So, what's it really like to work at Google?

I've been a full-time employee at Google for about 6 weeks now, and I keep getting questions from various friends, family and acquaintances about how it is, so I figured it was time to follow-up after my first impressions post I wrote after my first day.

One question people keep asking me is where I'm working; some assume I'm in Kirkland, WA; others presume I've relocated to Mountain View.  Others think I'm in San Francisco, New York, or Zurich.  But no, I'm quite happily commuting from my home north of the University of Washington to Google's Seattle office, which is in the eccentric but yuppified neighborhood of Fremont.

The commute is pretty ideal for me: about 20 minutes of biking, about 90% of it on bike path, to a locked bike cage in the underground parking garage.  There are a shade over 200 Googlers (yes, Googlers) working there, mostly engineering, but some salespeople as well.  Our office overlooks the canal, right next to the Fremont Bridge, so we can see all sorts of watercraft going by: rowers, Argosy cruises, tugboats pushing cranes... and today I spotted my first police boat, zipping off to some emergency.  It's been surprising to see how often the bridge has to open for tall vessels.

At Microsoft I always had an office (although I did have to share one both as an intern and also for my first 6 months full-time), but no one at Google Seattle has an office.  My manager's desk is right next to mine and there are about ten desks in our room.  It's a bit tight, and we're in the process of finding a different space in the building to move to, but having a south-facing canal-view room is something we're willing to squeeze in for.

People ask how I like the shared space instead of individual offices, and thus far I'm a pretty big fan.   Being a noogler (yes, noogler) on the team, overhearing conversations gives me an idea of how things work, how the team works together.  The close proximity of coworkers allow me to quickly ask questions, sometimes to individuals and sometimes to the group at large.  I'm definitely trying not to ask too many questions, usually trying to figure things out on my own first.

The food in the cafeteria is superb.  In 5 weeks at the Seattle office, I don't think they've repeated entrees once.  It's a small cafeteria and due in part to lack of cooking facilities, the food is prepared by a catering company mostly off-site and brought in daily.  Some things, like omelettes (on Tuesday mornings), pancakes (on Thursday mornings), and some stir-fry items are cooked in the cafeteria, but even those things prepared elsewhere are high-quality and tasty.  There's always a good variety of fruits, vegetables and salads and the dessert is always fantastic.

And yes, the food at Google is all free: breakfast, lunch, and dinner (well, there's no dinner on Friday).   I'd probably be eating very well and healthfully at our office if it weren't for those desserts and the micro-kitchens.

Each floor at Google generally has a "micro-kitchen" which includes snacks and drinks.  The drinks range from juice to soft drinks to espresso to hot chocolate.  Snacks include fruit, nuts, cliff bars, dried fruit, potato chips, and (here's the problem) m&m's.  All right, the m&m's aren't the only problem... the cashews, almonds, and peanuts have been consumed in copious amounts as well.  So yes, it is safe to say that I've put on a few pounds in the last 6 weeks!

One of the features of Microsoft buildings that I came to take for granted in the eight years I worked there was the showers and locker rooms. There's only one shower per gender at our building at Google Seattle, but in the ~20 or so times I've used it, I've only had to wait a few times for my turn.  To me, the office in general and the bathrooms in particular have a relaxed, friendly decor.  There are pictures on the wall, all sorts of useful things in the bathrooms for all to use (saline! shampoo! conditioner!  toothpaste!).   And yes, there is a towel service.

Well, I think that sums up the building pretty well.  Next time I'll delve into what the work is actually like!

One chapter ends, another begins: First impressions of Google

Almost three weeks ago I wrapped up my work with the Northwest School's coaching gig, travelled around the country to visit friends and family (in New Hampshire, Ithaca, St. Louis, and Los Angeles) and now I find myself in Silicon Valley at Google's headquarters for orientation.

For the most part, my first impressions of the people and the facilities here match their reputation: the people friendly, smiling, and chatting eagerly in the cafeteria. Dogs at campus. The area beautiful. Tons of internal information easily searchable. Outstanding variety and quality of food. Equipment ready for you on your first day. (I already have my laptop setup on VPN and on the corporate wifi).

There were only a couple of things that I didn't expect:

1. The number of people at work late (until 8 p.m.). Which makes some sense, since dinner is served from 6:30-8:00 p.m.
2. Heated toilet seats (which were quite delightful).
3. Watching a live interview and concert by One Republic at lunch. That was really pretty fun!

And there were a couple of things I was disappointed by:

1. Completely unripe kiwi fruit (sad face) in the cafeteria.
2. Having to walk to a few different buildings to find a community bike (GBike) that was functional. I found one with a flat tire, but didn't know where to find a pump.
3. Getting a "rental bike" for "visitors" (i.e. Googlers who live at a different location, like myself) that didn't have lights on it.*

A friend asked me today how Google and Microsoft compare, and some obvious differences are these:

• Much longer orientation at Google (5-10 days vs. 1)
• Better food at Google
• Better drinks at Google. (In my time on campus today I consumed 2 Odwallas, a frappucino, and another juice).
• More bikes at Google: I saw a good number parked outside and inside buildings. Unlike Microsoft, there are bike racks in front of buildings at Google, which makes biking a little more convenient and "advertises" that biking is a viable option. Also, Microsoft doesn't have any loaner bikes or "community" bikes like Google does.
• Less of a corporate atmosphere at Google
• Smaller campus at Google (7000 in Mountain View, compared to 40,000 MS employees in the Puget Sound area)
• Much easier to find internal information at Google
• Most (80%?) of Google employees seem to have been here 3 years or less.
• People seem happier at Google (I'm not really sure if this is true or not...)
• Variety of operating systems at Google (Mac OS, Linux, Windows, whereas most machines are running Windows at Microsoft).

One perhaps disturbing similarity between Microsoft and Google is that at both places time can certainly fly by. I was there until almost 9 p.m. tonight, for a total of 13 hours of time on and around Google today!

On the whole, the Silicon Valley area has impressed me and been nicer than expected: San Jose seems to have a pleasant downtown (as does Mountain View), the hills of Rancho San Antonio were quite deluxe for trail running yesterday (they seem a bit too civilized to those of us used to running through mud, roots, and vegetation in western Washington!), Santa Cruz was fun to drive to and a fun little seaside town, and there seem to be a good number of trails right behind Google itself in Mountain View. And yes, there are plenty of mountain views in Mountain View. And although I saw (from a distance) some traffic this morning at 8 a.m., outside of rush hour, the traffic appears to be minimal... especially when compared with what I saw two days ago in L.A.!

* Apparently their policy is that you can go buy a bike light at a bike shop and submit an expense report for it. This is a silly policy for several reasons. Firstly, if I'm visiting an area, I probably don't know where the nearest bike shop is. Secondly, it will probably be dark after work when I'm looking for said bike shop. Thirdly, it's required by law to have both front and rear lights on the bike while riding in the dark.

More adventures in Geotagging

I was trying to figure out why my EXIF-tag reading feature of my little Flickr2KML app was broken and searching on the flickr API forum for an answer and discovered that flickr has a feature I wasn't aware of:

If you have EXIF geodata associated with a photo that you upload to flickr, it can use that geodata, but only if you actively opt-in to the "Import EXIF location data" feature.

I never knew that this option existed until now! For better or worse, if you opt into this feature after you've already added many EXIF-geotagged photos to flickr, flickr will not import the location data for those existing photos; it only does this for subsequent uploads. In this case, Flickr2KML's EXIF-to-flickr-geotag feature might be useful.

Brilliant pictures

I don't usually post links to other people's work; but I just have to share these brilliant photos:
http://legnangel.livejournal.com/564026.html

Enjoy!

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes! (from unemployed loser to...)

(How many "ch"s are there in that lyric, anyway?)

For many friends and family, this is going to be old news, but I'll tell the story anyway for those following along at home...

Back in May, while studying in Granada, I got an e-mail from a friend of mine explaining that a fellow runner she knew was looking for an assistant cross-country coach for the fall. At first, the idea seemed a bit crazy: take a part-time job in the fall?! There's plenty of good climbing to be done in September! Why would I ever commit to being in the city during the week when the weather is pleasant and the mountains are calling?!

But within a week I was starting to think a bit differently.

I had often thought about the idea of coaching. But I'd never had an opportunity like this come up. And even if one had come up while I was working full-time at Microsoft, I probably wouldn't have felt like I could do such a thing. Leaving "real" work at 2 p.m. for a few hours just isn't something that's usually done by Microsoft employees. Coworkers would scoff. Bosses would boo. Why would anyone do such a thing? would be asked.

So here was an opportunity to try something that I'd always wanted to do. I would still have 6 weeks of complete freedom in the U.S. before I'd need to start work: a good deal of time to visit plenty of summits. It wasn't long before I started thinking about fun things to do with middle school runners.

So.... eventually I returned to Seattle, two months later, and after some phone- and e-mail-tag, Joe (the coach) and I talked on the phone... and then four of us met in person (Joe, the director of the middle school, and the athletic director). And that (in addition to a resume and cover letter and references) was all that we needed to make a decision: I would be co-coaching with Joe for the fall!

Which brings us to September. This week I have transitioned from an unemployed loser to a part-time loser, part-time "Middle School Physical Education Faculty" member. Wow! On Monday I attended a few meetings and got a tour of the school and even got to go to my first practice! On Tuesday the entire staff, from cook to head of school, attended a retreat at the Kiana Lodge on the Kitsap Peninsula. What a treat! And today the cross country team had a great game of capture the flag. Talk about fun stuff!

