Guten Tag

I’m now enjoying my last “working” week here in Giessen.  I will have my presentation on Thursday and next week I will only have half a week of work and my boss's PhD defense. Then on Thursday, I'll be heading to Heidelberg for the conference with all the all the other students who were awarded the RISE internship/scholarship. 

I spent some time exploring Frankfurt last weekend. I saw some sights,  like the central European bank, and went to the top of one of the skyscrapers there and looked out over the city. What I didn't know, is that Frankfurt is the only city in Germany with skyscrapers, although I don't exactly know the reason. At the top, we went to roof and then sat on the top floor which had a real fancy restaurant and had some drinks. It was odd, a meal there cost nearly 100 euros, but our beers were only around 3 euros each..... but I wasn't complaining. We had to walk through the red light district on the way back to the train station.... which was quite the experience in itself.


I meet another guy from Canada on Saturday and headed back to Frankfurt for the day. I was introduced through a mutual friend, and this guy turned out to be real interresting and the main reason we were going to Frankfurt that day was because he was suppose to be interviewed on one of the radio stations that day. There was a parade of cultures that day, and we got a little caught up in that and ended up missing the radio interview, but the host met up with us later on and showed us a bit of the city from a locals point of view.

We went back to Philip's, the other Canadian I met at the start of  my trip, and hung out at his place. Since there are around 30-40 people living on his father's land, there was a little get together. The cooked some home made bread and lamb in a stone over, which was pretty cool. He also had a little spa at his place, so some of us had a sauna and hung out for the night.

I went to a flea market on Sunday, but that wasn't very exciting in comparison to what I did later on in the day. There was a public viewing of the soccer game in Giessen and it blew my mind. The fans for the German soccer team were crazy! Luckily I had a German jersey from a friend so I blended in, as I'm extremely doubtful there was many other foreigners there, haha. I don't know exactly, but I'm sure there was over a couple thousand people there, and I'm convinced every single one of them was sporting some sort of German apparel. It was smoking hot that day and they had a fire truck which was shooting water over top of the crowds. It was amazing to see all the chants and how intense they were. I'm also sure selling beer by the liter didn't help either...



After the game, we headed downtown with a lot of the other fans. Everyone congregated on one of the main streets which was near a real popular soccer bar. The street was blocked by the fans and the police only finally succeeded to clear the crowd after they agreed to play the German soccer songs over their loudspeakers.

I almost forgot to state that Germany beat England 4-1, so there was plenty of reason to party afterward.

All in all, it was one of the best things I've done since I've been here. I'm planning on going to Frankfurt next weekend to watch their next game against Argentina... although I think my cheering for Germany has more to do with me not wanting the good times to end, then with wanting them to win.

A couple small notes:

- It's crazy to see how many languages most people here speak. I have yet to meet someone who speaks less then two, and it's not rare I meet someone who speaks three or four.

-I have been trying to make plans for my traveling after my internship.  Sarah and I were planning on going to Greece, but I'm not going to be booking any tickets until I can make sure the strike is taking care of by then, because as of now, all public services are close and on strike.

-I might be making a road trip to the Europark (europeon theme park) and Paris in a couple of weeks. We'll have to wait until I see if it will work out.


I'm sure this post had a bunch of mistakes but hopefully I got the point across.

Ciao for now!

Deustchland

Hallo!

I meant to blog sooner but I had quite the weekend and I’ve been quite busy at work. Compared to my trip last year, I feel as if I’m more in a “living mode” then a “traveling mode”. I’m working throughout the week, I have a gym I regularly go to and I hang out with the people I meet more then once, because now I’m not always traveling to the next destination.  I’m not sure which I prefer, but I’ll have another taste of the traveling mode for the last 2 and half weeks of July, as Sarah (girlfriend) will be meeting me and then we will be going to Italy (Rome and possibly Venice) then take a boat to Greece, and fly back to Germany at the end.  The details are still working themselves out….

