Paris with College Friends

Some times crazy plans you make with your friends just stay crazy plans, but some times these things actually do work out and the first weekend in January was one of those times.  I spent the weekend in Paris with a group of friends from college.  I had several different groups of friends in college, but the people I've known the longest were a group of friends I made during my freshman year on my dorm floor.  As most dorms on BU's campus are, my floor was co-ed, meaning one hallway had girl's rooms and the other hallway had boy's rooms.  Our whole floor was really social and we were all friends, but after freshman year, I kept in touch with only a few people, including an awesome group of guys.  Yes, I am part of a groups of friends where I am the only girl.  This might seem strange, but let's think about me for a second.  I like to play and watch sports, I like to play video games, and I am a physics major.  Very frequently, I am the only woman in situations, so hanging out with guys has become pretty normal.  Plus, these guys are some of the most respectful and polite men I know, so it's pretty easy to be around them.

Anyways, the stars aligned and while one guy was going to be starting his study abroad in London, one was visiting his brother in Berlin, and another found a cheap flight to Munich, while I was going to be in Zurich.  So we came up with this crazy plan to meet in Paris for a few days and it worked out fantastically.

First of all, I decided to take the high speed train called the TGV from Zurich to Paris this time instead of flying and it was so fantastic.  Nothing like a ride on an extremely efficient, fast, and comfortable train to help you forget about that silly America and fall in love with Europe all over again.  Some perks included: only having to arrive at the station 15 minutes before the train left, a plug for my laptop at my seat, being able to get up and walk around on the train, seeing the beautiful scenery go by, and arriving right in the downtown area of Paris.

I arrived Friday afternoon, with most of the guys having already gotten to Paris the day before.  I dropped my stuff off at my hotel room and then met them over at their apartment they were renting for the weekend.  Their apartment was just around the corner from the Eiffel Tower, so since I was early I took some shot since the weather was so nice.  Unfortunately, I only took my small, six-year-old camera that I thought would be okay, but really is so inferior to our new camera or even my friends' iPhone cameras.  So the pictures below are okay, but not great and many I had to scrap because they were blurry.

The view of the Eiffel Tower just steps away from the boys' apartment

 A party was starting up on the lower deck

After catching up for a bit, we went out to the Latin Quarter to find some dinner and had an okay meal at a touristy French restaurant.  We spent a good amount of time there eating and talking before we left to either head back to our rooms or to go out.  Since I was still jet-lagged, I headed back to my hotel, but enjoyed walking by the cute streets that were lit up, though I wasn't sure if it was for Christmas or if they were always there.  Either way, I was very surprised by how great our neighborhood was.  The next morning, the last person arrived via high speed train from London and we set off to enjoy Paris.  While Friday was sunny and beautiful, Saturday started off a bit cloudy and rainy.

Hashi, Kristian, Mike, and Kristian's awesome brother, Clinton

Can't remember the name of the bridge, but it is by the Palais Royal

We walked and talked and laughed, and eventually made it to the Musée d'Orsay.  I had just been there in July, but the great thing was they were finally done renovating the museum, so there were a lot of things I hadn't seen last time that were back in the museum.  The top floor houses the famous Impressionist section and all the paintings were back from being on tour all over the world.  I recognized all the ones I had seen at the de Young in San Francisco.  The top floor also has a really great view from a clock face, so I took a few pictures.

From the top floor of the Musée d'Orsay

The clock comes from the building's original use as a train station

For lunch, the guys were kind enough to indulge me and go to the opera district to get Japanese food at the same place I went with Darren last time.  In Boston we used to go to a Japanese restaurant in Kenmore Square called Maluken, so it was fun to recreate some of those memories.  By the time we left the Japanese restaurant, the sun was out and we walked along some of my favorite places in Paris near the Opera House, the Place Vendome, and the Louvre.

