VOTE ENGINEER

Back in Tennessee

2008-01-27T05:42:00.001+01:00

I am not really sure if anyone reads this anymore. I am now back at work in Tennessee. It is 'interesting' to be back here.

I can imagine that as time goes I will not be terribly inclined to continue writing on the blog, and so it will likely fall by the wayside. Of course, we are working on some cool projects and I may start up another blog with some other individuals so that we can post some of our crazy work for the world to see.

In the meantime, if anyone is reading this and would like to stay in touch, just send me an email at ejacob (at) utsi (dot) edu or you can get a facebook account and add me as a friend, or call me, or whatever you'd like.

So farewell my lovely blog, it was fun writing on you and you made for a great journal for a great trip. I will miss you.

-Eric

RENO

2008-01-09T19:02:00.000+01:00

[Edited while I was in the Reno Airport]

Hey folks, quick update - I had more adventures. I got rerouted through [I wanted to write 'friendster' here earlier] orange county towards Reno. When I got there they didn't have it in their records that I had flew there. So I was asked by a TSA guy how I got through security. Well, long story short I got a private [also wanted to write 'dance' here] search in the middle of the airport. It was no big deal, but interesting nonetheless. The guy gave me a thorough search, checking everything, but he didn't look at my bag or coat at all? Weird. Anyways, everything went well here - I didn't win though. I am so glad to be done with the presentations. Now it is time to relax.

I'll write more later when I am not using a public computer. -Eric

Reno Redux [Things I added in the airport]

I had a lovely incident happen to me at my second talk, the professional one. The entire time that I was in Germany, I kept a Heidi Klum background on my computere. She is Germany and hot, so it makes sense. As I was leaving Germany and heading to Reno I changed my background to something more professionally appropriate. I have this awesome shot from the deep field imager, or something like that. Now, I've had this background up for a good week. I go to my second presentation and when I plug my computer in for the presentation, Bam - half naked Heidi Klum. They engineers got a good kick out of it. Fortunately it was a rather discreet black and white photo. Either way, a bit embarrassing, but oh well.

The talks went well. Dr. Flandro had a good talk too, but he went long. He just had too much stuff to talk about. Today I slept in late and that felt good. I have been going non-stop for a long time. I think it was two nights ago that I went bowling with the other student winners. It was a good group with good presentations. It is nice to see some other quality students around. So I kicked all there asses in bowling and then had a few drinks. That is the rule for me, I am good at all bar games (pool, darts, shuffleboard, etc.,) I think bowling counts as well. I was dead tired, so I was done pretty early.

The view from my hotel room. Reno is pretty nice. They got 8 feet of snow in Lake Tahoe (the reason I was stuck in Vegas.)

Today I ran into Dr. Vakili and hung out with him at the exhibitors area. It was nice chatting with him. Oh and I was hanging out with a group of Australians from RMIT, the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, last night. Their head guy asked me if I would like to do an internship there for 3 months, or whatever time I want. I would love to do that, and the similar language would be a welcomed change. So maybe soon I'll be in Australia for a bit. It would make for a new batch of continued blog posts.

Viva Las Vegas

2008-01-07T01:54:00.000+01:00

Hi folks. I found the internet in the Las Vegas airport. Let me quickly get some sympathy.

So - starting two days ago. I woke up (12am Chicago time) walked to the train station (20 minutes) got on a train to Frankfurt (2 hours) got to the airport and figured that out (2 hours) flight from Frankfurt to Chicago (9 hours) bus ride from Chicago to around Milwaukee (2 hours) my Dad picked me up and a half hour later I was at home (7pm or so). Next day - woke up early because my body is still on germany time. Got ready to fly to Reno for a conference. Flight at 4pm. Flew to Las Vegas and my flight was cancel from there to Reno because of bad weather. So then I waited in line for hours and then had to wait while they figured out how to get me to Reno. Either way I was stuck in Vegas for a night.

Now, it isn't all bad to be stuck in Vegas on a Saturday night. Unfortunetely my body is still mostly on Germany time, so while it was only 9pm or so (Vegas time) when I got to my hotel room for the night, my body said that it was 6am and I hadn't slept yet. But my body can go to hell, I was in Vegas I had to do something.

So I walked around for a few hours and had a few drinks. I went to Hooters, MGM, Belagio, Caesars Palace, New York New York. All over the place. Nice gals around, I think I fell in love three or four times last night. I stayed out to about midnight (9am Eric's body time.)

Today I got up at about 9am, took a shower and went to the Bodies exhibit, the one where they took bodies and preserved them in plastic and have them all chopped up. It is really cool. Then I walked around a bit. It is nice out and the sun exists here. I ate lunch at the Harley Davidson Cafe on the strip. I was explaining to my Father how bad the German service is. Waiting 10 minutes for your beer, how they never ask if you want another one, it is rough. So I did an experiment. I was watching the clock, just seeing how long things took.

I was seated and she gave me a menu, I looked at it for a bit, then she swung by and ask what I wanted to drink. I got a Hefeweisen (it is hard to order here because I was pronouncing the name correctly.) She went to the bar, got my beer and came back. By then I had figured out what I wanted to eat, a pulled pork barbeque sandwich. The order went in and I looked at my watch. Now, Vegas isn't a fair comparison, but literally I had my food in 2 minutes. No kidding, It was just pulled pork and fries, so nothing that need much preparation, but still. So then, I drank my beer and finished it while I was eating. Sat it down, a few seconds later waitress came by, asked if I wanted another, I said yes, she walked to the bar, got my beer and I had a new one. Now that is service - God bless America.

I am about to get on a plane to go to Orange County, then to Reno. I will be there at about 10:50pm. Then I have to figure out where the hell my bag went. Then get to the hotel. I have a talk to give tomorrow at 2pm. I haven't had any time to practice it yet. Guess I will have to wing it again.

I have another presentation on Tuesday, that one I will practice.

I am tired, a bit stress and I just want to go home. If all goes well I will be back on Wednesday. -Eric

P.S. I have pics from Halle, where my Great Grandpa was born and final Germany Pics. I will post all that stuff probably on Tuesday after my work is done.

Auf Wiedersehen

2008-01-04T00:41:00.000+01:00

Well, it's that time. We are all packed and ready to go. Our train leaves for the airport early tomorrow morning. I won't be able to post anything for a while once I am home since I don't have high speed internet access there. I have some more photos. Today we traveled up to Halle where my Great Grandfather Erich Jacob was born.

We had a great time here, we met some great people, made some new friends and have a lot of stories to tell when we get home. It seems odd that we are leaving tomorrow. It feels like we just got here. Well, now it is back to work in the US and the end of our drunken adventures. At least my liver will be happy.

So Germany, Daniel, Mira, Martin and his gal, the other DLR guys, Fabian, Jan, Sabine and the girls in Cologne and everyone else we've met here, we had a great time and we'll miss you.

Hopefully someday we'll see you all again. -Eric

Das Boot

2008-01-03T12:05:00.000+01:00

Last night I dreamed a dream. A wonderful dream.

And you were there.

And you.

Sean, Mira, Daniel and I went out to Thanners last night for our final wheat beer night. We met up with Martin and his girlfriend as well.

And the most amazing thing happened. We found the boots from Beerfest. Sean spotted it, we thought that they were just made up, but they are real. So we just had to get one.

The glass had some German written on it. It translates roughly to 'A beer that was drank with good friends.' A nice finish to our trip here. -Eric

Happy New Years Berlin

2008-01-01T14:46:00.000+01:00

We traveled to Berlin for New Years Eve. Sean and I got to Berlin at about 1:30, Mira and Daniel were going to arrive at around 3:30. Sean and I needed to deposit some money into our bank account here, and since the machine was busted in Goettingen, we needed to do it in Berlin. We walked around town looking for a bank, eventually we found one. On the way I took a few photos.

Sean lifting a car.

Cool buildings.

When we met up with Daniel and Mira it was still pretty early, so we walked around the festivities. We took a ride on the ferris wheel.

This is a view of the stage by the Brandenburg Gate from the ferris wheel. It was freezing outside. It was especially cold up on top the ferris wheel. I picked up a sweatshirt later in the night because I was rather cold.

They had performances going on all afternoon, but most of them were crappy German bands that were tailored more to the teenie-bopper age. Anyways, it was still entertaining.

And of course the countdown in German. I have more to this video. There were fireworks for a while to the right.

After we rang in the new year we walked around to some of the other parties.

There was trash everywhere, it looked a lot like a war zone after the celebrations. The haze and the lighting only added to the effect.

We needed to kill a little time before our train left to come back. We walked back to the Gate and then up to the train station and we got some coffee and waited. We slept on the train, with alarms set so we didn't miss Goettingen. After arriving in Goettingen we walked back and quickly went to sleep. It was a fun adventure. -Eric

Hamburg Christmas

2007-12-31T10:04:00.000+01:00

Eh, I have been slow at this. I guess things are just winding down and I am preparing to leave. In the meantime here are a few photos from Hamburg and Christmas.

The Docks in Hamburg.

Sean and I had to leave our guns and baseball bats at home. How are we going to have any fun?!

It was foggy.

Opening some presents. We got Daniel a UTSI sweatshirt. He got us some DLR calendars.

Alright, I have some more pics I want to post, but Sean and I are leaving for Berlin in an hour, so I gotta go. Cya later. -Eric

Merry Christmas

2007-12-27T11:04:00.000+01:00

Hi everybody - just checking in after Christmas. We had a lovely time in Hamberg with some of Daniel family. Now we are at his parents home near Dortmund. I have some photos and such to post but I have to finish this technical paper so those things will have to wait. One week and one day until we fly out. Tomorrow we have to meet with the apartment guy and check out. We will probably move our stuff to Daniels Saturday or Sunday. Then Monday is New Year Eve in Berlin. Then we return for a couple days to rest and pack and then Friday we head out. See you all soon :) -Eric

Rockets, Planes and Cats

2007-12-22T20:50:00.001+01:00

I've always really liked this photo. This is one of my cats at home, Eddie. Hmmm, today is Saturday, I woke up later and Sean and I went into town to do some laundry. We stopped at the Christmas market and had some Gluhwein and Currywurst. Then we went back to the apartment. After dropping off our clean laundry and taking a nap we went back into town to do a little Christmas shopping. We also stopped at the grocery store to get something for dinner.

Right now I am working on my technical paper for the Aerospace Sciences meeting in Reno when I get back. I would really rather not be doing this right now. Oh well. I've been thinking of all my projects that I want to work on when I get back. Rockets, Planes, Scramjets, Submarines, etc. I am going to try my best to get some other students involved in all these projects at UTSI. I figure I only have a year or so left there, so I need to get cracking.

We will be moving out of our apartment next week after Christmas. Then we will party as much as we can before we leave. -Eric

Where Did I Go?

2007-12-21T19:45:00.001+01:00

Ok, I disappeared from the blog for a short moment there. I had meant to post something yesterday, but I forgot my power cord for my laptop at the office and my batteries died. But praise the Lord my laptop has risen from the dead.

So. Lets catch up on some old going-ons and then we'll talk about the pasts few days events. Now, Monday I worked and then left for Cologne in the afternoon. I met Sabine at the train station after she was done with work. I was great to see her. Now... I would love to give you every detail of my time in Cologne, but in the name of privacy I'll have to leave you hanging. Maybe it is best - like the song - you say it best when you say nothing at all. Oddly enough, being the sap that I am I did write something down. I wrote what I would have written on the blog.

Though, I will show you these photos:

They have a great Christmas market in Cologne, much bigger than the one here in Goettingen. I really enjoyed walking around there. It was cold, but the cold is welcoming when you have some warm Gluhwein to sip on. And check out the kick ass hammer and sickle boomerang in the photo above.

This is a pic of the shore of the Rhine at night. I was standing on the main bridge that crosses the river. The Rhine is gorgeous at night.

Ok, I'll give you one pic of her. I have to write something about her. I haven't held back too much on the rest of the trip. I think there are only a few things I haven't put on the blog. So here it goes. I am going to miss this girl. I had a lot of fun with her. She is a beautiful girl and I love that long red hair of hers. In the end these things come to an end. It is like in Casablanca - "We'll always have Paris."

I think I watch too many old movies.

Frankfurt Train Station.

Ok. I rode the train back to Goettingen on Wednesday and when right to the office. We were giving a presentation at work the next day so I wanted to finish up some things. But, mostly I just spent the time bull shitting with Sean about his time in the US.

This is a photo of Germany at high noon. You can sort of see the sun, it is the bright spot just above the buildings on the left. Again - this is at noon.

So yesterday we gave our presentation. It went well. We introduced them to combustion instability, showed them what we do in the US, showed them what we did here at the DLR and talked about what more could be done. I think we have succeeded in convincing them to continue some C.I. CFD research with Daniel. He is happy about that. It would be a great opportunity for us to continue overseas cooperation.

We went out for dinner that night.

Today we went to work again. Even though we gave our ID's back and stuff on Wednesday. We just finished a few things. Sean had brought some apple cider back from the US. They drink tons of apple juice here, but no apple cider. We didn't know if they didn't have it or if they just didn't know the translation. So today we gave some to Daniel and Martin. They liked it and confirmed that they don't really have that here in Germany. I'm glad we could share something with them.

Sean also brought some US coke and snickers back with him. We gave some to Martin. They taste different to me over here. This way we could do a direct comparison. I told him to take them home and he could try the taste test with his girlfriend too.

And that was our last day at the DLR. In two weeks we travel back home. -Eric

100th Post and 4 Months

2007-12-20T09:17:00.000+01:00

I meant to post this on Monday. That was the 17th, which exactly 4 months after we got here. So, although Sean was back in the US and on his way back, it has been 4 whole months in Germany. So, tomorrow is Friday and that leaves 2 more weeks here. I guess I am ready to go home. Also, by chance this is my 100th Germany related post on the blog.

I can't write much more now, Sean and I are giving our presentation today on our work here at the DLR. Uh, I'll talk to you later :) -Eric

Oh yeah, Sean did graduate. So he is officially Dr. Fischbach. Congrats.

Peenemünde Rocketry Museum

2007-12-16T19:14:00.000+01:00

Finally I am getting around to finishing the Peenemünde posts. On the last full day we were there we went to the actual museum in Peenemünde. We were rather surprised that we could fill up all of our time so thoroughly in such a small town. We were expecting to visit a few things and then spend some time relaxing. Well it turned out to be rather busy, but still a great trip.

The museum is located in the old power plant. This is one of the few remaining building left from WW2 and the actual rocket research.

There was a nice model of the V-2 launch site. This is where we were the previous day in the woods. Not much is left.

This picture is turned sideways, but it doesn't effect it. There were plans to build a larger rocket and launch it at New York. Fortunately the war ended before that.

This is part of the old power plant. I took a lot of pictures here because the lighting was great.

A chess board. They were trying to show the cold war as some kind of rocket chess match. I liked it because I am a chess player. It gave me a good idea for a chess board. I suppose their message wasn't getting through to me :)

This is what the left you with at the end of the museum. Here in Germany they have to play the balance between Nazi's and Rockets. They can't be too pro-rocket/technology or they will be accused of being Nazi sympathizers. So here we are, rockets are going to kill us all - I guess. When we got to this display I joking threw down my head phones and said to Banuti, "Fine, I get it, rockets are evil. I quit."

Lucky for us good ol' boys from the States - rockets are cool! -Eric

Come On Canada

2007-12-15T16:29:00.000+01:00

Hey Hey.

I haven't been posting enough. My life will not be thoroughly documented for this four month period unless I pick up the pace.

So... I was working. Ha. Ok, I got some good results, things are looking good. The 'trouble' with science is that it usually works out that successfully answering a question only leads to more questions. There is beauty in that. My good results have only given us a myriad of ideas to work on. But lo and behold, our time here is coming to an end. Well, we can work more, we'll just need to do it overseas.

We had our second DLR Christmas party last night. This time it was a dinner. So we had a lovely meal and then sat around and got drunk. I spent most the time talking to Mira and Martin's girlfriend. What can I say, I like to chat with the ladies. Maybe it is a product of being an engineer and always talking to just guys. Unfortunately, these gals are taken :)

Daniel was explaining to the boss here what we were working on and the good results that we've had. The boss (Klause, I like to refer to him as Klausie) asked if we could give a presentation on Tuesday. Eh, I had to tell him that I will be busy making a short trip to Cologne. Also, Sean is returning on Tuesday. Anyways, we will give a presentation later in the week (Thursday or Friday.) It will be a good opportunity for us to show them the work that we do at UTSI.

Today I swung by the DLR to help them clean up a bit. Then I walked to town with Martin and got a hair cut and got some food to eat. Now I am eating and blogging. After this I will swing by the train station, get my tickets for Cologne and then do some laundry. It is a full 'exciting' day.

