Friday was Matthias's last day in the lab. It also happened to be Sophie's last weekend as well, so she had a little going away party at her place. There I met Camille's boyfriend, Nail, who is from England. (Camille is from France...welcome to Europe. Pretty cool in my opinion). He had just finished up his degree after a year in Berlin last year. He actually specialized in American politics and foreign policy, and he knew a lot of stuff that Americans probably don't know. We also found out we both love the TV show The Wire, and he hooked me up with the rest of Season 2 I hadn't seen and Season 3. (As of today, July 5th, they are all finished.)
Saturday morning we went to Morgenland, Matthias's favorite resturant place, for an epic type brunch. We got there around 11 and didn't stop eating until about 2. It was very delicious food, and I want to head back there for a brunch next Sunday on my last day I think. Saturday evening was the United States vs. Ghana game which we lost in overtime. Very depressing. Sunday we watched the British game though, and they got embarrassed by Germany. Sadly. It was also time to say goodbye to Matthias, of course we got one last picture together. Definitely gotta check out France and Spain now. And I suppose London. Wonder when I'll have time to do that. Let's aim for next summer if I have a downtime summer if I apply to and get in to law school. To be decided...
The week in the lab was pretty low key. Tuesday night Spain played Portugal, so Andreas and I got together to watch that. First, after work, he invited me over his place to cook up some dinner. We had steak and some potatoes with onions while listening to some Spanish music. Then he showed me his hometown on Google Maps and I did the same. After that we walked up the East Side Gallery, the famous portion of the wall with paintings on it, which is right near his place. We walked across the river to Kreuzberg and ended up at Morgenland where we watched the game. It was a very nice night.
Nothing major happened until Saturday, when I got out and saw some sights I'd been meaning to see, including the TV Tower, the Rotes Rathaus, Berliner Dom, and Friedrichstraße/Checkpoint Charlie. Saturday afternoon was the Germany vs. Argentina, in which Germany destroyed Argentina 4-0. It would be quite amazing for Germany to win the World Cup and I'm actually here for it. That evening we all met up again to watch the Spain game, which they won 1-0. That sets up Germany vs. Spain, or Andreas vs. the Germans. Now I actually found out a few days ago that Andreas is actually half Spanish and half German, his father being German. I found this surprising, he is quite Spanish looking and he has lived in Spain since he was little, though he was born in Germany. He is pulling for Spain, but the funny thing is that the game is on Wednesday night, and he has to give a presentation for his thesis work on Thursday. So if Spain wins, he is going to have a bunch of pissed off Germans grading and critiquing him as a Spaniard. We'll see how this plays out...
Sunday was low key. I checked out Hermannplatz, which is a subway station done up with high ceilings and a cathedral like theme, it was interesting. Other than that I did the last round of laundry, bought some more souvenirs, things like that. Monday there was little to do and I actually got to go home around 2:30 and take care of more things around here like thank you notes. Things are winding down here...two more days in the lab, then a quick trip to Heidelberg for a conference until Saturday. After that, Sunday is my last day in Berlin and Monday morning I fly home. Feels like I just got here yesterday.
Pictures:
Coming tonight.
Monday, July 5, 2010
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Matthias's Last Week, and Thoughts on Traffic, the Homeless, and the German Language
Last Thursday was a pretty boring day, just hung on Facebook most of the day I think. Friday started out innocent enough. After watching the refs just outright rob America, I headed home. Robert, Ashish, and I (guys from the apartment building not from the lab) went to the same Italian/Austrailian place I went for my birthday - Belushi's - for dinner. There we got a burger and watched the England soccer game. After we went back, we pretty much turned around again and went out with Pedro and (insert Portugese name I've forgotten) to meet up with Tom and (insert British name I've forgotten), two Brits. We ended up at Kottbuser Tor at this really cool club/bar type thing that was basically over a supermarket. They were only playing music from the 60s which was pretty unique and cool I thought. Later on, we went to another place nearby, and by this point I wasn't feeling so hot and got sick. Towards the end of the night I was suffering and was just trying to get home. We got home around 4 am, which of course, looks like 12 pm because the sun rises so early here.
Now I figured when I went to bed I'd be out of commission for a long time. Not the case, as I somehow (probably due to the massive amounts of sunlight) got up at 12:30, which was great because Robert was leaving at 1 to go to Hackescher Markt to watch the Dutch game. Robert, as you may recall from the very first entry, is from Holland, though he could blend in in America 100%. I am amazed at how completely and 100% he is trilingual. He is the only non-American/British to keep up with my English, he obviously speaks Dutch, and he speaks fluent German on a day in and day out basis at the Hilton Hotel he interns at. Boggles my freaking mind. Anyway, I watched the Dutch game with about 200 other Dutch people which was pretty freaking cool. Though the Dutch language is hilarious sounding, just throwing it out there. I was still feeling very queezy and hadn't eaten so I got chicken nuggets and french fries off the kid's menu and a glass of water and I was feeling pretty good after that. The fact the Dutch won helped too. That night I planned to go and shop a little for the fam but really I just laid down and took a little nap.
Sunday Matthias, Andreas, and I met up to go play soccer with some people from the lab and their friends. It ended up being about 7 on 7, and I won't sugar coat it, I was clearly the worst player on the field. I mean, these are Europeans. When I would do something stupid or miss making a pass I would yell lots of curse words in English that some understood and some did not. (like hopefully the children nearby). The only consolation is towards the end I started to get more chances because I was still going strong and they were all getting progressively exhausted. I was told at one point I have "legs like ze horses!" I double checked to see if that was a good thing...it was.
Monday Matthias, Andreas, and I (you know what, I refer to us so much, I'm just going to start writing The Gang...it's shorter and oh so much more G). Anyway, The Gang met up Monday morning and we were ridiculously sore. Sore in places we didn't know we could be sore in. Though Matthias not so much because half the time he played goalie (and he played a DAMN good goalie, he used to play that position exclusively). Each day this week something else has hurt. Monday was my lower back and my lip, the lip just because I got a fist to the face during a challenge for a ball. Monday Lukas started back in the lab to finish up some fluid dynamics experiments with the column, so I occasionally help him take a sample in the plant while he is in the control room controlling valves and switches and monitoring levels. Monday also marked the first day of the last week in Berlin for Matthias, which is super sad. As such, The Gang has been doing something every night. Monday Spain played, and Andreas is obviously Spanish. We met up at Warschauer Straße and went to an Indian resturant where we were about 5 feet from a ridiculous flat screen. It was a fun little dinner and Spain won. The highlight was when some really weird parade or protest or ...something...came down the street we were on led and trailed by about 5 cop cars. Pictures were definitely taken.
Tuesday I helped Lukas a bit more to take samples. I also meandered around the lab, analyzing some data for Matthias or running a random sample or two. Tuesday's lunch was actually very eventful for me. We happened upon Sophie, a French student that Matthias knew and Andreas and I have become friends with. She was talking in English (didn't know she could do that, actually, since I just always spoke to her in German) with another girl sitting there who I'd never seen before. Turns out it was another RISE student from Rutgers named Jen who is here until the beginning of August. So naturally we chatted a lot, as it was finally nice to hang with another American for an extened period of time. Tuesday night The Gang met up after work in Eberswalder Straße, which is actually walking distance from my apartment, to get 5 Euro huge personal pizzas and watch the soccer game. Sophie came and brought Jen, and we also met up with Claire, my all time favorite British person who I'm friends with through Matthias. At half time we went to a little resturant sans Claire and sat outside and got a drink. We headed out after the game at 10:30, and I got home at 10:45 to Skype with the family and Grammie, which was a very nice end to the day.
Wednesday was one of those epic days in Germany, in the end a "Einmal im Leben Erfahrung" - once in a lifetime experience. Wednesday morning at the lab Steffen, I think looking for something for me to do, introduced me to a tensiometer to measure surface tension of liquids. I briefly orientated myself to it, which I am proud to say I did with a German manual. It wasn't important though for me on this day. The Gang went to lunch a little earlier today (12 instead of anywhere from 1:30-2:30) to see Frau Guten Tag (Mrs. ... Good Day). Really we call her that because of the comical way in which she says "Guten Tag!" Something like "gut-TEN Tag!" where if this were musical notes it'd be like, A C B. Matthias really wanted to see her and luckily she was there to serve us coffee post lunch. Then at 4 Steffen let me go to watch the United States game, though really it was the England game because Germany could only show one and that's the one that was on. I watched that game with Matthias and Claire on a beach at a place called Box At The Beach I believe. It was so cool, we were lounging on beach chairs watching a huge big screen projection of the game. Right as the English game ended, I was just, not in a good mood because it was the last minute of the USA game and we hadn't scored, so we were going home. Then they switched the game over to us celebrating, and when it finally hit we had scored in stoppage time and advanced, I was just overcome with joy. I was ridiculously happy America had made it through, and plus, it would help not having to hear it from Germans for a while longer.
I left the beach at 6:30 to meet up with Claire and Matthias around 8 again to watch the Germany game. In the meantime I went to the store and bought a sick Germany soccer team scarf to wear to the game. In the end, Matthias, Claire, and I met up with Jen and her two coworkers in the lab to head over to Brandenburger Tor to watch an outdoor viewing. We met Andreas on the way, and The Gang was once again complete. We got in to the park about literally 30 seconds before they closed the gates for good because they were way over capacity. So I took that to me there were a few thousand people I guess. I later find out there were TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND people in this place watching 8 screens. It was ridiculous, and the once in a lifetime part. Germany won and they went crazy, it was shoulder to shoulder crowded, everyone united to watch their team win. I can't even explain how awesome it was.
Afterwards we went to Oranienburger Straße to a little pub. I was exhausted and the other half of the group trickled out about a half hour before The Gang left, but I had to stick around, because although Matthias is leaving on Sunday, Andreas is going to Spain for the weekend and he was leaving Thursday at 5 in the morning. So this was actually the last night The Gang would be together on this trip. We walked from Oranienburger Straße to Hackescher Markt, where Matthias would catch his S-Bahn home. Andreas and Matthias said goodbye and it was a very sad moment. Afterwards Andreas and I walked to Alexanderplatz where Andreas got his S-Bahn. We chatted about future trips to Spain or France or the US and I don't doubt one will happen. At Alexanderplatz I was supposed to get my U-Bahn but apparantly I find out it stops running at 1 am, and it was 1:30. So I had to walk about a half hour home, which sucked but whatever. It's good I knew where I was and what I was doing, and also that I found out there were only 3 murders in Berlin a year, and two are drug related (thanks Jen...). To give you an idea of the awesomeness of The Gang we didn't even coordinate it, but all three of us have the sample profile picture on Facebook of us at the public viewing. I love this picture, it's getting framed when I go home: The Gang
Today I designed the tensiometer experiments to calibrate the device to water at 20, 30, and 40C, and then ran mixtures of 15 and 20 weight percent EVONIK II (an organic amine) at those 3 temperatures. That took most of the day, along with helping Lukas occasionally take a sample. After work Steffen and I met Matthias for dinner at a local Berlin pub, or as Steffen put it, "one of the last authentic Berlin pubs in Berlin." It was cool, I got an interesting food thing that they said was pretty good...and it was ...ok. It was basically like two meatloaf patties, home fries with onions, and then an egg over hard thrown on top. After dinner we went our separate ways, and now I'm just writing this and doing my laundry.
