Trista's Summer in Europe

Yesterday I returned from a fabulous week in Berlin, reuniting with Bjoern and enjoying a relaxing week that was largely unscheduled and not filled with touristy things. We spent some time hanging around his local neighborhood, Tegel, but also managed to get into the city on about three of the days and we also spent a sunny, windy afternoon at the Baltic Sea in the little seaside town of Warnemünde (where I had some Danish icecream and it was awesome) and I tried to get a sun tan...It's a very cute new england-esque fishing town.
There were some nice sunny afternoons and beautiful evenings spent in the city. One of the days we began at Schloss Charlottenburg, which is one of the Palaces in Berlin that I didn't visit last summer and then we made our way to Under den Linden and to Potsdamer Platz for a nice dinner and a movie (Transformers, in English) and took the train home. On Saturday we went into the city in the late afternoon to take part in the festivities of Christopher Street Day, which is Berlin's Pride parade. The festivity grounds stretched from the Brandenburg Gate all the way to the Victory Column and the streets were lined with loads of good German food, bars, and beer kiosks and the streets were packed with people, music, crazy costumes, and happiness. We had a fantastic time there enjoying it all and being around the other cheerful people. Afterwards we went to Hackescher Markt, which is one of my favorite areas of the city, and walked along the Spree to my other favorite area which is the river and bridges area around the Berlin Dome and we had dinner outside and then ate huge desserts in beach bar chairs right on the edge of the river.
I ate massive amounts of food all week and ate more breakfast rolls than one probabaly should in one weeks time, but it was really great. Bjoern has some pictures from the beginning of the week on his flickr and I have more of the end of the week and the beach as well, here.

And although leaving was terribly difficult, I at least return to Carsonified with lots of exciting things underway, including the upcoming launch of my event, Carsonified Summer Camp! Should be launching within the next few days and I'm really excitied. I also have a few small tasks there and one other larger project that are still in the drawing board/ pricing stages.
I have only about a month left here and am already having separation anxiety, especially on these beautiful, warm summer evenings (sorry New Englanders, I had to rub it in), but really, when it's just so lovely to be out around town and walking and spending time with people from work.
This weekend I have some free time and only loose plans to go into London on Saturday to visit some of the museums and attend London Pride! But otherwise it will be a nice weekend off from traveling and I'll spend some quality time with Bath.

I have just returned from Paris! I met up with Jen there and we had quite an adventure. On the first full day we covered most of the things on the right bank of the Seine, like the Louvre, the Tuilerie Gardens, The Arc de Triomphe, The Eiffel Tower, The Sacre Coeur, and Moulin Rouge. One thing you can't really wrap your mind around until you see some of these things, like the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, or the Arc, is the size, they are all massive and took so much time to create. The Eiffel Tower of course is a whole story of it's own and essentially is kind of ugly, but when you think about the architecture and try to see it how Eiffel himself saw it, you can understand why he thought it was beautiful and when they light it up at night it is really quite amazing and glamorous. The Louvre was probably my favorite, and luckily we were able to visit it both days (as we did with the Eiffel Tower). The Louvre, is now a museum and houses items like the Mona Lisa, The Lacemaker, and the Venus de Milo, unfortunately I don't know very much about art and couldn't appreciate all the paintings in their context and technique but I enjoyed seeing them. What I really loved about the Louvre was the size and beauty of the building itself with all its courtyards, fountains, and the long stretching garden that leads straight down to the Arc, through its very own little Arc just before the garden. The Louvre itself was only built in the mid 1500's, but the site had been a fortress since the 1200's. I also really liked the Sacre Coeur (scared heart), which is a Roman Catholic Basilica, and has been kept in such perfect condition and it atop this hill over looking the city that it almost doesn't look real.

The second day we had a bit of rainy weather and had to hide out in a Subway for a while to avoid getting drenched- but after that we decided to conquer the things on the left bank of the Seine. This included also the island where Notre Dame is, then the Pantheon, and a wander around the Jewish quarter. We also spent some time back in the Tuileries Gardens enjoying the fountain and people watching, then walked over towards Hotel des Invalides where Napoleon is buried and the golden bridge to get there also provides a lovely view of the Tower. We then treated ourselves to a glass of wine, in the true spirit of being in Paris, then went to enjoy the site of the Eiffel Tower at night, which was beautiful.

Sunday before I left we ventured into Paris' underground to tour the Catacombs and the underground tunnels. It's quite the hike, but seeing the scale and number of bodies and bones down there and the care they took to arrange them and give them proper respect and organization was very interesting. We couldn't read most of the signs, quotes, and prayers (because obviously everything is in French) but we were sure they were probably very profound messages.

Once again, I am out of space on my Flickr so click here to view some of the photos through my Facebook.

Tomorrow I am off to Berlin to reunite with Bjoern and I shall be there until next Sunday (June 28).

I miss everyone lots and am looking forward to thoroughly sharing all my adventure news with everyone in person and in more detail when I get home. 5 more weeks of Trista's adventure :)

Greetings everyone! I have just returned to Bath from a weekend in Holland and Belgium. I have a friend studying in Holland and I went to visit her. Friday we took the train to Brussels and had lovely weather to tour the beautiful city. There are so many nice things to see in Brussels and we only had one day but got to enjoy a lot of it, as we spent a very full day there. Brussels is considered a twin city to Berlin and I could kind of see why, although I'm no sure which city came first and who copied who but the Brandenburg Gate was built before the Cinquantenaire.. so.. Of course Belgium is known for their waffles and in the city you can smell the fresh waffles everywhere and find a kiosk or a shop serving Belgian waffles with fruit and cream and chocolate to-go. Besides waffles there are Belgian chocolate shops everywhere, carts selling chocolate covered fruit, and ice cream.. it's fantastic. I have some photos here and more will be added to that soon.

