Digital Distraction - Mike's Blog. For Serious.

As Countries Change, so do Blog Addresses

2009-09-14T18:38:00.000-04:00

Okay, so after about a month of living in Ethiopia, Blogger just isn’t
an option anymore. Firstly, all of blogger is blocked here, so I am
unable to post any content without going through a computer outside of
the country (which is very slow given the internet connections here).
Second, the Blogger online editor is rubbish.

So, that brings me to this point. WordPress has good reviews, and
works in Ethiopia. Easy enough. So, as much as I was happy with
blogger before, I have a feeling that WordPress will be just fine, if
not better.

The good news is that because I can now post easily and right from
Word, I can upload posts without spending time working through the
technology, which translates to more content posted for you to enjoy.

The New URL is: http://mikedotonline.wordpress.com

Kisumu, Day One

2009-08-29T06:28:00.014-04:00

The plane ride to Kisumu took only 45 minutes in the air. We deplaned (what a silly word) and headed off to our hotel with our World Neighbors contact, Quiresh. After checking in we headed out for dinner at a Chinese restaurant and enjoyed a fine meal, with far more than we could all eat. Very full, we headed to bed early, knowing that the next day would be a long day in the field.

FOCODED

At 9am, we assembled in the hotel lobby with Quiresh and met Daniel, a government official from the KARI office (KARI is an agricultural development organization). We all piled into a van and headed off down the road to FOCODED (a community organization) which was about an hour or so down the road toward Nairobi. When we arrived we were escorted into a concrete building. We were introduced to all of the project members (Secretary, Assistant Secretary, Treasurer, Health supervisor etc.) and Martha, Victoria and I introduced ourselves too. Quiresh then quickly outlined how the project operated within the World Neighbors structure and handed the floor over to the Secretary (president) of FOCODED, Eddie.

Eddie started his presentation by telling us of all of the successful initiatives that the project had undertaken. These included some agroforestry and water quality projects as well as the livestock with which the community had won first prize in a regional competition. After the presentation we went with the FOCODED staff to the areas where they were currently undertaking some initiatives.

The first stop along the way was to a gully that had been created as a result of deforestation induced erosion. These gullies were greater than sixty feet deep and some were decades old. They demolished roads, consumed vital crop lands and completely changed the landscape. The good news is that the community has recognized that the cause is linked to deforestation and has come together to plant trees all over the area to reduce the growth of the gullies.
Another initiative to reduce the impact of gullies is the introduction of natural fencing. Instead of using cut timber and wire as fences, the community is starting to use hedges. The addition of the live fencing also contributes to mitigation of gully creation because of their root structure.

The degree of erosion in the gullies is largely controlled by the amount of water that runs off of the surrounding hills. In an attempt to curb the flow rate of these waters (especially during flood times) dams have been created in strategic places in the community. The dams pool water during flooding times and reduce stream velocity. Further, they allow silt to settle which can further cause erosion. Even more, the dams incorporate chicken coops, which sit over the water to allow chicken droppings to fall into the water. The droppings provide nutrients to fish which the dams are stocked with. Lastly, the communities have started to collect water during flood times to provide water to small vegetable gardens. These gardens are then able to feed a few families in the community.

After seeing all of the projects that were being undertaken to mitigate the erosion, we went a bit further through the community (Our van getting stuck only once on the ‘roads’ we were on) and came to a meeting of the community elders. Everyone in the room introduced themselves and explained where they were from. It turned out that not only were there elders from the tribe where the erosion was happening present, but also the elders of the tribe from the hills where the water was coming. The meeting was an effort to look at all of the ways that the tribes in attendance could work together to help one another. It was really neat to meet everyone and see how they were finding innovative ways to cooperate. After a few speeches everyone shook hands, and we headed back to our van.

The next stop was about fifteen minutes down the road to an example farm where one of the FOCODED executives lived. The farm was used as a model for members of the community to visit during training sessions so that they could see a real example of sustainable living.

On the property were goats that were kept in pens and fed hay clippings (livestock traditionally graze aimlessly), kitchen gardens to feed the household, trees planted in the gully on the property (which were banana and mango trees for more food, bonus!), a fish pond down by the river that flowed by the end of the property, bamboo trees that were grown for leafy cattle feed, a water point for filtered water and also a variety of mango tree that they were able to splice with apples to create a more hearty fruit.

It was inspiring, seeing all of the projects that were ongoing in this one farm. Clearly a huge amount of work had gone into making all of this a reality. If all of the community was able to follow this example then major strides would be made to decrease the environmental issues facing the community as well as generate wealth.

Respa
Crossing the road (which is always treacherous in Kenya), we walked up a short hill to a house that was owned by a woman name Respa. Respa is a widowed woman living with HIV/AIDS. After her husband died she was left with nothing and had little to carry on with. However, she was able to start small farm raising a few chickens and growing enough food to keep herself afloat. Eventually, she was able to expand her operation to have many chickens and enough food to start buying goats to produce milk to consume and sell.

However, in an incredible act of selfishness men from the community came into her farm one night and stole all of the chickens, because she was a single woman with HIV/AIDS. What a truly despicable act. Having no other option though, Respa started again and was able to restore her farm to its previous status. After members of the community found out about the theft on her farm they made sure that the theft would happen again by making it known that her land is not to be tampered with. Another amazing fact about this woman? It is her goat that won first prize in Kisumu.

While we were looking at her goats, chickens and vegetables I asked her if it would be alright for me to take a photo of her. She agreed on the condition that she got a copy and after organizing with Quiresh we came to an arrangement. Here is my photo, Respa. What a courageous spirit. We left soon after and when our van came by we said our goodbyes to the FOCODED team and Daniel, Quiresh, Martha, Victoria and I left to get some lunch.

We had lunch in the local village and our options were chicken, or fish (tilapia from Lake Victoria). No menu, just the two options. We were happy to be out of the heat though and enjoy a few cold Cokes (it was really hot outside, by the way). While Vic and I had chicken the rest had the fish. Martha wasn’t that hungry though when the food came, so after some coaxing, I tried a bit of the local delicacy. While I normally detest fish I decided that I should at least try and I’m glad I did! The fish was actually pretty good, and although the chicken meal would have left me a bit hungry, the fish was perfect to top me up.

Upper Catchment
After lunch we drove to our last stop of the day which was at the top of the hill where the water catchment area is. As we climbed up the road we passed by many tea plantations that were the local cash crop and sold to multinational corporations. We also passed by a few towns where people had gathered to grab drinks and get some shade from the heat. Many of the kids we passed stared into the van as we went by, having seen few Mezungus (white persons) before. We waved to everyone and mostly, everyone waved back.

At the top of the climb we got out and Daniel lead us on a hike through the bush (I gathered many scrapes on my arms from the dense thorn bushes we had to pass through) and after a while we emerged the ‘the rock.’ The rock was a pretty stellar lookout point where we could see all of the surrounding communities and all of the locations downstream where the gullies had formed. Naturally, as a photographer I grabbed a few snaps.

After ‘the rock’ we headed back to our van fearing that we were going to get caught in the rain that the ominous cracks of thunder were promising. We were about 100m from the van when the skies opened up. We got pretty wet, while scrambling to back to the van. We drove back down the hill (snapping pictures at the vistas that lined the roads) and headed back to Kisumu. On the way we stopped at Hippo point on the shore of Lake Victoria and watched the sunset.

When we were finally back at the hotel, we had dinner and relaxed, tired from a really long day. We opted for another early night as we had more projects to visit the following day with ICRAF.

Nairobi (Part Two)

2009-08-11T15:44:00.006-04:00

Clouds Over Rift Valley

Kenya Gatsby Trust

The second day of work in Nairobi started early again, as we needed to meet with a group named the Kenya Gatsby Trust. We were on the road by eight am for our meeting at nine.

We arrived at the Kenya Gatsby Trust’s (KGT) building early and waited for the CEO, Valentine Mehiso to meet with us. It wasn’t long however before he welcomed us into his office and asked us who we represented and what we had come to discuss. We briefly went over some of the projects that COMART had worked on and supported in the past and the Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) paradigm that they served. Next we asked for a bit of information in the KGT and when we were all up to speed we turned to focus on the matter at hand, the Chujio water filters.

The KGT is a company that seeks to enable small businesses to grow and build capacity. They accomplish this by looking at all aspects of the business and marketing plans and also by building capacity within those businesses. Further, KGT has many different partners and connections so that they can make sure that the businesses that approach them are hooked up with the right partners. For Chujio water filters this means connecting them to Health and Water sectors of domestic civil societies.

Feeling invigorated by the possible synergies that KGT and Chujio could create, we set up a meeting for the following Tuesday between the two parties and, time allowing, us too. We left the KGT building and headed back to our hotel to prep for our next appointment of the day at a friend of Martha’s house.

Andrew in the Rift Valley

(Most of) Andrew's Family

We met Andrew at the hotel parking lot at just before noon and headed out in his car to the outskirts of Nairobi to the Rift Valley which is Masai Territory (more on that later). On the way we past baboons at the side of the road picking through trash. They were explained to me as ‘a nuisance like racoons, but with the strength of bears.’ We arrived at Andrew’s house before long and were welcomed inside.

Rift Valley Before Sunset

Andrew and his wife lived in a nice flat and it was clear that they had cleaned the house especially for us. Pressed white linens hung on the furniture and a lunch was prepared for uswhile we chatted in the living room.

The church that Martha belongs to, Runnymede United, had been supporting Andrew and his wife to foster several children who would otherwise be orphans. We listened intently as the children’s stories were told to us and about all of the various projects that were underway as a result of the funding that the church was providing. At around 3pm Lunch was provided, cooked by one of the daughters who had been sponsored to attend cooking school. The meal was made of up local dishes that were prepared excellently. Clearly the chef school was put to good use.

Mansion Amid Bungalows

After lunch we organised a group photo of all of the family that was present and us. It over the course of the day kids had been filling into the house and by the end of the day there were twelve family members there and at least three were still missing! Following the pictures, the family sung a song to thank us and wish us safe travels and we said our goodbyes. We then took a ride in the car out to the Rift Valley to see some of the countryside.

The Country Club!

The Rift Valley is an area that is reserved for the Masai people. The Masai people are a nomadic people which drive their cattle across the country each year in search of green pastures. They are known for going wherever the grass takes them, including on to the international airport!

As we drove up to the Rift Valley hills we passed by many of the Masai people. The local people of the area can always tell which of the people walking beside the roads are Masai. From what I’ve learned the Masai have telltale features such as their red clothing, being very tall and extreme lean, and the configuration of their ears with spacers and part of their lobes removed. The other obvious way to tell them apart are the massive amount of cattle that they drive. The Masai people equate respect with the number of cows that a man can care for so these herds can sometimes reach well over 100 cattle.

Middle Class Housing

The scenery around us changed quite quickly. From the middle class Kenyan suburb it went to a far more rural setting. We began climbing in the hills and the views out the side of the windows began to become very picturesque. The rift valley runs all the way through Kenya and is quite deep. Naturally this produced some very beautiful scenes and I have done my best to capture them here. Eventually we came to the end of the road and turned back (providing a second opportunity to keep my shutter rolling). We stopped on the outskirts of the village and two boys sold us three trinkets for our keys for 50KSH in the Kenyan national colors.

The Rift, Rift Valley

Driving back to our hotel now, we took the long way home and passed though a forest that used to exist where Kibera now sits. It is incredible to think that instead of a slum, the area used to be a pristine natural forest. In fact, at the edge of the forest we came upon Kibera. We passed by an area of Kibera where Andrew had set up vegetable gardens that were thriving. As the sun had now set we passed through Kibera which was completely full of life. People were out enjoying one another’s company and generally having a great time. It was just like any other scene of a Saturday night, except the backdrop was slightly different. When we got to the other edge of Kibera we were at our hotel and after thanking Andrew for his hospitality we said our goodbyes and went off to bed.

The following day we prepared our belongings for the plane ride to Kisumu where we were to visit a few communities that COMART was supporting and to attend some ABCD training that World Neighbours had organized.

Nairobi was a fascinating city. The Centre was filled with smog and guns, the slums full of life, and the suburbs full of peoples and customs I had never seen before. I was eager to see more of this fascinating country as I got ready for the 45 minute flight to Kisumu.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nairobi (Part One)

2009-08-09T16:29:00.009-04:00

Preamble

While I have been documenting my trip throughout Europe for a little while now (and managed to get more than halfway!) I have run out of time to keep writing about it. Unfortunately due to backups and limited access to computing facilities I have to abandon that storyline for now and move on to more current endeavors.

Five days ago I traveled to Nairobi, Kenya to look at some projects in the area. The following blogs will rejoin my adventures, now in Africa.

Getting to Kenya

Following the end of my European adventure, I took a RyanAir flight to London Standstead and checked into a hotel in Clapham South called the EuroLodge Clapham. The accommodation was the most basic I could find above the level of a hostel, and cost $75.00 per night. The facilities were very basic but that was alright as I was only staying there for just enough time to get an Ethiopian VISA and do some laundry. While I was afraid that the VISA might be complicated and take longer than originally budgeted, it turned out to be very simple and straightforward. Very kindly, a friend of my sister’s had agreed to hold on to the bulk of my belongings while I was in Europe, and when I asked them where I could do laundry they offered to wash my clothes from Europe (I tried to explain that they might be a bit rank, but they wouldn’t take no for an answer). After four and a half days I set out for Heathrow airport at 6am.

Getting to the airport slightly more than three hours early for my flight I was able to get an emergency isle seat on my Kenyan Airways flight to Nairobi, which was fantastic, considering it was a 8.5 hour flight and my in-seat entertainment system did not work.

Arrival in Kenya

Getting to the airport, I quickly made my way off of the plane and headed towards the customs center. The Kenyan Airways flight had run out of customs cards, so it was a bit of a flurry to try and get my customs and VISA card filled out before the lines for processing became too large. Luckily though I was able to get the VISA forms done quickly and the lines were not too long. The interview for the VISA took about three seconds – the longest wait was for the official to place the sticker into my passport and stamp it. Waiting for me was a driver with a name card and before long I was checked into my hotel and asleep for the night.

The next day I had little to do as I was waiting for my sister Victoria and cousin Martha to come back from a game drive in a national park that they had gone to. With the extra day, I chose to get up reasonably early and hire the same driver, Memussi, to take me into the city centre so that I could see a bit of the safe areas of town.

Nairobi is a very Christian city and on Sundays the entire city is like a ghost town. This played into my favour as it made it very easy to walk around and view the city, although almost every shop was closed. I walked around for about a half hour, stopping into a supermarket (Tuskys) to get some clean drinking water. What really surprised me was the amount of security that was outside of every shop, carrying clubs in case of trouble. Further, almost every street corner had both police officers and Administrative Police (who wear combat fatigues) carrying new issue Kalashnikovs. I later asked Memussi why there was such a visible police presence and he explained that without them Nairobi would descent into lawlessness very quickly. After walking I met with Memussi again and headed back to the hotel.

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful, but I did go to a market that sold hand crafted work and also a plaza to get some lunch. The rest of the day was spent at the hotel.
Kibera

The second day in Nairobi Victoria and Martha arrived in from their excursion and we spend the day relaxing at the hotel and preparing for the following days of work.

Wednesday was our first day of appointments in Nairobi. We woke up at 8am and had a quick breakfast and met up with a member of the Chujio Water Filter Company.

Chujio, is a family business that originally focused on making clay stoves for heating homes and cooking in the Kibera slums. Over 18 years they perfected their craft and became experts in pottery, knowing the whole process inside and out, from acquiring the raw clay to packaging their final products. A couple of years ago though, they were approached by a member of the Potters for Peace and offered the opportunity to start a new initiative producing clay water filters, which they how now been selling for two years.

After meeting Wanja and she drove us to meet with her sister Wangari and a pastor from the Kibera Slums before we took a mutatu (a local bus system, privately owned) into the edge of Kibera.

Kibera is the largest slum in Africa. Started during the First World War by Sudanese refugees, the slum has grown to house approximately three million people. Walking around the streets of Kibera with Wanja, Wangari, the pastor, Martha and Victoria there was so much to take in all at once. Houses are mixed in with small businesses on every street and the houses are made of corrugated sheet metal and timers, maybe fifty square feet per house. The streets which have never been paved are only passable by SUVs and off road vehicles. Beside the streets are gutters which carry all of the waste water in the slums to small rivers that run throughout the Kibera. Water pipes, the few that work, run through these gutters and carry water full of bacteria and have spouts once and a while where residents can fill ten-litre jugs to carry home. As these pipes run through the gutters, whenever the piper break the sewage water flows into the pipes and causes sicknesses to whole communities. Every twenty feet or so there is a smouldering pile of ashes that are garbage fires as it is the only way of removing garbage (trash is also thrown into the gutters and rivers).

Kibera Slums (Picture courtesy of Victoria Martin Evans)

The pastor led us along the highways of Kibera to a couple homes where two of the Chujio clay water filters were located. The church priest lived there with his wife and family and used one filter to provide water for his family and for any of the parish who needed water. The other filter was in the house next to his where some young men wad the filter in their house. We were invited into both houses and discussed how the filters were being used and how it had impacted their lives. Both houses had very positive things to say, and while they had been suffering many illnesses before their introduction, they had had little sicknesses after, and none from water borne infections. After talking for some time we left the houses and went out into the church yard where we were greeted by many children who had just finished school for their winter break.

School Children on Winter Break

The kids were very excited to see us loved to have their picture taken. The kids would crowd around for the picture and then fight for a chance to see it on the camera’s LCD panel afterwards. We did this for a little time but eventually had to tear ourselves and head for a school that was still in session in another part of Kibera.

The school had five filters and had approximately fifty children in the classroom. The filters were in the rear of the building and we talked with the teacher and the Chujio sisters inspected the clay, finding a crack in one of them which had to be destroyed and replaced. The school had had this broken filter for a few weeks and had taken no steps to replace the broken part. This demonstrated the way that foreign aid can create very clear systems of reliance. The filters had been donated to the church and school by an American church foundation. The Kibera school had the means to replace the broken on their own but would not because they were waiting for the American church to give them a new filter. This donor model is commonplace in Kenya and after years of providing free services and items it has served to create systems of reliance on foreign aid.

School Filters

After visiting the school we walked back to the mutatu along the Kibera streets. While walking I learned that while it would not be safe to walk on these streets alone, it was very safe because the pastor we were with was well respected in the community and everyone knew not to cause him any trouble. I also learned that there were over seven hundred NGO’s at work in Kibera.

Taking the mutatu back to the place where we had parked the car it was hard to process everything that I had just witnessed. Knowing that it would take time to sink in I focused on the next part of our day which would be at the Pipeline settlement.

