So long, and thanks for all the Wurst.

This is probably going to be my last post on Versicherung. I have been back in the States for a week now. It has been the typical rounds of doctors appointments shoved into very little time before I head back to school- which will commence on Wednesday morning.

I have found, just like when I got to Germany, that I have not been affected too much by 'culture shock', or in this case 'reverse culture shock'. This is not particularly surprising, since Germany and America are not that different culture-wise. The things that I have noticed the most since returning are little things: waiting for a host(ess) to seat you at a restaurant, having people bag your groceries (as much as I wish they would not), getting carded to buy alcohol, being able to pop down to the grocery at random hours, shopping on Sunday... The list could go on and on, but I will spare you. The things that I have found the most amusing is that I am having trouble responding to people in English- again little things- 'Thank you', 'Excuse me', etc... I noticed the other day at the pool that when a little boy asked me if the water was warm or not, I had to pause a second and think about what he asked and if he was speaking to me. Just like I had to when some one came up to me and asked a question in German when I was not expecting it. I do have to say that it is rather weird to be back here and not really feeling all that different from when I was in Germany. It feels exactly as it does when I am back at my parents house in between semesters.

Other than that, it has been the same old routine back at my parents house between semesters: getting used to Arizona time (which means I generally get up quite early...), pretending to clean up my room (in this case, unpacking and getting ready to pack again), watching the Twins on television (my favourite thing about my parents' house: they have the MLB Extra Innings package, so I get to watch ALL of the televised Twins games), working on my various crocheting and cross stitch projects, and last, but probably (definitely) the most frequent, getting yelled at for not helping out at a house that I do not feel as being my home, and getting into silly arguments with my father over stupid things, because I do not feel like I should do anything when I am on holiday. Granted, everyone else in the house has other views, since they do not see me as being on holiday when I am here. All understandable, since this is where they have lived for the last three years, but I have not lived here (in the long-term sense) and have no connections here except for the people living in this house. Sad, but unfortunately very true.

I have posted the remaining photographs that were taken in Europe. These do not yet include the picture my mother took with her camera when she was in Braunschweig, but I will eventually get them posted as well. These include pictures from our afternoon in Bad Harzburg, my day trip to Bremen, as well as my trip to Potsdam when I was in Berlin a couple weeks ago.

Overall, I will say that I had an amazing time in Braunschweig, despite the doldrums of the first couple months. Once I finally got settled and met people and started getting out and doing things, things evened out and I started having a good time. It was really sad saying goodbye to everyone I met in Braunschweig, since it is likely that I will never see any of them again. I will hopefully see some of them again, since I will be in Europe again. I am hoping that I will be able to get some sort of job in Europe at some point. But at this point I am just concentrating on getting through my last year of engineering school, and the joys of the job search.

If you feel like continuing to read by mindless blathering, I am hoping to pop in every once and a while to my other blog, Fifth Dimensional Tesseract. Thank you for wasting/spending your time reading my blog. I hope that it was some times entertaining and insightful.

Until we meet again, EMH.

Auf Wiedersehen...

...well, not quite yet. I still have a bunch of photographs to upload and more writings to do. However, I do only have a hand full of hours left in Germany. I did not get a whole lot of sleep last night and I am looking at more than twenty solid hours of travel, before I am finally back at my parents house. Hopefully all goes well, and my large amount of luggage does not manage to kill me. Talk to you again on the other side of the Atlantic.

All things come to an end.

I am now in that weird transition period. The one that comes when one chapter of your life is closing and the next is starting, but the first has not quite ended yet and the next has yet to start. Because of this, I am bout to be in a some what melancholy mood for the next weeks. It was brought on today by a couple things 1) Today was my last day at work 2) Today was my last day of crew practice. It had not really hit me until I was on the way back from crew that I really liked the people here, and it will be sort of weird never seeing them again, after so much contact for so long. OK, yeah, I knew that I liked them, but I did not think that I would necessarily miss them when I go back to the States. I guess that times like these teach you things about yourself.

The next week will be filled with paperwork, packing, cleaning, and probably not a little boredom. And a lot of good byes and introspective thinking. I am nearly as nervous going back to the States as I was before coming to Germany. They (yes, the infamous they) say that you can never go home and even if I was not convinced of that fact after moving from the Cities, I am sure that I will find plentiful evidence of this when I get back to the States. This is all a part of living, so I expect that this will not be the last time that this will be illustrated to me.

But, after such a lugubrious post, I will end with some things that I am looking forward to:
- Reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on the flight home. (I am not even going to buy it until later this week, so there is no temptation to crack it open and get sucked in before I leave.)
- Seeing my Once and Future Flatmate and other friends again.
- Spicy food.
- An oven.
- Getting back to regular workouts. (Yeah, I am that mental.)
- Getting to watch a Twins broadcast on television, and not just the day games.

Two weeks...

... since I last wrote and until I leave for the States (well, a little more than two weeks left). It is pretty crazy that I have been here for six months and in a short time I will be back in the States and back at school. I am not really sure how I feel about it, but I am sure that you will find out when I do.

Things are winding down. I am in the midst of my two week study break from work. I had my Finite Elemente Methoden exam on Thursday. I will just have to say that I do not want to talk about it. Yes. It was that bad. I will be ecstatic if I managed to pull off a three on that one. (A three is sort of equivalent to a C in the States. Top is a 1.0.) The hope is that Flugmedizin will go a little better.

I was in München last weekend. It was a lot of fun- driving on the Autobahn at 240 km/h. (You can do the math if you want to know what that is in mph.) And that was just getting there. Photos from our visit to the Olympic Park can be found in the München link. It does not seem like I took any other photos. But most of those were at Biergartens anyway. Funny story: We had just arrived at our hostel and were on our way out again when I saw this guy who sort of looked familiar and was giving me a funny look. Turns out that some of the other Purdue engineers in the country, who are studying at Karlsruhe, were visiting Berlin at the same time that I was, and we were staying in the same hostel. Pretty coincidental.

Next weekend I am going up to Berlin (yes, again), but this time I will be heading out to Potsdam on Saturday and then probably the Zoo on Sunday. I am looking forward to it. And I will be sure to post an absolute ton of pictures. I love Potsdam and Sansouci is one of the most gorgeous parks that I have ever seen.

As well as the München photographs, I have posted the pictures from the Staffelrudern in Hamburg. I have also added to the album called Nature. I took pictures on the way to the Thune (as far as I can tell, think the fish) boathouse am Mittlandkanal, as well as the boathouse and Kanal itself. (More water and boats. Believe it.)

More pictures

Sorry, I have been neglectful again. Things are crazy busy. But, I have taken the time to finally upload photos from the Ostsee camping trip (as usual, accessible by the link on the left). And, if you are at all familiar with my photography style, you will be surprised to find out that there are actually people in these pictures.

I was in Hamburg for the Staffelrudern yesterday. That was cool. I will eventually get those photos uploaded as well.

But hopefully these will keep you occupied until I can sit down and actually write something.

Finally France

OK, I am finally getting to tell you all about my visit to Paris a couple weeks ago. Overall it was quite interesting to be in Paris, the city much proclaimed by many. I have to say that I was not particularly impressed. I do not know why that is. Perhaps it had to do with the fact that I do not really speak the language, or because so many people told me that they did not really like Paris Or perhaps it is because I do not have as much of a connection with Paris as I do with, say, London, New York City and Berlin. The Once and Future Flatmate said that she was not surprised since the two of us ‘tend toward the Anglophilic side, and you can’t love both France and holly old England, can you?’ As true as that might be, it would have been nicer to have liked the city a little better. Oh well, you cannot like every city you meet, even if it is in Europe.

Other than that, Betsy and I are quite lazy when it comes to being tourists. We did all of the requisite Paris tourism things: Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, Louvre, Champs Élysées, Arc de Triomphe, the Tuileries. I have to say that Notre Dame was quite cool, I had no idea that it was on a little island bit in the middle of the Seine. The river– surprise, surprise– was the highlight of the trip for me. We spent quite a while walking along the Seine, and it was quite nice.

