A Sort of Homecoming

Once more it took me longer than anticipated (and than I had hoped) to update this blog. In case you are still bearing with me, thank you for your patience!

The previous post was a bit of escapism, telling you how I travel around between Stuttgart, Ulm, and Oberkochen, in order to escape the scarse supply of entertainment in town, and the dullness of not being online at home. Now, as to the latter, this has been remedied since about one month ago, which is now enabling me to post more regularly ... or so I wish. The former isn't actually so bad asit may have sounded in the revious post. I just needed to adjust a little more and find some hobbies I can pursue on my own.
I would like to prove that I have found more than one such occupation. In principle I have been a lover of photography (myself taking the photo, that is) for a long time. Recently I awarded myself for (re-)joining the work force with a new DSLR camera the technical possibilities of which certainly outdo my skills at this point. But I will accept the challenge and try to become an even more avid picture taker (and, by extension, an even more dedicated blogger) in the future. - The other hobby I have come to indulge in is cooking.
But let's have a look at the photos in this post. Starting out with the visit of my godchild and his parents (which, by coincidence, took place on the very weekend I had posted that whiny complaint about the lack of distraction in Oberkochen), we find that I am still in touch with them, and this time it took them only a few months to come and see me after I had moved to a new location. Not that I would blame them - having a family means a lot of your spare time is booked already. Nevertheless, (a)-(d) show that they were here, and we were having a great time together!
The next highlight was my quick and spontaneous getaway to Munich, for New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. Despite spending only one night there, I got to see much of the downtown area ((e), (f), (i), (j)), I rode the subway ("U-Bahn") to move around the city ((g) was taken at Marienplatz, beneath the City Hall), I went on top of the TV tower at the Olympic Stadium of 1972 ((h), I will have to do this again when it is allowed to access the open platform, so there won't be any reflections from the windows), I had several slices of really delicious pizza at La Pizzetta ((k), note that Munich is only a couple of hours away from Italy), and some equally satisfying ice cream next door at Häagen Dazs, but by then I had grown weary of walking in the rain, so I decided to return to the hotel and await the new year in a supine position (i.e., watching television). Nevertheless, on the way back I came by the central train station, where I bought a piccolo size bottle of champaign and a bag of potato chips for a proper welcome celebration for 2012. (After all, I was having much greater expectations for this year than I was having for the one before ...) So I did celebrate a bit, even if it wasn't in the company of other folks. And finally, the next day I had an original Bavarian lunch at Augustiner, a local micro brewery ((l) wild boar, a dumpling, mushrooms, and some berries). In fact, I had a late Bavarian lunch the day before, too, but there is no photo. Either way, Bavaria is beer country, so there was no peril of going thirsty ...
Back at home in Oberkochen, I recently continued to practice my photographing skills, and the results can be examined in (m)-(o). As to the cooking, last weekend I prepared scallops as my Sunday lunch ((p) a dish I have picked up from my mother's finer repertoire; i.e., for rather special occasions, or at least for a Sunday).
Today, I eventually decided to familiarize myself a little more with Oberkochen, and thus to climb on top of the Volkmarsberg, the local mountain with an outlook tower. Given the beatiful sunshine I seemed like a brilliant idea to do this, and to take the new camera out for yet another sightseeing session. I did get a few nice shots ((q)-(s)), but I never made it up to the tower. Unfortunately the sunshine comes at a price, which is a hefty freezing cold temperature. Americans would refer to this as being "in the low single digits": i.e., around 0-5°F. Everyone else is using the Ceslius scale, so it is around -15°C. After walking for about 15 min in that cold I arrived at a parking lot where Oberkochen borders the forest. There was a sign that the tower was another 25 min away, so I lost my enthusiasm and just took a few shots from the parking lot. After all it is already nicely above the town, and it offers a great view. I'll visit the outlook tower when I can do so safely without a jacket. Fingers crossed that there will be just as much sunshine as today on a weekend in spring, because the tower opens only on Saturday afternoons, and Sundays.
I would like to conclude by saying that I have come to view Oberkochen as my home every day a little more ... as long as I don't have to shovel snow!

