Weekend 5: Alex Visits Aachen

“Ich bin hier!!” were the words I heard from Alex when I picked up my German mobile phone on Friday night some time after 22:00. However, when I walked down to the entrance of my dorm, Alex was no where to be seen. He accidentally walked to another high rise because I live in one of four identical looking high rises. After a phone call of clarification, we met up outside my dorm in a few minutes.

Alex is a friend of mine from MIT who has an internship in Hamburg this summer and decided to visit me this past weekend in Aachen. He is the same year as me at MIT (class of 2011) and is majoring in chemical engineering. In Hamburg this summer, Alex is working for the German company Beiersdorf, which might be better known to you as the company that makes the brand Nivea (skin creams, shaving cream, shampoo, toners, etc.). His job this summer does indeed involve making his own batches of shampoo and conditioner and trying them out on his own hair. I must say I was a bit disappointed that he did not bring any for me to try, but he said it was because he did not like his last batch. Alex and I have been friends since freshman year because we were suitemates in our dorm.

So I guess Alex was my first (of probably not too many) guest this weekend and I had to figure out how to best show him around Aachen when I don’t exactly know all about Aachen.

Well, here’s a sample of something I may cook for dinner here in Aachen and it’s what we ate before we headed out on Friday night:

I stir fried “gyros meat” with onions and peppers and had it with rice. I put “gyros meat” in quotes because I just picked up some good looking package of fresh meat in the grocery store and I THINK that’s what the German said on it… I’m still not fluent in reading German. I must say I like the meat here better than the meat in the US. In fact, I don’t usually like eating pork in the US, but I think the pork in Germany is fine.

After Alex and I ate the “mystery gyros meat”, we headed into town to check out the Aachen night life. Pontstraße is the name of the popular street in Aachen where there are lots of bars, cafes, restaurants, and clubs. I’m sorry I don’t have any pictures of our Friday night out, but we just sat outside a cafe/bar and caught up with each other.

On Saturday, we made sure to be out and about by 10:30am so that I could show Alex the Lindt Factory and the Printen Factory, which close much earlier on Saturday. I think I mentioned this in a previous post, but printen is a sort of sweet, gingerbread, baked good, which is a specialty food of Aachen. After looking at the factories, we went to Cafe Galilei on Pontstraße for a 4,90 Euro all you can eat brunch buffet that my buddy, Levent, recommended I go to.

We then went to see some of the famous structures in Aachen.

This is the Aachen Rathaus. ‘Rathaus’ is the German word for ‘town hall’. Alex and I think it’s one of the nicer town halls you’ll see in Germany.

Here we are in front of the Rathaus. We’re in athletic clothes because we were scheduled to go climbing at a climbing park in the afternoon on Saturday, which I will get into later in this post.

Alex requested to see the Aachen Cathedral and of course I would bring him there because it is one of most famous cathedrals in Europe. I may have already seen the cathedral, but I definitely got a better look of it with Alex and I even got to go inside for my first time.

The inside of the Aachen Cathedral is actually more impressive than this. I wasn’t able to take too many pictures because you’re actutally not allowed to take pictures in there…

Here are two more pictures of the Aachen Cathedral, which is pictured at the top of this blog:

One of the groups from the RWTH International Office planned to have a climbing trip at this miraculous outdoor climbing park called Kletterwald Aachen. They even subsidized half of it so that we only paid 8 Euros each. Unfortunately, the Kletterwald climbing park decided to close once we arrived there because of rain (as per usual in Aachen). It’s a shame that Alex wasn’t able to enjoy Kletterwald when he came to Aachen from Hamburg, but I really hope I’m able to climb it before I leave Aachen this summer. Since we couldn’t climb, I took some pictures of the climbing park:

Well, since the climbing trip went “kaputt” (that’s a German word!), Alex and I had to figure out something to do for the rest of the Saturday afternoon. We ended up going on a run through Aachen (yay, exercise – I feel like I’m getting so out of shape here in Europe) and then drank a little Printen flavoured alcohol (Aachen just loves Printen and even makes Printen flavoured alcohol).

On the way out for dinner on Saturday night, we bumped into Michael, a rising sophomore at Johns Hopkins University. We ended up going to dinner together at VielHarmonie on Pontstraße.

We each ordered 0.5L Weißbier with our dinner.

After dinner, I showed Alex some more of Aachen.

The SuperC building, which is one of the international buildings for RWTH Aachen University.

Templergraben 64. The building I work in.

I think this is one of the prettiest streets in Aachen, but I forget the name of it.

After walking around Aachen at night (the sun doesn’t set until really late), we walked back to my dorm, Otto-Peterson Haus, and hung out a little bit in my kitchen.

Sorry for the bad picture quality. This is the view outside my kitchen window at night.

Sunday was Alex’s last day in Aachen and he had to catch a ride at 17:00. By the way, Alex got to and from Aachen through http://www.mitfahrgelegenheit.de/, which I think is a very interesting thing in Germany. People (usually young adults) post the drives they’re making and then other people can just hop onto the ride by paying only about 6-25 Euro for the trip, depending on the distance. It’s basically like hitch hiking and it’s rather popular in Germany/Europe. This is definitely a deal because, for example, to go from Hamburg to Aachen, it can be 100+ Euros each way. Germany has some of the most expensive trains in Europe!

For Sunday, we hiked the Lousberg. I already have some pictures from being on the Lousberg in the blog, but here is one of some cool art project in the forest:

The view of one of the towers from the Lousberg:

Here’s Alex and me on Ponstraße before he had to leave.

While I like my friends in Aachen a lot, it felt good to hang out with someone you are already good friends with instead of people you are still building friendships with. It was nice to catch up with each other and compare our summer/experiences abroad. Alex’s visit also forced me to explore Aachen more, which is good for me too. One thing Alex enjoyed about visiting Aachen was interacting with more Americans since I have other American interns in Aachen, but Alex does not really have any other in Hamburg since he is working for a company. I must say that hearing an American accent here is a very comforting thing.

Here is a link to the rest of the pictures from the weekend:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2015959&id=1233870200&l=1c0daeb56e