Chapter V: In Which I Can Get on the Internet

As it states above, I now have internet at my flat, and I will be able to post more regularly, instead of inundating you with scads at once.

22 January 2007
I hope that not too many of you stayed up too late finishing homework that you should have been doing while procrastinating and reading my last missive. Hopefully this one will not be as long, and hopefully I will have internet by the time you read this (by the end of this week *cross fingers*) and so it will not encompass nearly two weeks of my ramblings. Let me get you caught up on what has been happening this week…

I have again been called ‘un’- American, or rather, this one guy at work is totally stunned that I come from America, and probably thinks that I am a little crazy. My damnation, according to him, is a follows: I walk forty-five minutes to work, and forty-five minutes home (“An hour and a half of walking, do people back home know you do this?” Oh, if he only knew some of my friends…;-D); I speak a foreign language (yes, completely shocking for an American); and I know something about German food (well, that sort of goes hand in hand with learning a language, I have yet to meet a language class that does not introduce the subject of food as soon as they possibly can (and I have started four languages…) “Hello, my name is ___ and I like to eat (insert name of food here).”). In this case is was that I had had Döner-Kabab before and that I was not at all afraid to eat Currywurst for lunch (basically an hot dog type sausage, drowned in curry catsup (we will talk about that later) with some curry sprinkled on top. Quite tasty, if you like curry catsup (which all catsup is here, I have yet to see any other kind of ketchup, spelled in any variety here, and that includes my previous visit in high school). The one problem I have discovered with curry catsup is that it gets cold (it is always served warm) and congeals very quickly, making a nasty soggy cold blob of any french fry doused in it (everything is always drowned in curry catsup) that was not fortunate enough to be eaten quick enough. And that is my lament on curry catsup.

Speaking of lamenting, Lothar (the guy from above), laments that they never get normal Americans here. By normal he means fast-food-eating-fat-lazy-….you know. But what he really wants are some good gun-toting-beer-guzzling rednecks. I think he spent too much time at Virginia Tech (which is where he studied in the States). This was all brought on when I said that I had not yet been to a Mickey D’s or Subway or Burger King since being here and that I really had no thoughts of going, because I do not really like fast food that much.

Anyway. Other than that, I have discovered the wooded way to work (‘over the river and through the woods….’) and I must say that I feel very much like a Hobbit. I will take some pictures of it, and hopefully this post is accompanied by some of them. The only problem is that it is quite muddy (since it has been raining, again) and my shoes are a mess, which means when I try to do my knee exercises and core in the morning, my floor gets quite dirty. Despite the mud, the forest is wonderful, and I cannot wait for it to get less muddy so I can go explore it. Also, there are a lot of down trees from last week and all of the paths are not quite clear yet.

We are still having issues with paperwork, but hopefully we have gotten it all sorted out. I shall get my bank account tomorrow, which leads to internet!!! And then you can hear form me on a more regular basis, instead of weeks with nothing and then *splat* a ton, and then get my visa stamped on Wednesday morning, which leads to being able to sign my contract and me getting paid, so I can pay rent. I have endeavoured to start a list of all of the things that I have needed for paperwork here, so that future students can, hopefully, be guided by it, and not go through quite as much trouble as I have gone through.

And, before I forget… GO COLTS!! Hey hey! What an amazing Super Bowl this will be, at least for school, trapped right between the two, maybe not so much for the coasts… oh the poor networks. I will hopefully be able to watch it, as Dennis is hosting a Super Bowl party (complete, I am told, with PlayStation and Madden 2007, if it can be found, otherwise, it will have to be Madden 2001 *tear*). He is obsessed with American football, and sneers at REAL football. (Sounds like some one should be hit with a ‘Are you sure you are European?’ or really ‘Are you sure that you are not from America’).

That is the news for now, please stay tuned to any further updates…
I mean: Get to work on your sono-thermo-hydrolo-fusion-mass-transf…. um… get back to your neutrons, they are missing you.

26 January 2007
Update: I have a bank account, I have a visa, I have a work permit, and I have a contract. I officially start on Monday, and, if I am lucky, I will have internet shortly thereafter.

An amusing thing that I have noticed is that they have Star Date here. (A five minute daily show about astronomy and astrophysics topics that they play on some public radio stations.) They call it Stern Zeit. I first heard it earlier in the week, and what tipped me off what that they played the exact same music. I will now have to coordinate with my mother and find out if they talk about the same topics on each day. But I found that to be quite amusing.

