Here are a few pictures of my trip to kick boxing practice. The top picture is a view of concrete soccer field that are all over Warsaw. I tried to take a photo of the local kids. As I got there they were hanging out competing in how far they can throw a stick you can see one of them carrying. The school (facing the field) has two flags of the National Teachers Union (on strike). Inside you can see a mini basketball/volleyball/soccer field. The place is really small and smells of dust, sweat and solvent. On the walls you can see ladders used for everything from hanging pull up bars and punching bags, to situps, pushups and a number of communist era exercises. These ladders are virtually in every elementary school in Poland. In this somewhat meagre conditions you can see some members of the Polish national kick boxing team going to world cups in Italy next week. Finally, on my way home I thought I'd take a picture of the tram. Oddly, they remind me of school buses from the 50's you can still see in California. They are very oval in every way on the outside and very rail car diner on the inside (minus the chrome). To give Warsaw justice I should add that today I took a very modern tram, which didn't feel like it fell off the rails.

Going through my Budapest photos I thought I'd post a number of pictures of interiors. From the top, a picture of church interior (I forgot which one, but it was really quite nice inside). The second picture is an interior of an old fabric store (still has really long tables that were used for rolling out the wares) that has been turned into a modern fashion store. The interior and the exterior of the store are covered with original wood from the 1800's. Finally, the last picture is of an iron ceiling lamp. They look really cool and old world and are all over Budapest (and Warsaw).

And the Hungarian Academy of Science itself. We went on a tour of the building, which unfortunately turned out to be only a tour of its huge art gallery. That might have been fine, except that apparently the Hungarians would order portraits of every important scientist or contributor to the Academy, so for an hour we were led for a portrait of one bearded man to another.

A pretty sweet statue in front of the Hungarian Academy of Science. I hear it was created as part of an effort to popularize science with the younger generation...

Finally in Budapest. Our brilliant group at the first of many great dinners.

Tatra mountains on the flight to Budapest. You can't really see the fields in the background, but basically the mountains just come up out of a plain.

A plane we almost crashed into while landing in San Fran. :)

Going to Europe

Ok, great this seems to be working. As you see, I am ready to go to Europe!