Chilly week

This week some of that arctic cold which has been hammering Russia and east Europe reached us. Bonn's been a bit colder than normal, but still doable. East and Southern Germany has been suffering a bit more, though by no means as bad as it's been in Russia. The upside to the cold is that it's also been a bit sunnier, and the days are clearly getting longer.
Otherwise I had a good work week. After struggling for weeks with my VHDL program that would test the speed of this chip, I started over with an entirely new programming method. Within two days I had it working, and the good news is the chip is fast enough and will be integrated into the next FFT spectrometer board. It's nice to work on something that not only increases my understanding, but helps the lab as well.
Otherwise things have been rather uneventful. January in Germany isn't near as much fun as December. But next month is carneval, and that will be very exciting.

Pilgerfahrt

This weekend I finally made my pilrimage to Aachen to visit the Dom. For my German class last spring I wrote a paper about the Dom in Aachen, and therefore had to go and visit.
Aachen is not far from Bonn in the far western edge of Germany. It's less then 10 km from both Holland and Belgium.
The history of the church is fascinating. The central, main part of the Dom (the Octogon) was built around 790 AD for Charlemagne (Karl der Grosse), and in the 14th and 15th centuries smaller chapels and a large gothic choir were added because Aachen was a popular place for Christian pilgrams. Though Charlemagne himself was not crowned king of the Holy Roman Empire in Aachen, from 900 to 1531, 30 other kings were. I went on a guided tour and saw the throne used by the Holy Roman Emperors, which is amazingly simple compared to the decorations in the church and was able to see the shrine containing the Four Aachen Relics and the shirne containing the remains of Charlemagne himself up close. Both of which, of course, were made out of gold. The architeture is also facinating. The Octogon is, as one would expect, octogon shaped, and the distance from floor to ceiling is about 90 feet. On the ceiling is a beautiful, gold mosaic, which was remade at the end of the 19th century. Unfortunetly no one's sure exactly how it looked at the time of Karl der Grosse, but it's probably close. Anyho! I could ramble on and on, but as they say, a picture's worth a thousand words.

Here are my photos:



Here is one side of the Octogon. You can see on the top floor is an arch with four columns. These columns are made our of marble and the origninals Charlemagne brought back from Italy, but at some point when France was storming through the land, the soldiers broke the columns out and took them back to Italy. A couple are built into the Louve (the big art museum in Paris), and eventually about 2/3s were returned. Otherwise all of the walls are covered in marble slabs. This is also not original but added at the end of the 19th century.



This is a picture of the outside (obviously). The bit in the middle is the Octogon. The gothic choir hall is the big bit on the left.

Here's a link with much better pictures if you're interested:

http://www.oih.rwth-aachen.de/~hendrik/aachenerdom.html

Ok. Enough about the cathedral.
Today my roommate and I visited the house that Beethoven was born in. I'd already been there once, but it was interesting to go back after my German had improved significantly.
Otherwise there's nothing really new with me. I can already tell the days are getting longer, and that makes me very happy.
Have a good week everyone!

Notes from a small country

Hard to believe that it's Wednesday already.
There's nothing new with me. Last weekend was blissfully quiet. Saturday I woke up at decent hour to a beautiful sunrise. The sky was perfectly clear and the view from my quasi-east facing window revealed a multicolored sky. Always a good way to start a day. I then did my laundry, went grocery shopping, went to the library, and took care of other day-to-day stuff that I hadn't had much time to do in the last weeks with Christmas and visitors. At the library I picked up a new Bill Bryson book entitled "Notes from a Big Country". For those of you who are unfamiliar with Bryson, he was born in Des Moines and moved to London around the age of twenty. He proceeded to live there for two decades and work as a travel writer with a very Dave Barry sense of humor. At the end of the 90's he moved to New Hampshire with his british wife and children and once a week wrote short articles for a british newspaper about his experiences readjusting and relearning life in the US. This book is a collection of these articles. As an american living in a foreign country, it's interesting to see what sorts of things he describes, though I am by no means going to be in Germany for 20 years. It's also hilarious. My current German book is actually the German equivalent of Bill Bryson, so the two books fit together well. Anyho! That was probably way too much explaination about a book, but whatever. Life's a bit uneventful at the moment. Maybe one of you will be inspired to read it. Bryson is actually rather good in general. His best book by far is "A Walk in the Woods".
Otherwise the week has been uneventful. Work has not progressed one step, and in fact at the moment it's at a standstill because of a technical problem, which I won't go into since it's rather boring. I gave my colleagues wine from the Amana Colonies as late Christmas presents with the intention that they'd each pick a bottle and take it home. Instead they decided to keep in the lab, so we can open up one now and again at afternoon coffee. Side note: One of my favorite things about Europe is the relaxed attitude towards alcohol. I think they like the crazy fruit wines, though everytime they have to exclaim "wow that's sweet!" and seem happier when it's not so sweet. I think they were expecting something more like normal wine. Oh well.
I also (gasp!) actually started to study this week. In theory I have exams sometime in the middle of February, but I don't really know when. After not studying for a solid six months, I'm actually kind of enjoying it. I even get excited at the prospect of doing an integral. I think my the time August rolls around, I'll be ready to start graduate classes. Though I'm sure it will turn back into work real quick.
Enough rambling for now.
For all of you students out there, I hope the semester started well.

