World Tour

As you’ve probably heard, I’m going on a little trip. I’m going to try to keep these entries short so that I can update more frequently. So here’s a quick layout of my trip and my preliminary thoughts on each place before I get there:

Luneburg (Aug 1-5): This is where my uncle, Paul (he’s requested not to be called Uncle Paul) and my cousins Johannes and Clara live - I just landed here this afternoon. It’s a suburb of Hamburg and so far it's more of a Framingham than a Sudbury - if Framingham was more of a college town, and less commercialized, so actually more like Concord. Most of you probably don't understand that analogy, don't worry it's not that accurate.

-Hamburg: Surprisingly to me, this is the 7^th largest city in Europe, larger than Munich, Barcelona, Amsterdam, or Athens. It is a port city (sorry Joyce, you were right) and I’m going to be seeing a soccer, er football, match between Chelsea and local team Hamburger SV with Johannes there on August 4^th. This could be the most underrated city on the trip; I’m excited.

-Berlin: One of the six cities in Europe larger than Hamburg, I’m hoping that Clara will show me around for a day. In Beijing, a few Swedes I met called it the most fun city in Europe for their dollar, er Euro. I haven’t heard much about it, but I’m optimistic.

Paris (Aug 5/6-11): I can’t freaking wait to come here! I’ve only heard great things, plus the ultimate compliment to Shanghai that I’ve heard is that it’s the “Paris of the East.” What better way to put that to the test than to visit the Paris of Earth first? I’ve read a fair amount about Paris, but am definitely open to hearing about more fun places to go, especially in young person/nightlife terms. I’ll open up a forum later so that anybody who’s travelled there before as a young lad/lass can give me a few pointers. I can use all the help I can get. (Side note: I’m going to a Paris St. Germaine [PSG] soccer match on the 7^th)

Madrid (Aug 11/12-14): In stark contrast to the next place, I haven’t heard one glowing review of Madrid yet. But everyone says that I should at least go there while I’m in the area. Sounds like a really low bar to get over. I’ve allotted some time here just in case it exceeds expectations and I actually like it. Otherwise I could spend one of these days at Figueres (for the Dali museum) and there’s a soccer tourney in another town in Spain with Atletico Madrid that I may try and catch.

Barcelona (Aug 14/15-18): I’ve only heard gushing reviews of Barcelona and, before I read the guidebook at the airport, couldn’t name one monumental site there. Sounds like a real cultural hub that has places to explore during the day and likes to party all night. While Paris is the best bet to be my favorite destination, I could easily see the Catalonian capitol taking that title. I’ll also start a forum for this as well… it’ll be more important here because it’s such an unknown for me. FC Barcelona will be in America of all places while I’m there, so I may need help finding a soccer match to go to in Spain to complete my football tour of Europe.

Munich (Aug 18/19-21): I went here when I was 12 and I remember loving the weiss wurst (white sausage – no jokes please). I’ll be meeting up with my cousin Matthias here. Every guidebook of Munich I’ve seen so far has entire sections devoted to their beerhalls. Let’s just say I’m giddy. (Potential Bayern Munich game 8/20!)

Brussels (August 23^rd): I stop by in Luneburg to pick up my stuff, shower for the first time in weeks, etc before coming here to launch over to Shanghai. I have a late morning flight, so I’ll only have time for breakfast. Belgian waffles anyone?

So that’s it for my extremely brief introduction to my trip… I guess I rambled a bit. I expect that will be my longest post until I get to Shanghai, but I also know better than to think I know what to expect out of me (what?). To get more frequent updates from me you can follow me on twitter at @s_lauer.

Auf Wiedersehen from Lauer East,

Stephen “Scuba” Lauer

Shameless Plugs:

To my dad, Greg Lauer, who has been invaluable as ever throughout this entire process. He’s at least as excited about this trip as I am and I couldn’t ask for a better #1 fan (or 1b after you mom). I’ll also give him credit ahead of time for helping me survive when I inevitably lose my credit card/phone/passport at some point during this trip.

To my Aunt Laurie for meeting up with me at JFK airport and discussing Shanghai and Paris, somehow getting me even more amped for this trip.

To my uncle, Paul, in advance for not only putting me up at his place in Luneburg but for serving as my European base. Oh and for getting me a ticket to the Hamburger SV game!

And lastly, to the girl who sat next to me on the plane, Maria Metzler of Aldenburg, for being an enjoyable flight companion and especially for telling me that Justin Timberlake/Janet Jackson’s “Wardrobe Malfunction” was called Nippleblitzen in Germany. Awesome.

I'll leave you with this video that I saw when I got off the plane in Dusseldorf.

A little something I wrote up a few days ago...

About some of the real life in China.

