Bulgarian Interlude

Statue of Sofia in Sofia, Bulgaria

Last week I had the great pleasure of spending a week in Bulgaria. I was combining business with pleasure, attending a conference, doing some work, and doing some sightseeing, mostly in the company of my gracious hosts.

Street paved in gold

I had worked with my Bulgarian friends for a long time and was really looking forward to meeting them in person. They were kind enough to pick me up from the airport, and show some sights on the way to the office. It had just rained, and I was stunned by finding that the streets seemed to be paved in gold! (Being from the US, I would expect gold to lie on the street - but the whole street paved in gold?)

Golden street and museum

Initially, I thought this was paint, but my coworker explained that one of the kings of Bulgaria had decided to build golden streets for his wife to walk to church. The bricks were imported, at great cost, from Austria - these streets are not cheap to maintain, but they leave an impression of great beauty.

Typical house in Sofia

Because my own business was paying for the trip, my hosts had made it possible for me to stay in an apartment. Besides, hotels look the same everywhere, so staying in a hotel didn't seem very appealing. I really enjoyed the neighborhood with its crooked streets, old buildings, churches, and small shops. I discovered some new foods, such as Aryan, a yogurt you drink, and Bulgarian breads which I liked. I also found several stores with fruit, vegetables, and dried nuts and fruit.

Different nuts and treats for sale

Because Bulgaria still has its own currency (not the Euro), everything was cheap - and in Sofia, a big city of over a million inhabitants, everything was available. I especially enjoyed the many bookstores and, on my last day in Sofia, bought a book for the flight back by a Bulgarian author but in English. It was excellent!

After buying my book, I headed back to the subway, managed to get out at the right stop, and promptly got totally lost. This was both entertaining and slightly embarrassing, and because I did find the office after an extra 45 minute walk we'll just say no more about it.

Instead, let's talk about the wonderful weekend. On Saturday, our hosts drove a group to the mountains to see Rila monastery, a UNESCO world heritage site.

Rila monastery

Beautiful architecture, with the church completely covered with paintings! An incredible sight. We took the time to look at the museum, which included old sculptures, and also a printing press and cliches for printing icons. The detail work was incredible!

Possibly just as enjoyable was the fresh mountain air, the green mountains, the little river. We were sorry to leave, but also very hungry, so our hosts took us to a restaurant in a town about halfway back to Sofia.

The food was delicious - our hosts had taken great care to select wonderful restaurants while we were there. Bulgarian food is much more Mediterranean than east block, and the salads, fresh fish, breads, and spreads we enjoyed in several places were delightful.

Small towns, in general, had a southern European feeling, with fig trees in towns that were closer to the Black Sea, grape arbors, apricots and cherries for sale along the road, and fun little touches such as the street that is shaded by umbrellas below.

Street with umbrellas

On Sunday I spent the morning reading because the weather was terrible. In the afternoon, my friend picked me up and took me on a tour of Sofia. I enjoyed the green spaces, the shopping streets, and the old churches. Here, the Alexander Nevsky cathedral, a landmark with its golden dome.

Alexander Nevsky cathedral

And another photo.

We were especially lucky that an orchestra was playing traditional Bulgarian music in front of the cathedral. My friend said that in summer, this is traditional, and that you can often see people doing the traditional dances. The music is also broadcast by the radio station.

Traditional orchstra playing in front of the church

After the long walk through Sofia, we relaxed in an ice cream parlor. The Sunday I ordered was quite possibly bigger than my head, and I couldn't finish it. 

The wonderful weekend was followed by some interesting days at work, and I was sorry to leave - though excited to come back to Berlin!

The Queen's Lecture

Angela Merkel, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, Greeting Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

A couple weeks ago, an email from the TU Berlin events department landed in my inbox:

Subject: 50th Anniversary of the Queen's Lecture
Body: Click here to find out how you can get a ticket!

Since it didn't look like Nigerian spammers, I clicked on the link to find out what this was all about.

The story is that in 1965, the Queen (officially "die Queen" in German, with no plural, and it only refers to her, the German word for a run-of-the-mill queen is "die Koenigin", plural "die Koeniginnen") came to TU Berlin and gave a lecture, starting a series of yearly lectures by prominent British scientists, engineers, architects, and so forth. At the time, the Cold War was in full swing, Berlin was divided, and TU Berlin was in the British sector. Humboldt University, which before the war was the top university in Berlin, was in the Soviet sector, and some prominent Soviet politician came to Humboldt and gave a talk. So, in support of technical higher education in the Western side and to foster intellectual collaboration between Germany and Britain, the Queen decided to come to Berlin and give a talk. She hasn't participated in the lecture since founding the series, but because this is the 50th anniversary, she decided to attend.

