Hi everyone!

Yesterday Christian and I got back from my last Germany adventure…Berlin! It was great, one of the best trips and the best sightseeing of any city that I saw! We did a lot of stuff, a city tour, saw the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin Wall, and Reichstag (Germany’s Capitol Building, where the national Parliament meets), got to walk through an underground bunker used as an air-raid shelter during WWII, and visited the Pergamon Museum (which contains the famous Pergamon altar and the Ishtar gate from the ancient city of Babylon). It was great! Since I realized that me having this blog up means that you have all been able to keep up with everything that I’ve seen and done, I might not have anything to tell you about when I’m back, so if you want to see my Berlin photos and hear more about the trip, then you’ll just have to ask me! But, to prove that I really was there, here’s a couple select pictures…in order, me in front of the Brandenburg Gate, in front of the Berlin Wall, inside the Reichstag, and walking through the Ishtar Gate of Babylon at the Pergamon Museum!

Otherwise, I basically have two more days here and will be busy getting packed up, moved out, and saying my goodbyes! I leave Dortmund on Wednesday bright and early at 6 am, and will arrive back in Cleveland at around 6 pm…it’s going to be a long day of traveling, but I can’t wait to get home!  Thanks to all of you who have kept up with my blog while I was here, and for all the messages and e-mails! I can’t believe it’s been 5 months already, and my time in Germany is now coming to a close, but I really look forward to seeing all of you in America again soon!!!

Also…GO BUCKS!!!  ROSE BOWL BOUND!!!!

Anyways, that’s all for today, see you all on the other side of the Atlantic!!

Steve

Hi everyone! I’m back with another update on everything that’s been going on with me. The trip definitely feels like it’s winding down now, less than three weeks until I’m stateside, and I really am looking forward to seeing everyone again. Still, even though it’s winding down that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been doing anything. Last weekend was great, it really got going on Saturday when Peter, one of the students here from Britain, decided that some of us should get all dressed up and go to Hohensyburg Casino, which is just outside Dortmund. Here’s a couple pictures of everyone looking their finest!

Naturally, we all lost money (we mostly played roulette and some automated slots), but everyone behaved so no one lost more than they wanted to, and it ended up being a really great day! We all enjoyed putting our suits on and doing something more fun and different and exciting than just laying around (which is definitely the Saturday norm). Unfortunately, this meant that, for the first time all season, I didn’t see any of the Buckeyes game, but they looked good against Minnesota anyways and I got to see them again this week.  After the casino, we went to a birthday party for one of the girls who’s here from Romania.  Everyone was quite impressed when we showed up in suits, and it was a fun way to cap off a great day!

Sunday, I caught a morning train (impressed I made it out in the morning on a Sunday?) to Gelsenkirchen, which is where Christian’s favorite soccer team, FC Schalke 04, plays.  Way back in April in the US, on the morning of my birthday, I got a mysterious phone call on my cell phone that only said “private number” on the caller ID. Turns out that it was Christian, calling to wish me a happy birthday and to tell me that his present to me was that he would take me to a real European soccer game when I got to Germany! This was a great surprise and now, just over 6 months later, I got my present (and it was fantastic!).  Schalke was in third place in the German Bundesliga (the main German soccer league) and playing second-place Hamburg.  They were down 2-0 at halftime and things weren’t looking good, but when all was said and done,  the game ended in a 3-3 tie (Schalke scored their third goal, to tie the game, in the very last minute of play).  We had a blast! Here’s a couple pictures:

So between the casino and the soccer game, it was definitely a fantastic weekend, but Monday meant that it was back to work.  We’ve had a really busy week as Christian was working on a research proposal and I was working on getting a technical paper finished up, edited, and formatted to be submitted to a technical journal about material forming technologies, which is my field of research. It was a lot of work and a couple long nights, but the paper is all set so now we just have to wait to hear back in the next couple months if the paper will be accepted or not! Work-wise for the rest of my time here, I’ll be busy wrapping up the rest of the experiments and analysis on my current research project and then writing another paper about the project. That paper will also be submitted for publication, so I might be lead author on two published papers by the new year!! It’s been tons of work the last couple months, with much less traveling, but it’s been a great experience and the opportunity to write these papers and hopefully get them published definitely makes it all worth it.

Even though it was a tough week of work, I got well rewarded again because I got a ticket to the BVB Dortmund soccer game for this past Friday! First, this was a little strange because the greatest rivalry in German soccer is Dortmund vs. Schalke, so it was a little weird to go to each team’s games, but I like Schalke because it was an amazing experience to go and see them play, plus Christian is such a big fan, but I’m also from Dortmund and I definitely had to go see a game there! Since Christian refused to go, being a Schalke supporter, I went with some of my friends from the German language course that I took in September.  We had a great time and Dortmund even won, 2-0!  Check out the photo album, where you can see some of the friends I’ve made and the game and stadium…even though Dortmund isn’t very good, their fans are crazy and Dortmund has the highest average attendance of any German soccer team…their stadium is also the largest in Germany, seating just over 80,000.  The pictures in the album show, in order: Caitlin (America) and Amy (England), Imogen (England) and me and Caitlin (America), Peter (England) and Jean-Murie (France), Nicolas (France) and his girlfriend (who I’d just met that night), and then some pictures of the game and stadium.  The supporter’s section, shown in the last picture, is called the Gelbe Wand (or yellow wall) and you can see why: it’s huge and absolutely crazy: they were singing and cheering non-stop the entire game!

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Yesterday, I decided to skip the Halloween festivities and just take a day to relax and do nothing, which was perfect…I got to watch Ohio State win big and USC get blown out by Oregon, which was definitely fun.  Today I’m planning on going for a run here shortly and heading over to Christian’s to hang out around 7 or 8. And with that, time for me to get going…Hope everyone is enjoying the weekend, and I look forward to seeing all of you very soon! 17 more days!!

Hi Everyone!  Hope you’re all enjoying your weekend, I sure have….even with tough games for the Mustangs and Buckeyes.  I was still very glad to have a chance to watch both teams play over the internet…it was the first time I’ve actually been able to watch Kyle play this season, so it was a lot of fun even if the outcome wasn’t what we were all hoping for.

Anyways, I wanted to get a post up because I return to Ohio exactly one month from today…I can’t believe how quickly the last four months have gone!  I’m really excited to be coming home and to see everyone again, even though I’m not looking forward to leaving…I’ve made so many great friends here that I don't really want to say goodbye to.  I wanted to take this opportunity to look back on my trip so far.  I’ve visited so many amazing cities in Germany:  some of my favorites were Heidelberg, Hamburg, Munich, Bremen, Muenster, Cologne, and Duesseldorf.  I’ve also seen some great cities outside of Germany, including Amsterdam, Brussels, Vienna, and Dublin.  I still have plans to visit Berlin for sure with Christian, and hopefully also Trier and either Madrid or Barcelona, although those trips are still up in the air.

