Karneval (pre-lent festival), Cologne

Kölle Alaaf! (traditional carnival greeting although it sure sounds funny to me). To celebrate German winter carnival I headed to the epicentre of it all in Cologne. Karneval is kind of like Halloween in February except with more beer and lots of singing of traditional folk songs to oompa-pa music. The fête starts on Thursday and goes all the way until Monday evening, including a huge 4-hour long parade similar to the Calgary Stampede parade except that many of the floats have political messages (depicting everything from the French election candidates as chickens pecking at each other, to climate change, to likenesses of prominent politicians with nooses around their necks) and the participants in the parade shower you with candy and flowers. And I mean kilograms of the stuff and not just little Halloween chocolates. I caught two full BOXES of chocolates and the guy next to me got clocked in the head with a blutwurst sausage. In North America that would mean lawsuits for sure, but everyone here takes it pretty good-naturedly.

Children watching the parade

One of the cleverst costumes I saw: the Mona Lisa

Proof of the blutwurst:

Celebrating with friends in a pub. I had to improvise a bit for a costume, but I tried to pull off an elf and you can see my attempt at elf-ears with folded band-aids!

Frascati and Roma, Italy

What could be better than escaping the dreary winter German weather for a week in Frascati, Italy? I attended a PolInSAR conference (Polarimetric Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar for those who really want to know what I do…) at one of the two major European Space Agency headquarters. The week was quite intensive with lots of sitting in one room (we had some 3 hour marathon sessions without a break) but when that break finally came a little latte macchiato, cappuccino, or any other wonderful Italian coffee creation provided a delicious pick-me-up. My presentation went relatively well and I had a chance to meet a lot of legends in my field, which was a little intimidating but exciting.

Frascati is where the extremely wealthy people from Rome live. Check out this villa (I admit I sneaked onto the driveway to take this picture).


After the conference I had the weekend to spend in Rome. I met up with a friend to do some intense sight-seeing including the Vatican, Roman forum, Coliseum, and Palazza Venezia with lots of coffee and pizza breaks before more ruin-viewing.

St. Peter’s Square (i.e. Vatican). They’re a little late taking down the Christmas tree though.

The elite Swiss-guard with their cool uniforms. Just don't ask them to smile.

Roman forum




Palazza Venizia by day and night

Happy belated 2007

Please excuse my extremely belated new year’s wishes to everyone. I spent a very relaxing, much-needed two weeks in Calgary, Canada for Christmas with my family, friends and cat.

Happy new years from my family.

Saffron curled up in the smallest enclosed space he can find.

Typical big-sky Calgary sunrise from my kitchen window.

A visist to my artist friend Amy's studio to see her latest creations. She has a cool website too.

Porro Open, Barcelona

I played the Porro Open hat tournament in Barcelona in mid-October. For those who don’t play ultimate, a hat tournament is where the teams are “drawn out of a hat”, although in reality teams are chosen subjectively by the organizers. It can be difficult to get a spot in Porro because it’s so popular and is known for having a great theme party on the Saturday night, so I was really lucky to get in.

Playing on the beach in Spain was a great way to end the season and my team even ended up winning the tournament! The theme of the party this year was “Rubik’s Cube”, where you had to come dressed in the 6 colours of the Rubik’s cube. (And believe me, no one looks very good dressed in 6 different colours including orange, green and yellow together). At one point in the evening, your team is assigned a colour and after a series of manic trading, you are one unified, crazy melange of other people’s stuff, albeit in one colour (see before and after pictures of my team below).

Because I couldn’t find cheap flights on Friday night or Sunday I also took two days vacation to check out the bizarre but fascinating Dali museum in Figures and to see some of renowned Barcelona architect Gaudi’s colourful creations.

The beautiful beach at Castelldefels, just outside of Barcelona.

A hat tournament always has a mix of skill/experience levels. This was Anna’s first tournament and here she’s about to catch her first point in the endzone at a tournament ever.

Rubik’s Cube: before and after

Lalo about to spray our celebratory champagne into the crowd.

Dali Museum, Figures

Gaudi’s Apartment on Paseo de Gracia, Barcelona

Gaudi’s Parc Güell, Barcelona

Prague, Czech Republic

Dev and I had a great time exploring this beautiful (although overly touristy) medieval city. Everywhere you look there are towering dark turrets and buildings from the 10^th to 18^th century (or even the 21^st….I enjoyed Frank Gehry’s “Fred and Ginger” building as well). Charles’ bridge (Karluv most) was beautiful despite being packed with tourists, and I still remember some of the scenes from Mission Impossible which was shot there (the bridge also has a long and glorious history of people being thrown off it by slightly peeved monarchy). I had no idea that Good King Wenceslas was actually Czech (and still have no idea how to really pronounce his name…Czech is a very difficult language for Westerners) although I found it amusing that the plural is [sometimes] formed with the letter ‘y’, for instance “cigarety” for cigarettes.

Cramped night train on the way there:

Confusing house numbers (this is actually quite normal):

Fred and Ginger (supposed to resemble the famous Fred Rogers and Ginger Astaire dancing) by Frank Gehry:

A poster from the Communist-era that I saw in a museum. It's adverstising the Czech immitation of Coke (the terrible capitalist beverage). I think it looks more like Metamucil…