Conclusion

I am in Eugene. After thirteen months and two weeks, and a long string of return flights, I'm back in the States! It has really been a fantastic year. I got to see many new and interesting places in Europe and I met lots of people from different, interesting places. I learned a lot about German life and culture and engineering shoes.

Thank you for following my year. This is the final post for this blog.

Take care,
Henry

Zugspitze

My feet at the highest point in Germany.

Zugspitze
05. September 2009

In the winter, I went skiing in Garmisch-Partenkirchen with some colleagues. We stayed on the lower (but still spectacular) slopes for the first day and ventured up the Zugspitze for the 2nd day. The skiing was really, really good. Huge wide open runs with an amazing view, good, fast snow, and good bratwurst all made for a relaxing and enjoyable day of skiing.

The crew.


In the summer, there is no snow so you can hike it. I had wanted to hike the mountain, the tallest peak in Germany, for a long time and I organized a bit of a trip to do it. The weather reports turned nasty but Bob and Pascal still were up for it so we left Friday after work and spent the night at Hostel2962 (altitude of the Zugspitze in meters). When we arrived it was pouring rain and they had snow the previous day but the next morning, the morning of our hike, it was BEAUTIFUL!


The Reintal.

The start. I'm not quite sure what that peak in the distance is, but we either went to it, or above it.


We started at the Olympische Stadion, the landing zone for the ski jumpers, on the Reintal path. The Höllental path was our original plan because it has a cool section of via ferrata and some more extreme climbing but, with safety in mind, we chose the route with less ice. The first bit passed through some fields and quaint houses and narrowed to drop down into a narrow, high-walled valley big enough only for a fast river and a walking path.





This eventually opened up and we followed the river for quite some time, passing a couple of rest huts along the way. An Israeli experimental physicist joined our little group and we kept walking. There were fields of sheep, trees, rocks, and such. It was an interesting hike because we started more or less at the lowest point in the area and hiked to the highest point in the area. We could keep track of progress by looking back down the valley at our path.



We stopped for sandwiches after a few hours and then at the Knorrhütte, the first hut above the tree line. Hikers sleep here, but they also have a restaurant, bathrooms, and a nice patio.




From the Knorrhütte, it was only a few hours, a few very steep hours to the top. There were extremely steep sections of semi-loose rock and long sections of rolling rock hills. The final stretch was the border between Austria and Germany on a very narrow ridge. Fall to the left, you bounce down hundreds of meters of Austrian rocks. Fall to the right, you fall down hundreds of meters of German rocks. I walked straight.

This is the ski area (sans snow).



We walked up the stairs to the platform with boots and packs, and climbing gear and saw sandals, shorts, and designer T-shirts. Bratwurts on the grill, postcards in the stand, and cable car riding tourists soaking it all in. Our seven hour hike could be done by train and gondola in about an hour and many people had taken that option. We sat down, munched the last of our sandwiches and listened to lederhosen-clad musicians as they blasted out German folk music on brass instruments. Super.



The weather was great for the entire hike but minutes before we reached the peak, a fog (cloud) set in. The view would have been nice but it was more about the achievement of 2000 something vertical meters.

We took the gondola and train down. Great hike.

Hamburg

This is a picture of a Hamburger. Guess where it is...yes.

23. August 2009

With relatively short notice, I decided to shoot over from Berlin to Hamburg to visit Ryan, another guy in my exchange program. It was a two hour train trip so I arrived at around 9pm. The train station was huge! Hamburg does have 2 million people, but, for some reason, I never really thought of it as a big city. It just never occurred to me. I met up with Ryan and we went to the red light/bar district. Apparently, Hamburg is quite famous for this sort of thing. It was kind of an interesting walk of contrasts. There was an opera house at one end of the street and starkly contrasting entertainment on the other side. We swung past the docks and grabbed some burgers at the Hessburger, a Finnish fast food joint on the way to the train back to Ryan’s suburb.

The next day, we took a walking tour of the interesting bits of Hamburg. The city was a huge port and essential for trading back in the day (and now). There were a lot of historical buildings that remained but the waterfront also had a lot of really neat modern architecture.

After the tour, we ate, what else, another hamburger and I caught the train back that Sunday night. The city was really cool, I hope to go back some day.

This is a canal by the waterfront on the way to the trendy modern architecture area.