I’ve been able to meet people from all over the world, including many from Germany, of course.  I’ve also made friends with other students from England, France, Greece, Turkey, Latvia, Italy, Austria, Poland, Cameroon, Mexico, Spain, and Korea.  I’ve met other American students from Wisconsin, Colorado, Alabama, Indiana, California, Virginia, Iowa, Nebraska, and North Carolina.  It’s all been really great, and I’ve been exposed to so many new cultures and ways of life, which I’ve definitely enjoyed.

I’ve done a lot of things that I can cross off of my “bucket list”, such as drinking a pint of Guinness in an Irish pub, drinking a one-liter beer at Oktoberfest Munich, eating Wienerschnitzel in Vienna, eating a Belgian waffle in Brussels, climbing to the top of the Cologne Cathedral (5 times!), traveling over 100 miles per hour on the Autobahn (top speed so far, 140 mph!), attending the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart, eating homemade German Schwarzwaldkirschtorte (Black forest cherry cake) in a small village in Germany, attending a 100,000+ person music festival, touring the Guinness Brewery, seeing the final resting places of The Three Wise Men and Charlemagne, standing on the Grand Place in Brussels, taking a lake cruise in the center of Hamburg, walking under the 15th century city gate in the Hanseatic League capital of Luebeck, attending the Sunday-morning Hamburg Fish Market and party in the Landungsbruecke.  This is just a small sample of what I’ve been able to experience while living here in Germany, and it’s been great every step of the way.

What I’d like to do in today’s post is write a list of some of the biggest differences that I’ve noticed between Germany and America…so here goes:

Biggest differences

· Vehicles are MUCH smaller (only seen two pickup trucks)

· All the beer is quite good (even the cheaper stuff)

· Alcoholic drinks can be taken outside with you…it’s legal to walk down the street with an open beer in hand

· Almost everything is paid in cash

· Paper checks are not used at all…everything is paid with electronic transfer between bank accounts

· The biggest meal of the day is usually lunch, with simple sandwiches being a staple for dinner

· Almost no buildings use AC (which is unpleasant during the summer when every day is in the mid-80s or hotter and there isn’t a cloud in the sky)

· Streets, buildings, parks, public transport, etc. tend to be cleaner

· Almost EVERYTHING is carbonated, even a lot of juices and basically all water

· When you buy a drink in a bottle, you are charged a fee that is refunded when you return the empty bottle to a store or café (8 cents for glass, typically 25 cents for plastic)

· It is legal for garbage men to refuse to take your garbage if you don’t recycle properly

· Almost no windows have screens, even though most are open all summer

· A lot fewer people walk around while talking or texting with their cell phone (try to find that on a bus, train, or around a college campus or city in the US!)

· Food at the grocery store is often cheaper, renting apartments or dorms is a little cheaper, public transportation (bus, plane, train) is typically a little cheaper, but EVERYTHING else is more expensive

· Everyone loves their football!! (what we call soccer)

· Bars don’t have a required closing time

· There are more small villages in the countryside that have a castle than small villages that don’t have a castle!

· Electricity-generating windmills are EVERYWHERE (Germany generates the most energy of any country in the world from solar and wind power)

· Grocery stores charge 10 cents for every plastic bag you use…Most people use cloth bags, backpacks, or simply no bags at all

· Germans like to drink beer mixed with something else to make it more refreshing…orange, lemon, or grapefruit juices, cola, etc.

· No one wears tennis shoes (always casual shoes, dress shoes, or sneakers!)

· Big cities and other countries are much closer together than in the US (purely a function of geography, but still)

· I haven’t yet seen one person use a credit card (debit cards occasionally, but not often)

· The escalators have motion sensors so they only run when someone approaches…saves energy!

· Refrigerators are significantly smaller

· Most people get their bread from a bakery, made fresh that day (I’m really going to miss this!)

· Fries are eaten with mayonnaise, and you get some really weird looks when asking for them with ketchup only

I’m sure there are more, but this is what I can think of off the top of my head.  One last thing I’d like to show you is a really funny video that I found on youtube.  It’s an advertisement for Berlin Airport, and takes a very humorous look at some common German stereotypes….just click on the link below to see it!  (I can’t post it directly on to the website as it is a licensed commercial that I do not own the rights to)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKO7KGFw6VM

Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed the look back at my trip so far!  Be back soon with another post!

This past weekend Christian and I headed down to München (or Munich in english). From now on, we’ll just call it Munich to keep it simple. Thursday morning we arrived at Dortmund Hauptbahnhof (main train station) at about 3:45 am to catch our 4:00 train.  We had been up basically the whole night working, as we were officially going to Munich for a work meeting on Friday and were both giving presentations.  The train was great, it was a newest-generation ICE train (ICE stands for Inter-City Express), which is the nicest train I’ve ever been on.  They’re whisper-quiet, smooth, and capable of speeds up to 190 mph!  Here’s a picture:

The reason for leaving in the middle of the night was so that we would have all day Thursday in Munich.  We got a few hours of sleep and arrived in Munich a bit bleary eyed but ready to explore!  The first thing we noticed upon arrival at the Hauptbahnhof was a very large police and military presence, as Germany was concerned about terrorist attacks due to the national elections that had just taken place, as well as the fact that Oktoberfest was going on.  The increased presence was very encouraging and everything felt extremely safe.  The second thing that you noticed was that there were people everywhere wearing Lederhosen (for the males) and Dirndl (for the females).  These are traditional Bavarian clothes and are EXTREMELY popular during Oktoberfest.  Christian was quite embarrassed because this was about as stereotypically German as you could possibly get (beer and lederhosen!), but I loved it and thought it was all very fun.  Here’s what the clothing looks like:

I added this specific picture solely because it was the worst example of the traditional clothing that I could find on the internet and will probably irritate Christian to no end (so cheers when you read this, buddy!).  But it shows the general idea and is highly amusing when you see people everywhere walking around in clothing like this!  (Disclaimer so Christian doesn’t completely kill me when he reads this…I’ve never seen Germans wear Lederhosen or Dirndl’s ever outside of this weekend and one other Oktoberfest celebration.  They wear normal clothes any other time!)  Anyways, once we left the train station we headed for the Deutsches Museum, which is the world’s largest science and industry museum (larger even than Chicago’s).  There were a whole lot of cool exhibits, and we spent about 5 hours there.  Here’s the museum, which is actually on an island, and a picture of me at the main entrance:

There was tons to see (28,000 exhibits covering 50 fields in science and technology)…take a look at the album…I’ve labeled the titles of the pictures with what you’re looking at. 

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After the Deutsches Museum we headed over to our hotels (we were staying in different hotels that were about a block away from each other), which were about a half hour out of Munich itself but extremely nice.  After relaxing, I put the finishing touches on my presentation and went over it with Christian, then we headed to find some food.  We found a great little Bavarian restaurant right near the hotels and had some Oktoberfest-style beer and delicious Bavarian food (plates of different kinds of pork with sauerkraut).  We ended up meeting up with another member of our research group from Dortmund, then met two girls from America (one from Illinois, the other from North Carolina) and we all hung out together with some locals who were also at the restaurant…it ended up being a great night!

