More Hobbies

I spent Thanksgiving break in Phoenix/Tempe, Arizona with my cousin Aykut and his family. While over there, Aykut gave me his old Canon SLR camera. And it's a film camera! That's right, the kind that you can't see the pictures immediately after taking them..you have to get them DEVELOPED! And this thing isn't just any old 35mm film camera..it's got enough features and gadgetry to keep me entertained for quite a while.

So be on the lookout, maybe I'll eventually put some photography up on this blog. I will be sticking to black & white for now, and will probably be focusing on daytime urban shots.

Why Pittsburgh is Awesome: Part 1

If you have ever talked to me for more than 5 minutes, you know how much I love Pittsburgh and Southwestern PA. I'm going to start a mini-series on this blog called Why Pittsburgh is Awesome so all of you, my loyal readers, can get a feel for how great Pittsburgh truly is.

Creativity

Pittsburgh creates creative, progressive-minded people, just by the very nature of the city. Pittsburghers knew that after the steel industry collapsed, they would have to get resourceful and be able to adapt to ever-changing conditions. They have embraced the arts, technology, sustainability, and education like no other city in the country, and now other people in other cities wonder about how they can make theirs like Pittsburgh. People look at the out-migration of young Pittsburghers as a bad thing, but so many people in my generation will gain valuable experience in other parts of the country and world, then bring all of that back with them to Western PA in the future.

Example of creative Pittsburghers doing what they do best: I just heard about a restaurant in the East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh called Conflict Kitchen.

This take-out only restaurant only serves food from countries that the US is in conflict with. Each country is represented for four months at a time, and right now they are serving Iranian food and going by the name "Kubideh Kitchen". From the website:

"Kubideh Kitchen is an Iranian take-out restaurant that serves kubideh in freshly baked barbari bread with onion, mint, and basil. Developed in collaboration with members of the Pittsburgh Iranian community, the sandwich is packaged in a custom-designed wrapper that includes interviews with Iranians both in Pittsburgh and Iran on subjects ranging from Iranian food and poetry to the current political turmoil."

Vans Vault

I recently found out about Vans Vault, which is a limited edition seasonal run of shoes by Vans. The Spectator LX are some of my favorites, but they're incredibly hard to find. They're classy but still casual enough to wear every day as sneakers. Definitely a winner.

Zombie Infestation

AMC just came out with a new show called "The Walking Dead" that's based on zombies taking over the city of Atlanta. I've watched the first couple episodes, and it's pretty neat being able to pick out different streets and landmarks all over the city and imagine them being full of rotting, disgusting zombies. The plotline is actually pretty captivating so far, and in true zombie movie fashion, the series is somehow walking the line between disgustingly frightening and hilarious.

Rap City, USA

This song called Atlanta, GA has been stuck in my head all day, and I got to thinking about all the rappers/producers/hip hop artists/whatever you want to call them from Atlanta. It really seems like a new one shows up on the map every day. No matter how great or terrible some of their music may be, it's pretty impressive that so many big time rappers come out of Atlanta. Here's all the ones I can think of, just off the top of my head

Shawty Lo
Gucci Mane
Young Jeezy
B.o.B
TI
Lil Scrappy
Ludacris
Andre 3000
Big Boi
Yung Joc
Cee Lo Green
Jermaine Dupri
Youngbloodz
Ying Yang Twins
Usher
Goodie Mob
Soulja Boy

Baseball in October?

Something entirely new and unknown to me has happened in past week of my life. For as long as I've been following baseball, no team that I have even remotely cared about has made it to the post season. Growing up in Pittsburgh, I was used to baseball season ending in the middle of August, right around when the Pirates were getting ready to clinch their so-and-so consecutive losing season and the Godly Steelers were starting training camp.

But now, the Atlanta Braves are in the playoffs. There's baseball going on in October. Baseball is supposed to end in the summer. I'm going through a massive sporting paradigm shift, and I don't know if I can handle it. Go Bravos!

Asheville

What a great city for weird people like myself and my friends. The city is surrounded on all sides by the blue ridge mountains, and downtown is small, hilly, and really lively. I went last Thanksgiving and it was way too cold to really explore the city, but this time was perfect. Lots of funky little art galleries, bookstores, and restaurants. It is definitely a hippie city, but it's in the south!


We ate at a really great vegetarian restaurant called Rosetta's Kitchen (get the tempeh reuben, it's magical), and drank local beer at the Thirsty Monk. If you haven't been, then GO!