I must admit that working with the faculty from the Northwest School is, um, a little different from working at Microsoft. It's amazing (and perhaps a little scary) how much I seem to have in common with the staff. Shouldn't I have more in common with the people I've been working with for the past eight years than with the people I've been working with for two days?

But the head of faculty whom I sat next to on Monday just so happens to have biked the length of the Danube, and then along the Elbe, this past summer. (I was on the Elbe too!) As we biked home from the lodge (yes, almost 20 of the faculty biked to the Bainbridge ferry and from the ferry to the lodge), I chatted with another faculty member about cyclocross. It turns out that he's raced it a bit and wants to race more this fall!

EJ, on the maintenance team, offered to show me a good route to bike home from the school, so she went out of her way to bike with me to the school from the ferry dock and then up north towards our neighborhoods. And yes, she lives just a mile from me!

When I google'd the head of the middle school to see if I could find any information about her, I read about her climbing Mount Stuart. Not exactly an experience I would expect a school administrator to have...

In sum, I seem to share more with the average Northwest School employee in terms of lifestyle (bike commute!), location (west side!), outside interests (climbers!), and gender (at least half of them are female!) than I do with the average Microsoft employee. I won't try to delve into the reasons that this is the case, but I will say that it made me feel comfortable and almost at home... with a group of people that had been strangers just a couple of days before. One of the Spanish teachers even invited me to join her Spanish I class if it fit in my schedule!

One of the memories from Tuesday that might capture the difference between working at a school and at Microsoft is this: we went around the room introducing ourselves (all 100 of us); just names, roles, and number of years we've been at the Northwest School. One of the teachers was bold enough to try to make an announcement during these quick introductions. Her announcement was that she was pregnant and expecting a baby in February! Everyone applauded, offered congratulations, and in general the mood was festive.

In contrast, I can't even imagine such a scene at Microsoft. Truthfully, only once in eight years was any of my coworkers ever pregnant at all! (Several spouses of coworkers were pregnant, but that's not quite the same thing.)

This may be a cliche sentiment or a bit of an exaggeration, but at Microsoft I always felt like kids and family were things that got in the way of work; at the Northwest School, they literally are the work! It actually feels really good to be in an environment like that.

Cheesiness aside, the transition back to commitments and work has been fun so far, but I'm already feeling restless to get back into the mountains. Lucky for me, Labor Day weekend is approaching and I've got a couple of friends happy to chaperone me on a trip to visit my tall friends. So with that, I'll dust off the GPS, get out the tent, and get ready for one last multi-day hurrah in the wilderness before the summer makes her exit!

A quick observation

Tonight I was feeling the need for a late-night snack and looking at my mostly-bare food shelves, decided I'd try out a PowerBar Gel that had been left over from my last trip to the mountains. I don't usually eat these things, but for the sake of variety I had decided to grab a few on my last trip to REI.

Once I started eating it I decided it was actually pretty tasty (unlike the flavor "orange" that I tried in the mountains last week).

Wanting to remember which flavor it was for my next shopping excursion, I looked at the package.

Here's the thing: the kitchen was dark when I opened it up and threw its top into the garbage. At my desk and in full light, it was impossible to tell what flavor it was. None of the ingredients gave me any hint ("C2 max carbohydrate blend?", "kola nut extract", and "natural flavor"), and without the bit of the label that told me what it was. At first I was thinking it might be raspberry, but maybe it's more of a strawberry-banana. But no actual fruit appeared in the list of ingredients in any way.

It's just another one of those scary not-so-real foods...

Adventures in the supermarket aisle

When you're unemployed, you finally have time to do those things you've been meaning to do for years, including those unexciting adventures in the supermarket aisles.

Well, actually, I was walking through the aisles of REI with (quad-ruled) notebook in hand, writing down the nutritional information and cost for various freeze-dried foods.

At home, I started a spreadsheet of various hiking foods, along with their weights, calories, costs. For the weight weenies among us (and who isn't, especially when packing for a 5-day backpacking trip?), some things really jump out - which I've highlighted in the spreadsheet.

When it comes to freeze-dried foods, the Mountain House Mac & Cheese is a clear winner. I've known for years that it is tasty and packs in a lot of calories. What I didn't realize is that its value in calories per cent, at 145 calories per dollar, is almost 50% better than any other freeze-dried meal out there! (Note that in the spreadsheet I've treated the "2-serving" freeze-dried meal packages as single-serving, since that's how they're usually consumed in the field.

When it comes to snacking, the Trader Joe's Sesame Sticks is the hands-down winner. At almost 1200 calories per dollar, you could (if you had a real stomach for oil, sesame, and salt) fuel an entire day of climbing (around 4000 calories) for under $5! These sticks get 63% of their calories from fat... yum!

One thing that was a bit surprising to me was that trail mix was a better deal than I thought. For its volume, trail mix usually seems a bit expensive, but it's actually very good in terms of calories per dollar, at about 6 calories per cent.

Having said all of this, the spreadsheet is incomplete. I'd like to do some research to add some other trail favorites, such as candy bars, salami, chocolate, and gummies. Another aspect that remains to be explored is the calories per unit volume, since being able to fit more calories in a smaller pack (to keep the weight of one's pack closer to one's center of gravity and squeeze through tight spots) is desirable, especially when travelling off-trail.

I'd also like to check out the value offered by other retailers, such as the bulk sections of Whole Foods, Fred Meyer, and others. I'm optimistic that Fred Meyer will offer good value.

Let me know if you have any other suggestions for additions!

A little funny, a little sad: GeoFlickr

I've put a bit of work into my Flickr2KML tool, which has been fun, interesting, and good practice for me to get my hands dirty in code after some time off. And I thought that I was doign something that no one had done before but would be useful to Flickr-philes who wanted to see their photos in Google Earth.

Today I decided that development work had gone far enough and that I should start putting my code into some kind of repository before I a) accidentally made changes that I would need to revert or b) suffered some kind of hard drive failure.

I checked out Codespaces, as a friend of mine is using that for a current fun project, and decided that I might as well go ahead and give their 45-day free trial a run. And when prompted for a project name, I thought about using "GeoFlickr" as a name instead of "Flickr2KML", since I recently realized that my tool could be used for more than just Google Earth integration (i.e. KML-file generation).

Before using a new name, I of course Googled it to make sure that it wasn't taken. Ah, the irony! "Geo Flickr" is an application, made by Ravensoft software! And yes, it brings Flickr photos into Google Earth! Egads!

My first reaction was to feel stupid about the fact that I hadn't discovered that someone had already done what I was working on. But two things made me feel better: 1) A Google search for "flickr google earth" doesn't find Geo Flickr (at least, not in the first 4 pages of results), so it's not that I missed something completely obvious, 2) the app wouldn't start for me (I've e-mailed the creators), 3) I'm not sure if it actually does everything I want anyway.

Incidentally, during this recent searching, I did discover www.trippermap.com, which seems to do a lot of cool stuff with Flickr photos on maps, including bring them into Google Earth. I'm optimistic that it does most or all of what I want it to, and am awaiting the results from its scan of my photos! One problem that I have discovered with trippermap is that it only works with public photos; another missing feature is that it doesn't allow you to look at friends' photos. My Flickr2KML supports both private photos and accessing friends' photos. On the other hand, trippermap is a beautiful website that seems to do a lot of great things!

Adventures in Geotagging

I have a GPS that records where I've been at what times. I have a camera that takes pictures with timestamps. It seems logical that I should be able to plug both into my computer and - as my host at a B&B in France was so fond of saying - voila! - I should be able to have a map of my route with photos on it, no?

Or at least, I should be able to quickly embed the latitude and longitude (location on the planet) of each photo into its EXIF data, right?





I knew that there was software out there to do such things. I didn't expect that it would take several after-midnight hours of banging my head against my desk to achieve the desired results.


So here I blog, to hopefully save some other likeminded souls from similar agony.



Long story short, here is what I did that actually did work:

1. Download your photos from your camera to your computer. (I'm assuming you already know how to do this.)


2. Download your tracks from your GPS to your computer. I used Garmin's MapSource software to do this. I have this software installed because I normally use it to upload topo maps to my GPS. It's also pretty decent at managing waypoints, routes, and tracks.


3. Delete any data from this file that you don't want displayed on your map that you want to share. For example, we drove between two trailheads in my recent 5-day trip; since I only wanted to show our hiking/scrambling route and not our driving route, I deleted these extra tracks, as well as some old tracks that were still on my GPS.


4. Save the file as a *.gdb file. For some reason, MapSource v 6.15.4 (what I have installed currently) crashes if you try to export as a .gpx file (one of the few standards out there).


5. Use GPSBabel, a free utility, to convert this .gdb file to a .gpx file.


6. Use Microsoft Pro Photo Tools (ironically, I had never heard of this application while I was working at Microsoft!) to geotag your photos. The UI isn't completely intuitive, but the two buttons you'll need to find are "Track Route: Load from File" and Track Route: "Place Images". You should see a route after loading the .gpx file and you should see pushpins representing each photo on the map after clicking "Place Images". Note also that you need to "Save All Images with new data" after these first two steps to store the latitude and longitude information in the EXIF data for each photo.


7. Import these photos into Picasa (I'm using v. 3) and upload. Note that using the online web tool to upload photos to Picasa will strip out the latitude and longitude information that's embedded in each photo, so you must use the desktop application for uploading. Note also that Flickr will ignore this EXIF data, which is why I finally tried using Picasa.


8. View your newly-created Picasa album online and click on "View map". Then click on "View in Google Earth". Note that it's also possible to view these photos in Google Earth directly from the Picasa desktop app, but the results are better if you go the online route.


