Wow. What a response I received regarding precious memories and the tunes that go with them! If only the discussion could have been in the comments section... While I really enjoy seeing all the perspectives of the Koenig clan, I can't help but wonder what the remainder of the populace (read: my friends who have stuck with this blog thus far) thinks about this subject, and if they have any similar experiences.
Unca Ken's warning about memory/tune cross-pollination is valid, and Carrie's vehement exclamation of "NO CLAIRE!!! DON'T DO IT!" will be seriously considered, but I must also acknowledge the opposing argument. Well, it's not really "opposing" anything... it seems to be an unspoken agreement among my people that the integrity of the Boat Record/Tape/CD MUST BE MAINTAINED AT ALL COSTS. Carrie and Unca Ken (my interpretation) took this to mean that application rights of this music should not be abused by listening to it when more than 20 yards away from a Body of Water*, or if more than 20 yards away from a Automobile that is heading straight to or from said Body of Water. [*Body of Water: Primarily A) The Kentucky River, or B) Dale Hollow Lake; Secondarily Any body of water on which a nautical vessle is harbored, for the purpose of rest, relaxation, and the consumption of Tiddly Pinkity Hanky Tanks] Cousins Kelby and Russell seemed to support to this rule, and suggested that I add this acoustic scrapbook to my library of music, just as long as I enjoy it as "it was always intended to be heard," as an album, start to finish, in its entirity. Russell put it best when he said "I must agree with my older brother on the notion of all or none. This is to spare yourself the disappointment of coming to the end until the end is supposed to come. That would be like listening to Freebird and then turning it off just as the guitar solo begins. Or to put it another way, hearing a lively "Old Dan Tucker" without rounding it out with a mild "Mandy Lee I Love You 'Deed I Do"."
I must say that I quite agree. Therefore, I end this quandary by deciding that I will very respectfully put the music in question on the ol' iPod. And only listen to the songs as part of the whole collection. It's really for the best. With that rule in place, I can't see myself ruining a perfectly good work-oriented mood with blissful vacationing thoughts. Fellow Deweys, have no fear! It will indeed be "all or none," and NOT while visions of flat plate orifices are dancing before my eyes.
6/22/11
Weather is Awesome
Sometimes when Willner (bossman) makes a joke about the project being ornery (man, do I have trouble pronouncing that word), I am not amused. This doesn't help me with my "frustrated appearance" though, so maybe I should work on actively smiling/giving a dry laugh whenever Willner smiles after saying something. But sometimes, I see absolutely no humor in the cruel irony of engineering projects.
At one point today, the guys on either side of me were both on the phone. When that happens, I like making believe that they're talking to each other
MAN! Croissants are so deceptive!! "Oh, I'm not greasy, I'm only bread!!" and the next time you turn around, you find that they've peed grease EVERYWHERE!!! BAD pastry, BAD!!
Question for the masses (that means YOU!): If I put the songs from the Boat Tape in regular musical library rotation, will hearing them repeatedly in a non-nautical setting cause me to become jaded to their brilliance? Will some of the happiness I feel when I hear those songs (because hearing those songs is like being on the lake!) be less poignant if I hear them on a regular basis? Should I add them at all? I am in a quandary! Any advise you have to offer on this matter would be greatly appreciated!
Any time I walk into the cafeteria at work and smell sauerkraut, I get insanely happy. (Because it doesn't happen a lot. You think it would, it being Germany and all, but they have real food here, more often than not. Not that sauerkraut and bratwursts aren’t real, but.... you get the point.) But I am reaching the tipping point with the brats... I WANT A MET!!!! Though if you ask anyone who comes from outside the Greater Cincinnati Area, they might say I’ve been eating mets all along! Poor, confused people with no German heritage to set them straight!
There was a noise today during work coming from the construction site outside of the building. I could've sworn it was a couple vuvuzelas.
Ever since we set a date for the saftey meeting (for the testing field), nothing has been done on the orifice project. I spent last week on my other project, calculating (finally) the moments of inertia for that entire motor. At the end of Thursday, I got numbers. So I was happy. But these numbers were somewhere in the neighborhood of several TRILLION. Something tells me that's not right. And I was so confused, because I used all the right formulas! There's no reason it should not work! I left work that day puzzled. I came into work on Monday and realized that I've been writing down the units wrong, so when I converted mm-squared to m-squared, I multiplied by a billion instead of dividing. Whups. But, PROBLEM SOLVED!! Yaaaay! Now, hopefully, I can write up this SOP for the customer on how to find the inertia around whatever axis suits their fancy, and we can get this to them endlich! The initial request for this information was on February 8th. I don't know why they waited until I was here for a month to spring this project on me, even though I had to wait for another guy to help me since I don't have the means to access the necessary information. Sigh, I just don't get it.
This morning, at 9, I see the entire building gathering at the front of the room again. What is it, this time? I ask Sylvia, and she said We're having breakfast, but I see nothing! 9:05, this guy announces that the kitchen had the wrong time, and that breakfast would come at 10 instead. Sigh, okay. So I go back to my desk and drink my hot chocolate and eat my strawberry and quark pastry, which I got because I didn't know they were going to FEED me!
I really REALLY wish that somehow anyone who calls Herr Berr (the guy sitting next to me) could hear what happens during the two seconds before he answers the phone, because sometimes he is super annoyed when the phone rings or when he sees who is calling him and either slams his fists on his desk, or grumbles loud enough for me to hear him, or both. And then he answers, sounding perfectly normal!
Does it grind anyone else’s gears when they’re reading an article and it says “The person spoke on condition of anonymity because BLANK is supposed to be confidential.” IT MAKES ME ANGRY!!! If it was supposed to be CONFIDENTIAL, then WHY ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT IT AT ALL?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!!!!!!!
Okay. I’m done. :D
6/21/11
London, Final Chapter(s)
Okay, so it’s been a while since my last blog post, and even longer since I actually WENT to London, so I probably better finish recording my experiences for posterity. (or other such stuffy notions regarding travel logs) PICTURES TO COME, LATER!!
