Hamburg

Hey everyone!

I managed to get in touch with Jim, and he and Tracy are going to Hamburg tomorrow morning just for the day. Unfortunately, my free rail pass expired today, and a normal ICE train ticket will cost me 120 euro for a round trip, so I will be traveling separately and will meet up with them in Hamburg. This also means that I will have to catch a 6 AM train (so I need to leave my room by about 5:15 AM). But, my train ticket will only cost 20 euro, including the return trip! Whoo!

Anyway, I'm going to go to bed now, since I need to be up in...oh....4 hours or so....

I love you all, and I will be sure to tell you all about my trip when I get back!

Comings and Goings

Hallo all!

By the way, this may be a bit random, but it is going to take me a while to get used to saying "Hello" again when I come home. I've gotten quite used to saying "Hallo" instead. In fact, I've grown so accustomed to it that I tend to use it even when talking to native English speakers here. But anyway, that is just a bit of a random side note.

In other news, Monday was quite an exciting day. Steffi and Gudrun came back from vacation, Mattias was back from being ill, and we got a new practical student, who unfortunately knows next to nothing about molecular biology. She seems to be very nice though. Pingkalai has her preparing fly antenna (poor girl...I wouldn't wish that job on anyone). So the lab was literally packed with people again. And David came back from his vacation on Wednesday. So now everyone is back. It's so much fun to have a full lab again, especially since last week there were maybe three or four people there at any given time.

Tuesday night was certainly interesting. One of the Americans here (he isn't from the RISE program, but he spends a lot of time with us anyway) was leaving, so we all got together to say goodbye. It was a lot of fun. It is rather sad to see our group slowly dwindling. But anyway....we all walked Frank to the train station that night (he was going briefly to Switzerland before he came back to Germany to fly home). I had taken my bike (and by my bike, I actually mean Steffi's) with me so that I could get home faster, and I wheeled it up to the train platform with me and parked it. We were all saying goodbye to Frank, when one of the other guys knocked into my bike and turned it over. The bike lock, which was sitting in the basket, flew out and fell down between the platform and the train tracks. Yikes....not good. The basket was also a little bent, but I managed to straighten that back out again.

Anyway, there wasn't anything we could really do about the lock until the train left, so we finished saying goodbye to Frank. After the train pulled away, one of the guys jumped down to retrieve the lock. At first I was really relieved because it looked like the lock was fine.......and then I noticed that the key had broken off in it. I managed to pull it out, and I can still lock up the bike, but I'm going to have to go out sometime in the next few days to buy a new lock for Steffi. ::Sigh:: Oh well. Apparently I can buy one for a reasonable price at one of the nearby supermarkets.

Erm...really, that has been the only eventful thing from this week. Steffi has started this new thing where she only speaks to me in German, and I can only answer in German. It is great practice, but it makes my head hurt sometimes. Hehe. Oh well. It's a shame that we couldn't have done that the entire time I've been here. I would be nearly fluent by now!

I still don't have any plans for the weekend, but I'm sure I'll think of something. I think that Jim is going to Hamburg, and I would love to go too, so maybe I can send him and email to find out when he is leaving and then tag along with him. We'll see how it goes. One way or the other, though, I'll let you all know what my plans are!

Love you all!

Hi everyone!

Just to let you know, I've got about half a post written covering the last few days. At the moment though, I'm simply too tired to finish it up. I will be sure to post it sometime tomorrow though. I love you all dearly! Bis Morgen!

Cologne, Drachenfels, Adenauer, and other Abenteuern

The weekend was amazing. Since I'm really not even sure how or where to start, I guess that I will stick with a general chronological order. That seems to work pretty well...

Thomas and I set off at around 5 PM on Friday for Brühl, which is about 20 km outside of Cologne. It was a long (4 hour) but enjoyable ride. Thomas and I talked about everything from comic books to cars. And I must say that it is an extremely strange feeling to be zooming down the highway at 100 miles an hour and still having people passing by you. But that's another story entirely....

Thomas dropped me off at Martin's flat, and Martin and his wife Alexandra (bless them) pulled out some food so that I could have dinner (it was 9:30 by that time, and I was STARVING). We stayed up talking for a while, and then I went to bed so that I could be up nice and early for Cologne.

