Stuttgart Wine Country (June 17, 2007)

Complete Set of Photos

Last weekend, AEGEE (the student group that organizes all of these foreign kid excursions) had an event at a wine museum and some wine tasting here in Stuttgart. This was cool - wine is also very popular in Germany, especially in the south. There are many vineyards around Stuttgart too, and Baden-Württemberg is well known for its wines.

We started out visiting the wine production museum in Uhlbach, a part of Stuttgart just on the other side of a hill across from Untertürkheim, which is where the Mercedes factory is. This was a somewhat interesting museum - we had a crazy German tour guide who had funny looking hair take us around and show us some of the different sorts of grapes and so on. There was also a neat collection of the tools and tractors and such that the workers would use.

After the museum tour, we walked down the road up to the top of one of the hills, passing through cherry orchards and, of course, many vineyards. The grapes (the ones we saw were Riesling grapes) were still very small and not ripe, but it was cool to be right there on the sides of the hills. When we made it to the top (to a mausoleum monument), we all sat down on some benches and sampled a variety of German wine that our student guide had brought along.




It was a very nice afternoon spent in a very nice area of Stuttgart!

Visit to Lucie in Strasbourg, France (June 8-10, 2007)

Complete Set of Photos

Well, last weekend I visited Lucie for probably the last time. This time, I met her in Strasbourg, which is where she studies. This city is right on the border with Germany (it actually was part of Germany about a hundred years ago or so), so it was only a two hour train ride.

Lucie picked me up at the train station and we then walked through the city to her apartment. Strasbourg is really nice - it wasn't completely destroyed in WWII and there's a bunch of rivers/canals going through the whole place. The downtown area is actually and island and Lucie lives just on the edge of that (but not on the island, across the river).

After a quick tour to get my bearings, we met up with some of her school buddies at their apartment for the pre-party (some of them were done with exams, so there was a party tonight!). This was a cool apartment - it was in a nice building and had an overhand over a pedestrian street. After a while here, we headed to a different apartment on the 5th floor of a big tall apartment building at the university. Her friends were very nice and even tried to speak some English to me (Europeans always seem to know enough English to complain about our government!). I let them pass my camera around to take pictures - that explains the wierd ones!

The next day, we woke up... to rain! Luckily, that stopped after an hour or so and we dried out walking around. We checked out the huge cathedral tower (with a viewing deck halfway up!), walked around the whole city (there are very cool buildings and cobblestone alleys everywhere), checked out the medieval towers, and even took a touristy boat tour around the island! Here we got to see the seat of the EU Parliament.

Lucie's oven was broken (does anyone have an oven that works here!!!???), so we had to sample the local cusine in restaurants. We ate a Flammekeuche (a kind of pizza, but with cream instead of sauce and cheese, but I was told to never compare it to a pizza!), and then, with two of Lucie's friends, we tried escargot (snails)! Of the four of us, only Lucie had ever tried them, and the other two were also French! We found them at a fancy restaurant - we (four poor students) sat down, ordered one dozen snails (one entree) to split 4 ways, along with the free bread and water! What bums! They actually were good - there was a nice herb sauce on them too. You did not have to suck them out of the shell like I was expecting! Afterwards, we went to see Zodiac (the movie about the Zodiac killer), in original English with French subtitles.

The next day, we bummed around some and then I got on the city bus to head to Kehl (the first train station in Germany, from there I can get the cheap ticket back to Stuttgart). Well, there was a big fair because Sunday was the first day of TGV service between Paris and Stuttgart (the TGV is the super fast French train that goes 320 kph or so). Well, the bus got stuck in a traffic jam before we were out of Strasbourg, so the driver told us to get off and walk, it would be faster! So, after getting off the bus and wandering through this party, a security guard (who couldn't speak German or English) talked to me in French. I picked out the one word I knew (pont = bridge) and walked to where he was pointing. Well, I found the bridge and walked from France to Germany! I still find it amazing that on one bank of the river, they speak French and on the other, German (and not each other's language)! Just like that there's a huge cultural and linguistic divide! In the picture, looking south, Germany is on the left, France on the right.

