Even though we met up at a reasonable time 10:45 am, I was still tired in the morning…… (like usual) We took a train to a non-existing city Bielefeld, where Sparrenburg castle is located. On the way to the restaurant, we past two McDonalds and a carnival.
Garlic Pasta with a coffee
After lunch, we walked up a hundred hills to the castle. The weather was beautiful and so was the view. Our tour guide gave us a brief introduction about the fortress in German and I totally understood it… Very nice of Volker to translate everything for us. Followed by, we traveled through some underground tunnels and visited several dark rooms including a jail. We finished our short visit by climbing the tower and the view on top was absolutely breathtaking.
Welcome to my house
Best part of the day was ice cream. Sam kept selling this ice cream to us that the whole group was very pumped to try out Spaghetti ice cream. The flavor is the same but the ice cream was formed in the shape of Spaghetti noodles. I also accompanied my ice cream with a cup of coffee. The weird Germans serve hot coffee in a glass with a straw… I burned my mouth….
Not my ice cream, the picture is stolen from Patrick
Wednesday took us on an excursion to nearby Bielefeld. Our main attraction: a castle! A few of us took Switches for the ride, so we easily passed the time with some Smash Bros. Coming in the station, we were met with lovely weather, and we walked through a lively street fair on the way to the castle.
Sparrenburg castle sits on top a high peak, and it’s tower reaches even higher. Needless to say, we got quite the workout. Our tour guide led us around the exterior with details about the fortress’s long history, followed by a dive into the catacombs. Under the castle, we trekked through tunnels and explored several dark stone rooms. After the tour, we climbed the central tower and enjoyed a great view of the surrounding area.
In our few days in Paderborn, I managed to get people excited to try “Spaghetti Ice Cream,” a treat I learned about long ago in my German class. Our local friends helped track down the best ice cream cafe in Bielefeld for us to enjoy it properly. The treat itself is traditionally just vanilla ice cream, pressed into the shape of noodles, with fruit sauce and white chocolate imitating tomato and parmesan. This particular cafe had four whole pages of their menu dedicated to different varieties, and everyone ate well.
The Castle Tower!The view from up topThe Main Course
The second day started too early for me… I was half awake for the museum.
In the morning, we went to Heinz Nixdorf Museum which is donated by Nixdorf(surprise!). The museum combines both old historical machines and some new technolgoies. I was very impressed by a lot of the old chunky computers that you had to manually switch inputs. The high teched robots are attractive as well.
After our trip to the museum, we headed back to the campus for an AI talk. In my opinion, AI is the future for all humans and the question is how would AI work in the gaming industry? Right now, most of the AIs that exist in games are weak AIs, they only work for one specific task and they are based on finite state machines. I think strategy games would be a good start for AI in games.
In the afternoon, I took a nice nap until it was time for board games!!!!! I hung out with the German students and tried out a bunch of board games I never tried. Firstly, I played a game called Circus, it’s a toy building game with some strategies. Basically, you earn points by finishing different constructions, bonus is available if you complete certain tasks. I enjoyed my second board game quite a lot, everyone competes individually, yet you have to collaborate with your neighbors to get points. You map a city with your neighbor and certain combos can earn you points, such as adjacent malls. I was tied for second place in the end. Some of the Germans tried to make us stay by offering wine and beer. LOL.
My day started at a little coffee shop(I don’t remember its name anymore). People at the store were old and they were reading newspapers, don’t think they had an intense day going on. After knowing that staring is common in Germany, I don’t frick out no more. And many of them actually tried to talk to me, it’s just that I couldn’t understand them. Also, they sell packaged eggs at the shop which I thought was interesting. The store had a variety of bakeries, I feel like I have to go back to try out more stuff.
After breakfast, we walked around the town a little bit and got to see some historical buildings. Near the bus stop, we got more coffee!!!!!
My first time taking the bus in Paderborn was awkward because I kept pushing the “stop” button until someone yelled at me. (not really, but I was still embarrassed, I’m shy ). After arriving at Paderborn University, we headed up the games lab that is dominated by computer science students. The lab is like ours but smaller which makes sense since they don’t have a game design major. There weren’t many students in the lab, Bernie was working on his side project Q while we arrived.
