I hear the train a comin' / It's rollin' 'round the bend

Trains are loud. We took one (or two) nearly to the Austrian border the other day. Here is Sandi (and our friend Mara) in the early morning at the train's depot:

We went to the Neuschwanstein Castle and I took some pretty artsy pictures of the castle thanks to my friends at Instagram headquarters...

Here is the local beer:

Almost like Grenoble!

Us and the Castle:

And here's the Sicilian restaurant that I eat lunch at most days! Mmmmmmmmm

And (finally) here's Sandi enjoying one of their delicious pasta dishes!

Les Amants de le Bastille

We've signed the contract for an apartment but we don't really like it. We wanted a place with character in an old building/house, close to transportation and cafés, stores, and restaurants, that was still fairly quiet, at least on the 3rd or 4th floor, simple living without too many rules/regulations to worry about, and something not too expensive. At the end of the month we'll move into our apartment situated in a complex of three giant Mississauga-style white buildings built in 2012 that each houses 100+ units over ~10 floors, down industrial way that's at least a 10 minute walk to any form of public transportation, restaurant, or café, our 1st floor apartment looks out on to the train tracks where a train passes about every 5--15 minutes, and it costs approximately double what our Grenoble place set us back. Since it's Germany, our lease has 18 (eighteen) appendices containing rules with respect to how to clean and maintain the floor, the laws explaining how often we have to air the place out (at least 2 windows must remain open for greater than 15 minutes twice per day, ...), and rules on how we're allowed to use the oven (amongst others). Also, in Germany there are no benefits to renting. If something breaks and we have to call a plumber, it's us who pays. Plus, the tenants have to perform renovations either when they move out or every five years. Ridiculous. Oh well... at least we'll have a place to live.

Marienplatz 1

Marienplatz 2

Lake Starnberg (found while cycling)

Oktoberfest 1

Oktoberfest 2

How Sundays should be spent

Olympic Park -- on the way to pick up race kits

Race Expo!

Olympic Park -- on the way home (it got dark..)

Yes, so we had to go to pick up race kits because we're doing the Munich 1/2 marathon on Sunday. Should be fun except that we haven't ran further than about 10k in weeks and weeks and weeks.

However, when we did run 10k at the Oktoberfestlauf a few weeks ago, we were big winners! (though we forgot to stick around and get our prizes unfortunately). Here we are!

Sandra Rae

WM

P & J in Prague!

Following three gruelling rigid German rule-constrained aesthetic-less weeks, Pemulis and Joelle knew that they were in high demand (those people who suffer) in a potentially more forgiving neighbouring country. Luckily for them, they had just such an opportunity arise and grabbed that opportunity with alacrity. Following one last sunset in the capital of the Free state of Bavaria, their visit to Prague began...

What does Pemulis think of Prague? He loves it. When it comes to geographical locations be it for living or traveling, aesthetic subjective feel is of high importance to Pemulis, and though Munich will probably be fine, let's just say it ain't no Prague. Prague is beautiful and spending time there walking through the old streets or along the river or even attending a conference is an incredible experience. The Austrian satirist Karl Kraus maybe wouldn't like it:

Spare me this melody of life that disturbs my own music, which comes into its own only in the roaring of the German workday. Spare me this universal higher level of refinement from which it's so easy to observe that the newspaper seller in Paris has more charm than the Prussian publisher.

Despite the fact that Prague is very close to Germany geographically, walking down a street in Prague really is a pleasure in itself. Another very American-like thing that Pemulis enjoys about Prague is that everyone speaks English! This is not at all the case in Germany and it makes it very tourist-friendly! (a little too tourist-friendly, actually; Pemulis has never seen so many).

What would Pemulis do there [in Prague]? In addition to walking around a lot and drinking a lot of Czech Pilsner (1 euro for a pint! If you want a pint of the cheap beer at the Shannon Pub in Grenoble it's 6 euros [during happy hour]), he might go on a boat ride and capture views of this wonderful city...

He would also attend conferences on machine learning. He definitely would go to a KHL hockey game but only if his conference didn't get in the way. He would also for sure like to watch the Swan Lake ballet but again his conference would probably get in the way of that too. Would he ride his bike? Well, probably not this time because he didn't have it. He might rent bikes with Joelle but not always, and Prague -- while nice -- is probably not a cyclist's paradise because all the roads are cobblestones. Youch. But he would go for a few runs, no doubt about it. Would he take selfies? Sure, why not?

