BESSY

Ok, as most people know, I have been working recently at the synchrotron as the time gets closer to Christmas. And this has necessitated my acopting a nocturnal schedule for most of it. The reason for the nocturnal schedule is that we do not get time on such a large experimental facility very often (you usually have to apply for time, and get maybe 2 weeks in duration, once or twice per year), and so when we do have time, there is an incentive to use all the minutes. The equipment doesn't know what time it is, so it doesn't matter if it's during the night or weekend or whatever. Perhaps a little background....

I bet you never thought reading this blog would be educational, eh? A synchrotron in general is one of those big particle accelerator rings that you sometimes hear about in the news.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/synchrotron

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has been prevalent in the popular news during the past year or so, and it is a synchrotron of a little different flavor than the one I'm using. The one I'm using is called BESSY in acronym form.

http://www.bessy.de/

This stands for Die Berliner Elektronen-Speicherring Gesellschaft für Synchrotronstrahlung. Doesn't really matter, it just goes by BESSY. I feel like they may have taken a few liberties with the acronym, but this appears to be a pretty common practice. There's another facility affiliated with my department here that goes by the acronym SMART. One time I saw the word expansion of what that acronym stands for, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out how they got those letters out of it. They'd have to ignore words and invent silent ones etc. to get it to work out, it seemed. I think they must have just started out with the acronym they wanted, and then tried to come up with words spelled out something similar. And they didn't even have to do a good job, because no one bothers to go back and check on these things. They just always call it by the short name SMART. Then, they can say hilarious things such as "we are the SMART guys" and "so-and-so used to be a SMART guy, before he moved to a different department" etc. The people who work on this project seem to have quite a lot of endurance for finding the humor in this. Mine ran out after perhaps the first 1/2 time I heard it, but maybe it's just me. Perhaps no one else cares about this. And I appear to have digressed a bit...

In any case, so we use this BESSY thing in order to get out light. Like we have in the lab. Except super-intense and tunable to (most) any energy. For this extra advantage, the BESSY II facility (there used to be a BESSY I before) was built here a few years ago at a cost of about 100 million Euros (maybe $130 million depending upon the current exchange rate). As a scientist, I am supposed not to be cynical about this. We are doing very important work here that is yielding great benefits for the future of humankind. Depends upon the day that you ask me....

So, this is what necessitated my working the night shift for a while. A typical shift might run from 7 pm to 9 am for me. It takes about an hour for me to get out where the facility is on the train, so this makes for a pretty long day/night. And not particularly fun, to tell the truth. No time for Christmas shopping or anything else, so it's good that I finished that stuff early. What is amazing though is how quickly my body was able to adjust to the time difference The first 24-36 hours were quite difficult, but afterwards, it seemed just about normal. Somewhat similar to my normal work, but during the night. Of course, I found the smoothness of this transition a little disconcerting as well. The fact that I could live the inverse life of a normal human without anyone really noticing reminded me of the difficulties I've had getting to know Germans so far. I haven't really had many positive interactions with Germans that immediately come to mind. I've never been to a German person's apartment (unless you count the friend I visited in Dresden). And most German people don't seem particularly interested in talking with me. This also makes language development all the more difficult as I've described before. I guess that's something to work on in the New Year. I've heard that Germans have gooey, chocolatey centers, if I stick with it long enough to penetrate the outer shell. We shall see. In any case, I seem to have digressed again. Ok, on to some pictures so I can end this blog post, before I get off topic again.

Here is a photo of the outside of BESSY. It is about the size and shape of a professional basketball arena.

The following two pictures look one way, and then the other from the balcony inside so you can see some of the complicated business that goes on around the ring.

In general, people bring in their own equipment and then set it up like a little campsite on the periphery of the ring to tap into the stuff I described above. This makes for a bit of a challenge to bring all of the pieces and get it set up correctly, so that everything works. You aren't in your laboratory, so there are always problems with pieces not reaching far enough or not aligning the way you thought etc. The following picture is of the equipment we brought and set up. Then, afterwards, we had to quickly disassemble and transport it back to the institute in pieces. A little bit of the bottom part of the equipment does permanently stay there, but most of it goes.

