The Travelling Forumite

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Don Alexander
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The Travelling Forumite

Post by Don Alexander »

EDIT: Here's a direct link to Retiarius' post which contains the Ma3 Forumite Google Map!!

Hi there, everyone!!!

Lately, we've increased the internationalness of our crowd! People are starting to think of visiting other people from the forum IRL!!!

So, I thought I'd start a thread on a topic that seems to have been overlooked (just like food and drink, by the way, beyond the recipes ;) ): Travels!!!

I'm from Germany, as a few of you know. There seem to be no forumites closer than ~ 1000 km from me (Many in England, two Swedes, two Greeks, one Romanian) - so no visits from me in the near future... :(

Anyhow, my travels...

My mom is American, from Russellville, Arkansas. My first trip there was at -3 months!! ;) All in all, I've been to the US 14 times. The first 13 were "family business", we went every two years (plus a few additional times, e.g., when my Grandaddy died in '83) until 1992, then in 1993 I went there with two good friends, one of the awesomest vacations ever.

And then nothing until a month in Columbia, Missouri, in 2006 for PhD work. Alas, I've never been to a scientific conference in the States...

Otherwise, I've been several times to Richmond, Virginia, as a cousin of mine lives there. Twice to "The Mall" in Washington. The rest were just airports. New York, Atlanta, Chicago... My "westernmost" was Dallas-Fort Worth Airport.

The little country of Luxemburg lies just 20 kilometers from where I grew up, they have cheap gas and a movie theater showing English language (non-dubbed) movies, so I have been there probably ~100 times. Also, France and Belgium are reasonably close, so I have traveled there a few times as well.

During my early school years, we had youth trips each summer, which lead me to Switzerland, Austria, Italy and Sweden. Italy (Roma!) was also the final trip of my Latin class in late 1995. I've been to Italy (including Roma, Milano, Venezia, Bologna) several times during my PhD as well, for conferences and similar business.

In summer 1995, me and my best friend travelled per rail through Scandinavia. Denmark, Norway, Sweden, back to Norway, back to northern Sweden, then Finland and then a rush home through Sweden and Denmark again. I was also recently in Kopenhagen for a friend's PhD defense. Reached my "northernmost" during this journey somewhere east of Narvik. (I've also been to Iceland, but only as a stop in an Icelandic flight.)

My PhD has made me a traveller again. After more than a decade of not flying, I have now quite a few miles under my wing. An observing school in southeastern Spain, conferences and work visits in Italy, Turkey and Holland.

Further reaching were my two "great travels". In December 2007, I flew to the Chilean Andes for a week of observations at La Silla observatory, Santiago de Chile marks my "southernmost". And in July 2008, I was invited as a speaker to a conference in Nanjing, China, which marks my "easternmost".

So far, my continent count is missing only Africa, Australia and Antarctica. Alas, I will not be able to attend a conference in April in Cairo and Alexandria, Egypt... :(

Right now, I'm broke and not travelling, so no idea what the future will hold.

I'm looking forward to your experiences!! Any travel-related stories, or airport-catastrophes, are also welcome here, of course!!
Last edited by Don Alexander on Sun Jan 25, 2009 7:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Travelling Forumite

Post by Asaryu »

You seem to have been almost everywhere...

I had not ever travelled until the middle of last year when I went to visit george's mum in Cambodia.

We spent the first few days in Singapore, so I could get used to the heat on the equator while there was readily avaiable air-con.

Then we went on to Cambodia, where I spent most of my time in a mixed state between anxiety for meeting george's mum for the first time, and acute depression mixed with hope for the country that has just been fucked on by just about everyone.

On the up side, we petted monkeys!
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Re: The Travelling Forumite

Post by Don Alexander »

Asaryu wrote:You seem to have been almost everywhere...
Just not where you are. ;)

Or in Canada. :(
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Re: The Travelling Forumite

Post by Sideb(.)(.)bPlatypus »

I'm pretty close to the DFW area :-o
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Re: The Travelling Forumite

Post by Fen »

Romania here ^_^. Yes, you hate us, but we like you.

i did go o a round-Europe-organized trip in 5th grade, but I was *literally* tied to my sister(with a rope), and I don't remember much. But we went to Budapest, Wien, Salzburg, Paris, London&Oxbridge, Bruxelles, and I have a lively memory of hating Munich, though we only stayed there for a few hours.

Also went to Austria in first grade, and Switzerland in 7th.
And those were my organised trips:).

Though i do a fair bit of travel around the country, I rarely leave. I went to Hungary for the Sziget festival twice(07&08), Austria this June(Novarock!), Spain in July(and a night in Rome on the way back. a BRILLIANT night, I may add).

