Matthew Supert

Alright, so we made it to Berlin. It was incredibly hot outside, around 95 degrees. Once getting out of the train station we took the subway to the east side where our hotel was. First impressions were not that great and we sort of found ourselves in a pretty rough neighborhood , while taking a wrong turn getting to the hotel. There was broken glass and graffiti strewn about everywhere in the city. It was tough to tell if it was part of the artist neighborhood we were staying in or just a poor section of town.

After settling into our hotel, taking another shower and decompressing we headed out for the day around noon. We hit up the Berliner Dom, which is perhaps the largest church I have ever seen. We walked up to the top of the dome for an impressive view of the surrounding city. 

Next stop was to the Pergamon Museum, which showcases some amazing antiquities from the middle east. The most impressive part of it is probably the reconstruction of the Ishtar gate from the city of Babylon. The stone tables that they had one display were also incredibly detailed and really impressive. By this point we were both pretty tied and I actually found myself nodding off a couple of times while sitting on a bench in the museum. 

Our last stop for the day was to hit up the Brandenburg Gate. Unfortunately there was a sort of summer festival being setup behind it so we couldn't get very close. The US Embassy is located right next to it as well and there were lots of flowers out front in response to the night club shooting that had occurred a few weeks earlier. 

 Dinner was at schlesisch blau, which was a nice restaurant. I had fish and I cannot remember what Megan had. There was a huge summer salad though that came with four or five vinaigrette options. 

Day four had us saying goodbye to our awesome apartment in Munich and catching a train to Nuremberg. We left our photos on the travel wall and hopped on the high speed train for about an 90 minute ride up to Nuremberg. 

What makes Nuremberg so unique are primarily two things. 1) the medieval old town portion of the city, which includes Albrecht Durer's house and the castle and the court house where the Nuremberg trials were held. The old portion of the city is filled with old stone buildings, including some very old stone cathedrals. It was amazing that just a few city blocks held three very large catholic cathedrals. 

Day 3 of our trip to Germany was an excursion out to the country to visit two castles and the town of Oberammergau. We took about an 90 minute bus ride out to the country and the edge of the alps to get to the castles. Our guide told us that Austria was a mere miles away on the other side of the mountains. 

Our first castle was Castle Linderhof. It was the hunting lodge of King Ludwig II. He was a reclusive "mad" king and lived in this palace in almost complete solitude. The castle was not huge, at least by palace standards, but it was incredibly ornate, decorated in a french style known as Rocco in Germany. Unfortunately photos of the interior were not allowed. 

The second stop on the trip was to the town of Oberammergau. There wasn't anything here that really was that impressive, but it was a nice little country town. There seemed to be a whole bunch of these small towns in the countryside. 

The third and final stop on our tour took us to castle Neuschwanstein. This is perhaps the most famous castle in Germany and is known as the "Disney" castle as the castle in Disney land was modeled after it. The castle was also building by Ludwig II, but it was not completed or fully furnished before his mysterious death. The castle is only 1/3 complete and only one of the floors is decorated. During World War II the Nazi's stored art in the building to keep it from being bombed by allied forces. 

The yellow castle you see in the photo is that of King Ludwig II's mother and she lived just below castle Neuschwanstein. Both castles are surrounding by five lakes, one of which you can see in our photos. It was very pretty. 

We finished off the day back in Munich for some dinner. A nice summer salad and a "chef's selection" for our entree. 

The second day of our trip really has us kicking into Munich. The morning starts of off with one of the most impressive locations on the whole trip at the Munich Residenz. This is the royal palace for the House of Wittelsbach. As you can see from the photos, they had quite a liking to French style decorations. It is hard to describe from the photos who truly intricate and impressive some of the decorations are, but they were some of the most impressive decorations I had ever seen in my life. 

A lunch with some wienerschnitzel, beaten, spaetzle, potato salad before we took the subway up north to the Olympia Park from the 1972 Olympics and the BMW headquarters and museum. 

Megan and I had been talking about going to Europe for several years now and we decided to just "pull the trigger" and get it done. German was the destination and I bought airline tickets last fall and assumed we would just figure out our itinerary over the next several months. Our trip this year was to visit Munich, Nuremberg, and Berlin. 

The flight into Germany went fine, although Megan didn't get much sleep on the plane. We knew we were going to arrive around mid-morning so we had to check into our Air BnB apartment and then figure out something for the afternoon. Our apartment was located abut two blocks from the main train station. One of the tenants of the apartment, Marina, met us there to let us in. The apartment was gorgeous. You'll see some more photos of the apartment later. 

