A Connecting Addicted Society

This summer has been an interesting time for me.  It was the first time living by myself with internet.  I had a lot of time on my own, and that meant a lot of time wasted on the internet.  The internet is amazing and valuable and often I have things I need to do or learn or share via the internet.  I think that's great.  I noticed a problem though; I was almost always up to date on everything facebook decided to send to my home page.  I'd get home from class and scroll down and down and down, until I realized I was reading the things I'd seen before I went to class.  Then I'd go over to blogspot to see if anyone had posted anything, then I'd go back to facebook, and see the 2 new entries on my home page.  Then I'd close my laptop and go eat some yogurt.  Then I'd pull up facebook, and see another new entry...  Wow, getting addicted.  I recently started turning off my laptop when I'm not using it, so I wouldn't be so tempted to "just pull up facebook real quick."  I still think facebook is an AMAZING tool, and I have no intention of deleting my account any time soon.  It's very effective for coordinating activities amongst friends, and sharing visually, what exciting thing happened recently.  People complain about it's narcissistic nature, but I don't think that's what it is (necessarily).  No, I don't care that you just made the best spaghetti ever, but I do care that you visited Letchworth State Park, and I think you can describe the beauty better by sharing photos than in a conversation.  I care about you, and want to know what you're experiencing.  That said, it should be a supplement to real life interactions, not a replacement.

On a related note; smartphones.

Before I go into this, I realize you probably own a smartphone.  I am not attacking you (necessarily). But if your life looks like this video, yes, I think you have a problem, and you need to figure out a solution.

So for me, the real hindrance in getting a smartphone is the price.  It would cost me an extra $40 a month adding up to $480 a year.  I'd rather buy this bicycle:

I could buy it in a new color every year.  Or I could save for retirement... less fun, but important.

But anyway, even if it were a financially viable option, I still like to think I wouldn't have one.  Since I don't need instant access to email for work, I think checking my personal email 3 times a day is more than enough (and I have a very nice laptop on which I can check it).  Facebook... well we've already decided that I don't need to check that more often.  GPS; that could be nice, but... still not worth it.  I'm moving to Boston, known to be difficult to navigate.  So, I just look up where I'm going before I go.  Once, when visiting my cousin, I made a mistake and couldn't figure out where to go, so I called him and we sorted it out quickly and easily.  I expect my first few weeks in Boston will be a little chaotic, but after cycling all the back roads by memory instead of GPS, I think I'll know the city better than anyone.  I think that will be really fun and I'm looking forward to that.

Smartphones do have their advantages, which is why so many people have them.  I basically had one for a few years in college (iPod touch and wifi everywhere), and it got me a note taking job (though ironically it also caused me to pay less attention in class), and when you are out on vacation exploring a new city, it can make things so much simpler.  If you need it for work, that totally makes sense.  These advantages just don't seem that great to me though, and I know I'd have a hard time not being addicted to it.  That video makes me sad, and I want to say thank you to those of you with smartphones and self-control.  For those of us with average self-control, think twice about whether you want to keep the internet in your pocket.  For that matter, I think we should think twice about most things.

Stepping into Inequality

I grew up in a private Christian school.  I knew there were richer families and poorer families, but everyone there had the money to send their kids to a private school.
I grew up in the suburbs.  In the suburbs there is poverty but it's invisible.
I went to Argentina, and I suppose everyone was poor, so you didn't really notice that anyone was.
I went to university.  College students spend money like they're rich.  They tend to spend based on the lifestyle they expect to have when they graduate and are making lots of money (they hope).
Then I graduated, along with all my peers, and we walked into cities where the rich and the poor stand side by side.  They sit across from each other in the park, and bump into each other on the train.
It's strange.  The poor aren't invisible.  They're very close.

I found myself wishing I had a bike.  At first I just wanted to get around fast.  I don't like to wait, or walk.  Later I wanted it because people don't ask you for 50¢ when you're on a bike.

It's strange.  I suppose I won't be able to ignore them anymore.

Well, I could probably get over it if I tried, but I don't think God wants me to "get over it."

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

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.

