München Away

(6:40 AM - München)

Early breakfast is great.  I love the decor, the spread and watching other guests move in.  I try to use what little German I know appropriately for please and thank-you.  I can handle numbers pretty well and somewhat follow conversations.  Not having formal training in almost 20 years I find immersion in the country and culture helps immensely with my understanding and growth.  I cringe a little when other hotel guests from the states talk to the hotel employees in slow, exaggerated English.  I get that not everyone understands even the basics of a foreign language but I definitely get the stereotype of American travelers.

This leads me to the difference between the American approach to travel vs. what I see from people who live in Europe.  It seems (remember I’m a tourist when this is happening) that the culture here is much more open to travel and expects to understand the cutlture and tradition of their surrounding countries.  Once again, I’m enjoying and appreciating this experience; the ability to reflect on it and watch the students grown in their understanding reminds me that learning comes not from the textbook but from the experience.  I love the SOAR enables us the freedom to offer this type of learning, now it’s time for students to truly take advantage of it and make it part of their learning.

As far as yesterday - a great opportunity on two levels:

Level 1 - A guided tour by Marcus - This is the second time I’ve seen his tour of Münich and he’s a charismatic, fun and engaging tour guide.  I can’t help but laugh that he reminds me of the Yoga trainer from the movie Couples Retreat and because of that I chuckled to myself for almost the whole tour.  Still a wonderful guide and definitely worth having for the walking tour around the city.  Partly I couldn’t help but feel like it was very similar to any big city, but without a lot of big city experience, I can only assume there are similar stateside qualities that I’m seeing here.  Still, I like the small town.

The Sunday morning shuffle across town afforded some beautiful “behind the scenes” looks at the city.  Like many other people I know who have taken me through a city, the route seemed casual and our “official tour guide” seemed to really enjoy showing us around the city that he loved.

Beautiful buildings and empty streets because it’s Sunday.  I remember as a child not being able to go shopping on a Sunday and how annoyed I was.  As an adult I kind of wish we went back to that to force us to do more family and community activities.

Lots of time spent on the tour talking about historically significant areas and very interesting when our guide talked about the “bad history” of Münich without ever trying to avoid responsibility but rather acknowledging that it happened and how they moved on.

Very interesting to see the rich part of the city.  Not in terms of houses or anything, but rather a shopping district that features many of the the “Rodeo Drive” kind of shops.  A bit of culture shock from the group, especicially from the guys who were used to seeing SUVs and pickup trucks and now were seeing exotic cars.  I would have done the same.

Very interesting history lesson on the Beer Garden.  Bring your own food but you cannot bring a drink.

Overall the tour and the day were a success.  I’m out of time before starting the new day’s adventures, I’ll leave a few more pics and call it good.  Off to see a palace and concentration camp today.

Taking a rest at the Olympic park.  Seems like an awful waste if you only use it for a couple of weeks.  Would be nice if they just held it in one place and let a host company chip in.

Group pic with the guide before saying goodbye for another three years. 

Resting my tired old bones in my awesome travel hat on the edge of the fish fountain.

Rathskeller.  Basement dining and meeting place back in the day.  Nice place to eat - huge place inside.  Makes me think about the culture and history.  Also, I wonder how much politics is decided in dark basements even today . . . 

Hands-on (no pun intended) demonstration of how a flying buttress works and how it is represented in the architecture of the times.  Kind of makes me want to build something in these different forms. 

More different picture of the fish fountain.

Last pic of the Olympic center.  It’s just cool.

München in the Mörning

March 31-2019 (7:00 AM)

I love the German breakfast!  It’s like an amazing buffet to start the day off right.  This morning I was treated to bacon, sausage, hash browns, several kinds of cheese, fresh fruit, baked goods, coffee . . . All kinds of wonderful items to get me going.

But this is really about yesterday, today is still coming.  I’m giving the old college try to working on this while I spend an hour at breakfast.  First and foremost, breakfast for me is something quick that I can shovel in while I’m doing something else.  This is vacation, so breakfast is going to be a time-consuming, coffee-enjoying experience.

