New Website

Hi Everyone. As you can tell I haven't posted to this blog in some time. That's mainly because I got out of the Army and started a new job. Just recently, I decided I needed to start my own financial services practice in order to best serve my clients. I'm very excited about this and would like to invite you to view my website!

www.asecurefuturestartshere.com

So, as you'll read, my business is called Intervest Stuttgart and I'm a financial resource for the Stuttgart Military Community.

N Salutes West Point!!!!

GREECE!!!

Finally, a picture of the trip to Greece!!! I promise I'll update soon.

Eindhoven, Holland - Queen's Day 2007

Queen's Day is on the 30th of April each year to celebrate the Birthday of the Dutch Queen. I think it started a long time ago. Well, aparently the Queen loved Techno music and large street parties, because thats what we found. Eindhoven is known for having one of the longest bar distritcs in Europe. And its long... Just bar after bar for block after block. Bust be at least 1,000 bars. So, just an interesting set up.

Orange is the Dutch Color. So we used our BOOYAH T-shirts to fit in.

Orange fountain...cool

Like I said, the whole street was a Techno Fest. At every corner there was a new DJ. Here, the had the DJ booth suspended from a crane over the crowd.

We just stumbled into a 10,000 person crowd with a famous DJ on stage. We were right up front.

Brussels, Belgium

Easter weekend Nasi came to visit me in Trier. So we decided to take a trip to Brussels since neither of us had ever been there. And, its only about 2:30 hours away from where I live. Brussels, if you didn't know is the capital of the European Union. So, basically the equivalent of Washington D.C. except for that most of the "states" don't seem to care so much about what is decided here. Regardless, I was very surprised about how cool the city was. Very old European feel to the downtown area and a lot of more modern stuff being built in the rest of the city. But more than that, it was extremely touristy. I don't know if it was because it was Easter weekend or not, but it was more than I expected. At least as bad as Prague. This mainly becomes a problem in the restaurants. For some reason Brussels is known for its seafood. So as you walk around you come across tiny pedestrian streets that are packed with seafood restaurants. So within 100 yards you might have 30 places all selling the same overpriced meals. They have seats inside and outside and all of them have a guy standing out there clapping and yelling at you to come eat in their restaurant...strange, cause thats not the one's we wanted to go in. But they seemed to get plenty of business anyways.

Old buildings in the city center.

Brussels is know for a few things, mainly the Belgium beer, which is of course very good, and the Belgium waffles. These are cooked all over at little stands. So they are fresh, then they cover them with things like strawberries, whipped cream, and Chocolate. Tastes good at first, but then you realize that the dough itself seems to be almost 100% sugar. So it becomes too much, not to mention the ungodly amount of calories that must be there.... Anyways, on of the biggest tourist attractions is Manacin Pis. It the smallest statue in the world of a boy taking a leak, cool!! Here it is:

He's about 18-24 inches tall..

On Saturday they had him dressed in a scuba outfit...so funny, ha ha ha!

On Sunday, Nasi and I just spent the day walking around. Really Brussels can be seen in a day. Most of the main attractions are within walking distance. And we had a beautiful day to walk around and enjoy the sites.

Old Mayor's house int he center

Our reflection in a building. Nasi is laughing at me cause she thinks my ears look big...

Nasi in the park.

Panoramic view of the city with the Basilica about 5 miles off in the distance.

Brussels is also know for the Atominium. Its a giant structure built in 1957 for the worlds fair. Its supposed to replicate an Iron Atom magnified 165 billion times... So on our way out of the city we drove there to see it. It about the only thing not near the center, but there is also a very large and nice park there that would be nice to talk around in.

Me and Nasi in front of the Atom. Its about as big as the Eiffel tower, maybe not as tall, but its very big.

I just got a new camera so I was able to annoy Nasi a bit with all my photographing, but I think I was able to take some good ones like this close up of the Atom. Here are a few others:

A band was playing at the Atom and a large crowd was watching. I thought this kid looked funny with how it was listening to the music.

Krakow, Poland - New Year's

For New Year's we've made it a tradition to go some place new that has a great event planned. Having been to Scotland's Hogmany last year, we had high hopes. We thought about places like Madrid, Lisbon, and Finland, but settled on Krakow, Poland. Krakow is the second city in Poland and is know for its large student population, the biggest market square in Europe, and Auschwitz.

Just one corner of the square. The yellow building on the right is actually only in the center of the square. The square is about 50 meters

Ok, this was our apartment. No shit. And this is only the living room, there were two other huge rooms just as big. Oh yeah, we had the one upstairs too.... 210 square meters. We got very lucky finding this. We were looking at all sorts of apartments all over Krakow. The were all expensive and required 5 nights stay, we only wanted 3. But somehow I found this one. The prices were the same, but we were able to get the three nights. And to make it even better, we were in the best possible location. RIGHT on the square, and I mean perfect!

The BOOYAH Gang at the castle

The grand room in the salt mines

Being in Krakow we figured we'd hit up a few of the major tourist sites. Krakow is know for Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp. But, since it was a festive time, we didn't want to get all depressed. I've been to Dachau after Oktoberfest, it really really kills the festive vibe.... So we went to the salt mines. There is a huge salt deposit there and they've been mining there for like 500 years. So there are tunnels everywhere, but what makes it cool is how they carved all sorts of things in the caves. There are a bunch of statues but also huge rooms, cathedrals, lakes, etc...

Pete and I sporting the BOOYAH shirts

Before the trip we decided, like all cool large groups of guys going to a festival, to make t-shirts. Mainly, so we could have something to remember our group by in the years to come as most of us will be leaving Europe soon. After much (way too much) deliberation, we decided on Orange shirts with the BOOYAH World logo. Signifying our group as World traveling dominators. If you want to know where BOOYAH came from, its a long story and not for the faint of heart.