Home Means:

Home means lower doorknobs, and bedrooms without keyholes.
It's windows that open up and down instead of in and out, and it's winter so they're closed.
It's my guitar and fitting tweed case.
It's book after book, and internet everywhere.
It's a sound system that shakes the kitchen below me.
We enter on the first floor, because we don't have ground floors.
And that first floor is a figure eight, around which I can chase my sisters.
It's family and hugs, and hugs and family.  Love all around.
It's peanut butter or Reeses, it's tortilla chips and spicy salsa.
It's living on the top of a mountain that makes every run hurt twice as fast.
It's having wildlife come through the backyard, and a dog through the living room.  
It's a kitchen for 4 instead of 2, and of course a living room dining room family room to boot.
It's hosting 5 friends and a Grandma all at once.
It comes with a dryer for my clothes and a rack for dirty shoes that shouldn't be in my room.
It means never having to walk farther than the garage.
It's temperatures in Fahrenheit and gas in gallons.
Grooveshark works and GEMA doesn't block every second YouTube video


Most of all though it's back to the family and hugs and hugs and family, and friends and hugs too.






These are the things I've missed the past 4 months, not in any sort of order, just things I've noticed in the last week.  It's not a comparison of Germany against the United States, just of my life in Erlangen against my life at home.

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 II - in which I went North

Come the second weekend in December it was time for my first vacation.  I took Friday and Monday off to visit friends in Osnabrück where I studied last year.  Right off the bat though, an 8 minute delay on my first train made me miss my connection turning a 5 hour commute into 7 hours.  Conveniently just enough for me to get a refund of half my ticket (enough to cover my expenses for the rest of the weekend).  The afternoon involved cooking and eating and friends, and christmas cookies (not the "R" I made on top right =).

That evening I went back to stay with Jonas and Marlene who were hosting me for the weekend.  Marlene introduced me to "The Voice of Germany," a fun show along the lines of American idol, except the judges can't see the singers until after they vote, and the judges pick teams and have a competition of sorts.  We also saw the Christmas market in Melle that evening which was small but quaint and nice.

The next morning we went with people from church, all dressed up as Santa Claus, giving out candy and Bible verses at the Osnabrück Christmas market.  Went quite well and had opportunities to really encourage some people, and to pray with the people of the city.  Fun on all sides!

Later we ate Döner, knocked out some shopping, and then went to play a big game of Risk in German.  I got lucky with an easy mission and won  =P

Sunday was church at my favorite church in Germany, followed by lunch out.  It was great with 16 or so of us all squeezed around the table at Vapiano's, and Italian chain restaurant.  I stuffed myself, and then went back to Melle.  After some tea, Jonas and I went for a run... way to close after eating.  Did NOT feel good.  Oh well.  We hung out in the evening, played some music and then watched "Tatort," (translated as "scene of the crime." One of the few German phrases shorter than the English version)  a popular German criminal investigation TV show.  I got a lot of German culture this weekend.

Come Monday, Marlene had to head to work early, and Jonas to Uni, so I hung out with some other friends and enjoyed their company before taking the train back to Erlangen that evening.

Fun relaxing weekend.  I'm looking forward to doing it again when it is warmer.

I'm off to bed now.  Christmas will come early tomorrow.  Have a good one!

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.

Living Quarters

So here is where I live.  It’s quite comfortable I find.  Not everything is in good taste, but it is almost all good quality.  There is a huge grandfather clock too, although we don’t run it because the bells would chime through the whole night.  There is a beautiful original painting on top of the wardrobe (pictured).  The center of the wardrobe has three shelves fronted by glass - the optimal location to showpiece my shoes.  On top is also a radio that would have been terrific back in the day.  It has preset channels, can adjust the highs and lows, gets FM and AM plus 2 other frequency ranges, that I don’t know the names of.  There are also lace curtains, which bothered me at first because they offer zero privacy.  I found that peculiar because Germans are super into their privacy (in order for google to bring ‘street view’ to Germany they had to provide individuals with the option to blur out their houses!).  Well, the landlord was showing me some things and pointed out the steel shutters that can be lowered like blinds on the outside so that even in broad daylight I cannot see my hand in front of my face (with the lights off of course).  The only things really missing?  internet and dryer.  I’ll manage just fine without those I think though

Other bigger picture details, I live in a house on the edge of town.  The house used to belong to a grandmother with two daughters and a son.  Daughter 1 grew up and moved north to Bremen for work I believe.  She had a daughter named Muriel.  Daughter 2 bought half of the duplex next door to her mother.  Grandmother’s son, Reinhard, moved into the other half of the duplex with his wife and son.  Daughter 1 came into possession of her mother’s house, presumably upon her death, but still lives far away.  She rents out half of the rooms to her brother Reinhard, and half to her daughter Muriel, who just moved in 2 days before I did.  Reinhard wanted the house for his office because of the 30 yard commute to work.  He doesn’t need all the space though so he is subletting one of the rooms to me, plus bathroom and kitchen access thankfully.  Before Muriel came, Reinhard had been renting the whole house would would sublet to 4 interns/students at a time.

