Europapark

Oma and Opa (Claudia's parents) came to visit last week. On Saturday they took me and Oliver to a place called Europapark. I had no idea what it was, but Oli and Isabel both got very excited when it was mentioned, so I figured it was worth checking out. As we were on our way there i learned that it was, as the name suggests, a Europe themed amusement park and apparently quite popular throughout much of Europe as Disneyland is in the US.

Just as it was described each section of the park was in the theme of a different country. Each country had rides that were named for the country and decorated for the country. The employees were dressed in clothes matching the ride and country, the food was specialized in each "country" and even the languages matched, though German and often French and English translations were also provided. There were even shows loosely themed from each of the countries (often featuring good looking women) and Opa always insisted we stop and watch. In Germany there was a biergarten, in Russia they featured the Mir space-station training module, and in England they had the Globe Theater. Some of the rides were pretty cool as well including one whose cars spin while it travels the roller coaster track.

The only downside was that all of Europe was there. As it was a weekend during the summer, it seems that everyone else in Europe decided to show up to the park. Luckily we had Oli along to motivate us (or force us) to wait in the lines that were up to an hour long. We rode both of the big coasters with big lines 3 times. Everyone except Oli came home quite tired but very happy.

Schauinslandkönig

In English Schauinslandkönig means the most expensive t-shirt you've ever bought. That's not quite true. It's actually a charity race from the bottom to the top of the Schauinsland, an 11.5 km 800 m climb. I had considered competing a number of times but wasn't even sure when it was. The night before the race, Ossi saw on some website mention that the race was on Sunday. We discussed it and decided it was worth a shot if the timing worked out. So the next morning Ossi, my team manager, drove me through Freiburg to the Schauinsland. Registration was incredibly simple consisting of no liability forms or countless signatures like in the US, and came with yet one more cycling t-shirt to bring the count to 8-2 of cycling vs non cycling t-shirts. My team manager then left and I settled in to wait a couple hours till my start time.
There were a wide range of people getting ready from those who looked semi-professional to a team all in yellow who all had yellow balloons. After sending my bag to the top via gondola, I slowly started warming up. When it was close to my start time I got in line and waited through the large crowd. They weighed my bike, presumably to make sure it was over the 6.8 kg limit which it was by far, and I got closer to the start house. When I reached the front, they had a platform with a small start ramp. Two people held my bike as I got clipped in and gave me a countdown and then I was on my way! It started off at around 12% and then dropped down to average around 8% for the rest of the way. All kinds of people were participating ranging from inline skaters, roller skiers, people on tandems, people on 5dems (one driver and two sets of two next to each other), unicyclers, and apparently someone in a wheelchair. After passing a bunch of people and being passed by a few as well a guy who looked about my age caught up to me a little bit after the 4 km to go sign. I decided to stick with him, and after he mumbled something in German we stayed together until 1km to go at which point he dropped me saying something in German that I'd assume meant hurry up.
I made it to the top shortly after him and after getting some to drink and eat we talked for a bit. It was his 4th time doing this race, and he was from a town about 80 km away. As I was recovering another person came up to me and asked if I was from SLO, referring to my Cal Poly jersey. We talked for a while and it turns out that his family used to live in Palo Alto. He is in Germany to write some sort of history book. After enjoying the festivities for a while and deciding that this would be a bad time for a beer, as tempting as it was, I got back on my bike and rode home.
By the evening they had already posted results which is quite impressive as this race had almost 1000 participants! I completed the hill climb in 42 minutes putting me at 64th out of 118 in the open men's category. The winning time was around 31 minutes, a time I'm sure I will beat when I race next year. This was an excellent first race in Europe and I'm planning on doing more before I leave.