The Great Escape

It has been longer than expected for me to write forth this little blog of mine. The reason is simple - I have been deprived from internet access at home ever since I moved to my new home in southern Germany. Of course I have submitted a subscription with a provider company; however, as it turned out, they have to rely on the bandwidth they receive from the former state-owned, former monopolist, Deutsche Telekom (or just Telekom). Naturally Telekom will cling to any advantage they have in this competitive business, so they won't easily give up bandwidth to their competitors, hoping potential new customers will eventually get annoyed with them, and return to the save haven of Mother Telekom ... Alas, but not me! Unfortunately I am forced to buy a landline phone connection through Telekom, but then I will have internet through their competitor, 1&1; and the latter will check recurringly for available phone bandwidth of their own in my area, so that in the long run I can transfer to 1&1 entirely. This is part one of the Great Escape - escaping from the claws of a former monopolist with almost proverbially poor customer service.

Escaped I have, of course, also from the limbo of unemployment; this being the second leg of my Great Escape. Though I had to relocate once more (the number of moves I have had in my live seems to already approach double digits), and this time to the very rural Svabian Alb (quite unlike the urban giants, Chicago and Berlin), I am happy beyond being able to tell you that I have secured this job! It is essentially how I have always imagined my first industry job to be - an exhilaratingly motivated, yet totally welcoming crew of colleagues, a super-exciting product of great impact on the high tech community, an adequate level of remuneration - all in all a very satisfaying package. Yes, there are disadvantages, too, but they are far outweighed by the pros (and of course I'm not allowed to talk bad about my employer ... but seriously, it's a great job!).

However, there is even a third part to my Great Escape, and that is escaping from the occasional dullness that arises on weekends in places like Oberkochen, population < 8,000, number of traffic lights: zero. Thus, in the first weeks at my new place it was literally every weekend that I drove south to a city called Ulm, which has the nearest IKEA. To those who are unfamiliar with the concept: IKEA sells furniture of decent (yet not great) quality for little (yet not very little) money. The trick is that they can rely heavily on mass production - IKEA is somewhat of the McDonald's of furniture, in terms of world-wide representation, even though they like to think of themselves as very green. Also, the furniture is assembled by the buyer; you only get the parts in a few boxes, and you have to demonstrate your crafty skills at home. Well, despite occasional breakdowns that are rumored to occur over the latter, finding a space to park your car at IKEA on a Saturday may well be a greater test of your patience ... Anyways, I think I have done quite okay in setting up all my furniture, and after a while you got it figured out that most IKEA pieces are built in similar ways. By the way, it's not that I moved into a totally blank apartment - I had a basic set to make me feel at home right away; but then I needed more shelves for the living room, and then I discovered that I could transport an entire dining table for 4-6 persons in my tiny Peugeot 107 (which is about the size of the trunk of a full fledged American SUV ...)., and then I decided I didn't like the old study room furniture I was given by my parents. In total I may have spent at least twice as much money in extra tours to Ulm than I did on the original pieces I moved in with. But buying and assembling furniture isn't the only escape from rural Oberkochen I allowed myself. Slightly further to the west from Oberkochen than Ulm is to the south, there is Stuttgart, the capital of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. That's where I have commuted about every week to spend time in places called Starbucks and Coffee Fellows. Even though I feel seriously apalled already by the smell of coffee, I do enjoy their free public internet - for customers, of course, so I resorted to a hot chocolate. I already drove almost 6,000 km with my new car - since I've got it in August, that is. Fortunately it is really not thirsty. According to the manufacturer it consumes about 4.5 L of gas over 100 km, which corresponds to about 60 miles per gallon. Given that gas is about twice as expensive in Germany as it is in the U.S., I do appreciate the low consumption. It's green, too, of course; and all of that makes up for the only 60 horsepower that force me to think twice before I take over a slow truck on a narrow road ...

