After I spent most of my summer back in Germany spending time with Sören, family and friends and doing an internship with Ashoka, I went back to the US and on a three week roadtrip with Sören. To give you a better idea of our tour, I uploaded the map with our stops.




We rented a car and started from Portland. I tried to keep the description short as I'm sure you are mostly interested in the pictures at the end of this post. :)

Destination 1: Hell’s Canyon (B)

Things to see: deepest canyon in the US (deeper than Grand Canyon)
Things to do: Jetboat Tour along the Snake river over several big rapids

Destination 2: Craters of the Moon (C)

Things to see: old lava flows, cones and lava tube caves
Things to do: drive the 7 mile loop road, walk up the cones and master the caves

Destination 3: Yellowstone National Park (D)

Things to see: the most incredible and surreal landscape full of geysers, hot springs, a beautiful canyon, wide open valleys with wildlife feeding of the grass next to the river

Things to do: drive around the park and check out all the incredible natural wonders what nearly feels like visiting a museum (probably that’s because of the numerous tourists here); have a wonderful picnic at the Yellowstone lake; camp in the park and try to endure the constant Sulphur smell; wildlife viewing at Lamar Valley (our highlights were: two bison herds, two Grizzly bears – one of them feeding of a bison carcass, deers, Pronghorns, Bighorn sheeps)

Destination 4: Glacier National Park (E)

Things to see: beautiful alpine landscape with spectacular lakes, glaciers and of course wildlife

Things to do: driving the Going-to-the-sun road and doing beautiful hikes to “remote” lakes (remote is relative as we were definitely not the only people hiking there); watch mountain sheeps, mountain goats, marmots and many squirrels on your way; enjoy a picnic at one of the lakes; do a full day hike in Waterton Park (the Canadian part)

Destination 5: Banff National Park & Yoho National Park (F)

Things to see: the town Banff itself, even more mountain scenery, amazingly blue colored lakes and glaciers

Things to do: ride up the gondola in Banff to enjoy a spectacular view of the surrounding mountains and Bow River; see the Fairmont chateau in Banff; hike Johnston Canyon on the way to Lake Louis; have a short walk along Moraine Lake; enjoy the crowd at Lake Louise; do a day hike in Yoho National Park along glaciers, small mountain lakes and several waterfalls (longest hike of the trip about 20km (!)); on the drive towards the Columbia Icefield Parkway stop at Bow Lake and view the amazingly blue Peyto Lake from a lookout

Destination 6: Jasper National Park (G)

Things to see: Columbia Icefield with its numerous glaciers, and yet again beautiful lakes and waterfalls

Things to do: drive along the Columbia Icefield Parkway and take a walk to the foot of the Athabasca Glacier; visit the Athabasca Falls; do a short hike at Mount Edith Cavell to see the Angel Glacier and a lake filled with icebergs; finally do a hike to a lookout above Maligne Lake & meet a bear on your way back to the car (seriously I thought this would not happen, but there he was, the small black bear just meters away from us)

Destination 7: Vancouver (H)

Things to see & do: take the Aqua bus to Granville Island and stroll around the different market stands; rent a bike and cycle around Stanley Park; meet up with my good friend Laura (who by chance happened to visit Vancouver from Australia at the same time) and do the Grouse grind up Grouse Mountain; have lots of good and cheap Sushi

Destination 8: San Juan Island (I)

Things to see: group of islands in the northwest of the state of Washington

Things to do: spent two nights in a fantastic guesthouse where you can enjoy a nice breakfast in the morning sun on the patio of your room; drive around the island to enjoy the nice views on the other islands, soak in the sun and see Orcas feeding on salmon just off the coast; do a kayaking trip to meet Harbor seals and enjoy the spectacular sunset; watch some more Orcas very close from the whale watching boat

Destination 9: Seattle (J)

Things to see & do: stroll around Pike Place market; walk along the waterfront (although not that recommendable); have a nice dinner in Belltown; go up the Space Needle and enjoy the view on Seattle (they have a lot of cool interactive gadgets up there); spend some time in the sun watching the International Fountain

Destination 10: Portland (K)

Things to see & do: moving into a new place on the East Side of which I will post some pictures in my next post

And here are the pictures from our trip. I tried to limit them and ended up with 276 pictures – probably still too many, but I hope you enjoy them nevertheless.

