December - part IV - in which there were young ones

The day after my exploration of Bayern, I spent the afternoon with a family.  An organization that connects foreigners with German families put me in contact with these folks and we planned to hang out for a day.  Super Great!  I met them at church where we stayed late so the daughters could practice for a Christmas Eve dance that they would be participating in.  The youngest, Celina, was probably 7, the daughter Malacha was 9, and then the only son was Michael, about 12 years old.   My youngest sister is now 14, so spending a day with this family brought back many old memories.


For starters, lunch.  Very German, with some sort of rolled up meat with gravy and mashed potatoes and red sauerkraut.  I thought it was delicious.  The youngest didn't agree though.  She was told to finish her last three bites of sauerkraut (which would have been about half a bite for myself), she burst into tears.  Her sister tried to help by getting right in her face yelling "don't cry!" over and over again (didn't help).  Just like my sisters back in the day.  


Once we finished there, we played some board and card games in the living room, where I held my own. Learning new games via German instructions takes a ridiculous amount of focus, especially when a 7 year old does the explaining!  Eventually the music kicked on and the girls started twirling around the living room while I chatted with Michael.  Eventually I stepped in and taught some swing dancing.  Before it was out, I picked Celina up on my shoulders.  She quickly started yelling and clawing my face so I put her back down.  A few minutes later, "Wyan, darf ich wieder hoch gehen? (Ryan, may I go high again?)."  


"But Celina," I said, "I thought you were terrified last time."
"No, just a little bit.  I wasn't really scared."


So I picked her up again, and she started screaming again as expected, so back down she went to the amusement of her siblings.


Both of the girls had just gotten Polly Pocket contact books (for those of you without sisters, it is comparable to Barbie).  They each had me fill in my info, and my hobbies, and my favorite food and color etc.  While I was filling it in, I found a finger poking my face all of a sudden.  The father of the family, Martin, keeps his whiskers shaved shorter than I do mine, so the 7 year old was fascinated.  I asked if I could draw a beard on the picture of Polly Pocket that was on my page, but her grin turned into a scowl and she yanked the book out of my hands.  Not a joking matter apparently...

Blasted

I've mentioned this before, people smoke here a lot.  I'm not particularly bothered by cigarette smoke, but nonetheless, I prefer it out of my face rather than it it.  At the bus stop after traveling, the guy standing in front of me, and facing the other way, took a big puff and... the wind took a huge cloud of smoke right at me.  I flinched, but then to my surprise, it didn't smell half bad.  Turns out it was a tobacco pipe.  So much classier.  I should have asked him what kind of tobacco he had.  I wish all the cigarette smokers would trade in for pipes.  How much more awesome would it be to see hundreds of pipe smokers every day instead of the hundreds of cigarette smokers I usually see.  


ta ta for now.

December - part III - in which I made acquaintances with Bavaria.

Well, I've done very little traveling around Bavaria (Bayern) since I've been here.  Some friends were going to explore Nürnberg and Bamberg for a day so I jumped in.  In Germany you can buy train tickets that let you travel through a whole Bundesland ("state" for lack of a better translation) for up to 5 people for a whole day at only 29€ in all.  We started with Nürnberg, of which I had only seen the Christmas market and the soccer stadium before.  The artist Albrecht Dürer who painted the famous "praying hands" was from Nürnberg, so we saw his house briefly.  

We noticed a number of rather dark statues around town including a giant rotting rabbit... still don't know what it's all about.

The inner city has a wall around it dating back to quite a long time ago, with this fortress at one side of it.

It's up on a hill so you can see over all the buildings in the city from there (though only a small feat since the buildings are all short).  I failed at photographing that though.  I actually failed at photos most of the day.  Apologies!

Here we went up on a balcony to get good view of the Christmas market.. all we got was red and white stripes though..

After a good meal we made our way to Bamberg, which turns out to be a pretty legitimate city in it's own right.  It was cool to see after dark, they have some churches and castles up on the hill sides that have spotlights on them, only from the city side though.  As we trekked up to each of them, we found the back sides in darkness, and the front sides glowing brilliantly.  There is a nice part of the city that is compared to Venice, but it was tough to see in the dark.  I'll have to go again later.