SATURDAY IN LONDON: First thing in the morning, Jamie and I head on our way to Trafalgar Square. This is the place where people gather for big events such as New Years, since you can see Big Ben, just down the street through the buildings. The square, aptly named, commemorates the victory at the Battle of Trafalgar, the most decisive British Naval victory in the Napoleonic Wars (yes, I had to look that up). It was in 1805. The British were led by Admiral Lord Nelson (aboard the HMS Victory), who is featured as the statue atop the enormous pedestal. Well anyway, Jamie and I were headed to The Original Bus Tour information center, because we had booked a bus tour with them. It was kind of expensive (32 GBP!!), but it included a two-and-a-half hour bus tour, potentially three different walking tours, and a river boat tour. Goodness. So Jamie and I thought this would be fun! And it was! But to come back to the chronological sequence of events, she and I were hurrying to this information center with our vouchers to get our tickets printed and join the “Changing of the Guards” walking tour. We were in line, when this very loud, very friendly woman tour guide told us (and the others in line) that it wasn’t taking place today because some royal prep work was going on, and that it would happen tomorrow. With that, Jamie and I decide to do it Sunday morning, while we went over to a coffee shop and got breakfast (tea and croissant!). The barista asked if I wanted milk with my tea! :D they do things right, in Britain!!
Okay, Bus Tour general comment: Thank goodness we couldn’t go see the changing of the guards on Saturday. Not doing so enabled us to move up the time schedule on the bus tour, allowing us to be done in time to go on the Jack the Ripper walking tour, AND catch a riverboat at a reasonable hour.
Jamie and I enjoy our small breffast, then walk to the nearest boarding point for this tour thing. After several different buses, each belonging to a different Bus Touring company, shuffled themselves before our very eyes, it ended up that Jamie and I were the first ones to board an empty bus! Sweet! As we had not “cashed in” our vouchers for this tour, we were pleased when the bus driver ripped them out of Jamie’s hands and printed out vouchers for us! YAHOO!! So of course we then walk to the top of the uncovered seating section. Once we had decided to do this disgustingly overly-touristy thing, we were gonna go all out. There’s nothing that screams “YAAAAA, I AM A TOURIST” like gawking at the city through a camera lens from atop a gaudy, open-air tour bus. And it was glorious. The guy yapping at us through a microphone (and also standing up top with us) was Will, and the bus driver was Steve. Will was very engaging. There was a MAJOR traffic jam right at the beginning of our tour, which caused us to stay pretty much within the same half block, so Will had nothing else to do but talk about the square. He told us that he goes through it about 6 times a day, 42 times a week, so roughly 2000 times a year, and so he has nightmares about this place. We finally were allowed to turn onto the other street, and we were on our way. Caught that glimpse of Big Ben, another glimpse of The Mall (which leads up to Buckingham Palace), buildings, buildings, boring, boring, blah blah blah, OOOH, STATUE!!! Of an angel driving a chariot? And we saw some fake British Soldiers. When we passed the REAL Hyde Park, on the other side of the street (well, really it was in the middle of the two lanes of traffic, but since it was on my right (British road rules being backwards and all) I consider it to be COMPLETELY on the other side of the street from the park…. Sorry for rambling) but anyways, on the other side of the stree—FINE!! In the MIDDLE of the street was this memorial dedicated to the animals’ war. Will gave us a statistic for how many horses lost their lives in one of the major wars, and it was an obscenely high number. We turned a corner around where in the middle ages they would carry out their “hanging by the neck until dead” punishments…. I forget the name of the square…. and we passed a super straight street that Will said was laid over a Roman road, hence why it was so straight. Also, they would put the heads of executed criminals on stakes, since it was the entrance to the city. What a welcome, eh? So we pulled a U-ie (U-IE, U-IE, BANG BANG BANG!!), and went past the fence around the palace grounds. Will told us of the two major times that this perimeter has been breached: 1) Michael Fagan got across in July 9th, 1982, actually made it IN to the palace, found a bottle of wine, then went on his way within the palace trying to find a room to enjoy his wine. Out of a possible 775 rooms, he finds the queen’s bed chamber! He opens the curtains on the window, and that wakes the Queen up!! After a 20 minute chat, he asks for a cigarette, and that’s when she calls a footman who detains him and the matter is taken care of. The guy is actually now in a mentally insane asylum. 2) One morning (I don’t really know when) the guards found a pair of German blokes bathing in the lake. They had somehow hopped the fence with all their camping gear and spent an entire night in what they thought was Hyde Park! Um, what?! Moving along! We trundle past Westminster Abby and the Houses of Parliament. Oooh, a statue of Abraham Lincoln! And one of Winston Churchill, which makes much more sense. We learn that “Big Ben” is actually the name of the bell that sounds out the hour, while the rest is called “St. Stephen’s Clock and Tower.” We cross the river!! Pretty pictures ensue. Then we navigate the streets and go past where the London Eye is (glorified ferris wheel). 30 minutes for an entire revolution, each of the glass compartments can hold 25 peeps at a time. Peeps = people, not sugary marshmallows. Jamie is not a fan of the idea of riding it. She said that her sister wants to do that when she visits later in the month, but Jamie will have no part of it. And it costs TWENTY-FIVE POUNDS!!!! No thank you. ONWARD, STEVE!! I think Steve didn’t know where to go, because Will disappears for 10 minutes while we putz around. And sure enough, once he reappeared, Will told us that there was some construction so we couldn’t follow the course as faithfully as we would normally. Okay. (And right here, I know we go north over the fancy bridge AND somehow disembark the bus on the south side of the river, so I don’t exactly remember what we did in order for that to happen. Just consider me confused, and roll with these punches, please? Sweet.) Jamie and I get off the bus and we walk around the block to the replica of Shakespeare’s Globe Theater. It’s relatively cheap to see a performance of one of Shakespeare’s plays (11 Pounds to see a six-hour play, compared to 25 for a half hour ferris wheel ride) but of course it’s standing room only for six hours straight!!! Eep. Then Jamie and I walk across the bridge that the dementors (or death eaters?) destroyed in Harry Potter #6 the movie! How did they rebuild it so quickly!? Ha. Ha. It’s called the millennium footbridge. It was cool! And it led north across the river straight to St. Paul’s. Which is what we visited next. They would have charged us somewhere around 13 or 16 pounds for entry without our bus tour supplementary passes! OBSCENE! No pix allowed. Fine. But I think with how much you’re charging for entry, I should be allowed to take some measly pictures. So Jamie and I sat in the chairs, and with our cameras in our laps, snuck pictures of the dome and the breathtaking murals and statues. Then we looked over our shoulders and noticed a couple people not hiding their cameras at all. Heck with it, I’m doing the same. Plus it’s the only way to get a picture of the pipe organ! Then a guy comes up to us and tells all the people in the rear of the church to clear out since there’s a wedding taking place shortly. There’s a crypt in the basement of the cathedral, so we go check that out, enthusiastically, since Jamie said that Charles Dickens was supposed to be entombed there. Though, since we didn’t find him anywhere, he was probably in the cordoned-off section of the basement where the wedding party was. Grrrr.
