Night Lights

A few fun things we've done lately.  Beginning of December, we opened up a new wing of the building at work.  The outside panels are made of a cool concrete panel that was first developed at our institute.  The concrete is poured in layers, and there are glass fibers in between the layers.  You can see on the left a picture of the panel with a flash.  This is how it looks in the day.  When it's dark and there is an LED panel behind the concrete, the fibers light up and look like the picture on the right.  For the grand opening, there were a few talks and some dinner, then they light up the panels to music.  It was pretty awesome!

Timmy was pretty into it.  He was rockin out with all his little might.  Future Disco King?  We can only hope.  W e   c a n   o n l y   h o p e.

Second cool thing was New Years.  Here, New years is the time of fireworks.  Everyone buys fireworks.  They can only be sold sometime between christmas and new years, and they are in practically every store.  And people can buy some pretty major fireworks at the store.  The thing that makes it cooler than 4th of July is that everyone lights them at the same moment.  It must be the same feeling as being in England during the Blitzkrieg, except with less destruction and cries of glee rather than the other types of cries.  I guess it's not really a good example, but you get the idea.

Since KTs parents needed to leave at 4am the next day, everyone was in bed but me.  Of course everyone woke up, but they weren't as excited about it as I was.  Awesome.  I got  this video like 10 minutes after midnight out our back window, so it was facing away from the city rather than in the city.  I'm sure it would have been much cooler in the city, but we didn't have a good view from our place.

I know in Utah the restrictions on the 4th are pretty huge because of all of the fires.  I asked what the situation is in Germany, and I got the feeling that it's too humid and cold for fires to be a problem, but dumb kids loosing fingers can be a problem.  What do we really need all ten for anyway?

Another funny thing about New Years in Germany: it seems to be everyone's moral obligation to wish you happy New Years.  It's weird, you'd think that by the 9th or 10th of January people would be over it and looking forward to the next holiday, but the Happy New Years wishes do not slow down.  I think that you get charged a fine for every individual who was within a 10 meter radius of you and was not the recipient of your well wishes for the new year.

While I'm on it, the same goes for lunch.  It cracks me up.  They have a greeting "Mahlzeit" that they are obliged to say between 11 and 2.  Mahlzeit means "mealtime" literally.  At some time, it was "have a good mealtime" or something like that, but the lazy modern man just says "mealtime".  It doesn't matter if your done eating, you haven't eaten yet, or you are in the act of eating, you will be told by anyone who happens to pass by that it is mealtime.  Being the rebellious convention-breaker that I am, I've been working on some more situationally-appropriate greetings.  If the individual is at a table drinking coffee, I wish them a good "Kaffeezeit" (Coffeetime).  If a few collegues are gathered and talking, "Sprechzeit" (talktime).  If, as is more often than not the case, someone is just sitting at the computer, than they get to enjoy the wonderfully appropriate greeting "Rechnerzeit" (computertime).

So, to you I wish a good "Blogzeit".