It has finally become winter here. The temperature has been between -8 C and 0 C (umm…. So about 20 F – 32 F). We also go some snow yesterday, and when I left for work this morning, it was also snowing, and just before I left for my apartment, we were getting almost white out conditions out at the airport. Which, by the way is really cool, the building I am in is directly next to the airport building, so we are parallel to the runway. We have an excellent view of the few aeroplanes and helicopters that are taking off and landing.

My next note will come when I have Internet, unless something irresistible comes up, in which case I will write sooner.

PS: I finally finished Emma. It was better than I expected, but it will still not be my favourite, which is Northanger Abbey. Of whose amazing-ness I was reminded when I finished it the other day...

Rain, Beckham, Tea, Bureaucracy, and more Rain.

I do not yet have internet, but since I am not on clock at work yet, I will take this moment to upload all that I have written in the last ten days. I hope that you have a while...

And let the saga begin:

10 January 2007
15:37:40 MST: Denver International Airport

On the way to Denver, it just sort of hit me: I am on my way to Germany for six and a half months. That is sort of a long time. You think I would have thought about that before, but these things do not really come to you until you are actually en route. I am still nervous (predictably), but that is mixed with a little excitement—a real adventure, all on my own.

The airport in Phoenix is still swarming with people from Ohio State and Florida. (What a horrible game that was, and way to go Big Ten for being completely typical and losing most of the bowl games). My flight was full of people returning to Columbus.

My flight to Denver went off with out incident, though it did take me over a half and hour to get through security. Too many people do not pay attention to the world and knew nothing about the liquids, gels, etc thing. Every time some suspect showed up the TSA person would have to stop the entire line and have some one come over and double check what they saw, and if there was still a problem, then some one else would have to come over to remove the bag from the scanner. At one point, while I was near the front, all four open lines were stopped, luckily they decided to cancel the problem on mine, I was able to get through a little faster.

I had forgotten how incredibly large the Denver airport is. In terminal A alone, there are ninety-nine gates and there are three terminals. I arrived in terminal B and had to take a train to terminal A, from which my flight to Frankfurt will be leaving. There is definitely a lot of snow in Denver. Luckily the next storm is not supposed to come through until tomorrow night, so no being snowed into DEN for me.

Hopefully I will be able to write a little bit on the train tomorrow.

11 January 2007
12:25:45 West European ST: Some where between Frankfurt and Braunschweig

The flight to Frankfurt did not start boarding (or planing? Since getting off is deplaning? *shrug*) until the time we were supposed to be taking off, but the prevailing tail wind was so strong that we still arrived over an hour before schedule. I had an aisle seat, and no one was sitting next to me. Everything went without incident, except for the last couple hours of the flight, after which I had lost my neck pillow. Luckily it was located before deplaning, no worse for being dropped in the aisle on the way to the lavatory. (I never do seem to remember to take it from around my head before I get up, especially when I am half asleep.

Once getting to Frankfurt, things were a little more arduous. The guy at the passport check heckled me for quite some time about the fact that I did not have a visa, when everyone else (both at TUB and Purdue and the airport) told me that I would do that once I arrived in Braunschweig. He kept telling me that he knew the law and the stupid people in the Amerika did not know the law… yada yada yada…Germans ;-D. Anyway, as is in evidence he let me through anyway, telling me that ‘Next time I need to get a visa, because entering without one is a criminal offence, and I should never do it again…’ but it is really so horrible as he made out, why did he let me into the country? Anyway, whatever the deal is, I am on my way and a visa will be acquired upon my visiting the international office, hopefully tomorrow.

Once the Heckler was done with me, I found my suitcase without incident, made it to the train station, purchased a ticket (at which time I realized that my check card was missing, more on that later), made it to the subway and the train; where I am now sitting, about two hours away from my final destination. I was able to make the train before the one I was planning to take, but I decided that I would rather sit around in Braunschweig, if necessary, than sit around in Frankfurt and risk some other disaster befalling me. Better to get to the destination and wait.

The check card. I noticed that it was missing, and immediately thought ‘Oh shit. Where did I leave it? Or how had it managed to fall out of my wallet, since I barely was able to crush it in there in the first place?’ I had been in the country less than an hour and I have already lost something, great. I continue with the task of purchasing a train ticket (thankfully the Visa was still there) and making my way to Braunschweig, since there was nothing I could do until I had a phone or access to the internet.

I pull out my computer, to start writing this entry, and I decide that I am sort of hungry. I had purchased some snaky items in Denver, for such an eventuality. As I am digging around for the cashews I see the edge of the receipt from the purchase. And it hits me: Maybe I did a typical me and STUFFED THE CARD IN THE BAG WITH THE RECEIPT. So I dug into the bag a little farther, and Lo! there was my check card. Huzzah. So my first crisis was averted, and all that needs to go right now is me successfully meeting Mario at the train station in Braunschweig.

