Bajkowski.com

As always, it took a while, but the hundreds of pictures from our Euro-Trip are finally up, at least the ones from Italy and Spain. We took literally thousands of pictures so sorting them down to a few hundred is already a major achievement so to say. The album is subdivided into four sub-albums, namely Italy, Spain, Poland, and Czech Republic, just to make the navigation easier. So that you can a follow along easier here is a very brief recap of all the places that we hit up during the two weeks in Europe: We flew in Zurich where we stayed only a couple of hours before catching a train to Milan. The train ride lasted about three hours and the spacious compartments and amazing views of the Alps were exactly what was needed after the long trans-Atlantic flight. After a short layover in Milan we caught a second train down to Brescia where we met up with our friend Alessandro. We made Brescia our center for exploration, from which we visited Lago De Garda, Verona, followed by a longer trip to Firenze, Pisa, a little bit of Tuscany and Sienna. Big thanks go out to Alessandro who was a fantastic host, and also for letting us drive his car all around Italy! A shout out also goes to Michele for hanging with us and to the second Alessandro for letting us feast at his establishment, Mille Gusta, and serving us the best espresso macchiato that we ever head. Of all the places we visited in Italy we most fondly remember Verona for its sophistication and Tuscany for the sheer scenic beauty which is next to impossible to capture in photographs.

Once done with Italy, we took a plane to Barcelona where we got a second rental car. As relaxing as Italy was, Spain proved to be the exact opposite. From the get-go we encountered problems. First, it took us almost three hours after landing before we finally found a hotel. Once we finally found a hotel we were so tired that we could not avoid a nap that consumed most of the day. Thus we really only had a single night to explore Barcelona which was a real shame. But we made the best of it and even found a really awesome restaurant named Sukur, where we spent hours eating and drinking wine. The next day we were off to Valencia to catch the Formula 1 qualifying, which is about a three hour drive from Barcelona. The drive was very pleasant but finding our way around in Valencia was difficult at best. Not sure who is in charge of signage in Spain, but finding anything the first time around by car is next to impossible. As we expected we could not find an affordable place to stay in Valencia after qualifying, but we did not realize that we would have to backtrack almost 100km to Benicassim before finding a hotel. The next day it was back to Valencia for the actual Grand Prix, which was an absolute blast. It was so much fun I’m thinking about getting some people together and maybe going to the Canadian GP next year, should it make a return onto the F1 calendar. After the race we started driving back to Barcelona, but ended stopping in a small town named Cambrils which proved to be an absolute delight. We chilled, walked around, ate well, and eventually had to get on our way to Barcelona before taking a flight to Poland early in the morning the following day. To be continued in Part 2.

Another month has almost past and once again it seems impossible to catch up with time. It definitely has been a busy few weeks so here is my attempt at summarizing some of the highlights. First of all, we had no clue that one can find a castle right here in Texas. As it turns out one can, and it is at most an hour outside of Austin. How did we find out about it? Were we looking for road trip ideas in Texas or the like? Absolutely not! The only reason for our discovery was the fact the Dos XX decided to throw an amazing party at the castle with free beer, free food, exotic reptiles and insects, great artist performances and so on. The party, which took place at Falkenstein Castle, under the Most Interesting Experience theme, was an absolute blast at least for those of us who were lucky enough to get there early and get in. The turnout for the party was overwhelming and many were not as fortunate as us, but at least from what I’ve read an apology party for not being able to handle the crowds is already in the works – what can I say, people in Austin love free beer no matter what day of the week it might be.

Then there was the official Bullrun finishing party that was thrown by one of my buddies, Sky, right here in Austin. If you don’t know what Bullrun is then do yourself a favor a take a look at their website and you will get an idea very quickly. In case you are too lazy to even do that here is a summary: A whole bunch of wealthy individuals get together, bring some of the most exotic automobiles they poses, and embark on a week-long really that is divided into daily stages, where each stage finishes with a great party. It just so happened to be that the route chosen for this year stretched from New York to Austin. One thing I ought to mention is that Sofies’s boyfriend Martin actually partook in the race and not surprisingly Sofie flew into Austin for the finishing party, as did another buddy of ours, Justin. The party was a good time indeed with my buddy taking good care of us: free drinks, free food, good company and entertainment – what else can one ask for. Oh yeah, I also met a guy, Bob, who insisted that with enough mullah he can double the horsepower on my 350z – it seemed he knew what he was talking about so I won’t second guess him. Anyhow, some of the cars that finished were simply spectacular, from heavily modified Ferraris and Porsches to classic Maseratis – I would take anyone of them.

With Martin and Sofie in town there was only one thing to do, eat BBQ. We drove down the Salt Lick, as we do each time, and with the exception of them not serving steak on that particular day, they only serve steak on Sundays, the food was delicious as always. The next day, in hope of eating steak we drove down to Lockhart, about an hour east of Austin, which is the BBQ capital of Texas. We stopped by Smitty's Market, but once again we failed to get a steak, so we had to settle for brisket and sausage instead. While quite good and worth tasting, the food did not even come close to Salt Lick, at least in my humble opinion. Now don’t give up hope, there are still several famous places that we failed to hit including Kreuz Barbeque and Blacks Barbeque, so there might be some competition yet. What did we do after that? Well, hit the lake of course, and very much to our collective amazement, given the amount of food we consumed, the boat managed to stay afloat.

Next up for us, is a trip to Michigan for one of my good friend's wedding at the beginning of August which promises to be a good time as well – the only two obstacle to overcome are finding affordable airplane tickets and losing a few pounds after eating all this BBQ so that I can fit in my suit.

Technology is a funny thing indeed, especially since it changes so amazingly fast that one seems to always struggle just to keep up with it. On occasion I jump on new things way ahead of time, just to exhaust my patience with them before they even take off. Examples at least for me included the whole .Net thing where I had a site almost completely developed with it while it was .Net was still in beta, only to abandon the whole effort simply because I got busy with other stuff. Several months later an almost exact replica by another skilled individual made a big splash on the web – the realization of “could have, should have, would have” is always a frustrating one. Then, there are technologies which I just seem to ignore, and then get blindsided by them as they get amazingly popular. Case in point is twitter. By now, just about any TV show seems to have incorporated twitter, from sitcoms to CNN and beyond. Actually, the fact the TV networks always try to incorporate the latest web technology/tools is funny in itself: can anyone actually think of an instance where this worked out without actually being overly cheesy? Ok, using text messages to vote is probably the only one, but then again calling into shows to vote on stuff has been done for ages. It seems that bridging the passive and active mediums in style is a rather difficult task.

Anyhow, I digress. The real point is that I finally got around to using Twitter and law and behold, I actually like it. Honestly, it is really not that much different than aggregating RSS feeds in real - time in my opinion, with the major difference that the publishers don’t need to have any clue about RSS, and can do it from anywhere anytime. The magic of making things simple – it simply never fails. Anyhow, the overall point being here that if you are so inclined, you can now find out what I’m up to as well as updates from bajkowski.com and chipcrunch.com at twitter.com/bajkowski - enjoy.