In the meantime, I have to finish reviewing Dr. Flandro's theory, finish the CFD work, prepare this new presentation, start and finish my technical paper for the Aerospace Sciences conference in Reno, Nevada which is due in two weeks, also make the presentation for that, and revise the student paper presentation for the international competition. Plus + Hamberg for Christmas, then Paris, then Berlin for New Years and then I die :) Basically my life for the next month is me holding on, closing my eyes and praying for mid-January.

Ok - I have no pictures - but, but... I have a great great great video for you. I forgot to post this before. It is pretty hilarious. Short Background: this was taken two days before Karneval. Sean, Mira and I are in Cologne at the base of the historic Dom - really really drunk. Oh, and for any Canadians reading, I'm sorry :)

Ah, now I remember. My Grandma also sent me some cookies. I got them in the mail yesterday.

And my Grandpa found this hat at Germanfest in Milwaukee and decided to send it to me in Germany? I don't know. I think I will wear it to work on Monday :) -Eric

You're Not From the Public Radio, Are You?

2007-12-12T19:35:00.000+01:00

I guess I haven't posted in a while. Let me fill you in. Sean left for the US today for his graduation. He will be back here in a week. He is probably just getting to the airport in Chicago now.

I have been working, I've been verifying the mathematics in Dr. Flandro's newest combustion instability theory. I had a bit of a break yesterday so I got back to working on some CFD (computational fluid dynamics) results. I don't know what I did, but the thing I was having a problem with works now. So for the past couple days I have been running simulations of the experiment I did for my masters thesis. It is exciting when you get things working. Maybe I'll post a vid in a few days.

And now to the title of the post: they have a public radio/television station here in Germany. It differs significantly from our PBS. Here it is a lot like a normal network station, but the kicker is how they get their funding. In the US, we donate to PBS, they always have those telethons to raise money. Well here you are required to pay a fee to the public media service if you have any device that is capable of receiving their transmissions. Now, it gets a little crazier. In the constitution it says that the government can have no control over the public media, which is a fine idea, except for the fact that the public media service can pretty much do whatever it wants as a result. In order to prove that you have a TV or radio or computer they may try to get into your house by pretending to be someone else. The government can't stop them.

A while back we got our letters for payment, which we promptly threw away. We are not paying anything. Because they can be tricky, Banuti warned us not to let anyone into our place unless we knew them or knew why they were there. Yesterday Sean left the office early to get some things before leaving. When he was leaving from our place a couple guys came by and wanted to fix something. Well, we don't speak German, so Sean had no idea. Though he immediately was skeptical and asked if they were from the Public Radio (or whatever it is called.) The guys were confused, maybe because they probably didn't speak much English. Anyways, long story short, they were just here to fix the thermometer on the radiator. That is probably not as climactic of an end as you were expecting. But still, evil German public television, that is a bit odd :)

Uh, lets see, I have one more Peenemunde post to do, I'll finish that soon. So that is it for now. I am working on some CFD stuff at the moment. -Eric

Cradle of Spaceflight

2007-12-09T22:25:00.000+01:00

Last Monday, when we were in Peenemunde, after touring the town we visited the 'cradle of spaceflight.' At this location a rocket was launched which made mankind's first breach into space and gave birth to modern rocketry. It is because of the work done here that we have a space program, that we made it to the moon, that we have GPS and weather satellites and so many other space based technologies. Obviously, this location is important to us :)

[I enjoyed the large pictures, so I am going to stick with that for now] We had a kilometer or so walk through the woods to get to the P7 launch site. This is all restricted area, so we had to 'sneak' in. It was no big deal, but the wooded area around the site is extremely dangerous. There are old bunkers and holes which are covered by brush which you could easily fall into. Also, there are unexploded bombs from WW2 air raids. The photo above is of an old cold war building. Not much is left from WW2.

After an hour or so we made it to the site. This is us rocket scientists in front of what is left of the v2 assembly building.

We walked around the corner and found ourselves at the launch site. They would move the rockets on large sleds from the assembly building to the launch position. The railway was still intact. The pool above is the cooling water for the launches. The launches took place just to the right of this photo.

At the launch position there is a monument. It was a bit controversial for this to be placed here, but all it says is that this is where the A4 rocket was launched, which is simply a fact.

This is the fire hydrant which you can clearly see in the old videos of the rocket launches. It kind of looked goofy too.

This is one of those good holes to fall into. It was getting dark so we went back. It might seem like we didn't see much, Maik even warned us before going that it was going to be a long walk and there wouldn't be much to see, but we insisted. We needed to see the site, to stand there and take it in. Our profession started here, now it is our job to continue the journey into space. -Eric

DLR Christmas Party

2007-12-09T00:56:00.001+01:00

Howdy Partners. [I accidentally checked big pictures when uploading, so today is a big picture day.]

Yesterday we had our DLR Christmas party. We had a lovely lunch and then went ice skating. We managed to not fall. The ice was a little wet because it had been raining and wasn't very cold out, so it sucks to fall.

We had some Gluhwein and then went back to the DLR. Once we were there we had coffee and cake. Just if you didn't know already, Germans are nuts about their coffee and cake. We got out of there around 6pm or so. Then we went to the Christmas market. We had a bratwurst and some more Gluhwein. It was after that that the 'work' portion of the night ceased. Mira, Daniel, Sean and I were with Martin (which is pronounced differently here, it is more like Marteen.) He is a guy we work with and he is a lot of fun to chat with. So we all decided that we needed a beer, just one :) I love that game.

While walking to Thanners, our favorite local bar, we ran into Martin's girlfriend. He joked that he was lucky that he didn't tell her that he was still hard at work running simulations. So now the six of us went to the bar. Spoiler: We had more than one beer.

After Thanners we stopped by Martin's place. It is right in the heart of the town. He has a gorgeous place. He showed us around. Daniel wanted to see his guitars. I had a shot of vodka.

Next we went to the underground bar in town. It is a old wine cellar or something. It is a great place, but we had vowed, in the name of capitalism, to never go there again because we always got terrible service. However, Martin and his girl hadn't been there, so we sucked it up and went. Thankfully we had good service this time.

That is Martin, he is from Dresden. He works on Monte Carlo simulations of rarefied gas. As Banuti put it, speaking in a soft voice as if to a child, "come here little molecules."

After a few beers we called it a night. We got back at around 1am or so. Sean and I made some tea and ate some leftover pastries that we had. It was a great day. -Eric

Peenemünde: Day 3 - Morning

2007-12-08T20:16:00.000+01:00

Maik was going to show us around Peenemunde. We met later in the morning and he drove us around the island. He first took us to see where all the scientist had lived. Many of these buildings had been destroyed in bombing raids, but they have been rebuilt.

We saw the old train stations.

This is the location where Wernher Von Braun lived. All the buildings are destroyed.

After the brief tour around town we went for a tour of the airport. The guy there had all sorts of cool parts and a lot of technical expertise on the subject. He had a nice scale model of the island in his museum.

Strike a communist pose. Peenemunde was used as a base by the GDR forces during the cold war. So it is kind of a Russian/German mix of history.

He took us for a ride around the airport. There were old bunkers from the cold war era which would house aircraft. We saw V-1 launch ramps, the place where the ME-163 was launched and more. It was pretty cool. What was even cooler was that the guy had an awesome dog. He could open doors.

This was the air raid shelter. It was destroyed after WW2. It was pretty huge.

After the airport tour we swung back by the rental. We were going to take a stroll out to the V-2 launch site. It was a bit of a hike into the woods. Since it was getting late we ate something quick, warmed up some and then left. I will post that adventure next. -Eric

Peenemünde: Ruskies

2007-12-06T17:57:00.001+01:00

Sunday morning we went to see the Russian submarine. While walking up to it, the guy who we were renting the house from drove up. He has a shop that sells submarine stuff and he offered to personally show us around the sub. It would turn out that this guy would be just about the best guy we could have picked to rent from. You will see more later.

A lovely piece of graffiti. Don't know what ficken means? Use your imagination :)

There's the sub. It is the largest non-nuclear sub. The tubes that you see tilted up were for launching missiles at aircraft carriers.

They had creepy manikins setup in the sub, this was the creepiest of them all. Some kids were in the sub and they had to leave because they were too scared. I was scared too :)

Dive Dive Dive. Banuti and Sean pushing the emergency dive buttons. Apparently Daniel doesn't want to play along.

The sub tour went pretty fast and then Maik, the guy we were renting from, showed us around the town. There isn't a lot to see, Peenemünde is small. Many of the buildings are falling apart.

These buildings are not from world war two, instead they are from the GDR times, when there was an East and West Germany.

This picture is turned sideways. It is a pain to flip it and upload it. I just like the drawings on this abandoned building, which was a hospital. It is creepy, but beautiful.

There was an old chapel nearby with some old gravestones.

On our way back to our rental we passed the oxygen plant. This is where they manufactured the liquid oxygen for the V2 rockets. This is one of the few remaining buildings from WW2.

I think after that we made dinner, watched some episodes of 'From the Earth to the Moon' and called it a night. -Eric

Back From Peenemünde

2007-12-06T17:36:00.000+01:00

Hey Folks. We got back from Peenemünde late last night. Now I will tell the tale.

We got hammered the night before we left, which in retrospect, was not a good idea. I felt like crap on the drive there, the 6 hour drive there. But I got some food in me and felt all better. So when we got there it was dark. We found the house we were going to stay it. It was pretty nice and cheap too. 60 Euro a night, for all of us. Good deal.

After we arrived and got our stuff situated we took a ride into town to get some food at the grocery store.

We found some nice chocolate Santa's :)

And some batteries from Mars.

I didn't take many pictures that night, so I am scraping the bottom of the barrel for this post. We cooked dinner, a pasta concoction. Then watched 'The Big Lebowski' and rested after our long drive. The following day we would travel to the Russian submarine. I have more pictures of that. -Eric

I Don't Feel Nice Out Today.

2007-12-01T11:04:00.000+01:00

We are leaving to go to Peenemunde folks and I feel completely crappy. We uh, got a little drunk last night off of Gluhwein (I am leaving the funny dots off the words) that stuff sneaks up on you. Now I just want to sleep and the last thing I want to do is get in a car, but lo and behold, we shall.

Sean and I just went into town to grab some Whiskey for the trip. We naturally swung by the Christmas market. We had a few, then went to the store, then came back. We found some girl who was showing people how to roast bread over a fire, so we did that. While we were doing that Banuti and Mira randomly ran into us. Their question was - Why do I see an open fire? and - Why are the Americans there? Good questions. As a result of them finding us, we continued the drinking and now I am here. Miserable.

I'll be fine, I am never drinking again :)

It is nice out today. -Eric

Pizza + Beer + FHM = PhD

2007-11-29T16:28:00.001+01:00

I figured it was ok to post this now. Sean has completed all the steps for graduation. All he is waiting for is the 'hooding' ceremony. After that point we will all have to refer to him by his proper title - Dr. Douchebach :) Anyways, this is a photo of Sean 'working' on his dissertation at Jan's apartment in Zürich. FHM, pizza, beer - it's a tough life.

The plan this weekend is to go to Peenemünde. It is a small city in the far far north east of Germany. Even our German friends (the non-rocket scientist ones) have no idea where it is.

Peenemünde has historical significance to our profession. It is the site where the V-2 rocket was developed by Wernher Von Braun. The V-2 rocket is essentially the beginning of modern rocketry and lead directly to the development of the Saturn series of rockets which took NASA to the moon during the Apollo missions. So, although it was a Nazi run operation, it is still pretty important.

On an unrelated note - Mmmm, I want some more Glühwein. -Eric

Christmas Market

2007-11-29T09:34:00.000+01:00

Yesterday after the 'freakin' kid left Sean and I went into town to get some groceries. We stopped by the bank on the way there and deposited some money into our German bank account for rent. I had forgotten, but the Christmas market was opening on Wednesday. So we made a detour and hung out there for a bit.

We got some Glühwein - that is a spiced hot wine. It is the traditional thing to drink, it is very nice on a cold day. We enjoyed it thoroughly, actually we enjoyed a few of them thoroughly.

There are small shops setup all around the old town hall and the nearby church. It looks just as you expect a small German town to look like. The shops sell all sorts of Christmas toys and gifts and things like that.

Sean and I got a brat since we were hungry, we were planning on cooking ourselves, but this was much better. After eating and drinking some more we went over to the store and finished our intended shopping. We both had to finish our conference abstracts, so we decided not to get hammered :) We were still a bit hungry, so I fried up some potatoes and onions and Sean and I finished watching the rest of 'Der Untergang,' a movie depicting the final moments of Hitlers life. Interesting movie, I had seen it before. -Eric

Freaking

2007-11-28T16:10:00.000+01:00

I ran across this poster when we were walking through Zürich's train station. I think the direct translation is 'so near.' It reminded me of an old guy I worked with at the 'Lac La Belle' golf course back home. His name was Ray and whenever you would leave him he would hold up his fingers like this and say, "So Long." If he still lives in the same place maybe I will go visit him when I get back. He lives just down the road from my home in Wisconsin.

Speaking of home, this is my home in Wisconsin - cue the country music :) It is a real log home. We live on 16 acres of land. An acre is a weird unit, no one knows what is it. Well, 16 acres is about 12 full American football fields, or 6.5 hectares for our SI friends (who probably don't know what a hectare is, because I sure didn't. A hectare is 100 meters squared.)

Sean and I are both finishing up some work on our Joint Propulsion Conference abstracts. They are due today, yikes :) No big deal. I've been crunching through a bunch of thermodynamics and fluid mechanics and algebra verifying Dr. Flandro's latest work.

A duck in Zürich. I like ducks - who doesn't?

We had a couple guys swing by and take a look at the apartment. They were younger and one of them kept saying that the stairs were 'freaking.' Um, ok? I think he meant awesome or freaking awesome or cool or something like that. Either way, it was entertaining.

We've had this little oddity occurring lately. Whenever we ask someone if they speak English (sprechen zie English?) they usually do, however, they respond with 'bißchen' which basically means 'a little.' It's funny because we obviously don't speak German at this point. Either way, we know what it means, so we just go on conversing in English.

The odd thing about it all is that it seemed to start suddenly a few weeks ago, and now everyone says it. It is like some memo went around German telling them to screw with English speakers. I don't blame them :) -Eric

No More Elf Sex

2007-11-26T22:32:00.000+01:00

Hey guys and dolls.

So... Eric... what's with the title. I thought of this one today while at work. There was an intern at the DLR, kind of a weird guy. His email was something like elven_sex@blah.com. He had his last day on Friday, so today - no more elf sex. I don't know his real name.

Speaking of sex, found this poster somewhere. Sorry, the photo is turned. Fix it yourself :)

Sorry, I've had a few drinks. Don't drink and blog kids.

It snowed a bit here today, it also snowed a bit before we went to Zürich. When I took this picture I needed to use the flash so that the snow would show up, but a lady in the house across from us just stared at me after I took it. I can't remember if I was dressed or not, that happens sometimes. We don't have a refrigerator, so we put our stuff on the windowsill to keep it cold. Yesterday, or the day before, I was cooking with no shirt on (like usual) and got something from the 'fridge' and noticed the people across the way 'observing' us. If they only knew we were American too, that would make their day :) I am glad we can entertain someone. -Eric

Nothing

2007-11-25T20:00:00.000+01:00

Hey folks. We did nothing today.

Ok, I was just going to write that and be funny, but we did go and grab a bite to eat and something amazing happened. No, there wasn't any girls involved. Well sorta. We had probably the best waitress that we have had in all of Germany today. It started out rough, we had some other girl, but then it switched over to this new one. She was cute, that always helps. She asked us how our food was before we were finished. She asked if we wanted another beer before we were done with the one we had. And she brought us our beers quickly. She even played along perfectly with our lack of speaking German. It was an amazing event.

Now we need to go back there again and hope that we get her as our waitress. This was at the 'Hamburger' bar where we have had other adventures :)

See ya later, Alligators. -Eric

Thanksgiving Part Deux

2007-11-24T16:13:00.000+01:00

Hey, a few photos from our makeshift thanksgiving meal. We couldn't find anything that was remotely close to thanksgiving food at the market here. Maybe at one of the bigger stores we could get some pumpkin pie or something. Well, we had chicken and potatoes and a few cranberries. We also had a dessert, which is something we usually never have, so it was a treat.

I was trying to do a teary photo, but it just came off some much different than that. It looks like 'bing' look at me I am cute.

Lets see, went to work Friday. We got to explain to some of the guys that today is called "Black Friday" in the states. They enjoyed that. They had a 'Florida' schnitzel at lunch a few days ago, it was pork with peaches and cheese baked over it. I told them that peaches come from Georgia, not as much from Florida. So they named it wrong. The Germans said that nobody will know where Georgia is, so that would be confusing.

