New post - 47 hours of travel, door-to-door

After two delayed flights and two hotels on two consecutive nights, the following is a brief wrap-up of two very long days of travel from San Francisco to Chile. Normally, a trip like this would take 24 to 30 hours door-to-door if originating from either Canada or the United States.

Thursday, January 13

1030h PST (GMT-8), East Bay : BART from El Cerrito Plaza to SFO.  There's a lot to like about the BART, especially when the train goes through the tunnel beyond San Bruno and comes out onto a thin cement viaduct which appears to hang gingerly over US-101/Bayshore Freeway.

1230h PST, SFO : plane is late; scheduled departure delayed by 30 min.  It's raining and the ceiling is rather low in the Bay Area - so, no real surprise there.

1400h PST, SFO : after some problems which had nothing to do with the plane itself, flight leaves 45 min late.  No problem; I've a scheduled 2.5-hour layover in Dallas.

1600h PST, mid-air : plane descends below cruising altitude, and we're told we've got a problem and we're landing in Las Vegas.  No oxygen masks were deployed, and everybody was calm and breathing normally.

1645h MST (GMT-8), LAS (McCarran) : Checkmark one - plane lands safely.  The pilot explains there was slow pressure leakage, but they couldn't localize the origin; for safety reasons, the pilot decided to descend and land.  All pax are asked to leave the plane, as firemen/safety crew board the plane.  Checkmark two - we're all out in the terminal.

1730h MST, LAS : I call AA's ExPlat desk to find out if there are options, but since I checked luggage, the agent advises best to stay put and see what happens.  Besides, the daily AA945 DFW to SCL flight, which usually leaves at 2100h and I thought I was going to miss, has been delayed by 11 hours to 0800h the following morning.   Someone comments that it's a holiday weekend (in the U.S.) about which I had completely forgotten.  Swell.

1930h MST, LAS : after a couple of hours of increasingly cautious optimism, we've the green light to fly onto DFW.  We're asked to board the plane "quickly", as the present crew is about to reach their time-limit.  

2030h MST, somewhere between New Mexico and Texas : ... zzzzz ...

2330h CST (GMT-6), DFW : plane lands at Dallas Fort-Worth.  Pax are given hotel/meal vouchers, and the weary folks pile into shuttles, and pour out into the lobby of the Ramada (DFW North).  Oh look, there's a Denny's, but I'm too arsed to even think about eating.  I've got to get up at 0530h in time to catch the 0615h morning shuttle back to DFW to see if I can catch my delayed morning-flight to SCL ...

Friday, January 14

0630h CST, DFW : Time to check in.  The nice agent says my DFW-SCL portion was canceled when I made my call to the AA ExPlat desk from Las Vegas last night.  Yikes.  "No worry", she says.  She calls a couple of people to get the proper seating codes, and she calmly types away, trying to insert the last two flight segments into the itinerary.  After about 15 minutes, there's an "aha!" from her side of the counter, and I sigh with relief.

0830h CST, DFW : Flight AA945 is on its way to Santiago de Chile.  It's just another step forward, even if the step is a mere 7800 kilometres in distance.  Completely uneventful flight, and zzzzz ...

2015h CLST (GMT-3), SCL : with a beautiful orange-hue to the early-evening summer sky, the plane lands safely in SCL.  Border control is a breeze, and my luggage is already on the carousel.  So far, so good.  Percy G was also on the flight, and thanks to his vastly superior Spanish, we try to get the attention of an AA agent to see if we can get our hotel/meal vouchers, because there's no way we're flying to La Serena tonight.  An agent tells us his colleague will be on their way shortly.  We head on over to the AA counter near the luggage carousels.  Another agent comes by about 15 minutes later, and asks us to wait in the terminal, outside and beyond customs control.  Customs is a breeze, because I declared my one jar of strawberry jam : no granola, seeds, or turtle-shells.  And then we wait, and we wait some more ...

2145h CLST, SCL : The second AA agent finally appears with our hotel/meal/travel vouchers, and we find out we're staying at the Sheraton San Cristobal on the southeastern flank of the hill at the edge of Bellavista in Santiago.  We get our shuttle-vouchers verified, and we get multiple slips of paper for our shuttles to and from the hotel.

2230h CLST, SCL : After the usual wait about what shuttle we're taking and about how full our shuttle is going to be, our vehicle finally leaves the airport.  As there are three other pax in the shuttle, I tell Percy we're probably going to be last.   I was so happy to be wrong as ...

