I’ve decided to write this week’s blog a day early.  Tomorrow I have to explain my work to my PhD student, so I don’t know how much time I’ll have for writing, while the day after I’m off to Berlin Schönefeld to catch the plane home.  Also writing this allows me to take a break from copying and pasting excel graphs into the mamoth report which I’m preparing of all my work to date.  As I may or may not have explained I’m testing devices which measure the height of the water surface in a wave tank.  I suppose my general conclusion is that the ultrasound works except with big waves, the resistor-based probe which we knew worked works, the capacitor based probe doesn’t work very well, the pressure sensor is kaputt, and if all else fails you can film everything and then simply go through it frame by frame.  I’ve decided that the report is going to run to at least 20 pages though, to make my results look far more complicated than this!

This last weekend, as you can probably tell from the title, was spent in Prague.  This was not a particularly fun or illuminating visit because I barely had any cash.  For people going to Prague I would give the following advice: Firstly, the train ticket from the Czech border to Prague costs €20.50 or something if bought on the German side of the border but the train back from Prague to the German border however only costs 251Kc (or about €10).  You could probably save further money by buying a ticket only as far as Decin (with little v’s on the e and the c) from the German side and then buying a ticket onwards from Decin to Prague.  If I had know about the price discrepancy on Saturday evening I would probably have had a nicer and far more relaxed time, as it was I spent my time counting pennies and wondering if I’d have to hitchhike.  Secondly “Miss Sophie’s” in the guidebook is the best youth hostel I’ve ever been to, but they do rip you off.  The guide said that it cost 400Kc, but they charged me 590Kc (some rubbish about high season).  If I’d known I’d have gone to a fleepit for about 350Kc, then bought 10 beers for the difference and got royally drunk instead.  As it was I spent the evening skulking round the old city chain-smoking because it was about the only thing I could afford to do.  I did get given a free flyer for a strip-club though, but that wasn’t much consolation.  Thirdly the bureaux-de-change in the station don’t give good rates, but you’d be better off changing your cash there than in Wenceslas square, where you’ll get robbed blind, and fourthly fast-food is bad but cheap, so you’re not going to starve.  You can buy greasy potato cakes or greasy, phallic looking hotdogs for something around 20Kc (80 cents) each.  The hotdogs really were suspect though; the type where they skewer the bun on a pole, shove in half of the cheapest frankfurter they can find, then squirt ketchup into the gap between frankfurter and bun, which then wells up out of the bun-orifice, making the whole thing look like some sort of nasty bedroom accident.  Tasty.

Hotdogs aside though Prague is beautiful, the two pints of Czech beer which I could actually afford tasted great, and I plan to head back when I have more time and money and maybe someone to go with.  I failed to get into any museums (due to lack of cash), but I did take nice touristy photos of the outsides of everything, which I haven’t yet uploaded onto the computer, so bad luck, you can’t see them.

Instead I will leave you with a completely underwhelming picture of some laboratory equipment.  For those of you crazy enough to be wondering the small round thing in the middle is the ultrasound and the other 3 devices are resistance-based-wave-measurers, of which only the red one actually gives reliable results!

Anyways, bye until next week, when I will no doubt be writing a “Wow!  I’m home!  How strange!” sort of article from back in London.

Hallo ihr alle,
ich bin in Deutschland seit knapp 5 Monaten. Seit meinem Ankommen in Marburg habe ich in einem Studentenwohnheim gewohnt. Neulich habe ich aber entschieden, privat zu leben. Das Wohnheim ist nämlich relativ weit von der Innenstadt und dabei gibt es nur 2 Buslinien, derer Häufigkeit im Durchschnitt zweimal pro Stunde ist. Es ist dann eher weit von Geschäfte und oft verpasse ich am Sonntag den Bus u.a. die Hälfte des Gottesdienstes. Das Wohnheim hat auch keine Internetverbindung und die Netzverbindung, wo es steht, ist so unbefriedigend, dass ich kein Internet mit meinem Mobile-Stick bekommen kann. Dann bin ich verpflichtet, draußen zu surfen.

Nebenher ist es manchmal kompliziert, die selbe Küche zum Beispiel gemeinsam mit 8 anderen Personen, die noch kennen zu lernen sind, zu teilen. Das ist nicht so mein Fall. Andere Personen haben damit kein Problem und haben sogar Spaß, andere Leute kennen zu lernen. Das sind ein paar Gründe, warum ich entschieden habe, woanders und allein zu leben. Ist es aber einfach, eine mir passende Wohnung zu finden? Nächste Woche werde ich darüber schreiben.

