Germany, day 15: Berlin, Day 1

After a laundry panic, I managed to pack up all my clothes and everything for our trip to Berlin. Unbeknownst to me, most of the other students had gone to the train station the day before to get their rail passes validated. I had not, so I had to wait in line to get mine stamped, which took much more time than I had expected. Still, we made the train without too much haste.

The way to Berlin was mostly through natural landscapes, whizzing by at around 200 km/h. One major difference that I noticed between Germany and the United States is that Germans are fond of wind power. Indeed, close to Berlin, there is a large number of turbines, all spinning joyously in-sync. It looks a lot better than a fiel of oil derricks, in my opinion.

Once we got to Berlin, we took the local train, a red-and-gold beast whose colors seem to have lost their beauty and majesty, to the zoological gardens, which is on stop past the famed Tierhof. Once we left the station, our professor-guided tour began. The first professor, who taught us statics, had never been to Berlin before, so the dynamics professor, an avid pipe-smoker, led us on a tour to our hotel.

We passed by the memorial church, which had been partially destroyed in World War II. From what the outspoken Berliner there interjected, the church is only a tourist attraction, and it is "not ****ing Berlin." Needless to say, we passed a great many cameras around the church.

After getting to our hotel, we dropped our bags into what rooms were ready and headed off to our first big stop of the day: the Victory Column.

Coincidently, the day before we arrived was Obama's tour of Berlin. I hear that some Germans refer to Obama as the "Black Kennedy", which is indeed a very high honor.

Obama had given a speech at the Column the previous day, which may have contributed to the number of police vehicles on the scene.




We next visited the Brandenburg Gate, which can now be seen from both sides. I figure that, rather than publish all those pictures, I'd give an interesting one: the back of German-print sub-Euro coins have the Gate on the reverse, which can barely be made out in the picture. The area on the East-Berlin side of the gate is very modern, as it was previously desolate from the War and from Soviet clearing.

The Reichstag, now restored, is the seat of the German parliament. It's a very pretty old building with a great number of tourists on the lawn before it.

The glass dome represents transparency, an quality of a government who tries to be open and keep no secrets.







In this picture are three monuments. The Reichstag in the left background, the Brandenburg gate on the right, and the Jewish Holocaust memorial. That's what the stones are. Hundreds and thousands of stones. People play on them, walk on them, and save for the "information center" and a plaque, you'd have no idea that it had any meaning. Germans are not at all proud of the Holocaust or its artifacts, and the vagueness of the memorial was hotly contested in the parliament. The information center is really a museum that adds a personal aspect to the Holocaust, and has its own security check.


For dinner, we went as a group to a restaurant known as the Bavarium. I had cheesy spaetzle dish and a Loewenbraeu Original. I tasted the L. Dark, which I kind of preferred. The dish was good, and was one of the few entries on the vegetarian section. But at least they had such a section!

Eating vegetarian in Germany is hard; the street vendors are often selling bratwurst or some type of meat, and the bakeries tend to be carb-intensive with little protein. There are, of course. exceptions, and I can eat vegetarian well enough when I'm responsible for my own food.

Germany, days 12-14: Before the Berlin Trip

The research for the project went well, but we didn't spend too much time on it, in favor of other homework and not exceeding the time we would have had in class each day. The presentation went pretty well, but we had glossed over a few facts that the professor asked us about, which resulted in a bit of struggling, but it worked out, and I think some of my classmates liked having a chance to nap.

I have discovered that, in the Uni cafeteria, there is a premium on the word "Vegatarisch" (vegetarian). As such, the vegetarian dish costs E-3.10, while the main dishes from the sometimes-vegetarian general food lines tend to cost E-1.00. Also the vegetarian wraps are E-2.00, which is again more expensive than the general plate. To better ensure that I am getting enough protein, I tend to get milk, which runs 0.55 for a 300mL and 0.75 for a 400mL. Compare this to a grocery price of 1.09 for a 1L carton. (Also, both are "Bio" milk, which is apparently the German term for "organic".)

I had a laundry crunch before packing for Berlin, which kept me up very late doing the wash. After leaving the clothes out overnight to dry, they remained a bit damp, so I put them through the drier. This, ironically, seemed to have made them more wet than they were before.