For our first afternoon we were planning on hitting up a couple of art museums, namely the Pinakothek der Moderne. Unfortunately it was closed because it was a Monday. Our afternoon was starting off poorly, but we then decided to head of to the Englisher Garten, which is Munich's "Central Park".

The highlights of this garden were the manmade river that ran through the center of it and the beer garden. On many days in the summer residents would swim in the river. It was sitting unusually high on this day though due to recent rains. They have a small section near the south side of the park where surfers ride the waves. 

Look at the size of that beer. 

After lunch in the garden we went and walked around the grounds of the Residenz, which was the royal palace. 

We then just sort of wandered around the "old town" area, and walked into a beautiful church and got luck by walking up to see the Glockenspiel right when it was going off. 

The day finished off by hitting up another church and also walking through the main market square. 

Spice’s hands clenched the steering wheel of her rental car as anger began to build up inside her. Waves of heat  rose up off the front of the car as the temperature outside on the highway was a blistering 142 degrees. Traffic on intermodal 1 backed up for miles and crawled at a snail’s pace and accordion-like pockets opened up and then closed again as drivers moved through the stacked assemblage of cars. The aerial beacons for the airway system were offline and everyone was now stuck to surface transportation for the afternoon.

“Look at these assholes,” she flipped off the driver of a red car that just squeezed in front of her. Her head turned to her left, to the passenger seat. Sitting there was Apath, her husband, co-pilot, and much calmer individual. He looked up from his cellphone with a look of disapproval on his face, saying nothing.

“Can you believe these people,” shouted Spice. “They need to stay in their lane or use their damn blinker!”

Apath finally replied to her. “Would you just calm down. Traffic is bad and there isn’t much you can do about it right now. Besides, if you wouldn’t have spent the entire afternoon making a cake we would have left on time." Apath gestured to the cake sitting in the back seat,  "I told you we needed to leave by two o’clock.”

The returning glare from Spice shut Apath up. Apath tried to lighten the mood by putting on a little bit of music.

“Look, let’s just calm down a little bit. It’s hot out, but the air conditioner is working fine, we got some music, and the cake isn’t going to melt. If we are a bit late to Anna’s birthday, the world won’t exactly come to an end." he said.

Anna was Spice’s niece and she was turning fifteen today. Spice and Apath were heading to her party and Spice insisted on bringing a cake that she made, despite indications from her sister that there would be plenty of food. Apath touched a couple of buttons on the phone that he was still holding and a deep thump of minimalist techno came on over the car’s speaker system. It was a slow rhythmic beat with a soft, but deep kick drum and a short but smooth hi-hat. Over top of the percussion was a light dance of melodic synth lines, that were filtered just a bit to take off the edge. The whole track had a slightly muffled sound to it and Apath  knew that this sort of music always seemed to relax Spice. He set his phone onto shuffle before going back to browsing the latest news feeds.

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Last weekend Megan and I had the pleasure of riding up to Appleton Wisconsin with a group of friends. Their son goes to the Lawrence University music conservatory and they were on their way up to to see his final performance of the year. There was a total of nine of us in the group heading on up for the weekend. Leaving Park Ridge we went on up through Wisconsin though its always enjoyable country roads. We eventually found our way onto the Kettle Moraine Scenic Drive. It is a nice collection of scenic country roads.

We stopped for lunch on the first day for a burger before continuing on north. When we finally got to Appleton I was impressed at how cool the town actually was. A nice looking college campus overlooked the river, which appeared to be dominated by an abandoned mill. As as result of the mill there looked like there were at least two locks or damns on the river. The mill has since been converted into apartments or condos, but much of the aging infrastructure around the mill, including old bridge pylons in the river remain. 

Our hotel was the fantastic looking Franklin Street Inn Bed and Breakfast. It was an adorable converted victorian house with very vintage looking furniture. Megan and I waffled on our room choice and ended up with the very cool looking, but also very hot third floor attic room, with a seashell theme.  The proprietor had the most northern accent I had ever heard in my life. What's more is that our group had the entire house to ourselves, which made for a great evening. 

