Cologne Dom:

When we got to Heidelberg, we were greeted by a little bit of rain, but that quickly tapered off. We all went to find some food to feed our hungry bodies. After lunch we made the trip up the mountain to the castle on the fanicular railway. The views from the castle were amazing. We could see the whole city. When we got down the mountain we took the train to Cologne.
Heidelberg Castle from the bottom of the Mountian:

View from the Castle:

We spent Saturday and Sunday in Cologne. Some sights that we saw in Cologne included the city’s famous Cologne Cathedral (Kölner Dom), which was the cathedral that was not bombed during the war. It is an amazing structure with flying buttresses. Cologne is located on the Rhine River. They have a very interesting Chocolate Museum, which walked you through the life of a cocoa bean from the plant to the chocolate bar. We also got the sample some chocolate from the chocolate fountain. There was endless shopping that was a highlight and lots of places to get good food. On Sunday some of us went to the Cologne Dom and some of us went down the Rhine River to see some castles. We all returned back to the Teerhof later that night.

One of the Streets at Night (Cologne):

To read more about the Airbus and Auswanderunghaus tours, click the Read More link below.

We hopped on the tram at 9:15am Wednesday morning to make it to our 10:00am scheduled tour at Airbus in Bremen, which is its second largest production plant in Germany.  Now, I know what you are thinking, How did we land this sweet tour? Thanks to a current Calvin College student named Jordan Wanner.  Jordan is a senior mechanical engineering student at Calvin College.  For the summer, he is currently living in Bremen and has an international internship at Airbus.  At first, we weren’t going to be able to go, but then Jordan worked his magic and secured this incredible tour for us.  Anyway, back to the tour.  After checking in at the front desk, we walked back to one of the hangers and had a look inside.  In this hanger they were making the flaps.  The flaps are on the wings of the plane, and they help with the braking and landing because once they are activated they fly up almost perpendicular to the wings and provide tons of air resistance.  In the second hanger we went to they were putting together and inspecting all the wings.  There were six stations that each wing had to go through before it could be assembled to the body of the plane.  And people these hangers are huge.  Both wings were in the hanger spread out as if they on the plane.  We couldn’t take pictures, otherwise I would love to put some up.  Our tour guide then took us to another little hanger where the project he was working on was located.  He, alongside with many other retired former Airbus employees, was reconstructing a plane that was recovered from WWII. 

On Saturday, August 1, 2007, we got on a regional express train from the Hauptbahnhof and were on our way to Bremerhaven.  Here is a brief history of Bremen and Bremerhaven.  7.2 million europeans emigrated from Bremerhaven, which made Bremerhaven the largest German Emigration port during the 1800’s and early 1900’s.  In 1827 Bremerhaven was founded as the main port for Bremen, because Bremerhaven was just up the river from Bremen.  Before that, any emigration or trade would simply take place in Bremen itself.  The reason that emigration and trading stopped taking place in Bremen was that the Weser River was silting up and that large ships could no longer reach the city docks.  So basically all the paperwork and business was still transacted in Bremen, and then the people would travel by river barges up the Weser to Bremerhaven where they would then board their main ships.  This journey up to Bremerhaven took 3 days.  In 1847, after the development of steamboats, the journey to Bremerhaven only took one day.  Finally, in 1862, once the railroads were constructed, this trip was much shorter and made things much simpler for travelers. 

The Auswanderunghaus is located in Bremerhaven, which is on the mouth of the Weser River up by the North Sea.  The museam was pretty good and entertaining.  We got to see and explore a typical ship that emigrants would have taken across the Atlantic Ocean, hear the stories and read about many real emigrants that emigrated from Bremerhaven, go through a fake Ellis Island customs station, watch a movie telling the stories of living people in America who are emigrants from Germany,  and finally you could search through all the records located on site to try and find any of your relatives who may have emigrated out of Bremerhaven. 

