Weekend 8: Paris, France

Saturday, July 18, 2009
Wen Hui, Alan, Zherui (a student from Purdue), and me met at the Aachen West train station for our 7:55am train to Aachen Hauptbahnhof (that’s german for ‘main train station’). At the Aachen Hauptbahnhof, we transferred to our Thalys train to Paris which we had booked in advance. Thalys is an international high-speed train operator built around the high speed lines between Paris, Brussels, Köln, and Amsterdam. I think the top speed of a Thalys train is around 300 km/hr (or 186 mph). It’s about a 3 hour train ride from Aachen to Paris.

When we arrived at the Paris Nord train station around 11:40am, we met up with Helen (a UMich student who is interning in the UROP International office) who got a ride to Paris through mitfahrgelegenheit.de. We then bought a day pass for the Metro and then headed to check into our hotel, which was located near the Bastille. After checking into the hotel, we went to the Jardin des Tuileries and the Louvre. While we had planned to go inside the Louvre, we unfortunately did not have enough time to actually go inside based on our itinerary for the next item we wanted to do. Here are some pictures from when we walked around the Jardin des Tuileries:

The Tulip Garden area looks rather unreal to me. It was very pretty. People just lounged around in chairs around this fountain.

Here are some pictures from when we were in the area near the entrance to the Louvre:

This is one side of the Louvre and the Pyramid.

I was trying to do a kick in front of the Louvre, but it did not turn out too well.

One of my friends from MIT, Hattie, is interning in Paris this summer and she ended up spending a lot of the weekend with us. She met up with us at the Louvre before we headed to the “New Paris Tour” at 4pm. The New Paris Tour is a three hour walking tour. On this walking tour, we were able to see the following sites as well as learn interesting historical stories about them from our tour guide: Notre Dame de Paris, The Latin Quarter, Ile-de-la-Cité, Pont Neuf, The Louvre, Palais Royal, Haussmann’s Renovations, Eiffel Tower, Tuileries Gardens, Les Invalides Académie Française, Opéra Garnier, Musée d’Orsay, Pont Alexandre III, Napoléon’s Tomb, Assemblé Nationale, Champs-Élysées, Arc de Triomphe, Grand & Petit Palais, and Place de la Concorde.

In the evening, we planned to climb the Eiffel Tower, but our dinner ran a bit late and it didn’t leave us adequate time to climb the Tower and get on the Metro before it closes in order to get back to our hotel. Instead, we just looked at the Eiffel Tower at night from the ground and relaxed on the lawn next to the Eiffel Tower.

The Eiffel Tower sometimes does some random things at night. In this picture, it is having a period where it flashes crazy lights and looks all psychedelic.

I don’t exactly know the best way to use my digital  camera when taking pictures at night/in the dark. So I fiddled with the settings to see what kind of pictures I’d get.

This is pretty much the same picture as the previous one, but with different camera settings.

Underneath the Eiffel Tower

Sunday, July 19, 2009
Our intention for Sunday was to spend most of the day at Versailles. The city of Versailles is located in the western suburbs of Paris. We had to take the RER-C train to get there. Versailles is best known for being the site of the vast royal palace and gardens built by King Louis XIV. Each of us had to spend over 25 Euros (I think it may have been around 27 Euros?) for the whole ticket combo for admission to the palace and gardens. While Versailles was definitely a place worth seeing, I definitely think the admission was extremely overpriced. We thought it was a bit comical that in order for us to get into Versailles, we had to pay about the same price as our train ticket to Paris.

Here we are walking to the palace of Versailles.

Yes, Versailles sure is pretty.

The MIT kids got excited to see a statue of L’Hopital!

We got to walk inside the whole palace and it’s definitely really pretty in there. I wish I lived there!

View of some of the gardens from inside the palace.

I’m in the famous Hall of Mirrors.

A shot of more fountains and gardens in Versailles. There’s a watershow for an hour each day (it either starts at noon or 11am – I forget). All the fountains in Versailles turn on and run for an hour and coordinate with music.

Here’s a picture of one fountain in action. Though, Wen Hui was not impressed because she is from Las Vegas and the Bellagio Fountains are much more impressive than this.

Here’s another part of the Versailles gardens. Unfortunately, the fountains are not in action in this picture.

We left Versailles around 1 or 2pm with the intention of seeing the Catacombs at 3pm. Unfortunately, when we got to Catacombs, the line was rididulously long and we were told the Catacombs would be closed by 5pm. So we headed to see the Notre Dame where we met up with Hattie again.

This is the Notre Dame.

After Notre Dame, we decided to actually go up the Eiffel Tower. We took an elevator to the “second foor”. From the second floor, you can take an elevator to the top of the tower.

View of the rest of the tower from outside the second floor.

The view of Paris from the second floor of the Eiffel Tower.

After seeing the Eiffel Tower, we went to Montmartre for the evening. Montmartre is a hill about 130 meters high and it is in the north of Paris. Some people think Montmartre has better views of the city than the Eiffel Tower does and I think I might agree. Something amusing about the view from Montmartre is that you pretty much get a good view of Paris except for the Eiffel Tower.

I don’t think I took the best picture of the view from Montmartre.

Montmartre is best known for the Basilica of the Sacré Cœur. Here Hattie and me with the Sacré Cœur.

We ate dinner on Montmartre and we each got one of those pre-fixed three course meals.