Once we had our fill of Bamberg we headed home to Erlangen for some dinner and then visited another intern, Lisa for Christmas tea and brownies and a few violent rounds of Jungle Jam, a card game that requires laying down cards at top speeds until certain combinations come up and then lunging for the totem sitting in the middle of the table, and often effectively wrestling for it to win.  The wounds on my hands have healed though now.

 - that's all.  Christmas today was delightful.  I like my family.  Cheers.

December - part II - in which I went North

Come the second weekend in December it was time for my first vacation.  I took Friday and Monday off to visit friends in Osnabrück where I studied last year.  Right off the bat though, an 8 minute delay on my first train made me miss my connection turning a 5 hour commute into 7 hours.  Conveniently just enough for me to get a refund of half my ticket (enough to cover my expenses for the rest of the weekend).  The afternoon involved cooking and eating and friends, and christmas cookies (not the "R" I made on top right =).

That evening I went back to stay with Jonas and Marlene who were hosting me for the weekend.  Marlene introduced me to "The Voice of Germany," a fun show along the lines of American idol, except the judges can't see the singers until after they vote, and the judges pick teams and have a competition of sorts.  We also saw the Christmas market in Melle that evening which was small but quaint and nice.

The next morning we went with people from church, all dressed up as Santa Claus, giving out candy and Bible verses at the Osnabrück Christmas market.  Went quite well and had opportunities to really encourage some people, and to pray with the people of the city.  Fun on all sides!

Later we ate Döner, knocked out some shopping, and then went to play a big game of Risk in German.  I got lucky with an easy mission and won  =P

Sunday was church at my favorite church in Germany, followed by lunch out.  It was great with 16 or so of us all squeezed around the table at Vapiano's, and Italian chain restaurant.  I stuffed myself, and then went back to Melle.  After some tea, Jonas and I went for a run... way to close after eating.  Did NOT feel good.  Oh well.  We hung out in the evening, played some music and then watched "Tatort," (translated as "scene of the crime." One of the few German phrases shorter than the English version)  a popular German criminal investigation TV show.  I got a lot of German culture this weekend.

Come Monday, Marlene had to head to work early, and Jonas to Uni, so I hung out with some other friends and enjoyed their company before taking the train back to Erlangen that evening.

Fun relaxing weekend.  I'm looking forward to doing it again when it is warmer.

I'm off to bed now.  Christmas will come early tomorrow.  Have a good one!

December - part I - in which we attended the Christkindlesmarkt

This was my second December in Germany, although this time I am home for Christmas.  It was a delightful month.  Here are some stories, and maybe a few pictures if I get inspired to add them though my photography skills are deteriorating.


Early December I made my way to the Christmas market in Nürnberg.  It is know as the Christkindlesmarkt and is supposed to an excellent one.  Accompanied by Karen, Melissa, and Markus all from work we went to check it out on a Wednesday after work, hoping it would be less crowded than the weekend.  Well as we arrived, the crowds of people were all streaming out...  The wind was whipping sleet in our faces, and lightning was etching itself across the sky.  It only lasted about 15 minutes, cleared out the market, and then left us to enjoy the market in peace.  Definitely a memorable start.  (trash cans began filling up with wind broken umbrellas).


We all picked up some hot drinks.  Karen set one down on a counter of a nearby booth to take a picture.  I noticed the dirty look the booth owner gave her. "psst Karen," I said, "you probably shouldn't leave that there."  She wasn't too concerned though.  When she retrieved her drink we realized she had put it directly on top of the sign that read in German "Do Not Set Your Drinks Here!"  Oops, I'm a foreigner and can't speak German, is the motto that gets us through situations like that unscathed even if it's not entirely true sometimes  =P  - I'm obviously American, and then we had a Canadian, Austrian, and one German, but she would pretend to be Dutch when necessary, making us the perfect combination of clueless foreigners. 