The TU Events Department figured a lot of people would be interested, so they set up a lottery with three kinds of seats: ones in which you would be at the lecture in person, ones in which you would be at the concert after the lecture in person, and ones in which you would attend both by TV feed (the lecture was carried live by RF Berlin). I decided to attend only if I got an in-person ticket, and sometime last week, my ticket arrived in my inbox...and it was an in-person ticket for the lecture! Woohoo!

Last Sunday as I was bicycling past the TU administration building, this stylish sign caught my eye:

A nice picture of Her Majesty giving the characteristic "Queen Wave". Maybe I'd get to witness a wave in person?

On Wednesday morning the day had finally arrived! I walked to work humming "Rule Britannia" eagerly anticipating the afternoon's event. When I got to Ernst Reuter Platz, I saw that they had decked it out in flags as they usually do when a foreign dignitary is visiting: a flag for Germany (the red, yellow, and black tricolor), the Union Jack, and - most notably - the flag of the European Union:

 I had read in Die Zeit, a German newspaper, that David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, was going to join the Queen for a state dinner with Chancellor Merkel in the evening. Perhaps the EU flag was a gentle reminder that Germany felt the EU project was worth continuing and hoped that Cameron could bring the British around to voting "yes" on his proposed referendum?

The doors to the Audimax, a huge auditorium in the administration building that holds maybe 250 people where the lecture was to take place, opened at 12:30 even though the talk didn't start until 2. Around quarter of one, I went over to the TU administration building expecting the worst for security. Would they make me take my shoes off like TSA does? But fortunately, I was in luck. They did make me take off my fleece jacket and leave it at the coatroom, and they insisted I turn my cell phone on before going through the metal detector, but other than that, they were pretty cool. No "shoes off" like the TSA at least.

A few times during the intervening hour and a half before the Queen arrived, a young woman walked out on the stage and explained what was going to happen. The Queen would enter with Joachim Gauck, President of the Federal Republic of Germany, his domestic partner Daniela Schadt, the lecturer Dr. Neil McGregor, head of the British Museum, and Dr. Christian Thomsen. Prince Phillip would also accompany the Queen. A fanfare would play, Handel's "Royal Fireworks Suite". We would all rise and remain standing until Her Majesty sat, then when she left exactly the same series of events in reverse would happen. The Queen would go to the Lichthof, an atrium in the center of the administrative building, for a short concert and to view a couple of TU projects, then depart. In addition to the guest of honor and her accompaniment, several foreign ambassadors and some German government officials would be there. 

Note that unlike the U.S., the President in Germany is just the Head of State and not the Head of Government. The head of government is the Chancellor, like the Prime Minister is in England So the President primarily participates in ceremonial events involving other heads of state, which the Queen is for Britain. In addition to the Head of State function, in Germany the President serves as a voice for democratic values and moral government, a function President Gauck's biography has well-prepared him for, since he is trained as a Lutheran minister and was instrumental in founding an organization that led to the peaceful downfall of the authoritarian DDR (East German) government when the Cold War ended.

Near two, I was getting bored with sitting (the cellphone reception inside Audimax was terrible) when suddenly people started clapping and standing up. I stood up and looked down and there was a woman in a bright orange dress walking through a sea of black and white suits and dresses. When she turned toward the balcony, I recognized her: it was Angela Merkel! Even though she hadn't been invited, she had decided to crash the party! She walked to the front of the auditorium, where she greeted some folks in the front, then sat down in the front row with a young looking guy, probably her secretary.

I was astounded by what I didn't see. I didn't see a bunch of bulky guys with a white earphone in their ears and a bulge about the size of a .45 automatic on their hips surrounding Frau Merkel, alertly looking around for threats, as would have been the case had President Obama walked into the room. There was just her and her secretary maybe, and the only security was the guys from the security firm providing coverage for the event, who weren't in evidence.

I sat back down and waited. A couple of short British films that had won awards at various film festivals played . They were not bad but it was difficult to hear the sound track over people talking.

Sometime around 2:30 there was a commotion in the back of the hall, the "Royal Fireworks Suite" started up, and in walked the Queen and her entourage. She was wearing a broad white hat and a white dress. She walked to the front row, and was greeted by Chancellor  Merkel (see above blurry photo), then sat down with the others.