The first course/appetizer was some sort of salmon pâté:

The second course/main course/entree was some sort of stewed beef with noodles:

I forgot to take a picture of the third course/dessert, but I got some chocolate mousse.

After dinner, we walked around Montmartre and then decided we just had to visit Moulin Rouge.

Here’s Hattie and me outside of Moulin Rouge.

We were all pretty tired for the night after seeing Moulin Rouge.  After all, we did have two rather packed days of exploring Paris. So we headed back to our hotel.

Monday, July 20, 2009
We had to wake up really early to check out of the hotel and catch out Thalys train back to Aachen. We were trying out best to only miss a half day of work at our internships.

Since our hotel was really close to the Bastille, I tried to take a picture of it as we were heading to the Metro to get to Paris Nord:

There’s nothing left of the original Bastille fort today, but if you look very closely at this picture you can see the top tip of the July Column, which is at the center of the Place de la Bastille.

We returned to Aachen somewhere around 9:30am. Of course, I went back to my room to put down my things and rest a little before heading back into work. I probably got into work around noon. However, my friend Vasudha from MIT was visiting Aachen this day and I got a call from her that she had arrived. So I took an hour off from work to meet up with her and help get her acquainted with Aachen.

Here we are enjoying some German beer together. Of course, I ordered a BananenWeizen (Hefeweizen beer with banana juice) and Vasudha just got a normal Hefeweizen.

After meeting with Vasudha, I went back to work for the day, did grocery shopping, and worked out before I met up with her again in the evening. I showed her Pontsraße and then we got some drinks with some UROP International interns and German buddies. It was nice to get my second visit from an MIT friend. Vasudha is interning in Brussels this summer and that’s why she was able to visit Aachen this summer.

And if you want to see the rest of my Paris pictures, here is a link:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2018832&id=1233870200&l=2a9a5189d1

Köln with my German Buddy

As I mentioned before, each of the UROP International interns have been assigned a ‘buddy’, who is an RWTH Aachen student who volunteers to basically be our German counterpart. The buddy’s main job is to help us move in and to help us get acquainted with Aachen/Germany. Because my first buddy, Marek, went to the US after my first two weeks in Germany for a research internahip at MIT, I was assigned a second buddy, Levent. I’ve been very fortunate to have gotten along very well with both my buddies. Some UROP International interns don’t interact as much with their German buddies.

On Tuesday, July 14, I went to Köln with Levent. Köln is Germany’s fourth largest city and is the largest city in the German Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia. It is one of the oldest cities in Germany, having been founded by the Romans in 38 BC.  Köln is a city that I’m always going through or briefly stopping by in, but never one that I’ve actually spent a whole day in or thoroughly looked at, which is a shame. I remember the last time I was in Germany for a high school exchange, the students explored Köln for a day, but I was unable to go on this trip because I had already returned to the US! Unfortunately, even on this Köln trip with Levent, I still don’t feel like I’ve thoroughly explored Köln given the nature of our trip and the fact that we were only there for an evening.

The town Levent is from is very close to Köln so he basically considers Köln his hometown (or I guess you could call it his ‘homecity’). He invited me to go to Köln with him to watch his older sister, Melisa, play in a piano recital. Melisa studies at a music university in Köln. We went to Köln by train from Aachen and we arrived about one hour before Melisa’s piano recital. So Levent showed me a little bit of Köln, but it was mainly just the area near the famous Kölner Dom (that’s German for ‘Köln Cathedral’).

Here’s Levent and me in front of the famous Köln Cathedral. It’s pretty big so the whole thing could not be pictured. The Köln Cathedral is a Gothic Church that started in 1248 and was completed in 1880 – that’s quite a long time to build a church. You can actually climb the 509 steps inside to get to the top, but we didn’t have enough time.

An important thing to do in Köln is to drink the typical Köln beer called Kölsch. The different cities and regions in Germany tend to have their own beer and the people from there tend to be very loyal to their own beer. Some cities even have strong rivalries with each other. A few different breweries make this Kölsch beer and Levent took me to the Früh am Dom (the brewery’s name is ‘Früh’ and it’s located near the ‘Dom’, which means ‘Cathedral’).

Here we are enjoying our Früh Kölsch in front of the Früh brewery. I’ve actually had bottled Früh Kölsch before in Aachen. Unfortunately, Kölsch is only seved in 0,2L glasses, which is much smaller than the usual 0,5L glasses that I’m used to in Germany.

After walking around the area near the Cathedral, we headed to Melisa’s piano recital. I enjoy listening to classical piano so it was nice to attend this recital. Also in attendance to Melisa’s recital was almost all of Levent’s family (extended family included). He has quite a big family so it was a bit overwhelming meeting everyone. After the recital and in order to congratulate Melisa for a well played piano recital, we went to dinner at some fancy French restaurant with Levent’s family and some of Melisa’s friends. It was really fun meeting Levent’s family and Melisa’s friends.

We took the train back to Aachen Main Station pretty late and didn’t get back until about 1 or 2am. Because it was so late and there were no more trains going to the Aachen West Station, which is closer to my dorm, Levent drove me back to my dorm on his motorcycle. This was my second time ever on a motorcycle and I love motorcycle rides! It was a fun way to end the night.

Liege Pictures

I tend to keep forgetting to post a link to view the rest of my pictures from a trip.

