www.intermod.org

Party day! Everyone was very busy setting up for the party – a caterer and a beer keg were ordered and about 20 guests came in addition to the ~20 family members already here. Renate had many people to celebrate with her, including her former coworkers who performed a skit poking fun at the career counseling service they all worked at. Conny prepared a family cookbook for Renate with recipes from families and friends from all over the world, including a large amount of material from Monika’s old cookbooks. The party went late into the night with several bonfires going at once, music playing and much beer consumed. Shown in the first picture above are Renate’s friends in the “dirndl” traditional dress.

Cousins Susann and Winny, with King Ludwig II on the stein lid

The gift table

The buffet table – first course

Everyone settling in for the (first) meal in the late afternoon

Monika (Chris’s mother and Renate’s twin sister) was there in spirit. Shown here is the digital photo frame that had dozens of photos of Monika running in a slideshow.

Chris and Sharon in the party tent

Jazz obeying her daddy Marcy’s command and staying put despite the swirl of party activity around her.

The family cookbook, organized by Conny

Oh Oktoberfest, it’s a good thing you only come once a year. Munich’s celebration takes place in the large Theresienwiese fairground near downtown whose only function is for this annual event. Ever been to a state fair? This is sort of like that, but literally about 10 times bigger, with less agriculture and a LOT more beer. The panaroma pictures here are from just one corner of the whole thing. Everything is constructed in August for the big festival, and then torn back down in October. It’s immense.

Oktoberfest is basically a huge carnival with rides, trinket booths, games of chance, and food everywhere you turn. Bratwurst, chocolate covered fruits, smoked fish on a stick, popcorn, cotton candy, pasteries, pretzels and more.

But the fairgrounds are dominated by eight massive “tents” set up with thousands of tables and benches. If it has balconies, can it really still be called a tent? The tables are reserved for 2-4 hour stretches from 9am to 11pm, and you must reserve a table months in advance.

The beer comes in gigantic mugs (1 liter, called a mass or “measure”) and everyone is chugging. Eventually people are standing on the tables and benches, singing. All tents have a large bandstand in the middle (some have more than one) with traditional music (you know, “oompa oompa”) being played and people singing along drunkenly. Marcy swears some people get naked, although he says that’s usually just the New Zealanders. People are here from all over the world.

Although Aunt (“Tante”) Renate’s birthday party isn’t until tomorrow, by the time we got back home at 3:30pm much setup activity was already in motion, with Conny naturally in charge. A large tent was erected and tables and benches set up and decorated with Bavarian themes of edelweiss flower, lebkuchen, small pretzels and the iconic checkered blue and white Bavarian flags.

After the men-folk finished building the tent, they went off on a short drive around the countryside and Autobahn. The caravan of three cars was led by a Porsche 996, a 10-year-old 911 with a fairly obscene amount of horsepower and a demonic grip on the road. With Chris as ballast in the passenger seat, driver Marcy gave Chris his new land speed record: 270 km/h or 168 MPH. 250 km/h? Fine. 260 km/h? OK. 270 kmh? Hmmm, that’s a little scary now. Ludicrous speed!

Arrivals. Cousin Susann, her husband Peter and their children Serafin and Simon arrived in their minivan and camper trailer. Then cousin Teresa and her beau Nils. Then, much later and with much griping about traffic jams (“stau”), Aunt Gisela, cousin Winny and his wife Marianne. Much food and beer is consumed with the cousins joking and jabbing at each other.

Miscellaneous Bonus Pictures:

The impossible to describe whip cracking song (Goaßlschnalzen)

Oktoberfest!

“Beloved Devil” lebenkuchen, and chocolate covered strawberries with chile flakes.

