In Brussels now

Quick post because we pay for internet in this hotel and the time is running down. We came to Brussels today from London and have made it safely to our hotel. Internet use might be rare here so it might be 3 - 4 days before I get new stuff and all the London photos up. In short, London was awesome. I got to meet Joy's friend Eva who took me out on the town and even got into Wimbledon like Gabe said. I went Friday night on a whim (Pun intended) and queued up in the general admission line. After 30 mins I got in on a general ticket that lets you watch matches on the 17 smaller courts, but not on Centre Court or #1 Court. After watching a bit a random dude came up and offered me his ticket for court #1 since he was leaving. The seat was awesome and free. Just wait until I get the pictures up. Bye.

Now With Video!!!

Alright so I have figured out how to post video on the blog now. This is going to add a whole new dynamic to Onion Rings and Root Beer. I think we're going to be a worldwide sensation in no time. The three videos below are from the top of one of the tallest structures in Copenhagen- the city hall clock tower. Please note that my spac-tac-u-lar narration was made before I was sure whether or not the mic could even pick up my voice and that I could successfully upload the videos. A special cameo appearance is made by my room mate and travel buddy Mr. Gabe Dadi.

We also have reason to celebrate here today.

I finally found onion rings in Copenhagen. Well, okay that's a lie. What this delicious little treat actually is is some sort of faux-crab meat ring that has been deep fried by my good friends at the China Box kiosk near our class building. But hey, they LOOK like onion rings and taste darn good so I won't complain.

We finally received our itenerary for the next week or so. We will depart Denmark early Friday morning and I will march onto the Brittish Isles like a triumphant Caesar. We remain in London through Monday when we then travel to Brussels, Belgium. They have planned most of our time for us in both cities unfortunately but I will do my best to see the sights I wish to see. The Wimbledon Tennis Championships will be underway while we are in London and I'd sure like to partake in the legendary strawberries and cream. We will attend a presentation by the London 2012 Olympics Association and I will probably complain to them that baseball is no longer an olympic sport. I know less about Brussels but am assured that the food will be delicious. We will be meeting with people from the European Union while there and it will also be the first country where I may find some use for the modicum of French I have retained from my high school language courses.

Don't Make Me Come Back There!

Ok seriously guys. I leave the country for barely a week and a half and already things are falling apart. First Tim Russert dies and then George Carlin too!? And now I read that Ferd Grisanti's is kaput. Honestly, I don't want anymore bad news for at least a week.

It's Sweden

As promised here are some photos from our weekend in Stockholm. The red and white boats in this picture are two old boats that have been moored and converted hostels. We stayed on the bottom floor of the white boat. You can see from the picture how impossibly small our room was. Thanks to my astute decision to throw the paper sandwhich (paper-rock-paper) I beat Gabe in best of three rock-paper-scissors to win the right to sleep on the roomier bottom bunk. We avoided seasickness Friday night and then went to explore Stockholm on Saturday. Stockholm is a city of connected islands separating the inland lakes with the Baltic Sea. We took water taxis to the various island, the most interesting of which was the "Old Island" with its ancient buildings and narrow cobblestoned roads. The other highlight of the trip was seeing the Vasa. This was a warship from the 1600's that they recovered from the harbor and now have reconstucted 95% of it. It was amazing how large the ship was given that is was constructed 300 years ago. You can find out all about it here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_%28ship%29 .

That night was went to a pub to watch the Russia vs. Holland Euro soccer match and befriended a Texan businessman who bought all our rounds and a Scottish bartender with whom we argued the superiority of Kentucky bourbon and Scottich Scotch. The soccer match was actually entertaining, but I am really missing american baseball.

I bravely snapped the picture of the young Swedish guard in front of the Royal Palace. His helmet was just so cool.

Bork Bork from Sweden

We successfully managed the european train system and made it to Stockholm, Sweden today. It's even farther north than Denmark and that means the daylight is crazy. As I type this it is just about 10:30 PM and the sun is just setting, with plenty of light still. Our hostel is a boat moored in the main river here. Our room even has a porthole and everything. I'll post pictures soon. Computer time is short now so I gotta go. I'll recap Sweden on Monday.

"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to prosper." -Ben Franklin

Wednesday after class we finally made it to the famous Carlsberg Brewery. The Carlsberg Company seems to be to Copenhagen what Coke and Budweiser are to Atlanta and St. Louis respectively. The brewery has many old and very cool buildings including one with four giant elephants holding up a walkway. The swastika on the side of this one makes for an interesting picture, but was in place at least 60 years before WWII. As I explained to our group, the swastika was for years a symbol of good luck used in many cultures before the nazis used it and forever tarnished the image (Thank you history channel.)

After a tour of the origional 19th-century brewery and education in the histroy of beer we were treated to two free brews of our choice in the large lounge. The bottle in th case was from the hall of 10,000 beers and they claimed that it was the most expensive beer in the world, being one of only 600 ever produced and costing thousands of dollars. Now it just collects dust in a museum - what a waste.