9. Now that you're in Google Earth, you can import your .gpx track that you created in Step 5. And - voila! - you've got your pictures in their appropriate locations around the globe, and your route there, too!
10. Try out the coolest part of the whole thing: flying from photo location to photo location. The terrain appears to be 3-dimensional during the fly-by!
    

Long story short: I expected that this would be a simple process, but it still has too many gotchas and pitfalls along the way for the average consumer to handle. One of these days I expect it will be easy enough, but until then, it will take a bit of work! Note that I had to use a total of five software applications* to achieve my goal, and I'm still not completely happy.

My main issues that I'd like to resolve (or see resolved by the appropriate parties)

1. I'd like to continue to use Flickr. I'm already paying for an account there; I'd rather not pay to use Picasa. Flickr allows unlimited uploads for $25; Picasa can get very expensive (on the order of hundreds of dollars per year) if you upload thousands of photos like I do. However, Flickr ignores the GPSLatitude and GPSLongitude EXIF data. I have already started working on the problem in the tool that I'm working on (Flickr2KML), but I'm not sure if I'll be able to fix it easily or not.
2. I wish MapSource didn't crash.
3. I can import a .KML file from Google Earth to Google Maps, but Google Maps won't display all of the photos for a set at once; it only displays about 20 items at a time. I don't want to force people to use Google Earth, though... I want them to be able to click on a link and see everything in their browser, without installing yet another application to their machine.
4. I'd like the photo thumbnails in Google Earth to appear larger when a user zooms in on an area. Currently the user has to click on a photo to make it more than, say, 30 pixels across. At least it is possible to click on each thumbnail to make it bigger.
5. The "Play tour" feature in Google Earth is very very very cool, but not very smart. It seems like each photo should get bigger when the tour is visiting it. Or the tour should just make one stop for each group of photos taken at a particular location.

Happy geotagging, folks! Have fun with it!

* Note that it's possible to skip steps 2, 3, 4, and 5 and import tracks directly from a GPS unit into Google Earth, but I wasn't able to figure out a way to geotag photos without a .gpx file.

It's good to be home

Even if I was looking forward to arriving back in Seattle, I wasn't particularly thrilled about the trip that was required to get there: 2 trains, 2 plains, over 7 hours of waiting between said trains and planes...

... but it was one of the best long-distance international trips I've had. I met some great people along the way (it seems so easy to talk to people when you know they probably speak English fluently!) and even arrived a bit early in Seattle and made it to Carkeek Park in time to watch the sun set behind the Olympic Mountains.

I seem to be in "I want to get everything done at once" mode -- hence being awake at 4:40 a.m. -- but I think that a large part of it is that I'm genuinely excited to be here.

Note: I know it's time to head home when looking at a photo book of the USA, in German, in a German bookstore, about the United States gets me a little choked up. (In my defense, it's a pretty cool book...)

Time off the bike: time with mom and mountains

The last time I wrote a post, over two weeks ago, I was getting ready to meet up with my mother in Prague. Why haven't I written since then? Has it been a lack of time? Internet access? Motivation? Things to write about?

I'd have to say that it was a combination of all of the above. When travelling with other people, I personally find it hard to make time to write. I felt bad enough that I was leaving my mom alone for an hour or so each day so that I could get in my daily run. And then there was the problem of go-get-a-coffee-while-you-wait-for-that-page-to-load slow internet access. Besides, without those hours of meditative time in the bike saddle, how was I going to come up with anything interesting to write?

I had heard that Prague was an amazing city, and a beautiful one at that; in this respect it didn't disappoint.

I had been nervous that the language barrier would present some new challenges. Up to that point, I had travelled only in countries where Germanic or Romance languages were spoken. Czech, a member of the Slavic language family, has little in common with English. Some "modern" words, such as "internet", etc, look similar, and it's not uncommon to be able to remove the "y" at the end of a word and figure out what it means. But as it turned out, Prague's old city has turned into such a tourist destination for Americans and Europeans that English on signs and menus is more common than any other city I've seen in Europe.

Announcements in the train station, are in Czech, English, and German, and people working at hotels and restaurants that we met were fluent in English. Not surprisingly, though, the prevalance of English is inversely proportional to one's distance from the tourist center of Prague.

What I didn't expect was how useful my knowledge of German would be during our 2-day excursion to Northern Bohemia.

In retrospect, it makes sense. It's a beautiful area near the German border, and German tourists flock to the area's trails to take in the scenery. The best part was that since German was also a second language for the people I was speaking to (at pensions, restaurants, etc.), I could actually understand them! They didn't speak too fast, their vocabulary was no more extensive than mine, and good times were had by all. Hooray for those years of German classes in high school!

Prague's tourist area is gorgeous, old, perfectly clean, and feels very quaint. The roads are confusing (a map is a must), which adds to the charm as long as you aren't in a hurry to get anywhere.

Not surprisingly, though, the areas further away from this center, feel a bit rougher. Plain-looking apartment buildings, graffiti, and run-down neighborhoods become the standard. Smiles seem to be more rare, parks less-attractive, and the streets emptier than other European cities.

The train ride to northern Bohemia (we spent a night in Decin, and another in Litomerice) was both beautiful and a little sad. The train ran along a river through beautiful green hills, but for every quaint building we saw, it was matched by a run-down Soviet-era factory or building. In no other country that I've been to have I seen so many industrial sites in the middle of otherwise-beautiful countryside. Another interesting anomaly is the prevalance of above-ground water pipes in some areas, looking something like this. It seems that during the Soviet era it was preferred to put the pipes above ground rather than tear up roads.

Perhaps the most disappointing part of the Czech Republic was the theft of my mother's wallet on the second-to-last day of our stay in Prague while she was travelling by Metro (I happened to be making the same trip at that time, but on my bicycle). On the down side, she lost cash totalling about $200 USD. On the plus side, she still had her passport and a daughter willing and able to serve as her personal ATM/credit card for the remainder of her stay.

On Monday July 6 my mother headed back to Boston and I boarded a train back to my home-away-from-home in Freiburg, Germany. Unfortunately, not all German trains allow bikes to be carried (in contrast, they are welcome on all Czech trains). Especially disappointing is that the fastest trains, known as "ICE", or Inter-City Express trains, do not carry bicycles. Instead, cyclists must rely on slower, and in some cases, less frequent regional trains to travel across Germany.

As a result of this, instead of the Prague-to-Freiburg trip taking 9 hours, it required 15 hours and 5 different train rides. Fortunately, trains and train stations in Germany are comfortable and can provide endless eating and reading opportunities (I even picked up a book in English in Karlsruhe). I'm also lucky that I had learned my way around Freiburg from May 5-8 well enough that I could navigate my way to Ralph and Susann's apartment when I arrived at midnight on July 6!

During the next two days I recovered from the Prague trip (that is, did laundry), went with Uta to my first German climbing gym, and prepared for the next few trips: July 9 I would travel to Stuttgart to meet with my friend Jenny who I had studied with in Granada, and July 10-16 were reserved for 2 climbing trips in the Swiss Alps.

The plan was to return to Freiburg the evening of the 16th and take off on the morning of the 17th, which meant that I had to have my bike and other gear packed as much as possible.

As it turned out, the weather for Wednesday the 15th wasn't looking so good, so we rearranged plans so that we would attempt the Nadelhorn (a 2-3 day trip) instead of Finsteraarhorn (a four-day climb) for our second trip. Although we were all disappointed that we wouldn't be able to attempt Finsteraarhorn, the Nadelhorn turned out to be a fun challenge and had the added benefit that Uta would be back in Freiburg to celebrate her boyfriend's birthday with him. And of course, I would have an extra day to pack and prepare for my return to Seattle.

Long story short, the trip to the Alps was great. Ever since my hiking trip to the Alps last summer, I had looked forward to returning with ice axe, crampons, proper boots, and climbing partners that would make a trip to the top of some of these mountains possible. A special thanks to Uta for organizing both trips. I wouldn't have been able to do these mountains without her work!

Yesterday I returned once again to Freiburg, this time to heat and humidity that I hadn't believed possible in Germany, despite the claims of the locals. Today was a pretty relaxed day of running, cleaning, hanging out with Uta for a bit, packing, souvenir- and postcard-shopping and generally wandering around Freiburg. If you're ever in Freiburg, I highly recommend taking the S-Bahn into the town center and then running on the trails in the Schlossberg. After an hour and forty-five minutes of running, there were still plenty of trails that I hadn't explored!

Which brings me to 9:24 p.m. in the internet cafe across the street from the S-Bahn stop. In 8 hours I'll be taking that S-Bahn to the train station, and after 24 hours of various forms of transportation, I'll be back in the United States. Am I excited to return home? Absolutely! Will I miss Europe? Yes. Ten weeks on a different continent is a unique experience. Thank you, Microsoft, for helping make this trip happen... even if that wasn't the intent on January 22.

What's next?

Stay tuned... I'll let you know when I find out!

Tiramasu for Breakfast: How Susan ate her way across Italy

My first meal in Italy was an experience to remember.

I had been headed down towards teh lowlands of Italy from the pass at Sestriere when a voice in my head said "Hold on! What are you doing? You won't get to see these mountains again any time soon. Slow down!" So I did indeed slow down, and rolled to a stop in the next village with a visible hotel (only a few minutes later).

Balma, Italy has one hotel, Hotel Lion, and no shops of any kind (that I could find, anyway). The staff at the hotel was very friendly, and when they discovered that they were dealing with an English-speaking American, they fetched a man from the kitchen to deal with me and my registration for my night's stay.