This was the view from our train on the way to Zürich. The photo isn't the best because it was a dusty window, but you get the idea.

I've been working on verifying the latest version of combustion instability theory with Dr. Flandro. It is interesting trying to collaborate with someone you can only reach by email. It takes a lot more time since I need to write up all the equations and questions I have in a clear manner and then email them to him. And then wait. Normally I would just stroll down to his office and say, "uh, I have a question here" and then point to it. It'll be much easier to get work done when I am back. But what's the rush :)

Take Care folks. I miss you all. -Eric

Thanksgiving

2007-11-22T20:39:00.000+01:00

Uh, God, I burnt my right middle finger. It hurts to type now. I'll fight through the pain. AHHHH. What am I doing? Well, today is thanksgiving. Unfortunately there are no turkeys or pumpkin pies or cranberry sauce with can marks or sweet potatoes in ze Germany. So all in all - lame. We did our best, I cooked some chicken and fried some potatoes, we drank a few bottles of wine, including a nice chianti (I didn't eat Sean's liver,) and had some dessert. So right now I am full (check) and I am drunk (check) but I didn't watch any football (go packers) and I am not with my family (boo.) Eh, such is love and war :)

I have some chocolate here from Switzerland, who wants that? I am not a huge chocolate fan. I don't really like coffee either. I am not a big fan of bitter flavors.

We got a few photos from the gals in Cologne. Here they are.

I love this picture, it is the only good photo of me in my costume. Damn I look good :) that is a pimp hat too and the perfect tie. Gansta :)

The whole gang we hung out with. Good crew. Some good cowboy costumes. I could have done better :) the trick is the boots. You need that deep thud and clink every time you take a step. Also, a long jacket works well. Gives you that mysterious look.

Well folks, have a happy thanksgiving. Count your blessings :) ... that sounds sinister. Well punk, do you feel lucky, well... do ya?

I do. -Eric

Drie Months

2007-11-21T20:05:00.001+01:00

Hey folks. I remembered this before we left and forgot to write about it while in Zürich. We've been here 3 months now, well... 3 months and 4 days now. That leaves about 1 month and 14 days to go.

Sean is finishing things up with his PhD, after today he is finished. We are doing some work at the DLR. I've been going through Dr. Flandro's (the professor I work for, for those who don't know) latest theory in detail, learning as much as I can while I am here. We are putting together an abstract for the Joint Propulsion Conference in July. It is about Vortex Shedding issues in the NASA launch vehicles. Hopefully we can get them to make the changes we are suggesting and to do more studies on the topic as well. Interesting work.

Some random photos from Zürich.

We had a couple girls come and see the apartment to see if they want to rent it when we leave. They seemed to like the place. We've shown a few others it as well.

I look cold in this photo - well I was!

Other than that we are just going to take it easy here for a little while. We've had some crazy weeks and Sean has been really busy with finishing his dissertation and dealing with that crap, so it'll be nice to sit back here and enjoy a rest. I am not looking forward to writing my dissertation now, I am most definitely going to write it in LaTeX. I wonder when I will finish it, hopefully soon. I guess I am shooting for a year. I am ready to be done with school. I am really ready to be Dr. Eric Jacob :)

Yep thats me :) Take Care Folks. -Eric

Farewell Zürich

2007-11-20T19:35:00.000+01:00

Zürich
WatchesWe didn't do anything on Sunday - just recuperate.

Sean and I walked around Zurich Monday morning before we left.

They setup for Christmas here earlier than we do, they also setup early in Germany.

Holy crap a water fountain... or as I would say, being from Wisconsin, a bubbler.

Some twisty tiny roads. A girl asked us for directions in town. She asked us if we spoke English. I'm glad I've had so many years of English lessons. We didn't know where we were, but she had a map. I literally grabbed it, turned it around 180 degrees, pointed on the map and said this is the street we are on, you want to go that way.

The swans wanted some bread, sorry pals no bread for you. Swans are jerks by the way.

We got on our train at 3pm, took a ride for 6 hours and we were back in Goettingen. I played some 'Call of Duty 2' on the train (a ww2 game) odd game to play on a train leaving from Switzerland and heading into Germany. (You run around shooting Nazi's.)

We have some more pictures on Sean's camera, I will post those lata. I feel goofy always posting blogs now, since more and more people read it that we've meet here. I am writing for Germans and Americans, an odd demographic. I kinda feel like I am blackmailing myself :)

Peace. -Eric

Zürich Saturday

2007-11-20T19:13:00.000+01:00

Hey Folks. I haven't been feeling that great, kinda off a bit, so I haven't been in the mood to write. Here is a bunch of stuff. Saturday we went around town (in Zürich), saw the lake, and had lunch at a nice Italian restaurant. We were kinda tired from the day before. We went back to Jan's place and ate dinner and watched a movie. He has a nice setup - wide screen flat panel, good sound system, nice for movies. Then we drank a bottle of jack and a case of beer.

Hey look! it is the perfect crappy bread for a perfect peanut butter and jelly sandwich :)

We met up with a guy Jan works with from the Netherlands. Where are the Netherlands anyways? Are they like Eskimos or something? Ha, I am just kidding, I am geographically knowledgeable.

We went to a bar and it was full of Asians. I was confused. Where were we? There was some creepy old guy videotaping the whole event. Boy, I just got a shiver down my spine. I have a video of it. Of the creepy guy, not my shivering spine. Why is it that whenever we think of Asians we think of Josh? We''ll I uploaded this just for you pal :) Enjoy.

[Edit: there was a problem with the video. Maybe it'll just start working?]

We went to a club afterwards. Danced around, drank a bit. We left there late... really late. Got on a train to go towards Jan's place but we fell asleep on the train, we woke up an hour later back at the station we started at. So then we got off and got on another, more direct train. I think we got back at around 7am or so. Slept till 2. We told ourselves that we were going to take this weekend easy. We've had too many crazy weekends, especially with Karneval last week. I guess that is how it goes. -Eric

Sex, Drugs and Knives

2007-11-17T19:24:00.000+01:00

Hey guys, I am not in a talkative mood. Got on a train to Zurich. They were having strikes in Germany, but our trains were not affected. Our train was 74 minutes late though, so it took us a bit longer to get here. Mira's brother, Jan, has internet here, so we are still in touch. Oh, the picture above, swiss army dudes with their guns.

Zürich has a nice train station. They don't use the Euro here, it is the Franken.

Heineken's and brats.

Zürich is gorgeous.

Jan. We had a few drinks.

They have very blunt warning labels on their cigarettes.

WTF? MGD? ha. we drank the bottle of vodka, a case of beer, went to the club, had some drinks. Got back around 5am. Slept late. I am exhausted. I need a break.

The title... we were watching the news, that was their catch line. It was ridiculous. I bet you were interested when you read it too :) Take Care. -Eric

Leaving For Zürich

2007-11-16T07:06:00.000+01:00

Hey folks, we leave for Zürich soon. Probably won't be out of touch though. Sean is wrapping up his dissertation, so he needs internet access. It is going to be cold there. brrrrr.

So I got wind that my German friend, Sabine, found the blog. Probably her other friends have it as well. Ah... quick read previous posts and edit :) Heh, no, I don't do that, I only edit for grammatical reasons. However, in reading some previous posts I did notice that in my discretion I sort of neglected to tell you anything about this girl. I've seen her a couple times now, so I've talked to her more than most people in the last 3 months. So her name is Sabine, she is a touch older than me, but I am a young kid :) She has the perfect red hair. Curly, long and smells great. She is a personal trainer in Cologne and she has a corny website, you can maybe find it on google. She has an older brother and a younger sister. She speaks great English, she spent some time in New Zealand, so she has an adorable German/Austrailian/English accent going on. It is great. So see, I got to know her a bit, not enough though. She says that there is a German phrase, something about meeting 3 times. Well I hope that is true and I hope it comes soon. She didn't know about peanut butter and jelly, so I had her try that, but it was on good German bread. I don't think she liked it, that is a shame. The trick to a good PBJ is crappy white bread. That is harder to find here. Well I hope this gives me some brownie points. I guess she might not know what that is, or what a brownie is. Well, it is a good thing. Take Care everyone, I'll see you soon. -Eric

Light My Fire

2007-11-14T18:41:00.002+01:00

Sunday Sunday Sunday.

Sunday was Karneval. We woke up super early to get ready, about 7am. We got our costumes and met up with Sabine to go to her friends place and eat some breakfast and drink some beers. A train ride and some walking and we were there. They all dressed up as cowboys and cowgirls. The girls had good costumes. We could have done much better than the guys. I think I mentioned it before, but I was a 1930 Chicago gangster and Sean was a Scotsman.

So we had some bread and stuff and then headed to the bars. Karneval officially starts at 11:11am on Nov. 11th, so we waited outside the bar until it opened at that time. We were one of the first groups in. We started drinking and dancing and such. A short time later it was packed.

One of the girls took a liking to Sean. I was told later that she had said that she liked him the night before. So yeah. Now throughout the night I was dancing with this girl too. We were having a good time, she expressed some concern to me about the fact that Sean was wearing a cross around his neck. So I chatted with her for a moment and smoothed things over. However, in doing so all the other girls, including Sabine, thought that I was putting the moves on her and get this... that I, Eric Jacob, was the ladies man trying to steal the girl from Sean who is the shy one. Hmm... these German girls don't understand us Americans.

After a little bit of work I convinced them otherwise and it was all better. Now shortly after this me and Sabine disappeared and nothing else happened.

Ok, here are a few more pictures.

Now, Sean went off with Mira and the other girls. He has some stories, like a gay dude telling him that Sean wants to f*ck him. There is another one about some guy that was bothering the girls. The guy told Sean to step back, to which Sean replied, "What!" The guy then quickly explained to the German girls that he didn't mean it that way. Heh, well done Sean, time to kick some German ass... again :)

Cute girls.

Ok... forgot to explain the title. When I go out to a bar I usually like to take a box of matches with me. Sometimes there will be a girl who needs a light and matches are just so much cooler. If I have some light-anywhere's I can do the Clint Eastwood finger snap light thing. Too cool. Also, there are some good bar tricks you can do with matches, but no one has them anymore so it is good to carry your own. Sabine was having a cigarette. Says she only smokes on the weekends. I think every girl I've ever met says that. While walking to the bar in the morning her lighter wasn't working so she asked me to light her fire. I laughed, explained myself, then she realized what she had said and laughed too. Then I lit her fire :) -Eric

Misc. Cologne Photos

2007-11-13T17:34:00.001+01:00

These are a few random photos from Thursday and Friday.

Sean and Mira's Father.

Having a few beers near to the Rhine.

A crazy view of a 'meter' of beer.

Forgive me, I did not feel like turning this picture. Mira said we could go as Canadians. This was my reaction. I'm just kidding, I like Canadians.

Sean is a retard :) He posed for this. It was a coffee mug Mira had, obviously there was a different meaning for retard in Germany.

Outside the bar where we had our first meter.

A couple random German chicks. (Please note the girl who would later shoot me down as I explained in a previous post.) -Eric

There Are Sober Kids in Bosnia

2007-11-13T16:47:00.000+01:00

So don't waste your alcohol.

Saturday: We woke up really late. Mira's father invited us to see where he works. He is a maintenance inspector at the Dusseldorf Airport. After getting up and getting ready we made our way to the train station to ride to Dusseldorf. We got there by 3pm or so. Mira's father showed us around, it was a blast.

It is his job to make the final check on work done to verify that it is safe to fly. First we got to see the insides of the turbofans (the engines.) Impressive machines. Later we went inside a plane. We got to sit in the cockpit and Mira's Father showed us all the equipment in there. He really knows his stuff.

Hmm... they had German Playboy's left over in the plane from the previous flight so we helped ourselves to some. I swear I only read the articles.

After playing in the cockpit we went through a small door in the floor and saw where all the electronics are located. Also, the front landing gear is located there. That lead to the front cargo bay. It was all very small, so it was fun getting around. It was neat to see all the insides of the plane. Mira's father is a lot of fun too, we had a great time.

It was about 6pm or so when we left there. I gave Sabine a call and we made plans to meet her and her friends at a traditional bar on the south side of the town called Unklebach. We made it there around 9pm. She was with a group of guys and gals, some from Cologne and others from south of there. We got to know them, entertained them with our lack of German, confused them while trying to explain what we do. You know, the normal routine. They didn't drink much, they were preparing for the next day. We decided otherwise, so Sean, Sabine and I went for a drink near to Mira's place.

On the train from Unkelbach towards Mira's.

This is a gem of a photo. One of those beautiful accidents.

We stayed there until 1am or so and then decided that we needed to get some rest. We walked Sabine to the train and then went home. We needed to get up early the next morning to meet our new friends for breakfast before Karneval. -Eric

Beef, It's Whats For Dinner

2007-11-12T20:55:00.000+01:00

Friday we woke up and met Mira for lunch. Got some gyros. After lunch we went to the costume store to find something to wear for Karneval. That was a tough decision. Cowboys, Indians, all that stuff is cliche, but sometimes cliche is good. Anyways, after much deliberation I decided to go as a Chicago gangster and Sean was to be a Scotsman.

That evening we went to the Hard Rock Cafe in town. Daniel told us that it is the only place in Germany where you can find a good burger. He was right, I never thought a burger could taste so good. I've missed beef, they rarely eat it here.

I had called Sabine earlier that evening, if you remember, I met her last time I was in Cologne. I got in touch with her again, we were going to meet again for Karneval. I chatted with her on Mira's phone for a moment outside the Hard Rock Cafe. Oddly enough Sabine had seen us earlier since the place she works at is just down the road from the HRC. Small world kind of stuff.

After the Hard Rock we stopped at a nearby pub. They had 10 euro meters. So we quickly drank one of those. Then we walked down by the Rhine which was beautiful at night.

After that we went down to the 'Old Town' and got into a clubish sort of bar. We found a place to stand and ordered more beers. They also serve them in what Sean and I referred to as a hat, it was about 10 beers sitting in something that looks like a sombrero, kind of like a round meter. The beers in Cologne are small, only .2 liter, much smaller than the 1 liter beers in Bavaria, so having a hat full of them helps. We danced around got some pictures and got smashed. Somehow we got home. Here are some pictures.

This picture is great because it is about 3 seconds before I was completely (and rudely) shot down.

I have a couple videos, I'll process them and post them tomorrow. -Eric

Köln: Night One

2007-11-12T19:34:00.000+01:00

Thursday: We got on a train in the morning and headed toward Cologne for the second time. Our intention was to attend the Karneval on Sunday. It is a region-wide party. It is kind of like a bigger Halloween party. We got into town in the afternoon and met up with Mira. We got something to eat and walked around a bit. Daniel was coming back from France and had a stop in Cologne, so we met up with him at the train station while he waited for his next train. When we were seeing Daniel off to Göttingen Mira's father showed up.

After that we went to a local traditional beer hall kind of thing called the Brauhaus (if I am spelling that right,) it means brew house . We had several beers there, we weren't hungry, but Mira's Father had something to eat. After that we went down to a part of the city called the Old Town. We found a nice bar near to the Rhine and got a 'meter' of beer. A meter of beer is this:

This is a picture from the following night. I'll put up a few more photos when I can get them from Mira. I didn't have my camera with me.

So we drank more and more beer, got pretty hammered. Mira's Dad is a great guy. We had a lot of fun. -Eric

Köln Karneval

2007-11-07T18:26:00.000+01:00

Hey folks, Sean and I are going to Köln (Cologne) this weekend for Karneval. We didn't have internet access there last time, so likely this time will be the same. I'll write again on Monday, hopefully with another series of good stories.

In the meantime, we've planned out the upcoming weekends. What? We actually planned something? :) This weekend is Köln, next weekend is Zürich, those two are set. Then the weekend after will probably be Venice, we have that partly planned. Then Peenemunde or Amsterdam, it depends on Banuti's plans. Then Paris before Sean heads back to the US for his graduation. After he returns to Germany we'll probably hit up Nuremberg (they have a great Christmas market there,) try to get to London or Dublin and then it's to Hamberg for Christmas. We'll squeeze in a trip after that then party under the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin for New Years. We have a few days to say goodbye to Göttingen and then were back to the US. Busy times, it'll be a blast. I am going to need a vacation when I get back.

See ya soon. -Eric

With Bone Please

2007-11-06T20:22:00.000+01:00

So I realize that the title is kind of dirty, but it has a story... and it is clean. All of us guys were down in Chattanooga. As far as I can remember... I am trying to recount this with Sean. This is funny, we have too many stories from that night. Small note - I am drunk.