What I've been doing...

(Un)Fortunately, I haven't been able to update my blog because odd days are for Super Olympic Fun Time (working Women's Handball) and even days are for cramming in as much Beijing/Olympics stuff as possible. Here's some of the things I've been up to:

• 8/8/08 8:08 PM - On a subway for the start of the Opening Ceremonies, oh well. Got into the National Indoor Stadium and mingled with athletes before they marched to the stadium. I met just about everybody in the NBA playing in the Olympics outside of Kobe, Lebron, and Yao; D-Wade, Melo, Dwight Howard, the coaches, Andrei Kirilenko, Chris Kamen, and Dirk.
• 8/12 - went to the Men's Volleyball Matches USA v Italy and Brazil v Serbia. I also used my pass to get into the press conference afterwards, which was very emotional as it was the first game after the Drum Tower incident. Shook hands with several Americans after the game and had an exchange with Dante Amaral, who is possibly the best player in the world
• 8/18 - I went to the Men's Vault Final and Women's Trampolining Final. The first event features really fast athletic guys flinging themselves full force off a spring towards an obstacle which they quickly hit with their hands to spin in crazy directions. The second event girls do so many twists and turns that I went cross-eyed. A Pole (a guy from Poland) won Gold in the vault while the Chinese added to their Gold count via trampoline.
• 8/20 - Tried to scalp a ticket to Croatia v Espana for basketball, while police walked between us to buy soda and food from a stand next to the "Scalping Tickets is Forbidden" sign. No ticket was less than 3000 RMB ($400ish), so instead went to USA-Japan baseball for 100 RMB ($14). 0-0 after 10 innings with four total hits, I think partially because the loser would go on to play Cuba in the semi-final while the winner would play against North Korea. I passed the time by heckling the local Japanese left fielder Atsunori Inaba with a variety of Japanese phrases (to the delight of the Japanese contingent seated around us). USA won in the 11th 4-2 after they put players on first and second to start the inning, thats a weird rule. Bring on Cuba.

I'm heading out for today, tomorrow is the Women's Handball Gold Medal Match.

Personal Bubble Popped in Beijing

So in case you didn't know, there's about 17.4 million people in Beijing. This means that there's a lot of people on the roads, on the bus, and on the subway. In the stop-touching-your-sister culture of the United States, any inadvertent brush with a stranger results in an awkward glance and a quick apology. Here, I feel that I've gotten to know strangers and friends much more intimately via the Mosh Pit Theory. Its every man for himself when you want to go from one place to another, you shove people out of the way to make every step possible, but if you're just standing there you're propped up by everyone else and when someone falls down you pick them back up again. Some places are hard to bear if you are claustrophobic or have a good nose, which is why there are several large spacious areas to go to relax away from the clogged central arteries of Beijing. One of these places is the Temple of Heaven.

Across the street from the crazed Pearl Market, the Temple of Heaven's gates open to a long tree-lined stone walkway that calms our nerves before we reach the temple. As we approach the Hall of Sacrifice, we see elderly women twirling long ribbon (you know, the kind that rhythmic gymnasts use) and hear voices singing in the distance. When we pass these people though, we see that they are not master twirlers and their music sounds more like an Irish pub than a church choir. They do not dance and sing for money or recognition, they do it to get away and spend time with others. Within a culture where any hesitation walking down the street might get you run over, this is the greatest sense of community I have felt during my entire stay here. Walking past the Hall of Sacrifice, there are four or five different groups each singing different songs with different instruments separated by about fifty feet each - overlapping songs does not seem to bother them one bit.

We continued on to see the Hall of Good Harvest along with all of the intricate stone engravings of dragons and phoenixes around them. This area hosts a cluster of tourists from China and America (a couple of whom had mullets!), so we took our pictures and kept moving. One cool story from this area is that of the "70 year old door." In 1420, the emperor of China was seventy years old and did not have the strength to walk up the many steps to get to his throne, so he had a door constructed to bypass the long walk. A few years later, he noticed that the princes and imperial officials were becoming lazy and using the door rather than go the traditional way. He made a new law that only people older than seventy years old could pass through the doorway. Needless to say, it was several hundred years before another resident was allowed to use that door. We went to and documented several of the other tourist attractions around the temple, including the Imperial Vault and the Circular Mound Altar.

But the places we found most satisfying were in between and away from these tourist clusters. In the area around the Hall of Abstinence (where the Emperor needed to do without meat, drink, music, and women) and the Thousand Rose Garden, we found inner peace and serenity so lacking in our lives for much of this trip. I don't know if this has anything to do with zen, chi, ying or yang, but I could find myself here on a day off when the Olympics running at full tilt.