Arriving in the rain

This has already turned into a full entry, so I'll stop here and talk more later.  I've gotta run spot my brother lifting downstairs...

laters,

The Fastest Car

Here it is - the car in which I've gone the fastest in my life to date (200 kph/125 mph)

Here is the carpet at the hotel we stayed at in Switzerland... special.

Here is the main street in the tiny town of Mutenz where we were.

All set up for Christmas.  The globe ornaments of the tree had polka dots.  I don't know what the deal is with Mutenz and polka dots.

The Rennbahn Klinik - Swiss olymbic medical center started by Dr Segesser, one of the leading scientists in the are of footwear.  He's been around as long as footwear science has existed.  I doubled my understanding of running shoes in 5 hours with him.

Learning too much!

     It is a pleasant Saturday after a hectic but enjoyable week.  This morning (well 11:30...) I went running for an hour, and can honestly say I enjoyed every minute of it.  I like it when that happens.  Anyways, all the important people in my department are in Vietnam this week and next week, developing shoes on site.  Interns aren’t permitted to go, so I’m holding down the fort for my division.  A fair amount to do, but it’s less stressful knowing your boss isn’t going to walk in any second.  The most exciting thing this week though was the progress made on my “Best Practices of Running Shoe Design” project.  I don’t remember how much I’ve talked about that so far.  Basically it is a presentation that a designer, developer, product manager, or anyone else could read with little prior knowledge on running shoes, and then come up with a great biomechanically sound design and eventually shoe.  It should smooth over the disconnect between the folks doing research and the people actually making the new shoes.

     This past week, on Wednesday evening, another intern and myself got to take a drive to Switzerland.  The Rennbahn Clinic located in Basel Switzerland is one of the top clinics in the world attracting both recreational and professional athletes from all over Europe to come for professional advice, gait analysis, etc.  They see a lot of patients, and do a lot of research.  They basically know everything there is to know about running and soccer biomechanics (soccer is Karen’s project, the other intern).

     In summary, we arrived in the evening and got settled in to the expensive hotel that PUMA paid for, took a short tour of the area (self guided tour, pictures coming next week), got a great nights sleep, got up in the morning, checked out, went for breakfast, headed to the clinic, misjudged the time we needed, had an hour to kill outside in the cold (but with a great sunrise), finally met two of the owners of the clinic who are two of the top pioneers in the field, and then asked them questions for about 5 hours (I tested their ideas on my run this morning), before they took us to lunch (which would have been super expensive if we’d had to pay for it!), and sent us on our 5 hour drive back to Herzo. Yes, that was a run-on sentence.  On the way back, driving a manual VolksWagon Golf Variant I hit 200 Km/h (125 mph), drove through 9 or 10 roundabouts (traffic circles), and got good practice with stop and go traffic trying not to stall the car.  When I did stall though, the engine automatically restarted which was nice.  Also, at traffic lights the engine would automatically turn off to save energy.  Eventually we had to get gas (about twice what it costs in the States), but were at a loss at how to open the gas door on the side of the car...  I searched all over for a lever by my seat.  Karen came around with her little flashlight to look some more.  Finally I found a lever, pulled it, thought I heard something pop open, though the gas door was still shut, before Karen discovered that if you just push the door, it pops open!  Side note, the popping open that I thought I heard was actually the hood of the car.  We drove the last 50 miles with it open a few inches.  Oops... kept the engine from overheating I reckon  ;)   - In the end, we arrived back in Herzo just in time to go to the Internationale Studenten Treff where we were baking Christmas cookies.  Delightful!  I’m making some more this weekend with my mom’s recipe to bring to work on Monday.

Christmas Cookie Volcano

     I referenced this a few weeks ago, and here are the pictures finally.  No need for a mixing bowl.  This Thursday we are making Christmas cookies again at the International Student Meeting.  I'm hoping to make my mom's sugar cookies if I can find the time to grab the ingredients.

