Dinner at Antonio's

Last night we were invited to a farewell pasta dinner for Charles (he's going back to Luxembourg, and then to Lausanne for university) at Antonio's new apartment. Antonio and Holgar cooked us some delicious pasta, we all had some drinks and it was a really fun evening. Here are some pictures from the night:





Me and the chefs (Antonio and Holger). Check out Holgar's stylin' apron.













Lindsey and George enjoying the pasta.









Group pic (don't you love timers on cameras?)
front row: Al (Anthony's cousin that is visiting), me, Adrienn, Antonio, Charles
middle row: Anthony, Javier, George, Elisabetta
back row: Lindsey, Holger









Cue the top gun music.


















Lindsey, Antonio, Adrienn and me squished inside Antonio's new Ikea closet.

















Charles, Antonio and me.

Oktoberfest

Believe it or not, Oktoberfest mostly takes place in September. This is because the weather is nicer in September, which was definitely true last weekend. We were in Munich for the weekend to check out the true Oktoberfest. 16 of us drove up on friday night and then returned home on sunday. It was quite an adventure, but so much fun!

I drove up with Adrienn, Shane and Evan. We rented our car from Europcar, which was cool because I got a discount through work and it only ended up being ~$184 for 3 days, including an extra driver. Shane and I picked up the car friday afternoon and proceeded to the meeting spot (a gas station in Zurich) so that we could drive up with the other cars. We waited....and waited. Evan and Adrienn showed up (they had gotten on the wrong train so they were late). Then the Berg's car showed up: Vance, Tommy, Lindsey and Kiran (friend from Calgary that is visiting). Apparently they were held up by some confusion at the rental place, involving my roommate's car. We set off to leave, and managed to lost the Berg's car within 10m of the gas station. Sigh....long story short, the 4 cars drove up separately (I won't bore you with the details of why the other cars didn't meet us, I'm sure you are already wondering why I haven't gotten to the good part of the weekend).

Our drive was pretty good, Shane drove and we had some wicked tunes to pass the time. We got to go through Austria on the way, so I can officially add that country to my European countries that I have visited list (we bought kabobs, mmmm). We were held up by a giant traffic jam, as well as some light complications, so ended up at the campground around midnight. Since the original plan had been to meet at 10 (that when the campground closed and we wanted to get a site) we were doubtful that anybody would be there. But by some miracle of Oktoberfest, Devon's car (Devon, Travis, Warren and George) and Richard's car (Richard, Bernard, Henry and Olivier) were already there! And the Berg's car showed up a few minutes later. We all rejoiced over the fact that we managed to meet up with each other, and then tackled the question of where to sleep. Everybody else opted for sleeping in the car, but our car drove to a field down the road and set up our tents.




Shane, at our renegade camping site.











The next morning we awoke early to find bulldozers driving past our "campsite". Luckily, nobody seemed to care about our tents, and we packed up and went to meet the group. They were all in the midst of getting campsites (a highly chaotic process) so we joined in and by 10am everyone was set up and ready to go (except Bernard and Henry, they were going to meet Henry's friend). We jumped on the bus (after some confusion about which bus to take) and went to Oktoberfest!




Warren got totally decked out for the event (he actually purchased the lederhosen!)














Our first view of Oktoberfest. Think Stampede, but replace cowboy hats with lederhosen and add 30 more beer drinking venues. And remove the rodeo















We went directly to try and get into one of the tents, since apparently they are the best places to be. Well, as direct as you can be with a group of 14 (aka, lots of stops to buy food and hats). We crammed into a mob of people outside a tent, with information that they would eventually open the doors to let people in. But after 1.5 hours of waiting, we gave up with that idea and just went to one of the outdoor biergartens. It was a beautiful day, so I was fine with this plan. However, Devon, Shane and Evan were determined to get inside, and Devon and Shane (and apparently Vance) eventually did later in the day. The biergartens were really fun. The beer all came in 1L mugs, which was fine by us. We drank and ate chicken (mmmm) and met lots of people.


Prost! ("Cheers" in German)
Lindsey, Adrienn and I with our beer











Tommy, Kiran and Vance in their Oktoberfest hats (keep your eyes open for pics of everyone wearing Kiran's hat throughout the day)











Evan accidentally broke one of the beer mugs (doing what else, drumming on the table) and used the pieces to amputate Vance's arm.