Then, one last thing. I saw this little emergency exit around the outside of the ring and it gave me the giggles. As you can see, the architect of this building decided to make a ring of windows along the floor. This would be a convenient location if we had eyes on the tops of our feet. On more than one occasion, I had to get down on the floor to see how the weather was outside, and determine if I needed an umbrella, for instance. Then, I'm guessing that the fire marshall (or German equivalent) inspected the building after construction and decided that it needed an additional exit. Instead of interruping the window, or making a door with a widowed bottom, they went with this. Doesn't seem like it would be very easy for someone with a disability to use. But the image of people lining up in an orderly fashion to walk the plank on this thing in the event of an emergency seems quite ridiculous to me.

The Gnome Visits Berlin

(see description in the post below)
Sorry there are a couple of typos in this. The slideshow software interface isn't very user-friendly, but hopefully, I can fix the obvious ones coming up soon.

To Do in Berlin

First of all, a recent piece of news is that my last journal article from my PhD was just accepted for publication. This finally completes the last hanging chad from my PhD and is a welcome relief. Now that that stuff is behind me, I can concentrate on other things.

My sister and brother-in-law came up with a list of things I should do while I am in Berlin, and slowly over time, I have been making progress on them. I was also given a small gnome to carry around with me and keep me company on these excursions. As yet, the gnome is unnamed (I hadn't thought of this oversight until this moment). Suggestions? Perhaps Gnomey McGnomerton for now. In any case, I have (basically) finished the list as of recently and here is the pictoral evidence. Thanks again, Anna and Casey!

By the way, the slideshow is above, as you've probably already seen. I tried to make it go below, but after wrestling with the blog a bit, I decided it wasn't that important. Enjoy.

KC in the DL

Ok, I've had a bit of an unprecedented rash of posts lately, so be sure to look below and make sure you've caught my most recent ones. Here is a short one. I've run into a couple of Kansas City (MO) references in Berlin and thought I'd put them up here. This is exciting for me anyway, so please just humor me for a minute.


The first one was a completely random poster advertisement near one of the train stations. And here it is.



I saw it and took a picture because I was excited to see the KC reference. It looks like a fashion show. Or maybe an art exhibition. So, I looked it up later on the internet. And, the website was pretty mysterious. And maybe a little creepy. There are some strange pictures of a tattooed man wearing snuggie-like baby clothes, it appears. Feel free to check it out (but please don't blame me for the strangeness that lies behind).

http://www.peggynoland.com/shop.html

And little to no information on who Peggy Noland is. Very strange. Whatever, something new.

Anyway, the next second reference to KC came from when I was walking down the street. I walked past this old man, and looked up...and saw...a Kansas City Royals baseball cap. Be still my heart :). So, I went up to him and started frantically talking to him in German to ask him about his hat and where he got it and if he knew of the Royals and if he was a fan etc. He appeared visibly disturbed by the encounter and I managed to catch that he had no idea who the Royals were or anything about baseball as he ran away. I was working my way up to asking to take a picture with him, but this appeared out of the question at this point. So, I was only able to snap this photo of him as he fled the scene. Trust me, that blue cap says KC on the front.

30...

So, I recently turned 30. This happened to be on the same day as the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall, so it was a pretty big deal in Berlin. I tried to go and participate the festivities, but it was quite ridiculously crowded and I couldn't get really anywhere close. Plus it was rainy. To illustrate, here is a photo of the festivities from the newspaper.

And here is a photo of the real experience, from our point of view.

Patience ran out quickly under such conditions. We ended up deciding to just leave and go to a tamer area with an unseasonably-early Christmas market instead.

30 doesn't seem like it should be that big of a deal. I only turned one year older than 29. And really I was only one day older than the previous day. But, one apparent difference is the round number. I've read some about this before, and Americans, in particular, tend to emphasize round numbers, even a little more than other cultures. 100 yards rushing for a running back in a football game seems much better than 99, for instance, and 30 seems a lot older than 29.

Also, another difference is in the way we categorize ages. I received a survey from the Mizzou alumni association, the day after my birthday. Here was the first page.

