Happy Christmas

This is a picture of me wearing my festive red windbreaker standing on the upper portion of a waterway intersection a nice bike ride north of Magdeburg. It’s like a highway overpass, but the overpass and underpass are water canals.

Dear Family and Friends,

Merry Christmas! This holiday is quite different without the family, friends, and traditions I’ve known for the last two decades present. Jesus and the Charlie Brown Christmas album are the two common aspects and I’m quite thankful for both. Fröhliche Weihnachten!

30. Dez. 2008 :: Edit: This just in - a cherished element of family Christmas tradition has just made across the Atlantic! I have received the delicious pecan toffee from the McCaffrey Family!! Thank you!

-H

Leipzig

Manhole Cover.
I took very few pictures that day, mostly because I didn't want my hands to freeze.

Leipzig

On a whim, I decided to go to Leipzig. I looked up a couple of things to do before I went to bed, made a list, and forgot the list at home when I caught the train the following morning. This is at least the second time I’ve forgot my list (museums, train times, other things to see) but all my other trips have turned out well and this one was no exception.



I visited this little church when I got a bit lost wandering. They were rehearsing the Christmas Pageant.


About two hours after I left, I arrived in Leipzig, a nice city roughly the size of Portland Oregon. I GPSed my way to the opera house, reserved tickets for some stuff and then quickly shuffled my way over to the nearest warm area – the Grassi museum complex. This is an organization paired with a university in the city and in addition to research, it runs three museums. I visited the Music Instrument museum and it was neat. For a relatively little two Euros, I had the entire museum to myself (aside from the security guards – hence, no pictures). On display were hundreds (thousands?) of different musical instruments from the last thousand or so years. They were mostly un-identifiable to modern eyes but there were good descriptions and opportunities to hear recordings of music played with the instruments. Strings, keys, mouthpieces, bells, buttons, cranks, ect. They had pretty much every possible combination of music making devices in various sorts of weird instruments. Some were so unique, it seemed as if a musician would have to get good at playing a specific instrument, not just a specific type of instrument.

I snagged a bratwurst at the Weihnachtsmarkt and enjoyed walking around the streets for a while on my way to the Musikalisches Komodie, a small theater away from the center of town. Der Zauberer von Oss was playing and it was great. “The Wizard of Oz” doesn’t quite enjoy the same amount of popularity as in the states, but everything, songs and all, was translated into German. It was very well done and easy to follow.



This is a view from the opera house. A building undergoing restoration, the symphony performance center, and a fantastic landmark.

With about an hour and a half to spend before the next event, I wandered through the inner city a bit more. Leipzig, in contrast to other bigger cities in the area, was rebuilt immediately after it was destroyed. It still had that old town atmosphere of old architecture and narrow streets that isn’t present in Magdeburg, for example. It was a nice place to walk around. There were many street performers, lots of people, and a general hum of activity.

Der Fliegende Höllander (The Flying Dutchman) by Richard Wagner played at the Leipzig Opera house from 7-9:30pm without a break. The Flying Dutchman is an opera about some sort of haunting boat captain or something. I looked at it briefly before I left, deciding I’d figure out more when I watched it. Not the case. The opera was modernized. The set consisted of plain skyscraper type buildings of various heights (2meters at most) scattered about a black slightly tilted stage. After experiencing an interesting modern art piece at the Guggenheim museum in NYC consisting of some sort of image of plain apartment buildings with lighted windows partially obscured by moving fog, I have a bit of an interest in plain buildings with lighted windows so this set was kind of cool to me.

The orchestra jammed for a bit and then the show kicked off (jammed = played an overture, show kicked off = opera began). If I’m honest, it was a bit slow at the beginning and I may have dozed off. When I awoke after a few minutes, there was a topless girl dancing seductively on the stage. Interesting. The folks were still singing, of course, but that was just the beginning of the weirdness. The entire time, a large screen played projected video of seemingly random videos and images, for example naked people walking into each other 30 times in a row. The singing continued, and it was very good. Toward the end, a dozen or so guys came out in boxers, dumped gallons of oil on their heads, and then they destroyed the set. Though the opera was in German, I understood very little but I also did not understand how anything I was seeing could pertain to a Flying Dutchman. Bizarre.

I know a couple of people living in Leipzig with the same exchange program so we met up after the opera and had hot chocolate. Delicious.

Christmas Plants

This is a picture of Magdeburg, looking South. The Dom is through the trees and the river is right at the edge on the left side.

14. December 2008

While enjoying a cup of Earl Grey and a special Saxon Christmas cake delicacy, my host family explained the history of those festive red-leaved plants that make their way around altars and fireplaces this time of year.

