Prague on August 20, 2006.

The Czech Republic on August 19, 2006.

We spent the first part of the day at a place called Terezin. It was a Nazi concentration camp and a propaganda tool about an hour from Prague.







































Toward the end of the day we went to town called Lidice, where more bad things happened.

Prague on August 18, 2006.

The building at the end of the street is the National Museum. We didn't go inside because we read that it wasn't very good.









This is the inside of a church that we initially thought held Tycho Brahe's tomb. It didn't.






Everytime you turn the corner in Prague, there is some cool looking building.


Some pictures of the hostel we moved into for the last few days of our trip. It was 1/3 the cost of the hotel we stayed in and much, much nicer.





The Prague Philharmonic played for the astronomers on the last day of the first half of the meeting.

Prague on August 15, 2006.

Check out the Lamborgini in the background.

Prague on August 14, 2006.

The view from the conference center of the IAU meeting.


The old town hall and the astronomical clock.



The astronomical clock doing it's thing on the hour.


Woah, what's this guy looking at?










The view from the Prague city plaza.




The meridian line in the city plaza.



Rainbows are rare, so I took LOTS of pictures of it... as you'll see.







If you look carefully in this picture, you can see a second, fainter rainbow above the brighter one.

Pictures of Steinheim.

I really liked the bathroom in the place we stayed.




I think that "1490" in the sidewalk is refering to when the building was constructed.

Nuclear power. Efficient, but scary.








That yellow dot is a f*ckin' McDonalds.





A trippy Trabant.

A Taste of HL2:E1.

For those of you who haven't played or even seen Half-Life 2: Episode One, you can click here and get some panoramic views of different areas in the game. Enjoy.

Videos of Köln.

Becky showing you the Köln cathedral.




The gold blob in the beginning of the video is the shrine of the three kings... yes, THOSE three kings.




A view of the Rhine river.

Videos of The Netherlands.

Here are some more videos of The Netherlands. All but the first one were taken toward the end of the trip.





We payed the toll for the drawbridge by putting money in the blue clog.

The Detroit Airport.

Here's a video of the fountain in the NorthWest terminal in the Detroit airport. I took this at the beginning of our trip.

I Finished The Forever War.

On the flight back to the US from Prague, I finished The Forever War. It was a good sci-fi book and very easy to read. It won both the Hugo and Nebula awards for best novel of the year. It was written by a Vietnam veteran and some of the themes of the book seem to parallel things that he would have gone through during the war. I'm sure he drew upon those experiences for this book. If you like sci-fi and want a good, quick read, I would pick up this book.

Pictures of Köln.

The shrine of the three kings.









Me, Becky, Jan, and Onkel Karl-Heinz.

Me, Onkel Karl-Heinz, and Tante Gisela.

Videos of the Flower Auction in Aalsmeer.

Some Pictures of the Flower Auction in Aalsmeer.

My Review of Fast Food Nation.

I finished Fast Food Nation yesterday. That was a very good book. It gave a lot of interesting facts about the fast food industry and especially about the meat packing industry. The facts were presented in a non-textbook-ish way that made it very compelling.

This book has only reinforced my vegetarinaism and has shown me how horrible the meat packing industry is. Their concern for their animals, employees, and customers is almost nonexistent compared to their concern about profits.

Anyway, I highly recommend this book. You'll definitely learn something.

Some Pictures of Sailing in the Netherlands.

A church converted to a house.

The Trip Begins.... Almost.

Well, we didn't quite make it to Amsterdam yet. There was a problem with the plane in Birmingham for our flight to Detroit. There was something wrong with the power in the plane and they had to wait an hour for the mechanic to show up. Our layover in Detroit was only an hour, so we would have missed our flight. We are now spending the night in a Holiday Inn near the airport in Birmingham (on NorthWest's dime) and will fly out tomorrow morning. Tonight we are going to order room service and then maybe go hang out at the pool.

Hopefully the trip will run smoother tomorrow.

A Preview of Our Trip.

Becky and I leave in 2 days for our trip. We will be spending about a week sailing around the Friesland in the Netherlands on a boat similar to this:



Afterwards, we will be driving to Prague for the 2006 IAU conference. On the way, we will be stopping off in Köln, Germany for a short visit with my aunt and uncle.