But after a threefold escape, one might wonder whether I will actually settle down after all. Yes, despite the lack of entertainment, I feel like I have settled down in Oberkochen, and I could stay very well for quite a while. To explain why that is so, I am sharing with you some of the impressions I managed to capture - with my new camera, a Canon EOS 600D.
(a) me at the welcoming sign at the southern end of Oberkochen
(b) the train station of Oberkochen (it's really just an Asian restaurant with a beergarden, the actual station is a single platform)
(c) looking across the valley
(d) the southern tail of Oberkochen - I live now in the peculiarly peach-colored house in the center of the photo, just above the meadows
(e) a spiderweb outside my window that my camera was able to capture (I insist that there are no spiderwebs on the inside)
(f) the tower of the local church, at the center of Oberkochen
(g) an interesting fountain, also at the center, reminding me of far-far-away Alaska ("drill, baby, drill")
(h) a tree in the middle of the road near the train station
(i) southbound railroad tracks, leading to Ulm
(j) Oberkocheners like to wave their flag, too
(k) not so ugly ducklings
(l) an old building
(m) lots of light in that backyard
(n) the graveyard of Oberkochen - there is also an undertaker's business, so if I am destined to stay here for good, the essentials are taken care of ...
(o) a practice close-up of a leaf on the graveyard wall
(p) another practice shot, from above the bridge at the southern exit of Oberkochen
(q) a close up of the Rain Tree in Aalen, which is the seat of what Anglo-Saxons would call a county
(r) the old town of Aalen
(s) more of old Aalen
(t) a little ditch that drains water from the Rain Tree (along with my long afternoon shadow)
(u) a square at the center of the old town of Aalen
(v) Obviously the owner of this car doesn' know what (s)he is doing ... especially since the first group of (1-3) letters represents the county, but the subsequent 1-2 letters and 1-4 digits are random and can be picked according to personal taste, subject to availability ...

