A weekend trip to Brussels….

Last weekend, 1st and 2nd December 2007, I, Elda, Simin, and Tanin went to Brussels for sightseeing and refreshing. It was Thursday night when Tanin gave me an offer to join him spending weekend in Brussels. And I thought “wow… that’d be great!!!”. So I decided to join him.

Saturday morning at 06:00 we met in Bonn Hauptbahnhof and took the regional bahn train to Köln and changed with other train to Aachen. Then we went to Bushof and met with Simin who had spent a night in Aachen. We took a bus to Eupen and continued our journey by train to Brussels. The trip from Aachen to Eupen was really weird. We were actually going from Germany to Belgium (Eupen is in Belgium), but there was no border at all. All I realized was arriving in Eupen when the bus stopped The total trip from Bonn to Brussels took about 4 hours.

inside the Eupen-Brussels train (Simin, Elda, Tanin)

Upon arrival in Brussels, we got out of the train station and were offered a city tour trip by some local city touring companies. We thought for sometimes and decided to take one. It cost for 10 € /person and the ticket was valid for 2 days.

So we went around the city of Brussels by bus provided by the touring agency, and got out in Atomium. We took some pictures and went inside way up to the top and went back down again, and then to the middle levels. The view was nice from the top spot of Atomium. Simin didn’t go with us though and stayed outside the Atomium.

me in front of the Atomium

From Atomium we took other bus (of course from the same touring company) and stopped at Palais De Laeken. Took some pictures then took another bus to the shopping area, Rue Neuve. There we bought waffels which was really delicious for my taste and continued our journey to the famous Manneken Pis statue.

me at the Palais De Laeken

me in front of the Manneken Pis statue

After taking pictures in front of the Manneken Pis statue, we went to the Grand Place and saw a theatrical show for a while and went back to the train station because Simin decided to went back to Aachen that night. Then the three of us checked in at the youth hostel which was located near the train station. After settling down, we went out to have our dinner at the Grand Place. The restaurant’s name was LeROY D’Espagne. We really enjoyed the Belgian food, it was delicious.

Belgian food dinner at LeROY D’Espagne

After having our dinner, we searched for a statue called Jeanneke Pis. We were really curious about it. It’s a peeing statue like Manneken Pis, but a girl. And after taking some pictures of the statue, we went back to the hostel for a sleep.

We continued sightseeing on Sunday morning to Place Royale, Palais De Justice, Colonne, and the European Commission’s headquarter. We showed our respect to the European Commission by taking pictures in front of the building Yes, that was the institution who gave us the scholarship to pursue our master degree in Europe (in my case Germany-Italy).

me at the Colonne Du Congres

me with EU flags at the background besides the European Commission’s headquarter building

me at the European Commission’s headquarter

We continued our trip by feet to Parc Du Cinquentenaire since it’s near to the European Commission’s building, and went shopping for souvenirs at the Grand Place.

me at the Parc Du Cinquentenaire

Then we went back to Bonn. What a trip!!! Can’t wait for other trips….

My new laptop: Dafferianus [VAIOus]

On Saturday, 24th November 2007, I bought my new laptop: a SONY VAIO VGN-C2S/H at MediaMarkt Köln. This laptop is meant to replace the old ‘[Johnny] Travelmate’, an ACER Travelmate 2355 NXCi. I decided to name it ‘Dafferianus [VAIOus]‘. I picked this name because I used the Erasmus Mundus scholarship money to buy it I was inspired by one of Indonesian PhD students living in Bonn who several weeks ago bought a digital camera and called it a ‘DAAD camera’ since he used the scholarship money from DAAD to buy it. So I also related my laptop’s name with Erasmus Mundus => ‘Dafferianus [VAIOus]‘ Below is the picture of both ‘[Jhonny] Travelmate’ & ‘Dafferianus [VAIOus]‘.

‘[Jhonny] Travelmate’ & ‘Dafferianus [VAIOus]‘

My main reason for buying a new laptop was the need of more processing power to cope with my daily activities which almost always involves my laptop. Sure Jhonny had done a very good job in assisting me until today. Help me through the working days at PT. PSN, final bachelor project, searching & applying scholarships. But however, I must admit that Jhonny uses Intel Celeron M as its processor and it can’t handle stuffs well now. When I was back in Yogyakarta, my dorm didn’t have internet connection, and I had another desktop PC. I used Jhonny only for running a word processor, spreadsheet, implementing some *nix goodies, and a bit of programming. At the office I load-balanced my tasks with the office’s desktop PC. But now, everything should be done in a single box. Since my room is connected to the internet, now I use a word processor, spreadsheet program, music playing, browsing with several tabs, opening 3 instant messenger applications, and running a development application at once. Jhonny seems exhausted doing these things I hope VAIOus can handle them. So far it works well Actually VAIOus doesn’t use the most current tech out there. In fact, it’s a bit old in tech term. It uses Intel Core 2 Duo T5500 1.66 Ghz, 1GB RAM, and built-in Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950. But I chose it, since the price/performance was fine, and it’s 13.3″ (well less than 14″)

The story began several weeks ago. After deciding to buy a new laptop, I made a constraint that the laptop’s screen size should be < 14″. So I went to H&G and Galeria Kaufhoff at the city center of Bonn to compare the prices. I also checked http://www.notebooksbilliger.de , and found out that the average price was > 1000 € except for Acer and Fujitsu Siemens. But however, almost all of my friends and even sales persons at the computer shops didn’t recommend Acer laptops. I dunno why, since Jhonny did all its tasks well back then. So I was targeting one of Fujitsu Siemens’ 12″ Amilo series. But then I found out from H&G that the warranty of Fujitsu Siemens products sold in Germany aren’t valid outside Germany Then on Friday, 23rd November, I went to MediaMarkt Köln with Vina & Eddy. And there I found the offer of VAIOus for 849 €. But the drawback was that it’s the last piece available at MediaMarkt and on display. So I decided not to take it yet. The other day I checked Saturn in St. Augustin and ProMarkt in Bonn West. And I was really shocked to see the same Sony Vaio product as in MediaMarkt Köln priced 1299 €. So, I decided to take the offer at MediaMarkt Köln and went to Köln the same day to buy it.

At first I found the product somehow stupid, since Sony didn’t give any installer CD/DVD inside the package (except the Windows anytime upgrade DVD), and VAIOus was bundled with a Windows Vista Home Premium operating system in German language And the OEM license is only for that German Vista Home Premium….. Damn!!! So I downloaded an English version of cracked Vista Home Premium using torrent and installed it, coexisting with Fedora Core 7 soon after. I feel so sorry for using a cracked version of Vista Home Premium, but I think it’s not so bad since I have the German license And besides, there’s no way of using Windows XP => NO DRIVERS!!!! Even at Sony’s support page!

At last I hope VAIOus will do its job well assisting me through my activities….