For the rest of the day, we pretty much just chilled and fought with the game Q, that is made by a group of German students. If you are wondering what the game is like… Think about a mix of GeometryDash and Celeste plus Hallow Knight and Getting Over it. Yes, I gave up after half an hour. It’s not released yet but I’ll buy it just to support my friends. And then make my BFF beat the game for me, pretending I’m good at extreme action games.
Today we woke up at a more reasonable hour. We met up with Volker
and bused it over to the Nixdorf museum. It was a really cool museum dedicated
to computers, calculators, counting machines, and robots. We got a nice,
somewhat quick tour of some pre-industrial counting machines and early
computers. Afterward we bused it back over to campus where we got to sit in on
a class on A.I which was mindbogglingly interesting. I loved the topic and learned
a lot about Basic A.I trees, coding behavior and Neural Nets. It only furthered
my budding interest in learning some code. Plus, I feel like I participated
well. We then grabbed lunch in the Café and headed back to the hotel for a
quick siesta before game night.
Rather than taking the bus we decided to walk to campus this
time to learn the route. It was nice day out and only about a mile walk. When
we got to campus, we started game night. I got to play more Q and get to know
more of the Germans in a couple games of Secret Hitler. We ordered some pizzas
for dinner and Amanda and I bused it home to prep to go out. Mike, Amanda, and
I went out for drinks and hopped a few bars before meeting up with Penny and
Josh. We told a couple riveting tales before heading home to pass out.
We spent our time in the morning resting / freshening up before we headed out at 10:45 to catch a train to Bielefeld. Maybe I’m just not paying attention to the scenery at home, but it feels like Germany is much greener. Being that green is my favorite color, I appreciate it.
The view out the train to Bielefeld’s window. I find that pretty clouds like this often spur me to take pictures.
When we got to Bielefeld, we found ourselves in the middle of a carnival. There were all kinds of typical carnival sights to see, like ferris wheels, spinning contraptions I usually refer to as “X-Treme Merry Go Rounds” (I don’t know what they’re actually called), and numerous places to eat food of all sorts. Nothing much struck me except a hot dog stand with american flag designs all over it (which I regrettably didn’t take a picture of) and a neat drink stand of sorts with a medieval, high-fantasy motif.
Beerenweine, a fantasy themed beverage stand, presumably alcoholic by the name. They’re evidently well stocked on potions.
But we had no time to dabble in the carnival. (That’s a lie, but just go with it.) We had a castle to siege—The Sparrenburg, Bielefeld’s landmark—and a big hill to climb. I’m no stranger to walking up hills, and it was no less difficult walking up this one than any other respectable hill. I must have gotten stronger since my summer camp days, though, because I wasn’t completely knocked-the-hell-out by the time we got to the top. I was, however, tired enough to stop and admire the castle from the outside.
Just outside The Sparrenburg, before the bridge to the front entrance.
And so, we breached the castle walls by walking into the wide open front entrance. It was completely serene inside, and awoke my usually dormant desire to wander and look at things. Look at things I did, and many a picture did I take.
Map of The Sparrenburg, from www.sparrenburg.info.Map of The Sparrenburg, but in English.
Just outside The Sparrenberg’s entrance, to the right.
On top of Schuster Bastion.
The courtyard / visitor center, just inside the inner walls.
The view from St Mary’s Bastion.
The view of the bridge to the front entrance, from St Mary’s Bastion.
Looking up at the central tower from behind.
Inside the courtyard, looking out to the right.
A statue of Friedrich Wilhelm, Elector of Brandenburg. Lighting is hard.
Then we started our tour, the guide unsuspecting of our scheme to take over the castle. We first looked at a very old well not too far behind the central tower, originally 60 meters deep if I recall correctly (partially filled with debris from hostile occupation and time). After some more looking around the edge of the inner walls, we descended into the catacombs, which dated back to the 1600s.
The living quarters of the soldiers during the Thirty Years’ War, and likely other times. Complete with a large oven, very little light, and a cannon or two. (The original cannon[s] are no longer here.) Looking up and out of one of the openings in the catacombs. The alcove on the right was used to store logs, tar, and soldier residue to dump on foolish invaders.