We woke up early (a bit too early) the next morning to get to the work meeting.  This was a collection of about 20 Ph.D. students and Post-Doctoral researchers from three German universities (Technical University Dortmund, Technical University Munich, and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology).  Everyone discussed what had been accomplished relating to the research project since the last meeting and what the next objectives were, and I gave my presentation.  It was a 10 minute long powerpoint presentation, and was a really good experience for me.  Christian seemed happy with it, and I’m excited to finish up my research so I can present my full body of work to my research group in Dortmund before I head back to America.

After the meeting ended, I had the opportunity to get a tour of a couple buildings around campus.  First was the mechanical engineering building, which was unbelievable.  It was brand new (funded by a hefty donation from BMW) and huge!!  To put the size in perspective, this building has a larger footprint than Ohio Stadium, the Horseshoe.  Here’s a picture:

The other cool building that I got to see was the mathematics/computer science building.  Here’s a picture from the outside and inside that I took.  On the picture of the inside, notice the slides that go from the third to ground floor, and which combine to make the shape of a perfect parabola…crazy math slide!

After leaving the university we headed over to Christian’s friends’ apartment, where we would be staying for the rest of the weekend (we only had the hotel for the first night).  We got unpacked, Christian got caught up with his friends, and we headed out to find something to eat.  We ended up going to the Augustiner Brauerei, a world-famous beer brewery and restaurant, and the oldest brewery in Munich (and that’s saying something!).  I got a Wurstteller, or sausage plate, which featured 4 different kinds of sausage, sauerkraut, and spicy mustard...a very traditional Bavarian dish.  Of course, we all had to finish our meals off with a liter of Oktoberfest-style beer…my first-ever one liter beer!  That night we met up with some of the other Dortmunders who were also in town for the meeting and we had a really fun night in Munich’s city center, including spending some time at the Augustiner Brauhaus, Augustiner Brewery’s beer hall in the middle of the city.  Here’s a picture of the beer hall, which was really cool and quite busy, along with a good night picture that I got of Munich’s Altes Rathaus (old city hall):

The next day was the big one…OKTOBERFEST!!!  Christian and I met up with Amanda, who arrived in Munich that morning from Dortmund, and we headed to the festival.  It was amazing, and definitely lived up to all the hype and attention it gets, and then some!  We spent almost all of our time at an outdoor Biergarten (beer garden) next to one of the big tents, as it was so busy that day that all the tents were full, but it worked out as the weather was perfect (sunny and about 75 degrees).  We met some members of the US Military, serving in the Air Force, who were really nice and we talked to for quite a while, and we also met some locals from Munich who were there to enjoy the festivities (they even said that they were impressed with my German-speaking skills!).  First things first, I have to put up pictures of the entrance as well as all three of us enjoying a liter of beer (and of course with some sort of silly hat on each of our heads!) so here you go…

Check out this album for the rest of the pictures while we were there, it's all pretty self-explanatory!

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Needless, to say it was a pretty amazing experience and a great day!  We were done pretty early though, between the excitement, hot weather, and beers, and were asleep back at the apartment by about 8 pm!  This did have one advantage though…I was able to wake up at about 1 am to watch the Buckeyes beat Indiana!  Since the game started at 7 pm in Columbus, it started at 1 am here.  I was especially proud of the fact that I didn’t even set an alarm, I woke up naturally…I guess my body must have known that it was time for Buckeyes football!  I watched the game and then, of course, went back to sleep.

The next day we got up and did some sightseeing.  We found a great place with a brunch buffet (it was Sunday, after all) and then set out to explore Munich.  We saw many of the main sights including (in the order they appear in the album) Karlstor, which is now the entrance to the pedestrian walking zone).  Mom, Dad, and Kyle, you might remember from our family trip to Munich that this was right next to the 4-story McDonalds where we ate one time while in the city.  We also saw Isartor which is the only remaining gate from the city’s original inner wall.  We then headed over toward the Residenz and found a really impressive church with an all-white interior, which was also the burial place of King Maximilien II, one of the kings of Bavaria…you can see his tomb in one of the pictures.  Lastly, we saw the Residenz itself, which was the palace home of the Wittelsbach dynasty, who were the kings of Bavaria (the most famous of which is Ludwig II, the crazy king who built the fairy tale castles). 

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We also had the opportunity to meet with Katja, the post-doctoral researcher who is currently sub-letting my apartment in Columbus.  Munich is her hometown so she was there visiting family and friends for her last weekend in Germany, and this just happened to be while we were there.  Christian, her, and I got a coffee at a great outdoor cafe overlooking a park and one side of the Residenz, and we got to talk and finally meet each other (after about 30 e-mails back and forth to sort out all the details of her sub-letting my apartment).  It was really funny that I needed to find someone to sub-let the apartment because I was from OSU but doing research in Germany, and she was looking for an apartment because she was from Germany but doing research at OSU...it really worked out great for both of us, and we both felt better after having been able to meet the other.

After we had our coffee it was time to head back to the train station and catch a (very full) train back to Dortmund.  It was yet another amazing weekend during my stay here, and I will definitely not forget my first (but hopefully not last) adventure at Oktoberfest!

This morning I passed 2000 views of the blog!  Just wanted to say thanks to everybody who’s continued to read throughout my stay here…I now have just over a month remaining until I’m back in the US!  I’ve been keeping busy the past couple weeks with research and hanging out around Dortmund with all the people that I’ve met, along with Christian and Amanda. 

I’m also currently in the middle of writing my Munich/Oktoberfest blog post. I’ve already spent a lot of time on it but still have more to do, it’s a long one since we did so much during those 4 days!  Anyways, look for that sometime in the next few days…talk to you again soon!

For Matt’s last full day in Germany we decided to head to Aachen, the medieval city that was the seat of Charlemagne’s Frankish empire, and the Imperial city where the Kings of Germany were crowned for over 500 years.  Amanda decided to join Matt and I, which was great because she actually lived in Aachen for a time during another study abroad trip a couple years ago, so she knew what to see and where everything was located.  Our first stop was a pretty powerful one: we walked by the building that served as Gestapo headquarters during World War II.  I’ve included a picture of the building’s entrance and the plaque next to it, which reads Wegen gegen das Vergessen, that basically means “the way against forgetting”.

You find these in many cities and they serve as a powerful reminder about the atrocities that took place during that period.  The plaque reads “Since 1933 this building was used as the office for the “Geheime Staatspolizei”, or Gestapo.  People who were persecuted by the Nazis were detained, interrogated, and mistreated before being sent to prisons or camps”.  While this is obviously not one of humanity’s finest moments, I think that it’s extremely important that people not forget things like this, and I think it’s great that the German government does things like this to make sure that people never forget.

