Bike!

I recently bought a bike. This was motivated by a few factors:

• My recent trip to Freiburg, which is very much a cycling city
• My commute has gotten crazy - they just built a new tunnel, which reroutes all but one of the regional trains from going through the station nearest to my house, including the two that go to the suburb that my office is in, so it now takes about an hour and three modes of transport, to go on public transport
• I am traveling off and on during the summer, meaning that a monthly transit pass does not pay itself off. Buying daily tickets is annoying (it costs about 7 dollars a day to commute, so I have found myself to working more from home).

This sticker is a play on the Zurich Transport network's logo and motto...
"no ticket for everything" instead of "one ticket for everything")

About every six weeks in the warmer months, there is a Velobörse (bike market) in Zürich, where used bikes can be bought and sold. A seller can drop their bike (or bikes) off in the morning for a fee of 5 francs (10, if it costs more than 400 CHF) with a price set. Then people come to the market and can purchase a bike if they find one that they like. If the bike sells, the organizers get a cut of the sale price. It is organized by the cantonal bicycle advocacy group, who are on hand to check the bikes out, make minor adjustments and sell accessories.

The selling period is from 9AM-3PM and I had training on the morning of the most recent börse. I wouldn't be able to make it there until about 2, when I assumed all the good stuff would be gone. I had decided that it wasn't worth trying, until one of my teammates mentioned that she wanted to go, so I changed my mind. The thing is we both have similar taste in cycles and were both tempted by a beautiful Motobecane mixte, which was just past the upper end of my budget, but almost worth it. I talked myself away from the pretty and pricey bikes (three bikes have been recently stolen from my office or nearby).

For the past several years I have toyed with the idea of buying a Bianchi, partially because they are nice bikes, but mostly because they come in a color that I would call seafoam green, but they call Celeste. Well, my dream sort of came true, when I became the owner of a Bianchi Flash Delta! (Delta Flash?)

The sticker shown in the top left means that it has been in Zürich since at least 2004 (there used to be a mandatory cycle insurance program). I need to cover the other stickers up. Additionally, the bike has rad graphics and sweet purple bell. 

On its first outing to a school playground 300 meters from my house to do a work out.
Fun Fact: the helmet and lock cost almost as much as the bike.

I knew that the bike felt like what I needed (lady's frame, rides smooth, some style - but not pretty enough to steal), but I knew nothing about it,s so I tried to find out more about the bike, but info has been sparse so far.

This Flash Omega is/was for sale in Hungary.

As was this Delta, which describes it as a mountain bike,
 a statement with which I don't totally agree.

I found this blog, where a woman rode a flash delta on a ten day cycling trip in southern Africa, after owning it for over fifteen years (in 2009). Which puts my dating of the bike about right. (Hers has different colors, so it could be a slightly different model year). It also reminded me that I have been wanting to do a big cycle trip for quite some time. Not Africa big - I'm thinking more like Belgium.

An Austrian auction house sold several (or had several for sale) in 2012 as part of their lot of police bikes. They characterize it as a trekking bike, which I think is more accurate.

None of the images that I found have the purple/gray coloring of mine. They all have some purple/teal version, which would have also been cool, because then I could rep the Charlotte Hornets.

I may go to the next börse early to see if I can pick up something a little more stylish, for when I need to be seen about town, but this should do nicely for now.

Time to see if I can steady the front fender and figure out which route to take to work on Monday!

Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany

Two weekends ago I traveled with some German co-workers to Freiburg, a university town about two hours from Zürich, in order to be in Germany while the national team played the final and hopefully get to revel with other fans. I tried this last world cup, taking a spur of the moment trip to Amsterdam, which was a blast, but did not work out so well for the Dutch.

I had spoken with my friends about where in Züri to watch the game, but they decided that in the event that Germany won, the experience of celebrating in Switzerland would be sub-standard. So on Sunday morning I got an SMS saying to meet at the train station at 3 dressed in black, red and gold. This was slightly problematic because out of loyalty to the US team, I left my German jersey in the US and the only other yellow I own is ultimate clothes. I settled on a black tank top, red cardigan and gold necklace. I'm really glad I kept it toned down, because no one else really dressed up either (one guy did bring a flag and we asked strangers to borrow their face-paint).

Last time I was in Freiburg was about two years ago and the city hasn't changed much, although it seems like they are building a new tram line. We happened upon an outdoor electronic dance party, complete with a vegan kebab stand, and danced for a bit until heading to a bar to watch the match. There were some groups chanting cheers along the way. We tried to make "Tüütsch!" (too-ch), the Swiss-German pronunciation of the beginning of "Deutschland", into a cheer, by one person yelling this and the others echoing and also telling French people we met that it was a common German cheer. This was a little bit a response to thee trend of people cheering for " 'schland". Mostly this just garnered confused (and annoyed?) looks.