Biergartens!
left to right: guy that we dubbed "marker guy", Evan, Olivier, Richard, Lindsey, me, George.












George and Warren (another hat sighting)















After a few beers, and a rousing game of Never Ever (Tommy: "What Vance, you've done that!!!) some people wanted to go on some rides. I chose not to fork over 6euros, but most of the group went on the Drop of Fear (or whatever the German-named equivalent is) and a roller coaster (after some poor line-up decisions by a certain somebody, lol). Afterwards we went to find another beirgarten (since they are the only place other than the tents you can buy beer), but not before losing Shane and Adrienn. Oh well, every war has casualties. Not really sure how that fits in, but I'm leaving it.





Olivier (cow hat!), Kiran, Richard and Vance, sitting around after the roller coaster.









The next biergarten was pretty crowded, but a few of us managed to squeeze into a table to get drinks for everyone (they will only serve you if you are sitting down). We met lots of people at the table, it was really fun. Saw somebody nearby puke on the table (that was the third person I saw puke that day! The first was some really drunk German girl outside the beer tent at about 11am, haha. The second was Kiran, reminiscent of Chem camping last summer, hahaha....oh spiritus...). Anyways, the waitress came and rinsed off the table with a mug of water and then everyone sat back down. That's when I made my decision to refrain from touching the biergarten tables much in the future.


Lindsey, Vance, Tommy and me. Tommy's hat has a fiberoptic deely that lights up! It was so cool, too bad somebody stole it....











Eventually we decided that it was time to head home, in order to not miss the last train back to the campground. We had to wait a bit for the bus connection, but that allowed time for a late night Burgar King snack. On the bus ride home, Vance was falling asleep and doing the classic "head bob". Some other people on the bus thought this was pretty funny and turned it into a game where they cheer every time....haha, Richard got a sweet video of it.




What, can't a person have a nap on the curb while waiting for the bus?















Back at the campground, we met up with Olivier, George and Warren who had left separately. After a bit of hanging around, I decided that I was ready for bed so went to my tent. Later in the night Adrienn returned with news that she had lost her purse and Shane had lost his camera, oh dear. This was accompanied by the sounds of Tommy puking outside his tent, haha. Well, nobody expected it to be a fiasco-free weekend.



George's sleeping spot: the trunk of their car. I think I prefer my tent.











The next morning everyone pretty much got up, packed up and left. Richard, Bernard, Henry. Olivier and Kiran decided to stay in Munich for the day to sightsee, the Shane and Adrienn went back to look for their lost items, and Adrienn was lucky enough to discover that somebody had returned her purse, and it's contents to lost and found! Shane never got his camera back though, sucks. While waiting for them to return Evan and I got a ride to the store with the Berg's car, and then had a nice detour around the city trying to get back to the campground, haha.

I drove on the way home, which was fun since I haven't driven since I left Calgary. We made it back to Baden without any trouble and then I returned the car to Zurich the next morning on my way to work. That was a bit of an adventure, since I had no idea what route to take through Zurich and had no navigator. Stupid one way streets....anyways, I got the car back eventually, and made it to work on time (it was a good idea leaving early from home, haha).

So that was our Oktoberfest adventure. Good times, if I ever go back I'm going super early to get into a tent and then staying there all day. Devon said it was really cool inside, lots of music and dancing and stuff. Oh well, still was an awesome weekend!

Congratulations Mark and Erin!

Well, I just found out that my two friends from Calgary just got engaged! Congratulations guys! Anyways, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to break out those embarrassing pictures that I've been saving for just such an occasion....mwah ha ha. (Don't worry Erin, all the bad ones are of Mark). I'll throw in some nice ones of the happy couple too.



Eating chicken fingers at The Den on Mark's 20th birthday.














Halloween last year. Aww, Tinker Bell and Peter Pan.
















At Kadler's kegger last year. Apparently there was a chair shortage.














"This is the pose the girl on the costume box was doing"

















The beautiful bride. Wait a minute....

Erin, I hope he doesn't out-do you on the big day. Hopefully you can find a dress nicer than one designed for an 8-year old girl.

