Gary's European Vacation, Part 2

On Sunday morning, we traveled to France for one day in Normandy sandwiched between two days in lovely Paris. After a three-hour train ride through the lovely cities of Metz and Nancy exchanging gossip and other funny stories, we were ready to be stupid Americans in Paris.

The day consisted of lunch in the Latin Quarter, a walking tour through several Paris cathedrals, and an evening at the Eiffel tower and dinner near the Arc de Triumph. Here are some pictures.

I still hate Notre Dame, just not this cathedral.

It's a bird. It's a plane. No! It's a flying buttress!

Now that's what I call a hotel room with a view.

We're obvious tourists.

No that's not a raspberry with Maverick. It's just Raspberry's coat.

We were up early on Tuesday for a trek to the Normandy region in Northern France to check out some of the D-Day beaches. There were several rental cars available at the train station in Caen since many Americans and Brits like to drive 40km from Caen to the beaches. We rented from good old Avis and had our first run in with the American hating French. After some difficulties with a botched rental car reservation, we finally booked a new car at Avis. Since we had to fill up the car before returning it the next morning, we asked where we could find a gas station. Irritated with our question, the lady at the counter scoffed “Pfft. There everywhere”. More on that later.

The day on the beaches was awesome. Taking in the beaches where the Allied troops started the D-Day invasion was amazing, especially for any war history buffs out there. Here are a bunch of pictures from the day at the beach.

A view of Omaha Beach from the high grounds where the Nazis fired down on the troops.

Concrete shelter on Omaha Beach that was hit by a few grenades.

There's several thousand of these graves in the cemetary.

Gold Beach (where the Brits invaded)

We returned to Caen for a late dinner. Despite our inability to speak French, we did a fairly good job ordering our food without screaming that we were tourists that didn't know the language. However, when the waitress started speaking a lot of French later on when she was confused about our crepe order for dessert, she realized that we spoke English. At this point, the lady at the next table said something in French to the waitress that basically mocked that fact that we were stupid Americans. Seriously, we were providing business to this restaurant visiting the beaches that helped save France as we know it today for the second time in less than fifty years. At least they could be more respectful of our attempt to not stand out as annoying tourists. Stupid French.

We were supposed to return to Paris on the 9:25AM train for the return half of our pre-purchased ticket. Even though the train station was 5 minutes away, we left the hotel around 8:40 since we needed to put gas in our rental car at one of the many numerous gas stations in town. We drove around for a few minutes, but were unable to find any of the gas stations. Pfft. They were everywhere. Stupid French. While looking for a gas station, we got lost and ended up on a major highway. By this time, it was around 9AM and we were getting worried. Somehow, we found our way back into town and to the train station at 9:15. No time to fill up the tank, but just enough time to return the rental car and catch our train. Surprisingly, the penalty for not filling up the rental car is nowhere near the gouging you would receive is the US.

The second day in France was spent walking several miles around town. We went to the outside of the Louvre, but we didn’t go inside since the Louvre is a 1-2 day experience. We also went to Montmarte and the Arc de Triumph, among other places, before returning to Germany at the end of the night. The trip to Montmarte was nearly marred by a group of scary men trying to sell us bracelets as we descended the steps of Montmarte. Five men blocked us at the end of the stairwell and tried hard to sell us some stupid bracelet. Maverick tried to push her way through them and one man grabbed her shoulder. She yelled at them to let go of her and we the three of us were able to push our way through after a brief scare. In hindsight, we were probably at risk of getting robbed, or at the very least pick-pocketed since we were sort of trapped by the five men. Thankfully, nothing really bad happened.

Here are some pictures from the second day in Paris.

A museum where I could spend days walking around.

A rare break in traffic in the circle of death.

Don't drive around the Arc unless you have a death wish. Holy crap.

Shortest narrowest street. Ever.

A beautiful view of a huge city atop Montmarte. Be sure to get a nutella crepe at the bottom of the steps to the church!

We were able to grab a private 6-seat car for the train back to Maverick’s home. In between many stories from Rasbperry that were either blatantly false or colvoluted and impossible to follow without a detailed diagram, we decided to have fun with our digital cameras. Here is my contribution.

Up Next, Part 3: Let there be wine!