I’m actually writing this as I’m “working”, which involves actually working half the time, then looking at charts and writing down numbers the other half.  So if my sentences seem a little mixed up or jumping from subject to subject, it’s because I’m doing this while waiting for the recordings.

Last Wednesday (I think), I went to the “boathauss” to watch the Germany game in the World Cup. The bar was really cool with a bunch of picnic tables and beach chairs set up in front of a big screen outside in a fake beach by the river. I’ll try and post a picture. Although they lost, we still had a nice night indulging in German beers. I didn’t have to work on Thursday because we need to take measurements from the cells from different frogs, and another frog was not going to be “ready” until Friday.

Friday night, there was a festival called Kirmes (sp) in a town nearby. Somebody I meet from that village invited me to go along. Esentially every town or small city has this festival once a summer. Although I only went on Friday, which is the “disco” or party night which mostly people my age go to, Saturday is more of a traditional beer gardens night and Sunday usually involved drinking from 10am until night, or your body has had enough. I was joking when telling someone about it that I could write a whole blog post on it, but I think a quick summary will have to do.

            I helped him work on his farm for about five hours then semi-hitchhiked into town to get to Kirmes, which is pretty much just a huge tent set up with a stage and beercarts and whatnot. It looked more like a nightclub inside. Anyway, we meet up with some other people there and one of his best friends was working serving beer= free beer all night….. which depending on how you look at it, could be seen as a very good thing…. or very bad thing. And I think that will have to do it for the summary.

My whole Saturday was practically spent sleeping and recovering from the night before. One of the guys I work with found out I enjoy mountain biking, so he insisted on taking me on a ride on Sunday which turned out to be awesome. He ‘s heavy into biking and close to my size, so he had all the gear, bike included, for me. We biked around 45 km in total, and went up to the top of one of the only “mountains” in the area, which coincidentally had some sort of festival going on at the top. Like all German gatherings with more then 10 people, it of course featured a large beer gardens, but the bike ride caused me to decline a beer for possibly the first time since I’ve been here.  I also have been eating/trying any German food here at least one time. At the top of the hill, I tried this sandwich which looked pretty much just like a uncooked burger in a bun. I saw everyone else eating them… so it can’t be that bad for you, can it?

Last night was another German World Cup game, inducing much more BBQ of sausage and drinking of beers. I can’t say I’ve officially been won over by the sport of soccer, but it seems that most things that go along with it are quite tasty!

I think that’s almost it for the relatively interesting things I’ve done,  work and doing Jiu Jistsu / Muay Thai at the gym has been taking up most of my other time. I will be doing my last day of actual recordings/experimenting tomorrow, and all of next week I will be working on my data and a lecture I will be giving to a masters class and some PhD students…. Not exactly qualified for this, but oh well. And the week after that , my boss, Mike, will be getting his PhD mid week and then I have a conference in Heidelberg for 3 days! That will be the end of the “working” part of my trip and the start of my traveling!

I’ll blog…. whenever I get another chance.

Ciao!

Beer and food...

I'm not sure which day I left off on, but I'll do my best to remember everything.

It's pretty cool being in Germany while the world cup is going on. This is one of the first times in the last 60ish years that people have been displaying the German flag outside their house or on their cars, just because anything that remotely resembled patriotism was not very acceptable in the past due to the Nazi regime and their heavy emphasis on patriotism.  But back to the world cup, most things I've been doing lately for fun have kinda revolved around that. Last weekend I went to a World Cup kick-off party in one of the residences and everyone just wore a country's jersey/colors. Unfortuantely the friend I went with only had an extra German jersey, so everyone would start to talk to me in German all night. The residence here is very international, so only about half the people are German, and everyone (young people at least) can speak at least a little bit of english. The night was pretty fun, and pretty much like a party back home. A funny thing is, when one of the Germans I met that night found out I was from Canada, he wanted to talk to me about hockey all night because he was such a huge fan. He was telling me how he regularly would wake up at 3 or 4 in the morning to watch a live NHL from North America and has seen almost every hocky movie ever made, including the famous mighty ducks.

