France, Home

The final days of my trip were a little weird, we saw a lot but had a lot of down time. We stayed north of Paris for 2 days, mostly for strategy to get to the airport without the fear of nightmare traffic (it was truly a nightmare when we arrived in Paris). The town was nice a quaint and a lot slower pace the Paris. While there we were able to see a few Chateaus, wow. My favorite was Chateau Peirrefonds.The medieval Chateau Peirrefonds

My favorite Chateau we saw (not that we saw tons, but this one is cool).

Stained Glass in the cathedral.

I really enjoyed the cathedral in the castle. I think I liked it the most because it was practical yet had the gothic flare. Either way cathedrals here have been amazing.


Since we had a lot of free time in a small town I went and got my hair cut. The two other students I was with went bold with the Eurohawk (i.e. the European mowhawk), I on the other hand am very partial to the tribal cut.

The Tribal

We saw it nearly in every country. Luckily I was talked off of the edge, and got a "normale".

The trip home was long, I tried to get back on Mtn standard time and was up for over 24 hrs. Today I am trying to recover, and get the house in order for Torrie to arrive tomorrow. It has been an amazing trip, but man is it good to be home.

Paris

Don't get me wrong Paris has been amazing, but my first impression (and probably most lasting impression) of Paris is much different. Simply put Paris smells like poo. There are a ton of dogs and pigeons. Both of which leave little treasures all over the city. Everywhere we went it smelled.

Case in point: I bought this awesome watch today. I had found it on a previous trip in Switzerland, but felt it was a little pricey to buy, so I held off. Since then I have not been able to find it in the states, today however I found it at the Louvre Museum! I went ahead and gave myself a great graduation gift, and not ten minutes after buying we were walking in the gardens of the Louvre I was crapped on by a pigeon! On the hand and new watch none the less! To this end my advice to you if you ever go to Paris is bring nose plugs or an umbrella and golashes for the poo!

Now to the cool stuff. Since we only had two days here we have really condensed our site seeing. Which I thought made it kinda cool. We sae Notre Dame, the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower at night. The Lourve Mueum at night

Notre Dame at Night

A top of the Eiffel Tower

The Louvre Pyramid

The Effiel Tower at night

Napoleon’s Egyptian Obelisk

I have a ton more great photos, but you are going to have to ask to see them later~ its after 1 am and I am exhausted.

Metz and Luxembourgh

Well the last few days have gone by really quickly, mostly because we have been moving around a lot. Over the weekend we were in Metz France. This is the site of the largest battle of WWI. The significance of the war came to life when we visited the battle field and the hills were still rippled because of the artillery shells.

Today was the company visit that I have been anticipating most, we traveled outside of Metz to the town of Cattenom on the Luxembourgh/French/German border. We were able to visit the nuclear power plant Cattenom. It was way cool.

A view from the road of the plant.

This was a huge site, and really cool to see.

After visiting this site I am really excited to go work in NY. I have gained a new appreciation and understanding for nuclear design.

After the nuclear power plant we went to Luxembourgh, where we are staying the night. From the little that I have seen this is a way cool place. I really wish we had more time, but tomorrow we are headed to Paris.

If I hadn't have seen the power plant this morning I would have regretted turning down Goodyear, which may have sent us to Luxembourgh. Phew.

P.s. If anyone has heard from Torrie let her know we would all love to know how her trip went. Apparently I am not convincing enough on my own to get her to blog ;)

Deutschland

Germany has been interesting. It has been an ecletic visit. The first day in Frankfurt was interesting. During WWII Frankfurt was pretty much wiped off the map, because of this every building is "modern".

A view of Frankfurt.

To me it seemed as if this was a convience to focus on the future and not on the past. In addition it has been hard for me to connect with my heritage here. I don't know why, but I tried to experience the tradition.

Don't worry that is apple juice (one of the best I have ever tasted) not apfelwine i.e apple wine

The next day we had a little expected/unexpect trip out of the country. We had planned to go to The European Central Bank aka the bank of the European Union. When we got there we discovered that everyone needed thier passport. This was because we were officially leaving Germany and entering "Europe". It was kinda cool. I dont know of anyone else that has been to the entity of Europe so it was a neat experience. That night we went back tot he same restaurant since it was so good.