Gary's European Vacation, Part 1

I am feeling much less jet-lagged this evening, so now I have some more time to post about my vacation. Raspberry and I flew across the pond on Thursday the 18^th to see our good friend Maverick. Maverick fled the country last summer to join her husband, who is currently serving in the US military overseas. If you want to know how I came up with the nickname “Raspberry”, you’ll know when I post a picture of her wearing her distinctive coat at the Eiffel Tower in part 2 (I also couldn’t come up with anything better).

The trip got off to a good start with a great night of sleep on the plane, at the expense of watching the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie. This was my 4^th trip to Europe in my 26 years of existence, yet it was the first time I was able to sleep on the transatlantic flight. After a good four hours of sleep on the plane, I was relatively refreshed when we arrived in Frankfurt around 9AM on Friday morning (Germany time).

We cleared immigration and customs without being asked a single question about what was in our bags or why we were visiting Germany. Strange, but I guess they like Americans there. Maverick met us at the airport and we proceeded to tour the city of Frankfurt. Frankfurt really didn’t seem like a place that attracts tourist. There wasn’t anything exciting to do during the day and it was very much a business town. Hence, I have no pictures and no funny stories.

I survived until about 8PM on Friday before crashing due to lack of sleep. Despite my struggles sleeping in over the past couple years, I was up and refreshed for a new day at 10:30AM Saturday morning after 14+ hours of sleep! We spent Friday in Trier, which is a city near the Luxembourg border and within 30 minutes from Maverick’s home. Trier has a lot of ruins from Roman times that we explored before ending the afternoon with the German tradition of coffee and cake. Here are a few pictures from the afternoon.

Gate to the city of Trier in Roman times. The blackish exterior occured over time and is not due to fire.

Thanks for vandalizing a 2000 year old structure. My trip is complete knowing that Tina and Alex professed their love for each other at the gate to Trier on 3/4/2006.

The remains of the Roman Bath. A lot of the ruins were underground, so you can't see much in the picture.

I slayed all challengers at the Coliseum. They didn't have a chance against me.

The evening was spent getting fired up for the Michigan-Ohio State football game. Thankfully, the Armed Forces Network picked up the big game, so I was able to watch the showdown from the comfort of Maverick’s home. Even better, the AFN is not allowed to show normal commercials, so I was able to see some entertaining AFN specific commercials with basic cooking tips, family holiday greetings, messages from senior military officials, and the importance of abstinence.

Since Maverick gets a great rate on US phone calls, I called FlyingV to yell ‘Go Blue”, only to learn that his roommate, the temporarily hated BuckeyeBoy, pranked him by painting a large red block ‘O’ on his living room wall for their big gameday party. It was ok since FlyingV is planning to paint his condo soon...

I was sad to learn about the passing of the great Bo Schembechler, and even sadder to see Michigan lose the football game. We need to stop losing to those bastards. I'll post a fond memory of Bo at some point in the future, but Michigan football is not the focus of the Germany posts so I'll stop for now.

By the time the game ended, it was nearly 2AMand time for bed. We had to wake up at 7AM for the next leg of the trip, so I needed to get over the sadness of the game and get some sleep. There are more funny stories in the next part, so you don't want to miss it!

Stay tuned for part 2: The French – "Pfft. They’re everywhere"!

Hooray for Jet Lag

I am back safely from an awesome trip to Europe to visit Maverick. However, I am a little too tired/jet lagged after getting back last night and working ten hours today to post any pictures/details from the trip tonight. I'll be sure to provide the awesome details later this week.

Instead, I will post an unrelated story from my trip to the gas station this evening.

Anyone who fills up the gas tank on their car should know that there are three things you are not supposed to do while filling up the car. First, turn off the engine. Second, don't smoke. Third, don't talk on your cell phone. There is a friendly picture detailing these rules at every pump. Today as I was topping off the tank, I noticed that the guy at the pump next to me was violating two of the three rules. Surprisingly, he was not talking on his cell phone. While that guy might choose to tempt fate every time he fills up his car, I decided that i needed to finish up quickly and high-tail it away from the gas station as quickly as possible before I was an unknown statistic in this man's effort to win a Darwin Award in 2006.

Really, are there people out there stupid enough to leave the engine running and smoke a cigarette while putting gasoline in their car? Wow. If I wasn't almost done, I would have asked him to not endanger my life, but I was gone before he had 0.5 gallons in the vehicle.