After watching the post-game awards, we took to the streets with the masses. There was cheering and chanting and shaking of cars. For the most common cheer, Humba Täterä, based off of a popular Karneval song, the leader tells everyone to sit down several times, essentially blocking traffic or the walking path, then asks them to (translated from the German) "Give me an H", "H!", "Give me a U", "U!", ... "Give me an A", "A!", "Give me an exclamation point", "Exclamation Point!", then everyone jumps up, dancing and singing, "We sing humba, humba, täterä, täterä, täterä..." (I have no idea what it means) followed by people picking up all of the wallets that fell out of pockets during the siting portion and returning them to their owners.

A ground cheerleader

The bus cheerleader

One guy even climbed on to of a bus that was stuck in traffic to lead the whole street in the cheer. He hopped off, like it was no big deal. Then a few other guys got on the bus and were pulled down by the cops. People were having a good time, but there was slight sense of unease due to displays of national pride and the chanting. (or maybe people just felt like there should have been)

The cheer in another city:


We then split into two groups, people who had to work in the morning and those who didn't. The ones who didn't went to an after-party and I haven't seen them sense (mostly because I worked funny hours last week). Those of us who did have to get back to Switzerland and the office couldn't do so until the first train back at 5 AM, so we found a bunch of people dancing around a rolling speaker (at the same square where the electro party was earlier - I wonder if there is always dancing there). We danced, marveled at a world cup replica a guy had made out of fruit: bananas for the base and a cantaloupe with a globe etched into it as the top part, laughed at malfunctioning signs, went and got kebabs in a line which must have included half the population of Freiburg, then went to the train station where some people napped and I prepped for my meeting at 10.

The fruit cup. Photo from Anca.

I slept on the train and in the napping room at the office, then went to my meeting which went great! Someone who used to work for us had already built a model that I thought I needed to build, but really didn't want to!

Hehe! City theater of Freiburg. Should say "Heart of the City" 

June was crazy: Switzerland, France, Germany, Estonia, the Netherlands, + Greece (via Sweden, Germany + Serbia)

I wrote bits of posts during the travel, but never uploaded anything because a detailed description of my 15 hour journey to France, which should have taken less than 9, didn't seem too read-worthy in the end. I also spent some time working on a series of post about croissants, which I have shelved due to a change in my commuting route, but it will probably surface again at some point.

This massive post will catch you up to July 4th weekend with just the highlights from each stop! Google tells me the whole ordeal was about 10,000 kilometers!


France
Transport drama will always be associated with France for me. The above delay was due to in part to it being a holiday weekend, typical French train/rail problems, and other conference goers unknowingly swiping my reserved taxi. I eventually gave up on trying to find the taxi and found a bus, which took me to my first academic conference.

The door kept opening and closing while the bus
was moving for the whole hour-long ride

The conference topic was Service Management and the venue (or at least their restaurant) could have taken some notes (or invested in a better dishwasher and an exterminator). After the conference, I took a train (first class! for only an extra 10 euros) to Paris and then another to

Köln, Germany

This veggie loaf was actually disgusitng, but the first course
of cherries was delicious

On the Paris-Köln train they fed me and there was wifi, so I think the extra 10 bucks was worth it.

In between all the work conferences I've been going to, I've managed to fit in a little bit of ultimate as well. Aside from the twice weekly trainings, agility and strengthening workouts and extra throwing, my team has gone to (and performed quite well at) three tournaments, Disc Days Cologne,Windmill Windup in Amsterdam, and Skyline Cup in Amsterdam.

We won DDC, or at least the women's ultimate portion of it- the tournament also had Double Diisc Court and GUTS competitions as well as a frisbee dog showcase during halftime of the open final (so much for getting away from being "that sport with the dogs"). This was our first tournament with the out of town players, so we were able to work out some kinks and get in some good team bonding, we all have plaid warm-up shirts now, embroidered with a lime green "Z" for Zürich! If you want to read the German Frisbee Association's account of the weekend, it can be found here (in German).

So much style!

Parnü, Estonia

Time for Estonia, my second academic conference, and first conference presentation! On the way, I changed planes in Stockholm, so I could have my breakfast of champions: a Wienerbröd and Pressbyrån Coffee.