Beautiful, beautiful Opera House always look good in the afternoon

Us in front of the Opera House, taken with my lame camera

Hashi being classy in front of the Ritz

Some of us in front of the Louvre

We did a lot more walking to see the streets of Paris and ended up near the Trocadéro at a cafe with free wifi.  We rested there for a half-hour to let the guys check their email since they weren't able to use the internet in the apartment and to get some refreshments.  Then when it was close to 6 pm, we walked outside to watch the Eiffel Tower light up.  Darren and I weren't able to see this last time because it didn't get dark until 10:30 pm (we don't stay out late since we pack so many things in during the day), so I was happy I was able to see it this time.

Blurry picture of the Eiffel Tower with my sucky camera

I think after that we just walked back and got crepes at a place by their apartment.  We watched some episodes of our favorite show Community and then I called it a night while the boys went out for a while.  Apparently I didn't take many pictures of what we did on Sunday, so I'll just recap quickly, from what I can remember.  The guys wanted to go shopping in Paris, but once we got to the shopping areas, they finally believed me that shops in Europe are closed on Sundays and they were really surprised.  We walked over to the Champs-Élysées and there some shops were open, but it seemed like it was only the American stores, which weren't interesting to go into.  I did take them to the luxury cake and pastry shop called Ladurée where they sampled their famous macaroons.  Some of us had lunch at the French equivalent to McDonald's called Quick, where they were serving an awesome burger called Strong Bacon.

There's not only bacon inside, but bacon on the bun as well

"I feel so strong when I eat this burger!"

After that, we walked over to the Arc de Triomphe and paid to go up to the top and see my favorite view of Paris.  It didn't clear off on Sunday like it did on Saturday, so it wasn't as pretty of an afternoon when we were taking pictures from the top, but oh well.

Some of us at the Arc de Triomphe

Since everyone was leaving Paris at different times we just went back to the apartment to say goodbye to people as they left.  Kristian's brother left first and then I headed out around dinner time.  We made sure to get one more photo together, though.

It was a great trip guys!  Who knows where we will meet up next.

Christmas 2011 and Good News

Well, most of our stuff was moved out today and I'm left here with my computer and a book, so I have no excuse not to update the blog (we are moving back to the US next week).  Before I give a summary of our Christmas, I have some great news to share: I got a job!  And since this blog is only shared with family and close friends, I feel like this is a safe place where I can give some more details about how this miracle happened because it is really a crazy story.

Back in November, I started e-mailing around to my contacts in space physics to see what the hiring environment might be when I get back to the US.  It wasn't as great as I had hoped, so I decided to branch out and prepare resumes for the tech industry as a data analyst.  I had many years of experience doing data analyst work in science, but I did not have the business or programming background recommended for most of the job listings I saw.  Well, I started applying in December and only got back rejections, if I heard anything at all.  On the second Tuesday in January, after receiving a rejection letter that morning from a company, I applied for a data analyst position at a start-up called Glassdoor.com.  I didn't really know anything about them, but their job requirements sounded vague enough that they might give me a shot.  That night, I got an email from them asking if I wanted to chat some time that week.  What a quick response!  So I prepared all Wednesday and Thursday for my first interview (there were a lot of firsts in this process) over the phone Thursday night.  I did well enough, but not fantastic, though the guy seemed to already like me, so that was great.  I then had two more phone interviews the next night and they still liked me after that.  They wanted to meet me in person, so I convinced them to fly me out for an in-person interview, but they wanted me as soon as possible.  Luckily it's January and there are cheap plane tickets to be had last-minute, and Darren had to go back to the US anyways, so I booked a ticket Friday night to leave Tuesday morning with him.

We arrived in California Tuesday night and I drove out to the office Wednesday morning for my all-day interview.  I did well during some parts and just okay in others, but at times I felt like my skills weren't good enough that they weren't going to hire me, though in the end they did give me an offer letter!  After they checked my references, they sent me the offer, I signed it, and by 5 pm on Friday, I had a job!  In nine days, I went from sending in an application to having a job!  It was so crazy and I still don't understand why they liked me or how I got so lucky when I made a lot of novice interview mistakes, but I'm not taking this opportunity for granted!  The commute will be tough from where we want to live, but after 17 months of easy living, it's time to have some challenges.  So now we have to get back to the regular blog posts!  I need to catch up so I can do some final Swiss posts before we leave.

