Vortices of Extelligence

Towards this land…

[на български]

There is a Balkandji song, which name in English would probably sound like Towards this land; its lyrics go something like that:

“Towards this land I head again,
I find it and put an end to my fears
Because I'm back here again!”

Well, yeah, we seem to have made it back home — after a week and more of all kinds of exciting, scary, surprising, education or plain old wonderful experiences. I'll post at length about it all a bit later, now here are a few teaser pics, more of those in a day or three:)

The Kölner idea of a light plateau for three	The Kölner Dom — a path to the light from above	Do not meddle with the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger
The truth revealed? Nametags left to right: “Shteryana Shopova”, “Philip Paeps”, “Erwin Lansing”	Now that's what I call a big backpack!	Ryan McBride's approach to testing failover systems

And now, the real game begins…

So here we are in Basel, pretty much in time for the FreeBSD Developers Summit before BSDCon. We've spent a wonderful three days in Köln, a hectic and calm (at the same time) day in Zürich, we're right in the middle of the trip, and things are going just great!

I'll be writing some more in the following days, I think, but here are some Real Quick Notes(tm)…

• one of the very few downsides of having a big backpack: far, far less legroom in a bus;
• I hope the people at the Serbian border picked four random persons from the bus for a luggage search;
• in a 30-hour bus trip with rest stops at each four hours, it is a good idea to get off the bus at each stop, even if it is at four in the morning — your legs will regret it long before the next stop if you don't;
• Lubka and Marin really do know how to entertain guests, even those that really, totally wreck their life's schedule for three whole days! Pity we couldn't stay more… although I bet they don't feel that way ;)
• the Kölner Dom… you just have to see it to believe that architecture really can speak directly to the soul;
• a Christmas fair looks a lot humbler from 157 metres up;
• Christian Brüffer will probably think twice before making another “never heard of it” joke on IRC — a couple of weeks later, he got way more than his share of the Bulgarian political and economic situation over a couple of beers (for large values of “a couple”);
• on a shopping trip, being pretty much the only man on the women clothing floor is not necessarily a bad thing :)
• the ancient Romans sure knew how to live and how to party… even in death;
• whoever came up with the idea of airplane flights at 7am from an airport about an hour away from the city should be taken out back and shot… but see below;
• a 20cm threaded iron stick in the backpack makes for interesting conversations at the security gate;
• whoever designed the Zürich city transportation system was probably chosen for his exceptional performance in redesigning the lower levels of Hell;
• whoever came up with the idea of airplane flights at 7am ought to be given a medal or something — that's the only thing that allowed us to actually have the time to see some of Zürich;
• sometimes, a toast “to the nice surprises that life brings” is just right;
• on a trip like this, it really is nice to have a companion who actually thinks and makes the sensible choice every now and then;
• in some parts of Europe, the word “cafe” has a somewhat different meaning, doesn't it now?
• well-maintained two-storey trains are a blessing from above;
• A vacation. A restaurant in Zürich. Rum with hot tea. Who'd'a thought… even a month ago…

Okay, that's it for the present — now it seems we're about to go on living along the lines of the JSC recommendation — “Try not to get worried, try not to turn on to problems that upset you” — and just go off for a few beers or something.

Phase I complete

[на български]

Phase I of the short trip through Europe is complete - after a 30-hour trip by bus through Serbia, Hrvatska, Slovenia, and Austria, we reached Köln (or Cologne - as you like it) right on schedule. More to come in the following days, for the present let me just say that Lubka (Shteryana's sister) gave us a great welcome.