Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Day 9 - BMW
Today we spent the day at BMW. We started around 10 for a tour of the BMW Museum. Our tour guides were very good and we had a good time seeing all the various engines and cars. The museum had some great history and is very well done. After a little break we headed off on a BMW factory tour. The tour was pretty good and fun to see a lot of cool robots. However, this year some of the robots were offline and the final assembly as not operating. We still saw a lot of cool stuff in action, like painting robots, welding robots, and engine assembly.
After the BMW tour we let the kids have the afternoon off. Andi and I went to Fransikaner for a great dinner of Spanfarkel and Dunkels. Viel Spaß!
Andi says the pedometer reports 7.9 miles, 19 floors climbed, 17,800 steps.
Monday, May 20, 2013
Day 8 - Ulm and Munich
Today was another travel day. We caught a 9 AM train toward Munich but stopped in Ulm. Ulm is home to the Ulmer Münster, the tallest church in the world. After a short walk from the train station, we set forth to climb the church tower, all 470 ft and 770 steps. Luckily, the weather was absolutely beautiful so we managed a lot of great pictures. It was a bit windy and cold, but it made climbing not to hot and sweaty.
After lunch, we got back on the train to Munich. We set up in our hotel and immediately went on a nice tour with a very energetic tour guide that really did a great job explaining the history of Munich. He was funny and energetic. Andi and I thought it was the best tour we had seen in quite a while! He explained a lot of things about the history of the area and it was very interesting and fun.
Andi says the pedometer reads 8.7 miles, 10 flights of stairs, 19,700 steps. She did not do the Ulmer Münster, so our numbers are greater...
After lunch, we got back on the train to Munich. We set up in our hotel and immediately went on a nice tour with a very energetic tour guide that really did a great job explaining the history of Munich. He was funny and energetic. Andi and I thought it was the best tour we had seen in quite a while! He explained a lot of things about the history of the area and it was very interesting and fun.
Andi says the pedometer reads 8.7 miles, 10 flights of stairs, 19,700 steps. She did not do the Ulmer Münster, so our numbers are greater...
Sunday, May 19, 2013
Day 7 - Stuttgart Palaces
Today was a free day. Andi and I wanted to meet up with some friends from our sabbatical time in Stuttgart. Also, I wanted to offer a side tour to any students interested in tagging along with us. Amazingly, 17 of 22 wanted to go along! So today we caught a 10:00 train to Ludwigsburg, a nearby city. There are three nice palaces in Ludwigsburg, but we only planned to see two of them. The third was smaller and much further away, difficult to get to by public transit / foot.
We started out in a nice wooded area. This was a fenced forest where kings would go hunting for stocked deer. Sometimes they would have the deer driven towards them so they would not have to work at all to hunt. There was a small palace at the end of the park, Schloss Favorite. We took a quick tour of the palace with a nice man guiding us around.
Next, we walked to the larger palace, the Ludwigsburg Residenz Schloss. We had some time to kill so we walked around the extensive gardens for a bit. They have cafes, bird enclosures, geometric gardens, fountains, fairy tale houses and other things around the palace ardents. We started the tour at 1:30 but the tour took much longer than expected. Everyone was very tired when we were done plus it started raining. Despite this, I think they all had quite an experience for 10 Euros.
Andi and I had dinner with our friends at Paulaner. Later, Claudia helped me acquire something I have desired for many years, a Stuttgarter Hofbräu Hefeweizen Glas!
Andi reports 8.1 miles, 31 floors, 18,200 steps.
Saturday, May 18, 2013
Day 6 - Stuttgart
Today we finally woke again to beautiful weather. Beautiful blue skies and just a few clouds floating by. We got a late start and headed to the Mercedes Museum. This was one of our first times riding the S Bahn with this group and they did fine. The museum was pretty good, but I felt rushed. We had a good guide, but we could have spent a little more time on a few topics. More importantly, Andi and I realized two very significant things: the A class mercedes looks nice on the outside but is really poorly designed and constructed inside. And the Mercedes mini-van is basically a shambles compared to anything in the US. I guess we won't be importing either any time soon.
After a quick lunch, we headed out to the Porsche museum. While Mercedes had a lot of history as the inventor of the internal combustion engine and automobile, Porsche is all about speed. The racing enthusiasts loved it. Others, not so much. One fun highlight, we tried to make the 4:31 so we had to run and catch it. A few were late, so Andi and I waited with them for the 5:01. We eventually met up with everyone in the palace park near the main train station in the beer garden for dinner. After dinner, many of us hit the spa to relax with some steam and heat.
I have not uploaded more photos for two days because the internet here in Stuttgart is free but limited. I will probably pay to get full access Sunday night and dump three days of pictures at once.
Andi reports that her pedometer says 7.7 miles, 11 floors, 17,290 steps.