LUNCH TAHM! We find a cute sandwich place called Earl of Sandwich. Think British version of Potbelly’s. Nom. Take the subway over to the Tower of London, which isn’t a tower at all, but a little compound of towers that looks more like a squat little castle. That’s where we started our walking tour of Jack the Ripper. We walked around while Rebecca (the same nice lady who at the beginning of the day told us that the changing of the guards wasn’t happening as scheduled) went through the 5 murders who were definitely Jack’s doing. We stopped at places that kind of looked like some of the murder sights (since they had either been destroyed or built over), and we actually went to the location of two of them. Creepy. Especially since in the course of the tour, we walked past the building where Jamie’s staying. EEEEE!!
Boat tour! We’re going to get the most out of our tour tickets, if it kills us! It was pleasant, even if it didn’t offer too much information that was new to us, having been on one comprehensive tour of the sights on the river already. The guide was pleasant, and had a quirky sense of humor. As he signed off the mic at the end of the tour, he nicely asked for tips as we left, politely reminding us that HE would be the one helping us across the gap between boat and dock.
We disembarked the boat next to Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. Snapped a few pictures and my camera dies! Nooo! Good thing I brought the charger this time! HA! So by this time it’s 6:30, and Jamie and I are EXHAUSTED. Quick stop at Jamie’s place to put my batt’ry on the charger, then we head over to Fire Stone, a pizza place. Well, we really headed over to the marketplace, since even though the stalls are all empty, there are still restaurants lining the edges. The pizza place was good, even if the service was lacking. AND we got dessert. ICE CREAM ON A WAFFLE!!! SCRUMPTUOUS!!!!!!
SUNDAY IN LONDON: De ja vu. Get up early(ish) and rush down to Trafalgar Square to catch the changing of the guards tour before our 24-hour-bus tour passes expire. Weeee might have been a little late. But thankfully, the man at the counter gave us a shortcut to catch up with the tour group; go down the street and then go down the steps at the column. We scurry off, and immediately notice just how many columns there are on every single building! Then we turn a corner and go “ohhh, THAT column!” because there’s an enormous column in the middle of the staircase with a statue on top. There’s a group of tourists at the foot of the stairs all staring at a guy who is from the bus tour company, so we stand in with them. We’re walking along The Mall, while he’s blathering on about interesting things, when we turn the corner and stop in front of St. James’ Palace. It’s right about the time when Jamie and I start looking at each other saying “should we ask him if we’re in the right place or not?” when guys start marching out of the palace into the little courtyard. They’re still assembling when (gah, I forget his name!!) the tour guide leads us down the street, like a maniac!!! As in, I’m pretty sure he took off running. And he’s depending on us being able to spot the little paddle he’s holding up in the air in the middle of the crowd from 50 yards away! But from where he has us, we can see the guards as they are marching towards us, silent, since it’s Sunday and church is in service. They turn the corner, THEN the band starts. And it’s a band of . . . wait for it . . . piccolos!!!!!! We marched along with them down The Mall for what must have been (wait, lemme ask Google Maps...) half a mile or so. And those piccolos were still going strong! It was phenomenal! Then whats-his-face leads us down through the garden/park thing to the other side where the other regiment was coming. We were a bit late I guess, since they were already almost through the gates. We filed around to the back of the square in front of the palace, where whats-his-name assured us that we were missing nothing by being up close near the palace, because all that was happening now was an exchange of pleasantries by the captains while their regiments (and bands) stood facing each other at attention. Then he led us to where the REAL changing of the guards takes place, and we stare at the old guards 'til a small contingent comes down The Mall from the palace where they take all of two minutes to change out the guards. Very exciting. Okay team, break!
Jamie and I return to her apartment, where we pick up her roommate. We three go visit the Cathedral where Jamie works, where her boss gives me a free pass to take pictures (2 lbs, otherwise!). We go over to The Clink Museum, a criminal museum. Kind of like the one I went to in Rothenburg, but this one was in english, and it was a LOT smaller. It covered enough area to fit in my basement at home. We tried to then go to the pub/restaurant called The Anchor. They said that Charles Dickens ate there. (I heard that one the day before, on the bus tour, about another place, so I’m beginning to get suspicious... either that or Charles Dickens ate out a lot) But the place was PACKED!!! We went to another place down the river a tiny bit called the Thameside Inn. I got a chicken pie, or something. It was good! And it was POURING DOWN RAIN outside! Sigh. Allie went back home, and Jamie and I tried to find Platform 9 and three quarters. No such luck. So we go for a consolation prize and try to find a waffle-with-ice-cream stand. We saw them everywhere on Oxford street yesterday when we went to the souvenir shop, but I guess it being Sunday combined with rain caused them all to be closed. So we kept walking down the street towards the next subway station, holding out the hope that at least ONE would be open! Ooh, there’s one! CLOSED! Ooh, another one! CLOSED! Rats. We trudge through foot traffic, 'til we get to the other station, and in the space right before the steps down to the station, we see one... and it’s open!!! Oh, glory day! And it was delicious. Ahhh. :D
MONDAY IN LONDON AND GERMANY: Not much happened on Monday. Hadta leave. Sigh. It was fun, London!!! I left london around 9:30 in the AM (London time), and didn't get home to Nürnberg until 9:30 PM (Local time). I had a somewhat harrowing train ride back home from München. Apparently I boarded the wrong train. I still got home, but it took twice as long as it should have. And I got to see a rainbow!
