German Sauna Culture and Beer

As winter is full upon us here in Calgary and it’s getting colder everywhere in the northern hemisphere, I thought it might be time to do some reminiscing about German spa culture. I think European spas are something that North Americans probably don’t have a concept of. When I used to hear the word “sauna”, I would think about my local public swimming pool steam room which was suffocatingly uncomfortable and boring. Well in comparison to that Germany has the Disneyworld of saunas, namely Therme Erding. Thanks to the Therme Erding website for all these pictures; for reasons one can well imagine there are no cameras allowed in these strict birthday-suit-only German spas.

In early spring last year after submitting my thesis, I took a day off to relax and enjoy everything that Therme Erding has to offer thanks to a birthday gift certificate from my group.

This is a crazy luxury spa with every type and temperature of sauna and steam room. The saunas ranged from 38°C to 90°C with various decorations (dead branches, antlers, hundreds of thousands of real rose petals, a fireplace, sandalwood). The “aromatisches Dampfbad” had pure vapourized menthol (think breathing in super-heated Tigerbalm) with stars on the ceiling. Think pools of water decorated to be a Roman bath and cold showers pouring down from giant lilies twice my size designed to boost your immune system. (As an aside, Germans are big into cold showering. You can be called a girly-man or more accurately be saddled with the insulting “Warmduscher” moniker if you insist on warm showers).

Roman bath and the giant freezing cold lilies:

At this spa they also recreated part of Stonehenge adding thundering waterfalls cascading over an upright circle of stones. There were benches over a warm stream for a foot bath while you read. Infrared heat lamps. Freezing natural “Tauchbecken” pools outside to take the plunge, simultaneously sending all your muscles into spasm as well as stopping your lungs, heart, and all other organs. Pools with jets and in-pool bars (remember everyone except the staff are naked).

Cocktail anyone?

One of my highlights was bathing in three separate mineral baths with calcium, selenium and the last one had salt levels rivalling the Dead Sea which made you float. They had specially designed metal handles to hold on to otherwise you’d float away into your less-than-pleased neighbour.

I also participated in two “Aufgüsse” ceremonies in which they pour water on the hot stones to make the room feel even warmer, and then with a towel (or a huge flag in the Celtic sauna) they fan every person individually so that you really feel the warmth. In the Celtic sauna there was even a throne at the top for the hottest spot in the room; one good natured older guy took the challenge. The guy waving the flag spent an extra long time on him (“the king”) and I’m impressed he didn’t pass out!

One of my favourite parts was the “Al hambra” rest area with super-comfy water beds for a nap after all of that sweating.

Here is a Youtube video of the attractions if you’re still interested ;) I’d highly recommend a visit to the sauna as part of any winter trip to Germany.

http://www.therme-erding.tv/?v=i_ytTypabY8

And while on the topic of German culture, I just can’t help but provide you with the following link regarding a controversial new beer name the Germans have registered in the EU:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,686305,00.html

Hamburg, Germany

In the spring I ventured up into northern Germany for the first time and visited Hamburg, an ultra-cool harbour city known for its fish market and great night life. It still made me laugh though that the local people who live in Hamburg are called Hamburgers. I met an American woman living there who claimed “she fell in with love a Hamburger” and could never leave. Despite single-digit temperatures I still had a great time in this down-to-earth, laid back city.

Hamburg has a splendid city hall/legislature (yup, Hamburg is also a German state in and of itself as well as a city).

There weren’t very many old churches or other older buildings since anything which miraculously survived the great fire of 1842 was pretty much destroyed in the firebombing of WWII. In my high school social studies class you normally heard about Dresden being destroyed, but I had no idea that Hamburg was also carpet bombed by the allies. Apparently 35,000 died in only 4 air raids in the summer of 1943 and almost a million people were left homeless after operation Gomorrha.

I did a free walking tour pointing out all sort of interesting stuff including this Kontorhaus (literally counting houses which served as office buildings), which at one time had the distinction of the being the pointiest building in the world (I tried to find the world’s current title holder, but even Google couldn’t help me there).

Stolpërstein:

These “stumbling blocks” are the work of artist Gunter Demnig and are scattered throughout Germany. They are tiny memorials for a single victim of Nazism commemorating those deported and killed, generally placed where a victim lived or worked.

I did a Großhafenrundfahrt (aren’t German words cool?) which was a tour of the historic harbour including Speicherstadt (which literally translates to “Storage-city” although it’s now a trendy place with boutiques and €4,000 a month apartments) with canals, bricks and beautiful green copper roofs. We then went through some locks and into the modern harbour with the huge container terminal. The scale of it was pretty impressive, with cranes stretching out as far as the eye could see and thousands of container boxes stacked and lying around waiting to be loaded onto ships. A huge “Cosco” ship was being loaded while I cruised by with claws, cranes, and other machinery working away.

Historic harbour:

Speicherstadt:

Container terminal:

The centre of Hamburg night life is the Reeperbahn where the Beatles played at various local clubs at the start of their career. Hamburg claims the Beatles as their own since they spent nearly two years in the city and it’s where they had their big break. John Lennon once said “I might have been born in Liverpool - but I grew up in Hamburg".