Bellinzona and other weekend activites

Last saturday I went on a day trip to Bellinzona, which is in Ticino (the Italian canton of Swtizerland). I went with Richard, Lindsey, Olivier and Fengling (intern at Alstom). We left moderatly early on saturday morning and caught the 3 hour train to Bellinzona. We didn't leave really early, beacause the night before we were out lateish at a BBQ at KSB (learned a really fun new drinking game called "Flippy Cups" or "Tubo Cups"!). The reason we decided to go was because there was a wine festival that weekend, and some cool castles to see. Samuela from my work is from near Bellinzona, so she gave me all sorts of info about what to see.

We arrived around lunchtime and wandered into the market area to buy lunch. I had some yummy flatbread/cheesy thing. It was a beautiful day, though, apparently many days in Ticino are like that. We first went up the hill to Castelgrande and climbed up one of the towers. Something that is cool about the castles in Bellinzona is that you are able to walk up some of the towers and along the walls. Many other castles it seems you are only able to look from the ground (or they are lame buildings that are called a castle to trick you into thinking it is a cool thing to see).





Castelgrande (taken from one of the other castles)








There was a big wall that stretched out away from the castle, so we walked along that to the end...it had a nice grassy path and everything. Then we walked back underneath the wall, in a cool tunnel thing. After that me, Lindsey and Richard decided to take a nap on the lawn (it was a pretty lazy trip).


Fengling and Lindsey in the tunnel under the wall at Castelgrande













Lindsey, Olivier and Richard all taking pictures of the Castelgrande wall. Man, we're tourists.












Lindsey, Fengling, Richard and Olivier on Castelgrande, with Montebello Castle in the background.









Next we walked back down the hill, and up the other hill where Montebello Castle and Sasso Castle are. We only went as high as Montebello, becasue the other one is small and not really worth seeing. Once again, we got to explore along the walls of the castle and take some nice pictures.




View of Bellinzona












Lindsey, Richard, me and Fengling near Montebello Castle.










After seeing the castles, we went back down to the town to find the wine festival in full swing. For 6CHF you could buy a wine glass and then go around to all the booths and sample wine from different regions. It was pretty fun, I was able to work on my wine conneseur skills (they still suck). I only stayed for a little while, and caught the train back to Baden (the other's waited until after 7 so they could ride for free...hooray for my GA!)





Me and Lindsey tasting wine.










*************************************************************

On Sunday we got a new table! The Berg had gotten a used coffee table from their neighbours, and realized that they had nowhere to put it, so offered it to the other praktikants. We claimed it the fastest, so on sunday me, Richard and Vance carried it from the Berg to Kehl. It was a bit of an adventure, since we live about 30min away, up a hill. But there were no fiascos (though, we got some funny looks) and it fits beautifully into our living room.

Sunday night I went to a hip hop concert in Baden with Lindsey, George, Phil (German guy who works at ABB), Travis, Devon, and Dan (new praktikant from England). We saw a group called De La Soul, and it was interesting because I have never been to a hip hop concert before. It ended up being lots of fun (any kind of live music always is) and me and Lindsey even went up on stage at one point when they wanted a whole bunch of girls up there, haha.


Me and Lindsey on stage with De La Soul! (thanks to Travis for the pic)












It was a nice low key weekend. Next weekend I am going to Ibiza!!!

Adventures in and around Sion (Sept 3-4)

Alrighty. So after my conference in Lausanne I took the train over to Sion and met up with Tommy and Lindsey. We stayed in an HI hostel, which was really nice. What was even nicer is that we somehow didn't have to pay the extra fee for not having a membership (woot). They arrived pretty late in the evening, so we just chillaxed at the hostel and then had an early night (I was pretty tired from the conference anyways).

The next day we enjoyed a quality hostel breakfast and then went to meet Richard and Bernard at the train station. After stopping at migro's for food, we walked up one of the hills to see some castley thing (I really can't be bothered to look up the name of these things...do your own research if you care). It was cool because there was a small chapel inside that was pretty old and had a lot of the original interior. There was a pipe organ that somebody was playing, pretty sweet. We also got a nice view from up there, we could even see our hostel.





The town of Sion













The castle that we visited













Lindsey, Tommy and Bernard (behind to the left is the castle that we didn't visit)












Richard in front of a nice view of Sion.