Next we headed over to the pedestrian zone to find something to eat…we found a good pizza place near Aachen’s university with great prices.  With full stomachs we headed to the Ponttor, one of two remaining city gates that date back to the 14th century.  Here are some pictures:

We then headed to the center of the city, where we saw the Town Hall and the Aachen Cathedral.  Both have some portions dating back to the period of Charlemagne.  One of the towers on the city hall (on the left side in the first picture, shown in the second picture) was actually part of Charlemagne’s castle (dating to the 8th century), which has since been destroyed but stood on the same spot that the city hall now does.  The third photo shows the famous Aachen cathedral, where Charlemagne’s throne was located and where he is now buried (the Palatine Chapel, the left-most portion of the cathedral, was also part of Charlemagne’s castle).  The fourth photo shows me and the back of the city hall.

Here’s an album showing everything we saw of the main facade and inside of Aachen’s city hall.  Be sure to notice the world-famous fountain with Charlemagne at the top, the sculpture showing Jesus sitting on a throne, flanked by Charlemagne and Pope Leo III (the two most powerful people in the world at that time).  Also notice the large room with the stone columns.  This is the coronation hall, where the Kings of Germany (who were usually Holy Roman Emperors) were crowned.  In that room was a statue of Charlemagne holding what we were convinced was the “Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch” (a reference to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, if you’ve ever seen that film)…you’ll see pictures of Matt and I pointing to it.  Also notice the exact replicas of the holy relics of Charlemagne, now located in Vienna.

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After the city hall, we headed over the Aachen cathedral.  Notice the two sarcophagi shown in a couple of the pictures, located behind the altar.  Charlemagne’s remains can be found in the rear-most sarchophagus.  It was an amazing sight to see!  The whole cathedral was huge and really impressive.

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It was a great trip.  The city was full of so much history that I’m glad we decided to make the trip to see everything before Matt left.  After the cathedral, we all got some ice cream and made our way back to the train station to head back to Dortmund.  Matt had to be up really early the next morning to head to the airport and back to the US.  It was great to see him and we had a blast while he was here.  We saw some really amazing sites and have some great stories, and I’m glad I’ve been able to share some of that here!

After getting back from Hamburg, we all decided we needed to sleep in Monday, then Christian and I went in to work and Matt spent the day exploring the city.  Tuesday, I worked in the morning while Matt slept in again, then met him in the afternoon and we hopped on the train to check out Schloss Nordkirchen, a castle about 40 minutes from Dortmund.  Built in 1703, it is called the “Versailles of Nordrhein-Westphalia” because it is so nice (Nordrhein-Westphalia, or NRW, is the state in which Dortmund is located).  It was in the middle of nowhere but was worth the trip, we spent a few hours walking around and looking at everything.  Take a look at the album for the pictures:

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On Saturday around noon Matt and I met Christian in Münster (click the link to see my post Sunday in Borken and Münster to read about my previous trip to Münster) for the first trip with all three of us.  Christian had borrowed his brother’s car and we were ready to road trip our way to Hamburg.  After a three hour drive we arrived at Christian’s friend Marc’s apartment, where he lives with his girlfriend.  Since we couldn’t find a sports bar, we set up Christian’s computer so we could watch the Ohio State vs. Navy game (the first game of the season).  Here’s Matt, Christian, and I watching the OSU game at an apartment in Hamburg, Germany!

Marc was great…he agreed to take us out for a night on the town in Hamburg, and he of course knew all the best local spots.  After the game and some pizza we headed to the Reeperbahn (also known as “the world’s most sinful mile”) where Marc led us to a club featuring trance/electronic music.  It was a pretty small place but the DJ there was really, really good.  The four of us had a really great time there, here’s a picture of Matt, Christian, and I along with a priceless picture of Matt and Christian at their finest (I literally laugh every single time I see this picture)…

It was pretty hot in there and we had been dancing for a few hours, so excuse the shiny faces.  After the club, Marc had a pretty interesting idea for the next place to go…near the club we were at was an old World War II bunker.  These can still be found all across Germany’s major cities as they can’t be safely torn down.  Here’s a picture of the bunker as we approached it and from the roof…notice how thick the solid, reinforced concrete walls are (about 6 feet thick at the top and about 15-20 feet thick at the bottom)…

We danced at the bunker for awhile, including a great sing-a-long to Journey’s "Don’t Stop Believin’”.  After that, we decided we still weren’t ready to go home yet so we headed to the world-famous Hamburg fish market.  This occurs from 5 am to 9 am every Sunday morning, and is quite the interesting mix of locals who actually need to buy fresh fish, people (like us) still partying from the night before, and tourists who get up just to experience it.  Here’s the Landungsbrücke, the famous building at the fish market that used to be a fish auction hall, along with a picture of all four of us (me, Matt, Christian, and Marc).

Since we were at the fish market, we had to get fish sandwhiches!  At this point we decided that we were basically the funniest people ever so we bought mackerel sandwiches and kept running around looking surprised and shouting “holy mackerel!”  Here’s what I mean:

Christian wasn’t included in all this fun because he doesn’t like fish and got currywurst (sausage with fries and a curry ketchup sauce…delicious!) instead of the sandwiches.  We then found our way into the Landungsbrücke building, where we were astonished to find a full-fledged party still going on, with two live bands and everything!  It was pretty amazing, here’s a few pictures:

Since we were at the harbor, we climbed to the top of a building and got a few pictures, then finally headed home for some much-needed and much-deserved sleep!

The next day we did a little sightseeing (Matt had never been there)…if you missed my post of the sights in Hamburg then take a look at Hamburg and Luebeck (just click the link to see the post).  We made it back home and went to bed early that night.

I’m back again with some more posts about Matt’s and my adventures while he was here in Germany (this post follows up the “Brussels” post).  After getting back from Brussels, I worked the next day and Matt spent some time exploring Dortmund, and we left that night to head to Düsseldorf.  There, we met Amanda (the other OSU student in Dortmund), who was on her way back from Aachen.  She even brought us chocolate from the Lindt factory store there!  We walked around the city for awhile, which is really nice.  Like Köln, it’s right on the Rhein River.  Here’s a few photos showing the waterfront, Altstadt, and Rathaus (city hall):

That night we found a great German place for some food then went out for a few drinks.  We caught a late train back, so of course we had to dive into the chocolate!  Amanda took the picture of Matt and I enjoying some chocolate on the train, but I think she’s a better at delivering chocolate than taking photos:

Hey everyone, wanted to post a brief update.  I’ve been relaxing all day today as it was a busy week with research and the German course.  Yesterday night I met up with some of my friends from the German language course and we went to Kokerei Hansa, a coking plant that was in operation from 1928-1992.  It’s now available as public space for meetings and special events, and they give tours of the old coke production facilities.  Coke is produced by burning coal at extremely high temperatures in a vacuum.  Coke is much stronger and burns at much hotter temperatures than coal, and this is why it is used as the main ingredient in steel production (it is used to melt the raw iron ore).  The facility was very neat, and quite interesting for me as an engineering major…I’ve toured a steel mill before but never a coking plant!  Here’s a couple pictures:

It’s going to be pretty strange not being at the Buckeyes game tonight, this will be the first time in 4 years that I won’t be attending an OSU home game against a Big 10 opponent, but Christian and I will be watching the game from his apartment tonight!  GO BUCKS!  I also want to give a shout out to Kyle and the Strongsville Mustangs high school football team to say congratulations on their victory last night, when they beat Lakewood 31-3!!

