The Prophet

Cannondale Prophet

After many hours online with reviews, Ebay, Quoka, and Kalaydo, I have finally purchased a mountain bike. The streets in Magdeburg have more cobblestones, light rail tracks, abrupt lips, and are generally more hazardous for the small wheels and tires of a road bike. This practical concern, simply missing mountain biking, and the mountain biking club/class at the University inspired the decision and so far I’m glad. It is a Cannondale Prophet with about 135mm travel front and rear, big brakes, strong wheels, and lots of red. The suspension, specifically the rear, allows for a very stable, planted feel that makes climbing easier and cornering more stable than a hardtail. I look forward to many kilometers of Freude am Fahren (BMW’s current slogan here “pleasure in driving”). I picked it up in Berlin.

Berlin, by the way, looks a lot different from when I was there last, about 4.5 years ago. I think several new buildings have gone up, the Jewish memorial is completed and open, and it seemed like there were a lot more people there. I rode around to the Reichstag, Potsdamer Platz, and the area for a bit before I took the train back to Magdeburg.

Magdeburg

Magdeburg

I have been in Magdeburg for two weeks now and I haven’t sat down to write about it at all. Although the 1200 year old city is small (230.000 people), my time has been more or less thoroughly occupied. The city has a couple of larger more busy areas connected with a Strassenbahn and for me, line 10 is the backbone of the city. I can ride from my stop to the University in 17 minutes and there are also four bike shops within a stones throw from this main line. The city lies on the Elbe river; the west side contains the buildings and the near east side is mostly a large park for walking, and biking and such.


The town, though small, isn’t quite quaint. Unlike many towns its size, Magdeburg doesn’t have a picturesque old town because it was destroyed. There are still the wide walkways and pedestrian zones, open markets, and an old church (oldest Gothic style cathedral in Germany).

I’ve spent a significant time figuring out the University. Office hours in this country are not those us US Americans are used to. Banks don’t open until 9am, everyone takes a lunch break, and most peoples’ evenings begin a bit earlier than ours. Wednesdays are out of the question. Professors generally follow the closed door policy but the ones I have been able to catch have been extremely helpful and welcoming.


I’ve assembled a general picture of the University class system and I think it’s quite simple. Here’s how I think it works: degrees are awarded upon completion of all of the necessary exams. The courses are intended to educate the students and prepare them for the exams. If you know the material you don’t necessarily need to go the lecture. This optional lecture-ness then means that you don’t register for the lecture, you just register for the test. To take advantage of this situation, I’ve picked a ton of classes and I’m going to visit as many as possible in the first week to determine which would be best. Once I pick them, I’ll tell the professor and that’s that. Simple!


Julia, 5.

Of the people I’ve met, a number have been impressed that I, either as a US American or engineer, speak German. This is good. If you listen carefully, you can hear the small preconceptions and stereotypes breaking….
Here is a picture of a bridge to the park.

Somewhere Near the Czech Border

This picture was taken on the hill above the village. Notice there is no shadow of the camera. I thought that was clever.

Bielatal Weekend
5.October.2008

The weekend began Friday morning wedged between two child seats and two children in the back of a 1994 VW Golf diesel. The 5 and 6 year old girls proclaimed “Henry ist mein Kopfkissen” (Henry is my pillow) over and over and then sang more German childrens’ songs than I knew existed. For the relatively short distance, it was a very long trip but once we arrived in Bielatal, a small village within sight of the Czech republic, the weekend became more relaxing. Bielatal is a small town of about 1000 inhabitants. Aside from those who buy summer or weekend houses in the area, everyone that lives there has lived there their entire life, as have their parents, grandparents and so forth. The village, like many others in Germany, is essentially dying; the children are moving away to pursue careers because there is essentially no way to make a living in these areas anymore. Great place to visit though. It’s called the Sächsiche Schweiz. To me, that sound a lot like Sexy Switzerland, but it means something else.

This is a picture of the town.

The grandparents live in a 204 year old former farm house. The first floor has obviously had the electricity added after the walls were built and the metal rings used to retain the pigs and cows are still on the walls. Changes, however, have been made since 1805 and the two story house has a bit of character. Each of the many small rooms has its own wood burning heater/stove and that’s a good thing because it was real cold the entire time. It is the German way to keep all doors in a house closed and they generally have more of them. Where we would have a hallway, they have doors. Spending a few days in the cold house really emphasized the heat-saving origins of this somewhat annoying practice.


