It’s hot in Germany, eh?

I think my title sums up the current situation in Germany, as well as throwing in a bit of the Canadian accent I don’t have.  I’m Canadian. I’m not supposed to be good at heat. Not 37 or 38 degrees Celsius in the shade. And that “eh” is a stereotypically Canadian word  that’s really found more in central and western Canada. It doesn’t stop non-Canadians from asking about it though .

This past weekend, the DAAD hosted the RISE scholars at a three day conference in Heidelberg. Heidelberg as a city is beautiful, with lots of history to learn and sights to see. History is one of my hobbies, so being able to go from books to visiting the seat of an Elector of the Holy Roman Empire, or where Luther was an Augustine monk is amazing. The conference itself was also quite good. We got to meet our fellow scholars, hear talks from industry, academia, and diplomats, visit industrial sites, as well as eat good food and enjoy ourselves. There will probably be two other RISE student blogs up relating at least somewhat to Heidelberg, so I’ll go easy on the details. In short, it was an amazing visit to an amazing city with amazing people. BASF (my industrial visit) was interesting, and they fed us marvelously.

As I write this, I’m feeling the first cool-ish breeze I’ve felt in days coming through my window and it is absolutely devine.

My PhD student is at a conference in Poland this week, and though others in the lab will be around for help if need be, I’m on my own with my experiments for the week, which is a real taste of being a grad student, I think, which is part of the idea of this internship.

One last thing about this past week:

As a note to anyone coming from Canada or the US, Germany is part of the Schengen Zone, an area comprised of most of continental Europe that makes traveling between countries within the zone easier. However, this also means that you have 90 days (as a Canadian tourist) to stay in the area. I’m fairly proud of the fact that I managed to go through the Leipzig bureaucracy (which was quite orderly) by myself, and get my temporary residence permit, even though I speak little German, and the lady at the service desk spoke little English. My instinctive response to German [a foreign language to me] questions in French [my second language] only made us both laugh.

I’m trying to not be too too wordy, so I think I’ll end this here.

Think cool thoughts, everyone.

Cheers