Eine Reise nach Berlin

This is the commentary that I kept on my trip to Berlin. Regular text is what I wrote at the time. Italics are added later.

7:05 Hit snooze button for the second time, got some breakfast

8:17 Left dorm. Walked to Banhoff (train station)

8:58 I’m on the correct train. It took about 35 minutes to walk there. It takes less than 10 minutes to Bike there. On the way there were signs advertising a “BoS” “Black on Sunday” party at the local disko

9:07 And we’re off. Göttingen is the first/last stop on this line so everyone got off the train. This included some football fans that started chanting as soon as they got off.

For whatever reason the train feels like a rainforest. I’m sweating bullets. I’m listening to a podcast of PTI. Technology is a little out of control.

(the view from my seat on the first train)

9:43 I successfully switched trains at Kreiensen. This one is much smaller, only 2 cars. I Saw more soccer fans. Werden Bremen must be playing somewhere today. Also it turns out what I thought was my receipt is actually my ticket. And what I thought was my ticket is just a plan for what trains I should take. I used my student ID for the first train (Goettingen Students can travel for free within the Lower Saxony) but now I know the drill

10:24 2^nd train switch. Apparently there is a game between Wolfsburg and Bayern München. The train is full of FC Bayern fans. I’m sitting with 3 old ladies who are very clearly not going to the game.

Everyone is drinking beer. (including this guy with the mini-keg)

I’m dubbing it train-gating. One of the 3 guys across the isle from me just pulled out a 2’ long pepperoni, cut a piece off and is eating it with bread. Another one of the guys is wearing a bottle opener as a necklace.

11:13 3^rd train switch

The 3 women I was sitting with apparently didn’t know each other. They brought me into the conversation by asking if I knew why young people dye their hair green and blue and put it up in spikes. I then had a relatively normal conversation with them. When I said that I was from Connecticut and they didn’t know where that was I said it was near New York. The woman who was from Brazil immediately asked me where I was on 9/11.

My last transfer was in Wolfsburg so this train is packed with Bayern fans going to see the game. The Braunschweig haubtbahoff had a lot of them in it. They were singing songs and drinking… a lot. (that's them)

11:35 A final note about the Brauschweig Hbf. They had pay toilets. It cost .50E to pee. And there was an attendant in there. It was unclear what he was doing, but he was standing in there.

11:59 Train switch #4

This train is supposed to have reservations, but I don’t have one. But I hope they’ll let me stay here. They not only let me stay there, I wasn’t asked for my ticket.

I managed to sit in a s

moking car. It doesn’t bother me as much as it used to, but it’s not great.

2:01 The rest of the train ride was uneventful. They never checked my ticket. They came by, but I guess it looked like I had been there for a while.

I got off the train at the Berlin Hbf. Which is huge. It’s like Grand Central except new.

I got on the correct S-Bahn and successfully got to Alexanderplatz.

This is the S-Bahn Platform

From there I was supposed to get on the U2 and go towards Pankow. But I went the other way. So now I’m waiting for the U-Bahn to come back and I will hopefully make it to my stop.

I did and here's a picture of me on the U-Bahn

A change in Venue

I switched room this week. I was told that a new room had been reserved for me by David Starr. I didn't have too much of a choice in the matter. The new room is about twice the size (and twice the rent) with it's own private bathroom. It's in a different wing of the same building. This wing was just finished. As you can tell from the scafolding that's still visible through my window. I'm now right next to Alex, rather than on the floor above him. There are only 10 people on my floor now, as opposed to 24 with my old room. This is nice because it'll make the kitchen less crowded. One thing that is also kind of nice is that everyone moving in here is new. I'm not stepping into a hall where people have been living together for multiple semsters. I've only seen 3 other people in our hall. There is a mat outside the door of one of the rooms, and I saw someone's parent looking like they were moving in there, but I haven't seen who it actually is. The major downside about starting fresh is that there are no communial cooking items like there were in the outer dorm. Alex bought a pot from what's basicly a pawn shop yesterday and with that we prepared the delicious meal pictured above.







Tonight I'm going to a dinner that Willhelm (the coach of the track club) is having. Then tommorow at 9:07 my train leaves for Berlin. There I'm staying with Tomas and Wolfgang, who are firends of my wonderful aunt Lucy. I'm in Berlin untill Wednsday morning, when I take a train back to Goettingen. Then I leave the next day for Switzerland to visit Eric (my dad's cousin), his wife Liza and their kids. I will put up updates and pictures from my travels whenever I can, so check back.