Carl Zeiss Syn-"op"-sis

Good news! After almost one entire year of frustration (post-graduation unemployment is very much like "post-production hell" in the movie industry) I can proudly report that as of September 1, 2011, I am employed by Carl Zeiss AG, respectively a subsidiary, Carl Zeiss Laser Optics GmbH. (AG and GmbH denote the type of legal entity company belongs to, such as the American Ltd., Inc., Corp., etc.) I received the phone call on the birthday of a good friend of mine from college times, and apparently I will join the work force just two days after my own 35th birthday ...
Carl Zeiss has been around for more than one century, and made a name for itself as a world-renowned optics supplier. The founder, Mr. Carl Zeiss, started out as a workshop employee at the university of Jena (Thuringia, Germany), where he would, in collaboration with Physics faculty member Dr. Ernst Abbe, for the first time develop optical microscopes in accordance with physical theory. Prior to this, microscopes had been built in an inefficient trial-and-error fashion, but from then onward it was possible to reliably manufacture them in larger quantities. The duo was later joined by chemist Dr. Otto Schott, who did seminal work on improving the quality of the glass that was used for the microscopes' lenses. This fruitful collaboration became a successful business, when Zeiss and Schott started their own companies, Carl Zeiss AG and SCHOTT AG, which till the present day continue the original shared work of making glass at the latter and shaping it into optical devices at the former. - Abbe did not have a company of his own, but later became the head of Carl Zeiss AG, and an as prominent as important figure for the Carl Zeiss foundation, which is still the owner of both aforementioned businesses.
With time Carl Zeiss AG has started to occupy other fields of optical applications, including the proximate manufacturing of glasses, but also of instrumentation for medical applications, electron microscopes (which employ electrons instead of light for higher resolution), photo cameras and related accessories, and of lasers for special applications. This last activity is carried out by a subsidiary called Carl Zeiss Laser Optics GmbH, which I am joining now.
However, today the headquarters of Carl Zeiss AG are no longer in Jena, due to (very unfortunate) historical events. As it is widely known, Germany started, and lost, World War II, leaving it occupied by the allied forces: France, the United Kingdom and the United States in the western part, and the Soviet Union in the eastern part. The American-British-French "trizone" eventually evolved into the western "Federal Republic of Germany" (FRG). A not-so-well-known fact is that a part of what would later become the Eastern "German Democratic Republic" (GDR), namely Thuringia (German: Thüringen), was originally occupied by the Americans, but was traded in for one sector of each of the three western allies in Berlin. Thus, the Soviets withdrew from West-Berlin (where I pursued my doctorate!), which prior to 1990, when Germany was reunified, belonged to the FRG, but gained control over Thuringia. In anticipation of the emerging Cold War, the U.S. dismantled many, if not all, Thuringian high-tech sites, including those of Carl Zeiss in Jena, which were relocated to the state of Baden-Württemberg, which was in their part of the FRG. From the onward, Carl Zeiss AG has been headquartered in Oberkochen, near Aalen, 70 km east of Baden-Württemberg's capital Stuttgart, and 50 km north of Ulm. The new site is very close to the German state of Bavaria, which is adjacent to Baden-Württemberg to the east. (Funny enough, the surface area of Bavaria is about as large as that of Lake Michigan, and Oberkochen / Aalen are almost as close to the inter-state border as Chicago is to the lakefront ...)
As mentioned at the outset of this post, Carl Zeiss AG is an optics supplier. Their photography division used to be renowned for the Zeiss Ikon model, which became defunct, but was revived in 2005. My mother had once been presented such a camera as a gift from her father, and she passed it on to me on the occasion of my being hired. Please join me in marveling at this beautiful piece of vintage technology, encased in a no less beautiful leather hull, as depicted in the left photograph. (The inset shows the Zeiss Ikon logo.) - Coincidentally, my current camera was produced by Jenoptik, another pre-WWII subsidiary Carl Zeiss AG subsidiary. It is depicted to the right, photographed with the camera of my father. (I bought the Jenoptik in 2006, when I was visiting Glasgow, which had been my home for 3.5 months in 2002, and at the time of the visit was where my sister was doing one semester abroad, just like myself. - If you click on the image and then enhance it to its actual size, you can see a reflection of me taking the picture on the tiny metal knob between the flash and the objective.) Since I am thinking about buying a more sophisticated D-SLR camera, now that I am about to earn good money, I will probably give the Jenoptik to my mother, who currently doesn't own any camera at all.
So much for a synopsis on my new employer and the related history; a term that is of course etymologically related to optics, the Carl Zeiss AG's core business.

FIFA 2011 Women's World Cup

As I have previously mentioned in the post on my trip to Berlin, Germany was the host of the FIFA 2011 Women's World Cup, which has ended less than two hours ago. Much was written in the run-up to this event about gender equality, as in Germany women were banned from playing soccer until the 1970s. I would like to refrain from adding any more this this debate, while also drawing your attention to another earlier post, on women in science.
Nevertheless, since I would prefer my significant other to be female, and since I have also been an avid lover of soccer for virtually all of my life, I confess that the combination of two concepts that appeal to me leaves me no less than enthusiastic. When I was a boy, children's birthdays were a little complicated because the boys wanted to play soccer, and the girls preferred Blind Man's Buff (or so I remember). Nowadays, it seems, gender stereotypes have eroded, and the ladies are into physical games just the same. Well, you can tell that this is definitely in my good books! In other words, if you are a thirtysomething female soccer player, with decent guitar skills and a progressive mindset - I fear I would drop dead at the mere sight of you ...
To dissociate myself from any hint of male chauvinism, I would like to congratulate all contestants of the FIFA 2011 World Cup on their performance. Especially, thank you for the most thrilling final (including extra time and penalty shootout) I have seen in a long time. Team USA was a worthy opponent, but over the course of the whole match, and the entire tournament, Japan has earned the title of World Champion most convincingly.
Then again, it's not a crime if I find some (many) of the players pretty, is it? (At least not as big a crime as stealing the photo from somewhere in the depths of the Internet, I guess.)
Update, July 19, 2011: Last night, while in line for a movie ticket, I overheard a conversation about the final. A person stated that the performance of the US team in the penalty shootout (three misses in the first three shots) was so bad, it were a reason not to watch women's soccer in general. The person was a young woman, age 20+.