I woke up around 8:30 when I heard Lorenz (their son) wandering around the flat. We had an incredible breakfast. They had a ton of food. We had boiled eggs, yogurt, croissants with butter and honey and jam, cold meats and cheeses, coffee, juice, practically everything you could think of. It was amazing, and I was quite stuffed when I finished. Afterwards, fully equipped with with directions to the train station, some maps of Cologne, Martin's cell phone and a set of keys to his flat, I began my long and perilous journey into the unknown!

They were doing construction at the train station on the tracks that would normally go to Cologne, so I had to cross over to the other side. At one point, a lady came up and asked if the train to Cologne was coming on this set of tracks, and I told her that I thought that it was. I apologized for my German, and she told me that it was quite alright. We spent the whole train ride talking together in German. Her ex-husband was from Africa, and so she was used to talking with people who didn't speak the language very well. She spoke slowly and clearly, and whenever there was something that I didn't understand, she would find another way to explain it so that I could understand. It was really wonderful. Plus, I didn't have to buy a train ticket, because she was on her way to work, and her train pass for her job let her bring a guest on the train on Saturdays. Anyway, we ended up exchanging email addresses so that we can talk to each other in the future. I think that it was probably the best experience of the entire day. I was just so pleased that I could understand what she was saying and that I could, to a very limited degree, speak with her as well.

Anywho, I got to the city and headed straight for the Dom. It is incredible. I personally think that it knocks the socks off of Notre Dame, but maybe that is just because it is in Germany. And everyone knows that I'm a bit biased towards anything German. The first thing I did was walk up the tower (which took quite a while....533 steps to get to the top). I was terrified not so much by the height, but by the stairs. It was one of those circular staircases where one side of the step is much narrower than the other. And you have people going up and down the stairs (which aren't very large) at the same time. I was convinced that I was going to slip and fall all the way to the bottom. All the same, there were no major mishaps, and I made it to the top. The view was amazing despite the wire fence all around to keep people from taking a flying leap off of the tower. And here is the Rhine, as seen from the Dom-Turm (turm means tower):

Then I got to walk back down the 533 stairs, and by that point my legs were extremely fatigued. They wouldn't stop shaking. ::sigh:: I need more exercise, clearly. Anyway, after that I walked around the inside of the Cathedral (the mosaics on the floors are astonishingly detailed) and went to visit the treasury. It was full of really old gold things, which was cool, but eventually I decided that it was time to go see some other things in Cologne, so I left. This, by the way, is one of the mosaics on the floor. Ignore the people standing in the middle of it. The Dom was very very crowded.

My next stop was a museum called the Romisch-Germanisches Museum, which, as you can guess, was about the Romans during their occupation of Cologne. There were some really neat things in there, but it was a rather small museum (which I suppose was a good thing because as it was, I still spent about 2 hours in there). During this time it rained a bit, but it had mostly stopped by the time I left. After that, I walked down towards the Rhein and wandered for a while. There are these really neat fountain/sculpture/play areas for people that are quite unlike anything I've seen before. And there are also these guys, apparently:

After the Rhein, I went back up towards the Dom and found a Starbucks (WHOO!) and had some coffee and a muffin. It was delicious. Afterwards, I went to the famous shopping district of Cologne, although I must say that I wasn't all that impressed. It was crowded, and all of the stores were clothing stores. Granted, the prices were cheap, but still. I can buy clothes in the States, thanks. Nevertheless, I looked around and finally decided that I was tired and I wanted to go back to Martin's. Strangely enough, I ran into the lady from the train again on the way back. We had another very nice conversation, and at one point a Guy-with-a-Bike also joined in on the conversation to tell me that he was quite impressed by my German considering that I had only taken two years of it. Also, he wanted to recommend that I speak with people as much as possible, because I will get much better that way. Anyway, it was very nice, and I really enjoyed talking with both of them.

I got back to Martin's house (after getting turned around not once, but twice....curse my inability to navigate), and had a wonderful dinner of wurst and potato salad, and we sat around talking and playing with Lorenz until pretty late in the evening. Finally, utterly exhausted, I headed to bed.

