The strangest thing....

The strangest thing happened to me this morning. I woke up and thought about how good it would be to be home in Muskoka (Ontario) again with my car and computer and parents house for a few days before heading to Tennessee. I thought about driving to Huntsville to the Independent Grocery Store to print off a few hundred pictures from the last 4 months. You know that song by the Canadian Michael Buble, called "Home" (or something like that), I was sure I would never think like that again! But as I my time is running down here and although I have learned so much and do indeed feel welcome here, I still like the feeling of being back where I grew up and seeing family around Christmas time!

I was talking to Katerina comparing my first time living in Germany (2001-2002) to this time. The last time I was greedy for lots of new knowledge and sightes and tastes that I had never even heard of before. This time, I came all this way to speak a language I have come to love and visit friends (as many as I could) that for me are each one in a million. The last time I came for things or ideas or dead people (i.e. history). This time I came for friendships and, as before an adventure!

I leave my reader with two quotes to ponder...

"Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions."
Jesus as per Dr. Luke

"If you live out what is inside of you, what is inside of you will save you.
If you do not live out what is inside of you, what is inside of you will destroy you."
Anonymous

Visiting the Midieval town of Bamberg, Nürnberg and a Farmers Theatre in small town Frankonia.

Eckersmülen, deep in the heart of Frankonia and the village of Rainer

Rainer and his dad at the Christmas supply outlet and factory

At LGB in Nürnberg

We were lucky enough to meet the personal manager from LGB who gave us a quick tour through the show room. My dad is a dealer of LGB model trains, manufactured in Nürnberg.

Railroad in the Old-West

Little Austrian Town

Messing around on the full scale trolley

This place is amazing. What a cool job! Making model trains all day!

The Pignik River through Nürnberg

The fortress in the centre of Nürnberg is high on a hill in the centre of the city. Much of the height of the outer walls is made up of sandstone bedrock that the people carved out hundreds of years ago.

Fachwerk (Half-timbered) Houses inside the fortress.

Nürnberg is a very old city and was a very important trade centre between the east and west when Munich was just a little village (can you tell I was getting a tour from a proud local). This house is the oldest in Nürnberg still standing and is 700 years old, that's good German engineering!

The Lawrence Church. This church was destroyed along with 70% of the rest of the city at the end of WWII. Inside there are many plaques dedicating this church as a monument of peace.

In the background is a Catholic Church. In the foreground is a 600 year old wedding present from a blacksmith apprentice trying to win the heart (and convince the father) of a girl from a higher class. Her father was a master blacksmith and the family was out of the wooer's league. By the laws of the time the boy was not allowed to marry outside of his class.

2 generations of UW Germanistic exchange students from Bamberg, Katerina and Beatte (pronounced Bee-a-ta)

The old town hall in Bamberg, now a museum.

Hiking to the Fortress high above Bamberg

Going into the fortress

The Palace square

View of the Closter from the Palace gardens

Going home to Stuttgart saying goodbye over "little venice"

Latest Production from the Knappett School of Arts and Sciences

Virus Injected

There once was a little old virus
Who was so small he didn’t even have a pilus
But along came a big old E. coli
And the virus thought ‘my oh my’
He thought to himself ‘now if I can get my DNA inside,
200 of me would become alive’
You see its all about the genetic material
It’s really concrete it aint nothin’ like ethereal
Once our virus has his DNA injected
Consider that bacteria infected
That nucleic acid floats in a dormant state
Until with the help of enzymes starts to replicate
This new genetic code will then be made
As blue prints to create another phage
Until after all the viruses have been assembled
The cell bursts and this cycle has been ended
And so little virus is no more, let’s call him michael
And that my friend is the lysogenic cycle

Written by P (flee-diddy) and Beth-dog Knappett

The Critical Difference of Life in Germany

Charlie and the Angels (and Bosley)

at the Christmas Market (Weihnachtsmarkt) in Stuttgart

Karlsruhe Christian and Stuttgart Pete at a cafe in Stuttgart

After almost a year and a half living in Germany I don’t normally notice much outward differences between myself and Germans, however, I believe there to be an imaginary line that you could draw down the Atlantic Coast of France and up through the English Channel that separates continental Europeans from us Anglo-Saxon Islanders. On the continental European side of this line a significant proportion of people enjoy participating in public nudity. This might be a stroll in the English Gardens in Munich or a spa where people enjoy being naked together in a hot sweaty sauna. In Canada we might call this exhibitionism. In Germany this is a respected tradition, not practiced by all, but still widely practiced from Leipzig, in eastern Germany to Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg in the south west.

