Victor's Adventures: October 2005

Camping in Switzerland

Hey everyone,

Well, this weekend we went renagade camping again. This time it was Keegan, Kelan and I. We left on friday night to Arth, which is a small town close to Luzern. It was about an hour train ride so pretty close, and free (gotta love Gleis Seben). So we got to the town about 9:30 - 10:00 ish and walked to the end of town into to woods to find a good spot to set up the tents and finally found a spot on a hill beside some farmers and ranchers. The spot was covered from view with trees and the darkness of night and fairly flat considering it was on a side of a mountain. When we setup the tent we just laid outside, the weather was perfect, pretty warm, no wind and clear skies. There wasn't much light pollution so you could see a ton of stars, and there were a lot of shooting starts, satelites and I think a planet. The view of the town from across the lake was also pretty nice. It got a little cold at night (didn't have a sleeping bag, so just clothes and jacket) but I managed some how. Also sounded like there were people walking by the tent at night, but that could just be my paranoid mind at work :)

We woke up a little before sunset so we could take down the tent before anyone could see us and went on to our hike at Mt. Rigi. The place were we slept looks pretty cool in the morning, it was all misty and by a mountain, looked sorta spooky, fitting for halloween.

From town we took a Train up to the top of Mt. Rigi (1800 m). The view from there was really nice as you could see a lot of mountains, the swiss alps, and swiss country side.

The original plan was hike to Rotstock (a peak) and then down the mountain,

But half way there we decided to take the train to another town at the bottom, Vitznau (we had a day pass and wanted to get our money's worth).

The train was pretty old and the view down was really nice with big lakes and mountains. It was a lot like banff i guess.

We eventually took the train back up to were we started, then Hiked over the Hotstock. From there we hiked to another train station to catch a cable car down to the bottom to another town (Weggis). The cable car was pretty fast and had these cool drops, made your stomach jump :)

From Weggis we took a boat to Luzern. The boat was pretty nice and Luzern looks really nice at night time.

From there we took the train back home to get ready for the halloween party, but i'll save that for another post. All in all it was pretty relaxing, not very intense of a hike but the senery was nice and camping was fun. Next time i think we'll try winter camping.

When I can track down some Halloween pics i'll post them. later

drinking at work,,,,,,the good kind.

Well this week marks the last week my boss is gonna be here (too a job as the head of a research center in Germany), so we had a going away party today. Was sorta weird breaking out hte booze during work hours but these Germans sure love to drink :)

It's a little crappy cuz i had a cool boss, we'll see what the new guy is like (he seems more strict and less fun though).

My bosses friend is going through this thing on making a cake almost every day for my boss'es last bit here, so that's kinda nice (mm..cake).

For my work, nothing really changes, still doing hte same projects and all that, so i guess it'll just be the same as usual.

ok, back to work

GOODUCKEN!!

Gooducken

Do you guys remember that kids song or book or something where there's a spider and a cat eats it, and a dog eats the cat and it keeps going with bigger animals (or did I just make this crazy story up?). Well, it inspired us to make a Turducken. Unfortuately we couldn't find a turkey, but found a goose and ended up making a Gooducken.

Basically you take a Goose, a Duck and a Chicken and debone everything (took a long long time) so your left with 1 peice of meat per bird. Then you shove the chicken inside the duck, and then shove that inside the goose. We also flavoured each bird different. The chicken had fondue cheese inside it, and was flavored with tandori chicken powder. The duck was favoured with honey mustard, and the goose had a bunch of herbs. You let it bake on low heat for 10 hours and poof, you have a gooducken.

It surprisingly tasted pretty good, but the meat wasn't solid enough so we couldn't get a solid slice of the bird.

The bones we used to make congee as well as the soup base of rice noodles. That's a lot of food from 1 meal :)

yum

Random stuff

Hey everyone,

Just a few random pictures I found and figure I'd post.

Here's what happens when you lock your passport in your desk and lose the key (don't worry, it wasn't mine, it was Felix's). The drilling didn't even do anything to the lock, the lock got caught on the drill bit and it ended up tearing the lock out of the desk :D

Here are some pictures from our thanksgiving meal.

We had pasta with a white wine cream sauce, baked chicken, mash potatos, mixed veggies, and beef and leek soup. The sauce for the pasta didn't turn out too well since we had to add flour to thicken it and added too much. Eventually we just added a lot of flour, turned it into dough and bake "sauce-bread". It tasted really good surprisingly.

updates and random thoughts

Hi All,

I've been neglecting this site a bit lately, so I added some new stuff and will add more as soon as I get ahold of the pictures.

