Although it’s only Thursday (and my last post was Sunday), I will be leaving for our two-week break with Jordan and Mackenzie tomorrow morning and won’t be able to post while on that break, so I’m squeezing one post more in! This past week was nice because the German 101 class met in the evening versus at 8am, so was a nice week to sleep in!
Tuesday afternoon I rode up to the top of the hill visible from my dorm room. We went up there as a group in the first week we were here, but the colors have changed quite a bit!
Wednesday morning the group was invited to a reception with the city of Reutlingen at an art museum downtown. We went on a short tour before the reception that has occurred for every group of Valpo students who have come here. The 50th anniversary of the partnership between Valpo and Reutlingen University will be during the 2016-2017 academic year. It is potentially the second longest U.S.-Germany university partnership.
Our study abroad group (plus Jon Cisneros, the intern from Valpo, our Economics professor, and two city employees) after the reception.
The group went ice skating with our German teacher Wednesday night before going to a Mexican restaurant later that night!
This weekend Reid, Ryan, Teddy, and I all went to Paris. The trip started out a little rough with a 2-hour train delay and mixed up Airbnb (people renting out rooms of their houses) plans, but in the end we all had a great time! We did most of the tourist sites including the Eiffel Tower, the Catacombs, Notre Dame, the and the Arc de Triomphe. Contrary to what some say, the city did not smell bad overall, just in very few certain areas, but that may be different during the summer.
Just me and my new friends in the Catacombs, they aren’t looking so hot!
Ryan posing for a picture in front of Notre Dame.
The Eiffel Tower made a good backrest for Reid!
The Valpo pin during the Eiffel Tower light show.
We rented bikes for part of the day on Saturday, it was awesome being able to see more of the city that way!
The view of the city from the top of the Arc de Triomphe.
This weekend helped continue the trend of never having a dull moment this semester! On Friday a few of us hiked up to a castle less than a half hour bus ride from campus. While some told us it was a 2-hour hike just to get up, Jon and I made it in about 45 minutes and down in 20! It turns out they actually meant it was 2 hours there and back, but we still made really good time! While there we went on a tour inside the castle (unfortunately no photos were allowed) which was in extremely good condition and took in the beautiful fall scenery.
On Saturday, Mackenzie, Jordan, and I traveled to Strasbourg, France. It is right on the Germany-France border so not too far away for a day trip. We saw a beautiful cathedral, a street show downtown, Petite France (a small town area on an island in the city), and drank some freshly squeezed grape juice at a wine festival.
A group of us hiked to the top of the Liechtenstein Castle only a half hour away from campus! The fall colors were beautiful!
A better view of the castle!
Mackenzie having some fun in one of the alleys in Strasbourg, France!
Jordan and Mackenzie figuring out how to cut our French pastry into thirds.
An example of some of the glass artwork that we saw in Strasbourg!
A larger view of the glass artwork Mackenzie was looking through.
I have done a lot of traveling over the past week! Friday, September 25th was the start of our group portion of the trip that began in Leipzig. Over the next few days we saw several places related to the Luther and Bach class we are taking back in Reutlingen. Kennth’s blog will include all of the details of the group trip, but on Wednesday morning Mackenzie, Jordan, Kelsey, and I went to Prague. It really is a beautiful city and very cheap too. At the restaurants we ate at beer was actually cheaper than a Coke or water of the same size! Finally, on Saturday the three of us took a day trip to Oktoberfest in Munich which was definitely an unforgettable experience!
It was a great time touring the Wartburg Castle in Eisenach, where Martin Luther hid for a period of time during the Reformation.
Kellie enjoying the stunning views of the countryside from the castle.
Later that day, we all toured the Bachhaus Museum where we had an opportunity to listen to several of Bach’s compositions in cool hanging chairs!
Nick checking out the printing press at the Augustinian monastery where Martin Luther became a monk.
After the tour of the monastery most of the group (including Professor Hansen!) took a ride on the spinning pendulum ride at the Erfurt Oktoberfest. Everyone made it without getting sick!
While exploring Erfurt later in the day the group I was with came across this swingset on top of an old fortress. The views of the city and distant countryside were beautiful!