Dr. Thomsen spoke first welcoming the Queen to TU Berlin:

Then Dr. McGregor spoke:

He talked about the founding of the Royal Family through King George the 3rd (villain of the American Revolution, at least from the American side) and his queen Charlotte (from Mecklenburg in Germany), who had 15 children. He spent some time on Queen Victoria and her love of animals, showing some portraits of her many dogs that she had painted by her favorite painter, Edwin Landseer, and how that interest had morphed into a history of work for animals and conservation on the part of the Royal Family. Prince Phillip continued that tradition, serving for many years as head of the World Wildlife Fund. Finally, he talked about English gardens and how they had influenced garden culture in Germany, starting with the English Garden in Munich, and ending with the fabulous Royal Gardens in Kew near London, which represented the epitome of English garden culture. He finished by showing the film made for the 2012 Olympics, in which James Bond, played by Daniel Craig from Skyfall, picks the Queen up in Buckingham Palace and takes a helicopter to the Olympic Stadium, from which they parachute into the Stadium on parachutes decorated with the Union Jack. The film was shown at the Olympics, immediately after which the Queen appeared, making it seem as if she had, indeed, parachuted into the stadium (at 85? hard to believe but my mother did a parachute jump at 75).

At 3:30 the group headed over to the Lichthof for the concert. I could actually see the proceedings much better since the TV camera was closer to the participants, another example of an event where being there in person was probably not the optimal way to view it, like the bicycle race I described in this post.  Here you can see the Queen in the white hat and dress arriving and taking here place for the concert:

After the concert, she viewed the two projects from TU Berlin students. One was a small robot that danced and waved to her. The other was a ball studded with 32 cameras that you could throw up in the air and it would trigger, taking a macro-selfie and a panoramic picture of the landscape. Although for most of the lecture and the concert, the Queen looked interested and serious, when she saw the robot, she smiled, as did Prince Phillip. On the other hand, during the whole event in Lichthof, Angela Merkel looked like a kid on Christmas, totally excited. It was really funny. I guess she must have felt like she was sitting next to a rock star.

As they were preparing to go, the Queen and Prince Phillip signed the Golden Book of Important Visitors that the TU Berlin keeps:

Prince Phillip spent some time paging through it, probably looking for their entry from 1965.

But then it was time to go. On the way out, I got this great picture of President Gauck and the Queen walking together:

and just before she stepped into her Bentley, a young girl presented her with flowers:

All in all, a very eventful day.

But no wave. At least, the robot got to wave, but it wasn't the same as the characteristic "Queen" wave that Her Majesty used to do so well. It was a bit disappointing but I guess to be understood, since she is after all 85 and not nearly as lively as she used to be.

PhD Defense Fun

Sri's Doktorhut

This week Sri gave his PhD dissertation defense. Most of the department attended the lecture and following question and answer period. Sri had a couple of people on Skype (physically present as a laptop in the front of the room with the sound turned up and the screen visible to Sri and his committee). He did an excellent job of defending his dissertation, which involved proving some interesting theoretical properties of transactional memory. Contrasting his defense with mine, which was over thirty years ago and half a world away (at the University of Arizona in Tucson), I don't recall having anyone at my defense except me and the professors on my committee. I think there may have been someone from the University administration there to oversee the proceedings.

A couple weeks ago, Anja, the professor who is the department head, mentioned in the weekly departmental meeting (called "cookies" because one of the department members brings cookies, ice cream, chips, fruit and other goodies which we nosh on during the proceedings) that we needed to take up a collection for the hat. I was intrigued. What hat? I asked a couple department members what this was all about, but they just looked away and mumbled.

Well, this week I found out. It's the tradition at TU Berlin to make a hat for the new Doktor, with various stuff on it that has some connection with the Doktor's dissertation topic. Above you can see a particularly fine example, the hat that Dan, Florian, and some others made for Sri. For example, see that thing with a round blue sign having a "60" on it, and a striped bar hanging down from what looks like a gate? An important part of Sri's dissertation was proving upper and lower bounds on transactional memory properties. The sign with "60" on it is a sign for the lower bound on vehicle speed in Germany, and the gate with a striped bar indicates an upper bound on vehicle size going through the gate.

Here's a  picture of Dan presenting the Doktorhut to Sri:

And here's Sri donning the hat:

 After the formal part of the proceedings, we adjourned to Schleusenkrugen, a beer garden along the Landwehr Canal, for dinner and a party. A good time was had by all, though it was pretty cold.