So when I appeared at the hotel's restaurant that evening after a hike up into the mountains, the waiter nervously asked if I wanted "pizzeria or restaurant". I wasn´t sure why he was asking, but it looked like they were offering a good deal on the full "menu" (10 euros for a full meal), I told him I was interested in the "restaurant". At which point he ushered me into the kitchen so I could speak directly (in English) with the chef and tell him what I wanted.

Let's just say that by the end of my meal I could barely move... After devouring most of the bread served to me, the first course (pasta) had been followed by a meat dish and salad. At this point I was full, so opted for the coffee option instead of dessert. But they gave me a free dessert to try (because I was a special guest, apparently). And I wouldn´t want to be rude...

On my second night in Italy I ended up in an "agriturismo" in Piemonte, which in short means some kind of accommodation in a home in the countryside. This one happened to be a full apartment, complete with kitchen, living room, bath, and bedroom.. all for 30 euro, which was the best price for accommodation I´d seen in some time.

At the time, I was excited about the prospect of cooking (cheap!), and headed off to the nearest grocery store... which, unfortunately, was at the top of the next hill over... and returned to my little home to cook my meal.

As I discussed with a friend in Seattle by phone the next morning, the meal wasn´t that spectacular. The first problem is that when cooking for one while travelling, it´s hard to procure small amounts of ingredients for good cooking. The second is that I´m a terrible cook.

And thus we agreed that I should not cook in Italy. The prices for meals and accommodations were more reasonable than France, after all, so I might as well enjoy the fruits of the Italians' love for cooking.

And thus began my gastronomic tour of Italian gnocchi ata rifugio, calzone at a restaurant in Cortina, pizza in Belluno, farfalle in Belluno, panini at various cafe/bars along the way, gelato in Sirmione, "toast" and scuttlefish in Venice, as well as fried potatoes, chicken, spaghetti, struedel, and those little pasta things that are like a cross between ravioli and tortellini at various points along the way.

Perhaps because they put so much effort into other meals, Italian breakfast, like breakfast in Spain and France, is pretty minimal by American standards: bread and some jam and posibly cheese.

But the kind lady at the agriturismo in Pascoli, Italy, served homemade foccacia bread and leftover dessert for breakfast. Tiramasu for breakfast: pure genius and the perfect source of energy for the hungry cyclist!

One chapter ends, another begins

For me, cycle touring is always in tension between two opposing forces: the desire to go far and the desire to stop and explore. That desire to go far propelled me rather quickly across France and Italy, which allowed the desire to see more do two days of hiking in the Dolomites. While riding across Italy I realized that I would have time to ride into Austria and thus enjoy the thrill of crossing yet another border on two wheels.

Yesterday that vision became a reality... and thus concludes my self-ropelled jorney through Europe.

Over the last week or two I had really been looking forward to this moment. Every time my butt ached (which lately has been happening after just an hour after riding or any time I sit on a hard chair) and on every busy road and after tallying each day´s progress, Austria grew nearer. The days ticked by and my deadline to meet my mother in Prague approached.

But now that I´m in the beautiful Tyrolean town of Lienz (home to myriad sporting activities both in summer and winter), the sun is shining, everyone´s on a bike, adn I´m a little sad to be getting on a train today.

Over the last several days, mostly cloudy, my cyclist tan-lines (on my legs, wrists, and fingers) have already started to fade, and, sadly, I suppose that my fitness will fade as well over the weeks to come. When strangers ask me where I've biked from, I'll no longer be able to say "I biked here from Spain". I´ll no longer get the rock-star parking at the tourist attractions I happen upon on way from here to there or sing to the cows as I roll down quiet country roads. Nor will I have my now-regular daily routine of a cycle tourist.

My remaining 3 weeks here in Europe are mostly booked now, with rail journeys and car trips and sightseeing and visits to friends. I´ve been looking forward to this section of the trip and I know it will be great in its own way, but the last 4 weeks have been something special that I´ll never forget. I´ve met some great people who I hope to stay in touch with... and I´m already thinking about future bike trips that I´d like to do.

Thank you, Europe, for a great bike trip!

All the way to Venice...

I was looking through my notes the other night and noticed that a few weeks ago I estimated arriving in Venice around June 25. And here I am, almost a week early: I arrived in a town just outside Venice yesterday afternoon (June 19).

Since the only road to Venice is a major highway, I opted to stay at a campground (which is cheap) here and take the bus into Venice yesterday and today to explore.

In short, Venice is amazing. It's quite a sight to see buildings built right to the edge of the water, and the maze of streets is fun to navigate, as long as you don't have a specific destination in mind or a tight schedule to follow.

In the last week I've taken a pretty direct route across the north of Italy. On the bright side, I've had relatively easy (flat) cycling and gotten to spend some time in beautiful cities. The down side of this is that the area is full of busy roads which are pretty stressful for cycling. There are country roads, some of them fairly quiet, but they tend to be poorly signed and can result in lots of wrong turns and extra miles.

I've compromised by sometimes cycling on pretty busy roads (even smaller freeways, at times), and then navigating the smaller roads when I get tired of that. Yesterday I had some beautiful cycling through a regional park south of Padua.

I've found that even the smaller towns I've passed through have had some amazing cathedrals. For example, the other night I spent the night in Lonigo, and found their cathedral pretty amazing. (It was constructed to give thanks for the end of a cholera epidemic at the end of the 19th century). But the town was small enough that the man at the local bar/cafe spent plenty of time helping me figure out what to have for dessert!

One of my favorite things about my trip across the north of Italy has been stopping for coffee in bar-cafes along the way in smaller towns. Most people, even who don't speak a word of English, have been asking me about my trip (since it's obvious that I'm travelling by bike). Now that I've travelled over 2000 miles, it's fun to tell them where I've been!

Time to catch the bus into Venice. Arrivederci!

Score another one for the Excel bike kit!

Today I put on my clean jersey and shorts (i.e. the ones that I didn't wear yesterday) and headed up to the Col du Galibier to watch the Dauphine Libere (again).

Imagine my surprise when a guy - in Byrne Specialty Gasses vest (a team that I used to race with) - called out "An Excel jersey! Are you from Seattle?"

Yup, I just made a new friend Lee - from Seattle - in the French Alps. It turns out that he knows people that I know, such as Tom Wick and Glenn Bunselmeyer. Yes, it's a small world.

Kind of like when I met a couple (Meredith and John Whipple) in Vielha, Spain. They had been bike touring in Portugal, France, and Spain, and live in Chicago. It turns out that they lived in Seattle for a few years, and when I mentioned that I worked at Microsoft for 8 years, they asked if I knew a guy named Ermano.

Yes, yes I do. The cycling community in Seattle is just that small, I suppose.

Sometimes things just work out... (or, How to ride an alpine climb)

The night before last I was looking for a place to stay and reached a crossroads; to the right, the most direct route to Italy (the next place on my itinerary); to the left, the high alps and a less direct route to Italy. I chose the right; it looked to be the easier path, and where I would more likely find a place to stay without dying of heat exhaustion. (I swear the sun is at its hottest at 6 p.m. around here...)

As luck would have it, there was, just a hundred meters from that junction, a campground with "chalets" available (actually tiny little cabins that are little more than bedrooms with a stove; I could barely walk between the bed and the wall), but it suited me perfectly, and, most importantly, was available. There had been no room "at the inn", so to speak, at the town that I had just passed.

And thus began a chain of coincidences that led to a spectacular day.

In the "chalet" I found a pamphlet (in English! what are the chances?) about road biking and mountain biking in the Haute Alps, the area just to the north that I had decided to ride around. It included a basic map and described some of the bike routes. (No pictures, mind you, but the altitude of the passes gave me an idea of what it might look like). The map also pointed out the 5 passes that were the "high eagle passes"; apparently you could get some kind of reward from the tourist office in Briancon if you biked up all of these passes within 7 days.

And there's nothing that gets me excited like the idea of a challenge.

However, I didn't intend to climb all of those passes. But it, along with another few passes that were highlighted in the pamphlet, convinced me that I should see more of the Alps (I had already caught a few glimpses during the day's ride) before heading over to Italy. So I charted a more northerly course that would take me over a 2700+ m pass and called it a night.

The next day I went back to that junction, starting out at a mellow pace that was dictated by a rather stiff climb up alongside the nearest lake as much as my desire to save my energy for the big climb later in the day. This stunning lake is a product of the damming of the Durance, a river I have crossed several times on my trip. I reflected on my previous day's decision to forego watching the Dauphine Libere go up the Mont Ventoux. In hindsight, I wished I had stayed around Sault for an extra day to watch the racers. When would I next have a chance to watch a professional bike race in Europe? It might be years... or decades!

After a few hours of good riding, as I was approaching the town of Guillestre, I saw a road information sign. One concern that I had was that there was the possibility that the pass I was going to climb would still be closed due to snow, unlikely though this seemed in mid-June.

It took me a few minutes to figure out what the electronic road information sign was saying as it rotated through its three messages. I couldn't believe my eyes, so I read again. What luck! The road in Guillestre would be closing soon... because the Dauphine Libere race would be arriving there! And then the race would head up the Col d'Izouard...

A few minutes later I spotted another sign, listing the passes in the area. They were all open... except for the Col du Agnol... the one I had been planning on tackling for the day!

At Guillestre, I decided to stop and have some lunch and ponder. It seemed that I had 3 options: first, to try to get over the pass that had planned on, despite the snow, perhaps after waiting in Guillestre to see the race go by; second, to take the shortcut around the Col d'Izouard to the finish line to try to beat the pros there; or third, to try to get at least partway up the climb to the Col d'Izouard and watch the pros there.