The next day I just did some small things around town and then went to another street festival at night. There was a miny concert, and just like everything else in Germany, beer gardens. On Sunday I wacthed Germany's first world cup game at a co-workers house. We had a BBQ and some beers. I think everyone got a little bit tipsier then expected, as everyone would take a shot when Germany scored.... Germany won 4-0.

Also, it was my brithday on Monday. It wasn't too eventful as I was still recovering from the weekend and at work all day. Everyone in the lab got me a big box full of some wine and then all types of typical German food for my birthday. It was really cool and needless to say, I probably won't be going hungry anytime soon. That night i  went and found a place to train BBJ (Brazilian Jiu Jitsu).  It turned out great and I went and trained some Muay Thai there the next day.  So thankfully I found another way to excercise here then running or working out outside, a nice change. So that turned out to be my birthday present to myself.

I've been pretty busy at work lately as well, but I got the day off today (Thurs) as last night I worked until around 630. After work, I went to a real cool local bar that's on the "beach" of the river that runs through Giessen. They had an outdoor TV screen to watch the South Africa vs. Paraguay game last night. Turned out to be a good time, and I might go to a popular Jamaican bar in town to watch a game tonight.


That's all I can think of for now,

Ciao!

Ya bitte

Here’s my next blog… a little later then expected.

I had quite the eventful weekend and didn’t have time to write this until now.  On Friday after work, some people and I meet to go to a concert… a high school concert.  It turned out to be much better then I expected.  It was at a monastery just outside of town and the set up was pretty much a beer garden.  The people who I was with didn’t understand why I was so surprised about it, probably because I don’t think you’ll ever see a high school concert anything like that in Canada.  It turned out to be a really fun time.  Later on when I got back to my flat, I learned some German drinking games, and had the unpleasant experience of trying some home made alcohol. 

On Saturday,  I was in town and met a guy who was born in Germany, but brought up in Alberta, then moved back to Germany after school. Anyway, he invited me out to a party at his place a half hour out of town that night, and I figured I might as well with nothing better to do.  I’ll have to skip the adventures of getting there as that would probably take up a whole blog in itself.  So when I finally reach his place, I see that he lives on a absolutely giant piece of land his dad owns. He doesn’t really have a job, but does run a organic farm on the land, which I’m not so sure would be able to turn a profit. Anyways, they had a small man made lake there, so we ended up hanging around there all day. It seems like this guy is pretty serious about his parties, because half way through the day he asked a couple of us guys to give him a hand. So we get in the truck and go grab some serious speakers and a giant grill for the fire. He ended up having a bunch of people over and turned out to be a really fun time. One more thing about the night: I was offered some home made booze again, to which I quickly declined, but there was a bunch of guys there that were using it to blow fire. It was pretty neat, with the flames being probably five feet long!

The place where we stayed that night was really cool, almost like a large spa area turned into a small apartment. I realize it’s difficult to picture, but the kitchen was inside the drained out pool and the bedroom I slept in used to be a sauna.  So the next morning, I had to get up early and get back to a BBQ that I said I would go to. With everyone still sleeping I had to head out and catch the bus back to Giessen. Little did I know that the bus doesn’t run on Sundays. So…. three hitchhiking rides and a little bit of walking later, I was back at my place.  The BBQ was quite fun and I met some new people, including a guy from the US doing the same internship program here in Giessen. The rest of the day was spent  recovering from the weekend.

Now back to the work aspect of my trip. The lab work I’ve been doing is much more then I expected… in a good way. I was expecting to be the coffee boy, but I’ve been carrying out many experiments. My PhD student will actually probably be getting his PhD before I leave here, so I’m actually performing the experiments he will hopefully be using for his first Post-Doctorate paper.  So now that I’ve learned all the techniques and what not, he will be spending most of his time preparing for his PhD defense while I am doing the experiments. I should have some pictures on my next blog, as the set up I’m using is really interesting.  Most of the guys in the lab are quite cool and it’s funny some of the things you see the equipement being used for. Like using the super cool refrigerator to cool down beers in no time, or putting a wet phone in a vacuum with some “water-absorbing” rocks to dry it out.

