Jonathan Eisch’s Weblog

Hi All,

Yesterday, after posting, I met up with some guys from Madison, on their way to the pole to work on IceCube stuff. We talked a bit about the status of things and went out to dinner. We went to Valentinos. (Glenn, it’s right down the road that you mentioned to go to.) It was very good. I had a pasta and salmon dish, and it was very, very good.

Not all that much to post today (I’m at a cyber cafe so I can’t post pictures) as I spent my whole day on a train. I took the TransAlpine railway (one of the five best in the world!) and took lots of pictures. I have no idea how they turned out yet, as the screen on my camera is broken. (When I send it in for warranty, I’ll happen not to mention that it broke at the South Pole.) So, I still need to load those onto my computer. It was a bit over four hours both ways, with an hour stop at Greymouth (on the west coast of the South Island). Greymouth wasn’t all that impressive, so I’m glad it was just an hour. But we were a little late, so we didn’t even have an hour, so I stopped at the KFC, because it was close, cheap and (I expected) fast. It wasn’t really all that fast though. It wasn’t even designed to be fast. In the US, you have things divided up, someone takes your order and your money, and when that’s done they help the next person while you wait for your food, which is being put together by someone else (efficient, yes?). Here, One person takes your order, then your money, then they put everything together for you (even get you a straw and napkin!) and then give it to you before they help the next person. It takes forever! (relatively speaking.) But, other than driving, it seems like most things are that way around here. No real thought for efficiency, just take your time. Anyway, enough on that tangent.

On the way back, after finding my seat, and someone else finding (what I thought was) my seat, we figured out that just about the whole car was double booked, which made things interesting. Luckily, they had only half booked a few adjacent cars, so it all worked out. I took lots of pictures. The scenery around here is impressive. I didn’t see anything that looked like it was right out of The Lord of the Rings, but it was still very nice. They reminded me a lot of the appellations in some parts (the wet western side) and the Arizona foothills on the east side (the dry side). You’ll see when I post pictures and you can decide for yourself.

For dinner, I stopped by a restaurant and pizzeria on the square (it was open and convenient). I ordered a calzone in my best kiwi-english (I’ve learned to do that to keep people from looking at me like this. [inside joke for mom, if you didn’t get it.] ) Anyway, even though it keeps the New Zealanders from asking me to repeat myself, the waiter asked me where I was from, in a very western US accent (like far west, California or Washington). I told him Wisconsin and he said he was from British Columbia, and we chatted a bit while he was pouring my drink. It’s always nice to talk to someone that I can understand. Anyway, the calzone (or, calzone-E, as the waitress [a New Zealander] said) that I had was very good, and while it was called The Americana, it didn’t taste like any pizza or calzone I’ve ever had in the states. (I think it had chili seasoning.)

On the subject of how New Zealanders talk, while I was at this restaurant, they had some live music. A girl singing with a guy playing guitar. They did very well, but when she was singing “Route 66″ I had to chuckle to myself when she got to the line about going “Flagstaff, Arizon-E and don’t forget Winon-E…” Anyway, it’s funny hearing such an american song with such a funny accent.

I think I’m going to finish up some work left over from the pole this evening, and get to bed early, as I’m a little sleepy from having to wake up early this morning.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 10th, 2004 at 8:12 pm and is filed under Pole 03-04. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.