USA & Canada Trip

Spring Break

Yes, I'm still alive and doing fine. :) That happens when you take on a New Year's resolution about writing posts on your blog on a regular basis. It just does not works out. As a consequence it is over a month ago since you last heard of me. In the meantime I enjoyed a very nice holiday with Sören who came over to visit me for about three weeks. As I had Spring break, we were able to go on a week long road trip along the Californian and Oregon coast. Our travel itinerary arranged for a flight from Portland to Oakland as our first stop would be in San Francisco. After two nights in SF we would pick up our car to drive south along Big Sur. This seemed like a great plan, except for the problem that our airline had different plans for us. As the flight was overbooked, there was only one spot left on the plane. After long discussions with the airline, we decided that I would take the spot that would at least guarantee me and both of our luggage to arrive in Oakland as planned. Sören was rescheduled on a flight to Seattle where he supposedly could have catched the next flight to Oakland (arrival time 10pm). Well, of course the plane going to Seattle was delayed. At the end our holiday started with Sören staying in Seattle overnight and me enjoying our hotel room in SF alone.

After such a bumpy start we deserved a beautiful roadtrip with nice weather and no other incidents which turned out to be true for us. Over the next week we spent a great week traveling through California and Oregon as you can assure yourself of in the following pictures:

Spring Break & Ski Trip Mount Hood Meadows

After returning from our roadtrip I had to split my schedule between university and spending my time with Sören. The prioritization of tasks in this case was pretty simple. We spent as much time as we could together and amongst others went on a long weekend skiing trip to Mount Hood (see pictures). After Sören left, the "boring" life of a MBA student started again and I'm right in the middle of the term trying to keep up with the deadlines for our assignments.

Nashville Fulbright Seminar

From the 26th February till 1st March I spent four days in Nashville for a Fulbright seminar. Each year Fulbright is offering these seminars to first-years scholars that came to study in the US. We were more than 150 students from 70 different countries! Throughout the four days we had different panels, presentations and workshops related to Social Entrepreneurship. However, most importantly we had the chance to party for four days in a city known for country music. No, I didn't buy a cowboy hat after all and I didn't meet Dolly Parton, but we heard some good live music and not only country music. ;)

Here are some pictures from the four days

Nashville Fulbright Seminar

NBA

Last Saturday I went to watch my first NBA basketball game ever. The Portland Trailblazers were playing against the Washington Wizards. From what I heard this was not a topnotch game, so I was able to concentrate more on the shows during the breaks. :) I uploaded some pictures to give you an impression. The game was fun and I definitely would love to watch another (more important) match of the Trailblazers. However, I have to say that I missed a bit of the "fan culture" which is celebrated in the German soccer league. Where was all the "Shalalalalalahlalah"? And honestly I would be irritated as a basketball player if my fans are shouting "Chalupa" (which refers to some dish from Taco Bell) when the team gets close to scoring 100. ;)

NBA Portland Trailblaser vs Washington Wizards

Inauguration

I’m sure everybody of you had the chance to see at least some parts of the Inauguration yesterday. For my part I only watched the oath and maybe 5 minutes of Obama’s speech due to technical problems with my internet connection. And the little piece I saw was through a German website and they directly translated it into German. I have to say that I favour Obama’s voice over the translator’s one. It was a big day and my impression was that everybody around me was relieved and happy that Bush is finally gone. My landlord even invited everybody to join in for an Inauguration party with Democrats cupcakes and Presidential punch. Maybe I should take into consideration to organize a party in September and offer some Chancellor punch. ;) To end this little post I would like to share my favourite picture of the day with you.