Prepping for New Year's.

The drink of Poland is an herb vodka called
ZUBROWKA, which means BISON. They mix it with apple juice, which makes it very dangerous as you can't taste a thing. We met up with a polish friend of ours from Trier and his friends and decided to throw a party in our Apartment on New Year's in stead of getting smashed around in the crowd. So we bought a ton, a TON of ZUBROWKA and started inviting people up from the street. We would send runners out. Then from the window we would point out who we thought should come up to the party. It worked sometimes...

View from our window on New Year's night. This is early on, the crowd got much larger and was packed all the way to our building. The stage of the concert is just to the left of the tower, it was only about 300 yards away.

Edingburgh, Jan 2006

Just looking at some old pics that I thought were cool and wanted to share them

Tignes, France

Since I didn't go home for Christmas, a few friends and I decided to go skiing. For the longest time we were planning on going back to our favorite place, St. Anton in Austria. But we were having a hell of a time getting a room. So we canceled that. Good thing we did, cause they never got any snow there, and I'm not sure that they have any now either. Its been pretty warm in Europe too. El Nino.... Anyways, Eamon found us a room in Tignes. This is one of the ski resorts used in the Albertville Olympics in '92. Its also right next to Val d'sere. It was a long drive so we went for a full 4 days.

There was really only one bar to go to, so we ended up at the same place every night. Then at around midnight all the people from this bar would walk over to a different bar. Kinda of strange. Definitely not the party atmosphere in Austria. Oh, all the people were British. I mean everyone. I don't think I heard French all weekend.

The snowboarding was pretty good considering there hadn't been much snowfall. There were a ton of rocks and I really messed up my board. The main reason we went to Tignes was because of the glacier. It would allow us to ski even if there wasn't snow anywhere else. But turns out, the glacier was closed most of the time due to high winds, we only got up there for one run down.

Unfortunately, for most of the trip Eamon and T-Met were deathly ill. Tony only boarded one day and Eamon two. Eamon didn't even go out at night so that shows just how sick he was. I started to feel sick too, but it didn't stop me. I guess this is what happens when you have 4 grown men living in a room about 20m2.

Paris, France

Me and Nasi in Front of the Eiffel Tower.

Well, my next trip in my month of travel was the best of all, or should I say will have been the best of all as I have a few more to go as I write this. I had never been to Paris, mainly because I the French pissed me off with the whole Saddam thing. But I knew I would have to go eventually. So I'm definitely very glad I waited to go with Nastasja, because it really is a romantic place. So this was out Christmas present. We were there for 4 days and managed to actually hit up the major tourist things. We were very exhausted.


We spent the first day walking along the river and just looking around the city. We saw the Eiffel tower and Napoleon's Tomb. The tower was bigger than I thought it would be and impressive for a structure built in the 1800's. Napoleon's tomb was quite hilarious. Strange how he was considered an enemy to Europe and even France at a time, but they have his grave like this. I mean geez, the guy was exiled.

NAPOLEON!!!!!!

Arc de Triomphe

That night we walked along the Champs de Elysee ( all spellings are definitely wrong cause I'm too lazy to look up the correct way). Its full of high class shops, so we went into the Lois Vuitton shop. These people are crazy stupid, I never want to be like that.

Each day after we would go to a different area of Paris. So we saw the Jewish quarter and had a really nice dinner at the "best" Italian place in Paris. Most of the time we ate $7 crepes and baguettes. Paris is not cheap. Also saw the Latin quarter, where I was able to find a Starbucks! Nastasja was getting a bit angry that I wouldn't shut the hell up about finding Starbucks. So even though she didn't feel the same joy I did, I know she was at least happy that I shut up.

The Paris Opera where Nasi will one day be singing, of course!

Our next big trip was to Versailles. Its a nice place, but not overly impressive compared to other things I've seen in Europe. We did the goofy tour where you listen to the person on the headset. I expected more out of the gardens, but I guess it doesn't help that it is winter and there aren't any flowers. Oh well. We didn't walk around much cause Nasi's back was hurting.

The gardens at Versailles.

Nastasja and I in Front of Versailles.

Another of the main things we did was go to the Louve. It sure is all its cracked up to be. No way to do it all in a week, let alone a day. So we hit the main things, the Mona Lisa, and the old Italian and French paintings. We spent about 2 hours there. Plenty enough for us.

Walk like a Greek/German...

Wroclaw, Poland

The best part about my Army trip was that I had to stay an extra night in Wroclaw (pronounced: V-roch-waf) by myself. They took so long making the orders for me to go, that the flight booked up and I had to stay. No problem for me! Wroclaw used to tbe the German city of Breslau. But after the war the Polish kind of took it. Poish history is very stranged, But basically, it boils down to them being ruled by various people over the last 3,000 or so years. This is the first time they've really been in charge of themselves! Anyways, Wroclaw is a hidden gem. Poland is know mainly for Krakow (I'm going there for New Year's) and Warsaw. But this city is just as beautiful, just not as well known. There are 130,000 students here too, so there are plenty of bars all in a central area.

My new friend Max and the Polish people of Wroclaw

Well, I decided to go out on the town for my only night in Wroclaw. I soon realized I had a lot to choose from. So I first did what any other wandering tourist would do. I went to the Irish Pub. I had a few beers then asked some one where a good place to go would be. They pointed me to a group of bars down the street. I found a random bar and was walking around and heard ENGLISH. So I stopped the guy. Turns out it was another American living in Wroclaw. He proceeded to take me under his wing and showed me around to just about every bar in Wroclaw.

The river, don't know the name

This city is very nice and I'm glad I was able to see it for a bit. One very strange thing though. I went to Pizza Hut to get a quick bite to eat and they put KETCHUP on their pizza!!