I’m up at 5:00am writing these lines due to a wonderful jet-lag. I have been back in Ottawa for a whole day now and the desire of being a couch potato is creeping back. Also, I’m very sorry that I didn’t write a post before I left Germany as promised. It’s terrible that I have trouble keeping promises, my sincere apologies!

My last week in Jülich has been very eventful. On Wednesday, I proudly presented my work on the influence of biochar (a type of black carbon) on the biodegradation of atrazine in soils to an audience of a dozen researchers and got very good feedback from them. I think the fact that I was genuinely interested in the overall purpose of my research really helped me in delivering something good. Following the discussions of the results, I had a weird epiphany. I suddenly proud of being working in science, seeing everyone exchanging ideas and brainstorming together, once in a while adding my own views and thinking of in what ways the study could be improved. It was a very nice and supportive environment and I thought that perhaps not all is lost for me in science after all.

On Friday, the supervisor of our lab group invited us to his house for dinner to celebrate the end of my work term in Germany and also that of another Ph.D. student who will be returning to Brazil. It was quite an honour to be invited into a real German home for dinner. The hosts were so hospitable and attentive, and it felt great to give these three months in the country some kind of closure. I feel like the Germans are very good hosts; all evening, our supervisor and his wife were running around serving the guests food and pouring drinks for everyone, while the rest of us had our butts glued to our seats and chatted away.

Looking back, I learned a lot during this stunt of half a year in Europe. I was at a roadblock in terms of knowing what I really wanted to do with my life and I am so glad that I got the break I needed to “figure it out”, sort of. For one, I’m not too crazy about working in research in the future, but I am so glad that I was chosen for this DAAD internship in environmental chemistry because it made me realize how passionate I am about this issue and that I still want to work in the environment sector. As for where I want to live in the future, it would be easy to say: “I want to return to Germany!” because it is such a beautiful and functional place with the most disciplined and self-correcting people that I have ever known, but I think it’s important not to confuse feelings about a place and the feelings with a place. The difficulty is to piece together all the feelings you want, for some it would be success and sense of accomplishment, for others comfort in a nurturing home although there doesn’t have be a contradiction… The point is, once you know what you want and don’t want, you’ll be on the right path towards something great no matter where you are or what you do.

I have discovered that writing should remain a hobby of mine and that I will keep on writing about my development, both in a personal journal and online. The bloggers on this blog all write so well, all of them with different styles and that really inspires me to get better by reading more, writing more, exploring new styles and becoming more conscious of the power of words. Also, I loved the challenge of writing for this blog. I can’t speak for others but it was indeed challenging for me because I tend to poison my writing with the question: “what do people want to read about?” which produced many mental blocks, although it was always at the back of my mind that people really don’t care if you ask yourself that question so it is always better to write with heart, simply.

Today I will be returning to Montreal to hunt for an apartment for my last undergraduate year in university, somewhere close to school, just in case I become fully anti-social as this school year looks pretty tough. Just last night, I discovered the comedic videos of Jon Lajoie on Youtube, most of which were filmed in Montreal during the winter, and that made me strangely nostalgic. It was strange because Montreal winters are not particularly inviting and one of the reasons I wanted to leave it for France in the first place.

Right after I departed from Paris and met up with a friend from Canada who was traveling in Europe, she commented that I spoke English with a HUGE French accent. Somehow, I fully invite that happening again and hope that I will always carry a little piece of this experience in Germany with me, but I mustn’t worry about that as it is inevitable. Thanks for reading, it had been a pleasure sharing my world with you and I would be very glad to help if you have any questions about studying abroad, working in Germany, traveling around, “figuring it out” or anything else that might be important to you.

Love and peace,

Fanyi

This is an introductory resumé, a presentation card. A bit of nothing to try and catch your attention. My first blog obviously, and I already find it hard to write and write about concrete things. Try and be normal, try and write about travelling, food, people, things, try and be. I promise, I will (not).

Let us assume that I am writing about one of the supposedly classifiable themes, free time. What do I do in my free time. It´s all about expectations I guess. And we are never happy about what we do in our free time anyway, I could have been better, me thinks, you think, he thinks. I could have been better anyway. But conditionals do not seem to provide us with any kind of answer.

