Yo, I'm back in Old Europe's capital: Germany. The way back was pretty normal, but it's funny how funny german people tend to look and dress, when you've been away for a few weeks. I had a lot of time to study them at Schiphol Airport, where I heard, after 2 hours of waiting, that my flight would be delayed one hour. I also noticed that there was a large amount of people who, for some reason, thought it would be necessary and not at all questionable to buy and WEAR cowboy hats. Come on. COME ON!

Anyway, you're invited to take a look at the pictures from my way back home. 

(10:33 am) Thanks to my cold, which I first brought here, then lost it to catch it one week ago again, I had to delay my trip to L.A. by one day and drove down there on wednesday instead of tuesday. I originally wanted to take the short way and fly down Interstate 5. But hey, I'm a tourist after all, so I really had to take the scenic route: 280 to 17 to Santa Cruz and then down Highway 1 all the way to L.A. While said to have dramatic scenery the weather gave me a hard time enjoying it: FOG! Fog, Fog, Fog. I tried to take some nice pictures nevertheless, and as usual, you can take a look at my tries over at flickr.com.

It took me good ten hours to get to Irvine, where I met Gabi, Leon and Martin (both in alphabetical and chronological order) and had a really great time. It was so nice to see them again! The next morning, thursday, I cruised over to Newport Beach, but guess what they had there: FOG. Fog seems to either be a big problem here in California (or even smog) or I'm just an unlucky fellow. Anyways, thursday night we saw some strange lights in the sky. I just took a picture and didn't wonder too much, as I thought there was just some Disneyland fireworks going on - It turned out to really be the leftovers of a space rocket.

The way back was pretty unspectacular, I enjoyed Interstate 405's legendary traffic jam (of which you will also see pictures at the above link) and then cruised on the 5 for a long time to eventually return my rental car at 8pm. It was a tight race but I made it.

I was a little sad to have to give it back, as we became friends. Sterling took a good-bye shot of me in the Mustang (yes it's parked in the rental car return lane :).

(12:01 am) Yesterday The day before yesterday (Sunday)I drove along Skyline Blvd (US 35), which is a very nice scenic route overlooking the Bay Area with San Mateo and even San Mateo in sight (at least I think). The pictures from my little trip to the "mountains" start here. Today yesterday was a real nice and sunny day, with almost no fog, and I took this chance to drive up to San Francisco. I parked on 2nd Street between Market and Mission and took a long walk all around. You are welcome to have a look at the pictures.

I will now continue watching a funny show about Bodybuilders. In HD. On a beamer. Oh yeah.  

(12:50am) Today's Yesterday's trip led me to Muir Woods and some surrounding beautiful streets by the coast, of which the pictures can be found here. Good night.

(10:27pm, the day before) After searching for my apartment keys for an hour like a madman, I today finally made it to Stanford University after Sterling lended me his keys. I'll have to go there again though, as finding the computer science department was not as easy as assumed. I turned out just walking around the Campus for a while and checking out different places. I of course took pictures, which you can find here. The keys were found an hour ago under Sterling's pillow. I don't know how my keys got there, really ;)