven't seen it before. Pizza delivery by scooter from a pizza place named Speed Rabbit Pizza. 14 euros for a small pizza, 5 euros for a bottle of grapefruit juice! Even in markets, food and beverages in Paris are expensive.

Labels: france, paris

Posted by David at 1:34 PM | Share this post on:   facebook   del.icio.us   digg   StumbleUpon     | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

It'll be a while before we know who goes into the history books as the 2006 Tour winner, but drug tests aside, I saw Floyd in Paris in yellow. I heard the star spangled banner played on the Champs Elysee for him. i saw the American flag raised above Spain and Germany. Combined with Lance's 7, that makes 8 years in a row of closing down the busiest street in Paris to play the American national anthem. France shows goodwill to us, and I think we should return the favor by playing La Marseillaise on the 405.

Chances are pretty good that an American won't be on that top spot for a while, and OLN doesn't show the whole podium ceremony, so I took video of it. I tried panning around 360 so you can see all the people from around the world who came to Paris to show their support for America and the War. Even though Google just paid $1.65 billion for YouTube, they're still letting me upload videos for free that you can watch without ads. The only difference between now and right before the first dot com bust, is that before the first dot com bust, free stuff had ads.

The final stage is a good one to spectate because they race about 6 laps of the Champs and you can see them twice per lap. After the race, every team is presented and does another lap holding flags and waving to the crowd. The avenue is so long (and tree lined) that it can accomodate all the people without being too far back (or exposed to sun). If you can get there early enough with a few other people, chairs, tape, and/or rope, you can really stake some prime territory. But you can't stake the finish line. That area has a grandstand only for sponsors/VIPs (pronounced by europeans as "vips", rhymes with tips, not "V-I-Ps").

Before the race gets to town, if you get bored standing next to a barrier on the sidewalk, your best bet is to find the jumbotron and watch the race. Then you can see that they're all going really slow, drinking champagne, shaking hands, being totally inconsiderate of me having to stand around in the 90 degree heat and humidity. How can you guys still be 60km from Paris?

When they do finally arrive, they don't dissappoint. These guys are fast.

There were too many photos to post them all here. Check out the photo gallery on flickr.

Labels: cycling, france, paris

Posted by David at 11:38 AM | Share this post on:   facebook   del.icio.us   digg   StumbleUpon     | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

Luckily, I encountered very little bad weather. But the few times it did rain, it poured.

Labels: amsterdam, netherlands

Posted by David at 11:36 AM | Share this post on:   facebook   del.icio.us   digg   StumbleUpon     | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

I'll be first in line to support the metric system in America. Can you tell me how many gallons are in a cubic foot? I didn't think so.

However I've discovered one case where using feet is best...Subway sandwiches. Trying to sell a 30 centimeter sub just doesn't make sense. Are you trying to say that you're a better value than the guy next door selling 29 centimeter subs? No. So if you can't say "foot long sub", do Europe a favor and sell a "whole" or a "half" just like every other baguette sandwich place.

Labels: food, netherlands, signs

Posted by David at 11:21 AM | Share this post on:   facebook   del.icio.us   digg   StumbleUpon     | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

We all know biking on cobbles is a very shaky experience. Now it's captured on video.

Labels: cycling, netherlands

Posted by David at 11:22 PM | Share this post on:   facebook   del.icio.us   digg   StumbleUpon     | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

Some kind of Chinese festival was going on in Groningen so the streets had a lot of red banners and red lanterns hung over them. Then there was this banner written in English and Chinese..."Groningen The Netherlands' Best Inner City". I'm sure this a case of literal translation gone wrong because I don't think Holland has inner cities by our definition. And if they did, would you really rank them or brag about being the best? Wouldn't the best inner city not be an inner city anymore?

Perhaps this refers more to geography. Could there be a separate ranking of outer cities or coastal cities? I really should have asked someone because this is going to be on my mind for a long time.

Labels: amsterdam, netherlands, signs

Posted by David at 11:17 PM | Share this post on:   facebook   del.icio.us   digg   StumbleUpon     | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

Groningen is the big city in the very north of the country. Typically Dutch, it has canals, narrow streets, narrow buildings, cobbles and lots of bikes. Aside from a university, I don't know how people ended up here. But they built a very nice city and if it weren't 2.5 hours from Amsterdam I would visit more often, but not during the winter because I'm sure everything is covered in a thick layer of ice.

There's a relatively well known musuem called the Groninger Museum that has various temporary exhibitions. On this day they had a lot of photography and random sculptures such as Kate Moss in some type of yoga position. If I had to summarize my visit to this museum with one picture it would be this series of silhouettes:

Labels: museums, netherlands

Posted by David at 11:02 PM | Share this post on:   facebook   del.icio.us   digg   StumbleUpon     | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

Nijmegen is a city about 90 minutes by train east of Amsterdam. It's less than 20 miles from the German border. By Dutch standards it's a big city and has the customary church tower in the center, but I'm sure you've never heard of it. There are two museums I was interested in. One was the national bicycle museum which was closed due to a music festival. Just because there's a music festival in town, you can't find one person to open the door and take my 6 euro admission? Next was the Valkhof Museum. Roman history and contemporary art are slightly more important than bicycles so they were open. There were a lot Roman artifacts since Nijmegen was one of the northermost outposts of the Roman empire and they claim to be the oldest Dutch city. My favorite part of the museum was the inside because it was air conditioned while outside was insanely hot and humid. Two people died the day before from walking too much.

My least favorite part of the museum (and this is a general rant against all museums) is the floor plan. Why can't there be one continuous flow through the museum? Would that be too easy? One rooms leads to two. One of those 2 leads to a third and fourth. When I'm done in the 4th room, I have to backtrack through rooms 3 and 2 to get to 1 which continues on to the rest of the exhibit!

I have mixed reactions to contemporary art. Some of it looks like nothing; some of it looks like crap. Some stuff looks interesting...but not interesting enough for me to have paid to see it. But every now and then, one of these modern creations impresses me.

This sculpture is called Falling Man.It's the artist's impression of what Michelangelo's David sculpture would look like if he was falling down. This really is a work of art, It's anatomically correct. It's a classical style. The only thing modern about it is the pose. Which made me wonder why aren't there more sculptures like this?

Labels: museums, netherlands

Posted by David at 10:35 PM | Share this post on:   facebook   del.icio.us   digg   StumbleUpon     | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

I don't know what the exact name for this is. It's an outdoor portable toilet. More specifically, it's a free standing, open air, 4 sided urinal.

Where you could ordinarily fit only one porto-pottie, you can fit 4 urinals. I have to assume it exists elsewhere in Europe, but so far I've only seen them in Holland at public events such as bike races and music festivals.

In general, public restrooms are not free and not where you need them, so this a welcome sight if you're a male with a number 1 on your mind. What if you have other needs and/or are a woman? You'll just have to settle for something with a bit more privacy.

Labels: netherlands

Posted by David at 10:18 PM | Share this post on:   facebook   del.icio.us   digg   StumbleUpon     | Permalink | Comments | links to this post