Trista's Summer in Europe

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

So this past weekend (+Monday) was a holiday here as well, it's called "Bank Holiday" and really celebrates nothing, it's simply a day off, so I had a four day weekend to try and keep myself entertained. It was wonderful and sunny and actually didn't rain one bit. I spent a lot of time outside, went to the Farmer's market, and a little French market that was in town this weekend, and explored the upper left side (that's where it is on the map anyway) of town where the Royal Crescent and Botanical Gardens are. Also there were some fireworks on Friday night to kick off the International Music Festival that is in town... it was my pretend fourth of July. So these are some of the photos from my weekend :)

I have now been here for about a week and a half and despite a very rough first weekend I am now on my feet and trying to make the most of my time here. I am grateful to the people who I work with because they have really opened their arms to me and have been really wonderful. On Monday night I went to a concert with some people from work, then on Wednesday I was invited to a co-workers home for dinner, and last night several of us went bar hopping after work. As far as my work goes I have two big projects lined up that I have begun brainstorming for and will hopefully begin further production of them next week. They are quite big projects and I am really excited about them and seeing how they turn out and learning a lot from that. As they begin to work themselves out I will say more about them.
Just to say more about my work life in general, it’s a work environment unlike any most will experience. We have a four-day work week, it’s very flexible, and very fun. Everyone knows that everybody else will get accomplished what they need to and no one needs to punch in/ out or look over your shoulder to see if work is getting done (when you’re actually browsing twitter or Facebook) because it just gets done and you enjoy your work. It’s amusing that we have important meetings on beanbags in the “living room” and play music all day, but its wonderful and everyone is happy.
I am happy too. Bath is lovely and I have done quite a bit of exploring (although I still have many points of interest still to explore). Last weekend I went to Stonehenge and to Lacock Village. Stonehenge is a funny trip to take because it’s very anti-climatic- it’s really just a bunch of old rocks and you can’t touch them or anything… but amazing nonetheless and well worth the trip to have seen them in real life. Lacock Village is one of many, very very old villages that still stand in the UK today, but it’s like you’ve stepped back in time. The village is tiny, you can see the whole thing really in about half an hour, but it’s sort of isolated and maintains its heritage and charm despite hundreds of years gone by. Today I visited the Roman Baths, which is the main point of interest here that people travel from all over to see, and I could see why. They are beautiful and so much of the Baths are still well preserved even though they were build in the first century A.D. Although it costs money to enter and walk around I plan to visit again before I leave Bath.
I am also looking forward to moving into my own room in a student apartment next weekend. It’s a quaint, enchanting little house where six students currently live. Some of them will remain while I’m there so I can also hopefully make some friends. The room is on the first floor looking out on the street and garden and the living room and kitchen (like most typical townhouses here) are mostly all glass windows that open up into the back garden. I am looking forward to having a stable living space as well as being able to cook and store my own food instead of eating out and only eating food I can store without a fridge.
Ah, well it is a holiday here on Monday as well so many are going away for the “bank holiday” so I am trying to keep myself busy for what for me is a four day weekend. But all is well and I have high hopes for the coming weeks as we at work prepare for the Future of Web Apps UK Tour and I get myself more thoroughly settled in.

So far all is well. I have arrived safely and nearly caught up on sleep. I have a long unplanned weekend ahead of me to rest and wander. My first day was a bit overwhelming and I was exhausted from all the traveling. My arrival to Bath itself was very intimidating, although I had my map with walking directions from the bus station to my hostel the streets here are confusing and vaguely signed. I had planned to just hail a taxi from the station because I couldn't possibly walk with all my luggage- however, getting a taxi here is difficult and I did indeed walk all the way with my luggage in the rain- I bet it was hilarious to watch.

I of course was greeted with gloomy, gray skies and the rain continues, thus lesson #1 is learned over the course of my two days: always carry an umbrella because you never quite know when it will rain!

Yesterday after my time at Carsonified I ventured out to find the B&B that was promoting a flat for rent. I, of course, got utterly lost, as I have almost every time I try to get anywhere around here. Even with my map and walking directions, I am lost and wandering... somehow I always manage to get where I need to be, it just takes me a little longer. Luckily yesterday I really had the time to get lost and although I don't enjoy being lost, I really didn't mind so much wandering around and just looking around. It is a very cute city, actually there is some debate over whether it really should be called a city, because it is really pretty small. Despite it's small size I haven't been all over yet and plan to do that this weekend.

My second lesson, was how to shop at a Catalog store... which I thought was quite bizarre, but was actually kind of enjoyable. Basically you go to a little counter where there are these enormous catalogs (of everything you would really ever need) and you write down the little code to what you want on a little sheet of paper then you take the paper to customer counter and the sales people type in your order, you pay, and they give you an order number. You then take your receipt and sit in a little waiting queue and your order comes down a conveyor belt and another sales person calls your number and gives you the items you ordered. It was very efficient.

Everyone here has been incredibly helpful and friendly, it's been really nice encountering these helpful people as I wander and struggle to find what I need, the Carsonified crew has been especially wonderful, as I knew they would be, and I feel much more relieved today that everything will be just fine as I start this adventure.

That is all for now, although there are many things to say, I am still working everything out and getting myself settled in and as that continues I will post other news in a few days as well as some photos that I plan to take on my adventure tomorrow.