Sunday morning began very much like Saturday. There was a lot of delicious food for breakfast, and afterwards we packed everything up and all went on an adventure together! We decided to go to Drachenfels, a pretty famous mountain which makes up part of the Siebengibirge (the seven mountains). It is known for its castle ruins, its non-ruinous castle, and its view. The lore surrounding the Drachenfels is also really neat. The legends say that it is the mountain where Siegfried killed the dragon and took a bath in its blood to become invincible.

We went to the top of the mountain via the train, and once again, I had an amazing view. With the aid of the binoculars that Martin brought, I could even see the Dom, which was roughly 30 miles from where we were. About halfway down the mountain is a much newer (built in the 1880s, I believe) castle. Martin and I climbed into the top of tower here as well, and let me just say that my calves were not happy about it. But I think it was worth it. The castle:

Then we went to the Adenauer house and took a tour (which, unfortunately, was only available in German). Adenauer was the first Chancellor of West Germany after WWII, and he is extremely well respected and famous here. He was also responsible for having the capital city moved to Bonn for a while. In addition, his house is super cool and he had a great view and some really nifty gardens.

Once we finished that, we took the ferry across the Rhein and drove through Bonn back to Martin's house. We had dinner, and then Thomas and his girlfriend came to pick us up at about 8 so that we could head back to Gottingen. Before I left, Alexandra gave me a children's book in German that should be a pretty easy read. I'm quite excited. Also, she had Lorenz "sign" it for me. It was the sweetest thing ever.

The ride home was quite nice too. Martin and I were crammed into the back seat, which was a bit unpleasant, but we decided that we were going to be the annoying kids that ask every ten minutes if we were there yet. (We didn't end up doing that, of course, but it was fun to joke about it.) Thomas said he was going to have to send us to bed without supper and was somewhat disappointed when he found out that we had already eaten. The whole thing was especially funny when one of the "kids" (not me!) started demanding that we stop so that he could get a beer.

Anyway, all in all, it was a fantastic trip, and I will be sure to post more pictures soon. For right now, though, I think that I will head to bed. G'night!

I'm home!

Hi all!

Just a quick note to let you know that I am safely back in Gottingen. I had an amazing weekend, but I will have to tell you all about it tomorrow because I am literally falling over from exhaustion at the moment. I love you all dearly, and expect to hear from me sometime tomorrow. Night!

Off on Adventures!

Hi everyone!

This is really just a quick note to say that I will be leaving for Cologne this afternoon (4PM my time). So, I probably won't be reachable until sometime Sunday evening. I am super excited, but I've got a ton of stuff that I need to do to get ready. So, without further delay, off I go to pack! I love you all, and I will take lots of pictures to post when I get back!

Cologne and Other Things

The past few days at work have been unbelievably relaxing. We're waiting on some sequencing results to come back, and until that happens, there isn't much that I am going to be able to do. So, I generally do my behavioral assays with the flies (which are much more interesting now that I am working with the mutants and not just the wild type) in the morning, and then in the afternoon there isn't much else to do except sit around and talk.

Tuesday evening was pretty neat because I got to meet Martin's family (his wife and his year-and-a-half-old son). It was quite a bit of fun. They had come in from a town near Cologne to visit Martin for a few days and make some decisions about the house that they are having built here. I had a really nice conversation with his wife (whose name I can't remember at the moment) about traveling and my studies and so on. It was really enjoyable. I was telling her that I wanted to visit Cologne at some point because I really wanted to see the Dom (google it....HUGE cathedral in Cologne, and one of the only buildings left standing in the city after World War II). Anyway, she apparently told Martin, because he came to me yesterday and offered to let me stay with his family for the weekend if I wanted to come. So, I have plans for the weekend! Yay!

Then, last night, I went out to eat with a few of the folks from the program (and a few people not in the program). It was a lot of fun, actually. Our group is getting smaller and smaller as people leave for the summer, but the people that are still here are so much fun to hang out with. It was a really enjoyable evening. I ended up coming home far later than I had intended to for a weeknight (I got home a bit after 1 AM). Still, it was fun, and I'm bright-eyed and bushy-tailed after some breakfast and a big mug of Earl Grey. Plus, there will be coffee in the lab when I get there, so I can definitely get another caffiene fix later if I need it.