From Cologne, we took the Thalys to Brussels, which was great.  The ride took about three hours, and the train was quiet, comfortable, and reached speeds of up to 190 mph.  We arrived at Brussels around 7 pm, found our way to the hostel (which was a little ways out of the city center, but extremely cheap and easily reachable on the subway), then set out to explore the city.  Our first stop was the Grand Place, the main square in the city center, regarded by many as the most beautiful square in the world.  It’s easy to see why.  Here’s Matt and I in front of the city hall, and some other pictures of the square.  Most of the buildings are guild houses, and they all competed for the best-looking facades.

We also came back later and got a couple night photos, which turned out pretty cool.  Here are a couple of my favorites:

Apparently Brussels nightlife isn’t that great compared to many European cities (particularly on a Wednesday night), but we found our way into an Irish pub where we heard loud cheers as we were walking by.  We walked in and saw everyone fixated on the TVs, which wasn’t very abnormal except that they were all showing tennis.  It turns out that Kim Clijsters (a Belgian) was playing a match in the US Open that night, so everyone was cheering her on.  It was pretty neat to see everyone cheering and singing for each point, and it was made all the better because she won the match in an upset.  We decided to spend our evening there due to the great atmosphere, and the night had one more surprise for us…as I was walking to the restroom, I noticed a hat with a pretty recognizable logo on it…in the shape of a “Block O”!!!  It turns out that the two guys were Ohio State alumni on vacation in Europe…naturally we had to take the requisite O-H-I-O picture!  Wow I love going to Ohio State…Go Bucks!!

We found our way back to the hostel and woke up the next day to sight-see.  Our first order of business was to find a stand selling Belgian waffles (for some reason these were quite popular in Brussels!).  We weren’t disappointed, it was honestly the best waffle I’ve ever had in my life, and I didn’t even get any toppings on it whatsoever.  With full stomachs, we were set to see what Brussels had to offer…which, as it turns out, was quite a lot.

Our first stop was the Cinquantenaire triumphal arch, which was built to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Belgium’s independence.  Then, since Brussels is the capital of the European Union, we checked out the European Union Parliament Building (I don’t think it would be possible for this building to be any more different from the U.S. Capitol Building), and we saw the Brussels stock exchange.

Our next stop was Manneken Pis, which is a fountain depecting a young boy peeing.  I have no idea why this was built or if it has any significance, but it’s now one of the most popular tourist destinations in Brussels (and it’s not even very big).  Regardless, it’s kind of funny, especially because the city regularly dresses the boy up in little outfits…when we saw him, he was dressed up like a member of the Belgian Royal Guard.  We then hiked up toward the Royal Palace and got a great shot of the Brussels skyline on the way (that’s the city hall in the center), and then got to the Royal Palace of Brussels, where the King of Belgium carries out his formal duties of head of state (though he doesn’t even live here!).  We were lucky enough to be there in the couple-week window where walkthroughs are allowed, and the inside was absolutely amazing, with marble, crystal, and gold everywhere.  Unfortunately, pictures weren’t allowed though, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.

Our last stop of the day was the Atomium, which is basically Brussels’ Eiffel Tower (though it’s not near as well-known).  The structure was built for the Worlds’ Fair when it was held in Brussels (just as the Eiffel Tower was built for the Worlds' Fair in Paris) and is 335 feet tall!  As a materials science and engineering major, this structure is especially interesting for me because this is an exact replica (to scale) of an iron crystal (the main component in steel)…only blown up 165 BILLION times!! Matt and I each got pictures of us contemplating the shear size of the thing, and I threw in another picture at the base to give you an idea of just how big this really is:

We had to head to the train station after this, and made our way back to Germany.  We needed to get some rest before our next adventures:  Düsseldorf and Hamburg!

Hey everyone!  It’s finally time to dive into my blog posts from when my roommate Matt came to visit.  He arrived bright and early on Wednesday, September 2nd.  We toured around Dortmund a little bit, met Christian for Schnitzel, then he slept for a few hours to try to get past the jet lag he was feeling while I got some work done.  The next day we set off for our first big trip…Brussels.  Since we were taking the high-speed train from Köln around 4 pm, we decided to spend the early part of the day in the city.  I’m not going to bother with more posts of the cathedral or most of the city, as I’ve got a couple posts up about this stuff already:

Köln (Cologne)

Dad in Dortmund! (Xanten, Cologne, Essen, and Dortmund, Germany)

Cologne and Bonn

…But Matt and I decided to visit one new place, the Römisch-Germanisches Museum (Romano-Germanic Museum).  Present-day Cologne was built on the site of a large Roman city, and many ruins and artifacts have been found as a result.  The museum contains the world’s best collection of Roman glass in addition to ceramic artifacts, mosaics (the largest dating back to the 3rd century), paintings, and some larger architectural pieces.  You can see the photo album to see some of the artifacts we saw, along with some photos of Matt and I.

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We also stopped at Globetrotters, an amazing outdoor and sports store that puts Dick’s Sporting Goods to shame (yes, even the two story ones with the rock climbing wall).  They have 4 floors and the store includes a pond where you can try canoes and kayaks, a rain room to test raincoats, a room that stays at 13 degrees (F) and can create 30 mph winds to test winter jackets, and a deep pool to test scuba equipment.  If we had one of these in the states, I think I would go at least once a week.  Once we’d gotten our fill of the store and the museum, it was time to leave for Brussels!

Hi all!  Sorry I haven’t posted in so long, but it’s been an unbelievably busy few weeks.  From September 2nd to 10th, my roommate Matt was here visiting me, so we spent most of the time seeing what there was to see (this means upcoming posts on our trips to Cologne, Brussels, Hamburg, castles near Dortmund, and Aachen).  Since Matt left, I’ve been scrambling to make up lost time at work as I prepare for my presentation to my research group in Dortmund on September 26th, and my presentation to research groups from three universities in Munich on October 2.

In addition to this, I’ve started my German language course so that I can improve my speaking and listening skills.  I’m taking this class with other international students who are studying here at TU Dortmund, which has been really great.  I’ve been hanging out and making friends with all of my classmates, and they come from everywhere…US, England, Spain, Mexico, France, Italy, Turkey, Romania, Hungary, Korea, and many other countries!  This has been a great experience for me, and it’s been an unbelievable opportunity to be able to meet and interact with all of these people from all over the world on a daily basis.  The class has also been great, and while I’m not fluent, I’ve been speaking more and more German.  I now speak German more than half the time I talk to my German roommate, and regularly practice when out with people from my class, so my skills have been improving rapidly!!

This weekend I hope to start getting some posts up about my travels and adventures from the past few weeks, so bear with me as I work on finding the time and energy to get them written!  As always, thanks for your patience and finding the time to visit the site!

