State of the Stadt
13 April 2005
This is the 12 April update, although it probably will not be finished until 13 or 14 April. C’est la vie (or the German equivalent). We have finished the bulk of our official COB 327 related travel. We went to Augsburg on 1 April (Friday), and then another trip to München the next day. It is a little difficult grasping the idea that I just gave my fourth of fourteen lectures in surface technology while everyone in St. Cloud is almost ready for final exams.
Arnaud Ferrand, a French student staying at the Villa, joined us on both trips. The Augsburg trip was okay, it was interesting visiting a 2020 year old city, but there weren’t that many sights of interest for the group. They had a few pretty impressive churches, the Dom in particular, but I think the students are kind of “churched out”. They have already seen a few churches in every city so far, so I think they are starting to look the same. We saw the Furgerei, the first housing project for the poor, which dates back to 1514. All the students were amazed that residents only pay a symbolic 1€ per year in rent. I pity the apartment landlords in St. Cloud when we return. The last place for the plan was the home of Leopold Mozart. That was the father of Amadeus for you non-music majors. Unfortunately, we found it had been closed down. By this time, everyone was pretty worn down and thirsty. We anxiously headed for a bar a few blocks back everyone noticed, called Murphy’s Law. True to the name, it was closed.
On 2 April (Saturday) we made our second trip to München. We were joined by Villa residents Arnaud and Emma Bentham, and English student working as an intern at Audi. Most of the first tour was by van, so we tried to pick up some of the things that we just rode by earlier. Part of the plan was to catch the Glockenspiel when it went off at 11:00. Unfortunately, there was a big rally in the Marienplatz by the socialist party. They were doing the speeches and music until well after 11:00, and no clock action. We did get the occasional group of Neo-Nazis yelling and trying to stir something up, but they were largely ignored.
The main feature of the day was the Deutches Museum. We set a meeting time and place for about 3 hours after our arrival in case anyone got separated. Sure enough, that took less than five minutes. Chris ended up with me which kept the engineers together. We ended up seeing about ¼ to 1/3 of the museum. It has too much to really look at in one day. We got to the meeting spot about five minutes late and the rest of the crew looked like they were ready to wake up and leave. They said they got there about 10 minutes earlier and had seen the whole museum. I had the feeling they would have been happy to spend about two hours less at the museum. Definitely not engineering material.
We have two trips left. The students are planning a late June trip to Berlin. Everyone will have Eurail passes activated by then which is why we can afford the trip. It will probably be a one or two night stay. I am planning the Berchtesgaden trip for early June with whatever money is not allocated for Berlin. Seth and Eric and have been trying hard to keep our travel mileage average up to snuff. They have been to Paris and London in the last few weeks, and head to Dublin this weekend.
The ERC Panthers, the Ingolstadt hockey team, was in the playoffs. I did some research and found they have at least four NHL players killing time during the strike. Jamie Langenbrunner is the best known NHL player on the team. As you might have guessed, most of the players are Canadian. They beat Kölner Haie 4-3 in the first round (viertelfinale). We went to the 1516 club to watch a couple of the halbfinale games. They lost that series 1-3 to the Eisbären Berlin. I haven’t figured the logic of a best of 7 quarterfinal, then down to best of 5 for the semifinal. The finals are also best of 5. Football (soccer) was not much better. Bayern München made the playoffs in the Champions league. They lost the first game at Chelsea 2-4. Since teams advance on a composite score of 2 games, Bayern needed a 2 point win at home. They won tonight by 3-2, so lost the series 4-5.
The main request I usually get from back home is pictures, so we will try for a group photo next week. That last picture did not have Kerwin or the three Polish students. I have also announced plans for the “First Annual Burn what you Brat” this Saturday. Those grills have been on my mind since I first saw them waiting in the basement.
I am putting a collection of photos along with these “newsletters” into my campus website. The first two newsletters were sent as email text rather than the Word document you are getting now. If anyone saved those two emails, please send a copy back to me and I’ll add those to the web page. The webpage is a work in progress, consisting primarily of a series of "photo galleries". Take a look if you are so inclined.