Our Trip to Amsterdam---Buildings & City

This little Dutch girl elephant was so cute!! There were 100 decorated elephants around the city. They will be auctioned off, and the money will be used to help save Thai elephants. Brandi, however, was not impressed.

More elephants. At first, I thought the man pictured on the white elephant was President Obama, but decided later that is was not.

A view of the clock of the beautiful train station. Notice all the little gable window areas. I really liked the contrasting colors.

Another view of the main train station. Trams were across the street, as were some canal boat rides. Sandi and I bought a day's transportation pass for 7 euro 20 or something, and we could use it on trams and buses for 24 hours. Definitely worth the money. We took a tram to what we thought was going to be our apartment, but it turned out to be the office for the rental company. On the tram again to find out apartment....

This picture is from the little neighborhood shop where we had lunch on Friday in Amsterdam. This was after our tour of the Anne Frank house in a neighborhood recommended to tour after the somewhat sobering house tour. We had wonderful sandwiches at the counter.

This plant was growing along the sidewalk. The blooms were as large as my hand.

We had an absolutely beautiful day with sunshine. Aren't the contrasting colors of the buildings and windows just stunning?

A street in the shopping area after the house tour

Houses along the canal. Note the variety in window size.

Near the train station

Closeup of the sculptures at the top. We Americans just don't do this!! On the other hand, as someone said to me, our buildings are made of wood!

We did not tour the Heineken brewery, but I saw this at the base of a different building!

Our Trip to Amsterdam---Canals

This old-time sailing ship had been built over the course of years.....

Another bike parking area......

One of the many canals that Sandi and I walked along or crossed

Duplicate that I'm not sure how to remove!

I really liked the shutters on these 2 houses....

A typical street along a canal. The buildings are attached to each other, and I really enjoyed the variety of windows and colors

Notice that the front of the buildings, on the top floor, are basically fake with either nothing behind them or just a small area rather than the bigger area the front wall implies

An old windmill, apparently missing something....!

Oct. 19-21---Sandi Comes to Bielefeld

Sandi with Brandi in Rotterdam

A friend and fellow faculty member, Sandi Poindexter, is teaching in Helsinki, Finland all this year. Sandi is the one to whom I owe huge thanks; she's the one who got me started on international travel. The Finland system, or at least the system where she is in Helsinki has "intensive" courses where fewer courses are taught for more hours per day, for a month or so. Sandi had a week break between sessions, so she went to Brussels for a few days by herself, came here, and then she and I planned to go to Amsterdam and Rotterdam on Thursday through Sunday.

Sandi got to Bielefeld on Monday evening. I was able to meet her at the train station. It was so nice to see someone from "home" and to be able to talk about events on the NMU campus, what was happening for people we both know, and that kind of thing. Sandi went with me to school on both Tuesday and Wednesday. My computer gave me new fits and it appeared that Sandi was able to solve at least part of the problems. On Tuesday evening, the current dean, Uwe Rossler, and his wife took Sandi and me to dinner. We had a nice time and a great conversation. The dean and Sandi had met some years ago while she was here, and he had also come to Marquette I believe. On Wednesday, Sandi met with the "informatiks" (computer) faculty to discuss what their program is like, whether they will be offering classes in English (so that our CIS students could attend here---doesn't look like they will be), and told them about the one-week international event that the CIS people have been having each year. The computer faculty did seem interested in that idea. Wednesday evening Sandi finished making housing arrangements for our trip to Amsterdam (going there first, 2 days) and Rotterdam (going there on Saturday and leaving there on Sunday). We tried to find out whether Brandi could go with us, or rather, what it would cost. Sometimes different websites for the same hotel would say a pet was acceptable on one site and say no on another! We did call one place and discovered that it would cost 50 euros to take Brandi!! I've imposed on Wolfgang's family twice to take Brandi--once for the trip to St. Etienne, and next weekend for my trip to Spain. So, Sandi had nicely agreed to taking Brandi touring with us. So, we were set with a backpack apiece (really the way to go if you can condense down that far!) and Brandi walking where possible or traveling in her airline mesh bag when it was not, and we set off Thursday morning for our adventure!! Pictures to come in the next day, I hope!!