So... that fabled night. Banuti and I drove down earlier, he was taking his TOFEL test (a test to see if you can speak english.) So I chilled out in Panera for a while. Banuti finished his test (with flying colors, he speaks perfect English) and we hung out. I remember driving around trying to find a damned pay phone to call the guys. Anyways, we all met up. We had something to eat at taco mac's. Banuti ordered wings, but his accent threw her off (the waitress, that is.) It is a lot like us, we say things just fine and people don't understand us here. The waitress asked Banuti if he would like his wings with bones or without. Banuti replied, "with bone please." :) An amazing line, which only a foreigner could pull off. Perfectly fine English, but Hi-larious.

Later that night we went to another bar. The waitress asked us where we were from. Sean said, "The University of Tennessee Space Institute." she gave us a weird look. Sean immediately responded, "no I'm just fucking with ya, we're from UTC." There was also some gay dude hitting on us while playing pool which lead to some more stories, but I am too drunk to tell.

Ah boy, I am done. I'll see ya later alligator. -Eric

What Do We Do?

2007-11-05T22:09:00.000+01:00

Hey folks! How's it going? Life treating you well? It is going well here. We bought our tickets for our trip to Cologne this weekend. We are hoping to go to Zürich the weekend after that and Venice the week after that. Busy times. In the meantime we are getting some work done. I have to write an abstract for the Joint Propulsion Conference. It is due next week. We are also going to give a presentation here about our research at UTSI, but the date hasn't been set for that yet. To continue with my flash craziness, here is another vid. [1.3MB]

What does this video show? It is a rough example from my CFD code. It starts with a nice smooth sine wave and transitions to a steep fronted wave. This is what happens in rocket engines (and pretty much everywhere else in nature.) It causes some goofy things that a lot of engineers don't seem to understand. So it is our job to 'educate' them :) That sounds like we are going to beat some ass. Well, it isn't completely untrue. We've tried desperately to get into fights with the University of Florida's engineers, but they won't have it. They were being douchebags at Mississippi State a few years back and we, along with all of the Mississippi students, were doing our best to let them know we were not happy with their behavior.

Banuti left for France today to attend a conference where he is giving a talk on sonic boom minimization on hypersonic vehicles. Fancy :) We'll probably see him next week. And..... today is his birthday. Happy Birthday pal. -Eric

Embedded Flash

2007-11-04T13:43:00.000+01:00

Hallo Everyone! I figured out how to embed flash video into the blog. Cool. You'll need something like adobe flash (a free download) to view it.

This is just me playing around now. This video shows some of the results (the pressure waveform) from the CFD code I am working on. Nothing too crazy, just a shock wave and expansion wave. I have some videos that are compiling showing some more interesting results, such as the steepening of acoustic waves, which is directly applicable to our rocket instabilities research. I'll post those soon so you can see what we've been doing. -Eric

I Miss Halloween

2007-11-02T19:30:00.000+01:00

Greatest UTSI press release ever!

Nothing much is going on here, but we had one hell of a laugh at the most recent UTSI press release. Lutz, you are amazing. Banuti had a pretty good laugh at it too.

Last night we went out to Thanners and had some beers and a few shots of Sambuca with Banuti. It is his birthday on Monday, November 5th.

Remember Remember the 5th of November.

Photos from last years Halloween. Sean was not a Jedi, he was just holding someone else's lightsaber. He was a devil in a monks cloak. I was a terrorist. I really liked my costume. I got a compliment from a soldier who had just come from Iraq. He said that I had the look spot on. I also could properly tie the shemagh (the head wrap.)

Okey doke, take care folks. -Eric

Drunken Car Post

2007-10-31T20:32:00.000+01:00

Do do do. Drunken post time. It's been a while, and yeah, I've been slacking on the posts, but really all we are doing is working really hard and doing some CFD shit and that is all. It is interesting, but not to you guys, so I don't write about it. Until the average person figures out how cool we are I am stuck talking about castles and beer. Almost typed bee there, bees are cool too, bzzzzzzz, but I am allergic to some bees, so they are not cool.

I downloaded the pictures from Sean's camera. He is a douche and does not know how to push buttons. This is a man who will be receiving his PhD in a month. He had supposedly taken a great video of some German rice burners, but ney, he can't push a button. Hmmm, sorry pal, I am drunk, no mercy.

(random pictures from Seans camera. Me by the donkeys near the castle. Sorry, no donkeys in the photo.)

So, we just had some trick or treaters come to our place! We had no candy! F@%#! We thought that the Germans didn't do Halloween, otherwise we would have been prepared. Scared the shit out of me when they rang the doorbell. Geez. Honestly, in this state of mind their ghost costumes were a little creepy.

We are going to Cologne in two weeks for Karnival. That will be our Halloween. We need to teach them how to make costumes. Guys: anything is fine. Girls: slutty nurse, slutty cop, slutty cat, sluts, and my all time favorite - slutty Disney characters. They have so much to learn here. Also, they need good Mexican food and maybe a few spices here and there.

I told you we went to a car museum. Cars are not as exciting as planes or rockets, but they are still cool.

So yeah. I am going to hit the hay. See ya all later. -Eric

Wartburg Castle

2007-10-29T19:32:00.000+01:00

When I was a kid I was obsessed with castles. I loved the design and construction of them, as well as the devices used to destroy them. I would always go to the library and look up books on castles and castle construction and intently look through them. It is the engineer in me. So after all these years it was nice to finally see a castle (the Disney castle doesn't count.)

Sunday morning we drove down to Eisenach. It is about 100km south of here. The weather was pretty nice and it was a pleasant drive. We found the castle and parked at the bottom of the hill which it is on. It was quite a walk to get up to the castle, we were struggling. If I was a soldier I would not want to lay siege upon this castle.

At the foot of the castle there was a stand to ride a donkey the rest of the way. Sean wouldn't do it. Instead we stopped and ate a bratwurst and drank a Coke. There was a short walk up the rest of the hill to the castle.

And then we were there. The second reason it would be difficult to battle a castle is that the view is just too good from up there, you would be distracted and then axed.

A bit of history: The Wartburg castle was the residence of St. Elisabeth and it is where Martin Luther translated the New Testament to German.

(A genuine drawbridge. I was disappointed that there were no giant spikes at the bottom of the pit.)

We made our way into the castle and tried to find where the tours are. Well, we found out there are no tours. They had an exhibition there on St. Elisabeth so we went through that. We couldn't take pictures in there, so I have none.

( There were these goofy looking turkey/dove birds in the castle.)

Upon entering the exhibition the girl checking tickets asked us if there is any of us who don't speak German. (We had been talking in English walking up to her.) She asked us that in German. What if none of us spoke German? Hmmm, anyways, Banuti explained to her that Sean and I don't speak German. She then told Banuti that he speaks very good German. Heh. People get so confused. We didn't correct the girl, she was too cute.

We saw a bunch of parchments with writing about St. Elisabeth and other St. Elisabeth related items. We also saw the room in which Martin Luther translated the Bible. Pretty interesting.

So after we had seen the whole castle we made our way back down the hill. After the castle we went to a local car museum. I'll post some stuff from that next time. So in summary. I like castles, castles are cool, we saw a castle, it was cool, I am happy:) -Eric

Some Random Photos

2007-10-26T16:17:00.000+02:00

This pictures is funny for a couple reasons. First, Daniel is trying to get in on the photo on the right side. Secondly, I told Sean to take a picture of me (his camera battery had died,) so he takes it and says, "this isn't going to work, the Sun is right there." I snapped back, "Well...then don't take the picture into the Sun!" Next is a photo of Sean flicking me off because of my smart ass remark.

And now me laughing.

That's better.

Our makeshift kitchen.

Banuti, Me and Sean under the Dom in Cologne. I like this one. Mira took it.

I don't know when this is from, but it is Banuti drunk.

And this is all of us in front of the Dom. Another great pic. I especially like it because when I stand next to Sean makes me look taller and makes him look like a midget. (Sean likes to point out that he is stronger.)

We just worked today. Same ol'. I had some Haxentag for lunch yesterday, mmmmm, so good. It came with mashed potatoes and sauerkraut, which I am madly in love with. We are going to get some drinks tonight and on Sunday we are going to see a castle. Yes! -Eric

You Work All Day

2007-10-24T20:22:00.001+02:00

Wha' da ya get - another day older and the god damned exchange rate is killing us. :) Ok, that doesn't rhyme.

(Sean 'working')

We've been work the past few days. Long hard days. Engineering is tough. I've been working on my CFD code and I made some really great progress yesterday. I finally got the 1-D finite volume code working for the shock tube case. Now that that is done I can move on to some more advanced topics and add more detail to the code.

(The Mac Dr. Flandro lent to me, it is a fun machine.)

For the non-engineers, we are taking a set of equations which approximate the motions of fluids (air, water, etc.) and we break them up into small pieces which the computer can then, er - compute. By breaking the equations up we loose some accuracy and introduce errors. However, since the computer can do calculations really fast, we can still get accurate results on the motions of the fluid. It allows us to do some pretty fancy stuff. Of course, it is just an approximation, so you have to be really careful to check your results and see if they are correct. This is not what Sean and I normally work on. Usually we work on analytical problems, or different numerical problems, or I might do some experimental work. That makes this a good opportunity for us to learn something new.

Here are a bunch of equations. It is a little blurry, but that is ok. It is all top secret stuff and if you could read it I would have to kill you :)

So work is going well. We are going to eat now. See ya later, alligators. -Eric

We Need More Cuddly Germans

2007-10-21T23:22:00.000+02:00

Do you know the adage about drinking which goes - liquor then beer and you're in the clear, beer then liquor and you've never been sicker. I don't know if it is true, the order might be irrelevant. Well, last night we did wine then beer then liquor then hard cider then beer and then feel like crap the next day. It is not as clever of a phrase, but I am not in a clever mood.

Yesteday, before the bar, we walked around and did a little shopping, which is very unusual for us. I needed a winter hat since I forgot mine and Sean wanted some more winter clothes. We went into a bunch of stores in town. It was Saturday, so it was busy everywhere.

While walking to town there was some large protest going on with police in riot gear and the whole nine yards. The police had cool shin guards. It was all very peaceful and such. I suppose they were just there in case. We walked through the protesters at one point, Sean and I were wearing black jackets, so we felt that we fit in. Except we wear black because it looks good, they wear it to be morose. They had someone shouting things over some speakers. We didn't know what they were saying, which was probably good because it would have likely just pissed us off. I had part of their chant stuck in my head for the rest of the day. "Revolution, da da, da da da, Revolution." Do they really need to revolt? It is such a strong word, they need to be careful or it will loose its meaning.

After that entertainment we went to the stores. I picked up a winter cap and a Kashmir scarf (ooooh fancy.) Sean got a scarf too and a sweater. After shopping we went back to our place, made some dinner, watched some Curb Your Enthusiasm and then went to the bar. We went to the Irish bar because I was in the mood for some Newcastle. There was a live band playing. The guy was from San Francisco and was pretty good. We got hammered as I detailed above. The waitress told me that I was too cuddlish (my new favorite word) and that she was selling beer, not hips. Heh, honestly, all I did was put my arm around her. Oh well, shot down. I am cuddlish though, I like that. Germans need to be more cuddly.

Sean bought a round of drinks for the band, they appreciated that. He told the waitress not to tell them who it was from, but she did anyways. That was fine, we got to chat with the dude from San Fran.

Yeah, so we got back home and passed out and now today is a very blah day. We watched Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, which is one of my all time favorite movies. Otherwise, it was a recovery day. Tomorrow we go back to work. -Eric

A Little More Cologne

2007-10-20T12:35:00.000+02:00

Sunday: We woke up at the crack of noon. We wanted to get something to eat, but all the places had expensive brunch buffets for students. We didn't want that, we weren't that hungry anyways. We got a cup of coffee and grabbed some pastries. This is me eating a bread dude (I am at a loss for words.)

We took our bags with us and walked back towards the Dom. The main train station is right next to it, so that is where we needed to go anyways. All the shops are closed on Sundays (except bakeries and such) so it was a lot quieter. We got to the Dom again and took some more photos while Mira and Daniel looked at the train schedule. We just needed to get to Mira's home to get back Banuti's car.

It was about a half hour ride. We took a slight detour so we could ride the 'Schwebebahn Wuppertal.' It is a suspension train which rides over the Wupper river in Wuppertal (made in 1900.)

We got off at the last station and then walked to Mira's home. We ordered some pizza and ate it on her back patio.

After eating we gathered our things and drove back to Gottingen. It was a very pleasant weekend. Cologne is a great city. -Eric

Banuti's New Car

2007-10-17T22:27:00.000+02:00

Banuti's new car - A 1988 BMW 3 series convertible. (I hope that is right) Leather interior. Drives like a dream. Nice, very nice. I was afraid to take pictures of it in case we would crash again. Damn cursed camera. -Eric

The Rest of Cologne

2007-10-16T19:11:00.001+02:00

Saturday we woke up nice and late. Daniel and Mira came to her apartment by train. We left to walk into town and got a bite to eat. We ate at a nearby Greek place that Banuti is fond of. After that we walked through the shopping pedestrian area. There were some really good street performers around there. I always enjoy that. Eventually we made it to our destination - the Dom.

It is really huge. Really very huge and impressive and generally just really cool and huge. This is it from the inside.

The weather was perfect out. We climbed up the tower and got a great view of the city. This is a photo of the Rhine river.

And the peak of the towers nearby.

After the tower we walked around town and got some ice cream and something to drink. We walked to the other side of the river, since the sun was shining over there, and relaxed.

After walking around we went back to Mira's apartment and sat for a moment and then went into town. We found a decent bar (with a totally cute blond waitress) and had many beers there.

This is a picture I took of Sean. I am just going to let you wonder what the hell is going on, it is more fun that way.

They have their Cologne style beer. Which I would say is generally pretty crappy. Also, it comes in a .2 liter glass, a far cry from the 1 liter glasses in Bavaria. They are so small that combined with the slow service in Germany it is hard to get drunk off of them. We had some food after drinking and went back and slept. Another long night. These weekend trips are exhausting. -Eric

Cologne: Friday

2007-10-14T22:40:00.000+02:00

We left work early on Friday to try to make it to Cologne early. Daniel and Mira had tickets to a rock concert in town. Sean and I were going right to Mira's apartment. After a good drive from Gottingen to Cologne with a couple stops and a car change we were in town. We were in a bit of a hurry so we ate at Burger King. Daniel dropped Sean and I off near a train station and we rode into town. Mira and Daniel went to the concert, afterwards, they drove back to Mira's fathers house since that was going to be easier. They met up with us the following morning.

This picture is blurry (it is like a Bigfoot sighting,) but that guy on the right had an amazing mullet. I felt like I was back in Tennessee.

We took the train right into the heart of Cologne. We found our way out of the train station and discovered ourselves to be right under the Cologne Dom. It is a very impressive building. We have more pictures of it from the following days.

We were pretty sick of carrying our bags so we walked south towards Mira's apartment. Going from the Dom to Mira's takes you through a long stretch of stores.

We made it to Mira's with minimal confusion. Mira had given us a bottle of beer earlier, so we drank that as we rested a bit at her place. Mira's apartment is in a great location a block from the stretch of college bars. We promptly left to enjoy that. It was pretty busy. We walked around a bit and went into the 'Cuba Bar.' Good place for Americans to go :) We got some seats there and ordered a beer. They had a weak beer menu and the waiter was really pushing the cocktails, so we tried a few of those. And right here I have documented proof of a cocktail purchased by Sean R. Fischbach.

A few drinks in we met a few girls. I made friends with the redhead sitting behind me. Sabine was her name (pronounced sort of like Zabina.) She was a cute gal. Gorgeous hair. She had been to America once, to San Diego, and she spoke English pretty well.

Sean talked to her friend, Annita was her name - I think. She was nice.

We walked the ladies to the train station. Sabine had her bike with her. She was lost once and far from her home and she 'found' this bike somewhere. Hmmmm.

They have a website here in Germany: http://www.mitfahrgelegenheit.de/ People post when they are driving somewhere and you can get a ride with them. She was leaving the next morning to go to Paris. It was pretty late at this point, Sean and I went back to Mira's and crashed. It was a good night. Cologne is a nice city :) -Eric

Oktoberfest Recovery

2007-10-11T19:54:00.000+02:00

What have we done the past few days?... The day after we got back from Oktoberfest we hung out with Mira. We showed her the pictures and videos and ate some pastries. Later we walked into town and got some ice cream and a hot dog. This place said it had an 'American Style' hot dog. They were not, they were still good though.

We've been working hard the past few days, putting in long hours 9-6 kind stuff. Sean is working on his dissertation and I am learning computational fluid dynamics (CFD.) So there is plenty to do. I have some pics from work, I'll post them tomorrow.

We had dinner with Daniel and Mira on Monday. We ate at the Greek place in town. They have great food and large portions. Afterwards we had a few drinks including several shots.