So, what do I do with my free time? I smile! I try to convince myself that smiling is going to convince me to be happier, better, other. I am always surprised at how often, if not always, people are surprised by me smiling at them. As if it was something weird.

One and one is two, me thinks. Why is she smiling at me? Does she want something from me? What have I done wrong? Remember not to smile, not to move, not to live. Remember that you are but one little point in the air, sault that goes, do not dare smile at me. What do you want from me?

I must admit I have recently found this little pleasure, a time killer. Smile at people when they do not expect you to do so. It is the unexpected that makes us happy I suppose, I assume, no wait, I hope. A new activity for the summer, smile at people. Realize how much you can get out of the tiniest thing which was not to be expected. And you might even convince yourself in that way. Look, care, don’t, self. A little hint at the end.

This last week I didn’t do any travelling. Partially it was to give you, dear readers, a deeper and more incisive insight into life in a large and thriving German city, rather than producing just another travel based article, which is more or less what I and everyone else who writes for this blog seem to do every week. (Having said that though I think I wrote a particularly illuminating piece on Dresden’s public transport system a few weeks ago. I would heartily advise you to check it out…). Mostly however this new found recalcitrance was due to a number of more mundane reasons, generally speaking I was tired and running out of cash and I just wanted to settle down for a bit. In fact thinking of cash I now have the princely sum of 13 pounds left in the bank, fortunately my PhD guy is paying me cash in hand and there’s enough in my wallet to be going on with. If I get robbed though I’ll be living off pasta until he pays me again on Monday!

Anyway, enough of that, Dresden is cool, and Dresden had a Stadtfest going on all last weekend. I went on Friday and Saturday, but not Sunday, because I was generally burning through loads of money on things like overpriced beer, hotdogs, candyfloss, ferris-wheel rides, glühwein, dubious looking fried prawns on a stick, and at one stage €4 worth of shots in a shooting competition, which only won me a bottle of disgusting coca-cola, beer mix drink. Having said that I’d already seen away about 7 beers at the time, so how I managed to hit anything (or why I was even given an air-rifle in the first place) is quite beyond me!

In other news I also went to the DDR museum in Pirna. Pirna is just down the S-bahn from Dresden, but very much “the countryside” compared to Dresden. The inhabitants all seemed to have been taking a short rest crashing their tractors/livestock molestation, the entire town was full of NPD posters, no-one actually knew where the museum was except for a rather slow girl who pointed under a railway arch and said something unintelligible in Sächsisch, and finally a man I met in a pub after 20 minutes of searching (he was the only man in this particular pub who didn’t have a handlebar moustache!) In fact one old lady simply shouted “Nichts!” at me when I asked, so presumably she’d been screwed over by the Stasi at some point, or perhaps she simply didn’t like my face. Anyway when I finally got there (head out along the road coming away from the railway on the station side of the old town, left at the traffic lights, right about 50m after that and then 1km down the road opposite the sports centre/water park), it was completely empty, and so amazingly retro I wasn’t sure if it was cool or creepy (I think a bit of both). Lots of waxworks in pioneer uniforms/Vopo uniforms/ubiquitous flowery dresses, flowery curtains, flowery carpets. A room full of crap east German electrical goods which people across the Warsaw pact would probably have saved for years to buy. Trabis, Wurtzburgs, pictures of Honecker, propaganda posters, comemorative figurines and matchboxes and model Interflug planes. It is the last word in DDR kitsch and is spread over 2 slightly disconcerting floors – I’d strongly advise anyone in the area to go, particularly if the attendance is normally as low as when I was there, because it will probably go bust soon. No mention of the Stasi though, or any general bad stuff. I suppose Germany has been on the giving and receiving end of too much bad stuff to want to think about it all the time, maybe also the people running the museum are a bunch of nostalgia nutters.

Thinking of this while I was at the Stadtfest I was having a drunk conversation with a German guy (I’ve finally been adopted by a group of Germans – very exciting!) who was saying how beautiful the buildings along the river looked, at which point I said it was really terrible that we’d bombed it all, and flattened such a beautiful city for no reason. He just replied “Nee, das ist aber Geschichte” and changed the subject.