Straußäcker II Sommerfest (June 6, 2007)

Complete Set of Photos

Last Wednesday we had the annual "Summer Festival" in our apartment complex. The student leaders had organized this party, complete with live bands, food tents, and other fun stuff! Many foreign students set up foot stands with food from their own country (I ate some sushi!).

Unfortunately, it rained for about half an hour at the beginning, so everyone ran under the porches and into their apartments. We watched a bit of the Germany-Slovakia soccer game (Germany won!), and then went outside to continue the party after it cleared up.

I didn't bother to take pictures with my own camera, because they have a person who does it for the Straußi web site. I'll link to that when the pictures are up!

I also found it interesting... Michigan Tech has a whole set of rules regarding alcohol on campus, as well as companies sponsoring the sports teams, etc. Well, I think we break about every one of those rules in Germany! This party just got me thinking about it.

Trip to Berlin & Dresden: Dresden (May 26 - June 2, 2007)

Complete Set of Photos

After arriving in Dresden, I walked from the main train station to the hostel, which turned out to be an hour walk away (counting two wrong turns from the stupid map...). This was an awesome hostel though - there were actually friendly travelers around, unlike the ones in Berlin, and there was even free (old) bicycle rental! So, every place that I explored in Dresden, I did it in style on a wicked witch of the west style bike!

Dresden was essentially completely destroyed in WWII, but most of the famous Baroque stuff has been rebuilt or refurbished, and it's this architecture that's the famous thing about Dresden. There are three main churches, every one of which, I believe, was destroyed in the war. They're all rebuilt now and offer climbs to the top for a view of the town. I did that in the Frauenkirche, which had a great view of everything, as well as a cool basement with crypts and passageways preserved from the old version of the building.

There's also the Zwinger, a big Baroque complex with a neat museum of arms, the Rustkammer. I got to see about a million swords and suits of armor from just about every Saxon elector (Dresden is in the state of Sachsen, so Saxony in English).


I also got to do something I had wanted to ever since I got to Germany - go on a tour of a brewery! I found a brochure for the Radeburger Brewery near Dresden and they offered tours for only 6€ (this is conveniently one of my favorite beers)! I called them up and managed to get in on the last tour the next day. It was cool - we got to see the big steel vats, the computer guys who monitor all the parameters (that'd be a cool job!), the bottling conveyor belt, and then, of course, we got to do a tasting at the end! We got to try the pilsner (which is the only kind they produce), as well as the unfiltered pilsner (exact same beer, just not filtered). The non-filtered "Zwickelbier" is not sold in stores. We got to keep the cool glass as a souvenir too!

I decided to stay longer in Dresden instead of going to Leipzig because it was more interesting than I thought it would be. The second day, I rode the awesome bike down the path next to the Elbe River to a famous bridge, the "Blue Wonder." I stopped about 4 times there and back to read some - I enjoy reading but don't have much time for it when studying.

Back at the hostel, I met up with Martin (Germany), Alex (Canada, spoke German) and Anna (Germany), and Eva (Germany), two nice "Mädels" from Berlin. We ended up eating dinner together and then went out to a cafe and sat around for about four hours just talking in German and eating big strawberry ice cream sundaes. It was pretty cool - I finally met other Germans at a hostel! Here's a picture of us at the cafe place. I now have even more German contacts!

It turned out that Martin lives in Schwäbish Hall, which is a city outside of Stuttgart a little ways. This was excellent - we shared one of the weekend train tickets home and made it back for only 15€! He just got out at his stop and I continued on to Stuttgart. Our first train was really nice too: this is still second class!

Some of you loyal readers may remember Anny, the German exchange student from the 03/04 school year at MHS. She is from Dresden and is still studying there. I had made every effort to contact here the whole year (email, phone, SMS, I even signed up for German facebook to message here), but I never got replies from here while I was there. So, I never got to visit Anny.