Damn, I thought I was done, but apparantly in this title I promised opinions on traffic lights, the homeless, and the German language. Crap. Ok. If I wrote it before I gotta finish it up, and besides, my laundry is still in the drier. Anyway, to start out: Traffic lights in America we know are placed on the opposite side of the intersection. So if you're stopped a red light, that light is physically placed across the intersection. But here, the traffic lights are basically even with the limit line. So I was thinking of the pros and cons of this set up. I think the pro is it forces you to really stay behind the limit line, because if you're over the line, you can't see the light. The con is for the pedestrian (though any law abiding citizen would say this is a pro)....it makes it so much harder to jaywalk. You can't see the light really since it's above you, so you can't jump lights or anything like in America. Which is annoying for me, I'm trying to get places and can't jaywalk to get there! Randomly, the left hand arrow goes AFTER the straight ahead traffic. Not really sure if anything changes pro/con-wise versus our set up of having the left arrow before the straight ahead traffic.
The homeless. So in Germany you can collect bottles and receive a "Pfand" - deposit - for them, by bringing them to pretty much any common grocery store. So like, last night for the Germany game would have been a bottle collector's dream day, because they were everywhere. You can make sizeable money, for a homeless person. So this leads to interesting observations. First, there is very little litter, because if there's a bottle in the street or near a trash can or on a building ledge, it won't be there for long, because people snatch it up. But at least once a day while waiting in Alexanderplatz for my train, I see people walk up to trash cans, peer in, sometimes ruffle really quick, and move on. I can't really get behind this. But I don't want you to think it's like, a guy with one shoe looking throw the trash, there will be people in nice clothes looking in. So the class of trash rummager is nicer here...it's a nice system they have set up all around I think.
Finally, the German language. Little parts of German have been creeping in to my English, and some of it is starting to annoy me. For example in German there is no phrase for "There is/There are" i.e. "There are a lot of buildings here with grafitti." Instead Germans say "Es gibt" for both - literally "it gives." So, in German, "Es gibt viele Gebäude mit Grafitti." Last Skype call with my Grammie when describing Berlin I said "It gives buildings here with grafitti." Which makes no sense and sounds as if a German was directly translating his German in to English. I also told Claire she had "Kein confidence" in England against Germany, for some random reason saying Kein instead of no. However, some idioms I think work in German and I like how they sound. So for example, while the phrase "Spaß haben" - "to have fun" - does exist in German, more often they will say "Spaß machen" - "to make fun." So you say something makes fun. Which I think in more optimistic. In English, it's either fun or it's not. Traffic court - not fun. Rollercoasters - very fun. But here, you MAKE fun, so it's all up to you. Maybe traffic court could be fun, you have to make the fun. Also, they don't say to take a photograph, it's "ein Foto machen" - "to make a photo." And I think that's more artistic. Because while you could argue you are taking an image from the camera and putting it on paper, or you are taking a part of where ever you are back with you, you could also say you're changing the light/color/contrast to make the perfect picture. I think both work.
Ok, so that above wasn't finally. I have one more finally. I am actually really liking Berlin. Like, it's almost like a switch was flipped. At first I was lonely, a bit homesick, not too many friends, and the city was so unfamiliar. But now, I am constantly on my grind. Lots of friends, the end is in site, and I've seen enough of this city to say I know it extremely well. I will be able to come back in 20 years and know how to get around, know where things are, know where to go to go back to places I've had good memories at...I always said when I got here I liked Munich more. But I can't say that about Munich. At this point I can barely remember Munich, I was there for 2 days. But I will always remember everything about this city. It is definitely my second city after Philly (let's be honest Pittsburgh, you never made the list...get bent). I will most certainly one day come back, whether it be passing through for a day or taking a two week vacation. Klaus Wowereit, the Mayor of Berlin since 2001, once said in a 2003 interview "Berlin ist arm, aber sexy." - "Berlin is poor, but sexy." It's really true. It isn't the prettiest of places, sure the buildings have some grafitti on them, but it's really a ...sexy... place. A place you might not like at first, but god damnit, this place will grow on you. And before you know it, you love Berlin. So I gotta speak the truth: I love this city.
Pictures to come at the end of the week, I want to have a large album of this entire week with Matthias.
Now I figured when I went to bed I'd be out of commission for a long time. Not the case, as I somehow (probably due to the massive amounts of sunlight) got up at 12:30, which was great because Robert was leaving at 1 to go to Hackescher Markt to watch the Dutch game. Robert, as you may recall from the very first entry, is from Holland, though he could blend in in America 100%. I am amazed at how completely and 100% he is trilingual. He is the only non-American/British to keep up with my English, he obviously speaks Dutch, and he speaks fluent German on a day in and day out basis at the Hilton Hotel he interns at. Boggles my freaking mind. Anyway, I watched the Dutch game with about 200 other Dutch people which was pretty freaking cool. Though the Dutch language is hilarious sounding, just throwing it out there. I was still feeling very queezy and hadn't eaten so I got chicken nuggets and french fries off the kid's menu and a glass of water and I was feeling pretty good after that. The fact the Dutch won helped too. That night I planned to go and shop a little for the fam but really I just laid down and took a little nap.
Sunday Matthias, Andreas, and I met up to go play soccer with some people from the lab and their friends. It ended up being about 7 on 7, and I won't sugar coat it, I was clearly the worst player on the field. I mean, these are Europeans. When I would do something stupid or miss making a pass I would yell lots of curse words in English that some understood and some did not. (like hopefully the children nearby). The only consolation is towards the end I started to get more chances because I was still going strong and they were all getting progressively exhausted. I was told at one point I have "legs like ze horses!" I double checked to see if that was a good thing...it was.
Monday Matthias, Andreas, and I (you know what, I refer to us so much, I'm just going to start writing The Gang...it's shorter and oh so much more G). Anyway, The Gang met up Monday morning and we were ridiculously sore. Sore in places we didn't know we could be sore in. Though Matthias not so much because half the time he played goalie (and he played a DAMN good goalie, he used to play that position exclusively). Each day this week something else has hurt. Monday was my lower back and my lip, the lip just because I got a fist to the face during a challenge for a ball. Monday Lukas started back in the lab to finish up some fluid dynamics experiments with the column, so I occasionally help him take a sample in the plant while he is in the control room controlling valves and switches and monitoring levels. Monday also marked the first day of the last week in Berlin for Matthias, which is super sad. As such, The Gang has been doing something every night. Monday Spain played, and Andreas is obviously Spanish. We met up at Warschauer Straße and went to an Indian resturant where we were about 5 feet from a ridiculous flat screen. It was a fun little dinner and Spain won. The highlight was when some really weird parade or protest or ...something...came down the street we were on led and trailed by about 5 cop cars. Pictures were definitely taken.
Tuesday I helped Lukas a bit more to take samples. I also meandered around the lab, analyzing some data for Matthias or running a random sample or two. Tuesday's lunch was actually very eventful for me. We happened upon Sophie, a French student that Matthias knew and Andreas and I have become friends with. She was talking in English (didn't know she could do that, actually, since I just always spoke to her in German) with another girl sitting there who I'd never seen before. Turns out it was another RISE student from Rutgers named Jen who is here until the beginning of August. So naturally we chatted a lot, as it was finally nice to hang with another American for an extened period of time. Tuesday night The Gang met up after work in Eberswalder Straße, which is actually walking distance from my apartment, to get 5 Euro huge personal pizzas and watch the soccer game. Sophie came and brought Jen, and we also met up with Claire, my all time favorite British person who I'm friends with through Matthias. At half time we went to a little resturant sans Claire and sat outside and got a drink. We headed out after the game at 10:30, and I got home at 10:45 to Skype with the family and Grammie, which was a very nice end to the day.
Wednesday was one of those epic days in Germany, in the end a "Einmal im Leben Erfahrung" - once in a lifetime experience. Wednesday morning at the lab Steffen, I think looking for something for me to do, introduced me to a tensiometer to measure surface tension of liquids. I briefly orientated myself to it, which I am proud to say I did with a German manual. It wasn't important though for me on this day. The Gang went to lunch a little earlier today (12 instead of anywhere from 1:30-2:30) to see Frau Guten Tag (Mrs. ... Good Day). Really we call her that because of the comical way in which she says "Guten Tag!" Something like "gut-TEN Tag!" where if this were musical notes it'd be like, A C B. Matthias really wanted to see her and luckily she was there to serve us coffee post lunch. Then at 4 Steffen let me go to watch the United States game, though really it was the England game because Germany could only show one and that's the one that was on. I watched that game with Matthias and Claire on a beach at a place called Box At The Beach I believe. It was so cool, we were lounging on beach chairs watching a huge big screen projection of the game. Right as the English game ended, I was just, not in a good mood because it was the last minute of the USA game and we hadn't scored, so we were going home. Then they switched the game over to us celebrating, and when it finally hit we had scored in stoppage time and advanced, I was just overcome with joy. I was ridiculously happy America had made it through, and plus, it would help not having to hear it from Germans for a while longer.
I left the beach at 6:30 to meet up with Claire and Matthias around 8 again to watch the Germany game. In the meantime I went to the store and bought a sick Germany soccer team scarf to wear to the game. In the end, Matthias, Claire, and I met up with Jen and her two coworkers in the lab to head over to Brandenburger Tor to watch an outdoor viewing. We met Andreas on the way, and The Gang was once again complete. We got in to the park about literally 30 seconds before they closed the gates for good because they were way over capacity. So I took that to me there were a few thousand people I guess. I later find out there were TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND people in this place watching 8 screens. It was ridiculous, and the once in a lifetime part. Germany won and they went crazy, it was shoulder to shoulder crowded, everyone united to watch their team win. I can't even explain how awesome it was.
Afterwards we went to Oranienburger Straße to a little pub. I was exhausted and the other half of the group trickled out about a half hour before The Gang left, but I had to stick around, because although Matthias is leaving on Sunday, Andreas is going to Spain for the weekend and he was leaving Thursday at 5 in the morning. So this was actually the last night The Gang would be together on this trip. We walked from Oranienburger Straße to Hackescher Markt, where Matthias would catch his S-Bahn home. Andreas and Matthias said goodbye and it was a very sad moment. Afterwards Andreas and I walked to Alexanderplatz where Andreas got his S-Bahn. We chatted about future trips to Spain or France or the US and I don't doubt one will happen. At Alexanderplatz I was supposed to get my U-Bahn but apparantly I find out it stops running at 1 am, and it was 1:30. So I had to walk about a half hour home, which sucked but whatever. It's good I knew where I was and what I was doing, and also that I found out there were only 3 murders in Berlin a year, and two are drug related (thanks Jen...). To give you an idea of the awesomeness of The Gang we didn't even coordinate it, but all three of us have the sample profile picture on Facebook of us at the public viewing. I love this picture, it's getting framed when I go home: The Gang
Today I designed the tensiometer experiments to calibrate the device to water at 20, 30, and 40C, and then ran mixtures of 15 and 20 weight percent EVONIK II (an organic amine) at those 3 temperatures. That took most of the day, along with helping Lukas occasionally take a sample. After work Steffen and I met Matthias for dinner at a local Berlin pub, or as Steffen put it, "one of the last authentic Berlin pubs in Berlin." It was cool, I got an interesting food thing that they said was pretty good...and it was ...ok. It was basically like two meatloaf patties, home fries with onions, and then an egg over hard thrown on top. After dinner we went our separate ways, and now I'm just writing this and doing my laundry.