For reference, my cursor hovers over what I wanted to put, and the checkmark designates the answer I had to honestly put. And, um...can I also say...30-45!?!??!?! Ridiculous. I am in an age group with 45-year-olds as of one week ago. That is different. This is all I have to say about this for now... :)

Soccer

I managed to go to my first German soccer game a few weeks ago. It was pretty fun (even though of course I made them lose by being there). I think I've decided to become a Berlin Union fan while I'm here. This is their second-division team in Berlin (which is in the East; the first division team is in the West and they are horrible). Anyway, this seems to be shaping up to be my most underwhelming post ever, but I think this video turned out pretty well. I almost captured the scoring of a goal, but not quite. Turn up the volume to catch all the sounds, and enjoy.

Church

Going to church in Germany can be added to the list of things that were routine for me in the U.S., but are more challenging here. First of all, the number of churches here isn't huge. This is partly due to Berlin's location in the former East Germany. When someone from East Germany is asked to what church they belong, they will say, "I'm East German." It is interesting that Germany has governmentalized tax support for the Protestant and Catholic churches in the country. When you fill out your residence registration (which is required anytime you move in Germany, even just down the street), you can check a "Catholic" or "Protestant" box. I've learned that it is by this method that the government collects special taxes that it distributes to these two churches. Where is the separation of church and state, you might ask? I don't know... There are only the two boxes, so if you are a part of a third church then the government doesn't have an option for you. You can opt not to check either box however.

Anyway, so in looking for a Catholic church to go to, I kept running into churches that seemed like Catholic churches, but they would turn out to be Protestant. This kept happening over and over. There was some indefinable property of these churches that made them seem Catholic to me. But then I would turn out to be wrong. It was really starting to bug me. Then, I was reading about the history of one of these churches, and it said that it had been a Catholic church for a couple of centuries, before the Protestant Reformation. Then, it was a Protestant church afterwards. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh... This was one of my, "Aha, stuff in Europe is quite old...." moments.

Well, I have gone to a few different churches here to check things out. The common denominator is that I have little idea what is going on in any of them. Of course I understand some words. But, they speak quite fast, of course, and there is a bit of specialized church vocabulary. And the echo-ish effect in these large cathedral type churches isn't helping. At one of the places I've gone the most often, they have a big, beautiful organ which they play during mass. Then afterwards, the organist goes crazy and plays a virtuoso organ solo for a few minutes, which I always look forward to. Here is a taste below. Turn up the volume and enjoy. I videoed it stealthily from my lap so that no one was aware. Like a ninja.

Also, here is a picture of some of the treats they have at the Protestant churches. Here you can see some Martin Luther Bonbons. They also had cookies. For the kiddies.

Dresden

Last weekend, I traveled over to visit Dresden. I have a friend there, so this time I was able to have a place to stay and an expert tour guide (Thanks, Selina!). It was really interesting to see and definitely a fun weekend. Dresden, of course, is partly famous for being brutally firebombed at the end of WWII. This was a bit controversial because Dresden was seen as more of a cultural city and less of a military target. And also, because of the magnitude of the destruction and death toll and because it was bombed so close to the end of the war. And of course, the bombing of Dresden was part of the basis for Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut.

Believe it or not, there is still a lot of evidence of this in Dresden today. A lot of places in Germany that were bombed, have preserved a place or two in a state of destruction to act as a memorial to war. They had some of that in Dresden too. But, they also had some stuff that was just still not finished being rebuilt or recovered. This partly speaks to the magnitude of the destruction, but also the speed at which this recovery has taken place may partly be due to it's place in the former East Germany. Anyway, some of this history makes Dresden an interesting place to visit.