I think one of the southeast's greatest strengths is its small cities. There are so many really interesting and beautiful ones: Asheville, Greenville SC, Savannah, Chattanooga, Chapel Hill, etc. All of these towns take the things that I love about the big cities (namely ATL) that are too spread out to be really accessible, and smush them down into a more compact version.

More Travels

I went to one of my favorite cities in the south this weekend: Asheville, NC. I'll have an entry and some pictures pretty soon. For now, check out the website and new songs recorded by my bluegrass band, The Rusty Boys.

It's List Time

These are my favorite places in Atlanta. If you live here or visit, you should probably go to all of these.

1. Piedmont Park (see Tandemonium pictures below)

2. Virginia and Poncey Highlands - Walkable and lively with lots of shops and bars. Moes and Joes has $3.50 pitchers of PBR on Tuesdays and the best black bean quesadillas. 10High has live band karaoke.

3. Westside - So many unique places over here and tons of new development. 5 Seasons Brewing, Octane, Hop City, Ormsbys (a speakeasy-style bar with bocce ball courts), White Provision district, and Northside Tavern.

4. The Beltline - A ring of parks and greenspace that used to be railroad tracks all around Atlanta. The east side (between Dekalb Ave and Piedmont Park) has some amazing art installations and should have a paved walking/biking trail by December. Light rail eventually? I hope so.

5. Smith's Olde Bar - I'm kind of biased because my band's first gig was here, but this place is the best for live music and catching Steelers games. There's Steeler gear all over the place, and gamedays are full of fans waving terrible towels and wearing Polamalu jerseys. It's also really laid back and unpretentious, which is hard to find in midtown.

New Orleans, Round 2

I went to New Orleans a few weeks ago with some friends that studied abroad in France with me. This wasn't my first time going--I went in the spring of 2007 for a service trip to clean up after Katrina. Back then, I spent the vast majority the weekend there in the poorest parts of the city that had been hit the hardest by the hurricane. It was terrible seeing first hand all the damage that the hurricane had done and how bad it still was a year and a half later.

This time was a little different--we stayed at a friend's house in the city, went hiking through the swampland and marshes of a national park, and saw lots of great live music in the French Quarter.

It reminded me of Pittsburgh in some ways--people are so fiercely proud of their region, culture, and history that they could never even think about leaving, no matter what happens to their city. It's a place where families have lived for hundreds of years without ever thinking of moving. It's really a shame that terrible things keep happening in that part of the country because the people are so friendly, the culture is unique, and the city has so much charm that it almost forces you to fall in love with it.




A band called Sweet Street Symphony busking on Frenchmen Street


The Revivalists at Blue Nile music club. We caught a free concert after the red dress race.


The streetcar on St. Charles street

Tandemonium

I just realized that I never got around to posting pictures of the finalized tandem bike. It was a FRIGID day in December, 2009. The location was the gorgeous fields of Piedmont Park in my fair city of Atlanta, Georgia. Three excellent friends--Grey, Cassie, and Sinan took the newly built-from-scratch and barely functioning tandem bicycle out for a photoshoot. We thoroughly enjoyed one of those few short periods in which the bike was in working condition.

At the current moment I am sad to say that the tandem is in dire need of some love/fixing, but it will be back sometime soon.






ATL--We love this city

A New Cooking Buddy

Some of my fondest memories from my semester in Europe were the many delicious meals that I cooked with a great friend of mine and fellow food lover, Sid the Kid. We lived in the same hall and probably spent a little too much time wandering the nearest markets for the freshest and most interesting foods, and making dinners that were usually accompanied by some delicious French wine and a baguette with some hard to pronounce type of cheese.

That's why I am so glad that we've started a new tradition of Tuesday night cooking here at the new place in the ATL. I was inspired by my sister, who came across probably the greatest cooking site known to man (and woman), smitten kitchen. There's an endless list of recipes, and they are organized either type of fruit/vegetable/meat, season, or country of origin. After pretty much drooling all over my computer after reading some of my sister's posts, I decided that Sid and I had to begin our new Atlanta cooking tradition with one of these recipes.

Since it was nearing the end of May and the summer heat was starting to kick in, we went with something springy but still filling: asparagus, artichoke, and shiitake risotto, and it definitely did not disappoint.

The only change we made to the recipe was the addition of some fresh chicken, feta, and sundried tomato sausage freshly made at the Dekalb Farmers Market, also known as heaven on earth, at least to people who love food.


Sid's ready to devour some risotto.

Delish.

My Experiment

It's been about a year since I sold my car and started an ongoing experiment to see if I could live, work, and play without owning an automobile in one of the most car-dependent large cities in the US.

