OK. So it took just under a week to get some internet in my new flat in Germany. With the help of a colleague here at NETZSCH Germany, I now have mobile internet via a USB stick, and a cell phone. Pretty sweet that I can have internet anywhere now! It certainly makes me feel human again. I can finally talk to people! Now it's time to post about my past week in Deutschland. Where to start....
The Plane Flight:
The flight wasn't so bad to be honest. At the airport I bought a universal power adapter so I could plug things in as soon as I got here. That was a clutch decision. It at least enabled me to use my laptop for music. I wouldn't have lasted long without music. I also took out 100 euro so that I could buy food and such upon arrival. This was also a really good idea since a lot of places around here only accept cash. So during the flight I ended up watching Invictus. Not a bad flick. They had some other fairly recent movies that I haven't seen yet. Halfway through the movie they started serving dinner. Priorities first. I finished the movie after dinner and managed to fall asleep shortly after it was over. I woke up with about 2 hours before we were expected to land. From there they served a bit of a breakfast (a pastry and coffee) before landing.
Saturday:
After getting off the plane I was lucky enough to meet up with another employee of NETZSCH Germany who happened to be on the same flight. He stuck around to make sure that I met up with a few people from the team that I'll be working with during my stay. When the arrived I was told that we were going out for a "real Bavarian breakfast." For those not in-the-know, that means weissbier and weisswurst (really good wheat bear and white sausages). Beer for breakfast? I'm down. They serve soft pretzels as an appetizer at most meals.
Weisswurst and pretzels
(not actually from the restaurant)
The waitresses at this restaurant were also wearing the beermaide outfits that Germany is so well known for. Yeah, I'm really diggin' this whole Bavarian breakfast thing.
Next they took me to my flat.
The living room/dinning room
(with a few welcome brews on the table)
The kitchen/dinning room
The kitchen
The refrigerator (it's a little small, but it'll work)
The bathroom (with dual flush toilet!)
The bedroom
The bed
Weird nightstand (it's green though)
The desk
Dresser/Closet
Sweet rotating overhead lights
More overhead lights (living room)
The German light switch
The German door and lock
(not the door to the apartment)
Skylight window
Skylight window (open)
Bedroom window (closed)
Bedroom window (open: method 1)
Bedroom window (open: method 2)
Sweet mini-vacuum cleaner
Spice rack
Kitchen ware
Coffee maker :)
Toaster
Before leaving, they let me know that they'd be back to pick me up later for dinner at a local (mini) beer fest. Nap time. I'm pretty beat from this whole jet-lag phenomenon. It's time to recharge a bit. The mini beer fest turned out to be a bbq at the local firehouse. They cooked up sausages (go figure) with fries, "steak" with mashed potatoes, and fish. I'm not a fish person so I stayed away from that. I had sausages for breakfast so I kinda felt like trying something else. Steak sounds good. Right away I was warned that this would not be the steak I'm used to. It's steak so it can't be all that bad right? I'm hungry, just give it to me. "Steak," mashed potatoes and weissbier it is! We all get our food and sit down. Naturally I'm the first to finish my plate and one of the last to finish my beer. They refilled the beer shortly after. During the meal someone asked how the steak was. I thought it was OK. Kinda like cafeteria steak. Low quality, but it's still food and it made me happy. I was later told that it was pig and not cow. Fine with me. In the middle of my second beer I still felt hungry and went back for a weisswuerst and fries. After dinner I asked if we could stop at a market on the way back to my flat so that I'd have food for Sunday.
Sunday:
SLEEP! So after sleeping in I made some breakfast and went out for a run on the trails that start right next to my flat. What else was I going to do? The trails are right there, I can't ignore them.
Trail entrance (from my bedroom window)
Another trail shot (from my bedroom window)
It turned out to be a pretty productive run. They cross over a few main roads so I got a bit of a feel for my surroundings. The trail goes out for a mile or two and then loops around. As the trail gets closer to home again it dips through some thicker forests where there are some logging trails. I made some food, unpacked a bit and took it easy for the rest of the day. Thankfully I had my laptop for music and a good book to occupy my mind.
Monday:
First day on the job. Most of it was spent in a meeting with two consultants from London that are working with our team. It was nice to be around a few other people that speak English. Their accents weren't too difficult to understand. It's better than listening to most of the team argue in German and not being able to understand a damn thing. I'm still using Rosetta Stone and the books I bought, but so far I've only accumulated a handful of vocabulary and minimal grammar so I still sound like a first grader. The company has me set up to take a language course sometime soon. Hopefully it's REALLY soon. So during work I discovered that the coffee here is SO much better than in the US. It's a lot stronger and much better tasting. I don't need nearly as much cream or sugar. Good deal. After work I went out with one of the guys from work to buy a badass video camera for documenting our tests. They dropped 1000 Euro on this thing! Afterwards we stopped at a restaurant to have pizza. It's pretty customary to eat pizza with a knife and fork here. It's not cut into slices for you, but some people will cut it up and eat it like we do in America. I tried the knife and fork thing. Kind of a pain, but I managed.
