Stages of Guilt

November 23, 2011April 28, 2012 Tigerotor77Wconcentration camp, DachauLeave a comment

I have six weekends left before I leave, two of which were already planned and one of which is Christmas weekend. To try to fit in as much as I could, my original thought for this weekend was to go to northern Germany, but I was pretty badly sleep deprived this week and ended up not planning enough to make me feel comfortable with such a longer trip. I decided to visit the Dachau Concentration Camp and the Unimog Museum instead. This is going to be a deeper post than most I’ve written, and there are no pictures of mountains or cathedrals. If you’ve come looking for “Week Six in the Alps,” you should turn away now. ;-)

I wasn’t planning to spend much time talking about Dachau. I felt that the existence of the memorial should be enough; I reasoned that I could just flash a picture or two of various places in the Memorial and people would understand the undertones. I tried to use the fog present through the whole day to my advantage in portraying the Memorial, but it wasn’t until I started going through the pictures that I figured out what it was that didn’t sit quite right with me when I was actually there: I had felt detached.

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Inconsistent Attractions

November 20, 2011November 20, 2011 Tigerotor77Wengineering education, Gaggenau, Unimog, Unimog MuseumLeave a comment

I felt that my trip to Dachau merited its own post. It’s certainly serious enough, and lumping in this post — which is still serious, but on a different level entirely — with that one is a bit insensitive, even for me.

After I learned from my trip to the Mercedes Museum that there is also a Unimog Museum, I went there on Sunday to see the trucks in person. I had first heard of them from my forays into construction equipment, but never gave them much thought. They aren’t as productive as actual construction equipment or as efficient as dedicated on-highway trucks, so I figured they tried to be jacks of too many trades. But if a significant number of European municipalities (and especially those in the Alps) use them , they must have some merit beyond looking awesome.

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Dropping a Bomb: Twenty Weeks in Europe

November 13, 2011November 13, 2011 Tigerotor77WAiguilles Rouges, Alpes, Alps, Chamonix, La Flégère, Mont BlancLeave a comment

My Alps excursions to this point have largely been concentrated in Switzerland, but a colleague from Lausanne recommended that to “see” Mont Blanc (the tallest mountain in Europe), it’d be necessary to visit the climbing town at its foot: Chamonix.

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Just call me tripod

November 8, 2011November 8, 2011 Tigerotor77WAltstadt, castle, Heidelberg2 Comments

For the record and as a disclaimer, this is a very lighthearted post. No offense meant anywhere, and don’t click past this introduction if you don’t like pictures of words that rhyme with “witch”.

I thought of this title before I took a single picture the day I thought of it and wondered if I could keep a straight face until I posted the blog. As it turns out, no, I couldn’t.

I woke up around 11 AM on Sunday, going to sleep the night before rather certain that I wouldn’t go to Heidelberg the next day. Problem was, it was sunny when I awoke, and as my sorties toward Switzerland show, I’m a sucker for good weather. Plus, I had a premonition that the clouds would be just right for a really colorful sunset. I decided to skip planning my following weekend and got dressed, made and ate a sandwich, grabbed my camera gear and tripod, and headed for the Hauptbahnhof. I made it all the way to Heidelberg before I realized I forgot to bring the plate that attaches my camera to the tripod, rendering the nine additional pounds of aluminum hanging off my back completely useless. Then I couldn’t figure out how to get to the castle and nearly turned around and took the next train back to Stuttgart. I picked a direction that I thought was right and followed it, however, and eventually arrived to the roads that lead up to the castle.

It’s an interesting city to say the least.

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125 years

November 6, 2011November 6, 2011 Tigerotor77WMercedes Museum, Mercedes-Benz MuseumLeave a comment

It’s a big year for 125 year anniversaries: Bosch, Coca-Cola, and the car are all celebrating them this year. I wanted a weekend off to catch up a bit and also go to the going-away party of another trainee, so I stayed in Stuttgart and did local touristy things. Four months after visiting the Porsche Museum, I finally made it to the Mercedes Museum and offered the entrance fee to the Museum as my birthday gift for the car.

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Paris retardé

November 5, 2011April 29, 2012 Tigerotor77WCentre Pompidou, Champs Elysées, Eiffel Tower, France, L'Arc de Triomphe, La Louvre, La Tour Eiffel, Le Jardin de Tuilerie, Montmartre, Paris, Sacré Coeur, TGVLeave a comment

It took me 18 weeks to get to Paris. Prior to starting my rotation in Stuttgart and while considering which European cities I’d visit, I was under the impression that I’d be in Paris several times: once to do wine tasting, once as a base for a Normandy excursion, once to be among Parisians, once to explore the tourist attractions. What actually happened was that I ended up spending four weekends in various Swiss cantons whose native language isn’t even French, drawn instead by the allure of the Attractive Looming Pinnacle Sensation to the south. Suffice to say I was chuffed after seeing low TGV prices to Paris and that they happened to coincide with a four-day weekend. (I can’t take full credit for making the pilgrimage, though, as two friends from the US found cheap airfares and suggested Paris as a possible destination.) It was to be my third time in Paris, but I still didn’t feel like I “knew” the city after the first two times. I hoped this time would be different.

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Unfamiliar Deutschland

October 24, 2011October 24, 2011 Tigerotor77WHofbräuhaus, München, Munich, Munich Olympic Park, Neuschwanstein, Olympiapark München1 Comment

It is now fall in Germany, and even at 10:30 on a Sunday morning this means a rather empty city, frost on shaded grass, and the sun’s rays still low in the sky. Thick fog earlier that morning had made the actual sunrise impossible to see, but after more than two months, finally: a day spent visiting a German city.

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One Alp, Two Alp, Three Alp, … Thirty-Four?!

October 17, 2011August 9, 2016 Tigerotor77WAlps, Andermatt, Cervino, Col de Furka, Furka Pass, Klein Matterhorn, Matterhorn, Matterhorn Glacier Paradise, Riffelalp, Riffelberg, Riffelsee, Sunrise, SwitzerlandLeave a comment

Some of you are probably wondering why I keep going back to Switzerland. The speed limits on the highways stink, a 40 € vignette is required for use on these lame roads, German sounds even uglier when spoken by the Swiss, “great there are lots of mountains who cares get a life”… these are some of the reasons that I could have stayed in Germany this weekend. But… in my three previous Alpscurisions, I never saw what is in my mind the quintessential “Alps” picture — something like this, perhaps. My trips to both Zermatt (week 7) and the Bernese Alps (weeks 10 and 14) always showed only a few mountains; whether from the cities themselves or from observation platforms above 3,500 m, “la chaîne des Alpes” never really made themselves known. I subconsciously gave up on the idea of ever finding them — until this trip, that is. Continue reading “One Alp, Two Alp, Three Alp, … Thirty-Four?!” →