Germany universities seem to have a tradition of doing something goofy for someone who passes their PhD defense, at least in technical topics. When I was at Karlsruhe in 1978-79, the tradition was to make a float out of a small child's wagon and put stuff on it representative of the new Doktor's dissertation topic, and then pull the new Doktor around the campus to the cheers and jeers of bystanders. Here at TU Berlin, it's the hat. I think this is a way to tie what usually is a highly theoretical proceeding down to the mundane and practical, and to ensure that the new Doktor doesn't get too puffed up about about his newly acquired status. Besides which, it's fun!

In the US, we had nothing like this at the University of Arizona. When I finished with my defense, I went home and Town Mouse (who wasn't Town Mouse at the time) and I went out for dinner. I wonder if any other universities in the US or in other countries in Europe have traditions around doing something goofy for new Doktors?

I Was Wrong About the Purple Pipe

Purple Pipe Being Disassembled

In an early post, I speculated that the purple pipe outside our apartment might be part of an old district heating system.

I was wrong.

Here, you can see the pipe being disassembled by Citykran, likely a construction equipment rental company ("Kran" being German for the stork-like cranes that dot the city at construction sites). The end of June being nigh, the 6 month lease is probably up for the construction project on the corner of Gervinusstrasse and Wilmersdorferstrasse, which is a block away from us. And today I saw a big truck carrying sections of purple pipe driving down Marchstrasse towards Ernst Reuter Platz, so I guess the 6 month lease is up for other construction sites too.

Probably the pipe is some piece of construction equipment, but like nothing we've got in the US. There's another one, fully assembled, on Otto Suhr Allee, an alternative route to work that I've been taking lately:

What you can't see because its behind the teddy bear showing his butt to us (again my lack of skill with a cellphone camera) is water pouring out of a pipe that isn't properly connected. So it is likely some way to get water from an outlet where a lot of it comes out to a place on the construction site, like where they make concrete, that needs a lot of water.

Maybe the water is recycled or from one of the rivers and not from the municipal water supply? I know in Mountain View and Palo Alto, the purple pipe on the bay side of 101 carries recycled water from the Palo Alto sewage disposal plant for irrigation purposes. Perhaps they use a purple pipe for the same thing in Berlin?

Doesn't seem like something you could find out by googling it. Maybe I'll get up the nerve to ask one of the construction technicians when I pass the site on Otto Suhr Allee.

Update 6/27/2015: My brother-in-law, who is visiting this weekend, says that the purple pipes are to drain ground water away from building sites when the foundations are put in. Until he retired, he ran a department involved in issuing building permits for the city of Hamburg. So the mystery has been solved.

Sage Beach and Some Super Street Food

The Party at Sage Beach

Today was the Festival of Music in Berlin. From 4:00 PM into the night, different types of music are being played at various open air and inside locales throughout the city. My favorite kind of music is Renaissance and Baroque (like Purcell, Bach, Handel, Mozart) but my second favorite is Electronic Dance Music (EDM) in the genres goa psy/trance.  I checked the Web site out and the place that seemed to have the kind of music I liked the most was at Sage Beach in Kreuzberg, where some EDM was advertised. They didn't have any goa psy/trance, but techno and house were mentioned. Gernerally, I don't like techno and house - too much rhythm and the vocals aren't so inspiring either - but I decided to give it a try. Even if the music didn't pan out, I was particularly interested in visiting one of Berlin's beaches.

Berlin has a bunch of beaches along the Spree and elsewhere throughout the city. Here's a map showing where Sage Beach is located:

Another is on top of a mall in Preuzlauer Berg. Yet another is actually a swimming pool that is submerged in the Spree. People can get the feeling of being in Italy or Spain for the cost of a U Bahn ticket, and they get to go home and night and sleep in their own bed. During hot summer afternoons, I'm sure its great to hang out on the beach, but today was anything but hot - in the low 60's after yesterday's rain. Nevertheless, I thought I'd give it a try.

After a great bike ride through the city, I arrived at the Sage Beach site. It's an old industrial building along the Spree where the Sage Restaurant is located. This gigantic statue of the Buddha greeted me:

Well, not exactly the best of Asian art but nice for establishing the atmosphere nevertheless.

Inside, I found a bunch of "art cars" scattered about near the entrance, kind of like the art cars at Burning Man. Here's a couple:

And here's an old Mercury Comet mounted on top of the place where they keep the garbage cans:

I climbed up and took the picture.