Unfortunately, it was here the guide got wise on our plans, and put us in the soldier’s disciplinary prison, a fairly small featureless room with a lumpy floor and no light besides an electric light installed on the wall in the modern day (which was operated by a switch outside and out of reach, might I add!).
We were promptly let out because I’ve been lying to you all this time, we were never actually sieging anything, as far as you know. Emerging out of the impressively cold catacombs (so cold you could see your breath!) and into the sun once again, we made our way to climb the central tower. After our gracious hosts paid for everyone’s access, we made our way to the central tower’s entrance, but not before I took a picture of some flowers.
Miscellaneous flowers to the right of the old well. You can see it on the right edge. Why didn’t I take a picture of it?
The climb to the top of the central tower, as to be expected for a 37 meter tall tower, was a long one, with three different flavors of staircase; metal, wooden, and metal spiral.
One of the central tower’s staircases.
Getting to the top however, was worth it; from there, we had a view of all of Bielefeld, just as the brochure boasts.
Looking down on the courtyard from the central tower.
Misc. scenery from atop the central tower.
The flag atop the central tower.A picture of the sky from atop the central tower.
After coming down from the tower and leaving The Sparrenburg, we went on a quest for the fabled “spaghetti ice-cream,” something I initially thought was going to be spaghetti noodles hanging off a vanilla ice-cream cone. I was wrong, but not disappointed.
A menu displaying various Spaghetti Ice Creams. I ordered the Spaghetti-Tris di Pasta, despite my carbonara affinity. (It looks like there’s nuts in the carbonara one.)My order of Spaghetti-Tris di Pasta, chocolate, fudge, and chocolate. I forgot to ask for no nuts, so the left heap went uneaten. (I was full anyway. It’s a lot of ice cream!)
We intended to go out to a bar after returning to Paderborn by train, but most of us didn’t feel up to it, including me. An eventful day, and one that went by quickly, even despite all the walking.
The day began with breakfast at the hotel and then a bus ride over to the Nixdorf Computer Museum. We toured the various floors and went through the history of computers and how they started as simple punch card machines. I had learned about all of these early calculators and computers in my Computer Information Technology course, so I was able to ask more in-depth questions and recognize the most important parts of the machines. As we were walked through the development of the first computer and then the earliest video games, I found a lot of it interestingly applicable to what I have learned in both IGME and the film and animation course. Because I love 3D modeling, I was interested in the art aspect of computers and video games. I was reminded of my first advanced 3D modeling assignment last year that involved finding an old, visually interesting object to model; a lot of the primitive machines and computers would have been great ideas. My affinity for hard surface modeling continued to fill up my phone’s gallery as I went through and took pictures of anything that might be a reference or even inspire new projects. And of course, reference images are only as good as your ability to also take orthographic views, so to a non-animator my photos from the day looked pretty tedious and boring. We ended our tour at a wall of Chinese cat statues hooked up to a board in which people could use basic coding syntax to make them turn and wave in various patterns. It’s a great concept, but I also just really like cats.
We then went back to the university for a talk about AI and the role it plays both inside and outside of video games. I had a really good time asking questions and posing ideas to discuss, so much so that we ran out of time and I had to continue the discussions into lunch. After spending more time hanging out and having great discussions with the German students, we returned to the hotel for a brief rest before returning for game night.
I got a little work done on the current model/animation I’m working on – the bell tower from the recent Game of Thrones finale that I wanted to animate in the same style as the opening credits. We had ordered pizza, but mine was more like the contents of a sub dumped onto a cheese pizza with a couple mushrooms added in. I don’t know who eats pizza with lettuce on it, but they need to re-evaluate their life choices.
I joined some of the students in a couple games of Secret Hitler. Yes, I recognize the irony in that one. I had spent an entire summer playing that game with my friends back home, so I was pretty excited to play it again. The German students had obviously played with each other before, so it was pretty funny to see the crazy ways they would deduce who was a fascist and who was a liberal. Some turns took a very long time as they used logic to decide the best way to win; it was clear they were game developers by the way they thought things through. I just called everyone snakes the entire time.