Smoked fish

Creepy coffee stand

Horses bring in beer kegs

Bratwurst stand, in motion

The next day Conny drove us out to Chiemsee, a large lake about an hour outside of Munich in the Bavarian countryside. Chris’s Uncle Andreas, Conny and Sabrina’s father, owns a couple sailboats at the lake and an electric boat (gasoline boats are prohibited). In the middle of the lake are two islands — the Herreninsel with Ludwig II’s Herrenchiemsee palace, and the Fraueninsel with a village and several restaurants.

The four of us clambered into the electric motorboat and puttered out to one of Andreas’s favorite restaurants on the Fraueninsel, had a lunch of beer, fish and potatoes and then boated back. Andreas took a nap on the back of the boat on the way back and let Chris finish the leisurely drive.

Then we drove back to Munich, after stopping at a dirndl store to pick up a spare apron for Sabrina. We dropped off the car and took the Munich transit system (U-bahn and S-bahn) to the Pinakothek Moderne — driving to the museum was out of the question because the Oktoberfest traffic was snarling driving and parking for mile around. The museum houses a huge permanent design exhibit, an architecture gallery, and many modern artists, such as Picasso, Warhol, Magritte, Klee, etc. The design section had a large modern jewelry show including these crazy rings. Sharon plotzed.

We then had dinner at a large Bavarian restaurant with Conny. Lots of pork, dumplings, cabbage salad and beer.

Tomorrow, Octoberfest!

Miscellaneous Bonus Pictures!

Weird outside taxidermy display at a Cheimsee restaurant (“We don’t eat there”, said Andreas)

Sharon is merely blinking, not terrified.

“Modern” computers at the museum

A brooch in the design section

Today we’re leaving Amsterdam. Worn out from the last two days of hyperactive sightseeing, we take it easy and saunter out of the hotel at 10:30am. Tram to Centraal Station, train to Schipol airport, get through security, wait for delayed plane, finally get on and make the relatively short flight to Munich. Chris saw many wind turbines from the air.

We were greeted at the airport by Chris’s Aunt Renate and cousins Conny and Sabrina who brought us big bottles of beer and fresh pretzels. Then we went out to the parking lot and drank the beer and ate the pretzels. Now that’s how you greet people at the airport. Technically, we’re here for Renate’s birthday party which will bring most of Chris’s German relatives to Munich. The girls are wearing traditional Bavarian dress of dirndl (the fancy dress with the apron) and lederhosen (the leather shorts). With the annual Oktoberfest many people wear their traditional clothing during the two week celebration.

This visit we’re staying at Sabrina and her boyfriend Marcy’s house outside of Munich. They live on a 5-acre estate in a hundred year old house with a beautiful yard full of fruit trees, marmots, pheasants, and their two dogs, Jazz and Casey. Jazz is just about a year old and is huge. She’s part Leonberger and parts ‘other’. Below you see her falling asleep with her squeaky schwein toy. Casey, the black one, is “standing guard” in the driveway in the photo above, and snoozing in her special outside chair in the photo below.

The girls are wearing traditional Bavarian dress of dirndl (the fancy dress with the apron) and leiderhosen (the leather shorts). During Octoberfest many people wear their traditional clothing.

A full night’s sleep and then some — 11 hours. Now, back to the grind. Up first: the Van Gogh Museum, which covers his whole career, including examples of the art that inspired him. Rather depressing at times since he was quite alone and unappreciated by most during his own time, but his brother Theo was very dedicated to him and supported him his entire life (and named his only son after him).

After Van Gogh, a walk through the park towards and around the Rijksmuseum. Then a leisurely Canal Bus (boat) ride past canal houses to Centraal station.

Near the station was a huge parking deck for bicycles.

As with many of our trips we scouted out a place to see cats, in this case, the Poezenboot, or Cat Boat. The boat houses a cat-rescue agency. Inside are cages with adoptable cats and scurrying around the floor are the cats that live there permanently. Sharon donated money and bought a silly cat t-shirt.

Then a walk through the cozy Jordaan nieghborhood, with stops at a few shops.