Further on on the bank of the Spree, you come to the beach part. Here's what it looks like when nobody's at the party yet (I got there at 3:30 and it didn't start until 4):

I climbed up on top of an old barge where I had a great view of the proceedings and listened to the thumping house music the DJs were playing. Berlin is known for its female DJs (though female DJs are mostly absent everywhere else in the EDM scene) and a couple were in evidence here:

From where I sat, I had a great view across the Spree to the East Side Gallery, which I talked about in this post about the Mueggelsee trip:

The beach part was decorated with a kind of South Seas cross German hunting lodge theme. Here, for example, is a sign with directions to various remote locations:

which is kind of in the South Seas style, while here is a set of deer antlers, more in the German hunting lodge style:

There was even a pirate flag from the Hamburg St. Pauli football (soccer) club:

After sitting around for a while, I got up and checked out the grounds and walked over to the stand where you could get food. I had noticed a couple of people walking by with what looked like sweet potato french fries and, sure enough!, they had them (called "suess pommies" in German). First time I've seen sweet potato fries in Berlin. I love sweet potato fries so I stood in line to get some. And stood. And stood.

Turns out one of the deep friers was broken so they could make only one batch of fries at a time and for that they had two kinds, the sweet potato and regular. After about twenty minutes in line. I finally snagged some fries and bratwurst. Both the bratwurst and fries were really delicious, best street food I've had so far in Berlin. The bratwurst was spiced with barbecue spices and the sweet potato fries were thick like steak fries yet crispy.

As for the music, eh. While I was standing in line, I started to get a headache, I think it was from the thumping base line of the music. Thumping base is just about all techno has to it actually. Like I said at the beginning, I'm not particularly fond of house and techno, but I've occasionally heard some that I like. I thought maybe it would develop but no such luck.

I climbed on my bike for a fun and fast ride through the mostly empty streets of Sunday Berlin back home.

Weekend Breakfasts and the Search for the Perfect Chocolate Croissant

Weekend Breakfast at Haus Kempf

Somewhat more elaborate breakfasts on weekends are a tradition in our household from the early days of our relationship. I believe we started it when we moved to California in 1983 and began working full time. It became an opportunity to relax and reconnect over some good food after the stress of the week. Needless to say, we've continued that tradition during our time here in Berlin.

Above you can see an example of one of our breakfasts. Last Sunday we had coffee and tea, a mighty fine fruit quark made by Renate (quark is a kind of cross between yogurt and cream cheese), and some peachy tasting peaches, the first of the season. We usually have either a parfait, scramble/omelet, pancakes, waffles, or something like that which Renate makes, though in Berlin we've not done either the pancakes or waffles due to lack of the proper ingredients or the right tools (namely a waffle maker). In addition, we often have toast, or, here in Germany fresh breakfast baked goods. 

One aspect of Germany that distinguishes it from Silicon Valley is the large number of local bakeries/cafes. For example, we have 5 bakeries that I know of within a 10 minute walk from our house, and probably more that I haven't discovered yet. We even have one that is literally across the street from us, less than 5 minutes away, the Cafe Wilmersdorf:

There are two on the Wilmersdorfer pedestrian mall, Back Factory which is a chain (they have another store a couple blocks up the mall):

and M&M Back which sort of looks like a chain but I've not seen another store of this type:

 In the other direction there's one on the corner of Leibnizstrasse and Mommsenstrasse that specializes in sandwiches:

***

But they have a nice collection of other baked goods including Broetchen, croissants, and other items:

The Broetchen are in the back under the bread.

Though Broetchen are usually translated into English as "rolls", there is about as much similarity between a Broetchen and an American dinner roll as there is between a fish and a bicycle. American dinner rolls are usually small and squishy. Broetchen are usually larger and - most especially delicious - have a hard crunchy exterior shell and a soft and tender interior. The literal translation of Broetchen is "little bread", and they are kind of like a miniature loaf of bread.


Here's what a Broetchen looks like before it's gone under the knife. This guy is a rye Broetchen ("Roggenbroetchen" in German):

 And here's what he looks like after being cut in half:

 Especially fun is to cut one in half, scoop out the soft bready interior and eat it:

 then eat the shell and the remainder of the bready part with butter and jam or chutney. Below, the final result just before consuming:

In my experience, nobody else in Europe gets Broetchen exactly right, though the Swedes come close. On a business trip there recently I encountered some really chewy whole grain rolls, quite a change from past trips where the size was about right for a Broetchen but the texture was like an American dinner roll. Quite disappointing on the first try.