One amusing thing is that in Place de la Bastille there is a restaurant named Indiana. Of course I took pictures of it. The pictures, by the way, are now uploaded and can be accessed by the link call ‘Paris’ to the left. I may or may not ever get around to annotating the pictures, but, if you ask me, most of them are pretty explanatory. Either you will recognise the landmark; or if it is a gardeny area (and by gardeny, I mean tan gravel – probably another reason why I was not too enchanted with Paris was the lack of a nice green garden to sit on, except at the Tower), it is probably the Tuileries; and if it is a body of water, it is the Seine. Another note about the pictures, if you bother looking at them, you can see that I was up to my usually trying to be artsy antics. Sorry in advance. I also seem to have been quite taken with the Tour d’Eiffel, despite that fact that it is really quite ugly.

There is not much else to tell about our weekend in Paris. As I said, we are sort of on the lazy side. Keep an eye out for the next post, whose subject will be the week before last, while I was on holiday while my mother was here.

Sometimes you wonder what people were thinking.

Then again, sometimes you really, really, really do not want to know. At all. I know I said that I would start with France, but do you remember hearing about that American tourist who decided to go for a walk in Nürnberg without any clothes on? He claimed that he thought that Germans did that all the time. At the time I wondered where this guy had gotten that crazy idea. Well, maybe he had talked with the guy that was seen this afternoon walking along the Mittland Kanal northwest of Wenden-Braunschweig. He was not wearing a stitch of clothing. Luckily he was on the opposite side of the Kanal from where three guys and I were rowing. The boys, of course, thought that it was hilarious. And I, naturally, thought that I am always the lucky one. (Read: Oh my God, I think I have been scared for life... again.)

Two weeks later...

Yes, It has been two weeks since I last posted. Sorry to the very small un-named number of you that rely on this site to pass your boredom (though I really am not sure how this blog qualifies for boredom alleviation- more like boredom induction) while at various activities (read: work). It has been a busy couple of weeks, and I promise to start bringing this site up to date. For a quick overview of the things that I will be updating you on: Paris, Mother's visit, second trip to Berlin and a ton of new (and old) pictures that I have not gotten around to putting up online yet. So, be patient for just a few more days, and this weekend (which is free for once) you will get your fix of my larks on the continent.

Am Ende der Maifeiertage

Today is the last of the Maifeiertage (May – mostly Easter-related – holidays). Since the first of May, there have been three holidays: Maifest, Himmelfahrt, and Pfingsten (May Day, Ascension, and Pentecost). Since Maifest and Himmelfahrt occurred on a Tuesday and a Thursday, respectively, they also included Brücketage – bridge days between the weekend and the holiday, that, while not officially off, most everyone took off anyway. So, in summary, the month of May had two four-day weekends and one three-day weekend.

Since this is the last official day off in a while, I figure I should stop procrastinating (by now you should know that this is one of my more prominent qualities) and really say something of substance on this forum, instead of the random bits of fluff that I have been posting lately – all of those holidays are hard work, and do not lead to a lot of free time for extensive blogging. Speaking of which, I will eventually get around to uploading the pictures that were taken at Maifest of the burning man, etc, and other random pictures that have been taken, most notably, at the Autostadt in Wolfsburg, where I went on the last holiday weekend. I also hope to get some pictures of the Bootshäuser (Boathauses) and around the city at some point, but it had been scattered thunderstormy for the last couple weeks, so I never get around to getting out to do it…

Just to bring you up to speed on things here: I have just about two months left before I head back to the States. I am just about done with my main project for work, and have a large internal report to look forward to writing in the next month in a half. Crew is going crewingly, last week we were able to get out in an eight and it felt really good to be sweeping again after months of scull (there might still be hope that I will not lose my newly found stroke from last semester). This week is Excursionswoche (Excursions week), hence there is no class and I am off to Paris on Wednesday and then my mother will be coming in on Monday for a week. (I have twenty Urlaubstage – (paid) holiday days – I might as well use them.) Then I am back to the grind, finishing up the last bits of things that need to be done before I leave.

Better than a Ham Sandwich

If any of you are familiar with my novice coach's favourite sentence 'A ham sandwich could row that seat better than you.' (He had some other favourites, but they were not sentences, nor repeatable.) Then you might be interested to know that a Ham Sandwich is running as a write in canidate for Prince William County (Virginia) Commonwealth Attorney. Saying that Hamilton 'Ham' Sandwich, Esq. 'will perform with the same skill and tenacity as the current office holder, and best of all is incapable of engaging in personal vendettas against political enemies.'

Pachelbel

Here is a fabulous rant on Pachelbel's Canon on YouTube.

PS: You would think that I would post more with this four day weekend. Oh well, maybe I will get around to writing something tomorrow.

Boiler Up!

CONGRATULATIONS!!!

To the Purdue University Crew Team, for an outstanding preformance at the Dad Vail's Regatta this year! We swept the Varsity Eight Races, and the WJV boat got bronze in their race! I wish I could have been there in person, instead I was here in Deutschland following the results getting posted on the web. Here is an article on row2k.

This is a Technical University you say?

If you are ever wondering what kind of university you have found yourself at, the easiest way to figure it out is to go to the nearest wall with flyers posted on it, and look for something similar to this:

No matter where you are, what country or language you speak, there is one thing that is ubiquitous when a bunch of geeks are in close proximity to each other.

One perspective...

The following excerpt was taken from an article in Slate about an obscure correlation between presidential popularity and the strength of the dollar (both of which, at the moment, are quite weak):

"The dollar today may buy fewer BMWs and Prada shoes than it did in 2002,
but it buys about the same amount of Chinese-made microwaves, T-shirts, and
toys. And yes, Americans who suddenly find travel to Europe prohibitively
expensive might be expected to come home enraged. But most of these
travelers already hated Bush. An August 2004 poll showed that voters with passports preferred John Kerry to Bush by a whopping 23-point margin."

This is another illustration of something that I have noticed for quite a while, and since living in Europe, I have found even more striking: the people more likely to travel abroad are the ones who are the most dissatisfied with America-- be it politics, culture or whatever. You will very rarely find your stereotypical American living in Europe, for any amount of time. Some of them might do a little travelling, but they are still more likely to stay at home. Which is one reason why it is so sad that they are the American stereotype. But, as with all stereotypes, they are the ones that stick out and, hence, are the one that are noticed as opposed to their quiet, respectful, culturally oriented counterparts. All of the Americans that I have met, who are living in Europe, lean strongly to the left and are just as appalled at the state of American politics and foreign policy as the majority of Europe.

In my opinion, this can all be traced to the fact that the people who choose to live abroad are more open to foreign cultures and people, and are not impressed with themselves in the world as American citizens, but find more value in being citizens of the world. Which leads to Europeans saying (as one of my colleagues has complained) that they never get any real Americans, just the ones who do not act like how a lot of Europeans think that Americans should act.

Informationsaufnahmemöglichkeit

The above is a word taken from my Flugmedizinvorlesung (Flight Medicine lecture), and really, in the scheme of things, it is not that long at all. One thing that you must know about Germans, is that they love to make up words. It is quite acceptable German to stick together a bunch of words and make a new word out of them. This is so de rigueur, that they have their own word for ‘made-up words’: das Kunstwort, which itself is a compound word of Kunst ‘art’ and Wort ‘word’. That direct translations just about sums up about how Germans think of making up words: To them, it is an art form.

In case you are wondering, the title word is made up of Information ‘information’, Aufnahme ‘reception’ and Möglichkeit ‘possibility/potential’, which renders it as being a really fancy way of saying the possibility of receiving information. This word could have been taken farther, as the phrase that it came from was Informationsaufnahmemöglichkeit des Menschen ‘the potential for receiving information of people’ when it could easily have been Menschensinformationsaufnahmemöglichkeit ‘the human potential for the reception of information’. All of that, packed into one word. Ah, the power of Deutsch.

