Well hello everyone! I have begun a two week trip to Germany to visit my friend, Hinrich (@haihin1) in Hanover, and travel together. Over the last 24 hours, I went through all the hoops that were involved in flying here, and even had a pretty productive day despite only getting two hours of sleep. So I'm gonna post about it! I'm planning to post each day of this trip. Only time will tell whether I actually do, but so far it has been pretty action packed so I think there will be stuff to write about each day. Anyway, let's get on to the day:

My trip to Germany 2021 Part 1

Flying to Germany

Well yesterday in the United States was a big hectic mess trying to make sure everything was in place for the trip. My covid test hadn't come in yet, so we were worried and looking for other places to get a test, but it finally came back negative. I arrived at the airport around 12pm for a 3pm flight, and said goodbye to @remlaps (I'd said goodbye to my mother at home).

Waiting for the flight, I explored the airport, and learned that airport prices are ridiculously high. Unfortunately, a lot of stores seemed to be permanently closed in the three airports I spent time in yesterday. I have a feeling that is related to the covid lockdowns. I downloaded a nice app for video taping with my phone, and experimented with the settings. You may see some of the results eventually in a compiled video, but so far I have not had luck making the videos quality (other than one instance). Every time I've seen something, and manually adjusted the settings to let in the right amount of light, something has gone wrong. The worst of this was when I had an opportunity to film my plane and the outside of the airport in Hanover, and the file corrupted, but I couldn't see my phone screen.

Anyway, my flight path consisted of a plane from Philadelphia to Washington DC, a plane from DC to Munich, and a plane from Munich to Hanover. Overall it was about 15 hours, and it went roughly according to plan. The coolest flight was the one from DC to Munich. I got an opportunity to take a video outside the plane window when the gentlemen sitting at the window seat went to use the bathroom. That actually came out surprisingly well.

Over the course of my flights, I listened to the whole Wintereisse song cycle twice (more on that later), watched the movie That Thing You Do, and watched many videos about creating neural networks and genetic programming. I now think I understand the basics of the math and code behind neural networks, and how to code a basic genetic programming algorithm in python. I can't wait to give that a try the next time I get free time! I'd highly recommend this playlist of videos to learn about neural networks, and this one to learn about genetic programming (I downloaded both for my flights along with many other videos).

Day 1 in Hanover

Going home to a fancy lunch!

Well interestingly enough, I didn't even recognize Hinrich when I walked out of the luggage area because I was so immersed in my cell phone trying to connect to the wifi to text him. We got out of the airport pretty quickly, and I saw parts of Hanover as we drove back to their house.

When we got to their house, I met Hinrich's mom. Hinrich and I almost immediately began reading through music together at the piano until it was time for lunch. Fun fact: there are a number of German families who make the big meal of the day lunch. I did not learn this until just before dinner, but I was very puzzled about why lunch had been so elaborate. In America the big meal is almost always dinner. But what I discovered today is actually very similar to what some of my friends from Brazil say about their culture in Brazil. Apparently some cultures treat lunch as the big meal of the day. I did not realize that. For lunch, we had some kind of noodles and sauce as well as salad. Perhaps someday I will know the fancy German names for this meal, but for now I'll just say we had Nudeln und Salat.

The bike ride

After lunch, we took some bikes out to ride around Hanover. I had not ridden a bike in years, and despite the cliche, I had a lot of trouble starting and making sharp turns (the bikes we used were also much bigger than anything I've used before). I will admit that travelling by bike is so convenient here. In Pennsylvania, there are a ton of huge hills to climb, and no lanes designated for bikes so riding a bike is not optimal. Plus everything is spaced out.

During the bike ride, I learned the word Achtung. Hinrich shouted it when I was riding very close to a hedge. I asked him what it meant, and he said "It means attention (as in watch out)." But I being me heard "it means the hedge". So later on when we driving past another hedge, I said Achtung, and started a very confusing conversation that wound up giving me clarification about the meaning of Achtung. It is not a hedge in case anyone is wondering.

On a side note, you may notice the nice clothes I wore for my bike ride. Basically, I did not want to change and waste an outfit (though I did wind up changing to go to the gym:/). At one point while we were riding, I asked Hinrich if he thought Germans could tell I'm American just by looking at me. He responded "probably not, but they might think something's weird because you are wearing dress clothes to ride a bike, and a helmet." Our bike ride was decently long, and took us to a variety of settings from city side walks to nature trails to bridges eventually to a highway where we had to turn around. If I make it through this trip without embarrassing myself on a bike, I will be happy. After my observations today, the chances are slim at best.

Playing music

When we got home from the bike ride, we decided to read through music together again. This time Hinrich played the cello, and I played the piano. I tried to sight read the accompaniments as well as I could, but I'm hoping with more practice I will do better. They were some truly lovely pieces, and I do look forward to playing them again, and exploring more of the music for cello and piano. Hinrich also played selections from the Bach cello suites for me, and then we read through the 5th song in Der Wintereisse Der Lindenbaum (in which I butchered the pronunciation):

The whole idea of this trip was to learn Wintereisse together since we had to stop last year because of Covid, and being here now, I find it humerously ironic considering we are singing depressing music about the winter in the middle of the summer. The music is quite powerful though, and I look forward to seeing what we can do with it with the time we have. Starting tomorrow, it is my hope to record a new song or piece everyday for this week to include in these articles. We will see if that happens because I have to edit the video (and learn the music). I will try my best to do it though.

The Gym

Hinrich and I then went to a local gym to try to see if they had an offer I could use for my time here. They did, and so Hinrich went to soccer practice while I worked out. I kind of pushed myself today because I didn't think I had enough time to do as much cardio as I would normally do. So I ran for 5 minutes on the treadmill (at a high speed in kilometers. I have no idea whether it was higher or lower than what I usually do at home). I did chest today, and in between each set did a cardio activity. This really wiped me out by the end. I was covered in sweat, and breathing really hard. Overall, I'd say it was a good workout. I kind of had to go based on feel for some of the weights though because I have no idea what the conversion from pounds to kilograms is. I definitely feel like I worked the muscles though so overall it worked out (pun intended).

Dinner

After the workout, Hinrich's mom and I went shopping for food, and the she Hinrich and I went home to have dinner. We had bread with many different toppings. It was very good! I tried several different types of German bread, and liked them all! After dinner, we tried to watch Amadeus, but both Hinrich and I were tired so we decided to watch it tomorrow. Then I wrote this article instead of going to bed...

Conclusion

On that note, good night Steem. I hope you enjoyed reading about my day! Tomorrow I'll try to take more photos! Good night everyone!