The Slow Boat

I got a package today in the mail. I was a nice little care package from a family member back home. It had a couple of tabloids. For some reason I am enthralled with tabloids. The Globe, the Enquirer, they are perfect for filling the celebrity news void that exists in Switzerland.

Someone made a comment the other day regarding celebs and Switzerland that made a lot of sense to me. They said you never see celebs doing TV show interviews on Swiss TV like you do in The States. No Late night comedy interviews or early morning shows. They surmized that celebs shouldn't waste their time on a market of only 7 million people. I have to agree.

Anyway, back to reading about Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie.

Fotomuseum Winterthur

Today we took a short afternoon trip to the photography museum in Winterthur. It was about an hour train ride and I had been wanting to see it for some time.

The special exhibit until early May is an exhibition of David Goldblatt photographs. His project captures several decades of life in South Africa spanning the mid 60's to 2006. I found the exhibit to be very interesting as it covered the era of apartheid. It is hard to believe that apartheid was only ended just recently in 1994.

Some of the photographs showed beacheds with 'Whites Only' signs and such. These images were taken in the mid 80's but reminded me of something I would have seen in the US history books from the 40's or 50's.

Not only was the photography good, but Goldblatt did an excellent job of documenting a way of life and telling a story. I really felt like I got a history lesson through images.

This is about the 3rd or 4th Swiss museum I have been to and I have to admit the Swiss have the perfect concept of a museum. Often times they are only 2-3 floors and only take about 2 hours to get through. Just as you start to think it is time to go, you realize you have seen everything. They really make their museums manageable for an afternoon trip.

Flea Market

The Paris flea market is very bizarre. It is like walnut. You come to the edge of the flea market and and it is dirty and harsh. There are strange vendors selling shoes, CD's lighters, and knock-off designer clothes. Every 50 meters there is a a guy playing 3 card Monte surround by other men pointing at the cards and shoving 20 Euro notes at him. It feels like a tough yet interesting crowd.

At first I wasn't very impressed with the flea market. Then we broke the shell. In the middle of the European swap-o-rama chaos there is a sanctuary. A small island of peace. Here you'll find amazing antiques and oddities. Beautiful art and really cool things to look at. And best of all no one hawking fake D&G belts from there coat pockets.


The entire place was very inspiring. I found myself taking photographs at every turn. I was so interested in recording everything on film that I forgot to actually buy anything!

Parisian Cruise

While we were in Paris we took a boat cruise along the Seine River. For a few euros we went up and down the river past all of the most important sites. Musee Orsay, Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, it was very nice.

The funny part about the cruise is the lighting. At night the boats have these huge flood lamps on the sides that light up all the buildings as they float down the river. I can't imagine living on the river in one of the old apartment buildings and having these huge search lights blaring into my living room every 5 minutes in the evening. That would drive me absolutely mad.

The cruise was narrated in several languages. French, German, English, Chinese, Japanese. It was a little distracting to try to listen to narration from language to luanguage until your mother tounge came up.

If you ever visit Paris, take the cruise, it is well worth it, and a great way to see things a night.

Snow is Falling

We are in for snow here in Switzerland. The weather forecast shows the next week will be below zero. Yesterday evening the snow started and it is still falling this morning.

It looks like there are a few inches on the ground. I haven't left the warm confines of my appartment yet this morning but soon enough I'll be treking through the snow to work.

Looking at the forecast I see snow through Friday. I wonder how much we will get. I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

Travel

I have had an extremely busy last 10 days. Between work and vacation travel I am just exhausted. In the past 7 nights I have been in 6 different beds. I am really looking forward to sleeping in my own bed tonight.

I was in the Alps skiing with a friend for a few days at a resort called Arosa. It was very nice. Then back home for a day trip to Bern. This was followed by a quick flight to Paris for a seminar near Chantilly, a small town just 30 km outside of Paris. I ended the business trip with a few days in Paris. We stayed in Monmartre near the famous Molin Rouge.

I'll have to fill in some of the details of all of the travel later, but for now, I have posted a picture of the Sacre Coeur. This beautiful church was only a few blocks from our hotel.

Gaming Again

I spent most of Saturday afternoon trying to get my old American, NTSC PS2 game console to run. There were a host of issues in getting it to work. Lets see, TV's here are PAL insteand of NTSC format, The entire 120 volt versus 240 volt thing. Just a big mess.

By late Saturday I had a glimmer of hope, after about three trips back and forth between several stores in town I actually found a power convetor that would let me turn on the PS2 and I would get the PS2 start up screen to come up on the projector. Only problem was that when I put in the game the entire thing would turn off. I assumed that the convertor was not rated for enough wattage and when the laser would kick in to read the disc the thing would shut down.

I found 2 key pieces to the puzzle today. A different convertor rated to 55W at interdiscount, and secondly a piece of free software called DScaler that allows you display video piped to your TV tuner card via the composite RCA jacks.

So the next step I had everything going except the DScaler program would only accept the audio signals. It wouldn't accept the video signals because the NTSC Playstation didn't play well with my PAL TV card, but I at least I had sound.

Final solution, send the audio to the RCA jacks on the computer and play the audio stream via DScaler, send the video directly to the projector which is smart enough to autodetect NTSC and PAL.

So now I am playing FIFA 2004 again, this time on a monster scale.

My wife is going to love it!

The Sun!

We haven't seen the sun here since last Sunday. Even last Sunday the sun was only out for an hour or so just before sunset. Today I woke up to a beautiful, sunny, clear day. It was a much needed break from the overcast days we've had lately.

It was about 55 degrees so we went for a walk up to Baldegg. Before we knew it we had been on a 2 and a half hour hike. It was great. We spent the rest of the afternoon taking in the sun on the balcony having a little lunch and reading.

It was one of the most relaxing Sunday's I've had in a long-long time.

I also had to admit it but this evening I've been on a US TV binge. I tend to do this once it a while. I'm just starting my 3rd hour of the Discovery channel. Ahhhhh, I need to turn this monster off. Every once in a while I turn on the sling box and just get pulled in listening to the beautiful US english. Three epidsodes fo "A Haunting" and 1 episode of "Myth Busters" later I'm starting to feel a little guilty.

I'm going to have to sign off, both from blogger, and Richmond comcast.

Lunar Eclipse

Tonight is a total lunar eclipse with some of the best viewing from our timezone. Luckily some dinner guests this evening reminded me that the eclipse was tonight. I have the telescope set out on the balcony to view the event.

Right now the moon is a little more that half covered by the earth's shadow. I would expect in the next 20 to 30 minutes we'll see the total lunar eclipse.

Should be a good show, so I'm going to bundle up and head back to the balcony.