Right now we are cooking dinner, drinking some wine (2 euro merlot) and taking it easy. This weekend we are going to Cologne. Should be a good time. -Eric

Oktoberfest: A Fond Farewell

2007-10-10T18:24:00.000+02:00

Ok, this is the last Oktoberfest post. The Spanish speakers had just left and we slid down to give the Scottish and his gang more room. At some point a few Germans showed up. Two guys and two gals. The guys were bums, one of them was just sitting there, not talking, not drinking. The other guy wasn't doing much more, so it was easy to entertain their ladies. I wasn't about to try to cheer up the guys. The girls were pretty fun. Caroline and Sabrina were their names.

Sabrina was from Frankfurt. That's her above. When I first talked to her she did not believe me that I was from America. After trying to convince her I leaned over to Sean and said, "hey, this chick doesn't believe I'm from America." Sean yells to her (it was loud in there,) "Yeah, he is from Wisconsin." She says, "ah, he just told you to say that." Ha. Cute girl, gorgeous eyes.

Caroline was a bit of a firecracker. She was fond of the F word. She would not tell me the name of this city she was from, but kept saying, "it's the place where the Walt Disney castle is." I'd say, "I know! But what is the name of the city?" eh, it is in southern Germany near Austria an hour out of Munich. I have a great video of her. I took several videos while we were there. Whenever I would hold up the camera everyone would pose. Then I would tell them it is a video and the chicks would always squirm and try to get out of it.

I don't want a part in your Wideo. She had an odd accent, but the W in Video was very German.

Just past us, about half a dozen tables was the balcony. You can see it in many of the photos. There happened to be a blond up there, just a few tables to the right. Throughout the day she was looking down to us, we would raise our glasses together, wave, general long distance flirting and things like that. I learned later that Sean was doing the same (I really don't pay much attention to him.)

(This is about the only evidence I have of the blond. At 0:25 you will see her up on the balcony clapping. We tried to take some photos but they never worked. Also, next time I'll try to take less shaky videos. It is hard when everyone is bouncing and swinging.)

At some point I motioned to the blond to come down by us. There was room. So I pointed at her, then by me. She pointed to her friend. Two of them - great. So I held up two fingers and motioned to two seats by us. Now at this point it got interesting. She apparently had a guy next to her who wasn't too fond of this. So he leans over her and holds up his index finger (1) then two fingers (the index and middle finger, 2) and then reverts to just the middle finger. Ha - 1,2, f-you. Yeah, so he wasn't happy. I was down below returning the favor to him when the girls started arguing with him and eventually they left. Unfortunately they never came down. This was also close to the time we had to leave.

I leaned over and told Sean what had happened. We concluded that the guy was a douche, but it was a rather creative way to flick us off. Sean took a photo of him later. That is him in the middle in a yellow shirt, flicking us off some more and sulking because the girls left.

A beer later I convinced Sean that we really needed to go, though, I didn't want to leave either. Sean was in front of me as we were heading out. Just as a last goodbye I stopped to talked to the girls in green and blue in the photo above. I must have been pretty drunk at this point. We did drink 4 liters of beer in a few hours. I found out they were from Canadia (I love calling it Canadia.) I told them how beautiful they were and how beautiful all the Canadian girls are and stole a kiss on the cheek from the girl in blue. Then I was on my way :) Yeah, that is drunk Eric.

I took this photo on the way in of the way out. That was a good thing because on the way out it didn't even cross my mind. After leaving we scurried to Fabians place. He had a guest book, so I wrote some drunken nice things for him and gave him our email addresses. We had our stuff all packed up, after one last check we left for the main train station. We got there, made it to our train on time and took a deep breath. It's pretty good when we can do the whole system completely drunk. There was hardly anyone on the train.

That is Sean and me in the diner on the train. We made it back to Gottingen at around 11pm and walked home. On the way back we stopped to get a Doner at our favorite place in town. We got back and crashed. We tried to make it to work the next day, but that was not happening. Instead we hung out with Mira and showed her the photos and told her the stories and drank coffee and ate pastries.

It was a great trip. Before I left I was talking to my little sister, who I miss very much. I told her that we were going to Munich. She said, "what's that?" I laughed and said it is a big city in Germany. Then I said, "we are going to Oktoberfest" she said, "what's that." What are they teaching these kids!? :) So I explained to her what Oktoberfest is. When I said goodbye to her she said, "Have fun at your beer drinking festival." :) Well, that's was it was. You all really need to go, it was really great. Sean and I are already planning to go next year. -Eric

Auf Wiedersehen Oktoberfest: Part 2

2007-10-08T18:17:00.000+02:00

This day was so much fun. When I left you last we had just gotten a beer at the beer tent. The waitress seated us, which was odd. She got us onto a table with a few younger kids. They were from Spain, Argentina and Brazil. The two Spaniards were living in Kassel, which is near to here, and one of them had worked in Gottingen for a while. Small world. While we were getting seated we moved down and another group sat down. They were from Scotland, Sweden and Ireland. So we were surrounded by quite the selection of people. They all spoke English :)

(the guy in blue is from Argentina. There were some cute young girls sitting down from us, as you can see, with what looked like their parents. I wanted so much to go and dance with them, they looked so bored. They left soon after we got there though.)

One of the guys from Scotland was there for his bachelor party. That is him shown above. He had met his soon to be wife at Oktoberfest in the very tent that we were at. He had a good story too. It had been raining outside four years ago. He was trying to get into the tent with his friends, but it was full. They found one of the small doors where the waitresses were leaving from and quick ran into it. The guy in front of him got through and he made it as well, but the bouncer stuck out his arm and the friend behind him got clocked. So he just made it in, after that, as he said, he practically ran into her arms. "It was fate," he said and at this point he was getting a little chocked up. The guy from Sweden was the gals brother. They were good guys.

After talking with them for some time we learned that the guy getting married was an aircraft electronics engineer. We met so many engineers and scientists, it was crazy. This guy eventually learned that we are rocket scientists. We don't tell people that outright, but eventually they come to that conclusion. So he tells his pal sitting behind him, "Hey (in a thick Scottish accent) these two fellas are rocket scientists." His pal turns around and shouts, "rocket scientists, that's the fuckin' greatest thing I've ever heard." and we prosted our glasses. (sorry for the language, but it was a quote so it is ok.)

Scottish dudes, I don't know where the chick was from.

That's the Swedish guy on the left making an odd face.

Just if you are not aware prost = cheers.

At some point the Spainish speaking crew left, so we slid down a bit more. We were joined by a few other people. People from Germany this time. I'll leave you here and write the rest of this day soon. So stay tuned for a few more ladies and a guy we pissed off and us being drunk. -Eric

Auf Wiedersehen Oktoberfest: Part 1

2007-10-06T15:23:00.000+02:00

Wednesday: we woke up later, as usual, especially with the late night before. We packed up our stuff so that it was ready when we needed to leave. We said our goodbyes to Fabian since he had to work. What a great guy, he was really a tremendous help. We are fortunate to have met him.

We got something to eat at the nearby beer garden. I had Haxentag and Kartoffelsalat. They had a band playing and they were doing a great job. Most of the small bands we have seen just destroy any English song. We were happy to see someone doing well. They played a country song, which we found funny, so I took a video of that.

Then we went to Oktoberfest. It was gorgeous out, and hot too. Our train was leaving at 6:50pm so we only had a few hours that we could spend there. The initial plan was to go to the different beer gardens take photos of the inside and maybe have a bit to drink. We already had one liter at the beer garden and had a train to catch. As you will soon see - that plan didn't last long.

I got to be 'that guy' in the picture of two girls that were in front of me (on the left in the photo. ) They had walked right in front of me when I was taking Sean's picture. When they came up I was right behind them, so they have a lovely photo of me smiling in the background.

Walking around Oktoberfest

So we went into the first tent on our right (Paulaner) and walked around. Sean took some pictures. I don't know how many tents there are, probably about ten. We did that pretty quickly. After that we went to the next tent along the walkway (Hofbrau.) As soon as we walked in a waitress asked us (in German first, then English,) if we would like a seat. We were thrown back a bit by that because you always just find a seat yourself. So we said, "sure, why not," figuring that we could fit in a beer or so into our plan.

And that was the end of that plan. It is good to be flexible though. The next posts will detail this new adventure. I've got a lot more pictures and videos and stories. -Eric

Oktoberfest: Tuesday

2007-10-05T23:11:00.000+02:00

Ok, so... Tuesday we went to the museum, afterwards we got a bite to eat. Pretzels and brats and potato salad and beers, of course. God I love this kind of food. Reminds me of home.

We stopped by Fabians house and then went to Oktoberfest. The thing was that it was Tuesday and Wednesday was a holiday so it was packed and you needed reservations or something to get into the tents, but no worries, plenty to drink outside. Also, there were teenagers everywhere and they were annoying.

We walked around and found a seat with two guys. They were assholes, so we drank our beers and left that place. We walked around a bit more and found a seat outside a different tent. So who do we end up sitting with... a guy from New York City and a bunch of Canadians. Always Canadians, but their girls are cute, so I am not complaining. To make it all better the guy from New York was doing his residency in neurosurgery. So honestly, two rocket scientists and a brain surgeon. What are the odds, it is like a bad joke.

A couple of the Canadians had been traveling around Europe for 9 months. They sold their house and quit their jobs and left. Pretty cool. I have hardly any pictures from this night. Below is inside a beer tent after it had closed.

We had a few beers and the Canadians left. So we hung out with the New Yorker. Oktoberfest was closing so we hopped on a train and went to another part of the town where the clubs are. We had a few beers there and danced around. There was some mildly fat guy walking around the club with his chest all stuck out like he was tough. He kept trying to start something with me, apparently I was his competition. I would have loved to crack him one, but I was peaceful. There were a couple of good looking chicks dancing around. Lisa was the name of one of them. So I think fatty wanted one of them (as I reread this I thought some of the guys might be confused with the term 'fatty.' I am talking about the chest guy, not Sean ;) Anyways, Sean found some blond chick. After some time me and the New Yorker just had to leave, so we left Sean - again :) David, that was the New Yorkers name, and I got a Doner (remember that turkish gyro thing.) It was really good, but it was 3am and I was a touch drunk (only a touch,) so most things taste good then.

We took a cab back to the middle of town. David went north, I had to go west. I went to the train station and I was waiting for a train, but it was going to take a while, so I walked back outside. There I found an Austrian guy who was lost. I asked him if he needed help. I didn't know where he needed to go, but I had a little map, so I got it out. Then we got some German chick to find his street on the map. They figured it out. Then some drunk guy took my map, so I chased him down and got my map back :) what a mess. The train came soon thereafter and I got back and went to sleep. I slept like a rock, I don't even remember Sean getting back. He got back late. So that was probably our least eventful evening.

The next day was amazing and unfortunately it was our last. Quite a bit of stuff happened in just a few hours, so I'll have to bust that day up into more parts. -Eric

Deutsches Museum

2007-10-05T16:25:00.000+02:00

On Tuesday we went to the Deutsches Museum. It is the largest science and technology museum in the world. It was huge, we spent the whole afternoon there and hardly scratched the surface.

The museum is located on an island in the middle of a river in southern Munich. It was really easy to get to, they have a great train system in Munich.

There was a large aerospace section. That is where we spent most of our time.

In this photo, bottom to top - a Me 262, a Me 163 (remember Daniel's license plate) and a V-1 rocket.

Otto Lilienthal's old glider from the 1890's.

V-2 rocket engine burner cups. It is kind of fun to be able to walk around a museum and not have to read the signs all the time to know what everything is.

This is a great poem I found in the physics section.

Later I stumbled upon this gem. I got a kick out of this floating spinning ball, so I took a video. Enjoy.

Once the museum was closing we went and got a bite to eat. Afterwards we swung by Fabians to drop off some things and then went back to Oktoberfest. I will post that adventure next. -Eric

Oktoberfest: Monday

2007-10-04T21:34:00.001+02:00

After touring around Munich we went to Oktoberfest again. Fabian had some friends that were already there so we met up with them. We made a bunch of new friends right away: Patrick, Mike, Julia, Stephanie, King Ludwig and more that I don't remember the names of. We got more beers and soon we were at it again. So here are a bunch of photos, they will tell the story better.

Sean and our drunken friend Patrick, who was from Munich. That is not my hand on Sean's chin.

Mike and Julia.

Me and Stephanie, or as she said in German, Schtephie. She didn't believe me that I did not speak German since we are living here. But, I don't know how to prove that I don't speak German.

At some point in the night some guys from California ran into us, they were a good time. So they got up on the benches and partied as well. They were surprised that we have been here for over a month. They were just there for a few days. Although, they did decide like a week ago that they were going, and it was after watching the movie Beerfest, which everybody I've met here who has seen it agrees - it is absolutely true.

This is a cool photo of one of the guys from California prosting (cheers.) Sean does not know how to take a photo without it being blurry, so this is a rare case where it actually worked out for the better.

Later in the night the chick on the left side of this picture in the pink shirt comes up to me. She says, "What are you doing?," confused, I say, "What?," so she says, "I have been trying to get your attention all night." I think then, 'well geez, it is easy to get my attention, what have you been doing, and anyways, she was behind me, kind of hard that way.' So she came and partied with us. I can't remember where she was from, somewhere in Germany. That may sound obvious, but a lot of the people we met were from all over the world and they all spoke English. Yeehaw for English!

Now, I usually don't pay attention to Sean at all, we are in our own little worlds. He got the talking to a chick behind us. (we have no photos of her) He told us the next day that this chick, who was American, thought that he was a German who just spoke English well. heh. He left the tent with her and then decided to come back to find us. Well, by that time the tent was closed. I had left and was walking around Oktoberfest with the blond in pink. So he was out of luck.

Another guy from California, and originally Jamaica, with Schtephie and the blond, Claudia.

So I walked around the area for a while with blondie. She was trying to meet up with her friends. It gave me a good opportunity to practice my German phrases. It was hilarious. She just kept saying, "oh your just being a charming American," or "you are just drunk." And I wasn't drunk, which I eventually proved to her, but I was probably charming :) My tolerance must be pretty high at the moment. To be able to drink a good 5 or 6 or so liters of higher alcohol content than in the US, in a few hours, after only eating a small lunch, and then to only be buzzed. This is going to be trouble when we get back.

Eventually she found her friends and we parted ways. I went to the train station and got back to Fabians. Sean apparently walked around for a while, drunk, had another beer at some bar and finally stumbled his way back to Fabians. That was about 4 hours after I got back. He has no idea what route he took to get back. But it was no worry, I was fast asleep. He is a big boy, he can take care of himself. That was a good night and this is a long post. Well, there is more fun to come, but now I have to go to bed, so I will write more tomorrow. -Eric

Munich: Monday

2007-10-04T12:35:00.001+02:00

After getting a good nights rest and waking up a bit late we had lunch at a local cafe. Fabian took us to a place nearby. After getting some food in us we all went to downtown Munich. Fabian showed us a lot of the important buildings and told us a bit of the history and fables. Munich is a beautiful city. Oh, and I forgot to mention, Fabian speaks English very well.

This is the biggest church in Munich. It is the tallest building in the center circle of the city. Whoever financed the building (some king) made a provision that no buildings could be taller than it and they have followed it since. There was an interesting tale to go along with the church. During the construction of the church the King was getting annoyed that it was taking too long, so he pressured the constructors to hurry it up. The construction manager, feeling the pressure made a deal with the devil. The devil agreed to help build the church, but only under the conditions that it would have no windows. When you first walk into the church you won't see any windows since all the columns block them, but as you walk forward you will suddenly see all the windows. At this point there is a footprint 'smashed' into a tile. That is supposed to be the footprint of the devil when he got pissed that they put in windows after all.

We went to another chruch nearby where we could walk up the tower and see Munich from above.

We walked around a bit more. The street shown below was modeled after a street in Paris (I think, somewhere in France at least.) You can see that the street is wider than the buildings are tall, which is supposedly more ascetically pleasing.

It was at this place that Hitler gave some important speech. Now it is no longer allowed for anyone to give speeches at this location.

After this we walked by a Ferrari/Lamborghini dealership and saw all the fancy cars. Satisfied that we had seen the town we headed back to Oktoberfest. I will post those adventures next. -Eric

Oktoberfest: Sunday

2007-10-04T10:32:00.000+02:00

Hey Everybody. As I had mention before we were invited to stay with Mira's friend. His name is Fabian and he is a great guy. We left Gottingen at around 9am by train and arrived in Munich at 1pm. We then found our way to Fabians house (there was a little confusion, but we made it.) After arriving he took us over to a local beer garden. There we had our first beer in Bavaria. We also had a good, large meal. Everything is bigger here and it is fantastic.

