Excursion to Naumburg

Last Saturday, we took an excursion to Naumburg. We took the train to Naumburg and then got bused to slightly farther away so that we could canoe down the Saale to Naumburg, our final destination.That is right. We paddled Old Towns. The only problem with them is that they had a third seat where the yoke was supposed to be, which made the portage we had to do really annoying. How can people honestly think that hoser-carrying is easier? Anyway, canoeing down the river was fun, even though there were cars on the road nearby and was garbage in the river and on the trees.
Halfway through the trip, there was a dam that we needed to portage around. On the other side, there was an old mill that we got to tour after we ate lunch. After the tour, we went back to canoeing. After a while there was another dam. This time, there was a lock that we had to go through. Going through one of those in a canoe is definitely an odd experience.
You can see the water level we were originally at on right wall. After getting bused to the youth hostel where we were staying, we all walked down the hill into town. At the beginning we were at a café in the town market where there was a Neil Young cover band playing. During a set break, we went wandering around the town and ended up finding a Cuban bar. After spending a while there, we went back to the town market and listened to the band for a while more. They had moved on from just Neil Young stuff to playing standard "classic rock" kinds of things. Smoke on the Water, Born to be Wild, etc..

The next morning we got a tour of the city. I feel that, after three of them, they are all pretty similar. Here is a house where a famous person lived or was born, here is a church that is pretty old, here is a cathedral, here is some mildly interesting anecdote that you will forget in fifteen minutes, etc. That being said, those parts of Naumburg were much more interesting than the other two cities I have toured. The famous person's house was Nietzsche's, the church had an organ that Bach played, and the cathedral was more interesting to look at than the other two that I had seen so far. I was very impressed with Naumburg. In addition to having a city part, it also had a lot of nature. And I mean nature nature. Magdeburg may have a lot of trees and parks, but all of it feels very artificial. The trees are always in rows along the streets and the parks are all well groomed and designed. Nice, but not quite real nature. Naumburg seemed to have a higher concentration of trees and nature in general. The trees there also seemed to have decided to grow where they want to. That, or whoever planted them did a damn good job making it look like they weren't planted by a human. Anyway, here are some pictures.
The Nietzsche House. The plaque says "Here lived the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in the care of his mother during the years of 1890-18979." He also lived there in his youth, but I guess that that isn't important enough to go on the plaque. It was kind of nice to visit the museum there, but I wasn't terribly impressed. Mostly, it had big plaques that told his life story with some pictures that I had already seen on Wikipedia. They did have some original letters and books of his, but not as many as I was expecting. There is another Nietzsche museum in Weimar, where he lived out his final years, hopefully that one will be more impressive.
The first edition of the second volume of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Also, my camera's shadow.
The altar at the city church.
The organ. I am not sure when Bach played it, but it was built in 1746 and Bach died in 1750. My guess is that it is probably somewhere in between those two years.
The cathedral. Attached to it is the St. Peter Paul church. This is my picture.
This is a better picture that I stole from Facebook. I am not sure where it was taken from.

There was a ropes course in the woods next to the youth hostel called "climbing forest." The name doesn't quite work as well in English. Anyway, we trekked back through down and spent the afternoon climbing trees and then jumping out of them. It was loads of fun and was definitely worth the €10 admission and the sore muscles the next day. I didn't think to take my camera out of my backpack, so I stole these photos as well.
I feel like this group photo could have been posed better. There aren't any pictures of me doing crazy stuff that I know of, but there is this picture that I took (for someone else) which gives you an idea of what the course was like
I think that is this is all I have got for now. Next week we have no class because of Jesus' Ascension, so I will be going to Weimar, Leipzig and Lübeck and tomorrow I will be going to Dresden, so expect to see a lot of posts sometime next weekend or week. I will try to do posts shortly afterwards, but that might get pushed back. We will see and hope.