Pipeline

Pipeline Housing
(Image courtesy of Victoria Martin Evans)

We drove out to the pipeline settlement to visit an orphanage that had been given a number of filters. The area, which had originally been zoned as industrial area was illegally sold some decades ago to families needing an area to expand into outside of the city. As a result the conditions were deplorable. Pipeline had a few high rise apartment buildings that house people, but because it was industrial lands there was no infrastructure in place. The power lines that ran from building to building had been strung haphazardly. Each corner of the buildings was a rats nest of open high voltage wires, some within an easy reach of rooftop balconies where children played.

High Voltage Wiring
(Image courtesy of Victoria Martin Evans)

Water was another essential service that had no infrastructure. While in Kibera there were pipes running in the gutters, Pipeline had nothing. Water has become a private enterprise, where men carrying many ten-litre jugs on donkey carts would sell their water, which would likely not be treated. Taking the car into the centre of pipeline was tenuous. We scraped the undercarriage many times and Martha , Victoria and I offered to get out and walk so that the car could ride higher over the ground. Eventually we were able to get to the orphanage without leaving the car and we met with the manager. He gave us a tour of the dormitories and the play areas and we tried to take in as much as we could. I noticed though that they had a brand new computer in their office that had been donated and I chatted with staff for a little while as to how they used it. They said that slowly they wanted to teach all of the children living there how to use it but there was just too much of a demand to be able to do so at any meaningful level. We continued on and looked at all of their filters, and the manager explain how grateful they were that the filters had come along, cutting out all of the water borne illnesses that had been very common before. Each child was given a bottle that they could carry with them to school each day so that they would be able to have clean drinking water all day long, something that would not have been possible before they had the filters. After seeing and learning about the orphanage, we moved said thank you to the manager for allowing us to come and see his facility and made our way to lunch.

The Filter Factory

After leaving Pipeline, we were caught in massive traffic jams on the outskirts of Nairobi. While it is very common for traffic to be very bad inside the city, this volume was pretty extreme for the road we were on at that time of day. It turned out that because Hilary Clinton (US Secretary of State) was in Nairobi that day, entire section of the city had been completely closed to non-diplomatic traffic and had caused massive jams all around the city.

Eventually though we made it out of the city and followed up a winding road past the Canadian embassy (which was a huge building with high walls surrounding it), the UN compound and the American Embassy (the American embassy dwarfs the Canadian one, and has very serious security and “No Photography” signs every 20 feet). Lunch was served at the Red Java restaurant and after a tasty meal we continued on to the filter factory.

Pottery!

The factory was up quite a ways from the city in Lewa, a suburb. The elevation was at an elevation of something like 2100m (AMSL) and was in an area that had many tea and cut flower plantations. We arrived at the factory gates and went inside to meet all of the family that ran the business.

We were joined by Wanja and Wangari’s father, mother, sister, brother and nephew. The group of us went through the factory seeing the process from them refinement of the clay to the mixing, pressing, drying, firing, silver treatment and finally the packaging store room. Each member of the family had a specific area of expertise and they all worked as a team to produce the filters. In total there were twenty workers in the factory to produce the filters and stoves. After going through the entire factory, we were invited in their home (on the same property) and had some tea which grew in the plantations in the neighbouring fields.

Adding the Colloidal Silver

We chatted about their goals for their business and also about the marketing hurdles they were facing when selling the filters to the NGO’s. By giving the filters away, the NGO’s create systems of reliance instead of empowerment and was leaving their business with little opportunity. After hearing their business marketing plan we discussed the topic further, and Victoria (who has worked in marketing) took in as much information as she could so that later on she would be able to help foster connections with local marketing NGO’s. For my own part I will be taking a look at their online presence to see if I could pass along any tips or advice. At the end of the conversations the power (which had been rationed while we were there) was turned back on and we went back out to see the machines working in the factory. Finally however, it was time to say goodbye though and after a few group photos Wanja and Wangari drove us back to our hotel.

The Chujio Family Team

It was a very busy day with many different sights sounds and smells. I learned a great deal and am still processing it all today, nearly a week later.

Day Nine – Nuremberg

2009-08-03T17:27:00.000-04:00

Day nine began early again as I chose to get up with Thore and head back to the Deutzendiech. Thore and I were going the same way so we walked together over to the museum.

On the way we stopped a bakery and got some pastries (this time it was considerably easier to order with my German speaking counterpart beside me) and continued on. Outside the shop though, Thore and I turned to each other and he said, ‘Did you see those girls in the shop checking us out?’ I agreed and told him how I was pretty surprised. My surprise surprised him, and after thinking for a second he asked, ‘Do guys seriously have to ask the girls out, never the other way around in North America?’ I informed him that yeah, it was pretty much guys who asked women out and rarely the opposite and he couldn’t believe it. He said that that seemed like ages and ages ago, back to a time when men were gentlemen and horses squired couples out to grand balls. We had a good laugh and pressed on to the Museum.

Arriving at the corner where our paths split up, Thore and I made plans to meet again after he was done work in two and a half hours (remember, he just finished his major project two days ago so there wasn’t much left to do) and I went off to see the Nazi museum. When I got to the museum, the Deutzendiech was completely overrun with schoolchildren and tour busses. I suppose that is to be expected but it still blew me away how many teenagers were milling about, in clearly defined social circles.

The entrance fee for the museum was 10.50 Euro but I had them knock it down to the student rate of 4.00 Euro which was another score for my Queen’s ID. The museum was streamlined into a prescribed path and the audio tour guide device worked really well, making it very easy to navigate and see everything that it had to offer. Inside, the majority of the museum was dedicated to the rise of Nazi power illustrating how Hitler had motivated the entire country into a state of fanatical devotion (well, if were weren’t devoted you would disappear) and only really touched on the combative part of the war near the end. It was really quite disturbing though, looking at all of the photographs taken from Nuremberg when the Nazis party was at its height. The places that I had been walking only the day before covered in swastikas, everyone cheering wildly for Hitler.

Thore and I had decided to meet up again in two and a half hours, but it really wasn’t enough time. I could have easily stayed in there for another hour, going through all of the extra bits of information that was available and sitting down for a few more of the movies that were playing at various locations. I ended up running out of time and I had to hurry along as I was going to be late to meet up with Thore.

Exiting the museum I went to the pre-arranged meeting location and Thore hadn’t made it just yet. We had however made the contingency place that if he was late I would go to the beer garden nearby and wait for him there. Finally, after shrugging off a number of beer gardens previously during the trip and the expensive mass (1 litre) beers cant came with them, I broke down and purchased a full liter of some locally crafted weisse beer. I was about halfway through mine before Thore showed up and he too enjoyed a pint with me. After enjoying the fine beer we headed back to the flat.

Back at the flat Thore had a bunch of school work to get done and I was pretty tired from getting up early and seeing the museum so I watched some TV with Alex and had a rather long nap in the afternoon.

When I finally did get up it was about time for dinner. Because it was our last night in Germany (Alex and I decided to head to the south of France the next morning) I asked Thore if he could think of something very typical of a Sunday dinner he would have with his family. He said he would ponder it, and we went off to search for food. Eventually while rummaging through the supermarket he did think of something and after finding all of the necessary items we went back to the flat to try and concoct a crazy meal.

I’ve lost the name of the dish, but I can describe it to you. The good news is that it included vegetables this time (pickles and onions), but also had both beef and pork. Basically, the dish was a pickle wrapped in bacon wrapped in a thin steak that had been tenderized and covered in mustard and spices. The super wrapped item (kind of like a German turducken, or the SNL Taco Town sketch) was held together with wooden skewers and then pan fried to sear the meat. lastly the ‘meat roll-ups’ were submerged in a large pot of premade gravy and onions to braised for two hours.

The result was soooo good. I realize that by now, you’ve got to be thinking, ‘did mike eat anything he didn’t love?’ the answer to that is yes, but it’s not likely to make it into the blog J. Our traditional meal was really really good, and is something that I will have to make again. Maybe I’ll introduce it to Ethiopia and it will be a big thing. Maybe....

After dinner was all done, it was quite late and instead of heading to a bar or out for the night we thought we would save our strength as we had a really long travel day down to the south of France the next day. However, near the end of the night I was feeling a bit pent up (having had such a long nap in the afternoon) so Thore and I ended up going for a walk just before midnight.

We sauntered off in the direction of the Duetzendiech but turned into a large park that backed onto a sizable lake which I suspect was another man made entity like the one behind the Duetzendiech. The park that went around the lake however was enjoyable and while it wasn’t lit up well, that was a bit of the draw to it. Naturally, a dimly lit park after midnight on a Friday night made me start to wonder if it was a safe decision to be out there. Thore allayed my fears though, explaining that while teenagers use parks to drink and have parties back in North America because they can’t go to bars, that simply isn’t a problem in Germany due to the lower drinking age. I was skeptical at first but after quite a long walk there really was nothing to worry about in the park.

We walked and chatted about GIS, masters programs, and life in general. It was a really good walk and I was happy to be out and walk around for a while. Eventually though, we headed back to the apartment and by 2am I was in bed. It was our last night in Nuremberg, and our last night in Germany until the very end of the trip. It was definitely my favorite night during the trip so far, and looking back (I’m writing this while on the way to Kenya more than two weeks later) I might even go so far as to say that it was the best night of the whole trip.

Day Eight – Nuremburg

2009-08-02T09:37:00.001-04:00

On day eight I got up early with Thore and while he went off to work I headed into town in search of an internet Cafe where I could catch up of the happenings of the world and try to write up some of these blogs that were rapidly piling up! I found a pretty cheap internet cafe long my way into town although it would open for another hour or so I instead continued walking in until I found a bakery, bought a croissant and a coffee (I was getting pretty good with my broken German, for this part of the day at least) and then walked through the old town again, looking for a Saturn (German Best Buy) to see if they would have any cheaper memory cards for my camera that I could purchase.

It took a bit of searching but eventually I found the shop. It had begun to rain, so I was pretty happy to lurk around the store for a while and be out of the worst of the rainstorm (it rains a lot in Germany, btw).While I had high hopes that Germany would have better prices than back home on technological items, I was sadly mistaken. On all of the items that I chose to compare (going from memory) I found that everything was about the same price as back home, but in Euros. So much for getting cheap memory! In contrast though, I did find a bin full of 8 gig SD memory cards for shirt pocket cameras that were only 4.99 a piece! Eventually though I was bored of the shop and went back out into the rain to try to see some more of the town that we hadn’t gone to with Rebekah the previous day.

I found it to be a particularly interesting experience, walking though the old town. I say this because while the old parts of town in every city I had been in previously were the sole domain of shutter happy tourists (myself included) old Nuremburg was actually a fully functioning commercial area. Most of the people on the streets were in fact just ordinary citizens going about their business, they just happened to be working in buildings that were really old.

My wandering in the rain continued for some time and eventually led me back to the internet cafe I had pegged earlier (Via GPS) and I sat down and enjoyed two hours of the ‘net for two Euros.I managed to rip off one or two blogs (heh, blogging about blogging). My stomach started growling though by the end and I figured I should head back to let Alex know the plan that I had come up with earlier in the morning with Thore for the afternoon.

On the way back I stopped in at a Subway restaurant to grab some food (which was really quite expensive, and they only let you have one topping! Thus my sub consisted of Meatballs, Cheese and Lettuce) and as I was enjoying my rather simple lunch I saw Alex walking by on the street. I poked my head out of the shop and yelled to Alex and after she found the source of the shouting she came in and joined me. I let her in on the plans to meet Thore by a large Nazi museum after he finished work and then she and I set off in opposite directions – Her to check out more of the city and myself to head back to the flat.

Back in the apartment, Rebekah had to head out so she leant me had laptop and I looked up some of the possible places that we could go next on the EuroRail trains. After a bit of time Alex was back and it was time to go meet Thore out by the museum. Having looked up the trams that went out there earlier Alex and I were able to catch the right one pretty easily from right outside of the flat.

Arriving at the Museum, called the Duetzenriech, we waited for Thore to show up on his bike. He was a bit late getting out of work, and unfortunately because the museum was closing shortly we didn’t have enough time to go in. However, the location was situated on a large set of grounds that were pleasant to explore in the afternoon sun.

The campus, in true Hitler fashion, was grandiose in all measures. Used as a place to have massive party rallies and gatherings and had parade grounds, camping areas, a large manmade lake, a mock roman coliseum and a Zeppelin field to boot.

Walking around the sprawling grounds took well over an hour. One of the more interesting parts was the grandstands that were located on what is now the front stretch of the Nuremburg Racing Ring. Not to be confused with the very famous Nurnberg ring (where fast cars are tested and Formula 1 cars race), this race course is used for touring car championships. It was really odd, standing at the pulpit of the grandstand though, looking out over the parade grounds and into the Zeppelin fields. It was hard to imagine two hundred thousand people listening to you, women fawning over just the sight of you as if you were one of the beetles, and men waiting eagerly to go to war to fulfil your dreams. Even the brightest of sunny days can become spooky.

After finishing our walk about the grounds Alex and I caught the tram and Thore rode his bike back to the flat. Knowing that we would have arrived first Alex and I went up to the supermarket to grab some dinner. Alex, unsurprisingly went for a salad and I, also unsurprisingly, went for some German sausages and beer for Thore and I.

Back at the flat we cooked up our dinner, finished our beers and then went out into the old town to find a bar that Thore promised would have the very famous Banana-Weissen (he had been building it up for a couple days by now). Just like how we have desert ice wine in Canada, the Germans have desert beer. Essentially it is made up of a sweet weisse beer with a tin of banana juice poured in on top.Oh man, this is some seriously good beer. Not the kind you could have all day mind you, but for one serving it was amazing. If you are even in southern Germany, this is an absolute must. Seriously good beer.

We watched a bit or the Tour de France highlights while there too, and when the program was done the bar was closing down. We walked the long way home and headed to bed pretty quickly thereafter. Another splendid day in what was becoming my favourite country outside of Canada.

Day Seven – Nuremburg

2009-08-02T03:11:00.002-04:00

While Thore had to get up at the crack of 7:30am for work at Siemens (where he was at work completing a project for his thesis), Alex and I chose to sleep in, catching up on all of the sleep that we had missed on the train we had taken the night before – as well as from two very long days of visiting Munich and Berlin. We in fact were so good at ‘catching up’ that we slept in until sometime later than 2pm!

Finally getting up though, we had showers (which required moving a skillet or two) and prepared for a light afternoon of visiting the old city with Thore’s roommate Rebekah.

Rebekah, a student from Hamburg, was happy to show us around and also glad that we were not actually dead as she feared. We walked into town which turned out to be a pretty short walk (maybe 10 mins) and passed under the fortification wall towards the castle.

The castle, circa 1000AD, was situated at the top of a humongous hill and given the rather warm weather we were debating it’s value climbing up. However, while we were initially skeptical, we were quickly turned around. Being so high the wind coming through the courtyard was really fantastic. Looking out from the top we could see the entire of the south side of the city. Our wonderful guide, Rebehak, informed us that the view of the other side of the castle, although requiring a bit more climbing, was even better and trusting her judgement this far we climbed on over.

Walking across the courtyard we saw numerous university students who had also made the climb up to the top of the castle just to read a book or study for a course at the local university. I very really envious, I must say, since Kingston (where I went to school) has no castles on top of hills with amazing vistas to look out from. But, rather than be sore about it I whipped out my camera and started shooting a few panoramic sets. I could have stayed up there for a long time I think, letting the cool breeze hit my face and looking out across the town. We didn’t stay too long though as there was a pub back down in the old city that Rebehak wanted to show us that produced it’s own beer.

Arriving at the brew pub, we sat out on the patio in between some century old fairy tale houses and I enjoyed a well crafted weisse beer. As for food, I asked Rebekah what I should go for and she wholeheartedly encouraged me to try the Schnitzel. I’ve got to say, the beer and food was really good. I thoroughly enjoyed both and a big thanks to Rebekah for pointing me to them! After we had finished our meals the three of us paid our bills and started back towards the apartment. Rebekah had to be home as she was expecting a customer to arrive to purchase a record (she has her own record label with many Metal bands signed on from a number of different countries) and also so that we could meet up with Thore who would be finishing up with work and looked forward to having a few beers to celebrate the end of a big project he was involved in at Siemens.

When Thore arrived home we went off to the supermarket and foraged for some grub as well as a few beers. As in Munster, I let Thore do all of the choosing on the beer front as I was sure that he would make some pretty good choices. He pointed me to some Rattler beer (beer with lemonade in it) and also to a noname brand. What I mean about noname brand is that it is a company which produced beer, but spends no money on advertising and has no brand name for the beer. There were two flavours to this beer, one that was allowed for export and another that could only be found within Germany. Naturally I didn’t want to discriminate, so we got one of each and went home to make our dinners.

I can’t quite recall what it was that Thore and I made up for dinner, but I do recall that it involved meat and little else. Either way it was pretty good and I think even Alex, who is a vegetarian, was a bit jealous. For the rest of the evening we enjoyed our beers and conversed about many more cross cultural elements, using the web to illustrate some of our points.

Alex, for her contribution from England, chose to show us some of the Mitchell and Web shorts from British TV, Thore pulled up some Klaus Safety Videos (search German Forklift Safety video in YouTube and be amazed) and I contributed Rick Mercer’s Talking to Americans. We all had a good laugh watching these videos and while Alex was having a side conversation with Rebehak, Thore and I swapped stories about all of the devious things that we had gotten up to as irresponsible teenagers.

It was quite remarkable, really. Although we were thousands of miles apart, our childhoods were quite similar! All across the world, it would seem, boys will be boys, fashioning potato canons, tearing around on bikes and generally being pretty rowdy.

This is how it went on for the remainder of the evening, chatting and enjoying one another’s company until it was time for bed. It wasn’t the busiest day we had, but I would say that it was really quite fun to just hang out!

Day Six - Munich

2009-07-31T20:02:00.005-04:00

Day six started slowly. Being the first night train, I had quite a lot of trouble falling asleep, doing so only as the dawn broke and the lights came back on in our train car (5:30am). When we finally got into Munich, it was about 7am and nothing in the city had opened up for the day. Alex and I exited the train and headed into the centre of the station, picking a good meeting spot and finding the time when a train would take us into Nuremberg, where we were to meet up with Thore again around 6pm.

Alex headed off into the sleepy city and I decided to take the S-Bahn out to one of the things that I had wanted to see, knowing that the trip out there and the time spent finding the location would be enough to make sure that everything would be open by the time I was finished.

That place was Dachau, and the concentration camp that was located out there. I got on the S-bahn that went out that way and after about 20 minutes or so I was in the town of Dachau. First things first, I needed a good and strong coffee, so I stopped into the bakery that was across from the station and after a lot of pointing and giggling at our feeble attempts to speak one another's language two very cute bakers helped me get a croissant and a large coffee which I enjoyed in the morning sun on their patio out front.

