Train Central

Sunja is out and about once again, and this time she is in Tiffin, Ohio…a hot spot for trains and otherwise a good ol’ fashioned town.  I’m here for a total of four days on a business trip of sorts (I’m a professional?!).

Heidelberg University is installing a new president.  In his honor, the associate dean of the university, Dr. Jan younger, is producing his play, Frog and Grizzly. Two summers ago I worked with Dr. Younger and two professors at my own university to produce an Adobe Flash set to be projected onto a backdrop for this play.  It’s been a six month project—both a pain and a real great experience…at least in terms of resume building.  Reaching an hour and fifteen minutes in length, this was one Flash project that took a lot of planning and work.  (Flash is not a forgiving program).

As such, I’ve been given the real honor of helping with the production.  Most of the key people working on it are from my own university, which is strange considering it is in honor of a separate university’s president…so even more rests on representing our university in a good light. What’s more, there are potential employers in the audience, so I have a chance of networking and getting my name out there.

So, as I sit here in my motel room watching Batman movies, I can’t help but feel both excited and nervous for the performance to come.  My set design is innovative, moving with the actors and encapsulating the mood of the play…everything is done on cues, following the script closely.  Things could go wrong easily.  Still, I’m confident in it.

In any case, I would like to move on and describe Tiffin, Ohio a bit for you all.  I’m staying in Tiffin Motel, located behind a Denny’s on West Market St.  It’s cheap at about $55 a night for a single room, but you get what you pay for.

Tiffin is a medium country town—between the size of Cambridge and Delaware, Ohio, if you’ve ever visited there.  If not, you can imagine a town with a population of about 18,000.  It is located about an hour and a half north of Columbus.

Unfortunately, I don’t have much time for site-seeing, but I can tell you that there are a lot of neat buildings here.  There are two universities within the town: Heidelberg and Tiffin Universities.  As such, it has a big college-town feel, with a lot of hometown restaurants…meaning plenty of pizza and of course late night dining.

More than that, Tiffin is a popular train town.  Over 50 trains pass through the town every day.  I was told that in the warmer months a lot of the university’s older buildings do not have air conditioning, and so they keep the windows open.  When the trains pass by, there is a rule that all speech classes have to stop timers and lectures until the train is gone.

Choo choo! Chugga chugga chugga chugga…

Apparently you get used to the trains.  Eventually.