holidays, shoes, and the like

It's been a bit since I've written.  Life goes on though so here is the scoop.


November 1st - German Holiday - no work! Prayer brunch with SMD.  In addition to prayer it included weißwurst (white sausage) and Bretzeln (soft pretzels) both with sweet mustard.  Weißwurst is super traditional in Bavaria, though the feelings about it are quite mixed.  I enjoyed it though.  There is some debate about the proper way to eat it.  It's rather soft so it is encased like many sausages to hold it together.  The question is whether you poke a whole in the end and suck it out, or slice it open and scoop it out.  I went for the slice and scoop method.  The other didn't seem socially acceptable.


That afternoon I joined a few friends at their apartment complex and we made Christmas cookies.  They don't have thanksgiving here so Christmas is already on everyone's minds.  They are rolling out all the Christmas decorations at the mall right now actually.  I left the christmas cookie pics at home, so apologies there, but we decided against bowls and instead piled the flour on the table and shaped it like a volcano and put the wet ingredients in the top and then mixed it with hands =) with lots of love.  The girls made their cookies with steel... but they still tasted okay.  I finished the day with a trip to a cake shop with a friend.  We ate outside and froze to death.  Most of the cakes had some sort of alcohol in them.  Germans are pretty obsessed =)


Next evening was SMD, which was swell but let's move to Thursday.  I went to the international student group (IST).  We learned some Bavarian words and expressions.  They say "That is sausage" to say "it doesn't matter, it's all the same."


The other main thing that was exciting for me was finally meeting with the head of innovation for PUMA and talking about my project with him.  Turns out he graduated from Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh!  Anyways, another intern was already doing a project on soccer cleats and they mentioned that they might give me the same project for a different kind of shoe.  I was so scared they were going to assign me to cricket or handball!  In the end, it's RUNNING!  I was thrilled.  Running biomechanics is even cooler than soccer in my opinion because it's so advanced but so regular so you can study it really well.  Running is primarily done in Boston so they'll be teaming me up with someone there to talk with.  They mentioned maybe sending me there which would be sweet, but then they remembered the Boston guys are coming here in a few weeks so there is now need... schade (what a pity).  We'll see what happens but I may end up training for a marathon depending on how this project turns out.


Check out Octobers PUMA magazine here!  Unfortunately some of the info is only viewable from PUMA locations...  Talks a lot about the new 32 year old CEO of PUMA, Franz Koch.  He has a longboard!  Also Volvo Ocean Race!


K I gotta run enjoy the sun before it sets (at 5pm!)

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.

going once, twice, three times, sold!

So this weekend was the bike auction.  I had never seen a real auction except in movies so it was a cool experience.  The auctioneer spoke slightly slower than he was supposed to but otherwise it lived up to expectations.  It drove me nuts though that you only had to outbid by a euro at a time so sometimes it went really slow.  5€, 6, 7...then I would jump in and bump it up to 40€ so it could continue for real.  The bikes all ended up just outside my price range so I didn't manage to get one, but it's getting too cold anyway.  Oh well...


and I may have miss translated a few numbers at the end. 

It Takes A Long Time

It takes a long time to kill a man

55 years at least

until he breaks down 

starts to look underground

and go off and get him some peace.”

I want to die a lot quicker than that

if it’s my only way out.

I’ve been counting up the cost

getting up on that cross

I want to know what this is all about.

A friend of mine, Peter, talked to me about this song during my sophomore year of college.  It’s Jon Foreman (Switchfoot) “Resurrect me.”  He’s talking about the mid-life crisis.  I personally don’t have a lot of experience with these sorts of crises but I’m trying to have mine sooner rather than later.  My perspective is that we have the dreams, goals, ideas, things we live for, that we spend a lot of our resources chasing after.  Maybe we get there and maybe we don’t.  We spend more time chasing though than developing the goals well in the first place.  Then after a while of chasing, we start to wonder why we were chasing what we were chasing in the first place.  A new set of priorities moves in and replaces the old set.

I have definitely had those goals and been chasing them quite systematically.  My senior project, my major, my university, learning Germany, studying abroad were all steps leading up to my goal of developing athletic shoes.  As an intern now at PUMA, I find my goal drawing rather close.  As college draws to a close, I will have some big decisions to make.  I could take a job at PUMA and reach my goal.  I mean, who doesn’t like achieving goals?  Or I could re-evaluate my goal.  Even now I am beginning to step back again and look again at where I am going.  I don’t want to get 20 years down the road working at PUMA and then notice that there are more important things I could have and should have been doing.

I realize this is pretty vague, but that gives you an overview anyway of what’s in my head.  I’m not at all sure where the thought process will lead yet but you can expect to hear more about it over the coming year.

Observing Those Further Down the Road

“That’s it! I’m moving in with Freddy!” declared TJ as he came in to work, a little later than usual...  Freddy (my supervisor), already at his desk, was a little surprised.  TJ went on to explain that the 3 hours of commuting each day to work was too much.  If he moved to Herzo (where Freddy is), he could have 15 hours a week more with his newborn son.  I made a mental not of the conversation as something that might be valuable to remember someday.  Sure, sometimes a long commute can be a nice thing to clear your mind or think, but if that’s what you need then just go for a drive or a walk.  Living far away means you are forced to take that time, even when it can’t be afforded.  I’d like to keep all regular commutes in my life under 30 minutes.

Glad I finally got that figured out.

Hey Look!

So I've been drawing a good bit of attention around Erlangen in the past month and thought I'd mention it here.  So longboards aren't particularly common here.  They have skateboards, but most people notice that mine is different as I cruise gracefully through the streets, quietly, quickly, and smoothly.  Little kids turn point and stare quite often, or sometimes the other way around, the parent points me out to their small child.  It makes me grin.  Longboarding is fun, and it looks fun.  That's how I got hooked myself.  Maybe I'm inspiring lot's of young Germans to pick up longboarding.
Make it through the first 30 seconds, turn on your speakers, sit back.  Enjoy it.  Pleasant. 

Mist on the Moores

On Monday I went out to capture the view that I'd seen only from the bus for many days in a row.  Unfortunately I took the best ones on low resolution, forgetting the settings from the day before.  Fall is here now and I may not have a chance to get these again til the end of my time here.  This is a 5 minute walk from my apartment.