Frohe Weihnachten

I hope everyone had a merry Christmas (frohe Weihnachten) and safe travels.

My german Christmas adventure began on Christmas Eve when I left cloudy Bonn for cloudy Wuppertal with a quick stop in cloudy Koeln. Since I had a good hour in Koeln, I made a quick stop in the Dom. I really must go there more often. There's something about a 600-year-old gothic cathedral that calms the modern, digital soul. I can't imagine what it must've been like for people in the 6th, 7th, 8th centuries to see such a building.
Afterwards I caught my train to Wuppertal, and arrived at the Unger's just in time for a lunch of soup and wurst. Before I continue, I should explain that the Unger family was Andy's host family during his high school student exchange program. They are a very nice and generous family. Early evening we went to a luthern church service. It was a surprisingly simple service with very little pomp or formality. I finally got to sing "Silent Night" in German. Ever since I started learning German I've wanted to print out the german lyrics and have always forgotten. I never imagined singing it in German in Germany. After church was dinner. Sauerbraten, Knoedeln, and Rotkohl. Sauerbraten is roast beef that's been marinated in vinager, oil and onions for a week and then baked. Quite possibly my new favorite German dish. Knoedeln are similar to noodles, but in the shape of a sphere and an inch and a half in diameter. Rotkohl is red cabbage which is served pickeled and warm. Very typical German meal.
Once we couldn't eat anymore, it was time to open the presents. They open all their presents on Christmas eve rather than Christmas day in Germany. St. Nicklaus also only comes on the evening of the 5th of December and not at all on the 24th. Doro couldn't seem to grasp how Jesus and Santa Claus could come on the same night. But anyho! Afterwards we watched Aladdin because Doro got it as a gift and went to bed.
You may be asking yourself what the Germans do on Christmas if their presents are already open. And that's a fair question. In our case, we ate a whole bunch more, the day the was otherwise like any other Sunday. Lunch was Schweinbraten with more typical german sides. Schweinbraten is like a pork chop without the bone. In the afternoon we took a short walk in the sunshine. Yes sunshine! Or at least what sunshine one receives at a latitude of 50.5 deg N. Then we had afternoon cake and coffee, and shortly thereafter I got to talk with my family. Then we played a game. A nice, quiet day.
Monday morning we went to the zoo in Wuppertal. In September and October two mommy elephants had babies, so we went to look at the baby elephants. Oh they were cute! They must have been no bigger than three feet tall. Ok maybe four. In fact the entire zoo was full of baby animals. The monkies, the tigers, and many that I've already forgotten. The zoo is no where near the size of Omaha's or St. Louis's, but there was lots of vegitation and the newer enclosures were very well done. Unfortuntely my camera was acting up, so I didn't get any photos of the animals, but if I get copies from the Unger's, I'll post some.
After the zoo was a lunch with the rest of the Sauerbraten. Late afternoon it started to snow, but not too much. Shortly thereafter I headed back down south to Bonn.
Today I was back at work. The institute's unbelievably quiet. I'm busy the next few days preparing for my guests. Aaron arrives on Thursday and Andy on Friday. Yippe!

Feierabend

I did it!!!! I finally sent data from my FPGA to my computer through the ethernet module!!! Here are it's first words:

allo Laura¿H
~cÞ´}Õ o°^;Ï©å?aÿ(ÿü!ÿÿ±?«L?$ ñëC¶)ÿ@ú»¤6¢ÿáèßÿVëP®-(ç¦2~▒ñï<ÖYÎJõóÿïØô|s&»PÆýç±ï¿ {*êB{ íQ°W/(äAo
û³?þÿ:©D·`å|8mè,¾Q÷Õ0"ûCoÿþý@ýoÙ

ª·Yðìê |l þ"^-;¾ÿé¦÷n@ñ ÿ`ï?À^¤Û{ÿwUÿA}~@=
`0Pß▒ÀÕ .üBòÀ- Äì· ß@?¤(­³õÿ¥*óZÿç

»YR 6 ½@¿ {ã¼Hé1aËîï ³sj\FÞÇ=1~
0³zïÿ@>k«?TëSßo³Pò0³

I programmed "Hallo Laura" and got "allo Laura" plus a bunch of junk. What the rest of the following nonsense ( or "Quatsch", one of my favorite German words) is, I don't yet know. The important thing is I sent something. Time for Feierabend!