Jordan, Mackenzie, and Kelsey enjoying the famous Charles Bridge Band in Prague.
The first full week of classes went well, but as you will see the weekend was even more fun. It was a very busy three-day weekend for me in Germany! Between the castle ruins and waterfall on Friday morning, Lake Constance and live bar music on Saturday, and then biking and boat ride on Sunday I was ready for bed that night!
Aaron found a great place to read a book for a few minutes at the castle ruins!
Finding our way around the ruins bright and early!
The incredible waterfall at Bad Urach that we saw after the castle ruins on Friday morning!
Just visiting Switzerland for the day, you know, it’s casual.
Nick being braver than the rest of us at Lake Constance on Saturday!
Nick got some great German practice in on the ferry ride across Lake Constance!
The Valpo Pin overlooking Lake Constance from the small city of Meersburg, Germany.
Mackenzie and Jordan enjoying the view of Lake Constance from Meersburg!
The ever-majestic Lauren trying her hand at punting on the river in Tübingen.
Reid posing with the Valpo flag on the end of the punting boat in Tübingen.
Berlin. The Capital city of Germany. What a weird, quirky, classy, oddball, and altogether extraordinary place. We spend Friday-Wednesday here (a week ago, actually), and we certainly had a blast.
Before I go on about Berlin, I have some corrections to make to my last entry. I mentioned last time that my parents would represent a majority of the people reading this. As it turns out, I apparently have far more parents than I had previously assumed. Thank you to all for taking the time to read my musings. And thanks to Rachel and my family for continuing to be my biggest fans.
The first night gave us a chance for some culinary confusion. Hofbraühaus (“HOFF-broy-house”) is a Munich standard, so we let at the opportunity to eat there, despite being nearly 600 km away from Munich. With it a mere block away from our hostel, how could we say no to an early start to Oktoberfest? (Spoiler alert: we couldn’t.)
Walking westward as the sun was setting, we had fun with some photography in the Lustgarten on Museuminsel (Museum Island), between Berliner Dom (cathedral) and Altes Museum (Old Museum – a very creative name). Rick Steves says that the Berliner Dom “is a protestant assertion of strength,” adding that it “seems to proclaim ‘a mighty fortress is our God…and he speaks German!'” Nineteen of the seven of us had a splendid time.
Reid in front of the Berliner Dom, making good use of the iPhone’s Panorama function.
Nineteen out of seven of us had a splendid time on our first evening in Berlin.
We finished our excursion walking through the Brandenburger Tor, marveling that this was not something our parents could have done when they visited Germany 30 years ago. The gigantic gate was near the Berliner Mauer (Berlin Wall). Older readers may recall President Reagan challenging Gorbachev to “tear down this wall,” or perhaps remember news clips of people celebrating as the wall fell two years later. Younger readers and tech-savvy people can relive these moments on YouTube.
Contrasts began early on Saturday morning. Several more trains than we had initially expected were needed to get to Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, where 50000 people were murdered during the Holocaust.
Aside: Germans today will deliberately say that the victims of the Holocaust were murdered, as opposed to having died or been killed. You can be killed in an accident, or can die of natural causes. Murder is entirely different.
I tried to imagine whether or not 50000 people would fit inside an area equal to that of the camp. This doesn’t reflect any piece of reality – I was simply trying to imagine the size of a 50000-person crowd. 50000 is one of those numbers that’s just big enough that it’s magnitude is difficult to understand. I’m not sure many people have interacted with 50000 of anything in any kind of tangible way.
As though to remind us that our laughter and joy from the previous day would not be appropriate in this sacred, broken place, it was windy and rainy. The sun kept to itself for most of the day, only revealing itself a few times in the afternoon. Yet in the midst of the clouds and dark memories, there was still hope. No matter how hard the wind blew, it could never erase the memories. The trees would sooner topple and the buildings would sooner be reduced to dust than the Holocaust be forgotten. Perhaps this is an ill-informed view of how civilizations rise and fall, but it certainly felt this way to me.
Statue in the building to mark the location of the Sachsenhausen furnaces.
Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp
We need monuments like Sachsenhausen to help us remember the horrible things that people did (and can do) to people. None of us perpetrated the Holocaust. Very few people know anybody whom it directly affected. Nobody really owes anybody else an apology for the past, nor do we need to assign blame to anybody alive today. But we do need to remember that these things happened so that we can do everything to keep them from happening again.
After Sachsenhausen, we had quite possibly the least concentration camp-ish meal possible. It was several huge plates of all kinds of meats, each with enough food to comfortably split it between four people. It was fantastically filling, far beyond what any Sachsenhausen meal could have been for the people detained there.
Plate of meat for four at Zillemarkt. This plate was about 50cm (20in) long at its widest.
Following the meal, we went to Kaufhaus des Westens – KaDeWe, the largest department store in Europe. There were somewhere on the order of six stories of everything from jewelry and perfumes to clothing to toys to food and much more. Everything there seemed to have a markup. Even Lego kits seemed to cost more than they should in a typical store. This is a rather gutsy move for the store, particularly given the easily-referenced and well-defined prices of Lego kits. We looked for Ritter Sport chocolate bars to use as a standard price reference point, but couldn’t find any. Neither Nick nor I could tell if this was because the place was simply too large (which it was), or if it was because Ritter Sport is not classy enough chocolate for the normal clientele of KaDeWe (it very well might not be).
We didn’t stay very long at KaDeWe. There was simply too much to take in, and we had had a long day. The excess and materialism was simply too much for either of us, so we went home for some much needed rest. In an interesting symmetry to our morning and afternoon at Sachsenhausen, about 40 to 50 thousand people visit KaDeWe daily (per Wikipedia).
Sunday gave us a walking tour of the city. We covered some of the same route we had taken on Friday, but the added historical context was much appreciated. Berlin has had the interesting misfortune of being almost – but not quite – totally destroyed. There’s a mix of old buildings and new. The old ones embrace the grandeur of the emperors and kings of the past, the new ones celebrate rebirth and modernity, and everything in between serves as a reminder of the tumult of the 20th century. The juxtaposition of old and new, of destroyed sites and recent modern development, and even of former East and West – these are all things of which Berlin is very proud. Berlin is such a bizarre place because of all of these contrasts that define it, but these are the same contrasts that also make it the uniquely wonderful place that it is.
Almost as though an echo of Berlin, our group also let some of its contrasts show over the last few days – particularly with regards to travel style and planning. A great many of us are seasoned adventurers. We know how to deliberately get lost for the sake of new experiences, but we don’t stay lost for very long – there’s always a plan in place. Sure, we can recognize the fluidity of our short-term plans, but this doesn’t prevent us from living in the moment.
Other members of the group, well, don’t seem to be that great at traveling. The planning is there, but a combination of poor luck and incomplete follow-through has created some setbacks for them. Fornutely for them (and for the rest of us who live and work with them), it seems difficult to really upset their equilibria. If there is an edge over which they might be pushed, they sure seem to be far away from it.
We had the opportunity to do and see some more “touristy things,” or perhaps watch other tourists do touristy things. I try not to be an excessive travel hipster (just a little bit), but it can be fun and informative to watch tourists at popular sites. The crowds can sometimes be just as impressive as the thing at which they’re looking.
The “American Soldiers” at Checkpoint Charlie are neither Americans nor soldiers, and they barely speak English. A tour guide informed us that these men work as strippers after they’re done being soldiers. I did not investigate the veracity of this claim. I also do not know whether their alleged evening performance involves the removal of their fake uniforms. Hopefully not.
Nick and I had good fun exploring the history of engineering at the Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin. This wasn’t any specific exhibit – we just went around looking at planes, trains, and boats, all while considering the engineering that went into making them go (or the failures that made them stop going). We’re told that this museum also has cars, but we didn’t get a chance to check those out. Siemens was scattered everywhere in this museum. Having completed an internship at a Siemens plant in Cincinnati last summer, I had to get some pictures of Siemens artifacts that we came across.
Siemens and Halske Electric Locomotive (a world first) at Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin.
Werner von Siemens bust at Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin. This guy adorned my ID badge this past summer.