Fully awake now, I began the rather somber trip out to the camp. The route that I took was marked on the map at the S-Bahn station as the Holocaust Route, and was roughly the same route that prisoners had taken decades before on the long 'Death Marches' in the final days before American troops liberated the camp. Every couple hundred meters or so, there was a plaque that illustrated part of the history of the location and what had happened at places along the route. Eventually though, I knew I was getting very close to the camp, as I had come across the SS officers residences.

The residences remained as they were during wartime, and were now fenced off as part of a German riot police training facility. It was suprising to see that they were still standing and functioning, and that the houses looked so well kept and still in full use, given their previous inhabitants. It was a bit hard to fathom how the buildings were so beautiful when they were located so close to a camp where people lived in such horrifing conditions.

Walking up the rest of the path I finally located the beginning of the camp's grounds. Just outside of the wall of the camp was a welcome centre, although it was closed on Mondays. Just my luck, the one day that I'm in Munich/Dachau, and the camp is closed. Well, seeing as I didn't have any choice, I continued to walk around, following the wall along until I came to the main entry gates into the camp and found the rail platform where tens of thousands of people had been brought from all over the country to be sentenced to work or death.

After sitting on the rail platform and letting the view in front of me sink in for a while, I went up to the gates and looked into the camp. Deserted. At the far side though, I saw that there were other entrances, and hoping that I might have better luck over there, I followed the walls around the campus until I was at what looked to be the service entrance of the camp.

To my amazement, the gates were wide open and there wasn't anyone in the gate control booths. Looking into the camp, I saw another entrance a ways down and hoped that there might be someone down there tthat could help me out. I went down to this other entrance - it also was deserted. I finally saw a figure in combat fatigues walking across the camp grounds towards the gate. I thought two things at this time. One, "Oh good, someone that I can talk to about taking some photos;" and two, "Uh oh, are they coming by to give me the boot out of here for snooping around."

Turns out it was neither, just a military officer who explained that he was running a training exercise for his men and that I could inquire in the main administration building at the far end of the camp. I walked away quickly and headed back to the first service entrance going over in my head the explanation that I would use to try and get access to snap a few photos for a Canadian travel publication....

Walking into the camp, I knew that I had an uphil battle in front of me to try and get a pass to walk around and take some quick photos. So, on my way into he administration building I kept shooting pictures as I went in case it didn't work out. The building that I went into was a bit of a ways into the camp, but not too far. The office was pretty much deserted, and it took a few minutes to finally find a staff member to plead my case to.

Naturally, he was really surprised to find a backpacker with a massive camera in the office on a day when the camp was closed. Actually, surprised is not quite the right word, more like astonished. After explaining how I had got in and the military officer who had given me permission and why I was there, the staff member was able chat with me very briefly. Unfotunately I was not able to get permission to walk around the camp, although he didn't mind if I took photos as I made my way out. I thanked him profusely in my humblest Canadian accent and left the office. I kept shooting photos on my way out and left the camp.

Two more things hit me suddenly as I walked down the street, snapping photos of German troop trucks rolling into the camp. One, how eerie it was to be in the camp - alone and unauthorized. Two, It suddenly stuck me as completely odd, if not radically inappropriate, for the German military to run training exercises in the camp itself. Watching the trucks full of army cadets roll into the concentration camp my imagination started running in overdrive and it really scared the hell out of me. Dachau was used as a forced labour and extermination centre by the German military not more than five decades before and here they were pouring into the camp again. The camp was originally built for a maximum of four thousand people to be housed there, but by the end of its days it had swelled to housing more than thirty two thousand people.

I walked away from the camp, trying to put a bit of space between it and myself. I took the long way back to the station and saw some of the residential areas of Dachau. Many of the houses were in a very traditional style with many Lederhosen wearing Gnomes in the backyards and other very typical items scattered around. Eventually, with the help of my GPS (I'll admit I would have had a particularly hard time getting out of that subdivision without it) I got back to the S-Bahn station and caught the train into Munich city center.

Back in the city I got off the train in the middle of the city and went out to see a bit of the life on the streets. Quickly, I found myself on a pedestrian walkway, which was very much like a UK high street for the area. There were big brand name shops lining the streets and all of the tourists that one would expect to see in that kind of area. I had a bit of fun snapping photos of the huge volume of tourists. I'm always fascinated with places that are so dominated with outsiders as to make the place seem more like being in another country. Except that idea kind of dies when you realize that the fictitious country you are imagining would have to speak at least twenty different languages. Either way, the only thing German about that high street was the architecture. As a result, I didn't stick around too long and made my way down and off of the street.

Before getting right out of the area though I did stop by a really large fountain where people were playing and having fun in the jets of water spraying in all directions. Well, most people were having fun until a man had sliced open his foot and an ambulance had to fight its way through the throng of tourists and cart the injured man away. What a horrible injury for a backpacker. At that point I took time to be thankful that my feet were in good working order and hoped they would stay that way. A backpacker's most important asset is his feet.

Moving along I wandered the streets until the next most important part of my body started to speak up. My stomach was in need of refueling, and I was happy to oblige. I walked the city streets until I found a supermarket and then looked to find a cheap way to eat. While looking around I found a pretty astonishing marketing scheme. While perusing the drinks I came across a six pack of beer that made me do a double take. The beer, and I kid you not, was 'Ice Age: 2' themed. Who are they marketing to! Well really the answer is obvious, but think about whether that could ever fly in Canada... yeah, exactly. Anyways, I managed to come up with a lunch that fit me just right.

I left the supermarket with food in hand, and surveyed the scene to find a bench to eat my good on - nothing to be found. I wandered around a bit more, still nothing. I wandered around for half and hour and still nothing, until I found a square that consisted of a large empty grass field surrounded my enormous buildings on each side. I went into the square, found some steps (that were big enough to be out of a super mario big-land level) and began my lunch.

Lunch consisted of three items, and was very tasty. One, a Baguette. Two, some fancy blue cheese. Three, two liters of 'Bitter Lemonade.' Total cost? 2.40 Euro. I was impressed with the cheap nature in which I was eating and devoured the baguette and cheese. The drink however was a bit of a different story. It was funny though, it wasn't all bad. The drink was actually quite refreshing and all of the things you would want in a lemonade, however it had an after taste that could turn your mouth inside out. Not wanting to waste money, I drank my bitter lemonade in four or five very long chugs, to minimize the effect of the aftertaste. I finished my meal, and was still pretty pleased in my ability to put together such a cheap meal even if the drink was barely potable. I looked around to figure out what the point of this 'Big Land' square was all about.

None of the buildings were actually open. It seemed like they were just props on a Hollywood stage. Eventually I was at a loss, accepted my defeat and headed out without a clue. Pleasantly however, I found a plaque a block away that very quickly made me understand what was going in. It turned out that the area I was in was in fact the birthplace of the the Nazi party. The buildings all around me were part of an elaborate complex that Hitler had designed to showcase the strength and power of the Nazi regime, which explained the extreme size of the buildings.

These buildings though were not quite the originals, as after the war the buildings had been largely torn down. The only building that remained in its original state was in fact the building where it all began. The building where the Nazi party had formed in its early days had been taken over by the American military and turned into their headquarters for a while before being turned over to become a musical school. The amount of history that had been formed in the immediate vicinity of where I was was a bit staggering. Just a bit further in from I was there was a huge obelisk that was supposed to become the Hitler's Tomb should be be killed during or after the war (assuming German victory).

Whew, from this point I needed a bit of a break from the exploring and immense amount of history being barraged at me. I walked a bit further and happened upon a beautiful set of gardens, which I was happy to enter and sit by a spouting fountain. I pulled out a book (on Participatiory GIS in rural communities) and read a few papers that I had been meaning to for a little while.

After sitting for quite a while (about two papers worth), I left my nice shady spot and went to find the source of the pleasant music that was drifting my way. The cello player was quite talented I found. Sitting in a small open dome the accoustics were wonderful and although he only had a few songs in his repertoire, he sure could play them well. After a few minutes of listening I moved on and saw a bit more of Munich in the off streets I wandered along. I came across an area selling litre beers, but again decided that the 6.50 Euro was a bit steep for me and kept moving for a while until it was time to catch the 4:50 train to Nuremberg. I met Alex at the platform and we boarded a train nearby that was going in the right direction and were off to Nurembug.

While en route, we tried to call Thore, but unfortunately the UK cell phone we had wasn't playing nice. Instead we opted to give Thore a ring from inside the Nuremberg train station. When we did get through he told us that because of some complications with school he was on a train that would not get in until 9pm. Alex and I were not too bothered and took a quick tour of Nuremburg looking for some place to sit down enjoy some food.

We sat down at a nice place with reasonably priced food inside the old city fortifications and took in a bit of the view. It seemed like every small town in Germany had an old part of the city now, and the one that we were currently in was a wonderful place to be. The buildings were wonderfully old and gave off a lot of character. After dinner we went on a bit more of a walk, and eventually I found possibly the best bar of the whole trip.

This bar was titled "Ushi's Bierbar" if if for nothing else I would need to venture inside because it had the namesake of a good friend from school. Further, the bar was clearly sponsored by a brand of beer called "Lederer" and that too is the surname of two dear friends! Well, I went into the bar and ordered a bottle of Lederer from the barkeep. The other people in the bar, all locals, took a bit of notice of me taking pictures of the beer which was quickly evaporating, and the man next to me (clearly the town drunk) struck up a fine conversation with me.

Now, I said a conversation, but it was a bit disjointed. He only spoke part of the English language and a good portion of French. I only spoke a tiny bit of German and a bit of French. We did however manage a conversation mixing in all three languages. I had a quite a lovely time getting to know some of the people in the bar, but by the time that the bottle was empty I had to meet Thore so I left my new buddies behind and walked up to the HauptBahnHof.

Thore met Alex and I just after nine and we quickly made our way over to the Tram station as it had begun to rain. Getting to Thore's flat, we met his roommate and dropped our belongings off in his room and set up some beds. The apartment was a sight to see, having no kitchen sink connected, the bathroom sink had been substituted, and the clothing washer was also in the bathroom. I'll try to explain more of the house in the following blogs to come, but it was a really fun place to stay.

After a bit of chatting with Thore, Alex and I were pooped from a full day of traveling and a poor sleep the previous night so we hit the hay by 11pm.

Day Five - Berlin!

2009-07-30T14:48:00.002-04:00

The only thing that I needed to worry about on day five was the 10:12pm train that we had had reserved seats on for the overnight trip to Munich. Therefore, I had the day completely to myself to spend as I saw fit. Alex and I decided to see the town on our own, so I was able to meander all over the city for just over twelve hours. Getting up around nine, I had a nice long shower, packed up my gear and checked out of our hotel. Deciding to walk into town (4km about) I took a leisurely pace while looking for a place to watch the German Grand Prix that was on later in the day and to find the Berlin Zoo.

As I walked into town, I stopped a few times to ask people when the race would take place and where I could watch it. To my surprise, a number of the people that I stopped didn't even know that the Grand Prix series was in Germany that weekend, let alone when it was on at. Eventually though I stopped in at a shop that had a newspaper and with the help of a friendly shopkeeper who spoke limited English we were able to use various hand signals to understand one another and I found that time of the race was at 2pm (or something close to that). After finding the time of the race I quickly found a sports bar after which would be showing it on their TVs so I set out to find the Berlin Zoo.

The previous day I had marked the location of the S-Bahn stop for the zoo in my GPS, so I had a loose idea of where I was going. Fortunately for me though Berlin has many street signs to point the way to major landmarks. I arrived at the zoo and managed to convince the ticket saleswoman that I was a student in Canada and they let me in for a nicely discounted price (50% off if I remember correctly). The Berlin Zoo has a very well kept set of grounds and,h just like in town, there were signs everywhere to let you know which animals lived where. I managed to see Lions, Tigers, and Bears ... and also a great deal of other animals too. It would take a while to tell you about all of the animals I saw, so I'll try to just give you two impressions that I had.

The first animal that I saw that really struck me was the Orangutan. The primate was obvious far too smart to be 'hanging out' where he was. It was really odd, watching him watch us. you could see the wheels turning in his head, just as I'm sure that he could see ours too. It was really surreal actually.

The other animal that really struck a chord with me was the tiger in the large cats area. The tiger was stuck in a pen that was about three meters deep and maybe ten meters long. The whole time I was there it spent its time pacing back and forth, back and forth. It clearly was an unhappy tiger and did not appreciate all of the people that had come out to gawk at it. I took a few portraits of the animal, and made my way out. However, as I was turning to go the animal sized me up and began to charge. It lunged at the fencing, and thank god the wire mesh held out or else I would have become lunch right then and there. Whew, nothing like a tiger lunging at you to wake you up in the morning.

The rest of the animals were pretty blase, being that they largely appeared to be overweight and sleeping the days away. This was really obvious with the case of the Giant Panda who had people a few rows deep craning their necks to get a picture of it, and yet the panda had crawled up into a ball in the far corner of its cage under the limited cover of some branches, barely visible for the tourists.

I've got to say that while I'm sure that the Berlin Zoo does everything that it can to make sure that the animals that it keeps have the best possible lives, I couldn't help but be a bit saddened by the whole process. I know that its the nature of the place but many of the animals could really have done better by living in a place with a bit more room to run around and go 'wild.'

After the zoo, I set off back to the bar that I had decided I would watch the Grand Prix at. It was a pretty happening place outside, and inside there were a few German fans watching the TV at the bar. I chose a spot in the seating area, next to the male half of a family who also was there to watch the race. The race was good and I enjoyed having a bit of company to watch it with, albeit they didn't speak a word of English.

Leaving the bar at the conclusion of the race I had run out of the things I had planned to do. So, rather than find a tourist center and figure it out that way, I simply wandered around until I found something that looked interesting on one of the many tourist signposts littering the city. I found one that listed a 'Fotographie Museum' and decided to check it out. It was a bit funny, chasing down the museum sign by sign- a bit like a orienteering course... on each sign it had a direction and number of meters to walk in that direction before you would find the next sign with a new direction. Being a GIS nerd, this proved to be a very fun part of the adventure.

The photography museum itself was quite a nice place, dedicated to the life works of one "Helmut Newton." I went in and upon finding out that they had a student rate I decided to head in. The regular rate was something like 10 euro. The student rate was only two. Wicked, thanks Queen's. The exhibits were really interesting and I would highly recommend going and checking out the works that are published there. Highly enjoyable.

After the museum I was again faced with no specific plans so I continued my wandering. Figuring that I had seen enough of the payed attractions, I set off in a fairly random way into some of the residential areas of the city, passing through small parks where children were playing and small streets where local Berliners were enjoying an afternoon coffee or pint. When I finally did hit a major street it was by the main gates to the city and there was a market that was just shutting down for the day. I was also kind of nice to walk through the market after all of the shoppers had left, and only the sellers were left packing things up. I noticed a park on the right side of the street that the market was on and decided the head in there.

I clearly did not know what I was getting myself into. This park was gorgeous. I walked down the main walkway of the park, a river flowing gently alongside. past the river was the backside of the zoo, so I could see the animals roaming around, getting ready do head to bed as the sun was starting to set. There were little pathways all over the park and each of the ones that I chose to walk down lead on to new areas to explore. At one point I came across a small lake/large pond where families had rented out rowboats and were casually paddling around. Intrigued by where all these boats were coming from I set about finding the source. A few quick detours later and I came across a large beer garden in the middle of the park! The boats could be rented from one side of the garden and a couple hundred people were enjoying the late afternoon sun with a fresh Berlin beer. I fought the temptation to stop and sit down and continued to exploring. There was so much to see in this park, with little bridges over small rivers constantly cropping up around me. Picture Stanley Park, except far more German, and right in the middle of the city.

Eventually though I had to start to think about getting back to the HauptbanHoff (main station) and plotted a course in my GPS to take me back to the trains. Along the way I saw a few more monuments and even stopped at the Reichstag (German parliament), which had a 300+ person linueup to get in. I decided I didn't want to wait in line, and made my way into the station which was close by.

In the station, I looked up the track that my train was leaving on and thought about what to do with the two hours I had before my train arrived. Then it hit me, 'Oh no! I haven't seen any of the Berlin Wall yet!' I remembered that there was a section of it that was close to the station and quickly ran off to the tourist centre to find out exactly where it was. The gentleman in the tourist station told me where there was a bit of the wall close by but the map to show me where it was exactly was two euro, not quite worth the cost.

Electing not to buy the map I memorized the first couple directions and set off out of there station with a very rough idea of there I was headed. After 10 minutes of walking in what I thought was the right way, I stopped in at a Subway restaurant and asked a very helpful 'sandwich artist' the direction and got some more hazy turns to take. Walking a bit further, I ended up in a pretty industrial area of town and began to wonder if I was going in the right direction or not. I asked a woman walking on her way home from work if I was (awful late to be going home, in retrospect) and in perfect English she told me that she was going the same way as I needed to be. We struck up a conversation along the way and it turned out that her English was so good because she had in fact worked in the US for a couple of years as well as in the Paris and the UK. Not bad for a 26 year old in marketing! Just before the section of the wall I was on my way to see she headed off home, and came face to face with what looked to be a very underwhelming part of the wall.

It looked like a concrete wall. Go figure. It was about 12 feet high and had graffitti all over it. There was a plaque down the way though that told me about the events that had happened at that particular section of the wall and a bit more about the general history of the wall and the tragedies that surrounded it. Highly educational, and the simplicity of the remaining section really drove the point of it all home. I really liked the boredom that the wall exuded, somehow it seemed a bit more authentic that way.

Speaking of home, I was running out of time to catch my train and it was beginning to rain. I ran back, caught up with Alex on the platform (which had changed in the two hours since I had last checked it.... talk about a heart attack...) and boarded the train. This was our first night train, and after finding our seats we settled in for a night of riding the rails. Interestingly enough, I was able to get signal for my GPS while on the train (by making a bit of a Rube Goldberg with my shoes), so there should be some really neat tracks in the GPS file (to be posted shortly).

Berlin was a really interesting city. I would go back in a heartbeat and see more of the things that I'm sure I missed. You could easily spend a week there and still find things to do. Both the people and place where seriously cool.

Day Four - Münster to Berlin

2009-07-29T08:56:00.001-04:00

Day four started slowly as I chose to take a break from the past two early mornings. When we finally did wake up and get organized, we helped our host Thore edit some English writing he was working on for school, and then headed into the Münster market.

