Vacation

Spending over a week driving around in Germany really made me think about how hard it might be for non-Germans to get around here. I am driving on my Oklahoma license over here, and I never had any formal German-driver training, but I at least had the benefit of being exposed to German traffic rules and signs as a child. In grade-school we all had to go to the police station and participate in driver-training for your bicycle. That included learning all the traffic signs, traffic rules, driving around in a simulated little town while obeying all the rules, and taking a little test for your "bicycle-drivers-license". I also lived with the same traffic rules while driving my bicycle through Schwabach until I moved back to the USA. I figured that this would be a good time to talk about the differences and problems between American and German traffic rules.

Traffic Signs

The first thing one will notice while driving in Germany for the first time is that you will be quickly introduced to many new and exciting traffic signs. Many of which don't really give any hint as to what they are trying to tell you. Many colors and geometric shapes will be found on poles around the country, and unless you have memorized their meaning you'll be in trouble. Another interesting difference, especially in smaller towns, is that you will often find traffic signs attached to traffic lights. After the busy times for traffic are over, these traffic lights simply turn off and the signs take over.

No Traffic Signs

In addition to knowing what all these signs mean, you also need to know what it means when there are no signs to be found. Many smaller intersections in neighborhoods do not have any markings regarding right-of-way. In those unmarked intersection the rule is simply that whoever is on the right, has the right-of-way. So everybody drives slowly through the intersection and pays attention to the street on their right. If it is clear, you go. You don't have to watch your left, because that side has to yield to you. Sounds weird, but works very well.

Many streets also have no markings for speed limits, but have a preset speed limit based on type of street. City streets are always 50 kph unless marked otherwise, county-type roads 80 kph unless marked otherwise, and so forth. Unless you are familiar with the speed limits you will be lost, but an acceptable solution is to simply keep up with the traffic around you. Be warned that Germans do love to speed.

Autobahn

After driving from Schwabach to Karlsruhe in my grandparents little car going 100 mph, I think it is a testament to German traffic laws and German drivers that the Autobahn works as well as it does. Large sections of the Autobahn have no speed limits, and compared to the Interstates there are really no more accidents here. The Autobahn has only 3 consistent rules:

1. Keep on the right: Unless you are passing, you need to be on the right-most lane that you can be in. In 3 lane sections that usually means that semi-trucks (which have a lower speed limit) usually sit in the right lane, the middle lane is the "driving" lane, and the left lane is being used for passing.

2. Pass on the left: No passing anybody on the right side. Together with the "keep right" laws this means that most of the time the traffic moves pretty smoothly, getting faster as you move towards the inner lanes.

3. Keep Distance: These are some of the most enforced laws on the Autobahn. Keep away from the car in front of you. If you are driving 100+ mph, you better keep enough distance between you and the other car to be able to stop.

These 3 rules, and a higher quality of construction of the Autobahn compared to the Interstate, keep driving at high speeds very safe and comfortable. I can say without lying that going 100 here really doesn't feel much different than going 70 in Oklahoma.

The 4th rule, which is not really a written rule, is simply this: Watch your rear-view mirrors. Just because you think you are hauling at 100 mph, that does not mean that 10 seconds later there won't be a car behind you going 150 mph, and you better move over to the right and let them pass.

The last thing that comes to mind is that drivers in Germany seem less aggressive. You will hear more on their horn, but it is often a quick "please pay attention" instead of the long "WTF are you doing!!!!!" that I hear in the US.

I haven't written as much as I would have liked this week, but to be honest there has not been that much super-eventful to write about. I have spend this week mostly walking around my old stomping grounds, visiting places where I grew up.

During my last vacation here I had almost every day planned out in advance, "Today we will go here, tomorrow there, Wednesday this, etc". This time I have been playing it by ear, just waking up in the morning and deciding what the day feels like. So instead of a daily "this is what I did" I'll just post a summary of some of the places I have visited this week.

Mittelhembach


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My grandparents village, a collection of maybe 30-40 houses surrounded by forests and fields. My grandparents are currently on vacation in Italy, so I have free reign over their apartment and this is where I have established "home base" for the first few weeks of vacation. My bedroom opens to the forests east of the village and I get to wake up to the smell of nature and sounds of birds singing. The village itself is very quiet and very peaceful, a great place to relax. It also means I can use my grandparents kitchen for breakfast and dinner, so instead of having to pay to eat out twice a day I just bought some cheap groceries and cook at home.