To be clear, this is far from exhibitionism, the Germans have that too, where some crazed fan will run across the soccer field wearing nothing but his birthday suit, we have that at Toronto Blue Jays games every once and a while. In fact in 8 years of post strike Major League baseball (94 – 2002) the only time I remember noticing a Blue Jays game on TV was watching the spectacle of a nude fan being chased by security guards across a field. Hilarious!

So if you come to Germany, don’t worry, people look basically the same as Canadians, but are in better shape and paradoxically, more of them smoke. Just don’t be surprised when a German friend invites you to a nude Sauna. And Germans, don’t be surprised when the prude North American, like me, says no. My first instinct was either to say “no” or “can I bring a date?”. I think that last statement will appal people on both sides of the Atlantic so I will stop here. And in true Canadian form I apologize.

Where has my heart gone? An uneven trade for the real world...I want to go back to believing in everything and knowing nothing at all. Evanescence

Ska Concert in Weinheim. Spent some time in the Mosh Pit, it was awesome!

The Fort Knox of Shoes, Melanie's extensive shoe collection

Melanie and Fred, one of the surviving Columbia Lake Townhouses couples from 2003-2004

Fred is from Sweden which means he likes Hockey (and in his case even baseball) too!

Bismark was the dude that united Germany for the first time in 1866. He had to fight off the Hapsburgs (Austia-Hungary) to do this. Even Baden-Württemberg fought against him. He was Prussian like my Great Grandfather Gottlieb Kühl, who incidentaly emmigrated from Prussia to Canada the same year.

Fred, Annette and Peter in Heidelberg

Annette and Mel along the Neckar River

Castle Heidelberg

The Castle Walls

Castle Tower, destroyed by lightning or french troops

Castle Heidelberg by night

Musings Along The Long Road to the Completion of my Masters Thesis

I have been told that a master’s thesis should be a reference. I think it should read like an adventure, because that's what applied scientific inquiry is. There is a risk and you don't know the outcome at the beginning, but you have a goal: finding an application for your discoveries. You try to learn as much as you can from other’s experiences before making a move and expending resources, but at some point you make a plan and follow your nose, take a chance, believing that there is genius in the process of just trying something, anything and watching carefully what happens. So why can't a thesis be that? And why can't it be personal, emotional and colloquial? Why can’t it read like people talk? Such a thesis could reach a much wider audience of people and students. It could inspire new students to go into masters programs too. Instead of writing as if you worked for the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) and were recording mundane, impersonal facts.

The Ballad of the Master Thesis

(sung to the first part of the Black Eyed Peas' "Where is the Love")

I once wrote masters thesis
Although I didn’t have a clue what to write
I knew it would be something about feces
So I played baseball to keep my sanity
For the same reason I then went to Germany
But soon after arriving I heard
That my thesis was for the birds
So I waited for the terrible news
Of all the work I would soon have to do
But sadly the news never came
And once again I was waiting to start this game
You see my thesis was more like a puck
And I’m trying to score a goal and not get stuck
By the numerous referees
Making rules here and there as they please

“Skate backwards in a line
Now you have to stop on a dime
Now change into the colour blue”
I had to sign 3 forms before I could go to the loo!
Father, Father, Father help me
Send some guidance from above
Because this has got me got me questioning
Where is the Love

So I tried to have fun with my friends
And forget about the project that I alone could not end
Until those corrections arrived
And I could pick up my pen once more and try
To get this old puck in the net
So no further would I go into debt!

GO LEAFS GO!

Delft, Amsterdam, Cologne and the Rhine River Valley

The bad boyz of Baden-Württemberg...lets get this Road Trip started!

Friday afternoon.

Katerina had a hard week, can you tell?

Picking up Katerina from Medical School in Frankfurt am Main, the banking capital of the Germany and the European Union. Katerina had to do a particularly nasty autopsy this week.

Julie. Our beautiful, talented and resourceful hostess for the weekend. Water treatment engineer for a company in Delft.

We arrived at midnight at the same time as the bus from Paris. Its raining in Holland...big surprise.

Happy greetings and hugs all around. After a year apart!

Its midnight, so lets get this party started.

This is AWESOME!!! Everyone is together again!

Why is it that my old German roomate Ole, from Hamburg, always speaks in French at parties? He was our Glen Forrest in house computer programmer, IT guy and had the distinguished title of not missing a single international party in Waterloo for 12 months!

Ole sporting his english hunting vest.

Kevin and Vivien, the french guys are shakin up this night club in Delft. Kevin is a computer scientist from Paris and Vivien is from the South of France and studies Engineering Physics.

