It all started last Friday night. Will [my American friend here with me] and I were discussing plans to go snowboarding. We’d brought our boards over from the states, but hadn’t really had an opportunity to go riding yet. Once several weeks ago we almost went, but outrageous train ticket prices closed that idea. So as it was already May 4th, we were really starting to freak out, as most mountains around the world had already shut down long ago. We were going to be preoccupied with school stuff in the next coming weekends, so this was really our only chance to squeeze something in before the season slipped away. So for much of the week we pretty much planned on going to Hintertuxglacier in Austria. However over dinner on Friday the topic of the Swiss Alps came up; we hadn’t even entertained that idea, I guess simply because of the looming illustriousness that is ‘the Swiss Alps’. But now, we said why not? So after dinner, did a bit of scouting and research, and around midnight, completely changed our plans of going to Austria and decided that we’d head to Zermatt, Switzerland instead.

So the next day, we literally got up and packed our stuff. Will went to the grocery store, while I went into town to rent a car. I had planned on getting a cheapo VW Polo or something, however they were out of Polos so they asked if I “wouldn’t mind taking an Audi” for the same price. I don’t think I really need to state my answer.. The icing on top of the icing was that it was turbocharged and came with a nav-system, both of which later proved to be invaluable. I was on cloud 9.

So about 12:30pm we started our 8 hour drive. 3 hours into it we had already reached Austria and it had only felt like 30 minutes. Another 30 minutes later, and (because we made GPS-lady adjust the route a tad) we crossed into Liechtenstein! Had we not stopped to take a few pictures and whatnot, it would’ve taken only a couple minutes to drive from one side of the country to the other! But it was quite beautiful.

Next up, Switzerland. By far the most beautiful place I’ve ever been–sorry Italy. Driving along the narrow winding Swiss Landstraßen is definitely the best way to see the country. And something we quickly found out, and had no trouble assimilating to, was the fact that rural Swiss people drive fassst! The speed limit of 80km/h on the switchbacking roads seemed to be a mere suggestion. I was in my element.

But anyways, as we went further up the valleys, more and more snow started showing up. At times there’d be a 10 foot wall of snow on either side of the road. We had to keep reminding ourselves that it was May..

Later, as we were pulling up to a tollroad booth looking thing, GPS lady says something to the extent of “Fahren Sie auf den Autozug” –it wasn’t a toll road; it was a car train! So we had to pay 30CHF (Swiss Franks) and drove right onto a train car. The train departed no more than 2 minutes later, and we preceded directly into a tunnel. 20 minutes later we popped out the other side and pulled right off the train. Who needs to drive up a pass when you can just go through the mountain haha.

About 11pm, we pull into Zermatt. Verrrrry eerie: not many lights on, absolutely no cars, and random huge groups of people walking around. Felt like a creepy movie. As we’re driving around looking for a place to stay, people are looking at us very strangely. Then this guy runs up to us and, in quick and worried German, tells us that cars aren’t allowed in Zermatt! And that the Polizei give huge fines if you get caught!   So needless to say we chopped outa there, and had no other option but to pay for a fairly expensive hotel room in the next town back down the valley.

The next morning, we loaded up on breakfast, and this time took the train into Zermatt. Took the gondola up the mountain, and wow….quite the view.

And the snow was amazing, especially for May. We boarded both sides of the mountain, which happens to straddle the border of Switzerland and Italy, so we rode two countries in the same day!

And did I mention Zermatt is the location of the Matterhorn!? While it hid in clouds most of the day, it popped out near the end of the day for us.

So after a long and sunburnt day on the mountain, we headed back towards home. We had planned on staying the night in Zurich, but the two top places we wanted to stay were straight booked already. So, having already gone over budget, we decided to save some cash and just longhaul-it all the way back to Würzburg instead of staying the night.

Unfortunately though, because no road trip is complete for me without one, I’m fairly certain I’ll be getting a speeding ticket in the mail courtesy the Zurich Police Department. I thought I was going the speed limit, but I can’t be sure because we were busy fiddling with the stupid GPS. So the one time I wasn’t really paying attention to the road, there happens to be an automated speed camera….. I seemed to see the flash go off in slow motion, both the first time, and the second time as it got the rear plate. It was an excruciatingly painful 2 seconds, but probably not as painful as the first few minutes when I’m reading the ticket after it’s come in the mail. It’s possssible it wasn’t for me, as there were also other cars driving fairly close to me too, but the timing seemed to be too perfectly aligned for me. We’ll see in about 3 weeks…..ha.