The Ecke family moved from Magdeburg to California a hundred years ago and started the trend. Wikipedia suggests the plant’s relation with Christmas goes back many hundreds of years but the Ecke folks made it popular. They developed a method of making the plants look nice and then the basically flooded the media by donating plants for TV programs, other media, and other big social gatherings. They kept this up long enough for the people to draw their own associations between the plant and Christmas and were quite successful. The company still exists in California today.

Wasserstraßenkreuz

14. December 2008

Today I biked 15 or so miles to the Water Bridge north of Magdeburg. Built between 1998 and 2003, this water canal intersection was intended to provide better, cheaper transportation of lots of stuff but I didn’t see anyone using it the entire time I was there. It still looks cool though and I took some pictures. I first saw it on a map. It’s not too often one sees perpendicular rivers.


This is the top part going East-West.



The 10-second timer shot.



I like the colors in this one.

Weinachtsmarkt and Qudelinburg

I awoke this morning to find chocolate, trail mix, and other little treats in my shoe. Weird? Hardly. The 6th of December is celebrated as Sankt Nikolaus Tag. Saint Nicholas, a bishop from what is now Turkey was linked with anonymous gift giving, often in the form of coins in the shoes of sleeping folks. In Germany on this day, it is kind of a Santa Clause type event of children anticipating mysterious goodness. USA does socks, Germany does shoes.


Old Fachwerk

The host family left for Beilatal and I stayed behind to get some work done on projects and internship applications. After a few hours I decided to go to Quedlinburg. One hour later I was on the train and an hour after that, I was there. Quedlinburg is a small town locally famous for two things: Fachwerk buildings and the Weinachtsmärkte. Fachwerk is that picturesque type of architecture with brown linking timbers filled in with clay and dirt, essentially. The Weinachtsmarkt (Christmas Market) is a staple of the German winter season. I was talking with someone the other day, explaining that our “Christmas Season” starts after Thanksgiving and the response was “Ja, we don’t have that. Christmas starts when it gets cold”.





The train to Quedlinburg was packed with festively bundled shoppers and once I got there, it was easy to follow the crowds from one market to another. All in all there must have been at least twenty individual locations around the historic old town of the Q, each with different sorts of food and crafts made with everything from ceramics to steels. Children were playing violins and recorders, delicious things were cooking on open fires, and there generally festivity all around. Glühwein is the typical drink. It is alcoholic and served warm and has a very distinct smell (negative, in my opinion).


I don't think they planned the roofing situation before building.


Skyline


This is a mannequin sitting in a chair. Kind of weird that it's wearing a poncho, those aren't typically the kinds of things that get displayed on models. This mannequin drew the short straw when they were deciding who wears what.

In my current desire for any sort of topographical variety, I climbed the first huge set of stairs I found up to a church on a little hill in the middle of the city. I paid my four Euros, presumably to continue the reconstruction of the outside (it was covered with scaffolding) and entered the unheated church. It was definitely different. Very plain. There were lots of straight edges, a high flat wooden roof and the stained glass windows were nice but high and small. The cross was an interesting continual angular beam configured to outline a crucifix. Behind the main alter was an elevated area with another altar and doors to the ‘treasure’ rooms with old decorative books and other artifacts. I appreciated the simplicity of the interior design.


Interesting cross.

This is me standing on the elevated portion of the church behind the first alter.




I walked around for a bit more and took the train back. Nice visit.

Political Business Trip

This is a picture of the Brandenburg Gate. It looks real cool at night.

4. December 2008

On Thursday I had a meeting with Herr Jens Ackermann, a representative of the FDP (Free Democratic Party) and a member of the Bundestag, German equivalent to the US Congress. I requested to have the meeting in Berlin to get the full effect of meeting a politician and I showed up at Unter den Linden Straβe 50 looking sharp and cold a bit early after 1.5 hours on the train. The city was hopping. It was definitely Christmas time in Berlin; the lights, shoppers, and tourists packed the streets and there was just a general air of activity that I wasn’t used to. I took a look at the Brandenburg Gate and then checked in at the Bundestag office building. Melanie, from Mr. Ackermann’s office picked me up and we chatted on the walk back to the office and as we waited for the Bundestager (not sure if this is a real word).

Mr. Ackermann had just walked over from the Reichstag (he later pointed it out to me outside and said “That’s where I work.”). We discussed my exchange program a bit, what I’ve done and what I’ll do, and US politics. He was interested (of course) in the last election and how it compared to the previous two. When I told Mr. Ackermann about the internship search, he offered to contact a research and development company he knew in the Magdeburg area. That’s a neat connection to have. As I left I got a business card and they offered to help me out with any difficulties I might encounter while over here. Nice folks.



