We're finally here! (well, we've actually been here almost a month)

We are finally in Erlangen. I (John) have started my Humboldt Fellowship at Friedrich-Alexander Universitӓt. The University was founded in 1743 by Friedrich, Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth. Frierich decided that a recently founded University in Bayreuth should be relocated to Erlangen where students would have the option to study Protestant Theology, Jurisprudence, Medicine, or Philosophy.

We are settling nicely into our new community. We actually live in a little village called Uttenreuth (pronounced oo-ten-royt) about 6 km east of Erlangen. We have been attending a nice church in town and have been made to feel very welcome. Laura has been involved in a weekly bible study for women and is making quite a few friends. The men have a monthly bible study that I will attend in early November. The pastor heard that I am a paleontologist and invited me to attend the bible study and contribute to their discussion about evolution. I'm pretty stoked about it.

There is quite a large community of English-speakers in Erlangen. The University attracts a large international crowd. Siemens corporation's historical headquarters is in Erlangen and employs a lot of Americans and folks from the UK. In fact, we've already met four other sets of Hokies. One couple lives about 75 feet from our apartment! It is a very small world.

Here is a brief photo tour of the parts of Erlangen we visit the most:

Here we are in the main shopping district of Erlangen. The population is about 100,000, though it seems to me like a smaller town.

This is the Schloss of the Margraves built from 1700-1704. Since 1825 it has been the home of the University Administration.

There is a botanical garden behind the Schloss. It occupies several blocks and forms the core of the University and University Hospital.

This is another University building alongside the garden. I'm not sure what happens here. I'll let you know when I find out. The geology department is in the building behind the tree on the right hand side.

This is the University library. I love how the ivy turns red in the fall.

This is where the paleontological magic happens...well...at least my part of it anyway. The geology department is next door to the Schloss, and the Institute of Paleontology is located in an old 3-story home across town. Two years ago the geology department at the University of Würzburg merged with the department at Erlangen to form what is now called GeoZentrum Nordbayern or the Geocenter of Northern Bavaria. Paleontology has expanded into this building in the center of town. My office is down at the other end on the second level. It is the largest office I have ever had to myself. Fortunately, an old friend from my 2006 stay in Friday Harbor, Washington will be coming in November to work on research. I look forward to having Fernando as an office mate.

Yes, we're still here!

OK, so it has been a long time since our last posting...again. We'll get back on track soon. Get ready for a few blog updates in rapid succession.

We finished language school in München on 25 September and were able to spend a few days with Adam, Ruth, John, and Rebecca in Chambéry. It was a great time! We left München on a 6:30 train that Friday night. The train ride was exciting as it was the end of the first week of Oktoberfest. We met some nice and interesting revelers from Zurich who made the most of their day at the Wies'n. They taught us a lot about their view of German and Austrian culture. :) After changing trains a few times we finally arrived in Geneva around 2:15 am. As it turns out the train station closes at 2:30, so we could not wait there for our 5:30 train. So we ventured across the street and found a hotel for the night. That's the story of how we figured out why our tickets were so cheap!

We were out the door the next morning and caught a slightly later morning train for Chambéry. It was so nice to be with family. Adam and Ruth are fantastic hosts by the way! We ate like we hadn't eaten since we lived in Hoopers Creek (check their blog for the tartiflette and lebanese bulgar recipes...wow!). We had fun hanging out with the French Huntleys and seeing the beautiful landscape of Savoie.

After our all too short time with family we hopped on the train bound for Erlangen, Germany. We had a similar scheduling issue on the way back so we spent the night in Bern, Switzerland. It is a beautiful town which we hope to visit again in the future. They do have a natural history museum, so we just might go there for work.

Walking through the streets of Chambéry.

Here we are on the balcony of our hotel room in Bern. We highly recommend the train ride from Lausanne to Bern. The view of Lake Geneva with the Alps in the background and vineyards in the foreground was the most beautiful place either of us had experienced.

Stay tuned for more reports from Deutschland!

September

Well, I guess it has been quite some time since our last post. September has been a little less eventful than August, but still we have had a good time.

We went to the viewing deck on the Olympiaturm and had a nice view of the city. This picture shows BMW Welt and BMW Headquarters.

This is a view of the Frauenkirche from the Olympiaturm.

We went to the Tierpark (zoo) and saw plenty of critters...

