Back in Switzerland

I'm back home! After some relaxing hours in New Jersey (after I came back from Puerto Rico), a struggle to find the British Airways check-in (my advise: don't try to find it yourself...just ask your way to it...it's the only reasonable way) and a short connecting stop in London, I arrived in Zurich this morning and I'm now back at home...for now...on Tuesday, I'll continue my August full of trips to go for a few days to Milan (end of year meeting for my exchange program)...and the "best" part is that BA managed to loose my bags somewhere on the way! They probably got lost in London as we were six people from that flight missing some bags...I'm still waiting to know more details about it and I'm really hoping/praying to get them before tomorrow evening, as I'd have some trouble in Milan without all my nice clothes...

But well...let's get back to the nice part: Puerto Rico is gorgeous! The first days I was just enjoying the sunny weather at some of the beautiful beaches in the Cabezas area of Fajardo (my hotel was there) and doing a Kajak-trip to the bioluminescent lagoon there (Dinoflagellates in the water react on movement and glow...quite cool...there's only a few places in the world where such a thing is visible all year long). Then, I was planning to go to one of the small islands but since I would have had to rent a whole boat to get there (expensive), I was advised to go hiking through the rain forest of El Yunque instead. I think that was a great choice...it's quite an impressive jungle there and if you go all the way to the peak, you also get an impressive view. And then the last day, I did some sightseeing in Old San Juan with all its old forts. What more can I see...check out the pictures and I hope you will understand, why I think that everyone in the States should go visit Puerto Rico... ;-)

Internship in the USA - Final chapters

This is it...I had my last day of work at SCR in Princeton last Friday and today I packed my stuff and got ready to leave...I had quite a busy last week at Siemens introducing Roman (one more ETH computer scientist trapped in Colleen's AD-team... ;-)) to his new job (i.e. my old one) and having a lot of free time activities (i.e. BBQ or going out almost every evening) to have a reasonable farewell to my stay here...and then there was also Stefan's farewell (teammate at SCR) and the birthdays of Andreas (see Florida pics) and Michael (check the mindBlog link) which made it an even busier week...well, it was certainly hard enough to say goodbye to everyone here as I had a very nice time...although I'm certainly looking forward to going back home...same mixed emotions as after my stay in Delft I guess...anyway: a big TAKE CARE to everyone in the Princeton area...hope to see you again sometime...

...

Oh there's one more thing...I'm actually not leaving the States yet...I'm flying to Puerto Rico (yes...that's part of the States) where I will stay a few days on the East Coast in Fajardo (seems to be a gorgeous area there). Fortunately, no hurricanes seem to be disturbing the peace on the island and so I'm pretty much looking forward to a great trip there...I'll try to keep you updated on Saturday when I'm back in New Jersey to catch my flight to Zurich...

(to be continued...hopefully...)

Florida

Yes I've been to Florida and it was great. Miami Beach is an amazing place and we had fantastic weather and one hell of a car (a Ford Mustang Convertible) to be there...and going to Disney World and SeaWorld was also definitely worth it...I had a great time there... ;-) ...so make sure to check out all the pictures and videos I took in Florida, Disney World and SeaWorld. The pictures already tell most of the story to give you a little overview, this is what we did during the trip:
We (that is Andreas, Maik and myself) arrived Friday evening in Orlando, where we went to get our rental car...since Andreas didn't feel like driving all the way to Miami (and back) alone, we asked how expensive it would be to get an additional driver and how much it would cost for the driver to be less than 25 years old...well the additional driver was just 9$ a day, where the young one would have been additional 25$ per day...so we decided to get the additional driver (i.e. Maik) and no driving for me (I'll be 25 in the end of the year)...yet, as soon as the car rental guy heard that we were going to Miami Beach, he made us an offer to get a convertible for additional 12$ a day and the additional driver for free...et voilà...we got a Ford Mustang Convertible to cruise through Miami...nice... ;-)
So we went straight from Orlando to Miami Beach where we stayed until Sunday...as mentioned before...South Beach (i.e. the southern part of Miami Beach) is great... ;-) ...we were just walking around, hanging on the beach and relaxing in the warm ocean water....just nice...and there were plenty of things to do on Saturday night as well, where on our way back to the hotel (sometime after 3am) by pure chance we saw something going on in one of the bars, walked in there and saw one more hour of a nice live performance of Erykah Badu...I mean how cool is it to see a girl with such an amazing voice...and best of all...for free... ;-)
On Sunday (after relaxing once again at South Beach) we cruised (did I already mention that we had a Mustang Convertible?) through Miami Beach and Miami, where we saw the amazing Venetian Pool and the honestly not so amazing Little Havana...then we continued our cruising to Fort Lauderdale to see all the canals and yachts and drove a bit on the nice A1A street right next to the ocean (the street goes all the way from Miami Beach to Palm Beach, but it just takes way too long to drive there all the way)...there we also found a nice spot in Boca Raton to relax one more time at the ocean...nice... ;-)
After a short stop in Palm Beach which was completely empty by the time we got there (guess all the rich guys were already sleeping... ;-)), we were back in Orlando (or to be more precise in Kissimmee) where we stayed until Tuesday to see Disney World and SeaWorld...
Both parks are amazing...not that much for the exciting roller coasters (the ones in Disney World were rather slow (although Splash Mountain was still fun) and there were just two (nice ones though) in SeaWorld), but for the other attractions...seeing all the Disney characters (especially Mickey Mouse... ;-)) in Disney's Magic Kingdom and the shows with these amazing animals in SeaWorld (like huge killer wales (Orca) jumping around and throwing trainers all over the place and dolphins making somersaults and sea lions performing like actors) was just nice...it's hard to catch the atmosphere inside the parks with pictures or even videos but just believe me that they're worth a visit...