-Marc

New Guitar

As some of you are probably aware, I have been learning how to play the banjo for the last year and a half or so. Rather than bring it with, I figured I would just bring some strings along and restring a guitar. I am sure that I could find a banjo here if I looked hard enough, but it would probably be very expensive. It would definitely not be at the pawn shop three blocks from here. Last week, I decided that I would finally bite the bullet and buy one, especially since it is really more of a deposit on a loan than a purchase. I doubt I will get what I paid for it when I sell it, but hopefully I will get close.

You can't quite tell from this picture, but it only has five strings. I restrung it and tuned it to something that I know how to play. In this case, it happens to be open E tuning. Since a banjo has a fifth-string that is five frets shorter than the other four, it posed a bit of a problem getting it tuned correctly. After a little experimentation, it occurred to me that I could tune the fifth string up and tune the other four down, leaving me with open E. Open E is what long-necks are usually tuned to, so all I have to do is put a capo on the third fret and I know what chords I am playing. Since I am going to be playing by myself mostly, it doesn't even matter a whole lot that the chord I am playing is actually a step and a half lower than what it would be normally.

As far as I know, this is a unique creation and I am not sure what to call it. People have been tuning banjos like other string instruments for a long time (mandolins, ukuleles, guitars, and, rarely, a bass. maybe others as well, but I have never heard of them.) There really isn't a standard naming convention. Mandos and ukes usually place the banjo part first in the name, creating banjolins and banjoleles. Basses are typically named bassjos. Guitars go both ways in names, causing a problem. I feel as though guitjo is used more often, but banjitar still shows up fairly often. I feel as though I am going to just call it an abomination or something like that. I have also thought about naming it Frank (short for Frankenstein), but I doubt that I will need to refer to it often enough that it will matter. It doesn't sound terrible (and I kind of like the lower tuning), but it definitely lacks what the banjo brings to the party. Maybe I will just have to buy a longneck when I get home.

School Update

It is a funny thing how things just happen sometimes. For instance, last week I was going to finally decide between the three classes. The translation class canceled for one reason or another. The English class was also canceled because the professor was stuck in London at the time and ended up having to follow the crowd as they swarmed onto the buses and trains. So I only had one of the classes last week. I am pretty sure that I am going to go with the two harder classes.

In other news, we went to Quedlinburg last week. I also went to Halberstadt on the way back, but that is less important. Quedlinburg has all kinds of old houses that go back centuries. I think that the twelfth century might be about as old as it gets, but I cannot remember. I took some pictures, and they are on facebook, but I feel as though the camera fails to capture the most important part of the city. If you are not friends with me on facebook (somehow?), let me know and I can put them up here.

Because everything is so old and has been unchanged since construction, all of the streets are narrow and curvy. Watching the cars try to maneuver around was pretty entertaining. As you walk down the street, you are surrounded by three and four story buildings that curve around and meander without purpose. I can't think of a place in the USA that I have been to that has a similar feel. All that being said, you kind of get bored with it after a while. That is similar to seeing old churches here. At the beginning, I was really enthralled by all of the churches around town. Now, it seems kind of boring and regular. They all of similar looking, so it gets boring after awhile. We did get to tour an old church and castle in Quedlinburg, which was interesting, but not terribly so. I definitely enjoyed it, but nothing earth-shattering happened.

That is basically my feeling of Halberstadt. Some of us decided to go there on the way back and do a little walking around. It was pretty small and didn't have a whole lot that was terribly interesting. Since it was Saturday afternoon, most of the things were closed. We did get to walk around the cathedral, which was pretty interesting. I definitely enjoyed walking around the town and seeing new things, but nothing really jumped out and made itself terribly memorable. Ideally, all of my posts would be a length this length, but that seems unlikely. Next weekend is Walpurgisnacht followed by another excursion to Naumburg which involves canoeing on the Saale River and visiting the Nietzsche Museum that is there. I am pretty excited. More to follow when it happens.

Start of School

As with all good things, foreign students aren't allowed to just hang out with each other forever. They actually require students to go to school here. Not quite the way it is back home, but "when in Rome" I suppose.