Anyway, I guess I should go finish getting ready for work. Love you all!

Walking and Failed Dinners

Hallo folks!

Well, it has been a crazy busy day, to say the least.

In the lab today I had to extract the DNA from these bacterial cell cultures that I made Sunday evening. The process took quite a bit longer than I thought it would because our centrifuge will only hold two large tubes at a time. ::Sigh:: Oh well.

After work I got an email from Jim (one of the guys in the program) saying that he wanted to get everyone together to go out for dinner. I definitely wanted to go, but I had clothes drying at the laundromat down the street, so I had to let those finish and then bring them back before I could leave. We always meet at the Ganseliesel at eight, and by the time I left it was 7:40. And it is a half hour walk to the Ganz (as we have lovingly nicknamed it). So, I ended up practically running down to the Innenstadt and made it, surprisingly, by 8:03, only to find that no one was there. I wasn't sure if maybe they had collected everyone and left to go get dinner already, or if they had canceled and I just didn't hear about it, but nevertheless, I decided to wander around and see if I ran into anyone. Jim had suggested two different places for dinner, but unfortunately I didn't know where either one of them was. So, I walked around trying to find them (and I did, by the way, but I didn't see anyone there). Finally, after about 40 minutes of wandering aimlessly, I decided to give up and go home to have dinner.

And, on the nice long walk home, I ran into Jim and Tracy. This, of course, would explain why I couldn't find anyone at the Innenstadt. Apparently no one was interested in getting together for dinner, so they canceled. Jim had sent out an email, but not until after I had already left. ::sigh:: Oh well.

Anyway, Tracy and Jim were going back to Jim's apartment to hang out, so they invited me along, and I went. We just sat around and talked and tried to be quiet because Jim's roommates are studying for finals. Around 10 I decided that it was time to go home. Unfortunately, I got a bit lost on the way (I'd never been to Jim's before, and couldn't remember exactly how to get home again) and then it started raining. So, by the time I got home at 10:30, I was wet, cold, and tired and I STILL hadn't had any supper. No worries though! It was still a pretty entertaining evening, and if nothing else, I at least got plenty of exercise. ;)

Anyway, that was all from today. I'll talk to everyone later! Love you!

Birkenstocks, Movies, and More

Hi all!

Once again, sorry for the lack of updates. I was going to write a post last night, but by the time I got home I was just too tired.

Friday in the lab was actually pretty fun, because we didn't have anything really to do. So, for the most part, we just sat around talking about different things (including some of the differences between Americans and Germans....it was quite interesting). Apart from that, it was a relatively quiet day. David left after lunch to go on vacation with his family, Robert had left on Thursday to go on vacation for a few days, and there really weren't too many other people around. Pingkalai and I spent a lot of time playing around on Google Maps. That is so much fun!

Saturday I got up and walked down to the Innenstadt to go to the Wochenmarkt, where I bought some amazing apple cider. I actually spent a lot of time wandering around and popping into the various stores that were open. I went into one of the many tea shops and very nearly bought a tea set until I realized that it would be nearly impossible to get it home intact. I also went into one of the yarn stores here and bought some yarn so that I can make something neat when I come home. I've discovered that I really miss my knitting and crochet. I wish that I had brought some of me needles with me. Oh well.

Then I wandered into the Birkenstock shop and bought these:

Hee! They have stripes! I love them....

I also stopped by one of the many vendors that had set up his stuff along the street and I bought this:

That's right folks, it's a fork. And it is awesome.

After all of this, I ran into one of the people from my program, and we went into one of the cathedrals to take a look around. It was pretty nice, but the really odd thing about it was that they had these statues set up all over the church. They were very modern, and crazy odd. For instance, one of them was a girl sitting in a pew holding a cell phone. Another one was a man staring up at one of the stained glass windows with a camera in his hands. We found out that it is actually a traveling art exhibit designed for churches. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me, so I wasn't able to take any pictures. But trust me, it was weird....