The last week was very important to the DAAD scholarship holders from the South Asia region – includes India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka. We had an Orientation seminar held at Bonn, hosted by the Referat 425 – Südasien. The major division of the DAAD structure that concerns our region is the Programmabteilung Süd with Dr. Helmut Blumbach as the leader. The desk 425 comes under the Gruppe Asien-Pazifik headed by Dr. Klaus Birk. This desk is headed by Ms. Dr. Dorothea Recht and our main contacts are Mr. Benedikt von Romberg, Ms. Susanne Scherzer and our secretary Fr. Anna Wornowski. It was a wonderful meeting and we were around 35 students from the four above mentioned countries. I expected the seminar to be too formal but it was quite the contrary. They made sure to keep it relaxed and fun and especially Mr. Romberg and Ms. Wornowski (who are our main contacts for everything from the stipend to the university admission formalities) were totally cool!

I travelled from Marburg with 3 of my friends (Sajad, Megha and Hossain) and we reached by noon in Bonn. Trams keep running very frequently and there was one every 10 mins to our hotel which was booked by DAAD. We checked-in and I was thrilled to meet my co-stipendiaten from India (who were doing their language course here like me, but in different cities like Frankfurt and Berlin). After lunch, we all headed to a seminar hall, where Ms. Dr. Dorothea Recht introduced us to all her colleagues and made a short presentation about their goals and objectives etc. We were asked to introduce any other person in random and a few tried in German – it was quite fun! Dr. Recht and her colleagues were pretty pleased with most of our German and didn’t seem to mind when someone said “Er heiße..” or “Er komme”!!

Then there was a questions session where some of us had our doubts regarding the scholarship cleared and we still had a lot to discuss, which we were advised to do later the next day.

It was time now for taking photos outside the DAAD office and we were even showed around their office rooms. When I saw the rack with a lot of files and was told that the papers I sent from India about a year ago are somewhere among those, I was pretty thrilled!

We then took a bus ride to a point near the Rhine river and were separated into 2 groups. We had a guide arranged for us and were given a short city tour. Wow, I couldn’t ask for more!

The first buildings we saw were those of the University of Bonn. They used to be what was called “Kurfürtliches Schloss” or the electoral prince’s castle. Then we moved onto quite a high point which gave a beautiful view of the Rhine flowing graciously below and the Kenndy’s bridge nearby.

The Rhein – I was looking at one of the longest and most important rivers in Europe – 1320 kms long and through 6 different countries – the Rhein is simply historic. No wonder it has inspired countless poets and writers to create so many romantic works throughout history. Different portions of the river were controlled by different states that ruled in the past and we saw the Bonn regime’s official Toll collecting point of the past. This river has been economically and militarily very significant through time.

The famous seven hills (Siebengebirge) on the far side of the river stand silent witness to countless confrontations that had taken place on these banks – from the Roman legions stationed on the Gallic side in the 1^st century, Napolean trying to annex the western regions in early 19^th century, the battle for the bridges across the Rhine in WW2 and particularly notable at Remagen where the Allies captured the bridge to enter the mainland and at Arnhem, in Holland where they failed and were massacred.. everything started running before my eyes.

Then we moved into the market area and visited the beautiful Rathaus (Town Hall). I came to know from my friend that in any German city or town one would find the Rathaus on the market place and directly across from the church so that in the past people could visit the church, then come out and do some shopping and then also visit the officials in the Town Hall for any complaints or grievances.

We then checked out an important piece of architecture called the “Sterntor” – it was a gate with no particular purpose today but it was a part of the city wall in previous times (13^th century). Back then, I learnt from our kind guide, it was a privilege to be able to live ‘within’ the city – meaning having the city wall around you for protection.

And I also came to know that this city wall in Bonn was itself built from remnants of a strong fortress called Castra Bonnensis originally built by the Romans!

We walked further and came to Beethoven’s house - as simple as that. It was a simple house very similar to all others around and you would miss it if you didn’t know – but here is the place where the great composer Ludwig van Beethoven was born and lived! I learnt that he later moved to Vienna where he was a successful composer and continued to compose and bring out some of his best master-pieces even after he became completely deaf at some point of time in his life..

Later in the evening we came back to our rooms and freshened up and headed towards a pub with Mr. Romberg. There were some really remarkable ‘local’ beers that were available only in the regions of the Nordrhein- Westfalen.