Last Wednesday (I think that time moves faster on this part of the globe or something) we all had to report for our German as Foreign Language placement test. Classes for all of the normal students also started on this day. We were somehow immune to this start date because of this test. We couldn't start going to class because we didn't know which class we would be in. Until we got our test results back the next day, we had no idea what we should do, so we just kind of went to classes as a big mob and sometimes actually had to sit through class. Other times, we were just told to leave, since we weren't sure which class we would be in. I managed to test into the B2 level (they have six levels here from A1 (meaning you don't know the language at all) to C2 (meaning that you are basically a native speaker.)) The classes I have are all fairly boringly named. That is not to say that they aren't interesting and important, it is just to say that there is no fluff attached to the class names (and how interesting can grammar be, anyway?) like we often have in the homeland. They are: Speaking competence, Vocabulary, Writing Competence, Grammar, Listening Comprehension, and German Culture.

Beyond these, I will be taking two more classes, but I am not entirely sure what they are yet. One of my options is German to English business translation. From the one period I have had, it seems like a pretty interesting class. It would also be a fairly difficult class, since I lack a business vocabulary in both languages. But, since we will be mostly proofreading the translations that computers give us, it seems manageable and also very important in case I ever decide that I wanted to do some translating on the side. I would probably have to go to grad school for that, which is a possibility. The problem is that, once I am back living in the States, the demand for German-English translation will drop to about as low as the demand for something can drop (Slightly above "another hole in my head," I would imagine) and I would not want to consider relocating for a job on the side. But, the class is interesting, so I would like to take it, if my studies would allow.

The other class that I am debating over is the C2 version of Writing Competence. We all accidentally attended this class on the first day, not fully understanding the European system (I have an excuse for that. I am not sure what the Europeans were thinking.) During this class, we all had to provide a writing sample based off of a small picture in order to give the Professor something to decide whether we should be in the class or not. My picture was of airplanes at their gates at an airport. I wrote about all of the different times that I was on an airplane. Not really something directly related to the planes (since I never mentioned the airports or the planes at all,) but I figured it was close enough. The next day, I received an email from the professor saying that I could take both the C2 and the B2 class if I wanted. That should also be very difficult and rewarding and I would like to take it as well. I am just afraid that, if I take both of them, my schoolwork will interfere with my traveling the country. As I cannot have classes on Fridays (I have been trying to do that for my whole college career to no avail. I get here and I can't have it any other way, because the only German classes offered are for Chinese students only,) I have been planning on spending lots of time traveling and seeing things that I will not have any other opportunity to see.

And so, the slacker option rears its ugly head. There is a class called Foreign Culture Competence. It is a very high level English class that compares the culture of Germany with the culture of the United States. In all reality, I should probably not take this class. It is just so damn tempting to take a class in a language that I understand very well (I was going to mention something about "completeness" or "understanding all of the words of" but both of those are probably false.) At the very least, the language that I think in, which makes learning that much easier. At this moment I am strongly considering taking both of the hard courses, which is what I should do. I am just afraid that I am going to be jumping in way over my head if I do. I suppose I need to decide before Monday, so I should probably get on that.

At this point, I strongly considered taking a break before talking about what goes on in the classes and the people that I am taking them with. However, I realized that I probably wouldn't get around to it for another week or so if I stopped now, so I have decided to soldier on. Feel free to get up and take a break without me.

The translation class was very interesting. Apparently, the professional translator uses a very expensive version of something like Google translate (which I think I can acquire for free? I will have to check on that) and then proofreading what the program spits out sentence by sentence. Definitely a lot easier than doing it completely by hand, especially if you have to look up more than half of the words to figure out what it means. Speaking competence apparently means that we are have to speak in front of the class a bunch, or something along those lines. All we did was introduce ourselves (we did that in all of our classes, so I won't mention it again) and go over the basics: buy note cards that you can use as flashcards, by the newest version of this dictionary. The older ones will be wrong some of the time and should be thrown out, etc. I can't imagine that every class period will be like that. I guess I will have to wait until next week to see. Vocab just involved just looking over some vocab and the same spiel from before. The first writing competence just went over some sentences. The second one repeated the vocab exercise, but with a different list.