PS: Today is Cinco de Mayo (thin’ko day My’o, as opposed to sink’o day Mayo, since I am learning Spanish from a Spaniard and not a Mexican… though it is a Mexican holiday…) and Derby Day (der’by day, as opposed to dar’by day, but, since the Queen is visiting, the latter might be acceptable... though it is Kentucky...).

Addendum

Joe Mauer: Hot catcher or hottest catcher?

I had to share this with all of you. Speaking of the Chairman, did I ever tell you about the time that Joe Mauer dated this a girl on my swim team? Let's just say that his taste in females was not too great then, and it does not seem like it has improved since....

Walpurgisnacht, Hexennacht, Maifest and Beltane

I have finally gotten around to writing this post, which has been rattling around in my brain for a few days. One of the reasons why I am finally getting around to posting it is because I am procrastinating studying for Español and Flugmedizin. But, since I have had a four day weekend, which continues tomorrow, I am not too worried about having time in which to study.

Reason for the four day weekend: Today is 30 April, which means tomorrow is 1 May, which means that tonight is Walpurgisnacht (the Night of the Witches) and tomorrow is Maifest. This also means that tomorrow is German Labour Day, which means NO WORK. And since no one goes to work tomorrow, no one goes into work today. Which, unfortunately for hungry students short on time, also included the main Mensa (cafeteria). There is a decent history of Hexennacht here, but, in summary, the witches are supposed to be meeting on the Brocken (the highest mountain in the Harz) and do whatever it is that they do. The most notable thing about this is that the Brocken is not very far from here and Braunschweig is the closest larger city. So this is a fairly big deal here. My student residence has a huge Maifest party, so I am probably not going to get too much sleep tonight (whether I go to the party, or not).

Of course, if you had not made the connection, Walpurgisnacht is named after the saint Walpurga (there is a good Anglo-Saxon name for you) and it is, incidently, also the name for the first section of Goethe’s Faust. Which (the saint, not Faust) also leads to the fact that it is a catholicised version of a old pagan festival, known as Beltane in the Celtic world (and lot of other things elsewhere) and symbolises the final coming of spring and the triumphing of light over dark (as opposed to Samhain (Hallowe’en) which is the beginning of winter, where darkness over comes the light).

But, what is really comes down to, is a built-in excuse for the Germans to have a huge party and not go to work for a couple days to recover from said party.

In other news, as there always seems to be some: everything is coming along smoothly, class is class and work is work and crew is crew. One thing of note is that I have decided to expand my blogging, and, once I am back in the States, I hope to continue this blogging thing. So, in preparation for that, I have made another blog by the name of Fifth Dimension Tesseract, which you can find a link to here. The first entry at that site explains a little bit of my goals for that blog, so you can go there and read it, if you would like. If you have any other ideas for topics on the blog or anything else, let me know.

In sporting news: After having a terrible week last week, the Twin’s bats came alive and they took two games out of three in Detroit. Hopefully they will keep up the good work after their off day today.

And you are lucky, oder? I managed to keep today’s post to just over five hundred words, instead of over one thousand as I have been recently.

When U was spelled V, how could they tell the difference between U and V?

I am sure that you all have been wondering the exact same thing. If you have any theories, feel free to share.

As you are all aware, I am sure, this last week has been a rough one. As I have said before, events like these show us how connected we are. It also reminds us to keep our friends and family close, and when you are far away from both, it makes it double difficult to deal with some of the reactions; especially when the media is chock-a-block with coverage so you cannot get away. As the days progress, I find that I am listening to music a lot more than I had been previously and I only listen to a little bit of the news before I have to turn it off. And that is just the news magazines. I have not been able to listen to any of the interview/talk shows on NPR at all.

While I was off in emotional numbness, many things have been going on here, so I figure I will bring you up to speed:

Crew has started with a bang, rowing five days of the week. This is very exciting, since it gets me out of the flat more in the evening. (Though this also means that I am not quite as likely to sit down and write a post, do not worry, I will work on it… not that I have ever really been that regular.) The Twins managed to sweep the Mariners and then go down to Kansas City and loose the series to the team that is pretty close to an automatic last in the division. I am now taking beginning Spanish as well as Flugmedizin (roughly, flight medicine, but you knew that, right?).

The circumstances of my taking Flight Medicine is a little round about. I do not know if I had vented any of my frustration at my academic advisor at Purdue to you, but to sum it up, he ignored me for two months until I got my mother to call him. It all comes down to the fact that I had been trying to figure out if I needed to take any classes while I was here for two (TWO!) months. And he never replied. Then, after I ‘pulled out the big guns’ (direct quote from Prof Wms.) and finally broke the stalemate, he tells me that it would be nice if I did take one class here. I nearly lost it. I had been trying to get this information out of him for two months and he finally tells me a week and a half after the semester starts. Let us just suffice to say that I was royally teed (speaking of royalty, did anyone not hear that Prince William and Miss Kate Middleton broke it off and then about Willie’s boozing spree? If so, you win a prize for being able to pick you media outlets a lot better than I…). Anyway. This news led me to frantically figure out what class I should take (that had been another issue, nothing was really fitting), which led me to discuss it with my ‘overseer’ at work, which led us to finding a little class called Luft- und Raumfahrtmedizin—did I mention that we found this class at 1:30 Friday afternoon…when the class started at 2:05? And I was at the airport? Well, let’s just say that that was the quickest bike ride to campus that I have even pulled off. The normally thirty minute route took me less than twenty. All of the rushing turned out to be not needed, since it ends up that the class will actually start at 2:30 (and go until 5:30—long time for German listening). And that is how I came to take Flight Medicine, which, luckily for me, only started last Friday (a week after other classes) because it only meets every other week, because it is taught by a doctor who works for Lufthansa, and has to come down to Braunschweig special to teach the course. So I did not miss any class, and it only meets twice a month.

Now that you have heard my rant about Prof Wms., what else is there that I can relate to you? Mario moves to Berlin this week. And if he does not get his act together he is going to leave the things I borrowed from him when Dad was here here. His sleeping bag is going to do him a lot of good on my book shelf. Spring is really here. The wild flowers and later flowering bushes are popping up everywhere. Including the dandelions. Hopefully I will be able to get out and take some pictures of the lovely greenery this weekend.

I am sure that you do not want to read any more of my rambling at the moment, so I will leave you with the Worldwide (but really Europe-wide) Security Status Report:

The English are feeling the pinch in relation to recent terrorist threats and have raised their security level from ‘Miffed’ to ‘Peeved’. Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to ‘Irritated’ or even ‘A Bit Cross’. Londoners have not been ‘A Bit Cross’ since the blitz in 1940 when tea supplies all but ran out. Terrorists have been re-categorized from ‘Tiresome’ to ‘A Bloody Nuisance’. The last time the British issued ‘A Bloody Nuisance’ warning level was during the great fire of 1666.

Also, the French government announced yesterday that it has raised its terror alert level from ‘Run’ to ‘Hide’. The only two higher levels in France are ‘Surrender’ and ‘Collaborate’. The rise was precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France’s white flag factory, effectively paralyzing the country’s military capability.

It is not only the English and the French that are on a heightened level of alert. Italy has increased the alert level from ‘Shout Loudly and Excitedly’ to ‘Elaborate Military Posturing’. Two more levels remain: ‘Ineffective Combat Operations’ and ‘Change Sides’.

The Germans have also increased their alert state from ‘Disdainful Arrogance’ to ‘Dress in Uniform and Since Marching Songs’. They also have two higher levels: ‘Invade a Neighbor’ and ‘Lose’.

Belgians, on the other hand, are all on holiday as usual, and the only threat they are worried about is NATO pulling out of Brussels.

The Spanish are all excited to see their new submarines ready to deploy. These beautifully designed sibs have glass bottoms so the new Spanish navy can get a really good look at the old Spanish navy.