So I’ve been pretty busy for the last week, but when I get some more time, I’m going to try to learn some basic German with the Rosetta stone that my brother Vince gave to me. We’ll see how it goes.

Now some random things-

-       I’ve been going running quite often lately, and usually through the forest near my flat. I was telling the people I live with about this and they started to tell me how the forest used to be a mine during WWII until it suffered some very very serious bombing. The next part I didn’t believe until they showed me an article, but many bombs are still there that haven’t detonated, so a bomb will randomly go off every year or so, and you can see some of the “creator’s” as you run through the forest.

-       The beer and food here is heavenly

-       I’m going to have 3 weeks to travel Europe at the end of my trip so if anyone had any suggestions on where to go, the advice would be very helpful!

-       I might have said this in my last blog, but Giessen isn’t know for being that beautiful of a city now, because all the nice building that were here were completely destroyed during WWII.

- The town is litterally covered with over 60 nearly full size dinosaurs which is quite odd. I've talked about it with probably more then 10 locals, and no one seems to know why they're here. All I know is that some of them had to be moved in via helicopter.

I think that should be it for now, Ciao!

Pictures

Germany 1

Day off today! Meaning I have some time to write this thing. I’ll just start from when I got here until now.

I was picked up at the airport by the PhD student I will be working for and was on the autobahn shortly. I think the autobahn experience is quite self-explanatory but it is real cool to experience! I then moved into my room and went out shopping. The room is probably slightly larger then those at Lister residence at the UofAlberta, but it also includes a sink and a closet. I then share a lounge and kitchen with other “flat-mates”. Out of around 12 of us, only three of them are German (Although they all speak the language) and the rest are from all over the rest of the world. I’ve noticed many of the people here don’t seem as nice as back home initially, but once you get to even know someone briefly, they really want to help you, wither it be taking you shopping, bringing you with them to go out at night or just help making plans. It caught me somewhat by surprise, by I really like most of the people here. Then again, the town I’m living in is the most student dense city in Germany, with around 25,000 students and only 80,000 residents.
I went out for coffee and later supper+beers that day to meet some of the people I will be working with. My first morning on the job, I spent a good hour meeting people who’s names I stopped even trying to remember. But as we were making the rounds through the labs, I was invited to help dissect a very large clawed frog. After it was killed, I had to cut it open and take out the ovaries and lungs, as those are 2 of the most used structures in this study. I spent most of the rest of the day learning how to use most of the equipment, getting set up and preparing solutions.

Now a short description for those that needed to ask me what I’m working on.
Putting it simply, we are studying the effects of certain gaseous substances on the ion channels in our bodies. All the epithelial tissue in our bodies contain these Sodium channels, which help regulate fluid exchange between the bloodstream and “exposed” surface in placed like our lungs, stomach act By finding chemicals that will either increase or decrease these channels activity, we can change the rate at which the fluid is being pumped out of our lungs and back into our bloodstreams. Hopefully we can use this to treat diseases that either has too much fluid in the lungs or too little. The experimental side to this is that we take the “oocytes” from the frog’s ovaries, then inject them with bacteria we cloned that all have the exact same gene for increased expression of these channels. After this we will let them sit for a while, then treat them with the gas and then measure ion concentration rates inside and outside of the cell.

I realize the words I used might have sounded somewhat vague but I’m writing this with the intent that most of my family and friends can understand it. Another thing is that these “oocytes” we are working with are nearly the side of a period on the end of the sentence. Which makes my work, dealing with the injections, monitoring and what not very difficult. It is hard to explain but you do it all manually with the help of a microscope and manually controlled “injection needle machines”. Anyways, whoever let me in there was not thinking because most of this equipment is too expensive and fragile to have around someone like me. I’ll eventually take a picture of some of the labs to make it a little easier to understand.