This morning I had grammar and we talked about the sentence. I also got to briefly revisit elementary school, which was fun. The teacher used a bunch of example sentences to illustrate the different parts of the sentence that can exist. She decided to do this by telling a story using two of the easiest names from the class. As my name is fairly easy, it got chosen and I got to break a French girl's heart, causing her to plan revenge against me. I would think that I am mature enough to allow my name to be used in a class example without effect, but I felt really awkward during it. Some things never change, I suppose. After that, we all went to Listening Comprehension. I assumed that this would be the easiest of all of the classes, since, due to the similarities between German and English, I can understand much more of the language than I can speak. It is also much easier to listen, since you don't have to come up with the words yourself. I could not have been more wrong about how easy the class would be. We began by listening to some people talking about the correlations between the weather and health. It might be the fact that weather has its own special vocabulary (outside of the basic kind of stuff) but this seemed torturous to me. It also could have been the fact that the paragraph we were supposed to fill in the verbs on was shoddily copied, making it more difficult than it would have been otherwise. It also could have been the fact that of the 15 or so verbs on the list, I knew less than half of. Hopefully it will be better next week. I would really have to drop down to the B1 level for that class, especially since I am trying to attend the C2 course at the same time. I guess I will have to wait and see how that turns out, as well.

After a brief lunch (well, the eating part took about 5 minutes or so. The waiting in line took more than twenty,) I headed to the library to print my notes for the talk that I was going to give for German Culture on Germany since the reunification. There are only three computers that are hooked up to the printer system (you actually print from a photocopier) and they were all occupied during the half an hour or so I waited. Luckily, I had sketched some very rough notes on a notepad as I was reading stuff. The rest I had to come up with by memory. As I was the first person, I think that I will be granted some slack. The professor didn't seem particularly displeased, so that is good. An interesting point about the copy machines here. They all have usb drives on them, so you could print directly from your jump drive, if you wanted. However, I think that they only read .pdfs and not .docs, so I couldn't print mine. I couldn't find the documents on there, at the very least. I could find some pdfs, so I will have to try that next time. There ends my first full week of class in Germany. Hooray!

Since, in the past, some of you have whined about the lack of people in my entry, here is some information about the people. The other exchange students seem divided into equal parts from China and from France. There are also a couple Belgians and Czechs besides us two Americans. The people are all nice, which is good. However, as the French students choose to converse with each other in their native tongue, I am left out to dry when they are in a group. The Chinese students are the same way, but they have all been here since September and I don't spend much time outside of class with them. Since the Belgians can all speak French, Derrick and I are left either conversing with one another or the Czech students. However, there are only three of them and they are all studying things in addition to German here, so they aren't always around the rest of us as we go from German class to German class. Maybe I will just have to start learning French. Also, there is a girl from South Dakota here that lives on the floor above ours. She is in a class with Derrick. There might be other Americans running around, but I don't know of any. There was a guy in the hallway the other night with a Minnesota State Bulldogs track jacket, but he seemed terribly confused by my questions, so he must have gotten it from somewhere else. I am not sure if that means Duluth or some other university in the state. It was odd, at the very least. There was also a guy in the union yesterday who was decked out in Twins garb. I was caught off-guard at the beginning and wasn't quite ready to ask him about it before he walked away. Perhaps he will wear it again.

Germans? Do you honestly think that there are Germans in Germany? The truth of the matter, is that I don't know any. I am vaguely acquainted with a couple that spend Thursday evenings in the International Center (Inter-cultural meeting is what it is literally, I would call it an international center in English) playing foosball. However, as with the other people that I have talked to there, I haven't gotten good contact information for anyone, so I haven't been able to follow up on anything. Perhaps I should do that, the next time I go. For those of you who are familiar with foosball, these German guys are definitely better than anyone at Sawbill. Hopefully it will be good practice for the fall when I return. I can't imagine that I could have possibly forgotten anything from this post. I apologize for the length and will try to space it out in the future. Maybe I will remember something I forgot and will have to post it tomorrow. Bis später!