This conference was on the Baltic Sea and was also about Service Thinking. There were some useful sessions on paper writing and publishing. My presentation was the very last one of the conference and I think it went okay, or at least people told me they liked it; however, sanitation and water issues are not what these people are about, they were more into transportation, tourism or technology. The gala diner was at an old time farm and consisted of hearty food and homemade beer followed by traditional dancing, which the attendees had to participate in - this is consistent with one of the main tenets of Service Management: Co-creating value with the customer.

One of my advisers dancing! 

Parnü is a cute seaside town. Order the burrito at the Italian restaurant, if you are looking for adventure.

Awesome doors aren't just a Tallinn thing!

Rice, cheese, chicken and pineapple.
The salad and fruit on the side were excellent!

I took a bus to Riga, then a flight to

Amsterdam, The Netherlands
for a short stop at Windmill Windup, a massive tournament that I have been to three times before. Windmill was my first encounter with European Ultimate and it has been cool to see it evolve.

Good ol' Windmill!

I was in Amsterdam for about 24 hours. I was initially going to skip this tournament, but realized that I needed to play with my team against good competition before we go to Worlds. The three games that I was there for were really great preparation and I am glad I was able to be there. Aside from playing, I got to (ever so briefly) catch up with friends from other teams and countries. I also found out that someone other than my grandmother and other bloggers reads my blog (Hi, Herm!)

I also ate some stroopwafels!

The tournament organized an online contest to see who could most accurately predict the final rankings of all the divisions before the tournament started. My march madness brackets have been slipping, since I can no longer follow college basketball as easily as I could from the US, so I saw this as a chance at redemption. I got the second best score out of over two hundred entries! This is largely due to my team being seeded considerably lower than where I thought we would finish, which was second! I was frantically checking my phone for live tweets of the final during a session at the next conference that I went to in

Thessaloniki, Greece
I was sort of conferenced-out by the time I got to Greece. I could start to tell in Amsterdam that I needed to not be around masses of strangers for awhile, but I still enjoyed the food and the presentations. There was a special session on Base of the Pyramid research, where I presented my master thesis work and got to see what other service researchers are up to in this area.

Plus! All the signs are in Greek. I didn't know that things (other than formulas) were still commonly written in the Greek alphabet.

I don't know what this is, but it seems old and important.

Public viewing for the Greece-Columbia match. The local beer could not Fix the team's performance.

A store that only sells Feta (and Feta accoutrements, I assume)

(Air) Serbia
I traveled to and from Greece on Air Serbia, since they had the latest connection leaving Amsterdam that would get to the conference on time. And by that I mean it was scheduled to land at 2:35 AM and I needed to be at a session at 10. Of course the flight left Belgrade 90 minutes late, so I got to my hotel at about 4:30 and skipped the first session, which was fine. Air Serbia is in the midst of re-banding. Instead of just going down the isle asking, "Beef or Chicken?" there were menus distributed, which informed me what my choices were. I had found a menu from a previous flight in the seat pocket and both of the entrees were beef-chicken combos, so I was a little disappointed to have to choose between "air dried beef" and chicken.

Clockwise from bottom: My air-dried beef (cheese was a little tasteless), great ice cream from the Belgrade Airport, the menu from the previous flight (Maybe the plane was so late because they were making such complicated platings).

Luzern, Switzerland
The final round of the Swiss National Championships was in Luzern. We had to beat the other team from Zürich in order to make it to the finals, but that didn't happen (we let ourselves get down something like 6-11, tied it at 12s, and lost on universe), so we ended up getting third place. It was gross and rainy and a little disappointing.

Between the two days of play, we stayed at a teammate's house with a nice cherry tree and an awesome view of Mt. Pilatus, which I visited with my mom a few years ago (also visible from the fields).

Frankfurt, Germany
The last of the preparation tournaments was the Skyline Cup. This tournament had big ambitions, but it was its first year and scheduled at the same time as a big mixed tournament in Dublin and the some German national tournament, so the level and number of teams was not what anyone was really hoping for, at least in the women's division. The games were good for practicing staying onside during the pull, and refining a few plays and defenses, but we were never really tested.

After the tournament, I stayed in Frankfurt an extra day to meet with some German players in the sanitation game. I will hopefully be able to track some of their projects for case studies, as well as working together on some publications and putting together panels. It was really interesting to see how their offices work, since I could conceivably want to work for one of the organizations someday.

So, that is all for June and the first bit of July. I will probably have something up soon about what I do when I am not on the road, my recent trip to Germany to watch the World Cup Final, and my upcoming work trip to Kenya. Bis Bald!