For those of you not in the know, I spent most weekend-nights in the last year sleeping in a hospital, occasionally going on ambulance runs. As someone who has spent large amounts of time listening to the American style siren, I feel as though I can accurately explain why they are both so damn annoying and why I feel moderately relieved by the European ones. Also, since I live in a city now, I am forced to constantly hear the sirens, so it is usually on my mind.
First, the purpose of an emergency vehicle siren might need explaining. It probably doesn't, but I am going to do it anyway. The purpose is to make Joe Schmo get the heck out of the way as quickly as possible. It is for this reason that sirens need to be loud. Anything fairly repetitive will do the trick, it just needs to loud and drastically different some anything else that might be distracting the driver. I cannot speak to the efficacy of the European style siren, but the American siren fails to get everyone off of the road. I assume this is because drivers (and I am guilty of this myself) listen to music way too loud and never bother to check their mirrors. I assume that drivers in every country have this problem. Since the siren will never fail to catch everyone's attention, it seems useless to try to design sirens that become increasingly more annoying and mind jarring.
Since they can only do so much for the safety of the people outside of the vehicle, sirens should be designed to fulfill both the "make Joe Schmo get the heck off the road" part and also the "make the driver not go insane" part. My EMT textbook had some sort of name for this. It may have been "siren stress syndrome" or something similar. I don't think it was just "siren syndrome" and I am pretty sure it was alliterative, I just can't remember exactly what it was. Regardless, the point that the book was trying to make was this: you should not allow the fast pace of the siren make you drive faster than you should. One needs to always remain in control. This is impossibly difficult. When there is a serious emergency that your mind is preoccupied with, the rhythm of the siren gets to you and makes you drive much faster than you should. The difference between 75mph and 90mph is only a moment or two of distraction. Unfortunately, the damage that the tank of an ambulance could do at those two speeds is monumental. You own a calculator, figure it out for yourself.
This is why I like the European style so much better. Rather than a barrage of eighth notes at 200bpm, you get quarter notes at a speed less than 100bpm. Both sirens annoy the heck out of anyone on the street, so they both fulfill prerequisite one. The European one just adds a level of safety that ours lacks. I suspect that the reason behind our siren might involve Detroit, muscle cars, and engineers who have seen Bullitt way too many times. Or maybe it just involves emergency workers who want too badly to be Steve McQueen. I am guilty of both of those things. I could care less for Detroit's muscle cars (I drive a small Korean one) but I have seen Bullitt at least 5 or 6 times and I would love very much to be Steve McQueen. The only problem behind my Steve McQueen fantasy is that my muscle car or motorcycle is an anbulance that weighs so much that it still has no pickup, despite its gigantic engine. Seriously, it barely accelerates at all from a standstill, no matter how hard you push the pedal into the floor. Also, driving an ambulance in San Francisco must be impossible. They bounce around and are devils to control on flat, smooth pavement. I can't imagine what they are like when they have to deal with lots of hills and bottoming out.
I think I got the urge to write a paper out of my system and could probably benefit form walking around. I hope it was, at the very least, interesting for you.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Exploring and the like.
Having now been in Germany for over a week having been settled in my dorm room for an entire week, I feel as though I am able to give an accurate presentation of my life at the moment. Here goes (don't worry, it won't all be boring. There will be more pictures (Hooray!)):
Things will definitely be different once classes start after Easter, but I have got loads of free time until then. My life basically consists of waking up whenever I feel like it (usually about 930 or 10), walking around the city for awhile exploring, doing whatever shopping or meeting with people that I need to do, and then putting around on the internet for awhile. Not terribly different from previous incarnations of my life.
More importantly, this new life of mine is in a different country, where things are done differently, making nearly everything terribly exciting. Case in point, there is a streetcar stop right outside my door and there are another three within ten-minutes walk. These things do not exist in Minnesota (Ok, light rail exists, but that is only one train that only goes through a few stops.) There are ten different routes here that go all over everywhere, making it very easy to get where I need to, despite the fact that I only have a vague idea of where things are and don't have a car or a bike (I really wish I had a bike). Other exciting things that don't really exist in Minnesota are specialty shops. Today I bought cheese from a cheese shop in the mall. I also bought a hand of bananas in the Old Market where vendors gather everyday (or maybe just nearly everyday.) Buying fruit from a fruit seller in a market that has existed for hundreds of years is definitely different than going to a Cub foods that was built ten years ago.
This city seems to have an infinite number of churches. Life would have been very odd here during the late Middle Ages/Renaissance. It seems as though there were about 5 or 6 hundred years in a row in which a giant church was being constructed. (Incidentally, there is a road that goes in a figure 8 around Sachsen-Anhalt that has all of the churches in the Romanesque style on it. Not surprisingly, the road is called the Romanesque Road, which doesn't quite have the ring of the German Straße der Romanik.)