13 January 2007
It is two days since I last wrote. My internet is not working yet, so I will have to wait until I meet with the building super on Tuesday. Until then, I will continue to write, with hopes of eventually being able to post.

After all of the trouble I kept getting myself into on Thursday, meeting Mario at the train station was no problem at all. We were scheduled to meet with Dennis, with my key, at 16:30, but he never showed up. He said he had a doctor’s appointment, but did not manage to inform us of that. So we got to go over to campus in the cold rain and wind (very similar to West Lafayette weather, actually) and stand in the Altgebäude for fifteen minutes, asking random people if they were Dennis.

After deciding that Dennis was not there, we went back to Mario’s apartment to wait and call Dennis when his class was over at 18:15. We finally met with him, and were able to get into my apartment.

My apartment: way nicer than the one at school (though no Catie L). It seems like they just finished remodelling: everything is very new and it smells sort of like paint. I was not expecting it, but I have a bathroom and a little fridge and range in my room, which is exciting, because I thought that it would be communal.

Yesterday I unpacked and then went on a Catie-esque walk ;-) (ie: really long). I walked down towards the city and then back again. It was a lot of fun walking around and taking everything in. In the evening, we went out to a thrift shop and got some basic homey things: pot, pan, utensils, broom, etc.

I am still not quite accustomed to the time here, I went to bed at ten and then woke up randomly between three and four and then managed to sleep until ten this morning. I certainly have been getting more sleep lately than I usually ever am able. I am sure that the bliss will not continue.

This afternoon I went to the market and got some more basic kitchen essentials: milk, sugar and tea. (I also got some more cheese, bread and some cereal (yes, cereal)). There was quite a debacle while putting away the carts, because, of the three rows, two had a different style cart in them and one did not have another cart in it. (I have to explain here, that to use a German shopping cart, you have to insert a 50 cent or 1 Euro piece. When you put you cart back, you get you coin back.) And since everyone wanted their coin back, there was quite a to do, as you can imagine. It was quite amusing, and since I did not have anything else to do, I stuck around until the problem was solved. (With the input of many a bystander, and finally the summoning of a store clerk.)

(By the way, I have a phone now. Send me an email if you want to get the number.)

15 January 2007
Happy Martin Luther King Day, and while all of you were off work and school (I will not start on my opinion of that), I had my first day of work today.

After some confusion as to which building near the airport I was to go, it was all figured out (with a couple of almost panicky phone calls to Mario), and I arrived at the correct location only five minutes late.

My day at work was longer than I intended, however, a lot of it was being shown around the place. I spent the rest of my time trying to figure out a programme and programme in it in VBScript. Which work out fine, until I realized that VBScript does not have arcsine functions, of which I was in need. Hence, I had to start all over again, in Jscript, which gave me quite a headache, because it would not function correctly. Luckily, just before I gave up, it decided to be happy. So I packed up and went back to my apartment.

Side note: German keyboards are very complicated, they have two different Alt keys, as well as Fn and Ctrl keys, and most every key on the keyboard (which is much bigger than the American Standard) has options for all of these. Though some of the keys are in interesting positions (from my perspective) I found it much more useful than the American keyboard.

My meetings with the International Office and the building super are tomorrow. Hopefully this means that my visas, work permits, and internet will be figured out. It is amazing how much time internet and television take, especially when you have not a whole of anything else to do. I can live without the television, but it would be really nice to have the internet. I never realised how much I depended on it. With the lack of modern media distractions, I have finished my book on Mr. Darcy’s perspective on the Pride and Prejudice story (which was very interesting), I have also finished Sense and Sensibility and I have started the real version of Pride and Prejudice. Yes, it does seem like I am on a Jane Austen kick, but it was the most economical (as far as weight, space, and number of stories) thing to bring. Luckily, there are still seven more stories left in that volume (if you count Emma, which I still have never been able to get through), as well as a book about the myths of the Bible, left for me to read. And if that all gets read, there is always my Aerodynamics textbook… ummm, fortunately I will not have quite as much reading time, since I will be at work at least part of the day, and I think I will start running, once I get my knees back up to shape.

16 January 2007
DAVID BECKHAM IS COMING TO THE US. He must be mental. (This information, I heard while in the International Office, said in German, so I was not too sure that is what I heard and was then confirmed while talking to my mother on the phone this evening.) Catie, we have a new task: Go to LA to see a Galaxy game. Good thing they have always been one of my favourite MLS teams (yay Kobe Jones).