Will they return? I would count on it!

And how might Pemulis get rid of the red lines under the words that program X uses to underline what it thinks are misspelled words when in fact they aren't? Well, it wouldn't bother him so he wouldn't do anything about it. Pemulis's father, David Foster Wallace, however, is likely an entirely different story and one can imagine that this sort of thing would have him searching Internet fora all through the night and e-mailing the product support team. To save him some time, and the time of the people at program X's support team, Pemulis might explain to his father that you could right click on the word and choose "learn spelling" which would make program X (or on a Mac, all programs) now know that said word is not incorrectly spelled, or you could click on "ignore spelling" which would ignore that misspelling only in the current context so that if it showed up in another document it would still be considered misspelled, or finally, you could also just choose the option to "don't correct spelling" -- or something like that. 

It's cold here

Wow Germany has a lot of rules. And a lot of paperwork and a lot of regulations and things like that. Somehow it has already been two weeks since we arrived! That is craziness. In one week we'll go to Prague for a week and then a week after that we plan to go to Berlin for the long weekend to see Blaise's photography exhibition (and go to the Egyptian museum, of course).

I didn't have to steal Svetlana's Brompton Folding Bicycle because I bought my own. Well, in fact, I ordered my own and it won't come for another 4--6 weeks but in the meantime I get another one so in effect I really do have one so that's pretty cool. The metro here costs like five hundred thousand dollars or so and even though it rains a lot I've been biking to work so essentially the bike has already paid for itself nineteen thousand million billion times over.

One really good thing about Munich is that there are lots and lots of Italians here so that means that there are lots and lots of cafés where they make really good coffee. That is especially important right now because our poor poor Saeco Syntia is in a cold dark box in an anonymous storage warehouse somewhere on the outskirts of Munich.

Germans don't like credit cards and they pay for everything in cash. This is kind of dumb in my opinion and we don't have bank accounts here yet and there's a maximum foreign withdrawal limit on our French bank account so we have been having problems eating and stuff like that but I guess we're getting by. People carry around huge wads of cash because they know that nowhere takes credit cards. They are not so familiar with the utopian cashless society that Wired magazine promised us something like fifty-five years ago. I mean it's nice to have the option to pay in cash so we can be anonymous from the NSA and all that, but in general it's nice to not have to carry the stuff if you don't want to.

Work is very confusing.

München: Traces on the Rhodian Shore

We made it to Munich! We even have a great view of Munich's CN Tower (the Olympiaturm):

Then this morning we found a place right beside us that has something that seems to resemble French breakfasts:

Before we made it here though, I had to have my last day of work (August 7th). It rained, but Sandi came anyways to help me make pancakes for everyone:

After my last day of work -- in fact the very next day -- Sarah and Linda showed up so Sarah and I had to go biking (this is not us actually biking, by the way, but it is right before we went biking):

Here it is pretty cool because we are above the clouds!!!

Sarah: ha ha ha it looks like that cold-war octopus is attacking him.. serves him right!
Will: help!!!

We went to Paris and it was sunny (note the sunglasses). We also ate some food and drank some stuff!

Those are some pretty girls:

And here is where I worked in 1999-2000! It still exists!

Here is Linda wasting her time reading a book. Watching a movie would have been a lot faster...

Drinking wine in parks with minors is what France is all about:

The whole team of travellers in front of a river called the Seine:

This is us with a giant iron lattice structure behind us:

Back to Grenoble, and eating in our kitchen with some friends:

And here I am texting just like a teen:

The other side of the table:

And our side again:

I must have said something strange and/or funny re this delicious "espresso":

Now I'm describing it in greater detail:

The Grenoble spindle lady:

Sandi and her old work on our last Grenoble day:

Our last night in Grenoble with Sandi's new fancy French red pants (I chose them):

And back to Munich. We visited a trendy restaurant to eat some food and test this theory that everyone has told us regarding the fact that all people in Germany speak English. This is a wicked lie! Our waiter was quite exasperated and upset that we couldn't understand anything but then the bartender came over and translated the menu for us. We got some crazy fancy tomato soups to start:

It is campaign time for the upcoming elections in Germany. This is a real election poster. And that is a big beer.