Last Post Before Germany

I would be disappointed in myself if I didn't mention a certain football game this Saturday before I leave for Germany on Saturday. In case you haven't heard about it on ESPN, Michigan plays Ohio State this weekend. I'm guessing most of you knew this by now since ESPN has been counting down the hours until kickoff for about 5 weeks, but the game is this weekend!

I already wrote about how awesome UM-OSU week is last year. This year, I'll just link a couple cool posts from the MZone. The first link was brought to the attention of the guys on that site by a special guest of this site that shall not be named (unless she wishes to identify herself).

Public Service Annoucement

Not so Cute Puppies

I hope the Crazychicas represent well in Columbus this weekend. Be sure to wear your Michigan colors proudly, and be safe. I want stories when you return.

GO MICHIGAN! BEAT THE BUCKEYES!

Weekend Update

I am sitting here in Detroit Metro Airport with a lot of time to kill. I volunteered my seat on the 5:15PM flight to Hartford for a free round trip ticket to anywhere in the US (except AK and HI). I won’t get back to my apartment until around midnight now, but I used to take the late flight back to CT a couple years ago, so I can handle a late night for a free plane ticket. Unfortunately, after weather and mechanical delays, my arrival time was pushed back three hours. It’s 2AM, and my free plane ticket has ruined my sleep habits for the next few days.

I figured that I’d get a head start on my recap of LeftHand’s wedding this weekend. LeftHand is a friend of mine from the MMB trumpet section. Back when I was in college, he was one of my drinking buddies and good for tons of laughs since he is probably one of the biggest space cadets I have ever met. He is not the greatest person at keeping in touch, and I have not been much better with many people from high school and college over the past couple years. As a result, we had not spoken to each other much recently. Regardless, I was not going to miss his wedding after receiving an invitation.

There were quite a few other band alums at the wedding that I had not heard from recently. With the exception of CableGirl, I was basically out of touch with everyone who attended, including my senior year roommate and one of my favorite MMB trumpet friends, PinballWizard.

To my surprise, the wedding ceremony was outside. Yes. Outside. Note to self. If/when I get married, I will not have an outdoor wedding in a northern state in the month of November. Seriously. Outside??? There was a pavilion set up at the last minute so that we were covered, but it was still freezing (I consider 40 degrees freezing for a wedding). I could see my own breath. Ok. I will stop complaining. It’s a minor inconvenience in an otherwise fun night.

Everyone was wearing black coats. At one point, CableGirl turned to me and mentioned that it seemed more like a funeral than a wedding given how everyone was wearing black and shivering quietly. Thankfully, the wedding service was shortened to a brief 20 minutes or so since the bride was especially cold in her strapless dress.

I had only met the bride once before the wedding. Even though she was also in the band, I graduated and moved to CT before she joined. Jason introduced her to me at the reception. The bride then turned to LeftHand and whispered “as in Gary the Jew?”. There were two people named Gary at the reception, and I was referred to as “Gary the Jew” instead of just Gary (or Gary#1) when they were planning who would sit at each table for the reception. Ah yes. I miss the trumpets…

There were very few people staying at the hotel reserved for wedding guests that were not in the wedding party. As a result, I was stuck driving CableGirl from the hotel to the wedding since she wanted to drink. I limited myself to a glass of wine and a glass of champagne for the toast during the first few hours. Shortly before the dancing started, one of the groomsmen came up to me with a message directly from LeftHand letting me know that there is extra room in the wedding party shuttle back to the hotel and that it was requested that I get an alcoholic drink in my hand as soon as possible. Game. Set. Match. I had a glass of red wine in my hand in about 20 seconds and finished several more before the end of the night.

Most weddings I have attended recently are more geared toward the older crowd. By older, I mean people older than 35. Given that, I was shocked when the first song played after the end of the obligatory dances (bride-groom, bride-father, etc) was a song by Usher. Two songs by Outkast followed that. All of a sudden, the dance floor was packed with people who were under 35. I haven’t been to a wedding like this in a long time. Now that I had some alcohol in my system, I was ready to join the fun.

Since PinballWizard was there, we needed to get the DJ to play some 80s hair band music. Once the DJ started playing AC/DC, we rushed over to PinballWizard with a camera and got some great shots of him playing the air guitar. He topped that performance during the song “Foot Loose”. Truly impressive. I missed PinballWizard over the past couple years. He was always good for some laughs and a great friend for football and hockey games. We traded contact information last night and will hopefully stay in better touch going forward.