This is the house across the street.

The Grandfather had just taken on the ambitious project of rebuilding the entire front wall of the house. Despite his grandfatherly age, he decided he had to do it himself because contractors and professional builders aren’t precise enough. There’s a chance the last Americans he saw in the area were those flying by and dropping bombs but he was enthusiastic about explaining what life was like during and after WWII in East Germany. It wasn’t good. They had to get on lists to buy pretty much everything from building materials to food. A lot of the resources went over to the west or Russia. They used to say the pork was exported and only the poo remained. Somehow we got on the topic of oral hygiene at breakfast and he explained his theory to the table. Pull out every other tooth, healthy or not. That way, it’s much easier to clean between them. Hilarious.




We hiked in the morning on one of the little mountains in the area. If you could represent anesthesia graphically in a three dimensional sort of way, the landscape would be localized anesthesia. It is mostly flat with mild rolling hills but every once in a while, there’s an abrupt plateau. When it’s foggy in the morning, it looks like it’s hovering above the earth. It was a nice hike with unique scenery, fresh air, and a local history lesson from Herr Seifert. I also learned that kids have inner emotion dice that they roll unconsciously every 30 seconds. One means angry and tired. Six means happy and full of energy. This thirty second rule, however, does not apply if there are things (rocks, trees, exchange students) to climb on. Then they stay at six for a while.





We took an old metal and wood carriage powered by a horse back to the house.

The small town was celebrating the Erntedank fest, a Harvest festival at the big farm house. The Grandmother Seifert was spinning yarn, folks were grilling bratwursts, and selling cookies, bread, artsy stuff. All of the kids were going crazy over tractor rides. It definitely had the small town atmosphere. It was a very unique experience!

This is a picture of me, gazing contemplatively at the horizon.
Take care,
-H

That's not cigarette smoke!

If you look closely, I am in the picture.
Amsterdam
27.Sep.08

That’s not cigarette smoke!
That dam city in the Netherlands.

I woke up at 5:15am and it was dark. The darkness kind of reminded me what I normally see at that time of morning: the inside of my eyelids. The only people up and about this fine Saturday morning were those preparing their bakeries for the morning rush. Fortunately, the rental car company did not have the itty bitty car I requested so I got a new two-door six-speed diesel Opel Astra. It was transportation but nothing I’d buy. It had a power band like a toothpick: narrow and only useful for a short bit of time. There was nothing under 3000rpm and then the power kicked in very abruptly. Running through first gear just took a moment but in that short time it was like a roller coaster of automotive emotions. “Where’s the power? Is it really this wea..WOAH, where did that come fro—Oh, it’s gone.” It lost power about 1000 below redline at 5000rpm. If I blipped the throttle while shifting, the revs would stay high enough to not bog down in the next gear. I did discover a “Sport” button and that actually helped but not enough. For what it was, it felt quite big and the A-pillars seemed large and the rear visibility was lousy but I may be spoiled in the visibility department by my experience with older cars. But a car’s a car and after not driving for about two months, I was glad to be behind the wheel and bombing (safely) down the autobahn.




It took about four hours to get there, a bit longer than anticipated. There was construction on one of the main highways so I meandered my way through the countryside and about a billion traffic circles with the help of the GPS. Amsterdam is NOT a driving city. As soon as I got there, I wished I could ditch the car in the nearest canal and walk. The streets are narrow, nothing with two wheels follows traffic rules, there are one way streets, and no organized street grid. I got lost for a while, finally found a parking lot by a zoo outside of the center of the city, and traded my cross-trainers in for the casually comfortable leather shoes in an attempt to mask my true identity (tourist).


This is a picture of a bunch of fish for sale. Fresh, this is the closest I've been to salt water in 2 months.

Amsterdam is the fourth most visited city in Europe. At first I was surprised because I didn’t see any tourists. I walked through an open air market featuring clothing and I heard only Dutch. Dutch, by the way, is weird. It sounds remarkably like German but sillier, with more ‘J’s and “oo”s. Before too long, however, I found them: the tourists.