While we were at the beer garden one of Fabians friends met up with us. He was a Oktoberfest virgin too. We then made our way to the Oktoberfest grounds by train. They have a good train system there (probably most everywhere,) and Fabians house is in a good location as well. It was very easy and fast to get to Oktoberfest.

We got in and went straight to the beer tents. The rule is that you need a seat to get a beer. Fabian took care of that quickly and we had our beers very shortly thereafter. Good beers too, though, there are good beers everywhere.

This is Fabian with Sean. Fabian was sporting his lederhosen.

As the course of the night goes on the people around you evolve. People come and people go (and people get drunk.) So we eventually are sitting there with two Italians (Vito, shown above, who was nuts) some Germans, Canadians, a mathematician and two guys that work for Airbus. The Italians spoke almost no English (they kept calling Sean 'beautiful American,') but they spoke French. The Canadians spoke French as well, and Sean knows a bit. So you have an American, an Italian and a Canadian all speaking French in Germany. Nice :) I have some great videos. I hope I can load them. (here is a pause, which you won't notice, while I work on the videos.)

So they have several songs they like to sing in the beer tents. There are the traditional Bavarian songs, which everyone loves, but there was one song which they went crazy for: Take Me Home, Country Roads by John Denver. So here is the video of everyone singing it. It is a shaky video, I was rocking back and forth with the blonde chick next to me. (The video application was acting a little goofy for me, just scroll your mouse over the bottom left of where the video should be and you'll see a play button, press it and the video should go.)

I have many more videos so we can see some other songs, I will upload them later. The beer tents close at 11:30pm. We were exhausted, so then we made our way back to the train station and to Fabians. At some point we lost Fabian's friend, but he made it home alright. So that was our first night, it was great fun, but things only got better. :) -Eric

We're Back

2007-10-04T00:04:00.000+02:00

Ok, I am tired, but I thought I'd fill you in. For some reason the last post did not post when I wrote it. I really liked that one too, so you can read it now, but now we are back, so it does not make much sense. Anyways, Banuti says that I was wrong about the laws, so he is right, I still feel oppressed :) ha. Also, he was quick to point out the open nudity and walking down the streets with a beer, which in the US would be a either against a law or at least frowned upon, so we really don't have it that much better. So Americans, revolt and drink beer in public. Viva La Revolution.

Oktoberfest was absolutely great. I will post the details and the pictures tomorrow. All of you need to go to Oktoberfest, you neeeeed to. Have you seen the movie Beerfest? Because it is absolutely true. Honest. You can all come next year, and we have many places to stay now as well. Gosh, what fun. Sleep well. -Eric

Air Execute

2007-09-29T22:17:00.000+02:00

A long time ago I was sitting at a large table with a bunch of my extended family. I was sitting near to my cousins whom I am very close to. While we were chatting I kept overhearing my aunts and uncles and parents saying, "Eric's change." I was confused about why they were talking about my change, like my spare change. Why would anyone talk about that? After listening closer I realized that they were saying, "air exchange." I don't remember why, something to do with a flight. I got a kick out of that. It is a funny play on words.

So being the clever guy that I am, I always write "Air Exchange" on my coin jars now. A few years back I was living in a town house with a bunch of guys. I had this jar on the windowsill in my room. After living with these guys for a while one of them asked, "why does your coin jar say air exchange," probably expecting that I was saving up for something. So I smiled, happy that I finally get to reveal my ingenuity, and said, "just say it fast." He tried a few times and got it and smiled. It is always something with me.

So just say the title of this post several times quickly and enjoy :)

We will be in Munich until Wednesday for Oktoberfest. I am not sure if we will have internet access, so we may be out of touch. I will be sure to take lots of pictures and let you know about our adventures when we return. Au Revoir. -Eric

Closing Hours

2007-09-29T10:33:00.000+02:00

It is still raining today. It is coming down hard enough at the moment to keep us cooped up here at our place. We need umbrellas, as I previously mentioned. I had to quick read my last post this morning to make sure I didn't post anything naughty. It is fine, kinda funny, I guess I am not that crazy of a drunk, nor was I that drunk. I am regretting the Riesling I drank, too sweet, I have a headache now. I had a great bottle of Sauvignon Blanc just before I left Tennessee. I could go for some more of that. Though, it is a tad more expensive than the wine here.

I feel some compulsion to always have a photo to post. Here is me playing poker a few days before I left.

They have some weird laws here. For instance they do not allow businesses to be open later than about 8pm. Also, nothing is open on Sundays. There are some exceptions, bakeries and newspaper stands, things like that. The effect of these laws is that it is difficult to do any shopping after work during the week. Then, because this is the case for most people, everyone shops on Saturday, so it's crazy. On Sunday if you walk around you will see that everything is closed, but there will be all sorts of people walking around looking into the shop windows wishing to buy things. They have these laws to protect the workers and such. Inevitably it is just the government micromanaging things. They should just let the system work itself out.

There are other examples of laws like these. None of them act to directly repress you, but there is that continual undertone of control that is annoying. It is interesting how different the mentality is between here and the US with respect to freedoms (or maybe it is a lack of caring about all the details.) It is subtle, but we can feel it. I am not saying that we are perfectly free in the US, I wish we could dissolve a lot of government programs. All government ever manages to do is make a mess and waste money. And the majority of politicians are incompetent fools, this we know. Why we trust them to make laws, determine our taxes and spend them is beyond me.

Ok, enough of that rant. We leave tomorrow for Munich :) Finally we will get to see people in lederhosen and large breasted women carrying around huge beers. -Eric

Good Morning Germany

2007-09-28T22:10:00.000+02:00

This is like the best possible time to write a post since I am kinda drunk. Hemingway would be proud (except I hate the word like... jeez Eric.) Ok, so we walked and met Banuti for some lunch at Myers. It is a place in town, we've ate there several times. The thing is, they have good food, and an American style breakfast. That is eggs, bacon, toast, pancakes. They don't do that here. They are nuts. You know what else they don't do (I am completely aware that I am using terrible grammar by the way,) they don't drink apple cider! Are they crazy, they must drink half the worlds apple juice here, but they don't drink apple cider. Gosh. I happen to love apple cider, I think Sean feels similarly. We need to rectify this. What am I going to drink when I am cold? Hot chocolate? Are you kidding me? I can only take so much. I feel repressed. Fascists.

(I watched 'Good Morning Vietnam' yesterday, so this seemed fitting.)

Ok, so we sat around for a while. I just happened to introduce Sean to the show 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' which is great show with Larry David, one of the creators of Seinfeld. Anyways, we watched some of that since it was raining. The rain didn't let up, so we decided to go to the grocery store anyways. Stinkin' rain. So we walked, got some pasta sauce and soups and wine (tonights culprit.) God I love you cheap decent wine, you have redefined a cheap date. (me?) By time we got back the rain was really pouring. We were soaked. Note to self: get a God dammed umbrella already, would ya. We watched some more 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' and that has been it. We finished two bottles of wine and now my lips feel tingly. That is when I know I've had enough. Unfortunately, Sean does not have such a response and he just drinks and drinks. I love tingly lips. God, too many memories.

(What is the deal with the random pictures. Well this one is for Dan Lehman.)

We are going to Munich on Sunday. I don't know if we will have access to the internet, so we may be out of contact for a few days. We will be back late on Wednesday (I really hate capitalizing weekdays, they don't deserve it, but Nazi spell checker feels otherwise.)

(Daniels license plate. He picked them today. Can anyone tell me what a M163 is??? It is special to us.)

Daniel left to pick up his car today. That will be a good post, but then hopefully I will have good posts about Sean getting stuck in chimneys in Munich - like this one. HAHA. Life is too periodic to make a continuously entertaining blog. I miss you all, some more than others :) they know who they are. I am a little concerned that we haven't been drinking enough in preparation for Oktoberfest. We drank heavily for over a month, but we have eased up since. We will be fine. Ok, bed time. Yours Truly, -Eric

UTSI Lab "Work"

2007-09-28T11:43:00.001+02:00

I was going through some of my pictures yesterday when I was looking for random pictures to post. I came across these photos from the lab. I thought they would make a good post. This has nothing to do with Germany, except for Lutz, who is a German.

This was the experiment we were working on. It was for Lutz's experimental methods class, but it was also related to Dr. Flandro's research. We were killing two birds with one long plastic tube. We painted a lightning bolt on it - we are cool. Just so Lutz knows, when I spell check his name it comes up as 'klutz' - ha, new nickname?

I was bored waiting for Lutz to calibrate the hot wire anemometer, so I took some photos.

Josh showed up and he took some pictures too. This is me being bored while Lutz works. I am wearing an appropriate shirt for all this hard work.

We were having a hard time getting any good results. That is Lutz above being annoyed. The equipment just wasn't able to measure the little oscillations we were looking at. So we decided to play a rousing game of drop the hammer on your foot.

That lasted for one round.

Still bored we took some more photos using some weird color swap options on my camera. They turned out pretty creepy.

To wrap things up we spun a hammer in the air. The point on the hammer which appears to not have moved is approximately the center of gravity. So that is a day in the life of a rocket scientist. It is a very stressful life we lead. -Eric

German Engineering In The House

2007-09-27T19:10:00.000+02:00

I don't completely remember writing that last post. I was tired and a touch drunk. I am glad to see that it was normal. I have no good pictures to put up today, so I am putting up other random pics that I like.

(Me laying down the law at the roulette table)

Today we went to the bank and tried to figure out how to transfer funds from our US bank to our Deutschebank account. We didn't figure it out, well, we have to see. We can brute force it by just withdrawing money at the ATM depositing it here. That will at least work for the time being. We then went to the town hall to fill out some residency form, but they wanted us to fill out some work permits, but the regulations say that we aren't working long enough to have to do that. So, we need to check on that. No big deal, just something else to figure out.

(Sean and Banuti on the surface of Mars (or Kennedy Space Center))

We worked some too, it's been a productive day. I've been programming in C and have everything setup on my mac to do that. Sean was playing around with Linux. Hopefully soon we can have some basic computational fluid dynamics code running. Then we can move on to bigger tasks and change the world :) For instance, we helped the second in command in our division at the DLR decipher an American Volkswagen commercial. Vid At some point in the commercial, which is a great commercial, the guy says in a fake German accent, "this is your '98 vhatchamacallit." they didn't know what that meant and did not know how to spell it (nor do I) to look it up, so they asked the native English speakers. I'm glad we are good for something :)

In other news, we are going to Munich on Sunday. We just walked across town in the rain to get our train tickets. Mira has a friend there that we can stay with. That is great. Thanks again Mira. She is a great girl :)

Also, Banuti purchased a new (to him) car. His parents drove down this evening to give him the papers so he can go to the town hall tomorrow and get a car permit. He will leave tomorrow to pick it up. I'll leave it a surprise as to what car it is until I get some photos, but I'll tell you now, it is a nice ride. I am going to sit back now and watch a movie, enjoy your evening. -Eric

P.S. I don't know what is going on with the line spacing. It is doing it on its own. hmm.

Here Is Now

2007-09-26T23:02:00.000+02:00

I am trying to think of what I have already written about. I had a weird dream last night. I was swimming in a lake and then there was a big oil spill. Mark Olles and I cleaned it up. We setup those floating things to contain the spill and slowly closed the loop making it smaller and smaller. As a result it made the oil into a tall thin column reaching down deep into the lake. So I decided to swim down this column. The first try fail, the second time I made it. I followed the oil down and that lead me to the bottom of the lake. There was some dinosaur bones, and dinosaur carcasses. I was surprised. There were all of these animals piled up like something killed them all at once. Then I found a pair of giant boots. I took out my camera and took a picture of that (that is funny to me.) I don't remember too much else, but I found some underground building and other people and the dream ended with a Mormon kid stealing my Baby Ruth candy bar (that is super funny to me.) Yeah... so I am strange in my dreams too. Don't try to be all Freudian on me and analyze it, it is just crazy, that is all.

We worked today, Sean fixed his computer, we read some things too. Mira (Banuti's girl) came to town and we all had some dinner together and a few beers. Then me and Sean had a few beers afterwards. We need to get some things done tomorrow so we didn't hit it too hard. It was busy at the bar. As we were leaving we let an older couple and a younger couple who were together take our place. They seemed like nicer people than the other douche bags around. I was just glad that they spoke a little English and that I could tell them to take our place. They appreciated it and asked us where we were from. I said, "America." The older lady gave me a look like that completely explained our kindness. We were surprised. Now I am sleepy and a tad drunk. Have a wonderful evening. I miss you all. -Eric

C'est La Vie

2007-09-25T21:02:00.000+02:00

"I love beer," says Sean. Banuti retorts, "well, you came to the right country."

We worked a long day yesterday. 9:30am to 6pm. Only about 8 hours, but that is really long for me. We've been reading books on computational fluid dynamics, Riemann solvers, programming in C, using Linux, reading technical papers on CFD methods and the DLR Tau code and combustion instability. (all I was doing there was thinking of every big confusing word we are working with so the non-technical readers feel left out :) We found some interesting papers, we also found some other ones that are crap. So it goes.

After work we went to a coffee shop type place just down the road from the DLR and had a beer. Afterwards we dropped our bags off at our place and walked to the bar. The three of us had several more beers and continued the good conversation. At some point in the night we had a guy come up to us. He asked us where we are from, yada yada. He spoke very little English. Banuti told him that we are all from the US (him included - that is a lie that we've wanted us use, so this was good practice) and then we attempted to explain to him that we are researchers and design rockets and stuff. It was funny at first, but the guy just would not leave, so then it was annoying. The guy smelled pretty awful too and he was stretch out over Banuti.

(This picture is great. Right before I took this picture Banuti was thinking to himself, as he told me later, 'Eric really needs to take a picture of this' and right as he thought that I took one. This is the next picture where he turned around and laughed. That is the dude in white.)

The bartender also spoke English to us. He sounded Irish or Australian. We still spoke German to him regardless. We got back late and went to sleep and then woke up 'early' for work. Sean got some pastries at the local bakery, that was nice. We strolled into work and continued the reading and programming and such. Sean tried to add Linux to his machine, and it worked, but it screwed up the Windows operating system, so we (he) need(s) to fix that now.

After lunch we went to the town hall to declare our place of residence. We went where Daniel previously showed us to go and Sean asked a guy, "sprechen zie English?" which means - do you speak English? And the guy responded in German, "no, I speak German" and proceeded to talk to Sean in German??? So Sean said, "uh, ich spreche kein Deutsch." (uh, I speak no German) And then the guy asked us in German, "Do you speak English?" (sprechen zie English) Well duh pal. Ja, sprechen wir Englisch. (Yes, we speak English) So then he directed us to someone who speaks English. Of course, he told us that in German :)

Sean went to get a haircut after work. Me and my hippie self stayed back at the apartment and wrote some emails. A bit of dinner and now I am writing this blog post. Yeehaw! Have a nice day. -Eric

Eric Is Sad

2007-09-23T22:27:00.001+02:00

Psych! Just cutting onions. We used Daniel's place while he was gone to iron and make a call and stuff. To make it up to him, we made him some French onion dip. He liked it in the states and you can't get it here. I found a recipe online and we went about it. Our first try sucked. The recipe sucked. So we made some changes, looked online again and had at it. This next one was pretty good, but there is room for improvement. After a long deliberation I think I've got it. The next batch will be perfect. I'm glad to see I can use my mad cooking skills here. Unfortunately, now Banuti's place smells like onion, oops, sorry pal. I like the picture above: blood shot eyes, the lone strand of hair and you even get the tear rolling down my cheek. Perfect :)

The onions, they kill me, boy oh boy I cannot deal with cutting onions. Though, sometimes, if you are feeling sad and you don't want anyone to know, just cut some onions and cry cry cry :)

See - I am not sad. To prove it to you here is a link to a funny video about Germans saying nice things. Germans saying nice things (For you old people, it may take a minute to load and you might need to download a program that will play flash videos. Don't fret, the computer will show you how to.)

Gosh it was a beautiful day today. I love sitting in the sun, soakin' it up like a big mantastic sponge. Ha, I swear, I am not drunk (yet.) I just have a vivid imagination and the occasional willingness to let it show. (shine?) One of my favorite examples of this is occurred one fabled day. The guys and I were driving down the road. We were going to Knoxville for a football game. At some point I spotted two trees in the distance and I shouted, "those trees look like dinosaurs!" Because they did. They looked like two brontosauruses with their long necks like in Jurassic Park. The guys got a kick out of that, I don't blame them, it is a strange random thing to say. Anyways, I'll just think things like that and say them. So yes, I have a wild imagination and I love it.

Oh God, it's back to work tomorrow. Heh, now I am sad :) -Eric

Here Comes The Sun

2007-09-23T13:09:00.000+02:00

Today is a lovely day. The past two days have been gorgeous, bright, sun shiny days. Days like these are making me miss the sun. We went from 100 deg F weather in Tennessee to 60's and 70's here. I think that I did not fully appreciate the sunshine while I had it.