Jonathan suggested that we get a group of people together for the evening to go see a movie at the open air kino. I thought it sounded cool, so I agreed, and I walked back down to the Innenstadt to meet everyone a bit later in the evening. The movie that we saw was called The International, and it was, of course, dubbed over in German. I was able to follow it for a little while, but the movie was one of those political thrillers that is nearly impossible to follow in English, much less in another language. Plus, it was really cold last night and I was more focused on trying to stay warm than on following the movie. It was still a lot of fun, though.

Anyway, that's about it. There's a market of some sort right outside of the MPI this afternoon, so I think that I may go out and see what is there. Talk to you all later!

Nothing Much

Hey folks!

Sorry for the lack of posts, but honestly there isn't a whole lot to tell. Things have been pretty normal. I went out for dinner and ice cream Monday and Tuesday with the other kids from my program. It is always very relaxing to hang out with people whose native tongue is the same as your own. I was going to go to dinner with them again tonight, but I didn't get off work until the same time that I was supposed to meet them. I'll send everyone an email in the morning to apologize.

Otherwise, everything is fairly routine. There is lots of work to do, because Pingkalai and I have worked out a way for me to do both the molecular biology stuff that I enjoy and the behavioral assays, which aren't bad but which I don't enjoy as much. I will admit that I just started doing the behavioral assays with the mutant flies and that is rather fascinating because they act so differently than the wild type flies.

I'm also trying to speak more German in the lab. I'm pretty sure I surprised Bjorn today, because he came by to ask if anyone had gone to lunch yet, and I told him (auf Deutsch, of course) that we had already eaten. Judging from the look on his face, it definitely caught him off guard. Hehe. I've also been having small conversations with Ute and Pingkalai in German. I know it's a bit late to start now but I suppose every bit of practice helps.

I still don't have any plans for the weekend but I will see what I can work out tomorrow and Friday. Maybe I can take a trip to Hannover or Kassel just for the day. Those are both fairly close by train so I wouldn't mind going alone.

Anyway, that is everything from Germany! Love you all!

Birthdays

Thank you all for all of the birthday wishes yesterday! It was a very relaxing, fun birthday.

I didn't get back from Heidelberg until pretty late, as you know, so I took the opportunity to sleep in, which was absolutely fantastic. Then I just sort of spent the day hanging out in my room and relaxing until it was time to go meet Pingkalai at the MPI. She had emailed me earlier in the day to let me know that everyone else was in Cologne for the weekend, but if I wanted to we could still get together to have dinner or something.

So, at the appointed time, I went to the lab and was extremely surprised to find Simon walking in too. He shook my hand and wished me a happy birthday. Pingkalai came out of her office and did the same. Apparently it is traditional, even among friends, to shake someone's hand when you wish them a happy birthday. I thought it was a bit awkward because it seemed so formal, but I'm sure that is only because I'm not used to it.

Anyway, Pingkalai started fussing a bit because "It is hard to have a surprise birthday party when everyone is late!" I was delighted. She had baked me a cake and everything. (It was delicious cake, too, by the way. It had a chocolate cream filling!) Guvanch came in and handed me a small package with a little snow globe in it. The snow globe had a little teddy bear wearing a sailor suit and holding an anchor. Guvanch said "He's a world traveler, just like you!" I thought it was adorable.

At first, it was me, Pingkalai, Simon, Guvanch, and Bjorn, but Bjorn left after the cake to go to a concert and said that he would meet up with us again later. David came in a bit later. We all sat around drinking coffee and eating cake for a while, and then we decided that we were going to go for a walk out in the woods. Afterwards we were going to go bowling.

The walk was awesome. It was so pretty, although it was quite muddy because it had been raining here all weekend. Still, we had a great time. Guvanch was teasing me about my accent, which was really funny. Simon and David spent the whole time talking about phones, because Simon wants to get a new cell phone and he really likes the one that David has. It was just so much fun.

After our walk, Simon went home to spend some time with his wife, and we all went to Burger King for dinner, and then to the bowling alley. Bjorn met us there. It was so much fun! I haven't been bowling in years (and frankly, I was terrible at it). I did finally discover that it was quite a bit easier if I used my left hand instead of my right. I know, that seems like a funny thing to have to figure out when I'm left handed, but using my right hand was honestly more comfortable. Anyway, I got the first strike of the evening!

