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!