Tuesday:
More meetings. More yelling in German. Time for more coffee. As the day wraps up I get ready to go out with some guys from IT. Luckily our IT from the US was here for some sort of training. At least I have another American with me. We all go to another small beer fest, only this one is more like a carnival or fair. All the rides and games set up for the week. We sit down and order a round of drinks and then our dinner. These beers come in 1 Liter mugs. Are you fucking kidding me? A nalgene of BEER? This is awesome! I had two that night and I could feel it. Two liters of beer is nearly 5 beers back in the US. After dinner one of the German guys we were with bought a bunch of tokens for the bumper cars and insisted that we join him. I can't remember the last time I was behind the wheel of a bumper car. It was pretty fun riding around looking to T-Bone the guy across the track from you. Needless to say I had a stiff neck for the next 2-3 days from all the whiplash.
Wednesday:
The London guys went back home today so we had a little time to focus on our regular work. My first job was to draw up some 3D lettering that was going to be put on our pumps. Not a difficult task except that the program was in German. Luckily I've used the program before so I was able to recognize icons and such. It was still a pain to make it do what I wanted though. I still honestly need a fair amount of training with the program, regardless of which language it's in. Later on I got to see the pump get put to the test. First go, not so good. We got some vibration that shouldn't be there. We took it apart and checked a whole bunch of dimensions to see if anything was off and then checked to see if anything was slipping. Nada. We put it back together and tried again, this time adding a little more tension to the belt drive. All systems go this time around. It's still running even now. They're running the pump for 500 hours. That's quite a test!
Thursday is some sort of holiday here and since we didn't have work the next day a few of the guys wanted to take me out to a bar called Sudpfandl. It's a pretty cool bar that used to be a brewery. It's got two bars (one smoking, one non) and a dance room. We walked around a bit and ended up at the non-smoking bar. Good choice. I started off with a good ole Weissbier and then switched to cubra libre. That's what they call a rum and coke. Fine with me! We went through two bottles that night. You can order a bottle of rum and a bottle of coke. They'll put it in a bucket full of ice for you. I talked with a few people that spoke a bit of english, so that made the night a little better.
Thursday:
SLEEEEP! We were out until somewhere around 2AM so I needed sleep. When I finally got up I made some breakfast and started making some modifications to the presentations I've been working on back home. My boss volunteered me to present my work before a bunch of the big-wigs here at NETZSCH Germany. THANKS ASS!!!! I really didn't want to make any changes and I really don't feel like presenting this crap. I don't have much of a choice since my boss already put me on the agenda for this big meeting on June 1st. I better get my act together and quick!
Friday:
Most people took off since Thursday was a holiday. The guy(s) I work with are a little crazy so we went to work. They gave me some more 3D stuff to work on. This one is A LOT harder though. They gave me a 2D drawing of a competitor's pump and told me to draw it in 3D. This would be tough even with the english version of the program. This is going to take a few days. I'm pretty sure we have this pump down in the lab so I'm going to take a look at it on Monday to get a little more familiar with what I'm supposed to draw. Sometime next week I think I'm supposed to meet some of the guys in the design department. They'll teach me more about the program and such. This will be good stuff. Later on we went to the bank so I could set up an account. The girl we met with was smokin' hot! Short black hair, tan, and a slammin' bod. I might be stopping in the bank a few times a week.... After that we went and got set up with a cell phone and mobile internet stick. So far so good! The phone is in German though so that takes a little bit of work. The T9 is all for German words, so I'll be texting in German. Great.
Saturday:
Today I woke up and went right out for food. My stockpile is getting mad low. I went out for food on Wednesday before bar night. It took and hour or so of walking around before I found the supermarket. What a pain. You have to pay for your bags too, so you learn to pack the heck out of them. Today I knew the way so I didn't waste any time. I brought a small backpack and the bag I bought the last time I was there. I went prepared this time. Every time you go to a supermarket in the US, you notice shopping carts everywhere. Not here. They have a pretty nifty system for that. The carts all have a chain attached to the hand rail. On the free end is a key. This key is pushed into a locking device on the cart in front of it (closest to you). So essentially all the karts are changed to each other. The only way to disconnect this chain is to insert a coin (1 euro) into the locking device. This pushes the key out and free's up one cart. When you're finished shopping you have to put the cart back and use the key from another cart to lock it up. When you push the key in, you get your euro back! It's a pretty neat incentive to put your cart back where you're supposed to.
So shopping itself was pretty interesting. I can only understand a few words on any of the labels so I'm basically looking for pictures for things that aren't so obvious. Buying fruit, veggies, milk, meat and cheese are fairly easy so I opted for those items first. Pasta isn't too hard to figure out either. What took the longest was trying to figure out which bottle was body wash and which bottle was shampoo. Some shampoo bottles were shampoo & conditioner and others were shampoo & bodywash. Both are VERY common here as opposed to all the specialty items we have in the US. Not knowing any of the four terms in German made for some tricky deciphering. I'm pretty sure I got it right though. At least I'll smell good either way.
Shopping bags
A well stocked fridge
Milk, OJ, tomato sauce, ketchup and mustard
Bier, bacon, lots of yogurt, sausages-a-plenty, apples,
oranges, cheese and bologna.
Pasta, TORTELLINI!, coffee, raisins, dried plums,
PEANUT BUTTER and peanuts.
I found peanut butter!
The standard Focus
I've seen over a dozen Focus's over here. All different models. The Ford Fiesta is also a really popular car here. It's been around for a while. We'll see the newest model in the states for the first time in 2011. The new Focus should be statebound somewhere in 2010. Keep an eye out!
That's all I have for now. I hope this post was long enough to make up the long wait. I'll be posting more stories as they come and the pictures that go with them.
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