The market that we went to was really quite full of life, busy with people buying fresh produce. Thore explained to us that the markets in the area are set to specific day of the week and each city in the area had a different day. Alex and I did not need anything at the market, but Thore bought some cheese. The way that you order cheese in that market was interesting to say the least! Instead of picking the cheese and the weight you wanted, Thore just asked for 5€ worth, and received a bag full of all sorts of cheeses (photo forthcoming will show just how much that is). For 5€ I would say that he must have got almost a kilogram of various cheeses. I was really impressed. Moving on we went off to find a T-shirt store so that I could buy a local specific shirt, the Leesenritter.

Leesenritter, translated literally to 'night rider' is a Münster specific term. The Munster definition comes from the root of Leesen, which translates roughly to 'piece of crap bicycle.' I'm sure that all of us who have been to university are familiar with the Leesen. Highly rusted frame, creaking pedals, a number of gears which you can't quite shift to and brakes that are all but non existent. Anyways, the term Leesenritter is a way of making the Leesen cool again, and celebrating the nature of student owned bicycles. How could I not buy a Leesenritter shirt?

Wearing my new shirt, Thore walked us to the train station and we said our goodbyes. We would be meeting him again in Nuremburg so it was more of a 'see you in a week' than a long goodbye. Alex and I found our local train to Rhiene station where we changed to an InterCity train to Berlin (200km/h), arriving at 6pm. Our hotel was a bit out if the city (only 40 euro a night, split between the two of us!), so we took the S-Bahn tram system out to the burbs and walked to our hotel.

The hotel was rated as a three star but I would say that it was grasping at two. The room was clean though and the shower worked reasonably well, so I was a happy enough camper. After changing my bags around to make a light day pack, I went to the lobby of the hotel and tried to use the internet. It turned out to cost 20 euro an hour! That, and the computer worked with a flimsy plastic credit card reader that plugged into the computer via a USB connection.... yeah right. Alex met me downstairs shortly thereafter and we took the S-Bahn back into the city to explore Berlin.

Exiting Alexander-Platz station, there was a bit of a street festival already underway. In the square adjacent to the station there were lots of stalls selling beer and curywurst, and even a politically charged freestyle-rap / beat-boxing demonstration going on. I bought some currywurst from a seller (2 euro, I think) which got doused in Ketchup. From there we walked away from the festival and continued along the streets until we found another gathering of people- however this one was crawling with police.

Approaching the mass of people that had assembled in the square, we were wondering whether it was a demonstration or a riot. It turned out to be a huge anti anti war demonstration complete with live band, and plenty of drunk hippies. There were tons of people and almost as many police officers. it was pretty crazy in that place and we didn't stay for too long. I really liked going through it though and witnessing the drunken fury that the protest had become.... so many people were there just to drink and party, and the rest was there to see the band play. It made it seem like the anti-war agenda was an afterthought.

The rest of the evening was spent walking around and looking at the various monuments that were lit up for the night. In Berlin, there was a pretty happening night life, but saving our energy for the next day Alex and I headed back to the S-Bahn to grab a tram and catch some shut-eye. Before we did get some sleep though we stopped in at a Donner shack underneath the highway and grabbed a greasy (seriously greasy) chicken and fries with a few Becks to wash it down.

We finished our first day in Berlin, eager to get up and see explore more of the city in daylight.

Day Three - Waginegen & Amsterdam

2009-07-25T08:18:00.003-04:00

Day three started at 7am as I needed to catch a bus into the Haupbanhof (main train station) and take a train in to The Netherlands and meet with an expert in Participatory GIS (PGIS). I got to the closest DuetschBahn Trian station and then caught the city express train to Ede-Waginigen. From there I took a quick bus over to the CTA location where Giacomo Rambaldi (the PGIS exspert) worked. I arrived about 20 minutes early so I looked around and found a small river that was the home of two swans and their many ugly ducklings. I spent my extra time taking photos of them and although is was raining pretty steadily I had my MEC raincoat which preformed admirably, and I had my camera poking out of a rainproof sac. Finally though the time for my meeting rolled around and I left the swans to enjoy the weather alone.

Stepping out of the rain I talked with the friendly receptionist who rang up to Mr. Rambaldi for me. We met, shook hands and went up to his office to chat about PGIS. The meeting started with an explenation of the work that I was to complete for the NGO in Ethiopia and how I would be using PGIS techniques. We talked at length about the ethics of PGIS too, examining the issues surrounding ownership of information and understanding who the benefactors of digitizing spatial information are. After our meeting we had lunch and I contiued on my way to meet Alex in Amsterdam.

Taking the train into the main station in Amsterdam was easy enough, and I met Alex right in the middle of the station. We walked around the city for a few hours, taking in the extreme nature of the place and enjoying some really good fries and mayo. The buildings were old and tall, with many that had foundation that made them pitched at a few degrees. The people in Amsterdam, at least while I was there, were almost entirely tourists. It was a bit like New York City that way actually. Altogether, I found the city to be a bit disappointing, and although I'm glad I can say that I have seen it I do not need to return. I think that maybe if I were able to stay outside of the tourist zones of the city I would have enjoyed it better, but it was a bit too bizarre for me.

Catching a train later that day back to Münster where we had an early night booking a hotel and organizing the trains that would take us to Berlin the following day.

Eurotrip - Day Two - Münster

2009-07-24T08:49:00.003-04:00

Day Two

I got up early to see if I could get in touch with the Participatory Mapping expert in Wageningen and organize when I was going to meet with him. I was able to finally get in touch by 9:30 and arrange a meeting for the following day around noon. Thore and I made some breakfast consisting of bacon and eggs, which I'm told is a bit of an odd thing to have for breakfast in Germany. Apparently eggs are only really used in baking.

Finishing our breakfast, Alex and I headed into town and on the way tried to find her some Tylenol for a headache. We stopped in a few convenience stores along the way and also in a a few 'shoppers drugmart' type of places with shampoos, beauty products and whatnot. There were no tylenols to be found. It turns out that while in N.A. you can get over the counter drugs just about anywhere, in Germany this is definitely not the case. Drugs (including over the counter stuff) is controlled through only very specific places, which we learned to be the "Apoteka." When we finally did get into an Apoteka Alex had to talk with a pharmacist and then the pharmacist had to go into the back room to locate the Tylenol. As I said earlier, drugs are very controlled in comparison to N.A. (which is surprising given the ease of access to beer and Cigarettes. Cigarettes can be bought out of vending machines on the street).

Our next stop after the pain meds was to head into the town and chek out the main tourist area. There was an interesting church there from the middle ages that had large cages hanging in the tower, which apparently were used to publicly starve criminals of the state hundreds of years ago.

The cages got us thinking of food and we then went to a cafe to grab some lunch. The cafe was a particularily nice place, and we had a window in the sun to enjoy a pizza and a beer. After lunch we walked around the tourist areas a bit more heading into various shops and a tech store to see if I could find an extra memory card for my camera as I was beginning to worry about running out of space. Unfortunately for me, memory cards are REALLY expensive here! for the same card that I bought at home in October of 2008 for $60.00 (CAD) they wanted 50 Euro (50 euro = $80(CAD)! I think not....

We then walked out to the area of town where there was a bicycle highway. Münster is completely bicycle oriented, meaning that every street has a bicycle lane on the sidewalk and you do not want to walk in this lane as you will get run over by a speeding bike (seriously). Bikes are taken so seriously here that there are bike police that will chase you down if your bike is not in proper working order or if you are cycling on the wrong side of the street and give you a ticket.

The bicycle highway that we went to was a sight to see. It was located away from the road and formed a large ring around the city. Shaded by nice leafy trees it was full of bicycles commuting home from work. It had sidewalks as well so we could safely walk bside without getting run over.

We left the Bicycle highway when we were near the university castle and headed through to the botanical gardens. The gardens are maintained by the biology students at the university and were really nice. There was a decently large pond in the centre and large Heron taking a rest in a tree at the centre of it. Very picturesque.

From the gardens we walked back to Thore's place where we met him and then went to meet his girlfriend to get some supper at a local student bar. I had a fantastic pasta dish with fancy cheese and enjoyed a beer with pears and strawberries in it. We then went to a small cafe on the way home and picked up some extra bikes and went for a ride home, enjoying the wonderful bike lanes.

Once home we headed to bed, as it would be an early morning to get to my meeting in the Netherlands.

Eurotrip, Day One - London to Münster

2009-07-16T14:44:00.001-04:00

The first day of the trip started roughly at the crack of dawn. We decided to take an early plane ride to Dusseldorf via Ryan air for the cost of 1 pound. However, this meant that we had to get up at 5am so that we could catch a nite bus to Liverpool station to catch a train to Stansted airport to get on the Ryan Air flight. Having been very careful about packing the previous night we did not need to check any baggage and borded out plane with ease. The plane was about half full so we had our pick of seats and chose the emergency exit isle seats for maximum comfort.

The ride on the plane was only about an hour long, so we were barely at cruising altitude for twenty minutes before we began the descent. The airport that we landed in was Dussledorf Airport and while we expected to be able to get off the plane and see the city, this was certainly not the case. It turned out that we were in fact in the middle of absolutely nowhere. We had to catch a bus into Dussledorf (for a whopping 15 Euro!) which was approximatly just over an hour long. Once in Dussledorf though we had some time to walk around and enjoy the scenery.

I think that we must have caught Dussledorf at a bad time. We walked around the city, but there really wasn't much to see. athere were a number of shopping malls, but just a kind of boring downtown. There were two interesting parts though, there was a market where I bought a meatball (simply a ball of cooked ground meat) which came topped with two inches of mustard, and the Rienne river, which was okay to look at. After eating my ball of meat, I felt guilty for eating all of that meat and nothing nutrious, so I bought two peaches at the local food market.

After enjoying the town, we walked back to the train station, filled out our Erurail passes and had them validated at the station. Next we went to a ticket kiosk and found the train that would take us to our first real stop, Münster. The train only took about an hour and when we got into the station, my friend Thore was waiting to meet us already.

The three of us walked through the city as our tour guide (Thore) showed us all of the landmarks which we could use to investigate the next day. He also took us through the University of Münster and we saw the main campus building which was a castle. I'm not really sure why it was called a castle though, as it seemed more like a really large mansion type of lecture hall (I think its a North American thing to assume that all castles are from the days of Knights and Round Tables). Finally we walked up to Thore's flat which was about 10 - 15 minutes up the road.

Happy to be in a place where we could jettison our bags (which had become awful heavy) we relaxed and thought about our next steps. Eventually we decided to make some Fijtas and went off to the market to get some supplies.

While getting the supplies, Thore took some time to educate me about the beers that we should try. We bought some that were national, regional and local brews. They were all pretty good, but the best on was called Jever. I'm not sure if you can find this one in Canada, but it is worth buying one bottle if you can.

After shopping we made our dinner, and stayed up a while after chatting and sharing bits of our cultures back and forth, via youtube. At just before midnight though we were sufficiently exhausted and headed to bed.

Eurotrip!

2009-07-15T08:47:00.003-04:00

It is now July 15th and I have been traveling across Europe for one week. But before I get to going through what I have been up to, I might as well give you the big picture.

In April I firmed up plans to move to Africa for a year, working on some mapping projects for NGO's in Ethiopia, Kenya and South Africa. However, no Canadian airline went directly to Ethiopia, so I would need to stop in someplace in Europe on the way. Now, seeing as I had a friend in London, I decided to stay there and see a bit of the UK (see previous blog posts). Also there was a colleague that I wanted to meet in the Netherlands as well. So, rather than just have a quick meeting in Wageningen and then return back to London to catch my flight, I decided to make a trip out of it and my friend Alex and I bought EuroRail passes for 10 travel days in Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg), France and Germany. This way I could have a meeting in the Netherlands, and see much of Europe as well. The following blogs are an account of the cities that I saw and the adventures I went on.

Last note is that I did not take my laptop with me, so I can't put up photos as usual in my posts... I'll do what I can

Edinburgh, Day Two

2009-07-07T14:28:00.007-04:00

Waking from a rather marvelous sleep at 9am, I got up and began to pack up at the MacHostel. The checkout time was at 10am, so I needed to move relatively quickly in order to have everything ready to go. By 10am I had checked out, picked up my ID (they require a deposit for the room) and gone onto the street. First things first, I required breakfast.

The Scottish Breakfast

Walking around and window shopping at various places, I was able to find a breakfast place at South Bridge that looked to fit the bill nicely. I was hoping to find a shop that would offer a regular scottish breakfast like something as stereotypical as pancakes and maple syrup in Canada. The place I chose had pictures of the dishes in the window, and cheap prices on the food. I ordered the Scottish Breakfast, which was a smoragasborg of greasey items. It turns out that a Scottish breakfast is a lot like an English breakfast. My breakfast included two eggs over hard, sausage, bacon, baked beans, potatoes, dry white toast, tea and water. Nothing terribly specail but it was put together nicely. Looking across the room however I saw the largest family I have ever seen. They were also appearently regulars at this place because the owner seemed to know them. I looked back at my plate and after considering the nutritive value, things were understandable.

Model of Mary Kings Close Vaults

The next place that I decided to visit was the Edinburgh Vaults. I had been told the previous day that they were one of the must see things in the city, so I made my way to the Mary Kings Close just off of the Royal Mile. The Vaults are a pretty unique place; they were created when the municipal building was built in the city. There was no extra space in the location that the had wanted to build, so instead of demolishing the buildings that were already there, they just lopped the top few floors off of the buildings and put the new one on top. So, underneath the current city were the original buildings from the 17th century. Although the tour of the area cost 9.50 pounds (at student rate) the tour was preally well done and I'm happy that I did spend the money to enjoy the story telling that the guide offered. Life in Edinburgh in the 17th century was pretty natsy, with death a constant presence and rampant poverty everywhere. I would have liked to take some pictures from inside the vaults, but unfortunately no photography was allowed.

Professional at Work on Parliamentary Portrait

Traditional Scottish Parliament Dress

Next stop was down at the end of the Royal Mile, where the Scottish parliament sat. After going through airport style security I was able to freely walk around the parliament. Well, when I say freely I mean that unless I had a secuirty guide (tour guide) follow me around I was only really able to go to the top floor of the debating room, which I would imagine is much like the house of commons. I snapped a few picutes of the place, and then headed back out and chatted with an information officer in the lobby who had a great sense of humour.

Leaving parliment I went back up the Mile (everyhing touristy exists there) and found a small museum allong the way that had information about the way that people lived in recent history, say from the 1800's onwards. It was located in a converted house and had very few markings on the outside of the building showing that it was in fact a museum. However, inside it was quite lovely. It was a very simple museum, but they had plenty of displays and artifacts to show. One of the more interesting exihibts described the way that the community groups in the area took the place of social care before the government took charge for them. In particular it described how the Oddfellows group started and included a poster describing thier secret club handshake. Very cool.

(not so) Secret Grip of the Oddfellows

After the museum I went searching for a gift to give the family that had been putting me up in london and as I was in Scotland there was realy one good choice :). I found a shop that bottled thier own blends of scotch, and after finding one that I enjoyed I knew it would be a great choice. The rest of the day thereafter was just wandering about, stopping in here, stopping in there. During the afternoon I had two remaining goals, eat a deep fried Mars Bar and find a Scottish Baked Potatoe. It took quite a long time to find the Mars Bar, I could only find one place that actually offered them. It was about what you would expect.... gooey and greasey. The breading around the outside made the whole thing a bit like chewing through paper which wasn't the most enjoable but still it was good. The Potatoe that I found was really tastey. You order it with a topping or two (cheese, sour creme, lamb, kethcup) and then enjoy it with a side of salad. Very good. I also met a guy from Edingburgh named Justin and we discussed some of the finer points of being from Scotland.

Well, thats about all I did in Edinburgh, the Bus ride out of the city started at 10 and then got into London around 6am. Edinburgh was a pretty small town that I would say is worth seeing once. I really enjoyed getting a taste of the city, it makes me want to come back and see some other towns like Glasgow or go to the Isles.

-----------------------------------

Propsective Renters at Hertz Rent a SuperCar

[picture missing]

The Deep Fried Mars Bar

Scary Ali G. Mannequin

Scottish House of Commons

Santa, Olde Style

The World's End [is] Close

The Width of a Close (Close comes from Enclosure)

Edinburgh, Day One

2009-07-07T13:09:00.012-04:00

On Saturday I sat at the kitchen table thinking of the things that I wanted to accomplish before I left the UK. Among those thoughts was Tower Bridge, A three storey photography store (bigger than Toronto’s three storey mega photo store), The British Museum and a few others. However, none of these adventures really seemed as epic as the three days I had left would permit. Then like a ton of bricks, It hit me. What I really had wanted to do was go to either Ireland or Scotland. Well, as Ireland would require flights that had long since become very expensive (or a bus and a ferry), that left me with Scotland. With only two options of cities that I wanted to go and see, I had to choose between Glasgow and Edinburgh. That decision was made easily due to the availability of transport and the fact that I have some friends in Edinburgh.
I ran down to the station soon thereafter to purchase my tickets for an overnight bus that left at 11pm. Luckily there was still room on the bus, and I bought my return tickets. Afterwards I went to a fantastic dinner with my London hosts which we walked to through Trafalgar square where a Pride celebration was well underway. The dinner was superb; I enjoyed the slowly roasted duck and washed it down with a Juliper beer. On the way home we went through the Pride nerve centre in Soho which was a lot like church and Wesley at the Toronto Pride festival; lots of bright colors, people having a great time, and plenty of drag queens.

Largest Scotch Collection in the World

Once home I quickly packed and headed back to the coach station, ticket in hand. After a short wait the gate opened and the queue shuffled onto the bus, all of us hoping to have a decent seat for the nine hour ride ahead of us. After attempting to coax myself to sleep with Tom Waits (Closing Time and The Early Years). Later I realized that if Tom couldn’t help me get to sleep, then I might as well quit trying and watch a film.
Some hours later we stopped at a service station and then another few hours later we had yet another stop. There had been a bit of weather on our way to the second stop (low laying clouds in the valleys) so there was an excellent rainbow to greet us as we disembarked from our bus at the second rest stop.
Finally, after what seemed like a never ending bus ride, we finally arrived in Edinburgh at 8am. I stopped after a short walk away from the station to get a spot of breakfast and to find some locals that might be able to point me to the city’s high street where hostel that I was planning to stay at was located.

Warning!

