32 Days

I am traveling to Europe this summer, and from mid-June to mid-July I will be backpacking through Germany, Austria, and Italy. By backpacking I really mean taking trains from city to city while staying in youth hostels.

My trip doesn't have much focus, since one of my favorite things to do when traveling is walk around cities aimlessly. Hopefully in the final draft of my plans (which get more and more fine every time I revise them) I will have a balance between cities and scenery. I do plan on visiting a few places I have been before (including the concentration camp at Ravensbrück and even Freiburg im Breisgau, which I visited with People to People). Most of my travels will lead me to new places, however, including Hamburg, Vienna, Naples, and Nuernberg.

Here is a basic outline of my plans so far. Out of the 32 days I have to work with, 10 of them are designated "travel" days. If you have traveled to Germany, Austria, or Italy or have any other suggestions or advice to give, I'd love to hear from you! Drop me a comment (I won't make it public if you don't want me to...I do moderate my comments) or send me an email (if you happen to know it)!

Cities in which I plan on staying overnight:
Wesel/Hamminkeln (My host town...I'm staying here roughly a month altogether)
Hamburg (Famous harbor, access to Ostsee and Nordsee)
Ravensbrück
Berlin
Nürnberg (They have a famous F1 track...which is used for other forms of racing, too)
Vienna (Awesome food)
Rome (Colloseum, aqueducts...)
Naples
Genoa
Innsbrück (Scenic area, access to scenic train routes)
Freiburg (Black Forest)

Places I plan on passing through:
Bremen, Hannover, Wolfsburg, Dresden, Leipzig, Graz, Venice, Pisa, Munich, Stuttgart, Worms

Happy Earth Day!

It's everyone's favorite day of the year! (One of mine, at least). If you live in Pennsylvania, take a break from picking up litter and recycling and go vote! If you live anywhere else, you can skip the voting part. And afterwards, you can treat yourself to cake.

Because of the close primaries, we have been getting a lot of distinguished passers-by here in Pittsburgh. So far I have seen and heard Michelle Obama, Chelsea Clinton, John McCain, and Barack Obama. I think that political rallies are interesting and sometimes fun, if not always incredibly informative. Along with them came other famous people to introduce them, including Theresa Heinz and Sean Austin from Lord of the Rings.

Hopefully you get a chance to see some of the candidates, too, before November. Until then, though, pick up five pieces of trash and enjoy a cleaner Earth!

Carnival

Happy Carnival!

Most countries celebrate Carnival (a.k.a. Mardi Gras or Karneval) around February. CMU celebrates its traditional Carnival, which has nothing to do with the aforementioned Carnival, in April with three full days of events and a 4-day weekend to boot.

First up for Carnival was booths. About a quarter of the Morewood parking lot is taken up by student-built booths, some of which are practically houses. There are different categories for building, including competition and blitz. The teams (mostly fraternities and sororities in competition) have to stop building at one o'clock on Thursday. Midway opens at three to a loud fanfare of bagpipes followed by the Kiltie Band's annual Spring Carnival concert.

"Extra Extra Read All About It"

A bench so awesome you won't want to sit on it.

Friday and Saturday morning were Sweepstakes, more lovingly referred to as Buggy. Teams race their buggies against each other, four to five people pushing over the buggy up the hills and one person in the buggy driving down them. The race takes place around Flagstaff Hill: It starts in front of Margaret Morrison, races in front of Phipps (a long, steep downhill stretch referred to as the Chute), and ends with the buggies being pushed up Frew Street, which is behind campus.

A close race to the finish line.

At this point buggies are moving up to 35 mph.

Friday afternoon was the Mobot race. If you have been to CMU and have walked around campus, you have probably seen the white curves and dots in front of Wean. That is the Mobot track, which tests robot builders' and their robots' skills in unpredictable weather, their ability to move down steep hills and across deepening sidewalk cracks, not to mention through the final "decision point" where the track diverges and the robots must choose which path to take. (Photos from CMU's School of Computer Science).

One of my favorite undergrad mobots.

Another cool robot from the open division (it has a swiveling head and formidable arms).

This winning robot beat the world record...twice! It cleared all 14 gates in 50.7 seconds on its second run.

Ballroom

Here are some pictures from our last ballroom competition, courtesy of Jackie and Ken. It's been a busy week since then, full of papers, labs and exams (and another exam on Monday). I've been getting over a cold, too, which thankfully hasn't turned into a fever (Manasi just noted that I've gotten sick after every ballroom competition. I think I've used her thermometer more than she has). There's a ballroom party tonight, but I don't think I'm going now. Oh well.

The whole group

Andrey and I wearing our standard outfits.
Ken and his partner, Ashley.
Jessica, Marcus, and Daisy. Marcus is an au-pair from Germany who's joined our competition team for the time being.

Andrey and I with our sixth place ribbons for newcomer American Smooth Foxtrot.
Jackie and Volkan posing.
The gals.
The guys.
Hanging out at our spot on the bleachers. It was a long one-day competition.
Andrey and I after dancing about 9 dances in a row. I don't know who authorized Jackie to take this picture.
Daisy and Marcus.
Practicing our waltz.And our tango.

The Prefrosh are Visiting

I have been having some new visitors to my blog recently. Apparently my blog comes up on Google when you search for the chemical formula on Harvey Mudd's acceptance letters. Welcome guys! But I'm sorry, because I actually go to Carnegie Mellon University, not Harvey Mudd. Feel free to stay, though, and learn a little bit about college life. (Oh, and I believe the formula represents Chlinochlore).

This is a busy week: 2 exams, a paper, a lab, and a bunch of SWE activities. Last weekend I was at a ballroom competition at Penn State, so I wasn't able to get much of a head start. The competition went well, though. Andrey and I placed 6th in American Smooth Foxtrot in newcomer and 7th in the same dance in bronze (a higher level). In combination with 17 callbacks, it was a great competition.