17 January 2007
I was informed today that I do not look like a ‘typical American girl’. I am not really sure what a typical American girl looks like, but I guess I might be able to take it as a compliment. More bureaucratic blah today: To get a visa, I need to wait on my work contract, and because of some issues with that, hopefully it will be done on Monday, and because I do not have a visa, I cannot get a bank account, and because I do not have a bank account, I cannot get internet, because, evidently you have to pay, or make some sort of security fee, or whatever. So it means that I will not have internet for at least a couple more weeks, since the International Office is only open on Mondays and Wednesdays, so I will have to wait until next Wednesday to go back to them to turn in my paperwork with my contract. AAHHHH!!! This is insane. Though it would be nice to have access to my email and be able to communicate easier with people at home, I can live for a couple more weeks with out the ‘Net, it would just be something else to do while I am in my room. I gets dark quite early here, the sun starts setting around four, and I would go walking, but I do not really want to do that in the dark, so, that leaves me with about six hours in the afternoon with which to try not to eat all of my food, work on my cross stitch and read, all with the constant background of my music. When I am done typing this, though I am going to surf the German airwaves and see what they have to offer. (My music, as much and as varied as it is, is starting to get old.)

I successfully managed to do my laundry today. Nothing died and I did not break the washing machine or the dryer. The other good thing about that is that I have clean clothes now.

19 January 2007

As a postscript, I will add that my paperwork will hopefully be finished on Monday, when I will be able to get a bank account and thence, internet at my apartment. We had quite a large storm last evening, many trees were blown over and there was a lot of nice lightning.

I have not died...

I have not fallen off off the edge of the world, but I am having trouble with some paper work, which means I do not have internet at my apartment yet. I am still writing, and I will post the entirity of it when I get internet, which will hopefully be by the end of next week.

Insomnia...

It has been a long time since I had trouble sleeping because of excitement and nerves, but lately I have been feeling like it is the night before the first day of school. Since I am unable to sleep, I thought that I might do something semi-productive.

I have started getting ready to pack. My goal is to take only one suitcase and my carry-on. We will see how successful I am. Other than that, everything is set. My flight leaves from Phoenix on Wednesday. I then have a layover in Denver before the ten and a half hour flight to Frankfurt. From there, I will take the train to Braunschweig, where I will be picked up by Mario, a former exchange student to Purdue, with whom I have been corresponding. Then to my apartment.

I technically have an official minder, whose name is Dennis. Dennis is supposed to be picking up my keys and things to my apartment, but I have only corresponded with him once, and have no idea when I will be meeting him. Unless Dennis manages to find his email soon (his only email to me seemed to be a little on the scatterbrained side) and let me know when and where we can meet, I might be keyless. I hope that this will not be a large deterrent, since I am living in a University apartment and presumably they will have an extra set of keys.

I have been requested to be at the DLR at 10:00 am Monday morning. However, I will only be working part-time, so I will have ample time to explore the city and the University; as well as brush up on my German, which I have been sorely neglecting for the last two and a half years. Since I do not think that talking to yourself in German qualifies as keeping in practice. Especially since my German conversation was never very good. Luckily I think most of the work at the DLR is done in English, so I will have plenty of time to work on my German before attempting to take classes in it.

My plan is to write a bit while I am travelling, to keep track of my thoughts on the trip before I become overwhelmed (‘You can be overwhelmed and under whelmed, but can you just be whelmed?’) with the events of arriving in Braunschweig and getting settled into my apartment. If I do manage to keep to that plan, I should have a chain posting from the long trip sometime on Friday or Saturday. (8:00 am MST Wednesday to 4:00 pm Germany time Thursday equals 24 hours by car, plane and train from Flag to Braunschweig (ahhh!!), if I am correct in thinking that Germany time is eight hours ahead of Mountain Standard Time)

The Beginning...

It is currently just under a week before I leave for Germany and I will not be back to the States until the end of July, just in time to head back to school. I decided that an interesting way to share my experiences with my family and friends in the States was to create an online journal. Taa daa! Here it is.

I suppose that I can start by explaining where I am going to be and what exactly I will be doing (as far as I know right now, that is).

I will be living in the city of Braunschweig, Germany. In English-speaking countries, it is also known as Brunswick. Braunschweig is located in North-Central Germany, a little southeast of Hannover and west-southwest of Berlin, also known as the little red smudge on the map to the right. Braunschweig is home to the Braunschweig Technical University (TUB) and a branch of the Deutches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR) which is the German Aerospace Centre, an institute similar to that of America’s NASA. In the impending months I will be working at the Aerodynamics Institute at the DLR as well as taking a class or two at TUB.

As of the moment, that is about all I know of the particulars, but surely I will be able to apprise you of more details when I arrive in Braunschweig and become acquainted with my life there.