Nate's Travels

(This is Kevin writing). I arrived in Brussels and met Nathan with hugs and smiles. He didn’t look different which was nice. Getting through passport control was a breeze; the longest part of getting to Nathan after having left the plane was the walk from the plane to passport control. The entry agent took a look at the passport and waved me through. There was no Customs to clear! Nathan and I proceeded to the train station and took a train to Luxembourg City. The day was beautiful…sunshiny and breezy, temperatures comfortable. Nathan was an expert navigator of the train system and it took about 3 hours to get to arrive in Lux City. The view from the right was nice but I wouldn’t say spectacular. The train way was mostly through city like conditions (but we had really poor seats and it was hard to see outside). I learned an unfortunate lesson – you have to pay to use the bathroom in train stations. Nathan had warned me and I walked into one that was attended by a grandmothe...

Lake Vinuela Originally uploaded by Nate Brunk . I added about 300 pictures from my travels to Spain! I'll be posting a blog update later tonight, my time! =Nate

Soooooo I'm finally getting around to it. I apologize that you're being agonizingly kept on the edge of your uncomfortable office chair waiting for me to post one of these, but I'm busy!!! I've got a book to read, two papers to write, and work to do for the internship before I go to Spain! But enough about me, here's more about my time in Berlin and Interlaken so you can continue to live vicariously through me! Berlin: We left for Berlin after school on Friday (3/9) and caught the train (the 9 hour train) to Berlin at 2:30. The train ride was pretty uneventful, but it was an extremely busy set of trains. We were using Eurail and didn't have time to get a reservation during the week so we ended up standing/sitting in between cars for probably a few hours of the trip there. Anyway, we got to our hostel (really nice; Meninger... a chain in Germany) and decided to check out the city a little bit. To give you perspective, Berlin is three times the size of Paris so we...

Okay, Tonight I plan on Updating YOU, the reader through Dublin and Edinburgh (MINIMUM!). Hopefully I can get through Berlin and Interlaken too, so I'm up to date before I go to Spain! Ready? Lets go... Dublin: I got to Dublin on Monday afternoon of my week-long break, perfect flight, even though I almost missed it (stupid busses in London.. ugh!). The weather in Dublin was grey and rainy the day I got there, not exactly the way I wanted it to be, but I got a bus pass and headed into town. I stayed in the Temple Bar part of Dublin (one of the biggest centers of city life for pubs and good, Irish times). The hostel was great and let me check in early to throw my stuff down. After that, I went and met up with an Irish guy I'd met earlier in my travels who promised to hook me up with a tour if I came to Dublin... best money I never spent. We toured through Trinity college (beautiful), the Georgian (After the architechtural style) neighborhoods, back through the park to Oscar Wilde...

Phew! Finally a chance to update! I know it’s been about 3 weeks since I have, but bear with me and I’ll get through at least London, Dublin, and Edinburgh (my week-long break) and post about Berlin a little later. Sweet—here we go… London: Though I was staying by myself for the whole week, I traveled with a few people and met up with them in London. We got into the UK around 11:30pm their time (one hour behind Luxembourg). The problem was we were at London Stansted airport in Essex, about an hour and a half by bus from London! That meant I actually got to London proper about 1am on Saturday (2/24) at which time I had to take a cab to my hostel because night buses are so ridiculously slow that it would have taken me 4 hours to go 10 miles. The cabbie took me for pretty much everything I was worth, but gave me an interesting night tour—even if it did cost 60 quid (that’s about $120… yeah). The next day I got up and met up with my friends at Buckingham palace, a truly awesome sight on t...