And that concludes the novel about mine and Will’s legendary Swiss weekend. Maybe it helps to convey my current jarred sense of reality..

And I’ll get some more pictures up on flickr.

Driving south from Munich, it’s pretty basic German countryside: green rolling hills, with intermittent forested areas. However, approaching the Austrian border, the Alps just rise up out of nowhere. It’s just like flat fields, then boom, mountains. Once in Austria, it’s basically just an onslaught of stereotypically great views.. After the Alps, the landscape of Italy was completely different, but just as schön in it’s own way. Verry green, very steep terrain, with endless fields of vineyards..
At Gardasee, we stayed in a couple “bungalows” in this little vacation community, about 100 meters away from the lake. The weather wasn’t great, and it even rained on us several times, but we made the best of it. I’m pretty sure the BBQ grill was going the entire time that we were there, and there was always a cold beer waiting if you wanted one. The lake itself was absolutely freezing, as it’s surrounded by mountains, and the water is from snow-runoff. However that didn’t stop us from jumping in! Needless to say we weren’t in it long, but we all had a blast with our shenanigans.

We stayed at Gardasee for 2 nights, and then departed to the small town of Laives, Italy about 2 hours away. There was such a strange mix of Italian and German/Bavarian cultures, and pretty much everyone there spoke Austrian German. The style and architecture of the town reminded me so much of southern California; it was pretty cool to see some of the roots of much of socal’s pseudo-Italian style.
But anyways, the weekend was a great success, and great experience! I have a lot of videos, so I’m thinking of making a quick video about it.. We’ll see. As usual though in the meantime, there’s plenty of pictures

So to start off, earlier this week I went to the medieval-walled town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber. What’s cool about Rothenburg is that they’ve tried really hard to preserve its roots and keep it looking as authentic as possible. The whole town (besides what has spilled out due to growth) resides within the original huge stone ‘castle’ walls, complete with gates, bridges, moats, etc. It was a little bit of a strange feeling living within walls–it felt secure but also maybe sort of confining.. But anyways, definitely very cool.

Later on in the week, I decided it was time to visit the Würzburg Residenz, as it’s a world heritage site in the same city I live in.. When I started the tour of the residenz, I have to say I was expecting a semi-boring and bland tour of some oversized palace. However the Residenz completely blew my mind. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such good artwork; 2D murals on the ceilings and walls would evolve into 3D statues. It was so well done that most of the time you couldn’t even tell where the change between 2D and 3D occurred. Aside from the artwork, the glitz and glamour of the place was astounding. I always knew it, but now I have proof that Texans were not the founders of go-big-or-go-home. There’s a room in the Residenz who’s walls literally consist entirely of mirrors and gold. Every inch of the place had some sort of decoration. They didn’t allow you to take pictures in there, or else my camera would’ve been on burst fire mode, but a quick google search returns plenty of results. Here’s a link to a basic shot of one of the entry ways. Definitely cool.

Last and probably least, I just wanted to shout out a quick fyi: I’ve been taking tonssss of pictures.. Many of these pictures are pretty cool and interesting in some way, but they don’t really warrant their own ‘blog post’. Sooo that’s why I have set up a tumblr ‘microblog’, which is basically just a photostream of randomness from my cellphone camera, each with a veryy brief description. You might find it interesting, maybe not.. lol. There’s a link on the front page of my site, or just click here.

Below are a few more photos, and as usual the rest are on my flickr.

DeutscheBahn offers a “Bayern Ticket”, which allows 5 people to take the trains anywhere in Bavaria for a 24 hour period for only €30. So the roundtrip transportation for the whole day was only €6/person. In Nürnberg, we visited Nürnberger Burg (Nuremberg Castle), which is over 1000 years old, Nürnberger Felsengänge (Nuremberg ‘Rock-corridors’), 300+ year old beer cellars cut out of the bedrock, and manditorily, the Bratwursthäusle bei St. Sebald, which not surprisingly has the best brats ever. If you’re in Nürnberg, I recommend going to all three.
I’ll let the pictures do the rest of the talking.