Damn, I thought I was done, but apparantly in this title I promised opinions on traffic lights, the homeless, and the German language. Crap. Ok. If I wrote it before I gotta finish it up, and besides, my laundry is still in the drier. Anyway, to start out: Traffic lights in America we know are placed on the opposite side of the intersection. So if you're stopped a red light, that light is physically placed across the intersection. But here, the traffic lights are basically even with the limit line. So I was thinking of the pros and cons of this set up. I think the pro is it forces you to really stay behind the limit line, because if you're over the line, you can't see the light. The con is for the pedestrian (though any law abiding citizen would say this is a pro)....it makes it so much harder to jaywalk. You can't see the light really since it's above you, so you can't jump lights or anything like in America. Which is annoying for me, I'm trying to get places and can't jaywalk to get there! Randomly, the left hand arrow goes AFTER the straight ahead traffic. Not really sure if anything changes pro/con-wise versus our set up of having the left arrow before the straight ahead traffic.
The homeless. So in Germany you can collect bottles and receive a "Pfand" - deposit - for them, by bringing them to pretty much any common grocery store. So like, last night for the Germany game would have been a bottle collector's dream day, because they were everywhere. You can make sizeable money, for a homeless person. So this leads to interesting observations. First, there is very little litter, because if there's a bottle in the street or near a trash can or on a building ledge, it won't be there for long, because people snatch it up. But at least once a day while waiting in Alexanderplatz for my train, I see people walk up to trash cans, peer in, sometimes ruffle really quick, and move on. I can't really get behind this. But I don't want you to think it's like, a guy with one shoe looking throw the trash, there will be people in nice clothes looking in. So the class of trash rummager is nicer here...it's a nice system they have set up all around I think.
Finally, the German language. Little parts of German have been creeping in to my English, and some of it is starting to annoy me. For example in German there is no phrase for "There is/There are" i.e. "There are a lot of buildings here with grafitti." Instead Germans say "Es gibt" for both - literally "it gives." So, in German, "Es gibt viele Gebäude mit Grafitti." Last Skype call with my Grammie when describing Berlin I said "It gives buildings here with grafitti." Which makes no sense and sounds as if a German was directly translating his German in to English. I also told Claire she had "Kein confidence" in England against Germany, for some random reason saying Kein instead of no. However, some idioms I think work in German and I like how they sound. So for example, while the phrase "Spaß haben" - "to have fun" - does exist in German, more often they will say "Spaß machen" - "to make fun." So you say something makes fun. Which I think in more optimistic. In English, it's either fun or it's not. Traffic court - not fun. Rollercoasters - very fun. But here, you MAKE fun, so it's all up to you. Maybe traffic court could be fun, you have to make the fun. Also, they don't say to take a photograph, it's "ein Foto machen" - "to make a photo." And I think that's more artistic. Because while you could argue you are taking an image from the camera and putting it on paper, or you are taking a part of where ever you are back with you, you could also say you're changing the light/color/contrast to make the perfect picture. I think both work.
Ok, so that above wasn't finally. I have one more finally. I am actually really liking Berlin. Like, it's almost like a switch was flipped. At first I was lonely, a bit homesick, not too many friends, and the city was so unfamiliar. But now, I am constantly on my grind. Lots of friends, the end is in site, and I've seen enough of this city to say I know it extremely well. I will be able to come back in 20 years and know how to get around, know where things are, know where to go to go back to places I've had good memories at...I always said when I got here I liked Munich more. But I can't say that about Munich. At this point I can barely remember Munich, I was there for 2 days. But I will always remember everything about this city. It is definitely my second city after Philly (let's be honest Pittsburgh, you never made the list...get bent). I will most certainly one day come back, whether it be passing through for a day or taking a two week vacation. Klaus Wowereit, the Mayor of Berlin since 2001, once said in a 2003 interview "Berlin ist arm, aber sexy." - "Berlin is poor, but sexy." It's really true. It isn't the prettiest of places, sure the buildings have some grafitti on them, but it's really a ...sexy... place. A place you might not like at first, but god damnit, this place will grow on you. And before you know it, you love Berlin. So I gotta speak the truth: I love this city.
Pictures to come at the end of the week, I want to have a large album of this entire week with Matthias.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
World Cup is Here
Last week finished out pretty low key. Wednesday and Thursday I was naturally in the lab. In addition to doing things like titrate I’ve also gotten in to the Auswertung part of things – The analysis. So the computer does an alright job at finding equivalence points in the samples, but you still have to go through and analyze every sample you run to check for mistakes, plus you have to type in every equivalence point (3 per sample) plus the masses of the samples before and after and the net weight. So it can get time consuming, especially when the data doesn’t look right and you have to figure it out. But it’s actually not that bad to do and slightly nice to be behind a computer with numbers.
Now Friday was the day I’d been waiting for in Europe. The World Cup. The day started out awesome. I got there at 10 like I normally do and Steffen wasn’t there. The only clue of the day was a box that had a USB antennae program on it, so you could plug it in to your computer and get all the free German TV channels they offer (good quality and like 20 channels, for some reason including MTV in English). Then at like 10:15 Steffen taps on the window. Turns out he was at some big breakfast departmental brunch thing and brought a huge plate of like, thin pancakes and crepes and humus and fruit…it was boss. So then he disappeared for another hour. In the lab, there wasn’t much to be done…and as I walked by Steffen around 2:00 pm, he says “I have shut the plant down, why don’t you go install the USB thing on my laptop so we can watch the games, I need to go talk with Dr. Wozny (the head honcho here) real quick.” …awesome. So it started out that I got the thing installed on his laptop, but then he took his laptop to a seminar room with a huge projector and we watched it that way. After the game we went behind Matthias’s place to have a little barbeque, which included myself, Andreas, Matthias, Steffen, Yazmin, Övgü, her boyfriend, Claire, Martin, and some person from the lab I’d never seen before. The highlight included a 3 on 3 soccer game…they have these things like, basically like basketball courts but they're soccer courts. So Martin had one of those mini balls you can play with. It was me, Andreas, and Matthias (Foreigners) versus Martin, Steffen, and Yazmin (Germans, even if Yazmin is technically Turkish). We went down 5 to 0 but scored the next 7, and ended up winning 8 to 6. Afterwards we went back to the lab and watched the second World Cup game of the day. That night I got to Skype with mom down in Virginia, so I got to talk to extended family there. I also found out my uncle has got it possibly set up for me to come down to his law firm for a day and talk with the patent litigator. I am very excited about that, hopefully I can get some questions answered about the future.
Saturday was a relaxing day, didn’t do much as I can remember, until 8:00 pm when the USA played England. Now Claire is from London, so her and I had been going back and forth with some light trashtalking, which is always fun. I was donning my American soccer shirt and a small, about 1 foot long, American flag I was waving everywhere. We went to Matthias’s favorite little restaurant and sat outside, where they had a ridiculous flat screen TV. I got a good pasta dish with cream sauce and ham bits in it, so that was nice. After we tied England we went to a little club thing and hung there for a little, then went home. On the walk back some store owner was like “Hey Ami! Eins – eins! Das ist gut!” So they clearly didn’t think we were going to come anywhere close to tying them. In the Subway as I was walking to my train two Turks tried to clown with me by making a charge at me then saying “only fun only fun!” in German…but that was about the closest I felt to in danger.
Sunday Germany played and to be in a soccer country during the World Cup is something else. It was the first game, they won 4-0, and there were fireworks and things like that going off for like 3 to 4 hours post game. There was a public viewing in Olympic Stadium they kept showing that had about 30,000 people. I was watching the first half outside at the internet café I used to frequent. They had benches outside and again, a ridiculous flat screen TV. We ended up leaving at half time because above in the apartments somebody keep throwing noise makers and little popping things at us that were so loud my ears were ringing and I felt like I was under siege from above. It was bad, ridiculous, and oh so German.
Monday was my birthday, which was a fun day. There wasn’t much going on in the lab, and I did about 20 minutes of work the whole day. And that’s not me slacking, there just wasn’t anything to do. That night Matthias, Andreas, and I went to an Italian restaurant/bar to watch the Italy soccer game…all the waiters/waitresses spoke English, I couldn’t tell if it was English, Irish, or Australian accent, but this place was an English stronghold. The menu was in English first, THEN German. They had flatscreens on the wall for like, every booth. So it was basically like sitting in your living room, the TV was 4 feet in front of me. It was pretty ridiculous.
Tuesday was another slow day in the lab. I did some sample analysis but I made quick work of it. Matthias is starting some little experiment that he wants to do on his own since there is no other work around the lab, so I am helping me him run the samples and do the analysis. As I was leaving Steffen said there wasn’t much to do so I could show up tomorrow around like 11:30 instead of 10. Tuesday evening I had an impromptu Skype with Tylan and Vince which was fun, it was so nice to be able to talk to those guys for an hour. The highlight may have included this exchange:
Ty: “Did you see that goal by Maicon? My-con, Me-con, I don’t know how to say his name right.”
Me: “You got me, I don’t speak Portugese…”
Ty: “Mike, he’s from Brazil.”
Me: “Ty, they speak Portugese in Brazil…”
Ty: “ … “
Vince: “I wasn’t gonna say anything I was just thinking if Mike said it, it must be right.”
Wednesday I rolled in at like 11:15 am, haven’t done anything except analyze Matthias’s experiment results real quick, and write this blog entry. Pictures will follow when I get home, which include the first weekend of the World Cup.
Alright here is the picture album:
Berlin 6: The World Cup is Here
Now Friday was the day I’d been waiting for in Europe. The World Cup. The day started out awesome. I got there at 10 like I normally do and Steffen wasn’t there. The only clue of the day was a box that had a USB antennae program on it, so you could plug it in to your computer and get all the free German TV channels they offer (good quality and like 20 channels, for some reason including MTV in English). Then at like 10:15 Steffen taps on the window. Turns out he was at some big breakfast departmental brunch thing and brought a huge plate of like, thin pancakes and crepes and humus and fruit…it was boss. So then he disappeared for another hour. In the lab, there wasn’t much to be done…and as I walked by Steffen around 2:00 pm, he says “I have shut the plant down, why don’t you go install the USB thing on my laptop so we can watch the games, I need to go talk with Dr. Wozny (the head honcho here) real quick.” …awesome. So it started out that I got the thing installed on his laptop, but then he took his laptop to a seminar room with a huge projector and we watched it that way. After the game we went behind Matthias’s place to have a little barbeque, which included myself, Andreas, Matthias, Steffen, Yazmin, Övgü, her boyfriend, Claire, Martin, and some person from the lab I’d never seen before. The highlight included a 3 on 3 soccer game…they have these things like, basically like basketball courts but they're soccer courts. So Martin had one of those mini balls you can play with. It was me, Andreas, and Matthias (Foreigners) versus Martin, Steffen, and Yazmin (Germans, even if Yazmin is technically Turkish). We went down 5 to 0 but scored the next 7, and ended up winning 8 to 6. Afterwards we went back to the lab and watched the second World Cup game of the day. That night I got to Skype with mom down in Virginia, so I got to talk to extended family there. I also found out my uncle has got it possibly set up for me to come down to his law firm for a day and talk with the patent litigator. I am very excited about that, hopefully I can get some questions answered about the future.
