Without a Traceroute

I should say a few words about Stefania’s car. It’s a totally hilarious 22-year old beater. The roof leaks when it rains, so she has to always leave the windows open a crack so the interior can dry out. There’s a joint from a previous owner wedged deep in one of the air vents, so if you turn on the heater, the entire car smells like weed. There’s a broken radio from an even older car in the dash—when Stefania got the car, the radio didn’t work, so she replaced it with the radio from the car her father had owned when he met her mom, which he had kept as a memento (aww). Then that radio was destroyed by moisture after a few months. The back of the car is covered with tons of random bumper stickers, including a “01-20-09: Bush’s Last Day” sticker that an American friend of hers had insisted she put on the car. “It always confuses the Europeans, because they write the dates the other way,” she told me.

There was some question as to whether the car would make the 100km journey to Pisa without incident, but it performed like a champ.
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Tomorrow morning I’m flying to Valencia for La Tomatina,the world’s biggest food fight. This isn’t really related to my project, but it’s something I’ve always wanted to do, and I figured this would likely be my best chance for long time. The festival is on Wednesday, but the cheapest Ryanair flight was tomorrow, so I’m going to meet up with my friend Danny and we’re going to couchsurf for a couple nights before the festival. I have to take a train back down to Eindhoven tonight because that’s where Ryanair flies from and the flight is at 9:30 in the morning. I’m not sure what kind of internet access I’ll have in Spain, so if I don’t post for a few days that’s why.

Today I went to a this free outdoor music festival thing. It was pretty cool, the first band we saw was a very generic indie rock band, although they did have an electric violin. Later there was another band that was a little more bluesy. The festival vibe was very relaxed with lots of families and people hanging out on blankets and stuff. They also had a “Pimp your ride” tent where they had painting supplies and people who wanted to could give their bike a wild new paint job. I jazzed up my crappy bike–which I have named “Squeak, rattle ‘n roll”–which I think significantly improved its appearance. Sadly, I just sold it to a French student for €35. He said he liked the paint.

EDIT: Apparently in Germany, MTV aired an actual show called Pimp my Fahrrad which is exactly like Pimp My Ride but with bicycles.

Last night was pretty cool. I hung out with this guy Koen (pronounced “Koon”) who’s a physics student at Utrecht U. He just finished his bachelor’s degree and is starting on his master’s this year. In the Netherlands, they usually do a bachelor’s degree in three years and then immediately start on a master’s, it’s just sort of automatic and the bachelor’s degree is not even a big deal at all. At dinner, he and his classmate were surprised to hear that we have a whole graduation ceremony to recieve a bachelor’s degree. They’re supposed to go over to an office next week to pick up their diplomas.

Anyway, we went to dinner at this place called “Stairway to Heaven” which was essentally a Hard Rock Cafe-knockoff. They had all kinds of signed guitars and memorabilia on the walls. They had a “Shagadelic Burger” on the menu that looked pretty good, but I got a chicken kabob instead because I tend to be dissapointed by burgers in Europe. Later, we went to this club Tivoli where Koen and a bunch of his friends work so we got in free. It was a really cool club, it’s too bad I didn’t have my camera with me. I saw a guy there wearing an American Apparel Legalize LA shirt, and another one wearing a Cubs jersey. Both struck me as kind of random choices for wear in the Netherlands.

I did get my bike tire fixed by paying a bike shop (€12.50). They were kind of dicks about it. They told me that I needed a new tire, refused to put on a used-but-better tire I had (“It’s against policy”), but were willing to put the original tire back on. Whatever.

Koen’s bike had been stolen last week, so to get from his place into the city center and back, we doubled up on my bike. This is a VERY common practice in the Netherlands. The passenger will sit side-saddle on the cargo rack on the back of the bike. When I was driving the bike, it was mostly fine. It just felt like I was riding with a very heavy, unbalanced load on the back. However, when we switched with me riding on the back, I found it really terrifying. We were moving pretty quickly and I kept feeling like I was going to slip and fall off the back, or topple sideways off the bike (backwards from the way I was sitting) if we banked too much on a turn. It was fine though.

Well, I’m discovering that just like beater cars, old junker bikes have lots of things randomly go wrong with them. I was biking into town yesterday when I heard a distinctive pop-hiss as my rear tire went flat, so I walked it to the closest bike shop I knew.

They sold me a new inner tube for €5, and tried to sell me a whole new tire which, “starts at €50.” There’s no way I’m going to pay the entire price of the bike again for a new tire, so I turned that part down. I also declined having them install the inner tube for €15 thinking it would be a quick and simple process to do myself. After doing some more research, I’m starting to rethink that position.

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I bought another bike yesterday. This one cost me €50, plus €10 for a clamp-style lock for the rear wheel (I’m going to get a second, even heftier lock soon). It’s somewhat worse than the bike that was stolen, and it rattles a lot. My hope is that I will be able to sell it at the end of my time in the Netherlands for most of the purchase price.

You can see the lock on the wheel

I also met with one of the guys from PUSCII. He seemed like a very interesting, intelligent guy, but also very intense. He apparently spent 10 days in jail for chaining himself to railroad tracks along with other protestors to block the movement of trains carrying equipment for the war in Iraq. The charges were eventually dropped in response to bad press. He’s a true old-school computer guy, he even has a Commodore 64. He seemed to feel like the hacktivism scene in Europe was getting stale from a peak in the late 90s with the tech bubble. PUSCII at this point doesn’t have much of a physical presence, and he said it’s been hard attracting volunteers. He did give me some tips on other groups that might be more active (including a couple in nearby Amsterdam). So I’ll probably try to check that out.

The PUSCII sign

For dinner I cooked up this thing that’s sort of a Turkish equivalent of the frozen burrito. It was actually fairly tasty with vegetables and spices and stuff (I cooked it in the oven instead of the microwave, which usually helps). But what was really bizarre is that actually printed(?) onto the wrapper/tortilla part of it is the word “Mmm”. You can see it in the photo below. When I first saw it, I thought I was imagining it, or that I’d somehow failed to remove all the plastic covering. But no, it’s actually printed on there with food coloring or something. As a general rule, I try to avoid readable food, with special exemptions for alphabet soup/cereal.

"Mmm"