Last spring I joined a car-sharing service called zipcar in anticipation of selling my car. I did all the math and realized that using zipcar would be much more cost effective for me in the long run. I barely ever used my car, and when I did, it was for pretty short trips to the grocery store or other nearby places.

Summer of 09 was when I sold my car to a good friend and former Alice in Chains coverband-member from home, Craig. I still had plenty of options for getting around in Atlanta: MARTA trains, buses, my bicycle, bumming rides off my roommates (thanks boys), and zipcar. In the year that has gone by, I have only taken a legitimate MARTA bus (not including the Braves shuttle) once, but I use the trains all the time to get to and from the airport.

Up until September, I rode my bike pretty much everywhere and got fairly knowledgeable about which roads were good for biking, where the bad potholes are, and where drivers were the most courteous and willing to give room to bikers. Peachtree Street, which is basically the main street of Atlanta, has always been one of my favorite roads to ride on because traffic moves pretty slow, there's lots to look at, and drivers usually give you plenty of room. Edgewood is another excellent road for biking, and it connects many of the East Atlanta neighborhoods to downtown.

Then I decided to purchase my 50cc scooter almost on a whim. After going through the HOT summer months mostly on bicycle, I realized that it would be pretty convenient to have some kind of motorized vehicle to get me around without being constantly drenched in sweat. My dreams of zipping around the city on a little scooter became a reality, and I stumbled across a transportation revelation.

My scooter outside our new house in Atlanta.


Scooting is the greatest way POSSIBLE to get around the city of Atlanta!!!

You don't need a license. Or registration. Or insurance. You can park it ANYWHERE without ever having to pay for a spot or going through the oh-so-awkward valet parking exchange. I regularly get about 70 miles per gallon, and sometimes it'll even get 90mpg. It is by far the cheapest and most convenient way of getting around. Also, it has a super convenient basket in the back, which makes it perfect for scootin' on over to the grocery store for some supplies.

There are only a couple small problems. Atlanta is a fairly hilly place, though it's downright flat in comparison to The Paris of Appalachia (my new favorite nickname for Pittsburgh). The scooter tops out at about 40mph on a flat surface. When i'm going up a steep hill, I'm lucky to hit 25. Those car drivers don't appreciate that very much when they're hurrying to get to who-knows-where. Also, it's not the most fun thing to ride in the rain. But neither is a bicycle or motorcycle.

I still love my bicycle and ride it to and from work pretty often. I still use zipcar when I need to pick up some furniture or what not, and I still ride in my roommates' cars when we all want to go out to a bar or the farmers market. But from now on I will always be an advocate for the scooter. After one year, the car-free experiment has been a huge success, thanks to the awesomeness of the scooter, the ingeniousness of the zipcar car-sharing program, the amazing durability of my second-hand mountain bike, and the goodwill of my roommates and friends.

St Paul de Vence

I finally made it back to the United States after spending a semester abroad in France. We finished up with finals by May 5th and my parents came into town for a week-long vacation before going back to the US. We spent a few days in Metz getting me moved out of my apartment, and I had the opportunity to show them around my wonderful host city. After that, we headed down to the French Riviera, or Cote d'Azur, where we stayed in Nice and took a few day trips out to various other towns along the coast. After that we hung out in Paris for a few days before flying back to the states.

One of the most interesting towns that we visited was a place called St Paul de Vence in Southern France. It is an ancient, fully-walled, self-contained village of about 300 residents, and one of the most visited spots in the entire country. Luckily the weather wasn't great on the day that we went, so there were only a few other people visiting. The village was founded in the 9th century, and things haven't changed much since then. It became a favorite hang-out for some of the most famous artists of the 20th century--Matisse, Chagall, Renoir, in addition to actors, film-makers, and other celebrities. Nowadays plenty of contemporary artists still live there and showcase their art in the numerous galleries strewn throughout the village.

To give you an idea of how small the place was, it took maybe 5 minutes to walk from end to end, and that was at a leisurely pace. The art is some of the greatest in the world, so it's almost impossible not to stop and explore the galleries. Even the cobblestones on the streets are laid out in a flower-like pattern. My parents were absolutely floored by the village--they kept saying that it was dream-like, and felt like they were transported back in time. For me, it was incredibly similar to the feeling that I got while exploring the dark, deserted streets of Bruges at night. Some of these European towns are so well preserved that it is almost haunting.

The main street of St. Paul de Vence, lined with art galleries.

Standing at one of the ramparts..the view is incredible in all directions and the village is surrounded by vineyards used to produce its wine.

The cemetary where Marc Chagall is buried, just outside of the village.