After the hour drive from the festival, we arrived in Vienna, my third major international city of the trip (Amsterdam, Netherlands; Dublin, Ireland; Vienna, Austria).  After a quick pit stop to McDonald’s (we were all craving a burger pretty badly after eating camping food for three days), we checked into our hostel, which was about a half hour walk from the city center.  It was really nice, with clean rooms, free wireless internet, an arcade/game room, and a cheap but extensive breakfast buffet.  We all enjoyed having real showers again then got set to see the city.  Since the weather was about perfect (80 degrees and mostly sunny), we decided to walk down to the city center and get a feel for the city.  After a nice walk, we reached our first destination, the Museumsquartier (Museum Quarter) Complex.  It was pretty amazing, one of the 10 largest cultural complexes in the world…Frommer’s Tourbook describes it as “a combination of the Guggenheim, New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, an architecture/design center, children’s museum, and theaters, shops, and various other galleries and exhibitions.”  Here’s a couple pictures:

Our next stop was right across the street at the Maria-Theresien-Platz.  Flanked by the Museum Quarter, the Museum of Art History, the Museum of Natural History, and the Hofburg Palace Complex, this is one of the most famous plazas in the world!  Here’s me facing the Museum of Art History, which houses the extensive, priceless art collections of the Habsburg Dynasty.

Our next stop was the Hofburg Palace Complex, the 2,600+ room palace that served as the winter palace of the powerful Habsburg dynasty (rulers of the Austrian Empire from the 1400s to the 1700s).  It was just unbelievably huge and spread out.  Here are pictures of, in order, me in front of the gate to the complex, the Neue Hofburg (the most recent addition and residence of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination was the final trigger that began World War I), the monument to Franz Josef, then Daniela and I in front of the palace.  In the first picture we were being goofy (as usual), but for the second we decided that it WAS Vienna, after all, so we had to strike a more cultural, sophisticated pose.

From there I took a quick pit stop to see a couple pretty important sights.  Here are, in order, the monument to Mozart (spent many of his music-writing years in Vienna), the monument to Goethe (Germany’s most famous writer), and the Wien Staatsoper (Vienna State Opera House…arguably the most famous and prestigious concert hall in the entire world):

From the Hofburg, we went to the city’s most famous rose garden (first two pictures…and I even snuck one of Christian in there), then to the Austrian Parliament House, Vienna’s city hall, the Volkstheater, then back to the Hofburg to see some of the courtyards, the impressive Roman ruins, and the entrance to the Kaiserappartments (Imperial apartments, where the Emperors and their families lived in the palace complex).  The picture titles in the album indicate what each picture is showing.

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Our last main tourist stop for the day was Domkirche St. Stephan (St. Stephan’s Cathedral).  Originally built in the 1200s, it is one of the most famous gothic buildings in Europe, and it’s easy to see why from the pictures.  The altar, shown in detail in the last picture, is the most famous piece in the church and was built in the 1400s.

All this sightseeing had made us pretty hungry!  Since we were in Vienna (or Wien in German) we knew that we needed to find a place that had good Wiener Schnitzel, essential to any trip to Vienna.  Wiener Schnitzel is veal that is pounded flat into a very thin piece, breaded, and fried in hot oil for about 30-60 seconds.  True schnitzel must be very thin or it takes longer to cook and does not have the correct texture.  We found a restaurant called Figlmüller which advertised “the most famous schnitzel in Vienna!”, so we had to give it a try, and it didn’t disappoint.  We all ordered their signature dish, which was a 30 cm diameter by 4 mm thick piece of schnitzel that was hand-pounded and breaded, along with homemade German potato salad and a half liter of beer.  I was pretty excited when I started, as you can see in the first picture, but started to struggle towards the end…I ended up persevering in the end, though, and finished the whole thing in the end (along with the potato salad and beer), earning the respect of all my German traveling companions, who were quite impressed that I ate it all (Christian ate the most besides me, finishing only about 2/3 of his piece).  Too bad Kyle wasn’t there, he probably could’ve eaten two and really put us all to shame!

We were all pretty full and exhausted after the meal and the events of the last four days, so we decided to head back to the hostel and call it an early night.  The next morning, we got breakfast and checked out of the hostel.  We had a little time to sightsee before we had to start the 8 hour drive back to Dortmund, so we decided to stop at Schönbrunn Palace, the 1,441 room summer home of the Habsburgs.  Originally built around 1700, it was meant to be a finer palace than Versailles in France, although never quite reached the same level due to financial issues at the end of construction.  Regardless, it is one of the most famous examples of baroque architecture in the world, and certainly one of the most impressive palaces I’ve ever seen.  You can see my photos in the following album:

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From the palace, we left and made the uneventful 8 hour drive back to Dortmund, exhausted but very excited about such an amazing trip!

Christian, one of his best friends Ulf, Ulf’s girlfriend Daniela, and I all took a couple days off at the end of last week to take a mini-vacation to Austria.  Our first goal was the FM4 Frequency Festival in St. Pölten, about an hour outside of Vienna.  We got some good views right away, and the campsite was pretty packed.  The picture shows about 5 percent of the total camping area, which was long and narrow, flanking a river (the river pictured in the first picture).

First order of business was to get the camp set up, then, considering it was 90 degrees and not a cloud in the sky, we needed to check out the river!  This was definitely a popular hang-out for the first two days when the weather was hot…everyone enjoyed the swimming and relaxing.  Here’s some river pictures!

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The first night, we saw Rise Against and Peter Fox…they were both really good, and we enjoyed the atmosphere.  In all, 120,000 people ended up attending!  Here are some photos of, in order: all four of us, Rise Against, Ulf and Daniela, Christian and I in front of Peter Fox, and Peter Fox + crowd.

We were pretty tired after the music, so we headed back and went to bed.  The second day was more of the river and a few bands, but the highlight of the night ended up being after the concerts.  We met some Italians earlier in the day, and we ran into them on the way home from the concerts and were invited to a dance party in front of their tents, so of course we joined in!

We awoke the third day to the sound of rain hitting the tents, and the rain continued throughout the day.  Since this took the fun out of the river option, we had to find something else to do.  The night before, Christian made friends with some Austrians who were staying a few tents over, so we decided to go see what they were doing, and ended up spending the better part of the day hanging out with them and playing Uno!  It was fun to hang out with people from another new country, and they all seemed to like meeting an American.  Plus, Uno was played somewhat differently and took me awhile to understand…they must have some crazy rules in Austria or something.  There’s a picture of the Austrians along with Christian below.  One of the girls who was there with the Austrians kept yelling the word “Goulash!” throughout the time we were there (goulash is a stew, originally from Hungary, and extremely popular in Austria ever since the Austro-Hungarian period).  Now, just yelling this word isn’t such a big deal, but the fact that she would start around 6-7 am and not stop until 1 am or later was.  But, as you can see below, she got what was coming to her in the end (and Christian was an integral part of the activities….busted!).  Don’t worry, we all let her go eventually!