Speaking of the next day----Thomas the IT guy here and I have given up on this computer. The screen is scrolling, often, out of control. I can use it at school by hooking it up to an external monitor and just looking at that. At home, I often have to hold a certain spot on the screen (evidently a loose connection) in order to stop the screen from scrolling. This makes for inefficient one-handed typing. Thomas is afraid that if we don't send the computer in for repair (OK'd by NMU, given that Thomas found out that based on the particular number of this computer the world-wide repair company says it's under warranty and they'll fix it) something else will happen and we won't be able to even use it to get my info off of it. Sandi had nicely downloaded everything on it to my 500gb external hard drives (thank heavens I thought of getting one from OfficeMax before I left!), so that is current as of a couple of days ago. She'd also "fixed" the screen roll business at that point by inserting a piece of paper between the screen and the plastic housing. That worked until last night, when whatever broke loose again and the roll returned. This minute, it's not rolling, but obviously, something is wrong.
Because there are severe limits on how many pounds of luggage I can take on both EasyJet and RyanAir flights this weekend and because I'm giving up and downloading to a German laptop Thomas will loan me, I'm not taking this computer with me this weekend. If I can't upload pictures tomorrow, I will not get to do it until after I'm back. Then, you'll get to see Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Vic in Spain in one big splash of posted blog pictures!! So, stay tuned.....!

St. Etienne---city and hotel

This is the toilet room (literally) in my hotel in St. Etienne. The hotel had recently been updated. Many European bathrooms have the toilet in a separate room, which is nice in many ways. However, it does take more space overall. Notice that this toilet flushes by pushing a button on the top; most have some kind of button on top of the tank.

The shower/wash room in my room. This room was large by our standards. This is the first time I've seen a shower with a solid, immobile door and an opening which cannot be pulled closed.

The towel rack was the room's heating unit, which then provided a heated towel!! This was a first for me too, and I felt like I was really being pampered.
Some future date I'll explain the story about my dean and toilets in Europe....stay tuned!!

On Saturday, Charlotte, the main clerical support for the international program at St. Etienne, picked me up and we went shopping first. This is one of the main shopping streets; we admired the building in the center, but the top certainly isn't the usual French architecture!

These young women were on a street corner, and Charlotte's comment was that this must be "a hen party". Evidently this is the female version of a bachelor party, toned down. The women do silly things during the day and then go out for drinks in the evening.

In the afternoon, we joined international students for a tour of the St. Etienne Mine, now closed. This tour took over an hour and included going down into the mine, stopping at various points for televised portions. The entire thing, however was in French!! I used my FLIP camera to take movies of each section, and maybe our NMU French professor will be able to tell me what I saw. I didn't understand this room, but evidently uniforms hung from the ceiling. During the tour, the men were seen working in their underwear at some points, and naked except for something similar to loincloths in other portions of the mine.

I've been intrigued with the popularity of Converse-type tennis shoes over here. This is Charlotte's pair; she says people tell her she has rainbows on her feet!

We met Betty and her husband Andre for dinner Saturday evening in a "Buffalo Bill" restaurant which is modelled on their version of the Old West. Here are the restroom doors.....

...and never before in my life have I used a red toilet!! Note that this one flushes with a button imbedded in the wall. Some day, I may do an entire blog on toilets---long story involving our recently-departed College of Business dean and my comment about what I learned when I first travelled internationally.

St. Etienne was a very pretty city, and I greatly appreciated my time there. I spent time with Betty, with Charlotte, and had dinner with their dean, a man from Finland who has been there a month. I was quite impressed with him and quite impressed with the program. I hope we're able to continue our contacts in the future.

Ecole Superieure de Commerce de Saint-Etienne

This is a view of one side of the business school in St. Etienne, France, which is a partner school for us at NMU. This side is a view from a mall-like area with other important business buildings nearby.


This is a view of the front of the building from the city street side. Betty Beeler, an American who teaches there and was in charge of the international students in the past, took this picture and shared it with me. The light is such that her picture is far better than mine. this is a beautiful building.

I went to Betty's "coss-cultural management" class on Friday morning. There were students from 10 or 11 countries in the room!!

Friday afternoon, we stopped into this class and got permission to take a picture. Our international department members had asked me to get pictures of classrooms. These students thought the whole thing was funny and enjoyed our coming in.

Multi-lingual welcome banner on ground floor

There were two maps with pictures of students. One map represented where current students are from, and the other represented where students currently were on exchange programs.

At one point, Betty took her class to the lobby area so that they could work in small groups. She is careful to mix the students from other countries with the students from France. Betty is talking to this group.