Nick stands in front of a steam locomotive at the Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin. Steam engines are basically giant heat transfer demonstrations, which appeals to us engineers.
A fancy-dancy thrust-reversing jet engine, modeled by the ever-patient Nicks Sondag.
The below video is an example of something neither of my parents would have been able to do when they studied in Germany 30 years ago. Doing this gave me chills, which doesn’t happen particularly often.
One night last week, three of us (Aaron, Teddy, and myself) joined a guy from Aaron and Teddy’s floor for a game of pick-up soccer with some neighborhood teenagers. While they were significantly better than the three of us and at least pretended to not know English (and us not much German), we ended up playing well beyond the original 10 goals we first agreed to play to. It was a fun night!
Kellie, Nick, Lauren (pictured on the left), Kenneth (pictured on the right), and I went exploring on the trails near campus. A small pond, campground, awesome covered fire pit pavilion we plan to grill at later on, and a new restaurant to try out in the woods were some of our great finds! We also came across this little building/shack/tree stand on the hike so had to take the photo-op!
On a bit more of a somber note, our group toured the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp while on our Berlin trip this past week. Although we arrived and departed as a group, everyone walked around the camp by themselves. It was a very moving experience for me, because although I had been to the Holocaust Museum in Germany, actually visiting a concentration camp where people were murdered and not just viewing exhibits and photos at a museum had a much greater effect.
In the middle of our city tour of Berlin we stopped by a famous chocolate shop. Yes, that is actually a chocolate version of the Brandenburg Gate!
From a famous American university chapel to a world-famous cathedral. This photo was taken on a pew in the Cologne Cathedral during the free travel time after our group Berlin trip. I traveled to Potsdam and then Cologne, Germany with Nick and Maria. We all also met up with two of my German friends while in Cologne!
Also while in Cologne, Maria, Nick, my friend Marius, and I went on a gondola ride over the Rhine river. Nick is pictured here, snapping a photo of Cologne from up in the sky.
First a brief introduction. Not that it matters, as a majority of readers will likely be my parents, but we will proceed regardless.
I’m Kenneth Bouman. 4th-year (9th-semester) mechanical engineering major from Cincinnati, Ohio. Though I’ve crossed borders into Germany a total of five times, this is really only my second time here. I arrived with (most of) the rest of the group on 27 August, but unlike (most of) the rest of them, I’ll be staying for a full year.
The program I’m enrolled in is called Valparaiso International Engineering Program, or VIEP. If you’re enrolled at VU, they’ve bragged (and rightly so) about it in their ads, and you should totally know what it is. However, since even some of my engineering classmates still don’t know a thing about the program (or inexplicably haven’t heard about it) despite walking past several prominent posters that explain the big points, I’ll fill everybody in. VIEP takes engineering curriculum and adds foreign language. It also adds a year to your study plan, but considering that this year is split between studying abroad and an overseas internship, this extra year is easily worthwhile. There are impressive statistics that accompany the program, but you can look those up yourself if you’re really that interested.
We’ve been busy enough that I haven’t found time to properly formulate coherent thoughts that can give a blog entry a good flow. Instead, I’ll talk about several things that I’ve noticed.
Euros are incredibly well-designed. You can sort through different denominations of Kleingeld (change) and Scheins (bills) by touch alone, and the size of everything is more indicative of its worth than the US equivalents. All of our bills are the same size, while larger Scheins have greater value. Simple. You can read more about the coins if you’re really interested, but I’m just going to share one fact that I find interesting: the front of the coin (the “Common Side”) shows the denomination and some map-like image of Europe, but the reverse (the “National Side”) will be different depending on the country in which it was minted. This is a cool way for the countries to maintain some semblance of a self identity while still associating with the much larger entity of the European Union. The Scheins also have a bunch of security features which I find fascinating, but these don’t need to be discussed here or now.
The bills are different sizes, which among other things, facilitates transactions for people with visual impairments.
Infrastructure seems to be developed far beyond that which I’m used to from back home. Recycling is the big one in particular, but much more on that later. Or maybe not, come to think of it. Infrastructure, though interesting to me, is most certainly not interesting to many people.