So after our sightseeing we started out on a short hike. Unfortunately, the hike wasn't very well marked and we only had a very undetailed map. We started and ended in the right towns, but I'm not sure that we followed the official "hike" route. Anyways, it was still a nice walk, we were walking among vineyards the whole time. The place where we stopped for lunch was a cool vineyard grapey shelter (I'm sure it has a real name, but who knows what it is). After the hike we took the train back to our hostel and chilled/got ready to go out for the evening.






Lunch in a vineyard












I call it "Sion through the grapes".









We hopped on the train to Lausanne (only an hour away) and wandered around the city a bit looking for a cool place to eat. Let me tell you, I think wandering around Lausanne was more work than the hike we did, because it's a really hilly city. Anyways, after a bit of looking we stumbled across this really cool crepe place that was reasonably priced. We sat a had some wine (from a region across the lake) and then got dinner. The menu was all in French, so we had a fun time trying to figure out what all the choices were (with some help from the waitress). It didn't help that they all had strange names that had nothing to do with what actually came on the crepe. I ended up getting some sort of goat cheese and spinach crepe (really yummy!), and everyone else found something that they enjoyed. For Tommy, this was crepes and ice cream. After dinner, we all decided that we should try the dessert crepes too, I shared a caramel/apple crepe with Richard. Tommy got another dessert crepe (man, Vance would not have been impressed with Tommy's poor dinner decisions, lol). Lindsey and Bernard shared some sort of Flambe crepe, which was cool because the waitress came and lit it on fire. After dinner, we decided that we didn't have time to go anywhere else (since we had to catch the last train back to Lausanne at 12:30) so we just walked around/tried to find the train station. We thought it would be easy, since we walked uphill all the way there and then should just have to continue downhill on the way back. But something strange had happened and we had to ask for directions. This was fun, because the girl didn't speak English so we had to use our combined French powers to interpret her directions. We eventually made it to the station (though, I confess, we had to check a couple maps on the way), and then got back to the hostel. Tommy saved us from a giant gross hostel spider, and then I drifted off to sleep to the uneasy thoughts of spiders crawling all over my face.






Sitting by a fountain in Lausanne.













The next day we woke up semi-early in order to do a 5-7 hour hike. We realized that we hadn't planned well, since we would have to carry our bags with all our stuff on the whole hike. We realized that we REALLY hadn't planned well when we didn't know what bus to get on to get to the beginning of the hike. After a series of trains and waiting (there are fewer trains and busses on sunday) we realized that we would not have enough time to complete the hike and catch transportation home without running the whole way. We admitted defeat, and just took the train to the end hike destination, lol. This was a tiny little town called St Gengolf which was right on the boarder between Switzerland and France. We walked across the boarder (which was marked by a bridge and a random sign) and had some crepes (mmmm, more crepes....) and then went swimming in Lake Geneva (which is also called Lac Leman in some places). It's a nice lake, really clear water. Lottts of fish (I didn't like them swimming by my feet).






Eating crepes in France.











Swiss-French boarder. Wow, a boarder less guarded than the Waldshut boarder!














Swimming in Lake Geneva















We found out that there was a ferry to different towns around the lake, so decided to take this instead of the train for some variation. It's still under the SBB, so my GA got me on for free (woot!). We traveled around the lake and got off in Montreux, and walked around there for a little bit, it's another pretty lake-side city.





All of us on the Ferry. Richard, Bernard, Tommy, Lindsey and me.










Chillion Castle












We returned to Lausanne to get on the train, and happened to run into George, Olivier and some other praktikants from Baden (strange coincidence!). They had been in Geneva for the weekend, so we traveled the rest of the way back home with them.

It was a really random trip, but ended up being lots of fun. It was nice to finally see some new areas in Switzerland, I really like the area around Lake Geneva. I would like to come back to Lausanne and stay in the city (there seems to be lots of cool night places to go to), and would also like to spend a day in Geneva sometime and see all the UN stuff.

Thanks to Bernard for some of his pics!