...including this fine example of a parent re-directing the child.

We visited Schloss Nymphenburg...

...and spent several hours walking around the gardens.

And of course we visited Oktoberfest, or the Wies'n as the locals call it. This is the 176th Oktoberfest. It was originally a festival organized to celebrate the wedding of King Ludwig I and his wife Therese. At first there were horse races around the Theresienwiesen (Therese's Meadow), but they later decided that a beer fest would be much more fun. It lasts for two weeks and draws 7 million visitors to Munich. There are many beer "tents" constructed by the local breweries. These are enormous wooden structures which can hold hundreds of people and are reconstructed every year for Wies'n. We went to one of the smaller beer tents (Nymphenburger), which I found out later, is the one tent that specializes in German wine and only sells beer in the tiny half-liter glasses rather than the 1-liter Maß. Check out our video below. The party was in full swing on early Sunday afternoon.

This is our last week of language school in München. On Friday we are going by train to see Adam, Ruth, and John in Chambéry for a few days (we are very stoked about this). Then we will move to Erlangen and I (John) will finally get back to work on research (John is also stoked about this).

Füssen and Neuschwanstein

On Saturday, Laura and I went on an excursion arranged by our language school to the town of Füssen. The small town of Füssen lies southwest of München at the edge of the Alps. The town has become a major tourist destination because of Schloss Neuschwanstein (literal translation: Castle New Swan Stone). Neuschwanstein is one of three elaborate castles built by King Ludwig II of Bavaria in the 19th Century. Construction began in 1869 and was not completed until after Ludwig's mysterious death in 1886. The castle was built to honor Richard Wagner and his operas. Ludwig II, also known as the Fairytale King and Mad King Ludwig, spent nearly all of the family fortune building his castles. In an attempt to curtail his spending, Ludwig was declared insane. A few days later he was found dead (along with the doctor who declared him insane) in a nearby lake.


On the train between München and Füssen.

In the town of Füssen looking up toward Neuschwanstein. There are three ways to reach the castle: ride in the enclosed back of a large truck, horse and carriage, or walk. We walked to the top.

Here we are in front of a little waterfall on the way to the castle. The walk was about a mile long up a steep paved road. In icy conditions, walking is the only way to reach the castle.


This is Neuschwanstein. It was the inspiration for the princess castle at Disneyland.

The views from the castle were spectacular. Photography of the castle interior is prohibited, but the real beauty was not indoors.

Dachau

We went to see the Concentration Camp (Konzentrationslager) at Dachau. It was a somber and sobering experience. It was not an enjoyable afternoon, but most certainly an important one to have. The camp at Dachau was opened by Hitler in 1933 and originally served as a prison and re-education camp for political dissenters. The camp grew during WWII to house not only political opposition but also Jews, clergy, Jehovah's Witnesses, Roma, homosexuals, and anyone else deemed undesirable by the Nazis. The camp was liberated by American soldiers on April 29, 1945. Dachau was the only Konzentrationslager in operation for the duration of Nazi Germany.

The memorial sculpture at Dachau. Many prisoners would commit suicide by hurling themselves at the fences where they were either electrocuted or shot. Prisoners were also murdered by SS guards who would push the prisoners toward the fence and shoot them for trying to escape.

Gate leading to the crematorium. I am consistently surprised by our proximity to history. The camp is less than 15 miles from our apartment.

Sculpture in the Dachau museum. The museum tells a detailed story of the camp's history from establishment through liberation until the camp's closure in the mid 1960s. In the post-war years Dachau was used as a refugee camp.

This is the door leading to the gas chamber. The sign above the door means shower.

The ovens are in the room adjacent to the gas chamber.

This is the famous gate at the entrance to Konzentrationslager Dachau. The words mocked the prisoners by telling them "work makes you free."

Class and Extracurriculars

This is the roof top terrace at our school. We come here during breaks between class to cool off. It is a nice set up with a ping-pong table and plenty of places to sit and talk.




One day after class, Laura and I went to Olympiapark with our friend Shawn to look around, have a bite to eat, and watch some fireworks. Behind us is Olympiaturm which is 291 meters tall and has an observation deck at 190 meters. Munich hosted the 1972 Olympics and now the park is open to the public for all types of activities.



Going to Olympiapark we passed by BMW Welt. This is a sort of museum/showroom/conference center adjacent to the BMW world headquarters.