Some of the famous bands who passed through the “Star Club”:

I went on a fun pub crawl which included some clubs with live acts including this guy who had a sort of Michael-Jackson-does-Metallica persona:

It may sound unusual, but I really liked the food in Hamburg. I had the best falafel I’ve had in Europe (rivalling Calgary’s fabulous Byblos Bakery) as well authentic Baklava and a delicious curry wurst (see picture below) for only €2.60. Hamburg is definitely more affordable than Munich.

Below is a statue paying tribute to Hamburg’s favourite pirate legend Klaus Störtebeker. Störtebeker is a nickname which apparently meant “empty the mug in one gulp” in old lower German. Legend has it that he could empty a four-litre mug of beer in one gulp. I’m sure he would have been a hit at Oktoberfest. Aside from his beer-guzzling abilities, he is celebrated as being the Robin Hood of the high seas who robbed rich merchant ships and gave to the poor. He was however caught and executed along with his men in Hamburg around 1400 AD. Legend has it that he negotiated with city’s mayor to release one man per step he took after being beheaded. His headless body supposedly managed eleven steps before the executioner (paid by each head and wanting to earn the maximum possible) tripped him with an outstretched foot. Apparently the mayor ordered that all of his men be killed anyway, but Störtebeker is fondly remembered by the entire city to this day.

PhD Defence, Karlsruhe, Germany

I have some exciting news to share with everyone; on August 12^th, 2010 I successfully defended my dissertation (“Estimation of Glacier Ice Extinction Coefficients using Long-wavelength Polarimetric Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar”) and received the highest possible grade summa cum laude, which they apparently give out to less than 10% of all theses! I am thrilled to say the least and can’t stop grinning days later.

I thought I’d give a brief overview of the German PhD defence process. When officially submitting your thesis to the university there are of course reams of official German paperwork to fill out including statements saying that no one else wrote the thesis, a German resume, and numerous other oaths and confirmations . In my case because I was external, I also had to write a letter detailing all my contributions to research over the last four and a half years for them to even accept me. Once all that had been couriered to my university, I had to wait to see if they would take me. After a nail-biting week or so, everything was accepted and I could start panicking…..err studying.

Part of the tradition is to then visit all of the professors who will be on your committee. In my case there were five professors, two from my institute, and three from the University of Karlsruhe (about 4 hours from Munich by train). It’s kind of frustrating to make an 8-hour round-trip journey to introduce yourself and to talk to a professor for less than an hour, but I guess you gotta do what you gotta do. I was a little worried about the defence itself since only two of the five professors were under any obligation to even read the thesis; the others got to ask questions about whatever they wanted! The day before my defence I went to Karlsruhe to meet the last two professors, one of whom openly said that since my topic wasn’t even remotely in his field that he’d just ask me questions about hardware. Hardware was my nightmare since I come from a non-electrical engineering background, where a lot of that stuff is voodoo-black-box magic to me! Fortunately I had some cramming time that night and the questions weren’t as difficult as I had imagined.

The defence itself was held in a nondescript room in an old electrical engineering building, which was actually somewhat reassuring and nostalgic since it reminded me of the University of Calgary’s dingy, old engineering building.

The defence consisted of a 25 minute presentation, where I was encouraged to use all of PowerPoint’s bells, whistles, and animations to keep the professors interested. I found it very difficult to provide a good introduction to my complicated topic as well as all to my data, models, results, and validation within the required time, but it all came together. How much they understood though, I’ll never know! Other doctoral students from Karlsruhe were allowed to watch. A few colleagues from my institute also came along for moral support; it really is a good feeling to look out into the audience and see a few familiar faces in the crowd of strangers.

Then came the questions, which normally last 30 to 35 minutes, but in my case went on for almost an hour! I’d like to think that they were testing me to make sure I earned my grade, although it could be because of my wordy answers. I offered to answer the questions in English or German (I was told this is a good gesture). The first professor started in German and then the rest took their cue from him and so the entire grilling (much to my surprise) was in German, even with the professors I had previously only spoken English to. Despite throwing-in tons of English of expressions (my brain was too addled to translate “constructive and destructive interference” on-the-fly) I managed to make it through. I was then asked to wait outside while they conferred for twenty minutes or so.

Finally they invited me back in and told me my grade, and I came out where everyone was waiting. In a matter of seconds a graduation cap was placed on my head, a bouquet of roses in my hand, and a robe thrown on my shoulders. To be honest I was a little bewildered! We drank some champagne and ate some treats and then took the train back to Munich. Here are some pictures with the entire committee and audience members, as well as with my great colleagues who gave up an entire day to come support me.

Beautiful roses from my colleagues:

A really funny German tradition is the gift of the “Doktorhut”, a handcrafted graduation cap made by friends and colleagues. It’s supposed to reflect the research, personality, and characteristics of its owner, and my colleagues did a wonderful job! I’ve included some photos below.

I was particularly impressed with the scale-model plane (which normally carries our radar sensor) and the bent fork used to attach it to the hat! For the ultimate aficionados out there – they sacrificed an official Discraft 175 g disc for the making of the hat! The rest of the cap focuses on my Arctic research including photos from the field campaign, little yellow origami corner reflectors used for calibrating the radar data, and glued on polar bears.

A miniature copy of my paper accepted for publication formed the tassel.

How I will get this Doktorhut back to Canada in one piece is a good question. Speaking of which, I have a flight booked back to Calgary for September 9^th. I’m really looking forward to seeing everyone again soon!