Ankunft und Alles

I think I already mentioned, but Irene put me off two days so here comes Wednesday, August 31st.

  

Anecdote 1:

On my way to the airport with my dear mother at 7:30.  I ate a banana on route, and just as I wanted to throw it curbside across a lane and a half of traffic, my mom goes and changes lanes to take the fun out of it.   It still flew into 3 pieces as the wind took it before hitting the ground though =)

Anecdote 2:

I fly to Newark, and with the rescheduling of my flight, I ended up in an ‘extra legroom’ seat.  Sadly it was about 1 hour in the air and hardly necessary.  The guy sitting next to me was about 65, turns out he’s flown to over 100 different countries and more than 3,000,000 miles.  That’s about 121 laps around the globe!  Over a million with Delta Airlines, and a million with Continental Airlines.  He says he likes Continental best.  I think I’ll keep flying Continental (regretting forgetting to register my last 3 flights on their frequent flyer program).

Antidote 3:

5 hour layover in Newark! I was sitting at a table for 4 with my chinese food and I see three people muttering in German, looking for a table in the packed food court.  I offered  the seats at my table and they joined me (it’s not peculiar in Germany to sit with strangers like it is in the States).  It was great to hear German again.  Turns out they were on their way to Vegas.  They were from Munich and should have had a Bavarian accent that I couldn’t understand, but they didn’t.  Despite the warnings I got from Osnabrückers last time I was in Germany, I have been able to understand everyone’s accents here just fine (well, admittedly a bit rusty, but otherwise fine).  Also, did you notice that I titled this section ‘Antidote’?  Sorry just messin’.  I’ll continue.

Anecdote 4:

I hate flying across the ocean.  It’s not the ocean per say that bothers me, more just that whole 8 hour in a plane thing.  As I’m boarding there, the flight attendant says ‘go there,’ pointing to the second row of first class.  I had just read on the website about first class seating reclining into a bed 6’3” long and was getting ready to be stoked.  When I asked for clarification, he meant that I should cross in front of that seat to get to the other aisle since my seat was over there =’(  Tragedy.  My seat didn’t even have the extra 5 inches of the previous flight. I watched TV shows for an hour, talked to the nice little German lady next to me for a minute (who was lucky enough to get hit by the hurricane on her visit).  Breakfast and dinner came and suddenly (well not really suddenly), with a few hours of sleep and a legion of goosebumps to my name, I arrived in Munich.  Note, somewhere between cold and sleep we passed from day 0 to day 1.

Breaking from anecdotes for a bit, I took a 30 minute flight to Nürnberg, jumped onto the subway for the city center (with 100 pounds of luggage), grabbed a train to Erlangen, and then found the right bus to get me near my apartment.  I walked the brief quarter mile and found the address I had written on notebook paper.

Anecdote 5:

I knock on the door, hear a shuffling upstairs, a window open, a head comes out of the window looking rather like Einstein with his wild gray hair, “Ryan? I’m Reinhard Völkel-Prohaska.  Just a minute, I’m taking a very important call.  I’ll be there presently.”  He then comes down in a bit, welcomes me, shows me around.  I’ll get to descriptions later.

Anecdote 6:

So I’ve made it to my appointment at the bank in Herzogenaurach (Herzo), the next town over where PUMA is located.  The young man helping my to open my account looked only slightly older than myself, was wearing one of the best looking suits I’ve ever seen in person, and had great English.  We decided to meet in English just so I wouldn’t miss any important details.  After the account is set up, he takes me to the teller to get me some cash, but some issue with my travelers checks she claims she can’t do it (and is quite obnoxious about it).  She was maybe 50, with dyed yellow hair (I think it was supposed to be blond).  They are bickering in German for a bit very fast and so I didn’t catch everything but she musters up her meanest voice and says something like “I’m very sorry, but I won’t do it!”  He steps it up immediately and says, “ I’m very even more sorry, because you have to do it!”  She turns away finally and gets my money.  With way too much cash in my pocket, I hurry back to my apartment to pay the landlord for the deposit and rent.  I grabbed some food from a nearby store, unpacked my things and hit the sack at 8pm, turned into day 2 and woke up at 8am.  Much needed since I’d only had 3 hours in the last 42 hours.

Day 2 is exploring the apartment, sorting out details with my landlord, skating 2 or so odd miles to the city center to get my bus pass (that PUMA is paying for, score!) that let’s me take all the buses in my city, Herzo, and anywhere in between.  Admittedly there is nothing in between besides 20 minutes of my life for twice a day, 5 days a week, for the whole next year.  It’s about $80 a month.  For those of you with cars, I assume it costs more than that?  Tried the scenic rout home, which was cool, for a while, until I was lost.  Fortunately I’d just acquired (Edward A. that word choice was for you) a map at the bus station and righted myself pretty quickly.  Longboards are the best thing ever for exploring.  Here are some of the sights along the way.  I’m pretty sure there were much more beautiful parts of the city, but theses are the pictures I took.  I’ll do more over the coming weeks.  Overall, a very lively and pleasant place.

