No Sweden, because I am obviously not there. I went around today looking for what I thought were characteristic images of New England, especially ones that connote Christmas.

I thought I had found ones I really liked, but of course I took a second look and not surprisingly, decided to tinker in post-production. The results below:

In a previous entry, I complained about how I never get the window seat when the view was good. This time I got the window seat and the view was very good.

Notice, a view of the mountains over Norway:

And, the Icelandic moonscape:

The second set of pictures was worth getting, even if I had to endure turbulence and the feeling were going to land in the actual moonscape.

And me goes on the road again, except this time it is home. But, a few shots of this lovely place before I go:

What a great place this is.

I really need to know. What is this thing with the naming of food items after random places in America? Rhode Island sauce, Maryland cookies and now this:

Lots of things to love here, but the foods named after random American states and cities? That’s a little strange.

Now that I live in this “posh” area, my friends have taken to picking on me about it. I don’t know why, but nevertheless, they don’t know about the 15 hour days spent at work, hours spend studying for the GREs and memorizing words like perspicacity and antediluvian and slogging through classes where I had to learn about Sovietology vs. regional studies and mastering Hechler-Olin trade theory. Well, this is my reward. I get to live here:

This is the view outside my apartment. As is this:

Here is the rest of the neighborhood:

Views like this can make any bad days at work just melt away.

An homage to the long, cold winter here in Sweden:

Did I mention how damn cold it is here? I used to laugh at people who liked tropical climates, but no longer. You win. My next move is going to be somewhere more tropical. Like Prague. That’s closer to the equator.

Yeah, I have no witty comment for these. This is a band I saw that performed after I missed the band I really wanted to see. Band photos are notoriously difficult, so these are just kind of practice. I do think they turned out pretty good, for handhelds I just sorta haphazardly took. Tweaked in post-production of course.

There we go.

I once watched a very interesting and insightful film about the cultural differences between Europeans and Americans. It was called Eurotrip. The Americans go to Europe and somehow the continent survives. My favorite scene in the movie is when the kids in the movie arrive in Bratislava. One of them says “we are in Eastern Europe.” This is what they see:

And then a local comes out of the building and says “you Americans? I love America. We just get the Miami Vice.” 2004 was when this little masterpiece was made. Now mind you, I am sure that many people don’t think all of Eastern Europe looks like those apartment buildings up there. But on my last trip to Poland, I was surprised by how new and modern everything looked:

Here, one of the ugliest pieces of architecture ever conceived, the Warsaw central station, is obscured by the cell phone looking tower, the darkness and the fog:

Here’s a shot of the big avenue running through the entire city:

And this brightly lit shopping street:

Even this thing looks good, at least in the fog and darkness:

Thank you Soviet Union for this lovely gift. Nah, I guess everything has gotten used to it by now.

Oh and Warsaw has a metro now too:

And the requisite shot of the inside of the metro I’ve have taken of the countless public transportation systems I’ve been on:

Love the expression on the face of the woman on the left side of the photo. I guess that makes it different from every other “people on the metro picture” ever.

I once watched a very interesting and insightful film about the cultural differences between Europeans and Americans. It was called Eurotrip. The Americans go to Europe and somehow the continent survives. My favorite scene in the movie is when the kids in the movie arrive in Bratislava. One of them says “we are in Eastern Europe.” This is what they see:

And then a local comes out of the building and says “you Americans? I love America. We just get the Miami Vice.” 2004 was when this little masterpiece was made. Now mind you, I am sure that many people don’t think all of Eastern Europe looks like those apartment buildings up there. But on my last trip to Poland, I was surprised by how new and modern everything looked:

Here, one of the ugliest pieces of architecture ever conceived, the Warsaw central station, is obscured by the cell phone looking tower, the darkness and the fog:

Here’s a shot of the big avenue running through the entire city:

And this brightly lit shopping street:

Even this thing looks good, at least in the fog and darkness:

Thank you Soviet Union for this lovely gift. Nah, I guess everything has gotten used to it by now.

Oh and Warsaw has a metro now too:

And the requisite shot of the inside of the metro I’ve have taken of the countless public transportation systems I’ve been on:

Love the expression on the face of the woman on the left side of the photo. I guess that makes it different from every other “people on the metro picture” ever.

Yeah, this was a crop of a bigger photo that I did some post production editing on. I do like it, I think.

By the way, this is a woman on the train in Poland.