Trip to Berlin & Dresden: Berlin (May 26 - June 2, 2007)

Complete Set of Photos

This week we had the entire week off of school for the Pentecost break. Using my last big traveling chance of the year, I headed off to Turkey... I mean Berlin, (initially). I figured, having lived in this country for 9 months already, I should at least see the capital city! I ended up having a blast - there was a lot of neat stuff to see and do there. After being in Berlin for 4 nights, I headed off to Dresden, another city to the south, near the borders with Poland and the Czech Republic. I was excited for my first trip to former East Germany!

Yes, I went alone. I have traveled with friends before and that is also fun, but you can't beat being totally independent and being able to do whatever you want, whenever you want! You always meet other travelers too.

To get to Berlin, I used the German carpool service. Carpooling is way more common here than in the US, mainly because gas is around $7 a gallon if you convert Euros and liters (remember that next time you complain about gas prices!). I rode with Uwe and Heiko, two guys from Stuttgart who where driving to Berlin for the Stuttgart-Nürnburg soccer game that night. They told me about going to West Berlin on a school trip and having East German border guards with machine guns get on the bus to check people. There was also a sign on the side of the road where the border used to be (now it's just the border between two states).

After arriving in Berlin, I wandered my way to the hostel to deposit my backpack and then I went exploring, just seeing things and finding out where I was. I also took a boat ride up and down the Spree river. That was neat - they still had a building with WWII bullet holes they never fixed. We saw all the main German government buildings, where the wall used to be, etc. That night, the Stuttgart soccer game was shown on a big screen right behind the Brandenburg Gate - I was about 10 feet from where the wall was (on the eastern side) while watching this game. Stuttgart lost, unfortunately, but it was still cool. The half-time entertainment was... interesting. It was a live KISS cover band from the US, complete with makeup, spiked shoulder things, smoking guitars, etc. but... get this... they were all midgets/dwarves/little people, whatever the correct term is!

The next day after a breakfast of a 1,20€ Döner in the Turkish area of Berlin, I went to see some of the wall stuff, as well as to do a free walking tour. The Berlin Wall, of course, was torn down back in 1989, except for a few small stretches. I got to see those, as well as the brick path running through the city that marks where the wall was (this is what I saw at the soccer game). I also saw Checkpoint Charlie, then the only border crossing for foreigners, now a cheesy tourist area. It has a famous sign. During the walking tour, I saw more of the wall, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (also a museum underground), the general area where Hitler's bunker was (in former Eastern Berlin, next door to the Jewish memorial, and underneath the parking garage of a communist apartment block, off the picture to the right), and the hotel where Michael Jackson held his baby off of the balcony!





























Throughout the rest of my stay, I checked out Potsdamer Platz, a new shopping/office district that's quite famous. There's a viewing level at the 24th floor of one of the buildings with really cool views of Berlin. I also went to the Reichstag, the parliament building, which has a famous glass dome you can climb up in.




















In another shopping area (former West Berlin), Ku'Damm, there's still a church bombed out from the war. They just have a visitor center in the ruin, but they build a new modern church right next door that's actually used for church services.







In the eastern part, there was a museum housed in the old Stasi headquarters (the Stasi were the secret police of the GDR), complete with microphones, spy cameras, and jail cells. I was even in the director's former office!



After staying an extra night in a different hostel, I check out some old Nazi prison blocks (they were destroyed, buried, and now excavated, directly next to a part of the wall that's still there) before heading to the brand new Berlin Hauptbahnhof (main train station), where I caught a train to Dresden! Dresden information is contained in the next post...


There really weren't too many differences I noticed between former West Germany and former East Germany. It did look just a bit different, even after almost 20 years. The houses were different, the sidewalks weren't quite as nice, and there was way more graffiti in Berlin than other cities I've seen. In Berlin, you can't really tell which side you're on, because most things have been refurbished or rebuild, and the wall zigzaged everywhere so you have to look at the brick line to tell where you are. There are more big apartment blocks in the east though.