Alex and I decided to leave the games lab to meet our friend Mike back at the hotel. We hadn’t really checked the bus schedule or looked up the way back before we were already outside and without wifi, so it was a 20-minute wait in the cold as we listened to music in a particularly empty part of town. After meeting up with Mike we headed over to a bar that he had looked up called “Black Sheep.” It was pretty empty and after we each had a drink, we realized the bar was closing. So onward we went to find another open bar, a surprisingly hard task for being in Germany. We stopped at “Globtrotters” bar and had drinks and exchanged wild abroad stories until our friends Penny and Josh joined us. I lost track of the number of drinks I had, but I remember that they were all very tasty. We didn’t want to stay out too late because we had to catch an early train in the morning, so once the bar started clearing out we also left to go back to the hotel.
We started off the first proper day of the trip strong with a trip to Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum, a museum of old and new technologies ranging from cuneiform tablets to VR headsets.
Heinz Nixdorf from the outside.
The entrance to Heinz Nixdorf.
A neat statue in the Heinz Nixdorf lobby.
I feel like a lot of the more historical exhibitions went over my head, but I could at least appreciate them. We got to see some very old machines, but few of them were ugly or clunky looking; quite the opposite, really. So it’s only natural that I would forget to take pictures of the pretty ones and only have the mind to take a picture of this really old apple brick and some vintage computer mice.
The Lisa I, an old Apple PC.
An array of old and odd computer mice.
There were also some very unsettling robots, prime examples of the Uncanny Valley.
A robot I don’t remember the name of. Its eyes seem to follow you.This robot is frightening and I don’t like looking at it, so I naturally took a video. Feel my pain.
Afterwords, Jörg talked to us about AI, its role in games, and the potential role of games in AI. Since the event afterward was canceled due to rain, I stayed in GamesLab, and almost purely by accident played Q, a game by one of our german hosts, for more than three hours. I got all of the collectibles, though, so it was obviously worth it.
One of the gameplay images used on Q’s steam page. Finding said steam page wasn’t nearly as hard as I thought it’d be.
Finally, to end the day off, we played some board games and Jackbox games. A good time was had by all, except Stefan, who was dropped into a pit of spikes via trap-door.
To help ease us into the swing of things, we had plenty of time to sleep in on Monday. After 11:00am had rolled around, we went out and took a small tour of the city as me made our way to the bus stop.
Paderborner Dom, the local cathedral.
After that, we rode the bus over to the university and toured the campus as well. We—or rather, everyone else—also had lunch there, and after some more time spent in GamesLab that we’d been shown not too long ago, I headed back to the hotel to chill out some more.
One part of the University of Paderborn. It’s quite green.
There’s not that much to talk about, but that’s to be expected for an introductory day. It’s for the best we don’t leap right into the fire right away.
Tuesday began a bit earlier in the morning than I think most of us would have hoped, but we had a good start at the Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum (HNF), the world’s biggest computer museum. Exhibits covered topics from the beginnings of number systems, to the invention of the first computer, to the future of computing. They have a lot of old hardware on display, and it’s fun to track the changes in design throughout the years.
Our next main event was a presentation on artificial intelligence at the university. We talked about the application of different kinds of AI for games and discussed how it might develop in the coming years. When the talk ended, we all had a few hours on hand until the scheduled board game night. When most of our group returned to their rooms to nap, I wandered out into town to find Welt der Steine.
Welt der Steine, or “World of Stones,” is a cute little store that sells pretty rocks. I noticed it on my way to the hotel on Sunday and took a note to return. I bought four very nice rocks.
We opted to return to the university at night by foot, and it was very nice out. There was a light drizzle, with the sun just barely peeking out from a single corner of cloudless sky. I stopped a few times to take some rainy day pictures. Of course, board game night was pretty wild too. We stayed up a lot later than I expected, and I got really good at a game called Tichu despite still not understanding how it works.
A final note before the pictures: Germans don’t have Italian sausage or pepperoni on their pizzas, but they do have tuna.
HNF had the fabled “PainStation,” and no, I didn’t try itThat Wet Cobblestone Aesthetic