Saturday was a relaxing day, didn’t do much as I can remember, until 8:00 pm when the USA played England. Now Claire is from London, so her and I had been going back and forth with some light trashtalking, which is always fun. I was donning my American soccer shirt and a small, about 1 foot long, American flag I was waving everywhere. We went to Matthias’s favorite little restaurant and sat outside, where they had a ridiculous flat screen TV. I got a good pasta dish with cream sauce and ham bits in it, so that was nice. After we tied England we went to a little club thing and hung there for a little, then went home. On the walk back some store owner was like “Hey Ami! Eins – eins! Das ist gut!” So they clearly didn’t think we were going to come anywhere close to tying them. In the Subway as I was walking to my train two Turks tried to clown with me by making a charge at me then saying “only fun only fun!” in German…but that was about the closest I felt to in danger.
Sunday Germany played and to be in a soccer country during the World Cup is something else. It was the first game, they won 4-0, and there were fireworks and things like that going off for like 3 to 4 hours post game. There was a public viewing in Olympic Stadium they kept showing that had about 30,000 people. I was watching the first half outside at the internet café I used to frequent. They had benches outside and again, a ridiculous flat screen TV. We ended up leaving at half time because above in the apartments somebody keep throwing noise makers and little popping things at us that were so loud my ears were ringing and I felt like I was under siege from above. It was bad, ridiculous, and oh so German.
Monday was my birthday, which was a fun day. There wasn’t much going on in the lab, and I did about 20 minutes of work the whole day. And that’s not me slacking, there just wasn’t anything to do. That night Matthias, Andreas, and I went to an Italian restaurant/bar to watch the Italy soccer game…all the waiters/waitresses spoke English, I couldn’t tell if it was English, Irish, or Australian accent, but this place was an English stronghold. The menu was in English first, THEN German. They had flatscreens on the wall for like, every booth. So it was basically like sitting in your living room, the TV was 4 feet in front of me. It was pretty ridiculous.
Tuesday was another slow day in the lab. I did some sample analysis but I made quick work of it. Matthias is starting some little experiment that he wants to do on his own since there is no other work around the lab, so I am helping me him run the samples and do the analysis. As I was leaving Steffen said there wasn’t much to do so I could show up tomorrow around like 11:30 instead of 10. Tuesday evening I had an impromptu Skype with Tylan and Vince which was fun, it was so nice to be able to talk to those guys for an hour. The highlight may have included this exchange:
Ty: “Did you see that goal by Maicon? My-con, Me-con, I don’t know how to say his name right.”
Me: “You got me, I don’t speak Portugese…”
Ty: “Mike, he’s from Brazil.”
Me: “Ty, they speak Portugese in Brazil…”
Ty: “ … “
Vince: “I wasn’t gonna say anything I was just thinking if Mike said it, it must be right.”
Wednesday I rolled in at like 11:15 am, haven’t done anything except analyze Matthias’s experiment results real quick, and write this blog entry. Pictures will follow when I get home, which include the first weekend of the World Cup.
Alright here is the picture album:
Berlin 6: The World Cup is Here
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
On Skype, Spanish Lovers, and Fun in the Sun
Hmm, so it's been over a week, but really, nothing has been too noteworthy around here.
Starting out from where I left off, Monday I worked...late as I recall. I think I got off at about 8 pm, and Andreas and I were STARVING because we hadn't eaten since about 12:30 or 1 pm...so we hit up a McDonald's really quick. I had a funny run in, since I was wearing my Pitt Football shirt. Some girl yelled "Pittsburgh!!" at me as we were walking to McDonald's...and I responded "Hey, are you from Pittsburgh?" "Yeah, where are you from?" "Well I go to Pitt but I'm from Philly." "......Ohhhhhhhh." This was as we were passing in opposite directions, by this time we were like 50 meters apart. So I did the only thing I could in that situation: "STEELERS SUCK!!!!!" ...and on my merry ol' way I continued. That night I was planning to Skype with Mom and Dad, so I was trying to hurry home. I was caught, because I know I told them look for me around 8:15-8:30, but I had to eat, otherwise I would be getting sick. Rolled in at 9 after running from the subway, sat down to an email at 8:55 "Sorry we missed each other we'll talk soon!" and that did not sit well with me. So after posting on her Facebook and sending her an email, I got her back on Skype, and all was right with world (and I ended up not putting my foot through the wall).
Tuesday I also worked, did nothing exciting, mostly titrating if I recall. I mean, let's be honest, a week later, it's a safe bet I was titrating some samples. When I got home I Skyped with Laurin and did not end up having to frantically send emails that I was in fact still alive.
Wednesday Andreas's girlfriend from Spain, Maria, arrived for a weeklong visit. She studies environmental engineering back in Spain and was super nice. Now, Spanish lovers...I of course have what Gordon Weinberg, my loveable 5'0" Jewish Stat Professor last semester, would call a small sample size. But these two are clearly in some kind of love. And they show it often. Mittle of the meal, a little smootch, a brush of one's hand on the other's, sharing dessert. It was all very nice to be around. So I just have to assume all Spanish people are this passionate about love. I mean, they are passionate about other things...like running from bulls...and eating really slow to enjoy the food. So why not love?
Thursday I am pretty sure I bummed around the lab titrating samples, periodically checking Facebook, things of that sort. Oh I believe on Tuesday they moved the titration station to a new laboratory with more space, Oli and I had to troubleshoot the hell out of it, because post-move it wouldn't work. Hard to describe but turns out the stupid little stand is two pieces one of top of each other that slide as a connector. So they weren't 100% locked in. It was stupid but we were happy to fix that.
Friday more of the same. After lunch Mattias and Andreas took Maria and I to the top floor of a large building on the TU Campus (21st floor). From a little cafe at the top I took some sick pictures of the Berlin skyline (see below). I hope to go back and see if I can make a panoramic picture and perhaps enlarge and frame it when I get home. Friday night all of us from the apartments went out. Now Europeans don't even start getting ready to go out until like 10 or 11 pm, where as in American you are usually there at your party by like 10. So this leads to you not getting home until the sun is up. Now, this is really open ended, and I say it like this because I have a tangent. You may not be that familiar with geography, but Rome is actually FARTHER NORTH than New York City. Don't believe me? Go look it up. Anyway, now imagine how far north Berlin is from Rome. We're talking, like, Vermont/Canada border at least. So right now as I type it's 9:45 pm, and it is still light out. And the sun coming up? Yeah that happens at about 3:30/4:00 am. It is actually a bit ridiculous how much light you get the farther north you go.
Saturday Andreas, Maria, Matthias, 2 of Matthias's friends from France, 1 of his friends from England, and I went to a big park (Friedrichpark maybe?) and had a little barbeque/laid out in the sun. All during the week the weather was crappy in Berlin...remember about what I just said about Berlin being so far north. The highs had been like 55, and it was always overcast and rainy. But the weekend it hit like 80 and sunny, so everyone was out and about finally. The girl from London and I chatted about how different British and American English are. DID YOU KNOW: A sidewalk is called "Pavement" over there? So if a Briton tells you to walk on the pavement, they are actually not telling you to run in traffic, like that would mean over in the States. Also, an oreo is a biscuit, not a cookie, because it has layers. ...Anyway, later that night I met a bunch of people from the apartment building for a guy's birthday party, which happened to be a bunch of people getting together in another park and having a barbeque. Some of the guys were messing around with a soccer ball, just playing keep away. IT. WAS. AMAZING. There was a guy from Brazil who was standing with the ball, 2 people in front of him. So he jesters the ball over his head and over the heads of the 2 people in front of him and runs through them to keep the ball. I told him he was going to teach me that next time.
Sunday was another day of great fun in the sun...The group of Andreas, Maria, etc. plus Matthias's Irish friend went to the beach! Ok, so it was a lake called Wannsee (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wannsee) but they had sand and things like that. It was cool, I got to lay out and relax and enjoy the weather. It was certainly enjoyable and let me forget about work for a while.
Monday was frustrating as hell. Steffen has problems listening to others sometimes and can be a bit of a control freak. This boiled over when for some reason, the computer doing the titrations fell asleep and the password was changed. No idea what happened, but I was the only one with the computer, so it certainly wasn't going to look good for me if this didn't get fixed. After Steffen and Oli tried 1000s of passwords to no avail, including one I saw with an administrator type look to it. Now, I was kind of freaking out. All of the data was on there, and this was probably going to land squarely on my shoulders. So as soon as Steffen moved about from the computer for 2 seconds, I butted my way in there. I hit ctrl alt del twice to bring up the administrator account, and typed in this random password Steffen was holding. Low and behold, it worked like I thought it would. I got in to the administrator account, changed the password back to what it normally was, and the day (and my ass) was saved. Now, I had been telling Steffen to try this for at least ... 30 minutes, and instead he was just ... not listening. Which was making me progressively angrier. Eventually I worked myself down after it was all fixed, but the amount of shit I thought I was in, and then managed to seemlessly navigate out of, was enough to give me a headache for the next 2 or 3 hours.
And we finally arrive at today. It was Maria's last day, so I said goodbye to her at lunch. Yes, they were always passionate. At the barbeques, at the beach, rest assured, the Spanish remain passionate. Today they installed an autosampler which can analyize up to 16 samples at a time, so they're working on testing it out. So hopefully the work will be easier and I will have more time to learn more about the plant and do other stuff. Or sit while the machine runs 16 samples and I play on my iPod. To be decided...
The pictures today come courtesy of ... me. Who else? There are a few of the Berlin skyline from the 21st floor cafe, and a few of the Wannsee Lake. Also, you can see that Andreas resembles my dad...a LOT. Enjoy:
5: Berlin Skyline und Berlin Wannsee
Starting out from where I left off, Monday I worked...late as I recall. I think I got off at about 8 pm, and Andreas and I were STARVING because we hadn't eaten since about 12:30 or 1 pm...so we hit up a McDonald's really quick. I had a funny run in, since I was wearing my Pitt Football shirt. Some girl yelled "Pittsburgh!!" at me as we were walking to McDonald's...and I responded "Hey, are you from Pittsburgh?" "Yeah, where are you from?" "Well I go to Pitt but I'm from Philly." "......Ohhhhhhhh." This was as we were passing in opposite directions, by this time we were like 50 meters apart. So I did the only thing I could in that situation: "STEELERS SUCK!!!!!" ...and on my merry ol' way I continued. That night I was planning to Skype with Mom and Dad, so I was trying to hurry home. I was caught, because I know I told them look for me around 8:15-8:30, but I had to eat, otherwise I would be getting sick. Rolled in at 9 after running from the subway, sat down to an email at 8:55 "Sorry we missed each other we'll talk soon!" and that did not sit well with me. So after posting on her Facebook and sending her an email, I got her back on Skype, and all was right with world (and I ended up not putting my foot through the wall).
