Biking Far! (to Nürnberg)

So Nürnberg has always been just out of reach.  It's a 30 minute commute by train, but it's about $10 for a round trip, so not something I want to do so often.  It's about 14 miles away, and now that the weather is delightful, it is bikeable.  I did it the past two weekends.  This picture is from the first.  It's nice being in Nürnberg with a bike because then you are not stuck in the city center, but instead can go out a little further and find nice places like this.

Saturday, I biked to "Summer in the City" to hang out with some friends at the artificial beach there.  Quite pleasant.

Yesterday I just ran 14 miles.  Maybe by the end of the summer I'll run to Nürnberg and back?  We'll see. let's not get too far ahead of ourselves.

(side note - I finally got 10,000 views to this blog  =)

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.

Good Week

So we left off with Sunday's hike.  Let's skip to Thursday.  The international student group all went ice skating.  It was quite a good time.  I take for granted that ice skating is a part of our culture and we've all grown up doing it at least annually.  Not the case worldwide.  For much of the group, it was their first time putting on skates.

Come Friday, I found out that Germany does have hardware stores very much like what I would find at home.  I went to "OBI" and found some good wood glue to fix the guitar I broke...  I also used it to fix the hole I made in the wall when I tore a picture down. 

Saturday morning I got up early (8am) to make sure I had eaten and woken up by my 9am appointment with my landlord.  The meeting was about finding a bike.  See next entry for details.  It made me happy.  That afternoon I met up with a friend from PUMA (Lisa) to go the Toy Museum (Spielzeug Museum) in Nuremberg.  For just 3€ it was quite a good time.   A few pics below.  This morning, the church who provides us a room for the international student meetings invited us all to the service followed by lunch provided by them.  I quite enjoyed it.  We went for a stroll afterwards around a part of the city I hadn't seen before.  All I keep thinking though is, "wow, this would be so much more awesome in summer!"  Oh well, summer is coming.  I can't wait.

In other news, I got a biomechanics of footwear book the other day from 1987 written in German.  I'm going to try to plow my way through that.  My flatmate also finally finished unpacking and is going to lend me a few novels in German to try reading.  That's all for now.  Off to write an entry about bikes!

These folks flip one over the other down the stairs like a slinky

This is a toy kitchen.  Many of the ovens let you put a candle in to heat water.

Stieff toys "with button in ear" was their slogan.

American toys - Popeye the Sailor man

Lisa at her masterpiece

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 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,

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.