Well here is the link to view the rest of my pictures from Liege. And, no, you do not need a Facebook account to access them.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2017022&id=1233870200&l=7e67be520f

Weekend 7: From Liege to Spas to Spaghetti Ice Cream

Friday, July 10
My friend, Alea, was scheduled to visit me in Germany for the weekend of July 10. Alea is from Jamaica Plain and is a rising junior at Wagner College. We became friends because we worked together last summer (as research assistants at the AgeLab at MIT).

Alea decided to visit me in Germany since I was there for the summer and she conveniently had family friends in Brussels she stayed with before she stopped by Germany. The plan was for Alea to arrive at the Aachen West train station at 4:43pm so that I could show her the Lindt and Printen factory outlets before they close at 6pm. I did not see her on the Aachen West platform at the planned time and waited on the platform for two and a half hours to no avail. Alea gave me the phone number of the international cell phone she had purchased for this trip, but whenever I called it I most certainly did not reach Alea. I was starting to get worried and was not sure what to do. I finally decided to go back to my room after the two and a half hours of waiting because not only was I getting cold, but I thought maybe I might have gotten an email about Alea’s situation.

Once I was back in my room, I indeed got an email from her mother stating that Alea had some problems with the trains and would be arriving at Aachen West around 7pm. I then quickly walked back to Aachen West, but Alea still did not come out of any trains that came by. I waited an hour and a half until I started to get cold again. While I contemplated going back to my room, a train came and Alea finally arrived in Aachen!

Well, I didn’t get to show her the Lindt and Printen outlets since it was around 9pm by the time she arrived, but I made us dinner and then we headed to Pontstraße where we got a beer and enjoyed the Aachen night life.

We went to Cafe Galilei and I got a BananenWeizen, which is banana juice with Hefeweizen beer. This was one of my favourite drinks in Germany. Of course, this is half liter size!

Alea just got Hefeweizen beer, which is one of my favourite beers in Germany.

This picture shows you how slow I was at drinking beer that night since more of Alea’s beer is gone than mine.

Saturday, July 11
On Saturday, Alea and I went to Liege, Belgium with a few other UROP International students. The trip was organized by the UROP International office and we just had to pay 5 Euros for the bus ride, boat tour, and city tour in Liege. I must admit that I fell asleep during the boat tour so I can’t tell you too much about that, but I can show you some pictures from the boat tour of the Meuse River.

Me asleep on the boat tour.

I think the walking tour was about two or two and half hours long. Here are some things we saw on the walking tour:

A fountain where dogs and horses have drank out of.

A clock tower. Liege is known to be the city of clock towers.

Some university students made took random trash to make this artistic piece.

This is a shot of the contrasting countryside that can be found right in Liege.

Alea and I went to some Italian place for lunch. Here’s a picture of our food. I got some lasagna with beef dish.

A cathedral in Liege… there are just way too many cathedrals in Europe.

Food in Liege. Unfortunately, I did not get to eat any of this.

My opinion about Liege is the same for Brussels and, unfortunately, I am just going to make this general opinion about Belgium in general. Liege was just a pretty city to look at, but it did not seem like there was much to do and that you could get bored fast. I will admit that there are more things to do in Brussels, but I’d also get tired of them quickly. The only thing I truly enjoy in Belgium is the food – especially the waffles! As stated in my Brussels post, waffles in Belgium make all other waffles taste so bland and disgusting. I even ate two waffles when I was in Liege!

For Saturday night, Alea and I went to something on Pontstraβe and then we met up with my buddy, Levent, around 10pm because he wanted to hang out. We first got a cocktail with Levent and then he took us to a bar/club called KönigKeller. On Saturday night, girls get two free drinks at KönigKeller if they arrive at the bar/club before midnight.We basically just had some drinks and danced the night away at KönigKeller. Their music was ok, but not amazing.

Sunday, July 12
On Alea’s last day, we decided to go to Aachen’s famous Carolus Thermen spa. The Carlus Thermen spa offers indoor and outdoor baths to relax in as well as four different sauna worlds, massages, and gourmet restaurants. If you want to learn more about them, you can visit their website here: http://www.carolus-thermen.de/go/bad_aachen/english.html. We met up with Levent, Helen (an American intern in the UROP International Office), and Michael (a UROP International intern from Johns Hopkins) at Ponttor around 10:30am in order to go to Carolus Thermen. We decided to go so early because Alea was trying to leave Aachen by 4 or 5pm and we still had to go to the Aachen main train station to purchase her train ticket back to Brussels.

The Carolus Thermen spa was very enjoyable and relaxing. Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of us in the spa because my camera would have obviously gotten wet, but here are some pictures of the spa from the internet so that you have an idea of what it’s like in there:

Here’s a picture of all of us who went in front of the entrance of Carolus Thermen:

After the Carolus Thermen spa, Alea and I quickly got ready before heading to the Aachen main train station in order to get her a train ticket back to Brussels because she had not purchased it in advance and we were having trouble buying it online. Levent kindly offered to go with us so that he could help talk to the people at the ticket counter in German. With extreme luck, Alea was able to get a first class Thalys ticket to Brussels for only 24 Euros! Thalys is one of the nicer and faster trains you can take in Europe and the train Alea was taking back to Brussels was a direct train from Aachen to Brussels. I later learned that Thalys was doing a summer special where a certain number of first class seats were only 25 Euros. I should definitely take advantage of this next summer and it is too bad that I did not get this deal for my Paris trip the following weekend! Alea surely enjoyed being spoiled on her first class train ride to Brussels!