It's easy to see why they like beer so much here. In many cases it is less expensive than the bottled water or soft drinks in the grocery stores and 7-Elevens (By the way, 7-Elevens are EVERYWHERE here! Honest-to-god I stood at a street corner yesterday and could see 3 of them at the same time. Soft of like Heine Bros. on Bardstown Road I guess.) They also have a great approach to recycling all the bottles here. One danish crown (about 20 cents) extra is included in the price of a beer or soda. Then when you are finished with the bottle you can take it back to just about any store and feed it into an ATM-type machine that instantly reads the barcode and then gives you a voucher which you present to the cashier and then get your crown back. Needless to say I have yet to see a single can or bottle litering the sidewalks or filling garbage cans.

We are going to try and visit Stockholm, Sweden this weekend so this might be my last post ofr a few days. This weekend is a big holiday in Sweden celebrating the summer solstice. They say it began as a pagan holiday but was assimilated by the church sometime in the middle ages. Yeah, I could tell the solstice was nearing because the sun doesn't set until around 11 o'clock here and then rises again at about 4:30. It's ridiculous but I'm glad I'm here in the summer and not during the 18 hours of darkness in december.

Pictures from our 6 hour walk

Short post today because I really need to go to bed. We had a short class today and afterward all 16 of us walked all over the city to see sights including royal palaces, opera house, library, and King's Garden. The shirt in the photo above was from the gift shop for the local futbol team Futbol Club Kobenhavn. Bruce Springsteen is actually playing in that stadium this Saturday. Sold out though. They should just let Americans in free. I'll try and add more stuff soon. Bye.

Blondes, Bikes and Beers

We had our first full day on Copenhagen today and after a brief orientation in the morning were able to explore the city a bit and even sample some of the local foods.

Walking through the city you quickly notice that it is both very old and very "liveable" as the locals like to say. Bicycles are everywhere and the roads are very accomodating to their use. Many of the streets have a sort of "second sidewalk" that is raised higher than the street level but lower than the walking path just for bikes. All the cyclists obay all the rules of the roads (unlike back home) but WILL NOT stop to avoid pedestrians. We have almost lost a few students already to collisions. Also, the people all stop at all crosswalks and only will cross when the little man turns white. Aside from other tourists I have yet to see one instance of jaywalking.

I've sampled the local favorite Carlsburg brew and, well, it's beer. Not all they build it up to be really, just beer. But they sure do drink it anywhere and at any time of day here. Apparently the guy we saw drinking a bottle on the train at 9 in the morning was not out of the ordinary or frowned upon. Oh, and the sausage-in-a-roll thing you see in my picture almost made me sick. I had much better luck with the mediterranian food we had for dinner.
My only real complaint thusfar is the absurd design of our bathroom facilities here. Our 7x7 room has toilet, sink and shower, only the shower is just in the corner with only a rinky-dink curtain marking off its territory. All the water just floods the whole room before making its way to the room's lone drain which s located in the far corner by the toilet. This makes no sense and just results in everything being wet.

Nothing Rotten In The State of Denmark

I've made it to Copenhagen in one piece (no thanks to the 1 1/2 hour delay leaving Chicag O'Hare). They have us doing a ton of orientation stuuf right now so I don't have that long to type. We took a cab ride from the airport to our housing building. Gabe and I have just moved in to our room which is sparten to say the least. I am running on very little sleep right now but hopefully a good night's rest tonight will have me charged up and ready to go tomorrow. I think they're taking us to see the canals or something. That's it for now. We've got to go eat supper.

OR&RB Mission Statement

I'll begin by agreeing with Jerry Seinfeld in the assertion that "blog" might be the ugliest sounding new word in our culture. It would be much more aptly used as a verb meaning "to spit phlegm long distances" than as a noun describing this odd form of information dissemination. Gross-sounding or not it is nonetheless the best way I could thing of to keep everyone up to date with my activity in Europe. Plus this way I only have to tell stories once rather than dozens of times when I get back.

A quick overview of my trip:
I'll be travelling with 15 other students, all of whom earned both their engineering bachelor's degree and MBA at UK, just like me. We leave on Thursday June 12th and arrive the next day in Copenhagen, Denmark. Copenhagen will be our home for the next three weeks as we takes international business classes every morning. Our afternoons and weekends are free for exploring Copenhagen and travelling. After our time in Denmark we travel to London, UK for a quick couple of days. Hopefully I get to ride one of those double-deck buses. From there we move to Brussels, Belgium for a short two-day stay which will include a tour of the European Union HQ. After our official duties in Belgium we have the next four days completely free to travel as we like. During this time I hope to make it down to Paris. We are required to report to Vienna, Austria the following Monday to begin another three-week study session, again with weekends free for travel.
I'd tell you more about our weekend travel plans but we haven't quite hashed them all out yet. Some of the places we are considering are Sweden, Germany, France, Switzerland, and Hungary.

That's pretty much it. I'm very excited and will be spending the next few days frantically packing. Once in Europe I will do my best to update this as often as I can, hopefully with cool pictures and good stories. For those of you who have never used a blog before (ie you old farts) you will notice that there is the option to post comments at the bottom of any of my posts after you click the green post title. I encourage you to use this feature to fire back to me. This will make it way easier for me to quickly keep up with everyone.

Oh yeah, I gave this blog its name because they are two of my favorite foods that I could easily remember.

Everybody take care and I expect to find this country just the way I left it when I get back at the end of July! (well, feel free to change the gas prices if you like)

Michael

Test Blog

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