Tchuss!

Goodbye Germany! I’m just beginning to get to know Würzburg and now it’s time to leave. It took me about two months to start to feel at home in Ireland as well, but I still had 3 months there to enjoy it. During my last two weeks I was finally starting to get the feel of things and be comfortable with German life, but now I’m headed back home (and am rather excited about it). So here’s a recap of my last week, mostly by myself.

Hayley left Tuesday morning and then Rex and Jacob followed Wednesday so I’ve mostly been on my own. I spent Tuesday and Wednesday in my lab finally actually doing the experiment. It consisted of aligning mirrors, chilling down our sample, and hitting a button to turn on the source so we could measure the transmission.

There was also my last two frisbee practices which were fun. It’s starting to get dark early again. I guess summer is over. Sigh. At least it isn’t as bad as when I got to Ireland, no sunsets at half four in Texas!

Friday I finally went and visited the Festung Marienburg, our castle. I spent the morning climbing up to it and wandering around taking pictures. Probably good that I went by myself as I did quite a bit of the latter. I had my last döner for lunch - probably terrible for you but so good! I met Steffi in the evening for coffee and we wandered around and talked a bit before saying goodbye, which was sad.

Saturday I went to Nürnberg with Dan, a guy from England who works in Jacob’s lab group. Funnily enough we had both planned on going that weekend and so it worked out great. I really liked the city, 2nd biggest in Bavaria. We started out by going to the site of the Nuremburg Nazi trials and the parade grounds. There was a really interesting museum there and so we got to read a bit of history which is always cool. After the museum we were starving and so went to find famous Nürnberger brautwurst and lebkuchen for lunch. Successful on both accounts - I can say that they are quite delicious, though the difference between Nürnberger and normal brautwurst isn’t very obvious, but I like both so don’t really care. Lebkuchen is a ginger cake of sorts usually eaten around Christmas, and very tasty.

While food-hunting we wandered through the old town and saw many of the churches there. They are really cool, and there are quite a few of them. After finding food (well, actually as we found food, as the lebkuchen was there) we saw the site of the apparently famous Christmas market.

We stopped for a beer and then headed up to the castle. It was a very un-ostentatious castle, it seemed like a place people could actually live rather than being incredulously big and stately. I really liked it. After the castle we headed back down the hill and stopped at a Toy Museum, showcasing the history of toys and the development throughout the ages. It was cool to see, though I really wanted to play with them all.


A bit more exploring lead us back through the old town and past some cool bridges. One more beer and some more brautwurst and we headed back to the train station and Würzburg. It was a good trip, Nürnberg is a cute town and it was fun traveling with Dan, who also likes taking pictures and so didn’t mind stopping frequently to be photographers/obvious tourists. Back in Würzburg, as I was already in photographer mode, and actually had my camera with me, I decided to to take night pictures of the castle there. They turned out alright, I’d like to try again though I doubt I’ll have the time to before I leave. Here’s my favorite, the rest are on flickr :) (I have internet again! My landlord got home and turned it back on :) )

Sunday morning I spent packing, which took me less time than expected as it all fit the first time (well, time and a half) so I didn’t have to repack 4 times like I usually do. I cleaned the apartment a bit and then decided that since it was a nice day I would go back to the castle to try and redo one of the panoramas I had made of Würzburg when I visited before but didn’t look great because it had been slightly foggy that morning. This time it was much more successful, so here’s the city I’ve been living in the past few months


I tried to find my way to a vineyard trail, but couldn’t find the start of it so just went home and cooked dinner and played with pictures the rest of the night.

Today is my last day in Würzburg/Germany/Europe. Kinda weird. I’d love to stay but I also can’t wait to get home. I’ve had my fill of traveling, at least for a month or so ;) After spending the morning and afternoon finishing things around the apartment/being lazy, possibly taking more pictures, I’m meeting friends for a final beer in Germany and will head out tomorrow morning for the airport and then Texas! Total travel time: .5 hour tram to train station, 1.5 hour train to Frankfurt, 10.5 hour flight to Houston, 3-ish hour drive and then I’m back in Austin! Woot, be back in Texas 2 pm tomorrow!

One week

So I have one week left in Europe. Pretty crazy, this will be the first time in 2009 that I am in America for more than 4 days. I'm excited to go home! So since the last update I've had the fun development that our internet stopped working at home. This means that I now journey to either the university or the internet cafe in the city to check my email, usually every other day or so. This also means that no pictures to this entry because I don't have time to add them.