SSBE Conference in Lausanne

Last week (Sept 1-2) I was in Lausanne for a work conference. It was the Swiss Society for Biomedical Engineering Annual Meeting, and almost everyone (about 15 people) from my office attended (my boss is the president of the society). For the conference I had to prepare a poster about "The Reproducibility of Trabecular Bone Analysis of Lumbar Vertebrae of Two Inbred Strains of Mice". Sounds pretty fancy eh? It's about a study that was done before I got here, by Josh (my predecessor) and some others, and the responsibility got handed over the me. The interesting part is, although Josh mentioned that I might have to present something, nobody officially informed me that I would have a part in the conference. Only when I saw my name in the program and asked did they say "Oh ya, you are making and presenting a poster". Ah, what!?!? Lol, actually it was pretty easy to make, because we have a set design (damn, I didn't get to break out the poster board and felts and glitter) and about half the information was already compiled into an abstract (written by Josh). I had to make some more tables and images and then add to the writing and voila! I go the beautiful poster you see below:


Alright, so I arrived in Lausanne Thursday morning (after a few morning fiascos...but it all worked out in the end ;) ) and watched some presentations. After a tasty lunch there were more presentations and then we got to the poster bit. There were 37 poster each day, and each person had to give a 2 minute speal (accompanied with a couple power point slides) about what their study was. I had planned out what I was going to say (earlier that day) and was feeling pretty confident, despite my dislike of public speaking. Unfortunately once I was standing up there with the mike I got really nervous, and then nervous about being nervous...etc. In the end it went ok, but I could have done better. Oh well, it was over at least.






Me giving my presentation.









The funniest part about the poster presentations is that they scheduled 37 two minute talks into one hour. Hmmmm, now I know it's been a few months since I have had to do complex math, but I'm pretty sure that that doesn't add up. And of course almost everybody talked for longer than 2 minutes (not me though! That was my one success) so it went way too long. This wasn't really a big deal, but the guy organizing the presenters sure thought it was. It was very entertaining watching him constantly checking his watch, and urging the next presenter to start walking over to the mike stand before the previous presenter had even finished talking (he did this to me...maybe I can blame my nervousness on that dude). Another funny part about the presentations was that about halfway through the presenters somebody said at the end "Please come see my poster later this afternoon". So of course after that everybody had to say it. Some people started adding in what there poster number was, and then everybody started saying that too. This did nothing but add to the length of the presentations (I'm sure the scheduler was not pleased, lol).

Alright, enough about the things I found entertaining that nobody cares about. After the presentations everybody got an hour and a half (minus the time the presentations had run over) to wander around and actually view the posters, and ask questions to the presenter. This was pretty informal, and most people just took advantage of the coffee and snacks (yay!!) and socialized. I stood by my poster for awhile, but the only people who came and talked to me were people from my group, mostly just trying to think of questions to make me answer (haha). I checked out some of the other posters too, some were pretty cool.





Poster viewing / discussion time. Aka, free snacks (woot!)













Me and my poster!














Cool looking pic of some of us leaving the conference. We look like a gang or something (an office gang obviously).

Harry, Martin, Henri, Samuela, Kathryn, me, Duncan





Alright, let's jump ahead to the evening. We left the conference and went to drop off our bags at the hotel (staying in a hotel, what an uncommon luxury!). We then headed over to the bbq dinner by the lake. It was really fun, lots of great things to eat and drink. It was a beautiful evening, and it was fun hanging out with my coworkers, who I normally don't see outside of work. After dinner, Samuela took some of us (me, Romain, Ralph (my boss), Thomas, Martin, Henri) out to some nearby bars. She went to university in Lausanne so had friends in the city, who we met some of. It was fun, and we got back late to the hotel to sleep.





Susanne, Duncan, Doro , me and Stefan eating dinner.












View of Lake Geneva










The second day of the conference was similar to the first day, except I didn't have to present anything (hooray!). The highlight of the day were the poster awards. We all made bets about which 2 of the 64 posters were going to win (I'm not really sure what the criteria was, but I bet on the guy that had a video of him falling in his presentation). And.....my poster won! Haha, no, I'm just kidding (did you believe me?). Stefan from our group did win one of the awards though, congrats to him! And, somehow, the two winners were ones that Tom and Samuela had bet on, so we all had to cough up 5CHF. (Though, Tom was the one who organized the bet, so it's a little suspicious...haha, jk). After that, everyone headed home on the train, but I stuck around in Lausanne because I was staying in the area for the weekend....to be continued in the next post!

Thanks to Phil (my officemate from Vancouver) for all the conference pics!