Other interesting things about the city: There are two parks within 15 minute's walk of here. One of them is beside a barracks that was built during the middle of the 19th Century. There is also a huge park on an island in the middle of the Elbe. I spent a huge chunk of this gorgeous afternoon walking around this park. It was 22° out, and it needed to be enjoyed, so I spent as much time of it as I could enjoying it. These parks will all be more interesting in a couple of weeks when the trees have actual leaves, and not just the beginnings of buds that they have now. Still, parks are exciting.
Here are some of the pictures that I have taken so far.
This is my bed. When I got here, these were the sheets that I was given, and I decided not to fight the point. On the left you can see my hallway. I have my own hallway!
This is the St. Johanniskirche, the oldest church in the city. Construction on it began in 941. Also, it has the coolest door I have ever seen on a building.
The scroll under the face has lots of writing on it, but I didn't take a picture of that. I should probably do that in the future.
This is the old city hall, built in the 13th century. The church in the background is Johanniskirche. The tents and huts at the bottom are from the market, which is located right next to the old city hall.
The big church on the left is the Magdeburg Cathedral. I took a close-up picture of the Cathedral, but I prefer this one. One of the towers is undergoing some sort of construction right now, so there is lots of scaffolding all over the place. The one in the middle is Johanniskirche. I have no idea what the one on the right is. This picture was taken from the bridge to the park earlier today. Immediately behind the Cathedral, but not visible in this picture are the Hundertwasser Haus which is about a block and a half away and the Kloster Unser Lieben Frauen which is about the same distance away, but next to the Cathedral, not in front of it like the Hundertwasser Haus is.
The Elbe from the bank in the park. Not as interesting in a picture as it was in person, but it was cool at the time, so I took a picture. Maybe I can follow it up with a picture from the late spring, when there are leaves on the trees and vegetation that is more green than brown.
I feel as though this should be long enough for me to have covered everything, but that seems doubtful. Let me know if you want me to cover something specifically that wouldn't necessarily require 18 pages.
Things will definitely be different once classes start after Easter, but I have got loads of free time until then. My life basically consists of waking up whenever I feel like it (usually about 930 or 10), walking around the city for awhile exploring, doing whatever shopping or meeting with people that I need to do, and then putting around on the internet for awhile. Not terribly different from previous incarnations of my life.
More importantly, this new life of mine is in a different country, where things are done differently, making nearly everything terribly exciting. Case in point, there is a streetcar stop right outside my door and there are another three within ten-minutes walk. These things do not exist in Minnesota (Ok, light rail exists, but that is only one train that only goes through a few stops.) There are ten different routes here that go all over everywhere, making it very easy to get where I need to, despite the fact that I only have a vague idea of where things are and don't have a car or a bike (I really wish I had a bike). Other exciting things that don't really exist in Minnesota are specialty shops. Today I bought cheese from a cheese shop in the mall. I also bought a hand of bananas in the Old Market where vendors gather everyday (or maybe just nearly everyday.) Buying fruit from a fruit seller in a market that has existed for hundreds of years is definitely different than going to a Cub foods that was built ten years ago.
This city seems to have an infinite number of churches. Life would have been very odd here during the late Middle Ages/Renaissance. It seems as though there were about 5 or 6 hundred years in a row in which a giant church was being constructed. (Incidentally, there is a road that goes in a figure 8 around Sachsen-Anhalt that has all of the churches in the Romanesque style on it. Not surprisingly, the road is called the Romanesque Road, which doesn't quite have the ring of the German Straße der Romanik.)
Other interesting things about the city: There are two parks within 15 minute's walk of here. One of them is beside a barracks that was built during the middle of the 19th Century. There is also a huge park on an island in the middle of the Elbe. I spent a huge chunk of this gorgeous afternoon walking around this park. It was 22° out, and it needed to be enjoyed, so I spent as much time of it as I could enjoying it. These parks will all be more interesting in a couple of weeks when the trees have actual leaves, and not just the beginnings of buds that they have now. Still, parks are exciting.
Here are some of the pictures that I have taken so far.
This is my bed. When I got here, these were the sheets that I was given, and I decided not to fight the point. On the left you can see my hallway. I have my own hallway!
This is the St. Johanniskirche, the oldest church in the city. Construction on it began in 941. Also, it has the coolest door I have ever seen on a building.
The scroll under the face has lots of writing on it, but I didn't take a picture of that. I should probably do that in the future.
This is the old city hall, built in the 13th century. The church in the background is Johanniskirche. The tents and huts at the bottom are from the market, which is located right next to the old city hall.
The big church on the left is the Magdeburg Cathedral. I took a close-up picture of the Cathedral, but I prefer this one. One of the towers is undergoing some sort of construction right now, so there is lots of scaffolding all over the place. The one in the middle is Johanniskirche. I have no idea what the one on the right is. This picture was taken from the bridge to the park earlier today. Immediately behind the Cathedral, but not visible in this picture are the Hundertwasser Haus which is about a block and a half away and the Kloster Unser Lieben Frauen which is about the same distance away, but next to the Cathedral, not in front of it like the Hundertwasser Haus is.