A 5k in Germany

I've been running a couple times a week with the LG-Goettingen. They're a track club here and they meet tuesdays and saturdays to work out (don't worry, I've been running on my own the other days). There is a race series in a city nearby. There is a race every wednsday. This week was the 5k. I asked them if I could go. I met Willhelm (the coach), Susanne, Sebastian and Franchesco at 4:50 and we drove to the meet in Willhelm's mini-van. I ran in the 16:00-18:00 heat, which was the second fastest. I ran with a pack of 4 other people, 2 sets of teammates for the first 4k. I made a move with 1000m left. One of the people in the pack was able to respond, but I beat the other three. I finished with a time of 16:56. It felt pretty good. There were a total of 5 heats, all with various time ranges. Willhelm was running in the fast heat which was last, so we stuck around untill the end.
They were playing music durring most of the meet. When I got back from my cool down I noticed they were playing Elton John. They proceded to play Elton John for the rest of the meet, which was about an hour and a half. Interspursed durring this was some offical doing a sort of play by play identifying the runners names. It was the strangest pronuciation of Read that I've heard. Later on in the meet, the anouncer decided it would be a good idea to sing along with "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting" in a very think accent. Just when you thought it couldn't get any weirder, he attempted to give some sort of commentary on "Candle in the Wind." I'm not sure what he was saying, but he just started talking durring the song. It was a good meet. The final race of the series is next week, but it's a 10k, so I'm going to be taking a pass. Here are some pictures that Sebastian took of the race.

Riding around on a Sunday

I set out on my bike this past Sunday hoping to pick up a few things. However, it turns out that everything is closed on Sunday. Supermarkets, all kinds of stores. However, I did see this sign advertising a "Fidel-Garten." Most of the German restaurants have a "Bier-Garten." It is usually an enclosed courtyard where you can eat outside. It doesn't really have much to do with beer. This sign was outside a Cuban restaurant. It didn't go inside, so I can't report on how far this theme goes. I'm hoping that there is a cardboard cutout of Mr. Castro and maybe the waitstaff is wearing those awesome hats? But it's probably just wishful thinking.
Because nothing was open I decided that I'd just explore on my bike. I just started going in a direction that I hadn't gone before. I rode out for about 45 minutes. I saw a bunch of car dealerships, 2 tombstone stores (what's the word I'm looking for here, they're not stores...), and a bunch of closed shops. It was nice, but not too interesting. Then on my way back I found the city cemetery of Goettingen. When you walk in there is a sign telling you how to find the graves of the 6 Nobel prize winners who lived here. I wandered around. The graves seemed to start in the late 1800s, and then, with only a couple exceptions the latest I saw were from the 1980s. This picture is of the graves of Germans who died World War II. There is a monument(in the middle of the picture above this. That says simply "those who died in WWII". The graves look like the one to the right. Simply a cross, the name, and dates of birth and death. What is interesting is that the ivy or whatever plant is around the graves is allowed to grow up just enough to cover the date of death. I don't know if it's intentional, but it seems too much to be a coincidence. (If you look at the picture below, you can almost see what I'm talking about)

On my way back I did manage to find one place that was open on Sunday. There was a "Flohmarkt", a flea market. I figured at the very least I could pick up some utensils. There are always utensils at flea markets. I found some for .50E, and I also bought a glass for the same price. My greatest triumph however was successfully fighting the urge I have to buy old books. There was one book on the 1932 Olympics that looked like it was published in 1932 that was very cool. However it was 30E. That was a little too steep. So it ended up being a successful bike ride.

So maybe I ramble a little bit.

This is the view from my window. It's very idyllic and German. The only problem is that it faces directly east. So I need to close the curtains when I go to sleep or I will be woken up by the sun shining very brightly directly on my eyes. It has not rained a single day since I've been here, while for the 2 weeks before it rained almost every day. Coincidence... I think not.

And now for some rambling. (I wonder where I get that from)
I've come to really enjoy cooking. It's fun. I don't have that much storage space and the supermarket is a 3 minute bike ride, so I usually go around 5 and figure out what I want to cook. It's very grown up and all that stuff. I made little brotchen pizzas today. I found out today that "ja!" also has shampoo. I'm slightly frightened to try that one though. I take such meticulous care of my hair. It takes hours to get the "I cut my hair twice a year" look.

One random note, the deposit on stuff here is crazy. It's like .25. I bought a 1.5L soda today for .39 (yes it was ja! brand), and there was a .25 deposit. I've discovered a forest with trails about 2 miles away, so that should help make running easier.

It turns out the deal with the stipend is that I can't get it until October 1st, because that's when the infamous David Starr gets back from Cali. I don't know what he's doing there, but he's the one who is supposedly in charge of my program. But it'll be around 400E a month once I get it, and I will get the money for September, just not until October. Thanks to the mind-numbing work I did this summer it's not an issue.

