Aalborg Carnival

Closing out a hectic month of travel, my last destination was the furthest north I've ever gone in Denmark: Aalborg. Dropping in for a day to participate in Carnival, which quite reminded me of Bay to Breakers in San Francisco, just without the runners and without the nudity. Floats, everybody in costume, everybody drinking, and public urination abound. The festivities were tempered a bit by poor weather, but at least we escaped the downpour that was expected.

This is the mother ship of our group. It was basically a bar on top of a truck.

My friend, Peden, getting smokes from a parrot

I won't identify these guys, but they are supposedly a couple of Vestas' best and brightest. The Danes think they know how to do everything the right way, but I have to say that the Dutch have the bathroom situation at large street parties down better - tons of outdoor urinals for the guys, porto-potties for the girls. In Aalborg, bushes, parking garages, alleyways, storefronts - everything is fair game, for both guys and girls.

Aalborg on a calmer, less booz-filled environment. The next morning, the streets had been cleaned up, though it often still smelled like pee. Thank goodness I don't live in Aalborg.

The Stranger Side of Paris

From Brussels, I hopped on a train to Paris, to meet up with my good friend from Yale, Sucheng, who was passing through on his way to Vietnam. A few things stood out - despite being the middle of the workweek, at 11PM there streets and cafes were still packed. The city was so vibrant, it was unbelievable. Second, French food really is that good. It was a huge disappointment to come home to a bare kitchen, only able to scrape together some rice and corn.

Since everybody already knows what Paris looks like, I'm going to skip all the touristy photos, except for a few:

Here is Sucheng and I in front of Notre Dame. Proof that we did indeed meet in Paris.

Manuel, a guy I met in the Netherlands a few weeks ago that lives in Paris, brought us to this restaurant that specializes in duck. For lunch, we had duck foie gras and duck leg fried in its own fat. Absolutely delicious. Note here that Sucheng is striking the classic Asian picture pose. I think he's spent too long in Hong Kong.

A gang of classic French cars. They all drove off together soon after this picture.

Onto the weirder and more interesting things we saw in Paris:

An interesting bar we went to was the Luche Libre, a bar with actual amateur wrestling in the basement. For 5 euros, we got quite a show.

In front of Notre Dame, I ran into these rollerbladers that were jumping over a high bar



In front of the Musee de L'armee, we saw these guys playing polo on bikes. Why hasn't anyone thought of this back in the States?



I hate museums, but I did see one art exhibit in Paris - Monumenta, Anish Kapoor's temporary exhibit at the Grand Palais. The video hardly captures the immense scale of the exhibit but it is at least a bit better than a picture. Think a football field-sized red fabric bubble that you walk into, semi-transparent so the light inside shifts from a bright to soft red glow as the sun moves in and out of the clouds. The curves and lines made me feel like I was falling into Alice in Wonderland's tunnel. Here's and example:

Brussels w/o the Mussels

Last week, I started headed off to Brussels for some meetings with external consultants that we were to receive some sales pitches from. We're opening up a new representation office for EU affairs, and these folks were to help out with getting our office up and running. This trip was virtually exactly 10 years after I last visited Brussels, when I came after college graduation on a big European backpacking trip. This time, I had distinctly better hotel accommodations, and instead of a backpack, I carried around a work bag.

Brussels was kind of a Jekyl and Hyde city - some parts, like the old city center, and the EU Parliament and Commission side, were very nice. The other parts...bleh. Dirty, kind of run down. And, they all spoke French.

Here's a Coke machine I saw at the airport. In Brussels, the Manneken Pis statue - a little boy peeing - is a beloved symbol. You see it everywhere, on postcards, trinkets, even candy. Here, I wonder if Coke means that tasting "the Coke side of Belgium" means tasting Coke that somebody has peed into. Yum.

Royal Palace. One of these places everywhere I go.

On the way down to the old city center.
The European Commission. We didn't have any meetings there, but it was still cool to see.

Touristy part of the old city center with all the restaurants. We found a great locals steak restaurant for a 100 euro meal (on the company!). Turns out mussels were out of season, so this restaurant refused to serve them, even though many of the touristy places still were.

Orange Crush

There are certain things in life that you just "know when you know". You can't fully describe how you know it's right for you, but you can just tell. The moment when you have found the right major to study in college. The moment you meet your future wife. Or, the moment you've found home. I knew the first one right away. The second, well, all I can say is that I am not married yet. For the third, I know it to be the Netherlands - it did not take me long to realize that it was where I wanted to make my home. I am going to make it happen sometime in the near future, 52% tax rate be damned.

This past weekend, I traveled to the Netherlands to visit my friend Roberto, and to join him in Queen's Night and Queen's Day activities. These celebrations are in honor of the previous Queen's birthday (the current Queen's birthday inconveniently occurs during the winter), where thousands upon thousands of Dutch and Dutch-for-a-day patriots head to the streets all clad in orange to drink, eat, buy stuff, and in general join in any activity that comes along with the largest street party I've ever seen. My trip was split between The Hague, where Roberto lives and Queen's Night activities occur, and Amsterdam, where Queen's Day activities occur.

Here's a picture of Roberto's roof deck, a great place to drink beer. I found The Hague to be wonderful - nice, peaceful, tons of parks, international organizations, and even the beach. A great all-around place to live. The most memorable event was driving around The Hague in a manual shift car, 15 years after I last drove one in driver's ed class. I only knew in theory how to drive a manual shift car, but it went quite well. Lots of stop and go's, and I even parallel parked multiple times - on both sides of the street. Queen's night was not a crazy event, but everybody was out on the streets, wandering between different music stages set up around town. A mess of a crowd to get through, but it was nothing to compare to what was to come in Amsterdam.

Dutch pancackes. Thinner and denser than American pancakes, but more substantial than a crepe. Kind of like a super big Swedish pancake. With lots of sugar.

The Queen's palace. Very modest, just like the Dutch are.

The International Court of Justice, paid for by Mr. Andrew Carnegie

Fresh (raw) herring sandwiches down by the beach. Yes, I did have one. No, they don't taste the greatest, but not gross either. The traditional way of eating fresh herring is actually sans bread, hold the fish by the tail, tilt your head back and drop it down into your mouth. They do serve it without the heads, at least.

Amsterdam - what can I say about the place? Wonderfully pretty, a bit more hectic than Den Haag. I didn't get the truest impression of the place being that the majority of my time there was spent during the mess of Queen's Day, and they were still cleaning up my second day there. From the moment we got off the train from Den Haag, it was a sea of orange that we could not escape until we returned to Den Haag at the end of the night.

A classic shot of the canals

A parking ramp. But for bikes, not cars. As many bikes there are in Copenhagen, Amsterdam had much more parked along the streets. Strange, though, I didn't see too many people actually riding bikes through the streets.

The XXX is the symbol of Amsterdam

Me, canal, post-Queen's Day party. It's a bit cleaner, and no orange.

A freaky door awning.

One example of the crowd you wade through. And there is nothing going on in this street - it's only on the way to the good stuff.

Party boats on the canals. Lots of people drinking heavily and dancing on rickety boats in the canals. Great idea!

I Amsterdam. Or in this case, I Am.

The 40Up party. Apparently geared toward those 40 years and up in age. We still had fun, anyway.

Yeah - don't have much to say about this guy.

Armin Van Buuren, the #1 DJ in the world (or so I was told). He was indeed pretty good at spinning euro-music.

The butt of I Amsterdam.