One side of the main floor with a receptionist

Thi entire building is light and welcoming. Paint colors are light, the skylights and use of space make for an airy feel. Betty's classroom, naturally, was probably the worst space of the whole building from a pedagogical point of view.

A person from admissions quietly brings his black lab to work each day. She is well-behaved and quiet. She even dressed up for my visit!!

Going to St. Etienne, France

On Thursday morning, I began a trip to St. Etienne, France, to visit our partner school. This involved the following steps:

1) Getting up at 4:20 to take the first vehicle of the day, a u-bahn from my stop of Siegfriedplatz to Hauptbaunhof. The u-bahn was at 5:12; I knew I'd be early for the 5:59 train but would far rather be early than late. Hauptbaunhof is 1 stop from Siegfriedplatz.

2) After getting to the main train station (not far walking outdoors from the u-bahn station), I checked which platform (gleis) I would need and then decided to check McDonald's in the train station for something to eat. No bakery/vendor areas were open. There was a swarm of about 40-50 college-age people around, some of them obviously half-drunk. I was a little surprised to find that McDonald's had no breakfast items whatsoever. I had a chicken (snack) sandwich. I was also surprised to have that many young people swarming around at 5:30 a.m.!

3) The second vehicle of the day was a regional train going on a 2 hour journey from Bielefeld to the Dusseldorf airport. There was a black woman on the train who had spent the night in the train station, having missed her train to somewhere. She was from Berline. I felt badly for her. There was some kind of issue about her ticket with the conductor, but it worked out alright.

4) I got to the airport at 8 for a 10-something flight. I spent some time looking around and shopping, then kind of camped in an area of chairs and continued to work on reading research articles Rainer had found for our article, using a database that we don't have at NMU. When I went to check in for Swiss Air, I was told that if I wanted to wait until 11:30 to fly, I could fly directly to Lyon, France rather than Dusseldorf to Zurich, wait an hour, then Zurick to Lyon, and I would get to Lyon faster too! So, I gladly did that. We were herded onto a small bus to go to the plane. The plane flight was nice. One interesting sidenote was a young woman obviously breastfeeding her daughter, about 1, as the plane took off and again as it landed. There were 2 young men across the aisle. Americans would have been more discreet, but no one seemed bothered. The older couple behind this woman became acquaintances, did peek-a-boo with the baby, and helped her get the child's carseat off the plane. The baby had to be strapped to the mother with a separate small seatbelt when the plane took off and landed.

5) Betty Beeler is an American who has lived in France for years and who had been the international director at this school in St. Etienne. She had sent me directions on what to do next. I was to buy a bus ticket for 8,90 and go three stops to Lyon Part Deux. I did that on a completely full, nice tourist bus.

6) Lyon Part Diex is a train station. Here I was to buy a train ticket for 9,80 and go 3 stops again to St. Etienne something I don't remember. I got the ticket with no trouble but almost couldn't find Platform J. Asking people didn't help a lot because evidently J is pronounced G in French, or vice versa. I realized there was some kind of language deal and drew the letter J in the palm of my hand to show people what I wanted. I kept running up and down stairs from one area to another, which seemed to be what people were telling me to do. It turned out that J was almost at the end of a series of platforms on the ground floor. I found the train a few minutes before it left.

7)I tried to call Betty on the cellphone number she'd given me, from my new German cellphone, but got French words and wasn't sure whether I had reached Betty or not. This was after my phone gave me a text message welcoming me to France, in German. So, I had no idea whther the stupid phone was welcoming me to France, or I was getting voicemail, or what.

8) There was a black man, probably 30-35, on the train using a cellphone. When he was done, I asked him if he spoke English. He did. He also spoke French; turns out he was from Cameroon and had lived in France for 12 years. We dialed again, he realized I was getting Betty's voicemail in French, and I left a message again saying I was coming on that train. Betty was going to meet me at the train station and she'd said if I called when I knew which train I was getting on (they run every half hour) she could pick me up. So, I left a message. Betty called back, and the fellow and I were both pleased! Betty told me where to be in the train station, we found each other, and life was good. Once again I got hit in the face with the importance of language. It simply had not occurred to me that if I got something other than Betty speaking English, I'd have no clue. And once again, I worked my way out of it because I've learned I just plain need to ask for help. I know now that some of the people in the train station misunderstood me or gave me info that they thought was right but wasn't, but at least the phone fellow got me to Betty. I'd decided that if I couldn't get her, I'd stay on the train, get to the right train station in St. Etienne, and get help to call the school to track her down! At least I'd be in St. Etienne.