Dinner that evening was at the Stone Cellar Brewpub, just across the river. Again, I was completely surprised at how great the place was. Great food with all of the Wisconsin standards like beer, cheese and sausage. It really was fantastic. Later that evening we went to the recital which was performed in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel. After the concert we went to the Viking Room, which is a bar located inside the university's union. Take that in for a moment. A bar, located inside the university. It was a strange sight, but it was a cool little basement hangout. Surprisingly it wasn't too crowded and drinks were apparently cheap.

The next day we began out trip back down to Illinois. We probably got started a bit later than most anticipated, but we went to go see the Horicon Marsh, which is a wildlife sanctuary. Part federal and part state land, it is home to migrating birds. It was well worth the side trip as it was a very pretty location. We only stayed for an hour or so. 

Finally, before heading home we made one last stop at a taco stand near Delvin Wisconsin called Lopez's Anchor In. At first glance it appears to be your standard hamburger and hotdog drive up stop, and it does have that food, but what it also has is some delicious  tacos and horchata. Megan got a horchata "smoothie", which was amazing. 

Finally push put us back down to Illinois and home around 5:30 or so. It was a long weekend, but some great riding and some great sights. 

This past Friday, May 20th was national ride your bike to work day. I have been wanting to do this for the past several years, but rain and other factors at work have prevented that. This year however the weather promised to be nearly perfect and I had nothing conflicting with work that would prevent me from participating. So I went off this past Friday with my bike and some research from Google Maps to find the best bike route to get to work. The ride in for me is 17 miles each way, which makes for a pretty robust bike ride. It is doable, but not exactly something that is easy or one would do on a daily basis. 

My ride was going great until I was about 2/3's of the way done, whereI ended up in the bicyclists worst nightmare. A car driver turned the corner off of the road heading into the entrance of a Mcdonald's and cut me off. I was just feet from the car. Thankfully, I didn't hit the car, but I did end up locking up my breaks and "high siding" the bike. I basically did a front flip on the bike, over the handlebars and onto the pavement. I hit the pavement pretty hard and my Strava map actually seemed to capture my crash, which you can see below. 

It took me a few seconds to realize what just happened. The woman who pulled in front of me did ask if I was "OK", but she did not get out of the car nor did she actually apologize. Several other motorists asked if I was "OK" as well. Thankfully, I wasn't badly hurt. I had a nasty raspberry on my knee which was bloody, but really not that bad. I also landed hard on my shoulder and my back, which later in that day ended up hurting a lot. As of a couple of days later, they still hurt, but they are feeling much better, so I think I just bruised some ribs and my shoulder. The only other major casualty was the strap on my bag which tore off from the impact. 

So of course I had to ride home from work at the end of the day. Thankfully, the ride home was without incident. It was however pretty tiring though. Overall and interesting experience to say the least. Perhaps I'll do it next year, or perhaps not. Can't quite say at this point. 

I have been in-between a solid video game for the past few weeks. The Division has lost my interest and I am hoping that a future update may bring me back to it. I have been dabbling here and there with a few different games. 

I played quite a bit of the Overwatch Beta that occurred a couple of weeks ago.That game is a ton of fun and has a lot of the same sort of hooks that TF2 had when it came out. While gorgeous and a ton of fund to play, I don't see myself necessarily picking it up right away. For some reason I never came away from the game "craving" for the next time to play. 

This past weekend had another Splatfest for Splatoon and I I ended up playing a lot of that this weekend. I had forgotten how good that game really was, and they have continued to add more maps and more weapons to the game. There has to be over thirty different load outs now for the maps. Tons of fun and it actually scratched my area shooter itch that Overwatch was going for. 

My biggest thing though was that I have been playing some indie games as of late. I finally finished The Fall, which was from the last Humble Nindie Bundle from last fall. The Fall is a cool adventure game where you are an AI in an environment suit trying to save the life of the body inside. You are stuck in a recycling facility that is trying to tear you apart. The game has some great atmospherics and the puzzles are decent, but there were several occasions where I had to basically "try everything" in my inventory to see what would solve a puzzle. Solutions were not always intuitive, but the game was probably 6-8 hours in length total, so it was a good time while it lasted. 

I briefly also played "Affordable Space Adventure" this weekend two for an hour or so. This was in the most recent Humble Nintendo Bundle and a game that has received a lot of praise when it came out. It is a Wii U exclusive and makes fantastic use of the touchpad for having controls and even sounds just on the pad to supplement the game. I am just pas the tutorial section, so I'll have to see how that one plays out over the next few days.