The Hills are All Snowy; They Make Me Want to Ski!

I have a half day tomorrow. The subway works are striking all day and there's really no other effective way for me to get to work. I do need to go over to BMW and see the wind tunnel again, which I can do by bus, but after that, I'm done for the week. Awesome.

Let me tell you about my business trip.

On Tuesday I went on a business trip in a foreign country. It was pretty easy to get there, having started in a foreign country to begin with. Ha. The place was this factory that makes lifts for car dealerships and test equipment for research facilities. We went to go look at some test equipment they had proposed to build for a climatic wind tunnel we are designing for a company in Sweden. A climatic wind tunnel simulates weather, like snow and rain and such.

The factory was situated out in the middle of nowhere Bavaria in the foothills of the alps. Inside there were a bunch of funny little rooms in and around the offices and manufacturing space. One of these rooms was a little bar with an old-timey wooden interior. On one wall hung a picture of "Mad" King Ludwig of Bavaria, the guy who built a bunch of crazy castles over a hundred years ago, and on the other, a picture of John Wayne. Their cafeteria also had very traditional-looking wooden chairs and tables. Quaint.

The meeting was tough for me to sit through, knowing very little about the equipment from the start and having to try and muck my way through specific technical German. My conversational German is getting better, but talking about cooling and ventilating motors in German is an entirely different beast. I survived.

As we finally left to head home late that afternoon, the two guys who had brought me along informed me that we were taking a scenic route home. The two guys were Steve and Klaus, by the way. Steve is an American, with a very goofy American accent in German, and Klaus is a German, with a very funny German accent in English. Both fairly friendly.

The aforementioned "scenic route" involved driving south through the foothills of the Alps to see the cute little Bavarian towns and the little bit of countryside we could see through the fog and snow. On a clear day the drive would have been absolutely majestic, I imagine, but we had to imagine most of the mountains surrounding the road because of the fog. We even stopped at Neuschwanstein Castle, the famous Disney-inspiring castle built by King Ludwig. You really could not see much at all. Here's me with the castle, if you can see it at all:



We could have driven closer, but Steve's dinky little car probably would not have been able to make the ascent. Going to Neuschwanstein is a staple of the German tourist experience, so I will definitely be back in fair weather.

The snow was really fantastic. In some places it got up to a meter and a half. Another picture perhaps:



Absolutely wonderful. Everything was so simple and alpine in and around the villages. It reminded me of the big ski resorts in the states, though every single little bit of what I saw was completely authentic and not a cheesy replication. The ski resorts at home should probably remind me of here.

We stopped for dinner before leaving the Alps. As I'm told, most of these villages have their own special beer, a tradition dating back to the time when monasteries were everywhere in the mountains. Monks used to make a lot of booze back in the day.

My goodness do I want to go skiing now. It looks like it will happen too; I've got a trip to Austria in the works and a couple day-trip possibilities on the horizon. I'm gonna go Alpine Skiing! For real.

"If we get up now, we can catch the afternoon"

This'll be short, but I wanted to make another little post.

I slept until 4:00 or so on Sunday and took it easy for most of the time after that. Later that evening I went up to hang out with Ben Schmitz, this German guy I've hung out with a couple times. His English is a not great but that means I speak German with him most of the time. I need to speak more German here.

He gave me some German music that has so far been pretty good. I particularly like this band, Juli:



Ben is a music student here in Munich and, as he was telling me, the music school here occupies the building previously used in 1938 for the Munich appeasement conference, before the outbreak of World War II. Below this building there is a network of tunnels and bunkers Hitler had built in case he were in Munich and needed to take refuge from a gas attack. The tunnels apparently span much of the city and, as the story goes, people have gotten lost in there in the past and died. Freaky. Anyway, because they want to keep out all the Neo-Nazis only musical school students are allowed into the depths of the building but Ben was going to see about showing me around in a weekend or two. Sounds pretty cool. Apparently Hitler's bedroom is still intact down there somewhere along with some engraved graffiti made by Allied soldiers while occupying the city. I'm looking forward to it.

