• On Life and Love

    Nuremberg: Day 1 (Monday)

    (Note: it’s looking like I’m going to be a day or two behind on each of these. That’s not the worst, I guess.) Agenda: Get checked in at the apartment Get food Walk around and see some stuff A pretty chill agenda, brought on by the fatigue of travel and wanting to ease ourselves in a bit. I teased this in the last post: I wish I had a picture of what Google’s live translation made of that photo, but it was garbage. Something about wrinkles. Translating now based off of that picture reveals that we should have had our train tickets stamped for validation. Oops. But we made it!

  • On Life and Love

    Nuremberg: Day 0 (Travel)

    Travel day was only slightly Home Alone-esque. I got most of the way to the airport before realizing I didn’t have my passport. Luckily, it’s a 15-20 minute drive, but we only had a bit over an hour once we got through security. …I like being at airports early. Sue me. Better to chill at the gate than chill at home and have to do the backpack run through the airport. Anyway, the new (?) United wing of the Charlotte-Douglas airport has added some cool digital mural art that we ogled: The flights themselves were pretty easy. Charlotte to DC ran late, DC to Zurich was smooth. Dante’s joy at…

  • On Life and Love

    Buying Russian Train Tickets: A Tale of Language and Gaming

    Goal Get from Moscow to Saint Petersburg on a particular day, starting at a particular time, and on a particular train. Trouble I don’t read Russian! Nor do I have a grasp on the phonetics of the alphabet, although I can now successfully remember/guess the sounds of some letters and thus near-cognates (e.g., “ДOKУMEHTA” is probably something about a document, although Google Translate throws up its hands). Things in My Favor I’m using Google Chrome, which seamlessly lets me toggle back and forth between the original Russian and translated English. I have a precise train number, car number, and set of seat options to book. (Hoo, boy, if this had…

  • On Life and Love

    Visiting Russia: the Unfriendly Reactions

    The trip to Russia is in planning–our traveling companion is researching hotels (so we can get visas!) and sight-seeing destinations in Moscow and St. Petersburg. What’s been surprising me is how much negativity I get when I tell people I’m planning a visit to Russia. “It’s depressing!” (with pictures like the one to the right) “Don’t go to XYZ!” “It’s super-dangerous!” “The USSR?!” It’s disappointing that my friends and colleagues have little other than (relatively uninformed, I think) skepticism and dire warnings. I find wonder in so many things; a few pictures from the internet don’t suffice to satisfy or discourage that. I might choose not to visit an active…