Other then work I have got my Internet, room, bank account and all that stuff set up. I’ve met a bunch of students that go here and also some other interns who are funded by the same agency as me. Last night, a bunch of us went out for a drink, then ate and headed out to this Sports faculty party. It was much more exciting then I expected. There were definitely thousands of students there in one giant beer garden which had an outdoor dance floor/DJ, tons of beer and small sports set-ups everywhere. They had one activity where people would stack plastic beer cases in a single stack and climb up the stack as someone passed the next case to them. They were attached to a safety harness, which was tied to a small crane –looking thing so when the stack collapsed, they hung there. It was amazing seeing, a single stack over twenty feet high of foot x foot plastic cases and someone climbing on it. There were many other ones but this one stuck out. They all closed down before everyone got too drunk and decided to go for it. Anyway, the rest of the night included much beer drinking, meeting other people and seeing some sports displays earlier in the night.

After walking home when it got light out and stopping for a Kebab, I managed to sleep almost all day today. Other then a workout and laundry, I have been mostly nursing a hangover. I will try to write again during or after this weekend.

Ciao

- I’ll try to add some photos of my trips, but I should have an album up of my Spain trip on Facebook already.

Starting to blog again---- spain recap

Alright, I’m in Germany now, and am starting up this blog again, so I’m not emailing everyone separately with the same stories.

I flew in this yesterdat from Barcelona where my family and I went on a cyling trip around Spain for around two weeks. I will now make a weak attempt to briefly sum up that trip.

            After a couple planes, some sleep and a lot of free beers, we arrived in Barcelona with all nine of our bikes intact. Although we only had two panniers (small bags that attach to your bike) each, we enjoyed our first day biking through Barcelona without them.  After my bike’s pedal broke off within two minutes of getting on the bike, my dad and I were on our own for the rest of the day, which proved to be blast. Speeding through the city of Barcelona on these little bikes with the traffic was awesome. I got to see the beaches, some churches, and the Olympic stadium/park. It all surprised me right away to see how huge and rich the city was, I definitely underestimated Spain.  At the end of our trip, I also went to the FC Barcelona soccer stadium, which is absolutely huge holding more then 100,000 people I think.

            Now biking. Keep in mind, I had only ever ridden probably 50km on a road bike in my whole life before this trip, and we were going to average around 80km a day… through the Pyrenees mountains. Short story would just be that mine, along with Vince and Dave’s (my brothers) butts took a serious beating. I would strongly suggest you get used to sitting on a bike seat before going on a trip like this.

            Biking seemed to be the perfect way to see Spain. You see landscapes that remind you of the dessert to the Rocky Mountains, and everything in between. After the first day, I think all of us understood that my dad’s plan for the trip was not to start slowly.  His guidebook marked these trails at an advanced difficulty, but he didn’t bother to waste his time with such difficulties. Anyways, some of the harder days included a 20km climb, meaning for 20km, the only thing that changed was how steep the incline was.  Others had the rare off road track or a wrong turn that just add onto the kms you have to bike.

            Good parts included some of the placed we stayed in: beach towns, castles, small town hostels, and medieval villages.  Thankfully we were treated to a nice places and some seriously good meals. Although the healthy indulgence in beers every night didn’t make the biking easier.

            I managed to get my burn on early on in the trip and then accepted that sunscreen may actually be necessary.

Another thing that didn’t exactly work out was the fact that Steph and I, and especially Vince speak Spanish, but in the portion of Spain we were in, many people and things used the Catalonian language.

            I’m already running out of time, but if I find some more time soon, I might write a little more on Spain. But all in all, the big group, large hills, fast downhill’s and beautiful country made it a very successful trip. Although probably not for everyone, I would strongly suggest something like this to other travelers and will probably explore countries this way again.

            I got into Giessen, Germany today and it all looks awesome! The work i did my first day was awesome and the internship looks extremely promising. I’ll try to do another update and talk about the job when I get a chance. 

Leave a comment if you there's anything you want to know or think I should talk about.

This blog has already taken too long so Ciao for now!