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.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
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
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)