Poor Bjorn was having a hard time because he and David had done a Triathalon the day before and he had apparently pulled a muscle or something. Anyway, it was a lot of fun. Guvanch won, and I came in third.

So, all in all, it was a great birthday. Now I need to go to work, because I am quite late! Love you all!

Heidelberg

Hallo!

I'm finally up an moving for the day, and now I can tell you all about the trip to Heidelberg!

Let's start by saying that I have to give the people at RISE credit for even attempting to arrange a meeting of 350 college students when there are really only about 6 or 7 of them running the program. I have to give them even more credit for even vaguely making it work. But I will admit, much of the meeting was a disorganized mess. Not to say that it wasn't still enjoyable, because I did have a good time; it was just often confusing and more than a little crazy.

Heidelberg was very pretty, although I didn't see nearly as much of it as I would've liked. We arrived at the hostel, got checked into our rooms, had lunch, and then piled onto a bunch of buses to go to the old university campus for a welcome meeting. We were in this beautiful room called the Alte Aula, which they said was actually fairly new (it was built in the 1880's). Needless to say, we all snickered quite a bit at that because anything more than 100 years old is practically ancient in a lot of regions of the States (the East Coast may be an exception to this). Still, the university was established in 1386, so I guess that they would consider the Alte Aula to be pretty new.

The welcome meeting in and of itself was dreadfully boring, except for the first speaker who told us some interesting things about the university. So, after that, we walked across to another university building to have some dinner. Unfortunately, they seemed to have forgotten that the evening meal in North America is quite different from here in Germany. They supposedly ordered enough food for 400 people, but it was all finger food and they ran out way before everyone got food. I managed to get my hands on one piece of chicken and a little pastry thing. A lot of people had to go out and find bakeries that were still open in order to eat.

After that, we had these panel discussions about studying in Germany for a Master's Degree or Ph.D. I enjoyed the one about the Master's, but the one about getting a Ph.D. in Germany was rather...tedious. I was itching to get out of there by that point. When they finally let us out (late, of course) I went back to the hostel and hunted down everyone else from Gottingen. They were all sitting out back hanging out. We had thought about going out to explore, but I think that everyone was so tired that all we really wanted to do was relax for a while.

The next day we had to visit a company for a tour. The company I ended up going to was one called Degussa, and was about a 1 hour bus ride to Hanau. Degussa is a chemical production plant, and we got to tour some of the factory. It didn't really have much to do with my field, but I guess it was neat to see how they produce chemicals on a large scale. That took up most of the day, and the bus ride on the way home was about 2 hours for some unexplicable reason (because we didn't hit any traffic) but we managed to get back by about 5:15.

At 7, we went back to the inner part of the city for dinner at a brewery. There were actually so many of us that they had to send us to two different restaurants, but I managed to go to the same one as all of the folks from Goettingen, although I didn't get to sit with them. Instead, I had to sit with all of the people from the ACS. It was actually a lot of fun. Lourdes (she's the lady from the ACS that organized everything for the orientation meeting in D.C. back in March) was there, and she had dinner with all of us. They didn't tell us that only our first beverage was free, so most of us had more than one. Lourdes, though, was very nice and paid for all of our drinks at the end of the evening. We've decided to treat her to dinner at the D.C. conference when we get back.

After dinner we all wandered around the city for a while, and all of the ACS folks had the most amazing experience. We were standing in a square next to this big fountain, just talking, when some old man came up to us and asked us where we were from. Apparently, he was an American who had been living in Heidelberg for about 30 years. He was a professor of philosophy or something like that. It was so crazy, because all of a sudden he just said, "Okay, you all are going to think that I am nuts, but I am going to sing you a song about how much I love Heidelberg." And so he did. It was actually very pretty, and he had a great voice. After that, he asked us to give him 5 or 6 words, and then, right off the top of his head, he made up a song using those words (the words, by the way, were penultimate, tricycle, doubtful, cakes, and one other, but I can't remember what it was). It was so funny, but really great. We all got our pictures taken with him before he left. I'll see if I can find someone who has posted the picture so that you can see it.