After Alea successfully got on the train headed to Brussels, I met up with Helen, Michael, and their German friend, Hendrik. We ended up going to an Eis Cafe (‘eis’ is German for ‘ice cream’ – though European ice cream is much lighter than American ice cream and it’s usually gelato) and we ordered spaghetti ice cream!

The four of us split two large orders of Spaghetti Eis. One had strawberry sauce and the other had chocolate sauce. Spaghetti ice cream is made by first putting a layer of whipped cream down. Then, vanilla ice cream is pressed through a “spaghetti maker” so that “noodles” are formed over the layer of whipped cream. The syrup is then put on top of all of this. I’m not sure what they used as the white stuff that dusted everything, but I will assure that it is not cheese.

My First Race

On Wednesday, July 8, just 3 days after I returned from Belgrade, I ran my first race ever! The race I ran was called the “Lousberglauf”, which directly translates to “Lousberg Run”. As I mentioned in my previous posts, the Lousberg is a big hill in Aachen that is actually located right by where I live. The Lousberglauf is a 5.555 kilometer (approximately 3.5 miles) run up and down the Lousberg. The run is actually a pretty big deal in Aachen and there were probably around 2000 runners (possibly more?).

Running is an activity that I love and hate. I have always admired the idea of running, but I never really seemed to find the tolerance for the seemingly monotonous activity. However, I started forcing myself to go on regular distance runs during my freshman year of college and have continued it ever since then (minus the 6 month break from physical activity due to my knee injury).

The UROP International office has sent the interns emails about signing up for the Lousberglauf since May (before the program even started). The UROP office really wanted to create a “UROP International” team/group that would run together at the Lousberglauf. I finally got the courage to actually signup for the race in the beginning of June.

And so there ended up being 13 of us on the UROP International team for the Lousberglauf – three Germans and the rest Americans. The UROP officie even got us all spiffy athletic shirts that had the UROP International logo on the back:

Here’s what we looked like from the front:

All of our race numbers actually had a chip on them called the “Bib Chip”. There were sensors at the start and finish of the race that would be able to scan these chips (as the runner passed the sensor) in order to help time how long it took you to complete the race. The results were available shortly after the race and online. I’m not going to broadcast my time on here because I am a bit embarrassed by it.

The Lousberglauf was quite a fun experience despite the fact that it was pouring very badly the entire time (I got soaked). The whole area at the foot of the Lousberg (which is right where the four dorm towers are, including mine) was full of beer vendors, food vendors, stages, and more. What I thought was quite comical was that right after several Germans crossed the finish line, they would immediately go grab a beer from one of the beer vendors. That doesn’t sound too healthy to me.

The run itself for me was definitely a bit hard going uphill, but such a relief when I got to the downhill part. The entire time I felt very hungry (though I am known to have a very good appetite and am frequently hungry) and kept complaining about my hunger to my running partner, Stephen (he’s a UROP intern from Georgia Tech). My knee was rather sore after the run and my head felt even worse since I was recovering from a mild concussion (that I got in Serbia) and actually wasn’t supposed to be doing any heavy physical activity. Despite all this, I still thought it was a good race.

After the race, I cleaned up (and dried up from the rain) and then conveniently just headed to the bottom of my dorm where all the party action was happening. Apparently, after the Lousberglauf there’s a big party afterwards. Again, there’s lots of food and beer vendors and a stage for a cover band to play. I ended up hanging out the rest of the night with Stephen and my German buddy, Levent.

Departing the Universiade

I apologize for the short hiatus from posting! Last week and this week have been extremely busy – primarily because my research paper and poster are due by the end of this week and my German final exam is tomorrow morning! I am very behind on my posts and I hope to catch up soon!

Anyhow, I shall continue about my departure from the Universiade…

I was scheduled to fly back to Germany from Belgrade on a Germanwings flight (the return leg of the first flight I missed) for Sunday, July 5. The last day for the Taekwondo competition at the Universiade was Monday, July 6, and the rest of the USA Taekwondo team was scheduled to fly out on July 8. It was definitely very unfortunate that I had to leave early because I did not get to watch all of the Taekwondo competition nor did I get to see the rest of Belgrade and party with the rest of the team.

Of course, for my last night in Belgrade on the July 4 (I don’t think team USA even did any July 4th celebrations… that’s kind of sad because I like celebrating Independence Day with my friends back at home) I wanted to hang out with the team as much as I could or try to go out in Belgrade at night. While my last night didn’t go as swimmingly as I wanted it to, it was still a memorable experience…

After the competition day was over for us on Saturday, July 4, we went back to the Athlete Village to relax a little bit and our coaches told us that they’d be willing to take us to the Hyatt for dinner. Dinner at the Hyatt was definitely a fun affair and it was nice spending more time with the USA Taekwondo team members. However, after dinner it started to rain very very hard. We all got into taxis to get back to the Athlete Village. When we arrived at the Athlete Village, it was still raining extremely hard and my teammates wanted to run to the USA apartment. I obviously did not have my knee brace with me and it is very difficult and painful for me to attempt to run when I do not have my knee brace on. So TJ, our male featherweight, decided to give me a piggyback ride. Unfortunately, he slipped backwards on the wet cement, which caused me to fly off his back and land rather hard on my head, elbow, and butt. I definitely got bruised up rather badly on my butt and elbow… and my head? I thought it was just a bad hit, but I could tolerate it. However, the doctor for our team saw me fall and insisted that she check my head out after we took our team pictures.