The walls and structures within the village

The streets were like this throughout the village. Some had even more elaborate designs with multiple flowers coming out of a vase. It was definitely one of the most unique towns I have ever seen.

A view of the village from outside the walls. The entire town is on a hilltop with the church at the highest point.

Wilderness

This is an adaptation of an essay that I wrote recently that can be looked at as a critique of the modern environmentalist movement and the American viewpoint of wilderness. I take a stance that you might not expect me to take, but that made the paper much more interesting to write.


In his essay called The Trouble with Wilderness, historian Bill Cronon writes, “In virtually all of its manifestations, wilderness represents a flight from history.” This statement, while seemingly vague, forms the basis of his criticism of the paradigms in American society regarding the natural environment and how the relationship between humans and nature has changed dramatically throughout history. He then goes on to discuss the modern American environmental movement and some of the risks that it can pose if it is perpetrated in the wrong manner.

The statement that wilderness represents a flight from history in its most basic understanding means that in Cronon’s point of view, American wilderness is purely a construct of modern, urban industrial civilization that directly opposes previous historical thoughts about the relationship between man and nature. In the past, humans generally did not have the desire to wander around remote corners of the planet just on the premise of ‘getting away from it all’ or for strictly recreational purposes—they explored mostly for economic and subsistence reasons. Wilderness was a dangerous place to which people only came against their will, which contrasts greatly with the thoughts about wilderness in the nineteenth century brought forth by people like Thoreau and John Muir, who began treating wilderness as a place for self-fulfillment and getting closer to God.

The idea of American wilderness became highly romanticized in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, and it still retains some of that idealism today. Since the United States was such a vast country with a relatively small population, the romantic ideas of the wide-open, majestic frontier and seemingly endless unexplored territory fueled the American drive to expand westward. The idea of wilderness became intertwined with notions of primitivism and masculinity while contributing to a national renewal. Men who became fearful of the feminizing tendencies of civilization moved their families to wild frontier land and “shed the trappings of civilization, rediscovered their primitive racial energies, reinvented direct democratic institutions, and reinfused themselves with a vigor, an independence, and a creativity that [became] the source of American democracy and national character” (Cronon 8).

However, by the late nineteenth century, this uniquely American source of identity—the frontier—began to disappear, and the roots of the American environmental movement became prevalent in the form of wilderness preservation. National leaders and representatives of the state such as Theodore Roosevelt, fueled by romantic and nostalgic ideas of the great frontier and masculinity, began creating the vast national parks that Americans appreciate so much today. However, as a result of this forced creation, people’s notions of wilderness changed completely—wilderness went from being a place representative of America’s rugged, rural frontier spirit to a place where well-off urbanites could temporarily partake in recreational activities. American wilderness and national parks turned into a vacation-spot for the wealthy class, evoking notions of elitism and class separation instead of the original intent to recover the frontier ideas of primitivism and rugged masculinity.

Because the United States government mandated the creation of these new national parks, they came with some of the negative side-effects of massive state-imposed projects. For example, many of the national parks and wilderness areas have been the traditional homes for various Native American tribes for thousands of years, but the tribes were forced off of their land for the creation of simulated virgin, uninhabited land. By creating national parks, the US government participated in this an unnatural ordering, which dramatically changed American wilderness from rugged, unpredictable frontier land to false ‘virgin’ land. The traditional hom of indigenous people but had been morphed by the federal government into a playground for the urban elite. Perhaps Cronon puts it best when he says that this ‘uninhabited’ wilderness created by authoritarian high-modernism “reminds us just how invented, just how constructed, the American wilderness really is” (10).

The process of the authoritarian ‘creation’ of American wilderness has myriad implications for the modern environmentalist movement. Many environmental organizations advocate for the protection of threatened lands across the globe, such as the rainforests in Brazil and Indonesia or the African savannah. However, many of these environmentalists look at these lands from the American perspective of wilderness, which does not necessarily take into account that indigenous people have lived in these areas for thousands of years. According to Cronon, if these environmentalists fight to preserve their ideas of ‘wilderness’ from the native people who utilize the biodiversity for their subsistence and economic benefit, they “run the risk of reproducing the same tragedy—being forceably removed from an ancient home—that befell American Indians” (13).

Another downside for modern environmentalism may be a lack of focus directly related to the idealization of fabricated wilderness. This idealization can lead environmentalists astray from focusing on the issues that directly relate to most people, which usually occur in cities and other places with a relatively high density of human population. A strong focus on uninhabited ‘wilderness’ can lead to a separation between romanticized visions of nature and the real issues that directly impact humans and their surroundings, such as healthy, pollution-free air, clean drinking water, and environmental justice. Cronon does not speak against the premise of environmentalism in his essay, he just warns of the implications that the modern American view of ‘wilderness’ can have on the environmental movement.

