Ersten Schneefall

This morning's view

If you haven't guessed by looking at the pictures, we just had our seasons first snowfall ("ersten Schneefall").  The storm lasted all Saturday, and brought about an inch of rain.  However by Sunday morning there was about 4 inches of snow on our deck, with which I made a snow man.
 This might be more snow than we got all of last year.

And early this morning we switched to Standard time, so we had an extra hour to get used to the transition to winter.  And to that end, Betsy put on some Christmas music.

Long Bike Rides

Because I am now busy with classes, I don't think I will be making any long bike rides soon.  So this is a quick and (very quantitative) review of my late summer bike rides.
I wrote about riding up the Neckar River (Yellow path on map) on 2^nd of September; it was 210km (130miles) and took 9.5hrs to get there and back.

Map of long bike rides, this map shows the entire width of the state of Baden-Württemberg

I also rode to Strasbourg, France and back.  This is the pink path.  That was a very grueling ride and took all day (12hrs) and was 220km (140miles) long.

Strasbourg

I attempted to get to Ulm, but didn’t make it.  This is the light blue path.  I got caught in one of the largest storms of the summer, and took a train back to Tübingen.  I was out for most of the day and went around 140km (90miles).

Danube River

Schloss Sigmaringen

My longest ride of the fall was a loop through Sigmaringen and Rottweil.  This is the orange path.  It was 240km (150miles) and took 13hrs.  There was frost when I started.  By mid-day I was on the Danube River bike path, and it is beautiful, and I stopped about every 2km to take pictures.

Recently I have ridden to Stuttgart and back.  This is the dark blue path.  While not as long, at only 125km (78miles), I have been able to ride it in about 5hrs.  Which I think is fairly good for self-supported trail/path riding.

I think the longs bike rides are finished this year.  Next spring Betsy & I are looking forward to biking through Holland to see the tulips.

Perfect day of Sunday hiking

Today Betsy & I plus Rachel, Barbara, and Adam (other Americans in Tübingen) went for a 6hr long hike (13km) at Bad Urach, which is an easy train ride from Tübingen.  The hike was fantastic, because the weather was perfect and the fall colors are at their height, and I think the pictures tell that story better than words.

Mosterei

Mühle Laden left; Mosterei behind Joe.

I (Betsy) enjoy Saturdays because I get to go shopping at the only store in our town: the Mühle Laden ("Mill Store"). It has limited hours during the week and I'm always at work. It's a small shop that sells regional produce and other products and organic stuff as well, and it's housed in the old mill next to our house (hence the name). Today I noticed trailers full of apples just behind the store. When I asked the staff inside I got the answer I was looking for: the mill is processing local apples into cider, and we could bring our empty bottles and fill them up.

"Most" apples being processed.

"Most" is the juice that comes from a special kind of apple that grows in this region; one I'm told that is not good for eating but makes great juice. Two liters of freshly pressed juice cost us 2.7 euros and will last about 2-3 days in the refrigerator before it starts to really ferment. We have to keep the lids on a bit loose to let out the gas. To my understanding, this is also the initial product that goes into making apple wine (also called "Most").


We went several times this summer to a special place called a "Besen." It literally means broom, and a Besen is usually marked by a traditional broom over the sign. A Besen is a small restaurant open only seasonally that serves locally produced wine. Our local summer Besen is in Schloss Roseck, one of our nearby castles, perched on a hill. We had great views of our valley ("Ammertal"), while enjoying Most wine this summer. Starting this October, the "Altstadt Besen" (Besen in the "old town") opens in Tübingen (see blog post from last March describing an earlier visit). We will go again with my work colleagues next week. The Altstadt Besen serves young wine from grapes that grown in the Ammertal, the valley where we live. All the red wines have funny names related to communism, and it's rumored the folks that operate the Besen are communists. Well, we will at least take part in the communal drinking!

Funny things at the Stuttgart Volksfest

The weather here is spectacular, the leaves are at the height of  fall colors, ...and I have hundreds of pages of engineering texts to read.  But before getting to homework, I wanted to post about two pictures that Betsy & I found funny at the Stuttgart Volksfest.

There were several stand at the Volksfest, many selling lederhosen and dinderls.  But we also saw that one stand promoting the Bible was next to another promoting condoms.  Dispite a nominally large Catholic population in Germany, many don't practice and therefore don't have any issues with the Catholic stance against condom use.  we also noticed the Condom stand was much busier than the Bible stand.