I thought I'd write that down quickly. Sorry about no pictures but I did at least leave a song.

Köln is the Same as Cologne

I went to Cologne on Saturday, I was tired yesterday, and I worked today, but now I have time to sit down and post. This one has some pretty solid pictures, though you can probably see that.

Right. So, Cologne was pretty wacky. Starting Thursday and running until Monday they get down to business to celebrate Fasching or Carnival. It reminded me a lot of Halloween at home, except that I imagine the women are a bit warmer in Cologne, based on choice of costume.

I got up early on Saturday to catch a 4ish hour train to Cologne leaving from the Munich Hauptbahnhof (Central Train Station) at 7:55. I bought my ticket very last minute and, from what I saw, it seems that the trains are willing to overbook as needed. This means that I did not have a "seat" for the entire train ride. I ended up instead sitting on the ground in one of the entrances, which wasn't terrible. I probably had more leg room that way, even though the train seats probably have more space than airplanes.

One of the girls from JYM doing the whole semester deal came with me to keep me company. She had just recently returned from Italy and had been to the Carnival celebrations in Venice. Crazy.

Riding the train gives you ample opportunity to see some fine scenery as you cruise though the countryside. My favorite thing to see were the quaint little picturesque German villages nestled in valleys. I should have taken a picture. Maybe next time. I also saw the Frankfurt skyline for a few minutes. It kinda reminded me of some Midwestern city, like Indianapolis or Cleveland, because it had a few skyscrapers concentrated in a city center. The tallest one had a pyramid-shaped top. Germany feels somewhat Midwestern to me already. Wikipedia told me that Frankfurt has the 3rd most skyscrapers of any European city, after London and Paris. I think we may have one here in Munich.

The train dropped us off on the east side of the Rhine just across a bridge from the crazy-huge Kölner Dom, the big cathedral for which Cologne is famous. You walk out of the Hauptbahnhof and the thing is right in front of you. It looks like this:



But it's cooler at night:




The thing is crazy massive and it's all really intricately detailed:



Unfortunately, for me, the cathedral was closed for Carnival; a very good move, however, on the part of the caretakers, as things could easily get as trashed inside as the people outside.

The people were pretty wacky. As I mentioned earlier, wearing a costume is a must. I had an Oktoberfest hat on. I saw a couple people with Joker face paint, a la Batman, as well as a couple people wearing costume lederhosen. It's funny to think that what is traditional and barely strange here can be a funny costume just a few hundred kilometers north.

Amongst the somewhat generic fare of costumed tipsy people who love breaking their glass bottles all over the place were a number of traveling marching bands dressed up in various costumes. Take a look:




My personal favorite were "The Huns". They had the best beats of any of the groups and were all around really solid. We found them in a narrow street near a brewery. Here's a drummer:



The other funny costume group we ran into were eating lunch with us at another one of these local brewery establishments. One room of this place was reserved for a marching band whose uniforms were green 1700's military garb (Think Revolutionary War guys in green). They came out and played a bit for the restaurant, but they were not the highlight, however. Next to us at this long table were 5 or 6 elderly women dressed in polka dots with plastic hats and drums. They would get up periodically and lead everyone in some German song, that I didn't know, while tapping on their little drums. When their meals arrived they all held hands and chanted, auf Deutsch, "We wish you bon appetite!". Hilarious. They were really hard to understand but fairly friendly.

The drink of the day was local favorite, Kölsch, a fairly light beer that they serve in these tall thing .2 l glasses. You could also buy a little lanyard necklace thing to hold a glass of Kölsch around your neck. The Bavarians told me that Kölsch was basically water. I thought it tasted just fine, lighter than here in Munich, but not bad. On a side note, I find the beer-pride rivalries here in Germany hilarious. Apparently there's a big one between Cologne and Düsseldorf. Wacky wacky wacky. Don't let me catch you dissin' my beer!