Throughout American history, our notion of wilderness has undergone a dramatic change from that of a wild frontier land to an artificial, government-protected land with its indigenous people replaced by wealthy urbanites that bring along with them the modern civilization that they are trying to flee. This is why wilderness represents a flight from history—its meaning and usage transformed with the last of the frontier and the creation of the national park system. In order to respect the real natural world and not just an idealized version, we need to appreciate natural beauty wherever it occurs—from the trees that give us shade while walking along Peachtree Street to the tallest peaks of the Himalayas—wilderness and natural beauty abound all over the world, and humans are undeniably reliant on it for the survival and well-being of our species.

Group Pictures

My semester in France is starting to come to an end, which is pretty sad because I've had some great times here in Europe and made a lot of really good friends, but at the same time I'm ready to go back to the states and see my friends and family.

I would be writing more but the last round of tests/projects has been taking over my life for the past week or so, and now it's time to prepare for finals. We got some group pictures the other day with all of the undergrads at GTL. Our group is really small compared to the one that's coming here for the summer--that one is gonna have over 200 people!

Anyways, i'm one of the oldest in the group..most of the undergrads are sophomores and juniors, so a lot of them got to experience legal drinking for the first time when they got to France. I think just about everyone is majoring in some sort of engineering, mostly mechanical and electrical. Everyone goes to Georgia Tech back in the states except for 3 kids from VT, and it seems like most of the GT people are from out of state, which makes sense because we out-of-staters get in-state tuition at GTL.

This is the back side of the GTL building





Heading back to the apartment after class

We had a cheese tasting in our last statistics class, so I have a few more cheeses to add to the list.

Aged Comte
Delice
Aperobic - This one was amazing..it's an artisanal hard goat cheese that's pretty hard to find. And it's in the shape of ear plugs.
Double cream

Atlantic Station

When I first came to Atlanta back in 2006, Atlantic Station was one of the first things that I saw. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, it's a fairly new development in Atlanta that used to be the site of an old steel mill, but they cleaned it up and now it's a vast area of residential and retail stores, complete with a MASSIVE underground parking deck. If I had to compare it with anything in Pittsburgh, it would probably be the Southside Works.

A plan of Atlantic Station from atlanticstation.com


Atlantic Station has been the subject of a decent amount of debate in some of my classes, especially the city planning class that I took last semester, and I've been hearing a lot of conflicting opinions and ideas about the development since I've been in Atlanta, and only recently have I been starting to form a concrete opinion about it. First off, some more details about the place: since the developers started off with basically a barren wasteland, they could plan Atlantic Station as they wanted, with no real geographical boundaries besides the home park neighborhood to the south and the Interstate 75/85 connector to the East. They way that it is planned makes a lot of sense, with some traditional 'city blocks' in the heart of the district and some more wide open areas with pedestrian-friendly tree-lined streets and a small lake in the more residential areas.

It has some serious problems though, and I think someone in my city planning class put it well when they called it 'intown sprawl.' The location of this place is very important--it has no real link to the public transportation system of the city besides a rather unreliable 'shuttle' that runs from the outskirts of the development to the arts center MARTA station. This fact, which many folks may consider meaningless, makes the residential part of Atlantic Station nearly off-limits to lower-income people who cannot afford cars, which may have led to an unnecessary gentrification and social separation commonly found in wealthier suburban areas.

The design of the buildings is spectacularly unoriginal and could be found anywhere else in the country, and the huge underground parking deck with subsidized parking further adds to the notion of 'intown sprawl' because visitors are actually being encouraged to bring their cars to the development, despite the fact that the website labels it as 'pedestrian-oriented' and 'transit focused'. The whole development added a huge amount of traffic to that section of town, and now the home park neighborhood is having to make some street changes to prevent the traffic jams from extending into it. Meanwhile, there are still large surface parking lots in downtown and midtown Atlanta, where residential or green space could be added to increase the density and beauty of the city.

So what do I think about all of this? I think I agree with my history teacher, who said that it needs more time to change and become more personal and real, much like the old neighborhoods in Atlanta like Inman park or Virginia Highlands. Although it is a place for people to live with fancy apartment complexes and classy retail stores, I would never consider it a real neighborhood; I think of it more like a shopping mall with apartments nearby--a little piece of suburbia in the middle of a big city, complete with massive big-box stores (Ikea) that are usually found outside of the city and make walking difficult because of the sheer amount of space that they take up. It has no local flavor--you could pick up the whole complex and put it in just about any city in America, and it would look fine, and the locals would recognize 90% of the chain retail stores.