At this point I should mention that watching a pro bike race on a climb is the ideal location; instead of seeing the entire peloton whiz by in a few seconds, the group tends to spread out, sometimes separated by minutes... or a dozen minutes. On serpentine alpine roads, you can see the riders approaching from below. It's a great opportunity for photos and for picking out your favorite rider.

And thus, I chose the third option.

For the first dozen or so kilometers of gentle climbing through an amazing river gorge, I saw just a few spectators. But once the real climbing up the windy switchbacks began, I saw the caravans and cars parked alongside the road. They had been parked there for hours, since before the road closed, waiting for a chance to see the racers. Some of them supported a specific team, rider, or country; some had signs from various races that they had gone to watch posted on their caravan. Flags from France, Belgium, and Italy were flown with pride. The most unusual form of fan-dom I saw was the man who had done large paintings of various professional racers, many of them signed by the racers themselves.

A few other amateur riders, wanting to watch some of the action like me, passed me along the way. With my baggage and relatively heavy bike, I was surely the slowest rider on the road that day. But here's the thing: since I was one of the last people up the road before the pro racers, the spectators were excited to have someone to cheer for! I got many "bravo"'s... and other words of encouragement (I think) that I couldn't necessarily translate.

But it gets better: the spectators weren't the only ones bored with waiting.

I knew that at some point I would need to get off the road to let the professionals pass by. I thought, but wasn't sure, that I had read at my lunch stop, that the pro's were expected to reach the top around 4 p.m., but I didn't know when spectators like myself would need to shove off to the side of the road for them. Would I need to get off the road at 2? 3? I expected any one of the dozens of gendarmes that I passed along the way to tell me to pull over.

So when a motorcycle approached me from behind and then started to slow down, I assumed it was a police officer... but no! It was a cameraman from a local news station. Bonjour! I greeted him...

When he responded with a question in French and I made clear that I had no idea what he was saying he asked in English "Is it hard?"

"Yes! It's very steep!"

I went on to explain that I was making a big bike trip across Europe and told him I was from Seattle in the United States. It was my first ever TV interview, and my first interview of any kind while riding a bike! After a few more seconds of him filming me suffering up the climb, he zoomed off. So who knows, I may have been on the local French news last night!

Two other great things about riding the Col d'Izouard the day of a race were that the road was mostly clear of traffic, and towards the end, it was very clear how much further I had to ride. Even I could translate the French for "one kilometer" and there were signs for the race indicating 500 m and 200 m to go.

At last! I reached the summit, just 20 minutes before the pros were anticipated to arrive. I took some pictures, parked my bike (I figured that locking it wouldn't be necessary considering the number of police officers that were hanging around), and found a good place to settle down.

A few rounds of goat cheese and crackers later, anticipation was high. I thought I heard "5 minutes"... and indeed, just a few minutes later, the lead cars arrived, followed by a pack of 4 riders. And then a few more riders, and more... and then a whole crew of them... and then a few more... sometimes there were so many riders that they took up the whole road and I, camera to my eye, almost got in their way.

Eventually, after 15 minutes or less, the "Fin de Course" truck drove by... and it was over.

People who had been camped out for hours quickly jumped in their vehicles and onto their bikes, men started deflating the finish-of-climb markers, and we were off. By "we", I mean the cyclists, for we enjoyed about 20 minutes of glorious car-free descending before the cars were allowed on the road.

What a day! I even managed to find a cheap hotel in the town of Briancon, where the teams and officials were staying the night, since the next stage started here this morning. My hotel was home to about 25 French motorcycle police officers for the night (and at least a few race officials). Scattered throughout the town were team busses, trucks and cars. It was exciting to be in the middle of it all!

And it all started with the luck of finding that pamphlet...

It's not that the keyboards scared me off...

I just haven't seen an open internet cafe in several days!

Greetings from Sault, best known for its lavender, porc, and proximity to Mont Ventoux, a climb that is often tackled by professional racers in the Tour de France and the Dauphine Libere... in fact, that race is heading up there today! I rode up it yesterday and was thinking about sticking around to watch the professionals ride up it today, but that would mean sitting around for an entire day (they don't arrive here until the afternoon) to watch 5 minutes of excitement.

My time in France has been more enjoyable and interesting than I had hoped! I've seen amazing caves, ancient Roman bridges, aqueducts, arenas, and amphitheatres. In Avignon I saw the former home of the pope and other beautiful bridges. In Arles and St. Remy de Provence I visited the old haunts of Van Gogh, including two hospitals where he lived.

I've seen more wineries qnd vineyards than you can count, ridden through hills that remind me of Vermont and New Hampshire, and endless cute villages filled with people walking with baguettes in their hands.

Both times that I've pulled out a map in a small French town, an old man on a bike (with bread in his panniers) has stopped to offer his assistance. (They were different old men... I think...)

Both times that I've stayed a bit outside town, my hosts have offered me a ride into town so I could get dinner (even though it was only about a mile and I obviously have a bike...)

But my favorite hosts of all, of course, were Olivier and Isabelle in the small town near the Grotte de Demoiselle (the most fantqstic caves I've seen). They're cycle tourists who visit q different country every year in their off season (January). While they were busy serving ,others day dinner to their guests, I got to look at their pictures from their New Zealand and Vietnam trips. They also charged me far less than they should have for delightful accommodations (including a kitchen and large dining area that I had all to myself).

Oddly enough, the first woman I interacted with in France (at a bakery just north of the Spanish border) was a bit unfriendly, but since then everyone has been great. OK, OK, there was also that one woman at the hotel in Chateauneuf de Pape who gave me directions to the parking lot that only made sense for a car (that is, she had me bike downhill and uphill for about a mile instead of just walking on the sidewalk for 25 meters), but I'll chalk that one up to ignorance.

Yesterday was one of the highlights of the trip... on my way into Sault I ended up riding with a Belgian cyclist (Jurgen) and he even joined me for the ride up Ventoux! (25 km and about 1100 vertical meters of climbing). He had climbed it several times in the past and had knew the route well. And then after we parted ways and I headed into my hotel, I ran into two Swiss cycle tourists who happaned to be arriving at the same time. They later invited me to join them for dinner... and as it was the first time in two weeks that I had had dinner with anyone, I didn't hesitate to accept. I had a really great time eating and chatting with them about cycling, Europe, France, America, food, and everything else. Thanks, Pieter and Beat, for a great time!

Well, the morning is already getting quite warm (it's 10 a.m.), so it's time for me to start heading towards Italy! I should be there in 2 or 3 days...

Yikes1 I), in Frqnce1

Yup, the keyboards here are crazy. The period requires a shift; the a and q have been switched, and the and w switched as well... as well as the m and semicolon and comma. So it takes about 5 times longer to type anything. Just when I was getting used to the Spanish keyboard! The weirdest thing is that the nu,bers all require a shift as well... And I haven't found the comma or question mark yet. But the cycling has been really beautiful so far. Now if I can just find a bathroom!

I chose a route today that isn't in the mountains. It's been a bit hilly but feels oh so much easier than the riding I was doing in Spain! Well, the road awaits!

The Pyrenees!

Let's see... a quick post since I need to get back on the bike if I'm going to cover some more kilometers today...

On Sunday I took a train to Montserrat from Barcelona, since I figured that would be a relatively easy way to navigate out of the city. It was pretty cool, but I ended up spending more time there than I anticipated (and money), but that was all right - it was nice to hike around there and explore the mountains.

That evening, after waiting out a big thunderstorm in a village with some new Spanish friends, I spent the night in a casa rural (pension) near Cordona.

On Monday I rode to La Seu, found a place to stay, and then did an out-and-back ride to check out Andorra. La Seu was a really nice town, with everything from a 12th-century cathedral to bike paths to boutique shops.

From there (Tuesday) I rode over a pretty high (5500') mountain pass to Sort, where I sorted out some food and met two British bike tourers, and then continued to Espot. At the Casa de Parq for Aiguestortes National Park I bought a good topo map and then did a late-afternoon hike up to the closest refugio. The terrain up there was just like the Enchantments in Washington!

I realized, once up there, that the refugios do serve food, so I would probably be able to stay overnight at one, even with my tiny little backpack.

So last night I stayed at a great refugio at about 8000'! There is still a good deal of snow up there, so my options for hiking were a little limited in running shoes, but I still managed to get up to a 2700m+ summit. All I brought was a light jacket, my fleece, some food for lunch, and one water bottle (0.75 l).

Today it was back on the bike and up over a 2000m+ mountain pass and into the town of Vielha, where I got some stamps and mailed some postcards. :) I'm torn between staying here for the night and trying to make some more progress on the road (I've only covered about 50 km on the bike so far today). I met my first American bike tourists today, who happen to have met a guy I know from Microsoft (yes, it's a small world!).

Sorry, no chance to post pictures yet!

Barcelona is...

Barcelona is...

... vast pedestrian areas in the middle of streets 50 meters wide ... and streets barely wide enough to walk down.

... enormous buildings ... and tiny shops.

... Gaudi and Picasso and Gothic and modern high-rises.

... surrounded by mountains ... and the Mediterranean.

... filled with people from Germany, Japan, Turkey, India, Italy, France, and Great Britain.

... short man-shorts and Moslem attire.

... tapas, doner, patisseries, Italian restaurants, Starbucks, Burger King, and heladerias.

... quiet mornings in the park, and the Catalunya Plaza filled to the gills... skateboarders in front of the museum of contemporary art and a man singing opera next to the cathedral... a man playing guitar in Parc Guell.