Tram over to Munttoren, where behind the Bloemenmarkt is the Torture Museum. Rather shabby and even a bit silly (if you can imagine torture being silly) but still interesting. Here’s the skull cracker.

Then a walk over to the Museum of Bags and Purses, which just about caused Sharon to faint. Housed in a gorgeous canal house, which used to be the mansion of one Cornelis de Graeff, 17th century big shot including mayor at one point.

Then on to the Anne Frank Museum, the house where she and her family hid for two years during the Nazi sweep of the Netherlands, which has a large museum built around it. Cannot be missed.

We had dinner at a small restaurant nearby with the resident cat named Timba.

Drinks at a nearby bar. Walk through the old town back to the tram and back to the hotel.

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Miscellaneous Bonus Pictures:

Canal scene

Cat boat

Art in the city center

Boat purse!

The flight from ATL to AMS was uneventful. Sharon read a book and slept, Chris watched movies via the on-demand system (can’t sleep on planes). Cedar Rapids (pleasant Ed Helm vehicle), Limitless (reasonably entertaining Bradley Cooper hollywood product), Just Go With It (couldn’t bear it beyond 15 minutes) and Battle L.A. (for shame Aaron Eckhart, OK to watch for the shoot-em-up eye candy, but horrid script, gave it the fast-forward treatment for 30 minutes).

Arrival in Amsterdam … train from airport to huge Centraal train station; tram to hotel in Vondelpark neighborhood. We stayed at the Hotel Zandbergen, a lovely B&B-esque place. An hour of rest and then hitting the streets.

Took the tram to the Old Amsterdam city center and the iconic Munttoren. Just around the corner was the Bloemenmarkt, the flower market with tulips of every color and shape. We grab a bite to eat (including a crepe-like pancake) and some coffee at a cafe. Wander through the Southern Canal Belt neighborhood and, stumble upon an awesome monument to Spinoza, across the Magere Brug bridge, and end up at the Waterlooplein street market. Catch a tram over to the huge Dam Square, and plow through the throngs of tourists there and in adjacent National Monument square.

Two things to know about Amsterdam at this point. Prostitution is legal. Growing and smoking pot is illegal but it’s not punished so people do it. A cafe is a place to get coffee and food; a coffeeshop is a place to get coffee, food and buy and smoke pot. So as you walk through the streets every now and then you smell something, that we’re told, smells a lot like pot.

Onwards to the Red Light district where scantily clad women stand behind floor to ceiling high windows beckoning you to do business with them. We saw the “Belle” statue, a tribute to the local sex workers which reminded us of R. Crumb, and the condom store with its freaky wares. It’s weird to see that at 2pm in the afternoon, even weirder when in an alleyway only 3 feet wide, and weirdest when directly across from a church.

Specifically, the old church, or Oede Kerk. No longer an operating church, stone walls leap up to a wooden vaulted roof with painted ceiling, painted in medieval days. Strange things to be see in all six directions, from the gravestones underfoot to the freaky carvings on the wooden seat bottoms in the choir.

Bikes. Bikes. Bikes everywhere. Bikes threatening to kill us poor lost pedestrians. Bikes are outfitted with very large carrying baskets, almost like carts in the front for groceries, and are also set up with extra seats so entire families can ride.

Back to our hotel’s neighborhood and a nice dinner, and sleep for the first time in 30 hours or so.

Miscellaneous Bonus Pictures:

Oede Kerk Grave, in the floor of the cathedral

Oede Kerk choir seat

Art on the sidewalk celebrating the Red Light District

Condom shop in the Red Light District

Simpsons shaped French ticklers!

We are spending two weeks in Europe. Munich is the anchor of the trip, as we’ll be meeting up with family to celebrate Chris’s aunt’s 70th birthday.

As you can see from the map above, we’ll be hopping around a bit. Two days in Amsterdam, four days in Munich, four days in the Camargue area (west edge of Provence), and finally two days in Paris.

