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!