2250h CLST, Santiago : ... we arrive in the hotel to check-in.  I ask the gentleman at the counter if we can use our meal voucher at one of the hotel restaurants ... which are closing in 5 minutes, but the bar is available.  Meh, whatevs.  Dump stuff in room, head to the bar, eat, drink, be merry ... zzzzzz ...

Saturday, January 15

1030h CLST, Santiago : Up at 10, pack what little I unpacked.  After check-out, I finally get to see how the hotel appears in daylight - not bad, very fancy - nice pool, too, and are those ... Argentinian/Brazilian pool-bunnies?  Sadly, before I learn the answer to this very important question, the shuttle arrives to take me back to SCL airport.  I cry a little, but only just.

1200h CLST, SCL : At Starbuck's in the national terminal, because I have no intention of drinking what Chileans consider coffee.  Besides, the WiFi is free of charge, and I've just started writing online this story of hilarity.

1400h CLST, LSC : Flight LA312 arrives in LSC early.  Final-line summary: finally arriving in the flat, unwrapping, unpacking, and getting into a fresh t-shirt and shorts, looking up into that bright glowing ball high in the sky, +22C/72F air-temp, and getting to relax a bit on my front-lawn.

In less than 24 hours, I'm on a shuttle up to Cerro Pachon at an elevation of 2800 metres (9000 feet) in the lower Andes to begin my nighttime duty-function shift.  

Them's the breaks, and time to get right back to work ...

... and tackle the 500+ messages in my work mailbox ...

HL, 1013h GMT - 17 Jan 2011

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New post - Traveling in Germany with HL

Hello, and happy 2011 to all!

In this past year, I've discovered my ability to overcome a number of self-imposed boundaries and to visit some places which I once found challenging.  It's been healthier to write about what I've come to enjoy and love, even if the daily challenge remains to struggle with the confusing, the illogical, and the idiotic.

With the new year now upon us, this post is about a few details about some of the tools I use in my trips to Germany, and about what I use presently for photography.

TRAVEL

Germany is a country with diverse topography, great scenery, and varied urban settings.  The country is also where I would like to photograph some more, from the beaches of the North Sea coast to the twist and turns of the Rhein river to the gentle hills in the Harz, from the hustle and art-bustle in the capital city of Berlin to the party hardy in Köln to the majestic castles near the Bavarian Alps.

Typically, I have to cover a decent amount of distance across Germany on any given "tour" to visit and catch up with friends and/or to take in photographic opportunities.  Instead of taking intranational flights, I'm a big fan of the train, and I use RailEurope's German rail-pass, if I have multiple cities to visit on multiple dates.  I often go with the 4- or 5-day pass, and if you do your own pricing on the bahn.de website, you'll see that "biting the bullet" with a pass is much cheaper than buying point-to-point fares within the country.

To help with traveling out and about the country, here are some of the applications I use on my 3rd-generation iPodTouch (iPT):

* Tripit - an excellent trip organizer.  You can enter all of your trip information with as much detail as you like, and retrieving the details are a real breeze to examine on your mobile device.

* HRS - a hotel-search website, whose extensive interface I like using.  You can order your search by "number of stars", average nightly rate, or proximity to city centre, airport, or nearest train stations.  In the last few years, I've noticed that the parent company has been more aggressive in their marketing campaigns throughout Europe.

* Currency Converter - USD to EUR, for example, but you can also input an arbitrary amount (say, 50 US dollars) to determine what that amount corresponds 

(37.30 Euros).  Recently I've been tracking simultaneously the US dollar, Euro, Chilean peso, UK pound, Canadian dollar, Australian dollar, and the Czech koruna (crown).

* DB Navigator (German) - Deutsche Bahn's application in English provides train schedules, as well as point-to-point planning. Knowing the words "Hauptbahnhof" ("Hbf", central train station) and "Flughafen" (airport) helps.

* berlin.de - native city-guide application based on the city's tourism webpage

* Fahrinfo Berlin - transit information in Berlin (English, too) for details about bus, tram, U-Bahn, and S-Bahn throughout the metropolitan capital region.  Please keep in mind that native applications also exist for Frankfurt am Main's RMV transit authority and Munich's MVV transit authority here and here.  As always, your kilometrage may vary with usage.

* LEO - native German-to-English, English-to-German dictionary, when I'm constantly confused by "separable verbs" ... which are reflexive ... come with prepositions ... and you have to know the correct case to go along with the (in)direct object (e.g., sich anpassen an, accusative).

