May first was a holiday (May day or Labor day) in Germany so the first weekend of May was a long weekend. In some cities like Berlin, May day was celebrated with riots and protests. I decided NOT to celebrate in this manner and decided to spend the weekend traveling.

On Friday, my housemate Johannes and I used our semester tickets to travel to Stadtallendorf, a small town just north of Marburg. Before World War 2, this collection of towns was a major manufacturing hub for middle germany. During the war, the Germans needed a munitions factory. Instead of building large factory buildings which would be prime targets for bombing, the Germans built tiny buildings in a forest. Then instead of relying on darkness to to disguise the buildings, they planted a forest on top of the buildings. When allied bombers flew over the town, all they saw was a large forest. The allies knew that a large munitions factory existed in Hesse, but they could never find it! The factories were hidden so well that they were never discovered during the war. Rumour had it that the buildings still existed, so we took off to explore.

Stadtallendorf itself is a tired little town just 15 minutes train ride north of Marburg. The town today is little more than a train station and a small pedestrian zone. (they only have one ice cream shop!) However, soon after leaving the train station, we found a map showing a small military base and then a box with TNT on it. We had no better idea so we just headed on to the forest. After a few wrong turns, we ended up at some military barracks and a sign saying basically, "don't trepass" with very bold lettering. Being the non-obedient people that we are, we of course we trespassed.



Soon after walking into the forest, we found exactly what we came looking for, a building covered in trees. Johannes attempted the scale the fence but we decided it was better to set off in search of other buildings.


We made our way deeper into a forest and started noticing large hills with trees growing on them. Only later did we realize that these lumps were in fact the buildings we so desired to find!

Can you see the building in the photo above? This photo was taken in broad daylight, from the path just 20 meters away from the building. Now imagine trying to locate these buildings at night or under cloud cover, No wonder these buildings were never found!

Nearly all the munitions equipment had been removed during extensive clean up operations 20 years ago, but we still found evidence of what life would have been like at the factory. Apparently some workers actually lived at factory as you can see the wallpaper in this particular building.


In one building we even found a cot, although its likely that the cot arrived after the factory had closed.


We also came across the recreation area, complete with beer garden and tennis courts. The beer sign still hung on the outside of the building, although you can't see it very well in this photo.


We came across lots of these old buildings, many of which had been turned into trash heaps over the last 60 years. One person's trash heap becomes another person's treasure.


We spent over 3 hours exploring these buildings and experiencing a part of German history well known to the world, but of which little evidence remains. In general, most Germans don't want to talk about the war. Frankly, I don't blame them. Its a huge blemish on a rather fascinating country. The country is filled with wonderful towns and a truly remarkable history, but most people tend to focus on the relics from the war. The relics are fascinating and very much intriguing, but Germany is just much more than that. Stay tuned for the next part of this weekend, a birthday in Heidelberg and a visit to Stuttgart.

In the meantime, here is a link to the photos from this trip. I highly suggest you take a look as the buildings are incredible.

Stadtallendorf Munitions Factory

Wetzlar, Goethe once hated this town

Back in late April (easter weekend to be exact), my friend Johannes and I decided to make the best of our semester tickets and travel to obscure places in Hessen (that's the region of Germany I live in). The list of cities to visit started out rather small. Hessen is not exactly known for its tourist sites. The city of Frankfurt merits only 10 pages in my lonely planet guidebook while Berlin merits close to 60 pages. Marburg gets 1 page. Thus we didn't really know where to go. One of the other Fulbrights in Marburg(link) mentioned a town with free night vision goggles. The idea sounded interesting so the Saturday before Easter, Johannes and I piled onto a train and headed to Wetzlar.

The town of Wetzlar is little over 1 hour from Marburg by train. After transferring in Giessen (a town much larger than Marburg that does not merit a single mention in my guidebook) we arrived in a rather sad looking town. This trip did not seem promising at first as we stepped off the train into a American style indoor mall, complete with German interpretations of the easter story (hope to find the pictures soon). However, we soon found signs directly us to the old town, so we took off across an old bridge and ended up in the Altstadt of typical German fachwerk houses.

We traveled up into the hill to find the Wetzlar Dom/Kirche. A catholic and a protestant church in one. The mismatch of services corresponded quite well to the mismatched architectural styles of the building. In the photo below you see styles reminiscent of the middle ages, gothic, and romanesque.