The next morning in Delft. Caro is an Chemical engineer working for an Oil Company (ie the dark side) in Paris. We bonded during a terribly difficult graduate statistics course at U Waterloo, and came out laughing.

Delft Town Hall and central Market square

What did Julie's apartment look like with 18 people? I sat outside most of the time. Late at night I thought this could be symbolic of a genuine difference between Europeans and North Americans. 400 years ago when it got too crowded in Europe and people were dying of the plague all over the place from over crowding, some of us had the good sense to get out! Just as a side note there were no cases of the plague reported at Julie's this weekend.

Kevin, Philip and Christian in the Amsterdam main train Station

Ready to rock Amsterdam! Saturday afternoon.

This is one of my favourite buildings in Amsterdam.

Canal in Amsterdam, you wouldn't want to swim in it, but it is beautiful nonetheless (trotzdem).

Group picture in Amsterdam.

Christina, Arne and Kevin. Arne forgot his camera somewhere.

Rebecca, Wolfgang, Katerina and Christian. Catching up with the rest of us who took the train to Amsterdam. They drove and had to park three cities away in... Belgium I think.

Dutch style buildings in Amsterdam. I dont know how they would ever close those windows if a storm came. They seem rather impractical to me, but quaint.

18 of us in a restaraunt on the Singel canal. Prost, Zum Wohl, Sante, Cheers.

Saturday night.

Roop and Willem
She is the other Canadian in the group. We could talk about BBQs and hockey and Toronto, and complain about all the smoke in the air together. Love the person...hate the smoke!

Julie you rock! Awesome rib dinner for 11 Euros...i dont know what that green stuff is, maybe it is to feed the ducks on the canals?

Thats Philip. Aka The Independant! He grew up in both Germany and France so he totally fluent in each, he is even a pretty good skater so he would make a good Canadian. Right now he is an aerospace engineer with Airbus in Toulose, France.

Roomates forever (or as long as we have cable TV). Delft, sunday afternoon.

Eating a whole herring with onions, but no vinegar...i thought it needed something else...

Two different reactions...Willem thought it was really not bad, I thought it tasted and felt like a tube of raw fish tooth paste

So Roop finished mine off

I really didn't feel well afterwards

Group Picture in Delft

Christian, Christina, Rebecca, Caro, Julie, Fabi, Vivien, Philip, Kevin

Ole, Peter, Christian, Arne, Roop, Willem

If the dutch know anything, they know how to deal with water! They get their drinking water from the Rhine River, build canals throughout the country for recreation, sanitation and beauty, and are continually fighting off the North Sea from re-consuming 2/3 of their (already crowded) country

Katerina, Wolfgang and Herr Stamm, Sunday night

The Stamms took good care of these recovering party cats from Holland. They fed us delicious German food and over the dinner table we squeezed in a couple interesting German history and European architecture lessons from Mr. Stamm.

The Stamm bros. out for a drink in Bergisch Gladbach after dinner. (OK guys I know it wasnt Bergisch Gladbach, but close by) (ok Jüngs, ich weiß genau es war nicht Bergisch Gladbach, aber in der Nähe)

What you see from the windows of the Hauptbahnhof (train station) in Köln (Cologne)

ahhh Monday morning with a cappuccino in front of the Cologne Cathedral!

North and South towers of the Cathedral

South tower and facade of the Kölner Dom. There was some light restoration work going on while we were there. That was nothing compared to what you sometimes see at churches, thank goodness. I read that hundreds of people died during the construction of a big cathedral like this. As well as the money involved, I guess you could conclude that people had a lot of faith then.

The Rhine River, rises from the mountain glaciers of Switzerland and flows 1,320 km to the North Sea in Rotterdam, Holland. This picture was taken from 157 m above the square in the southern church tower. The northern one had an elevator but was closed!

Elegant gothic spires around the main knave of the Cathedral. Fortunately, WWII bombings missed the building, only knocking off the top part of one of the main towers.

Christian is a former roomate from the summer of 2004 in Waterloo. Now doing his Phd in making really cool robots at the University of Karlsruhe! That's all I got out of it, but i saw some matrices on the black board in his office. He also plays saxaphone in a big band (as in "Big Band"..not just a big band, although they are that as well)

Rhine river flowing north. I think I can see some Salmon in there! There is a lot of excitement among Germans that Salmon have come back to the Rhine and the Elbe Rivers, after years of imposing strict rules on pollution. Since I have spent all of my time in Germany at Scientific Institutes, it could be this excitement is particular my lunch time tables.