Westminster Abbey , originally uploaded by Nate Brunk . While I have yet to post on my adventures of last week, you can check out about 200 of the new photos by clicking on the one to the left! =Nate

Le Tour Eiffel at Night , originally uploaded by Nate Brunk . Click on the picture to see the rest of the pictures from Paris and Vianden! =Nate

Helloooooo Everyone! This is going to be an extremely long post, so bear with me! Two weekends ago (the last weekend in January), after our Bruges trip, Taylor and I decided to remain back in Differdange for the weekend. It ended up being a good time; I had to get some shopping done for my new Embassy job ☺, then we went and saw “Casino Royale” in English at the big movie theater in Lux City. The movie theater is the high point of western (read American) civilization in that there is a billiards club, a few bars, and a Subway attached. Taylor and I hit up Subway for food… it was a nice “slice of home.” The movie was good, but the theater experience was a little weird… They don’t open the theater until 20 minutes before your movie. Then, if you want snacks, you go through a self-serve line to get your own popcorn/drinks/candy, pay for them and exit the concessions corral. After that, you wait helplessly in front of the door until a team of 5 people comes and unlocks the theater about 10...

Hey ya'll, Sorry I haven't posted much... This has been a really really reallllllllyyyy busy week. I started my internship in Lux City, had 2 papers due, over 200 pages of reading.. ugh. Anyway, the plan for this weekend is Paris! I'm pretty excited to say the least... the Louvre, Palis de Versailles... good times. I'll provide a much bigger update when I get back, I promise! xnatex

The Canal in Bruge , originally uploaded by Nate Brunk . So this weekend we headed to Bruges, Belgium... What an amazing little town! Full of tourism (and tourists acting like tourists), the town had plenty to do and to see. We arrived by train on Friday night (only about a 3 hour ride from Luxembourg City) and started to hike around to try to find our hostel. We ended up staying in a place called Snuffel Backpacker hostel... it's an awesome place with tons of people there. The common room was a bar... a bit smoky, but a neat place to socialize. Taylor and I ended up talking to people from France and Holland (in French, incidentally... well, slightly drunken French...). They were studying to be train conductors, and had the weekend off for holiday. Anyway--that night, we took a night walk of Bruges, an incredibly beautiful city when the weather is nice and the lights are on... Awesome! We stopped before we went back to get some fries (did you know they were invented here?!) wi...

The Valley in Lux City , originally uploaded by Nate Brunk . Hey ya'll, here's the first of the pictures! I'm constantly working on uploading them, and doubt i'll have the chance to upload more tonight... then we're heading to Bruges, Belgium tomorrow... I'll get to it though, I promise! The rest of the photos are at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nathanbrunk/ xnatex

Bonjour! Sooooo, we've been extremely busy, and I haven't much time to check e-mail, etc, but when I can, I am trying! Linda... I'll email you the thing asap, I dont have the zipcode here on me right now... Anyway, we've done some more cool things on our orientation trips... we've had the opportunity to go to the Moselle region of Luxembourg (on the border between France, literally separated by the Moselle river. The moselle region is known for it's amazing wine production (mostly white wines... apparently the soil isn't sandy enough for red grapes). We first visited La Musee du Vin to see exactly how wine was made historically by smaller winemakers. We tasted a wine at the finish of the tour, it was pretty tasteless for wine, but meh.. whatevs. Next we headed to the Domaine Vinsmoselle winery. It's a coop winery for the growers around, they jointly purchased the equipment to create some of Luxembourg's best wine and champaigne equivalent (did you kn...

Ah! Finally, Le Internet! Moyen! Well, we arrived safely (much more so than on Air China Flights) on wednesday morning in Brussels, Belgium. After getting all of our things, we headed for the bus where MUDEC staff greeted us. After a three-hour long bus ride, we finally made it to Differdange (lovingly known here as "The Diff"). We hooked up with our host family's son, Johnny (not to be confused with their dog Johnny), who packed our luggage in a tiny van and took it ahead of us to our house. We walked to the house, literally a 2 minute walk from the chateau (yay for rolling out of bed!)! We checked out our rooms--they're really nice! We each have our own room on the 3rd (2nd here) story of Claire's (host mom's) house, then share a newly renovated bathroom--it's really nice! We came back to MUDEC on Thursday to begin our orientation: first a lecture from Dr. Stiller (the dean), then introductory sessions about living with a host family, and student activi...