As we did for our trips to Tokyo in 2005 and New Zealand in 2008, we’ll try to post here daily.

Anyone who knows me knows that I have a deep interest in space exploration. Over the past year or so, as the end of the Space Shuttle program (SSP) has approached and more and more people have become aware of it, I have found myself explaining why this is happening.

I often hear things like “it’s such a shame that we’re shutting down the SSP”. But the more you know, the more the SSP shutdown makes sense and is actually a positive move for space exploration.

Here’s why.

1. It’s done. The space shuttle was designed to carry really big payloads to low earth orbit — up to 50,000 pounds. It was intended to be used for all kinds of payloads — scientific, commercial and even defense. Over the years various developments (including the two accidents) have caused that mission to get pared back to just science, and even just a subset of that. So having now officially completed the International Space Station (just this year), there is literally nothing major left to do.

2. It can’t leave low earth orbit. The space shuttle was designed to get heavy loads up to low earth orbit, and that’s it. It can’t go to geosynchronous orbit (where most communication satellites reside), can’t go to the moon, can’t go beyond. If we want to go beyond Earth, to an asteroid or even to Mars, we will have to develop another spacecraft to do it. And the past decade or so of history has shown that as long as the shuttle keeps operating, it’s going to suck all the air (funding) out of the room and starve everything else.

3. The space shuttle, while beautiful and fantastic and amazing, is colossally expensive to operate. Certainly it’s far too expensive to keep operating just to bring astronauts and ISS supplies into space 2-3 times a year, now that it’s done with the heavy lifting work of assembling the ISS. Thanks to various political actions over the last decade, the US federal budget simply can not support that kind of inefficiency. The SSP went on as long as it did only on the basis of political support from the regions that got a lot of the funding — pork barrel spending, essentially.

4. The replacement system, proposed in 2004 in President Bush’s “Vision for Space Exploration” plan (VSE), got its funding from Congress and then proceded to march to nowhere. An astronomical amount of money was spent on a new program (Constellation, aka Ares plus Orion) that just chewed through that money without much to show for it. Some observed that money kept flying out the window but the goalposts kept moving out on the calendar. Obama did a brave thing when he killed it. I should add that there is a lot of debate and disagreement on this.

In fact, as I type this, Congress is about to mandate that the replacement launch system, currently called the Space Launch system (SLS), be funded at higher levels and be built with certain components, counter to what NASA’s engineers have recommended. These are politicians dictating engineering decisions! If you look at the early history of the space shuttle, back in the early 1970s, the same thing happened to the shuttle design — Congress mandated certain design features and ultimately created the conditions that made the shuttle vulnerable to accidents. Those design mandates created the situation we’re now in where we have to shut the program down! Sadly, it’s not likely that this will change.

5. Commercial space launch is really starting to take off. By “commercial”, we mean companies that are building their own launch systems. NASA is still involved, dicating safety requirements for example, but fundamentally this is work being done not by the government but by private enterprise. And THAT is going to truly drive costs down and finally give us the cheap access to space that we’ve dreamed of for 50 years. The funny thing is, most folks eyes glaze over when I say “commercial space launch”, but it’s really happening! SpaceX has had great success with their orbital test launches over the past 2 years — the parachute photo here shows a descent test of their Dragon capsule. Virgin Galactic is busy testing their system (shown here is the spacecraft lining up on the runway during a landing test) and will soon be starting their suborbital tourist flights from New Mexico.

6. We now have lots of cargo launch capabilities. In the US, we have the Atlas V, the Delta IV, SpaceX’s Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 rockets, Orbital’s Pegasus and Taurus, and so on. Europe has their Ariane rocket, the Russians have the Proton, Japan and China have their launchers. We now even have multiple vehicles that can carry cargo all the way to ISS and dock/berth with it — Europe’s ATV, Japan’s HTV, the Russian Progress. The next step now is to refine some of those launch systems enough that they can be safety-rated for carrying crew.

