The Las Vegas diaries

So. Las Vegas. The most un-EWB place on the planet hosted the 10th Annual EWB International Conference. It really happened! And I was even there to accept an award with my co-volunteer Bob on behalf of our chapter. It was pretty strange, as you might imagine.

Aside: did you know some Southwest flights have wifi now, and you can turn your smartphone into a location tracker? Pretty neat!! Also I didn't realize that flying to Las Vegas from Pittsburgh meant we almost went over the Grand Canyon. Topography from a plane is awesome.



The resort we stayed in had about a million rooms, all too cold, but it was quite impressive. They even had a popcorn machine in the convention hall, so swanky. It reminded me a lot of the AAAR conference, with hangar-sized rooms and expensive food, except this time a lot of the rooms had people at gambling machines. I'm pretty sure every spare space in Vegas is required to have machines, because there are even some in the airport! The weird thing is, no one ever really looks that happy sitting at a slot machine. Even later, when I saw craps tables with dancing women above them, no one seemed to be appropriately entertained by the women and instead were focused on the game. More on how weird being female in Vegas is in a bit; but yeah, I didn't gamble, as you might imagine.


The conference itself was a blast. I took tons of notes during the workshop sessions, and there was one night where, if you talked to all the sponsors, you were entered to win an iPad. Odds weren't terrible so I made the rounds, even though I didn't actually have a voice - on Wednesday I could feel myself coming down with something, and took a bunch of meds with me on the trip, but nothing really helped. It's funny to think all the people I met have no idea what I really sound like. I mean, I felt mostly fine, but I was coughing all of the time, which was annoying. Anyway I did meet several sponsors that could potentially be very important to my career, which was very exciting. And I got swag (though not an iPad, boohoo)! All good conference-y things.



We had some pretty talented a capella to cap off the awards dinner, but if they were trying to defray the nerdy engineer stereotype it didn't quite work. I was able to meet up with the EWB-international contingent - turns out it's like five people...I guess they aren't well established yet, but Nationals can say it's an international conference, kind of strange. Anyway I hung out with one of the guys from Holland especially and we walked from the Stratosphere (we got to ride the Big Shot, where it shoots you up in the sky and there's an incredible view of the Strip, freaking awesome) down to Mandelay Bay, which is a few miles. It took us a while, longer than it looks, but there's a lot to duck in and see on the way so it wasn't too bad.







Courtesy of that Strip walk, and the one I had taken with Bob (including riding the NY, NY rollercoaster around the building, which was also awesome), I present things that don't usually happen every day but probably do in Vegas:
>> being in an elevator with a couple who, just minutes ago, did their proposal on top of the Stratosphere, super sparkly ring and super tanned faces and all
>> coming out of that elevator to see a dude puking in a trash can
>> passing a male hobo elaborately dressed in part with a ladies' bikini
>> all the goddamn malls, curved escalators, and full size statue replicas your heart desires
>> indoor freaking gondola rides in a city that shouldn't have water
>> seeing Walgreens get equal billing on a sign as Barneys New York

It was really an unbelievable part of the country, and I'm glad I wasn't walking it alone. So many of the girls we passed were in dresses that barely covered anything - all of them seemed to end right at the same length, right under their asses. And with huge heels! I try not to judge people's choice of dress normally but that kind of makes you prey, and it was really weird. It doesn't help that are smut peddlers that circulate little cards of their call girls; a lot of the cards end up tossed on the ground like confetti with fake boobs, it's totally bizarre to walk through.

So I can't really say that I will ever feel the need to visit Las Vegas ever again, but I do have to hand it to the resort; on the last day, I spent quite a bit of time sitting on the pool chairs and reading, and that was very relaxing. I could have even ordered a drink poolside, which was novel, but I didn't bother. I did get to walk through their gardens, which have bushes of actual rosemary - so jealous!! It smelled really nice. Additionally I came across some lizards in my wanderings, but I'm not so jealous of those...

Back to the States

Leaving day, booooo! We had to wake up quite early to get me to the train in time for my flight, but we didn’t get much sleep anyway - Peter was coming down with a fever and all we had was advil. Plus waking up at five isn’t great to begin with. But we made it, although we did have to walk to the train station since all the trams were on a 25-minute schedule (though that’s the longest we’d ever seen and it was 6am on a Sunday, eat that Pittsburgh). The Leipzig airport is pretty novel – security isn’t until much after the entrance, so you can in fact have one last breakfast croissant with your loved one without the TSA getting in your face. Pretty nice.