I have some issues with this, and it is definitely not a place that I would ever live, mostly because it's just too fake. Maybe I'm just a traditionalist and prefer and old-style neighborhood with small businesses, a market, and a post office, much like some of the neighborhoods in Atlanta and Pittsburgh. However, I will admit that Atlantic Station is definitely an improvement on what was there before, which was essentially an environmental hazard and eyesore for the city of Atlanta.

PS: A few new French cheeses to add to my list.

Boursault
Reblochon
Tomme Blanche

A Change of Pace

When we first got to GTL, one of the professors here gave us a powerpoint presentation about all the different things to see and do around town, and one of the attractions that she talked about was a bike trail that supposedly goes along the Moselle river from here to the next town called Thionville, which is about 30km north of here. I say supposedly because when we asked for more information, she said she didn't really know where the trail started or how to get there.

Friday I decided that my goal was to take a little solo bike adventure to find the trail and do some exploring of rural France. Since my rental bike got stolen a few weeks ago, my friend Josh was nice enough to let me borrow his bike for the weekend. After biking to the city center near the river, I went around in circles a few times before finally giving in and just asking at the tourist office. When I told her that I wanted to bike the trail, she was like "Oh...that's going to be difficult. The trail isn't completed yet." But she told me where it starts and said I might have to bike along some roads to find the completed parts of the trail.

Some of the original city walls of Metz, built in the 1300s


I got stuck at some dead ends in the middle of the woods, almost rode into the port of Metz, and rode past a meat packing plant that had me on the verge of stopping the bike to puke all over the side of the road, but I finally found the trail! By this point I was already a few miles away from Metz. Being that far from a similarly sized American city would probably mean I was about to start hitting some cookie cutter strip malls, subdivisions, and soccer moms yapping away on cell phones in their SUVs, but suburban sprawl is not a huge problem in France, so I was effectively immersed in farmland and gorgeous countryside.

And by gorgeous I mean that I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. I felt like I was in the middle of a movie that took place in the stereotypical French countryside: one-lane roads lined with flowering trees and fields of vegetables, a family of cows staring at me like I was crazy, and an endlessly charming village called La Maxe. It was so interesting coming into the village from the surrounding countryside--one minute i'm biking past farmland and the next minute I'm on 'rue Principale' of La Maxe, which was lined with humble houses, the occasional cafe, and of course the town square just ouside of a gorgeous church. I veered off the main trail to check out this village so I really had no idea where I was or how to get back, but I loved every minute of it.

One of the roads leading into the village of La Maxe.

The village from a distance. You can see the cows staring at me in the distance.

The church in La Maxe


I eventually found my way back to the river and biked along it for a while, then started getting tired and headed back to Metz, almost throwing up again when I passed that meat packing plant. As soon as I got into downtown Metz, I found a bench in the sunlight with a nice view of the town and slept for at least an hour. Turns out I had biked about 30 miles total. What a great way to spend a Friday afternoon!

La Moselle

Yet another adventure

It's time for a fun and exciting post after that boring essay that I last posted. Today in heat transfer we learned about the NTU method for optimizing the design of heat exchangers. It's an exciting method because you only need to know the inlet temperatures for the two fluids in the heat exchanger to calculate a heat rate OR an overall effectiveness! Just kidding...


This past Saturday was one of the most beautiful days that we've had over here, so of course I spent just about the entire day outside. We started out by checking out the weekly market that happens in Metz just outside the Cathedral, then hopping on a train for the cheap and short 45 minute ride North to Luxembourg. I heard some mixed reviews in the past regarding Lux so I didn't really have high expectations of the city..we just figured it would be a new and possibly interesting place to walk around on such a beautiful day, and it definitely overcame all expectations that I had.


Market outside of Cathedral St. Etienne in beautiful METZ!


What impressed me the most about the city was the amazing natural beauty that it possessed. The topography is really interesting--the main commercial and residential parts of the city sit on the tops of large hills that are separated by deep, stunning valleys with rivers, parks, and trails running through them. The hills created such a huge separation between the different parts of the town that each level had a different name: upper town and lower town, which is similar to the 'slopes' and 'flats' in Pittsburgh.