Darren and I were able to go home for Christmas again this year and it really was a great trip all around.  Since Darren had to go to California before Christmas for work, I flew to Dallas to visit with some of my family.  Since I hadn’t been back in the US for a year, I had a lot of fun reveling in all the little things that are different from Europe.  I ate really cheap food, I went out to restaurants and got my free water refilled four times, and I reveled in the variety of cereals available.  I hadn’t bought any new clothes for a year because they are so expensive in Europe (well more expensive than I think they are worth), so I enjoyed picking up some essentials with my favorite shopping partner, my mom (seriously best shopping partner ever).  Just to point out that I do remember Christmas is a time to buy gifts for others, I was an excellent helper with getting my mom’s Christmas shopping done.

It was also fun just to do normal family activities together.  We had some great meals at home, but we also went out to one of our favorite restaurants, Café Madrid, one night.  Afterwards, we went and looked at Christmas lights in the neighborhood.

My brother and sister-in-law

Me and my mom

My mom and step-dad

We also made dozens and dozens of cinnamon rolls and while every year they are good, this year I think it was one of the best batches we’ve made.  I had three just that day.  They take a long time to make because the dough has to rise several times, so usually we have to wake up early, which I usually protest.  But since I was still jet-lagged, waking up at 5 am was no problem. :)

Rolling out the dough and putting them in the pan to cook

I also got to spend a lot of time with my brother and sister-in-law since they were off because they work for schools.  We hung out in their awesome new house that they moved into over the summer.  It's kind of crazy my brother and I are old enough that we are married and buying houses.  I guess we are adults now.

After a fantastic week in Texas, I flew to Utah to meet up with Darren in order to spend the holidays with Darren's family and see some of my dad's family as well.  All the Baker kids and spouses made an effort to be together for the holidays this year since Darren's youngest sister was leaving on a mission soon after.  She left on January 11th and after she spends several weeks in the training center in Provo, she will be spending the rest of her 18 months in South Korea (she is already doing a great job on learning the language, we hear).  So it was really great everyone could make it home this Christmas to be with her before she left.

Christmas was really fun because we first went to an hour of church and then came home and opened presents.  I think it was a great way to start the day.  After lunch, Darren and I drove down to spend time with my dad's family and have Christmas dinner with them.  I had a lot of fun chatting with family that I hadn't seen since we moved.  After that, a group of us went up to see the lights on Temple Square.  Though, since it was Sunday, a lot of the buildings you can visit on Temple Square were closed!  Whoops, guess we'll go at a different time next time.

The Robison/Peterson group after a great Christmas dinner

Me, my dad, and my little brother braving the cold

Love this picture of us next to this beautiful temple

We had a lot of other fun family activities with Darren's family and extended family while we were there.  I think all the parties we attended were really fun and I could tell people put a lot of effort into making them so.  We also had a fantastic farewell party for Rachelle where any of her friends and extended family could see her one last time and a lot of people came!  While we were there, we also took some family pictures since it will be a while before all of us are together again.

The cute Baker family

Darren's brother got into Duke, so we took a picture with shirts from all our colleges

After a fun time in Utah, I actually went back to Texas for a day since my round trip from Zurich was booked through there.  I had a chance to see some of my California family for a bit before all of us visitors flew back to our respective houses the next day.

The Williams cousins

I flew back to Zurich, while Darren went back to California to work.  It was a little bit depressing to fly home by myself, but I had some great motivation for being in Europe the first weekend in January, which I will cover next time! :)

Car Museums in Stuttgart

(Darren heavily edited this since I don't know much about cars.  Try and figure out which sentences are mine and which he added.)