Interestingly, unlike many churches in Germany, this one was not bombed in World War II, it just grew to look like this. The effect was not quite ugly but not quite beautiful either. I would call it interesting.

After exploring the innards of the church (pretty boring so no photos), J and I headed back into the fachwerk houses of the Altstadt. One house in particular carried a plaque that merited further investigation.

Goethe once lived here. We decided to commemorate this occasion by enjoying a beer, which led me to try this interesting Magic drink

The drink may not have been magic, but carried enough sustenance in it to keep me going for another few hours. Its the difference between American and German attitudes towards beer. Americans view beer as a way to get drunk, but Germans view it as a way to refresh the body with vital nutrients and minerals. The german beers are generally much darker than their American counterparts and thus provide you with the stamina to continue a hike.

After refreshments, we headed out to explore more of the city and came across this tower on the edge of town.


A sign on the tower said that it used to be a guard tower. Now its attached to a rather modern apartment complex. The other side of the tower is a lovely park, which was just starting to bloom.


As we walked through town, we saw lots of pieces of old town fortifications and even a few more fachwerk houses, but our goal was some castle ruins on top of a hill overlooking the city. After a few wrong turns and detour through an old factory, we finally stormed the castle.



I have found that castle ruins are much cooler to explore than fully restored castles so J and I spent about an hour just walking through the former courtyards and guard rooms. The largest remaining part of the castle was the guard tower, which even had a staircase for us to climb.


Once reaching the top, we saw this lovely view of south Hessen.

You can see the Wetzlar kirche/Dom in the middle of the photo. We then decided to head back into town to find some food. We hit the jackpot when we discovered a newly opened beer garden in the middle of town selling fresh wurst and ebelwoi. Now before people start calling me a drunkard, you have to understand that German beer gardens are places for family, not for getting drunk. People gather around large tables and reminisce while the kids play around the table. The gardens are typically surrounded by plants (hence the garden) and are great places to just relax and chat. This particular garden was located on the banks of the river Lahn (the same one that flows through Marburg) and featured a great view of the 500 year old Wetzlar bridge.


We enjoyed a bit of wurst and brotchen while probsting to the recently minted PhD friend of mine in the US. (Here's to you Bryce!)


We still had about 45 minutes to kill before the next fast train to Marburg, so we enjoyed a bit of the musical water fountain before heading back into town. (listen very carefully and see if you can figure out the song...here's a hint...Jingle bells, jingle bells....)



We eventually found the famous "night vision goggles" which proved to be quite useless in the daylight. We also found many other interesting novelties such as a spinning tunnel that was supposed to distort your mind and a series of giant bubbles that you were supposed to shine lights on. My friend J realized that the town was home to a major German optics manufacturer. The company apparently donated all the weird optical equipment.

We caught the train and headed back into town. I can now say that I have been to a random German city and explored the games of the local employer. In reference to the title of this entry. Goethe, the German writer, once lived here but hated it, not exactly the best selling point for a city.

Hopefully I will find more time to write about the other random cities that J and I visited, including a WW2 munitions factory town (big highlight for me).

Until then, here's the link for the complete photo album of Wetzlar.

Wetzlar

Dritte Platz

Tuesday was a highlight of my time in Marburg. Each year, the department of chemistry hosts a day long soccer tournament. I was lucky enough to participate in the tournament two years ago (link) and I looked forward to attending another one. The group started planning for the tournament about 5 months ago. Since the group hosts a lot of short term visitors, repeat visitors actually arrange their trips to coincide with the tournament.

One of the first things we needed was a team name. It was very important that our name exude both love of our field (quantum chemistry) and intimidation. Competition was fierce, at one point we had 15 different names to choose from. Eventually the field was narrowed down to two names
1) Frenking's Smooth Operators - Named after our boss and the mathematical functions that act on other functions to produce a number (implying that we would act on the field to produce points)
2) St. Pauli Principle - Combining a soccer team from southern Germany with a well known chemistry principle, the Pauli principle. In basic chemistry, the Pauli principle states that if two electrons are placed in the same orbital, they must be of opposite spins. In its pure mathematical form, the Pauli Principle states that if two electrons are placed in the same space, they must be antisymmetric (ie. Psi ri rj = -Psi rj ri)

After two rounds of voting and dubious claims of voter fraud (just kidding), we finally chose the name St. Pauli Principle.

Once we had the name, we had to create a t-shirt. This was rather straight forward since the St. Pauli team already had a logo of a Pirate and crossbones.