The first day I was there, we went to the Sächsische Schweiz, which is located just outside Dresden. My guidbook had said that it was nearly impossible to capture the place in a photo, and they were pretty correct. The Sächsische Schweiz is near the Elbe river and has these big bluffs and sandstone rock formations which are really interesting looking. Also, there used to be some people who lived up there a number of centuries ago, because they found it easy to defend from intuders, with all the cliffs. So, there's some evidence of them as well. Here is a photo to give you a taste. ;

The next day, we looked around the city of Dresden itself. It has a very pretty and historical city center. One of the highlights is the Zwinger. It is a huge palace built for the sole purpose of having royal parties. I think no one lived there. It was only for parties. Supposedly, one of the more famous parties lasted for 43 days. For a prince's birthday, or something. Can you imagine? When was his birthday, then? The beginning, middle, or end? Hard to imagine. Anyway, the Zwinger is gargantuan, but here is a photo to give you an idea, below. Here, I am in the middle of the complex, and the building goes 360 degrees around.

Overall, I had an awesome visit in Dresden. Thanks again to Selina for hosting me, and for an awesome weekend!

Hamburg

A couple of weekends ago, I managed to visit Hamburg to see a new place in Germany. It's the second largest city in Germany, so I'd felt like that was missing from the list of places I'd been here. It has easy transportation connections from Berlin though, so I took the train up. I didn't know anyone there, so I'd just made a central hotel accomodation to check out the city. Pretty interesting. It's a very large port so it has a large harbor for ship-building and fishing. It also has a pretty international feel there because of all the different people a large port brings. The city was much more centralized than Berlin; you don't have to go very far from the city center to see most of the things of note. If Berlin is Techno, then Hamburg is Heavy Metal. Anyway, the city had a pretty interesting feel. The Reeperbahn is kind of the center of party scene in Hamburg and that place is no joke. One of the most interesting things was the fishmarket. Here is one of the salesmen selling some eels. They don't taste too bad.

The salesmen get really into selling their particular fish (or whatever product) and so it's become a big attraction there. They are always yelling something or another about how they sell the cheapest and the freshest and the guy next to them sells overpriced, rotten fish. Makes for an interesting atmosphere. Also, below here is a photo from a barber shop in Hamburg. Staying with the previous theme that Germans love the Simpsons. I guess they are claiming that the hair stylists there can bring about a similar transformation to you, as seen with Marge here. I didn't try it out, but I like the advertising effort.

Work etc.

Hmm, it seems that I haven't posted in a while (again) and so I feel like I should be writing something new. I have finally dipped my toe in the world that exists outside of Berlin. But only barely. Recently, my department at work had its annual meeting in the northern part of former East Germany. Really the middle of nowhere so it was a pretty boring locale. Plus, it was for work, so that didn't help for the excitement either. Then, last weekend I managed to make a day trip to Potsdam, a short distance from Berlin. This one was at least not work-related. There is a castle there and such, so there were some things to see, and now I can say that I've been there. But, hopefully soon, I'll be getting out a bit more. Still working on it.

As far as at work, here is a picture of the equipment I'm currently working with. It is kind of a bigger and more complicated version of the same class of equipment I worked with during my Ph.D. Currently, it is one other German postdoc and I working on this machine. It is generally considered unfavorable for more than one postdoc to be working on a piece of equipment. They tend to get in each other's way and sometimes there can be conflict over the direction the research should go. Sooooooo, I've been supposed to move to another piece of equipment for the last couple of months. But, there are all kinds of excuses why they haven't moved me yet. The latest one is that there is some foreign visitor who has applied to come do experiments on that equipment for a couple of months. All in all, the guy I'm working with is not difficult to get along with and so it is ok working where I am now. But, I'd rather not feel like I'm in limbo all the time waiting to move somewhere else. It makes it a little more difficult to be invested in what I'm currently doing. Plus, I'll inevitably have another learning curve when I move to another piece of equipment, and I'd rather get that going sooner rather than later. Also, working with another German postdoc as now, it seems that he is given preference on a lot of things, partly because the other Germans are more comfortable talking to him. We'll see how the situation develops.

So, there's the short work update. Now all of you who have been clamoring for work updates, I hope will be satisfied. What's that? No one has been clamoring for work updates? Hmmm, well you've got one anyway. Enjoy.

