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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!