Note: I don’t have internet, but I can get it for free at the mall in town so... I’ll be slightly less prompt than you’re used to.

Here is the air near Nürnberg.  Not the best location to shoot but it was more 

gorgeous than most country sides.

Here is my Landlord (Reinhard) with wife and Aunt.  

All three like wearing socks and sandals.

Here is the mall where I get internet.  Super nice.

 Walking down the street in the city center.

 The city hall, 'Rathaus Erlangen.'

 Playground in front of the Rathaus.

 Typical scene just outside of the city center.

On my way to getting lost.

Cool clock!

If at first you don't succeed, try try again.

Rain Rain go away, come again another day.

sorry, I'm done being cliché now. Due to Hurricane Irene, my original flight was canceled. Now I'm leaving Wednesday August 31st, putting me in to arrive on September 1st. That was going to be my first day of work but...

Everyone is being super flexible. PUMA was super understanding and told me to just wait to come in until Monday. That gives me 4 days of getting myself settled in and exploring! Thursday and Friday should be rainy, but Saturday and Sunday will be free to cruise around town on my longboard, getting familiar with the area. I'll be sure to grab some pictures to give you a feel for what I'm dealing with here. Hopefully I find a spot pretty quick with free wi-fi. Then I'll update again. Since I'm not sure when I'll have access again, I took screenshots of quite a few maps and sets of directions to all the important places in town.

I spent a good bit of time searching online for a decent church in the area. Despite being in a student town, most of them have sad looking websites that weren't very helpful. I almost gave up finding one, when all of a sudden, there it was! A church that looked relevant to real life, but... darn... turns out they are borderline cultish =P Finally found an online phone book that listed one more church that I hadn't seen. It's called the 'Jesus-Life Gemeinde'. Turns out it's less than half a mile from my apartment. I'll definitely visit there soon. The one other place that jumped out was an international church where everything is both English and German. Looks like a cool place, though I'll be speaking English all day at PUMA, and so I don't want to deal with any more English if I don't have to.

Off to go tidy up my room so my parents don't have to.

Beginning the Adventure

So it's off to a bumpy start. Initially the plan was to take off Monday at lunch time via Newark, NJ. The hurricane though has stopped that plan in its tracks and canceled my flight. Now it's just calling the airline over and over and over and over again. Lines are busy though so we'll see what happens later I reckon. Maybe by 3am the lines will be chill enough for me to get in and figure out what's going on.

I do think this is good for me though. I've always been one to have all my ducks in a row before moving. This trip though involves a lot of details outside of my control. It's amazing how a storm can pull everything out of what I can do on my own strength. "God's got the whole world in his hands," has been God's word to me today though and I'd like to walk as if I really believed that. I suppose I don't really have a choice anyway so I might as well.

Hopefully my next entry will be from Germany! later skaters,

Inspired

This article was what set me on the path to being an engineer at PUMA. Open picture in a new tab, then click to zoom in and read away!

This is how I feel in summer classes.

Shoe Design

So I was like, "I should learn to do computer graphics of shoes, since I have CS5 and all." Many, many hours later, after drawing on paper, scanning, illustrator, photoshop... we have the final rendering. Click on it for an up close. Here's the link for the tutorial here.

It's not all about the design, it's more about the rendering. I might have picked different colors otherwise but overall I like the shoes and would wear them. This is warm up to the co-op I'm doing with PUMA starting in September. Maybe I'll do a PUMA shoe next instead of just generic.

What's in a Shoe?

It fascinates me. Cars are legitimately impressive machines that allow us to do so much more than we ever could before. People value them. They're valuable. I think any culture that had the opportunity to have them, would see their value and be on board.

On the other hand we have a pair of beautifully designed shoes. They've had shoes for centuries, millennia really. Sure they're helpful, but not on anywhere close to the same scale as a car, but nonetheless, we live in a culture that says cool shoes are important, valuable, and not because they help you do more, just because they're cool! Who said they're cool? Who knows, doesn't matter. I've gotta get me those. I'll pay $5 to get some functionality, but I'll pay $80 to get me some cool. Ask someone from a tribe in the Amazon, and they won't be able to tell you if the $5 shoes or the $80 one is more valuable, it's all the same. The value doesn't come from it's function like a car's does. It's purely assigned by our opinions.

That fascinates me. That's all.