Minneapolis, November 10-14, 2003

I was in Minneapolis for the 58th Meeting of the IETF. I also happened to attend the 53rd Meeting, which was also in Minneapolis, so it was my second time to the city. I love the skyway system which allows you to walk throughout the downtown without going outside! Very nice in winter. Though while I was there, the weather was pleasant.

I had a strange variety of poor dining experiences on this business trip. Dinner one: at an Indian restaurant I order a simple curry dish. It never shows up; the order (apparently) left with a take-out customer and they had to redo it. When it arrived, it wasn't the Channa Masala I had ordered -- instead it was Chicken Masala. (The mistake was that the waiter had noted my order as simply "ch ma". The chef interpreted "ch" as "chicken".) Too hungry to care at this point, I ate it. Lunch two: I go to an order-at-the-counter place, and order one of these big salads with all sorts of yummy stuff inside. There was nowhere to sit, so I went back to the conference hotel to eat, only to discover I ended up with a boring ceasar salad. Dinner three: I happen to go out alone to a place that specializes in dinners-for-two. Just bad luck there. And then after the conference, in Maryland, I ate out at one of the typical American chain restaurants, where they lost my order all together. All in a week and a half!

But it was all worth it for one particular meal. My last dinner in Minneapolis, I made the trek to the northwest corner of the skyway system to have dinner at Cafe Brenda. I had the most wonderful grainy, fresh-vegetably meal, free of the normal greasiness that's so pervasive of dining establishments. Yum!

MK

 The skyway system

MK

Downtown Minneapolis: glass, cars, and a touch of the odd. The building seen outside on the left is covered in a mural of musical notes.

 MTV München v. 1879, Munich, November 23, 2003

I returned from Minneapolis on the day of my fencing club's intraclub championship. It was fenced in a round-robin, everyone fences everyone, five touches. I didn't fence, having just come directly from the airport. Ben won the epee event.

Sports are handled quite a bit differently in Germany (perhaps all of Europe?) than in the US. Our fencing club is located in a sports hall, a building completely dedicated to sports. The local schools use the gym space during the day for physical education, while the same gyms are used at night for adult fitness, aerobics, and athletics. In addition to the several large gyms, there are dedicated rooms for fencing, boxing, judo, karate, and an indoor climbing wall. We pay club dues as well as fencing dues; I guess it's a little bit like joining a country club in the states, except that it's a sports club.

Our particular club, MTV München v. 1879, is one of many "MTV"s in Germany. MTV stands for Männer Turn Verein, which means "Men's Gymnastics Club," which meant a sporting club for men, back in the nineteenth century. The "v." is for von, "from". The club was established in 1879, the name never changed, and now women are as welcome as men, and there are a whole range of sports and activities offered.

MK

MTV Fencing Room

BH

This was taken in a small out-of-the-way courtyard as I wandered through Salzburg in the pouring rain.  My initial attempt to record this was thwarted by a dead battery in my camera.  Later, armed with a fresh battery, I navigated the narrow Gassen (alleys) of the old city to return and get this shot.