Hiking the Appalachians

This weekend I was out on another tour with my lab mates - plus a Japanese girl how is a friend of Jiang. The weather was forecasted to be awesome - so we planned some nature thing. We decided to go for a moderate hiking tour in the Pennsylvanian Appalachians in Berks County. The loop passing by the scenic outlooks "Pulpit Rock" and "Pinnacle" is supposed to be one of the best in PA.

All the hiking recommendation websites warned that it is a rocky trail and that you'd need sturdy hiking boots. Well, none of us had proper hiking equipment here - but we tried in any case. Americans tend to exaggerate... It turned out to be not that bad. Some trails were quite rocky, but I've seen much worse... After all it was just a hill with a maximum elevation of about 500 m...

Nevertheless we enjoyed the tour. The view from up there was really excellent. You had a perfect birds-eye perspective of the agricultural land of Berks and Lancaster County. It looked very cute and peaceful from above. We also encountered some wild life: In total we saw four snakes and countless vultures. One of the snakes was really long - maybe 1.5 to 2 meters. Quite astonishing for me - I hardly remember when I last saw a snake in Germany. I'm not 100% sure, but I suppose it was a Coluber constrictor aka. Black Racer. The birds were probably Turkey Vultures judging from their way of soaring in the upwinds.

We finished the 8 or 9 mile loop at a leisurely pace but we were still kind of tired after it. I guess we are slowly getting lab rats... Find some of my pictures below. Unfortunately I screwed up the exposure setting... so most of them are quite overexposured... But you can still get an impression of the scenic views.

Lancaster County - Home of the Amish

This weekend I did another trip with my lab mates. This time to Lancaster County, which is a convenient one hour drive West from here. It is most known for its many farms and of course the large population of Amish people.

In case you have never heard from them. Here is an excerpt from the Wikipedia article:

The Amish (pron.: /ˈɑːmɪʃ/ AH-mish; Pennsylvania Dutch: Amisch, German: Amische), sometimes referred to as Amish Mennonites, are a group of traditionalist Christian church fellowships that form a subgroup of the Mennonite churches. The Amish are known for simple living, plain dress, and reluctance to adopt many conveniences of modern technology. The history of the Amish church began with a schism in Switzerland within a group of Swiss and Alsatian Anabaptists in 1693 led by Jakob Ammann.^[2] Those who followed Ammann became known as Amish.^[3]
In the early 18th century, many Amish and Mennonites emigrated to Pennsylvania for a variety of reasons. Today, the most traditional descendants of the Amish continue to speak Pennsylvania German, also known as Pennsylvania Dutch. However, a dialect of Swiss German predominates in some Old Order Amish communities, especially in the American state of Indiana.^[4] As of 2000, over 165,000 Old Order Amish live in the United States and approximately 1500 live in Canada.^[5] A 2008 study suggested their numbers have increased to 227,000,^[6] and in 2010 a study suggested their population had grown by 10% in the past two years to 249,000, with increasing movement to the West.^[1]

 At first we went to a former Amish farm or village that has been turned into a museum. So we could learn something about their history and life style. Pretty impressive to see, and almost impossible to imagine to life like them. As an extra goody I could talk to a lady there who could speak Pennsylvania German. It sounds like a softened version of Suisse German mix with a bit of English. When she was speaking slowly, I could actually understand most of it! Quite astonishing.
A unique sight in the area are the horse buggies. As most (all?) Amish refuse to use cars, the still go around in horse buggies. So seeing them on the street among the regular traffic is perfectly normal - but quite surprising to a tourist...

After that we toured the beautiful countryside. We saw a lot of farms, neat houses and covered bridges. The latter are wooden bridges that are covered by a wooden roof structure. Thus, they are protected from the weather an can last 100 years. Many of them are still in use for the everyday car traffic.

We also went for an extended walk trough a nice little state park. There we looked for some geocaches and enjoyed the nature. We definitely had a great day (a perfectly sunny one!) and we loved the beautiful rural views. Sometimes the landscape strongly reminded me of rural parts of  Germany. But see for yourself in the pics.

Spring in Ardmore

Spring finally arrived here. After having been unusually cold in the beginning of April, temperatures rose sharply. Within a couple of days all flowers and trees started blossoming.

I want to share a few impressions of spring (Now I can do so safely, after spring also started back in Germany... ;-). I took those pictures on the street right outside the house I'm living.

Let's go 6ers let's go!