Future plans? Hell yeah. Leaving to Germany this month, spend 3 days, then a week in Amsterdam,and one night in Wien(WOO!).

And I WILL hitchhike around Europe some time. When I have money, guitar skills and guts, that is.

Also future plans is going to language school. Hopefully I'll manage to get to Japan/Russia at least one semester, and if I don't pull off an epic fail, do my MA in Holland. If that fails, I'm sure some certain hot street musicians in San Sebastian are willing to take a girl in their group for the fanservice.

Also. T2b: Greece is filled with Greeks. Greeks has the hottest guys I've ever seen o.o. Even the Spartan midget was hot! Having met them, I think I'll take up my grandma's offer and go to Greece this year.
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Re: The Travelling Forumite

Post by Don Alexander »

Yeah, monies...

Most of my travels in the last years were paid for by my PhD supervisor, from his travel grant.

Only longer one I financed alone was my "Bill Clinton/Al Gore trip" :D

A pretty nutty but totally rich professor invited me to give a talk for his group - in Roma!!! :ymparty: Told me he would finance the whole trip. I asked if I could stop with two other groups as well, and he agreed.

So my itinerary was:

- Day 1: Travel to Merate, an observatory near Milano. Get treated to utterly awesome seafood dinner (price: > 50 Euros per person!!! :-o )
- Day 2: Give talk in Merate (earn 100 Euros), travel to Roma.
- Day 3: Give talk in Roma, travel to Bologna (Roma, sorry to say, was a bad experience!)
- Day 4: Give talk in Bologna (earn 200 Euros), get treated to dinner again.
- Day 5: Travel back home.

Later: Get 550 Euros from Roma group.

I had a week of Italy and earned several hundred Euros giving talks about my work!!! I felt so awesumz!! :ymsmug:

Edit: @Fen: Where in Germany?? Probably nowhere near me... :(
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Re: The Travelling Forumite

Post by Fen »

Berlin!
i shall be teriffied and have to control my reflex of saying "DEUTSCH IST DER TEUFEL" whenever I hear someone utter a word in German. Hell, i almost got my ass kicked in Munchen because I leaned on a table=/.


Roma during the day gave me a headache(technically, we also spent a day+night there before going to spain, but i'll disregard that day). However, a tnight, that city goes wild. In this order:
8pm: FUCK YOU, GROUP OF BIMBOS! I'M GOING SOLO! make a map with objectives I want to see.
10pm:having seen Vatican and some other place, keep asking long-haired people (in spanish:P) "Donde esta un rockbar?!" "What does this ragazza want?" "a rockbar? In Rome? hard rock cafe" "no hard rock cafe, stinky basement rock bar!" "we no have that".
11pm: stop in a bar and drink some coffee. Romanian waitress. nice talk :). She hates Romanian pasta, I hate Italian pasta. Didn't get along.
11:15 pm.Plaza navarro. 3 street singers in one plaza. WTF? sit next to the one with the amp. Make him play pink floyd. over and over again.
12pm:Guy leaves, i hang around a while, decide to go to the Pantheon.
12:05: right outside, some guys were on a bus, having a live concert. "Excuse me, where can i get a drink?" "anywhere?" "...anywhere?" "yeah." "but where do i drink it?" "ON THE STREETS OF COURSE!" "O.O".
1am:Reach Pantheon, tipsy. notice group of decent-looking chicks with one hot guy. "Hello, want to be my friends?" "sure!". Follow them to a live jazz concert in another plaza.
2am: everything suddenly closes down. Locals star throwing eggs at us, hitting the hot guy. Drunken italians start throwing empty beer bottles at the locals. Fun moment.
2:30 am:Pantheon. Find yet another hot guy with his even hotter girlfriend. Chatted for about an hour. left for Trevi.
Found Trevi, walked back to the hotel, woke up the bimbos, "LET'S GO HOME BITCHES I NEED SLEEP!"

6am:check in for our 7:45am plane.
7am:"The plane for Romania is having a slight delay"
8am:I manage to sit on one of their filthy Champino chairs. Fall asleep.
11am:we board the plane. Have no memory of it whatsover. They said i slept through turbulance. I wake up alone in the plane, notice I'm in Bucharest, go home and sleep.

Wonderful night!
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Re: The Travelling Forumite

Post by Don Alexander »

:))

Fen has the best travelling stories, methinks!!

And everyone knows Deutsch ist teuflisch!! :P

How are you going to get to Berlin??
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Re: The Travelling Forumite

Post by Fen »

Airplane, of course.
Cheapest. I was surprised to see that planes are more expensive than trains=/.