* Nelso Prague - native application which provides place- and detailed-information about all sorts of places in Prague, including tourist attractions, accommodation, and restaurants

* GoodReader - I copied my travel documents in pdf to native storage on the iPT, and used GoodReader as the native PDF reader 

* Evernote - available on my Mac and my iPT, I can edit notes on any of the two, and sync changes automatically (with wireless access).

* Facebook - to get my daily dose of quick-hit news-items, photography websites, and the shenanigans my friends are wreaking upon the world.

* to help with planning shoots at potential sites, I use Apple's Weather app to get up-to-the-minute updates and forecasts, as well as Magic Hour world-clock application for sunrise, sunset, astronomical, civil, nautical dusk/dawn times, moon phases, moonrise, moonset.  If the places you require are not included, you can add your own by latitude and longitude.  In short, I admit Magic Hour satisfies my astro-geek.

* Foursquare - this actually helps me to keep track of some of the places I've visited, even though its use is more limited to finding free wireless access; see also below.

I'd like an Apple portable-internet device with both wireless *and* mobile-access capabilities, with pay-as-you-go domestic mobile-access packages without the need for a long-term contract and international roaming charges.  However, I can also see that there may be a limited market for this capability, and Apple does not want to cannibalize its popular and successful iPhone product-line.

CAMERA

I've a Canon EOS450D (or "Rebel XSi" in North America) which at the time of purchase was packaged with their EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS lens.  This "kit lens" is light, versatile, and is a great walk-around lens with which to travel.  I have learned a great deal about my camera and general photography by shooting with my kit lens - I cannot emphasize this enough.  I've also bought a Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM lens, which provides some beautiful photos.  

In the last few weeks, I've added the Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM.

On this present "Weihnachtstour", I decided to just use the 50mm prime.  Although the 50mm is "effectively" 80mm on Canon's cropped-sensor, the wide-aperture in low-light settings has been a joy to use, as you can see in evidence, for example, with photos at the Christmas market in Prague's Old Town Square.

These three lenses all have the same filter-thread size (58mm), which means I need only one set of filters.  I now have a 2-stop (4x) polarizing filter, a 3-stop (8x) neutral-density filter, and an 8-point star-filter.  You all may have noticed that I've been using the latter quite liberally in many of my recent night-time shots.  I'm still on the lookout for a 2-stop graduated neutral-density filter ...

To contain my camera, two lenses ("short" and "long"), and my growing collection of SD-cards, I use a Tamrac 5768 Velocity 8x sling-pak pouch, which is easy to open, as the top-cover opens from the body out.  As well, I can bring out or take away elements (e.g., lens, filter) without removing the pouch or putting the pouch on the ground.  Other members of the Velocity series are described here.

This has been a much longer article with a great deal more details, but these have accumulated very rapidly in the last year or two.  Now, they're all pretty much second nature to have and to use.

I hope you all have a safe, happy, healthy, and successful new year!

- HL, 1925h GMT - 3 Jan 2011

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New post - New Year's Eve, also known as Silvester

With this post, New Zealand will see the new year, to be followed very soon after by Australia in a couple of hours.  It's the middle of New Year's Eve day here in Europe, and North America is waking up to the same.

Why is New Year's Eve referred in some countries as Silvester?  Here's why, courtesy of Deutsche Welle's Word of the Week feature:

... For many in the English speaking world, it (Sylvester) is nothing more than a male name - usually attached to a Looney Tunes cartoon cat. But in Germany and a handful of other countries (Italy, France, Poland, the Czech Republic) 'Silvester', or a variation thereof, is a night to celebrate - ideally by going to a fancy party, drinking champagne and kissing your sweetheart at the stroke of midnight. The end of the year was first called 'Sylvester' back in 1582 AD, when the Gregorian calendar reform moved the last day of the year from Dec. 24 to Dec. 31 - the anniversary of the death of Pope Sylvester I. ...

In Germany, December 25 and 26 are named, respectively, "1. und 2. Weihnachtstag" (1st and 2nd Christmas Day).  Also, December 31 and January 1 are "Silvester" and "Neujahr", respectively.

Tomorrow, I'll be post about some of the (electronic) tools I have with me and use on travel. 

- HL, 1200h CET - 31 Dec 2010

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15000th photo w/ 450D #BrandenburgerTor #Berlin #Christmas #fotoeins #togs #flickr

This was a part of a set of photos I took from Pariser Platz on the former East Berlin side.   In all of the shenanigans, I realized I had just taken my 15,000th photograph with the camera.