Sorry for being late to post.  Things got a little crazy last week with my ongoing search for a post-move job in the Bay Area; hopefully I'll have some good news to share on that front later this week.  In the meantime, I'll jump back a month to finish writing about our quick weekend trip to Germany in December.  On Saturday the 9th, after doing lots of Christmas activities the day before, we shifted gears (get it? :) and spent the day in Stuttgart going to car museums.  If you remember, Stuttgart was our very first trip in Europe, but our main goal while visiting last time was to get our visas, so we didn't have a chance to see many sights.  This time, Stuttgart was on the way home from Rothenburg and Nuremberg, so it seemed like a good opportunity to go back and see some things we missed.  Our main focus was to see the Porsche and Mercedes car museums.  Did you know that the automobile was invented in Stuttgart and these two car companies were founded there as well?  I didn't know that until we visited these museums.

We first went to the Porsche Museum and spent the late morning and much of the afternoon there.  We bought the audio guides at both museums and walked around to see a variety of cars from throughout each company's long history.  I felt the Porsche Museum wasn't as good as the BMW museum because I don't feel like it gave enough background about the company's founder, Ferdinand Porsche, or about the history of the company in general.  Mostly, the museum just showed lots of cars, with a strong emphasis on their success in high-octane racing. 

This is the Porsche 356, the company's first production car and the first one they produced with the name "Porsche"

The silver one on the left was the model James Dean was driving when he died in a crash

The 356 Spyder

Looking at the dashboard of one of the roadsters

Some aerodynamic racing cars from the latter half of the 20th century; the yellow and purple one that you can barely see on the left end of the line has something like 1200 horsepower!

A late-model 911; Darren wants one like this

My love, the Panamera

Probably the closest he'll get to this anytime soon, unless he buys me a Panamera :)

The outside of the museum, which was redone in 2008

Even though the Porsche museum wasn't my favorite (since I'm not really a racing enthusiast), it was still fun to visit.  Plus, they had a very affordable cafe (who would have thought that anything at the Porsche Museum would be inexpensive?) where I again enjoyed my favorite Swabian dish, called Maultaschen, which filled me right up.  I love eating in Germany!  (I'm already scoping out German restaurants in the Bay Area, anyone want to join?) 

Next, we drove over to the Mercedes-Benz Museum.  This was a much more comprehensive museum because the founders were the inventors of the first automobiles, as I learned.  Thus, the scope of the museum was much wider, and they covered a lot of concepts in the development of motor transportation, rather than just focusing on 60 years of race cars.  Carl Benz filed a patent for a three-wheeled automobile in 1886, while Gottlieb Daimler converted a stagecoach into an automobile later that year.

A replica of Carl Benz's automobile invention

A replica of Gottlieb Daimler's four-wheeled automobile

Built in 1902 and once owned by the Vanderbilts, this is the oldest Mercedes in existence (cool, huh?!)

The Mercedes name actually comes from an extremely wealthy racing enthusiast, Emil Jellinek, who had Daimler's company build a car to his specifications.  He named that model after his daughter, Mercedes.  The Mercedes model and its successors became so popular that they came to define the brand for all the company's future cars.  Daimler and Benz's companies merged in the 1920s and the Mercedes-Benz name was born.

One of the stylish touring cars from the 1930s that was popular with heads of state

An example of more affordable post-WWII cars manufactured by Mercedes

As we went through the museum in order of the history of the company, it was funny to read how quite often, major safety and fuel economy changes were forced upon these car companies by US policies.  Instead of making separate cars that fit US standards, the company just redesigned most of their cars and so safety, fuel economy, and environmental impact were improved worldwide.  They talked about US pollution regulations and had a picture of Ralph Nader highlighting the poor safety standards in automobiles in the 1960s.  US politics may drive you crazy, but sometimes we do things that affect the world for good.