... signs in 4 different languages.

... trying to figure out Catalan.

... friendly people, and a few less-friendly.

... blue skies, blue water, a sandy beach, a goofy clown, a loud German father.

... walking on the other side of the street to get some shade... or lucking out and getting some sea breeze.

... amazing specialty shops (like the two-story bookstore that only sells travel books)

... bike-sharing and road sharing, bike lanes and pedestrian lanes and turn lanes, huge rotaries, and many one-way streets.

... giving up the hope of seeing everything that you want to.

... smiling at strangers when you almost walk right into each other.

Water, water, everywhere, but not a drop to drink...

There have been a couple of instances during my cycling on this trip thus far where some item has been seemingly close at hand... but impossible to obtain.

One of the obvious examples is grocery stores. In most towns and cities, even relatively large ones like Granada, supermarkets of all sizes are closed on Sundays (as are most other kinds of shops). This can be very frustrating, as you might imagine...

The first example I ran into while cycling was at a Lidl. Lidl is one of the largest supermarket chains in Europe - I believe it's a German company - and they specialize in low-cost food. I was happy to see one when I arrived in Guadix. However, the packages of food available there were all unsuitable for biking. For example, instead of being able to buy a package of cookies, I would have had to buy a package of three packages of cookies (picture something the size of a large cereal box). Again, a bit frustrating.

But the best example so far was my experience in Ayna, a town nestled on a cliff in a canyon. Of course, at the bottom of the canyon is a river, so it didn't occur to me that the lack of water in the bathroom might not just be a problem with my room... It actually started out as a trickle, enough to wash my hands and face, but soon dwindled down to nothing.

But when I arrived at the front desk of the hotel (which, I must say, at 30€ was much cheaper than I expected, given that my room had a balcony that faced a 1000' cliff), saying 'Tengo un problema', the man already knew what I meant. From what I could put together ('obra', 'el pueblo', 'todo'), the whole town was without water at the moment, and would be for another 45 minutes or so... for reasons unclear except that it had something to do with construction work that was going on.

But alas, after returning from my hour-plus saunter around town, which included stopping at a local tienda and guzzling a coke (as well as checking out an amazing mirador carved from a cliff that was hundreds of years old), there still wasn't any water coming out of the faucet.

Eventually, after I returned to my room after dinner in the dining room at 10 p.m., I finally had my chance for a shower!

The next morning the water was still fine, so I headed off for some breakfast without any concerns, but when I returned to my room, the water flow was tapering off. Knowing what would soon follow, I hurriedly filled my water bottles, and - success! - just barely managed to top them off before the water was finished again.

The Streets of Granada

How much can you tell about a city based on its streets? I'm not entirely sure what all of this means, but feel free to interpret for yourself:

Dogs - plentiful, usually small or medium-sized.

Dog poop - common. It appears that some people do pick up after their dogs, but not when they don't feel like it.

Bikes - not too common in the neighborhood where I stayed, commuter, racer, or otherwise. If you head towards the local sierra (mountain range), the Sierra Nevada, you'll see plenty of spandex-clad men. (And two spandex-clad women, other than myself).

Mopeds - all over the place. There were some very large motorcycle/moped parking areas.

Candy - lots of it. Candy stores are common, and even more common is finding a bulk candy section in a small store. The candy is usually of the gummi variety (chocolate, not so much). I'm going to chalk this one up to climate.

Pastelerias/panerias - (bakeries) - Yes, many.

Tapas? - Of course. In certain neighborhoods, there are lots and lots.

Geladerias? - Yes, especially near where tourists congregate. Ice cream bars are also commonly available in every small shop that has any kind of food. I'd chalk this one up to climate as well.

Running - not too common. If I headed to the canal, I would usually see some joggers, especially earlier in the morning, but the per capita number of miles run per year has to be pretty low. I found the streets to be a bit dusty, which seemed to make the sidewalks a bit slicker than I'm used to (it never rained during my two weeks in Granada). The temperatures were so much warmer than I'm used to that running was always a bit less pleasant than I'm used to.

Jaywalking - pretty common. Some people always waited for the little green man, but a lot of people (of all ages) would simply cross the street when it appeared safe to do so.

Jaybiking - all the time. It appears that cyclists aren't expected to obey any kind of traffic lights, which makes cycling in the city more fun and exciting!

Shoe stores - many, but not to the extent that I remember in, say, Mexico.

Valencia, then resting the legs en route to Tarragona

After a long day of riding yesterday, I arrived in gorgeous Valencia... while I rode around looking for a place to stay, I kept running into more and more amazing buildings (well, not literally, but you get the idea... sunset is a great time to arrive in a city).

I had tenatively planned on Tuesday to take a bus up north today, and I did ride up here to Tarragona today. I was curious to check out the Roman ruins in this city and also wanted to give my legs a rest, so a (n air conditioned) bus ride was just the ticket.

I'm about to get kicked off this computer (and my eyes are starting to close involuntarily), so that's all for now, but all in all, things here are great! I've seen just a few drops of rain in the last 3 weeks!

On day 4 of biking through Spain and doing great!

Just a quick post to say that all is well here in Spain, despite the concerns I had before heading off on my own onto the back roads of Spain... without a good guide book for this area, without reservations or listing of places to stay.  In fact, things are better than I had imagined possible!

The scenery has been amazing; each day I've been over several mountain passes (not like the Pyrenees, but demanding nonetheless), seen castle ruins and amazing cliffs (and even stayed in accommodations near some of them the last two nights), and met some friendly people along the way.  Two days ago I met a retired Belgian man who had biked down here from Belgium... and is going to bike back after he reaches the southernmost point in Spain.  So far Ayna has been the most scenic place I've stayed and the best deal on accommodations was in Tranco, where I was the only person staying in a beautiful pension.

Today's terrain, here in la Mancha, is far less mountainous and has a good number of farms and windmills... Don Quixote's territory!  Along one of these country roads I ran into 3 cyclists (well, actually, then passed me from behind).  We rode the last 30 km into Albacete together and right now I'm in the apartment of one of them - Mateo - catching up on internet stuff and getting ready for lunch!  Good times!

About the bike

Some notes about the bike and some changes about my setup for this cycling trip versus what I did in New Zealand.

1. Total equipment: less. Since the ratio of campgrounds to hotels/hostels in Europe seems to be much lower than in New Zealand, I opted to leave the camping gear (sleeping bag, tent, sleeping pad) at home. Or rather, some of it is in Freiburg, in case I need any for any trips in the Alps (i.e. when I'm not cycling).

2. Gearing: easier. From what I've read about the mountain roads in Europe (especially the alps), they have some very very very very very long climbs. Since I'm carrying my own gear, it seems like it only makes sense to change my gearing so that I would have a chance of making it up these climbs. I had already installed a triple chain ring (that is, there are 3 different gears in the front) for New Zealand, and for this trip I installed a new rear derailleur so that I could use some bigger gears in the back (which makes it easier to go uphill). The biggest gear in the back now has 32 teeth. I believe that the smallest in the front is 28. This means that now, in my easiest gear, one turn of the pedals turns the wheels less than one full revolution!

3. Baggage: different. Yesterday I bought a bag for my handlebars. It seems to restrict my hands a little bit when on the tops of the handlebars, but maybe not too badly. I've never tried this before, but it seems that the roads here in Europe are far more complicated than anything I've tried to navigate by bike before. Thus, I want to have a map as accessible as possible at all times. My experience with maps is that if they're not easy to reach, you won't reach for them. The same goes for cameras, incidentally, so I intend to keep one of those in the handlebar bag as well. I'll also keep my GPS and maybe a snack or two in the handlebar bag.

I've only brought one pannier with me. I actually used this setup (i.e. one pannier, no camping gear) for most of my Land's End to John O'Groats trip in the UK in 2004, so I think it will work fine. Additionally, I have a small backpack (think Camelback, even though it's a different brand), which is large enough to carry about a liter of water and some snacks for short hikes or walking around town. It's worked pretty well for my time here in Granada and the outings I've done from Granada. I plan to either bungie-cord this to the top of my rear rack or carry it on my back while I ride.

4. Tires: bigger. I'm really not sure that this was necessary. but riding on a 32 cc tire, instead of the 23's that I normally use for riding unladen, makes me feel a little more stable and safer. Also, when riding on dirt roads (which I did a bit of around Frieburg) it's a little better. For most of my bike trips I've used 23 cc tires and been fine, but I ended up with a 32 in New Zealand when the guy at the bike shop in Nelson recommended it (after my existing tire gave up the ghost), and decided to match that one with a new tire before heading off for Europe.

I'm still riding the same bike that I picked up for cyclocross racing back in '03, the Fuji Cross. It's travelled with me for bike tours in Vermont, Colorado, the UK, and New Zealand, and I did some riding on it in South Africa as well. So I guess you could say that it's well-travelled! Most of it has been replaced over the years: the parts you'd expect, like handlebar tape, brake pads, tires, cassettes (rear gears), and chain, as well as chain rings, derailleurs, pedals (yup, they wear out too), and wheels. I haven't replaced the shifters yet, but I think they're the next thing to go. I'm wondering how much longer the frame itself will last... I'll keep my fingers crossed for now!