Looking west over Karsruhe, Germany accross the Rhine River graben (geologically active valley) to the mounains of France

Fortress in Baden Baden where Wolfgang works...ok he doesnt work at the fortress, that would be way cool! He works for Luk, an autamotive company doing his Phd in theoretical mechanical engineering. In particular he studies how to model frictrion using computer models. Fascinating and impenetrably complex to me, but thats why they pay him the big bucks!

Pisa aint the only thing leaning in Europe. This Delft church was first started in 1200 AD.


From the left, Vivien, Philip, Rebecca, Ole, Fabi, Wolfgang, Katerina, Christian Shacht, Karo, Julie, Peter, Christian Simonidis.

Missing from picture but present in Delft are Kevin, Arne, Christina.

Missing from Picture are Jens who was at his Godfather meeting in the Bavarian Mafia and Fred, overworking himself in Strasburg for too little money.

Here is a glance at the beautiful city of Delft in Holland where we had our 2nd University of Waterloo, Columbia Lake Townhouses international student-click reunion.

Friends came from all over France and Germany to converge on Julie's apartment in downtown Delft. Toulose, Paris, Hamburg, Karlsruhe and Stuttgart were some of the places people came from. Altogether there were 18 of us mostly sleeping on the floor of Julie's aparment or apartments of very kind Dutch friends of hers.

After 12 hours on the road we arrived in Delft at midnight and the party was just getting started. We went to a pub for a couple hours to talk and then to a shady disco playing 60s rock music, hard rock and euro-techno dance music. Odd combination, but no one cared about the music or the fact that we were the only ones dancing. When there are 18 of you that is enough no matter how dead the place was! After the disco closed at 5 am we went back to Julie's apartment and most stayed up late talking, while some tried to sleep...hah good luck!

The topics of conversation until 7 am in on Saturday morning included what's up with you since I saw you almost 2 years ago? French, German and English tongue twisters (as the only native English speaker I could only come up with "she sells sea shells down by the sea shore"). And my personal favourite "Where is a Starbucks in this town"?

Saturday morning didnt happen.

Saturday afternoon we went to Amsterdam to walk around and around the circuits of canals in this beautiful and tasteful city. It was a little hard to fit 18 people into cafes and restaraunts but we managed fine. On Saturday evening Julie wrangled the manager of a restaraunt down from around 20 to 11 Euros for a great dinner for everyone, in Holland, as in North America, volume is cheaper. Speaking of this phenomenom I bought a 1.5 L fanta drink in the Delft train station for 1.5 Euros. I didn't need 1.5 L of pop but, the 300 ml size costs 2 Euros...go figure?

Everyone was a little more tired and drained of energy on Saturday night. So we went to a disco with a live band and danced a little but left early around 2 am to take the train back to Delft. Sitting in the train station for 45 min in Amsterdam some of us played the game "I'm going on a trip and I'm packing in my suitcase....". Some of the objects in the suit case included a Sneltrain (fast train in Dutch), a prosthetic foot, a bottle of nano-robots, a pair of rattlesnake-skin cowboy boots and blue prints for a ski lift.

Sunday morning didnt happen.

Sunday afternoon we walked around the canals and shops in Delft. I tried eating whole, raw heiring with Willem and Roop, a special dutch tradition. Went to cafes and took pictures of churches that had been there a long long time. In late afternoon we parted ways and I went to Köln (Cologne) to stay with Wolfgang's parents in the neighbouring willage of Bergisch Gladbach. The next day we went around the inner city of Köln taking dozens of pictures of the famous Cologne Cathedral. The construction of this cathedral began in 1350 and continued until 1850 or so. 500 years! I thought a Phd was a lot of work. It is at once massive and elegant, and entirely in the gothic style. Before Gothic, churches were bulky and had small windows but because of the addition of supporting buttresses the walls could be made thin and the windows large so that much light could stream into the church through stain glass windows. These multi-coloured windows told stories from the bible or from the last 2000 years of church history in Europe. We climbed the tower to a height of 157 m up a spiral stair case, so the height was dizzying in two ways. From the top we had a great view of Cologne and the Rhein river making its way north to the Ocean 350 km away in Rotterdam, Holland.

Wolfgang's parents fed us well and we were actually able to sleep in beds! Awesome!

Monday night Wolfgang, Christian and I dropped off Katerina in Frankfurt and went back to good old Baden-Württemberg, my home state for a few months. I checked out Karlsruhe on Tuesday after staying with Christian, and then headed back to home sweet home Stuttgart on the train.

And now I have to get some work done!

Giddy up!