Quick update

Hi all!
I don't have much to report today. Things are starting to return to normal. Early in the week I worked a bit more and let Andy wander around Bonn by himself a bit. He flew back to "the States" early on Thursday morning. Otherwise there's nothing new with me.
Still stressing about my landlord situation, but we'll just have to see what happens.
I'm looking forward to a very quiet weekend with lots of sleep and maybe even a bit of studying. (First time since finals in May. Just like to point that out. :-) )
Have a good weekend everyone!

First week of the year

Hallo!
One week down, 51 more to go. All in all it was a rather stressful week. I hope the rest of the year goes better. The source of the stress is my crazy landlord, who after learning of Andy's presence in my apartment, decided that he can't stay unless he pays rent for the time he's visiting. Of course this is ridiculous because common sense dictates that I'm allowed to have visitors. My lease says nothing about how long visitors can stay, but I didn't know what German law has to say about the subject. So after a couple days of freaking out everytime I had to go home in anticipation of yet another fight, Andy being the good law student that he is, found a book which clarifies German law regarding renting property. In short it explained that as a renter I'm entitled to visitors, and the landlord has no right what-so-ever to say who may or may not visit me and can not get in their way. As far as how long he can stay and still be considered a visitor, the guideline is 4 to 6 weeks, so Andy's two weeks is clearly within the span. Needless to say I'm a little irritated at his rampant disregard for the rules and laws.
Otherwise Andy and I have been having fun. Tuesday we traveled to Koeln. We visited the chocolate museum, the Dom, and even climbed the 509 steps to the top of the south tower. Afterwards we grabbed a quick lunch, had a Koelsch, and returned to Bonn. Wednesday we went the the Haus der Geschichte des Bundesrepublik Deutschlands (House of the History of the Federal Republic of Germany). Like all german museums it's huge and we didn't manage to see it all in one day. Friday we went to the movie "Herr der Diebe", which is "The Thief Lord" or some such in english. It was pretty good. The story seemed very interesting at least, although I think the movie could have been done better. Saturday we traveled to Wuppertal to visit the Unger family. The Ungers were Andy's host family from his High School German exchange, and they hadn't seen each other in almost six years. It was a happy reunion I think. Saturday evening we went "kegeln", which LEO translates as playing "skittles". We'd never heard of it, but it's like bowling only better. First off there's only 9 pins, and the balls are much smaller (maybe 6 to 9 inches in diameter) and have no holes. The width of the lane starts out only about a foot wide dips slightly in the middle so the ball weaves back and forth some. And then shortly before it reaches the pins, the lane widens dramatically to the width of the opening (about three feet wide or so). What is really fun is that there are various games you play with it, not just who can knock down the most pins. I think we played four or five different games. By the time we were done it was past eleven, and we had no desire to travel back down to Bonn, so we stayed the night and enjoyed a lovely german Sunday breakfast and lunch. Now I'm here. All for now.

Ihr seid gefeuert!

Ihr seid gefeuert! (You're fired!) That's my New Year's in a sentance. But first, the days leading up to New Years.
On Thursday my friend Aaron arrived in Bonn. It was so good to see some one from home and speak Iowan (Iowanisch). Not that I don't speak any English in Germany, but I tend to speak some what slower and clearer because most people here are not native speakers and are more used to the british accent. I'm pretty sure I've spoken more english in the last three days than I have in the last three months. Craziness.
On Friday Aaron and I buzzed around the shopping district and took a joy ride on the subway. That evening we traveled to the airport to pickup Andy. That evening we hit the irish pub and had a late dinner.
On New Year's Eve (Silvester) the three of us headed up to Köln with no real plans. Just seeing where the crowds take us. We silly Americans arrived in Köln way early, and I quickly exhausted my tour guide capabilities because all of the pubs and breweries I know in Köln were either crazy packed or closed. Eventually we made our way into an ice cream cafe. This is where the fun began. We sat next to a family playing a vocabulary game with their 8ish-year-old daughter, which involved thinking of a name for each letter in alphabet within various catagories. Anyho! We started helper her think of things and when we couldn't think of a river that begans with "B", she declared: Ihr seid gefeuert! A totally Trump style "You're fired". It was hilarious. We talked a bit with her mom, and the girl gave each of us a sparkler.
When we were finished there we headed over to one of the bridges. Before I continue I should mention that fireworks are not illegal in Germany. That means throughout the entire night there were people lighting bottle rockets and fire crackers in the streets at random. A little unsettling at first, but we really hadn't seen the true glory of a German Silvester celebration. As midnight approached more and more people, a good fraction of whom were drunk, filled the bridge and the number of fireworks also increased. People simply lighting things and throwing it on the packed streets. Not the safest thing in the world, but we were in Germany, not the US. There were people shooting fireworks off along the Rhine, from the bridge, from everywhere. I really can't describe how cool it was to be completely surrounded by fireworks. They weren't as big as offical 4th of July fireworks, but there were so many, it looked way cooler. I tried to get good photos, but between my camera acting up in the cold and blurriness due to the long exposures, I only got a couple good ones.



Fireworks in the direction of the Dom.



View in the other direction. It's a bit blurry, but you can see all the firework remnants on the ground.




Here I am with my guys.

Around 2 am we caught the train back to Bonn and by 3 am we were back in my nice warm apartment.

I hope everyone had a good celebration. Happy New Year!