City planning seems to be more relaxed. Houses don’t necessarily have places to park cars next to them. Some had stair climbs to get from the houses to the road, and these houses may or may not be accessible by car or have a road going to them. (Google Earth helped me confirm this). This may not be true everywhere, but it certainly seems to be the case in Reutlingen.
There are quite a few playgrounds around. Seems like a great place to be a kid. These playgrounds even look to be far more exciting than their US counterparts, though this could be my fresh optimism talking. We’ll see if this is still the case in a few weeks or months.
When walking from Stadtmitte (city center) toward the Hauptbahnhof (main train station) – a 300-meter (3 block) distance – there are a minimum of 5 mobile phone stores. This seems like kind of a lot for a country that I didn’t really imagine as very consumer-centric.
You know how “there’s a Starbucks or a Walmart on every corner” in the US? It seems as though the German analogue might be a Kebob place on every corner. The closest one to our dorms, Campus Kebap, is about a block away.
Smoking seems fairly prevalent, but I could be biased by the fact that my room is situated immediately next to the two-seat smoking balcony for my floor. You get carded at grocery stores if you look like you’re under 18, much as one does in the US with alcohol. Interestingly enough, alcohol doesn’t have nearly the same taboo factor here as it does in the US. It’s perfectly acceptable to be seen in public with open containers of it, and none of us have needed (or likely will need) identification to purchase it.
My group is great. As usual, more on them later. For now, here are their names in alphabetical order: Aaron, Adam, Brittany, Jessica, Jordan, Kellie, Kelsey, Kenneth, Lauren, Nick, Mackenzie, Maria, Micah, Reid, Ryan, and Teddy. We’re spread pretty evenly across three apartments for international students. My experience of meeting more english-speaking non-germans in the dorm echoes what I’ve heard from the rest of the Valpo cohort. Carter Hanson, our director, lives with his wife Michelle and daughters Sophie and Elsa in a nearby apartment building. Classes are all in one room (but at different times, fortunately), which is about a 10-minute walk from the dorms. It takes about 20 minutes to walk into town, but the bus can get you there in less time.
By the way, the ‘eu’ in “Reutlingen” makes an “oy” sound, and rhymes with “boy” or “Freud”. If you’ve been pronouncing Freud incorrectly this whole time, now’s a great time to fix that.
As you may guess from these disjointed observations, they’ve been keeping us very busy. We’ve had two cursory days of classes so far, and are already preparing for a group trip to Berlin beginning tomorrow morning. Though there has been time to relax – to climb a nearby mountain and spend an afternoon at the pool, among other things of course – the whirlwind of stimuli has left room for barely anything else. I would hope that before too long, everybody will be able to settle into something of a routine, but in the meantime, we are a bunch of fulfilled yet busy travelers.
The day we arrived, Thursday, August 27th, was a very tiring one during our meeting with Professor Hansen in his family’s apartment. Regardless of being exhausted all managed to put on a smiling face for our group picture!
One day after arriving (most of our jet-lag gone by this point), we took a tour of the city of Reutlingen, which will be our home for the next slightly over 3 ½ months. Although much of the city is newer than many other German cities, the cathedral luckily survived the bombings and fire during the last few centuries. This photo was taken on a later night with the moon in the background; the photo alone can’t show how picturesque it was!
Also during that tour of Reutlingen, we went through the world’s narrowest street, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.
The tour of Tübingen, Germany was arguably more beautiful than that of Reutlingen, between the cathedral, river, castle, and flowers scattered throughout the city.
Earlier today we started off early (9am, so very early for college students) with a hike to the top of a “mountain” visible from our dorm rooms. The views from the top were spectacular, and we all cannot wait for the leaves to start changing color in the fall to go up there again!
So it’s officially been a week since we started our travels here! Still so beautiful, as you can see from the cover photo! Plus, this week has been super fun. And that’s not just because we only 3 classes instead of 5 or anything… wink wink. Surprisingly, I ENJOY class. I never thought I would say that. It’s all extremely discussion based where we talk about the different ethical decisions we will have to make and the different dilemmas we will be presented with as engineers.