Tuesday I also worked, did nothing exciting, mostly titrating if I recall. I mean, let's be honest, a week later, it's a safe bet I was titrating some samples. When I got home I Skyped with Laurin and did not end up having to frantically send emails that I was in fact still alive.
Wednesday Andreas's girlfriend from Spain, Maria, arrived for a weeklong visit. She studies environmental engineering back in Spain and was super nice. Now, Spanish lovers...I of course have what Gordon Weinberg, my loveable 5'0" Jewish Stat Professor last semester, would call a small sample size. But these two are clearly in some kind of love. And they show it often. Mittle of the meal, a little smootch, a brush of one's hand on the other's, sharing dessert. It was all very nice to be around. So I just have to assume all Spanish people are this passionate about love. I mean, they are passionate about other things...like running from bulls...and eating really slow to enjoy the food. So why not love?
Thursday I am pretty sure I bummed around the lab titrating samples, periodically checking Facebook, things of that sort. Oh I believe on Tuesday they moved the titration station to a new laboratory with more space, Oli and I had to troubleshoot the hell out of it, because post-move it wouldn't work. Hard to describe but turns out the stupid little stand is two pieces one of top of each other that slide as a connector. So they weren't 100% locked in. It was stupid but we were happy to fix that.
Friday more of the same. After lunch Mattias and Andreas took Maria and I to the top floor of a large building on the TU Campus (21st floor). From a little cafe at the top I took some sick pictures of the Berlin skyline (see below). I hope to go back and see if I can make a panoramic picture and perhaps enlarge and frame it when I get home. Friday night all of us from the apartments went out. Now Europeans don't even start getting ready to go out until like 10 or 11 pm, where as in American you are usually there at your party by like 10. So this leads to you not getting home until the sun is up. Now, this is really open ended, and I say it like this because I have a tangent. You may not be that familiar with geography, but Rome is actually FARTHER NORTH than New York City. Don't believe me? Go look it up. Anyway, now imagine how far north Berlin is from Rome. We're talking, like, Vermont/Canada border at least. So right now as I type it's 9:45 pm, and it is still light out. And the sun coming up? Yeah that happens at about 3:30/4:00 am. It is actually a bit ridiculous how much light you get the farther north you go.
Saturday Andreas, Maria, Matthias, 2 of Matthias's friends from France, 1 of his friends from England, and I went to a big park (Friedrichpark maybe?) and had a little barbeque/laid out in the sun. All during the week the weather was crappy in Berlin...remember about what I just said about Berlin being so far north. The highs had been like 55, and it was always overcast and rainy. But the weekend it hit like 80 and sunny, so everyone was out and about finally. The girl from London and I chatted about how different British and American English are. DID YOU KNOW: A sidewalk is called "Pavement" over there? So if a Briton tells you to walk on the pavement, they are actually not telling you to run in traffic, like that would mean over in the States. Also, an oreo is a biscuit, not a cookie, because it has layers. ...Anyway, later that night I met a bunch of people from the apartment building for a guy's birthday party, which happened to be a bunch of people getting together in another park and having a barbeque. Some of the guys were messing around with a soccer ball, just playing keep away. IT. WAS. AMAZING. There was a guy from Brazil who was standing with the ball, 2 people in front of him. So he jesters the ball over his head and over the heads of the 2 people in front of him and runs through them to keep the ball. I told him he was going to teach me that next time.
Sunday was another day of great fun in the sun...The group of Andreas, Maria, etc. plus Matthias's Irish friend went to the beach! Ok, so it was a lake called Wannsee (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wannsee) but they had sand and things like that. It was cool, I got to lay out and relax and enjoy the weather. It was certainly enjoyable and let me forget about work for a while.
Monday was frustrating as hell. Steffen has problems listening to others sometimes and can be a bit of a control freak. This boiled over when for some reason, the computer doing the titrations fell asleep and the password was changed. No idea what happened, but I was the only one with the computer, so it certainly wasn't going to look good for me if this didn't get fixed. After Steffen and Oli tried 1000s of passwords to no avail, including one I saw with an administrator type look to it. Now, I was kind of freaking out. All of the data was on there, and this was probably going to land squarely on my shoulders. So as soon as Steffen moved about from the computer for 2 seconds, I butted my way in there. I hit ctrl alt del twice to bring up the administrator account, and typed in this random password Steffen was holding. Low and behold, it worked like I thought it would. I got in to the administrator account, changed the password back to what it normally was, and the day (and my ass) was saved. Now, I had been telling Steffen to try this for at least ... 30 minutes, and instead he was just ... not listening. Which was making me progressively angrier. Eventually I worked myself down after it was all fixed, but the amount of shit I thought I was in, and then managed to seemlessly navigate out of, was enough to give me a headache for the next 2 or 3 hours.
And we finally arrive at today. It was Maria's last day, so I said goodbye to her at lunch. Yes, they were always passionate. At the barbeques, at the beach, rest assured, the Spanish remain passionate. Today they installed an autosampler which can analyize up to 16 samples at a time, so they're working on testing it out. So hopefully the work will be easier and I will have more time to learn more about the plant and do other stuff. Or sit while the machine runs 16 samples and I play on my iPod. To be decided...
The pictures today come courtesy of ... me. Who else? There are a few of the Berlin skyline from the 21st floor cafe, and a few of the Wannsee Lake. Also, you can see that Andreas resembles my dad...a LOT. Enjoy:
5: Berlin Skyline und Berlin Wannsee
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Pictures! And Being a Tourist
Thursday morning I made sure to get down to Herr Redder. It didn't turn in to "Get on the phone or I'll pour sauerkraut all over your suit," sadly, because he was wearing a sportscoat. So it turned in to more of a "You know, it's very very frustrating that I'm paying for internet twice since I paid for this and now have to pay for internet cafes too. So I'm hoping we can get this fixed right now." Alright, completely different, but 5 minutes later it was fixed.
Thursday I had the day off. Steffen had a conference to go to and people to tend to, so Andreas, Matthias, and I did touristy things. At 4, we met up to go to the Hamburger Bahnhof. Now I was initially confused because this means Hamburg Trainstation. Turns out it was a trainstation that was necessary due to the Berlin Wall, but after the Wall came down, they built a new Hauptbahnhof (main trainstation) and turned this one in to a museum. Inside were models of ... bugs. And vases. And just weird art. Ugh. 3 engineers going to an art museum just turned in to us mocking everything we saw. Afterwards they showed me the German Reichstag (parliament), the Brandenburg Gate, the Memorial to murdered European Jews, the AMERICAN EMBASSY, and Unter den Linden, which contains the famous Hotel Adlon, where among other things, Michael Jackson famously held the baby out the window. After that we headed to a museum dealing with Islamic art and history. It was more interesting than the art, but still eh.
Friday I was back at work titrating samples. I also helped find errors in data that the computer wouldn't detect and did it pretty quickly, so Steffen was impressed. Friday night a bunch of us from the apartments went out to dinner because Nadia was leaving tomorrow to go home. We went to an Indian place which wasn't too bad. I met a Bulgarian girl, a Spanish girl, a Turkish guy, and a Swedish guy, so that was all interesting.
Saturday I met up with Andreas and Matthias to do more touristy things. First we went to the Spandau Citadel, which was a big fortress located in the Spandau part of the city, almost on the border of the city with Brandenburg. Spandau used to be its own deal but it was absorbed into Berlin a long time ago. It was a neat place, the museum was actually something I was interested in since it was military history, so that was much better than art or Islamic guys chipping a piece of marble in to a lion.
Afterwards they took me to Potsdamer Platz, the famous city square. It was so cool, a very busy place that had so many glass buildings. I also found out I really like glass buildings, I mean I knew I liked them but I like them more than I thought. It still kind of blows my mind that the square was completely desolate for so many years since the Berlin Wall cut right through the center of the square.
Sunday I am just hanging around, doing laundry, went and paid my rent, nothing exciting. What IS exciting: Pictures. Overall in these albums are about 450 pictures you can sift through. In the future it won't be such a pile-on, but this was the first real opportunity I had to get pictures up.
1: Arrival/Around Town
2: Karneval der Kulturen
3: Museums/Brandenburger Tor
4: Spandau/Potsdamer Platz
Thursday I had the day off. Steffen had a conference to go to and people to tend to, so Andreas, Matthias, and I did touristy things. At 4, we met up to go to the Hamburger Bahnhof. Now I was initially confused because this means Hamburg Trainstation. Turns out it was a trainstation that was necessary due to the Berlin Wall, but after the Wall came down, they built a new Hauptbahnhof (main trainstation) and turned this one in to a museum. Inside were models of ... bugs. And vases. And just weird art. Ugh. 3 engineers going to an art museum just turned in to us mocking everything we saw. Afterwards they showed me the German Reichstag (parliament), the Brandenburg Gate, the Memorial to murdered European Jews, the AMERICAN EMBASSY, and Unter den Linden, which contains the famous Hotel Adlon, where among other things, Michael Jackson famously held the baby out the window. After that we headed to a museum dealing with Islamic art and history. It was more interesting than the art, but still eh.
Friday I was back at work titrating samples. I also helped find errors in data that the computer wouldn't detect and did it pretty quickly, so Steffen was impressed. Friday night a bunch of us from the apartments went out to dinner because Nadia was leaving tomorrow to go home. We went to an Indian place which wasn't too bad. I met a Bulgarian girl, a Spanish girl, a Turkish guy, and a Swedish guy, so that was all interesting.
Saturday I met up with Andreas and Matthias to do more touristy things. First we went to the Spandau Citadel, which was a big fortress located in the Spandau part of the city, almost on the border of the city with Brandenburg. Spandau used to be its own deal but it was absorbed into Berlin a long time ago. It was a neat place, the museum was actually something I was interested in since it was military history, so that was much better than art or Islamic guys chipping a piece of marble in to a lion.
Afterwards they took me to Potsdamer Platz, the famous city square. It was so cool, a very busy place that had so many glass buildings. I also found out I really like glass buildings, I mean I knew I liked them but I like them more than I thought. It still kind of blows my mind that the square was completely desolate for so many years since the Berlin Wall cut right through the center of the square.
Sunday I am just hanging around, doing laundry, went and paid my rent, nothing exciting. What IS exciting: Pictures. Overall in these albums are about 450 pictures you can sift through. In the future it won't be such a pile-on, but this was the first real opportunity I had to get pictures up.
1: Arrival/Around Town
2: Karneval der Kulturen
3: Museums/Brandenburger Tor
4: Spandau/Potsdamer Platz
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
A Rollercoaster of Ups and Downs This Week
Monday was a little bit of a wash, even though I made sure I didn't sleep till 3 pm again. It was storming in the morning, but mid-afternoon I headed over to a nicer part of the city called Penzlauerberg I think. There was a guitar shop over there, but as I assumed, it was closed. But I got to get outside and walk around for a little bit, and it was nice while I was out. I got back to my place and then the skies opened up with some cool thunder and lightning, but that also meant I wasn't exploring any parts of Berlin on my day off. Monday night I skyped with my mom and my sister which was very nice... I miss everyone at home a LOT. It's good that I was able to talk to them, because right around the stroke of 11 pm, my internet was like "Hey, for no reason we just logged you out...log in again!" So I'm sitting there, very skeptical-like, and tried to log back in. "Login war fehlgeschlagen" - Login failed. Incorrect user name and password. So I try again. and again. And I'm getting more and more pissed off each fehlgeschlagen-ed login. Finally I'm like, Level 5 pissed (www.twitter.com/OGOchoCinco/status/7633188144). I abandoned all hope and was just upset with the entire country of Germany for making me leave my family and friends, and then taking my only way to connect to them.