Schwabach


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Here is what I truly consider my "hometown". First settled around 2500 years ago, and first called Schwabach around 1500 years ago. I went to High School here and eventually got mowed up to the "Realschule". Schwabach is where I spend most of this week, just walking around my old neighborhoods, eating lunch on the market place, drinking beer in the park. Schwabach has some interesting historical impacts:

The Schwabacher Schrift was a font developed in the town and was widely used by to print the Gutenberg Luther-Bibles in the middle ages. This Bible lead to the development of a common German language and the Schwabach Font became very well known.

The Schwabach Articles were written by Martin Luther in Schwabach in 1529, and were used as the basis for the Augsburg Confession, leading to full blown reformation in Germany. The Schwabach Articles, and the later writings based on it, forever changed the political and religious landscape in Germany and Europe. Of special note is that the articles were written while he stayed in the Inn "Zum Goldenen Stern (at the golden star)", where I was a dishwasher and did a very short internship to decide if I wanted to apprentice as chef. I don't know about anybody else, but I think that is kind of cool.

Nuernberg


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Nuernberg. If Schwabach was my hometown, then going to Nuernberg would be the equivalent of "going to the City" for Oklahomans. It might be one of the most famous cities in Germany, and at the same time one of the most infamous. It was the capital of the Holy Roman Empire, and each new emperor had to hold his first court there. The first railroad of Germany originated in Nuernberg. The Nazi Party also held their National Conventions here, and the Nuernberg Laws were the basis for striping the Jews of their rights in Nazi-Germany. The allied forces literally bombed the hell out of Nuernberg during WW2, due to its symbolic status to the Nazis. The Nuernberg Trials signaled the end of the Nazi reign. The city has healed well form its scars after WW2, rebuilding much of the historic downtown. I think the city did a very good job with moving past it's historic connection to the Nazis, while acknowledging it's part in Germany's dark history. The old parade grounds are now part of a park, and the old Nazi headquarters is now a "documentations center" regarding the rise and fall of the Nazi Party. The Germanic Museum features the "Pavilion of Human Rights", and every few years the city awards a price to a person that made a significant contribution in the area of human rights. We used to sneak to Nuernberg on the train and go to Oktoberfest, the Train Museum, and the Christmas Market.

That pretty much concludes the little virtual tour of my old hometown and stomping grounds. I'm still working on getting some video clips put on YouTube, but pictures can be found on Flickr via the link on top or to the right. Tomorrow will be one more trip to Nuernberg, and then I visit my brother in Karlsruhe before moving on to Italy. My GPS has been giving me fits, so I'm still trying to get it working again to see if I can do some stuff with it. Despite the rain I enjoyed this last week, and I'm looking forward to the rest of this vacation.

Day 3 of my vacation is underway, and I am watching the rain covered forest outside the window. This seems like a great time to give a detailed account of the crazy trip across the ocean. The plan was to leave Oklahoma City at 1130 Monday morning, and arrive in Nuernberg at 1045 local time. But reality has a way to mess with your best plans.

Oklahoma City to Minneapolis - St. Paul



I arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare. Got checked in, picked up (almost) all my boarding passes, and started the waiting game. I spend some more time with Mrs. D-USA since we will be apart for 2 weeks, and waited on my mom who was coming up to visit and wish me a good trip. We finally parted our ways, and off through security I go. No problems with security, my big bag of electronics did not arouse any suspicion, and I make it to my gate. 10 minutes into my trip, and everything is going great!

Then we started to wait on our plane, great. In the end I leave the airport with only a 45 minute delay. The trip itself was fairly uneventful, no turbulence, and a smooth landing. I try to plan ahead for delays and leave myself plenty of time to connect. I was scheduled for a two hour layover, so even with the late start in Oklahoma City I still had an hour to make it to the other side of the airport. Enough time to grab a quick snack, visit the Larry Craig Bathroom, and make it to my gate.

Minneapolis - St. Paul to Amsterdam

Now it was time to sit at the gate and wait for our on-time departure......

About 45 minutes before we were supposed to leave there was the first announcement: "We are waiting on a plane, we don't know where it is." Hurray for Delta \o/. But I guess it is better to loose a plane when there are no people on it.

With about 30 minutes to go we have the second announcement: "The plane is here. Now we are waiting on a crew to fly the plane." Great.

With about 15 minutes to go before our "scheduled" departure, we are finally allowed to board the plane. I get in line, make it through the gate, and while I walk towards the jetway I get to watch Security Theater in action. Being a member of the Pirate Party I have long held the belief that Security Theater is a waste of time and money, and watching this show was no different. The "random" secondary screening had pulled 3 people aside so far, all very middle eastern looking. I am sure there was no profiling there *rolling my eyes*. As I walk past the security guys and towards the plane somebody started to yell: "You.....hey you, stop......YOU IN THE ORANGE!!!". Well crap, I was wearing an orange shirt. I don't know if I was chosen randomly, because of my disapproving look towards "security theater", or because of my awesome beard (which after a survey of friends and family qualifies as a "terrorist beard" by a tally of 4 to 2).