Mercedes not only makes standard commercial cars, but also ambulances, trucks, buses, construction vehicles, etc.  They highlighted some of these other vehicles in the museum as well, and since Darren likes to see everything, we went over to take a look at them.

This truck is basically a giant snowblower

Can't forget all the fancy limos Mercedes has made over the years for people like the Emperor of Japan

The very first Popemobile

Overall, I enjoyed the Mercedes museum more, but the BMW one was still my favorite.  Either way, it was still a great day and I'm glad we made time to see these before we moved.  I guess we just should have bought some guidebooks for the museums so we could remember the names and significance of all the cars we saw!  After finishing at the museums, we left Stuttgart and drove back to Zurich to prepare to leave for the US just a few days later to spend time with family for Christmas.   

Weekend in Germany

Now that the holidays are over, it's back to blogging.  Our European adventure is almost over, but we are still managing to get in a few more trips.  For example, back in the beginning of December, we did a quick tour of some southern Germany sites I had been interested in seeing.  We left Friday morning and drove up to the cute town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber that I had visited before.  I had really wanted to take Darren and I wanted to go back to that amazing Christmas store.  

We arrived in Rothenburg in the afternoon to chilly temperatures and a bit of rain, however, Rothenburg was even more magical than before.  It was decorated from head to toe for Christmas and it really boosted my Christmas spirit.  We walked around to see the decorations and visited the small Christmas market in the town square.  After that, we stopped in a restaurant, called Baumeisterhaus, on the square and had a delicious and (for me) hearty lunch.  I had pork roast with potato dumplings and the best red cabbage I've ever eaten.  

In front of the Rothenburg tiny Christmas market on the main square

Happy to be eating in Germany

An example of all the Christmas decorations in town

After lunch, we spent a good hour in the two Käthe Wohlfart stores working around the crowds and deciding what to buy.  Darren did snap some pictures of the inside this time with his phone so that we could show it looked like.  We picked up some traditional German Christmas items like straw ornaments and a real nutcracker.  I am excited to display them next year.

The entrance to the Christmas store

Inside the Christmas store

Some traditional German Christmas decorations

On our way out of Rothenburg

We only spent a bit of time in Rothenburg because I wanted to see the Nürnberg (Nuremberg) Christmas market that night.  We drove another hour east and arrived in town around dinnertime.  It was very chilly outside, so we bundled up to walk over to the Hauptmarkt where the Christmas market was.  This main square is also home to the Frauenkirche, a beautiful church, and the Schöner Brunnen, a beautiful 62-foot fountain that was built in the 14th century.   

Hauptmarkt with the huge fountain in the middle and the church in the background

The market had a dozen or so rows of stalls, each selling food, Christmas treats, and Christmas decorations, among other things.  We walked through all the rows and purchased some Christmas presents for family.  We also enjoyed sampling some market food like apple strudel, Nürnberg sausages, and waffels topped with cream.

Eating my Christmas market treat

An example of the Christmas decoration for sale

This picture is for my dad, I know he would have loved to eat this

We had Nürnberg-style sausages, which are tiny sausages put inside a roll and eaten like a sandwich

Darren enjoying his waffel

I just loved visiting this Christmas market and feeling a lot of Christmas cheer.  Darren said he thought the Strasbourg Christmas market was better, which is great for Zurich friends since it is much closer.  I'm really glad we were able to spend one more Christmas season here before we move back.  After seeing all of the Christmas market, we walked around just a bit of the old part of town.  We ran into this castle and walked up to the top where the Christmas tree was to get a view of the city.

Part of an old castle in Nürnberg

It started to rain again as we walked up there

The great view from the top captured by Darren's steady hands

A self-portait next to the Christmas tree

Stopped by another church on the way back to the car

Unfortunately, we didn't have more time to visit other sites in Nürnberg, though it seemed like a nice town with a lot of history to take in.  We left Nuremberg and drove to our hotel for the night, which was just outside of the city.  The next day we visited the Porsche and Mercedes museums in Stuttgart, which I will cover in the next post.