Tuesday and Thursday mornings the one guy for this building has office hours...7 to 10 am. So I made damn sure I was awake, went down there, introduced myself, and let him know what was going on. He said he'd talk with IT and the problem would be fixed "By 3 pm." No problem, I was going to be at work until like 7 or 8 pm. So I went to the university, and most of the day I didn't have much to do...so I edited Steffen's paper, since English ist not his Muttersprache. I definitely understand what my German teacher goes through when he has to read all these essays and they come back with so much red on them. I used the "Track Changes" feature in Microsoft Word...to give you an idea, in addition to the notes it saves in the margins, it added 3 pages of annotations of things I changed. The paper from 5 pages and I think it took me more or less an hour a page. And I'm not saying my German is any better, not even close. I'm just saying...at times my head hurt and I just had to get up and walk away. I'm sure it would be no different if the roles were reversed.
So I got home Tuesday night, sat at my computer, tried to log in, and BAM...nothing. So of course, I'm very pissed. Then I spot a piece of paper on my floor...it has new login and password information. Great, except "It works not today it works after tomorrow at 10." Great, that is exactly the 3 pm that I was expecting. And of course, in bold at the bottom it says "Only one PC may be logged on." like I brought 5 computers and was logging them each in. So I didn't do much Tuesday night except play some computer games. Rousing fun, and something I definitely couldn't be doing in the US. Oh right! I also broke my headphones Tuesday night, so I asked Nadia where I could get more. She said I should go up two subway stops and there will be a big store I could get some in. Well, she lied. IT WAS A BIG MALL!! Hello America, I could literally hear God Bless America in the background. There was a Saturn store inside the mall, which is 100% like a Best Buy except with a gray and orange scheme as opposed to the blue and yellow. I have definitely found the place to knock out some shopping.
Wednesday was another day behind the computer just titrating sample after sample...I think I got through like 20 samples the entire day. It was lonely, boring work. But I talked with Oli a lot throughout the day, and found out Thursday we'd get the day off because there was some big conference that Steffen had to be at. So THAT was cool, Matthias and Andreas invited me to check out a museum that they were going to. They have definitely been very nice and friendly to me, though that doesn't help much at night when I'm just chilling in my apartment. At least the days are cool.
Wednesday night I got home and wanted to try my internet, since I had to leave before 10 am. Of course, NOTHING, and now I'm in an internet cafe, paying for internet on top of internet I already paid for, except this one actually works. God it is infuriating. Luckily, since I have the day off tomorrow (not going to the museum until after lunch) I am going to talk with "Herr Redder" again. And by talk I mean say, "Hey, so this internet still doesn't work. Lucky for you I'm not going anywhere so you need to call IT now and get this fixed in the next 5 minutes, or I will throw sauerkraut all over your suit." ...something like that.
I had found this ad on Craigslist (they have that for Berlin! Awesome) for a Rover travel guitar...hit up google images, it was so cool, the case is the size of my violin's case, but the guitar has a full sized neck...just a smaller body so softer sound. And I am not trying to go play a concert with this thing. It came with a case and a strap and it was dirt cheap, so I couldn't NOT buy it. I am very very pleased. It more or less made up for the German lying to me about my internet being fixed.
Tuesday and Thursday mornings the one guy for this building has office hours...7 to 10 am. So I made damn sure I was awake, went down there, introduced myself, and let him know what was going on. He said he'd talk with IT and the problem would be fixed "By 3 pm." No problem, I was going to be at work until like 7 or 8 pm. So I went to the university, and most of the day I didn't have much to do...so I edited Steffen's paper, since English ist not his Muttersprache. I definitely understand what my German teacher goes through when he has to read all these essays and they come back with so much red on them. I used the "Track Changes" feature in Microsoft Word...to give you an idea, in addition to the notes it saves in the margins, it added 3 pages of annotations of things I changed. The paper from 5 pages and I think it took me more or less an hour a page. And I'm not saying my German is any better, not even close. I'm just saying...at times my head hurt and I just had to get up and walk away. I'm sure it would be no different if the roles were reversed.
So I got home Tuesday night, sat at my computer, tried to log in, and BAM...nothing. So of course, I'm very pissed. Then I spot a piece of paper on my floor...it has new login and password information. Great, except "It works not today it works after tomorrow at 10." Great, that is exactly the 3 pm that I was expecting. And of course, in bold at the bottom it says "Only one PC may be logged on." like I brought 5 computers and was logging them each in. So I didn't do much Tuesday night except play some computer games. Rousing fun, and something I definitely couldn't be doing in the US. Oh right! I also broke my headphones Tuesday night, so I asked Nadia where I could get more. She said I should go up two subway stops and there will be a big store I could get some in. Well, she lied. IT WAS A BIG MALL!! Hello America, I could literally hear God Bless America in the background. There was a Saturn store inside the mall, which is 100% like a Best Buy except with a gray and orange scheme as opposed to the blue and yellow. I have definitely found the place to knock out some shopping.
Wednesday was another day behind the computer just titrating sample after sample...I think I got through like 20 samples the entire day. It was lonely, boring work. But I talked with Oli a lot throughout the day, and found out Thursday we'd get the day off because there was some big conference that Steffen had to be at. So THAT was cool, Matthias and Andreas invited me to check out a museum that they were going to. They have definitely been very nice and friendly to me, though that doesn't help much at night when I'm just chilling in my apartment. At least the days are cool.
Wednesday night I got home and wanted to try my internet, since I had to leave before 10 am. Of course, NOTHING, and now I'm in an internet cafe, paying for internet on top of internet I already paid for, except this one actually works. God it is infuriating. Luckily, since I have the day off tomorrow (not going to the museum until after lunch) I am going to talk with "Herr Redder" again. And by talk I mean say, "Hey, so this internet still doesn't work. Lucky for you I'm not going anywhere so you need to call IT now and get this fixed in the next 5 minutes, or I will throw sauerkraut all over your suit." ...something like that.
I had found this ad on Craigslist (they have that for Berlin! Awesome) for a Rover travel guitar...hit up google images, it was so cool, the case is the size of my violin's case, but the guitar has a full sized neck...just a smaller body so softer sound. And I am not trying to go play a concert with this thing. It came with a case and a strap and it was dirt cheap, so I couldn't NOT buy it. I am very very pleased. It more or less made up for the German lying to me about my internet being fixed.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Concert and Karneval der Kulturen
So Friday was like any other day in the lab. It involved a lot of titrating samples. I am definitely feeling research is not something I want to be doing post-undergrad. It seems like all Steffen does is that he has one big problem - reducing CO2 in the waste stream - and he has to vary 10 million parameters one by one to see what the optimal combination of parameters is. That is definitely something I don't think I'd enjoy doing. So maybe that lawyer thing isn't so far-fetched. Definitely need to get in at Merck for a day when I get home and also talk with some lawyer types. I met some more people in the lab though...Julian (Julio? can't remember for sure) is from Columbia, and he has been working here for like 2 years with another guy on some project with working on seperation of oil layers. Turns out he lives in the same building I do which was cool to know. I at least did the smart thing and brought something with me to read while I was sitting at the computer, so I read a Men's Health cover to cover. Oh, actually, come to think of it I did get one piece of good news on Friday...Monday is a holiday in Germany, so I was going to get a 3 day weekend my first weekend here.
Christoph really wanted to go to a "The New Pornographers" concert on Friday night. To all relatives out there...no worries, they're just an indie rock band from Canada. They had a song in Rock Band, that game all your grandchildren/nieces/nephews place with the fake instruments :). I have only heard one song from them (the aforementioned Rock Band song) but I figured, "Why Not?" So he led me a ways to the club, where all we had to pay for this show was 6 Euros...not bad. The opening band ... well they just plain sucked. Really no two ways about it. But, being we were in a club and not in a traditional, "stadium-like" rock show, I was about 2 or 3 rows from the stage, which was very cool. Christoph met up with some of his friends that he's met, and one happened to be a guy named Andrew, a rising junior at Duke studying electrical and computer engineering. So that was a nice little (comforting) surprise.
After the show ended the Europeans kept dancing, and Andrew and I were like ... we can't do this, we reached our end hours ago. So we headed out, and went our seperate ways to get home. Unfortunately, by the time I got back and got to bed it was like 4 am, and with the exhaustion of the week, some possible lingering affects of jet leg, and the lack of a true alarm clock, I slept till 3 pm, and boy was I pissed off. There were two guitar shops I wanted to go to that were both only open to 4 pm, and I couldn't get to either. In Germany nothing is really open on Sunday and I assume they'll be closed Monday for the holiday, so Tuesday perhaps if I get off work early enough. Or I might just walk over to the one during my lunch hour since it's close to the university. Needless to say Saturday quickly turned in to a wash and it was all my fault.
Sunday was a little better. A bunch of us from the lab - Steffen, Andreas, Martin, Jasmin, Övgü, and myself, and then Övgu's boyfriend, Steffen's girlfriend, and some guy from Greece whose name I forget - went to the annual Karneval der Kulturen - Carnival of the Cultures. It was a huge street festival and parade spanning pretty much the entire city district of Kreuz. It was huge. I got lots of pictures and ate some good food, as we walked around, listened to music, and did some light shopping...well the girls mostly.
Hopefully tomorrow I will be able to get out a little more and sightsee, since I messed Saturday up. And as for pictures, Facebook won't let me upload pictures for some reason, so I can't post a public link to the albums yet...I have over 200 pictures so far. If Facebook is still being stupid (come to think of it it's probably this ridiculously slow and terrible internet) I might try something like a PhotoBucket.
Christoph really wanted to go to a "The New Pornographers" concert on Friday night. To all relatives out there...no worries, they're just an indie rock band from Canada. They had a song in Rock Band, that game all your grandchildren/nieces/nephews place with the fake instruments :). I have only heard one song from them (the aforementioned Rock Band song) but I figured, "Why Not?" So he led me a ways to the club, where all we had to pay for this show was 6 Euros...not bad. The opening band ... well they just plain sucked. Really no two ways about it. But, being we were in a club and not in a traditional, "stadium-like" rock show, I was about 2 or 3 rows from the stage, which was very cool. Christoph met up with some of his friends that he's met, and one happened to be a guy named Andrew, a rising junior at Duke studying electrical and computer engineering. So that was a nice little (comforting) surprise.
After the show ended the Europeans kept dancing, and Andrew and I were like ... we can't do this, we reached our end hours ago. So we headed out, and went our seperate ways to get home. Unfortunately, by the time I got back and got to bed it was like 4 am, and with the exhaustion of the week, some possible lingering affects of jet leg, and the lack of a true alarm clock, I slept till 3 pm, and boy was I pissed off. There were two guitar shops I wanted to go to that were both only open to 4 pm, and I couldn't get to either. In Germany nothing is really open on Sunday and I assume they'll be closed Monday for the holiday, so Tuesday perhaps if I get off work early enough. Or I might just walk over to the one during my lunch hour since it's close to the university. Needless to say Saturday quickly turned in to a wash and it was all my fault.