The last week in Granada

A quick summary of what I've been up to:
Saturday - trip to Alpujarras (40€, guided, lunch not included)
Sunday - bus trip to Salobreña with Jenny (11€ round trip)
Monday - Trip to The Cathedral
Tuesday - Capilla Real (3.5€), Bike to Guejar Sierra
Wednesday - Monastery de Cartuja
Thursday - Arabian baths and massage (woohoo!), last day of class, buying some last-minute bike things, walk around Albacin at sunset, tea in an Arabian tea-house
Friday - Bus to Guejar Sierra for some hiking, packing, burning DVD of pictures

Getting ready to leave Granada

Yesterday I finished up my last day of Spanish classes in Granada and tomorrow I'm off to try my luck on the roads of Spain with my trusty companion the bike. Will it be hard to find reasonable places to stay? Places to eat? Will the weather cooperate? Will my bike? Will the hills kill me? The heat? How far will I be able to ride each day? Will I meet any interesting people along the way? Will my Spanish improve or fade away during the rest of my time in Spain? Will I be homesick? (Well, I am a bit already...)

These and other questions are only possible to answer after a couple of days on the road. I do know that the weather forecast looks good and that my experience with cycling in Spain has been fine so far. The only dog that has chased me was a tiny terrier, which only made me laugh (although I was a little concerned that I would run him over). I am definitely curious to see what the outlying towns are like. I'm planning on avoiding any cities of significant size until Albacete, at least... though my plans are always subject to change. In a week or two I hope to be in the Pyrenees, even if that means taking a bus part of the way to get up there in reasonable time. And then I'll be able to pop over the border and explore France!

I don't expect to have much internet access in the next week or two, so don't expect many, if any posts, between now and then!

El fin de samana en España

Con nuestra fin de samana sin clase, mi alemana amiga Jenny y yo vamos en dos viajes: una a la alpujarra con un grupa de la escuela y una a la playa!

Es mi primera vez a la Mediterraneó Mar. Es bonita! Muchas gente van a la playa en el fin de semana. Hace muchas calor en Granada, pero a la playa esta viento y es bien.

Las Alpujarras son pueblos en las Sierra Nevada. Las personas en las alpujarras hacer jamon y otros especiales suchas, pero hoy turismo es la mas grande parte de la economía. El queso de cabra y jamon me gusta muchas!

Hasta luego!

The Tower of Babel: Where the EU falls a little short

Congratulations to the European Union for uniting so many countries and making so many things so much easier. One currency does make things a good deal easier. And it sure saves a lot of time when you don't have to go through any kind of border crossing ordeal when going from one country to another. But honestly, there is still a ways to go.

Let's start with the computer keyboard. Just when you start getting used to the fact that the Y is where the Z should be while in Germany, you fly to Spain, where those letters are back to where they should be. Of course, it's anyone's guess as to where the semicolon, hyphen, apostrophe, @ sign, and quotation marks will end up. Of course, if you haven't figured out what the "Alt Gr" key does, you might as well stay home, because you won't be able to type an e-mail address without it.

Then you might be lucky enough to find a computer at an internet cafe that has the handy little language bar that lets you choose which kind of keyboard mapping you want to use. Of course, by then, your fingers will be trained to use the keyboard layout of your current country (rather than your home country), so you're in a broken state once again.

Frustrating as issues with keyboards may be, the phone problem is guaranteed to be more expensive. Let's just say that I'd recommend doing some homework before buying a phone... and trusting cellphone salespeople only as far as you can throw them, regardless of how nice they are.

After the loss of my iPhone at the Brisbane airport, I picked up a cheap one at Bartells in Seattle for $18. The bad news was that it wouldn't work internationally, which I didn't realize until a couple of days before I left for Europe.

It was then that I bought cellphone #2, for $40, at the AT&T store in Seattle. I was told (and the box said) that the phone would work internationally. Additionally, AT&T will give you an unlock code for your cellphone if you tell them that you're travelling internationally. (At least, they would do this for me with my plan; your mileage may vary). Note to self: it will take them 3-5 business days to e-mail you this code. Apparently the wizards who cook up these codes can't be rushed.

But alas, upon touching down in Frankfurt, the cellphone claimed to have "no service" once turned on. A call to AT&T (on a land line) confirmed that my phone would work in some countries, but not in Europe, as it did not support the frequencies commonly used in Europe. Which baffles me, because my understanding is that there are two groups of frequencies (900/1800 vs 850/1900). So an "international" phone should support both, no?

I found a shop in Freiburg that advertised "lock-frei handys" for 19 € and decided to check them out. Since this shop also happened to house the internet cafe that I had been frequenting for a few days and I liked the (Turkish) proprietor, I took his word when he said that the phone I was buying for 35€ (yes, that's the 3rd phone I was buying in a month's time) would indeed be able to handle a different SIM card when I reached Spain.

But of course that wasn't the case. The phone did work in both Germany and Spain, but there were some issues in Spain... it was taking text messages days to get to recipients and sometimes calls simply wouldn't go through. And there wasn't any way I could figure out to "recharge" the SIM card with more money.

So yesterday I went in search of phone #4. It turns out that Orange, one of the cellphone carriers in Spain in our neighborhood, doesn't sell "libre" phones, but I did find a (questionable-looking) shop in the neighborhood of our escuela that sold one for 49€. And it turns out that the friendly internet cafe next door to the school sells SIM cards with favorable rates to the U.S. (around 15 cents per minute). And so far, the SIM card and phone are getting along very well.

Every time I was faced with the proposition of buying Yet Another Phone, I tried to reason that I didn't really need one (civilization survived for centuries without them) to avoid the purchase, but it seems that they're so pervasive in our society that it's hard to survive without one now. And besides, when travelling alone on a bike in a foreign country, it just seems like a good idea, should anything go wrong or a hotel need to be called...

So, anyway, back to the point about standardization... if Europe could have phone service that worked across borders, that would have saved me the purchase of Yet Another Phone.

And of course, the biggest request of all for the EU would be a standard language. It's unfortunate that mankind built that tower of Babel and ticked off God enough that he forced people to speak different languages scattered around the world. Because I guess if we all spoke the same language, we could accomplish some pretty amazing things (both in the discipline of tower-building and elsewhere). And I would be able to figure out how the heck to climb Mulhaçen.

But in the meantime I suppose I'll content myself with being a student of Spanish in Granada!

Mythbusters

It's funny, the things that people will tell you. Do they tell you these things because they actually think they're true or because they just want to make you feel better?

For example, Thing Number 1 that people told me before my trip to Europe, especially when I expressed concern that I didn't know any Spanish, French, or Italian, despite planning on travelling through Spain, France, and Italy: "Everyone in Europe knows English."

Really? Everyone? That's funny, because I couldn't even manage to explain to the woman behind the counter at a pastry shop in Malaga (in a very touristy area) that I wanted to get something to take away (note to fellow travelers, the magic words are "para llevar"). Tell that to my "host mother", who doesn't speak a word of English.

Myth number 2 (Propagated by Polly Evans in her book It's Not About the Tapas): Everyone in Spain is crazy about cycling. To be fair, I did see a good number of spandexed men heading out of town on Tuesday when I rode towards the Sierra Nevada. Did I mention that they were very tan and fit-looking? But cycling around Granada seems to occupy the same status as it does in Seattle: it's a popular recreation for the relatively small percentage of the population who can afford light bikes and afford to consider suffering on a bike to be "recreation". There percentage of bicycle commuters here appears to be even lower than in Seattle (where it's around 1 or 2%). Walking, driving, and moped'ing are the methods of choice... and I haven't seen any coverage of the Giro d'Italia in the news here, despite ample opportunity to see such coverage (my "host mother" has the TV on most of the time when she's home, beginning when she wakes up at 9 a.m. and ending when she goes to bed at midnight).

Myth number 3: Things run late in Spain. My bus from Malaga to Granada left exactly on time. (Take that, Greyhound.) Our class starts on time every day. Shops open and close at the appropriate times. So if you do travel to Spain, don't forget your watch!

Susan's first week as a Spanish student

I was one of those people who took German in high school. The logic I had used to choose a language was undeniably sound: I chose the class that was supposedly harder. The valedictorian of the class ahead of us had taken German, so it was clearly the best choice.

Never mind that 34 million people in the United States speak Spanish. There are probably at least 34 who speak German. Clearly, German was the way to go.

But I digress...

Let's just say that after travelling two Mexico for two vacations and Ecuador for another, it became clear that Spanish might be a useful tool for me. So when planning what I might do on this European adventure, studying Spanish and getting some sun in Granada (which happens to be next to the Sierra Nevada, which contain the tallest mountain in Spain - Mulhaçen - at over 11,000') seemed to be a good idea.

It wasn't hard to find a private Spanish school in Granada online for people like myself. It seems that studying in Granada is very popular for Americans and Germans, and this part of town is littered with small private schools.

Ours (Projecta España) is pretty small, but probably of average size: there are 4 or 5 classrooms and maybe a dozen instructors who teach at various times during the day. Our 2-person class meets for 3 hours per day, which pass surprisingly quickly. In college I could barely survive a one hour and 50-minute class. Apparently having such individual instruction helps keep one awake.

A few days before my arrival in Granada I was told that I would be living with a woman named Elis in her apartment. (I had requested a 'homestay'.) En route to Granada I had envisioned exactly what Elis would be like. A grandmotherly woman with a bit of grey in her hair, she'd help me find the perfect place to store my bike (who doesn't like bikes?) and invite me to go grocery shopping with her. She would try to tell me stories about her husband who had passed away, in simple phrases, trying to help the unfortunately foreigner understand. And of course she'd have a cat. Or two.

Instead, Elis is a middle-aged cat-less nurse who does happen to be a grandmother. I've no idea what happened to Mr. Elis. And Elis was not excited about the bike. I showed her where I parked it temporarily (under the stairs, locked to the railing), and she indicated that we would consult with the janitor about where it could be stored mañana. Five days later, it's still under the stairs.