Bible stand next to the Condom stand

In German "Lose" means ticket, chance, or prize.  But when you think about it in  English, buying 4 "lose"s for 1 Euro, this carnival game has remarkable truth in advertising.

"4 Lose" for 1 Euro at a carny game

In addition to enjoying the festival, I found a stand that sold leather goods --and a lot of traditional Lederhosen ("leather pants").  I managed to get my belt repaired, which was the real prize of the day.

Bureaucracy of University

It seems that my classmates have not suffered as much as me when dealing with the registration process, which is somewhat surprising, since I have been in Germany for one full year, and they have been her for less than a month, with many not speaking any German.

Stamped = official; permission to attend university

 So my latest saga involving the international student administration staff started 3 weeks ago today.  After a full day of delivering, procuring more, correcting, and finally delivering  again my paperwork, I was told that my student ID would arrive the the next week.  It turned out not to be.  Because I am here on a spouse visa and not a student visa, the University of Stuttgart couldn't process my registration.  Nor could they answer a phone call or email.  After a visit to their office that lasted ~5min including the "wait" in line, I was told what the problem was and sort of told how to fix it.  The solution:  convince the Tübingen county foreigners department to write a note saying that there wasn't any issue with me taking classes; see picture.
 I suppose my cultural lessons are several:
1) don't be too judgmental; it is a different culture,
2) stamps are official and they seem to solve lots of bureaucratic blocks,
3) everybody is dismissive of the administration staff --professors think they are dumb, the rest think they have a job-for-life and have lost the motivation to work, let alone do a good job.
As for me, I think the incompetence of the administration staff exposes myth of "German efficiency," and reminds me how good some American secretaries can be.
 At present the issues seem to be solved, AGAIN.   And regardless I can attend class.

First Day of School

Today was my first day at the University of Stuttgart.  The classes seem like they will be very good; I am really looking forward to the rest of the semester.  There are about 40 students in my group, and we will take 6 core courses together this winter semester (mid-October to mid-February).  Most of my fellow students came straight from undergraduate degrees, but about a half dozen have 1 or 2 years of work experience.  This means that I am about a decade older than everyone.

On the first day of school, it is customary for the new student to get a "Schultüte" or "Zuckertüte", as seen in this picture.  The translation is school cone or sugar sack.  I think they are usually filled with candy, toys, pencils, etc.  Furthermore I think this is only for kindergartners, which is too bad for me.

Spouses in Germany

Last month I said that I would write about what spouses do while in Germany.  And finally I am getting to that.  Some spouses of other post-doctoral researchers leave Germany early, others find part time jobs.  For me I was trying to work remotely for NREL, however that didn’t go too well –a large part of the problem is “out of site, out of mind” and I have been out of site for a year; plus I have been traded to my 3 manager in less than a year, so not much work was coming my way.  Therefore I am going back to school.  Tomorrow I will start classes at the University of Stuttgart, in an all English Masters degree program in the field of Computational Mechanical Engineering.  This will give me something to engage in while in Germany.  …and the surely the subject of future blog posts.

But there have been some other things that have occupied my time in the last few months.

Apartment renovations:  Calking bathtub, painting window frames, install better lighting.  Left picture is what one window frame looked like before repairing and painting.
I have a modest weather station, and I have been writing programs and building some instruments for it.  Right picture is me investigating the circuit of a humidity sensor.

I have also taken several long bike rides. And those are worthy of their own blog post…

Schloss Lichtenstein

Today Betsy & I went to another romantic castle –Schloss (“Castle”) Lichtenstein, which is only 30km from Tübingen.  It was a great half-day trip.  It has been rainy and cloudy for the last week, but today the clouds cleared and we had spectacular views of the fall colors.  The guided tour was very friendly.  And surprisingly it was in English, because everyone in our small group spoke English.

After the castle, we visited a nearby cave.  The Swäbish Alb, is a limestone plateau and the foothills of the Alps.  This limestone makes for dramatic white cliffs above the valleys and allows for some caves.  The cave we went into was large –about 300m in length and having 5 large rooms.  For a few years one of the royals, for which Castle Lichtenstein was built, lived in the cave.  The caves inspired the book Lichtenstein, which in turn inspired the local Duke to build the castle in the romantic style during the 1840s.  This is about the same time as Berg Hohenzollern and Neuschwanstein, and many other fairy-tale castles in Germany.