Hmmmm

So, I just got back from my department's annual meeting, held this year at Hasenwinkel (http://www.hasenwinkel.com/) and I thought I'd make a short post. So, after living at my apartment for more than two months, I recently noticed that I have a plant. Apparently, it must have always been there. Of course that makes sense, since who would have broken into my aparment and given me a plant, managing to leave without any other trace. The evidence that this plant was always there is further supported by this photo from when I moved into my apartment. Anyway, so it probably goes without saying that I haven't really been caring for this plant, since I didn't know it was there. So, no watering whatsoever. No easy access to sunlight. But, then, the day after I noticed the plant, it sprouted these two pretty flowers (below). You can see it harvesting the light it can from in between the cracks of the venetian blinds.

Pretty nice! Plus, I'm hoping it's not reading too much into things to wonder if this plant is somehow representative of my current state of evolution in Berlin as well. Perhaps...

Some things I've noticed

There are a lot of things in Germany that you'd anticipate are different than in the U.S. But, there have also been some random things that I've been noticing over time as I've been here. The little things. Here are a few.

• If you have a real job in Berlin, then you are in the minority. Berlin must have the highest number of photographers/writers/artists/muicians/other random self-employed things per capita of any other city. If you tell someone that you are not available to meet them at 2pm on a Tuesday because you have a job, and you have to go every day, all week long, then you get quite the funny look.


• Smokers. Just about everyone here smokes. It's just a matter of how often and in what contexts. There is a guy at my work who claims to smoke only on Wednesdays. It's possible that my calendar might be broken, because I've seen him smoking on all of the other days as well.


• Dogs. Almost all Berliners seem to own dogs. And they come everywhere. They are often unleashed and you'll find people "walking" their dogs by just biking down the sidewalk with their unleashed dog trailing somewhere behind. A lot of people also bring their dogs on the u-bahn, and they seem to lie there silently no matter what chaos is going on around them. I don't know if this is a matter of breed or training or both. But what kind of dog doesn't bark at you when you accidentally step on it?


• Doors. Of course there are two types of doors: the push kind and the pull kind. Often times they are labeled, but sometimes they are not. I've found that when they are not labeled, I guess wrong nearly 100 out of 100 times. At least until recently when I starting trying to think the opposite of what I want to think. Confused? You're not alone. I'm not sure what subtle clues I use in the U.S. that hint to me whether the door is push or pull, but whatever those are, they must be opposite here. Quite embarassing, depending upon the circumstances.


• In a similar vein, they put the light switches on the the outside of the bathrooms here. So, often an unsuspecting person such as me goes inside only to find that there's no light in there, and then you have to come back out and turn it on. It's not so bad, usually you can just open the door a bit and reach around the corner to turn it on. You'd think this would be easy for me to catch on to, right? Well, you'd be partly correct in thinking so. But, here's the problem. Somehow, I cannot categorically separate bathrooms from every other type of room in my head. So, when I got here I pretty quickly caught on to this bathroom trend. But then, I started trying to reach around and turn on the light when I entered the kitchen. And the living room. And the hallway.... I enter those other rooms more often than I enter the bathroom, so I had to switch myself back. By now, I'm all mixed up. Sometimes, it's easier to just pee in the dark.


• Whoever said that there was a bee shortage has not been to Berlin. I don't know if it is specific to here or general to Germany. But, I have noted it. There are bees and wasps everywhere. If you open a beer outside, they are quickly onto you. The other day, I was in my apartment and I opened a jar of honey to put on some bread I was eating. Then, suddenly a bee flew in my open window and noticed my honey and started to chow down. It sounded like "buzz buzz buzz", but, to a bee, that must sound like, "Holy crap, there's like 2 hives worth of honey sitting here. Come on everybody and join in the feast!" So, I had to fend off the bees with the feeble instruments I had at hand and defend my honey. Never happened to me before. This reminds me of another thing they don't have here. Window screens.