Today we stopped in Stuggart on our way to France. We stopped to see the Mercedes museum. It was awesome. I took over 200 photos of all of the cars on display.

At the end we went on a simulation of the history of Mercedes racing, it was pretty cool. We have some pretty cool company visits coming up in the last week of our trip. But so far I have been amazed at what we have seen.

Prague

Well it took a long time to get here, nearly 9 hours. Mostly due the large group. Everyone that I know that has been to Prague kept telling me how amazing Prague was, I kinda shrugged it off, but boy was I wrong! Prague has some amazing architecture.

Since we traveled all day we took the evening to check out the city. My favorite thing that we saw was the "old town astronomical clock"

As an Engineer working on gears I was a little excited.

We watch the animation as the clock sounded it was really cool.

Tomorrow we are going to two companies, one is a joint manufacturing plant between Toyota and Renault and Pugeot. I am sure you woud rather see some more pics of the city so here you go.

A look back at the city from across the river.

Another part of old town.

Auschwitz

Today was a somber day. We went to the branch in Krakow for Church which had a dozen members (we tripled the size of Sacrament meeting). Afterwards we traveled to Auschwitz, the German concentration and extermination camp in Poland. I am still trying to find the words to describe my visit. It had been challenging for me to relate to horror of a place that I had only seen in pictures. To actually be here was unfathomable.

A view of what is left of the housing block of Auschitz II- Birkeneau.

The "Killing Wall" inside Block 11

Auschwitz I, the initial camp

The Soviet POW Block

The infomous gate, and rail track of Auschwitz II- Birkeneau

I am very grateful to have been able to visit this amazing site. I think it has helped me understand my role in society and how I may be able to help prevent such a horrible thing from ever happening again. Most of all it has made me charish my little family and how good I acutally have it because of the sacrifice of others.

Hungary and Slovakia

Wow, we have done alot in the last few days. Just a warning this may be a long blog. So in the last post I said I had seen some of the coolest things I had seen in person in engineering. Well that didn't last long.

This is a picture of me outside the research nuclear reactor at the Budapest University. To me this looks as foriegn as everything I have seen in NY. It was really cool to be able to go see a nuclear reactor. We were told by the director of the facility that in comparison this reactor is a "toy", and being so we could go up on top.

On top of the reactorA look inside.

I still can't come up with the words to describe looking down into a nuclear reactor.

I kept checking the radiation exposure counter in my lab coat pocket, thankfully no exposure was registered, but my heart rate was elevated.
After the nuclear reactor we went to see the city. I was pleasently surprised at how beatiful Budapest was.The ride to Slovakia was amazing. It is an amazing view. We arrived really late, and walked around the town square of Banska, which happened to be hosting a concert for the celebration of entering the European Union.

In the morning we spent some time seeing the town during the day. I didn't realize it, but we passed by some monuments of WWII. It was rather impressive, and suprising I missed it at night. We are now in Poland, but have only been here a night. Tomorrow is a big day and I thought I would wait to until we have seen a little of the country before I blog about it (we have only been here for a few hours). Besides, you need something to come back and read right?

Budapest

Well we have been in Budapest for two days. We are leaving for an overnight visit to Slovakia on the way to Poland tomorrow. It has been pretty cool here in Hungary. Yesterday was mostly traveling from London, but in the afternoon we went to a transportation museum. It was pretty cool, but all of the signs and literature was only in Hungarian. Because of this about every 10 minutes or so someone from the museum would come be and tell us not to do something in Hungarian. For the most part we figured it out. I was suprised how clean the rode was.

The rest of the city was more typical, but rather dirty.

Today was a really cool day from an engineering perspective. In the morning we traveled to a aluminum extrusion plant. After telling us about what they did (mostly producing parts for Ferrari and Porsche cars) we took a tour. I was able to see one of the coolest manufacturing processes I have ever seen. It was a hot rolling mill. Basically they took a 1.25 meter thick, 6 meters long slab of aluminum and heated it to 500 C. Once it was hot it is shoved (and I do mean shoved, it makes a huge noise) between to huge steel drums. The "ingot' of aluminum is squished to about 1 meter thick. As soon as it is out of the rollers, the rollers close the gap between them and the process is done again. After about 5 minutes the ingo is now a sheet about .04 meters thick! For me this was really cool. We werent allowed to take any pictures, but it I did have one I would have posted it.