It rained a lot that night, but we had fun watching the fireworks and getting soaked.

John's Birthday

Last week was my birthday and Laura had a day full of surprises planned after language class. She was able to find a mexican restaurant in München and invited our friends from class. From left to right are Shawn, Laura, John, Mohamed, Benjamin, Nathaniel, Walter, and Marianne.

The first birthday surprise happened before dinner. Laura took me to the Palaeontologisches Museum München at the Ludwig-Maximilians Universitӓt. When I woke up that morning, I did not expect to see the great fossils waiting just a few kilometers away.

An ancient European relative of today's elephants. This bull had four tusks; two up top and two in the bottom.



Here I am with the remains of a 12,000 year old extinct deer species, the so-called "Irish Elk". This fellow stood 1.7 meters at the shoulder and weighed 600 kg. It shed and re-grew that rack each year. (He's a few feet behind me, so he is even bigger than he looks).


And for the pièce de résistance, the Munich specimen of Archaeopteryx (though it may be a replica of the real thing...I'm not sure). This is one of only several specimens in the world of one of the most important fossil finds (in my humble opinion, at least). Archaeopteryx shows traits transitional between birds and dinosaurs and lived during the Jurassic Period. The first full body fossil was described in 1861 just two years after Darwin published on the Origin of Species. This fellow was big news. The Munich specimen was first described in the early 1990s. Hopefully we will get to see the more famous textbook specimen from 1861 in Berlin as well.

Day Trip to the City of Three Rivers...and it isn't Pittsburgh

One of the benefits of our language school (other than learning German of course) is the chance to take day trips at a reduced cost. This last Saturday we took a trip to the city of Passau. Passau lies at the confluence of three rivers: the Danube, the Inn, and the Ilz. We hopped on a train and traveled about two hours to the east, just shy of the Austrian border.

The train stopped briefly in the town of Moosburg on the way to Passau. Papaw Huntley was a guest here during the Second World War at Stalag VII A. Some of the buildings from the POW camp are still standing, and we hope to explore the town more in the future. This is Moosburg's train station.

We took a short cruise on the Danube and Inn Rivers. It turns out that the Danube isn't so blue, but still very pretty.

This is Dom Sankt Stephan in Passau. Construction lasted from 1668 to 1693. Until the 1990s, the Dom boasted the largest pipe organ in the world with over 17,700 pipes.

The pipe organ at Dom Sankt Stephan.

Side street in Passau's Altstadt (Old Town).

Tincy's German cousin.

Views from München

Here are some pics of the more famous buildings in München.

This is the Frauenkirche (Dom zu Unsere Lieben Frau or the Cathedral of our Blessed Lady). Construction began in 1468 and the church was consecrated in 1494. The domes at the tops of the towers were completed in 1525.*

Tomb monument of Holy Roman Emperor Louis IV in the Frauenkirche.

The current Pope was Archbishop of München-Freising from 1977-1982. Here the Frauenkirche celebrates local boy done good.

Another view of the Frauenkirche.

This is the Neues Rathaus (New Town Hall) built between 1867 and 1908.*



Detail from the Neues Rathaus.



Detail from the Neues Rathaus.




Statue in front of the Neues Rathaus.



*In the interest of full disclosure I need to admit that I did what I yell at my students for doing...I used Wikipedia as an information source. I'll trust that you won't tell them.

The Huntleys Arrive in München

We arrived at Franz Josef Strauss Flughafen in München in one piece, and so did all of our luggage! Our flight landed at 10:15 on Friday morning so we had a few hours to kill before we could meet up with our host family. We became very familiar with this end of the airport. Fortunately we were able to take showers and freshen up after being awake for over 24 hours. Later that afternoon we crammed our luggage into a cab (Mercedes station wagon) and made our way to our new home in the München neighborhood of Pasing. As we sped along the autobahn to our new digs I (John) looked out the window and thought "hmmm, we're going awfully fast." I glanced at the speedometer and saw we were cruising along at about 160 km/hr. Normally I would have been scared to death to ride in a car at ~100 mph during rush hour, but I was too tired to care.

Planegger Straβe in Pasing, just west of the city center of München – our new neighborhood.

This is our new bedroom...which also serves as our living room and dining room.

The Huntley couch at sunset. Yes, I know. It is majestic.