     I should also mention, I'm about to get my first chance to drive in Germany.  Another intern and I are driving to a laboratory in Basel, Switzerland on Wednesday evening to consult with some folks on a project we're working on.  Her license is in Canada, so I'm driving the 4 hour stretch, with a manual, in Germany, in Kilometers/hour, probably a lot of km/hr (by that I mean fast).  I hope I don't break any rules by accident.  My license is good the first 6 months I'm here, even though I've never learned German road rules.  Supposedly it's pretty simple to get a drivers a German license so I may do that at some point.  For about half of the states, including PA, you just have show your license and pay about 30€ and they give you a German one.  Not exactly fair, since for a German to get a license they pay a few thousand dollars and take a course.  I paid $25 =)

Another day in the office.

We don't know anything about these people

Typical

München - 1st attempt

I spent this weekend in Munich for a conference.  One of the afternoons we got to check out the city.  It looks like a sweet place and I'm looking forward to going back in the spring with the honors program for a week!

 Below is from a market.  In the bottom right are 6 barrels of beer with names of the 6 breweries in Munich that are allowed to sell beer at October fest.  They are all within the city limits.

 Notice something peculiar about the clock?  It runs backwards and the "IV" is written "IIII"

As a regular at one of the most famous pubs in Munich you get your mug stored there behind bars. 

 I think this dragon has something to do with the plague.

"Gift"

So I had a bad cold for a few weeks that involved some cough and whatnot.  My neighbor lady found out and asked me what I was taking so I showed her my Robitusson I had brought from the States.  "'Gift', just as I thought" she replied and told me about some natural remedies she new.  I couldn't remember what gift meant in English, so I looked it up... "poison."  It's amazing that I took poison 4 days in a row and lived to tell the tale.  
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

holidays, shoes, and the like

It's been a bit since I've written.  Life goes on though so here is the scoop.


November 1st - German Holiday - no work! Prayer brunch with SMD.  In addition to prayer it included weißwurst (white sausage) and Bretzeln (soft pretzels) both with sweet mustard.  Weißwurst is super traditional in Bavaria, though the feelings about it are quite mixed.  I enjoyed it though.  There is some debate about the proper way to eat it.  It's rather soft so it is encased like many sausages to hold it together.  The question is whether you poke a whole in the end and suck it out, or slice it open and scoop it out.  I went for the slice and scoop method.  The other didn't seem socially acceptable.


That afternoon I joined a few friends at their apartment complex and we made Christmas cookies.  They don't have thanksgiving here so Christmas is already on everyone's minds.  They are rolling out all the Christmas decorations at the mall right now actually.  I left the christmas cookie pics at home, so apologies there, but we decided against bowls and instead piled the flour on the table and shaped it like a volcano and put the wet ingredients in the top and then mixed it with hands =) with lots of love.  The girls made their cookies with steel... but they still tasted okay.  I finished the day with a trip to a cake shop with a friend.  We ate outside and froze to death.  Most of the cakes had some sort of alcohol in them.  Germans are pretty obsessed =)


Next evening was SMD, which was swell but let's move to Thursday.  I went to the international student group (IST).  We learned some Bavarian words and expressions.  They say "That is sausage" to say "it doesn't matter, it's all the same."


The other main thing that was exciting for me was finally meeting with the head of innovation for PUMA and talking about my project with him.  Turns out he graduated from Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh!  Anyways, another intern was already doing a project on soccer cleats and they mentioned that they might give me the same project for a different kind of shoe.  I was so scared they were going to assign me to cricket or handball!  In the end, it's RUNNING!  I was thrilled.  Running biomechanics is even cooler than soccer in my opinion because it's so advanced but so regular so you can study it really well.  Running is primarily done in Boston so they'll be teaming me up with someone there to talk with.  They mentioned maybe sending me there which would be sweet, but then they remembered the Boston guys are coming here in a few weeks so there is now need... schade (what a pity).  We'll see what happens but I may end up training for a marathon depending on how this project turns out.


Check out Octobers PUMA magazine here!  Unfortunately some of the info is only viewable from PUMA locations...  Talks a lot about the new 32 year old CEO of PUMA, Franz Koch.  He has a longboard!  Also Volvo Ocean Race!


K I gotta run enjoy the sun before it sets (at 5pm!)