On Saturday we slept late to recover from the long day in Brussels and then rode our bikes around Tilburg, Holland, where Sara's University is. We had another very sunny day and although I'm out of shape, riding bikes around was nice. It's a nice lifestyle they have there where everyone rides their bikes. There are more bicycles than cars, bike lots with hundreds of bikes parked there at any given time, bicycle street lights, and a path between the street and the sidewalks designated for bicyclists. They even have a free underground bicycle parking garage, where you can leave your bike for free and people who are paid by the government watch the bikes for you while you are around the city center.
Tilburg is a beautiful little city, very quaint and Dutch with the red brick houses all lined up very neatly along the streets and then a very open city center and an adorable street for night life where bars and cafes line each side of the street and everyone is sitting outside along the streets under the overhangs and everyone is happy and music is playing. Sara and I went back during the night to go to this street and have a drink and pretend we are both very European.

It was my first trip outside the UK alone where the signs and the announcements where not in English, and although I was a little anxious on some of my travels listening to the voice overs and crossing my fingers that I was on the right bus, because I couldn't understand them. But all is well, it was wonderful and next weekend I am off to Paris!

This past weekend I decided not to jet set off anywhere because of poor weather predictions in much of Europe for all of the weekend and I'm trying to optimize my spending so a last minute trip was a bit more expensive to some places. So I decided that it's about time I get myself to London!

I took the train and got into the city around 12 and spent the entire time (until my train at 8) trying to cover all of the major points of interest. One of the speakers from FOWA offered to show me around, so although London seems pretty easy to navigate, I had a nice tour guide. As I think about it, I really don't think there was anything that I missed. I saw London Bridge, Tower Bridge, the Tower of London, Big Ben, Parliament, the London Eye, Piccadilly Circus. Buckingham Palace, Hyde Park, the Prince Albert Memorial, and even a royal horse parade! [I've run out of space for this month already on my Flickr, so click here for all my photos.]

As for the other days in my weekend, on Friday I spent the afternoon in the center of town with Ryan and his family doing errands and hanging out in the park. Then on Sunday I took a long walk to the other end of town and after lunch I just settled back into my bed and watched Jane Austen movies (Pride & Prejudice and Sense & Sensibility) for the rest of the evening, in honor of true Bath and English spirit (Austen lived in Bath for many years and there is a museum and tour here dedicated to her.)

I have also planned a trip to the Netherlands for this coming weekend to visit Sara!(a friend from Turkey who I haven't seen in three years!) So she will show me around the Netherlands and we may even visit Brussels for an afternoon.

So here are my upcoming travel plans/ dates:
June 11-14 >Netherlands
June 18-21 >Paris
June 22-28> Berlin

I am now just about at my three week mark and finally completely settled in. I have moved into my apartment and met my flat mates who are all very lovely and I'm actually a little disappointed that nearly all of them will be leaving after their graduation.

The weather here has been unusually sunny and summery and I have been soaking up every bit of it spending all my days off lying out at on the Crescent lawn taking in the sunshine, the grandeur of the Royal Crescent, and watching the people. I rarely get lost now wandering around town and feel that I'm ready now to start making some weekend trips out of Bath.

I have just returned after three days of travel with work helping to run the Future of Web Apps (FOWA) conference days in Cambridge and Bristol. We left Monday and made our way to Cambridge. We spent the night there and wandered around Cambridge, which is really beautiful and we had amazing warm summer weather, and ate dinner at a small Italian place sitting outside on the cafe tables along the street. In the morning we then headed to the venue and set up and did registration for the 150 or so people who attended FOWA Cambridge, then Jo and I made our way to Bristol, leaving Cambridge in the hands of Keir and Mike for the rest of the event. We took the train to Bristol and did a bit of wandering there, had a few drinks and met up with Lou, another co-worker who lives in Bristol, for dinner. In the morning we walked over to the FOWA Bristol venue and set up registration with Lou and began the event. I did the MC-ing for the morning bit of the event and was able to watch some of the presentations as well. Following the main event we went over to a nearby bar and organized speed netoworking and then sponosored free drinks for all the attendees and everyone just chatted and relaxed from a long, but fulfilling day of focus and presentations. We stayed at the bar mingleing and drinking for a few hours and then went out for a work dinner with some of the speakers and friends of Carsonified, which was really fantastic because I got to know some of the speakers better and we all celebrated a job well done!

I now have another long weekend ahead of me and rain is approaching so I am trying to make a plan so that I'm not too bored. I have two trips already planned for mid-June, Paris with Jen and Berlin to reunite with Bjoern and would like to plan some more extensive Europe trips but am hesitant still with my budget.
More photos are up on my flickr so you can have a look at some photos from the event and the recent travels and now that I have a home I also have a mailing address so if you'd like it shoot me an email and because I have a home I can also have guests so if you'd like to come and visit me, please do.

<3