Fränkische Schweiz with Americans

This week my parents came to visit.  On Thursday we ventured to the Fränkische Schweiz.  It was quite pleasant.  We started with Ebermannstadt which is just a small German city that is the entrance to the region. A quaint main street and a nice stream winding through it all, plus a sweet old lady who served us coffee made it all delightful.

After some time we moved on to Tüchersfeld and climbed up this large rock that just sticks out of the middle of the city.  Really cool features.  Here was the view from the top.

Easter Weekend - part 2 of 2

Wow, 3 weeks late - here comes Graz.  The faithful mall internet has failed me.  I wondered if I had been blocked for using it too much, but here it is again!

Sunday morning was the most beautiful Easter morning I have ever had.  Taking the train from Vienna to Graz goes directly through the Alps.  I like that a lot (more on the Alps next week I hope!)!

I forgot what most of this is called, but there is this big rock in the middle of town that you can go up via windy path or by train (incline really).  At the top is this cool building and nice view.

Top left is “The Friendly Alien” - a design museum that looked awesome but we arrived after it closed.  So sad.  On the river is the manmade island that looks like a shell.  The open part of the shell is an amphitheater and the closed part is a cafe.  We enjoyed coffee there (I settled for hot chocolate, but Karen insisted on the weird espresso with egg yoke in it.

There is the group shot with Markus who we were visiting.

That night we all went and played pool which was fun.  I hadn't played much in a long time.  I finally started to get the hang of it again. 

The next morning we headed to a castle outside the city of which I have no pictures, but there were lots of peacocks.  The scenery was lovely.  It was the one blue sky of the trip which made it all the more terrific.  After a nice lunch we found the train and made our way home to begin another week of solving the world’s performance footwear problems at PUMA.

My parents are here this week!  Tuesday to Monday.  You’ll hear about it later.  Fun stuff planned.  Should be lovely!

Easter Weekend - part 1 of 2

This past weekend was Easter weekend for those of you who missed the memo.  At PUMA that means a 4 day weekend (Good Friday and Easter Monday).  Karen and I grabbed the chance to see two lovely cities while visiting a retired intern from days gone by.  We started off in Vienna, Austria.

We arrived Friday afternoon and checked in at the hostel.  My first experience in a dorm setting (6 people to a room).  We then made our way to the city center for a look around.  We quickly found these brilliant traffic lights. 

 Nice gardens, parliament, the city hall, and an Easter market with loads of painted eggs, some very ornate and others simple, but all real.  We split a giant apple cinnamon frosted pretzel.  We made our way to another market and tried Langos, this fried bread bigger than your face, coated in butter and garlic salt.  So delicious, and made us both feel rather bad upon finishing... We had just finished talking about our families’ heart attack histories.  I was sure I was going to have my first heart attack right there.

It seems everyone in Austria likes Mozart since he is from there.  We saw one guy dressed as Mozart with PUMA shoes.  I did take a picture, but am not bothering to post it. 

We stumbled across this cool “Explosion” on the south side of town.  I think it was supposed to be a frozen shock wave, milliseconds after some sort of bang.

After collecting ourselves at the hostel briefly we set out again to find some Sachertorte, a chocolate cake with an apricot layer in the middle and a special blend of chocolates from various manufacturers who produce chocolate solely for that purpose.  On our way we swung by the Nike store, because their shoes are absolutely amazing.  I love the new NikeFree 4.0.

After a short night’s sleep we both got up around 6 (don’t ask me why, it just happened).  Karen went for a long run, which I had to skip out on because of injury before we headed away from the city to see Castle Schönbrunn.  Absolutely HUGE building and property.  It included a labyrinth with games throughout it that included poles to climb, bells to ring with your feet, and crazy mirrors.  It made for a fun morning.

 Lunch was at a ridiculously large market.  Wiener (Viennese) Schnitzel from veal and Almdudler (served in CocaCola cups?), a drink like ice tea that tastes like Litchi.

Clock museum in the afternoon was full of fun little treasures.  Karen got in trouble for touching the clocks.

 The main event came that evening.  We had read that we could get standing room tickets at the Opera for 3€ so we lined up and got some.  “L’Eliser d’Amore”  (The Love Potion) was playing.  It had quite the shallow story line, but the opera experience was a fun one.  They have this crazy system for the standing room section that enforced by the staff.  Once you have your spot, you mark it with a scarf and then it is reserved for you.  You can’t mark it with a jacket, or a bag, only a scarf.  The guys next to us didn’t have scarves so they made the pages from the program into a scarf to draper over their spot.  Impressive.  That was the program for Vienna.  Stay tuned for the second half of the weekend in Graz in which we meet Markus and have even more fun.

LED Snowboarder

Usually I don't just post random video, but this is sweet.  Snowboarding at night in an LED suit!

Easter Weirdness

Easter is coming.  The mall here always has fascinating decorations.  There are a lot of these scenes with bunnies now around the mall, some playing instruments, some in real rabbit cages, and then these ones painting easter eggs.  With their heads at such awkward angles I find they look quite creepy.  Real grass though makes the whole thing nice.  It’s hard to imagine how the resurrection of Jesus Christ inspired a scene like this.

Shopping Spree!

Saturday, I headed up a trip for IST (Internationale Studenten Treff) where we all went to PUMA and did some shopping using my discount (Karen shared hers too thankfully).  Even though we all live in Erlangen, just 6 miles from Herzo, most of the students had never been there so it was a fun trip.  I just took a few pictures as we were arriving.  It is funny to see in the one picture, a punch being given, and then the reaction in the next  =)