All we had to do was replace the pirate head with our bosses head, add the Pauli Principle to the shirt, and print it, which we did.

Now that the t-shirt and name were set, we started practices. The group is rather large so finding a time that worked for all was very difficult. We started with a few 8am practices, which were nice since we finished practice, then headed to shower, then joined everyone at the Lahnberge for breakfast together. We also tried 5pm after lab and finally 5pm on Sunday. All in all we got in about 6 different practices, its better than none, but still not too great. However, work kept us from practicing more (even though our boss wanted the team to do well, we still had to do work).

The day before the tournament, one of the labmates proposed that we increase team spirit even more by painting our nails with the team symbols. (the Pauli principle). Many of us said, why not. The end product looked like this.

Finally, the day of the tournament arrived. We all arrived bright and early to the field, wearing our brown St. Pauli Principle shirts. Our team played very well and everyone who wanted to play earned a chance to play. I even played about 5 minutes of our third game. Three games and a couple of bratwursts later (its germany, we snack on wurst all the time), we had won or tied enough games to put us into contention for the top team in our group. We only had to win one more game in order to advance to the quarterfinals.

The cheer squad decided to renew our cheers. Cheers of "lets go Pauli, lets go" and "Pauli, Pauli" and our slogan "Psi is not symmetric, neither is this game, St. Pauli Principle, Win! Win! Win!" filled the field. We may not have been the best team, but we were the most enthusiastic.

Our cheers must have worked because we advanced to the next round.

From this point on, the rest of the day became a blur. I spent 25 minutes cheering loudly for the team, then taking a 20 minute break between games. The team advanced all the way to the semifinal and lost by just 1 point to 2nd place team. We eventually played a half-final to earn third place over all, the highest placement the group has ever earned!

Our boss was so proud of us that he volunteered to pay for dinner the following night, an offer that many of us took him up on

Overall, the day was a major highlight of my time in Germany. The research group here is very diverse and international. In the year that that I have worked here, we have had students or post-docs from North America, South America, East Asia, India, Africa, Iraq, and of course countries from all over Europe. In the past the team has had members from Spain, Russia, and Brazil show up to play. This year was no different as 4 continents and 8 different countries were represented. We all joined together to work as a team and advance the team goals. Even those who could not play joined in cheering on the team. I am very grateful that I was able to stay for this historic win and I know that I will treasure the memories for a lifetime.

Here is a link to the photo album containing photos from the day.

Fussball Tournament

the lunch lady smiled at me

Only 15 days left in Germany. Its unbelievable that I am really leaving in just over 2 weeks. I know that my family wants me home. Part of me wants to go home, but as I return to thoughts that I had in January, what really defines my home. In college, I defined home as "where my pillow is". This year, that definition failed to explain my circumstances as my bed is in Illinois with a friend, the special gel pillow I bought last year is at my parents house, my fiance bought a pillow that I liked when he bought his bed hoping that someday I would actually be there to use it, and my favorite pillowcase that I used since college is on my bed in Marburg. The usual definitions don't work anymore.

One thing this year has taught me is to redefine what it means to be home. Now, home is simply defined as a place that I can relax and be myself. Now that means that I am home when I do a crazy dance in the group coffee room as my labmates and I discuss a confusing chemical phenomenon.(really, this happens often). It also means that home is the place where I sit on the balcony and read papers while listening to people on the balcony below sing songs in both German and English. Home is also the train rides from Frankfurt to Marburg where I feel relaxed enough to fall asleep (especially when the train ends at Marburg). Home is also my parent's renovated farmhouse, in a room that I never actually lived in for more than 4 weeks. Home is also with my fiance as we drive from town to town visiting people.

Home is what brings me peace. This year reminded me once again how much it takes to create a home. It took many months before I could finally relax with my housemates, not worrying how I acted or how poorly I spoke their language. It took several conferences and many late nights in the office to allow me to relax with my labmates. Home is what led me to actually carry on a conversation with the lunch lady at the mensa today, which gave me the first lunch lady smile I have seen all year.

The title of this post, "the lunch lady smiled at me" refers to all the little happy moments that have made Marburg seem like home. The guy in the stockroom that greets me with a smile every morning, the knowledge that I can run into my labmates when I go to grab a quick cup of coffee in the room next door (and I am happy about it), the smiles and jokes from Reuti as I walk by his office, the teasing housemates who put up with my silly simple German stories. All of these things combine to make Marburg just a bit more homey.

