It has been a busy two months since I last posted an update.  I spent a month in Germany and after I got back my daughter had her birthday, we had family over during Thanksgiving, I spent a week in Texas on business and I just returned from Pittsburgh to see the Bengals lose against the Steelers on the Sunday night game.  All in all it is good to be back in Cincinnati to enjoy the holidays.  Last weekend we went to Fountain Square to go ice skating while some of my family was in town and I got to take a peak at a finished Via Vite that we plan to hit this weekend.  My month in Europe was amazing as usual and I continue to contemplate moving there.  While I was there I visited Trier, Rothenburg, Frankfurt & Prague, Czech Republic.  Needless to say, I didn’t want to leave.  My trip a couple of days ago to Pittsburgh on the other hand was an experience I will remember for another reason.  It was one of the worst fan experiences I have experienced at an opposing fans stadium before.  This was my second trip to Pittsburgh to see the Bengals play so I am not naive to the teasing but this experience was over the top.  I got the impression that the locals had never seen visitors before.  There was five of us on this trip and everywhere we walked we seemed to become the side show.  From the hotel hallways, to the elevators, to the restaurants, stadium concourses and even the bathrooms.  There was a constant attempt to intimidate our group and we heard “Go home” from many of the residents.  While there are asses in ever city, Pittsburgh is full of its share of them.  You would think they would welcome out of town money in their city.  Sadly I heard a couple of groups bragging of about Carson Palmer breaking his leg during the Steelers-Bengals playoff game.  It didn’t help that it was a Sunday night game so there were very few Bengals fans there for the game.  With the Steelers recently winning the Super Bowl and in first place, you would think the fans would act like they have been winners before. In closing this update includes photos of the Bearcats-Huskies Football Game and a dozen photos from my trip to Pittsburgh.  In the coming weeks I will be posting photos from my European Trip. 

I am currently in Germany for the next few weeks.  After arriving in Frankfurt, I made my way to the Samstagsberg (Saturday Hill) district of Frankfurt.  I love the traditional German architecture and wood framed buildings.  At one of the tourist stands, I purchased a post card of what Frankfurt looked like before WWII and it is just shocking.  Much of the traditional architecture was actually rebuilt and is not original.  Unfortunately the bad part of traveling to Europe right now is the poor state of the US dollar.  At the Fifth Third Bank at CVG, it cost me $310 US dollar for €200 Euro.  As I get time, I will try and post some of my photos of the different cities and villages I visit but until then you can view my Frankfurt gallery can be viewed here.

With some of you emailing me, wanting to know when I was going to publish these photos from last night, I knew I couldn’t procrastinate much longer especially with a contest at stake.  I took about 150 photos last evening and had the special privilege to meet up with an acquaintance of mine that was able to get us special access to a certain rooftop for some amazing views that I will never forget.  Aaron, thanks again!  I also want to thank the security guard that escorted us, he went above and beyond.  What can I say, I love this city!  After photographing hundreds of cities around the world, very few cities give me as much pleasure and gratification as Cincinnati. There are so many options and when an event like this happens, it becomes a strategy on which ones we are going to tackle during the evening.  Some are a little risky and include trespassing but luckily if any of that happened last night (pleading the 5th), we didn’t encounter any problems.  If some of you are not familiar with “Light Up Cincinnati”, you can click on the link and read more about it.  It is a yearly event that gets very little coverage in the media and is always a last minute announcement that you have to adjust your personal schedule for, unfortunately last year I was out of town for it.  Luckily for me, it happened right in between two of my business trips.  You can view the “Light Up Cincinnati” gallery here or if you would like you can view them all in a complete thread here.