España

Friday was the last day at Uni Freiburg for one of the two people from Spain in our group. Because of this the 2 Spanish people decided to throw a spain party. So after spending the morning doing one of the biannual lab cleanups, we all were met with a delicious lunch of Spanish food. We had Spanish omelet, jamon serrano (Spanish prosciutto), different kinds of spanish sausage, rolls, sangria, and beer. Everyone very much enjoyed all of the different food and drink. It turns out that for insurance reasons after drinking, doing lab work is not allowed. This caused the afternoon to be much less productive than usual. Some people did work on their computers, some sat out on the front lawn, and some just disappeared. I think I could learn to deal with this kind of life. Oh, there's still beer in the fridge for next week!

Rain!

So after a long 90F day of working with no airconditioning in long pants, a lab coat, and gloves coating tube after tube and then testing them to make sure the polymer had adhered it was finally time to go home. I got changed into shorts ready for a hot ride home and walked outside into pouring rain. I considered my options: Call Ossi and hope he could pick me up, take the train and then be stranded at the train station, or ride home like usual. As my mother taught me I made a list of the pros and cons of each and decided that I would ride home as usual (the final pro being saving Claudia and Ossi from having to pay the water bill on my shower for that evening). Within seconds I was drenched and the rain, thunder and lightning held out all the way home keeping me nice and cool.

Now we're done with the biomed

This is what Ossi said to me Tuesday after a much less stressful and more successful day at the lab coating tubes. I looked at him confused and he said if we're not doing biomed then it's time for beer! And with that we settled in to watch the Netherlands beat Uruguay!

Wednesday was a big day! It was Germany vs Spain to see who would be going to the world cup finals. As was tradition the whole neighborhood turned out for a pre game barbecue. So far when they'd had a barbecue Germany had won so they couldn't stop now. Everyone was quite nervous since Paul the Octopus Oracle had predicted Spain to take the win. As it turned out Paul was quite right as Spain played much stronger than Germany, and recipes for barbecued octopus began being discussed. Fussball is probably the only thing that can make all of Germany cheer or groan in unison.

Day 1

Monday. 6:30 AM. Time for day 1 of work. After a tasty breakfast of rolls, jam, wurst (German lunch meat), and cheese, the standard breakfast in the house. Ossi and I got on our bikes and took the long way through the woods to the train station. Though Ossi has a monthly pass for the train, I had to buy my ticket. There are machines on the train that sell tickets. On the machines they suggest you use exact change. Of course for my 3.60 train ticket I only had a 5 and so i put it in the machine and not only did it give me my ticket but I hit the jackpot. It just rained coins into the dispenser slot for 15 or twenty minutes. When I took them all out and counted I found that it had given me my 1.40 change in 10 cent pieces. After a short trip we arrived at the campus and the day began. First we had a group meeting during which general announcements for the group are made and a couple of the PhD Students present where they are in their research. The first of these presentations was done by a man named DingDing. Here is what I can tell you about the presentation: HydrogelscaptureandreleasevitaminD3. Now this may sound very complicated, I think it was as it lasted for 76 slides, but the combination of the technical language, the accent, my complete lack of chemistry knowledge and a hint of jetlag had me completely boggled and nodding off within the first half hour of my first day at work. A great way to start. (I came to find out later that even the other chemistry PhD students were bored to tears by it.) The next presentation by Nico was much more interesting and straightforward involving creating flaps that could be controlled to mix very small amounts of substances on a chip on the nanometer scale. At the end of the meeting Ossi introduced me to Pandi, the PhD student who I was assisting. Ossi left shortly thereafter to go to a meeting and when I looked around Pandi was nowhere to be found. Luckily by following others I was able to track him down. The rest of the day was somewhat of a whirlwind. Not only was there a lot that I was told and shown, but combining my lack of chemistry knowledge, and the speed and accent that Pandi speaks at I was struggling. I was given a tour of the different labs in the department and shown all of the very expensive equipment that I could only imagine the uses for. Pandi then told me about our project. We were coating tubes with a polymer that would hopefully prevent thrombolytics by sticking to the tubing and repelling cells that normally get stuck and cause blockages. The current problem with this coating was the actual coating process. We needed a way to prevent air bubbles from forming to ensure an even and thorough coating.