We spent most of the day exploring the riverside and the town to see what neat thing we could find. Here's a few shots:




Most non-restaurants and shops were closed for Carnival. That, sadly, includes the chocolate museum.

Later on, we tried to find the "Geisterzug" or "Ghost Train" parade which happens yearly on Saturday night. From the pictures I saw online it seemed to me like a tricked out Halloween-type parade that everyone can participate in. The location changes every year but I though I had this year's spot nailed down. I did not, apparently. The ghost parade was apparently invisible; rather ironic I guess. Or maybe I was just a little late... From Wiener Platz, where I thought the parade began, we headed south to see if we could catch up but instead we decided it would be cute to get a bit lost in the fairly nondescript neighborhoods on the east side of the Rhine. Eventually we found an S-Bahn and rode back into town but we ended up walking a ton before we found it.

After a lot of walking around and exploring I was very very tired. I had also planned to take the 4:20 train back to Munich, so I still had some time to burn. By 1:00 I had fallen asleep in the Hauptbahnhof.

Staying inside the Bahnhof that night was an experience. At the entrance were a few drum groups that may well have played all night long for the masses of people dancing around them. Further in I found people all over the place looking for a seat anywhere remotely clean until their train arrived. As I tried to sleep I was periodically interrupted by drunk people who wanted to talk or sing at me. I was wearing an Oktoberfest hat, like I mentioned earlier, and off and on people would come up to me singing various Oktoberfest tunes. I don't actually know any. People also like to wake up sleepers in the Bahnhof by yelling in their face. I usually would scream back. No use actually trying to get much sleep.

At one point this drunk guy sat down next to me and put his arm around my shoulder. After talking to me a little and finding out where I was from he asked me if I was f***ing George Bush. He then corrected his gross error and asked me instead if I was f***ing Barrack Obama. He soon learned that I had no cigarettes on me and moved on.

I slept on the train ride back; this time I reserved a seat. Of course, I didn't actually need to. Whatever.

I slept until 4:00 or so on Sunday after getting back.

What a day. Before I go, here's a picture of me in costume:



Hooray!

"The artist must train not only his eye, but his soul."

I had a forced vacation today. This weekend is Carnival in the Catholic world, a holiday that a lot of people take here in Germany. I was going to be the only one in the office and that's not allowed, so I had to take the day off. I certainly didn't mind.

Before I get into today I wanted to share some pictures with you, from downtown Munich.

This is the "Rathaus" on Marienplatz, which is sort of the city center I guess. It is a central shopping area. "Rathaus" means "city hall" in German; I've always enjoyed the fact that the word "rat" is in there, even though it means something entirely different in German.


Here's another view from Marienplatz with one of the many ornate churches in the area and the statue of probably King Ludwig, which sits at the center of Marienplatz. The churches around Marienplatz are sandwiched between shops and restaurants.


For Carnival this weekend they decorated a bit:



I thought that was pretty cool.

Speaking (or writing) of Carnival, I'm going up for some Carnival-ing tomorrow in Cologne. Should be pretty interesting, I hope, and it will be my first use of the trains here in Europa. Hooray!

Back to today. There have been these signs all around advertising a Kandinsky exhibit at the Lenbachhaus and today, with the vacation time that had been so nicely given to me, I decided to go check it out.



The Lenbachhaus is this neat art museum here in Munich and they, together with the Guggenheim in New York and the Pompidou thingy in Paris, put a bunch of Kandinsky works together to show. This is the building:



Also this:


The whole thing was pretty neat I thought. Kandinsky was pretty much the father of modern painting, more or less, and it was interesting to see how his work progressed
over time, becoming more and more independent of any recognizable form, beyond geometric shapes and lines. Someone told me Kandinsky could hear color.

If you don't know much about him go check out Kandinsky on Wikipedia and/or give him a Google search. I particularly liked this one, called "Moscow I":


Notice the Bavarian couple in the middle. The color was a lot more vivid in real life.