After the aluminum company we headed to the other side of Budapest to Proctor and Gamble. P&G make 300 different consumer goods, here in Budapest they make Always and Tampax products.

Yup thats right we went to see how feminine hygiene products are made. At first is was really weird. They passed out samples and invited us to open them up and take them apart. Just imagine 20+ men engineers awkwardly trying to figure out how this stuff works. It ended up being really interesting. We discussed some of the difficulties and technology needed to provide this essential product to 1/2 of the world. After we had destroyed some 100 odd products we went to see how they were made. Iwas rather impressed. This facility supplies all of the product for all of Europe. We were able to see several machines which produce several million pads a day! Again we were not able to take pictures, which I am sure you are thankful for.

Tomorrow should not be as weird, but will be just as nerdy. We are going to a local university which is one of one a few universities in Europe with a nuclear reactor. I am really excited (as I should be). If I am able to get pictures you can guarantee that they will be up here.

London Wrap Up

Well today was my final day in London. We didn't do too much in terms of site seeing. We did do a lot of riding the "Tube", which I get a big kick out of. I don't know why, it may be because it reminds me of Italy. It was however a really cool engineering day. We went to the imperial college and saw some really cool stuff. To try not bore everyone I won't go on and on, but we did get to walk inside a wind tunnel. It was pretty sweet to see what they were developing, which was a way to reduce pressure drag on a vehicle which would increase fuel efficiency by 50%! We also got to see their flight simulator which they use in the development of planes.

When we first saw it the implied we would get a chance to sit in it, but it turns out we couldn't.

Bright and early in the morning we are off to Budapest. I am not sure if I will have Internet access, I guess you will find out. And if not I will blog in a few days when we get to Slovakia.

London 3.0

We have done a lot in the last two days in London. We went to church near Hyde Park where the local members were out numbered 2:1 by various visiting groups. After Church we went to speakers corner in Hyde Park to get an idea of what missionaries may have faced. Then went onto Westminster Abby for a Organ Recital (I fell asleep through half of it~ still a little jet lag). We also saw Big Ben, the London Eyeand # 10 Downing street i.e. where the Prime Minister of England lives. These guards were a little amused when we asked what the big deal was and why they were guarding the gate (we were just walking by and thought it was out of place, turns out to be kinda a big deal).

Today was really long as well. We got up really early an rode a train to the London Temple. It was really cool to visit the Temple on another continent~ turns out they are all the same ;), but still cool. Afterwards, we made our way back into London to see "Tower Hill' where the crown jewels are kept. They don't allow pics, so the outside of the "Castle/Tower" is all we got.

After the Tower we took a little detour on the 'Tube" and stopped by the King's Cross rail station to see Platform 9 3/4.

The scene after this photo was a little painful since I am not a wizard.

And finally I decided to include a picture of a real Lamborghini since Mike Chai corrected me on the last one. Mike~ Since you are the guru what model is this?

London Day 2

Today was pretty cool, at least from an engineers point of view. We went to the London Science and Technology Museum. We spent 2 1/2 hours there but only saw the 1st of 6 floors. We saw all types of engines from steam to turbine, also the evolution of manufacturing, space flight, cars, and medical devices.
This picture is of a clock that is designed to keep the time (well at least the year) for 10,000 years! I thought it was really cool, but that is because I am working on gears for my masters. We thought this museum was so cool we even went back later in the day to see another floor. Once we left the science museum we went to find some lunch. We ended up a this organic deli. We all had a "Tortine", which I had never herd of. Basically it is an open faced sandwich.

My smoked turkey tortine was really good and expensive (but what isn't in London) and not very filling.

Later we went to Buckingham Palace. I was really hoping to get a picture with a guard and to try and get him to move, but there were none outside the gates. We are going to try tomorrow and I will let you know if he moves. After dinner of some real "fish and chips" and we saw this Lamborghini as we headed home. We have noticed a ton of really cool cars in only two days but I will spare you from having to see them all.

Try not to get too upset when you dream of this car (like I am going to do) and wake up to realize it was only a dream.

~After writting this I realized how big of nerd I really am. Perhaps tomorrow we will do some normal stuff, but then again I am making the itinerary, so it will most likely be geeky stuff! I can't wait.