After breakfast I followed the direction that the friendly person that sat beside me had said and ended up in downtown Edinburgh. However although I was downtown I had no clue where the high street was. None of the streets that I passed was called high street, and none of the streets I passed looked like a high street with high end shops and whatnot. A stopped a man who was cleaning up trash and he pointed me in the right direction which was back the way I came. The high street is also named “the Royal Mile” so I at least I can pretend that I had an excuse.
Edinburgh, by the way, is the grossest city I have ever seen - from a garbage perspective - in the morning. I thought it was because it was just garbage day and some animals had gotten into it, however there was also garbage strewn about the next day in the morning. By the afternoon though the garbage was cleaned up nicely.
I first walked up the Royal Mile towards the Edinburgh Castle, but it was closed until much later so instead I went looking for the hostel. Somehow I managed to see a pretty small sign pointing the way to it and checked into the MacHostel (I’m not kidding... it was seriously called the “MacHostel”). The hostel was only 15 pounds for the night which sounded like a good idea to me, and I registered myself. Unfortunately the check in time was 2pm so I had to carry my whole kit around with me while I toured the city.
Next I went back up to the castle and even though it was raining I had my rain jacket and figured I would be fine with a few drops. What I didn’t expect however was the 15 pound price tag to enter! Yeah right. So, angry with the extreme price tag I went back down the street looking for something else to ease my woes of not seeing the castle.
The Scotch Whiskey Experience tour did the trick. The student rate was only 8.50 and it had a cool Disney type ride in a barrel, so I was happy enough. That price also included a tour guide after the barrel ride, and a scotch tasting. Then, an added bonus was thrown in; we saw the world’s largest whiskey collection. Awwwesome. I would say there were several thousand bottles there. At the end of the tour I asked the tour guide if she could tell me about some of the more interesting things that I should spend a day doing. She recommended walking down to the park at the far bottom of the Royal Mile, and said that there was a nice hill I could climb to takes some pictures of the city.

Hill Climbing

She undersold it a *bit*. This was not just a hill, but rather an epic mountain. I switched from my leisure jeans to my extreme mountaineering shorts in the visitors centre bathroom and set off to begin the climb. I powered up the around the first corner and though I was pretty high and took a picture of my GPS to show the change in elevation as well as snapping a few pictures. It was a view to remember.

Then I turned the corner and saw the real summit looming before me. Yeah, it was big enough to be called a summit. Going up the next leg looked to be a bit harder, as the trail changed from groomed to ragged and rocky and I had about twenty extra kilograms to contend with in my backpack. Never the less I resolved to get there and I set off again up the mountain.
Eventually, I made it up to the top. Only a handful of people made it up there when I arrived. The sight was beautiful. A few hundred meters up and I could see the entire city (and then some). Being that the view went as far as the eye could see, I took a few pictures.... a few hundred actually - it was that good. At the top I also met another photographer shooting some medium format film and a digital as well and we chatted for quite a while before we both headed back down the mountain.

The Summit

Remember all of the complaining I did about the steep and dangerous climb? Well, it turns out that while one side of the mountain was rocky and steep, the other was a gentle, grassy slope back into the park area with a beautiful set of ponds at the bottom and Swans swimming around to complete the picture. What a difference!
Anyways I sauntered back down the hill (notice how it is a hill now...) and snapped a few pictures of swans.

This guy held his kid at arms length so that the swans could take turns trying to bite her hands off. Cute.

After the mountaineering adventure it was late enough that I could check into the hostel and drop my bags off. Leaving the majority of my things in the foot locker in the room, I made my way along to an internet cafe and did a bit of work before meeting with a friend of mine from the GISLab at Queen’s University.
Mel met me with her boyfriend George, and after introductions we went off to find some Haggis at a local grocer. My goodness, Haggis in Edinburgh is good! It was much better than any dinner we could have got in a pub and the whole deal only cost 5 pounds!

Haggis and Neaps

After that great dinner I went back to the MacHostel and took some of the extra beer from dinner down to the lounge to play a little billiards and meet new people. After playing half a game a few people nearby were chatting in French, and in my best Quebec h’acent I asked if they would like to join me. Amazingly they understood and we played a great game of doubles. After chatting for a while we went over where we were from and it turned out that they were in fact Quebecers, so no wonder they could figure out the franglais I was butchering. Once the game was done we chatted for a while longer and they went out to a club. I was tempted to join them, but after having not getting any sleep the night before I figured that I would take it easy and grab a decent night’s sleep. Somehow I had remembered to bring my earplugs with me on the trip and I was glad to have them then! The hostel was loud and hot, but I still got a great sleep, and woke up fresh for the next day of adventures

--------------------------------------------------------

Egham and The Vault.

2009-07-07T12:49:00.001-04:00

Friday was the one day I didn’t bring my camera, and one of the best photography opportunities I’ve had. Alex will be attending Royal Holloway University in Egham, England this fall to do a Masters program, so we decided to visit her new campus. Egham is a picturesque little town, littered with cottages and a university at its centre. The campus is splendid and features a number of wooded trails that run throughout. The main campus building is the perfect example of Victorian architecture and was quite a sight. I wished I had brought my camera along.
Coming back into London we stopped at Waterloo train station and then took the tube to London Bridge where some friends were playing a rock concert at a place called “The Vault.” I was really unprepared for this place, as it was a real marvel. It was situated underneath London Bridge, and was a cavernous underground space for the arts. I think that at one point it was a part of the tube stations, but that would have been many decades ago. Now it has been turned into a very dimly lit dungeon type location with long halls and nooks leading away. In some on these nooks were art exhibits and stages for performances.
The first performances I saw were two poets who gave their all performing spoken word, definitely something worth seeing live if you have the chance. Next there was an acoustic stage where two bands played their musical offerings. The first, called ‘Steps to Korea’ was a one man act that had pre-recorded all of his backing parts and played guitar and sang on top. Excellent. The second band to play was our friends ‘We Aeronaughts’ and were musical was a soulful good time. The third and main show of the night was on a much larger and main stage down the hall for full bands.
The first to play was the full complement of ‘We Aeronaughts’ and they played a great set. With a host of instruments and a large cast, they were a full bodied sound that is akin to the range of sound you get from collectives like Broken Social Scene. Coming onto the stage second was a one man band called ‘Napoleon III’, and we played a wicked set, based on setting up complex patterns with a loop machine and various instruments. Very well done.
The highlight for me though was the final band to play. Called ‘Keyboard Choir’ the group consisted of six keyboardists one of which was conductor with his back to the crowd and a computer set up to mix all of the sounds. This group seriously rocked. They played delirious electro-pop mixes that were half improvised jam, half structured songs. The musicians themselves were having the time of their lives, often running from keyboard to keyboard midway though songs to trade melodies and sounds with one another, dancing as they played. I would strongly recommend seeing this band if you are ever able to, simply fantastic.
After the music was done, we all (fans and band members) went into another area of the vault which had a serious dance floor going in a club style and danced the night away. Finally, on the way home we elected to walk from London Bridge to Sloane Square as the tube was closed and it would require a number of buses to get back. The walk took well over an hour, and it was at least 4am when we finally arrived back home. Fantastic night, although I was I had my camera. I’ll see if I can find some photos taken by others who were present.

Canada Day

2009-07-04T12:23:00.009-04:00

Canada Day in Trafalgar Square

Waking at the crack of 1pm after a night in Brighton Alex and I prepared to gather ourselves for another day of fun in the sun. Wednesday was the height of the recent heat wave in London and after putting on our sunscreen we headed out in the 30+ degree weather (Yes, I know Smith Falls was 37 with the humidex last week) to grab the tube, bound for Trafalgar Square where we heard there were some Canucks gathering.

Canada Day '09 in London

Already sweating buckets (tubes have no air conditioning, and are really packed on the Circle Line), we left the tube station and made our way to the square. Turns out that there are quite a few Canadians in London (actually, according to CBC there are 250k of us) ! Alex and I made our way in and immediately started to feel at home. To the right of us Sleeman Breweries had set up a tent and to the left there was a wagon-type fry shack and a ball hockey tournament already in progress. Finding some of our friends already enjoying some of the cool beverages on the right, we joined in the fun and soaked in the Canadiana. After two hours or so of celebrating our country, we took a quick walk around the National Gallery that was there, and walked by a Canadian themed pub, called “The Maple Leaf.” The whole street the pub was on seemed to be full of Canadians and Canadian themed shops, including a man in full Mountie uniform (I’m not sure how he didn’t die from the heat). The Maple Leaf was really busy though with a line well out the door so we elected to take it easy on ourselves and head home to make dinner. Stopping in Tescos along the way, the clerk saw my red and white shirt and complimented me my country, telling me how he wished to someday move there to join some family that had emigrated some time ago.

It was a good day to be Canadian.

----------------------------------

Ball Hockey!

So Many Lost Balloons

More Hockey

Sleeman Beer Tent

Wagon Fries.
Think they have enough flags?

Brighton

2009-07-04T10:35:00.011-04:00

Brighton Beach
(six photo panoramic stitch)

On Tuesday Alex and I decided to take a train to Brighton to meet with some friends and attend a quiz night at a local pub. Tuesday also happened to be Alex’s last day of work, so the night promised to be a hoot.

Rather than arrive just in time for the quizzes, we elected instead to go a few hours early and have a chance to see the city and enjoy its most popular spot, the beach. We arrived at the beach and surveyed the situation. It was pretty packed as the panorama suggests. However, we found a good spot not too far away and settled down onto our beach towels and began to soak up the sunshine by the sea. After only a few minutes a friend of ours arrived and with the ability of asking him to watch our stuff open to us, we began to debate the prospect of going for a swim. England (or well, London and surrounding areas) has been though a wicked heat wave recently, so the idea of a swim sounded awfully appealing. Tom (our friend) however, had his reservations. Being only June and the Atlantic, the water promised to be really quite cold. On the other hand, Alex and I bravely laughed in the face of cold, proclaiming loudly that we were Canadians and we enjoyed walking five miles into the up a hill (both ways) to school each day at negative 20 below.... yeah, riiiight.

Getting my Swim Gear Ready

Long story short, we set out for the water and I’ll admit I was a bit apprehensive as to now having to swim in the water, regardless of the temperature. Luckily my fears were abated when the water, although refreshing, was lovely. The salt of the ocean and the waves reminded me of vacations past, and Alex and I enjoyed the cool respite.

Swimming is Fun!

After our swim, we sat out and let the sun dry us up before heading back away from the beach and getting a plate of onion rings for dinner. Four pounds fifty for eight (8!!!) rings — They weren’t even large rings! After finishing my expensive rings I walked up to the pub, a sleepy looking place from the outside, on a quiet side street.

Although I don't know who you are, your bike is Grrreat!

The team we fielded consisted of about ten of us, so we were confident that our numbers alone would be great enough to take a shot at winning the whole thing. There were a number of musicians with us, some history students, a graphic designer and Alex and I provided some geography for insight. I’m happy to say that we did relatively well. I think in the end we were able to finish in second place, with our prize being the affirmation that there is power in numbers.

We stayed at the pub long after the quiz was finished playing a really tough game, the name of which I completely forget. However, I do remember how it is played.

Players sit around a table and in turn each player calls out numbers in consecutive fashion.
Depending on what number is said there are different rules associated. For instance, if you say a multiple of seven, you lose. Another rule is that if you say two numbers in a row on your turn, i.e. “Five and Six” instead of just “Five” the direction of the circle will switch (from clockwise to counter clockwise or vice-versa). Calling three numbers in a row means that the order will skip a turn.
Now, here comes the complicated part. If a multiple of nine is uttered, the player who lands on that number creates a new rule. Either a new number (and its multiples) becomes a rule or the rule can be completely unrelated. For Example. I say the number eighteen, and I institute the rule that nobody can talk using a personal pronouns (this is exceedingly difficult).

Father & Daughter Teammates

We continued to play this game for a while and when I saw ‘we played’ I mean that while the we were all playing, I was constantly loosing :). Afterwards, (now getting to be after eleven O’clock) we headed to a Salsa bar that was just off of the beach.

Now, I had a preconception of what ‘Salsa bar’ would mean. I was, however, completely wrong. Think of what a semi underground, sweaty night club would be like, then add another ten to fifteen degrees, amp the music up thirty to forty decibels and invite fifty-cent. Yeah. That was it in a nutshell. However, instead of focusing on the negative I decided to take the approach of national geographic, and capture the local species in its natural environment. I think the night yielded something in the range of seven hundred pictures. I had a lot of people approach me and ask if I was a professional, to whom I would answer, “I work for a Canadian Travelogue” and that usually struck up a nice conversation and made the night move along well.

Hibbity Hibbity, Up In De Club

Right so, 2 am or so rolls around (I can’t really be sure as I had no watch) and we decide to leave the club. At this point we would probably have headed home, but the trains had stopped running for the night and we had to hang about until the 4:35am morning train. Brighton seemed to be aware of this, and there was a massive beach party raging on! The weather was still cooperating and the beach was littered with people sitting around bonfires, having a great time. I joined a number of the groups, and met people from all over the world there. Mostly people were from Europe, but there were plenty of people from other continents. I joined a few circles of people sitting around guitars, and also had a chance to sit in on a few conversations about politics. Everyone seemed to be having a fantastic time and why not!? Warm weather, cool breezes, bonfires on the beach beside the sea and a wide mix of interesting people to talk with.

Guitar? Yes, Please!

Beach Bonfire!

Finally though, the night came to a close, and we made our way back up to the train station. I’m pretty sure that everyone else waiting with us was up from the beach and all were looking to get home and rest after a long night. The first train however was a milk run into Victoria Station, so what had been just over a one hour trip out to Brighton, was a two and a half hour trip back into London. Once back at Victoria we had a quick walk back to Sloane Square and finally hit the hay around six thirty.

The Never Ending Morning Train

Brighton was great fun. I would highly recommend any traveler in London or surrounding areas to check it out if they have the chance.

-------

Canterbury Tales

2009-07-01T15:06:00.008-04:00

Boat Tours

Yesterday I made a Pilgrimage. I got up at 8, showered, packed, ate and made my way down to Victoria Coach Station. Word to the wise, if you have a printer, buy your coach tickets online. If you get your tickets from National Express online, they are roughly half price. Unfortunately at the station tickets ended up being 14 pounds each way, but I had committed to going, bit the bullet and paid the money. The bus ride was the prescribed two hours length, although I would say that a good deal of that time was spent going through London stopping to pick other passengers up.

Gondolier in Canterbury

Getting into Canterbury, I had pretty much no idea where I was or where I should be going. However, The touristy area is quite close to the bus station and after walking for a minute in the right direction I was right at their High Street. Walking down the street I came across a building marked ‘Hospital’ which seemed to be a bit odd as it was marked with ‘visitors welcome’ so I ventured inside. Turned out that Hospital referred to the Olde English meaning of Hospitality, and the building was from 1100AD for visiting friars. Pretty neat place, only cost 75p to get in and I snapped a picture or two.

Hobgoblin Public House

On the way out the curators of the hospital told me to visit the friars quarters and garden located just around the corner. I walk down that way and missed the gardens, but caught a nice looking pub called ‘The Old Brewery Tavern.’ I went in thinking it would be a brew pub, but instead it turned out to be an average pub with standard brews made locally, neither of the two I had were very good. However they had wireless internet and the place had some charm so it wasn’t a loss. When I came back out I found the gardens which were located down a dimly lit driveway. A nice babbling brook crossed the pathway, and the bridge overtop provided a quaint picture, with tourists in boats being guided along.

Singing their Heart Out

After the gardens and poking around a bit I went to the Canterbury Cathedral, famous for the death of Thomas Becket, who was an Arch Bishop that was murdered by the King. Well, he wasn’t really murdered by the king, but some of his Knights thought the King wanted them to kill the Arch Bishop so they took it upon themselves to do the deed, or so the storey goes. Either way, I went and saw Cathedral. The price of admission for a student was 6.50 pounds and while I don’t usually bother with paying to see churches, it looked like this was the be all and end all of Canterbury, so I went for it.

Canterbury Cathedral Main Hall
(Could you imagine if this is where you went to church each week?)

Inside the place was really quite well done. The main hall where services are still done each day was huge and had many tombs within it. Leading away I saw the location where the Bishop had been killed and the replica swords on the wall. In the basement there was a really old crypt, which was definitely the most impressive sight. The crypt, standing since 1000AD, housed the remains of many religious figures, and a museum in the back housed goblets and religious gifts from the past 1000 years.

Slayer's Tools

While I was walking around I wondered how much more you would get out of the place it I had been on a walking and guided tour. Knowing that these would be considerably expensive I had elected not to enquire. However, it was really hard to understand the significance of what I was seeing while roaming around. On two occasions I asked the docents (is that the right term?) to tell me a bit about what I was looking at, and these quick questions turned into quite long and in depth discussions about the cathedral and its history. It definitely pays to ask!

After seeing the cathedral I walked around a bit longer, soaking up the city and finally I made my way back to the bus. The area was a lot like visiting old Quebec City, the same sort of sprinklings of old sights with little new boutique shops and pedestrian boulevards everywhere. A quaint city, and interesting day traveling in England. I would caution though, I tried to do this one on the cheap, and it ended up costing me about 38 pounds. Not the cheapest day so far.

Canterbury Gardens

Going Tacos Locos in Canterbury

Masked Shadow

Seen Jesus Yet?

Dean Geolnoth 820AD

An entire family lost to war

No title

Prayer Notes in Canterbury Cathedral

Cycle, Cemetary and Surfing

2009-06-28T18:28:00.013-04:00

Angel in Brockley Cemetery

The weekend in London was full of fun and games, I met new people and saw more outside of the core of the city.

On Saturday Alex and I got on bikes and rode around the Thames, eventually heading southwest toward Wimbledon (Map and route at end). Riding a bike in London is pretty fun. Although many would say that it is exceedingly dangerous, I would say that as long as you are comfortable on a bike in traffic and you have your wits about you, everything should be fine. As long as a Lorry doesn’t pass you on the inside of a corner up a hill... then you might have some trouble. As we went along we passed by a few parks where a lot of people walk their dogs, play with their kids or enjoy a game of cricket. I took only one picture from the trip of these startlingly mottled trees that lined the Thames providing some great shade and a place to catch our breath and grab a drink of water.

Thames Shoreline, Saturday afternoon

On Sunday morning I woke up to find an email from a Couch Surfing group dedicated to photography in London. Reading through all of the forum talk, I found that there was a photography afternoon organized out in Crofton Park, which is south east of the city. After checking the trains heading that way I saw that the pub that it was centered around was pretty easy to navigate and the trains left from Victoria station every half hour.

Welcome to the Graveyard

I left the flat and caught the 1:38pm train thinking I would be late for the 2:00pm meeting time. The trains operate awfully efficiently from what I can tell and I was at the pub by 2pm. I was only the second person to arrive, so I waited for a while with the one other person more to come. I was only able to tell that he was with the photography group because of the Nikon DSLR he was holding. Camera guys stand out!

Resting Easy

After an hour of chatting, there was myself, an Italian, a North Vancouverite and an organiser who lived just down the way from the Jam Circus Pub where we were. Knowing that not many more were likely to show up and getting a bit antsy to get over to our shooting location I headed over to a local cemetery with my new Vancouver friend Araz (sorry if I got that one wrong!) .

