New Trip!

Hello friends and family!

I have embarked on a new adventure for the next couple of days. As many of you know, I have completed my PhD and this will be my last trip during my time at Johns Hopkins University. Most of my trips during my PhD have been a part of an amazing NSF grant which supports research in wind energy and collaborations between the US and the rest of the world. As part of this last trip I will be attending a conference in Copenhagen. I decided to do a layover in Iceland for a couple of days and check it out. My good friend Joel is joining me this time for the adventure.

One thing to know is: we were not well equipped for this trip. I did not bring a jacket and hiking shoes are a must. Because of this, we have been running in most trails just to keep ourselves warm. haha

First thing is packing, and as usual, I like traveling with only carry-ons!

We rented a car in Iceland!

Nothing brings more excitement to a foreigner than a familiar store. Our first stop: Krispy Kreme! hahaha

A nice church in the capital. The tallest building in Iceland.

There was a nice organ inside the church.

We saw some nice street art in the city.

 First hike was a '45min' hike. It took us 45 min to get to this point.

We crossed the water this way.

There was only one way to get through.

And after another hour we got to this point!

We then crossed the water and got to the other side. Total time was about 4 hours of hiking. hahaha

Day 2! We did a tour and stopped at 5 different locations. First stop: an ex-volcano. 

I touched the water!

Band-aids: an essential part of this trip.

 Second stop: An amazing waterfall!

Just the waterfall.

 Third stop: Geysers!

Temperatures 80-100deg Celsius.

You could see them blow up too!

This one blew up 3 seconds before I got the selfie, haha.

Stop 4: Another amazing waterfall.

Stop 5: A national park with an amazing view. 

The trip has been fun so far! One more day to go and we are off to Copenhagen.

Oktoberfest

Hello friends!

I am back home in Baltimore, MD. These last couple of weeks have been amazing! I went to Oktoberfest and then to a conference in Munich. I went with some good friends and had a great time. Here are some pictures of the fun times in Munich.

For those of you interested in the scientific aspect of my visit (yes, there is a scientific purpose to my visits! :D) here is the paper we published as part of the conference. The Torque 2016 conference was amazing! One of the best conferences I've been to!

This is the right way.

First day!

At one of the beer tents in Oktoberfest.

Beer is by the liter.

Random people stand on the tables and drink a whole L of beer and the crowd cheers.

Making new friends.

The JHU/KULeuven crew!

The night was still young!

We made it to the Torque 2016 conference!

Conference dinner.

Juliaan presenting at the conference.

Me presenting at the conference.

:)

Last picture of the crew on the way back.

There is this nice spot in Munich were people surf in the river.

Leuven

Dear Leuven, I missed you!

This weekend I went to Leuven, Belgium to meet with some good friends. It was awesome! We made it all the way to Seven Oaks!

The first part of the story: The train to get there.
The train I was on was stopped for a suspicious  group of riders. It seems there were some 'brown' people on the train. The police came and I got padded down, they were very strict, until they saw my American Passport in the bag. Then they kept going and eventually found the brown man they were looking for. There was even a chopper above us and this was one the news. It took me in the end about 4 trains and 8 hours to get to Leuven. Why do the terrorist always have be brown people? Common guys, you are making all of us look bad!

Suspect arrested.

There are reporters on one of those windows. This was on local news.

We drank the Belgian way. And ended in 'Seven Oaks'. A selfie-stick fell from Heaven to the hands of Jules. We had a night of selfies.

This bar gives you nails and a hammer. It's a recipe for disaster!

We saw one of the libraries fromt he University. It is gorgeous! The inside is also great!

KU Leuven library.

Inside the library.

I love these things. haha

Windmills

Before wind turbines, there were windmills! :D And they had lots of them in Holland. I went to visit the windmills north of Amsterdam in Zaanse Schans. They are awesome. The blades are just a frame, and they put sails over them. This is different to wind turbines nowadays, whose blades are made in a similar way as airplane wings.

Francesca was in Brussels and she came to visit! She loved Amsterdam. We walked for many hours and saw a lot of nice areas in the city. Amsterdam is a biiig city!

Windmills!

This beautiful gal came to visit!

A windmill!

This was the best windmill!

Dutch shoes.

A nice picture with the sunset on the building in Amsterdam.

Amsterdam

Hello friends!

Amsterdam is an interesting city. There is a nice/weird feeling to it. It has the nice atmosphere of a big European city, combined with the side of lust from the red light district and all the 'coffee houses' which are just pot stores. It is funny, because finding an actual coffee place was quite a challenge. I was about to go to Starbucks for just coffee, but we found a regular coffee shop... more to come...

Typical Dutch weather that day.

The Van Gogh museum was awesome! They had a little bit of work from all stages of his life. It is sad to know that he was mentally ill and committed suicide :'( However, he is one of my favorite artists and the museum has an awesome collection! No pictures allowed inside the museum though. Being there reminded me of the my favorite dream of the movie 'Dreams' by Akira Kurosawa.

At the vanGogh musesum :D

I also hung out with my friend Laura, who was in Netherlands with her family for vacation!

Laura in Amsterdam.

Of course, I couldn't miss taking a picture here!

We were at this coffee shop and for some reason the servers were telling some people to leave if they were not gonna buy anything. He then told someone to leave from the window. I was very confused at this point, until it was all revealed. The coffee shop was right next to a brothel, and the girls were on display in the windows. We were at the red light district! haha

A nice coffee house next to a brothel.

Money well spent :D

You get a lot for your money grocery shopping. Look all I got for 26 Euros!

Hello!

Well hello my friends! As many of you know I'm in a PhD program at Johns Hopkins University and my research is on numerical simulations of wind energy flows. We have an awesome grant at JHU (WINDINSPIRE) that has international collaborations as a priority. This time, I get to go to the Netherlands to work with Richard Stevens (a former post-doc from our group). The group I'm visiting is the POF group at University of Twente.

I will be here for a couple of weeks and then off to Germany for Oktoberfest and then the Torque 2016 conference.

Here are some pictures from my first days:

My bags. Yes, only a carry-on and a BIG personal item!

Bed and Breakfast where I'm staying!

The first floor of the place where I'm staying where there is a studio and there is a music class.

Breakfast every day! It's awesome! :D

Bikes in Netherlands, lots and lots of bikes.

Free ice-cream on campus with Richard.

A BBQ with some new friends!