A very pointy building. The most photographed in all of Hamburg. It was a trading house of for somewhere in South America, I think.


What a great sewer cover!


Little lake in the city.

Berlin 10k

10km Race through Berlin. East and West in one run! Unimaginable just over 20 years ago...

On a whim, I went to Berlin to run in the Champions Run, the 10k road race during the World Championships. A few friends from work were there for fun and business purposes and one of them happened to have an extra number bib and chip for the race from a pre-registered non-attendee. So, I decided to run, and the next morning I caught the train to Berlin, a 5 hour trip. For the ICE trip north, I listened to the train radio, which had a unique station playing classic and modern rock and pop hits. Unique, because it was a Latin band. Stairway to Heaven with Spanish guitar, Aerosmith with a full brass section and maracas, ect. Fantastic!

I stashed my stuff in a locker in the train station and ran to the Reichstag to pick up the number from one of my engineering colleagues and got in line by the Brandenburg Gate for the start of the race. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize the line of people waiting to start extended around the corner so I started quite far back in the pack. The first three kilometers of the race were a mess because everyone around me was sooo sloooooww, but it opened up after a few miles.

The course started going west from the Brandenburg gate, around the big tower monument and back past the Reichstag further east, along the river, and past the Dom and TV tower. The final stretch was along Unter den Linden Strasse, finishing under the Brandenburg gate. It was a great feeling to be “racing” again, running past crowds, water stands, historic monuments, ect.

The race population looked a bit different from the Butte to Butte racers I associate with 10k runs. EVERYONE was wearing some sort of synthetic running shirt and shorts, a lot of sport watches, oddly tinted sunglasses, and utility belts with water, energy gel, ect. Generally speaking, it seems these people take sport clothing very seriously, perhaps more seriously than the running itself. There were also a lot of company t-shirts and groups, and I can say the Deutsche Post was by far the slowest group of people. Funny.

After the race, I ran into a couple friends from work, showered at a hotel, and took the next train to Hamburg. It was a great race.

Cheb

Translation: People with hats or short Martian crossing zone.

Cheb
15 August 2009

On a whim, I decided to take the train to Cheb, a small town in the Czech Republic. This town met my two criteria quite well: it was within 3 hours on a train and I had not been there. The journey began racing the bus to the bus stop and ended around three hours later in a tiny train station with a passport check somewhere in the middle. It was nice to see a language I didn’t recognize again but the signs to the center of town were clear enough. Immediately, language aside, it was evident I had reached another country. Everything was not as clean and tidy and frankly, it looked like the type of place you would hope to get out of if you were born there.


Suddenly, despite the August heat, I was no longer thirsty.

The tourist office lady gave me an 8.5x11 sheet and when I asked a question, she said everything interesting in the town was on this sheet. The sheet had big pictures too. Within about 45 minutes I had walked through most of the “attractions”, the church, the square, ect. I forgot to look up the exchange rate before I left so I just got the middle-small amount from the ATM and based everything off of how much a candy bar cost. Is this castle worth 2 candy bars to me? Yes.


This is a picture of me on the 2nd floor of the chapel.



The castle had a neat tower and a double-storey chapel, both of which I had all to myself. I spend a good amount of time walking around and it was nice. With so few tourist attractions, there was no rush to see and do everything. I watched people take wedding pictures in a monastery garden, I watched kids on the street break dancing, and I saw families picnicking. I spent some time sitting on a bench with a book. The city was quiet and it was just a chill day overall. To round it out (and spend my remaining kroners), I visited the grocery store. It was a very un-touristy tourist day. Fantastic!


The black tower.


This tower is famous enough to get Wikipedia recognition.


Sidestreet.


Overlooking a nice park by the river.


City center.
It was a nice trip!

Middle Ages Festival

Mindelheim
27June 2009

On a whim, my friend Hellen and I decided to meet in Munich for a daytrip to Mittelheim, a small city south of Augsburg and home to the biggest rain storm I have seen in a while. It was wet. Normally, this small town would not have enough to entertain tourists for more than a few minutes but Mittelheim was living in the past. That’s right, the Middle Age Festival was in full swing, immediately evident by the historic city flags and peasant walking his ox down the street.