Sadly, I am not in great party shape anymore. We went back to the hotel around 1AM and started a post party where we were going to kill the wedding kegs with the bride and groom. There was an “open bar” at the wedding, which consisted of alcohol purchased in advance by the bride and groom and served by the reception hall wait staff. Hence, there was some leftover beer that needed to be finished. I showed up at the party a little before 2, but I was ready to crash by 2:15AM. I felt bad because I left before LeftHand showed up at the post party, so he was freaking out that I didn’t have a good time. Thankfully, CableGirl was still at the party and pointed out that I had a blast, as evidenced by a rare appearance on the dance floor.

I didn’t take any pictures with my camera since several others at my table had digital cameras. Once I receive some of the good pictures, I will post them here.

Several of us discussed ideas for a late winter ski-trip out west. CableGirl has been pushing this idea for a few months, but it’s starting to sound like this trip might actually happen. Hopefully we can make the details work and meet up again early next year. Otherwise, I probably won’t see most of these people until Bright’s wedding in July out in San Francisco.

This Site Sucks

So I know what all of you have been thinking lately. "Gary, your blog sucks these days". I admit it. It's true. I have had a major case of writer's block for a while now.

I finally figured out why this site has not been as fun lately. I miss the craziness of TheCrazyCanuck. If you couldn't tell, I am currently in a familiar location. I am sitting in the corner of the living room of my old apartment hanging out with TheCrazyCanuck and her new roommate. Moving out of this apartment and not experiencing TheCrazyCanuck and her bag of hilarious quotes (and trashy television shows) each day has left a void in my life. I was reminded on one of her best quotes of 2005 a short while ago and decided to steal her laptop and share it with everyone:

"Gary, how do have an uncle when you only have one brother"? - I never realized that Canada was so similar to Mississippi.

And here is another classic
"I didn't know that the Yukon territories had an actuarial school" - Not so much a quote but rather a thought about someone who was interviewing her for an internship at my company several years ago. Think about this one.

In her defense, TheCrazyCanuck is not stupid. In fact, she is far better than me at Jeopardy. Also, she killed me on this Wheel of Fortune puzzle tonight:

THE ----
THE --- ---
THE ----
--------

Category: Before and After

I've got Nothing

Yesterday was a big day for the direction of our country. It's not that often that the control of our government switches from one party to the other. Yet, I really have nothing to say about it today. There was no major surprises (though the Democrats taking the Senate was borderline). I was even expecting Bush to make a major move in the event of a Republican loss (i.e., firing Rumsfeld, which he should have done years ago). I am curious how the University of Michigan responds to the passing of Proposition 2, but Mary Coleman spoke to an audience on the Diag this afternoon. I have a feeling that Proposition 2 will be in the courts for years, and I am not sure if I support that use of university funds since they are probably fighting a losing battle.

So that's it. I have nothing given the major news of the past twenty four hours.

I'm off to Michigan on Friday for a wedding this weekend and then off to Germany to visit Maverick, so I will not post much (if at all) before I return from Germany after Thanksgiving.

Puppies or Potentially Fatal Car Crashes?

Election season mercifully comes to an end tomorrow. There have been a few hotly contested races here in CT. However, none of them come close to the nasty race for Senate that I wrote about a couple weeks ago.

Lately, the Lieberman and Lamont released commercials that made me laugh. Watch them both.

Lamont

Lieberman

Ok, so Lieberman has many other nasty adds out there that match the venom spewed from Lamont's camp, but I like this one. As RoopDogg eloquently put it, I'm "Pro-Dog(g)"?

I am looking forward to Tuesday night when these commercials stop polluting the airwaves. However, between now and then, I have to decide which candidate to support. I gave this a lot of thought over the past couple weeks, and I am probably going to vote for Joe. I think Ned Lamont is running a one-issue campaign, and I disagree with way too many of his other ideas. For example, I am strongly against government paid universal health care. I think this would be incredibly wasteful and inefficient. There are much better ways to address the rising number of uninsured Americans than universal health care (promote cheap catastrophic coverage, tax breaks for individuals who pay their own insurance premiums, expanding the Medicare/Medicaid programs to those who are extremely poor, etc). Candidates as far left as Lamont scare me since they share the belief that the government should run the US healthcare system, which I think would weaken the health care system and substantially increase our taxes.