• Germans generally like to be well equipped for the tasks they have at hand. For instance, in the U.S., you might see someone out and about dressed in athletic clothes, and then ask them what they are doing that day. They might reply that they are going on a bike ride. This type of conversation is not often had in Germany. Here, if you are going on a bike ride, you are wearing biking shoes, biking socks, biking shorts, a special biking shirt/jersey, biking hat or helmet, and biking gloves. This makes the question unnecessary. Similarly, there are certain uniforms for certain jobs. If you are a custodial worker, you are wearing a set of grey overalls. Fix-it people wear blue ones. If you are a gardner, there is a very specific sort of green overalls you wear. There's no need to ask that guy what he does for a living. He's wearing green overalls, then he's a gardner.


• Here they are much more formal with greetings and with titles etc. There was a long booklet on regulations that I read when I got here and at the end, I determined that I do in fact meet the requirements to be called Dr. in the country of Germany. So, I am many times referred to as such. Not by my immediate coworkers or in informal settings of course, but on other occasions. For instance, I am allowed to label the mailbox at my apartment as Dr. As evidence, pictured below is my German bank card, complete with title. Funny.

World Championships

The track and field world championships have been going on in Berlin for the past couple of weeks or so. I haven't gone to any of the formal events in Olympia-Stadion. Apparently Bolt set another world record. Now, he's all over the gossip pages here about this and that. I haven't paid too close of attention really. But, recently they had the marathon events out in the city, and it turned out to be pretty cool (thanks Lars, for giving me the heads-up). Here is a video showing a bit of what it looked like. You can see the Fernsehturm to one side and the Brandenburger Tor to the other side. You can also somewhat hear fleet of helicopters above that were filming and monitoring things. Unfortunately, I was not able to capture on video the guy who vomited on himself while running, without breaking stride. I was quite impressed. Enjoy! Hopefully this video doesn't take up too much computer memory...

Thanks to Lars for his help with my video technical difficulties as well. Who knew that the answer was on my computer all along. Two thank yous in on blog post. I hope Lars actually reads this.

Hackepeter

Most of you know that eating is one of my absolute favorite passtimes. So, of course I have tried to eat and drink as many interesting things as possible while I am in a place with some foods that are different than I'm used to. The list of interesting things I've eaten is pretty long, but here is one highlight: Hackepeter. It is basically raw ground pork. You can spread it on bread like it's jelly or something and then just eat it. Here are a couple of pictures of the eating. And the verdict is...it tastes like....nothing. If nothing were cold, soft, and squishy, then that's what it would taste like. I think Germans sometimes put little chopped onions on top. I didn't, but if I had then I suppose it would have tasted like onions (nothing + onions = onions). The thing is, the Hackepeter doesn't really keep very long, so you're supposed to eat it all immediately, or cook what you don't eat. I didn't feel like cooking it particularly, and there isn't anybody to help me eat that stuff. So, I just sat down and ate that whole pile of raw meat. I'm not sure my stomach was certain exactly what I had just fed it. I'm not sure I particulary recommend Hackepeter, but it was definitely interesting to try once.

Die Simpsons

Ok, I felt like that last post was a bit negative, so I thought I'd post something a little more entertaining. There are a lot of things that are different here, but one thing that is familiar is the popularity of The Simpsons. In fact, I might venture to say that the popularity of the Simpsons here is maybe even greater than in the U.S. Everyone seems to know all of the characters and most of the episodes. Anyway, I caught an episode recently on German TV and here is an excerpt for your enjoyment. Must have been too hard to dub the singing. Also, "Aycarumba" must be untranslatable :).

So far

Howdy. Sorry for not posting in a while. I had gotten a bit busy and a little sidetracked recently. Hopefully, I can be a little more consistent going forward. Plus, I wasn't sure if anyone really read this, but a couple people have commented on my laziness of late, so there must be a few. :)

If I were to describe the beginning of my time in Germany, I'd say that the most prominent feeling is of isolation. I feel a bit disconnected from the things I'd previously beeen accustomed to. It's more difficult to keep up with the sports and news I found interesting or important before. I live by myself (which is a bit new in and of itself, since I'm used to having roommates) and I still really don't know any people in Berlin. Meeting people has turned out to be a bit more difficult than I thought. In my experience, Germans seem to separate work life from non-work life a bit more than in the U.S. So, I have met a few coworkers of course, but none of them have been too interested in helping me out or hanging out outside of working hours. Though, I do suddenly become quite popular when they need to submit a manuscript or important e-mail in English :).

