exploration makes a better world

After a serious storm this morning, sun came out briefly in the afternoon, so I went out to take the Martisor pictures. Of flowers. For ladies. All ladies are invited to pick one flower of the below (or more) and have, in the good old Romanian tradition, a happy spring.
Then I went to a lake [...]

Last night, the Romanian Lucian Bute, IBF world champion boxing for Interbox in Canada, had to defend his world title against a former world champion, William Joppy.
Here is Joppy’s preview of the fight

and here is the outcome

The Romanian construction worker Costel Busuioc went to Spain as a guest worker 2 years ago. His colleagues on the construction site encouraged him to participate to a “Spanish Idol” type show, Hijos de Babel, made for members of international communities in Spain.
How it went you see below.

He is still in contest, after winning [...]

I had almost 1000km ahead of me that day, so i woke up early. With eyes half-open, taking the luggage to the car, I went out of the building and… stopped.
Fog. What a fog. Like in movies.

Was 8 in the morning. So I said – I’ll hang around for a while, by the time I’m [...]

Mile 870: Olomouc
They say that less than 10% of the tourists entering the Czech Republic go somewhere else than Prague. We were among those 10% and drove 300 km to Olomouc, a city in the east, close to the Slovakian border; former capital of Moravia, the second region of the Czech Republic, after Bohemia, where [...]

Mile 700.
I was blown away by Prague. I knew it is a beautiful city, everyone I heard talking about it was very appreciative, but I didn’t expect… this.The night we arrived we went for a walk, without the camera. Awesome. I couldn’t believe it. The old part of town is HUGE, and brilliantly restored. Aristocratic, [...]

Mile 600: Dresden.
We parked next to the Frauenkirche, Lady’s Church, in the convenient underground parking. Frauenkirche, the most well-known church in Dresden, was completely distroyed on Feb 13, 1945 and restored in 2005.

It is impressive, with its „dalmatian” style of old burned black stones and new yellow ones. I dont know if the black ones [...]

Mile 400: à Goettingen, à Goettingen.
At the beginning of our walk through Goettingen, on the way to the university, we saw these two girls sitting on a fence, very preoccupiedly reading… Harry Potter 7. Both of them.

afterwards, we noticed that guy trying to climb a kind of steep terrain with his bicycle

speaking of bicycle, it [...]

i finally tried it this week-end, after much postponing. it is, like a friend told me, “inspiring”.
i recommend:
1) read this tutorial
2) reserve a lesson with an instructor
3) go 2 hours or so BEFORE the lesson, pick a (VERY) small hill and get used to the board, doing the exercises in the tutorial. you will fall [...]

Guggenmusik is street music people play in the Carnival period in germanic areas of Europe. Bands have colorful costumes and masks; they play the songs just over the edge of being “right to the tune”, but skillful, so it doesn’t go astray. It is quite an entertaining sight. This one was in the Zurich railway [...]