6/9/11
Londonia, Teil zwei
The past two days on the way to work, I've had one of the songs from The Boat Tape stuck in my head. (pick up your hat, close up your flat, get out and get under the moon!)
Today at work, there was finally activity! Well, what that means is that I left my desk multiple times today! I suppose Willner wasn't as busy today as he normally is, and had time to coach me. He's really good about that. He doesn't BS me when we meet to discuss my projects. If he doesn't have time, he says so, and when he does have time, I find myself wondering "Doesn't this guy have more important things to do than coddle the co-op the entire day?" In other words, he's a very dedicated and caring mentor. He asked me today how my time here has been, and I said it has been good, but at times I wished I had more work to do. Then I mentioned that in past co-ops, I at times had several projects going on at the same time. So Willner says “If you want more work, I can give you more work!” And he says that I looked so frustrated at many points during the quarter that he thinks it would have been a bad idea to pile on more work. I couldn’t work up the courage to tell him that I might not have been so frustrated if I had more than just the one, frustrating project, that I would have welcomed something else to work on in order to give myself a break from the madness. Plus that would have come across as insolent. But anyways, Engelhard also finally had time for me, and I went down to his desk on the ground floor (where they get to play with 3D modeling software! So jealous!). I dragged the extra chair over so I could sit in his vicinity. And it never fails, sitting in that chair, watching him do his thang on the compopper, I struggle mightily to maintain consciousness (GOOD SONG). Also, Willner took me and Ebert over to introduce us to Herr Schwarz, the man in charge of the Prüffeld (test field), and to schedule a day when we can attend the safety procedure thing. Apparently they’re popular over there, since we can’t get a time slot until the 29th of June, so oh well. More time to figure out HOW exactly we will be testing the oil flow through an orifice! Oh! And Andreas #2 (there are several in my office) gave me a technical document that he translated into English that he wanted me to go over. Well, that took one hour for me to overhaul (when Andreas came over to my desk afterwards, he took one look at all the red marks I put on it and grunted, “oh my!”), one hour to go over my corrections with him (after which he walked over to Andreas #1 and said something like “I just went over this with Claire, and all your mistakes got corrected.” I tried not to listen. Or laugh.), and later he came over and told me that it took an entire hour for him to correct the actual document on the computer. Yikes.
I love the Major Cleaning Fit I enter whenever I need to do laundry. Since the dryers in Germany are TURRIBLE, I have to lay out all my laundry in my room. And to do that, I need to de-clutter and de-grungify my bedroom. And it was really really bad this time. It’s like I went into a beserker rage, but instead of killing anything in my path, I whirl around my room like Taz, and when I find myself on my back in the middle of my floor, cross-eyed, my floor is vacant and spotless. Ahhh!London? Oh, right.
And we come to Friday in the Big Chips-Are-What-We-Call-French-Fries! I travel to The University of Westminster with Jamie and Bonnie (who does indeed have a pleasant British accent) in the morning around 9:30 or so. The entire morning leading up until the lecture starts, I’m told by everyone that I will be bored out of my mind. Then the guy starts talking. And he is wonderful to listen to, AND he keeps us all engaged! He talked about Britain and the effects of World War II on British society. After 10, 15 minutes of lecturing, he latches onto the NHS (National Health Service) and talks about that for an hour-and-a-half. Break time! A whole posse of us traipse across the street to the coffee shop. And I get a pastry that looks plain but is filled with a vanilla cream BOMB! Super win. We return to the lecture hall for a movie, but technical difficulties get the best of these Brits, so we just continue talking about the NHS. Sigh. LUNCH!
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| The University of Westminster |
We walk somewhere. I’m not in control. So why should I know where we are? Lol, but we stop at this little pub sort of place called The Prince of Whales, where I order Fish and Chips. But I don’t get chips, I get french fries. Seriously, these people shouldn’t falsely advertise!! Then we walk to this museum of World War II, where they all check in with someone who has a clipboard. Then John and Colin head out to Amsterdam, and Jamie, Bonnie, and I head inside. Everyone in this class will have to answer questions online by Sunday night. The first exhibit we go to is The Childrens’ War, documenting the WWII through the eyes of Britain’s children. It was very sad, reading all the excerpts from letters written by some of the children who were a part of the mass exodus of children from the large cities of the UK. Then Jamie and I walked through an exhibit about the World War I. I saw the army recruitment poster for the British army, for Kitchener’s New Army. ...with a mustache like that, what man could POSSIBLY refuse to take part?
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| Cool Car in the Museum |
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| From The Childrens' War exhibit. I found it amusing... :) |
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| What a guy! What a mustache! What a party mustache! |
So after multiple hours spent within the museum, walking and reading without reprieve, Jamie and I were exhausted. We didn’t really do anything else on Friday, sorry about being lame. We did rent and watch The King’s Speech, though. Fitting, right? I really liked it!!
