Closing Time with Parents

For my parent's last real day in Germany we traveled back to Nuremberg, and got them checked into a hotel right across from the airport.  Their flight was 6:30 Monday morning, so minimal travel was best.  We decided to take the subway and then pop out in a part of town where I had never been before.  It took a few minutes to get oriented but it was beautiful and there was a good panini shop nearby.  Eating there was a relief after all the heavy German food we’d been having.  Karen joined and we all went outside the city to Docu Zentrum where Hitler gave many speeches and marched his army in a parade before audiences of 200,000 people.  There had been a big schwastika built into the wall but they blew it up after the war.  Now the whole area is a big sports complex.  They were playing American football when we were there.

We headed back into the city for a nice Italian dinner.  We also got some white asparagus.  It is in season in Germany this time of year, and everyone is really into it.  I had some and it tastes fine, but just very plain.  I don’t know what all the fuss is about.

Anyways, it was such a blessing having my parents get to come visit me here.  We had a lot of good quality time together, lots of catching up, and of course the fun that you’ve seen through my last few entries.

Garmish-Partenkirchen (cool mountains)

So it got to be Saturday morning so we took the train to the town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen.  They had the winter olympics there back in the day.  It is know as the German gateway to the Alps.  Sounded cool to us.  It's a tiny town with the Alps as the main attraction.  We arrived and took this train below over to the foot of the mountain.  From there we transferred to the 'Cog Wheel Train.'  It has wheels with teeth so it can climb steep hills (like the alps).  Suddenly we disappear into a mountain and come out 25 minutes later at the top (almost).

 Amazing no?  It was April, and people were skiing here.  It was 30 degrees C (86F) at the bottom of the mountain but 4 (39) at the top, and windy.  From there we took a short ride in the cable car to the very top. You can see below how the train had to just pop out of the ground at the facility because there is no other access to it.  We enjoyed excellent food at the restaurant there.

From the very top we took a good look around.  Here is the Austrian side - mountains as far as you could see.  Can you imagine?! Hannibal took elephants through here!  

And here is a look at the German side.  The Eibsee (lake) is below. 

 Here is our picture with the gold star marking the highest point in Germany at 2900 odd meters.

Back at the bottom, at the Eibsee, it was hot again so we posed. 

Things I Do Not Understand

So let's look at a very German restaurant, well known across the world - Hofbrauhaus.  It is full of Bavarians being Bavarian, wearing lederhosen, drinking beer, and singing songs.  Let's look at a nearby store.  It is also quite German as far as I can tell.  It is a supermarket known as LIDL.  At the first location one can purchase a full liter of beer for about 7€, which is often repeated every hour.  At the latter, one can purchase a full liter of ice cream for about 1.49€.  Now to me it seems obvious where to spend one's money.  Getting almost 5 liters of ice cream for the price of 1 liter of beer sounds like quite a deal.  That's why the Hofbrauhaus is going out of business and Germans have stopped drinking beer entirely....


Wait... but they have't?  Actually Hofbrauhaus is still doing great business and Germans are still drinking lots of beer.  How can that be, given the circumstances?  Well I haven't given you the whole picture.  It turns out that the supermarket, LIDL, that sells the ice cream that should put Hofbrauhaus out of business is only open until 8:00pm like every store in Germany.  As a restaurant, the Hofbrauhaus stays open until about midnight, leaving Germans with no choice but to drink beer during those sad hours.


This my friends is the root cause for Germany being known for beer, I think.

Munich Cont'd

We visited Weihenstephan Brewery, the oldest in the world.  The guide was a doctorate student at the Technical University of Munich doing some beer related studies.  He was very Bavarian, and earned 5 liters of beer a day for his studies.  There is some crazy partnership between the university and the brewery.

 I don't know what these buildings are but I'd like to spend more time with them.

Munich as a Tourist

Here is a preview of Munich.  More pictures coming over the next few days I would imagine.

Maximilian Straße - "This ghetto is so poor that the people

can't afford roofs for their cars" - French tour guide.

A gorgeous passage

A shrine to Michael Jackson on the statue of Franco-Flemish Renaissance 

composer Orlande de Lassus in front of the hotel where MJ was fond of staying

In front of Neuschwanstein - the castle that the 

Disney castle was based off of.

On the wall of the castle with a few classmates.

This is the town of Augsburg.  The bright building is from 

the textile makers gild.

A rather different building than above belonged to the butchers gild...

The Stone Ages

This past week the honors program from my Uni sent it's engineers to Munich to visit companies.  As the only one currently living in Germany, I was the only one with a German cell phone.  That means the rest of the group had no way of contacting anyone else, except face to face. 


Chaos.


Now I realize of course that people lived like this for millennia, but most of us have been dependent on cell phones for the last few years and it has shaped our social planning.  Everything is impromptu.  If you are running late, it's easy to call ahead and explain.  In short, we've become bad at making and sticking to plans.


I'd say by the end of the week we mastered it though.  More posts coming!

Birthday - Rounds 1 and 2

I had a birthday again a few days back and quite enjoyed it.  I decided I might as well celebrate twice.  Round 1 was well photographed as seen below.  That was with a group of friends from SMD, specifically people I know well from worship team or International Student Group.  We went first to 3 Linden for lunch.  There was something about "Crap" written on the sign, but word on the street was that it was just a name.