Marc

American Problems That Could Be Easily Fixed: Part 1

Anyone remember the way that American car companies have been in free fall for the last several years? It turns out that at least one of those companies was even more clueless than we all suspected. I will not speak of GM here, because one can argue that there are separate companies involved or something. That isn't really the point. The point here is that Ford Motor Company is entirely capable of making something that is not a large truck. I know it is hard to believe, but you are going to have to trust me on this one. Alternatively, you could trust wikipedia instead. Or, I could take pictures of real cars that exist here in Germany. Anyway, why Ford is run by idiots.

As I am sure most of you recall, Ford has only recently admitted that, yes in fact, they are capable of making the small car that Americans have been giving all of their money to Honda and Toyota to have. Personally, I own a Hyundai and am very pleased with its small stature and turning radius, and it isn't even a subcompact. They even make a smaller one that I could buy, if I wanted to. Getting back to Ford, they have not made anything that might even be optimistically called "small" since 1997. The Focus might be in the compact class, but it is gigantic in comparison to real compact cars, my Korean one for example (an easy comparison for me to make, since my car is often parked next to my sister's Focus.) In the very near future, Ford will be re-releasing the Fiesta to the United States.

This is where I try to avoid thinking about this too hard. Ford has been selling the Fiesta in the rest of the world since the seventies. Americans stopped buying Fords because they only sold us huge vehicles that guzzled fuel. This seems as though it would have been a no-brainer to just add the Fiesta to the American market. A small, fuel-efficient car would have sold like crazy due to high gas prices and American Patriotism. If this would be the only source of Ford's stupidity, I might be able to forgive them. It gets worse.

In addition to the Fiesta, Ford also sells a model called the "Ka" in Europe. This car is even smaller than the Fiesta and also gets 46mpg. They have been selling this car in the rest of the world since 1996. Again, this seems like it might be obvious, but it isn't to them. After doing some research, I found out that the Ka will not be joining the Fiesta in the US because Ford has deemed it too small to succeed in America. (http://www.egmcartech.com/2009/11/09/mulally-ford-ka-and-new-ford-ranger-not-coming-to-u-s/) A car that is American Made and gets 46mpg does not exist. It could exist, but Ford decided that it doesn't want it to exist. Advertise it as Red, White, Blue and Green and you would make a killing. Why they are not doing this is beyond me and I am going to avoid thinking about it too hard, for fear that my brain might explode out of confusion.

Ugh. I feel bad that the people that have the misfortune of working for Ford are being by people that are so out of touch with what people want. Hopefully those poor people can get other jobs before the company is crushed by the weight of a million unsold explorers and F150s.

Trip to Berlin

Yesterday, I woke up at quarter to five. Showered, made and ate pasta and left for the train station at 530. The train left at about 6 and we got to Berlin just before 8. We (Two Czech exchange students, a visiting Czech girlfriend, and us two Americans) then spent the next 10 hours walking around Berlin and seeing the sites. Did we see everything that Berlin has to offer? Not in the slightest. However, we did see some of the biggies, which will allow us to be more focused with our return journeys. Well, I cannot speak for the others in the group, but I will be more focused on seeing the rest of the things to see when I go back, because I will assuredly do so.

