Heidelberg and Stuttgart

The day after Stadtallendorf, I worked in the morning and then headed to catch a train to Heidelberg to celebrate the birthday of dear friend and fellow Fulbrighter Elisa. I should explain a bit about the Marburg semester ticket.

The semester ticket is given to all students who register. The student union in Marburg negotiates with the regional transportation to secure a special transit pass for students that covers travel on regional trains in the area surrounding the university. The union in Marburg is particularly good at this task and even negotiated with Deutsche Bahn to grant us access fast Intercity trains that travel across country. Thus, we the 100 Euro semester ticket, I can travel on any train that travels through Marburg to the stop right outside Hessen. This means that the normally 30 Euro train right from Marburg to Heidelberg is now free, as long as I stink to Intercity trains. Its a beautiful thing. On this particular trip, I felt inspired to write the previous blog entry about the joys of train travel.

I arrived in Heidelberg around 3pm in the afternoon, bearing only my backpack for the overnight travel. The birthday girl was MIA, so I found a park bench along the Neckar River and settled down for a nap. (another thing I love about Europe, I feel safe enough to fall asleep on a park bench). Eventually the birthday girl was found and we set out to make food for the Mexican themed feast. While cooking several other Fulbrighters from around Germany arrived (all a pleasant surpise for the birthday girl) and secured a cooler to transport the now freshly prepared food to the river bank. After singing happy birthday by candlelight, we watched a procession of men and women carrying torches down the river. We never figured out why they did it.




After dinner, we all cleaned up and I retired to Elisa's place to camp out for the night. I woke up early the next morning and hopped on an early train towards Stuttgart. I just happened to board the same train as another Fulbright so we ended up chatting during the hour long trip. (Can you imagine this happening if we all drove cars to the party?) I hopped off at Stuttgart while he traveled on to Munich. Once in Stuttgart, I took use of the train locker system (great system that needs to be replicated at US train stations) and set off exploring Stuttgart. I first found a lovely park just outside the train station.



After getting lost a few times and learning to navigate the tram system, I eventually found my way to the Mercedes Benz Museum, a modern glass sculpture on the outskirts of town.
This museum was a must-see considering that even the busses in Germany are Mercedes Benz. The museum is extremely interactive and shows the history of the company from the birth of the first car to the most modern version of the Mercedes Benz Class 5.
On your self-guided tour, you see all types of vehicles that the company has ever made (including their ambulances and speciality cars).









At one point, the museum even let you try out the massaging seat chair available in class Mercedes Benz class 3 or higher cars. (I tried this out of course.)

After exploring the museum, I met up with Elisa and Kim at the Stuttgart FruhlingsFest (or Spring festival). I at first thought it would be this dinky little festival filled with beer and schnitzel, but it turns out that the festival was a HUGE fair type event, filled with high flying swings (we rode them), roller coasters named after the alps, games (played them), and of course multiple beer gardens with live music and people dressed in dirndls and Lederhosen.


Even the little kiddie rides were authentically German with kids riding miniature ICE trains.

The feeling of the festival was one of great fun and joy. I honestly can not remember having so much fun at an American style fair since I was 10, but I guess the fact that every thing seemed new and different made me feel like a kid again.

After spending a few hours at the festival and realizing that none of us had brought more than 15 Euros each to spend at the festival we decided to take off towards the city. Since Stuttgart was a major manufacturing hub during World War II, the town was heavily bombed and thus had to be completely rebuilt. The "old town" consists of a few churches that were rebuilt after the war and some pedestrian only streets of rebuilt fachwerk houses.

However, it was still a nice town to explore. Its one of the few big cities that I would actually enjoy living in. I would love to visit it again, especially when I found out later that my dad's family lived in Esslingen in the 1200s. Esslingen is less than a 10 minute train ride from Stuttgart.



Thus this place definitely merits another visit, just probably not this summer.

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.