Anyways, enough talk about class! We were very fortunate to go on two engineering tours this week. We rode the train from Reutlingen to Stuttgart, and got to see the Bahnprojekt. (On a side note, Professor H pointed out to us that the railroad ties were made out of concrete, not wood like in America! Check it out!)
To continue, the goal of the project is to create a sort of ‘round-a-bout’ to help the trains go in and out of the Stuttgart train station faster. Also, the whole rail system will be moved underground and additional high-speed trains will be added. In total, the project could cost up to 10 billion euros. Such a HUGE project, all to add additional space to the growing city of Stuttgart. There was a model of what the station would look like and it was really quite an amazing project. There was four main tracks within the station, all underground though. There were many entrances to the underground station from a park surrounding the main station building. They hope to have the project completed by December 2021.
Outside the station, the construction is already started. There was a path and park around the construction, so we walked along it and could see the site. Unfortunately, Monday was a holiday so there was no work being done. The project is quite a process, as they must have pipes and pumps for the ground water, they must put up steel walls while digging, and they must test the dirt. If the dirt is toxic, then they must add bacteria which will take a few years to cleanse the area, which sets the project back a couple of years. I never realized exactly how much work must go into such a project!
After we walked along the paths, we came to some old ruins of an old palace which had been moved to this location. Continuing a little further, we entered a beautiful park. There was a fountain, a pond, and so many flowers! There was a little garden and café. Such a lovely place. This part of the country is so beautiful, I keep going on walks because I can’t get enough of it!
Now onto Tuesday, we had class and then we had free time. Of course us girls went shopping (no dad, I didn’t buy anything! OK.. maybe one thing. I’m a girl. It’s what we do!) while the boys went to a knife shop. After, we all met up and ate dinner and then got one euro gelato! It was delicious!
On Mittwoch (Wednesday), our lives were changed forever.
Just kidding.
But our views on faucets certainly changed! We visited the small city of Schiltach, Germany, (about 3,000 inhabitants) for a tour of Hansgrohe. This green company produces beautiful, extremely high quality mixers and faucets for tubs, showers, sinks, and kitchen sinks. The company itself was very sharp; around every corner there was a little drink station so if you needed a coffee, water, or cola you could take a break and have one! We took so many coffee breaks during the tour, I definitely felt pampered.
The company is very family oriented, the chances that the current employees are following in their parents footsteps are very high! The pay here is even better in the cities because the town is so small, the company wants to keep their valuable employees there instead of losing them to the city. Everybody we met that was working was so friendly and happy, they really seemed to love their job.
You’re probably wondering what was so amazing. Well, the faucets were incredible! We went through the show room and we saw one of their new products in the making: a clear faucet which has air in it to create a visual vortex. Simply stunning. Also, they had waterfall faucets and rain shower shower heads. I really wanted to take a shower right then and there. Additionally, they have shower heads where you can click between the different shower head effects. My favorite was the one where the water spun as if to give a massage! How nice, I don’t think I would ever leave the shower. Once we had a presentation, we got to test the different shower heads. Hansgrohe has created a shower head with air to help preserve water. With the air effect, it feels as if you are using more water than you actually are. The cool part was when we turned the lights off and shined a light onto the shower heads. You could see the air in between the drops. It looked awesome!
After we spent awhile messing with the different designs of shower heads, we got a walking tour of the actual factory. There was a huge orange robot to help with different stages such as polishing. We have a similar orange robot in our engineering building! Only much smaller.
Overall, the tour was great. I not only loved seeing the company respect for its employees but I also loved seeing the employees and their families’ loyalty to the company. It’s not something you always see now-a-days. They even gave us a gift for visiting! A towel and flip-flops, so thoughtful.
Since yesterday, we have all been looking at the different types of faucets around the campus. Mostly all of them are Hansgrohe. It’s like a little game, who can find a faucet that is NOT Hansgrohe brand.
It has been a nice relaxing day, reading & writing our papers. Tomorrow is going to be an exciting day! We are going to Munich!!!! I am so excited, but not so excited to wake up at 6 AM. Since high school, I think I forgot how to do that. Oh well, it will well be worth it!