More photos on flickr here.

Let me introduce you to my new home: Würzburg, Bayern (Bavaria), Germany. It has a population of about 160,000 people, four universities, a castle, and is the second sunniest city in Germany. Pretty ideal place to live.

Upon my arrival, the first thing I noticed was how incredibly picturesque the town is. I felt like I was in a movie; rolling hills, cobblestone streets, medieval-style architecture, sweet cars, etc. Everything is so organized and clean, the public transportation is flawless, people never J-walk, recycling is a big deal, and a bottle of beer is the same price, or often times cheaper than a bottle of water. haha. The people are reserved, but really nice when you start talking to them. Und natürlich, the food is awesome.

I’m rockin a small like studio apartment which is on a hill above the city, and very close to Universität Würzburg. I’ve met several students from the universities here, and turns out there are lots of people from across the world here. Fortunately almost everyone speaks english but unfortunately that means that I don’t get as much German practice as I’d like..

I recently got a tour of the facilities and studio that I’ll be working with, and it’s easily the nicest photo/video setup I’ve ever seen. I’ll describe it more after I’ve had a chance to use it and maybe grab some pictures with/of it. But let’s just say I’m stoked for this year.

So much has happened in the short time since I’ve been here, that’s its really difficult to remember everything and write about it.. But I’ll try to keep the blog up-to-date with my most current ramblings and shenanigans. Also, I’ll be posting pictures to the blog, but because of the amount of photos I’ve been taking/plan to take, not all of them will make it onto the blog. So if you’re interested in seeing more, I’ll link to my flickr photostream for the whole shibang.

More photos on flickr here.

Or rather, bis später. Yesterday/today I hopped the pond for a 6 month jaunt over in Germany; a 1.5 hour plane ride to Dallas, a 10 hour plane over Greenland to Frankfurt, and then a 1.5 hour train ride to Würzburg. So 36 hours after getting up ‘this morning’, I’m going to bed..

I’ll post more, including pictures and all, once I get more situated, but for now a quick panorama of the Frankfurt-Flughafen Hauptbahnhof (airport maintrainstation):

Since Wednesday I’ve put many hours in the editing room, and it’s paid off in the form of the quickest video turnaround I’ve ever pumped out: one day for a 6-minute video. It’s still a rough cut though, and will be headed for color grading, motion graphics, and final sound equalizing. That job will go to two other very cool guys I met, Scott Wells and Asher Barrett. The video is scheduled to be finished sometime next week, so in the meanwhile enjoy a couple iphone pics from the shoot and the edit:

Update:
Here’s the links for the two finished videos.
http://youtu.be/D5BRb9uzhRE
http://youtu.be/B28zpGQNm5k

They both turned out pretty well I think, and it’s awesome because they already have a combined 60,000+ views in just a few weeks. Glad I could help out Levi..

The project itself is basically a huge b&w LCD screen, of sorts. It’s hard to describe exactly because it’s a new technology that hasn’t really been used before, so this could potentially become a big deal haha. It’s apparently going to be the most energy efficient “screen” in the world, because it uses ambient lighting as it’s primarily light source. I don’t know a whole lot what I’m talking about, so if you want to know more about the piece itself, go check out Federico’s website: www.federicomuelas.com.

Here’s a panorama shot I took with my phone from the 7th level of the scaffolding:

A couple days ago I brought my Canon and tripod to capture some time-lapse shots of the day. I had the dual motive of wanting to capture the action up there on the scaffolding, and to try out the intervalometer function on the new MagicLantern firmware I installed on the camera. Turned out to work pretty well:

A final cool bit of information is that the project was featured in the Albuquerque Journal today, with just a brief spotlight on and description of the work. (It was pretty funny when the journalist came up on the scaffolding for questions and pictures because he was extremely afraid of heights ha)

Overall, this project has been a blast and all the people I’ve met through it have been awesome. We’ve got about a week left on it, and I can’t wait to see it completed!