Sunday was a little better. A bunch of us from the lab - Steffen, Andreas, Martin, Jasmin, Övgü, and myself, and then Övgu's boyfriend, Steffen's girlfriend, and some guy from Greece whose name I forget - went to the annual Karneval der Kulturen - Carnival of the Cultures. It was a huge street festival and parade spanning pretty much the entire city district of Kreuz. It was huge. I got lots of pictures and ate some good food, as we walked around, listened to music, and did some light shopping...well the girls mostly.
Hopefully tomorrow I will be able to get out a little more and sightsee, since I messed Saturday up. And as for pictures, Facebook won't let me upload pictures for some reason, so I can't post a public link to the albums yet...I have over 200 pictures so far. If Facebook is still being stupid (come to think of it it's probably this ridiculously slow and terrible internet) I might try something like a PhotoBucket.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
My Introduction to Berlin
First, let’s start out with what this is/why I’m writing this. I am in Berlin, Germany for 8 weeks (May 17, 2010 until July 12, 2010) for a research internship. The internship is at the Berlin Institute of Technology (Technische Universität Berlin, or TU-Berlin, often I’ll just say TU), and it is through the RISE program – Research Internships in Science and Engineering, which is a program through the DAAD – Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst (German academic exchange service).
So, on Saturday May 15, I left for Berlin. Leaving was damn hard, and I’d be lying if I wasn’t tempted to just leave the airport right there and stay home. But this is something I needed to do if I want to get good resume experience, and hopefully 8 weeks will go semi-fast. It does at school. And at home. Well normally time flies doesn’t it? The 8 hour flight over wasn’t great we’ll say that, THAT time didn’t fly. I had a middle seat in a section of 4 seats. Whenever I did sleep it wasn’t good and my back was so freaking sore. The cool thing was that each seat had personal TVs that you could tune to whatever you wanted, as opposed to the stereotypical in-flight movie (As you might recall, I had to watch 27 Dresses on my last flight home from Germany). I was able to watch two episodes of the Simpsons that they had, one episode of Entourage, and one episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, which was pretty cool. I got to Munich no problem, made it through customs no problem. I had to stop by a Lufthansa center to get my ticket and then I made it to my gate with plenty of time. I had to buy some internet and I shot off a quick email to mom and dad to let them know I was in Germany. The flight to Berlin was awesome, at least compared to the other one, because it was only 45 minutes. As we were waiting to get off after landing the guy behind me saw my Pitt shirt. Turns out he was from Jeannette and we talked about how Terrelle Pryor was dead to both of us. Then my luggage came thank god. I have spent 2 weeks in Europe before with no luggage, so I wasn’t exactly looking forward to 8 weeks.
I was able to grab a cab to my apartment, which was a nice Mercedes. He drove like a taxi driver we’ll leave it at that. I put in the code to the lockbox that the landlord gave me and thank god the key was there. I opened the door and quickly moved my stuff in. The room is nice, it has a twin bed, large desk, armoire, and nightstand, plus a wall fixture of 6 cubes to put extra stuff. The building houses international students, and each “room” is a hallway with four bedrooms, and in the hallway is a kitchenette and bathroom. The first night I met Nadia, a student from Portugal, who has the bedroom next to mine. She was very nice, but I only talked to her for a minute so I don’t really know what she is doing here yet…well actually almost done, she told me she leaves in 2 weeks. There are four sets of these four rooms per floor, and 5 floors, for a total of 80 rooms.
The very next day I was thrust into action in the large city of Berlin. I couldn’t take the jetlag so I had fallen asleep mad early Sunday, like 4 pm their time for a 2 or 3 hour nap. That night I went to bed around 11 pm, but woke up on the dot of 3 am. I laid awake for 2 hours, tossing and turning, with John Mayer and Taylor Swift stuck in my head. Around 5 am I finally fell asleep again as the sun was rising, and slept through my 8 am alarm, because I forget to turn the iPod volume up. Luckily I snapped awake at 8:40 am, got in the shower real quick, and started to make my way to the university. I took the subway to Alexanderplatz, which is a crazy busy station at the city center, and got a rail to the university, with the whole trip taking maybe 20 minutes. I met Steffen, my PhD student, and he really immersed me in German. He showed me the pilot plant he works with and the Aspen control system, and gave me some (English) literature to read. From the sounds of things I’ll be working with a French student named Matthias a lot (who wasn’t there) to vary set factors about the pilot plant to try and reduce the amount of CO2 in the waste stream. …I think. I’ll get back at that when I know more for sure. Steffen helped me buy a rail pass and a meal card, and I got out early around 2:30 or 3 pm. He could tell jetlag was killing me.
Monday evening, feeling brave enough to conquer more of the Subway and Rail system, I made my way about 2 miles away to the main building of the people who own this building (and I guess a bunch more around town?) to buy some internet. So this was Monday, and they told me it would take 2 or 3 days at the latest for them to put the network ID and password in my mailbox (spätestens Donnerstag, said the main…oh yeah I did it all in German, I’ve really been trying to limit the English. Except with some stuff in the plant – I made the guy give me the safety instructions and tour in English. I feel like that is important enough for me to understand 100%...). Let’s see how long it ACTUALLY takes, here we go German punctuality. I got back and walked around my street a little bit, turns out there are like 4 grocery stores within a block or two, it was slightly ridiculous. When I got back to the apartment, I met my other roommate, Christoph. I say other because from what he told me, the 4th room is currently empty. Christoph is 24 and from southwestern Poland, and after a minute of talking with him in German, I was delighted to hear, “My German is not so good, I actually prefer English.” Well say hello to Mr. English. We talked for about an hour, with Nadia joining in about halfway through. Christoph is halfway done a 6 month IT internship, not sure who with though. Later that night I met some other people in the building – Ashish, a 24 year old PhD molecular medicine student from India, and Robert, 23, studying hotel management and doing an internship at Hilton Hotels, from Holland but actually born in Westchester, NY.
Monday night I actually slept through the whole night but I snoozed my alarm a few times, had some weird dreams, and ended up waking up at 9:40 am to get all the way to the University by 10:00 am. Miraculously I made it by 10:05…not too bad. I learned more about the project. Steffen has a pilot plant with an adsorption and desorption column. After the reaction to produce ethylene, there is a waste stream that is about 22 weight percent CO2, so that is trying to be reduced to 1%. So over the course of the next 8 weeks we will be systemically varying parameters to see if we can match the theoretical results, which were promising. It is all controlled from the “Control room” which I will show pictures of. This was described in a 5 page technical paper in grammatically terrible English. I asked Steffen if it was going to be published, he said yes, I hid my shock, offered to edit the English, and he gladly accepted.
So here are the people that I encounter in the lab on a daily basis. Obviously Steffen, who is German. His English is probably what my German is like. It isn’t grammatically right all the time but he gets his point across. Andreas is from Spain but speaks German and I think pretty decent English, though I only really heard him speak it once. He helps Steffen out. Matthias was there today and he seems to have his own project with Steffen involving the columns. He is French, speaks very good German, and pretty poor English. Olvü is from Istanbul, Turkey, and is a Master’s student who has been in Germany about a year. Her German is great and her English is not so good either. Oliver (Oli) is a cool guy, he’s a 40ish year old chemist. He speaks English the best and converses with me in English, and I try to reply back in German, so we both are improving our second languages. A good example was him trying to explain “Niederschlag,” not knowing what the English translation was, and I figured it out to be precipitate. He and I both described our German/English the same way – We both know how to get around in the streets but when it comes to translating something like hydrochloric acid or sodium hydroxide, we have a much harder time. Oli and I talked about music a lot today, he plays guitar and bass and sequences drums. Which reminds me that I really need to find out how to get a guitar. So with the exception of Oli, the group’s collective English skills aren’t too good, so the main operating language is German. I just told them to speak slower to me and it’s been working fine. The best part is I am working on the thing I never ever got to work on in school, speaking. In German class you might speak for a sentence when you raise your hand and answer a question, but here, all I do is speak. It helps not only my speaking, but also my confidence with the language. Since the word order is so different in German, speaking it really reinforces the language in me.
So I worked with Steffen the first part of the day. He and I troubleshot a problem with the column, because gas was escaping when a valve opened that shouldn’t have been. Turns out an open/close valve like 30 feet high was stuck open and it needed to be closed. Check out the pictures of the column it is mad interesting. After lunch I worked with Oli and Olvü to take samples from the column to titrate them and figure out CO2 levels in the column at different points. Oh yeah, about Oli – he looks damn near identical to Till Lindemann, the vocalist for Rammstein. This fact is of course made funnier by the fact that he plays a lot of music. This fact is FURTHER made funnier by the fact that he is the 3rd person I’ve seen who resembles Till. I am keeping a Till Count at the end of each entry…I would keep a Euro Mullet count but that’s already in the 4 figures. Speaking of other things that I noticed that annoy me – 1) The Germans love Chucks. I happen to strongly dislike them. Problem. 2) As opposed to any place that makes sense in this world where one side of the street is odd and the other is even, the numbers here increase on one side, reach a stopping point at the end of the street, and decrease on the other side. So for example I am at 119 but across the street is like, 40something. Thus, the problem when I started to walk up my street to get to Brunnenstraße 4, when it is actually the other direction since they are decreasing on the other side while my side is increasing.
Wednesday I woke up at 9:55 to be in the lab by 10 am. I wouldn’t have cared so much, except for the fact that the dream I was having when I snapped awake was me being my mom, dad, sister, and Bandit, that would could have gone on a little longer. So I got to the lab about 1030, said that jetlag was killing me (whether it was or not isn’t really important, but it’s what I told him), explained that my body still thought I was trying to wake it up at 2 in the morning, and promised that it wouldn’t happen again. No big deal, I just have to make really sure that I don’t pull that shit again tomorrow. Today I just took samples from the columns all day and titrated them, and when I say titrated them, I really mean sat at a computer that my mom circa 1998 would have thought was old and watched as the samples were precision titrated by a machine. I already kind of knew I didn’t want to do research (aka grad school) but things like today reinforced that position. I bullshitted a lot with Oli, he is quickly becoming the coolest member of the lab to me. He gave me a possible invention idea which I am obviously not going to tell you people. He is learning a lot of English from me and likewise I’m learning a lot of German from him and the lab. Though I don’t know how much “titrieren” – to titrate – will help me in the streets. Well, yes I do. None. Got out of the lab late, like 7 pm, but I wasn’t complaining since I more or less didn’t start till 1030/11. Yesterday everyone was saying “Feierabend” when they left at 430/5, which to me translates to “evening of vacation.” Maybe them staying today until 7 (and I was the second person to leave, Matthias and Steffen stayed after I left) makes me understand why they were so happy yesterday.