The next day was very interesting when we had our breakfast and attended a seminar by Ms. Alexia Petersen, who talked about Inter-cultural communication and its relevance for students from different parts of the world, who would be working in a different cultural atmosphere in Europe. It was a very very informative and interactive session. Germans are really direct and straight-forward and also like their partners/ colleagues to be so. Anything, good or bad, big or small is reported as such and directly to the person concerned. Also, here a ‘no’ always means ‘no’ and there’s no discussion beyond that. I remembered once a German guy in my hostel offered me some ice-cream and I would have loved it. I refused the first offer, purely so as to be polite, and he said ‘Alles klar’, smiled and walked away eating it himself. I was left with my mouth watering!

I then went to meet one of my old friends Prem, who had come from Aachen nearby. We went shopping for some shirts and lost track of the time. I had to rush back to the hotel and pick up my luggage and waited for the tram. There was a funny guy at the tram-stop who kept screaming and made a big fuss over a wasp that he claimed, had been following him for a long time and wouldn’t leave him. We made it to the main train station just in time, only to discover that our train was delayed by 20 minutes. This also meant that our chances of catching the connecting train at Frankfurt just got slimmer. When we reached Frankfurt well beyond the time of our intended regional train to Marburg, we assumed we had to take the next train an hour later. We walked lazily and dejected to the platform, and were amazed to find a train still waiting there. A quick check on the display board revealed that it was the one we assumed to have missed, and it had no reason to be standing there for 10 extra minutes. We rushed to it and settled down – a thrilling finish to our Bonn trip.

Oh, I just spent the last hour writing a lovely last post, and was almost finished, but randomly the page closed, and I lost it all! =( That has happened a couple times before, and unfortunately I still have not learned to just write it in Word first. So, though I am sad to abandon my original wordings and descriptions of before, I have not the energy or will power to re-write the whole thing. My apologies!

So I am now back home in Ft. Myers—after a long itinerary that initially included layovers in Amsterdam, Newark (NJ), and Detroit but got derailed at an unplanned hotel stay in Newark (I missed my connection due to short international connection time and a ridiculously far gate change). It’s nice to be back home with my family and with the comforts I’m used to, namely, Internet access in my room and a washer and dryer that works consistently. However, I do miss many aspects of my life in Jülich, such as the delicious ice cream (for 50 cents!), the ubiquitous bakeries, the plentiful beer, the delicious falafel sandwiches, the currency (I do like the Euro quiet a bit), and all the friends I made there and in Berlin. During my 12 weeks in Berlin and Jülich, I learned to navigate the public transit system with confidence, use a bike as a mode of transportation, cook meals for myself, communicate (primitively) in German, open a beer bottle off a table or chair ledge, package a great deal of items, fully appreciate sheep, and write numbers in the “German” way. I have also learned a great deal about myself and the things that matter the most to me in life: music, chemistry, and people. Music represents all that is beautiful in a world filled with much hardship; chemistry stimulates the mind to elucidate the unknown while also providing a cathartic escape from other worries (at least in my opinion); and personal relationships warm the soul and provide the companionship that all humans crave. Undoubtedly, it was the people I spent my time with that made my RISE experience what it was—from my work in the Forschungszentrum to all my weekend trips to various cities. My summer had a great beginning with the friends I made in the language course in Berlin and continued during my stay in Jülich, where I met some other RISE interns with whom to share experiences and worked at a top-notch institution under a supervisor who was a good role model and source of inspiration in the field. Additionally, most of the others in my lab group were very helpful and uplifting, and I sincerely think that without their company, work at the Forschungszentrum would have quickly become very draining. Also, thanks to one of my co-workers, I successfully shipped my piano back to the States for a reasonable price—it arrived today (only one day after me!). What a great relief! Of course, thanks to everyone for all their input, and thanks to all the people I met for making my Germany experience what it was!

Over the course of the summer, I was fortunate enough to visit eleven cities: Berlin (still my overall favorite!), Leipzig (a treasure trove of music history), Düsseldorf (a very entertaining city that would be a great place to live), Jülich (my home, which I grew quite fond of despite my initial resentment), Köln (always to be remember for its amazing chocolate museum), Bonn (also a goldmine of musical significance), Aachen (the city of mountainous ice cream scoops), Heidelberg (the most picturesque city in my opinion), München (the winner of the “best-looking Rathaus” competition, held by me), Amsterdam (the most exciting city by far), and Venn (the Belgian city where our lap group had some precious bonding time during our retreat).