Expect posts about the office ipod nano, office kitchen, and chocolate fondue in the future.

I finally updated the map at the top to include the places I've been to, Unfortuately, the europe map I got didn't think Turkey was European enough and since I'm too lazy to photoshop it in, it'll just be in letter form. Same goes for Santorini.

On othernews, all anime fans out there, you must read the full metal panic novels (this means you frungy :) ). They are really really good, but slow to come out since someone has to translate it. But after reading The End of Day by Days (which yours watching as The Second Raid), I've decided to rewatch the series from the beginning. So I finished watching Season 1-2 this weekend and after the last episode of season 3 (out this up coming weekend), I'll start on the second novel. I think i'm a nut.

On other obsessive behaviour, I rewatched all of scrubs for fun (good show, they must air new episodes soon..), and I am now sick of chocolate (after pulling a Keegan) and downing like 50 bars in a couple days.

Well, that's enough of my rambling for now, peace out.

Brussels

Hey Everyone, finally found time to write about my weekend trip, this time to Brussels, Belgium.

For this trip we took the train friday afternoon and got there in the evening. Not much to do then except check in to the hostel and walk around during the night to get a feel for the city.

Brussels is an interesting place; on one hand, it's a ultra modern city with all these new buildings and stuff, and on the otherhand, it's has all these old qualities. A pretty good mix.

On saturday we got up fairly early and first went to the Grand Place. This place is one of the best perserved old european town centers. The buildings here are amazing. When we went they were setting up a scarecrow festival (some weird ones out there) but last month they cover the whole square with flours to make a carpet, it's crazy!

The next landmark we went to see was the Manneken Pis, which is the statue of the little boy peeing. It's pretty famous and can lead to some creative (and bizzare) photos.

While we were walking around we stumbled upon a chocolate demo, we wanted to do those huge factory tours but you needed a group of 20, so this was the closest thing we could work out in a short period of time. They just showed all the steps from the bean to the bar and had some samples and demo of how to make the chocolates, so it was pretty neat.

We also say the Atomium which is a building/structure in the shape of a crystal atom. Unfortunately it was under renovations so we couldn't go inside.

Brussels also has a thing for comics there. The walls of many buildings have paintings of comics on them and they have a museum of European Comics (ie. Tin Tin).

After a long day we just walked around checking out the city, trying to find a good place to eat. Here's another cool building, it's the stock exchange.

For Dinner I got the Mussels from Brussels (mmmMMmmM)...
It was basically a big pot of mussels in a white wine sauce, good stuff. I had some Belgium Waffles but they we're as good as the ones in Luxembourg. The beer was ok, i think i picked a crappy brand since everyone keeps saying belgium beer is the best, I found Oktoberfest beer better.

At night we went to the big church/cathedral thingy again, it was pretty nice inside.

We decided to call it a day after that.

On Sunday we didn't have too much time until we had to catch the train and most things we're closed so we just wandered around. the first place we checked out was the Botanical Gardens. We had come there the night before but there was a rock concert being held there, so couldn't get in. It's was alright, lots of green.

We walked to this big park and found the Parliament and some free museum for a Art Nouveau Architect but they didn't show much. Afterwards we went to a museum about the history of Belgium and some underground castle thing under the parliament.

At about noon we had to catch our train to go home, so we picked up a few Turkish Pizzas and headed towards the trainstation. Continuin our theme of Parliaments, we stumbled across the UN parlament on the way to the train. It was quite nice, but they wouldn't let us inside.

When we went to catch the train we were surprised to find Vance, Richard, Bernard, Tommy and some of their friends on the train. Apparently they were coming home from Amsterdam but it was weird to bump into people like that. For the rest of the trainride home, Vance taught me all about the X-men and their similarities and differences in the Ultimate universe. Weird stuff :)

Migros Challange

So we were walking around in Migros (like Swiss Safeway) and for a "All you can grab chocolate for 5CHF" bin, so Felix and I decided to have a challenge to see who could fit in more, the bags weren't so big, but with some careful planning you can fit in a bunch. I ended up getting 898 grams and 42 pieces in mine. Felix got a bit over 800 and 30-something (I rule). Kelan saw what we were doing and got her in on it also, but she wasn't as skillful and came in 3rd. Fun times. I've never seen the checkout counter ladies so disgusted (well, except for our 2 for 1 super stuffed fish buffet plates at work :) )