The Elbe from the bank in the park. Not as interesting in a picture as it was in person, but it was cool at the time, so I took a picture. Maybe I can follow it up with a picture from the late spring, when there are leaves on the trees and vegetation that is more green than brown.I feel as though this should be long enough for me to have covered everything, but that seems doubtful. Let me know if you want me to cover something specifically that wouldn't necessarily require 18 pages.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Arrival and Settling In
After being here for nearly a week, I have finally gotten internet access in my room, so I am finally able to take the time to give everyone an update without having to worry about paying 1€ per fifteen minutes or hogging the internet station at the café for longer than might be justified. Yay Internet! Anyway, here is the story, starting from the plane ride, since I suppose I should start there:
being in three different planes and airports for about twelve hours blows chunks. After that, I arrived in Berlin. Rather than staying and doing any sightseeing (or anything that did not involve the public transit system with the intention of leaving Berlin, for that matter) we (the other guy from Bemidji who I am here with. Also, I will probably end up using "we" most of the time, since it is usually both of us who are doing things) headed to Magdeburg. Although we will eventually have to go back to see parts of Berlin that are not the airport, the inside of a bus, or the train station, I can't imagine that we could have done much more than pass out from exhaustion, had we tried to do anything. Although coffee can make my body forget that it thinks it is 6am for short periods of time, it eventually wises up to the coffee's tricks and feels tired again. Anyway, after dozing through the hour and a half of train ride (I assume that Derrick was doing the same thing that I was doing), we arrived in Magdeburg.
We arrived in town too late to accomplish anything meaningful (which we found out after we went across town to the school), so we ended up staying at the hostel next to the train station. The next morning, we went back to the school, where there was still no one. Not entirely what I had expected, but things happen. After that, we went to the other school in town (where our dorm is) to check into our dorms. The man giving out keys told us that our keys were at the International Studies office in the first school, so we went back (luckily, dragging suitcases all over town is made much easier by the existence of streetcars).
This time, there was a person! A student worker who had the misfortune of showing up to work that day. Little did she know that we were going to bombard were with large amounts of confusion and work. She told us that two of the women from the office were on vacation and the third one was sick. We told her that our keys should be around somewhere (they weren't there, it turns out). She tried to contact anyone who might have some sort of idea where the keys might be. Of the many people she called, only a few of them answered. And of the few of them that answered, all of them didn't know anything. She finally contacted someone who could get us some spare keys that we could use until we found the first ones. After about four hours of trying to get into our dorm, we were finally able to put our suitcases some place and rest.
In the interest of trying to keep this a reasonable length, I think that I am going to end here, so that it can be manageable for the reader. Hey look! A picture!
This is Die Grüne Zitadelle, a building designed by Hundertwasser. More to follow later. Tomorrow, perhaps.
being in three different planes and airports for about twelve hours blows chunks. After that, I arrived in Berlin. Rather than staying and doing any sightseeing (or anything that did not involve the public transit system with the intention of leaving Berlin, for that matter) we (the other guy from Bemidji who I am here with. Also, I will probably end up using "we" most of the time, since it is usually both of us who are doing things) headed to Magdeburg. Although we will eventually have to go back to see parts of Berlin that are not the airport, the inside of a bus, or the train station, I can't imagine that we could have done much more than pass out from exhaustion, had we tried to do anything. Although coffee can make my body forget that it thinks it is 6am for short periods of time, it eventually wises up to the coffee's tricks and feels tired again. Anyway, after dozing through the hour and a half of train ride (I assume that Derrick was doing the same thing that I was doing), we arrived in Magdeburg.
We arrived in town too late to accomplish anything meaningful (which we found out after we went across town to the school), so we ended up staying at the hostel next to the train station. The next morning, we went back to the school, where there was still no one. Not entirely what I had expected, but things happen. After that, we went to the other school in town (where our dorm is) to check into our dorms. The man giving out keys told us that our keys were at the International Studies office in the first school, so we went back (luckily, dragging suitcases all over town is made much easier by the existence of streetcars).
This time, there was a person! A student worker who had the misfortune of showing up to work that day. Little did she know that we were going to bombard were with large amounts of confusion and work. She told us that two of the women from the office were on vacation and the third one was sick. We told her that our keys should be around somewhere (they weren't there, it turns out). She tried to contact anyone who might have some sort of idea where the keys might be. Of the many people she called, only a few of them answered. And of the few of them that answered, all of them didn't know anything. She finally contacted someone who could get us some spare keys that we could use until we found the first ones. After about four hours of trying to get into our dorm, we were finally able to put our suitcases some place and rest.
In the interest of trying to keep this a reasonable length, I think that I am going to end here, so that it can be manageable for the reader. Hey look! A picture!
This is Die Grüne Zitadelle, a building designed by Hundertwasser. More to follow later. Tomorrow, perhaps.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Departure
I leave tomorrow for Germany. I will be studying there until the end of July. It is my goal to update this blog to let everyone keep track of my life until I arrive back in America. Feel free to ask me anything that you would like to know, my email is marclevoir@gmail.com.
-Marc
-Marc
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)