Germany, day 11: Monday, Monday

Yet another rainy day. The forecast told that the weather would warm up this week, which is good.

We got our Engineering tests back, and I aced it! We are still behind in the lecture from the schedule, but I think we may be catching up.

The German teacher determined that the more advanced students would benefit from a research assignment, so rather than study grammar, another student an I are reading travel books about Germany for a presentation on Thursday. This means that we don't need to attend German class until then, which makes the other students a bit jealous.

This rainbow actually turned out well on the camera!

Germany, day 10: Sunday in the Dom

Although I enjoyed the service at the nearest church last week, I must confess that having a non-Catholic service in a cathedral is even better. The Bremer Dom (Bremen Cathedral) is also Evangelische, which is slightly more familiar to me than Catholicism is. From the two I've attended, I can tell that they incorporate music into the service much more than my Catholic high school did, to the point where the musician(s) have a designated time just to play music during the service, while nothing else is going on. This works really well with a 3-5 second reverb and a very good organ player, which was the case in the Dom. It was modestly awesome.

I could pick up that the sermon text was the parable about the 3 servants who were each given silver coins from the master -- where two invested and the last buried. I enjoy the contrast in ages and eras between sound equipment and a cathedral like Bremen's.

I had already finished my homework for the weekend, so I worked on putting Linux onto my flash drive. This ultimately succeeded, so I can now boot Linux on any computer with an Intel-compatible chip in it. And it still has 1.5 gig of storage, down from the 2 gig advertized.

Sundays are strangely sunny, especially after all the rain.

Germany, day 9: Rainy Day, Really

We got bread, but it was accidently left on the burner, where it is prone to being burned, even by accident. I was in the hall, talking, when we smelled burning. My roommate, in the meantime, was in the room, and evidently didn't notice the smell of burning plastic. The bread, once the bits were cut off, was still edible, as it had only burnt to the crust.















Yes, it was raining. It was raining very hard. There was a bit of thunder and lightning, too.















After it stopped raining, this was left. Notice the shiny steeples.

Germany, day 8: Nach Bremerhaven

Today was our first Friday entirely in Germany, which means that today marks one week of our arrival and of our luggage misfortune. I'm doing laundry to celebrate.

As our group would have it, we have classes four days each week, resulting in Fridays off from class and 3-day weekends all around. Spiffy. This weekend was our one weekend without plans, so we asked the Uni-Bremen engineers for advice for a day trip. Of the options presented us, we decided to go to Bremerhaven, Bremen's seaport-town.

We took a train from Bremen's main station, a mere 10-minute ride on any of the trams heading north from our housing. The train ride was super-smooth, and took only half an hour; it was an express train, so it made only one other stop. Best of all: it's free for Uni-Bremen students.
(Pictured: Our group on the train, right before it left Bremen.)


We didn't have a very clear plan for our activities in Bremerhaven, so we had some down time to grab a bite to eat and chill. Should you find yoursulf in Bremerhaven, or indeed anywhere in Germany, stop by the bakeries. You can get a cheap sandwich or baked good that is very fresh. I had no problems with getting veggie-friendly sadwiches or wraps. Just expect tomatoes on the sandwich.

I noticed this statue as we walked along, so I decided to interact with it. Everybody stopped to take pictures of me and the statue, but I made sure that my camera caught some, too.



As I said, we didn't have definite plans, so we split up to visit the recommended sites. I went with a group to the Deutsches Schiffahrtsmuseum, pictured as seen from one of its ships. (German Maritime museum)

They had a lot of cool models, artifacts, and data, and the museum is in the process of rebuilding the Hansekogge, a ship from 1380 that was found in the Weser river. (Sorry, pictures were forbidden!)


We took a tour ride around the harbor, but it was all in German. I caught snippets, though, which seemed to be a lot more than anyone else in our group. It was raining for a good part of the ride, which means most of my pictures are hard to make out.

(Pictured: The captain, still talking away in German, but showing of a bit.)


The train ride home went well, after we found seats, which was a long process. I really enjoyed the trip, except for the crummy weather.

We re-stocked on bread and bananas, which will make tomorrow easier, so I can focus on homework. I had a container of cherry Quark with chocolate sprinkles. It was really good -- it was like yogurt, but focused more on the fruit flavor than overall sweetness.

