Daffodils and Ducks

As I am the most studious of all the people who were ever studious I decided to take a walk instead writing any of my papers.

I quite like the windmills in Bruges. Especially one such beautiful days as yesterday.

The real reason for my walk was that I want to take pictures of the daffodils. I run past this field of daffodils on my running route and decided I should take a picture before they all die. So pretty.

More daffodils!

The whole field of them!

Liège

For Easter I decided to leave Brugge and Yannick so kindly invited me to his house to partake in the traditional Easter matzo. Liège is quite nice if you enjoy post-industrial cities but there are some really nice areas of town. During our driving tour of the greater Liège area Yann remembered that he lives quite close to the Ardennes American Cemetery.

As you can see it was a gorgeous day. I had never been to an American cemetery in Europe people and they are really interesting. You can see the monument in the background which serves as a memorial to all those who died.

Most of the 5,000 buried here died during the Battle of the Bulge. I was glad I got to visit it.

The rest of my visit to Liège was quite nice and I got to partake in real food and enjoy the very pleasant company of the Hartstein family.

April Fool's or Why Muxtar Sucks

As much as I hate to admit it, Muxtar is the April Fool's King. He got us. He got us good. We were convinced he had to leave the College and we were all very sad about it. So our "final farewell" to Muxtar was at De Garre, of course.

Muxtar and Monica.

Me, Abdul, Muxtar, Monica and Fred. All so sad to say goodbye to Muxtar.

Lucy, Yann's friend from the UK who got to experience the April Fool's fun and Yann.

The gang for one last picture with Muxtar before he "goes back to Baku."

IRD Study Trip: The Polish Leg

Because one cannot stay forever in Kaliningrad, we finished our study trip with a tour of northern Poland. The first stop was Frombork, the hometown of Copernicus.

Not much there aside from the cathedral but it was quite pretty. This is the view from atop the tower next to the cathedral.























Next stop on the Polish fun fest coach: Gdansk. Aside from being really fun to say, Gdansk is quite nice. Here is Kevin modeling his sweet Gdansk cap.

















Kevin, Monica, Yann and Muxtar posing infront of a cute Gdansk street.

















I have a bit of an obsession with former Soviet things so upon seeing a bust of Lenin modeling amber necklaces at an amber shop (they are just mad about amber in Gdansk) I had to have my picture taken with a silver Lenin sporting the latest in amber fashion.

















The last stop was Malbork, home of a very nice castle. Teutonic knights lived here back in the day.

Калининград

After three fun filled weeks in Poland the IRD show went on the road. And what a road it was. We decided to grace Kaliningrad with our wonderful presence. More like Russia let us grace her with our presence, but those are details really. Our trip was a study trip so we got to visit various universities in Kaliningrad and it was a very interesting experience to say the least. The Polish-Russian border crossing only took three hours and 27 minutes!

The first full day in Kaliningrad was spent at the state technical university. This picture comes from a very interesting lecture about a topic I forget. I don't, however, forget the horrible acoustics in the room or the fact this man spoke in Russian and had to stop so every sentence could be translated and often pointed to overheads that were in Russian with a GIANT WOODEN STICK.

This is a blurry picture of another lecturer who did not have a giant wooden stick but does bear a fairly strong resemblance to Dr. Nick from the Simpsons.

This is my room at the Hotel Deima which I shared with Louisa and Myrto. We decided to host a few guest the second night there.

More lounging in the room. The very high quality room.

Kaliningrad is a very unique place. While it is on the up and up and street shoot outs no longer occur in the center of the city the outskirts, where we stayed, I might add, were a bit...how to say...ugly as sin.

More of beautiful Kaliningrad.

Holy dilapidated industrial building, Batman!

Naval museum as seen from the bridge.

Downtown, which is you see isn't as decrepit as the outskirts.

Myrto standing in the city center on a monument for something or other.

The new orthodox church in the center of the city.

A Kaliningrad shopping plaza. Please note the Sbarro sign with Sbarro written in Cyrillic.

Obligatory street named after Lenin!

A trip to Kaliningrad just isn't a trip to Kaliningrad without signing karaoke at a Japanese restaurant. Look how into it Philipp is.

Håvard and me signing "Friday I'm in Love." We rocked it.

Fred may not readily admit it, but he is a rock star.

A lovely duet by Myrto and Rana.

I think this is the boys singing "Imagine."

Rana and I really got into "November Rain." Rana has some serious air guitar skills.

Fred singing "Last Christmas." It was truly spectacular.

One day in Kalingrad was set aside for sightseeing. This day included a trip to Baltiysk, the naval base in Kaliningrad.

Look at the ships in Kaliningrad bay!

More boats! Sorry Colleen, I don't know any more information about them.

Louisa, Rana and me enjoying the Russian naval base fun.

One of my favorite pictures from the entire trip. "Proletariat of the world unite." I love Russia.

Still more boats.

A memorial to the Baltic fleet with the Baltiysk lighthouse in the background.

The memorial to Elizabeth something or other on the Baltiysk shore.

The Baltic!

The Baltiysk beach. I was not expecting something so pretty.

Kevin, me and Mathieu getting our feet wet in the Baltic. I can assure you that it was quite cold.

Fred running down the beach away from Nike.

And who can forget the stripper pole that was in the hotel restaurant. I love Kaliningrad!