(The view outside our place today)

In the few weeks before I departed for Germany I was having a hell of a time. The softball season was finishing up, we had an amazing post season win, we were getting drunk and having some great parties where we also made some great new friends. It was a blast. During this time I also started another habit, which I can't do here, but works in Tennessee during the summer. I would wake up early every morning just a bit after sunrise (which is really early for me) and walk down to the lake. I would lay down a towel out on the dock, stretch out and relax. Usually I would listen to some music on my mp3 player. A little Chuck Prophet, Corinne Bailey Rae, Jack Johnson, something calm. Otherwise I'd appreciate the silence. I would do this for about an hour.

(A picture of mine of the dock by the UTSI dorms in the fall)

After sitting in the sunshine I would head over to the gym and do my routine there. Then head back to my room, shower and continue my day. Soaking up that sun, waking up so peacefully and slowly on my own terms with good friends and good times to follow. I really miss those few weeks.

Now I know what I am going to do next summer :) -Eric

Working Like A Dog

2007-09-21T22:16:00.000+02:00

I was a little toasted when I wrote that last post. I am thinking that maybe I should write all my posts drunk. They are more fun that way. Then I was thinking, maybe I should not get drunk so often.

We have some good ideas for a project. There is a paper that Banuti found on the effect of passive devices on combustion instability. Basically the guy just did some CFD and looked at the acoustic effect of baffles and Helmholtz resonators. He found, as expected, that the baffles disrupt the acoustic harmonics and that the resonators, well... they resonate. It was just interesting they way he went about it and that he got results. Although, we are interested in knowing more than that. What types of baffles work, why, how, what shapes? Does combustion effect anything? Does viscosity effect anything? Injection? And is the code here at the DLR capable of capturing these effects? This would be an interesting project that would benefit both the DLR and UTSI.

Sorry, I had to nerd it up a little there. For the non-technical audience: we want to run a complicated computer program that will give us pretty pictures (this is the joke that we usually make, because a lot of the time that is all that they are) that will hopefully tell us whether or not a rocket engine is going to go crazy.

(A picture from inside our place)

Banuti went home this afternoon, he is going to look for a new car and his mother's birthday is on Sunday. We are bums :) Well, I need the rest and hopefully then I can be finished with this cold. -Eric

Another Day, Another Dollar

2007-09-20T21:57:00.000+02:00

Like a sweat shop :) get it, nah... oh well.

Today we started working. I know. Calm down. I am not screwing with you. I swear. We actually are working. And so as to prove it to Sean's Mom I'll post a photo of our ID's.

We got a hold of Banuti this morning. I was a tad hungover, plus sick, and tired. Well, either way, we went into work. We got the ID's figured out and introduced to our temporary office. There is some girl that is leaving soon and we'll take over that office. This chick, if it is the one I think it is, is f*ing hot. Banuti, pal, you gotta tell us these things. This is very relevant, critical info. Work with us here :) we would have been working a month ag0.

Ok, so we ate lunch in the cafe (I had some pea soup and a viener) and were introduced to most of the people in our department afterwards. Banuti gave us some books to read and we discussed possible topics for a project. We have many ideas, so it is a problem of figuring out which to do, not what to do. We took off at about 4pm. Took a nap and then we went to the grocery store. We got some pasta and sauces and wine. The wine is cheap here. We were trying to figure out if it a matter of consumption levels or transportation, but in the end we think that it is just overpriced in the US because people think it is special. So we are getting decent wine here for about 3 euros (4 bucks) a bottle. Four bucks would only get you some sink ass boxed wine back home. heh.

We cooked some pasta and drank our wine. Well, I am still drinking it right now. That would explain my more open use of vulgar language. Sorry :) Today is actually going to be the first day in over a month that we have not had a beer. But don't worry, two bottles of wine will do the trick. Sean's Mom asked him if we were going to go through a detox program before starting work. She is lucky that we are not working in southern Germany where it is ok to drink beer at work.

Alright, I miss you guys and gals. Have a splendid evening. -Eric

P.S. - Sean is old. Ha!

Happy Hunting

2007-09-20T16:47:00.000+02:00

We spent yesterday with Mira, Daniel's girl. Our landlord came over to make the initial inspection so we could point out any flaws so they don't get blamed on us. She acted as our translator. Well, she just did all the work. Afterwards we got a bite to eat and stopped by Daniel's place for some coffee and donuts. While we were there Mira taught us a few important lines. Here they are, in order. I'll give you the translation after so you can try to decipher them first.

Ich Finde dich süß!
Kann ich dich auf finen drink einladen?
Mochtest du mit mir tanzen?
Zu dir oder zu mir?
Hast du Kondome?
Die nachy mit dir war sehr schon!
Ich brauche eine zigarette.
Wie ist die name?
Wie ist diene telefonnummer?
Ich kanne nicht bleiben.
Ich habe ein wichtiges meeting morgen.

And now the rough translation back to English:

I find you sweet.
Can I buy you a drink?
Would you like to dance?
Your place or mine?
Do you have condoms?
I think that you are very beautiful.
I need a cigarette.
What is your name?
What is your telephone number?
I can't stay the night.
I have an important meeting in the morning.

After our lessons we went back to our place, had a bite to eat, and went to the bar - to practice our German :) zing. -Eric

Rain, Rain, Go Away

2007-09-18T12:21:00.000+02:00

To celebrate one month of Germany we went out to grab a few beers. I am still a bit sick, but whatever. I am happy to report that we have not gone a single day without a beer (probably 4-5 avg.) So, we are doing well. We hit up Thanners, but the service was lacking and as good capitalists, we left. We went over to the Irish bar, it is just a few blocks away. This is a nice bar, but it is listed in Wikipedia Travel as a 'place for English speakers to gather.' So... we don't want to be tourists. They do have Guinness on tap though, so we'll go there anyways.

There were some girls sitting behind us (not attractive ones) and at some point Sean turned around to look at the TV where a soccer game was playing. One of the girls said in English, "Is this guy looking at us or the TV." or something like that. Apparently unaware that we spoke English as well (or that everyone does.) I was at the bathroom at the time. Sean should have screwed with them and asked them something in German and pretended that we don't speak much English. Or we could have turned to them and said in clear English, "no, we are not looking at you, the soccer game is much more interesting... even to us Americans." :)

It rained on us on the way back. Just what I needed - sick and drunk and wet and cold. Well, it wasn't all that bad except that on the way back while running we got lost and took a rather long way. The pic above is of us just after we returned. We stripped down (not together) and got dry. After a good nights rest I am feeling a little better. It is rainy today so I might just catch up a little on some reading and get some more rest. Have a lovely day. -Enrique

Time Is An Illusion

2007-09-17T19:21:00.000+02:00

Today Sean and I have been here for one whole month. It does not seem so long.

We took a walk this afternoon to get some lunch, but that was about all that I could handle. I am still feeling a little under the weather and needed some more rest. I got a doner (that turkish thing) with feta cheese and Sean got a pizza. Otherwise everything is cool. Once we get our paycheck for the next month we are heading down to Munich for Oktoberfest. We'll do a long weekend or something. Gotta see what we can handle.

(I like this picture. It isn't framed right, but I am all smiley with those bums looking like, well... bums.)

I am trying to think of something more to write so I our blog is not so lame. Ahh, we'll do some small details... like when Banuti smashed his car up. The dude he hit got out of his car dressed completely in camouflage with a gun holster. We were like, "what country are we in???" The guy was totally cool though. He didn't show an ounce of emotion as he lit up his cigarette. I guess, as Daniel explained later, that he was on his way to hunt some Boar and that he had just happened to miss his exit and was in the process of turning around. Bummer. When the cops showed up the officer asked them for their driving license. The holster guy asked the cop if he wanted to see his hunting license to which the cop replied, "why? did you shoot at him?" :)

[Please note that in the previous paragraph I used the word 'like' in the valley girl sense (we were like) and I hate to do that, but I don't care right now. Though, it does remind me of a Demetri Martin joke... I have a friend who always talks in similes. He is like... annoying.]

Have a great Monday folks. -Eric

Lazy Sunday

2007-09-16T18:43:00.000+02:00

Last night we went out and had a few beers (1...2...3,4,5,6...) I don't remember how many. I've been fighting off a head cold for a few days now and right now it feels like it may be winning. This morning we met Banuti for breakfast. He made some white sausages and pretzels which is a traditional Bavarian breakfast. Oh, and a beer too.

(A view of the town near our apartment)

After breakfast we took a stroll around town, sat down and had a cup of coffee. There was a group of people playing classical music across the walkway from us, so we enjoyed that. Sean got a craving for some ice cream, so we fulfilled that craving and got ice cream cones. I got peppermint. We stopped at a magazine/newspaper shop after finishing the cones. It is always fun since magazines here openly show nudity, even on the covers. This particular shop has a section of English magazines, so we read some of those. We walked back to Daniels place to grab a couple forks and plates for our place and then Sean and I walked back to our place. Since then I have been resting since I feel slightly crappy.

Heh, on a lighter note, they have these tiny 1 cent coins. They are just a bit bigger than a skittle. We always joke that they just feel like you should eat them. Mmmmm copper :) -Eric

Sean = Ladder

2007-09-15T12:16:00.001+02:00

So... we moved into our place. I'll add some more pics soon of it. We had to install a few lights and build the tables and other furniture. We had no ladder so we had to improvise. In other news, we decided to quit engineering and join the circus.

Our make-shift ladder, I like how my feet are only about 2 feet off the ground.

Us admiring our work.

Later in the evening we went and had a few beers and a bite to eat at the place we refer to as 'the hamburger place,' not because they have good hamburgers, but because of the chick from Hamburg that I met there. That place has good food and always has 2 Euro wheat beers and cute waitresses too. 3 liters of beer later we stumbled back slightly drunk to our new place and slept there for the first time. It is morning now and we are going to get some lunch with Banuti. -Eric

Just A Note

2007-09-13T19:23:00.001+02:00

A note that we left for Daniel a few days ago. Enjoy - Eric

Once It Hits Your Lips, It's So Good

2007-09-13T11:50:00.000+02:00

We had a reasonably busy day yesterday (Wednesday.) We went to IKEA and got some furniture and blankets and such. So, we've got a lot of that stuff taken care of. I found a frog and stuck it on my head.

So, we got stuck in a bit of a traffic jam on the way back but we took some side roads and made it back in pretty good time. It was late when we got back and after we unloaded the vehicle (packing that stuff in these tiny European cars was fun) we got a bite to eat. Good pizza at a good place in town. We had a few beers there too. Afterwards, Banuti, still felling a touch ill, went back to his place. Sean and I continued onto Thanners for the Wednesday night wheat beers. We lucked out and found a place to sit even though it was late and pretty busy by time we got there.

At some point in the night a chick came by who was getting married in a couple days. They do strange things here. So, she was trying to sell kisses or liquor or I don't remember. She had a striped outfit on, nice... you can see it above in my blurry photo. We did a shot of some crap with her.

This is a pic of her friend taking a pic of Sean and Me and the striped chick. Her friend was cute (I just raised my eyebrows when I wrote that, heh.) We made our way back to Banuti's. Sean had taken one of the small bottles that we took the shots from and proceeded to rattle it on every fence all the way back. Nice pal. -Eric

Das Kitzelt = That Tickles

2007-09-12T13:08:00.000+02:00

Ok, not too much new. We got some furniture from Banuti's home and we will move that in soon. Daniel caught a cold on Sunday, so we've been just kind of chilling out for a few days. He seems to be feeling better today. He got a note from the doctor saying that he didn't need to work for the week and that he should drink a lot. Daniel asked him what he should drink, the doc said that it didn't matter. Hmmm, sounds like trouble.

(The dessert at Daniels home which wasn't sweet enough for us Americans :)

Tonight is wheat beer night at Thanners, so we'll hit that up. It'll be packed so we'll get to push around people to get through the bar. That is half the fun. Hopefully they push back. That is even more fun.

We are itching to get back to work, Sean is doing some research for his dissertation. I am working on, well... yeah. Once Daniel is feeling better, we are going to go in. -Eric

Banuti's Email

2007-09-10T12:16:00.000+02:00

I forgot to mention this a long time ago, but Daniel sent us an email before we left and it had a great line in it:

"if you want to provoke a fight, tell some leftish or punkish looking guy you are paintball-playing, big car driving, hunting, gun-owning, rocket building, Bush-voting Americans, who believe in God but not in global warming and support the war on Iraq. Hmm. Maybe he'd just get a heart attack, seeing the stereotype of his favourite enemy come true. ;-)"

That is great. -Eric

Ich Bin Heiß = I am HOT!!!

2007-09-09T20:57:00.000+02:00

Ok, new phrase for the weekend.

I last left you on Friday afternoon. That evening we went for a walk around town, later that night we went to a place that we hadn't eaten at since the first few days we were here. They had a couple cute waitresses so we figured we'd give it another shot. We had some decent food there and many beers. I had some pasta, Sean had some sandwich thing and Banuti had a hamburger. I met a cute girl from Hamburg and we had a nice conversation in the hallway near the bathrooms. I am changing my entire wardrobe to tight white t-shirts. Sean tried to hit on a waitress, but no luck. Waitresses are a tough catch anyways. We stumbled back drunk and passed out.

Saturday we went to visit Daniels family. On the way there we got into a little fender bender. Everyone was fine. Just by chance I took pictures of his car right before we left. We got to his parents house and had a nice German meal. His parents are fun, his mother speaks very little English so it was an interesting conversation. Daniel was a good translator. His mother went out and bought extra Coca Cola for the Americans, joked that we are not allowed to put ketchup on the meat and then insisted that the dessert was too sour for us and we would rather have something sweeter. After dinner we drove to a glider pilot party and hung out there. We had a few beers and danced to some good music. It was a bit of a sausage fest, but not terrible. They had some fireworks show at the party, I joked that I could by those at the store and fire them off in my backyard. We are just trying to be arrogant Americans, we usually succeed. At about 4am we left. We stayed the night at house of Daniels girlfriends family.

We left there at about 2pm, went back to Daniels parents and had dinner in town at a Chinese restaurant. Afterward we went to his home and had some cake and coffee. I was so stuffed. We got a few items from his folks (coffee maker, some lights, shelves, etc.) so that will help with the furniture. Tired and full, we drove to Daniels apartment, now I am more tired and need a shower and I need to have a few more beers to meet my daily quota (enough beers each day so that I should not take aspirin :)

(A view from the party)

We are going to start work in the next couple of days and finish furnishing the apartment as well. Then I just need to find a bike, we are going to look for a gym and that is about it (maybe some more Hamburgers too :) heh. Also, we are going to rent a BMW one of these days and take a ride on the autobahn.

See you later alligators. -Eric

Look At Us We're Beautiful

2007-09-07T18:19:00.001+02:00

:) Okay, today we went and finished paying rent for September. A few days ago we ate at this place in town and we noticed that they made an American style breakfast. So today we went there at lunchtime to get some eggs and bacon. Mmmm, now if we can just find greasy pizza and hot wings we'll be set (we have a hot tip on a good pizza place and there is one hooters in Germany.) The waitress asked where we are from, America, oh, so now she wants to practice her English. That's fine, we just want to hear some German (show me your ö face ;) Anyways, the waitresses really get a kick out of us trying to speak German. It's the only time we make these damn Krauts smile :)

Afterwards we swung by the apartment with Daniel's girl and showed her the place. Now we just need a few furniture items and we are set.

Here are some random pictures.

Me trying to push down the Berlin wall.

Sean rebuilding it.

And me in front of the Brandenburg Gate.

The other day we confused another waitress. Right as we sat down she asked us if we wanted to move to another table. We'll, she said that in German, so we had to break it to her that we no speaky German. So she spoke some English. As the meal went on, we would respond to her questions in German. At one point she walked away and said (in German) 'why am I speaking English?' Yet another confused waitress. We need to learn how to say, "we speak no German except for." and then hand them a list of words we know.

Ok, have fun. It's Friday night and I'm feeling right. -Eric

Drunk Again :)

2007-09-06T22:48:00.000+02:00

Ok, so last night we got drunk. They had wheat beer night at Thanners (the wooden bar we like to go to) and we got really drunk. Here are some lovely photos. This first one is great, I don't remember what Sean was doing, but ha, it's good. The second pic is of the foam, or head of the beer. The German translation is the 'crown' of the beer. We decided that as Americans, we have a distinct dislike for crowns, therefore we cannot call it that. I told the guys that the picture looked like scales, like on a fish... or a dragon. They got a kick out of that.