Brandenburger Tor (Brandenburg Gate); S+U Brandenburger Tor (formerly, S-Bahn Unter den Linden)

Berlin, Germany

2317h CET, Christmas Eve 2010

EOS 450D + EF50mm f/1.4 USM : 1/13s, f/4, ISO800

- HL, 1555h GMT - 27 Dec. 2010

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New post - Christmas markets, part 5 : Prague Old Town Square #christmas #market #prague #praha #vanocnitrh

It's very grey, snow-white, and relatively quiet on the continent - despite travel snarls and traffic disruptions in the air, by rail, and on the highways.

On this Christmas Day, my series on Christmas markets in Europe continues with another set of photographs at the market at Old Town Square (Staroměstské náměstí) in Prague.  The Old Town is one of the oldest parts in Prague where the original charter or incorporation as the city we know today would have occurred.

Merry Christmas / Frohe Weihnachten / Veselé vánoce!

All of these photos are also viewable on Flickr.

- HL, 1200h GMT - 25 Dec 2010

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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New post - Christmas markets, part 4 : Prague Old Town Square #christmas #market #prague #praha #vanocnitrh

My series on Christmas markets in Europe continues with a highlighted set of photographs at Old Town Square (Staroměstské náměstí) in Prague.

One thing I should have mentioned at the outset is that I am in no way trying to cover all of the representative Christmas markets throughout Europe.  In fact, the series should really be "Christmas markets in Germany" with an additional stint or two to the Czech capital.

For this installment, photos will be presented simply without (much) text; my next post will finish off the set for Prague's Old Town Square.

- HL, 2300h GMT - 23 Dec 2010

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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New post - Christmas markets, part 3: Prague Wenceslas Square #christmas #market #vanocnitrh #praha #prague

In continuing my coverage of Christmas markets in Europe, today's entry is about a well-known and famous plaza in Prague.

Václavské náměstí (Wenceslas Square) is a place laced with history, especially in recent times as the square eventually held hundreds of thousands of people in peaceful protest, as the communist regime was brought to a relatively peaceful end in 1989 in what is known by some as the "Velvet Revolution" or by others as "The November Events".  The speed at which events transpired was remarkable; Timothy Garton Ash said to Václav Havel:

In Poland it (revolution) took ten years, in Hungary ten months, in East Germany ten weeks: perhaps in Czechoslovakia it will take ten days!

("The Magic Lantern: The Revolution of `89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin, and Prague")

Since the nineties, Wenceslas Square has been overrun by a mixture of department-stores, coffee shops, souvenir shops, currency exchanges, restaurant-traps, and tourist-hordes, though friends in the hospitality industry in Prague have observed fewer tourists in the last five years.  Locals would rarely consider visiting the square.  However, when the skies darken after 4pm and the lights are turned on, the locals might reconsider their reluctance to visit the square.

Wenceslas Square is one of the venues for Christmas markets in Prague, and the number of tourists are not diminished by the cold or snow.   Prague Christmas Markets (Vánoční trhy v Praze) are described, for example, in English at the Prague Experience website and in an article from The Prague Post.  Wandering from one stall to another with a cup of hot Svařák in hand, a sample of languages overheard include Czech (duh), German, Spanish, Italian, North American English, British English, and a sprinkling of Mandarin Chinese.

As I was taking the 4th and 5th shots shown (i.e., overhanging lights in the trees outside the Bat'a building), an older couple stopped to ask me a question.

A (gentleman): Entschuldigung, sprechen Sie Deutsch? // Excuse me, do you speak German?

B (me): Ja, ein bisschen. // Yes, a little.

A: Wie kommen wir zum Moldau? // How do we get to the Moldova (Vltava) river?

B: Gerade hier zum Ende Wenzelsplatz, dann links biegen und können Sie nur 20 bis 25 Minuten zu Fuss erreichen. // Walk straight to the end of the square here, turn left, and you'll reach the river in 20 to 25 minutes.

A: Vielen Dank! // Thank you!

B: Bitte sehr! // You're welcome!

This is only an example of the surreal zaniness that is my travelogue.

I really hope the couple got their wish to see the river.

I took the following shots all at Wenceslas Square on the evening of 2010 December 4 - you can also view the photos on Flickr.  Finally, it's worth noting that Bat'a Shoes began in (the former) Czechoslovakia in 1894 when the siblings Tomás, Anna, and Antonín Bat'a first registered the company's name.

- HL, 1610h GMT - 15 Dec 2010

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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