Despite the abundance of cities I got to see this summer, I would say that there is still plenty of incentive for me to return to Germany someday in the future, whether it be for work/study or vacation. Sadly, I never did get to see Hamburg or Frankfurt am Main, so there’s one reason to head back. Also, I would love to see Munich on a sunny day sometime, and one can never spend enough time in beautiful and interesting cities like Berlin and Bonn. Düsseldorf would be surprisingly easy to visit, since Air Berlin offers direct flights to and from my home city, Ft. Myers, and I would actually also love to spend a little more time in Jülich, as my last few days were so hurried. Additionally, the shopping opportunities are outrageous, especially in cities like Düsseldorf and Cologne.

Of course, being such a diehard food-lover, just thinking about the yummy food in Germany is enough to make me eager to re-visit. When I spent the night in Newark on my way home, I bought dinner using American dollars for the first time in 3 months, and it felt rather strange! (mainly, it was the addition of sales tax that was so conspicuously absent in Germany…) I was craving a falafel sandwich but instead ended up with a tunafish sandwich, which turned out to be decent. In my opinion, Germany is a food-lover’s paradise! Whether you’re in the mood for a Berliner donut, a traditional German meal with potatoes and cheese, an exotic but authentic Korean dinner served in golden bowls, fluffy gelato-like ice cream for 50 cents per scoop, a beer at one of the ubiquitous bars and biergartens, or a quick meal at a döner-kebap place, Germany’s got it all. If you really love food, like me, you can even see food in chemistry, too! Honestly, some of the reactions I ran truly looked just like refreshing beverages; I “made” carrot juice (think V8 Splash, Americans), chocolate milkshake (like a Wendy’s Frosty), red wine, white wine, apple juice, and grass jelly (a Chinese dessert drink). Sometimes it was horrifically tempting to take a swig, especially of the reaction mixtures stirring at 0 degrees Celsius on a hot summer day… Unfortunately for me, though, I won’t be enjoying any solid foods in the next couple of days because I just had my wisdom teeth removed yesterday. =( Though it was a bit traumatic (the only surgery I’ve had since I was an infant), at least this food restriction might be somewhat helpful in shedding the pounds I put on in Germany (totally worth it though!)—to look on the bright side.

Overall, I had a very enlightening and enjoyable experience in Germany, and I’m very fortunate to have had this opportunity to work with the DAAD. With this summer’s memories in hand, I am excited to start the new school year (beginning in another 2 weeks or so) and apply some of the new skills I’ve acquired. Thanks very much for reading this blog, and I wish everyone else the best of luck in future endeavors as well!

Kelly

About the pictures: my jam, cheese, and bread specialty that I developed in Berlin; an aerial view of the Ft. Myers/Naples area from the plane; my digital piano in Juelich–I am quite attached to it and glad it got home safely; the apple strudel and ice cream that my supervisor brought in on my last day in lab for my “goodbye” party; the first beer I bought in Germany–a girly but delicious grapefruit beer in a Berlin biergarten; the last beer I bought in Europe–in the Amsterdam airport during lunch; my favorite Berliner donut, from Backwerk, the best company!; the “red wine” I created in lab–doesn’t it look similar?; my first meal back in the States; me at my fume hood in the Forschungszentrum.

Dear all,

This week is announcing to be quite hectic as my internship at the Forschungszentrum Jülich comes to an end and I need to prepare a formal report and a PowerPoint presentation to give to a big lab group on Wednesday. I feel quite silly because initially, I think my Ph.D. student only expected me to prepare a presentation but I stupidly asked if he would like a report to go with it too. I just finished making a 14-point check list for this week such as packing, cleaning up the apartment, closing the bank account, finishing all the academic things such as the work report and presentation, buying souvenirs for family and friends I have been out of touch with since coming to Europe (“No, I didn’t forget about you. Here’s a keychain”), and somehow feel ready to leave by Saturday.

I will be leaving from Düsseldorf International Airport this Sunday at 7:20 am, transferring in Iceland and Boston before arriving in Ottawa, which means that I probably will need to camp at the Düsseldorf airport on Saturday night. At the moment, I am starting to get a little worried about how I am going to haul my two monstrous luggage bags from Jülich to Düsseldorf. I’ve accumulated a large number of useless objects and memorabilia that I can’t throw away during the past 7 months in Europe so at the moment, the arduous road home seems rather unappealing.