Day 3 - More driving interrupted by another small medieval-style.  This was a nice stop to enjoy some lunch (I had a kraut sandwich) and a little treat (mocha-java and Mozart ice-cream).  I also had the opportunity to watch some of the local culture (which I accept is also tourist-heavy) and immerse myself in this experience.

Starting out in Rothenberg in the morning I was able to take a perspective of the wall.  We walked quite a ways around the city and actually were able to finally see over the large stone walls into the courtyard behind. 

Seeing this makes me reflect on one of the differences between living in ER vs. what we see walking about Rothenberg.  The more we come across garden areas the more I appreciate what people can do with a small space.  From the outside it looks cold and Univision get, when you change your perspective and look over the top (barring looking like a creeper) I can see what the residents have in the garden and how they spend their time.

I’m not a big flower guy, but beauty can be found all over.  I’m still loving these shots.  LAst time I was here it was all about the close-up of the flowers.

Finishing up at Rothenberg we took a group picture and I wonder about the construction of the different parts of the city.  Arches and mortar, houses with wooden frames and stucco, green grass and courtyards.  A look back into the past as well as updates (electricity) throughout the city.  It actually kind of bothers me that they have cars driving through the city.  I would love to see them ban auto traffic like Macinac island.

After arriving in Münich we stopped at a church before going to dinner.  I took the time to sit and reflect.  It was nice to also talk to students who were interested in understanding the kind of church and importance it plays in the city and the country.  Münich is primarily Catholic and so was this church.  Very cool place and amazing architecture.

Breakfast is done, time for a quick reset and off to expolore Münich on foot and public transportation.

Up, up and Away! Traveling back in Time

Let’s start with a statement you won’t hear me say very often:  I don’t know everything about everything.  Even though my family and students may thing I do sometimes, I get that, there are lots of things in the world I don’t know and that makes it a wonderful place to be.

I don’t speak German.  At least I don’t any better than I run marathons, climb mountains, appreciate art or take pictures.  That didn’t stop me from making a second trip to the country of Germany with a group focused on learning more through immersion.  Challenge accepted.

This blog (at 1:24am in Germany - somewhere around early evening back home) is going to be a narrative - I think.  It’s going to be stream of consciousness - I think.  It’s going to be expository - some of it.  That may change too.

Since this is a school trip and designed to be a learning experience, I’m excited to put it through the old SOAR HS ringer and see how it shapes up as a learning project along the way.  I get that not everyone will have the opportunity to get on a jet plane (song in there somewhere I think!) and take off for a week to another country.  I’m going to guess, though, that EVERYONE has the chance at some time during a spring break, summer break, weekend or whatever, to find yourself somewhere, presented with an occasion to do something that has a plethora of opportunities to learn about this wonderful world.

I humbly present to you my attempt at a project in a week.  Don’t know where it’s going to end up but I’m sure going to enjoy the journey.

You can quote me on that last line.  I’m even OK if you want to put it on some kind of artwork and display it in basecamp.

Day 1 - Air Travel

I’ve only been on a plane a couple of times.  It’s easy enough to do but I don’t fit very well in many things in this world - coach seats on an international flight happens to be a slap-in-the-face kind of reminder that height, shoulder width and an inability to sit still for very long are a bad combination on a 7+ hour flight.  But let’s not get ahead of ourselves:

I’m using a couple of teachers as an example here, but this morning they’re parents.  What an amazing resource available to all the students on this trip (especially if there’s one who gets Dad to go with!).  I’m very glad we have such an amazing group of people willing to pony up some, much or most of the money to go on this trip.  More so, Kudos to anyone that wants to entrust their child to me 4000+ miles away for 10 days.  Glad the kids can speak German or I’m not going to eat.

I don’t want to suck all of the fun out of this blog by tying all the project cycle into it, but you know me, I probably will at some point, so I’m sorry ahead of time.

Central Wisconsin to Detroit to Frankfurt.  First leg of the journey.

Bus Ride

Airport Terminal 

Takeoff (on the smaller of the two plane rides)

Check Surroundings

Check Self

Ready for the adventure to start.  There are so many thinks to think on just the first day of travel and experience, but this isn’t about journaling everything I do in the next week, but rather to serve as an opportunity to lead by example on the journey from the LGI all the way to a few pieces of evidence in my learning and a great approach to life.