That night, we decided we should see some bands since it was the last day of the festival.  As the pictures demonstrate, it was incredibly muddy after all the rain, but if anything that just made it more fun!  Oh, and no idea who the really muddy guy is, but he was the muddiest person we found that night, so I think he needs to be included here.  As far as bands, we braved the mud and rain to see Mando Diao (Swedish rock band), Ska-P (Spanish ska band), and The Prodigy (English rock band, and the biggest band at the festival…pretty impressive distinction considering some of the bands that were there).  The four of us had a great time!

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The next day we woke up and, along with everyone else had the unenviable task of packing up and attempting to sort of clean the area.  In a very smart move, the festival organizers charged everyone a 5 euro garbage deposit.  To get the deposit back, you were required to bring a garbage bag full of trash to the check-out area.  Despite the mountain of full garbage bags, there was still a pretty big mess:

But, we couldn’t stick around to clean it up…we packed up our tents, turned in our full garbage bags, and it was on to Vienna! 

Hey all!  Wanted to put up a brief update since I haven’t had a chance to finish my posts about my 5-day trip to Austria (which was great, by the way!).  My goal is to have a post up for the trip by Sunday.

Since I took a few days off for the trip, Christian and I were both really busy getting caught up with work this week.  I formed about 80 parts which I would be running tests on (the parts are an aluminum tube connected to an aluminum mandrel…if you missed it take a look at my July 8 post…click and it will take you there).  Then, yesterday and today I used a tensile testing machine which pulls the joined pieces apart.  The machine I used can apply more than 55,000 pounds to a piece to break it.  The machine makes a graph by measuring how hard it is pulling at any given time, and how much the metal pieces are being stretched.  Using this information, I can learn a lot about which types of parts work better than others, and how and why the parts break.  This will be a large part of what I’m working on the rest of the month.  We will also be cutting some of the parts in half and looking at them under a microscope, and using x-rays to see what the formed parts look like under the surface without having to break them.  I’m looking forward to using all these techniques to learn more about the parts I’m trying to form!

This weekend I’m taking it pretty easy, I have an exciting couple weeks coming up as one of my roommates from OSU will be arriving in Dortmund on Monday morning to visit!  He’ll be here until September 10, and we’re working on some travel plans and other things to do while he’s here.  Tomorrow, I’ll be able to watch my brother’s high school football game, as I have software that lets me watch our home’s (in Strongsville) cable TV over the internet, so I’m looking forward to that.  Go Mustangs!

Sunday, I’m planning on taking a day trip with a couple people to Aachen, another city in the same state as Dortmund.  I’m excited to go, the city is right at the corner of Germany, Belgium, and Luxembourg (there’s actually a spot where you can stand in all three countries at the same time).  Additionally, the city was the headquarters of Charlemagne (regarded as the “Father of Europe” and regarded as the originator of both the French and German Royal lineages).  He created what was known as the Frankish Empire, and is one of European history’s most significant figures.  Aachen was Charlemagne’s favorite place of residence, and the place where all medieval German kings (usually Holy Roman Emperors) were crowned.  Although Charlemagne’s castle was destroyed, his Palatine Chapel is still standing intact and open to the public, and is Charlemagne’s final resting place.  The city has a lot of other medieval history as well.  It should be a great trip!

Anyways, look for my Austria posts by the end of the weekend, hopefully, and everyone enjoy your weekend until then!  Good luck to all you high school football players out there!

This past Monday was the last day in Germany for one of the Americans I’d become friends with through the RISE program, so we decided to take a little day trip.  Since we both live in the same state here, we could use our train passes to go anywhere in the state for free, so we decided to head to Cologne first.  We climbed to the top of the Cathedral (just like Christian and I did when Dad came to visit) because my friend hadn’t done that yet, then headed inside the Cathedral.  I was glad we did, because this time they had the area behind the altar open.  Here’s a couple pictures I was able to get of the Shrine of the Magi, the gold-gilt sarcophagus that is traditionally believed to hold the remains of the Three Wise Men, or Three Kings, of biblical times.

After getting our fill of the cathedral, we hopped on the train for the 30-minute ride south to Bonn.  The first thing we did was our main reason for the trip:  we wanted to go to the Haribo factory store in Bonn!  Haribo are widely available in the states, but if you’re not familiar they are the company who developed the original gummy bears that are so popular today.  Here’s a picture:

The store was really cool, with candy everywhere!  We both got what was most likely a little too much candy for our own goods, and I filled some orders that had been placed by friends back in Dortmund (everyone loves Haribo!)  When we had gotten our fill, we headed back to the city center of Bonn to explore a little bit.  Some of the pictures I got can be seen in the album below, and show the United Nations campus in Bonn, the old town hall in the city center, and the home where Ludwig von Beethoven, the famous composer was born.  It was a neat city.

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When we had seen enough, we got some ice cream then headed back to the train station.  We stopped back in Cologne on the way home for dinner, where we found a really great traditional German restaurant along the Rhein.  After that, we headed back…it was a fun day!

This week I was busy working.  I found out a couple days ago that the abstract we submitted for a presentation at a conference got accepted.  So, I’m now co-author (along with three others) of a presentation entitled Fabrication of Dimensionally-Correct Sheet Metal Components Directly from T-6 Aluminum Alloys and Airframe Applications….fascinating, I know.  My professor will be giving the presentation at the “Global Innovations in Manufacturing of Aerospace Materials” Symposium at the 2010 TMS (The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society) Annual Meeting and Exhibition in Seattle, Washington, which I should be attending!  In other news, we’re still working on writing the paper that we hope to get published in the journal, and I will be starting some experiments this coming week for my project that I’m working on here.

This weekend I just hung out in Dortmund and didn’t do a whole lot, Dublin was expensive and I need to save money for my trip to Vienna next weekend!  I’m going with Christian, one of Christian’s friends, and his friend’s girlfriend.  We leave Wednesday night after work and come back on Monday night.  We’ll be spending a day and a half exploring the city and the rest of the time at the FM4 Frequency Music Festival, a 3-day music festival that has already sold out of the 150,000 tickets that were available!  It’ll be a busy start of the week getting experiments done, but that should be a great trip!

I also got some exciting news that one of my roommates from back at OSU, Matt, will be coming to visit for ten days in the beginning of September!  He got his plane tickets last night, and Christian and I are both really looking forward to having him come over here! 

Anyways,I might put up a small update by Wednesday if there’s time, if not I should be back on here by the middle of next week (sometime around the 25th or 26th).  I hope that you’re all having a great weekend and thanks for reading!  I’m over 1,000 views of the blog so far, which I think is pretty cool!

Made my second international trip this past weekend (the first was Amsterdam, right near the beginning of my trip), and it was awesome!  I went with two other Americans who I met through the RISE program.  They’re both conducting research at University of Essen here in Germany, which is about a 30 minute train ride from Dortmund.  Marcus is from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Indiana, while Katie is from Colorado State University in, well, Colorado.  Pictures of us will be upcoming.