There is a TV in the dining room that's right next to the kitchen. When I'm eating my meals I usually turn on Eurosport, because I'm suffering from ESPN withdrawal and that's the closest thing there is. The last few days there has been the men's field hockey world cup on. It is apparently being held in Germany. And guess who advanced to the final, Australia.

Adventures in Retail

Today I didn't have anything to do, so I thought I'd go out and buy some stuff. The room came with sheets, but there weren't any with the elastic that you put over your mattress and the pillow that they gave me was 2'6" square, and down. I can't deal with down pillows, they're too soft and the feathers always end up poking me. So I set off on my bike and tried to find a store. I was unsucesfull, but then I IM'd Dennis, who was a TA two years ago and asked him. He sent me to Karstat, where I went. When I was in there I saw that the section for boys was labled boys I thougth it was interesting so I took this picture. Immideatly after I took it a saleslay came up to me and said "Photos sind im Haus verboten." Pictures are prohibited in here. I said excuse me and fortionatly she didn't take my camera. I found a bedspread, a hand towel and a pillow. It was a success.
I did my first real round of food shopping later. I got some basic stuff, eggs, flour, oil, cheese, pasta, yogurt all for around 30E. I boutght enough food to last me for a while, so I'm happy. The cheapest version of everything was this brand titeld "ja!" which means yes in german. It's been fine so far, and it's really cheap. At least my to my non-grocerie-shopping eyes. The one thing that is expensive is peanut butter. It was 1.50E for a jar about 1/3 the size of one you would get in America, but it's clearly imported and I don't think the germans use it a lot, so maybe I'll just have to limit my consumtion. I cooked some pasta and a pre-made garlic bread loaf for dinner. Alex and I threw some tomato sauce and feta on there and it was pretty good. While we were in there two women, one of whom still lives here, the other who used to came in. They explained the way things work here, which no one had really done.
Kitchen: You have one month each semster where it is your responsiblity to clean the kitchen. You clean it every day for that week. There is a set of dishpans that are common property, but they were described as "ecklehaft" or nasty. As usual, no one can wash dishes well. You can claim one shelf of the cabnets for yourself and label it "privat" which means the same in German as English. The one of the women who was living somewhere else gave me 5 dishes, and a tall (like 8") beer glass because she didn't need them. So that's nice.
Laundry: There are 2 washing machines in the basement. They cost 1E. The only issue: there are no drying machines. So yeah. Looks like I may be hanging some lines in my room.
Other stuff: there is also a communal iron and vacume cleaner.
That's about it for today, I can't prommise all this pace of updates will continue but now with no classes, and not really knowing anyone it's a comforting activity.

Write a comment if anyone is actually reading this.

Arrival in Germany

I got into Germany yesterday. It's been pretty busy so far, but that's about to calm down. I arrived at 1 pm local time on Wednsday (9/6). I got into my room right away and proceded to pass out for 2 hours. After that I went for a walk and bought some milk and cerial. I ate dinner out at a crappy italian restraunt with Alex, which is where I'm drinking this beer. Beer is really cheap here. At the supermarket it's 3 euro for a 6 pack of Becks, and even at a bar it was only 2 euro for .5L. The city has a fun downtown. It's a pedestrian only zone, and it has a bunch of shops and some restraunts and bars. After dinner I went out with Sebastian (he was a TA last year at Amherst) and Alex (the amherst student I'm here with. It was fun. Wednsday night is apparently the big college night out, I was told not to schedule classes for Thursday morning. The weather has been good so far. Highs in the 70s, lows in the 50s, so fairly simmilar to the north east. Navagating the German Beurocracy has been predictably difficult. This morning I was told to do about 17 different things. The guy who is supposed to be here and help guide me through this, no one can get a hold of. There's a rumor he's getting back on Monday so maybe I'll be able to figure out things then. Today I bought a bike, which everyone rides here. Riding it occationaly makes me feel like I'm 7, but it helps you get around a lot faster.
Notes about the Germans so far:
-The Men are Huge. I'm about average height at 6'1". There are many men who are 3-4" taller than me.
-So are the Women: I've seen more women my height in two days than the rest of my life combined.
-No one J-walks. Everyone stands there and waits for the walk signal. I ran a red light on my bike today and an older German gentleman also on a bike cornerd me and proceded to yell at me. I had to go off the path to get around him.
That's about it for now. It's almost 11 and I think the going out the night after getting 2 hours of sleep ona plane is catching up to me.