So, I got safely and fairly smoothly to St. Etienne. This required 1 u-bahn, a German train, 1 plane flight, a long bus ride, 2 little shuttle bus rides to and from the plane, and another train ride. With good directions and some help, I made it!!

Posting for Oct. 12-14

Life has been interesting so far this week. I went to school on Monday and worked on several things--preparing for Tuesday's HR class, working on a literature search for a paper Rainer and I want to write, etc. I also finally was able to work with Professor Herzig, who teaches HR. You should have seen the 2 of us, working with a translation program, where we discovered that I don't have to teach nearly the material I thought I did. HR is apparently a 2 part class, and I'm only teaching about aspects up until a person gets hired. Safety and health, performance appraisals, pay, benefits, and all kinds of things will be in the next course. I told the students this on Tuesday and said I'm happy that we now have time to move slowly and go through things well. This class started with 9 students and now has 22.

I came home last night knowing I had a cold, but by about 8 p.m. I was absolutely freezing. I took Brandi out, put every blanket on my bed that I could, and was in bed by 9:15. I got up at 8 this morning feeling much better!

The org. behavior class today, starting at 4, then 9, is now 13. We changed the time today to take advantage of a free hour where students don't have classes and various faculty groups can meet. There were 3 students today who were brand new, and so rather than heading for a test next week, I've put it off another week. I hated having to go through things again, but these students don't have books (the library had bought 5), and without explanation of the foundation material from Chapters 1 and 2, they'd be really lost. The way classes are run here certainly causes some different outcomes.

For the first time since I've been here, there was evidently a breakdown on the u-bahn system and the u-bahn leaving the university was late. People really packed themselves into the train. I was late getting here to meet Wolfgang and Coco, who were picking up Brandi. They'll take care of her while I'm in France. I leave on a train at 6 tomorrow morning to go to Dusseldorf, then have 2 planes to Lyon, France, then a bus, and finally a train. An American, Betty Beeler, who is involved in international students stuff at one of our partner schools, St. Etienne, will meet me at the train station in St. Etienne. I'll call her with my new phone when I get on the last train!

So, it appears to me that everything is moving along fairly well. I hope I make it to France and back! Hopefully, my next posting will include some pictures of things at St. Etienne.

Oct. 10 & 11---Shopping, Dinner, and H&P leave

On Saturday, we went to Jahnplatz to do some shopping, mainly to buy a cellphone for me. We got a phone for 20 Euro with 10 euros of time on it. We also went to 2 different stores to accomplish unlocking Heidi's phone from 6 years ago, putting a new SIM card in it, and putting euros on it. So, I have 2 phones now. When Sandi and Christine visit, they can call me if something goes wrong, they're outside and I'm inside, whatever.

Pete, Heidi, and I all ended up buying nice wooden toys for their coming child and for me to use for Christmas present. This child is not due until April, but s/he will have toys to push and pull while walking!! The quality can't be beat. After we took this picture, I realized not all the toys were in it, and I forgot the German children's books I'd bought entirely. Maybe another picture later---I finally found a nursery rhyme book with the music included!!


We unfolded the couch into a bed and left it down the whole time Heidi and Pete were here. This is my main living room, which you enter immediately when entering the apartment. This picture was taken from my bedroom door, looking toward the kitchen.

This picture is from the kitchen looking into the bedroom. The TV and table are to the right, my desk and bookshelf are to the left. With so much black furniture (the two IKEA tables bought last are yellow because Ulla thought it was too much black already!), it's a little hard at times to find my black key pouch (Harley Davidson---a great choice---room for lots of keys and then a zippered bag attached for money, especially all the change involved in Europe), the memory card reader, etc. Almost all my computer and camera equipment is black!!

Saturday evening we were invited to Wolfgang's house by him and his wife, Coco. They will be taking care of Brandi for a couple of weekends, so we took her along so that she could get used to them and the house. We had a fantastic dinner---a casserole from the Tachine, I believe it's spelled---basically the Taliban area! Heidi was ill with a cold, feeling lousy, but Rainer picked Pete and me up and we had a great time.

The kids left the Bielefeld train station Sunday morning at 9, supposedly due at the Mpls airport by 5:30 Sunday afternoon. Flying west works a whole lot better, I think. I was sad to see them go, but I also needed to get back to focusing on school, my future trips, etc. My other visitors will be in singles, not pairs---Sandi from NMU (by way of a year's teaching in Helsinki, Finland this year), and Christine near Thanksgiving.