Ingobertusfest

This is actually an ancillary post to the announcement of Heinrich's successful defense. The same night, after returning to St. Ingbertby train, I walked home from the train station, which is located on the far end of the town. That weekend the Ingobertsfest (St. Ingbert's equivalent to Saarbrücken's Altstadtfest) of 2011 was taking place. To my benefit I could buy a Schwenker steak, and spend a few minutes in front of a musical stage before eventually heading home. To demonstrate the skill level of some local bands, I recorded a short video clip - but beware! These guys rock!

Another successful PhD defense!

The weekend after my most recent Berlin trip was marked by the upcoming doctoral examination (colloquially known as the PhD defense) of my college friend Heinrich (english "Henry"). Heinrich was the last of my friends at my college, TU Kaiserslautern, to finish his PhD there. While originally being a student of a combined chemistry/business program, he later decided to fully immerse himself in scientific research, and obtain the degree of Dr. rer. nat. (english "doctor in natural sciences"), which I am holding myself. He was working in the same group where I pursued my Diplomarbeit (roughly equivalent to the thesis work of a Master's degree in the U.S.) to become a Diplomchemiker (abbrev. Dipl.-Chem., the only pre-doctoral degree conferred upon completion of a chemistry curriculum, until the advent of the tripartite Anglosaxon Bachelor's / Master's / Doctor's degree system in the European Union. In that respect, returning to Kaiserslautern was like yet another "blast from the past", considering I was in Berlin just one week earlier ...
I seized the day to take a few pictures: (a) the building of the Department of Electrical Engineering, where I was enrolled in 1997-1998 before switching to Chemistry, (b) a few old friends in the auditorium of Heinrich's presentation, (c) the main entrance to the Department of Chemistry, (d) Heinrich being "hatted" by his labmates
The tradition of "cap and gown", as conferred in an Academic Commencement ceremony in the United States, has been abandonned in Germany's public universities in the aftermath of the 1968 student rebellion, and thus in the science departments the labmates craft a hat for the graduate-to-be, decorated with items and pictures alluding to the candidate's personality, and to anecdotes associated with him. In Heinrich's case, at the core of his research was the design of a cooling device for a measurement apparatus, which he nicknamed "Tweety" due to the sound it produces - hence the Tweety insigniae all over his hat!
The absence of an official graduation day leads to the somewhat undue situation that the certificate that legally enables the graduate to hold his or her newly obtained degree will be sent by mail, or at best be handed over by a representative of the university's administration. Also, for this to happen it is required that the candidate "publishes" the thesis with one year's time; i.e., makes it available to the university library after all editing has been finalized. (In the case of my own doctorate I at least got congratulated by a quite friendly lady who was in charge of all PhD affairs of the university.) In other words, after a (presumably) successful defense there are still some formalities standing between the candidate and his becoming a graduate, which may take up to one month!
Nevertheless, friends and family are allowed to praise the performance at the defense, and offer congratulations, and even call the candidate a doctor without legal implications. It is also customary to celebrate the success on the day of the defense, usually paid for by the candidate (or someone close). We did honor that tradition and celebrated Heinrich until nightfall and beyond, but I had to leave to catch a train back home at 10 pm. Still, it was great to meet with some old friends again, some of whom I hadn't seen in almost a decade ... making me aware of the fact that my departure from Kaiserslautern is now longer ago than the duration of the time I spent there. And with the graduation of Heinrich I feel I have no immediate reason left to visit this school, other than pure sentimentality.
Thus, all that's left for me to say here is: Congratulations Dr. Heinrich! Well done!

"Du bist so wunderbar, Berlin!"