After a quick lunch, we headed out to the Porsche museum. While Mercedes had a lot of history as the inventor of the internal combustion engine and automobile, Porsche is all about speed. The racing enthusiasts loved it. Others, not so much. One fun highlight, we tried to make the 4:31 so we had to run and catch it. A few were late, so Andi and I waited with them for the 5:01. We eventually met up with everyone in the palace park near the main train station in the beer garden for dinner. After dinner, many of us hit the spa to relax with some steam and heat.
I have not uploaded more photos for two days because the internet here in Stuttgart is free but limited. I will probably pay to get full access Sunday night and dump three days of pictures at once.
Andi reports that her pedometer says 7.7 miles, 11 floors, 17,290 steps.
Day 5 - Freiburg to Stuttgart
Today was a travel day, so things were a bit quiet. We left Freiburg at noon by train to Karlsruhe. We had an hour there to eat lunch, then catch the train to Stuttgart. We had to carry our bags about half a mile up a hill to our hotel, but it was worth it. This is the nicest hotel we will stay in the whole trip.
We regrouped and left the hotel before 4. The afternoon was free. I had hoped to go to the zoo, but the weather was gray and cold. We went into town, thinking the museum in the castle would be something to do but it was a bit expensive (last year it was free due to construction). So we just dispersed and went our separate ways in Stuttgart. Stuttgart is bustling with activity compared to Freiburg. Andi and I tried to meet up with a friend from when we lived in Stuttgart but we had some communication troubles. We went back to the hotel after dinner and enjoyed the spa, along with a few of the students.
Despite being a down day, Andi's pedometer reports 6 miles, 12 floors, 13,500 steps.
We regrouped and left the hotel before 4. The afternoon was free. I had hoped to go to the zoo, but the weather was gray and cold. We went into town, thinking the museum in the castle would be something to do but it was a bit expensive (last year it was free due to construction). So we just dispersed and went our separate ways in Stuttgart. Stuttgart is bustling with activity compared to Freiburg. Andi and I tried to meet up with a friend from when we lived in Stuttgart but we had some communication troubles. We went back to the hotel after dinner and enjoyed the spa, along with a few of the students.
Despite being a down day, Andi's pedometer reports 6 miles, 12 floors, 13,500 steps.
Friday, May 17, 2013
Day 4 - Fraunhofer
Today we toured the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy in Freiburg. This is a cutting-edge applied R&D lab that works on government and private industry contracts. They do a lot of photovoltaic work, setting world records for efficiency in different categories. They work on traditional silicon, focused light solar, multi-band PV, thin film, and dye based PV systems. They do work on infrastructure materials as well as solar thermal. We saw a PV production system and got to go into the clean room. After lunch, we toured a biomass gasification reactor and saw a hydrogen powered fuel cell Mercedes. They have installed a hydrogen fueling station that makes hydrogen using PV energy and electrolysis.
We met up with some USC professors and took our host from Fraunhofer out to dinner at Martins Brau, a local brewery. Every single student opted to go to dinner together, so we had a good time. However, after dinner almost everything in Freiburg was closed. Andi and I along with a couple of students got drinks and sat at the train station watching freight trains fly by at 80+ mph just feet away from us.
Andi reports from the pedometer: 6.9 miles, 11 floors, 15,500 steps.
We met up with some USC professors and took our host from Fraunhofer out to dinner at Martins Brau, a local brewery. Every single student opted to go to dinner together, so we had a good time. However, after dinner almost everything in Freiburg was closed. Andi and I along with a couple of students got drinks and sat at the train station watching freight trains fly by at 80+ mph just feet away from us.
Andi reports from the pedometer: 6.9 miles, 11 floors, 15,500 steps.
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Day 3 - Freiburg City Tour
Today was another solid day in Freiburg. We met our guide Steffan at 9:00 AM for a quick lecture on some of the history of Freiburg, considering the significant investment in energy efficiency and sustainability. After the lecture, we took a walking tour of Freiburg and went inside the church in the central part of town. After the walking tour, we went back to the train station where we were able to rent bikes. We rode off to see two different environmental communities, Riesenfeld and Verbaun. Freiburg has great infrastructure for bike travel, so on the way out we had very little traffic to deal with. We stopped for lunch in a nice little Indian restaurant
The bike tour went through some nice parks near downtown. It also went through some beautiful woods. The total distance for today was 25 km biking, about 15 miles. The last part of the ride was in bike lanes next to a busy road, but everyone made it just fine.
Tonight Andi and I went to the Red Bear for dinner. This is a Freiburg restaurant that has been continuously operated in the same location since 1120, almost 900 years! Dinner was outstanding. We were going to meet up with the students after, but apparently they claim to be tired and heading in early.
Andi's pedometer says today was equivalent to 29 flights of stairs, 11.1 miles, 24,951 steps.
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