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!