And then I got on the plane and left! There were some delays, I watched The Descendants, finished Keith Richard’s Life on my kindle, so it went. What’s funny about being in Germany is that in stark contrast with all the other places I’ve visited – Mexico and Greece spring to mind – Germany is the first place where we were automatically spoken to as locals. Makes sense, given how very German we both look, but it was still strange to finally experience that. I also thought it was funny that as harsh as the polite stewardess-spoken German sounded as I flew in, by the end I started being able to understand some words and it didn’t sound so weird anymore. Although the sign for airport check-in still cracks me up. All in all, a good trip! We can check more European cities off our map, hooray!

Last day in LEJ

Well we tried to go to Peter’s favorite bakery here, but they were closed. Boo. But we did get some delicious (and very fattening) “pudding pretzel” – ie a glazed pretzel with curd in the loops – from a supermarket, so all was well. Here, all the bottles have deposits on them that you can return in these futuristic-looking machines in the supermarkets, which really cuts down on plastic in the trash since each is worth 10-25 cents. I was lucky enough to spot one on our walk to breakfast so I win! Haha.



We then set out to tackle a big monument Peter had seen but never gone up to. Turns out it was the Monument of Nations, recognizing the war of 1812, and it was HUGE! It’s hard to describe how insanely large it was. There were four stone statues that were each easily two stories tall, plus several smaller ones below and quite a few adorning the top of the building itself. A lot of stained glass and many, many carved horses in the dome of the place. The elevator (which I recommend, as there are wayyy too many stairs otherwise) takes you up 34 m – so it says on the screen, which I thought was super novel! – to the very top. Well, or so we thought. At that point you can stay there and walk the perimeter of the subroof, which is a fantastic view on its own, or you can wait for the light above the single-passage stairs to turn green and head up to the very top of the building. At that point the sun even came out! So that was really cool. Peter wasn’t so happy with the tiny stairs, but it was really cool to see. A poster on one of the sublevels said they used to have choirs sing upstairs, which would have sounded crazy if you were on the bottom floor. A very impressive place, especially since we didn’t know anything about it heading in!









Conveniently, there was a big Hit grocery on the way back, so I picked up a bunch of energy drinks for Steve, in addition to marveling at the aisle section full of canned and/or jarred wursts. It just looked like a bunch of hotdogs orderly pointing one direction in a jar, so german! This was especially great for the miniwieners, which just looked like meat chaos in comparison. We spent enough time there, though, that we had run out of time a bit, so we dumped everything at Peter’s apartment before briskly walking to the Thomaskirche. This is a famous church because of Bach, mostly, and Peter had seen the boy’s choir there before and said it was neat. The church itself was impressive, and although there was no boy’s choir that day, we did get to hear some very accomplished opera and orchestra pieces. I hadn’t realized it was an actual church service, though, so…I guess that fulfills my quota for the year.


After we got our groceries and went back to change, it was time to head to the Auerbachs Keller for dinner. This is “the best known and second oldest restaurant in Leipzig. It was described in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's play Faust I, as the first place Mephistopheles takes Faust on their travels.” (so says Wikipedia). Unfortunately, although the interior was cool, it was basically an over-hyped German Bennigan’s. My main dish was fine but the Brussels sprouts and mushrooms on the side were the worst I’ve ever had. They did not get a tip for their ridiculous portion costs, either. We had to stop at a fancy chocolatier to get some (yummy) hot chocolate after, to wipe that taste out of our mouths. Sometimes you don’t get lucky with food, I guess!


It was finally time to pack, which sucked, but we had some raspberry booze from the day before to finish so that helped. I had a lot more space left than I anticipated, but I guess I brought a lot of things for Peter and didn’t buy a lot of souvenirs! We did some final cleanup and also re-conditioned Peter’s dress shoes, which were in need of some more warm wax finish after the winter months. Nothing like taking advantage of a free hair dryer in new and unusual ways!

Leipzig wandering

A sleepy Leipzig day! I got to tour Peter’s workplace and meet some of his coworkers, which was cool. Their building has a bear duo statue outside of it, how fitting! We also got a doner from the competing place (see the February 23rd entry), which was pretty good but spicier, I thought, which means I didn’t quite like it as much…oops.


We tried to do some shopping downtown and wander, which was fun. Got to see cool churches, a pineapple impaled on a fence stake (?!?), that jewelry stores are called Schmuck here (heee), and bought some chocolate and a local liquor to try later. The sun was out, which was really nice! We thought we’d try our sunset luck again (did I mention Peter had written out the actual sunset time for every day I’d be visiting? So cute!) on top of the MDR building, where we’d had dinner before. It was a bit too hazy to be spectacular, but the view was expansive and breathtaking. Heights, they are pretty good.






We had a very gourmet dinner of sandwiches, a Vapiano fancysalad, and a “Surprise!” type of wine (it says so on the label!) we were assured would be good. And it was! We sat watching german TV shows, being jealous of having Al Jazeera, and catching the Disney version of Hercules in Spanish…the funny joys of not having a lot of internet bandwidth, I guess!