Cloudy Monday

Hallo Freundinnen und Freunde,
I hope everyone survived their finals.
My weekend was very, very quiet. Saturday I did a bit of Christmas shopping. Sunday I watched some soccer in a pub with my roommate and a friend of hers. The station switched between the Hamburg/Bremen game and the Nueremburg/Berlin game. These are all teams in the National League (Bundesliga). Hamburg is currently ranked second and Bremen third. (Muenchen is first much to the dismay of the rest of the country.) Both my roommate and her friend are big Bremen fans, so I had no but to root for Bremen. In the end both games ended in a 1:1 tie.
As far as news goes, I was very happy to hear the German woman kidnapped in Iraq was released. On the other hand I was saddened by the death of actor John Spencer who played Leo McGarry on West Wing. The show won't be the same without him.
I also saw an interesting article on CNN about a website where you can submit an email and have it sent to yourself some specified number of years in the future. It's an interesting idea. I can't imagine what I might be doing five, ten years in the future when it would arrive.
Now I must talk about the weather. I'm from Iowa (not Idaho!). I have no choice. First of all Bonn is about nine degrees farther north than Des Moines, and the difference is obvious. Sunrise at the moment in Bonn is 8:30 am. In Des Moines it's 7:30 am. We also get about one sunny day every two weeks or so. Arg.
All of you traveling for the holidays have a safe trip.

Middle age Christmas Market

Hallo!
This has been a rather busy week.
Monday night was an offical DAAD meeting where we learned about the organization and activities of the institute. I also of course got a chance to meet more people from all sorts of countries.
Tuesday night was far more interesing. I traveled with a small group of current DAAD fellowship holders and a few german DAAD alumni to a middle-age Christmas market in Siegburg. This market was a bit different than most because of the middle-age theme. The stand workers wore middle-age clothing, the food was of an older type, and many people spoke an older dialect. The signs were also written using older words and spellings. For example Wein (current spelling of wine) was Weyn, and instead of Euro, they used the word Taler, which I believe is where the english word dollar comes from. Everything was lit with candles and every so often you'd find a fire pit. There was not only Gluehwein, but also hot mead, and it was served in ceramic chalise glasses rather than the typical mug. I found it very intersting.
Otherwise things are going well. I haven't really progressed with my ethernet module, but I also haven't had much time this week to work on it between lectures and today's christmas party for one of the departments in the institute. But now it's time to go home and enjoy a nice quiet evening.
Have a happy last-day-of-finals!

Viel Glueck!

I just wanted to wish all of you students "good luck" with finals and congratulations to those who are tackling their last finals as an undergraduate. Needless to say I don't envy you, though I'll have my turn in a couple months.
My only news is I finally saw Serenity last night. Though (in my opinion) it didn't translate perfectly from TV to big screen, I still enjoyed two new hours with the crew. I think the writers tried to wrap up too much plot development in such a short time. But the humor was still there (or at least it seemed to be there in the German translation), and I was glad that some of the tensions were resolved. I look forward to seeing it in English when I get back.
Anyho! Back to work!