It is not terribly charitable and not really even all that true (even stereotypically) to some of the countries that it mocks. However, the first bit and the last two bits just about make up for the other bits. To fully disclose, I found this lying about the printer room at work (incidentally, also my office) and it was, in my opinion, obviously written by an American, or some one quite Americally oriented. And that is not just because the spellings are American and not British.

Another Update....

I found out today in an email from the Purdue Crew President, that one of the victims at Virginia Tech, Kevin Granata, was not only an alumnus of Purdue, as I said on Tuesday, but he was also an alumnus of the Purdue Crew team... Best wishes to all of the families and people more directly connected to the massacre than I, but this just goes to show how closely this world is intertwined. Also, good luck to both the Va Tech crews and Purdue crews this weekend at SIRA's. Boilers: Kick some major SIRA's butt. BOILER UP!

Something to Lighten the Mood a Bit...

I found this online, much like all the others of its kind, but still quite amusing.

You've studied abroad in Germany if:

1. You have sorted your garbage into at least 3 garbage cans and you know the difference (or should know the difference) between "Gelbe Säcke" and "Restmüll".
2. You have ever drank: a Maß, Meter or Stiefel of beer.
3. You have ever had or not had "lust" to do something.
4. You get excited that CNN is in English.
5. You know what a Döner is, and you've eaten more than one in the same week from a different "Imbiss" each time.
6. You've been to Oktoberfest.
7. You've worried before about catching "the last Strassenbahn" home.
8. You've ever been stressed out at the grocery store while checking out, and have noted that you will never take "baggers" for granted ever again.
9. You've enjoyed the ablility to walk down the street/ride the strassenbahn/hang out in public
drinking a beer or other alcoholic beverage.
10. You've watched the Simpsons in German and hated it.
11. You've ordered more than one Kugel of Eis a day...everyday...
12. You've laughed at someone trying to say "squirrel".
13. You know what a "Klo" is and you've gone "auf" one.
14. You know what the "German Stare" is.
15. You know what DB stands for.
16. You've ever explained to someone what a "pinata" is.
17. You've ever visited the local gas station on a Sunday because it's the only thing open.
18.You know the difference between Milka and Ritter Sport.
19. You know what a WG is, and have lived in one.
20. You've ever been totally confused on how to open any and all windows/doors/locks.

Sad, but pretty accurate. I will leave it to your imagination to decide which of these has befallen me...

Update:

This tragidy comes even closer to home than I previously indicated: Two of the professors who were killed were graduates of Purdue.

Gun control, or not to gun control? That is the question.

As you can probably surmise, I am writing this post in response to the recent happenings at Virginia Tech. It is always hard to come to terms with the facts of life when things like this happen, and I have found it harder now that I am away from my friends and family and have no close friends here in whom to confide.

The massacre at Va Tech comes even more close to home, since I have several connections to the school (colleague studied there, know a couple kids who currently study there, crazy novice men’s coach from freshmen year went there….). Even more disturbing—to me at least, I have no idea if there is any significance to it. I will leave that to the FBI—is that (from what I can tell from the news coverage from both here and in the States) the largest group of students killed were in that class room in Norris Hall (an engineering building that seems to have housed a part of the School of Mechanical Engineering that did more Aerospace related work) and those students were in their German class.

Being a very rational type of person (there is a reason that I ended up in engineering), I know that these facts are probably not related, just the victims of wrong place wrong time, but there must be a reason why that particular building and room were targeted, since human beings, even mental ones, can never be completely random. And I know that it is just pure happenstance that I have so many random connections with the event.

What I find even more inconceivable (Inconceivable!), is that the Bush administration still thinks that there is no need for stricter regulations on fire arms. Yes, I know the circular argument of: well, the bad guys have guns so I need to have a gun also, so I can protect myself. There is also the thought that if one of the other students in the class had a weapon on them then they could have stopped the rampage. This thought, however, is almost scarier than what happened yesterday (and at Columbine and at Red Lake and at Austin and too many other places in what seems to be increasing frequency). I would definitely not feel safer if the random kid sitting next to me in class was carrying.

In my opinion, it would just escalate until no one felt safe unless they are carrying a weapon and that would be a very, very, very scary world in which to live.

I do not have any specific statistics or what-not to cite, and I do not really feel like doing any intensive research on the subject at the moment (yeah, yeah, how can you expect people to believe what you say, if you do not back it up with substantiated information, well, tough, this is basically a personal blog, so I can come up with unsubstantiated arguments when I feel like it) but I would certainly feel safer in a country with tighter gun control, and I believe that there is some evidence somewhere to back this up: that in places with tighter control on guns, there is less gun violence. And in a strictly analytical-causal approach, that makes perfect sense; fewer guns = less gun violence.

Those are my not carefully edited and randomly organised thoughts stemming from yesterday’s incidences. On a happier note: I changed the tire on my bike by myself; I am taking Spanish twice a week, we will see how that goes; and crew goes into full time tomorrow.

Finally!

I have finally posted the London pictures. I did not take a whole lot, due to the real dislike of looking like a tourist. But those that I took are up now. As is typical, the one day that I really took a lot of pictures it was cloudy. Luckily though, the only cloudy day of all eight.

That, my friend, is a Teapot.

So, if you could not guess by this post, I am back in Deutschland. I had an absolutely AMAZING week in London and I think that the best way to tell you about it is to go day by day:

MONDAY: While planning for this trip I kept having to remind myself that a trip to this foreign country did not involve so much pre-planning, since every thing is in English in England—go figure—meaning I would have no trouble figuring things out. On the flight over, at the airport, on the train and the tube I got this little jolt when it struck me anew that the advertisements were in English and most of the people around me were speaking English. Frankly, it was a really weird feeling to feel so astonished that I could understand what people were saying in my native language.

TUESDAY: Did the whole tourist thing—London Eye (I did not go on it), Parliament, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Saint Margaret’s, Harrod’s (I bought some tea—for some reason I felt sort of bad free loading on their amazing interior), Hyde Park, Buckingham Palace, Wellington Square. Very touristy—most of my pictures are from this day (see the link to the left). If it was within walking distance of the south bank of the Thames, we hit it. The only day that it was cloudy and mizzling—typical for the day that I am taking pictures.

WEDNESDAY: While Shana had coffee with some friends, I spent most of the day at the Victoria and Albert Museum. To all of you who said that I should go there if no where else, were right. It is an amazing museum, however I was not as impressed with the clothing exhibition as I thought I would be and some of the galleries I would have like to see best were closed. (They seem to be in the middle of an exhibit remodelling.) After being museumed out (I was at the V&A from 11:30 until sometime after three), I got a picnic lunch and went and sat in and wandered around Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. I also got a start on the sun burn that I am currently sporting.

THURSDAY: Another great day in a week of great days. Shana and I went out to Notting Hill and wandered around. Man, those are some amazing houses. We also walked down Portobello Road. And before you ask, yes, I had the song from Bed Knobs and Broom Sticks stuck in my head for most of the afternoon. Such is the way my brain likes to work. After Notting Hill, we made our way down to Covent Garden. From there we wandered down through Trafalgar Square and passed Whitehall on our way back to the River, where we wandered down in the opposite direction from Tuesday and saw the Globe Theatre, the Millennium Bridge and Saint Paul’s Cathedral. After that wander we went to a play. It is called Landscape with Weapons and the main reason we went to it was because one of Shana’s favourite characters from a show called Green Wing (a British medical comedy-drama a la Scrubs) was in it. And, of course, because when you are in London, you just must see a show. As it turned out, it was the premiere and the play was quite interesting—it is about a scientist’s moral dilemma in the development of technologies that could be used as a WMD: Quite interesting to me, since the scientist was an engineer working on swarming UAV’s (unmanned aerial vehicles). Hence, he worked in the aerospace/defence sector. Hmmm, what am I currently attempting to get a degree in?