I’ll leave you with a great quote from John Shannon, manager of the SSP, at a news briefing on June 30th, where he said:

“The bottom line is, there’s not enough money. Would I like to fly shuttle two times a year to go insure that ISS was in the best possible shape, or maybe go back up to Hubble again, or maybe do who knows what? Sure! I think it’s a national capability that we are losing, but again you weigh that against — you’ve done what you set out to do with the shuttle. You’ve got Hubble in extremely good shape, you’ve got ISS in extremely good shape. Now we have other areas coming up to take over the LEO functions that the shuttle did. We can take that money, and just as importantly take that workforce, and apply it to the next leading edge and expand the sphere of operations that we do in human spaceflight. I think that is extremely important. What we’re doing is we’re sacrificing the shuttle to enable us to take that next step. If we were going to retire the shuttle, this is the time to do it. The ISS couldn’t be in better shape than it is right now, it’s pretty much out of volume, we’re going to pack it full before we’re done. While we can always come up with other missions, it’s an OK time and I think that we’re going to expand the breadth of things that we do as a nation and as an international partner. That’s how I came to peace with all of the decisions that we made.”

Now, enjoy the last mission of the Space Shuttle. Here’s a reference I put together a couple years ago on all of the resources available online to follow a mission.

I went to Los Angeles in late June, mostly for work but I got some fun in on evenings.. I wanted to document what I did there, but just haven’t had time to do it right, what with the new house and all. But I wanted to go ahead and get this published, and I’ll come back to it later and flesh it out some more. So … I’ve backdated this entry, and issue apologies to those of you seeing this in your RSS feed and wondering why I’m posted such a lame travelogue!

Los Angeles

Monday:

Mann’s Chinese Theater and 1920s / 1930s celebrities

Tuesday:

Carl’s Jr

La Brea driveby

Globecast driveby

Giant Robot 1, 2, 3

New Villager art event at Human Resources gallery

Wednesday:

JPL driveby

Planetary Society driveby

Hugh Masakela and Wynton Marsalis at Hollywood Bowl

Thursday:

Warner Brothers tour

Griffith Observatory

MOCA Geffen: Art In The Streets

Tiki Ti

We went to Minneapolis in early May. I wanted to document what we saw there, but just haven’t had time to do it right, what with the new house and all. But I wanted to go ahead and get this published, and I’ll come back to it later and flesh it out some more. So … I’ve backdated this entry, and issue apologies to those of you seeing this in your RSS feed and wondering why I’m posted such a lame travelogue!

Minneapolis, May 2011

Sharon at a conference, Chris as idle spouse. Stayed at nice downtown hotel one block off Nicollet Mall. Watch librarians partying down in hotel ballroom with cover band, ridiculous buffet decorations.

Beautiful manhole covers, a la Japan.

Public library

Main falls downtown; click to enlarge this panoramic photo:

Made good use of the “Nice Ride” system, where you can rent a bike by the hour from automated sidewalk kiosks located all over town — well, not too far from downtown. The bikes are lime green so you have to overcome looking like a dork, but it’s a good way to cover far more ground than you would walking, and the biking is easy since MPLS is so flat. Well, it’s flat until you get to the river, which is kind of a gorge and thus can present some serious hills as you climb in and out.

Walker Art Center, with huge sculpture garden outside, all sorts of freaky art inside.

Ukranian sausage joint. Nye Polonaise.

Electric Fetus record store near Stevens Square, 1 mile from Walker Center – look for Lifter Puller book “Lifter Puller Vs. the End Of” I-35W bridge Minnihaha Falls

Dashed through Mall Of America on our way to airport.

Places that I didn’t get to:

old Milwaukee train station on First Street The Lakewood cemetery between lake Harriet and Calhoun Art Deco cement water tower at Washburn Park near 51st street Near the airport there will be a road named Post Road after Wiley Post, who flew his airplane out this airport.