The last day in Heidelberg was definitely the best. We all got up, had breakfast, and went out for a "debriefing" in which the head guy essentially apologized for all of the things that went wrong during the conference. Then we hopped on some buses and went down to the city center for a guided tour of the city and the castle that is up on the side of the mountain (that, by the way, was a VERY long walk up more than 300 stairs). But it was well worth it. The city really is very beautiful, and the castle is AWESOME. I will certainly post pictures at some point. After the tour, we were free to do whatever we wanted. Jen and I (one of the people from Gottingen) decided that we wanted to stick around and explore for a little while. I think that everyone else was going back to Gottingen as early as possible, since some of them had been hiking in the Alps and hadn't been back since we went to Munich the weekend before. Hanging out in the city was a lot of fun. Jen and I bought some jewelry from an artisan in a really neat little market, and we went to this bakery and got this AMAZING thing called a castle-cannon ball. Essentially, it was this big pastry that had nougat cream in the middle, pound cake surrounding that, and the whole thing was dipped first in marzipan and then in dark chocolate. It was soooo good, but ridiculously sweet. We also saw this guy from France doing a street performance (sort of like a circus act of sorts). It was really funny because he was switching back and forth between German, English, and French the whole time, sometimes using all three languages in the same sentence.

We ended up missing the train that we wanted to catch back to Gottingen by less than a minute, so we ended up waiting around for an hour until the next (and last) train came. Anyway, it was quite a lot of fun, and we had a great time.

Anyway, I should go. I'm supposed to meet Pingkalai in about 20 minutes to go out and do something for my birthday. I'll tell you all about it tomorrow!

Home Again!

Hi everyone!

I just wanted to let you know that I made it back from Heidelberg in one piece! It was great fun, but I am completely exhausted. I am looking forward to sleeping in really late tomorrow morning. I will certainly make sure to post all about my adventures first thing when I get up though! I love you all! G'night!

Sambesi

Hi all!

Sorry for not updating. It has been a busy but mostly uneventful past few days. At the moment I am trying frantically to get ready for my weekend in Heidelberg, so this will probably be a relatively short post.

I will say that last night everyone from the RISE program in our city (plus a few people from the nearby city of Kassel) met up for dinner at this African themed restaurant called Sambesi. It was a sort of farewell dinner for Jamie, who is leaving after Heidelberg. It was very very cool. There were a TON of people there, most of whom I had never met before. I didn't realize that there were so many people in our program in the city.

Everything on the menu was really exotic. They had crocodile, ostritch, and even zebra. I ended up getting the zebra, by the way. It tasted mostly like beef with a small hint of lamb thrown in. It was crazy, but delicious. Who would've thought that I would get to try zebra while in the middle of Germany!?

Anyway, after dinner we walked over to this place called Trou, which is essentially this neat little pub that is literally located in the stone cellar beneath some buildings. The atmosphere was amazing. You're sitting there, around a bunch of barrels, and most of the light comes from either these really weak lamps overhead or the candles on your barrels. Very, very, neat.

Anyway, a little while after we got there, this very loud and very drunk German guy came by to "practice his English" with us. It was really funny, because most of the time he didn't make any sense whatsoever. Poor guy.

And really, that was most of my evening. I came home, packed up most of my stuff for Heidelberg, and now I'm just getting ready to go. Again, I won't have my laptop with me this weekend, but I should be home by late Saturday night so that I can tell you all about my trip!

Bis Dann!

Munich and Everything Else

Oh my. I'm not even entirely sure where to start, except to say that I should probably start with Thursday, since I haven't done a proper blog post since then.

Thursday I got an email from one of the guys from my program saying that there was a huge party sponsored by the university on the main campus that night. Everyone was going to meet at his flat beforehand to hang out for a little while and then walk down to the party. I didn't really want to go to the party, because they really aren't my sort of thing, but I did want to go hang out at Mitran's place. I wanted to get to know some of the people that were going to be going with me to Munich, as I had only met most of them once or twice. Anyway, long story short, I got to Mitran's flat, everyone had a great time, and they convinced me to go with them to the party.