3 Linden is known for their schnitzel.  I ordered half of one (see below).  A full one is just another one stacked on top.  It's a good deal of food and it is one of the few places in Germany where take out is encouraged.  When the waitress noticed us slowing down she promptly brought out the aluminum foil (which we used for decorating eyeglasses).  We then went to a café room at a church nearby and I cooked up an apple crisp, and brought vanilla ice cream to go on top.  We played and listened to music, played crazy mind games, and a version of Mafia.  When it was time for presents they blindfolded me and gave me a "weapon," really a spatula, and made me look for it.  The idea at first was that happy piano music meant I was closer and sad that I was farther away.  We resorted to hot and cold though in the end and I found a nice bag of gifts hiding away for me.  I could go into details but you would all be jealous.  Eventually we all split and headed our separate ways.  Just as I was getting ready to say goodbye to everyone, my family called, so I did speed goodbyes and then talked to my family a bit.  It was so great to hear everyone's voices from home.

When I got home I mixed up some chocolate chip cookies to bring into work the next day.  Chocolate chips are super expensive here though so I bought a giant chocolate bar.  It was too fat to break so I melted it and let it cool on wax paper so I could break it in pieces.  It made really cool swirls in the cookies.  For some reason, my experience with German ovens has been that they always cook slower, which meant my first two rounds of cookies were crunchy all the way through before I adapted and got them crunchy on the outside and soft in the middle.  There was just enough to cover my dinner that night (oops), work in the morning, and a few for my landlord and his family.

After work I went to an Italian restaurant with friends from PUMA.  I forgot my camera though.  Schade...  It was fun, mostly interns, some old and some new.  One was sick and volunteered to breathe all over my food as a birthday present for me.  I declined.  Instead I got a beautifully illustrated card with fun notes, and a rad PUMA keychain.  Afterwards a couple of us headed to a bar nearby to hang out a little bit.  It is Carnival time now, and so there were quite a few peculiar costumes wondering around.  I love people watching.

After all that fun, I still made it to bed by 11.  Impressive I know.  Enjoy the photos below!

Unterschiedliche Kulturen

A Subjective Comparison of the United States and Germany 


Normally I don't just post links here but this site was fascinating when trying to understand the difference between two countries.  Americans will notice fairly promptly that the rider is biased towards Germany, but nonetheless has some interesting points to make and gives a better understanding to us about how we are perceived and why.  The writer was born and raised in Germany and then spent a large amount of time in the States.  The writer has a better understanding of the States than most Germans do, though some things I think you have to be raised with to understand.  Enjoy

Dresden

If you're sharp you've already guessed from the title that this entry is about a trip to Dresden.  It started off quite early.  I was surprised to walk out the door at 5:30 Saturday morning to see everything was covered in snow.  Fortunately when we got Dresden it was gone and slightly warmer.

Waiting at the bus stop to kick off the morning.

The "Artsy" side of Dresden.

They turned gates into bikes.  Not practical but creative.

I don't know what it is but it was impressive.

The Japanese garden in the foreground looking across the Elbe to a number of the larger landmarks.

Karen is terrified of these spiky stars that keep following us everywhere.  

They just seem dangerous!

Crossing one of the bridges in town.  We did a lot of walking on Saturday looking at all the sights.  I think this was the last bridge crossing before closing the night with Chocoloccino and cake.

The coffee filter was invented in Dresden.  Everyone knows that it's not the bean that makes the coffee good, it's the filter!

Volkswagon has a manufacturing plant here that is all glass so you can watch the process.  Unfortunately we weren't there while they were giving tours.

This was in the middle of a 15km run early on Sunday to see things farther from the center.

We followed the river to all sorts of cool stuff

The bridge is the "Blue Wonder"  and I don't know what the spike is in the back.  Dresden is just spiky.  We had to jump a fence later, and another spike got the better of Karen's running pants.. Schade Schokolade..

The bird feeding lady.  The swans could have pecked her nose if they weren't on such good terms.

There is where J.S. Bach is buried in Leipzig.  We passed through on our way back.

That's all.  

A Story - we got on a train that we weren't technically allowed to take with the ticket we had (honest mistake).  But the super nice train lady (wearing Nike earrings) made an "especially special exception" and didn't make us pay a fine as long as we got out at the next stop (Leipzig).  Probably more stories to tell, but the mall is kicking me out now.

The End

Endlich ein Fahrrad

So I finally got a hold of a free bike.  My landlord has 7-10 bikes in various states of disrepair lying around, so he said if I could fix one and return it at years end then I could use it.  Most were ugly except this one.  It is a ten speed roadbike, much like the one stolen from my back at Uni.  I need to unrust the chain, change a few break pads, and a break cable before it is operational.  I love it.  I think I'll be even more attached to it after I work on it.  Oh, and I need to replace the bell.  Since bikes are used so commonly for regular commuting, having a bell and mud guards are standard.  I'm thinking of replacing the bell with a big horn.  I think that would be marvelous, if it can stand the rain.  The generator for the lights needs to be adjusted too.  In Germany, it is the law that your bike have lights if you are riding after dark.  They are basically just as strict with bikes as with cars since they are used so much.  That also means biking with too high of a blood alcohol level is punishable.  I think people mostly ignore that one though.

Under Construction!

See the little silver barrel next to the wheel.  That is the generator for the lights.