Before you do an eye roll, think about what’s already going on here.  Just the fact that I’m taking time (just hit 30 minutes of work on the blog - using an iPad and iPhone) to write about my experience I’m already building up a whole ton of ELA documentation.  Just saying.  I’m the ELA guy.

Since you’re curious to connect this to the Learrning Cycle, I’ll insert that along the way.  At the beginning of this trip (maybe even a year ago when I was invitied to participate) I was in the Inspiration stage.  This stage continued with every meeting, fundraiser (I’ll see if I have pics to throw in at the beginning) conversation and email.  It continues as I ride the plane, talk to the students, review the itinerary and meet an important part of this, our Learning Guide.  I don’t have to assume I can navigate my way through this trip (substitute museum, town, fair, experience) by byself, I can get the help from someone who knows how to share the amazing world we’re going to encounter.  I’m going to call her both a primary and secondary source and add her to my source list.  That was easy.

Here is Abi from ACIS.  Actually, from Britain, she just works with ACIS to help run these tours.

I’ll add a better picture later, I went from camera to phone for some of the early pictures until someone took it from me and is using it for her experiences.

As I move along I would be remiss if I didn’t share my Detroit airport meal with you:

It’s Schwarma.  Thank you Tony Stark for Inspiring me to try it.

Without making this longer than it has to be (trying to keep it under an hour a day - 2:09 am now) I’ll get through the highlights from day 1 (sleep deprivation was a theme for us all).

Let’s start with the wall.  We went to Rothenburg first.  I’ve been here before but in a nutshell it’s surrounded by a wall, has wonderful history and is known as a medieval town.  We started with a group pic and continue this tradition throughout the day.

A lot of walking, stopping and talking about the history of the town, the people who live and lived here and examining the culture of the area.  Makes me think about why it was built here (cultural geography maybe?) and what role it played in the wars that came across here.  There was a cool little bit of info about the 30 years war given by one of our students to the others on the steps.  Have to love learning from one another!

Looking over the countryside gives us an opportunity to imagine what this would have been like back in the day when it was the biggest, wealthiest town around.  Not to mention the stink in the summer from the human waste thrown in the streets.  Almost inspires me to do a learning project on sanitation.  Anyway, most of us are numb from 24 hours without sleep and ready for a little rest before dinner and night-time fun!

There’s a tie into Christmas with this pic.  I was very impressed that it looked to be carved out of a solid piece of wood.  Reflection might lead me differently since the proportions don’t work out that way, but it’s still very cool.

Big church.  Lots of carving.  More than that I think about the condition of the space.  There hasn’t been extensive polishing by oils and solvents, it’s been polished by human hands, worn to the grain by time and touch.  Kind of humbling.

Stonework worn smooth by passers by

This group of pics makes me want to revisit perspective again.  I’m a stranger in a strange place. I’m a tourist (anyone want to discuss A Small Place?) and I’m looking around at buildings that predate almost anything you’re going to find in the US.  Makes me feel a little small and appreciate that I need to get around outside our sea to shining sea and open my mind a little.  Really glad I’m doing it with boots on the ground rather than fingers on the keyboard.  Probably should insert some comment about how your boots can travel out your front door and adventure and something about authentic experiences . . . But you’ve heard that before.

I found myself having fun with the camera and took some perspective pics along the way. I think that can be a definite theme for the week.

Traveling with a group is great.  Gives me a chance to share not only my perspective but the perspectives of others as well.  The last pic was a shout-out to Mr. Marien.  Family history. . .

Ending the night we watched the presentation from the night watchman, looked around a bit more and ended up back at the hotel.  Where, apparently, I’m not doing a very good job sleeping.

The night watchman walks us through the town explaining the history and the role of the watchman in keeping the town safe.

What a beautiful town to be in.  

This ends experiences from days one and two.  I have four hours I can still sleep and I may take advantage of that.  Finished at 2:32 AM.  Just over an hour of time sitting at the keyboard - two days worth of experiencing life and learning.