On Sunday I did another activity with my lab mates (and their flat mate): Going to a game of the local NBA team, the Philadelphia 76ers. We thought that being here, we should take the opportunity and watch that spectacle. Hence, we got some rather cheap tickets for $26 each and went for it.

And I really believe it was worth it. It was a very turbulent game with lots of points for both teams. However, the victory of the 6ers was never really in danger. Even though they had one of their worst seasons ever this year. The Cleveland Cavaliers were even worse. Hehe. Well, I couldn't tell in any case.

As interesting as the game was the action in the numerous breaks: Dancing cheerleaders (hehe), T-shirts shot into the audience and spectacular trampoline dunks by the "flying squad". In the half time break we could even see a true celebrity: "Dr. J" from the last 6ers team that won the NBA championship:

"Julius Winfield Erving II, commonly known by the nickname Dr. J, is a retired American basketball player who helped launch a modern style of play that emphasizes leaping and play above the rim." - Wikipedia

So we enjoyed the day and I hope you will enjoy the pictures!

Roadtrip to Boston

Its about time for the next posting. On the Easter weekend we had 2 additional days off (sometime its good to be at a Catholic school) and we (2 lab mates, Jiang and Young, and me) went to Boston. So I want to share some experiences and pictures with you.

We started Friday in the very early morning. It was still dark and it was quite challenging to orient yourself on the huge highways. So thats how I did the $36 detour... By accident I took an exit of the highway. When leaving we had to pay $2 toll, because it was just a very short distance on the road. We somehow managed to get back on the interstate, but for some reason we never got a toll ticket. By the time we realized it was already too late. (You don't really want to stop or turn on a highway...). So about 4 miles later, we came to a toll plaza and could not show the ticket... I tried my best to argue with the toll booth guy, but he stayed hard... And we hat to pay the toll for the complete highway (several hundred miles!!) which amounted to over $30. Argh, this really pisses you off in the morning...

Well, apart from that the ride was smooth. We went to Boston via New Haven (to see Yale) and via Cambridge (to see Harvard). Quite amazing to see these beautiful old campuses. How much money must the have? (and charge from their students...).
Boston itself is a great city with lots of historic buildings. The most striking difference to the majority of American cities it the street layout. At least in the old part the streets criss-cross arbitrarily like in an average European city and are not laid out as a chess board. I quite like this way - kinda gives the opportunity for some nice and hidden places. We explored the whole city on foot and had awesome weather (but see for yourself). Food was also great - in China town with three Chinese guys, haha! :)

Sunday, on the way back to Philly, we also stopped by MIT to complete the college tour. Looks much more contemporary that the other two. But one of the new buildings is just amazing! Its kinda Hundertwasser in Cubism...

So enough writing - enjoy the pics. There are more of them - but I'll have to ask Jiang to share them with me. So you can hope for another posting. ;-)

 

"Snow storm" on departure

Dear blog community,
its been almost a year since my last entry here. Now that I'm back to the US, I decided to continue blogging occasionally about my activities. I hope you enjoy reading and viewing the pictures. Please comment to make this a more rewarding exercise for me... ;-)

So... every journey starts with travelling. However, this start was not one of the best. In fact we had a mid March "snow storm" in Germany on the very same day I should have taken the flight. Well, there were about 10cm of new snow falling over night - one might think that a developed country used to this kind of climate is able to deal with that. It's not...

First, it took me more than 2 hours to get to the airport (which is usually a 20min ride). The freeway was just covered with snow and the traffic jams skyrocketed to 40+ km... Having arrived barely one hour before departure at the airport (!) I learned that all flights are suspended. The whole airport was closed down due to the weather conditions... Well, that could be an interesting day.

About 1h after the official boarding time, we were finally ushered into buses to get to the plane. Sitting in the plane for 15min... nothing happened. Finally, the captain told us that the runway is still closed until further notice... He kept repeating this about every 20 min until after 2 hours the first aircrafts could take off again. However, we were still waiting for a number in the de-icing sequence...

To cut the long story short:
- we never got that number
- the pilot canceled the flight (he would exceed the maximum duty time)
- took a cab back to Darmstadt
- had (at least!) a good sleep in my own bed (quite a few people actually had to sleep on the terminal floor)
- more than 800 out of 1200 flights got canceled
- I came back the next day to catch the same fligh

Finally, I happily arrived in Philly an I'm staying at the same cozy place as last time. I'm looking forward to an interesting and fruitful stay. I'll keep you updated.

Enjoy the picture series "flier and ice" ;-)