My secondary screening only reinforced my belief that the "new and improved post 9/11-shoe bomber-underwear bomber-tactics" are a bunch of crap. I receive a pat-down, because flying on an airplane qualifies as probable cause that a crime is being committed. And to top it off the pat-down only covered my arms and my side, nobody checked my legs or my crotch. No offense, but if we are using the underwear bomber as an excuse to treat everyone like a criminal, then maybe you should check the area where bombs are hiding. I'm not advocating that the TSO should grab my junk, but it is very clear that this screening would not catch anything. My carry-on bag is being searched as well, and the TSO quickly discovers my hidden bottle of liquid that I forgot about. They look at the bottle, stick it back in my barely searched bag, and send me on my way. So the result of my screening is this: Nobody checked my crotch, so the condoms filled with deadly explosives in my waistband are save, and they allowed my bottle of acid onto the plane with me. After "increased security" I would have had the exact same ingredients as the underwear bomber on the plane with me. But everybody else is watching the TSA search the "foreign looking people", so they feel safe because the Government is doing something.

After being harassed for my own protection, I make it on the plane and take my seat. 15 minutes after our scheduled departure, but still on the ground at the gate, we get the next announcement: "This is the pilot speaking. The volcano in Iceland has become active again and the airspace above Ireland and England has been shut down. We need to file a new flight plan that bypasses the affected area and get it approved. I am sorry for the delay." Time to get comfortable.

In the end we finally take off with only a 1 hour delay, and we are on our way to Amsterdam. I am able to get some good sleep on the plane and by the time I wake up we are flying over France, about 30-45 minutes away from Amsterdam. The detour in the sky added an extra hour to our flight, and we arrive in Amsterdam with a 2 hour delay. I had a 3 hour scheduled layover, so I hightail it through passport control, security (where I am searched again), and run across Amsterdam airport to try to get my boarding pass. KLM tells me that according to Delta I am supposed to be on the afternoon flight instead of the morning flight. I present my luggage tag as proof that I am supposed to be on the early flight, if my luggage is on the early flight it would seem that I am supposed to fly with my luggage. By the time they allow me to get a boarding pass for the early flight it is to late, and I get to watch my plane push away form the gate.

Another passenger on the same flights as me received 50 euros and meal vouchers since we now have a 7 hour layover to sit through. But since I am not officially delayed "because Delta had you on the late flight anyway" I don't get anything. Thanks Delta \o/.

If I am stuck in Amsterdam for 7 hours anyway, I sure as heck was not going to spend it at the airport in an uncomfortable plastic chair eating over-priced airport food. So I put my carry-on pack in a locker, and hop onto the train to downtown Amsterdam. I spend about 3 hours walking around the city center. The red-light district is very well advertised, but I decided to just walk without much of a plan and head towards the Anne Frank House. Without a map I didn't quite make it there, but I got to watch a great city along the way. I wouldn't be surprised if walking down the street could result in a positive drug screen, but I am sure I had a 500% increase in my lifetime exposure to cannabis. And that is without ever stepping into a coffee shop. In the end the 10 euro a person is a great price to spend in order to get out of the airport if anybody has 3 hours or more to spend at the airport. I would count on a 1 hour travel time both ways between Airport-Downtown. I head back to the airport, go through security again without being pulled aside \o/, and head towards my gate.

Amsterdam-Nuernberg

At the gate we sit and look at our plane. 10 minutes after boarding was supposed to start we get another announcement: "We are waiting on the people to clean the plane."

10 minutes later we board, take our seats, and get the next announcement: "We are waiting on fuel".

After a 1 hour delay we are finally on our way home and I get to Nuernberg "only" 8.5 hours too late. My uncle has already been here twice since he came to pick me up from the earlier flight before I could reach my brother to relay the new plans to him. The volcano is still causing problems, so we will see if it quits in time to go home.

The Solo Kesler-Does-Germany-Tour is underway. Thanks to mismatching vacation schedules and a very loving and understanding wife, I am now on my way to Germany. Here is what happened in a nutshell: I got 3 weeks vacation, Mrs. D-USA has 2 weeks vacation. After some skillful scheming I was able to extend my vacation to almost 4 weeks, while Mrs. D-USA still remains at 2 weeks. So in an act of loving kindness I received the go-ahead to add a solo-leg to the "Kesler's Do Europe Tour of 2010" and see family in Germany and my old hometown. So for the next two weeks you will see updates, pictures, movies, and stories about my crazy adventures in Germany. After those two weeks I will drive to Italy and reunite with Mrs. D-USA as she flies into Venice. We will have two weeks together in Italy and then we return home.