Some nice contrasting scenery in Luxembourg


We only spent a short amount of time in the upper town, walking through the dense, compact streets of the old town for a while before descending into the gorgeous green valleys. It was such a contrast from the hustle and bustle of the upper town. The valleys were quiet, peaceful, and serene, and it felt like we went from a city to a series of small villages connected by parks and biking trails. After wandering through the valleys for a while, we decided to check out the old fortifications of the city. From seeing the fortifications, it's pretty easy to be able to tell why little old Luxembourg isn't a part of France or Germany right now--it seemed like it was just about impenetrable back in the old days! Coming into the town by river, you're surrounded by soaring cliffs, castles, and walls that seem really imposing even today. The Luxembourgers (Luxembourgeoise? Luxers?) must have protected that place really well.

Sid the kid in the Old part of the upper town


Gorgeous view from the top of the fortifications


Contrasting layers



The hills reminded me of the burgh


All in all, it was a really interesting city. I could tell that it's a very wealthy place; there's no shortage of BMWs and Porsche's rolling around the city, and the town is filled with quirky little art galleries and expensive cafes, but we walked through a neighborhood of shacks not more than 2km away from the city center in one of the valleys. The topography of the place makes it so much more exciting than most other European cities--I thought of it as a place with all the excitement and culture of a cosmopolitan city combined with the natural beauty and quaintness of the European countryside. Lux is definitely a winner.

Urban Development

This is a short essay i wrote for my history class about urban development. I decided to post it because it's something that I'm really interested in, and it might be worth a gander if you have any interest in public transit, social problems, and/or sustainability. What's really interesting to me is the massive paradigm shift between the early 1900s and today regarding streetcars (or 'trams' here in Europe)--back then they were the first step towards suburbanization and class division but now they're seen as a progressive step towards higher density, environmental sustainability, and more livable cities and towns.


A modern streetcar/tram in Sevilla, Spain

Throughout history, the growth and development of cities have been governed and assisted by countless factors. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the development of both American and European cities changed from being directed by political and institutional forces to primarily those of economic forces. In other words, private companies and market forces, for the first time in history, reached the forefront in the determination of the way that cities functioned and developed. This in turn led to various developmental results, social consequences, and a variety of ways to address this new form of growth which differed between the United States and Europe.

Perhaps the most blatant result of these new economic forces and technological development was the mass decentralization of American cities. Many private forces contributed to this spatial deconstruction, but two in particular had the greatest impact: electric utilities and streetcar companies. In the late 19th century, private utility companies in the US started supplying energy to many of the major cities, and soon enough, the American lifestyle depended on the continuous electricity provided by these private companies. According to historian Harold Platt, as more people purchased their electricity from these providers, “the unit cost of electricity fell, encouraging even higher levels of consumption” (247). These low prices and constant availability of electricity allowed Americans to move to the suburbs and enjoy the openness of rural American while still having the same commodities that were previously only available in cities.

At the same time, streetcar and transit companies in both the US and Europe were strongly lobbying for the mechanization of traction systems within urban areas. As their streetcars caught on with urbanites, they led to the growth of “streetcar suburbs,” especially in the US. This new form of transportation contributed directly to the spatial development of cities because it allowed people to live away from the city and use the streetcar to commute to and from their jobs every day. The primary form of propulsion for the increasingly popular streetcars was overhead electric traction, which required a large and constant source of electricity provided by the private utilities. Thus, a connection formed between these two privatized distributors of technology—Americans who had moved into the suburbs relied daily on the streetcars, which in turn depended on the electric utilities to deliver the power that they needed for overhead electric traction. Also, as discussed in class, the streetcars expanded along power lines in the city, and since the lines ran along sources of electricity, businesses tended to form along the same lines, further popularizing the decentralized urban development that became increasingly tied into privatized forces.

This new form of urban development in the United States did not come without its social consequences and various ways for urbanites to address these changes. Historian Anthony Sutcliffe calls into account the vested interests of these private transit companies of the 19th century: “The mechanization of street transport clearly favored tenants and property owners on the periphery of the urban area” (34). As a result of this, property owners in central urban areas along with owners of the pre-existing means of transport banded together and lobbied to retain the status quo that had been upset by this new form of transit. Because the streetcar provided the first step to the mass suburbanization of the United States in the 20th century, it also contributed to the social and class discrimination commonly associated with the suburbs. The suburbs of the 20th century became the havens of what is commonly referred to as “white flight,” which left poorer minorities in the central cities without the same transportation, education, and technological opportunities as their suburban counterparts.

Also, according to Platt, these new electrified street railways and utility companies caused social stratification that had not been previously seen. Because the utilities at first only supplied electricity to large cities, “electric lighting was associated with downtown areas and notions of class status” (Platt 251). The availability of electricity in urban areas added to the social stratification between the city and the country, and perpetuated the notion of urban elitism in working class, rural Americans.