At the end of the day, Ossi and I took the train home (I actually received a 1 Euro coin in change this time), had dinner and I promptly fell asleep after a long and stressful first day.

The first adventure

Today started rather early (amazingly at my request). I suppose it started extra early if the thunder storm waking me for a brief moment counts. But apparently there was to be some sort of rather large chemistry apparatus moved from the nearest port Rhine where it had been shipped to all the way up to Freiburg. Something this size would be impressive in the US, however the road that connects these two cities was 1 lane in each direction... barely. To allow this rather large apparatus to pass they essentially dismantled this entire section of Germany. They moved road blockades, cut down trees, and took down power lines. To go watch this phenomenon pass Claudia woke me at 6:30. We ran, with me in flip flops, to the street where it was supposed to go and we were already too late. So we piled into the car and drove to the next town and were able to witness the entire convoy rolling by. Quite a way to start a Sunday morning!

After the excitement from the morning it was decided that for the afternoon adventure we would bike to get Eis [cream] (In traditional Marcum 4th of July celebration). After a very relaxing ride we made it to our destination. After enjoying our food, Claudia and Ossi decided that we might as well swing by France. I'm still in shock that just like that we rode across a bridge and were in a different country with a different language and culture. There was not passport check, just a bridge over the Rhine river. we made it home, I fought sleep for another few hours and passed out with thoughts of my first day at work.

How I got to the beer

A number of months ago I was looking for a internship in biomedical engineering. Having only completed two years of college and with no experience in the field, internships were not particularly easy to come by. Add to this my desire to stay in the Bay Area for the summer and my options were very limited. Figuring that I would try to use all available networking opportunities I posted to Facebook that I was looking for an internship. Low and behold it worked, but not quite where I had expected.

Our family friend Ossi sent me a message asking if I would be interested in interning in his lab in Freiburg, Germany testing biomaterials. After discussing this idea it was decided that this is how I would spend my summer.

So tickets were bought, plans were made, bags were packed (eventually) and on the evening of July 2nd I was delivered to San Fransisco to attempt to make my way to Freiburg where I would be met by one of my hosts. After checking in, mother and I spent a delightful few minutes stalling by looking at antique German china that I couldn't differentiate from plates from a garage sale. She then sent me away and next thing I knew I was on the plane on the way to Germany. I had a very enjoyable flight that included dinner just after takeoff. a roll with something resembling meat and a slice of plastic and yogurt posing as breakfast just before landing, but by the time I disembarked I had already missed out on lunch.

I then meandered towards the train station. After negotiating the ticket machine which seemed to want to know everything about my plan for the train ride right down to how many trips to the WC I'd need, it gave me a ticket and I continued to the proper platform and settled in. A bit before 15:54, the arrival time, my train's information showed up on the display board and by 15:56 the information from the next train had replaced it. Now if I had been on the train I would not have known when it's information would have disappeared but of course the train did not show up. The next train came and went as did the one after that. Being somewhat worried that I had misunderstood the German train system I did what any logical person would do when his train does not show up, I continued sitting there. My train did show up however, a mere half hour later and I along with the rest of Germany squeezed on to the train. Immediately numerous laptops were opened and connected to the train's wifi to attempt to watch Germany destroy Argentina. Despite the miserable connection due to so many people trying to stream the game, I was able to at least keep up with the score thanks to the conductor announcing the score frequently over the loudspeaker.

After a fast (upwards of 250 km/hr) train ride I arrived in Freiburg and was greeted by Claudia. As we drove towards Merdingen, all of Germany was out in the streets yelling, honking horns, and generally celebrating the utter destruction of Argentina. When we finally reached the house, I was greeted much to Claudia's chagrin with the bier that I had traveled so far to get to. And that is how I got to the bier.