FRIDAY: Friday was concentrated shopping day. We went to Oxford Street and made our way down that street. After some partially successful shopping (I bought the aforementioned teapot as well as some books—Victoria’s Wars, Ireland Awakening- sequel to Dublin, and The Interpretation of Murder. I will let you know what I think of them as I read) , but did not see any clothes along what I was looking for), we headed down to Tower Hill to the last of the major attractions that we had not hit: the Tower of London and Tower Bridge. Those are two quite imposing structures. It was also Shana’s last day in London. This was very sad, but since she is in medical school, it is probably good that she went home to revise for her exams.

I will pause in my daily recounting here to say that it was really, really great to see Shana again. I had not seen her since the last time I went to Saint Paul (i.e.: A criminally long time ago.) We stayed at Shana’s friend, Alison’s, flat on the east side of London. The tube station that we used was Bromley-by-Bow which manages to remind of both Lady Catherine de Burgh and one of my favourite nursery rhymes, Oranges and Lemons* . After Shana left on Friday night, Alison was kind enough to let me continue to sleep on her couch, since I had three more days left in the city.

SATURDAY: Really the most amazing day, and great timing on my part. From the first time I got on the Tube, I noticed that they were advertising The Boat Race. After inquiring as to what that was, I found out that this was none other than the boat race; otherwise known to Americans as the great duel of the crews from Cambridge and Oxford. I cannot even begin to explain how overjoyed I was when I realised that I was going to be in town for the event. So, I spent all of Saturday down in Putney on the banks of the Thames working on my sunburn and watching one of, if not the, most historic races in the history of sport. Let me tell you, the number of people who where on the banks of the river was amazing (there are a couple pictures of across from where I was sitting to illustrate this, and I was only at about half way… not the starting line or the finish). Granted most of them where there for the party and I heard one group on the Tube back say that they had managed to miss all of the race, but it was still amazing to see that many people there. The whole thing was also broadcast over the radio and television all over the world. Evidently it was aired for the first time this year live in the States on ESPN. Way to go crew. I think we owe a lot of that to the amazing performance of the men’s national squad at the Olympics in 2004. (By the way, I have I ever mentioned that I have also met the US Men’s Olympic Eight? Yeah, yeah, you know how much I like to brag.) Anyway, in case you are curious, Cambridge won both the second boat race as well as The Boat Race. Which is good, since they were heavily (both literally and figuratively) favoured and Oxford has won the last two years.

SUNDAY: And if anything could top off Saturday, which I do not think anything can, my activities on Sunday come pretty close: I went to a couple Easter services at Saint Paul’s Cathedral. Which, I have to tell you, is an amazing structure. After church, I continued my sunburned ways by sitting along the river and reading and snoozing.

MONDAY: I took my last day in London slow. I did not have anything planned, so I slept in, watched a TV Agatha Christie movie, purchased provisions for my bivouac at Stansted Airport, and then made my way to Green Park (near Buckingham Palace) to further acquaint myself with London’s many and beautiful parks and read and snooze. A nice lazy day, and since I hate feeling like and looking like a tourist, it suited me just fine.

MONDAY NIGHT/TUESDAY: My journey back to Braunschweig started at ten o’clock Monday night, since my flight left too early for me to get to using the Tube, and the last train to the Airport left at 22:55. I spent a not too sleep-filled night on the floor at the Stansted Airport with at least hundreds of other people. I was quite amazed at how many people were there so late. But it did put me in mind of the article on NPR last year on young people staying overnight at London’s airports because the cheap flights went out early in the morning. Now why does that sound familiar? I got back with no snags, and was way too tired to make it into work like I had been planning. So I spent all of yesterday catching up on my blog reading and on everything that was going on while I was in Happyland.

To summarise my first England experience: AMAZING. And I am trying to figure out the way to get back the fastest and I am thinking of switching to banking or law, since there are not too many engineering firms in the city…. Well, I can dream, at least.
* This is the closest I could find to the rhyme as I know it. In the version I am familiar with the last lines read: 'Here comes a copper to put you to bed, Here comes a chopper to chop of your head'. Here and here are a good history and alternate versions, but, again, not quite the same words as I know.

Sport

BBC Five is amazing. They do live sport commentary for the Swimming World Championships—on the radio. It is not the entire meet, but they come in for the finals of some of the more well known swimmers; i.e. Michael Phelps’ 400m IM race (which he won, while I am writing this post, his seventh gold medal—he was trying for eight, but his 4x100m FR was DQ’ed in prelims due to a false start by Ian Crocker—and broke yet another world record; his fourth individual and fifth over all for the Championships). The only down point that I have found is that they do not stream the EPL matches, due to stupid broadcasting contracts. In other swimming news, Ian Thorpe has denied all allegations of doping after a sample that he gave before he retired last year was found to contain high levels of testosterone (a similar situation and possibly the same sort of test, it seems, as the Floyd Landis debacle at last year’s Tour de France). From the reports and the news conferences, Mr. Thorpe is very angry about the leaking of the test results to the press before the inquiries were finish. Understandable I think, because Ian Thorpe has always been an advocate for clean racing, and it is truly unimaginable that Mr. Thorpe would have cheated.


In other sport news: Today it Opening Day! The Twin’s season opener, however, is on Tuesday, when they play the Baltimore Orioles. We (or you, since I will not see it) will see Carlos Santana, Boof ‘because I like Boof better than John’ Bonser, and Ramon Ortiz. That leaves the rockiest part of the rotation: Sidney Ponson, our amazing Aruban tank, and Carlos Silva. I will not say anything about Silva, but if you really want to know feel free to read all about the general feelings on him here—scroll down to the posts from Thursday and Friday (29 and 30 March). Despite our shaky pitching rotation, the field starters are looking decent. The squad is strong at catcher and first base, of course, with hometown, AL Batting Champion Joe Mauer and his pal and roommate, AL MVP Justin Morneau. The rest of the infield is filled out by Luis Castillo at second, Nick ‘Piranha’ Punto at third, and Jason Bartlett at short—let’s hope that the beginning of this season goes better for Jason than the beginning of last years. The outfield is not horribly spectacular but it is solid: Rondell White in left, Torii Hunter in centre, and Michael Cuddyer in right. To fill out the twenty five man roster are Jason Kubel and Jeff Cirillo as DH options, Mike Redmond and Chris Heintz backing up catcher (third string catcher to keep Joe rested with that stress reaction in his leg), Luis Rodriguez for infield backup, filling out the Jason-trifecta is Jason Tyner backing up the outfield. The bull pen is more than solid, per usual, and is as follows: Joe Nathan, Jaun Rincon, Jesse Crain, Dennys Reyes, sidewinder Pat Neshek, and Matt Guerrier (you can choose how to pronounce that one—I prefer the French version).

In my own analysis of the roster, I have found that the Twins’ Opening Day twenty five includes ten men with a first name starting with J. This number becomes eleven if we count that Boof was born John. My own personal hopes are that Silva continues his crap from Spring Training, and that the Twins’ management quickly sees this and brings up Matt Garza, who’s only reason for not making the starting rotation, is that he pitched better this spring than three of the starting five, and Gardy wants to wait and see which will be the worst. Let’s hope for a speedy conclusion to the pitching rotation woes.

In other news, I am debating on whether or not to get MLB Radio, so I can listen to the games—most likely archived, since most of the time they will be playing while I am sleeping. I think that I might get it when I get back from holiday, since they have a five day trial period and there is no point being on that trial when I cannot listen anyway.

I am also disappointed that Florida won last night. Hence, Ohio State better do better in the basketball championship against Florida than they did in the football championship. It would be completely unbearable if Florida 1) managed the first repeat since Duke in 1991 and 2) they were champions in both football and basketball in the same season. In women’s Final Four action, an excellent match up for my family: North Carolina versus Tennessee.

I will be leaving for a week in London tomorrow afternoon. I will not be posting while I am there, and I do not know if I will write any posts to post when I return, but I will definitely be taking a ton of pictures (which is why my computer is probably coming—thought I have not decided on that front yet) which I will upload on my return next week. Until then, happy Holy Week and Easter.