While all of this was going on in the United States, Europe was also experiencing the advent of new technologies such as electricity and urban transit, albeit in a slightly different manner. Much like their American counterparts, European cities became reliant on the streetcars, but “these private transit firms were more strictly regulated by national and municipal governments in Europe” (McKay). In the United States, the government only had to concede some property rights to the streetcar companies, then the market forces took over from there and the state imposed minimal regulation on the industry. Large European cities, on the other hand, faced strict governmental regulation; in Paris, “everything was regulated: routes . . . rates, timetables, stations, technical progress” (Larroque 43). This high amount of regulation even placed restraints on entrepreneurs of the streetcar business—thus diminishing the possible economic forces on European urban development and constraining them with harsh political and institutional forces.

Although there were some significant differences between the experiences of American and European cities in the late 19th and early 20th century, both encountered vast economic and technological growth. With streetcars running on constant electrical current, expansion of cities on both sides of the Atlantic reached levels that had never before been seen. The advent of new technologies and industries forever changed the growth and development of urban areas: for the first time in history, private economic forces played a tremendous role in shaping the evolution of cities by contributing to social, fiscal, and spatial changes that can still be seen today.

In Bruges (and Brussels)

Since Easter was this weekend, we had an extra day off from school so I traveled north to the wonderful country of Belgium. I started the trip with visiting the ancient town of Bruges, which is in the Flanders region in Western Belgium. The town itself is pretty small, maybe about the same size as Metz, but it's one of the biggest attractions in Belgium.

It used to be one of the biggest cities in the world in Medieval times and was the main port city in Belgium. But in 1500, the river that connected it to the ocean filled with sand, and the city was completely forgotten about for about 400 years. Since the city basically fell asleep for so long, visiting it is like going back in time. The old medieval buildings are almost all still intact and the streets are narrow and covered in cobblestones. When we first got in on Friday night, we wandered around the dark, narrow, deserted streets for a long time, which was the best way to see the city. I felt like I had been transported back to a time before electricity, cars, or anything else we have in modern society. I must admit it was one of the coolest experiences I've had since I've been in Europe, and words/pictures cannot describe what it was like. It was something that everyone should experience at some point.

This picture is from Wikipedia but i think it almost comes close to giving the feeling of what Bruges is like at dusk/dark.

Bruges by day was pretty cool as well. We ended up doing the touristy stuff that you can do in pretty much every other European city--visiting various really old churches, climbing up to the top of the belfry (366 steps!), and eating the local food, which you can probably guess since we were in Belgium: Waffles! The Belgians really have their priorities straight..the three things that they are really known for are waffles, chocolate, and beer. Unfortunately I didn't have any of their chocolate since I'm not much of a chocolate person, but I had the waffles and beer. Most of the really delicious beers in Belgium are made by religious monks who live in Abbeys. They sell the beer as a way to make money for their respective abbeys, and most of them have been brewing using the same ingredients since the 1200s. Belgian beer is by far my favorite in the world because it's usually dark, strong, and full of flavor. A couple of my favorites that they also have in the states are Chimay, Duvel, and Delirium Tremens.

Bruges by day..it still felt like I was in a different world


Medieval windmills! There were a few more of these along the canals.

One of the squares of the town with the Belfry in the background

The view from the top of the Belfry. Check out all the wind turbines in the background!

Inside of one of the churches in Bruges

The next day we went over to Brussels, which was a nice city but definitely not as impressive as Bruges. It is the capital of Belgium and a much bigger city than Bruges, so it felt pretty similar to many other big European cities that I've been to.

Brussels, on the way up the hill to the Royal Palace.

The Royal Palace in Brussels

We did go to one really unique place though: Saturday night we were walking around and met two British guys and a French girl, and we decided to all go to a bar together. The place that we went to was something that I had read about previously in a NY Times article about Brussels and was probably the most interesting bar/lounge I've ever been to. Here's what the Times said about it, because their description is much better than what I could have come up with:

For good times, stumble over to Goupil le Fol, an eccentric, three-story bar housed in a former brothel that looks like a cross between an opium den and a 1970s porno set. The walls are covered with old paintings of nudes and lurid landscapes, as well as vinyl LPs. Sink into one of the couches, order one of the owner's favorite fruit wines and party into the wee hours, with an Edith Piaf song blaring from a nearby jukebox. Those with less bohemian instincts should stay downstairs, as the clintele gets more and more risque the higher you climb.

We were on the 2nd floor. I definitely recommend going there if you ever go to Brussels.

My rail pass just expired this past weekend, so that's probably the last of the foreign trips that I'll be doing this semester. Only about a month left in the semester, then I'll be leaving for the states on May 15th!