F.C. Nürnberg

On Saturday I was invited to go see FC Nürnberg play against Stuttgart with my friend Johnny.  It was quite the ruckus and I enjoyed it a lot.  The corner crews of these two teams put RIT's to shame.  It ended 2-2.

going once, twice, three times, sold!

So this weekend was the bike auction.  I had never seen a real auction except in movies so it was a cool experience.  The auctioneer spoke slightly slower than he was supposed to but otherwise it lived up to expectations.  It drove me nuts though that you only had to outbid by a euro at a time so sometimes it went really slow.  5€, 6, 7...then I would jump in and bump it up to 40€ so it could continue for real.  The bikes all ended up just outside my price range so I didn't manage to get one, but it's getting too cold anyway.  Oh well...


and I may have miss translated a few numbers at the end. 

It Takes A Long Time

It takes a long time to kill a man

55 years at least

until he breaks down 

starts to look underground

and go off and get him some peace.”

I want to die a lot quicker than that

if it’s my only way out.

I’ve been counting up the cost

getting up on that cross

I want to know what this is all about.

A friend of mine, Peter, talked to me about this song during my sophomore year of college.  It’s Jon Foreman (Switchfoot) “Resurrect me.”  He’s talking about the mid-life crisis.  I personally don’t have a lot of experience with these sorts of crises but I’m trying to have mine sooner rather than later.  My perspective is that we have the dreams, goals, ideas, things we live for, that we spend a lot of our resources chasing after.  Maybe we get there and maybe we don’t.  We spend more time chasing though than developing the goals well in the first place.  Then after a while of chasing, we start to wonder why we were chasing what we were chasing in the first place.  A new set of priorities moves in and replaces the old set.

I have definitely had those goals and been chasing them quite systematically.  My senior project, my major, my university, learning Germany, studying abroad were all steps leading up to my goal of developing athletic shoes.  As an intern now at PUMA, I find my goal drawing rather close.  As college draws to a close, I will have some big decisions to make.  I could take a job at PUMA and reach my goal.  I mean, who doesn’t like achieving goals?  Or I could re-evaluate my goal.  Even now I am beginning to step back again and look again at where I am going.  I don’t want to get 20 years down the road working at PUMA and then notice that there are more important things I could have and should have been doing.

I realize this is pretty vague, but that gives you an overview anyway of what’s in my head.  I’m not at all sure where the thought process will lead yet but you can expect to hear more about it over the coming year.

Observing Those Further Down the Road

“That’s it! I’m moving in with Freddy!” declared TJ as he came in to work, a little later than usual...  Freddy (my supervisor), already at his desk, was a little surprised.  TJ went on to explain that the 3 hours of commuting each day to work was too much.  If he moved to Herzo (where Freddy is), he could have 15 hours a week more with his newborn son.  I made a mental not of the conversation as something that might be valuable to remember someday.  Sure, sometimes a long commute can be a nice thing to clear your mind or think, but if that’s what you need then just go for a drive or a walk.  Living far away means you are forced to take that time, even when it can’t be afforded.  I’d like to keep all regular commutes in my life under 30 minutes.

Glad I finally got that figured out.

Hey Look!

So I've been drawing a good bit of attention around Erlangen in the past month and thought I'd mention it here.  So longboards aren't particularly common here.  They have skateboards, but most people notice that mine is different as I cruise gracefully through the streets, quietly, quickly, and smoothly.  Little kids turn point and stare quite often, or sometimes the other way around, the parent points me out to their small child.  It makes me grin.  Longboarding is fun, and it looks fun.  That's how I got hooked myself.  Maybe I'm inspiring lot's of young Germans to pick up longboarding.
Make it through the first 30 seconds, turn on your speakers, sit back.  Enjoy it.  Pleasant. 

Mist on the Moores

On Monday I went out to capture the view that I'd seen only from the bus for many days in a row.  Unfortunately I took the best ones on low resolution, forgetting the settings from the day before.  Fall is here now and I may not have a chance to get these again til the end of my time here.  This is a 5 minute walk from my apartment.