I am very excited as I consider both Germany and Italy "home". I will try to take a ton of pictures and I should be able to put a big batch online on a close-to-daily basis. I will try to remember to make good use of my little video camera as well.

I hope everyone enjoys the crazy ramblings of a German-American back in Germany.

Flickr has a new fun feature: Flickr Maps!

So if you were following us during our vacation, and looked at all our pictures, but had no clue whatsoever where the places we visited are actually located, then this is for you. So take another look at the pictures, and see where they were taken on our map.

Finally, I was able to upload the rest of the pictures from the vacation. Click on the Flickr link to take a look .

Today is the day, and we are finishing up our bags. At 10:30 am our plane leaves Nürnberg and we will be on our way back to Oklahoma City via Amsterdam and Memphis. We are actually taking the exact same flight that I used to come to the USA 11.5 years ago, and should be landing in Oklahoma City around 9 pm.

We made a last trip to Schwabach yesterday, visiting my old apartment and schools. We drove around the countryside, and we ate a greek dinner on the padio in the market square. It was somewhat of a sad day yesterday, and it reminded me a little of the last time my family packed everything up to leave Germany and move to the United States. I'm looking forward to coming back to visit soon.

All in all I think that "The Kesler's Do Europe Tour 2008" was a success.

Well, we finished the first part of our trip back home yesterday, driving back home from Italy to Germany. The trip itself was pretty stressful at first, it took us 3 hours to drive through 200 km (aprox 125 miles) of backed up traffic. But once we got to Austria it was pretty smooth traffic from there all the way back to my grandparents house. All together it took us about 11 hours to make the trip home that normaly takes about 7 or 8.

Leaving my grandparents behind in Italy (they still have 3 weeks of vacation left there) was pretty sad, but I guess all good things have to come to an and. After 1 month of doing nothing we should probably come home and come back to work. I hope that my grandmothers friends came by her tent yesterday and helped to console her. I hope that we will be able to come to Europe more frequently in the future, at least for a 1 or 2 week vacation, we don't need a mammoth 1 month getaway every year (only Europeans get that much vacation ).

Now we are packing out things, getting ready to go to Schwabach one last time to say goodbye to my old childhood home. Tomorrow it is time to go to the airport, avoid hurricane Gustav, and make it back home to Oklahoma by 10 PM.

The Kesler's Do Europe 2008 Tour is giving its last Encore....

Tomorrow we are going back to Germany and we are leaving the sun, the beach, and even the jelly fish behind us. 4 weeks went by pretty fast. So at 9 am tomorrow we are starting the 7 hour trip back to my grandparents house in Germany to get ready to fly home on Monday. I will start to upload the final big batch of pictures next week, and I hope that I will have all pictures online by the end of the week. I will have a better report about our time in Italy this weekend.

Hello all you faithful readers of this Blog. We have not decided to abandon the Vacation Blog Concept, but as it turns out we have almost no Internet Options out here. Camping + Italian Anti Terror Public Internet Laws = Dead Blog! So I am sorry to have to say that there will not be another entry until we get back to Germany next Sunday. The pictures have equally suffered from this.

We made it to camp in Italy at Camping Ca'Pasquali last Saturday. It took only about 10 hours, and that includes sitting still for 3 hours at a traffic jam in Austria. The nice thing about a real traffic jam in Europe is that when you stand still you stand really still. You can get out of your car, set up a chair and enjoy the countryside. We have our little tent set up at my grandparents spot, and are enjoying doing nothing. In the morning we do nothing while laying on the beach, and in the afternoon we do nothing while laying at the pool. If we feel crazy we go to the pool first and to the beach in the afternoon, we are CRAZY KIDS!!! Mrs. D-USA had her first near death experience while running into a jelly fish in the Adrianic Sea, and I am starting to regret the Vacation Beard concept. It if freaking hot when you are wearing a sweater-vest in your face!

We took a trip to Venice yesterday and walked for about 12 hours over lots and lots of bridges and stairs, we are tired now so we will have to go back to our routine of doing nothing now . Tonight is a 9 mile long firework display on the beach, so that will be fun. I will take pictures as I have been, but they will probably not be posted until after we come back from vacation.

I hope everyone is doing great at home, and once again I am sorry for not being able to post better in Italy, but if we keep up our current routine you are not missing much.

Your tanned and saltwater covered Mr. & Mrs. D-USA