All in all, I think today went really well and I enjoyed it a lot. I have become the unofficial translator for our group, which is sometimes a bit annoying because the professor, who tries to organize our group activities, speaks no German, and I don't have the extent of vocabulary that I think I need to effectively translate. Ah well, time to learn.

Bonus picture: The view from our window at night. (My camera doesn't do well in low light, so I apologize if it looks bad.)

Germany, day 7: The Banquet

Ah, another rainy day in Bremen. The rain was not strong at all, but it was noticeable. We missed our desired tram, so we had to wait for 10 minutes or so for the next one.

The test went well -- we were allowed an hour and a half to do it, and I took roughly half that time. I checked my answers and conventions, of course, but while I waited for others to finish, I went upstairs to the break room, where there was a buffet set up in celebration of a baby born to one of the staff. The food was good, and kept me full until lunch.

The curious sleepiness I find in the lecture hall is unique to the engineering lecture; I was not at all sleepy while taking the test, nor I am tired during the German class. Me had a lecture after the test, so that we would be caught up (or at least less behind) to the schedule.

Lunch was good, but expensive. The main vegetarian plate alone was 3.10 Euro, more than I had spent for the total lunch the day before. I think vegetarian food might be more expensive in general, but I know not why.

In the evening, at 5, the engineering program of the building threw a banquet for all its guests, Calvin students included. The food was good, and I gave in to a wurst again. I had a Paulaner Hefeweissbier with the meal, which I enjoyed more as the night went on.
During the banquet, one of the German engineers, who looked to be in her mid-twenties, approached my the group of Calvin students with whom I was sitting, and asked us about America, what we thought about Germany, etc. We later moved on to discuss stereotypes of Americans and Germans, some of which turned out to be right -- Germans have much more accurate ideas of Americans than vice versa.
We also talked about learning our respective languages, which turned out to be very interesting. We started comparing the two sounds of the German "ch", which I likened to English's two "th" sounds; neither she nor several of the Calvin students knew that a difference existed! She thinks that I speak German well, which I find reassuring.

Tomorrow we are headed for Bremerhaven, the port city of Bremen. I have been asked to speak entirely in a piratey tone, but I don't know how this might carry over into German.

Germany, day 6: Rain in Bremen

(There is a faint rainbow over the cathedral -- it faded quickly, sorry!)


Today started like most days here in Bremen: with a shower, breakfast, and a tram ride. The hot water heater is more cooperative -- perhaps it's warming up to me? Breakfast was cereal and a banana, as it has been. I rediscovered that not doing pushups for a while decreases the amount that can be done.

This morning was raining, but that didn't bother me much. I have waterproof skin, and my backpack has its own covering. Part of our group (the part with both me and the professor) got left for a later tram to the university. The next one came only ten minutes later, so it made little difference.

I think that the lecture hall has some sort of Avery sedative, since I always get tired in it, seemingly regardless of sleep. We have a test tomorrow, so I hope I don't tire similarly.

Lunch at the university is consistently good, and rather cheap. Compare the mediocrity of Calvin's dining (at a minimum of $5/meal) to the excellent dining at Uni-Bremen, where I tend to run up a 3-Euro charge. The service is very fast.

We got a book for the German class today. It is "Schritte", a green paperback in the neighborhood of 160 pages. It includes a CD, and has full-color pictures. The book's price: 12.50 Euro. Why can't our books be so cheap?

We noticed that the water level of the river rose substantially between our departure and return to and from the University. I don't often spend a lot of time by the window, but I saw a boat of four rowers, and another very thin boat with one person, who looked to be getting quite a workout from rowing. Interestingly, the person was wearing shorts -- a very uncommon sight outside of our group.

Germany, day 5: More school

I tried out my new cereal this morning. It reminds me of the oatmeal squares back home. They taste somewhat similar, but these seem more healthy, or at least grainy. I liked them! I also enjoy fresh fruit.

The novelty of the lecture hall is wearing off, but it is still neat.

We discovered that Germans and Americans have different rooms in their houses, which is likely a cultural difference as well, as our descriptions to our German prof seemed to confuse her. She was interested in where American college students stayed (dorms, apartments, etc.) She can't imagine sharing rooms with someone outside her family, which is a staple of the American dorm experience. Huh.