The team doctor claimed that I failed her memory test and that I had a mild concussion. I then was brought to the medical clinic in the Athlete Village to get checked out who then made me go to the Military Hospital in Serbia. Although this was a very unique medical experience, I don’t want to blog too much about my medical experience because, to be honest, it was not the best medical experience I’ve had and I don’t want to be offensive… I probably already achieved being offensive by just mentioning this though…
You can ask me if you want to learn more about my medical experience in Belgrade.

Here’s a picture of me and Master Chuang riding in the ambulance on the way to the Military Hospital in Serbia. Master Chuang is a coach for the US Collegiate National team and he is also my coach back in Boston.

As for my head and my bruises, they definitely continued to hurt pretty badly for the next 1-2 weeks. In fact, my elbow and butt are still really sensitive and it hurts when I touch them. My head felt really dizzy and achy for the next week and I also felt sleepy all the time… this obviously did not help me be productive at work during the week.

When I finally returned to the Athlete Village after my medical excursion for the night, I just hung out with a few team members in our apartments for the rest of the evening. I couldn’t really go out on the town with a concussed head.

On July 5, I spectated the first half of the Taekwondo competition day and then I had to head back to the Athlete Village where I checked out and was driven to the Belgrade airport for my flight back to Germany. Quite an interesting coincidence happened while I waited in the check-in line for my flight – I bumped into Claudia Beaujean’s boyfriend. Claudia Beaujean is the female individual poomsae competitor for the German national team and she did indeed compete at the Universiade. She usually places within the top 3-5 in internatoinal competitions. She’s extremely good and I like her poomsae! Claudia’s boyfriend’s name is Frank. Frank and I got along well and he requested to be seated next to me on the plane. We talked the whole way back to Germany and he even offered to drive me back to Aachen with Claudia (she flew back on the same day, but a different flight), which means I didn’t have to waste money on a German train! We all ended up exchanging numbers, which has now resulted in us hanging out and training together sometimes. It’s great training with Claudia and I’m definitely learning A LOT from her about poomsae. I hope I can remember it all when I go back to the US.

Here are some pictures from the team photo opt. They were taken on Bobby Ren’s camera. Bobby was a member of the pairs poomsae team for the Universiade and he is also an instructor for the MIT Sport Taekwondo team.

The girls, both sparring and poomsae. Unfortuantely, Carissa and Karolina (two other poomsae girls) are missing.

The guys, both sparring and poomsae

Everyone – including coaches, president, team manager, and doctor

Poomsae people, including the poomsae (and sparring) coach, Master Chuang

Poomsae members trying to sync

My Photos from the 2009 Universiade

I forgot to post the link to my Facebook album of pictures from the Universiade!

If you want to see the rest of the pictures I took of the Universiade, here is a link:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2016877&id=1233870200&l=14967ab8c5

Unfortunately, my camera isn’t the best and I don’t have great photo taking skills so I don’t think my pictures effectively capture the Universiade experience.

My Universiade Experience

Because last week and this past weekend have been extremely busy with work, outside activities, and a friend (visiting from the US) staying with me, I did not have any time to write a detailed post about my experience at the Universiade! It frustrates me a bit that I’m behind on my posts and I apologize for any avid readers out there…. but I have a feeling there’s not many of you and I’m not really disappointing too many people.

I feel like this post about the Universiade won’t be as detailed as I would like it to be or won’t express what I would like it to because so much time has passed. I’ve been back in Germany from the Universiade since the evening of July 5, but I was not able to post anything about it until now.

Anyhow, let me say that the 2009 Universiade is an experience that I will never forget. I think many people do not realize the significance of this sports event, especially people in the U.S. Most people understand the significance of the Olympics and the Universiade is pretty much on that scale. The Universiade is the Olympic Games for university students. There are indeed several Olympic athletes and Olympic medalists who compete in the Universiade so the level of competition is very high and difficult. I know some people may think it didn’t take much for me to make the US Collegiate National Taekwondo Poomsae Team or that some people may think it is not difficult to make the US Collegiate National Taekwondo Poomsae Team in general, but I had to work very hard to try to make myself look like a world class athlete when I was up on that stage to compete against the world’s best. I feel like some people don’t understand the prestige of the World University Games nor do they understand the hard work that goes into Taekwondo poomsae.

My last post left off on Carissa and me arriving in Belgrade. As stated at the end of that post, we had a personal driver and personal escorts to the Athlete Village, which was built in Belgrade just for the Universiade. Once we arrived there, we met an ‘attaché’ for the USA delegation and someone who worked for the USA delegation took care of all our paperwork to get us our credentials (badges we had to wear all the time). There was high security everywhere – anytime we entered some place we’d have to put our bags through x-ray machines and walk through a metal detector. After getting our credentials and getting through security, Carissa and I were escorted to the USA apartments in the Athlete Village. The apartments were very new and nice and at the base of each country’s apartment is a headquarter office for the country, a room for massage therapy and physical therapy, and a student ’study room’. This is an example of what a typical apartment complex would look like in the Athlete Village:

As you can tell from the flag on each balcony, this is Germany’s apartment complex in the Athlete Village. Unfortunately, the US delegation did not have this many flags on their apartment.

This is what my key looked like to my apartment. Isn’t it very Harry Potter/Mickey Mouse-esque looking? It was a HUGE key and it seemed very childish/fake looking. However, it was pretty hard to unlock and lock those doors because there are 4 or 5 bolts so you need to turn your key 4 or 5 times.