I've taken it upon myself to go out on a breakfast baked goods expedition on Saturday and Sunday morning (Saturday the bakeries open at 6:30, Sunday at 8). Like every other expedition, this one needs a goal, searching for something. What I set as my goal was the search for the perfect pan au chocolat (chocolate croissant). So far, the Sandwich Art shop is ahead. Theirs are just the right bit of bitter, and have two lines of filling on the two long sides of the croissant. But I'm still not done looking, maybe in the remaining time I'll find something better.

***  The law in Germany (Datenschutzgesetz) prohibits from posting any picture on the Internet of identifying information  about a person. For example, when we left the Bulgarian class at the Long Night of the Sciences last weekend that Renate wrote about here, one of the woman running the event asked for our permission to post our photos on Facebook an their Web page about the event. For this reason, I've obscured the license plates in this photo.

Eco Fair1

I regularly go to the berlin.de portal to see what's going on, and for this weekend, we had the Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften, and an Eco-fair.

Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften or the Long Night of the Sciences is an initiative by all of the institutions in Berlin and Postdam that have anything to do with science and technology: the Technical University of Berlin, Humboldt University, the Natural History Museum, etc. People buy tickets, and then can ride a shuttle bus around different sections of the city where the institutions host events, some of them elaborate. The TU Berlin had an especially elaborate collection, which we attended since it was in Charlottenburg where we live. We took a 45 minute crash course in Bulgarian, watched a lecture by a woman who'd invented a device that had helped her daughter walk, very cool! (the daughter had a stroke when she was a baby and lost control of one side of her body), and took a guided tour of the different stones used in the buildings. The stones tour came with a booklet and was both educational and entertaining, plus we can look at some of the other sites later.

Anyway, back to the eco-fair. The announcement in berlin.de focused on the informational stands. On the way to the Brandenburg gate were 200+ exhibitors with an eco theme. A eco bank, homemade honey (one beekeeper even brought some demonstration bees), different food items including sustainable cocoa and cocoa beans, information on being a vegetarian / vegan, and more. We had a chat with one of the representatives of the Green party, which was interesting. We got some info on gardens in Berlin. We almost had some eco ice-cream.

Eco toilet

Especially impressive were the eco-toilets, made of wood and, I think, meant to generate compostable waste (in the background a memorial for the Russian soldiers who died during the final assault on Berlin during WWII).

But the real focus of the fair was bikes and biking. It started with the bike tram, shown below and powered by 2 guys on bikes.

Bike tram

And quite a few of the stands offered bike-oriented goods, including large bikes suitable for carrying stuff.

The Nehmt Ruecksicht (Be Considerate) campaign had a stand as well.

I'd seen their large billboards before, offering cans of consideration with always a positive talking point, for example the woman below with the can saying "effective immediately".

But the big deal was the Sternfahrt that was being put on by the ADFC or Bicycle Club - kind of a AAA for bikers. A Sternfahrt means that different people start at different places at different times and converge at the same place - in this case, people starting from all over northeast Germany and converging on the Brandenburg Gate. More and more people join at different meeting points at different times. Streets are closed, and a good time is had by all.

Last year, there were 200 000 (that's right two hundred thousand!) participants. It is the largest bicycle demonstration in the world. We figured some of this out as we were getting ready to bike toward home. More and more people were heading in the opposite direction. And more. And yet more! It was fun to watch. Old and young. Lots of kids on bikes - and I mean on bikes. I have yet to see a kid on a bike attached to the parent's bike and doing nothing at all. Here, the kids pedal, or they don't move.

Sternfahrt on Strasse des 17. Juni

It was fun to watch. Some folks had banners. Some folks were playing music from portable boom boxes attached to their handlebars. It was especially fun to get to the Siegessauele, the gigantic pillar in the middle of Groessestern with a roundabout circling it, also closed to car traffic. Everyone rode around it, to the sound of "Born to be Wild".

Regrettably, a misunderstanding seemed to have caused a crash between two bikers, but it was encouraging to see that two Red Cross helpers were already on scene in their stylish red outfits - and of course, they had come by bike.

We were possibly a bit sorry to not have known more and joined the festivities - but it always takes a long time to untangle such crowds and we - having passed on the eco ice cream, the vegan burger, and the whole happy cow on the spit - were a tad hungry and rode back to a cafe near our apartment for some traditional 3 o'clock coffee and cake.