.medieval (modern) Strasbourg

.our travel diary was expanded even further. Today we visited important (historically and also now) city of Strasbourg. It's famous for its 142m high cathedral (the highest building in Europe for a long time), beautiful centre, called Petite France (UNESCO heritage). From the modern history, town hosts many important structures of the EU (European Parliament, Council of Europe, etc...). Even though it's not a big city (272,800 citizens, metropolitan area 612,104), it's definitely among the prettiest ones.
This time 5 people took part in the expedition into the French territory. Surprisingly, finding a parking place was not a problem and so we started the sightseeing before the lunch time. Exploration is not an easy thing and so after strolling around some parts of the city the hunger drew all our attention and we're forced to stop at one small restaurant and taste some local specialty (Tartes flambee). After recharging the energy we finished what was left of old quarter of town.
Being here, it was an absolute must to go to see European parliament and take some photos. There we met a neat French security guy, who was not able to speak a word in other than French, yet we had some nice conversation about Slovak and Czech deputies in the parliament. So now we now that Monika Benova-Flasikova is bella bellisima ;)...

More photos available here.

.let's play

.nothing really interesting was happening so we decided to at least take advantage of sport possibilities here in campus and play badminton :).
Our team consisted of three players (Sasa, me, Igor), two rackets and one damaged shuttlecock ;). Not the best combination for a game, right?
Anyway we had some playing schedule for taking turns and borrowed one professional shuttlecock so it was not as bad after all. I think everybody enjoyed it quite a bit and some of us have fulfilled their sport activities for this week ;)...

.ancient Trier and lux(ury)

.today we've finally found enough courage to face the oldest town around here. It's Trier, founded at Roman times (16 AD). This city was really important in ancient times (had 80,000 inhabitants already in 300AD!). Favoured by emperors of Roman empire, many ancient sights are still spread around the town (amphitheater, imperial baths, Ponta Nigra, etc.). The interesting mix of ancient and medieval is apparent everywhere. If you have a chance of stopping by, I really recommend you this place!
We had a really nice time (apart from the bad, cold, rainy weather following our every step...). We did a nice walk around the old town, took many photos. If you want to know more about Trier, check this site.
But it was not all, what was planned for this day. Next stop was Luxembourg (really close, only some 40km). We've already seen this attractive town, yet our friends have not so it was a must see for them ;). This time finding a parking place was absolutely no problem. Because we knew the city, we've led some shortened version of sightseeing around the centre (weather was getting worse and worse). Hopefully it was enough to get a feeling, what is Luxembourg like. It's definitely better to visit such places in summer or spring, but we cannot decide about that...

More photos available here.


And I have almost forgotten, this morning the whole Saarbrucken was covered in snow!!! It was beautiful. It's a shame it didn't last though, rain has ruined all the beauty :(.

.(freezing) wildpark

.so it happened again. I've visited the Wildpark. But this time the temperatures were way below the zero (-8, feels like -12). But what wouldn't you do for a sister, right ;)?
Apart from this we had quite a nice time. The weather was relatively sunny and walk through quiet woods is always relaxing. As we soon found out, many things have changed lately in this little zoo. As if to oppose the power of nature and winter, many newborn animals were enjoying their time on the Earth. One example for all of them. 5 cute, little piglets were playing and racing around their paddock. Only from time to time they had to stop and ask mother for more of the energy drink. Yeah, you're right it was a simple milk, yet it acted on them like real red bull. Two minutes after leaving pit stop they were again unstoppable :). It was really beautiful...

That's it, the week of fun has started ;). More photos from today are available here.

.arrival to Mannheim

.today was a big day. Guests arrived! To be more precise, my little sister Sasa and our friend Dano :). There are no direct bus lines to Saarbrucken so they were picked up at Mannheim. This was also a possibility to walk around another city. Due to the big traffic problems because of snow in the Czech Republic and also partially in Germany (only partially, Stuttgart and all the south east Germany are fighting with snow, yet here in Saarbrucken we haven't seen any so far this winter) the bus arrival had a big delay (3 hours). We've almost frozen during our wait on the parking place with Igi (temperatures are below zero after a long time)...

Anyway, after all the waiting we were ready to start our crusade into the old city centre ;). Mannheim is a very old (766 AD) and relatively small town (307,640 inhabitants). Main district consists of strictly regularly shaped streets and of a few sights (very few, to be honest). Worth of mentioning are Wasserturm (water tower, on the pic) and big 18th century palace (now a university)... So all the tourist stuff can be done in about an hour or so :).


So now I have my sister here (at least for a week) and that means a lot of traveling and other interesting stuff is going to happen, so stay tuned ;)!

.rendering competition

.finally! The work on my school CG project is finally over. It consumed all my free time in past 21 days. I'm glad I can relax a bit now :). It was interesting, I've learned a lot (or at least programmed a lot of new things) but it was too long ;).
To explain all this to you, we were writing a ray tracer. It's a software which computes mathematically-modeled visualizations of programmed scenes using a technique which follows rays from the eyepoint outward, rather than originating at the light sources. It produces realistic (or at least is capable of ;) ) results with advanced optical effects, such as accurate simulations of reflection, refraction and shadows.
It's used world wide (design, architecture, movie industry...). And as it's getting faster and faster (OpenRT project, group around Mr. Slusallek) it'll probably be used even more.
Anyway, in case you're interested, here is my webpage dedicated to rendering competition (with more details on topics and techniques used)...

And now I can return to posting regularly ;)!

.kyrillomania

.the global weather changes are each year visible more and more... These days Europe has seen the strongest windstorms ever (probably, at least it was the worst hurricane in past 25 years). And it affected almost whole Europe. Fallen trees, damaged roofs, tens of death casualties, paralyzed transport... The city I'm staying in was not hit with such a strength (only some lectures were canceled as a precaution) but situation in Germany was really bad and unusual this weekend (train traffic had to be stopped for a whole day, thousands of flights canceled, etc.).

Is this the way the weather will look like in the future? Hopefully not, hopefully the mankind can find a way to stop (slow down) the global climate changes...

.(almost) winter beauty

.probably nobody can argue that this winter is not as it should have been... No snow, temperatures way over the normal values. And I personally love this white, silky thing falling from the sky. It's making the whole world softer, nicer and calmer. But as I said, not this season (at least in almost all parts of Europe...).
So you probably can imagine my excitement, when today I awoke into white world :). Ok, it was not white because of the snow, yet the temperatures had dropped overnight by almost 15 degrees and it was freezing outside. Every possible piece of ground, trees and plants were covered quite thickly with hoarfrost. In combination with beautiful sunny weather it created breathtaking views, exposing the beauties of the nature...
I didn't hesitate much and took some photos. Hope they'll make your day a little brighter :)!

Have a nice (winter) day!

.pizza reunion

.we made a short break on our way back to Germany and stayed for a night in Prague. We had a few hours of free time, which was a nice possibility to meet friends. Pizzeria Einstein (famous among students for big ISIC discounts) was chosen, time set to 19:00. This was to be a special evening because our friends from South America were coming (Peru and El Salvador). I'd not seen them for a long time, so I was full of expectations ;). A lot of pizzas were eaten , sangria and beer drank. The night was filled with good mood and laughter. Many funny things, thoughts were said (for example a plan to solve Czech and Slovak demographic problems :)... ). It was a great evening and I know that I'll be happy to come back to Prague in two months because of friends :).

See you soon!