Aside from learning how to survive without internet, my room mates and I had to give our final presentations yesterday about our summer work. It's our only real graded part of the summer, but it, like everything else, was rather informal. We had members from each of our groups come and we just talked about our work and they asked questions. Good practice for giving scientific talks. I also actually started taking data today, or trying to. We have everything set up, just need more liquid helium to cool down our sample, which we should get tomorrow. It's kind of ironic that I am only now taking data, a week before leaving and after giving my presentation. Oh well, at least it happened before I left :)

Frisbee has also been fun, now that Germany's school is out for their summer practices have been much less well attended and more just fun playing. It's still been great though. We even had lessons in how to layout after one of the women's practices. By layout I mean the frisbee term (diving for a disk), not sitting in the sun ;) It was fun, we did it on the beach volleyball courts so it wouldn't hurt so much when we landed :P

The first of my room mates, Hayley, left today and the other two are headed back to Texas tomorrow so it will just be me for the last bit, but it will go by fast and I'll be back in Austin in no time! Possibly even after a day trip this weekend :)

München Adventures

For those unaware, München = Munich, the city I visted last weekend. My room mate Jacob and I took a train down Friday morning and spent two days around Munich and then took a day trip out to Neuschwanstein castle. It was a good trip away from Würzburg for a bit and one of the trips that I had really wanted to make so I'm glad I got to.

We started out the day visiting the Marienplatz which is the main town square and home to the new town hall and Glockenspiel - the dancing clock. I'm pretty sure it's listed as one of the most over-rated tourist attractions, and definitely rightly so, but still cute. We bought fruit from a stand and munched while watching it then headed to the Viktualienmarkt, a large outdoor market which appears to specialize in sausage, for lunch.

After sampling some things Jacob and I headed north in the city in the direction of the English Gardens, wandering there and stopping by the Residenz and Hofgarten on our way. The English Gardens are really pretty, and one of the largest in Europe. We headed to the Chinese Tower, a beer garden in the middle of it, for our first mass in Munich. Throughout the weekend we decided that a) weissbier (wheat beer) is very tasty b) I drink beer rather quickly (thanks Ireland) and c) Müncheners like beer (apparently they drink 10,000 L a day, just at one beer hall). We definitely partook in that intake and tried several varieties while there including the standard hofbrau and the dark beer, called hofbrau something, along with the weissbier. The darker beer was very good as well, though rather strong (9%).

After the English Gardens we went back through the Residenz, wandered aimlessly through the city for a bit and then headed to the Hofbrauhaus for dinner. The Hofbrauhaus definitely deserves its reputation for being stereotypical and touristy, but it was interesting to see. It's not really necessary to visit though for anyone with trips planned to Munich. After dinner we headed back to our hostel for an early night as Jacob hadn't had much sleep the night before and we had woken up early to catch our train.

The next day we had a bit of a slow start and were planning on getting the typical Bavarian breakfast, weisswurst, and then heading to the Deutches Museum, a big technology museum. We did the first part and ate outside at the Viktualienmarkt - weisswurst is delicious! - but then decided that since it was shaping up to be a gorgeous day we would go on a free (nominally - they work off tips) bike tour around the city before going to the museum. The bike tour was cool, it was about 3 and a half hours and took us all around Munich, including a stop by the Chinese Tower again for a beer and lots of stories about the monuments and city along the way.

We finished the bike tour and headed to the Deutches Muesum, but unfortunately got there an hour before it closed. Because of that they didn't charge us admission, which was nice, but also meant we didn't get to see much of it. You could probably spend a full day there. We headed to the physics/computer section being the nerds that we are and wandered around until the museum closed.


We climbed up one of the church towers which had a really cool view of the city, 330 steps up to the top :) Dinner and souvenir shopping before heading back to the hostel. We spent some time relaxing in the hostel's bar before going to bed.

Our next day was largely spent on the train/bus - 3 hours to Füssen, bus ride to Neuschwanstein, bus back to Füssen, 3 hours back to Munich and then 3 hours to Würzburg and 45 min tram to our house. Lots of reading/music/nap time. But, the point of this outrageous journey was to see Castle Neuschwastein, the Disney prototype castle. It was really pretty, though one side was covered in scaffolding and there was an imminent storm. We walked up to the castle, wandered around the parts that you can get in for free and then took the trails around the grounds, which are really pretty in and of themselves and give you a good view of the castle and it's neighbor, Hohenschwangau. A side trail looked interesting and lead us to the river below the castle. It was gorgeous, and had freezing cold water that we waded in. We decided to try a different way back which turned out to be really cool and had several gorgeous waterfalls. We made it back to the train just ahead of a storm rolling in and headed back to Würzburg.


Back in Würzburg I'm working on putting together a presentation of my work this summer. The four of us each has to complete a presentation at the start of next week as a final for our work. Still haven't taken any data, but I have done some analysis with the previous data my group has. Maybe (though its looking increasingly unlikely) I'll get to do some experiments next week.

Also, two weeks until I'm back in Texas!