Not knowing where to go for the action, we walked through a wooden gate and back several hundred years. The little village was quiet, the campfire between the canvas tents had ashes from the previous night’s fire (pig roast?) and the villagers were gathered at a long table under the dining tent enjoying a late brunch. They were dressed head to toe with middle age clothes and had daggers and eating utensils hanging from their belts. Probably because they were somewhat surprised to see an umbrella, raincoats and backpacks in their century, the villagers ignored us at first but then gave directions to the center of town.


The Mittelalterfest was spread through the entire old-town and consisted of demonstrations of middle aged crafts (carving, lace-making, woodworking, blacksmithing, ect.), places to pick up new swords, armor and chainmail, and plenty of opportunities to buy all sorts of German delicacies.

We then walked about 3-4 million kilometers in the middle of nowhere in search of a crossbow tournament that may or may not have even existed, providing the opportunity to explore the industrial and residential sectors of Mindelheim. In the rain.

It is worth mentioning that most of the people we saw walking around were way into the fest. Swords, crazy hats, and the entire middle aged clothing scheme were the norm. Even the security people were dressed in similar black and yellow middle-aged clothes. They carried spears too!

The big event of the day was the battle. Staged slightly outside of town to commemorate a battle in the city’s history (where the city lost), this event probably had 100 fighters and ten times that many viewers. The spear-wielding security guards passed out cotton to plug your ears and one big bearded nobleman mentioned that someone lost a finger in a cannon at the previous reenactment.


The two sides marched in with flags and drummers and stared each other down for a quarter of an hour before they started blowing stuff up. There were about half a dozen big cannons that made FANTASTICALLY powerful sounds and shockwaves and a handful of muzzle loading rifles that contributed to the noise and smoke. Then the real fighting started. Swords and spears clanked, eventually leading to the overly dramatic death of many a soldier. Between attacks, the women and children would rescue the fallen and the drummers would play on. Eventually, the city lost and so began the reign of the imperial overlords or something like that.

The final event of the day was “Flag Throwing” so we proceeded to mistakenly give up the best bleachers in the plaza before finding another spot to observe. This “Flag Throwing” can best be described as a drum line and men prancing about in tights waving city flags in the best German/college color guard tradition.

Here is a picture of me with the lovely Lady Liberty. She went "green" before the rest of NYC. Way ahead of the times.

New York City
15-20Jul09

To conclude the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange for Young Professionals, we all met in Frankfurt on a Wednesday to fly back to the States. I left my apartment at 4am and moved in zombie-sleep mode until Frankfurt, where I checked my bag and met up with the others. The plane ride was uneventful with a bad movie and lots of friends excited about home. Three busses bussed the 75 of us and our stuff to a hotel in the middle of town and we immediately found the closest Chipotle for a re-introduction to American cuisine.


There are some friends.

Afterwards, I got a tour of town with a buddy from the city. Jet lag kept the night early. Early the next morning, I went running to and through Central Park with a couple of friends. The rest of the day was spent with talks at the German Consulate. Some friends and I trekked across town with lots of luggage to Queens, the home borough of another friend/program participant, who graciously offered her apartment for the weekend.

Over the next few days, we rode to Stanton Island, saw the Statue of Liberty, walked the Brooklyn Bridge and ate all sorts of American food. I saw “Wicked” and it was FANTASTIC. I HIGHLY recommend it. Erik and Anne Marie from college came up and we hung out for a few days meeting Emily (Sunshine) for a night at a bar as well. Barbecue at another friends house. Good times. It felt like home. Kind of.

It was weird to be back in the States. New York is an extreme example, I suppose. The English, the people, the familiar signs, fixtures, cars, clothes. It felt familiar but also quite different, like home, but still quite far away. Lots of aspects of the United States (culture, people, attitudes, ect.) became more apparent than before – it must have been the immediacy of the change from small German village to big American city.


Here is a picture of Erik (college friend) and I in New York after amazing cheeseburgers.


Here's a picture of Anne Marie (college friend) and I at the Empire State Building.


This is a picture of some buildings on Broadway in the rain during the intermission of Wicked. It was a nice sight.

It was the most geographically diverse group I have been apart of and it was a bit sad to split ways with so many good people from all over. I hope we meet again. From the apartment in Queens to my desk in Herzogenaurach took 18 hours and 55 minutes. It did feel like I “returned” to the States but it also felt like I “returned back” to Germany as well.