So each day was pretty much the same schedule – competitors of team USA must get to the Taekwondo venue by 7:15-7:30am and non-competitors must head to the venue by 8:30am; compete or watch the competition; have about two practice sessions a day; eat; have a team meeting; and sleep. Each day was long and busy and I sometimes would not get to bed until some time far after midnight. For the Universiade, the city of Belgrade turned a lot of their public transportation vehicles into vehicles strictly for transporting the athletes. And that is how we got to the venue each day. I really enjoyed the practice sessions with the team. It was really nice to watch, train and touch spar with some of the most talented Taekwondo athletes in the US and the world. It was very motivating.

On the evening of July 1, which was the evening after the first day of competition, the parade of nations and opening ceremony took place for the Universiade. This was definitely quite an experience. It was really fun to mingle with athletes from other countries and take pictures with them while all the countries were getting ready for the parade. Athletes would also try to trade pins with different countries. It was really fun to see all the different uniforms for the different countries… and I wished the USA uniforms looked better.

Here I am mingling with Mexico!

The parade was full of excitement. The streets were full of people cheering as we all walked to the arena for the opening ceremony.

The opening ceremony was quite phenomenal and visually fantastic. In the beginning, a representative marched in for each of the 145 countries participating in the Universiade.

This is China marching in.

After all 145 countries marched in, the torch runner came into the arena and passed the torch onto the athlete selected to light the large Universiade torch, which was outside the arena. Do you see how this is exactly like the Olympics? After the torch lighting, there was a splendid visual show. I don’t my pictures adequately show how spectacular it was.

This is one part of the opening ceremony where they made it look like there were rowers rowing on water.

Now, about the actual competition aspect of Taekwondo at the Universiade. So the first days of competition (July 1 and 2) were devoted to 5 poomsae events: male individual, female individual, men’s team (3 guys performing pooomsae in synchronization), women’s team, and mixed pairs (one guy and one girl performing poomsae in synchronization). As mentioned in my last post, I competed in women’s team poomsae. My two teammates were Alicia and Karolina, who are both intstructors for the MIT Sport Taekwondo team. We did practice together for a few weeks before I left for Germany, but my one and a half month separation from them (because I went to Germany for the summer) prior to the Universiade definitely was a tough thing to overcome. It is very difficult to figure out how to precisely synchronize every movement for three girls. I did practice poomsae on me own in Germany, but I felt like the only real practice three of us got in were the two days in Belgrade prior to our competition day on July 2. Anyhow, on the day of competition, I was surprisingly not too nervous at all. I usually am anywhere from somewhat nervous to very nervous whenever I have to compete, but, for some odd reason, I was almost not nervous at all for the Universiade. My women’s team made it to semifinals and came in 9th in semifinals, but you need make the top 8 in semifinals in order to advance to finals. So that was a bit unfortunate that we did not advance to the final round, but it was still overall a great learning experience. Here’s a couple pictures of my women’s team taken by Daniel Rogers:

Finishing my part of the competition by the second day of competition was definitely a somewhat relieving feeling. I then could just sit back, relax, and enjoy spectating the Universiade. Most of time was spent watching Taekwondo, but the table tennis and fencing venues were very close to the Taekwondo venue so I got to take a quick look at those too. World class ping pong is definitely a crazy sight to see:

I believe this is Korea warming up during the lunch break. They looked insane!

I think this pretty much covers most of the things I wanted to say about my Universiade experience? I’m sorry it’s long and not too coherent! I’m pretty tired from work and other things that have been going on. I noticed that competition wise this post only focuses on me. But, I think it would take me forever to write about all my other teammates. I’m also sure I would inadvertently focus more on certain teammates than others and I don’t think that is very fair.

I actually plan to write one more post about my departure from Serbia. Rest assured that, unlike my arrival, my departure was not a dramatic experience. However, I thought my departure was an interesting affair.

Getting to Belgrade, Serbia

I actually started this post before I left for the Universiade (Summer World University Games) in Belgrade, Serbia, but I did not have time to finish it or post it before I  left. So this is a rewritten version of the entry I would have posted before I left. I have a lot to say about my experience at the Universiade and I’m not sure where to begin in order to accurately capture the magnificence of the experience. I will split it into two entries – one entry (this one) about the adventure I had in order to get to Serbia and the other entry about my experience at the 2009 Universiade.

Back in March, I competed at the U.S. Collegiate National Taekwondo Championships (took place at Brown University for 2009), which served as a team trials for the U.S. Collegiate National poomsae team, the team that would be sent to Belgrade, Serbia to compete at the Summer World University Games (also known as the Universiade). I made the U.S. Collegiate National Taekwondo team for the event ‘women’s team poomsae’. In this event, three girls perform forms together in synchronization. (If you’re getting confused with all these terms, just ask me to clarify.) I would have loved to compete and try out for a sparring spot on the U.S. Collegiate National Taekwondo team, but a serious knee injury from July 2008 prevented me from sparring at all this year. Deciding to compete in poomsae at Collegiate Nationals was actually tough because I did not start any physical activity after my injury until February 2009 and Collegiate Nationals were in March 2009. In addition to the fact that I only had one month to attempt to get back into Taekwondo shape, I had to learn the black belt forms from 2nd degree to 5th degree because I am a 1st degree black belt and for poomsae team trials you are required to know the forms up through 5th degree black belt. Anyhow, at Collegiate Nationals, I placed 1st for women’s team, 2nd for mixed pairs, and 3rd for individual. You need to place 1st in order to earn a spot on the U.S. Collegiate National poomsae team.

