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