Boston

So I realize I abandoned you back in May, but it's not entirely my fault.  You see Germany doesn't really have summer, so I had to skip it  ;)   Well I suppose the bigger part of it was less and less access to internet and more and more to get done.  It did enjoy those last months in Germany.  When it came to a close I baked three cakes to split between 2 going away parties.  One party in German, with friends from Erlangen, and 1 party in English with people from work.  Soon enough I was home and my family was getting more hugs from me than they knew what to do with. 

So during the year I was working on a running shoe related project.  The running team is in Boston though, not Germany.  I had met a few people from the team but not the majority, and few of them knew what I was up to.  We arranged that after my internship finished up and I went home, that I could visit the Boston office for 2 days enjoy everything that goes with that.  I had never been to Boston before but have been wanting to visit for some time.  It's a beautiful place.

I landed Wednesday night and took the train into town and found my hotel, which was really a bed and breakfast called The College Club of Boston.  Delightful.  I believe is used to be a women's college.

After a recommendation from the gentleman at the front desk I met with Andrea, who used to study with me, at the Parish Restaurant.  I enjoyed a meal called Elephant Walking on Eggs "Sandwich from the Mountain".  Then we met Adrian and he drove us the harbor to explore.  He showed us this red line painted through the city called "the Freedom Trail" that leads you past many of the sights of Boston.  Getting pretty late though so we all headed our separate ways.  1 perk of Boston, I already know lots of people who live there.

Thursday morning I rose and enjoyed a good breakfast with no deli meats (a German peculiarity).  I then walked the 45 minutes through town to PUMA as an excuse to see more of Boston.  I got to work at 9, found out I was presenting at 10, and promptly was toured through the office to meet a million people (or meet their desks for those who weren't there) in quick succession.  The meeting started 15 minutes late because that is the PUMA way, and because designers were involved.  In the end, the seats were filled, and hardly even standing room left.  It was a great way to start off the day.  I spent the next two days meeting people, and seeing how things work in the Boston office.  I went for a run with two of the other developers at lunch just like in Germany.  One of them used to log 100 miles a week in his prime.

To conclude the trip I got to go to the preliminary round of the Red Bull 2012 Cliff Diving World Series Boston.  Pretty crazy stuff.  The Olympic high dive is 10m.  This was 27.

Then I flew home.

That's all.

oh and I got 2 new pairs of shoes in Boston  ;)

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. 

Fränkische Schweiz with Americans

This week my parents came to visit.  On Thursday we ventured to the Fränkische Schweiz.  It was quite pleasant.  We started with Ebermannstadt which is just a small German city that is the entrance to the region. A quaint main street and a nice stream winding through it all, plus a sweet old lady who served us coffee made it all delightful.

After some time we moved on to Tüchersfeld and climbed up this large rock that just sticks out of the middle of the city.  Really cool features.  Here was the view from the top.

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.

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