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.