So where in this Lander der Teufel are you at?
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Re: The Travelling Forumite

Post by Don Alexander »

Fen wrote:Airplane, of course.
Cheapest. I was surprised to see that planes are more expensive than trains=/.
So where in this Lander der Teufel are you at?
Oh. :(

I'm a few hours travel by car pretty much straight south of Berlin. Thought if you were coming by car (who knows...) we coulkd meet for a bit at an Autobahn rest stop close to where I work. Would not even have been a detour for you.

Anyhow, have fun in Berlin!! :ymhug:
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Re: The Travelling Forumite

Post by Fen »

Alas, I don't have a license, and I travel solo.
(also, with my one-week time line, it would've been impossible to spend more than a few hours on the road. Though traveling 12 hours for a concert and leaving at dawn for the road back has not been unheard of.
You should totally come to Berlin. It's filled with strangers that speak a weird language! i can barely handle strangers in my own country :ympray:
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Re: The Travelling Forumite

Post by cyanide_sweet »

I've been to quite a few places for someone my age. I lived in France for two summers (visited Belgium for a few days and passed through Germany). I've been to L.A. three times now, Hawaii once, Seattle once, and on an Alaskan cruise. I've also travelled pretty extensively through Canada. I've been from BC and every province in between up to Quebec. I'm going to Halifax and PEI in a few months which is pretty exciting :)

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Re: The Travelling Forumite

Post by midgetshrimp »

I consider myself fairly worldly, compared to a lot of the people in my general area. I've been half way across the US (once) and to Europe (twice).

My family went to a reunion in Wisconsin ~12-13 years ago. Stops on the way and such. That's my in-country experience.

In 2005, I went on the high school Europe trip. It was a Christmas gift, completely paid for (except spending money), and I still have no idea who paid or how we got the money. The trip was ten days through five countries. Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, and France. We spent three days in Germany (arrived in Frankfurt, visited Heidelberg, and then went to Munich the first day). To this day, Munich is my favorite city in the world. It was so clean, the architecture was amazing, and the people were awesome. It was just a nice place in which to be. We spent the next three days in Lucern. Well, I spent two. A bit of a side story, that school year we had a foreign exchange student stay at our house, named Lukas. One of those days in Switzerland, I took a train to Zurich and met his mother and sister, who took me around for a day in the city. We went to the zoo and different hot spots, and they were very concerned with their English (which, of course, was flawless. Which always amuses me). That night, they took me to their house, where I met the rest of the family and had dinner. I can't remember all of what we ate, some meat that was alright, and giant white asparagus (aspargol?). It was an amazing day, to say the least. The last three days were spent in Paris. I didn't like Paris. The city itself was for the most part beautiful, but it wasn't clean and the people sucked.

The next time I went out of the country (summer before last), Lukas' family invited mine back to Switzerland for two weeks. We went all over the place, Lucern, Bern, Zurich, Lugano, Thun, Montreaux... I almost bought a 4.5 kg bar of Toblerone... and I should have, because I still have 70 francs that I cant use, and can't exchange anywhere around here without losing at least half. But yea. One of the nights, Lukas took my brother Anthony and I to the "meanest" street of Zurich. We walked past a pair of prostitutes conversing on the sidewalk... and that's about the worst of it. I tried a lot of different kinds of beer, but I only had one full bottle. I just took a taste of whatever my brother got until he got annoyed and I ordered my own. I think it was Ettinger. Not bad, but not what I'd prefer.

The only other time I've been out of the country was probably in 2001 or so, when we went to Montreal. It's a beautiful city, and I've had a love for the Hard Rock Cafe ever since. I have a 1.5 liter mug from the HRC in Munich that I drink iced tea out of. It's pretty sweet. And I plan on being in Australia by this time next year, for what by now are probably obvious reasons. :p
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Re: The Travelling Forumite

Post by karpeth »

Hey, germany?

I'm going interrailing this summer. Mayber a forumite tour is in place?

Should I start a topic to gather the interests of interrailing in europe, or are we to few?
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Re: The Travelling Forumite

Post by LadySheDevil »

O_O;

I've been nowhere cool at all.
Farthest south: Minot, ND (if I recall, maybe a 4 hour drive... And the only place I've ever been outside of Canada.)
Farthest west: Medicine Hat, AB
Farthest north: Saskatoon, SK
Farthest east: Brandon, MB (Though I was kinda too young to remember much)

My top places I'd LOVE to see though...

Ireland, Scotland, Finland, Sweden, Germany (Would Hutterite German be acceptable for use? :-\ )
... Japan, Australia, most of South and Central America, and HAWAII! (Especially Oahu... DAMN YOU, LOST!!!)
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