For Carnival tomorrow I tried to find a classic Bavarian hat to wear in Cologne; apparently they find the Bavarians pretty funny. Todd Bauknecht has one. Unfortunately, my is is just a bit bigger than the average Bavarian head and I could not find any hats that fit well. We went to three or four different traditional Bavarian clothing stores and none of them had anything that fit me. Hat's have always been too small for me so I wasn't too surprised, just disappointed. I will find one before I leave in August. I might even by some Lederhosen.

A couple people told me that Bavaria is the Texas of Germany. I think that's probably true.

Later this evening I went and sang Karaoke with some of the Germans on the 5th floor. One of the guys has a program on his computer for Karaoke and we hook it up to the sound system in the communal room. There were only 5 of us there but that hasn't ever hampered the fun. They really seem to love the whole singing thing; I want to try and get them to try it for real sometime, if I can find a Karaoke bar around here.

That about wraps up a particularly image-filled little post for you. When I get back from Cologne I'll have more exciting pictures and such.

Goodnight.

I'm A Regular-Fahrer.

I want to try and have pictures with every post and I'm going to try and bring my camera with me more.

Here's a picture of the U-Bahn (subway) station:


I'm not sure why I took it but it does segue me into something I wanted to talk about. Maybe you remember back a few posts when I was talking about the U-Bahn and it's "honor system". Maybe not. I remembered today that the crime of not having a ticket and using public transportation is called "Schwarzfahren" and one who does that is a "Schwarzfahrer". Back in German class we watched a neat little short film about it; I think it was just called "Schwarzfahrer". It's on Youtube, check it out below. As you'll see the title is a play on words in German; the word "schwarz" in German means black.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFQXcv1k9OM&feature=related

I appreciated that clip a lot, both then and now. It's neat to see how some of the little cultural things we did back in German class actually have helped me understand what's going on around me now.

Today has otherwise been fairly uneventful. It snowed all day long and it was really cold and windy outside. I hope I don't get sick.

The one other thing I did today was register my address with the government; it's a citizen's duty you know. Apparently they do it in the U.S. too, except they lump it in with getting your driver's license. In Germany there is no address on your driver's license.

I had been told that the whole address process involves a lot of waiting, but that was not the case at all. I think it took me all of 10 minutes to do everything. My bank account was the same way. Everyone told me I might have trouble but it all came together really nicely.

I wish a German bank account was as cool as a Swiss bank account. I only have a German one.

That's all for now.

There Are So Many Foreigners Here. I'm One Too.

I'm back.

I've got some down time with my laundry in the washing machine, let's make good use of it!

I guess the next thing that happened is the whole meeting people part, which has been pretty cool. I'm here with Junior Year in Munich along with 40 or so other people, but I'm early. There are other people here though, people from JYM and the US that are here the whole academic year rather that just summer. When I picked up my key on Monday the woman at the JYM office, Sommer, mentioned a couple people who would try to come find me this week. I hadn't heard from them until Wednesday when they came out and found me. They were Sam and Scott, from Miami of Ohio and Wooster, respectively. They later invited me to a taco night on Friday.

On Friday I met a bunch of other folks, Blaine, Harrison, and Zack, to name a few. All JYM people. From the sound of it the whole JYM crowd is a bit "clicky". I don't mean that they make weird noises (though I'm not saying they don't) I mean that they form little groups that are a little bit hostile; I can't remember how to spell the word. I'm interested to see what it's like when everyone is back. The tacos were good.

From there I went on to meet some Germans, some Irish, an English girl, and some people from Slovakia. They were all hanging out in "The Pot". For those of you at Michigan, think "Blue Apple" but less new and shiny and also serves alcohol. A better comparison might be the "Halfway Inn" in East Quad. All that aside, it is a pretty neat little hang out.

The Germans are really into fooseball over here, but they call it "Kicker" to avoid confusing it with Soccer, which is "Fußball" auf Deutsch. I'm really bad and most of them aren't.

On Saturday we went "Schlitten", or sledding. I have pictures!