I was supposed to fly out on Monday the 29th on a direct Germanwings flight at 10:55am, but something went wrong. I am a complete idiot and did not take my passport with me to the Köln/Bonn airport, which is a 2+ hour train ride from Aachen. I put something that looked like my passport into my purse and was extremely convinced that my passport was in my purse, but it was not! I realized I did not have my passport when I was in line to check in baggage. I had a colour photo copy of my passport in my purse and I took that out hoping it might get me by, but I had a gut feeling it would not (and it did not). So, I feel that customer service in Germany is quite terrible. When I got to the counter, Germanwings yelled at me for not having my passport, which is understandable. However, they did not even offer to help me find another flight. I asked them when is the next flight I could take and they said July 3 – way too late AND I had to pay for rebooking fees as well as the cost of the plane ticket. Germanwings then told me to try Lufthansa and all Lufthansa said was that I could buy an 870 Euro business class plane ticket.

After this, I was in a greater state of panic and disappointment in myself. I had royally screwed things up by being irresponsible and forgetting my passport in Aachen. Though, how the heck was I going to get to Belgrade in time to compete and in an affordable manner? I felt like I was letting down my team, my coaches, and my country by making this big screw up. At this moment in the airport, I had no idea who I should get into contact with to help me with this problem. I had no numbers of anyone in the US who could help me and even if I did call it was like 3 am in the US. So, I called my buddy, Levent, back in Aachen. Levent told me to calm down, return to Aachen, and call him when I return to Aachen so that we can figure things out.

After my 2.5 hour train ride back to Aachen and lugging my heavy luggage up and down endless flights of stairs (because Europe doesn’t believe in making things convenient for the handicap – i.e. not too many elevators or escalators), I called Levent who said he would call me back in two hours after his University classes. In the mean time, I frantically searched the internet for a plane ticket to Belgrade. All of them appeared to be $1000+++, have several layovers, and total travel time of maybe more than 24 hours – it’s only about a 2 hour direct flight. This was frightening me. Finally, I found a $479 ticket with a reasonable itinerary From Czech Airlines – Köln/Bonn to Prague, 3 hour layover, then Prague to Belgrade. I did contemplate for a bit whether all this money, drama, and effort was really worth it for the Universiade, but I did end up buying this ticket. A good thing about this flight is that on the second leg of my flight (from Prague to Belgrade), I would be on the same flight as Carissa Fu, another member of the U.S. Collegiate National Taekwondo Team.

After buying the Czech plane ticket and burning a bigger hole in my wallet, I searched the Deutsche Bahn website for a train to Köln/Bonn airport. Transportation from Aachen to Köln/Bonn airport would only be about 45 minutes by car and usually about 2 hours by train, but all the trains I saw that would get me to the airport on time for my 7am flight were all 5 hours long and 30+ Euros! As I was being frustrated about this, Levent called me to say he found a 360 USD ticket to Belgrade, but I had already booked my 479 USD ticket to Belgrade. Then, on the phone, he asked if I was in my room and if it would be ok for him to visit me. And this is why he is one of my favourite people in Germany and why I’ve been so fortunate to get the best buddies ever:

He gave me a box of Happy Hippo Kinder chocolates! He said he knew I was having a terrible day and thought he should do something to cheer me up. He certainly did, but he managed to make the day even better for me – he offered to drive me to Köln/Bonn airport so that I wouldn’t have to deal with the hassle of the train!  Levent and Marek are the best buddies any American could ask for while in Germany. I am extremely thankful for this.

And so, Levent picked me up in the dark morning hour of 4am on Tuesday, June 30. He even walked me to my terminal and check in counter. At the check in counter, I learned that the ticket I had purchased was actually a business class flight! It seems that when you buy last minute only business class is left. I definitely did not feel like I deserved business class since I screwed so many things up already. It was quite an experience being in business class. I did feel a bit odd because I’m just this teenage asian girl among german men in business suits. I felt weird getting treated so well.  I also got a nicely put together meal on both legs of my flight.

This was my breakfast on the first leg of my flight. Though, I don’t think this picture shows the food in the best light… probably the huge coffee cup makes the plate of food look small? Anyhow, that is a plate completely stacked with all sorts of different cheeses and cold cuts. It was a lot of food and it was pretty good.

It was great bumping into my teammate, Carissa, on the second leg of my flight. She was pleasantly surprised too. When we got off the plane in Belgrade, we were greeted by our own personal escort, sent by the Universiade, who brought us to baggage claim and to our personal driver who drove us to the Athlete Village. The athletes in the Universiade were all treated extremely well and I soon learned why as I experienced the Universiade myself. I hope you’ll be able to learn why too in my hopeful next post  about my Universiade experience.

Weekend 5: Alex Visits Aachen

“Ich bin hier!!” were the words I heard from Alex when I picked up my German mobile phone on Friday night some time after 22:00. However, when I walked down to the entrance of my dorm, Alex was no where to be seen. He accidentally walked to another high rise because I live in one of four identical looking high rises. After a phone call of clarification, we met up outside my dorm in a few minutes.