Also, I can feel as if by myself even when there are other people around, because often they're speaking quickly and at a high level of German. My German has been improving (though not nearly as fast as I'd like), but it is somehow exhausting to try to understand these things for any length of time. So, after a couple of minutes, it just tends to blend in with the background noise. That is how lunches with my coworkers go most of the time, for instance.

In a related note, I feel like I can understand now how a non-native German speaker could move here and not bother to learn German. That always seemed silly to me, and partly defeating the purpose of moving abroad. But, though my German has been improving, it has only be marginally useful to me on a couple of occasions since I've been here. Most people will respond to your German question in English automatically (even if there are no grammatical mistakes) because they recognize your American accent. Then there are those few people who don't speak any English, and they are also difficult to talk to for different reasons. I'm still working to learn German because I think it's important and because I find the language inherently interesting. But, you have to work hard to manufacture artificial opportunities to practice, so I can now sympathize a bit with why a person wouldn't bother.

Ok, maybe this is enough complaining for now. I did find a regular pickup ultimate frisbee game recently, so that is a welcome addition to my life in Germany. Hopefully more to come :).

Where do I live?

A good question. I have a tiny apartment on my own in Kreuzberg (a district of Berlin, for those who don't know) and it has a lot of the furnishings that I'd want as someone who just stumbled off the plane and onto this continent. So, for instance, I have a bed, kitchen table, some pots and pans, a television, etc. already furnished here, which is nice. I like the area in which I live, and the apartment is ok for now, so I may stay here a long time or I may move on to another place depending upon how things go. I worked it out so that I can get out of the lease here with 1 month notice, which is much shorter than typical.

In order to orient you, I have a partial layout of the local trains here in Berlin posted below. The red circle in the bottom left is where I work (in Dahlem which is considered a pretty boring part of Berlin) and then I live at the other red circle which is more on the central/right, in Kreuzberg. I make the commute in between every day to go back and forth to work and that takes ~35 minutes, station-to-station, which isn't too bad. Also, here is a slideshow of some other pictures of my apartment from right when I moved it. Enjoy!

Posting!

Ok, here's the first real post, so I should try to catch people up. Sorry about the delay. Or maybe I've done this intentionally to weed out all of the non-serious blog readers. In any case, I've now been in Germany for about one and a half months and I'm just now starting to feel close to settled.

A large portion of my initial time in Germany was spent dealing with the bureaucracy which Germany is notorious for. And this is much more difficult when your German language skills are not very good. Not knowing anyone doesn't help either. When I got here, I needed to get a bank account, an apartment, health insurance, a residence registration, a work contract, a work visa, etc... Each of these things is non-trivial (for instance, it took me 6 tries to successfully acquire a bank account) and they also need to be done in a particular order. This would be a tall order, but doable, if each of the relevant administrations could agree on what that order is. But, it seems that they have different ideas on this. For instance, you could go to get a bank account and be told that you need to have a work contract first. And then, when you go to get a work contract, they'll tell you that they need your bank account information before they can process it. A bit frustrating....

But, now I have all of these things and more and so I'm feeling a little more settled. My most recent acquisitions were hot water in my apartment (maybe this will be a post of its own...), internet, and a washing machine so that I can clean my clothes. On Monday, I have to apply for a special insurance in the case that one of my water connections breaks and I damage all the apartments below me (I live on the 5th floor, which would be the 6th floor in the U.S., so I really hope that doesn't happen).

Of course, when I came to Germany, I packed my bags tightly with as many things as possible so that I could try to have most of the things I needed when I arrived. Now, it turns out that some of the things I brought I haven't used at all, and a couple things I wasn't sure about have turned out to be quite useful. Hands down, the #1 most useful thing I brought was this bag that Karen had given me for Christmas a couple of years ago (Thanks, Karen!). I use this thing all the time and it has saved me quite a few hassles.

Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3...

Hello!

So, I am trying my hand at this blogging thing to try to keep people informed on my adventures in Germany. We'll see how this goes. Happy reading!