Since Lieberman will still caucus with the Democrats, voting for him is not the same as voting for Bush. I like some of his other ideas, even though I am still not enamored with Joe as my senator.

I really hope the Democrats sweep congress. Recent history supports the argument that when a party controls Congress and the White House, they become corrupt (Democrats in early 1990s and Republicans since 2000). The leadership becomes unable to control itself from pork and excess (did someone say a $250M bridge to nowhere in Alaska?). When Congress is appropriately checking the White House, I have much more faith in government. Therefore, go Democrats!

You know what is really sad about this whole election season? I am generally more interested in Michigan politics than Connecticut politics, even though I may never live in Michigan again. I can't name my congressman here in CT. However, I can name the congressmen that represent Ann Arbor and Plymouth. There are two hotly contested races involving incumbent Republicans in CT (Rob Simmons and Nancy Johnson). However, both of them represent other districts within the state (yes, CT has more than two congressmen).

There are two votes in Michigan that have my full attention this fall. The first is the race for Governor. I think that Jennifer Granholm is in deep trouble because of the huge slide in the economy over the past four years (largely driven to the fall of Ford and GM). She is up against a dangerous candidate. Dick De Vos terrifies me with his far-right social views, even if he is probably the better choice to improve the economic condition of the state better than Granholm. Why do Republicans insist on having such reactionary social views? When did I become such a Libertarian? I haven't seen a recent poll, but this will probably be a close race. I hope Michigan does not vote for a change.

The other election is Proposal 2, the so-called Michigan Civil Rights Initiative. The state of Michigan is voting on whether to allow preferential programs at any public institution that provide a special advantage to an individual based on race, religion, gender, etc. This is a thinly veiled attack on the University of Michigan's admission policies and "affirmative action". Based on what I have read about a similar proposal passed by California voters a few years ago, this proposal had unintended consequences against programs that supported women. Although this proposal will likely pass convincingly, Michigan will regret their actions once the courts further define the far reaching impacts of this new vague law and come down hard on state programs not targeted by this proposal. Even the conservative Detroit News opposes this proposal.

Regardless of your beliefs, I hope all of you take the time to VOTE tomorrow.

Don't Worry. I Am Alive!

I have not been blogging much lately. Sorry! I have been busy with other things over the past week, like managing to fit 18 people into my small apartment for a massive taco night on Friday and spending my whole weekend on the couch in my apartment watching TV. With a life as exciting as that, it's hard to come up with some good stories to write about.

WTF?

Maybe it's a good thing that ESPNU is not carried by the local cable station. I did not see a single play from yesterday's nail biter against Ball State. I want to leave it that way. How did the game end up so close? Ball State is terrible. Michigan has been sluggish for the past couple weeks. Hopefully they can turn things around because Indiana is not a team to take lightly this year. They have one hell of a receiver in Hardy and are capable of scoring in big plays if Michigan comes out sluggish next week. There will be no choking before the Ohio State game. Please...

I was disappointed that I was not able to see the game on TV in my own home yesterday. I could have gone to a sports bar, but I was not overly excited about the matchup.

ESPNU continues to oversaturate the college sports market with another station devoted to less than stellar college football games each week and are trying to drive up cable costs by forcing carriers to add ESPNU to their regular lineup. I would be much more supportive of a station like ESPNU on my cable lineup if it was more devoted to low revenue sports (like college hockey). However, ESPNU is damaging truly great stations like CSTV which air sports other than football and will probably never break through when big companies like ESPN promote a similar product that is far inferior. The last thing I want is a college sports station that carries less exciting football and basketball matchups as opposed to big showdowns in sports like college hockey.

Be Careful, CrazyChicas

I stole this link of the crazychica blog, who stole it from a comment on the MZone blog.

Assuming all goes as planned and Michigan and Ohio State are both 11-0 entering the epic showdown on 11/18, a game day scene far worse than the one in that link awaits the Crazychicas. I hope you are all safe and have a blast in Columbus.

That city is pure hell when Michigan is in town. I love traveling to Michigan away games, but I doubt I'll ever go to Columbus again. This video is consistent with my memories from the trip, and we won the game that year.