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.

Small Town, Big Aspirations

So I finally got pictures around where I work.  I needed to visit the bank and so I made a run out of it and took pics along the way.  These first pictures are down Main Street (Hauptstraße) in Herzo which is about a mile and a quarter from where I work.

The above building is the Alte Wache.  We had a PUMA social event there a few days ago.  It is an old house converted into a restaurant.  They have a handful of American burgers on their menu.  Not what I expected going in the door.  Let’s head over to PUMA now.  I hadn’t noticed until I went to take these pictures, but check out the manhole covers!

And the bathroom sinks!  That is PUMA design style right there.  Crisp, bold, classy, no drainage hole in the middle.  I almost feel like I’m washing my hands on a macbook.  Btw, the sinks are in a different room than the toilets, so it’s not entirely weird that I took that picture =P

 The picture above is the PUMA Vision side of the building where we show off our history and cool products inside.  The top level is the cafeteria which spills out onto the roof.  Below is the outlet which is on the right.  Note the solar panels on the roof and PUMA's parking garage just past it, looking out over Herzo.  Both pictures are taken from the window near my desk.

 Below is the parking garage again with some cool advertising.

 And the main entrance is in the middle next to the little PUMA cat.  I work on the top floor of the building on the right.

 And here is the other side of PUMA vision, which is one of the first things you see from the bus on your way into work.

 And this last one combines everything.  I like the place a lot, but then I like RIT's architecture as well so maybe my opinion is null and void.

Got to play soccer last night with a bunch of PUMA guys.  Such a great feeling.  I love soccer and I can't believe I've gone so long not playing it.  One of the things I'm dreading about my senior year at RIT is being too busy to play.  The people I've worked with here do a great job at working hard all day, sometimes long days, but also making sure they have fun and get in their vacation times too.  It can be challenging to work with important people on vacation all the time, but since it goes both ways, I think it's definitely worth it overall.


Lastly, I'm using a dell when working.  I need to get back to a macbook.  I took for granted that you can do things like change the language on a mac.  Not an option on my dell...  If I'm ever there long tern I'll be able to convince them to get me one.  All the designers have them, but the developers usually have dell, just because.  No particular reason.

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!