My European trip part 1

November 26, 2008

I intend to spend the next many posts talking about two subjects, my trip through Europe and the book Lernen by Manfred Spitzer. I will just alternate the two subjects.

Heureux qui comme Ulysse a fait un beau voyage

Happy is he who has, like Ulysses, made a wonderful journey

du Bellay 16th century French poet.

Travel enriches us, or at least has the potential to do so. Just as in du Bellay's poem, we return home happier and renewed. We rediscover the joys of the home and hearth, yet we are changed by what we have seen. Some trips give us more than others. My most recent trip was wonderful. I feel like Ulysses.

Between October 25 and November 22 I was in Milan, Brescia, Leoben in Austria, Zovencedo (just outside Vicenza), Augsburg, Munich, Prague, Paris, Brussels, Antwerp, Cologne, Heide (north of Hamburg), Berlin, Stockholm,and finally Karlstad (Sweden) before returning home. I spent a good deal of the time in cars, trains, subways, and just plain walking. I was not on the beach, nor in the mountains. I did not stay at resorts, nor visit cathedrals and museums. I traveled though countrysides, visited cities, and experienced different histories, cultures and languages.

The first week I was with three traveling companions from our sawmill, Real, Robert and Steve (another Steve). We were looking at Italian equipment that would enable us to produce electric power using our wood waste, which consists mostly of bark. We are only utilizing a portion of our waste, or biomass, to dry our lumber, and wanted to see if we could somehow justify a small scale electric power station. An Italian company had develop a technique which uses high temperature oil, rather than steam, to drive the turbines. This would be easier for use to manage than the conventional approach using steam. This company, Turboden, was located in Brescia.

Our flight from Calgary to Frankfurt was late, so we missed our connecting flight to Milan. However, there was another flight a few hours later. From Milan's Malpensa airport we took a bus into the central train station. Sitting in front of me on the bus was an Asian looking gentleman, whom I took to be Japanese or Korean. Then I noticed that he was reading a Russian newspaper. I was curious, and of course always keen to practice my Russian. I struck up a conversation in Russian and discovered that he was Kazakh. We had a pleasant conversation about Kazakhstan and other subjects and I gave him a LingQ card. He was not going to be the last one to get a LingQ card on this trip.

From Milan we took a train to Brescia, and a quick taxi ride took us to our hotel. It was still early afternoon so we decided to rest a little and then go into town.

November 26, 2008 in Travel | Permalink