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Europe day 20/21 – Munich

Dave — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 00:41:30 +0000

This morning we checked out of the hotel, and went to the city center, Marienplatz, to watch the Glockenspiel at 11am. The whole thing took about ten minutes to complete. I’d have to say it was a little underwhelming for all of the hype. The figures mostly just moved in circles and/or spun around. After that, most of the people in our group left for Dusseldorf. The three of us that stayed behind had tickets to the Bayern Munich game that afternoon. It was pretty easy to find our way there – follow the masses of people on the subway. The game was one of my favorite parts of the trip. The amount of people at the game and the quality of the team were both amazing. After the game we took an overnight train to the Dusseldorf airport. We were expecting just to have chairs for the nine hour journey, but somehow we ended up in a sleeper car. We got a lot better sleep than we would have sitting up the whole time. The three older people in our car were on their way to Brussels, and helped point us in the right direction for our connecting train when we arrived in Cologne. Without them it wouldn’t have been to hard to misread the sign and miss our train. We got to the airport about three hours before everyone else, so sat around for a while and prepared for the long flight home.

Europe day 19 – Munich

Dave — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 00:40:46 +0000

Today some of us went on a tour of the BMW plant in Munich. The plant is located in the Olympic park and was a pretty neat place. The whole thing took about two hours, but we got to see almost the whole process of how BMWs are made. The entire plant, except for the motor assembly, is almost completely automated. Robots make the cars. This was a pretty incredible thing to see, especially considering how precise they have to be. Later that night we went to another big tourist attraction, the Hofbräuhaus. The place was packed, but the huge one-liter beers were a nice way to end the day.

Europe day 18 – Munich

Dave — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 00:39:59 +0000

Today we went to the first concentration camp in Germany. Dachau was primarily a work camp, unlike some of the others. The camp had an extensive museum set up in the main building with tons of information. Outside, a lot of the camp is gone now, but the a handful of buildings and the crematoriums still remain. Although the gas chamber at Dachau was never used, the crematoriums were used every day. When we left the camp we went back towards the center of the city. We walked around for a while and did some shopping. Later that evening we all went out to the Paulaner Brauhaus and hung out and talked for a while. One thing that I like about these trips is that you’re forced to get to know people that you might otherwise not.

Europe day 17 – Leipzig to Munich

Dave — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 00:39:21 +0000

Today we started our last three, and free, days of the trip. The majority of the group got on the train to Munich. When we got off the train, we walked about twenty minutes to try and find the hotel we were staying in. We finally found it, had to buzz our way in, the walked four floors up the unlit staircase. Some people were a little skeptical. Everything turned out to be pretty good. We went out that night to a “chicken restaurant” that the guy at the hotel suggested. I had half of a chicken, which was some of the best grilled chicken I’ve ever had. We walked around for a little bit afterwards, but when we didn’t find much we headed back to the hotel. We turned on a movie and eventually fell asleep.

Europe day 16 – Leipzig

Dave — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 00:38:46 +0000

Today we went to the St. Thomas Church, where Bach worked for a number of years. Inside the church there is a spot where Bach is supposedly buried. After looking around the church we went across the street to a Bach museum. The museum was pretty interesting. It was almost a completely interactive museum, which is sometimes hard to tell if that is a good thing or not. In this case, I think most people skipped the reading and went straight for the hands-on things.

Europe day 15 – Wolfenbüttel to Leipzig

Dave — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 00:38:05 +0000

A couple of us ate lunch today at the Thomaskirch Brauhaus. Thomaskirch as in St. Thomas Church, in which Bach played a significant role. After lunch we all met up at the Runde Ecke museum. This was a Stasi museum which had a fairly small exhibit in part of the building. The Stasi was the secret police in East Germany. The Stasi kept a close eye on the citizens and was very repressive. The museum had everything from badges to concealed weapons to how they recruited school children. The Stasi eventually fell apart with the GDR.

Europe day 14 – Göttingen to Wolfenbüttel

Dave — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 00:37:12 +0000

Today we went from Göttingen to Wolfenbüttel by train. Wolfenbüttel is a small town that we primarily came to because one of the Bethel faculty members used to work here. We only had one day here and spent a good chunk of it getting a tour of the library. Our tour guide was a woman that worked with the Bethel faculty member that was there. The library has around one million books, most of which are from the 17th century. It is one of the most significant libraries in Germany. My favorite part of the library was a section about typography and calligraphy. There’s a lot of thought that goes into typography that most people don’t realize. After the library we walked around the city a little bit. It was hard to find places that were open since it was a Sunday, but eventually we found a place to eat.

Europe day 13 – Göttingen

Dave — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 00:36:17 +0000

This morning we went back to the center of the city to see the market. It was full of fresh foods and produce. While we were there we started a scavenger hunt. Lisa came up with the list yesterday afternoon and the items were scattered all over the city. We were split into groups of four and spent the rest of the afternoon looking for obscure objects everywhere within walking distance. Luckily we remembered a lot of things from the day before and had a general idea of where to go for some of the items. To conclude the scavenger hunt we all met at Gauss’s grave in the cemetery. After that we went and had a nice dinner together, then made our way back to the hotel to go to sleep.

Europe day 12 – Göttingen

Dave — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:34:39 +0000

Today we got a tour of the city of Göttingen. The main focus of the tour was the university and the mathematicians that were in Göttingen. We talked about a number of people – Dirichlet, Gauss, Hilbert, Klein, and Planck. We got to see where some of these people lived and worked. This was all pretty interesting as I knew next to nothing about a few of these people. The university was a little different than I expected. The buildings were spread all over town and clearly had some history. After the tour we had some free time. We walked around the city for hours and later met back up to eat dinner.

Europe day 11 – Paris to Göttingen

Dave — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 00:33:37 +0000

Today was a pretty uneventful day. We had to get up early this morning to catch the train. Unfortunately, our train was behind and we missed our connecting one. We had to wait an hour for the next one to come through. When we got to Göttingen there wasn’t much that we could see around our hotel to eat. A few of us ended up going to a McDonald’s which was just down the street. After that we decided it was a good night just to lounge around and watch a movie, so we did.