As Elis doesn't know any English, I'm rather glad that Danja, the German student who's also living in this apartment, is around to help translate. Danja is ihere with a friend of hers from Germany (who happens to be from New Zealand), and as a result, we don't hang out together to0 much. I've mostly been hanging out with my German classmate at la escuela, Jenny. (Yes, I told you that Germans love Granada).

Class is from 12-3, "dinner" (prepared by Elis) is from 3-4, and each afternoon has been different: on Monday Jenny and I headed up to Sacromonte, Tuesday and Thursday I went on long-ish bike rides (3-4 hours long, towards the Sierra Nevada), Wednesday was dedicated to la Alhambra, and today (Friday) Jenny and I spent some time with her roommates and visited The Cathedral and walked around Albaicin a bit.

I've paid for "half board" here, which includes breakfast and the midday meal. As far as food goes, breakfast every day has been corn flakes (which I usually supplement with a pastry or other snack, since corn flakes don't fill me up enough to last me until 3 p.m.). And though my father will probably think it heresy to say so, corn flakes get old after the 3rd day in a row. The lunch/dinner served every day has been a bowl rice or potatoes with vegetables and some fish on top. I'm hoping that the consistency in the afternoon meal has been due in part to Danja's long list of allergies, which include milk, meat, and bread... Danja will be leaving after this weekend, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that next week things will get more interesting. On the other hand, I see a weekly diet designed for my hostess posted on the refrigerator, which makes me suspect that she is either diabetic or on a special diet for some other reason. Long story short, the food has been OK so far, but when I had a doner kebab today, it seemed exceptionally tasty compared to what I've been eating at home.

The running here hasn't been too spectactular. I did find a running route along the canal that heads away from the city a bit, but even that gets a bit old. One of the problems is that it's been nearly impossible for me to get to bed and wake up early, which means that there is always car traffic and foot traffic, which makes it frustrating to run in an urban environment. Ah, to be running in Seattle again...

On Tuesday I found the road up to the Sierra Nevada and rode up to about 5000' (Grenada is at about 2200'). Thursday I continued up the same route, this time reaching 6800'. The views were phenomenal, especially as I headed back to Grenada under the setting sun. I even spotted a solo chamois and a group of 4 along the route.

Last night we got to see some flamenco, which was pretty amazing. I intend to write more about this later, but for now I will say that I've never seen such phenomenal clapping, snapping, and footwork.

Tomorrow we don't have class (it's Saturday), so it's off to Alpujarra, a the villages known for their natural beauty and unique culinary delights. Woohoo!

Meanwhile, the Spanish studies are going all right. Instead of drawing a complete blank when trying to get something I need, I can sometimes string together three or four words together. It's amazing how exciting it is to be able to say "I want"!

I'm hoping that my progress will continue as quickly next week, for then I'll be heading off through the countryside, attempting to live off my knowledge of Spanish for a couple of weeks!

'Are you the chocolate girl?' or, Susan hits the language barrier

Of all the things I read about Spain before arriving here, one of the things that got my attention was the concept of drinking a thick cup of hot chocolate with a churro to dunk in it.

After visiting Alhambra today (more on that in a future post, to be sure), my classmate Jenny and I decided to stop by a convenient 'churreria', which seemed like a perfect place to sample this local delicacy.

You'd think that requesting the treat that this establishment was named after would be straightforward enough. But alas, when I asked if they had 'chocolate y churro', the man asked if I wanted coffee with chocolate... or juice... and then he indicated that we should wait at a table and he would find someone who spoke more English.

A moment later he returned to ask me if I was the one asking about the chocolate. His actual words, were, however, 'Are you the chocolate girl?'

After replying in the affirmative, I was escorted to speak with the woman behind the counter who pointed at their chocolate treats available: pudding and cake. Well, no, that wasn't what we had in mind, thank you very much, so we headed down the way to try our luck at another establishment.

The next place we tried advertised 'churros y chocolate' very clearly on the sign above their door, but after our previous experience I was a bit skeptical of our chances of success when I didn't see any mention of said churros or chocolate on the menu in the window.

But our luck had changed, for this man seemed to know exactly what we wanted, so we ordered 'para dos'.

After a couple of minutes, our pudding-like hot chocolate arrived (indeed, there was no point in attempting to drink it; spoons were the only option for consumption). And after a few minutes (when I had started to think that the churros had fallen victim to translation) the plate of hot-out-of-the-oil churros, piled high, arrived at our table. ¡Dios mio! I had expected one for each of us, but they had served us a full meal of churros!

Fortunately, Jenny had been saying she was hungry, and as I always have room in my gullet for tasty local treats, we devoured them all.

A successful leap over the language barrier after smacking into it on the first try... Score one for Susan!

The Spanish schedule: the jury is out

I like the idea of breaking up a work day into two chunks with a good meal and maybe a little nap in the middle. (Spanish shops typically close between 2 and 5 p.m. and are open from 5-9 p.m.) But if you can't go to bed until midnight (no one here seems to; you even see little kids out and about after 10 p.m.), how are you supposed to wake up for an early run? Theoretically that mid-day break is a good time for a run, except that the break coincides with the hottest time of the day (by design, of course). And since exercising after dark is an activity I reserve for cities I know well, I'm not sure when it would fit into a normal workday.

Fortunately for me, I'm just a student here. And though the program I'm in is advertised as 'language immersion', which might conjure up images of a dozen hours of classes per day, things are a bit more laid back than that (this is Spain, after all). Thus, we have three hours of classes from noon until 3 p.m. The three hours is actually rather intense: we have a class of two, which means there's no sleeping, daydreaming, or slacking off involved!

That leaves a couple of hours in the morning available for running (woohoo!), even if it is a bit warm by 9 or 10 a.m. when I get out the door. And this morning I even discovered a decent running route that heads out of the city along a river. The best part is that the return is all a slight downhill! I'm hoping to have a bit more time to explore tomorrow morning; with any luck I'll manage to fall asleep a bit earlier tonight (before 1:30 a.m., that is).

So, all in all, this schedule is pretty ideal for me right now, but I'm not sure how I'd cope if I were working in Spain: would I manage to find a place to live quiet enough that I could get to sleep before 11? If so, this might be a pretty sweet place to live! But then, there are a few other factors to consider... which I'll have to save for next time!

Buenas noches!

Espana: Where´d my hostel go?

I flew from Basel, Switzerland to Malaga, Spain last night (bringing the number of countries I´ve visited on this trip to five: Canada, Germany, France, Switzerland, and Spain). Although in retrospect taking a bus to the hostel I had booked probably would have worked out... eventually... I opted for the easy route (taxi), which cost about $25.

The only problem was that once we arrived at the address of the Piscis Backpackers hostel (33 Cuarteles), it wasn´t there! There was indeed a ¨Piscis Edificio¨ at that address, but no hostel. In fact, even though I walked and biked around the neighborhood in my time in Malaga (which, admittedly, was a mere 18 hours), I never did see a hint of it.

Anyhow, there wasn´t any need to panic, since I saw a hotel not far down the street. Since its price was a bit high (50 Euros), I asked if there was a hostel nearby, and the man at reception pointed me in the direction of Pension Olympic, where the price was right (20 Euros for a 2-bed room, which gave me room to assemble my bike!).

I lingered in my room just long enough to drop my bags there and then headed out to explore the town. Despite lacking a decent map (thank you, Mr. Frommer!), I managed to find the old town area, where beautiful old cathedrals seemed to pop up around every corner. Which isn´t an exaggeration; because the city is so dense in that area, with very narrow streets, you literally don´t see these gorgeous cathedrals until you´re right in front of them.

I eventually returned to my pension around dark and was in bed by 10 p.m. The strangest thing is that I slept for a solid 12 hours! Which must mean that I´ve contracted the swine flu; I haven´t slept that long since I was last sick.

Unfortunately, that meant that I didn´t get to explore Malaga much this morning at all; I had hoped for a good run around the city but had to settle for a short ride (30 minutes) around the neighborhood. The good news is that I did happen upon the annual Malaga cultural festival and got to see some traditional dancing during my brief journey.

The bus to Granada left exactly on time (I thought things in Spain were supposed to run late?), where my host Elis Gea was going to be waiting for me at 4 p.m. There was some misunderstanding regarding the bus schedule (the 1 p.m. bus doesn´t run on Sundays), but fortunately the 1:45 bus arrived earlier than it was supposed to.

Once off the bus (with bike in hand; I had just laid it on its side in the luggage compartment in the bottom of the bus), I eventually made my way to her apartment. Let´s just say that Spain doesn´t take street signage as seriously as they do cramming as many buildings as possible in every square kilometer. Elis doesn´t speak any English, so it´s going to be a fun 2 weeks for sure! She explained that there is another student staying in the apartment, so I´m looking forward to meeting her. Based on the German shampoo and lotion in the bathroom, she´s either German or Swiss, so it should be fun to practice some German while I´m here, too!

After unpacking my clothes and other essentials, I was off for a walk around town. I made my way up to Alhambra, where I'll have to return to explore fully another time. All I can say is that the quantity of beautiful buildings here is astounding! Which isn't to say that it's all gorgeous, but I am glad that I lugged the SLR along.

And I certainly didn't expect the mountains here to be snow-covered at the top now! Especially considering how hot it was today (around 80 deg. F), even at 6 and 7 p.m. I need to figure out how to get up there, which would involve some hiking-boot rental, since I´ve left my boots, ice axe, etc., back in Freiburg.

Well, enough blathering on from me for now. I'm going to try to get in a run before dark!