I am back! Yesterday I came back, caught by the rain only on the last bit. But first things first.

On Sat Sept 23rd, I left at 7:20 (am). It was a tough day and I was not in the mood of packing in advance, so I missed my original goal of leaving at around 5. Leaving at sunrise was not bad either. At first it was cold, then the weather warmed up and I did the approx 900 km in 11 hours, making 6 stops and counting in the roughly 2 hours of breaks.

Yesterday, I came back then, in 10 hours this time, I used a different route and also did less breaks, and I had ear-plugs. The ear-plugs protect me against the noise on the motorbike, from the wind continuously hitting the helmet and being really annoying. I learned that there's a lot of thinking going on during such a long trip, because the driving is a monotonous activity which does not keep all of the mind busy. But on a motorbike, the slightest mistake can mean end of thinking altogether so at least it does not get boring.

It is impressive to see Germany again. On the highway, you can see scenarios we're you are driving among dozens of vehicles on four lanes, and they all seem to stand still because everybody's at the same speed. That speed was 150-160 km/h (that's 100 mph for you British and American folks). Germany has amazing technological infrastructure. At home, I realized something that never caught my attention before: some sidewalk was being repaired, and there were several special purpose vehicles pouring concrete or piercing the ground or whatever. My motorbike needed a little fix, and the garage (a Mercedes service point) was full of big trucks, all scheduled for maintenance, however all looking shining brand new. Germany is extremely industrialized. It's very high-tech, the coutryside landscape of my parent's place notwithstanding.

I also paid a visit to Hamburg, and I shot some videos there, which I hope to piece together and upload to the net once. I really want to play with videos and music again, I miss expressing myself somewhat artistically (even if it's layman-artistically). I know I will never impress you with my words :-) and I used to enjoy making music.

Programming does not, and will never, get recognized as an art, like engineering. Lucky for me, it fulfils part of my desire to produce things. It's like blogs -- people when writing them are in fact constructing things (words and sentences and meanings). It might not serve a well-defined function but it is fun to do it and to share the result. And when they are shared and linked and when it is fun for somebody else to read them, they become more than the sum of their parts.

Back in Lausanne, I recovered from the trip by taking a shower, watching Aeon Flux, eating peanut cookies, and going to sleep early. It's a good one, go and watch Aeon Flux if you like futuristic scenarios and a story with a psychoactive twist. Of course it is nothing like the MTV animated series that I used to consume in a former life, but it's also much easier to understand. The other movies in line are Inside Man and V for Vendetta... I am not the kind of person that goes and buys tons of DVDs but when going shopping with the family my father insisted I pick some movies to cheer up my single life at home.

Now I am back at work, the code I hacked up for work during my week off turns out to work out well. I did some chatting today and later am meeting friends for breaking the fast together. It's good to be back.