PS: I could not pass up adding this image of Michael Phelps in an underwear commercial for some sort of Speedo-made underwear. My first thought on seeing this picture was: 'Speedo makes underwear?'

PPS: Have I mentioned that I had a long conversation with Michael Phelps and Klete Keller when Purdue hosted the US Open Swimming Championships last year and that we ended up going out to one of the local bars after the meet? Yeah, went out with some of the best swimmers in the world. We hung out until the wee hours of the morning. I do not know if I will ever be able to best that experience. My co-lifeguard Aprile Kasperles can corroborate this account, as she was with me when the guys asked, however, since she is not twenty-one, she was unable to accompany us.

Schloß und Schlauch

The opening of the Schloß-Arkaden in Braunschweig has been all of the talk at work. One colleague actually went this morning before work (the Grand Opening was a six this morning), he was able to give us his opinions during Kaffeepause. He was not particularly impressed, but, he grew up in Braunschweig and is very, very, touchy about everything that changes the landscape of the city (cityscape). Hence, he is predisposed towards prejudice.

The Schloß-Arkaden is a huge shopping mall, that has been built near the site of the old Braunschweiger Schloß of Heinrich der Löwe, which was destroyed during the War. The most exciting thing about the new Schloß is that it is an actual reproduction of the original structure, and uses some of the original stone, I think. Another key thing is that, in diverging from general German practice, the mall will be open all weekend. And by all, I mean all. As far as I can tell, the mall will be open from Friday all the way through until Sunday. This includes the night, which they have been advertising as Moonlight Shopping (yes, in English) since at least the beginning of February.

I will eventually get down to that part of town and take a picture for you, but I will wait for all of the fervour to die down. I was taking a bus that went by there yesterday (on the way to a basketball game, more on that later) and there was a huge amount of traffic and people in the area. *

The basketball game: It was the New Yorker Phantoms Braunschweig versus Ratiopharm Ulm and the reason I was there was that the International Office got free tickets.

The Braunschweig side has such a lovely name because one of the richest men in town is the owner of a quite successful clothing store name New Yorker. Let's just say that I do not think anyone (bar of the Dominatrix/Brothel/Goth set) would be caught dead in any of the outfits that I have seen advertised around town, but, after a little tooling around their website, I guess that I can say that the rest of their clothing seems be a little more main stream. Anyway, as you can guess, the Phantoms part of the name follows from that. The have an incredibly silly looking mascot, which is a guy dressed as a 'phantom': ie. in a black muscle-y outfit with a black cape and a white mask. I tried to find a picture, but I was unsuccessful in my attempt. I nearly died of laughter when I first saw him. Add that to the Phantom of the Opera music and the fact that Phantom was a memorable part of my senior year in high school (band trip to NYC, including seeing the musical on Broadway... not to brag or anything.) and I was dying.

Other than the hokey mascot, the game went well. At least, it did go well, until two minutes remaining in the fourth quarter, when Braunschweig was up by at least ten. We will just suffice to say that once we hit overtime, it was looking like an interesting mirror to the Tar Heel's loss to Georgetown on Sunday. Or so I hear, since I was not privileged to watch that particular game as noted in a previous post.

And now it is time for me to got to bed, since staying up late on the Internet is no way to kill my sleep deprivation-- the presence of which I am not sure of, since I get at least eight hours of sleep a night. (Yay flex time and nothing else to do with my life.) Hopefully tomorrow my bike will be fixed. (Yet another flat tire, this time the back one. So completely dead that I had to go and buy a new inner tube-- Schlauch auf Deutsch, that word has a nice roundness to it...) I had the tools and other necessities to fix it to-day (except for the colleague from whom I am borrowing the bicycle and the one who does the fixes), but I was too chicken to try to do it myself, since I have never taken the back tire off of a bike before, and, knowing my luck, I would have killed it. Forever. And, as old as it is, it does not deserve the fate that is me trying to fix things. I know what you are thinking: 'Isn't this girl majoring in engineering?'. Answer: 'Yes, but there is a reason why I did not choose mechanical, and remember: I am not fixing the aeroplanes and space ships, I am just designing them. And there are IT guys who can fix the computers.'

Countdown to London: Four days.

* Update 01.04.2007: Here is an artists rendition that I found online, the foreground being the Schloß and the hinter-part being the rest of the shopping mall.

How to make WET into WEST (other than adding an 'S')

Spring has finally sprung here. Hopefully it will last. Along with it has come Summer Time (a much better name than Daylight Savings Time, if you ask me). So, for you edification, the following is a list of time differences between some key locations and me:

-Greenwich Mean Time (Universal Coordinated Time): +2 hours
-Purdue (Eastern Daylight Savings Time): +6 hours.
-Minnesota/Houston (Central Daylight Savings Time):+7 hours.
-Colorado (Mountain Daylight Savings Time): +8 hours.
-Arizona (Mountain Standard Time = Pacific Daylight Savings Time): +9 hours.
-Kuala Lumpur: -6 hours.

The other thing that I like about Summer Time is that it turns WET into WEST (Western European Time —> Western European Summer Time).

Also, I have finally gotten my pictures uploaded to a site where you can look at all of them at your pleasure: Lots of random shots of random things—typical me photography. In this case, it is probably a good thing I decided to be an engineer, instead of a professional photographer. Hopefully at least one or two of the pictures is good enough that your time was not wasted looking at them. Some of the pictures you have seen already (like the first half of the Nature album and most of the Braunschweig album), but many are new; including the Berlin album and the second half of the Nature album, pictures along the Oker which I took this afternoon.

No more streaming basketball for me since CBS only streams the first three rounds, which makes me sad, but is much better for my sleeping habits. Crazy Carolina game the other night—I was up until 05:15 at least they pulled it out and won. Florida is currently leading the Oregon Ducks. Hopefully this game is the reverse of their other ones (trailing until mid-second half and then picking up their play enough to win the game), and they lose. UNC plays Georgetown tonight. I am wearing my Carolina shirt in support.

Countdown to London: 9 days.

How to exit the building.

This might not be the more in depth that I promised last time, but what can you do? I had a great long weekend with my father. He was here from Saturday afternoon until Wednesday morning. We spent Monday in Berlin. It was great fun. I will post some of the pictures I took sometime this weekend. Sunday and Tuesday we spent wandering around Braunschweig, including the Herzog-Anton-Ulrich Museum—the local art museum, which, if my memory serves me, is one of the oldest art museums in Europe and houses quite a few lovely paintings from the Dutch Masters period (1600’s to late 1700’s), including some Rembrandts. They also have a gallery with a huge amount of porcelain and other pottery objects. (Grandma and Grandpa: Fürstenberg porcelain in the Rococo style.)

Oh yes, happy belated Spring. The weather here decided to gift us with about six centimetres of snow and then cold, cold rain for the first two days of spring. However, the weather is looking gorgeous for the next week, getting back up into the fifties and sixties.

More travel updates: I have gotten in touch with my friend in Scotland, and she will be in London on Monday week, so I have booked a flight and will meet her there. (I am going to England! Finally!) I will stay for just over a week, which will include Easter Sunday; I am hoping that I will be able to go to my first Easter Service since going to university at one of the great Cathedrals. If any one has some suggestions about day trips out of the city, let me know.

There was just a knock on the door (quite unusual, since I have few visitors, and those that do come, I know are coming, and they generally call me before hand), and there stood a pizza delivery guy who was having some trouble exiting the building. There is a small trick to getting out; you have to turn the handle before you push the door and not just push like a normal door. Anyway, this guy could not figure it out and came around asking for help. I do not know if my door was the first he tried, or if he had gone down the other hall way, but I guess that is what I get for being one of the only people living on the ground floor.