Wrapped Up

The Brockley Cemetary (Lewisham) was fascinating. It is the only completely unkempt cemetery I’ve ever been to. Nature had long since taken hold of the grounds and only the paved paths provided any indication of what routes to travel. The grass was a few feet high, thorn bushes were littered around and most of the grave stones were hidden in ivy. Not only was nature at play here but weather and possibly the local teenagers made sure that many of the tombstones were cracked, overturned or simply broken into many pieces. While I found this all to be a bit odd, the cemetery had quite a number of stones from eighteen and seventeen hundreds. The mixture of the age and decrepitude on the grounds made for an excellent location to shoot at and I enjoyed the two hours I spent capturing the essence of the grounds.

Philadelphia.
Flash shot through branches for effect

Shooting technique

I decided pretty early on that I wanted to work with the nature of the place and distil the eerie nature. However, doing so at the brightest time of the day is much easier said than done! In order to capture what I wanted the use of flash would be pretty much compulsory.

The Memory of our Dear Boy

The trick about flash is to use it in such a way that it is either very obvious or not at all. I chose the latter for much of what I was doing, simulating a much later time of the day. I made sure to set my camera to under expose the scene by at least a stop or two (half or a quarter of the light needed) and then used my flash to light whatever it was that I thought was important. In all of these shots the flash is not mounted to the camera, but instead is tethered via a sync chord.

Foreshadowed Cross

Using largely aperture priority (Av) and the flash set to auto (plus a little compensation for the under exposure) all of these photos were really more about placement of the light than anything else. I found that with the flash in the sync chord I would leave the camera on my tripod and then be free to hold the flash wherever it was that I wanted within the 6 foot reach of the chord.

Post Processing and Socializing

Couch Surfing Group

After shooting for two hours in the cemetery it was getting pretty close to five o’clock and it was begining to sprinkle rain so I packed up my gear and headed back to Jam Circus. When I got there I found that many more people had joined, as there was promise of a beginners Photoshop lecture. While everyone was setting up their machines with a version of Photoshop, I set about transferring and editing the pictures I had taken from earlier in the day with Lightroom. While I was editing I got a chance to chat with a few people and talked about the pictures we had taken and my Lightroom workflow . At about the same time as I finished editing, the lecture on basic camera usage started and I was happy to join in while my photos were uploading onto Facebook via the pub’s wireless.

Back to Back

The organiser went over such things as ISO, shutter speed and aperture, while I chirped in from time to time injecting little bits of knowledge like what Mirror Lockup was or about Medium Format cameras.

After a time I got to talking with a gentleman who worked with the BBC managing their database of information. He showed me various pictures of the 40 petabyte (1 petabyte = terabytes gigabytes; 1 terabyte = 1024 gigabytes) data solution that they had come up with and all of the optical cabling and servers that were required to service it. Pretty incredible stuff! Apparently this is only one of the data centres for a small section, and the main BBC database is actually over 400 petabytes!!

Later on, the topic of the talk moved to Photoshop basics, and how simple image manipulations are done. When I had joined the conversation people were in the process of using their new knowledge and I was able to walk around to a few of the various computers people were working on and show a few pointers, like how to use adjustment layers instead of adjusting photos directly.

Engulfed

Wrapping up

By 8:45 everything had pretty much been wrapped up and I had met quite a few new people and learned a few new things along the way.

I learned how Couch Surfing works, and the type of kind people who attend group events. I tried new techniques with my camera and got a chance to try out how editing on the go works, while trying to keep everything manageable (camera, computer, card reader, portable hard drive etc.). I used the London train system, which is pretty damned good. I saw some of the massive amounts of information that go into maintaining a video editing system and lastly I was able to meet some people that I will hopefully be able to go out with later in the week in London to capture some of the more unique aspects of the city.

Stormy Horizons

The whole day was pretty fun, and I only wish that I was able to be in London longer, as although this was the first meeting of that group, they were talking of planning a whole lecture series and trips through the country.

-------------------------------------

Cycling Route

--------------------------------

Recooperation

2009-06-27T06:38:00.004-04:00

Leapfrog in Duke of York Square

Not much going on yesterday, Slept in late and watched some TV. Managed to come alive later on though and snapped a few going down Kings Road. Decided I would stop and eat at the first place to serve Boddingtons, but no such luck. After walking for a while I eventually gave up and went to Tesco's. That's where I finally found the pint I was looking for! Funny how that works. Anyways, Nice little walk about town and an altogether pretty low key day. Today I might go see some more stuff up the Thames, we'll see :)

Chelsea Fire Station

Science Museum, Natural History Museum and Harrods

2009-06-26T08:09:00.008-04:00

Lioncat.

Yesterday was a busy day. I'm sure I must have walked more before, but I can't remember when. Museums are hard work!

Science Museum

The Science Museum was pretty fun. After the previous night I had seen a bit of it, but not a whole lot. It was kind of neat having got a bit of info ahead of time about the place, so I knew the way around before I had seen the exhibits. There were a number of fun ones I hadn't been to before, including the History of Medical Science. That one was both fascinating and scary at the same time. There was a different amputation saw from every era covered. War has really been the motivator of medical science. Oddly enough, in the back corner of the exhibit was a real mummy in sarcophagus, kind of put in there as if it were no big deal. A FREAKIN MUMMY! Holey crap, it was so cool! I think that might have been the highlight of the exhibit for me.

The rest of the museum was pretty fun, some pretty standard science stuff in there... the kinetics, and interactive things, an exhibit on the history of plastics, some generic things about F1 technologies. very cool stuff, but nothing as mind blowing. One cool thing I saw there (the night before) was a cockpit that Mikka Hakkinen crashed in '99. That was cool. There was a big sign saying no photography, but I'm not sure why... there are likely thousands of pictures of the thing out on the net.

After we finished in the Science Museum, we went down Exhibition St. and found a nice sandwich shop to get some lunch and then ate our sandwiches in the Natural History Museum's park. It was a really fun place. Kids running around all over the place and a ton of cameras around the necks of parents. There was an old painted piano in the park and many people (of considerable talent) came out of the crowd and played a song or two while we were there. A butterfly conservatory had been set up in one corner of the park and that was our next attraction to see.

Butterfly on Fruit

After being to the Niagara Butterfly Conservatory a year before I did not imagine that this location would be able to come close to being as interesting. However, I was pleasently surprised as while it did not have 't quite the same number of butterflies, it was a very adequate setup. Lots of butterflies, and many opportunities to take photographs.

Natural History Museum

The actual Natural History Museum I was excited for. I have been told by many people that it is a really fantastic spot to check out and in addition it is free, so it was a must see. I've got to say I was a bit let down. It had some neat stuff for sure, but in m honest opinion it just want as good as some of the other places I've been to. The ROM and the American Museum of Natural History in NYC really ruined this one for me, as they are leaps and bounds better. Sorry London.

Having said that, I should say that there was nothing unsatisfactory about it. They had nice exhibits, just not anything that stuck out and really caught my attention. The one lasting display was a fully animatronic T-Rex model, that was really well done. It wagged its tail, moved its head, clamped its jaws menacingly and had sound effects. The other fun area of the museum was the Geography and Geology areas, but I have a feeling that that is mostly just me being nerdy :)

From the Beginning. Natural History Museum

After the Natural History Museum, we went to seek shelter in a cool place (it was pretty hot outside!) with refreshments, so we made our way to a public house. The Kronenberg here is a lot better than back at home. Might have just been because it was cold on a hot day, but I really enjoyed it. While enjoying the cool atmosphere, we figured out or next move, Harrods. It was just down the street and promised to be a spectacle.

Harrods

This is simply an awesome store. Actually its more like a mall. Its like a huge brand outlet with many boutiques inside. In any rate, it is massive. Everything here is done on a grand scale, with nothing from the 'thrifty' lifestyle present. My journey through Harrods took me across all of the floors and to most of the departments.

Unmarked Price tags

Near the entrance of the store is the most expensive jewelry areas. We ducked into the De Beers store and it was crazy. I chatted with the clerk in there for a little while, finding out about some of the more extravagant items. Most things in there were south of 10,000 pounds. There was a diamond in the front window that they (the clerks) were not even allowed to know the price of! In fact, If you wanted to know the price you had to have the saleswoman call the head office and set up an interview for you. The rock was seriously massive.

Dom and Friends

I don't think that photography was allowed in Harrods, so you'll have to forgive the following photos if they seem a bit rushed, I was shooting from the hip with the camera slung around me, messenger style.

Italian Prosciutto

Next was the food and drink. I have a feeling that Harrods has just as many places to eat and drink as it does to shop. There seems to be a place to eat in every one of the bigger shops and they also have their own food court. You can't really call it a food court as much as a tasting area too, since it is so expensive as to be prohibitive to have anything more than just a taste.

Caviar House.
Plates starting at 150 Pounds

Mind you, the food looked incredible. Bottles of Dom, caviar, cheese and meats everywhere. The entire section of the store was mouthwatering. It was great to see that Canada was present, with 'Fresh Lobster' on display, pre-cooked in Halifax. Not not quite as 'fresh' as I would expect!

Other sections we went to in Harrods included Pet Fashion, and the fancy Pen shop. The pet fashion area was a wee bit over the top. Burberry dog hats just blow me away. The pen shop was where you could spend upwards of 350 pounds on a Cross, Cartier or Montblanc pen. Wow.

Pet Fashion

After Harrods we walked down to Hyde park, and then back to Sloane Square. Saw a few more Ferraris, Lambos and Astons. Astons here are as ubiquitous as squirrels in Kingston. A fantastic day around London again, in absolutely fantastic weather.

Enzo and Me

Prized Beheading in Hyde Park

Today I'm taking it easy, trying to get some energy back from such a tiring day.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

High Quality Octopus

Fresh Canadian Lobster

Back by popular demand, more Lioncat

A Walk about the Thames

2009-06-25T05:53:00.007-04:00

DND at Vauxhall Bridge

Another day later and a few more pictures. I went for a rather nice and long walk yesterday, down from where I was staying to Westminster to the Thames. Its been really brilliant weather lately, so I've been enjoy walking around. While walking I managed to capture a few pictures, but I'll only post three here in the sake of brevity and for your enjoyment.

First we have a pic (below) that solidifies my statement about the prevalence of the city buses. Second, a picture (below the buses) to illustrate how many CCTV cameras there are, and lastly (top) a panorama I took looking across the Thames at the DND building and some interesting Condos at Vauxhall Bridge. the pano is pretty small in this post, so let me know if you want to see a larger version. Its pretty lovely when bigger.

More Red Buses*

CCTV in Effect

* For those of you who know this area, you might have caught me exaggerating, slightly. This is taken near Victoria Station, which is a transit hub.

The Route (counter-clockwise in light Blue)

I eventually visited the Tate Britain, which is a museum full of classical paintings. it was really neat to see artwork of London from the 1700's. I highly recommend this Museum, but it might take a while as there are many pieces that you could sit in front of for a long time.

In the evening we went to a birthday party which was celebrated at a night opening of the Science Museum. It was a special night for adults, and all of the exhibits were open. There were a few interesting ones, including a Quiz Night (trivia) which had nothing to do with science, and a Silent Disco. Today I'm heading back to to Science Museum to take a look at all of the things I didn't have time for, such as the history of Medical Instruments (eek!) and the Museum of Natural History.

Street Party

2009-06-24T08:10:00.005-04:00

Yesterday's walking about bought me through Hyde park and along Oxford street. This city is a busy one, let me tell you. Hyde park was as busy as the Time Structure during Queen's University exams and Oxford street was ridiculous. I went into a 'British Institution' (a Londoner's words, not mine) called Primark. That store is akin to the Eaton's Centre on Christmas Eve, and it was the middle of a Tuesday afternoon!

Two images today, one from the Motcomb street party and another from an ordinary afternoon on Oxford street . Two thing to notice; One, the lack of people at the 'street party' opposed to the overflowing amount on Oxford. These two photos are only a handful or streets apart. Two, the number of buses on Oxford Street. There are as many buses in London as there are taxis in New York. Its incredible.

Okay, enough with the similies/metaphores.

Throbbing Street Party

Oxford Street at Low Tide

Albert Bridge

2009-06-23T08:35:00.005-04:00

Albert Bridge.
f/5, 1/4000th, iso 320

Yesterday was quite an adventure. Walked from Sloane Square to Brixton, courtesy of some mixed up GPS Directions. Instead of going to Grosvenor's Square, I went to Brixton, which took just over two hours. Later in the day I met with a friend and saw Big Ben, Westminster Abbey (from the outside... 13 pounds to get in!) the Tate Modern (a very cool (free) museum) and St. Paul's cathedral (also free). St. Pauls might have been the coolest becasue we went in during an event, which later we found out was the Mayor's Birthday. Pretty epic way to party..... in a church over four hundred years old! I didn't take pictures of the super touristy places I was at as I'm sure there are already too many pictures of them online, but I hope you enjoy Albert Bridge.

Google Earth Track to Brixton.
Note the starting point (Alex's House)
The waypoint that alex told me to go to (Alexs Work)
How far I searched (waypoint 001)
The track (in light blue)

Day one – No Return Ticket

2009-06-21T14:44:00.000-04:00

Currently, Sitting on a plane, I have much to look forward to and even more to accomplish. Just getting here has been a bit of a journey.

Travelling via Air Transat, the baggage weight limit was 20kg. For those not cringing, allow me to explain the importance of this. My clothes alone weigh 20 kg! Let alone the weight of luggage, tripod, mediations, computer, GPS, hard drives, books, shoes, camera, camera equipment and so on. Packing inevitably meant leaving some things behind and being a bit sneaky in order to get aboard this plane.

After what seemed like the longest two weeks of my life, the hour to leave for the airport arrived. Due to a convenient ride, I left the house at 7pm to get to my 11:50pm flight. Enough time, you think? Well, going early allowed me to do two things: first, I got my pick of seats (isle emergency seat); and secondly I was able to check my bag in for weight (19.8kg!) and then meet my sister who was wearing a vest that could make any photojournalist envious of the amount of things stuffed inside of it. This vest was loaded with 20kg of stuff! I wore the vest through security and while boarding to keeping my bag looking light. The plan worked! Thanks Dad! (Helping me out, even on Father’s Day no less!)

The wait for the flight seemed to take forever, but I had time to load my laptop full of movies and TV (Arrested Development) and charge my batteries to full. Currently I’m watching Quantum of Solace (James Bond) although I’ve been watching full screen video (the writing of this excepted) for just over two hours now there is still 3:46 hours left of battery!

Tomorrow I land in Heathrow to meet my friend Alex and spend the next two weeks in London, visiting museums and getting a feel for the place. Following that I’ll be gallivanting through western Europe, meeting with professors, Universities and friends, having a bit of a working vacation before gearing up for Africa.

Feel free to email me if you are in London over the next few weeks.

Street Photography in Kingston.

2009-05-01T17:08:00.004-04:00

"I find that when I'm traveling my senses are heightened by being in a foreign environment, and I often see photographic opportunities in otherwise mundane places." Michael Richman, 2002

Block and Cleaver Market

Attempting to photograph the streets where you live is a bit like being a tourist in your own town. This is not made any easier when you live in a town of approximately 120,000 people.

To tackle Kingston, where I have now all year round for the past three years (and another two during school sessions), I need to identify what I'm going for. Because I know the city so well it is almost impossible to just walk around and capture the landscape as it unfolds around me. I bring with me the connotations and expectations that the past five years has taught me to find. So what then? Do I just take the pictures of the places that I think would be interesting? Well I think that is usually a given, but it doesn't lend itself well to discovery of new locations.

Instead, I chose to mimic the mindset of a tourist — sort of. A few friends had come into town for the weekend, and I decided to let them dictate the locations that we went to, as I and another friend told them about locations that a tourist might like to see while in town. Everywhere that we went to I had seen before, but by bringing people with me who did not know the city at all, I attempted to view it from a new perspective.

194 and a Half

Suiting up!
Street photography is like a really long episode of What not to Wear, agonizing over whether I am bringing too much, or too little. It is hard to try and get a kit together that will "do everything" either you don't have a long enough, wide enough or fast enough lens or it's something else. Often 50⁺% of what I bring I never use. I went minimal for this outing, knowing that I could come back to the same locations as many times as I want if I can't get the shot that time.

Weather wise the day was altogether miserable, but that just made me think that there would be more interesting locations and skies, overcast notwithstanding (always an optimist). I decided to wear a light anorak, and threw my gear into an empty shoulder bag. This way I would be ready for a light drizzle and I could throw whatever gear I wanted on my back without giving a thought of looking like a tourist(!) or worrying about pulling gear out of an annoying backpack.

Camera Equipment
Since I was going minimalism I wanted to have simple and lightweight gear. This meant one lens and my flash with a quick light diffuser that I could throw on if need be. Simple!

I brought my EF 50mm f/1.8 lens because it is a really light weight (plastic fantastic), very fast (good for indoors and low DOF) and it doesn't shout at people when I take their picture as the 70-200mm f/2.8 would. Did I mention the lens was cheap?(N.B. if you don't already have a 50mm prime, run to a camera store and pick one up). Having the camera gear in the shoulder bag was useful because it was always close by so I could grab it quickly in case something evolved in front of me. I threw my flash in the bag as well in case there was something inside a shop that I wouldn't have enough light for.

If I had my way, I would have changed this setup a bit. I would have used an EF17-40mm f/4 and made sure to bring a flash extension cord (or better yet a set of pocket wizards). Oh well, more toys to buy....

Sandwiches and Brambles

Stranger in a strange land
our trip about Kingston was pretty basic, we decided to head down through city park to the farmers market that was set up, check out some of the stores along the main street in town and finally head home through the area where some of the more historical building were located. Easy enough, right?

Travelling with this group as I did was really neat. The two 'tourists' I was with had their own shirt-pocket cameras and when they stopped to take a picture, I made sure that I did as well. I also took some more when I found interesting places and scenes. While the market didn't have too many opportunities, it gave me a chance to explore some of the ETTL functions that I've been meaning to, setting up different lighting zones in an image.

What of it?

In the picture here, I have set my camera to Aperture Priority (f/1.8) with -1.5 exposure compensation, and my flash (w/ diffuser) to ETTL (auto) +2.5 EV. This gave me a nice separation from the background light and made Serena pop out of the scene nicely.

Market Square

Shops
Moving on, we started to explore some of the shops along Princess Street. There are some really interesting places downtown and although there are some exceptions most of the stores are one of a kind. One very cool store is Era Vintage Apparel. Era is the sexy name for the March of Dimes store in Kingston. Walking around the shop there was some pretty normal vintage things... recycled glass wear, a wedding gown, and two really neat easy chairs, one green and one pink placed next to one another. It seemed to me that they looked just right sitting there next to one another as if to be a 'his and hers' collection. I decided to capture the set together, and used some dialed down flash to get the exposure I wanted. Processing this image, I applied a 'Lomo' colour cast to it, giving it a green and yellow stressed look.