"Super Olympic Fun Time"

To give you a little background, we are ONS flash quote reporters for team handball events. This means we collect quotes via interviewing athletes and coaches or by sitting through press conferences. Sounds pretty simple right? Wrong! And as I give you a sense of what we have been undergoing for training, you will realize that our job (or ‘Super Olympic Fun Time’ as we like to call it) requires a tremendous amount of concentration, precision, teamwork, and efficiency.

Our training began with consecutive days of lectures from the BOCOG for all 400ish volunteers. They touched upon the array of “Super Olympic Fun Time” tasks we must know how to perform, and emphasized the abilities we must contain and utilize. It was important for all of us to hear this even though they pretty much restated all of the practice exercises we completed prior coming to Beijing. If anything, this got us in the right mindset to begin our training at our venues. Not to mention CCTV, one of China’s national news stations, produced a documentary about all of us volunteers and I was on national China TV!!!

After a few days off, we began the training at our venues. Again, it was very dry and we began to worry about the professional of BOCOG and the ONS. Fortunately, our primary ONS Reporter(Thomas from Germany) and our sports information specialist, or SIS,(Cilje from Norway) showed up a few days later and we really began to breakdown the different responsibilities of flash quote reporting. Since we had already studied the basics of our jobs, Thomas and Cilje threw us right into realistic scenarios. As a flash quote reporter, we watch the handball matches from the “press tribune” which is the area designated for media personnel. Upon the conclusion of the match, we make our way down to the “mixed zone” which is basically the players’ walk from the gymnasium to the locker rooms. This is where our interviews take place. The mixed zone is expected to become very hectic especially when the more popular teams are playing. Thomas will typically suggest players to be interviewed, and if they slip by then…..well….journalists will not have the quotes they want and the ONS, as a whole, will be looked down upon. And if that is not enough pressure, we are required to have all of our quotes entered into the computer system just 10 minutes after the athlete is interviewed. Meeting this time deadline is crucial since we will often sit in on the press conference, and late arrivals are simply not let in. When we are required to sit in on a press conference, we again collect quotes from the athletes and coaches but are expected to compile extended statements opposed to brief quotes. We then again enter these quotes into the computer and it must be done within 15 minutes after the conclusion of the press conference. Sorry to run on for so long, but I hope you get a sense of how much information we are responsible for in such a short period of time. And I might add that we cover 6 matches per day!

This sounds like a hefty amount of work, but after spending time in the ONS office and around the venue I could be more excited and ready for “Super Olympic Fun Time.”

Tienanmen Square and Wandering Beijing

After a couple of gorgeous blue sky days, Monday goes back to the regularly scheduled clouds and rain. Maybe its always gray during the week and blue on the ends, I don't know if thats great or horrible.

We take a small bus to the Pearl Market in downtown Beijing. At Pearl Market, hundreds of vendors clamor for our attention so that we can barter over the price of their goods. On a rainy Monday such as this, there are few customers visiting, so our group expected to get a few good deals. I got a spare battery for my camera, which has run out a few times with all the pictures I've taken, cutting the price from 270 qai to 100 (about $14). I also got a Transformers belt buckle - which has been on my Amazon.com wishlist for a while - for 40 qai with a belt. Thats less than seven dollars for something that costs $15 plus shipping and handling over here, not shabby.

Everyone meets up and the bus takes us over to a plaza across the street from Tienanmen Square. We form groups and head in different directions; Steve, Katherine, Mario, Dave, and I head in the most logical direction: towards the square. Several monuments and large pictures of Mao adorn Tienanmen and the surrounding area, had it not been so rainy and miserable it may have seemed more impressive. What is impressive is that the rain hasn't driven away much of the crowds, which cluster around each tourist attraction. We wander aimlessly before wondering if the National Museum across the street is open. Turns out its closed, however a Chinese family approaches Mario (they assume she's Chinese (she's Japanese), turns out this happens a lot) to ask if they can take a picture with Steve, Dave, and I. We politely oblige, giving Mario our cameras to document our growing fan club. As the first photo finishes, another family asks for a photo, then a third; we hurry to finish before the paparazzi arrive. The onslaught of photo shoots probably happened because we are damn sexy, but another option would be that we are Americans standing in front of the National Museum (with clock ticking down the seconds until the Olympics) - and it didn't hurt that I was wearing the Chinese national soccer team's jersey.

The girls decide to take a cab to some shopping outlets as we head towards the Forbidden City. As soon as we get through the main entrance, the rain picks up even more and we decide it would be a poor choice to pay to trudge through the rain to take pictures of a damp Forbidden City, we'll go another day. Instead, we decide to head to Oriental Plaza where the Official Olympic Store is located. The city blocks are much larger here, so it takes us at least 20 minutes to span the two blocks over to the plaza. After checking out some Olympic gear, Dave decides to take a cab back to Beijing Sport University while Yo Tai and I venture forth into the unknown.