We left early Friday morning on the three-hour train ride out to the airport, which was in the middle of nowhere (by taking the three hour train instead of the one hour bus, we saved 11.5 Euros!!).  The flight was from a low-cost airline called Ryan Air, was actually quite pleasant…the main drawback was that the entire interior of the plane, from the overhead bins to the seats, was Michigan colors…blech!!  We landed, and you could tell right away that we were in Ireland…

We took a bus into the city and checked into our hostel, which was great…right in the entertainment district of the city and with a view of the River Liffey, the main river that bisects the city, running east to west.  Here’s the view looking right and left from our room!

We arrived early in the afternoon, so we had the late afternoon and early evening to explore.  We decided that the first order of business was fish and chips, since you don’t exactly find that everywhere in Germany.  It was fantastic!  Then, since we wanted all day on Saturday to explore, we decided we were going to tour the Guinness storehouse with our remaining afternoon time on Friday.  We found it without too much trouble, and of course had to get pictures at the gate!

When we made it into the storehouse itself, we were pretty blown away…it’s a seven story building with all sorts of exhibits all about the brewery, including how the beer is made, transported, packaged, and sold.  We spent a few hours in there without too much trouble at all…here’s an album:

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The highlight of the museum was the area they have in there where they teach you how to properly pour a glass of Guinness at a bar!  As you can see, I did it properly, and was pretty pleased with myself about it…

After we got finished, we strolled around the city a bit and relaxed.  That night we decided to head out.  The main street for pubs was about a block from our hostel, so we headed out that way.  Here’s what we found…

The pub on the left was great, they played the most ridiculous American pop music there (think “ABC”, “Bye Bye Miss American Pie”, and “We are the Champions”).  We had a great time, then headed back to the hostel to get some sleep for a busy day on Saturday!

We woke up around 10 on Saturday, grabbed a quick breakfast from the hostel, and headed out for a city tour.  There’s a company called “New Europe Tours” that offers free tours in major cities around Europe…we got a three hour tour around the city that was great!  They went into the history of Dublin and Ireland as a whole, and talked about everything from the early Viking wars to the struggle for independence from England in the 1900s, and where each area and building fit in to all the stories…the guide did a really great job.  Here are some pictures of the city, the pictures are labeled if they’re of something notable.

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We also got to see Trinity College, the oldest college in Ireland and one of the most well-known throughout the world, and houses such treasures as the Book of Kells, a hand-drawn manuscript of the four gospels dating from the year 800.  Here’s the main gate (first picture) and the Campanile (second picture), the most famous landmark at the College, located in the center of the main quad.

We didn’t get done with the tour until almost 3 and were extremely hungry, and we had spotted a good looking place the previous day, the Porterhouse Brewing Company and Restaurant, so we went to check it out for a big lunch/dinner.  It was great!  It was a microbrewery with traditional Irish ales and stouts, and had great food!  I got bangers and mash, which is sausage, mashed potatoes, and Yorkshire pudding, with mushroom gravy on top.  As we got done with our food, an Irish band started up, so we hung out there for awhile, it was a lot of fun.  Here’s a picture of the restaurant and one of the band (minus the drummer, don’t know where he ran off to)…

That night, we went on a pub crawl with the same company that does the tours.  We met some native Dubliners along with people from Australia, England, and some other Americans, it was great!  Here’s a few pictures of Marcus, me, and Katie…

I even had my green on the whole weekend, if you notice!  Our flight left early the next morning, and we made it back to Germany with no problems.  It was a great weekend!

Saturday, the day after my trip to Bremen, we had plans to attend the “Juicy Beats” music festival.  The outdoor festival went from noon Saturday to 4 am Sunday, and had 40 bands playing over 14 different stages, it was huge!  The weather that day was absolutely perfect, a warm 80 degrees and sunny, with a light breeze, and the nicest weather we’d had in awhile.  We started off the day on Christian’s porch enjoying the weather.  Christian invited about 6 of his friends, and Amanda (from Ohio State) was there along with another American who I’d met in Germany who was also in the RISE program.  Here’s a picture of Christian getting ready for the festival which is just perfect.  Our research group at OSU bought Christian this mug as a gift before he left the US to return to Germany last year, so it was nice to see it get put to use (Go Bucks!)

We headed to the festival around 4, giving it a couple hours to get started.  It was huge, about 20,000 people ended up attending!  Here’s a couple pictures, the first is from my camera (I didn’t get too many pictures because I didn’t want my camera to get broken, there were people everywhere!) and the second is from the Juicy Beats website:

It was a really fun night that went pretty late, and everyone had a great time!

Well, that’s all I have time to write about for now!  My next post will be about my weekend in Dublin, so that should be a good one!  I hope to have it up tomorrow or Friday at the latest.  Good night everyone!

Two weeks ago, I was looking at my free train pass I got from the RISE program and realized I only had about a week to use it before it expired!  Since I was going to be in Dublin this past weekend and wouldn’t be able to use it, I knew that it had to be used that upcoming weekend.  Since we already had plans on Saturday to attend a music festival (more on that shortly), it had to be on Friday.  I wanted to go somewhere that I could get to and from in one day so I could be back that night, so I chose the city of Bremen.

Bremen is Germany’s oldest coastal city, and the largest port in the country except Hamburg.  Known as the “Rome of the North” during the middle ages, it was also a Hanseatic City, making it extremely influential and wealthy.  Here’s the main train station and the park that rings the city where the ancient walls once did (the Wallanlagen)…there’s an ancient windmill there that still works!

The clear heart and soul of the city is the Marktplatz, and has been for over 1,000 years.  Here’s a picture of the 560 year old Rathaus (town hall) and a picture of Roland, the 30 foot high statue of the city’s protector.  Legend has it that Bremen will always be a free city so long as this statue stands…when the area was heavily bombed in World War 2 extensive measures were taken to protect it and it never did fall.

The following album shows some more pictures of the sights along the Marktplatz.  The statue of the donkey, dog, cat, and rooster are especially interesting.  They are known as the Bremen Town Musicians and are characters from a famous Brothers' Grimm fairy tale.

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The other main places I visited in Bremen are the Schnoor Quarter, the oldest area of the city (pictures on the left and middle) and Böttcherstrasse, which is a reproduction of a medieval alley and contains shops, galleries, and restaurants (picture on the right).

By a pretty amazing coincidence, I happened to get an e-mail from my Grandma on Thursday night before I left telling me that my great great grandfather immigrated to America from a town in Germany called Oldenburg.  I checked out Oldenburg online, and found that it was a 20 minute train ride from Bremen, so I hopped on a train to check it out!  It was pretty neat to see, one picture shows the harbor where my Great Great Grandpa very likely started his journey to America, and a cemetery in which I might have relatives buried (although I couldn’t find any, but it was pretty big).  You can see them in the album:

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Sorry none of these pictures had any people in them, but I took this trip by myself!  More posts upcoming shortly!