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| It seemed like everyone was reading on the subway! |
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| NNNNNNOM |
The other day, I opened one of the cans of skyline, grated some cheddar cheese, and had SKYLINE! Ohhhhhh, talk about pure BLISS. :D :D I do believe that I made my Facebook status: "Today's mood just took a plunge when I realized that I have no clean clothes, and can't do laundry until THURSDAY. But then I made Skyline. And for a moment, the world was perfect." (And SIDENOTE: I got the laundry key a whole 18 hours earlier than expected!! so I'm DONE with laundry!)
London, Part-o uno
Okay let’s get down to it. First off, Thursday morning started well. And by that, I mean I slept through my phone alarm. Good thing I set an alarm on my iPod (which I never do) to go off a half hour later than my phone! But STILL . . . eek! I had gone to bed Wednesday night earlier than usual. I even cut short the video chat with mom, and I feel like I didn’t fall asleep near as early as I woulda liked. That’s when the voice at the back of my mind suggested that I set the second alarm, because it would NOT be pretty if I missed my ride. So I woke up at 4:30 instead of 4:00, and had even LESS time to shower, throw last-minute stuff in my luggage, and walk to the Hauptbahnhof by 5:30. But I made it. With a minute to spare! :) The girl who I rode with dropped me off at the Ost-Hauptbahnhof in Munich at 7:00. My next ride was leaving Donnersbergerbrücke at 7:30, so I somewhat had plenty of time. WELL, the map of U-Bahns and S-Bahns in Munich is somewhat confusing, and when I saw that U5 went to the Hbf, I got excited and misread the map and convinced myself that it went to D-bridge as well. WRONG!! So I’m sitting at the station 1 stop beyond the Hbf, FREAKING OUT because it is now 7:35 (the U-Bahns don’t run as often on holidays, which Thursday most certainly was (Siemens was off, it being Ascension Day and all. Or, auf Deutsch, Christi Himmelfahrt, which means Christ drives to Heaven)), and my ride calls me saying WHERE ARE YOU? I tell her the station name and she’s like Well I’m not from here either so I have no clue where that is. If you’re not here in 5 mins, I’m leaving. I would like to leave soon.” And I say “Me too!” Which makes her laugh, so I think that bought me a few more minutes, lol. :) So I’m still on the verge of hyperventilation because I have no clue how I’ll get to the airport if I miss this car ride. Luckily, the U-Bahn going back to the Hbf was there shortly, and I raced over to the S-Bahn, which was waaaaay on the other side of the Hbf. (WHY!?) And even MORE lucky was that the S8 was just pulling in, and it was going in the direction I needed! THANK YOU, GOD!! I hop on, and silently urge the train to go faster than a speeding bullet. Two stops later, it’s at D-brücke! I push the button to open the doors. Nothing happens. Wieder die Taste drücken. NOTHING IS HAPPENING!!! Oh! My! GOODNESS! IT CAN’T END LIKE THIS, I HAVE TO MAKE THIS HAPPEN! I run over to the next door, push, and send another prayer of thanksgiving to my Lord in heaven (and I’m being serious) because these doors behaved! Woot! I think I started breathing again. When those first doors didn’t open, I don’t think I’ve been more scared/panicked in my LIFE. I then run up the stairs and out onto the bridge, and there sits my ride! So relieved that I made it. Christina
and Uli were very nice to ride with. I’m glad I was by myself for that entire fiasco; I might not have been too pleasant to travel with for that half hour of Angst (ein deutsches Wort). By the way, how is it that stress causes ulcers? Is there some sort of bile-sprayer that just lies dormant until the brain says “Alright, something big is going down, cuz she’s freaking out. Let ‘er have it!” Just a thought.
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| Christina und Uli |
So the moral of the story is: I made my flight.
The UK had the most legitimate customs and security yet; I had to fill out a border card and tell the guy why I was in the UK and everything. Rome/Italy had diddly squat, as well as Baden-Baden, on the return from Rome/Italy. We just hopped off the plane and walked straight out the doors. Here at the UK border, you had to navigate a 20-mile-long labyrinth until you get to this huge customs area, followed by a place to claim items. It looked super serious!
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| Some nice ladies walking past saw me taking pictures of myself, and offered to put me out of my misery. I like the result! |
I got to Liverpool Street Station. Okay, now what? Jamie doesn’t get off work until 4:30. Sigh. Okay. So I pull out the iPod, and open my Map App ($2 on iTunes, and as of now, it has been a life-saver in at least two cities, so I am saying it was worth every penny. And yes, it was bought in DOLLARS.) and find places to walk around to kill time. Apparently, it was lunch hour (12:30/1 PM) because sooooo many people were walking around, and they were all wearing suits and jamming all the food places. So there was all of them, then there was me. Toting two bags and taking pictures of EVERYTHING. iiiii’m not a tourist... not at all...
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| Tsk, tsk. |
Jamie and I meet up eventually, and she walks me over to her building, which is this enormous high rise that I’d passed about 5 times (okay, maybe just once). So I follow her closely to get in past the stupid card-activated gates. She says it’s okay to just do that the entire weekend, because everyone does it, and the guards aren’t really attentive, and they hardly speak English (“...which is ridiculous! Someone should tell them they’re in bloody ENGLAND, for goodness’ sake!”). So we chill for a bit while I get situated in Jamie’s room. I meet Allie (Jamie’s roomie) and Katie (Jamie’s neighbor) and Charlie (lives on the 7th floor). Allie went last year on the same international internship that Jamie did, in Berlin. It was the same thing as she’s doing now in London, where she interns somewhere culturally enrich-ful Monday through Thursday, and attends a culturally enrich-lichkeit lecture Friday mornings, with two more culturally enrich-ifying activities throughout the day. But that’s all on FRIDAY, and right now, I’m disgusting THURSDAY!! ((yes, that typo was on purpose)) Anyway, Jamie, Katie, Charlie, and I walk downstairs and I try 
to slip out like I slipped in before, but somehow, somebody messed up with the card swipe thing, and I was confused and couldn’t make it past the gate in time before it closed in front of me. GARRR. And the guard starts yelling at me in broken English, so I turn around and walk to the elevators again. And we go to retrieve Allie’s key card, since she’s in the shower and said we could take it. So we go to this bar on the corner called Dirty Dick’s. It was soooo cool! Quaint little English Pub, that it was! And I ordered a burger, American Style (which apparently includes salsa. They called it relish on the menu, but it was NOT green!!), with chips (stupid British nickname for French Fries). The beer/cider thing I ordered turned out to be SWEDISH! MAJOR WIN!! :D and it was deeelicious. Then Colin and John join up with us! Keep in mind, all these people are from UK, in the same internship/class that Jamie is, too. There’s another girl, Bonnie, who actually grew up in London, then went to UK. And she is also doing this thing, but I didn’t meet her until Friday.