Once in Berlin we were basically given the freedom to plan our own sightseeing on Thursday afternoon and Friday. In order to find out what anyone did specifically you will have to ask them, but there are pictures below of some sightseeing highlights that many people choose to see. On Saturday we all traveled to Wittenberg as a group. Here we were able to see the location where Martin Luther burned his excommunication letter, St. Mary’s Church (where Luther preached), The Schloss Kirche (or castle church, where Luther nailed his theses), and Luther’s house. It was raining quite hard when we arrived at Wittenberg in the morning, but thankfully it cleared up a bit in the afternoon. On Sunday morning we attended church as a group at the Berliner Dom (Berlin Cathedral). The interior of the church is beautiful. The service was Lutheran, and they had earpieces available that allowed us to hear an English translation of the service. Some of us also got a chance to see the crypts in the basement of the church. In the afternoon (about 3:15) we boarded the train heading back to Bremen. This time we transferred trains in Hamburg. It was an amazing weekend!

our hotel rooms

Schloss Charlottenburg (Charlottenburg Castle)

some of the boys setting off to explore

the girls in front of a giant map of the city

Checkpoint Charlie

The Brandenburger Tor (Brandenburg Gate)

the Fernsehturm (tv tower)

a view of the city from the top of the Fernsehturm

The Berliner Dom (Berlin Cathedral)

The doors of the Schloss Kirche

The square in Wittenberg (St. Mary’s church is the tallest building)

the Schloss Kirche in the distance down the road

We woke ourselves bright and early on Saturday, July 20 to go to Church.  Now I feel obligated to tell the caring CRC parents that this was a Lutheran church, but it was just a tour, so worry not.

The church has a long fascinating history.  I forgot most of it to make room in my brain for the last Engineering test. (Which I think deserves a blog entry of its own).  “Der dom” is 322 feet tall, making it the 99th tallest church in the world.  We saw a crypt, bits of which were over 500 years old.  The main sanctuary is vast, and heavily decorated.  Here are a few pictures to help explain it.

We climbed up in the tower, a total of 260 some odd steps, giving us a broad view of the surrounding city. 

There were many schön sights, but my favorite was either this artist’s rendition of the first day of creation:

or the posted prayer request that read “Dear God, 20 million please.”

So after our vertigo had worn off from the first trip, we decided to get it back again by touring the Beck’s-Haake Beck brewery.  We learned many valuable lessons about the engineering processes of mass food production.  Including, but not limited to, heat transfer, the recycling of waste materials, and how to bottle beer the 19th century way.

So after we learned how to turn everyday cash crops into popular beverages we saw a brief video history of Beck’s (The beer with the key) and Haake-Beck (The regional beer which supports its community…more on that later.)  After the quality of their brand had been thoroughly ingrained in our psyches, we were taken to the reception room to enjoy some beverages.  Here we met Russians, Germans around our age, and Fins who like Canadians much more than Americans. 

Postwards it was back to the Teerhof for a nice relaxing night of homework.

...

The highlight of the following day (Sammstag) was the Haake-Beck Badeinselregatta.  This is a perennial festivity thrown by the aforementioned local brewing company.  The shores of the river Weser (VAY-ser) were packed with people all hoping to watch 200 Bremers paddle up the river in little inflatable rafts.  This was quite impressive as they were swimming against the flow of the river, and the water is pretty dirty.  The Teerhof provided front row seats, so we enjoyed ourselves quite a show.  Regard the following pictures as a visual explanation:

Following the aqueous nonsense there was a large party where “Fury in the Slaughterhouse” played a kicking set.  Interesting thing:  the band spoke in German, but sang songs only in English.  The audience was alright with this and still sang all the songs.  The longer I am in this land, the more I am impressed by these people’s multilingualousityness

Ask questions and I/we can elaborate.
More updates to come.  That is, when the homework dies down, and the inspiration dies up.

-Ian

On Wednesday, July 17, 2007, our engineering group skipped class to go on a tour of the Mercedes Benz Kundencenter, which is a customer service center, customized car pickup outlet, and production/test center.  As a particularly special treat for the mechanical engineers of the bunch, we were taken on a tour through the factory.  We watched the process of cars on the assembly line being welded together, joined with the engine, and customized for each order.  Watching the new state of the art laser welding, we were right amidst the car-creation-action.  Ian even almost got his face burned off by flying sparks.  All the while listening to the comedic rants of our Irish tour guide, we even got a sneak peek at the new C-class model that has not yet been released to the market.  With one last stop at the Mercedes gift shop, we made our way off; each in our own brand new, personally customized cars.  Just kidding.

outside

inside

I’m sure once we graduate and our full time salaries kick in, each one of us will be sporting one of these.