"Berlin! Du bist so wunderbar, Berlin!" This is the chorus of the 2003 song by a band called Kaiserbase, which translates to "Berlin! You are you wonderful, Berlin!" It was popularized nationwide in Germany through its use in a television commercial for Berliner Pilsener beer. This period coincides roughly with my time as a graduate student at the Fritz Haber Institute, and hence it has become my unofficial anthem of this indeed wonderful city.
I haven't found the time to visit Berlin since my return from the US of A, even though thinking about it did make me quite homesick. Finally, my friends Heather and Jon, who are avid Berlin lovers just as much as I am, came back for a visit, or actually in the case of Jon for a (short) work-related stint. With my good friends back on "home-away-from-home turf" I had a good reason to kick my rear and hop on the next train to our capital.
In a way it felt different, but many things have remained the same. The difference is that this time I strolled around the city with a sense of accomplishment, which replaced the previous feeling of belonging. While being a student I often pictured my first return, imagining it must feel great, if not triumphant, to enjoy Berlin without the ever-pending pressure to succeed in the pursuit of my doctorate ... In fact this wasn't entirely untrue, but the former connection, arising from a lengthy task that required my day-to-day attention, has diminished. It also plays a role that many of my former colleagues are no longer there. The student who took over my office space told me that she is now one of the most senior students in the department.
Nevertheless, it was a great experience to come back, even for just half a week. (I arrived on thursday afternoon, and left on monday after lunch.) No doubt the seven hours one-way train ride was totally worth it! Of course the main reason for me was to reunite with Heather and Jon, but I was also taking advantage of the location, trying to revive as many memories as possible. By a pleasant coincidence my hotel was on the same subway line I had to take when I first interviewed for the position as a graduate student, so the route itself already brought about some forgotten memories. One particular sensation was recalled at the Spichernstraße subway station, where the air is moved heftily by the trains on the platform of the U9 line, but is notably cooler and less turbulent at the top end of the escalator to the U3 line that intersects there with the U9. Another significant "reenactment" was having an Italian gelato at the Potsdamer Platz Arcaden shopping mall, which is so highly reputated that during daytime the waiting time is at least 15 min! (And yes, I definitely got a sweet tooth!) Since my arrival in Berlin was on a short notice Heather and I would not meet until the second night, so I engaged in my favorite passtime: watching a movie at the Cinestar Original movie theater; "original" referring to the fact that the movies aren't dubbed, but feature the original English audio.
I revisited a number of sites, as depicted in the phtot collection, including (a) my old house (I used to live on the third floor to the left of the entrance that is to the left of the big window), (b-c) the Hauptbahnhof (central train station) ((b) a view from the platform for east/west-bound trains on the top floor, all the way down to the platform for north/south-bound trains on the bottom floor, the two being a solid 25 m (82 ft) apart, (c) a sign announcing an inbound over-night train from Berlin to Paris, which has its only stop en route in Saarbrücken, my birth place), (d) a meadow just across the street from the Fritz Haber Institute, where I used to play pick-up soccer (with real goals that we would bring along, built in the institute's own workshop), (e) the fountain at the famous Alexanderplatz (Alexander plaza, named in honor of a visit of Russian tsar Alexander I.), sporting the nickname "hooker's brooch" (Berliners have a reputation for their potty mouths!), (f) the Reichstag building (home of the Bundestag, the "national" chamber / "lower house" of the German parliament, the other being the Bundesrat, or "federal" chamber / "upper house"), (g) a night out with (from left to right): Wiebke, another Fritz Haber alumna (and also one of my former office mates), Tia (originally a friend of Heather's, now also of Wiebke's), and Heather, along with their respective significant others, (h) a placard advertising the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup, in which Germany is the host nation (the slogan translates to "Guys, we will avenge you", a reference to the men's competition hosted by Germany in 2006, where the German team came out third, while everyone had hoped for the championship - unfortunately the German women's team got kicked out as early as in the quarterfinals), (i) the façade of KaDeWe (Kaufhaus des Westens, english Department Store of the West, the second-biggest department store in Europe after Harrods in London (which of course leaves KaDeWe the biggest department store in continental Europe)).
To sum up, this short getaway did quench my homesickness for Berlin for a while (and it also remined me of the less pleasant aspects, such as the very long commutes across the city that are additionally impeded by the many urban rail stations under constructions). Yet a part of my heart will always be in Berlin (just like in Chicago!), and I will always need to return every once in a while ...