Tonight I am also drunk, but not as drunk. We got a few postcards from Banuti's girl. We had a few beers at Mr. Jones, a restaurant in town, and we then had a few at Thanners, Warsteiner. Great beer.

(The card says something like - when I am sober I am shy, when I am full (of beer) I am bold)

(And a lovely lady riding a banana that was on the back of the postcard)

Now for non-drunk news. We've got our apartment setup, we just need to get a few items of furniture and we are set. We'll have bank accounts here to, that is all set as well. So things are going smoothly. We are probably going to start working next week. It'll be nice to use my brain again, I wonder if it still works. -Eric

Apartment Search

2007-09-05T10:38:00.000+02:00

We were looking for an apartment for a few days. I think we've found something. Two bedrooms, two bathrooms, kitchen, two floors. Pretty nice place. It is just a few blocks from the DLR (where we are working,) so the location is ideal. We just need to setup a bank account for rent and make sure the contract is ok and we'll be set. I'll post pictures soon of the area.

In other news, we went to a big supermarket yesterday. I got some bananas, watermelon, Gorgonzola cheese and potato salad. We got beer too, naturally. Shown above (...in Fig 1. - my writing sounds like this is a technical paper) is a great picture of Sean in the beer section. And another pic below of some honey... like from the bee-hive.

Afterwards we ate at Burger King, it was Daniels idea, not ours. Tasted the same. We also passed a McDonald's earlier that day and were surprised that they had the playground too. We haven't eaten there yet. Maybe we will in France so I can get a royal with cheese, like in Pulp Fiction. Apparently, they have really good coffee at McD's here. They are crazy about the 'Mc' phrase here and attach it to anything (McClean, McFit, etc...) It is supposed to mean 'fast.' To us it is just silly. I've been taking photos and I'll do a whole post on the Mc's in the future.

We went to the bar that evening and had a few, plus a few more. We tried a new beer. It wasn't that great so I took a bunch of pictures of it since it may be the last time we have it.

Alright, we are off to the bank. See ya later - Eric

A Case of the Mondays

2007-09-03T23:03:00.000+02:00

Today I bailed Sean out of jail. Just kidding, I was just trying to scare his mom.

So we didn't really do anything today. We waited around until the FedEx guy came around and delivered Sean's package from his mother. Then we went and got a bite to eat. Good pasta, mmmmm. I could go for some Gorgonzola cheese right now. We stopped at the grocery store and tried to decipher the deodorants since we both just ran out. We also got some beer.

I finished a lovely video which I titled, "Two Weeks of Beer" you can watch it on facebook. This link might get you there.

LINK

Ahh - and the song selection; It's the beer were in love with.

We've been looking for an apartment (well, mostly Sean has) with mixed results. We'll see how tomorrow goes. For now, it is off to bed. -Eric

Some Random Berlin Notes

2007-09-02T10:27:00.000+02:00

We were walking down the street late Tuesday night in Berlin, making our way back from the bar when we past one of the many hookers standing on the side of the street. They were reasonably conservatively dressed for hookers. Some of them wear corsets, which to me look a little creepy. Anyways, we past one and she said something to us in German, I responded in German - 'I speak no German' as we passed by. Then she said something in English, but we had already passed. I commented to Sean the following day that from now on when someone complains about learning a foreign language, namely Spanish, my response will be, "even the hookers in Berlin know two languages."

I think it was on Wednesday we met a chick from Australia. She was staying in the same room as us in the hostel. So we chatted with her for a while. She was alone, but we refrained from asking the creepy question, "so... you're traveling alone." She asked us where we were from and such and we told her about us working here and how we are amazing rocket scientists from the future. Okay, I am exaggerating. We said that we are aerospace researchers and do stuff with rockets. Though, we are sometimes curious whether or not people believe us anyways. We might as well be spacemen from the future. She left early Thursday morning for Croatia.

People have continually mistaken us for British (especially in Hannover), which is odd, even Banuti thinks so.

This is the mug with which I drink coffee in the morning. Daniels father works for a pharmaceutical company so that sort of explains it.

Enjoy, -Eric

Hannover Hangover

2007-09-01T15:59:00.000+02:00

Sean and I took off Friday afternoon to Hannover. It is only a 30 minute train ride north of here. The plan was just to stay out all night, drink, etc. and then take a train back to Gottingen when we could. So it went alright. It rained on us for some time. We picked up a couple of cheap umbrellas and proceeded to break them. We did a two beers and leave technique for a few bars. There was a nice Italian place where we got some great pasta and pizza. We did a pretty good job speaking the language, but inevitably in every conversation they say something which completely confuses us and we are stuck, dumbfounded.

Today is the first day in two weeks of consistent drinking that I have a hangover. It was the last beer, I know it, it always is. We got back to Banuti's and crashed. Sean took a long nap and I took a little shorter one. We are exhausted and have had our fill of traveling for the week. We are looking forward to getting back to work and maintaining a bit more of a reasonable schedule. Hopefully this week we can find an apartment. That is our goal.

Now for a bit of a random snippet of joy - the pizza I had Thursday night at Daniels. Cheese, Onion, Tuna and a sunny side up egg. Silly Germans. It was good, I swear. -Eric

Ich Bin Ein Berliner - Day 3

2007-09-01T12:04:00.000+02:00

Ok - Day 3. This is taking forever to write up. We woke up at a decent hour again, went down to the lobby of the hostel and had a nice breakfast. We had decided the day before that we were going to hit up the German history museum and we did exactly that. Checking out of the hostel was a breeze. Then we made our way to the museum. It was right past the Lustgarten and Altes Museum that I showed in day 2.

Basically the museum guided you around from ancient history to modern history chronologically. It started with lots of old things from the Celts and lead through the Roman era, then comes medieval, reformation, ww1, ww2, Berlin wall. Thats the basic overview. So - Photos.

This is a map of Celtic movement.

This guy has a creepy face.

I liked this sculpture. I got scolded for taking a flash photo (at least I think I did, some lady said some German to me,) but it was an accident because I didn't even want it on. This pic was taken with no flash.

This is a drawing from after ww1 but before ww2

Nazi's - more than just movie bad guys and video game opponents.

Nice.

This is a pic of a piece of a US movie poster. I just loved the way the girls were falling back in terror. It's so corny.

I apparently can't hold the camera still.

Next!

Berlin Wall

As we were leaving I had Sean take a picture of me in front of the Reichstag, the capitol building of Germany. Cori - this one is for you.

We went back to the train station, got on a train back to Gottingen and arrived around 5pm or so. Good trip. - Eric

Ich Bin Ein Berliner - Day 2

2007-08-30T22:03:00.000+02:00

Friday morning. We woke up at a reasonable hour and got moving. We just started walking. We really didn't know what all the stuff to see was. We had some tourist maps that showed where the important stuff was. There was a really tall pointy thing in the distance, we figured we start by walking towards that. While walking that way we made our way to the river which runs through the city. We saw a gorgeous old church, bridges, wonderful architecture, boats traveling along. At this point we could not see the tall pointy thing, so we walked along the river. The main road was up ahead and at that point we saw the tall pointy thing.

(Old church = Berliner Dom)

(tall pointy thing = Fernsehturm)

There was a park before the Fernsehturm with a cool fountain in it.

We then walked past the Berliner Dom that I showed before and came upon the Lustgarten and the Altes Museum. There were a lot of tourists around.

(Statue of Frederick the Great)

We walked down the 'Unter den Linden' or 'under the linden trees' which took us to the infamous Brandenburg Gate. It is neat to see all these things first hand. It makes all the history we've been taught over the years so much more real. After the gate we walked north and passed the parliament building, the Reichstag. Berlin is, after all, the capital of Germany.

We ate some lunch at a Italian restaurant. They spoke Italian to us and German and English and it was terribly confusing. The food was great though. After lunch we went up to a Berlin wall memorial. Shown above is a piece of the remaining Berlin wall and the 'death strip.' This is the view from former West Germany.

Before sleeping we stopped at several bars, including a lovely East German bar complete with socialist propaganda and Lenin and all that wonderful oppressive government paraphernalia that just warms your heart. There is more, I'll just add another post. -Eric

Ich Bin Ein Berliner - Day 1

2007-08-30T20:02:00.000+02:00

So we are back from Berlin. Let me tell you the tale...

We packed all our stuff up Tuesday, we had to wait until the afternoon since Sean needed to make a phone call regarding future employment. After that we walked down to the train station, a 10 minute or so walk from here. They have computer terminals setup, so you just punch in where you want to go and you can pay for and get your ticket. With a ticket to Berlin in hand we hopped on the train. We had a connection in Hannover, we should have just got a direct train, it would have been easier. Either way, we got to Berlin. Once at the station we ate currywurst. Suggested to us by Banuti, it is a traditional fast food item. It is basically a sausage chopped up with curry spices and a barbeque like sauce. Not bad.

Step one was complete, now we just needed to find a place to sleep. We had looked up a few hostels beforehand, so we walked towards them. Before we reached the first hostel we stopped at a bar. I know I really needed a drink. It turns out that the place was an Irish bar to the full extend in that everyone spoke english. We had a few beers there. While we were sitting there Clive Owen walked in (the guy from children of men, etc.) That was strange.

Now that our thirst was quenced we departed to the first hostel. The first place, 'East Seven', was full. They suggested that we go to 'The Circus' (recommended by Lutz as well.) They were full too, but this guy was really helpful. He called up another hostel nearby and found some rooms. So we walked there. By this time we had practically walked around all of Berlin. A half hour later we arrived at the 'Heart of Gold' hostel - literally two blocks from the Irish bar we stopped at previously. (FYI - the heart of gold is the spaceship in hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, one of my favorite books and movies)

After getting settled we went to get some more beers. Later that night we stumbled back to the hostel and got a much needed nights rest. I was tired, I still am. I've got two days more info, but I am exhausted now, so I'll right those tomorrow (remember, I am in the future 7 hours.) - Eric

Feiern Wir Wie Blöd! = Lets Have Fun Like Idiots!

2007-08-28T12:30:00.000+02:00

We are getting off our arses and going to Berlin. We looked up a few hostels and such, but we are just going to wing it. We'll be there for a couple days then come back and hang out with Banuti.

We ate at the Bavarian place again last night. They have good classic German food, but the place is kind of touristy (we've decided that we are not tourists since we are working here.) Some lady across from us order a beer, just a beer, "I'd like a beer." Jeez, you're (I almost wrote 'your' here which would have upset a certain someone :) in Germany ma'am, learn to appreciate the wonders of beer - they have more than one. Banuti told us some great stories from his year of service in the military. We laughed and laughed. A good time was had by all.

This is a great pic of Sean and Daniel trying to figure out how to do that sliding finger trick. We'll be back soon to report on our adventures, unless we have internet access there, in that case, we will do it there. - Eric

Mittlebau-Dora

2007-08-26T23:02:00.001+02:00

We went and did something today. We drove about 90km east of here to a concentration camp. I know it is a sudden change from our fun thus far, but this is important.

This camp is particularly interesting and sobering to us. This is one of three sites that the V2 rockets were built - using forced labor. The V1 was also manufactured here. For those of you who don't know, the Germans built these weapons solely to terrorize the British. The V in V1 and V2 is for Vengeance. They were fired at London and indiscriminately hit wherever they ran out of fuel. The V1 was very noisy. I actually have a 1/2 scale V1 pulse detonation engine in my office that I have shown to many of you. The weapon not only took many innocent lives but also caused a certain psychological misery. As the V1 flew above you, you could hear its distinctive rumble. The hope was that you would not hear the noise stop so that you knew it was passing by. Then you would realize the hideousness of what you just thought - that someone else is going to be hit soon and not you.

This site was a forced labor concentration camp. It is also near the center of Germany, so it was one of the last camps to be liberated. Shown above is Dr. Wernher Von Braun. He is essentially the father of rocketry. After the war he came to the US and is in a large part responsible for America landing on the moon first. From 'Nazi to NASA' as a book title explains it, he was aware of what was going on here and personally examined it. Simultaneously we are exposed to the foundations of rocketry and what we love to do while being in the midst of a terrifying atrocity. The dichotomy of emotions produced by this facility are heart wrenching.

We took a tour which was in German, so Daniel kindly translated the important information. We walked around what was left of the camp. Not much is remaining since that was during WW2 and it was made of wood. The tour then continued to the tunnels which are burrowed into the nearby mountain. The main production facilities were located here, safe from bombing. Not much remains and they only recently reopened the tunnels. After the camp was liberated all the useful equipment was taken away. Then later the Soviets had control of the area (when it was East Germany) and they took everything else. What remains is rubble and a few miscellaneous parts. Shown below is a pile of V1 parts, the tunnels, a V2 rocket engine, and a model of the tunnels.

These tunnels are huge, what we walked around and what the photos show are only a few of those tubes. After the tour was done we walked up to the crematorium. This is the saddest part of the tour and it was interestingly fitting to save it to the end. Being the engineers that we are, we are interested in the technology that was developed here. There was a certain excitement to see such things. The reality of situation was driven home by the crematorium. Many innocent people paid with their lives for this. It is difficult to rectify such opposing feelings. - Eric

Meister Proper Gets Rid of Dirt and Grime

2007-08-26T22:27:00.000+02:00

Saturday - We have yet to go a day without having multiple beers. Such is the life. Hung over, we slowly woke up, watched some fraggle rock on youtube and then departed to get some Chinese food. I had the duck. We then walked around the city a bit. We were tired and needed to sit down. Banuti had the idea to get some ice cream and it was a really good idea. They had some crazy stuff. I'll show you a picture. I had a kiwi becher (kiwi 'mug') and they had some cherry and raspberry dishes. It tasted as great as it looks.

Exhausted, we stumbled back to the apartment after stopping at the store for a few items. Sean found Mr. Clean in the grocery market. I joked to Daniel that you can no longer sing the catchy jingle, but he proved me wrong by singing the German version. We really needed some rest. We wrapped up the recovery process with a nap. After waking we went to get something to eat. Do you see the pattern - sleep, eat, drink, sleep, eat... We had pizza again. It is so different here. I had a craving for some greasy pepperoni pizza, but lo we end up with fresh ingredients. Well, I guess that is acceptable :) A few beers and a few bars later we made it home. I passed out in my jeans on the bed. Tomorrow we'll be more productive. -Eric

Life is a Highvay

2007-08-25T22:04:00.000+02:00

Let me start out that we will be going somewhere soon, but we need to sober up. Last night we started at the Irish pub in town. We drank Newcastle and Guinness. There was a live band. All the guy did was covers of the Beatles, Bob Marley and Bon Jovi. The guy wasn't terrible, but his music selection was lacking. They pretty much exclusively listen to English/American music here, so while sitting in the bar you'll find yourself in this weird mix of not knowing German and having the inability to communicate while listening to music that I had not heard since high school. Strange.

After the Irish pub we went to our usual wooden bar (Thanners) and had a few more beers. Then we went to some clubs and had more beers. We found one good place that was playing some great techno/remix music. It was really small, but great music and a nice relaxed ambiance. In our drunken stupor we ate the Turkish gyros again. We got back here at about 4 am.

And now for your viewing pleasure - the many emotions of Daniel Banuti. The best part is that these were all taken within a matter a minutes.

We've been here a week now, it is hard to imagine. -Eric

Greetings from the Future

2007-08-25T00:17:00.000+02:00

Hi everyone. So right now it is about 3:00 pm here, so that makes it about 8:00 am back home. Good morning. I feel like we are in the future. Don't worry, it's nice in the future too :)

(The properly poured beer we had in the morning last Sunday)

Today when getting our morning coffee we confirmed our suspicions that we may be confusing people. We went into the bakery and I said, "zwei becher kaffee" - 'two 'mugs' of coffee'. Then she went on to speak all sorts of German which neither Sean or I understood. So then I said, "ich spreche kein deutsche" - 'I speak no German'. Then the guy standing behind us spoke to us in English and told us what she had said. He then commented that our German was very good and repeated the sentence that I had spoken earlier. So we confused this lady just like the waitress a few days ago. I guess we look enough like Germans and students in this college town and we can speak a few phrases well enough to confuse them when we say we don't speak any German. Not bad for only one week of learning.

The guy that helped us out then asked us where we were from. America - Wisconsin and Illinois. He asked Sean where in Illinois and Sean told him Bloomington, but the guy didn't know it. Sean said it's about 2 hours south of Chicago. They know where Chicago is. He asked us if we were students and I told him we were going to work at the DLR. He seemed rather impressed by that, so it seems that as long as they know what the DLR is we will get some credit for that.

(A completely unrelated photo of me at Scott's house)

We walked around the city some more after eating. It is an absolutely lovely day today, sunny and a comfortable temperature. Now we are back at Banuti's place drinking a beer. This weekend we are planning on going to some museums around the country. Next week we are going to go to France.

Au Revoir. -Eric