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| Charlie, Katie, and Jamie! |
6/1/11
When in Rome... walk a lot!
Wow. What a weekend! As I said to Bridget at one point during the trip this weekend to Rome, “There’s nothing like a foreign country to put things in perspective.” 1) I find it endearing that I’ve come to consider Germany a kind of home to me (so I guess I really should’ve said “foreign foreign country,” as in a foreign country that’s more foreign to me than Germany already is), 2) In other words, I prefer being in a country in which I know at least half of the native language. Don’t get me wrong, Rome was really really fun and exciting!! But it killed me, not knowing italian.
Food:
OH MY GOODNESS, the food in Rome was to DIE for!!! They knows what they’s doin’. Pizza, pasta, gelato, oh my! NOM NOM NOM!!!
Scams:
All told, Bridget and I got scammed out of 15€. Don’t ever accept anything you didn’t ask for, in Rome . It will cost money.
Traffic:
Yes, I know I wasn’t driving anywhere or riding any trams or subways, but as a pedestrian who sometimes (okay, “always”) needed to cross the street, I was very much affected by the driving culture and habits of the local traffic. Let me just say that it was nice being able to jaywalk once again. Especially if there are NO CARS FOR MILES!!! In Walking:
Bridget and I walked EVERYWHERE!!! I actually mapped out (roughly) where she and I walked the entire weekend, and altogether, we walked 16,34 miles! With 12 on Saturday, alone!!! Our feet (and knees) were begging for a bullet to end the misery...
Public Water Fountains:
Boring, chronological revelation of events:
I wanted to travel to Karlsruhe (to meet up with Bridget) as cheaply as possible, so I used Mitfahrgelegenheit.de and carpooled with a guy (which also means that I had to take a complete day off, as opposed to most of a day). That website is kind of like a craigslist for people who want to carpool or trainpool. Type in where you’re coming from and going to, and it gives you a list of people, as well as their phone numbers or email addresses, and the times they’re traveling. He was nice! I tried to tell him why something like this website wouldn’t go over well in the states, but he just didn’t get it.
So, after lunchmeat sammiches in the hauptbahnhof in Karlsruhe, we train-ed it up for a half hour. THEN we walked out of that train station, and pulled out the print-out map Bridget had prepared. And tried to follow the directions to the bus stop. Well, we were standing there for 10+ minutes, ample time for the bus to get there. And would you know it, no such bus as what we needed showed up. One woman overheard us distressing about where we needed to be, and kindly told us we were waiting in the wrong spot, and that we needed to go back to the train station. Okay. Check. We go back from whence we came, and had at that point missed the bus. Wonderful. And the next bus doesn’t come for another FIFTY MINUTES!!! PANIC!!!! (because at this point, the gate for the flight closed in an hour, and the bus ride was supposed to take 20 minutes. PANIC!!!! So then we found the taxis. Gah. And guess what?! The fare wasn’t by the mile, it was by the minute!!! What a way to start off the trip, with a 30€ cab fare. But hey, we weren’t about to miss that flight. Not for the world. Plus, this is kind of how you learn how NOT to make future mistakes. As painful as it was, we are probably better for it.
The flight ended up not being as shady as I had thought it was going to be. I had spent all my worrying on the flight, that I hadn’t really stopped and realized that I should probably worry about other things too, like LODGING, FOR INSTANCE!? Oh my goodness, flying by the seat of our pants on the lodging thing was NOT a good idea. Bridget and I were trying to use couch surfing to find something, and by the time we left Karlsruhe and she checked her email one last time, we didn’t have a host yet. We REALLY should have booked a hostel or something right then and there. In order to check one’s email, one would need internet access, right? Yes? Yes. Welllll, we couldn’t find any in Rome. Anywhere. And we didn’t have ample time to search for it. Sooo we walked to an address of a guest house that Bridget wrote down (on Via Cavour (Via apparently means “street”)). Thusly we were introduced to the Italian street door system. Every door had a list with buttons to ring the bell. We rang the bell, and the (HUMONGOUS) door unlocked. We trekked upstairs, only to be rejected. No more room! Sigh. So we walk up the street, establishing our limit, since it was looking like we were going to have to man up and spend money for lodging. The first hotel we tried was waaaaaay too expensive. So we left. The next one was still waaaaaaaay expensive, but the man at the desk offered to call up a sister hotel who was cheaper and check to see if they had a vacancy. So we said sure! And waited while he jabbered on the phone in Italian. The bell boy spoke to him once he was off the phone, and then offered to drive us to the other place, at no charge. Sooo we said okay. On the sort walk to the vehicle, we told him what time it was, and he says “okay, I have 40 minutes until I stop work. My chief is very picky, he no like me to work overtime!” He drove a rickety old van, and the aforementioned driving habits of Italians was made terrifyingly apparent. Oh goodness. And he seemed to not care about the shifting gears, since I almost got whiplash, I’m sure of it. It was very exciting!! In the riding-a-rhinoceros-full-speed-through-a-dense-forest kind of way. I tried to get a picture of him. He talked the entire time, and ALSO in true Italian fashion, talked with his hand (the other was on the wheel). Which means he was gesturing out the window so we couldn’t really see it anyways, haha! :D He also kept repeating that this other hotel was in a nicer neighborhood, “it is much more quiet!” Except he pronounced “quiet” as kwee-et.