Through the pouring rain, Steve and I pace westward down Jianguo Jie, which turns out to be a major road in Beijing. In addition to running between Tienanmen Square and the Forbidden City, Jianguo Jie runs past the Oriental Plaza, Beijing Railway Station, the Beijing Friendship Store, and a Wal-Mart Supercenter; not to mention dozens of huge buildings devoted to apartments or corporations. We meet up with the girls at Wal-Mart and buy air mattresses (greatest investment ever) and Transformers on DVD.

Afterwards, we tiredly walk around searching for a Japanese restaurant for Mario's Birthday. The one we stumble into is perfect, no shoes necessary for service! We split a bottle of sake while eating traditional Japanese soups and sushi. Afterwards, we walk down the hall and see a store called "Ho's Fashion," where we took some obligatory pictures.


Now that we've written about the biggest days of touring, hopefully we'll be able to spit out all of our training days to get caught up before the Olympics start. Sorry for the inconsistency of the posting schedule, but with so much to do we don't always have time to blog every night (or week).

Official Tour of Winter/Summer Palaces

Woke up today (July 13th) to another blue sky morning with the sun out and no humidity. Its weird how the first week went by without any sun, only clouds and smog; merely seeing the sky makes China feel more like home, the sun also shines on the other side of the world.

We started off by heading to the Winter Palace again, except this time as an entire group. Fortunately, the only section we spent time in was the statuary, which I didn't get to see last time round. Vast rock pillars stand without walls burned down long ago. A stone maze leading to a small gazebo in the middle is the highlight as it is more intact than any of the other stone carvings. Based on how intricately the stone was carved, and what I know about the rest being burned and looted, one can only imagine how awesome the wooden carvings and golden treasures were within this palace.

Over at the Summer Palace, we ate lunch within a pavilion on the outskirts before venturing within. This palace served as a second home to the Emperor, and was abused by one Dragonlady - a babysitter to young Emperors and key advisor to the throne - who put the Emperor on house arrest here. Not that it was incredibly restrictive, hundreds of acres at the very least and a lake to swim in to boot. There is almost a monotonous amount of detail in the designs in the hallways that run around the courtyards, which brought out the more unique murals and paintings at the top of the windows and doorways (there are no windows or doors, but thats the easiest way to describe them). Amongst our group of Ithaca College students are a few Beijing Sport University students; Ivan and Robin (their English names) are two that Steve and I befriended pretty quickly. I inquired about one particular painting with a monkey, a pig, a horse, and two people riding on a turtle across a stream. Robin explained to me that there's a famous fairy tale about a monkey king who journeys west across China with a monk and the King of the Pigs to find Buddha... sounds like the best story ever! Another story we came across was that of the Bankruptcy stone: once a man came across a beautiful stone and decided to haul it across China to the Summer Palace as a gift for the Emperor. Due to its immense weight, he only took it halfway before he ran out of money, starved, and died. 200 years later, a merchant found the stone and completed its journey to the palace. At the time of its arrival, Emperor Qianlong had lead China to its greatest prosperity to date; after receiving the stone, massive rebellion and embezzlement caused the kingdom to go broke! I was going to take a picture in front of it to tempt fate, but the last thing I want to do is mock the gods; if a rock could bring down an entire kingdom it could probably bring down Stephen Lauer.

We head out for another delicious dinner, during which Robin and Ivan give Steve and I our Chinese names! My Chinese name is Shur Tien Shway (rough pronunciation) meaning Steve Scuba. Steve's is Shur Yo Tai meaning Steve Jew. While they were telling us our names they were conversing in Chinese on how to pronounce each name. We were confused and they told us that initially they mispronounced Shur as Shura, which means "something you do in the toilet." After a moment, we realized the hilarity of Shura Tien Shway (Scuba Crap) or Shura Yo Tai (Jew Crap). Great day for learning Chinese, we learned our names and our first curse word.

Finally, we closed our night at the Peking Opera with the performance The Phoenix and the Dragon. Very interesting with a few funny segments and fighting and plot twists, however one thing stood out: the screeching falsetto of the leading lady. While the men spoke so quickly that the subtitles had difficulty keeping up, she elongated every syllable to the extreme at a pitch so high and loud glass should have shattered. Thankfully we were pretty far back, some of my classmates had premier seats; sitting up front next to the speakers, I can understand why some needed to walk out. Even our tour guide, whose English name is Silver (pretty sweet), admitted that she didn't need to be mic'd up for the performance. So thats how operas are done on the other side of the world. Tomorrow will be the last day of our official tours of China, then we're on our own.