Oh and I almost forgot, they like spiders in the corners because they keep down the fly and mosquito populations? yes, that’s what he said.  I always thought screens were a better solution for that but... they don’t believe in screens here.  They do believe in fresh air though so the windows are all open year around.  I don’t have any spiders in my room so I’m not too concerned.

 Black and gold - duvet and sheets (I can store things in the box spring).

 Painting, wardrobe, shoes, radio.

The view kneeling on my bed.

Wrapping Up (Part II)

I'm calling this part II because I already have a part I. I'll be wrapping up till I get home I suppose. Let's go back in time now to Monday morning on the 14th of February, the day I left Osnabrück, bound for England. I packed up my things and abandonned my room. The caretaker came and inspected and the only problem he found was some dust... oh well.

I left my bags with my roommate and set out with my backpack to run some errands and set off. At 11:30am I caught the 2 hour train to Bremen (free with student ID). My flight was not until 6:30 so I had time to kill. Instead of taking the tram to the airport, I decided to follow it by foot and see what there was to see. Here is one of the random monuments I found. Someone said it references an old law that is still in the books that allows farmers to bring their pigs through the streets of Bremen. Who knows.

So after walking for over an hour, with some video documenting to be posted soon, I arrived at the airport. After walking through a city full of beautiful buildings it seemed as if RyanAir was kind of a disgrace to the city with it's cheapness. There were terminals 1,2,3 and E. E was for RyanAir and you had to walk through a passageway from the main airport to get there. Most of the building is just aluminum like a warehouse or something. RyanAir only had 3 flights that evening so they didn't even send the employees into the terminal for security check etc. until 3:30pm. When I first arrived there were just a few old folks with bags waiting...
While I waited I explored and decided to document this German phenomenon. I've noticed it most commonly in Restaurants. WC (Restroom) is almost always down. Usually down two flights of steps and down a long passageway, very away from everything. You know, like not close to anything at all. Maybe that would be gross? Everyone knows those rooms are gross but we all deal with it differently. In America we just call it a restroom and pretend it's a nice place. In Germany they call it "the toilets" and just keep it far away. Both work I suppose.
All the money I owned, I had on my person. Heading to England I had to change some over to pounds. Here is some of my money. I have all the commonly used bills including £, €, and $. Notice that the European money goes down to 5 (~$7-$8). Once smaller than that you have to use coins... I accumulated £10 of change in one day in London... very obnoxious.
Traveling went well. I landed in Stansted airport and then took a 2 hour trainride to Haywards Heath where a friend, John Dixon, picked me up and brought be to my room. More on that later.

to be continued.

A Mono-Class Society (in appearance)

Disclaimer up front is that my view of Germany has been very limited and there are probably large segments of society that I haven't seen yet.

Basically, my view here has been that everyone here seems to be in the same class. Talking to to people that's not entirely true. Generally people associate lower class folks with British names like (example given was Kevin). I have a few ideas why the class difference isn't so apparent.

1. Many of the minorities here are often still white Europeans and so to me they look German. It's possible that all the russian immigrants are poor for example but I just can't see it. The varying skin color in America makes it easier to quickly categorize groups of people and make assumptions at to what class they are in, regardless of how accurate it is.

2. It seems that everyone here has basically the same sense of style. Sure some people are more stylish than others but you don't have goth, emo, prep, hippie, lumberjack, as well as the style sets that tend to come with african americans. That means everyone looks the same still further. Once again it is harder to categorize groups of people by appearance.

3. Where do poor people live? Maybe they are all out in the country, or maybe just in the big cities? Anyways, I have seen no particularly rough, or rundown areas. Yes it's a small town (160,000) but it's definitely not like America.

So we should never stereotype people by appearance but I know in America we do it all the time. It's just peculiar here how much of a non issue it is. I'm taking a class called "Race and Equality in America." The prof and I are the only Americans. I think it will be difficult to convey to the class what America and racism is like because of what they are used to living in.

k later