Alex is a friend of mine from MIT who has an internship in Hamburg this summer and decided to visit me this past weekend in Aachen. He is the same year as me at MIT (class of 2011) and is majoring in chemical engineering. In Hamburg this summer, Alex is working for the German company Beiersdorf, which might be better known to you as the company that makes the brand Nivea (skin creams, shaving cream, shampoo, toners, etc.). His job this summer does indeed involve making his own batches of shampoo and conditioner and trying them out on his own hair. I must say I was a bit disappointed that he did not bring any for me to try, but he said it was because he did not like his last batch. Alex and I have been friends since freshman year because we were suitemates in our dorm.

So I guess Alex was my first (of probably not too many) guest this weekend and I had to figure out how to best show him around Aachen when I don’t exactly know all about Aachen.

Well, here’s a sample of something I may cook for dinner here in Aachen and it’s what we ate before we headed out on Friday night:

I stir fried “gyros meat” with onions and peppers and had it with rice. I put “gyros meat” in quotes because I just picked up some good looking package of fresh meat in the grocery store and I THINK that’s what the German said on it… I’m still not fluent in reading German. I must say I like the meat here better than the meat in the US. In fact, I don’t usually like eating pork in the US, but I think the pork in Germany is fine.

After Alex and I ate the “mystery gyros meat”, we headed into town to check out the Aachen night life. Pontstraße is the name of the popular street in Aachen where there are lots of bars, cafes, restaurants, and clubs. I’m sorry I don’t have any pictures of our Friday night out, but we just sat outside a cafe/bar and caught up with each other.

On Saturday, we made sure to be out and about by 10:30am so that I could show Alex the Lindt Factory and the Printen Factory, which close much earlier on Saturday. I think I mentioned this in a previous post, but printen is a sort of sweet, gingerbread, baked good, which is a specialty food of Aachen. After looking at the factories, we went to Cafe Galilei on Pontstraße for a 4,90 Euro all you can eat brunch buffet that my buddy, Levent, recommended I go to.

We then went to see some of the famous structures in Aachen.

This is the Aachen Rathaus. ‘Rathaus’ is the German word for ‘town hall’. Alex and I think it’s one of the nicer town halls you’ll see in Germany.

Here we are in front of the Rathaus. We’re in athletic clothes because we were scheduled to go climbing at a climbing park in the afternoon on Saturday, which I will get into later in this post.

Alex requested to see the Aachen Cathedral and of course I would bring him there because it is one of most famous cathedrals in Europe. I may have already seen the cathedral, but I definitely got a better look of it with Alex and I even got to go inside for my first time.

The inside of the Aachen Cathedral is actually more impressive than this. I wasn’t able to take too many pictures because you’re actutally not allowed to take pictures in there…

Here are two more pictures of the Aachen Cathedral, which is pictured at the top of this blog:

One of the groups from the RWTH International Office planned to have a climbing trip at this miraculous outdoor climbing park called Kletterwald Aachen. They even subsidized half of it so that we only paid 8 Euros each. Unfortunately, the Kletterwald climbing park decided to close once we arrived there because of rain (as per usual in Aachen). It’s a shame that Alex wasn’t able to enjoy Kletterwald when he came to Aachen from Hamburg, but I really hope I’m able to climb it before I leave Aachen this summer. Since we couldn’t climb, I took some pictures of the climbing park:

Well, since the climbing trip went “kaputt” (that’s a German word!), Alex and I had to figure out something to do for the rest of the Saturday afternoon. We ended up going on a run through Aachen (yay, exercise – I feel like I’m getting so out of shape here in Europe) and then drank a little Printen flavoured alcohol (Aachen just loves Printen and even makes Printen flavoured alcohol).

On the way out for dinner on Saturday night, we bumped into Michael, a rising sophomore at Johns Hopkins University. We ended up going to dinner together at VielHarmonie on Pontstraße.

We each ordered 0.5L Weißbier with our dinner.

After dinner, I showed Alex some more of Aachen.

The SuperC building, which is one of the international buildings for RWTH Aachen University.

Templergraben 64. The building I work in.

I think this is one of the prettiest streets in Aachen, but I forget the name of it.

After walking around Aachen at night (the sun doesn’t set until really late), we walked back to my dorm, Otto-Peterson Haus, and hung out a little bit in my kitchen.

Sorry for the bad picture quality. This is the view outside my kitchen window at night.

Sunday was Alex’s last day in Aachen and he had to catch a ride at 17:00. By the way, Alex got to and from Aachen through http://www.mitfahrgelegenheit.de/, which I think is a very interesting thing in Germany. People (usually young adults) post the drives they’re making and then other people can just hop onto the ride by paying only about 6-25 Euro for the trip, depending on the distance. It’s basically like hitch hiking and it’s rather popular in Germany/Europe. This is definitely a deal because, for example, to go from Hamburg to Aachen, it can be 100+ Euros each way. Germany has some of the most expensive trains in Europe!

For Sunday, we hiked the Lousberg. I already have some pictures from being on the Lousberg in the blog, but here is one of some cool art project in the forest:

The view of one of the towers from the Lousberg:

Here’s Alex and me on Ponstraße before he had to leave.

While I like my friends in Aachen a lot, it felt good to hang out with someone you are already good friends with instead of people you are still building friendships with. It was nice to catch up with each other and compare our summer/experiences abroad. Alex’s visit also forced me to explore Aachen more, which is good for me too. One thing Alex enjoyed about visiting Aachen was interacting with more Americans since I have other American interns in Aachen, but Alex does not really have any other in Hamburg since he is working for a company. I must say that hearing an American accent here is a very comforting thing.

Here is a link to the rest of the pictures from the weekend:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2015959&id=1233870200&l=1c0daeb56e