I am looking forward to staying up basically all night to watch basketball. Carolina plays at three in the morning my time. I did not stay up last night to watch the games (had to go to work), but I am sort of sad that I did not, since the two South-bracket games were only won by one point and Kansas only bear Southern Illinois by three. Too bad the Vols lost. Oh well, better luck next time. Hopefully tonight’s games will prove to be just as good.

That is all I have to say for now, but I will post those pictures this weekend. Go Carolina!

Untitled

It has been quite a while since I last wrote. This is mostly because it has been sort of crazy. So, I will give you a short recap:
-- New computer is now up and running with internet. I am really liking it. I am also more impressed with Windows Vista than I was expecting to be. Not liking Internet Explorer 7 as much though.
-- Posters arrived in the mail last weekend, while I was out rowing, and then the Post managed to loose the package until they finally found it on Friday.
-- Dad arrived yesterday, we had a great time in Braunschweig today, and we will spend the day in Berlin tomorrow.
-- Crewing three day a week until the semester starts after Easter.
-- Amazing weather last week, but it got typical German nasty (like it was when I first got here) yesterday. Just in time for Dad to get here. As I said, typical.
-- Carolina has been cruising through the bracket, with some great play.
-- Purdue has just lost in the second round, but they played a great game against Florida, and were ahead for most of the game, until they pulled a typical Purdue and lost it towards the end of the second half. Overall it was good game and will give the team something to build on for next year.
So, there is a recap of the last ten days or so. Sorry it was so short; things have not been particularly interesting. Later this week, I will sit down and write a little more in depth. I promise.

Water in Various Forms.

It continues to rain here, but not as much as before. Instead of it raining all day, we get scattered rain showers. Shortly after I left work this afternoon, the sky opened up in a veritable deluge. Before I was out of the security gates, I was soaked and getting pelted with what felt like hail. (It probably was not hail, but there was a very, very heavy head wind, driving the rain into face.) If you remember from three sentences ago, I said that these where scattered showers, so, as I was being drowned, I also had sun glaring in my eyes. This made me think: sun, rain… rainbow? So, I stopped my bike and turned around. And, lo and behold, there was one of the most gorgeous full-arc, double rainbows that I have ever seen; a brilliant double rainbow against a dark cloudy sky. I wish that I had had my camera. But I did not. So you, and I, will have to do with my description of it.

And that was just the beginning of my adventure. I found out that the crew team here gets together a couple times a week for strength training and a little water time on the weekend. Strength training happens on Tuesdays, so I decided that I would check out the way to the boathouse. The greater Braunschweig area is laid out like a wheel (the main city of Braunschweig) with a bunch of spokes (the main roads) ending in, or following along, little Stadtteils (which the dictionary defines as quarters, like the French quarter of New Orleans, but I would say that they are more like satellites). Basically, they are little towns that function inside the city of Braunschweig. I live along one of the spokes, the airport is at the end of that spoke, and the boathouse, which is in Thune, is at the end of the next spoke counter-clockwise around the city centre. I thought that I had figured out a way to get from work to the boathouse, using one of the outer ring connexion roads. Unfortunately, the way I chose did not have a bike line, and I was not about to ride my bike on the edge of a narrow two lane road. So, I decided to turn around, and go the way I might take if I were coming from home, which cuts through some farm land/ wildlife preserve to the next spoke. I was able to find my way through a neighbourhood to the spoke, and started following it out of town. Unfortunately, at one point I continued following the main route (which curved to the port on the Kanal), instead of going straight, like I was supposed to. This was not a huge problem, I made it to my goal (after going quite out of my way—think taking one leg and the hypotenuse of a triangle, instead of taking the other leg—and heading through industrial/car sales area of the Hafen). From there (it has been an hour since I left work) I made my way home in less than thirty minutes, along the way I was supposed to have come in the first place. After all of this excitement, I decided that I will take the bus, at least in the evening, when it is likely to be dark, since the lamp on my bike has broken, again. The reason I did not just decide to take the bus in the first point is that the bus takes even longer to get from one point to the other, because you have to take one spoke down, take the street car, then get on another bus up the other spoke. But, since bus and streetcar riding is free, I will take that route when I go out there in the evening.

If you happened to miss the basic message in that long paragraph, I do not blame you. Here it is: CREW!! WATER!!

In case you really would like to know what I am doing around here, other than taking long bicycle tours of the northern section of the city and breaking electrical equipment, I will let you know that I went downtown on Saturday and bought some books. (I am quite excited: The Last Templar by Raymond Khoury, as you can probably tell, it is a Dan-Brown-esque religous-y thriller. Dublin by Edward Rutherford, when I got it, I thought that I had only read part of one of his other books (The Princes of Ireland), but, evidently this is actually the book of which I read the first couple chapters—same book, different name? Needles to say, I hope that I get a little farther this time. And, last but not least, Watching the English by Kate Fox. This is a book that I am very excited about, it is an amusing recount of a modern day anthropologic study on the English people—what make the English different from other groups of people.) I looked at some posters and decided that I was really not into any more Lord of the Rings poster, or any Pirates poster, and especially not any posters of nearly (mostly) naked women (if you have been into the room of any college aged male, you know what kind of poster I mean). That prompted me to go online that evening and find some quite excellent (and quite cheap for being shipped from Raleigh, North Carolina) posters of football players. With the help of the Once and Future Flatmate, I was able to pare it down to three posters: The Pride of England, depicting six of England’s best footballers; a poster of Michael Ballack, a German national who plays for Chelsea; and, an excellent poster comprising mostly of the bare torso of David Beckham. You did not seriously think that I would buy football posters with out getting one of Becks did you? Well, I almost did not, but, for nefarious purposes of our own, we decided that this one had to be purchased—it was also cheaper than a picture of Andy Roddick, Roger Federer, Tim Henman, or any of the rowing related posters. The online store (which touts itself as the largest poster store in the world) actually had a few Twins posters: of Corey Koskie, Joe Mays and A. J. Pierzynski—none of which actually played for the Twins for at least two or three seasons. No wonder they were on sale for about five bucks. (They also had a poster of Doug Mientkiewicz, but it was after he caught the last out of the winning game of the World Series for the Red Sox.) With all of this online ordering, I will let you know that both the posters and my new computer should be here by the end of the week, or early next week at the very latest.

Soapbox: Enterprise High School

This has to do with the tornado at Enterprise High School in Alabama. I am really tired of hearing people say that it is the school's fault. Here is my opinion:

The school did exactly what any other school would do when it kept the students at the school. Every school policy that I have known, the school is more likely to keep students longer than send them home early when severe weather is threatened. This is due to many facts; working parents, transportation, etc. I agree completely with the school in its decision, because, in general, it probably was safer for the students to stay at the school. How were the administration supposed to know that the tornado will come right over their school? They had no possible way to know this. And how could they know that the storm would strike in such a way that would damage the structural integrity of the building? Again, they had no way to foresee this. As I heard one student say, on NPR, he probably would not have heeded the storm warnings if he had been at home. Hence, he was, in principle, safer at school than at home.

It is a tragic event, and I have strongest sympathies for the students that lived through it, for their families and the families of the eight who did not live through it, for the teachers, and for the entire town of Enterprise, Alabama, but the school administration should not be blamed for this catastrophic occurrence. If anyone needs to be blamed, blame the Jet Stream and the particular mixture of elements that made it possible for the violent storms of last week to take place.

"This, madame, is a faithful narrative of every event in which we have been concerned together..."

The following is a faithful transcription of every thing that I wrote whilst I was without the use of my computer:

It is currently 21:25 on Friday, 23 February 2007. I am sitting at the large table in my room; with my back to my computer. I am writing this by hand. Do not worry, your eyes have not mislead you: I said by hand. The reason for this [as you already know, due to my earlier posting] aberration is that my computer finally lost its battle with terminal hard drive warping, brought on by a dysfunctional cooling system thanks to the ineptitude of Dell. For the record: Because of this, I am never going to purchase a Dell again. (On a side note, a song by Herbert Grönemeyer, very popular German crooner, that we had to sing in German class in high school is currently playing on the radio.)

