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.

the South Side - Erlangen style

Here's a look at my side of town.  I think it used to be a small city that got swallowed up by Erlangen.  These are on a walk I took from my house.

Construction on the church. excuse the lighting.

There was a guy in that car staring at me.

Typisch.

The river through town.  The line across it is the Herzogenauracher Damn.

We're on the upstream side.

I came back and saw this shoe on my landlords car.  Also the hideous chair in the back? 

Yes, it was in my room but I told him he could give it away =P

Did I mention that I work at PUMA now?  Those shoes are 5 years old.  Also turns out the standard sample size at PUMA is a US 9 for men's shoes, which means I can get lots, my size cheap before they are on the market.  Even other PUMA employees with bigger feet have to weight for production =)

I'll blog about PUMA soon.  For now I'm just getting comfortable.  Everything is fairly slow since my boss is on vacation this week and his boss is sick.

Bye,

Erlangen at Large

My body is still freaking out a little about being off schedule apparently.  Saturday night I went to bed at 10pm and then woke up, wide awake at 5am... so I got up and ironed 8 or 10 things including a pair of new pants I’ve been fighting to get the creases in the right place.  I think I worked on those an hour, changing the crease at least 6 times.  I have a much better understanding of the way fabric is fit together into pants now!

Tip for gentlemen, your mother-in-law will be impressed if you can iron.  You’re going to need her to like you, especially if your father-in-law is the shotgun type.

Anyways, I don’t have very many clothes here, but the things I do have look much better ironed (that includes a few nice T-shirts), so I may take this year and iron everything and become a pro. So after ironing forever I had breakfast, espresso and müsli, went for a walk then came back and crashed on my bed for an hour nap.  Post expresso? Yes, I told you  my body is still freaking out. woke up with 15 minutes to get dressed, in freshly ironed clothes, and make the 7 minute skate to a church I wanted to visit at 10:30.

The church was called ‘International Jesus Gemeinde.’  The service is in English and German.  I met a few cool people and enjoyed it overall, but still plan to visit other places.  I might want something more German intensive to challenge myself more.  Regardless, the guys there play soccer indoors once a week on a nice turf field starting up in a few weeks.  I’ll definitely be in on that!  I was surprised how many folks from the UK were there and had been there a few years, still without learning much German.  Then someone mentioned that SIEMENS is headquartered here in Erlangen.  The company operates in English and often has employees from branches come to Erlangen for three year stints.  Almost 1/3 of Erlangen’s population consists of SIEMENS employees.  Another 1/4 are students (many of whom are gone the month for vacation sadly).  In a city of 100,000 people that makes about 30,000 SIEMENS employees and 25,000 students.  That explains a lot of the city set up and architecture.

Years ago, Erlangen was a much smaller place, back when they built those classic old German houses with the dark wooden frames with white ...stuff... filling the gaps.  The university takes a very central location in the city bordering most of the oldest buildings.  The campus has lot’s of impressive looking buildings itself and a huge garden for lack of a better term where this time of year there are quite a few people sitting out, picnicking, and all that jazz.  Outside of that you start getting some skyscrapers (I use the term loosely, this is still Europe).  I was out exploring and found myself quite lost amidst a cluster of ominous 7 story buildings (I think there’s a code that says buildings can’t be taller than that).  All I could see in every direction was SIEMENS.  It was actually kind of intimidating.  Once you get passed that you get to my area, which is Erlangen now, but used to be a small neighboring town until it got swallowed up.  Here are some pictures from my skate around the city.  I also want to post some from where I live, and eventually some of Herzo where I work.  Time is limited though so be patience, as my sister would say.

By the way, I write these at home when I’m free and then post a day or two later when I get internet.  I can’t afford to waste internet time writing, so you’ll always be a few days behind.  Monday is my first day of work, and I won’t get to posting this till my work day is done, but from my blog’s perspective it’ll still be Sunday.

 Here is the lovely "Deutsche Bahn" train station where I arrived.

A very typical German intersection between the architecture,

sidewalks, poles, rocks etc.

Yard in the university.

Continued - lovely.

Germany is clean, but add on these sort of buildings and it just

emphasizes it even more.  So crisp! 

Typical city center street.  It's Sunday and all is closed, otherwise it's full of bicyclers.

Even the McDonalds looks nice.

This is where I want to go to church next week.  I'm not sure if E-werk is a club, or theatre, but 

that's where Jesus-Life Gemeinde meets.

Approaching SIEMENS territory!

SIEMENS

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!