Train Travel

I wrote this post over a month ago but I just now finally posting it, sorry for the delay. :-(



I write this post from the bord bistro car on an intercity train from Marburg to Heidelberg. The tables are bigger here so I have room to spread out while I am working. While riding this train, I have been entertained by an incredibly drunk German man who likes to talk, especially to pretty women. I am so far avoided his conversation by keeping headphones in my ears, thus rendering me inaccessible to his conversation starters.

He keeps talking and talking to this poor older lady two tables from me. I keep looking up and giving the lady my sorriest grin that says "I am sorry you have to deal with this man." However, while listening in on the conversation, I have so far been entertained by a song about Bankfurt on Buy which is about the banking town Frankfurt on Main (pronounced like mine). He also likes to talk about Ryan Air, and how London is a prettier city than Frankfurt (no disagreement here). The really cool thing about the whole situation is that people just seem to humor him.

The environment on this train is very relaxing. I often fall asleep.....



or get a lot of work done. I really wish the US had more trains.
Riding the trains is one of the few times that I absolutely fall in love with this country. When I travel with friends, we just pile into a four person seater, then chat and chat until the train announces our destination. We then pile out and wander the town, hopping back onto the next train that will take us home. If I don't travel with friends, its not uncommon to make friends along the way. Just like the atmosphere on the bord bistro that allows us all to humor this drunken guy, the train puts every one on an equal place, so we learn to enjoy every moment.

Ich liebe den Zug!

Dein Englisch ist perfekt!

One of the coolest things about living in another country is making friends in a new language. Instead of associating a person with a name or a place, you now associate a language. Its incredibly weird. However, the problem with being a native American English speaker is that every one wants to speak to you in English instead of German. Thankfully, most of the people in my dormitory realize that I want to learn German, so they speak to me auf Deutsch instead of English. The last few weeks, I have been so obsessed with thesis writing that I have completely avoided all conversations with my housemates (and writing my blog, sorry). One of my housemates thought that I was avoiding the common area because I was afraid to speak auf Deutsch (part of the reason) Today, when he saw me in the kitchen he said, "I want to speak English with you. I want to practice my American English." I smiled and said, "Ja, wir können Englisch sprechen." He then said, "My English is bad so you do not want to speak English with me." I replied auf Deutsch "Nein, dein Englisch ist perfekt!" He this switched back to German and we continued to chat for another hour or so auf Deutsch.

The point of this conversation is this, no matter what the housemate said, I could only reply to him in German. To speak English to a housemate would be incredibly weird and disconcerting, even when I know that a housemate speaks perfect English (two of my housemates studied in America as high school students). It shocks me to the core to hear housemates use English sentences or phrases. I feel strangely out of place when the conversation switches away from German, even when I don't have a clue what is being said auf Deutsch.

I suppose this is a normal feeling for people immersed in a foreign culture, but its a pretty cool experience for me. When I recognize people on the street, I have to think about which language to use to greet them. I really really love this experience and will be sad to lose it in 5 weeks.

Visiting the dentist.....auf Deutsch

Wow...I can't believe I haven't posted in nearly a month. I apologize for my laziness, I've just been too busy traveling Europe, writing my thesis, and wasting time online (but not writing my blog). I started several posts last weekend but I never got around to finishing them....I promise to amend soon. Today my post will focus on my visit to the dentist.

In an effort to experience as much 'real' German life as possible, I visited the dentist back in March. To find a dentist in Marburg, I simply googled (in English) for dentist in Marburg and ended up on the English website of a dentist located in Marbrug (how convenient). The Dentist had an American wife and spoke perfect English (even with an American accent!) thus I was saved from learning German tooth vocabulary for a while. However, during my last visit (mostly a check-up) the dentist stated that I needed to repair a filling and I could not wait until I returned to US (and had dental insurance again) since the damaged portion of the tooth was dangerously close to a nerve (that is really really bad). Since I don't have dental insurance through the Fulbright, I have to pay for all teeth repairs myself. After spending the last two months saving money to pay for the needed repairs, I finally made another appointment with the dentist for today.

Last time I visited the dentist, the dentist tried to speak to me in German, then realized that I wasn't following, so he switched to English and I understood everything that he said. I felt like I was cheating my travel experience since I was able to converse in my native tongue but I felt that speaking English was an acceptable compromise considering that I was already pretty nervous about visiting the dentist.