My first stop was the Rijksmuseum, featuring Dutch art and a lot of Rembrandt. It was good stuff but very crowded. Aside from a rather large American, who’s waistline and voice were only surpassed in magnitude by his ego and immaturity, it was a pleasing experience. I got to see several works from Rembrandt that I had studied earlier in my art history classes.

I then visited the Van Gogh Museum, just across the plaza. This was also a fine museum; it featured works from Van Gogh’s entire career. He was only an artist for the last ten of his thirty-eight years and with the guidance from the descriptions, one can easily follow his progression and development.


Getting tired of the museum shuffle, I turned on the speed and power-walked many kilometers through town. The canal system is quite interesting. It reminded me a bit of Venice, but with bikes, cars, and light rail. I found a central city park full of Dutch folk enjoying the beautiful day and joined them on a vacant bench overlooking a pond and grassy inner-city field. I trekked further north to the main train station, constructed on a man-made island in the bay. This was the business side of the city and it was definitely be considered bustling.

I took a boat tour of the canals and it was interesting for several reasons. Firstly, the tour was conducted in Dutch, German, French, Italian, Spanish, and English in that order. I was amazed at how similar Dutch was to German. I could actually understand more or less what they were saying! Secondly, they had interesting stuff to say. For example, because the houses, doors, and staircases are so skinny, they have to move stuff through the window.


The Red Light District

I grabbed some delicious Chinese food and started following my GPS back to the Opel. On the way, I stumbled across the infamous Red Light District. This area consisted of a row of buildings separated by wide walkways and a canal and a few blocks of cross streets. Every few buildings there were several glass doors or windows with girls illuminated by the red lights. They wore almost nothing but they seemed pretty happy about it. Groups of people, often bachelor parties, walked through looking for where they could see the best show or the best girl or what not. It was like grocery shopping meets pornography. Quite interesting. I walked past an English tour guide explaining the happenings to a small group and it was hilarious. Maybe it was how proper he sounded with the accent but the whole scene just didn’t fit, in a comical way. The whole setting was something totally different.

I skated back to the car in record time to beat the parking meter. A pack of gummy somethings, a huge KitKat, a Red Bull, and great Dutch and Deutsch music kept me going until I arrived back in Köln a bit before 3am the next morning. Good trip. I’ll have to go back some time.

Riots and Zons

20.Sep.08
Zonz Bike ride and Nazis

Köln is traditionally a very tolerant city and it follows that there is a relatively large multicultural population. To cater to the large Islamic group, a big Mosque will be built within the year. Unfortunately, there are those in Germany and Europe that see things a bit differently than you and I. This weekend there was a “congress” (not political, in the English colloquial definition) or meeting of the radical right folks with a group called “Pro Köln”. Though the name has a positive sentiment and their public message is one of German cultural preservation, this city and cultural pride is manifested more often through discrimination of everyone that is not “German”. These are the Nazis. People came from all over Europe to demonstrate and meet to discuss what is to be done about a “problem” they called the (rough translation) “Islam-ization of Germany”. As I understand it, they are convinced Muslims are trying to turn Germans toward Islam in some sort of soft revolution.


So there were demonstrations and counterdemonstrations planned, 3000 police officers came to town with riot gear and “we-mean-business” attitudes and although there were squabbles, it was almost a non-event. Hotels were ‘full’, taxi drivers ‘didn’t have room’, and bars around town posted signs that said “Kein Kölsch für Nazis” (No beer for Nazis). I heard the main demonstration had only 50 neo-Nazi radicals because the rest of the group was late and the police wouldn’t let them in. In the picture above, you can see a line of white helmets and green uniforms.

Wanting to check out the action on my way to Zons, I biked to a crowded place and took a few pictures. It felt like what I imagine the revolutionary ‘60s was like. Rows of police with helmets and body armor, oddly dressed youth running around and yelling, parents clutching their children, ect. An old guy on a racing bike stopped next to me and we chatted for a minute about the situation and the area started to get a bit rowdy. He yelled “Folgen Sie mir!” and we blasted away through crowds, down alleys, past police lines, and eventually came out on the other side of the demonstration. Exciting! He was an interesting fellow and we biked for half an hour or so together. He spoke quickly in short bursts and yelled at cars when they came too close. He was a racer in is youth and has ridden all over Europe.