After an atrocious parking job (think almost 45° angle, one tire on the sidewalk), he walked us to the place, and we parted ways forever. We walked into this hotel, at the guy at the desk looked like he could play the part of Jafar. If only he had a ridiculous bulbous hat, and a parrot... Well, this place was a little bit too pricey yet, so we left. I told him sorry, and he laughed and “don’t be sorry, it’s okay if you don’t want to stay. You will leave and that will be okay!” I asked him when he closed (because I’m sure that German hotels definitely stop admitting patrons at a ridiculous hour like 7 PM or something), he laughed AGAIN and said “We never close!” Whaaaat!? Unheard of! In the land of Kroger-less, White Castle-less, “eat great, even late!”-less Inconvenience (aka, Germany), haben wir das GANZ nicht!!
Bridget and I totter off in a daze after receiving this unprecedented bit of knowledge, and proceed to check every hotel we pass for availability. We steered clear of the obviously swanky hotels, noticing for the first time the plaques outside their doors displaying how many stars each hotel had. There was one that took up a whole quarter of this plaza. It had to have had 16 stars or something. We checked a couple places, but they were booked. And we were hungry and getting frazzled by not having a place to sleep yet. THEN WE FOUND A TWO STAR HOTEL!! More importantly, it had a vacancy! And it was just below our limit, money-wise. Win! AND, they had a little computer thing in the lobby where Bridget was able to check her email for potential Couch Surfing hosts for Saturday night at least. While I watched the tv. Italian game show. Really confused. It didn’t make sense at all. Oh well. SO, we weren’t too far from Via Cavour (that first street we went down), so we walked there and ate in the patio section of one of the restaurants. It was lovely!! :D Though it was a mistake ordering wine. ‘Spensive!!! But the Pizza was OOHHHHH SO DELICIOUS!!!! àHotelàCRASH  |
| "Don't mind me, just tryin' to ride this horse!" |
We decided to walk along the “back roads” after a while, and it ended up being a win, since it was A) quieter, and B) shady-er, due to the more narrow streets, as well as the plentiful trees. Speaking of the trees, the trees in Rome were very beautiful! Plenty of full-foliaged trees (I believe they might be called “deciduous” (that word looks REALLY strange, by the way)), but also the scraggly half-evergreen-esque trees. They were everywhere. Along the way, my feet were threatening to start aching, and my knee protested slightly, and I was like “ooooh don’t you DARE! We’ve still got a lot of walking ahead of us, so don’t you start crying now!!” |
| Happy to have a place to sleep! :D |
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| 5 EURO picture |
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| FREE picture... and a stiff breeze, apparently :) |
Since we didn’t want to pay anything for sightseeing during this trip, we didn’t try to get inside the Colosseum. So we kept on moseying, 'til we eventually hit the river. Walk walk walk, oooh what’s that incredibly decrepit building over yonder? Let’s go check it out! Oh, it’s kind of boring, and we can’t figure out where to go to get to it, so hey, why not just keep walking north 'til we hit the Pantheon? Okay! But wait, here’s a souvenir shop! And an ice cream shop! Let’s stop at both! NOM NOM! We keep walking, past another super old batch of architecture, but the weird thing was that there were cats EVERYWHERE! We keep walking north, roughly in the direction of the Pantheon. Turn a corner, turn another corner, walk to the end of the block, and BOOM. We realize that we’ve been walking AROUND the Pantheon. Woah. Dude. Walk inside, and my camera starts giving sickly coughs. Wonderful. Trek over to the Trevi Fountain, where my camera keeps hacking up a lung. Some random guy offered to take our pictures (and didn’t charge us! Awesome!). Whelp, on to the Spanish Steps! Crowded. I lament my dead camera battery. Bridget and I are also huuuungry! We decide a trip back to Via Cavour was in order, since the souvenir shops were plentiful, and there was a second restaurant/pizzeria thing place we wanted to patronize. It was quite lovely, we sat out on the sidewalk again, but this time, to serenade us was a guy with a wimpy accordion. Dude, you’re gonna have to work harder if you want to compete with the violin/guitar duet we had last night... This time for dinner, we ordered pastas. Sitting next to us was a couple who turned out to be from Montana, in Italy for a long vacation. He must have drank about 5 beers while we were sitting next to them! Goodness!! And when they weren’t talking to us, I didn’t hear him say a word, he just let her do the talking. At the end of the meal, the waiter brought out these two things of lemon ice. Bridget and I were dubious of it, because we hadn’t ordered it, and tried to tell our Italian waiter such. He spouted off some gibberish. Probably on purpose. So we ate the things anyway. Yep, they cost money.3 km walk back to the hostel at 10 PM. Never once did I feel unsafe. And as soon as we walked in and asked for our room key, a 10-point crash was imminent. I lay in bed for about five minutes, extremely annoyed with the noisy people in the hallway (and generally everywhere else but our room), but beyond that, I was dead to the world.
Breakfast! YUMMY! Walk back to the room at 9:40, fuddle around with luggage. Bridget leaves to hop in the shower, and she’s not gone for 2 minutes, and there’s a knock at the door. Apparently check-out is at 10!! What?! YIKES! So I panic. I run down to the bathroom/showers and yell to Bridget “You almost out?!” “Sorta. Why?” “Check-out’s at 10! Like, right now!” “well, I can’t!” “I know!” and I turn around a bolt back to the room and pack all my stuff really quickly. Still panicking. Run back to the bathroom, and re-tell Bridget that check out is at ten, since she thought that earlier I was telling her to “check out this bug” or something. Haha! So I try to check out while Bridget gets her stuff together. The woman at the desk tells me that we still owe her money. WHAT?! PANIC!! I argue with her, saying “I don’t have the money any more. I already paid.” And she has no receipt of the transaction, and can’t find any proof, so I go to Bridget saying “do you have the receipt from when we paid yesterday? Because she’s saying we haven’t paid.” And Bridget’s face goes white, and looks exactly how I felt too. Then she says “Oh! We didn’t pay!” “well then what happened to my money! I gave it to you!” she grabs said wad of cash, and we go to the counter and settle our account. Phew! Alles im Butter! :D
We hung out at the train station for the next shuttle to the airport. While we wait, we take several tours of the facility, taking pictures of all the men who are wearing pink. I think Palermo’s (soccer team) color is pink. The one sure way to get a man to wear pink: make it the official color of a professional sports team.