Germany, day 4: Back to School

This morning, during breakfast, we finished off the Muesli. It was pretty good.

Today, Monday, was our first day of classes in Bremen. Our room is pretty awesome. The window blinds are on the outside, but are controlled from inside the classroom. There is wireless, but althogh it has no encryption, it has a MAC address filter, so we can't connect. There are two whiteboards that slide vertically and independently, which is neat.

The Mensa, or dining hall, is nice. It is bigger than Calvin's, and most stations are attended. Unlike at Calvin, one must pay by what one eats; it is not an entrance-fee buffet. I picked up a University of Bremen T-Shirt, which I believe I shall enjoy.

We met our German teacher, who is a few years older than we are, and who is in her last year of studies at the University. Her English is pretty good, and she speaks German slowly for our comprehension. I know that the course is designed for people with less German than I know, so it should be easy enough that I can request additional work.

She also gave us a tour of the University and talked about the things that the last Engineering professors did by way of overworking the students. Her main point was that if we want a cultural experience, we should not be restrained to our homework. I agree.

The group dinner was brats, beans, and burgers, and I broke my vegetarianism for a German brat. It was good, but I suppose it wasn't authentically German, as it wasn't prepared by a German-trained chef.

Germany, day 3: The First Sunday in Bremen

Ow. The sun is bright in the morning, and it woke me at 6. I got up and closed the curtains, which helped considerably. I then returned to my sleep until 8.

The shower is rather confusing. At first look, it seems very like an ordinary one, save that the shower head can be hand-held or slid up and down a pole for adjusting the height. unfortunately, there seems to be insufficient friction on the pole, so the head will slide back down like one of the woodpecker toys one of my brothers has. Then there's the hot water. As far as we can tell, there is no reservoir of hot water, but it is heated directly by a machine with complicated instructions that nobody understands. The machine is not very cooperative, and it will shut off at its own discretion, leaving the user rather cold until turning off the water. (Bremen's tap water is impressively cold.) As such, we have taken to very short showers and soaping or shampooing after the hot water has left us, which may be all too soon.

We went to church as a group, attending the St. Martin's church service at 10. It promoted itself as an Evengelistic church, and it though the English brochure promotes itself as Reformed, I do believe it means "Protestant", rather than the tradition I know as Reformed. I have kept the handout containing the sermon passage and bearing the title "Gottesdienst St. Martini am 8. nach Trinitatis 2008". Yes, St. Martini. We received a special welcome as the travel group from the US, but of course, everything was in German. I understood most of the service, and I discovered the I know neither the Apostle's Creed nor the Lord's Prayer in German. This shall be remedied. Also, the church is one of the three churches readily visible from our room window, as it is literally right across the river from us. It has what I now recognize as a typical architechture and layout for a church, and its organ was duly impressive. Their hymns typically alternated between verses of organ accompaniment and brass accompaniment, which entailed trumpets, trombones, and baritones. I certainly enjoyed it, but I have the feeling that my companions would rather investigate rumors of an English service at a Baptist church, whose location is yet unknown.

As promised us yesterday, we went out for the group dinner tonight. I got Schollenfilet mit Kartoffelsalat. It was very good, and I had a Feldmann's Dunkel (dark), the house brew, to accompany it. I enjoyed the Feldmann's, and the dish was delicious. I had to act as a translator between my companions and the waitress. She complemented my on my German, which makes me very happy. After the meal, she asked me if America had restaurants or if everything was fast food. I replied with something like, "although we unfortunately have fast food, we also have restaurants", which we then clarified to include Italian food, etc. Yeah. So, if you are in Bremen, I can recommend Feldmann's.

Germany, day 2: The Internet Cometh

Yes, it's a sad day indeed when the highlight is that I have Internet, but such is the case. As it turns out, the network had a hidden SSID, though I knew from the informational binder in our room. The WEP key was on a bulletin board somewhere downstairs, which the professor found, and now there is Internet. Yay!

We went shopping in the mall today, mostly to get food from the grocery store downstairs. I discovered that a large Ritter Sport cost a bit over 2 Euro, and bought it. (I had not originally intended to buy anything.)