His and Her Lomo

The next shop was Cookes Fine Foods. This store has been in Kingston since 1865, and has some fantastic coffee. When I'm feeling like being expensive, this is where I head to get my grounds. The neat thing about this store is that the owners have chosen to keep with the rustic feel to the place so many items from when the store first opened are on display, including an antique cash register which seemed like an obvious place to stops and take a picture. This is where I wish I had my extension cord for my flash. The light around that particular area of the shop was terrible, so I had to make my own with flash. Unfortunately since my flash was attached to the camera it would have to be pretty harsh even with a diffuser because of the space restrictions and getting the object to fill the frame while maintaining the lowest DOF that I could. I tried using the walls make a good bounce light, but the angles were all wrong. I played around with the exposure quite a lot, and also needed to post-process the result a fair bit too. Below is the best I could get out of it. With an extension cord I could have created a far more directional light, and I think the texture of the object would spring out far more.

$99.99

The last shop we visited was Minotaur Games. This place is awesome — even without bringing a camera. They hold free nights where the public is invited to play their games for free, and during the day many of the games are often left out to try and enjoy. I managed to capture so many neat things in there, but it is hard to keep taking pictures of other people's creations. Finding unique composition inside a store is difficult when everything is decidedly done with the mindset to look interesting already. Many of the games were set up, and taking close ups of game pieces using shallow DOF was a useful exercise in trying to add context to the shot, while still blurring the backgrounds to achieve separation. The small pieces are like many microcosms which are pretty fun to play with. Lastly, I found some interesting notice boards for community events and shows which are fun to read and shoot.

Instant Peotry

After the games shop, we crossed back across Princess, Brock, Johnson and the rest towards home. A few scenes caught my eye, like the real life castle that pops out in between rather normal and dull housing. I played around with some filters, and gave it a dreamy feel, let me know if you think it works (or doesn't!)

Medieval Dreams

Lessons Learned

That's pretty much the whole trip, there were some really neat shots that I wouldn't have taken if I were not with the people that I was, so I think the experiment was a successes. I managed to learn a bit about my kit, I would rather have brought a wider lens and an extension cord for the flash. In fact, it was enough of a pain that I've started working on a DIY L-Bracket. I'll save that one for the next blog though :).

Lightroom Workflow

2009-04-11T16:13:00.011-04:00

Everyone who uses Lightroom has a workflow. Even if you don't have a workflow, that is your workflow. However you choose to use the program is what defines your own workflow. It's a lot like having a signature burger at Harvey's, however you like it is exactly what makes it yours.

I've been using Lightroom (LR) for about a year now and it has really changed the way I edit. There are so many things I do differently because of it. To illustrate the difference, I'll show you a version of my old workflow, and then show you a progression to today's and you can decide which is better.

September 2007 - May 2008 photography workflow
1. Shoot RAW + JPEG (usually in AP)
2. Download pictures to computer from CF using Windows Exploder, categorized by year and then by event name (i.e. C:\Photos\Fourth Year\Flipcup tournament 12)
3. Flip through JPEGS in Windows Photo Preview, (i tried bridge for a while, but didn't enjoy the bloat of it) until I find one that I like.
4. Put good photos into a subfolder called "good ones" (i.e. Flipcup tourenament12\good ones)
5. Open good photo in Photoshop, process with camera raw and adjustment layers
6. Save PSD and JPEG in a subfolder called "processed" (i.e. Flipcup tournament 12\good ones\processed)

May 2008 - December 2008
1. Shoot RAW (usually AP)
2. Import images into LR, automatically attaching tags and backing up photos to an external hard drive
3. Peruse though photos flagging the good photos, slowly limiting the photos down to the best picks.
4. Export to desired medium (usually JPEG for web)

Jan. 09 - now
1. Shoot RAW (AP or M if flash is used, Mirror Lockup if for landscape art, bracketed exposure)
2. Import to LR - tagged, custom named, backed up, organganized by base folder, then by year, then by date shot (i.e. C:\photos\Fifth Year\2009\4-8-2009\mme_IMG6947.CR2), the folder then get renamed in LR once the photos are imported to add context (i.e. C:\photos\Fifth Year\2009\4-8-2009 - Shorline Sunset\mme_IMG6947.CR2)
3. Color code pictures if from different events (two locations shot on same day, or contain different subjects like robotics teams)
4. At the same time as color coding, attach a one star rating to any photo that is in focus and balance white points
5. Filter photos by one star and complete cropping and basic lighting modifications (exposure, recovery, fill, blacks). Photos that are correctly lit and composed get two stars
6. Filter photos by two stars, the number of photos should be dropping by now to a more manageable number. Start completing more sophisticated editing — edit the tone curve, change color balances, convert to grayscale. Attach three stars to surviving photos.
7. Filter by three stars. Apply a four star rating to only the strongest photographs. Complete finishing techniques such as vignetting, split toning or sharpening.
8. Usually by now I only have a few photographs in the 4 star category, say 60 or less. A final and very brutal selection process continues to find any photographs that are worthy of portfolio status. If any exist, apply a five star rating.
9. Export to JPEG for web, or TIFF for printing. All of my common output settings are set up into presets. The exported photos are automatically placed in subfolders for the output type (i.e. (i.e. C:\photos\Fifth Year\2009\4-8-2009 - Shorline Sunset\facebook\mme_IMG6947.JPEG)

A variant of this workflow uses a step of editing photos in Photoshop if I want to do any hardcore alterations, such as retouching a portrait or creating a panorama. I usually do this around step 7. Using LR, This is a really easy step — just select the photo, right click and choose edit in Photoshop. The photo is opened in Photoshop automatically and when you click save in Photoshop the photo is automatically imported to LR again. Pretty painless as long as you have the RAM to back it up.

As you can see, my workflow has mutated and largely become more formalized as I go along. I'm sure that in a year it will have changed again. As long as it seems to take to go through that nine step process it doesn't often take very long if you don't have a lot of photos shot. However, in the case that you cover a sports even and end up with 2000 photos after three days of shooting... it is the only way (I'm looking at you, robotics!). However if you are only editing a set of 50 photos or less... the process becomes more like 2 rounds of edits, separating the gems from the trash.

Using this new method, I can do far more sophisticated changes to my photos at a really fast rate. I shoot, find the best, and batch process them for a client's needs. Very nifty. The one caveat to using LR is that it eats RAM like crazy. Well, I have 1gb ram running Vista and LR 2.3 and it is barely palatable. Minimum ram to would say to run Vista and LR is 2.0gb, especially is you want to incorporate local adjustments in LR (which you will notice I have purposely not included in my workflow....)

This is just my workflow and the steps I use to edit, the signature 'Mike' burger, if you will. For those who do it differently, feel free to drop me a line (email or in the comments) telling me what your signature workflow looks like

Team 2809 takes on the Canadian FIRST Robotics Regional

2009-04-10T18:09:00.018-04:00

Team 2809

For the past few months I have been volunteering my time to help a high school in Kingston, Ontario learn how to build competitive robots for the FIRST Robotics Competition. KCVI, a local school, got in touch with Queen's Engineering student Jonathan Norris this past fall and decided to start a FIRST team, K-Botics. Because I have worked with the FIRST Robotics competition in the past (team 610, Crescent Robotics), I figured I would lend what help I could to this rookie team.

The way that this competition works is that in January teams are given a short description of a new challenge game, a standard kit of parts and six weeks with which to design and build a competitive robot.

Once the robots are built, they are sent away from the teams and stored until the teams compete in regional based competitions. My team chose to compete in the Greater Toronto Regional (GTR), which happened over March 26-28th.

Controls Setup

The regional competitions follow a standard format. The first day is for practice rounds so that teams can get accustomed to the playing field, and work on strategy. Next is a qualification day where teams compete in seeding matches. A final day is dedicated to elimination matches to determine the winning teams.

Organized Chaos

As a photographer I was charged with the task of covering the event and making sure that all of the most important moments would be captured for those unable to travel with the team. I spent most of my time between three locations; in the pits, the stands, and of course on field level.

Blinded by the Light

Location Concerns and Technique
Covering an event like this is pretty challenging. You need to be able to get both the action of the sports being carried out on the field and also capture the team spirit throughout the competition off of the field. These are two fundamentally different types of photography and each require different styles of shooting.

K-Bot, Mark I

The important thing to understand about the action shots is that there are two very well defined lighting zones on the field level; the field, lit by high intensity stadium lights, and the operator and judging stations located around the field which lit only by ambient room light. As I alluded to earlier, these are dramatically different lighting zones to cover and this makes metering a real pain in the ass. I did my best to meter so that the playing field was properly exposed, and the shadow areas (operator boxes and judges) were tamed using on-axis fill (flash attached to camera body).

My camera settings around the field were generally aperture priority or manual. Using aperture priority it was easier to manage DOF (depth of field) without thinking about the metering implications, and when on manual I knew exactly what I would be able to get away with, exposure wise. The flash I was using was set on ETTL and although there are many who would balk at this, I was able to make sure that the flash was set for the scene I was in, and either under expose flash (to tame highlights) or bring the power of the flash up over the ambient (when metering over the field).

Walking around in the pits and throughout the stands, the techniques used were far different. As for lighting the people scene, usually I left the camera in manual mode, with the ambient scene underexposed by a stop or so and then filled the person in the scene with diffused on-axis flash (ETTL +1). I was able to leave the settings this way because the lighting inside the pit areas was constant, and the only lighting variable that was changing was the distance to subject and the ETTL system took care of this easily, making sure that the subjects looked good :). Lastly, I usually only needed to change settings on the camera if I wanted to change the DOF, for example if I wanted greater DOF, I would open the aperture one stop, and lengthen the shutter speed by one stop.

If Eight was Nine

One thing to keep in mind is that when hand holding, make sure you keep your shutter speed above 1/60 at a minimum, or else you are going to have blurred pictures, no matter what. Either the subject moves or (more likely) you do.

Equipment
When travelling to a new location where you have no clue what the light will be like... you bring the kitchen sink. Well, sort of. I brought what equipment I had (three lenses, flash, Gary Fong modifier....) and borrowed a monopod and a ball head for it.

Jubilation

I shot the action of the competition from field level with my 70-200mm f/2.8 lens, 580exII and gary fong attached. From the stands I shot mostly with the 70-200 and bare flash head (which lit the crowd around the field). I used the monopod in both of these situations and it allowed me to remain stable while at the same time using lower shutter speeds. Further, I was able get some pictures where the robots are in motion and the operators were static.

Stop Motion

In the pits, I had my 50mm f/1.8 lens, and a Gary Fong on my flash. I personally hate on-axis bare flashes because they kill all of the 3d shading in a photo. If I had a RRS (really right stuff) flash L-Bracket I would be able to shoot slightly off axis, but alas, I do not. I'm happy with what turned out, so I'm not complaining too much :)

Team 2809
The competition itself was really fun. The team qualified well and managed to get up into 2nd place at one point during the qualification matches! During the elimination round the K-Bots managed to make it to the quarter finals, and it was a electrifying set of matches! However, as FIRST is more about learning and community outreach than robots competing the K-Bots were really going for another award, the Rookie All-Star.

The rookie all-star award, which is even more important than the winning of a regional event, celebrates teams that have the greatest amount of community outreach and sustainable stratagies in their rookie year. The K-Bots were able to win this award by a wide margin. The award was well deserved as the team put forth a very serious and dedicated effort in their first year. Winning this prestigious award now makes the team eligible for the World Championship held in Atlanta next week.

Well Deserved

Once I returned home I was faced with the daunting task of post processing the 2000 (16gb) photos down to about a hundred from each day. What a pain! The post processing was done in Lightroom 2.3 and by using a specific workflow I was able to (eventually) produce ranked photos to give to the team in multiple formats (jpeg for web, TIFF for printing).
My workflow for processing worked well for me, and I will be writing a post to go over the steps that I usually take.

The GTR event was a real joy to cover and yielded some fantastic photos.
Good Luck K-Botics!!!!

Point!
Image Credit: Jason Sadler

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Fernie, BC.

2009-03-07T18:12:00.017-05:00

King of the Castle

Aside from tearing around on motorcycles in Ontario, I traveled to Fernie, BC. where I was presenting some LiDAR research at the Spatial Knowledge and Information Canada conference. Fernie, for those who may not know, is a small town pretty much in the middle of the Rocky Mountains. The view in all directions is simply stunning.

Home

I arrived a few days early so that I could learn how to snowboard (when in Rome....) and so that I could get a chance to snap a few images here and there (the snowboarding was good. I got covered in bruises but triumphed in the end).

All of my images from the trip I took from three basic outings. One, the drive into fernie from Calgary. Two, out and about the town (to and fro getting beer). Lastly, I borrowed a friend's 4x4 Pathfinder and went about getting lost.

The Road to Paradise

Reeling in the Beauty

The drive in yielded a few images that I'm happy with, however shooting through chipped windshields is no way to conduct landscape photography, thus few good results. Still, it was a good way to get the "take a picture of everything you see" bug out of me. I think I shot close to 200 photos in three hours.... that's just over two photos a minute, on average.

However if you must take pictures through a car window, here is some advice. Either you can use a high depth of field to make sure that the landscape is in good focus and then clone/heal the crap out of the image or you can use a decently low f-stop (f/5 maybe) and focus carefully. One problem using a low f-stop is that the camera will have trouble knowing whether to focus on the windshield or the landscape in the distance. I'm becoming a really big fan of using single point focus lately, so if this is how you are planning on focusing just make sure that you try and get AF working correctly in a car you pre-focus away from any spots on the windscreen. You will get some spots in your pictures, but hopefully not too many, and they should be easily cloned.

Goodnight, Fernie

Out and about the Town.
When visiting Fernie, its pretty hard to believe that those who live there can take the mountains for granted. Looking around and seeing houses with mountains in the backyard it kind of boggles the mind. I wish I could live in that paradise. The town itself is very simple, one highway with a few hotels along it and tucked away off the main highway is the historic town and main street. I recommend trying out some of the local flavors, such as the wonderful bakery Freshies (good coffee, and fatastic foods).

Mundane Shopping Trip

One of the best parts of visiting the rockies is the ability to search out little known roads, and climb high into the picturesque scenery. My first attempt to find these roads was to reach out to the Luminous Landscape forums, a place where landscape photographers all around the world come together. Secondly, I went to Google Map s to try and find some good looking roads. Finding the Hatley Trail Road I went for it.

Hatley Trail Road is marked as a through road, however I would caution that this road is not a winter destination. At the apparent top of the hill (when I say hill... I mean mountain), there was a parking lot where it appeared that the non off road vehicles were parked. Being in a 4x4 Pathfinder with super-low drive for uber traction, I decided to go onwards. Bad Idea.

Stuck!

Being stuck halfway up a mountain with no cell service (poor planning!), I decided to trek back down the road to wherever I could get service and a tow. On my way back down, I spotted a cabin that looked as if it had had traffic in and out of it recently, so I decided to try my luck and see if anyone was home.

I couldn't have found a more helpful person. I met a wonderful New Zealander who had moved to Canada to ski a few years ago and was having a baby soon. She invited me in, fed me home made cookies and specialty tea and called me a tow truck! I can't say enough about the hospitality out in the Rockies, everyone I met was completely friendly and trusting. After a while of chatting, I figured that the tow truck had arrived and I went off to see if we were going to be able to get out of the muck.

TJ's Towing had arrived on the scene before I arrived and TJ himself had already hooked up the pathfinder and was preparing to get me out. I gave him a hand with his winch and before too long the truck was free and I followed him back down the trail and paid him. All-in-all it was an expensive misadventrure, but I managed to talk with some very nice people becasue of it. I asked TJ if there were any better roads to explore and he told me about the River Road Extension, which turned out to be the most productive location that I visited.

Golden Light

Fernie River Road Extension.
Following TJ's advice, I went up to the river road extension, which is an active logging road, and was greeted by this magnificent sign.

Extreme Caution

After driving a fair way up the mountain, I got to a point where TJ had told me the road falls apart at and after the previous expense I decided to take his advice to park the car and hike the rest of the way up the mountain.

Red Cabin

Boy was I glad that I did, I had the most productive photography session of the trip there. I took a number of photos there that I am quite happy with. As the light started to fade, however, I took a look around and realized that I was on top of a mountain that I didn't know anything about in adverse conditions and on a dangerous road. Unfortunately, I had to make the choice to leave during the best light of the day. Next time I go out, I will bring a friend and plan a bit further ahead.

Green Valley Skylight

Equipment
To capture the amazing scenery and light available to me I chose to use everything that I had available. My 30D had either my EF 28-135 (stopped down, this lens is great) or my EF 70-200L with a Circular Polarizer. I used my super light tripod, and this adventure showed me that for serious landscape work, I need to use a much heavier tripod. the legs of the tripod would bend and bow out as I plunged it into the snow, and it was quite ineffective for this use. Next time I will bring a better tripod. The large scene images that I made there made me wish I had the new 5DMkII, with its blinding resolution, wide dynamic range and fantastic ISO performance.

My Setup

The Group Shot
One of the last tasks I had for the week was to take a picture of the group that presented at the conference. The shot was taken in the conference room and the lighting was a mix of incadescent and flourescent lights. I used my widest lens, and bounced some flash sight (580EXII) into the crowd with my bounce card out to add more fill to the image. To fix the issues of lighting I white balanced the image in post. since there was only one lighting zone in the image, the mixed lighting sources were not an issue.

Spatial Knowledge and Information Canada, 2008

Final Thoughts (thanks Jerry...)

The trip was fantastic - I went out west, climbed a few mountains, learned how to snowboard took a few pictures... oh yeah and I went to a conference :) I learned the value of gaining local knowledge and the role that caring and giving people can play. Sometimes we need to guard ourselves, and other times we need to trust perfect strangers (but don't go teaching that to the young-uns!).

Thanks Fernie!

For Tonight's Show.... Motorcycles on Ice!

2009-03-01T17:45:00.007-05:00

This past reading week, I had the chance to do many things. One of these adventures was riding a dirt bike on (frozen) Lake Simcoe with studded up tires. Naturally, all present had a go on the bike and I was left with a neat opportunity to snap up a number of frames.

Equipment
For this setting we had mid afternoon sun, strongly shining down at us, while on snow and ice (read: Bright!). This setting is pretty difficult without the right equipment. Basically, I was looking for a way to dampen the ambient sunshine on the lake, which was reflecting all over the place. To do this I used two key ingredients. One, I utilized the lens shade to help with sun flares. The Canon 70-200L sun shade is pretty deep and that helped a lot with shooting near to the sun. Two, I grabbed my Circular Polarizer. The C.Pol. helps with glare and limits cross-polarized light from the sun. What this means is that I was able to get rid of sun flares reflecting on the ice, and give the sky a far more rich depth of blue.