Kölner Weihnachtsmarkt

Happy 3rd Sunday in Advent!
Everything is going well with me. I've recovered from Tuesday's celebration.
It was a productive week at work. ::Knock on wood:: By Thursday I'd managed to successfully program the IP number of the ethernet module and ping it. By Friday afternoon I could establish a TCP connection. What was more amazing, is I could verify the statis of the connection. The next step is data transfer. Unfortunetly I still don't fully understand how to do it. Why didn't I just stay in Astronomy?
Yesterday Manuel and I went to Köln to check out the Christmas markets. We found no fewer than three different ones. The moral of the story was don't go to Christmas markets in Köln if you have any desire to move about like a normal human being. One of the main shopping streets was so packed that you couldn't move. We'd reached a state of human fluid and literally had to flow as one big mass until we reached a cross street. Ugh. I now know how a neutron in a neutron star feels. But I had a Glühwein, hot maroons, and Reibekuchen, so all was not lost.
The big news here is the seeding of the groups for the World Cup this summer. There are eight groups of four teams. Germany lucked out with an easy group: Costa Rica, Equador, Poland. The US on the other hand, was not so lucky: Italy, Ghana, Czech Republic. The Czech Republic is the biggest problem. They're currently "ranked" second. We have arguably the second hardest group. Oh well. Americans don't care about soccer anyway.
Tschüss!

Weihnachtsfeier

Nie wieder Alkohol. That's today's motto. Yesterday was digital lab Christmas celebration in Köln. We headed out at about 1 pm. Had a few beers in Bonn while waiting for the train. In Köln we met up with a former digital lab colleague and started the tour with a late lunch in one of the local breweries. My German food experience was expanded a bit to include some sort of raw meat, which, after pfooing, ended up tasting pretty good.
Afterwards our chief decided that it would be a great idea to go ice skating on a small, portable rink. The moral of that story was I can either drink beer or ice skate. But I can't drink beer and ice skate. (Naturally I don't mean at the same time, but rather while the effects of the beer are still there.)
After I'd had a chance to fall down a couple times and get my pants rather wet, we decided it was time to head to the Hard Rock Cafe. We had a few more beers. No big surprise.
We decided it was time to eat something, so I had my first Döner. A Döner is a Turkish creation and is the most popular fast food in Germany. (Yes, even more popular than McDonalds.)
Once we'd eated it was time for a stop in a very crowded irish pub. Had a couple more beers. We were not there long, for it was time to catch the train back to Bonn.
Anyho! Here are some photos. As they say, a picture's worth a thousand words.




Here we are in the Hard Rock Cafe Cologne. From left to right: Bernd (our fearless leader), Andreas, Me, Klaus, Hanne, and Ingo. In front: Kölsch. Disregard the bottle of water. We're not sure what Andreas was thinking.



This is a close up of me in my wicked cool, personalized santa hat (Mütze). The stars are LED's and blink.



Me and the Digi's on the Eisbahn sporting our Mützen. Hanne was playing camerawoman.

Last weekend was pretty uneventful. There was an Adventsmarket in Endenich (my neighborhood in Bonn). It was small but cute. My roomate Fanny bought a digital antenna, so we now have TV in our apartment.
Alles für heute!

Frohliche Freitag

Happy Friday!
I hope you all had a good week. My week was relatively quiet. Wednesday night I met my DAAD mentor for a short excursion through the Bonn Christmas market. Otherwise I mostly sat around my apartment, read a book, and played cards with my roommate.
Work was rather frustrating. In my last post I mentioned that I managed to successfully program a memory register and was rather pleased with myself. As it turned out, I fooled myself into thinking that. In reality I had not. Or at least the test I did to check the contents of the register was not fool proof. So after three long days fighting with VHDL, I'm now mostly convinced that I've successfully set some registers. This required me to completely re-think my code. VHDL is a strange, strange beast.
Anyho! Enough techno-babble.
As of last weekend the advent season has begun. Culturally advent is celebrated here more than in the US. The Christmas markets are a good example. Most started on our around the first weekend of advent. Also, everyone has an advent wreath (Adventkranz) at home with four candles, and they light a new candle each Sunday. In fact my lab has an advent wreath, and we light it during coffee. In the US I've only seen advent wreaths in churches. It's also traditional to make your own, but of course it's becoming more common to buy one.
Next week should be interesting. Tuesday my lab travels to Koeln for our Christmas celebration. I'm sure there will be pictures, but only from early in the tour. :-)
Schoenes Wochenende!