This evening we were going to have a group dinner, but we could not find a restaurant to seat 17 (13 students, the professor, his wife, and his two boys). Therefore, we split into groups, resolving to have our group meal on Sunday night. My group of 5 went to a Pizza Pazza, an Italian pizza and pasta place that advertized itself as serving the pizza with a hole. Indeed, there was such a hole in the middle of the pizza, and it was good. I had a vegetarian pizza and Beck's from tap, which reminded me somewhat of Vegemite.

While walking about in Bremen, we would chance upon what seemed to be bachelor and bachelorette parties, no doubt related. They were very noisy and may be the source of a great many bottle caps on the stairs of the foot bridge.

Germany, Day 1: Of Airports and Engineering Trips

(My college engineering department organizes a trip to Bremen, Germany that brings along its own prof's for Statics and Dynamics, and gets a U. of Bremen prof for a German Language and Culture course.)

Oh, the troubles of flying! As planned, we left the local airport for Detroit, from which we would fly to Amsterdam and then on to Bremen. The first flight went well, but the second flight most certainly did not. The small airport had free Wi-Fi, which I used to set up this blog. The Detroit airport has not-so-free wireless, which was rather upsetting.

The flight out of Detroit was in a completely-full 747. That's a lot of people, especially when your plane isn't working. After everyone had gotten on, the usual announcements, instructions, and such went on, until the command, "Flight Attendants, arm doors for take-off and cross-check." As it turns out, one of the doors wasn't closing properly, which meant that we had to stay around for another half-hour or 45 minutes. Once the door was fixed, we taxied back and warmed up the engines, only to find that the far-left engine wasn't starting! We taxied back to the gate, where the plane would be fixed, and had to wait another hour or so. Great. Also, passengers can't stand up until the plane is either at the gate or flying. Like we were going anywhere dangerous. So, at this point, we're two hours late for take-off, which put our connection time to the Bremen flight into the nearly-impossible range. The pilot tells us that the flight will go faster than advertized, which means that we might have a shot at the connection. He then proceeds to go through the worse take-off I've ever had.

Fast forward one boring flight to our arrival in Amsterdam. We got off the plane, and I'm told that my appearance was something akin to a Google cowboy, given my hat, shirt, and what the people were saying in Dutch, by my prof's interpretation. Ah well. Now, the Amsterdam Schipol airport has very few monitors, which means it took us a while to figure out that we had to go from the E terming to the B terminal in half an hour. No, that might not be hard enough -- let's add customs and another security check for the sanity of the EU. Woohoo. Murphy's law: our last member had to go through the full pat-down, so we had to have someone hang behind to collect and direct him. We made it to the bus that brought us to the spot on the tarmac where our tiny Fokker-50 (turboprop) city-hopper plane awaited. It was rather empty, and maybe even quieter than the jet.

We landed in Bremen, only to find that our luggage hadn't made it. Great. All of our stuff for showers, plug adapting, etc, were in the checked bags! Fortunately, we had enough money-changing and grocery-shopping to occupy us. We had supper at 5-ish local time: spaghetti, bread, and salad. And it was delicious! The bread here is very good, but the exchange rate sucks. The prices, generally, are numerically similar to in the US, but the dollar is weak. I traded $500 from my trip fund into E-303 after E-1.50 conversion fee. (Sorry, Blogger isn't being symbol-happy.) I now have E-15 worth of provisions, which might last a while. After dinner, we started watching a movie, during which our luggage came! Ah, what a relief it was to have clothes, shampoo, etc. again! My camera, through some lapse of judgement, was in my luggage, so pictures from Day 1 are very few.

But there was no Internet for us.

Prelude

These are the Chronicles of Avery: an assembly of the adventures, tales, and legends of Avery.

For those who do not know Avery, these may seem not much more than stories. These chronicles are not intended to be an Introduction to Avery, as he believes that you would know him much better if you actually met him and got to know him yourself. So, sit back, relax, and don't worry --- and welcome!

For those who do know Avery, welcome to his blog. Sorry if it doesn't cover your favorite stories of Avery's past, but he hopes you'll enjoy these Chronicles, or at least find them useful in keeping track of him and his adventures -- and welcome back!

So, without further ado, the Chronicles of Avery.