Thursday I ran from the Tiergarten stop where I get off to the university and made it by 10:01, but Steffen wasn’t even there he was in some meeting. So I titrated basically all day. Mostly by myself, but I talked with Martin a while was we were both working in the same lab. He is experimenting with UV light scatters. Oli wasn’t even there today, he took a sick day, so I couldn’t give him the gifts I got him … well I use that term loosely. I brought it my external hard drive to show him pictures of the guitar I built, because he was really interested in seeing pictures when I told him about it. I made a sign that says “221B Baker Street,” the home of Sherlock Holmes, because he said he always felt like he needed a sign like that because people make him figure stuff out without telling him. Maybe tomorrow. I got back around 7:30 or 8 and my internet code was there (barely made the 3 day limit Germans…), though right now it’s pretty finicky. Apparently Christoph (which I found out is actually spelled something like Kryzstof…or something… I will stick to Christoph) says that some days it’s great and some days not so much. I’m really hoping with the weekend coming up tomorrow I can get out and actually see some of this city…there look to be so many interesting places when I ride the rail, but I obviously can’t go there just yet.
So, on Saturday May 15, I left for Berlin. Leaving was damn hard, and I’d be lying if I wasn’t tempted to just leave the airport right there and stay home. But this is something I needed to do if I want to get good resume experience, and hopefully 8 weeks will go semi-fast. It does at school. And at home. Well normally time flies doesn’t it? The 8 hour flight over wasn’t great we’ll say that, THAT time didn’t fly. I had a middle seat in a section of 4 seats. Whenever I did sleep it wasn’t good and my back was so freaking sore. The cool thing was that each seat had personal TVs that you could tune to whatever you wanted, as opposed to the stereotypical in-flight movie (As you might recall, I had to watch 27 Dresses on my last flight home from Germany). I was able to watch two episodes of the Simpsons that they had, one episode of Entourage, and one episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, which was pretty cool. I got to Munich no problem, made it through customs no problem. I had to stop by a Lufthansa center to get my ticket and then I made it to my gate with plenty of time. I had to buy some internet and I shot off a quick email to mom and dad to let them know I was in Germany. The flight to Berlin was awesome, at least compared to the other one, because it was only 45 minutes. As we were waiting to get off after landing the guy behind me saw my Pitt shirt. Turns out he was from Jeannette and we talked about how Terrelle Pryor was dead to both of us. Then my luggage came thank god. I have spent 2 weeks in Europe before with no luggage, so I wasn’t exactly looking forward to 8 weeks.
I was able to grab a cab to my apartment, which was a nice Mercedes. He drove like a taxi driver we’ll leave it at that. I put in the code to the lockbox that the landlord gave me and thank god the key was there. I opened the door and quickly moved my stuff in. The room is nice, it has a twin bed, large desk, armoire, and nightstand, plus a wall fixture of 6 cubes to put extra stuff. The building houses international students, and each “room” is a hallway with four bedrooms, and in the hallway is a kitchenette and bathroom. The first night I met Nadia, a student from Portugal, who has the bedroom next to mine. She was very nice, but I only talked to her for a minute so I don’t really know what she is doing here yet…well actually almost done, she told me she leaves in 2 weeks. There are four sets of these four rooms per floor, and 5 floors, for a total of 80 rooms.
The very next day I was thrust into action in the large city of Berlin. I couldn’t take the jetlag so I had fallen asleep mad early Sunday, like 4 pm their time for a 2 or 3 hour nap. That night I went to bed around 11 pm, but woke up on the dot of 3 am. I laid awake for 2 hours, tossing and turning, with John Mayer and Taylor Swift stuck in my head. Around 5 am I finally fell asleep again as the sun was rising, and slept through my 8 am alarm, because I forget to turn the iPod volume up. Luckily I snapped awake at 8:40 am, got in the shower real quick, and started to make my way to the university. I took the subway to Alexanderplatz, which is a crazy busy station at the city center, and got a rail to the university, with the whole trip taking maybe 20 minutes. I met Steffen, my PhD student, and he really immersed me in German. He showed me the pilot plant he works with and the Aspen control system, and gave me some (English) literature to read. From the sounds of things I’ll be working with a French student named Matthias a lot (who wasn’t there) to vary set factors about the pilot plant to try and reduce the amount of CO2 in the waste stream. …I think. I’ll get back at that when I know more for sure. Steffen helped me buy a rail pass and a meal card, and I got out early around 2:30 or 3 pm. He could tell jetlag was killing me.
Monday evening, feeling brave enough to conquer more of the Subway and Rail system, I made my way about 2 miles away to the main building of the people who own this building (and I guess a bunch more around town?) to buy some internet. So this was Monday, and they told me it would take 2 or 3 days at the latest for them to put the network ID and password in my mailbox (spätestens Donnerstag, said the main…oh yeah I did it all in German, I’ve really been trying to limit the English. Except with some stuff in the plant – I made the guy give me the safety instructions and tour in English. I feel like that is important enough for me to understand 100%...). Let’s see how long it ACTUALLY takes, here we go German punctuality. I got back and walked around my street a little bit, turns out there are like 4 grocery stores within a block or two, it was slightly ridiculous. When I got back to the apartment, I met my other roommate, Christoph. I say other because from what he told me, the 4th room is currently empty. Christoph is 24 and from southwestern Poland, and after a minute of talking with him in German, I was delighted to hear, “My German is not so good, I actually prefer English.” Well say hello to Mr. English. We talked for about an hour, with Nadia joining in about halfway through. Christoph is halfway done a 6 month IT internship, not sure who with though. Later that night I met some other people in the building – Ashish, a 24 year old PhD molecular medicine student from India, and Robert, 23, studying hotel management and doing an internship at Hilton Hotels, from Holland but actually born in Westchester, NY.
Monday night I actually slept through the whole night but I snoozed my alarm a few times, had some weird dreams, and ended up waking up at 9:40 am to get all the way to the University by 10:00 am. Miraculously I made it by 10:05…not too bad. I learned more about the project. Steffen has a pilot plant with an adsorption and desorption column. After the reaction to produce ethylene, there is a waste stream that is about 22 weight percent CO2, so that is trying to be reduced to 1%. So over the course of the next 8 weeks we will be systemically varying parameters to see if we can match the theoretical results, which were promising. It is all controlled from the “Control room” which I will show pictures of. This was described in a 5 page technical paper in grammatically terrible English. I asked Steffen if it was going to be published, he said yes, I hid my shock, offered to edit the English, and he gladly accepted.
So here are the people that I encounter in the lab on a daily basis. Obviously Steffen, who is German. His English is probably what my German is like. It isn’t grammatically right all the time but he gets his point across. Andreas is from Spain but speaks German and I think pretty decent English, though I only really heard him speak it once. He helps Steffen out. Matthias was there today and he seems to have his own project with Steffen involving the columns. He is French, speaks very good German, and pretty poor English. Olvü is from Istanbul, Turkey, and is a Master’s student who has been in Germany about a year. Her German is great and her English is not so good either. Oliver (Oli) is a cool guy, he’s a 40ish year old chemist. He speaks English the best and converses with me in English, and I try to reply back in German, so we both are improving our second languages. A good example was him trying to explain “Niederschlag,” not knowing what the English translation was, and I figured it out to be precipitate. He and I both described our German/English the same way – We both know how to get around in the streets but when it comes to translating something like hydrochloric acid or sodium hydroxide, we have a much harder time. Oli and I talked about music a lot today, he plays guitar and bass and sequences drums. Which reminds me that I really need to find out how to get a guitar. So with the exception of Oli, the group’s collective English skills aren’t too good, so the main operating language is German. I just told them to speak slower to me and it’s been working fine. The best part is I am working on the thing I never ever got to work on in school, speaking. In German class you might speak for a sentence when you raise your hand and answer a question, but here, all I do is speak. It helps not only my speaking, but also my confidence with the language. Since the word order is so different in German, speaking it really reinforces the language in me.
So I worked with Steffen the first part of the day. He and I troubleshot a problem with the column, because gas was escaping when a valve opened that shouldn’t have been. Turns out an open/close valve like 30 feet high was stuck open and it needed to be closed. Check out the pictures of the column it is mad interesting. After lunch I worked with Oli and Olvü to take samples from the column to titrate them and figure out CO2 levels in the column at different points. Oh yeah, about Oli – he looks damn near identical to Till Lindemann, the vocalist for Rammstein. This fact is of course made funnier by the fact that he plays a lot of music. This fact is FURTHER made funnier by the fact that he is the 3rd person I’ve seen who resembles Till. I am keeping a Till Count at the end of each entry…I would keep a Euro Mullet count but that’s already in the 4 figures. Speaking of other things that I noticed that annoy me – 1) The Germans love Chucks. I happen to strongly dislike them. Problem. 2) As opposed to any place that makes sense in this world where one side of the street is odd and the other is even, the numbers here increase on one side, reach a stopping point at the end of the street, and decrease on the other side. So for example I am at 119 but across the street is like, 40something. Thus, the problem when I started to walk up my street to get to Brunnenstraße 4, when it is actually the other direction since they are decreasing on the other side while my side is increasing.
Wednesday I woke up at 9:55 to be in the lab by 10 am. I wouldn’t have cared so much, except for the fact that the dream I was having when I snapped awake was me being my mom, dad, sister, and Bandit, that would could have gone on a little longer. So I got to the lab about 1030, said that jetlag was killing me (whether it was or not isn’t really important, but it’s what I told him), explained that my body still thought I was trying to wake it up at 2 in the morning, and promised that it wouldn’t happen again. No big deal, I just have to make really sure that I don’t pull that shit again tomorrow. Today I just took samples from the columns all day and titrated them, and when I say titrated them, I really mean sat at a computer that my mom circa 1998 would have thought was old and watched as the samples were precision titrated by a machine. I already kind of knew I didn’t want to do research (aka grad school) but things like today reinforced that position. I bullshitted a lot with Oli, he is quickly becoming the coolest member of the lab to me. He gave me a possible invention idea which I am obviously not going to tell you people. He is learning a lot of English from me and likewise I’m learning a lot of German from him and the lab. Though I don’t know how much “titrieren” – to titrate – will help me in the streets. Well, yes I do. None. Got out of the lab late, like 7 pm, but I wasn’t complaining since I more or less didn’t start till 1030/11. Yesterday everyone was saying “Feierabend” when they left at 430/5, which to me translates to “evening of vacation.” Maybe them staying today until 7 (and I was the second person to leave, Matthias and Steffen stayed after I left) makes me understand why they were so happy yesterday.
Thursday I ran from the Tiergarten stop where I get off to the university and made it by 10:01, but Steffen wasn’t even there he was in some meeting. So I titrated basically all day. Mostly by myself, but I talked with Martin a while was we were both working in the same lab. He is experimenting with UV light scatters. Oli wasn’t even there today, he took a sick day, so I couldn’t give him the gifts I got him … well I use that term loosely. I brought it my external hard drive to show him pictures of the guitar I built, because he was really interested in seeing pictures when I told him about it. I made a sign that says “221B Baker Street,” the home of Sherlock Holmes, because he said he always felt like he needed a sign like that because people make him figure stuff out without telling him. Maybe tomorrow. I got back around 7:30 or 8 and my internet code was there (barely made the 3 day limit Germans…), though right now it’s pretty finicky. Apparently Christoph (which I found out is actually spelled something like Kryzstof…or something… I will stick to Christoph) says that some days it’s great and some days not so much. I’m really hoping with the weekend coming up tomorrow I can get out and actually see some of this city…there look to be so many interesting places when I ride the rail, but I obviously can’t go there just yet.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)