Historischer Keller Restaurant

On Day 1, I had my first lunch in Trier Germany in a restaurant serving German food. Im letting the pics do the talking this time.

A moose

Plenty of wildboar heads hanging around the restaurant given that their specialty was wildboar meat

The specials which I cant read but I think I order the first special on the list

The name of the restaurant

The drink I was recommended to try - apple soda

meet my aunt and uncle - the cheerful duo

My meal - wildboar meat with white asparagus and fried mashed potatoes covered with white sauce. it was delicious.

My aunt had salad

Fish and chips

Rice with bolognaise chicken

The interior of the restaurant

My cousin

its customary for European ppl to have a cup of coffee after their meal. 

Their theory for drinking cofee was so that the caffeine kicks in and they dont feel so sleepy after lunch.

McD

McDonalds is still called McDonalds regardless of which part of the world we are in :)

McRibs found in Trier, Germany. A favourite of many people here.

Mouth-watering pork ribs from McDonalds in Trier, Germany and they eat their french fries with  Mayonaise

Trier, Germany - The area

I was brought to Trier in Germany after arriving at Luxembourg. Trier is an older part of Germany. It was a 30minute drive from Luxembourg Airport. It has a University located so high up in the mountains that the people up there hardly needed to travel to other areas as it was like their own little town up there.

I was told that Trier was a shopping haven for most from Luxembourg and surrounding areas as there were plenty to buy and most importantly, reasonably priced. I visited this historic building called Porta Nigra.

Porta Nigra behind me

We also went on a train ride tour around Trier. I fell asleep while sitting in the train as it was really hot. Also, the tour guide was repating everything in three languages - German, Dutch and English. The English explanation was last, so yea.. I had a good nap. Took some pictures which were n ot very good given that the train had really horrible glass windows...

More to come in the next post....

Dictionary required

Currently in a place where English is not their first nor secod nor third language....
It felt awkward to be the one having to wear the headphones to get everything translated to english.

Also, everything sold on the shelves were not written in english too. Its always either french, luxemburgish, german or sometimes dutch. Needed help choosing a cleanser and buying groceries XD

Went to a milk/cheese/butter/yoghurt making factory and was back to wearing labcoats ;)

Climb

At the Reykjavik Zoo and Family Park on a beautiful spring day. (I'd rather not mention that the kid's pirate ship play feature is now sponsored by an oil company, with no less than five white signs posted along the ship's side, for all the spaced-out moms and dads to see...)

Pebbles

In macro, even the most mundane things in life show their true beauty. Here, a centimeter-sized stone, one of untold millions that provide softer landings in Icelandic playgrounds, does just that.

Harpa

The final touches on the Harpa concert hall are being put into place for the May 4th opening show with Vladimir Ashkenazy directing the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra.

This immense and oddly-angled building, which hunkers at the eastern edge of the Reykjavik harbor, was part of a grand pre-crash scheme to redesign the city center as an international center of finance. The award-winning Danish Bjarke Ingels Group of architects (be sure to visit their website because it is very cool) was commissioned to design a global headquarters for Landsbankinn bank, which Ingels himself said he was excited about in his TED lecture until he found out the bank had gone bankrupt in October 2008. Watch this video from 2007 to get a visual on the once-grand plans for the Reykjavik harbor area and also for a virtual tour of the hall itself.

The big question, then, post-crash, was whether or not construction should continue on the concert hall, which is also to be used as a conference center. After much debate, construction did continue and today I think we are all fairly excited to see the finished results. (There is still some grumbling at the cost of cleaning the hall's thousands of individual panes of glass, a whopping 8 million króna or $70,000 a year.)

Saga films has been documenting the building process since 2007, and you can watch a clip from the film online, though it is untexted and in Danish (the Henning Larsen Architecture group designed the glass exterior in concert with the Icelandic Danish-born Icelander Olafur Eliasson.)

Conceptually, this is a gorgeous design and I think we are all hoping that, when finished and glistening like a multi-faceted jewel in waters of the bay, it will live up to it's lofty aspirations.