On another note, for my last full weekend in Europe, I visited the city of Munich and dreamy castle of Neuschwanstein on the German-Austrian border! I also visited Dachau to see what is left/what was reconstructed of the concentration camp there. It was depressing no doubt and a few people I’ve talked to warned me against going there, but Dachau was the first erected concentration camp during the Third Reich and set the example for a slew of others – this part of history is so dark but yet so recent and real that it would be just irresponsible to shy away from it. That morning was cloudless and incredibly sunny so the contrast was very strange. I feel very privileged to have had such a grand ending to my experience in Germany. This is all that I will say about the Munich weekend for now, or else I will keep going forever and leave my work report and presentation on the back burner for too long. I leave you with a promise to write a more detailed post about my Munich trip later, before I jump into the time machine (or plane, but I really see it as a time machine – I have no idea what lies ahead over there anymore!), back to North America!

Wie viele andere in Zeiten der Finanzkrise lieber “zu Hause” in den Urlaub gehen, habe auch ich mich zunächst mal dazu entschlossen, das lange Wochenende am Bodensee zu verbringen und nicht weiter weg zu fahren.

Und wie es sich so im Urlaub gehört schien strahlend die Sonne, das Wasser glitzerte blau zurück, das Eis schmeckte so gut und erfrischend wie noch nie zuvor…es war einfach die perfekte Urlaubsstimmung.

Leider hieß das auch, dass es ganz vielen anderen Leuten auch so ging, und es am See nur so vor Menschen wimmelte, aber auch das gehört ja irgendwie dazu. Auf jeden Fall bringt es einige Vorteile mit sich, wenn man mal in den freien Tagen nicht in die Ferne zieht, sondern sich auch mal für die eigene Umgebug Zeit nimmt. Nie sonst hat man so viel Möglichkeit das meist übersehene Angebot auszunutzen. So lernt man auch mal eine andere Seite, die nicht irgendwas mit Arbeit oder studieren zu tun hat, kennen.

Ofer auf jeden Fall ergeht es mir so, dass ich mir sonst viel zu wenig Zeit nehme, mein neues Zuhause (inzwischen gar nicht mehr so neu ) mal richtig zu erkunden und auch mal das Touri-Angebot in Anspruch nehme.

Ich war zum Beispiel vorher noch nie richtig mit einem Boot oder Schiff auf dem Bodensee, obwohl der von mir gar nicht so weit weg ist und jedes Mal wenn ich da bin, auch ganz regelmäßig solche Schiffe fahren. So kam es also, dass ich am Samstag das erste Mal so richtig “auf” dem See war, und das sogar bei Sonnenuntergang und Spaghetti.

Es war natürlich wunderschön und ich konnte mir nicht erklären, warum ich das noch nicht früher gemacht habe. Aber dazu musste eben der Urlaub her!!

As you can probably guess from the title I went to Strasbourg last weekend. Strasbourg is in the far east of France on the German border and very beautiful. It is also quite a distance from Dresden! To begin with this involved a five hour train journey from Dresden to Frankfurt. At Frankfurt I stopped to have a cigarette, which was rather stupid because I missed my connection. This then meant an hour long wait before catching the train to Karlsruhe and then the TGV to Strasbourg. I went for a wander and sat outside drinking an overpriced beer at an ice cream stall watching some sort of football promotion thing with loud music and passsers by invited to take shots at an inflatable goal. Once again I was struck by the differences between the west and the east. There are the obvious differences; the eastern Ampelmänner, the accents, but then there’s a general feeling that you’re in a slightly different country as well, rather like say, crossing between England and Scotland. I got a bit of a song by The Doors stuck in my head where Jim Morrison sings “The West is the best”, in strange slow voice which makes the line sound like a mantra that he’s trying to convince himself with rather than a statement of fact. I felt the same; maybe it is, if you repeat it often enough, but I still like Dresden. Frankfurt is an international, strangely generic western European city, while Dresden is somehow more “gemütlich”, and couldn’t be anywhere but Germany. Frankfurt is faster and louder and has shiny skyscrapers, but there’s something about the station which makes one think that, barring the signs in German, one could equally well be at Gare du Nord in Paris or Kings Cross in London.