Ahhhhh... travel time is here again.. In less than 12 hours, I'll have started my journey towards Differdange, Luxembourg, my new home for the next four months! I'm super excited, and way more at ease about traveling a long distance after having traveled to China. I've been watching Rick Steve's DVD's, reading information, and basically just getting mentally prepped. I say mentally since I just finished the majority of my packing about an hour ago :P I'm really stoked that so many people have access to this site; It'll be sweet to share my experiences... these are your souvineers :P Stick around, come back every week or so and I'll do my best to update regularly! I would like to note that I'm not going to have internet access at the chateau in Differdange for a few days, so if ya'll don't hear from me, assume the best. Au revoir mes amis... ALLONS-Y A EUROPE! xnatex

Alright, I decided to go the way of the net.. pictures are at http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v475/natebrunk/ Only some are up, more to come... xnatex

Keep your fingers crossed everyone. My iPod (which has about 400 photos from this trip) has failed me. I'm having deja vu of my powerbook and now it's going kerplunk. Hopefully I can recover the data the same way I was able from the computer... we'll see... but keep prayers flowin and fingers crossed! (If not, all you get to see is shanghai and tibet :P) xnatex

Hey Everyone! Hope this blog finds you as well as it does me! Tibet is/was out of this world! Thank you Uncle Jake and Aunt Karen! I can't believe how beautiful this place is... It's so unaffected by the outside world while at the same time slowly becoming modernized. It's been a nice break to not constantly be breathing in hardcore pollution though... the mountain air has been great. I've noticed a few things because of the altitude, but nothing too significant. Yesterday we went to the Potala palace... the place where the Dali Lama would live, walked around that, the Tibetan museum, and one of the big bazarrs around the big temple in the center of Lhasa. We also visited the Summer Palace for the Dali Lama and got to see the part constructed by the 14th (most current). Very serene indeed. Today we visited a monestary--it was very interesting (though Bhuddism is extremely difficult to understand...) and the temple I mentioned earlier. Both are full of extravagant statue...

Hey Ya'll, Sitting here in the hotel business center in Shanghai! This is one kickin' city. Of the three we've been to so far, this is by far the most developed in the western sense. We've been able to see the work of different governments to build "concessions" or quarters here. There is a British quarter, French Quarter, Russian Quarter, etc. The Americans were offered a part of Shanghai to build in, but they never did it in time. Eventually it became part of the British Quarter... as ze French say, "Stupid Americans" (or as the chinese say, Stupid Maiguo) :). The city has an incredible number of skyscrapers though: some of the coolest I've seen to date in the world. I took tons of pictures, so you'll get to see them all. Today we went to a think tank here in the city, and later we'll be meeting with people from the American Consulate. The meeting this morning was informative, and we were again offered a lot of differing perspectives on...

ALRIGHT! Finally a chance to update! We have been a busy little delegation on diplomacy here in China. The flight over was miserable to say the least. 13.5 hours on the plane to Shanghai and then another 2 to get to Beijing... I was pooped! We got into the hotel, which was extremely nice, at around 12am on Sunday (our time). We had a light Western dinner (they made us crustless sandwiches) and went to bed. I'll put more in the DVD about the hotel, but it was definitely a 3-4 star. Extremely nice. The next day we had our first group meeting, got to know some other people and had an introductory cultural briefing by one of the people in the tour company that scheduled everything for us over here. After that, we ate lunch at the Yueshanfang restaurant (pretty good, but not the best... the fish and chicken with their heads still on freaked us all out a bit), and went to the Imperial Summer Palace. The palace was extremely crowded, but served as a great starting point for learning about...

Shoooooot. I hurt all over. LA was a great time hangin' with Karen and Uncle Ed. We basically did a food tour of southern Cali, or so it seemed. Needless to say it ended crappily. I got food poisoning last night, yacked in Karen's car, yacked all night long (and didnt sleep) at the hotel. I still feel miserable today, but at least I can keep some food/water down. China is almost here! I'm actually sitting at the gate right now. Most of the kids I've met so far from the program are pretty cool, a few idiots, but I suppose you'll find those everywhere. Now I have to get in gear and try to make it on an airplane for 18 hours without dying. Fun! Anyway, I'll post again in Beijing! Say me a prayer for my crappy stomach/body.