First some pictures of traveling and the building we are staying in.

At last, we are boarding the plane to Amsterdam.  It was a close call though for some however, because three students had gone to a resturant and when we had started boarding, they had just gotten served their food.  Lets just say those burgers were injested rather quickly.

A few of us on the plane from detroit to Amsterdam.  Since we all were sitting in the same area, we had the misfortune of dealing with a rather unfriendly flight attendant.  However, her rudeness was made up for by us having our own personal televisions, where we could watch a ton of movies or watch the plane flying over the ocean.  I myself enjoyed the movies 300 and Blades of Glory.

Well aren’t we a good looking group waiting for the tram (otherwise known as the Strassenbahn).  In this picture we are at the airport getting ready to head to the Teerhof Gaestehaus.

The building on the left is the Teerhof.  This is the building that all 11 students and Professor and Mrs. Sykes are living.  The students are staying in small apartments with a bathroom and kitchenette.  Our rooms are located on the top floor, or if you look in the picture the row of white rooms at the top of the building.  The Sykes are staying a floor below.  We are all really jealous because they have bigger windows and less flights of stairs to go up and down.

The view out of our windows (which don’t have screens so we get and influx of bugs with the changing weather).  Nicht schlect, oder? That side of the river is known as the Schlacte and would not be complete without many resturants, beer gardens, and always tons of people.

Now for some views of the apartments we are staying in. I think three view should suffice.

I know that you all are dying to see some pictures of the area around us.  The few that I’ve chose give a good variety of the small town that we are making our home, Bremen.

These are the towers of St. Petri Dom.  Note that you can see these from our windows (you can go and check the picture above if you want).  Most of the gang attended church here on our first Sunday morning, which is a considerable feat considering our jet-lagged bodies.  After much debate on what type of church it is, it should be duely noted that this is in fact a Lutheran Church. 

It is just our luck that a building just to the left of the teerhof is being built, so we get to listen to and walk through construction every day.  Prof Sykes thinks it is a learing experience for all of the civil engineers to be able to watch this new building being built.  But for everyone else, well, its just kind-of annoying.

 
A typical streat in the residential area of Bremen. 

This picture is a view of the Wesersee, a small branch of the Weser River.  On the banks of the Wesersee many people lay-out and go swimming in the river, because boats are not allowed in this part.    Betsy and I were laying on the wooden dock/pier thing where people would jump off into the river.

Some of the boys eating lunch at a cafe on the street.  While there are many of adorable cafe’s available, it is a very expensive option of eating.  This is how we ate until we discovered the beauty of buying groceries.  Our new favorite store: Aldi. 

Ohhh yea…. that little thing called school, and engineering, and homework….

Here we are on the first day of school heading to our classroom.  This picture is actually on the Universitaet von Bremen Campus.  The campus was littered with grafitti, and there are protests going on to preserve free education for everyone.  Its a very interesting environment to be around for a bit.  The Mensa is quite good, with tons of food for pretty cheap.  Right now however, students are still in class and will be done next week after they finish writing their exmas. So after that the campus will be pretty dead and we’ll be able to sit together at lunch.

This is our classroom for the first week.  Don’t we look ready to learn? :)

Well since this entry took me an hour and a half to compose, I sure hope you enjoy it.  Even though I’m sure you are astounded by my incredible ability of writing, I think the pictures do a better job of describing what is actually going on over here in Bremen, Germany.  Leave some comments and questions!

On April 22, the students gathered at Professor and Mrs. Sykes’ home for some refreshments, a few (more!) administrative details for the trip and courses, and an opportunity to get to know each other better. The students are: Lisa Andela, Lindsay Arnold, Steve Brink, Katrina Denny, Tim Hirschberg, Ian Hoffbeck, Elizabeth (Betsy) Huyser, Tom Kok, Jon Lotton, Doug Spencer, and Danny VanderSpek; due to an earlier, very important personal committment Betsy Huyser could not join us.

Upon finishing the Spring 2007 semester, all prepared to regather at Calvin College on 9 July for 4 days of Statics and Dynamics, before flying to Bremen on July 13.