The journey continued and I finally found myself in Strasbourg, having paid an extra thirty something Euros because the TGV conductor refused to accept my Deutsche Bahn pass (logical I suppose given that I was now in the hands of the Societé Nationale des Chemins de Fer, but quite annoying though, because for most of the journey I was still in Germany). Strasbourg station consists of a nice, 19th century stone building which some joker surrounded in a glass bubble for no apparent reason. Presumably the EU had cash to burn at the time! After starting my journey before 10 in the morning, I had finally arrived at about 8:30 in the evening, grumpy and thirsty and having missed my trains and been ripped off by the SNCF. However having bought myself some water in fast grumpy French I crashed out on the grass by the station where a jazz band was playing and gradually calmed down, so that when the fair Carrie arrived half an hour later I was actually in quite a good mood!

Anyways Strasbourg was very cool. Carrie was excited that she could finally understand what was happening, thanks to a Canadian education which taught very good French. (Are foreign languages actually taught in the US? – except for Brendan, one of the Rise guys in Dresden, who has now left, I don’t think I’ve heard an American who speaks a foreign language convincingly all summer – Please prove me wrong guys!). Meanwhile I was amazingly happy because of all the delicious food. I didn’t have a single non amazing meal in Strasbourg. If you were wondering I ate as follows: Steak frites for supper on the first night, yummy coffee and sticky buns Saturday morning (which makes me wonder, why is coffee in Germany so crap? It’s more or less lightly flavoured water, unless you’re willing to pay €2.50 or something insane for an expresso) Tarte Flambé for lunch (a sort of Flemish pizza, with no tomato sauce but lots of sour cream instead, delicious, but strangely unfilling). Amazing Italian Pizza for supper, coffee and Pain-au-chocolat for breakfast on Sunday and then crevettes poêlés followed by some fish in Provencal sauce for lunch. Then I had to head home to Dresden, which was very annoying, because I was just getting into it!

I avoided the Alsatian speciality (Alsatian as in the province of Alsace, in which Strasbourg lies, not as in German Shepherd dogs, silly!) of Choucroute garni (garnished sauerkraut). It never seemed to cost less than €14, and while the servings looked gigantic I was pretty convinced that you could get the same thing in Germany for half the price. Which brings me on to my only complaint; goodness France is expensive! The meals were all about €20 + per head (although that includes wine, and they were really worth it), while drinks in bars were anything from €5 to €10, which is a little cheaper than Paris, but still daylight robbery by German or even English standards! All in all I ended up spending way more than I’d intended.

As far as sight-seeing is concerned we checked out the cathedral, which is very impressive and has a cool clock, and the European parliament, which was very unimpressive and didn’t even have a cool clock (see pictures). It’s basically a large round glass building in an industrial estate in the middle of no-where. Because it was Saturday it was actually locked up – which to me seems bizarre; surely at the very least there’d be a few minor burocrats in writing laws for next week? or maybe guided tours or something, but as the home of the most important Pan-European organisation it just seemed rather dead and parocial.

The EU Parliament (it was closed)

Other than that we spent our time wandering round and generally seeing stuff. Neither of us had a guidebook so I’m sure there are lots of very important yet somehow fatuous sights and museums that we didn’t see, but it was just fun being and soaking up the atmosphere. Strasbourg has loads of lovely old buildings, especially in Petite France and the place is wonderfully hyper French (amusingly too, given that it has spent large chunks of time as part of Germany). My main impression was just how lovely it was being “on holiday” in another country. The only bad side (apart from the prices) was that it was all over so soon. Added to that for the first time ever German railway efficiency broke down and there were multiple late trains on the way home, with me eventually getting back into bed in Dresden at about 1:30 in the morning. This all combined to make me rather pissed off, so I spent Monday in a deep sulk. No France, no Carrie (who was back in Aachen), no more French food, it was raining and, for the first time, there were no trams because the trusty number 4 to Laubegast had broken down. Just to rub it in I went to the Mensa and they were serving pork and potatoes.

Since then I’ve recovered my mood. I’ve started going to the other Mensa which is cool and emphatically un-Soviet and you can eat pizza and sushi every day if you want. I was even given some cool new work (trying to get the instruments to give funny readings by putting loads of salt in the water). Unfortunately Carrie is off home though, but that is the nature of limited summer placements and transatlantic travel and stuff. Oh well.

Anyways, Tschüss bis next week, and try to find a song called “Strasbourg” by The Rakes on youtube, which got stuck in my head all weekend and harks back to Germany’s darker but arguably more glamourous Cold War past. The openning lyrics go: “I’ll meet you in West Germany/October 1983/I knew that freedom was a lie/and your husband was a spy”