I shot hand held (30D) and used my 70-200mm f/2.8L IS. This lens has great AF response, it works really well at controlling sun flares in the lens, and has a decent reach for sports photography. Essentially ideal for this task.

I did not use a tripod for this adventure, since the ambient light was so high I knew I could get crisp photos without.

Technique
This was a challenging task. I'm not going to lie, there were a lot of wasted frames from that day. However, I was able to play around with framing and composition with other elements in the scene (ice huts, snowmobiles, ice rifts, etc.) to achieve interesting shots. This location also allowed me to play with fill light since I was shooting near to the sun. As a result, many of the pictures were backlit and the persons riding the bike were way too under exposed (think silhouettes). The quick remedy for this situation is to use a fill flash to bring the person back into light. However, I didn't have the foresight to bring my 580EXII flash with me and was left with only the on camera pop up flash. This flash is waaaay too under powered for this application, but it was better than nothing :).

Things I would do differently
Next time I would like to play around with motion blurs. I would like to bring the tripod (which I constantly forget) and the flash, so that I would play with ambient light. I would blur the rider as they enter the shot (long shutter) and then add a curtain flash to make the rider crisp at the finish of the exposure.

The Benefits of forgetting your Tripod

2008-11-07T20:35:00.005-05:00

Yeah, thats right, I said it. Sometimes it is good to forget equipment and go low-tech. Recently a friend of mine wanted to go down to Lake Ontario (a stone's throw away) and shoot some of the lakeshore at night. I handed her the camera and thought nothing of it. a few minutes later I realized that they were going to have little to no luck without knowing about ISO and aperture. Begrudgingly I threw on my coat and boots and headed out into the frigid weather. Did I mention I had a cold..?

Anyways, long storey short, I held an improptu lesson on high ISO and aperture for night time shooting. Even at ISO 3200 and f/1.8, there wasn't quite enough available light. We ended up having to make use of natural tripods such as park benches and tables. otherwise the only other option left was to shoot away from the lake and use shot of the street lighting that was around.

Some of the shots are quite blurry. however, here is the magic of getting things wrong, the effect of the high noise patterns and the soft edges (from shake and being wide open) gave the whole sequence a dreamy feel that is quite pleasing.

All-in-all a fun experiment- Even with a cold.

Homecoming

2008-09-28T21:23:00.008-04:00

Homecoming. what a whirlwind. On paper, this year was just like any other. Lots of political pandering, a show of force, far too much alcohol consumption and alumni fit in there too. However, this homecoming, for me, was unlike any other that I experienced so far. This year, I managed to only do the things that I've found fun over the years, and discarded all of the bullshit we do because we're told that it is fun.

Homecoming this year started on the Tuesday before homecoming weekend. One of my housemates, Alex came up early because he had to work, and we managed to have a good time catching up until Thursday when we had to get back to work, gearing up for a big weekend in the restaurant industry. On Thursday two more of my friends arrived, and on Friday the final two were in town.

On Thursday we finally started to get organized for the weekend festivities. at around 5pm, I traveled down to the Beer Store to try and pick up a keg, for our annual pancake kegger on homecoming saturday. Arriving at the beer store, I quickly took care of buisness asking a service rep. what kegs they had left in stock (frequently, the beer store runs out of kegs and pickings are slim for homecoming) and I was informed that they were teeming full of kegs, 300 in fact.

Too good to be true. The Kingston Police had served them with an order that they could not sell any kegs from thursday through the rest of the weekend. Noticing the rep.'s shared injustice, i decided to drop it, and move on buying bottled beer for the night instead.

These were tense times. Homecoming waits for no no man, and I needed to think fast if we were going to be able to host our party, which many people were already invited to and anticipating. There is no keg depot in Napanee or Gananoque, the two closest towns. The supply of kegs was quickly dwindling in Belville the closest depot. I had to import a keg from even further.

The good news is that Homecoming brings alumni into kingston from all over, and being in fifth year, I am friends with many. Four phone calls later, and I had found someone who would be able to save Homecoming, Aaron Glazer. Aaron hosted the kegger himself when I was in first and second year, and in fifth year he came through again. Thanks Aaron! (shameless plug: www.idlivethere.com)

With that debackle dealt with, a few of us played mild drinking games, such as Gladiator, Wii Golf and Mario Bros. It was a - relatively - quiet night for the most part, as friday was sure to be a big day.

***

Friday.

The friday of homecoming has one really big event, Homecoming Ritual. The event brings engineers back to the campus from many years, this year the oldest getting marked as a '63 grad. Ritual is the weekly meeting of engineers on Friday afternoons to celebrate the start of the weekend with a few pints of beer. Homecoming ritual is the type of event that if you don't arrive when the liquor licence begins at 11am, you aren't likely to be able to get in, without waiting in a line for at least 2+ hours.

Arriving at 11:30, I was in for some trouble. I phoned ahead to friends and the line had not started yet, which was promising. When I got there a small line greeted me, but at least it was moving. There are two lines at ritual, the alumni line and the undergrad line. Since it appeared that there was no problem with waiting in the short line I waited my turn getting to the front of the crowd. It wasn't so. I ended up waiting for an hour and a half at the front of the undergrad line, having them reached capacity with my mate directly in front of me.

I did not attend Homecoming ritual this year. The good news is that I can go to ritual next week, since I haven't graduated yet and have none of the responsibilities that graduates have (oh, snap).

Much later in the day, I went back to ritual and snapped a few pictures off, catching a few of my friends after they had spent the last 4 hours there. Needless to say, they were in fine form. After getting getting some food we all headed home for a quick slep to recoop energy for the next drinkfest.

We spent the night flip-cupping and singing out. good times for all. Eventually we headed to bed, eager for the next morning- of drinking.

******************

Homecoming Saturday.

On Saturday it was 10am when the first of my friends arrived atour annual pancake kegger. We tapped out kegs and I headed out to pick up last minute supplies for the kegger (like plates, cups and pancake mix....).

I Figure about 50 odd people partied at our house that morning. everyone had a wonderful time, and there was even an impromptu beer pong tournament. Fun times!!!

Another day long of drinking meant one thing... hard core napping.

After our naps had replenished us, we struggled through our 7pm hangovers and grabbed a couple more beers and headed out to Aberdeen, to see the drunked-up annual debackle. Same old shit.

Sunday we got the best Queen's Sunday Hangover Helpers. Two risers and a Poweraid at the JDUC.

-----

All things Considered, it was a the weekend that I had envisioned. I give a big shout-out to all of my buddies who made the treck back home to kingston, for one more alchoholistic mess of a weekend.

Cheers!

Grease Pole

2008-09-10T16:54:00.022-04:00

The Grease Pole; one of Queen's most celebrated traditions. This event, hosted by the Engineering Society, is probably the best frosh week event of any faculty. It combines sweat, ingenuity, wisdom, a mud pit, waist deep water, a thirty foot pole and A LOT of lanolin.

The basic premise of this even is that the first year engineers are asked to climb the 30 foot pole and pluck a Tam (traditional sottish hat) off of the top of the pole. Seems like a pretty interesting game, although nothing out of the ordinary. There are, however, many little quirks that make this event truly unique and fun.

Holding On.
Canon 30D. 28-135 @ 80mm. 1/40s. f 11. ISO 125

To understand the basis of what makes this game fun, you must first realize how engineering frosh works. It is a system just like any other faculty, except that the frosh leaders (called Frecs) are trained to treat their frosh with feigned cruelty and trickery. This is meant to convey the image that engineers are tough and rough. The engineering frosh are taught their year song, which is usually pretty angry music (I wonder if every Rage Against the Machine song has been used yet...), and the various cheers that end in "nibble gobble chew!"

With this in mind, the engineering frosh are loaded into cheese wagons (yellow school buses) and taken to a secret field located outside Kingston (its actually just north on Gardiners street...), forced to hide their heads under blankets with all of the windows closed on the bus (read: hot and humid) and the heaters blasting- all the while being shouted at by the Frecs. This is known as The Bus ride from Hell.

Out of the frying Pan and into the Pit.
Canon 30D. 28-135 @ 85mm. 1/160s. f 5.6. ISO 200

Once extricated from the bus ride from hell, the frosh are rushed into The Pit. Traditionally, the pit was a waist deep mud pool, filled with disgusting things such as animal entrails and feces. However, as the years progressed, and frosh week became more politically correct, the vileness of the pit was watered down, and now is nothing more than a muddy wading pool. This doesn't mean that the engineers don't find a way to have fun though!

"Drown Frosh Drown."
Canon 30D. 28-135 @ 30mm. 1/160s. f 5.6. ISO 200

Steel Eyes.
Canon 30D. 28-135 @ 135mm. 1/60s. f 6.3. ISO 200

Once the Engineers have rushed into The Pit, they are greeted by the pole and a few hundred upper year engineering students and alumni that are yelling all of the things that the Frecs were not allowed to. Signs like "Drown Frosh Drown" are quite common, and the upper years dress in flamboyant costumes. However, due to the constant berating by the Frecs all week, the engineer frosh brush the jeers from the crowd aside and set to work trying to climb their pole.

I Want YOU.
Canon 30D. 28-135 @ 135mm. 1/160s. f 5.6. ISO 200

Peace amid Chaos.
Canon 30D. 28-135 @ 135mm. 1/125s. f 5.6. ISO 160

The climb to the top of the pole is timed, each years frosh trying to make it up there the fastest. The crowd of unruly engineers, however, want anything but a speedy climb as after the first hour alumni get to enter the pit and join the fray. The following hour, the entire crowd of upper years are allowed to enter as well.

Teamwork.
Canon 30D. 28-135 @ 28mm. 1/125s. f 5. ISO 160

This year, the alumni and upper years were allowed to enter the pit. The climb took forever. In fact, the climb took so long that the Environmental Security (sent from the university) attempted to shut down the pole, in fear of serious hypothermia. After two and a half hours, the organizers of the event (the Frec Committee) decided that they would have to move to an assisted climb. This means that control is taken from the crowd, and given to the organizers on scaffolding, which direct the sea of engineers in the pit as to how to form the layers of the human ladder.

Reaching for the top.
Canon 30D. 28-135 @ 28mm. 1/125s. f 9. ISO 100

Success.
Canon 30D. 28-135 @ 28mm. 1/125s. f 9. ISO 100

Triumph.
Canon 30D. 28-135 @ 120mm. 1/160s. f 5.6. ISO 100

Eventually, after what seemed like a lifetime, on their last attempt before they would need to stop for environmental reasons, they made it to the top. It may have taken the longest recorded time (in recent memory), but the explosion of celebration was deafening. All of the engineers in the pit reveled in triumph, and the Sci' 12 were officially welcomed to the engineering faculty.

Elation.
Canon 30D. 28-135 @ 135mm. 1/60s. f 5.6. ISO 100

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Environmental Concerns.
Canon 30D. 28-135 @ 112mm. 1/125s. f 9. ISO 400

Untitled.
Canon 30D. 28-135 @ 105mm. 1/60s. f 5.6. ISO 160

Moving into Queen's Residences

2008-09-03T17:05:00.019-04:00

Every year brings with it thousands of new students to Queen's University, and on the Saturday before labor day they simultaneously move into residence. The result of this is a massive semi-organized chaos.

Around the bend. Canon 30D - 28-135 - f8

My favorite aspect of this event is not being directly involved. The second, less cynical favorite part is how the parents interact with the frosh. There are so many curious relationships melting together at the same time, often at high stress levels. You can see the parents who do everything for their kids (including move all of their belongings for them) and those that lake the hands off approach, families of all socio-economic backgrounds, frosh who want to get away from their parents, and those that can't bear to see them leave.

Easy Does It. Canon 30D - 28-135 - f8

This is the fifth year I've come back to Queen's but it hasn't been since my first year that I've been able to see all of the frosh move into residence. I've lived out in the aptly named "student ghetto" all of the other years, but this year I decided to live in a house that is directly on campus, between a few of the residences. The frosh move in has taken me back to another world it seems, I'm overhearing conversations of "I wonder if the bars here are tough to get into," and "I wonder if my sister's ID will work." Makes a guy feel old, all right.

Hustle Bustle. Canon 30D - 28-135 - f8

However, there is a silver lining to being surrounded by the frosh is get to relive moments from my own frosh year, and I will be to witness all of the frosh learning how to live. It reminds me of how much has changed, and how much has stayed the same, since I was back in first year.

Frec. Crossing. Canon 30D - 28-135 - f8

Strut. Canon 30D - 28-135 - f8

One of the most unique things about Queen's frosh move in are the engineers. They are bold and brazen shouting slanderous comments to both the arts and science frosh, as well as to their own engineering frosh. The tradition is for the engineering frosh leaders (called Frec's) to go around campus, causing as much mayhem as possible. They slam their school jackets (called Golden Party Armour or GPA) on the roads in front of cars yelling at everyone, parents included. Needless to say, after the first couple of hours of their taunting and mockery, everyone around campus is ready to throttle them.

10am. Canon 30D - 28-135 - f8

Honk, Honk. Canon 30D - 28-135 - f8

The joy of beginning the year, being back with friends after a four month furlow brings out some pretty funny upper-year characters as well. Inevitably someone shows up with a megaphone and drinking begins on a not too distant lawn. This year featured a cliche group of students; a large muscle car parked awkwardly on the front lawn, picnic tables set up to play drinking games, and a color commentary by two men watching the move in efforts and preaching the virtues of being wasted. At one point one of the group bounded into the street, laid down on the pavement in front of a student constable, and the men on the mic created a calamity shouting about constable brutality, all done in good fun.

Security. Canon 30D - 28-135 - f8

Eventually, as the day wore on, the frosh finished moving in, mothers said teary eyed goodbyes, and the fathers, with a courteous nod and a firm handshake, got back in their cars and drove off leaving the frosh to wonder what they had gotten themselves into.

Walk down to the Lake. Canon 30D - 28-135 - f8

Traffic Cram. Canon 30D - 28-135 - f8

Oh yeah, The photography. I accidentally spent most of the day with the exposure compensation set to 2+, so most of my pictures ended up blown out and blurry due to longer exposures. Rookie mistake! The ones that were sharp, I corrected in Lightroom with exposure control. I spent the day in aperture priority mode, at f8 or f11. I chose to shoot this way because I knew that the action around me left me needed quick exposures, and I needed the depth of field to be great enough to allow the AF to keep up with me, without worrying that the wrong element of the photo was in focus. Altogether, it was a decent day of shooting. A number of photos that I was excited about were ruined by exposure compensation, but others turned out alright.

Next Post, Frosh Week.

Butterflies

2008-08-31T12:44:00.000-04:00

Digital SLR cameras have truly revolutionized the photography industry, and thats pretty obvious. They provide us with on demand photographs, and allow photographers to go from composition to the print pretty damed quickly, especially if you use on camera direct print (not that anyone does....).

One major problem with Digital SLR cameras that I have noticed (and I must say, it really grinds my gears) is that the sensors are dust magnets!! Mind you, it's not like film didn't have to deal with dust, but since each roll of film is a new clean-slate, it isn't as pervasive as with a digital sensor.

Now, after a year of shooting I managed to pick up quite a lot of dust, and it was really beginning to affect my shots. So, I went and read a number of articles (always the best way to start) on getting sensors cleaned by store vs. cleaning it yourself. Almost all camera manufacturers strongly recommend avoid cleaning your own sensor and this is complete hogwash.

There are two good reasons why manufacturers and stores recommend that you leave the cleaning to the professionals; One, if you damage the piece of glass that sits just in front of the sensor it will cost A LOT more than the price of a cleaning to repair; Two, camera stores can make a killing off the price of cleaning.

The reasons against, as you can imagine, are a bit more compelling. Firstly, It doesn't take very long to clean a sensor (took me about 20 mins. and that was my first attempt). Second, the cost of the tools needed is about the same as one cleaning. Third it is deathly easy. Fourth, if you are a serious photographer, you are going to need to clean it fairly often. Changing lenses and working in dusty conditions introduces dust to the sensor no matter what you do to prevent it. Photojournalists in places like the middle east claim to need to clean their camera more than once a day, which makes sending a camera in for cleaning a bit ridiculous.

So, after weighing my options, I went with Arctic Butterfly - SL700. Cost me $69.00 (CDN). Henry's told me they would clean my camera for $60.00 (CDN). The choice was obvious for me.

The Butterfly charging up.

One interesting tidbit about this piece of equipment is the amount of packaging that it comes in. It had a clear plastic sheath, In a foam lined hard case, in a leather zipped case, plastic wrapped, in a cardboard box when I picked it up at the store. I decided to forgo a plastic Henry's bag. A little bit of overkill, don't you think?

I think I can hear an environmentalist crying.

Anyways, The cleaning process is super easy and you can find a really good guide by Micheal Reichmann, He also reviews the Arctic Butterfly on his site too. The version of the product is pretty much the same as the one pictured on that site, just a little different packaging.

In Conclusion, If you are careful you can save yourself a A LOT of money by just doing your sensor cleaning yourself. I would highly recommend the Arctic Butterfly.

Portfolio's

2008-08-28T12:48:00.000-04:00

Logic tells me I should start at the beginning, like how I decided to buy a camera and some of the basic shooting tips I've picked up. I'm not though since I can cover those later, and it seems woefully boring.

Instead, I'll pick up on what I'm working on now. My portfolio. What a pain in the ass. the steps I've taken so far are best summed up in a list.

Take ~ 10, 000 pictures.
Decide on 20 that are decent.
PDF them, making it look nice.
Try to print at a copy centre
Fight with the manager about Image Quality.
Go to a real Art printer.
Lament at high prices. ($20/print @ 11 X 17)
Learn your images are not anywhere near ready to print.

So far as I can tell, you get what you pay for, and there is nothing cheap in fine art. If you want to be serious about art you have to pay serious money. Even the portfolio cover is expensive, up to $200 or more!

So here is what I recommend.

Take your pictures. Process them in photoshop or lightroom, or both.
Make sure you are running at 300 ppi, because anything less is a sin, apparently.
Depending on your mega pixel count (on my 30D 8.2) you will have to up-res your photo (enlargen it), I typically use 150% to get to 11 X 17. Photoshop does a pretty good job at it.
When saving your files, make sure you save as TIFF, or any other format that does not a lossy-type of compression. I prefer TIFF.
Find a printer who has Cross-Calibrate their printer to their monitors, using an ICC profile that they created themselves. This is the only way to make sure that what you look at on a computer screen will be what you see in a print.
Go to an art supply shop and find a portfolio that works for you and doesn't break the bank.

Hopefully this will help you get something together that won't kill you. Once I have my own printed, I'll share it with you.