As I was saying: Never again Dell. This was a great machine, and because of business decisions made by Dell, I have had to put up with a dying computer for the last two years and a half years (note that they computer is not quite three years old). At first this was not too bad, just a Blue-Screen-of-Death every once in a while, until it finally escalated to the current issues. Fortunately I have been able to nurse the poor thing along, hoping that I could get it to last through university, as it got increasingly worse. And, instead of dying some time inconvenient last semester, it just had to hang on long enough that there was no hope of getting things fixed before I left the country. It just had to wait until I was out of the country, where the warranty does not hold. And, even better, I still have at least two months on my warranty.

Things like this are completely typical for me. It is a good thing that I am not superstitious, because if I were, I am sure that I would be hunkered down somewhere, waiting for Armageddon. This is just the crowning glory of what has been a chain of interesting events, that, if I had been State-side, would have just been a passing phase that I would have looked at as being rather amusing. Since I am abroad these things tend to pile up a little bit, and, while trifling, are a little more irritating. ‘Good grief,’ says Charlie Brown. No wonder. If my luck continues like this, I will take up ‘Good grief’ as my mantra.

I am now getting powered into reviewing-my-options mode – similar to the mode that our esteemed president was in at the time of the State of the Union Address. Hopefully my reviewing process will yield better fruit than his “process” of review did.

Speaking of politics. As much as I enjoy following politics (why did I not major in poli-sci? – Do not ask me, I have yet to figure it out), I am already starting to get worn out by the constant presidential/Hilary/Obama coverage. You would think that it was currently January 2008 and we were gearing into the first round of primaries. It is my hope that every one will chill out over the summer and we will not have constant coverage of who is running for president. And, frankly, if the media focused more on who WAS NOT running for president, it would take a lot less time. [Except, that would include Al Gore, and every one has a lot to say about Al Gore.]

Enough of politics (who talks about that stuff anyway?). If anyone is keeping track: I had an altercation with a door today. It won, of course, as the doors always do. I will never understand why I have so much trouble with things like door handles, especially the lever kind. (Note: German door handles are all levers, I have yet to see a knob.) You would think that, since I just used the door handle to open the door, I would know where the handle is and manage to keep my arms from getting caught on it. Apparently not.

25 February 2007
I will begin today’s commentary by relating an observation of mine from sometime last week. First, I will tell you that the DLR has some programmes for school children, and once a week or so, two teenaged boys, not older than fifteen can be seen getting lunch in the canteen. On the day in question, as I was taking my tray to the kitchen, I noticed that these two boys were sitting at a table. They were finished with their meal, since the table had nothing on it. This was not remarkable in itself, except for this one detail: What were they doing while sitting at the table? They were not talking, or doing any conversing with each other. They were sitting at the table, playing there handheld gaming things. [I recently heard the PSP mentioned in an article, and this is what they were playing]. I tell you this because it was completely something you would see teenaged boys doing, but it was so out of place in a company cafeteria that I could not help but chuckle when I saw them.

Now, if you ever had any doubt, you know how awkward a story tell I am, and why it is probably good that I have recognised this and do not harbour any wish or have my heart set on (using two well worn clichés) being a writer. Truthfully, this journal (ok, yeah, I have succumbed to the craze, it really is a blog, but since I am currently composing this with pencil and paper, humour me.) is the most non-lab-report/technical writing that I have done since the research paper days ended in early high school (oh, how I miss those paper days…).

Another amusing thing. The student residence that I am living in has a ‘clubhouse’ on the premises that has a little bar in it. They put flyers up in the buildings to try to get people to come. This week’s flyer says (translated, of course) that most of household accidents happen at home. It then shows a Venn-diagram like picture, all filled in and captioned: Household accidents at home: 100%. At the bottom of the flyer is says, Better that you are not at home. This is quite a persuasive argument, and completely factual.

27 February 2007
That is the end of my… ok, not so faithful narrative, but you got the gist. I will now update you on what has been going on since. We were able to get my computer to function again by taking out the hard drive and then putting it back in again and pushing it very firmly into the case. Not so technical, but it worked. I am still going to get a new computer, I have had quite enough of this one. This one will get sent home with my father when he comes in a couple weeks, and will finally get sent to Dell. (By the way! Dad is coming! He has a meeting or conference, or something like that, in Norway, and is coming to see me a few days before that. We are going to go to Berlin, and maybe San Souci in Potsdam.) In summary: I have a working computer which will make finding a new one a lot easier and I will be able to stay in contact with the world until the new one arrives.

Breaking (Broken) News

Those of you who have been acquainted with my computer these last couple of years know that it has been suffereing from a terminal form of hard drive failure. Well, as you might expect, it seems to have finally made its final spin. Last night, the ominous clicking started, so, as usual, I turned it off to save it from further distress. After a resting period, I attempted to reboot. To no avail. The bootable hard drive 0 is not to be found. Future options include trying to figure out if Dell will help, even though I am over seas, or, waiting for my paycheck to come in, and just replacing the poor soul. May it rest in peace.

President's Day and Karnival

Background for the amusing anecdote of the day: There are restrooms on each floor of the building I work in at DLR. They are located in the area where the stairwells open up to each floor, which is also the crossway between sections of the building. This area is also enclosed by fire doors on both sides. One computer that I work on is on one side of this area and the other computer is on the other side. Hence, I am frequently crossing through this area. Now that the scene has been set, here is the amusing anecdote of the day: Today, as I went through this area (every five minutes I think) I noticed that there was a workman doing something in one of the restrooms (they do not have doors yet). It looked like, at one point, that he was painting the ceiling. The reason that this was amusing is because he did not have a light on. Usually the workmen will bring up a light to hang somewhere while they work, but this guy was working away on what ever he was working on… in the dark. You might not wonder as to why I found this slightly diverting: how are you supposed to see what you area painting if you cannot see the surface that you are painting. Beats me, but this guys seems to have it down.

Moving on. Today is President’s Day. Happy for those of you who are off work and school, and not so happy for those of you who are not. Tomorrow is Mardi Gras and the day after is Ash Wednesday. Which means: we are in full Karnival swing. Well, not really here, in the north of Germany, but if one goes a little south and east into Nordrhein-Westfallen and Köln and Düsseldorf then you would have had today, and perhaps tomorrow off as well, but for only the purpose of revelry. Braunschweig did have a parade yesterday and I have been told that it is the largest Karnival parade in the north of Germany.

On Saturday I managed to take myself down into the inner city and take some pictures for your edification. I also bought a pair of everyday shoes. This will take off the great burden from my running shoes, which is good, since while looking at shoes I looked at running shoes and comparable shoes to mine were some where around 100 € which is way more than I am willing to pay for running shoes.

On to the pictures…

These pictures are of what is left of the Burg 'Dankwarderode'. Which was the castle of Heinrich der Löwe. As you can probably tell the Lion was his symbol. The statue is a replica of the original, which is now in the museum that Dankwarderode has now been turned into. Benches such as these are all

around the Cathedral which was founded by Heinrich. The following pictures are of the Cathedral. You can sort of get the idea. The other pictures are other scenes from the Burgplatz and streets that branch off of it.

On the other side of the Burg is the Altrathaus of Braunschweig, it is quite an imposing structure.

I also made it out to the area where I work and took a couple pictures. I did not want to get too close to the airport. You never know who will accuse you of taking pictures for some nefarious purpose. The picture on the bottom is indeed the airport building. You can see air traffic control sitting on top of it. In the

pictures to the above that, you see the hill that the DLR compound sits on. My building is toward the back next to the airport building and is just along the runway... very distracting for aerospace engineers to have an excellent veiw of all planes and helicopters taking off and landing.

Now, since my computer is having issues, I will stop here before I loose everything. I also have more pictures of the woods. But, since they look like woods, I figured that if you want to see them, you will let me know. Speaking of which, if you would like an electric copy of any of the pictures you see on here, or you would like to see the other pictures that I have not posted, just let me know.