This is the group:


This is the hill:


This is what the sleds looked like:


I guess they're called something along the lines of "butt sleds". You sit on the back and hold onto that handle and fly down the hill. They look kinda funny but they're definitely pretty cool.

The sledding hill was north of my room, by the arena where FC Bayern plays. That's a soccer team.

This is the arena; it lights up at night:


I enjoyed finally going sledding this year; I've missed out until now.

We kinda hung out after that.

That's all for now. Take care.

It's Really European Over Here

Blog time!

It's been a rather hectic week so far getting settled in and meeting people and such and I still haven't figured everything out, but I'm getting there. As I write I'm working towards doing laundry, which is a little trickier than back home and I need to be careful not to ruin my clothes. That might be a bit drastic.

Anyway, I figured I would try to at least write down the big things of the past week to get caught up with where I should be here in blog-land. The one thing that always foils my attempt to write something is the clash between my desire to be detailed and my need to be doing a million things at once. This means I want to take my time but also don't. As such, I may skip over details and come back some other time, all in the name of finishing. Let's get started, shall we?

We landed last Sunday in Munich fairly early in the morning and took a taxi over to the hotel. We would come to learn that we spent way too much money on the taxi and could have instead taken the subway and train right to the hotel. Of course we didn't know that at the time.

The hotel was very nice and in a fairly central "businessy" location. The beds were really soft.

After dropping off our stuff, my dad and I hit the subway to go check out the surroundings. We first went up to the StudentenStadt (Student Village auf Deutsch) where I would be living, but I couldn't move in until Monday as my room was still occupied. I'll put up a picture soon. It snowed most of the morning and everything was pretty dead all over. Sundays in Bavaria are pretty low key, with only restaurants open (if that) and not too many people walking around. It wasn't terribly exciting but we at least got a chance to learn the city a little bit.

I started work on Monday in the town of Garching b. Munich just north of town on the U-Bahn (the subway). The office is fairly new and sits on the outskirts of town in sort of an industrial park type area. All around there is rural farm-ish land. This company, Jacobs, is a U.S. company that does construction and other technology consulting, though this particular office designs automotive wind tunnels, like the one for BMW I got to see later that week. Incidentally, they also have an office in Southfield MI that serves the industrial life-blood of sunny Detroit. The office is small and half American, which helps my getting adjusted. The Americans have funny sounding American accents in German.

Work was sorta slow all week (as I've come to expect), though by Friday I was at least doing grunt work for them. They had a proposal to send off today so I was in charge of printing and assembling two 3" binders full of appendices. They had another one full of livers. It actually wasn't too bad and it did keep me occupied.

Enough work for now though.

Side note: There are 3 washing machines in this entire building. Ridiculous.

Munich has been pretty cool so far. My dad and I ate in a couple German restaurants and we even had Doener for lunch one day (that's a Turkish thing kinda like shiwarma or maybe a gyro). Yes, we did go to the Hofbräuhaus. Downtown there are loads of old buildings and new buildings and big churches and such, all very European feeling. When I have some pictures ready I'll put them up somewhere. Be patient.

On Wednesday morning my dad headed back home. Despite the snow storms he made it back alright.

I feel like this is a decent place to stop for now; maybe I'll do more later today. I will, at least, leave you with this picture:


This is the bedspread they provided me. No mistake, it's light blue with flowers on it. Hilarious.

Tchuss.

Am Anfang

Hi People!

Listen. I've started this whole "travel blog" thing now that I finally have a little time to sit down and consider. I do not, however, have enough time to decide on the formatting and titling, among other aesthetic concerns, just yet, so don't mind the "cookie cutter" look for now; I intend to change it.

Anyway, I decided to go ahead with this because I thought that, at the very least, it could be something neat to look back on as a loose record of my adventures. I also figured the family might find it interesting. All are welcome really, as long as you find it interesting. I'll try to be interesting for you.

So that's my introduction. Short and open ended. More stuff on the way.

I hereby Christen this blog, Chris Grimm is in Germany. May it live forever.

Internet voyage time, hoorah!