I then took a bus tour of Berlin. Four years ago, I covered the city with my buddy Erik and I was surprised to see how much of the city we actually saw. I got a lot of history and building information on that tour so I’ll share a bit now: US Embassy is relatively new. The Japanese Embassy looks real cool. The Austrian Embassy is real small. The Russian Embassy is enormous. The Swiss embassy (since 1992) was one of few buildings that didn’t sustain much damage during the war. If you want, you could spend the night in Berlin for 4000Euros. Berlin is Germany’s ‘Greenest City’ because there are millions of trees on the streets. Someday when I play a trivia game and Berlin comes up, I will dominate.

Before I left, I got a coat. Generally not a noteworthy item but it took a long time to find one and it is probably the first piece of clothing I’ve bought for myself that I wouldn’t go hiking in. I will say this coat symbolizes a shift in personal development toward a more mature lifestyle.

Maybe.

Zienken am Rhein

It's been about four months now. Here is a picture of me, just in case you forgot what I look like.

To visit Maschinenbau-Kaltenbach, a heavy (I don’t think I could lift anything they make) engineering firm, I traveled to the small town of Zienken am Rhein. I spent the night in a slightly larger town (with some hotels) called Neuenburg, and I had dinner at a city called Basel. Because my appointment was early Monday morning and I was not aware of public transportation in the area, I decided to rent a car. This gave much more flexibility and allowed me to make it back to a project meeting Monday evening.




This is somewhere between Basel and Neuenburg. Fantastic!

The car was a new Ford C-something with a little turbo diesel engine, 6 speed automatic transmission, and seats that still felt comfortable after 7 hours. To my knowledge, Ford doesn’t sell anything in Germany that it sells in the states and vice-versa. I was surprised at how nice the car was, actually. Nice is naturally a relative term. It was not a fine automobile, but everything worked well and lots of things were well thought out. The GPS system had the standard color display in the center with a map but it displayed a graphical image of the upcoming road geometry with arrows and distances right between the tachometer and speedometer. It was very easy to use, and see and was quite quick at re-calculating. Also displayed between the gauges were fuel consumption rate, average consumption rate, odometers, temperatures, and distance to empty. I averaged around 7L per 100km. The windshield wipers, after using the spray, cycled a few times, paused, and cycled once again. Brilliant! You always need a few seconds for the remaining drips to get within range before zapping them with another wiper cycle. The intermittent cycle had a manual adjustment but the wipers would change speeds often, fwapping fast and slow at weird times. It had winter tires and felt surprisingly solid on the highway in heavy rain/snow/whatever. The car did the job.


This airplane probably travels fastest when it's on a trailer.

I checked into the hotel as the only guest. Breakfast would have been included in the price, but when I told the lady what time I was leaving, she said it wouldn’t work, presumably because she didn’t want to get up that early. Alles klar. I had an apple and she agreed to reduce the bill.


Winter driving conditions. Interesting.

Basel was the dinner destination. Not wanting to pay the Swiss highway taxes for a few kilometers of use, I told the GPS to take me away from toll roads and highways and I ended up darting through alleyways, fields, a bike path, and industrial areas in lightly falling snow. Once in der Schweiz, I contacted my Chief European Currency Advisor back home to get an accurate Swiss Franc conversion rate and then I ate a crepe. Basel was quiet. It was snowing lightly but the snow was kind of wet. I strolled around for a bit until I got cold enough to seek refuge in the nearest US Embassy (Starbucks) for some tea. I met a few American English teachers in the Starbucks and then I followed a different sporadic mysterious path back to the hotel.



This is me becoming cold and wet.

The factory tour and discussion with Maschinenbau-Kaltenbach were quite interesting and went well. Afterwards, I loosened my tie and drove over the river, and up through France on the way back to make it a three country weekend.

Here's a picture of France from a car.

Alfa Gios

This is a picture taken last year at the University of Portland. I saw a friend of mine taking pictures of the night so I stopped driving, ducked, and he captured this image.

Back in college, I enjoyed the late night Alfa Romeo runs. I’d put on a windproof jacket and my leather helmet and goggles, pop in a good CD, and head north through the industrial area. Once the engine warmed up, the radio got turned off, the heater got turned on, and I would cruise lazily in a big loop past factories and warehouses, often not seeing other cars at all. There was something very relaxing about rowing through the gears, hearing only the wind and the exhaust note, and breathing in the super crisp air.

Back in Magdeburg, I enjoyed the late night GIOS runs. I’d put on my synthetic running gear and my plastic helmet, fill my pack with maps and tools, and head north through the rural area. Once I warmed up, I’d stop singing to myself, my legs would be warm, and I would cruise lazily in a big loop past rural areas and through the heart of town, often not seeing other cars at all. There was something very relaxing about shifting up and down the cassette and chain rings, hearing only the wind and my breathing, and enjoying the super crisp air.