My keen sense of Party led me to Zons, a small town which happened to be celebrating something with lots of food, kid activities, and arts booths in the old town. I clanked up and down the cobblestones with my cycle shoes, visited an old windmill, and at the end of the city, I ran into the old guy again. We ended up grabbing espresso and a sandwich at a café and discussing politics and Lance Armstrong’s return.


In German, as with Spanish and probably other languages, there is a formal and an informal way of talking about people. Germans have Sie (formal) and du and Spanish uses Usted and tu. Sie is used when talking to people older than yourself or people you don’t know du more between friends. We were speaking with Sie for mostly the entire time but when were almost back in Köln, he said in German “Use the du form. We are both athletes, yes?” That was a nice moment of acceptance for me.

The Bratwurst Dilemma

This is a picture of statue of a skeleton having a great time.

The Bratwurst Dilemma

Germany is regarded as a country of precision. The trains are precisely on time and time is precisely kept on intricate time pieces tucked neatly behind pressed cuffs. The country made the BMW e28 M5, and the Porsche 911, and the people follow the exact instructions of “walk-don’t walk” signs. Juice containers have a square base so they fit better in square refrigerators, and the parking spaces are no bigger than the cars that use them. One would think that a country that prides itself on precision could have devoted a bit more attention to their lunch: the bratwurst.

I enjoy the delicious sausage but honestly, it is a square peg in a round hole situation; it just doesn’t fit. If a couple of engineers from Mercedes diverted their attention away from their intricate power convertible hardtops for just a few minutes, I’m confident they could design a better fitting bread to go with the wurst.



Notice that First Bite A yielded only bread. Dimensions B and C are far too large.

Perhaps the misfit comes not from a lack of consideration but a love of the Brotchen. If there was a German nutrition pyramid with only bread, the Brotchen would be the wide base. People buy them in bulk at the bakeries and the stores almost always have signs in front that say how reasonably priced their Brotchens are. It’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Bad fitting but well loved bread is indeed a terrible socio-culinary problem but fear not dear friends, for I have the answer. Smaller bratwursts. That’s right, small enough so they fit within the beloved Brotchen. By creating bratwursts that are a few inches shorter (minimize Dimensions B and C), the awkward disproportionate problem would be remedied and who knows, reduced bratwurst consumption may even increase the average life expectancy. Happy eats!

-H

Cycle Poem

This is a poem I wrote. I'll call it "I need to retire", unless I can think of a better name. But that one's pretty good. This poem was designed to be read at a leisurely pace with barely noticeable contemplative pauses. Enjoy.

I need to retire
By Henry

I was riding out one lovely day,
Well, “lovely” in my sort of way,
With clouds above and trail below
And grass, in dire need of mow.

I flicked my wrist to switch my gears,
And let the sounds waft through my ears.
Sounds of chain and swapping cogs,
Of open fields, and barking dogs.

Metric distance flew right past,
For I was traveling very fast.
I soon had left the main Cologne.
Riding south, all alone.

Mesmerized by sounds and sights,
Flashing tree shadows and cloudy whites,
I suddenly felt slower than before,
And decided I should not ride anymore.

I quickly stopped to check the scene,
And, on the survey of my machine
I found that I was missing air,
My holey tire needed repair.

Now I had tools for loose and tight,
For fixing things that don’t look right.
For long and short, high and low,
Everything to help me go.

I had the air and had the skill,
I had a spot to sit and chill.
But sadly I had yet to acquire,
The thing I needed most: a tire.

I promptly made a mental note,
And then one more, to bring a coat,
For rain was falling from the sky,
I started walking and gave a sigh.

How many miles I don’t recall,
And I’d rather not discuss it all.
‘Cause it was long and I was tired.
Without the piece that was required.

A stop at the shop and a card swipe later,
A few more minutes with the inflator,
And new tires rolled ‘round once more.
I grabbed my gear and I was out the door.

I cruised the city and it was dark
Over the bridge and through the park.
I checked my pressure at the Dom.
Good. I made my way back home.