Exeunt Rome.
I am exhausted.
Andere Theme:
I’m starting to become a pro at this workplace cafeteria thing. At the beginning of my co-op, I was going through the place super fast, and didn’t want to inconvenience anyone by trying to compare prices or seeing what each station offered for eats. But now, I realize that the Germans will take their time deciding whatever they want to. They’ll take the time, AND be in your way in the process, and they hardly mind what other people are doing. As long as they can collect enough information to satisfy their curiosity, or take enough time to load their plate to their precise satisfaction, it doesn’t matter who’s waiting on them, or who they are blocking. It almost seems like a mix between supreme self-confidence and blind arrogance.
Willner asked me this morning, “War Rom schön?” and I just stared slack-jawed at him, tryna figger out what in the world he just said. Because at first, I heard him say “Warum schön?” And ‘why beautiful’ is not a sentence, in any language. So after a couple seconds of brow-furrowing, it finally clicked, and the conversation was able to commence. It’s intriguing how, in that sort of situation, you realize what was said, since you can never tell when your brain shifts gears and starts attacking the information from a different direction/angle.
Coffee revelation: I was angrily staring at yet another single measly partial-cup of coffee left in the coffee pot in the break area, when the guy “in charge” of the coffee strolls by. So I stop him and ask if I can run the machine again, for a second use of the same grounds, and he says Yeah! But it won’t be as strong! (and I say) That doesn’t matter! (I’m thinking that it might taste better if it doesn’t have the capabilities of getting up and walking away on its own... yes the coffee is usually THAT strong... and he says) In that case, you don’t need to pay for it. Also, if there’s not a full cup left, that doesn’t cost anything, either. .....WIN!!!! So it’ll taste better, AND be free!!! I should do this more often! (Note, I didn’t say that out loud.)
As I type this (waaaaay at the beginning of the post), I have my bedroom window open, my door open, living room door open, kitchen door open, and the kitchen window open. It’s a regular ol’ wind tunnel! Key to comfort :D I also realize that I have them all propped or kept open, courtesy of my travel-sized contact solution, my shoes, a kitchen chair, and the handle of a kitchen cabinet!
IT IS NOW WAAAAY TOO LATE AT NIGHT!!! Ya’ll will have to wait for the pictures to which I was referring to in any of the above paragraphs. I am tarrd. (as in “tired,” said with a drawl)
6/1, 7:30 PM CET: Pictures have been added! :D
5/26/11
Und so, nach Rom!
My roommate and I made Wednesday “Englische Tag.” Because we’ve been speaking mainly German to each other, she wanted a chance to work on her English! So after I come back from work, we were talking for about 15 minutes, when she stops and said “...I think I like English day!”
One of the guys who works on the ground floor came through my office. Recall how I said that everyone who walks through the office sorta greets the room? This guy grew up in Canada so he's a little differnt from the other guys.He said "Morgen... Mahlzeit.... Servus... " and mumbled on, so I chuckled. I don't think any of the Germans appreciated the humor.
A fine prize to whoever guesses what I got in the mail before I tell you... okay, I’m telling you now... My wonderful roommates sent me a PACKAGE!!!!! BAAAAAH!!! It’s filled with wonderous (junk) food, and goodies!! Inhalt: two bags of chocolate chip cookies (homemade by who I assume was Grace), nacho cheesier doritos, smart food popcorn (ahh, my lieblings!), oreos, A SHIRT THAT SMELLS LIKE ERIK (and his house), many many drawings of what life is like at Mr. Tuxedo without me (seems sad and pointless... JUST KIDDING), a happy birthday banner, a stuffed animal horse (??? what!?), and a tiny pot with plant seeds in it. FUN!! Those drawings were very appreciated. I love them. They would go on my wall if I had some way to hang them up. And I bit into one of the cookies, which to me just looked like they were fat cookies, but NO! They were PREGNANT!! With oreos!!!! Intense. Mary likes them too lol. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!!! :D
Yesterday, Frau Otto (one of the contracted engineers) brought in two different cakes. Because guess what? She had a birthday on Saturday! Interesting! I got the chance to tell her that Friday was mine (without treading on her feet about it), and then she shared that her sister had a birthday on Wednesday, but ALSO gave birth to a daughter! What a birthday present! haha :D So anyways, I think it was Christie who asked me, but I think I have an answer for her finally: Yes, I do believe that Germans make as big of a deal about Birthdays as Americans do. Everybody comes up to you and shakes your hand and says "Alles gute zum Geburtstag," or "Herzlichen Glückwunsch zum Geburtstag!" and if the cakes are any indicator, then yes, Germans definitely like birthdays. :)
Today at work there was a sort of turning point with my project. The boss man decided that the weird numbers we were getting for all the theoretical calculations actually kind of make sense. Or at least it was unlikely that we would prove them to be erroneous. Soooo we can move forward! My next task is to tidy up my excel sheet. Wooo hoo. :D That will have to start next week, since tomorrow, I go to Rome! Therefore, (ahem, GRACE whateveryourmiddlenameis GILLES!!) do not get upset about there not being a post about it until Tuesday. YOU relax!!
On that note, I’m off to pack!! Please pray that Bridget and I have a safe and fun-filled trip. But I would be okay if it just ended up being safe, if it couldn’t be fun. :)
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