Source: http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/01/20/article-1124043-031F41BF000005DC-321_468x550.jpg

Day at the gorge

The weather this weekend was so beautiful that we had to take a break from studying. Mike Shall offered Bettina and me to take us out for a little trip to the gorge. The Columbia River gorge is a canyon through which the Columbia River flows. It is partially forming the border between the state of Washington and Oregon and it is famous for the wind coming through it. Naturally we had the chance to enjoy this “wind” (I put it in quotation marks, because in my opinion it was rather a storm that day.). To give you an impression of how strong the wind was, I will give you a short description of different scenes at the Vista House: all the cars parking there were shaking; a man got out of the car and his glasses were immediately blown away; a man had to hold his 6 year old kid, because it was nearly blown away; and on our way back to the car, we actually had to grab the handrail and pull ourselves towards the car. We had a great time and the view was surreal. I tried to capture it with my camera, but it is not even close to reality. After this little adventure Mike took us on a quieter tour along the river shore and showed us different water falls, a fish hatchery, a dam. We finished the afternoon with a little hike towards another waterfall. It was a great day and a great change for a day.

The Gorge

Returning to Portland & A new term starts

Back to Portland the new term has already started and it promises to become an exciting term with statistics and two accounting classes. ;) To make a change for all the numbers, I’m having an ethics class and I signed up for an interesting new class which PSU is offering in conjunction with Mercy Corps (a big NGO with their headquarters in Portland). The first week I was busy in getting used to studying again. ;) And I was working a bit on my apartment to make it more comfortable. Yes, I was at Ikea and of course spent more money than I expected to. But I would say it was worth it.

Christmas at home & Portland in snow

On 16th December I finally started my trip back home! I was so looking forward to see my family, friends and Sören again. I had two and a half weeks back in Germany and used the time to be a bit all over the place. The first few days I spent in Nuremberg with Sören. Over Christmas I actually stayed at my parents’ home close to Karlsruhe. On 26th December I left to Hamburg and stayed at Sörens’ place till we went to Sylt to spend New Years Eve there. I had a great break and enjoyed being back home and see some of the people again. After a wonderful break I packed my suitcase full with chocolate (I’m sorry to say that, but you just cannot get good chocolate in the US) and souvenirs and flew back to Portland.

First term is over

Beginning of December we did it! We finished our first term and after the busy last couple of weeks we deserved a good party. You know the reportedly motto of business students: Work hard, party hard! So we all went to Anna’s house to celebrate the end of the term and Adrian’s birthday (see pictures).

Anna's and Adrian's Party

Thanksgiving Invitation

I was lucky enough to experience my first American Thanksgiving. I was invited to a good friend’s house to spend the day with his wife and their families. It was a lot of delicious food and good wine. Unfortunately I (as always) forget my camera, so I can not show the pictures of the delicious turkey we had, but be sure I ate so much turkey on that and the following day (you have to finish the leftovers) that I won’t be able to eat turkey till the next Thanksgiving.

Day at the beach

Some time in November we actually managed to take the day off of studying and spent a wonderful day at the beach. We had blue sky and it was so warm that we could even walk along the beach with our sweaters on. And then everybody keeps on talking about the rain in Portland. ;) I attached some pictures of the day.

Cannon Beach

Election party

I know it has been a long time and by now all the euphoria about Barack Obama being elected has long give way to a more realistic view on the difficult tasks Obama will face as soon as he is in office. However, I still would like to give you a short look back on what I actually did on election night and about the impression I got. It was the first time ever that I went on an election party. I’m usually used to follow the election results in front of a TV while doing some other stuff. This time I was drawn by the excitement of the people around me. Already following the campaign was something new to me. Compared to that campaigning in Germany is really boring. As I showed you on one of my pictures, could you imagine finding Merkel or Steinmeier outfits to buy in stores? However, I have to say that the debates in Germany seem to be more fun, because the candidates Obama and McCain were usually quite nice to each other (at least during the debates). Anyways I wanted to see how the Americans are spending the election night on such an historical election. I ended up attending two parties, so I can tell you that I had enough of celebration on that night. Most impressing to me was just to see how happy and relieved especially here in Portland (traditionally democratic) the people were once Obama was announced as the president elected. It was clearly a historical moment and I was glad I could experience it. When Obama held his speech I’m sure a lot of the people around me were close to or actually crying. I added some pictures of the election night in the Random pictures album. Unfortunately the quality is not that good.

Random