In an earlier blog post, I mentioned that I felt that my German comprehension had increased dramatically in the last month. On May 5th, I conversed with my lab mates almost entirely in German. On May 6th, I left for 7 days in Great Britain. On May 12th, I returned to Germany and realized that I no longer understood anything that my lab mates said! Oh second languages...how quickly you disapear when not used......
In addition, my appointment was for 8am in the Southern quarter of the city, which meant that I had to catch a bus that left at 7:15am in order to arrive on time. I woke up at 6:30am, much much earlier than my normal wake up time. Since I woke up so early, I didn't have time to grab a coffee before catching the bus (I like to say, Ich kann kein Deutsch verstehen weil ich keinen Kaffee trinken habe).

I arrived at the dentist's office very tired and completely incoherent. But this was no problem because my dentist could speak English, which I thankfully can understand even when tired. The staff however speaks only German so I first had to navigate through the complexities of German dental bearocracy (note to others, take your passport with you, Germans aren't happy to accept Student IDs, even when issued from Germany!). Thankfully, the staff was very understanding and made every effort to communicate with pictures and hand gestures. I tired my best to communicate but I could not make a sentence more complicated than 'Es schmerzt' and point to the tooth that needed repairs. The funny thing is that my teeth didn't hurt at all, it was the only thing I could think of to describe my situation. I tried my best to reciprocate on the language front by reading a German children's book on visiting the dentist. Despite my best efforts, I still could not comprehend more than a few words spoken by the people around me.

Eventually I was taken back to visit the dentist, expecting to communicate in American dental lingo. This time, however, the English speaking dentist was unavailable so I ended up with the German brother of the dentist, which meant that all conversations took place in German! We chatted (mostly smiling and nodding on my part) and then the dentist took a look at my teeth. I could tell from his expression that he was not happy. He said something about a filling and mentioned that he would repair it. Then he brought in a peice of paper for me to sign. The paper was entirely in German with numbers and a bill. Not a big deal since I had seen a pre-pay bill before. I sign the paper and pass it back to the dentist. However, just as he pulls the paper away, I noticed that there is a '3' next to the German word for dental fillings. I think...'maybe that's just the line number for the bill (after anaethesia and cleaning). The dentist comes at me with a silver needle (frightening even when you understand what's being spoken) and proceeds to jab me not once, but twice for 20 seconds per jab. He then tilts my chair up and says, something like wait 5 minutes. I wait...falling asleep in my chair and shaking awake when I hear the door open. The dentist flips my chair back so all the blood rushed to my head. Then he pulls out the dreaded drill. The pain killer had kicked in at this point so I didn't feel much. I did notice, however, that the drill seemed to move from tooth to tooth. I kept thinking that my unfeeling nerves were playing tricks on me. However, after drilling for 20 minutes (no joke, I timed it), the dentist pulls out a mirror and has me look at my mouth. My eyes widen when I realize that the dentist had drilled holes in 3 teeth! The dentist then proceeds to look at another tooth and says...blah blah blah zwischen blah blah. I think zwischen= between. Apparently the dentist was trying to tell me that I had a cavity in between two teeth so he asked if he could drill in yet another tooth! That means that I now had four teeth with holes! The dentist (and me!) had not anticipated that the appointment would last as long as it did, so he kept having to leave to visit other patients and then return. While he was gone, I was left to ponder my poor dental hygeine and the weirdly shaped teeth in my mouth. Finally, nearly two hours after I arrived, the dentist finished.

I wandered into the hallway, a little woozy from the early morning, the blood rush to my head, and the copius amounts of local anaethesia. We try to navigate the bill process, only to discover that the dentist did not accept EC cards. As stated earlier, I did not have dental insurance which meant that I had pay for everything in cash. I ran to the ATM, then rushed back to the dental office to pay the bill. The total bill for 4 fillings, local anaethesia, and 2 hours of the dentist's time came to a little more than 300 Euros, which comes out to 75 Euros per filling. That's actually about what I would pay for a filling in US, after insurance picked up their part.

The experience was a bit terrifying, but the dentist did an amazing job with my fillings (I can barely tell where the tooth ends and filling begins) and tried really hard to keep me comfortable, even dabbing my chin when anaethesia caused drooling. I was told my a German friend that dental care in Germany is rumoured to be quite awesome. I can say that my experience provides support for this rumour, even when I couldn't understand that anything the dentist said.

Check another cultural medical experience off the list...lets hope that I don't have to check out the German hospital system.....