After leaving the Hauptbahnhof, we went to the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate. Getting the biggies out of the way first is often a wise practice. Although we didn't get to tour the inside of the Reichstag (we got there just before 8am and would have had to wait in line for 90 minutes to get to tour it) the outside was still pretty cool looking.
Although the Brandenburg Gate didn't look as cool at 8:30am as it does in the night picture that they have on Wikipedia, it was certianly made more interesting by the fact that there weren't thousands of people there.
After that, we headed down the Allee Unter den Linden towards Museum Island. Since it was now only 9am and none of them were open, we took pictures of the outside of the Old Museum and the Cathedral and found ourselves some breakfast. Coincidently, as we were leaving the cathedral, a group of Czech tourists were just arriving there. This, of course, meant nothing to me, but the Czechs in the group seemed to be amused.
After some much needed coffee and breakfast at a café, we took the S-Bahn to Schloss Charlottenburg. The castle was pretty sweet on the outside. But, as previously, we did not go in because it would have meant waiting in a long line and paying €10. Ahh the joys of being impatient and poor. Perhaps when I am older.
After the castle, we walked toward the heart of the city, found a Scientology church (Did you know that these existed in Germany? I didn't. I thought that they had outlawed or something) and ate some delicious Chinese food. The real beauty of immigration is that it allows me to eat delicious Chinese, Indian, Thai, etc. cooking nearly everywhere.
Once we were full of delicious food, we continued our journey and went to the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. The church was destroyed during the Second World War and has been left that way as a memorial. Before showing you pictures of the church, I am going to pause and complain. The following is addressed to anyone who might be pro-war (as an abstract concept) who happens to read this: If you are going to insist on having a war, please be kind enough to do it away from things which could be damaged. If you are going to agree to not damage anything, then you are not allowed to have a war. Do you know how many things in this city (or even country for that matter) would remain had they not been destroyed by war at one point in time? A whole freaking lot, that is how many. Anyway, ranting addressed, primarily, to people who have been dead for over 60 years aside, here is a picture of the ruined church.
Also, here is a picture of the inside.
The area surrounding the church was full of all kinds of street performers (dancers, jugglers, caricaturists, a brass band, human statues, at the very least). I don't have a picture to prove that one, you will just have to take my word for it. After watching them for a while, we headed to KaDeWe (Kaufhaus des Westens), the largest department store I have ever seen (Kaufen, if you don't know, means "to buy" The other words should be pretty self-exploratory). I am not usually one to be Claustrophobic, but I can hardly imagine how one could not be in that place. Seven floors packed to bursting with people looking at overpriced stuff. Also, an entire floor of perfume. I really wish that they would had a sign that said something to the effect of "Do you have breathing problems near perfume? Well good freaking luck holding your breath, because there is no way you are going to be able to get off of this floor holding only one breath" I made it through alive by alternating holding my breath and taking large breaths through my sweatshirt. I hate perfume. After we freed ourselves from the mob in that place, we headed over to the Großer Tiergarten. (Big Animalgarden) and relaxed in the sun for a while. Two of our party decided that it was nap time and slept. In the intervening time, I took more pictures of ducks than any person could ever need. To make the ducks more interesting than they normally are, a family showed up to feed them chunks of bread. Hooray for free entertainment!
There were also some other birds fighting for the bread. I have no idea what kind they were, except that they enjoyed plotting their attacks from a nearby tree.
After our rest, we spent a little more time walking around the garden (It could also be viewed as walking "out" of the garden, since we didn't really meander at all) and then headed back towards the train station to go home. Before we made it back to the Reichstag and the train station, we found the Schloss Bellevue, which is largely equivalent to the White House (In that it is the president's residence, even though the American president and German president are not terribly similar positions).
Since, in order to get back to the train station, we had to go to the Reichstag, I decided to take another picture. This one serves the dual purpose of being a time comparison ten hours later, and also captures the weirdest thing I have seen here in Germany (much weirder than the man running along next to a guy on a bike wearing a large metal chain who barked back at dogs)
If we were near some sort of American embassy or something, I could understand the stop sign's existence. As we were between the the German Chancellery Office and the Reichstag, I am utterly confused.
The Berlin Hauptbahnhof. Much cooler than ours here in Magdeburg (as one might expect) It is also the most interesting public transit station I have ever seen. For some reason, the airports I have been to are always boring. Well, that isn't entirely true. The one in Brussels was pretty interesting, but I was so tired at the time that I didn't appreciate it much. This is not my picture (notice how it is all black and white and artsy. Filip, my neighbor, is an Industrial design major and is pretty artsy. Luckily, he put this picture on facebook so I could steal it. Even though it is not mine, I still feel as though it provides an adequate summation of the whole day. (even though it was taken before 8:30 in the morning)

American vs. European Sirens

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.