Heidi and Pete took back some things I'd bought, mainly toys, paperback mysteries I've read by now, and a now-empty brewery beer bottle!! They'd also brought me a couple of things I'd asked for---multivitamins and some small ziplock bags. I'd also requested a washcloth---people here just don't use those. The kids forgot that, but that's not a problem.

Trip to Flensburg--Oct. 8-9 2009

My mother's mother, Christine Gruse Miller, was born in Flensburg, Germany. For various reasons including the efforts of my Aunt Phyllis (Aunt Fifi), we know far more about this side of the family than the Steinhaus side of the family. Grandma Miller was very special to me; I've always wished I'd learned German years ago so that I could have spoken with her in German. She's the one who got me started in Hummel figures. She would make gingersnaps for me every time we visited Ohio. Flensburg is so far north in Germany it's about a half hour walk to the border. This and the next picture are pictures I took from the train window, on one of the 3 trains we took to go from Bielefeld to Flensburg. We changed trains in Osnabruck and in Hamburg on the way there.

I hope, by the way, that all of you have discovered that you can click on a picture and it will go to full-screen size!


This is a very rural area. The closer we got to Flensburg, the flatter the land got. It reminded me of Kansas except the fields are smaller---crops, wind breaks of trees, cattle, etc. The area has a high unemployment rate now because ships were built in Flensburg, and a lot of that has been taken over by China. One of the faculty men here has a brother who is an engineer for a ship building company in Flensburg. They had 50 employees and are now down to 5.


Pete used my camera to take a picture of me in front of the house where Grandma Miller was born. The kids had made reservations at a hotel that proved to be on the outskirts of town. When we walked to town on Friday morning, we discovered we were going right by the house!


St. JohannesKirche, where Grandma was baptized. Heidi wrote, in German, in the guestbook, explaining that we were from the USA and that her great-grandmother was born in Flensburg and baptized in this church.

The ceiling of the church is painted in a pretty blue-green color. Note again the place from which the pastor gives sermons. The parking lot was big enough for perhaps 10 cars, and each place was labelled for the pastor, organist, etc.

This is Manuela Bunson, known to our family as Ela. She is very distantly related, something like her great-grandmother and mine were sisters. She had visited Aunt Fifi and Uncle Herman in the USA, and she lives in Neumunster, about 1 1/2 hour train ride from Flensburg. Priss and Aunt Fifi gave me her address, and my work student at school composed a letter in German to her, as though I'd written in, explaining who I was, that we were going to Flensburg, etc. Ela met us at the train station Thursday afternoon, and we all had a wonderful time together. She is now 42, visited Kirschner's when she was 19, and has been unemployed since January. I had told her I'd treat her to dinner and would pay for her train ticket. She does not communicate with her mother, and we don't know what that is about and didn't push it. We had a lot of fun together, and we now have her phone number, e-mail address, etc. If she doesn't get a job soon, she may have to move to a different city. She said the unemployment office will help her with the cost of moving. This picture was during an afternoon coffee/kuchen stop. I had the rot (red) something that was one of Heidi's favorites, and now is mine!! Warm raspberries with a pudding/custard base.....yummy!

Coffee and kuchen Thursday afternoon

Ela, Heidi, and Pete outside the church

This dog intrigued all 4 of us; he seemed to have a Jamaican touch with braided ears! Brandi was with us and wasn't at all interested.....

We walked beside this house, with sunflowers, etc., just across the street and down a bit from the church.....

....with this detail in the lower left-hand corner of the mural!

I really like the detailing of the brick in this building, and the colors

Another nice brick/color building; must have moved the camera!

Flensburg is basically a coastal sea town. This was taken along the fjord, across the street from shops, restaurants, and the Hansens Brauerei where we stopped later. This fellow in the small sailboat was sailing all over, but it really looked like work!!

Hansens Brauereri. Pete and I each had a pretzel and a beer---mine is the smaller bier!! The glass, .2 liter, was so cute I bought one.

It was really wonderful to be where Grandma was at one point in her life, though she left there by age 5, if I remember correctly. Going there also let us see a very different part of Germany. Pete realized as we were coming back home by train that this was the only time in their entire trip that they had backtracked anywhere along the line. It was fun, and I hope to keep in touch with Ela. Ela asked us to greet Aunt Fifi for her, and we have her speaking for a minute or two on the Flip videocamera!