Again, I am not much of a party person, but I guess it was fun. They had the party both inside and outside of a big building on campus (I think it was the Mensa). Mostly it was just frustrating because there were too many people, it was too warm, and I kept losing the group of people that I was with. I ended up standing around a lot going "hmm....I wonder where in this crowd of 600 people they could be?"

Eventually though, I met up with everyone else again and we had a pretty good time. There was one point when Frank and I were trying to catch up with everyone else, so we were talking to each other about the best way to navigate through the crowd. Apparently, one of the German guys heard us speaking English and wanted to know where we were from. Of course, there were too many people around to have a proper conversation, but it was still funny.

Anyway, at some point I got bored and decided that I needed to go home, since I had to work the next day. Frank was really nice and walked me back to the MPI. I would like to note that there is no real concept of a "work week" here, in which all you really do is go to work and go to bed early so that you can go to work the next day. If they want to have a party on a Tuesday night and stay out until 3AM, then that is what they are going to do. Or maybe that is just the college students (who may or may not be on holiday right now, I'm not sure).

Friday I left work early so that I could figure out how to get to the Bahnhof. That was actually quite an ordeal. I was going to just walk, but it was so hot that I really didn't want to. So I decided to test out the bus system. Unfortunately, I didn't know that the buses don't really work like they do at home. The buses don't run every 10 or 15 minutes or so. They run maybe once or twice an hour (i.e. at 3:25 and then again at 3:55, or something like that). I was starting to panic because I asked one of the ladies when the bus was supposed to come, and she said 3:25. Then I asked her how long it was supposed to take to get to the Bahnhof and she said 20-25 minutes. Well, I was supposed to meet everyone at 3:55 because our train was leaving at 4:00. If the bus was late or something happened, I wasn't going to make it in time to catch the train, and I had no way of getting into contact with anyone in my group. And unfortuately, by that point there wasn't time to walk to the station, as I was more than a half hour away by foot. So, it was a rather tense bus ride, but I made it on time and met up with everyone. Everyone, by the way, is defined as Ginni, Jim, Andrew, Kyle, Mitran, and Jamie.

The train ride was nice, but it took longer than expected because we got caught in some bad weather and then had to switch tracks. So, our three and a half hour train ride turned into five hours. Oh well. We all got to Munich in the end, and found our hostel without too much trouble. We had booked a big room with three sets of bunk beds in it (for the six of us). Mitran was also there, but he was staying with some friends living in Munich and we didn't see him much during the weekend. The room was pretty nice, and relatively cheap (15 Euros/night/person), but it was a bit of a trial to share one bathroom among six people. ::Laugh::. Also, we had to pay for our towels. Which was odd. So, once we got settled we went out to dinner at this little cafe, which had a great atmosphere but only mediocre food. Then we went back to the room and crashed.

Saturday (the fourth!) was a ridiculous amount of fun. We started out by going to the city center, called Marienplatz, to see the Glockenspiel. Jim, who requested that we go to see it, was a bit disappointed, I think. It isn't very high tech.

Then we just wandered around for a while and took pictures of all of the crazy buildings and such. For instance, buildings like this:

Jim and I, the only two Americans in the group, were super excited when we found a fruit stand

that was selling big hunks of watermelon. We bought one and shared it, because of course, there is nothing more American than eating watermelon on the fourth of July! Or at least, something like that... Anyway, it was fabulous!

Eventually we wandered over to the Deutsches Museum, which is this HUGE science and technology museum. We spent three or four hours in there, and still only saw maybe 5 or 6 exhibits, and only made it up to the 2nd of 7 floors. It was NUTS. My favorite exhibits were the musical instrument exhibit and the chemistry exhibit. The chemistry exhibit was interactive! How cool is that??? Most of the guys (because they are all physics majors) were having fits over the particle physics exhibits. It was really funny to watch Jim, Andrew and Jamie "oooh" and "ahh" over stuff.

After that we went and had dinner at a different little cafe and decided to strike out towards a popular place called the Hofbrauhaus for dessert. We got hopelessly lost, and ended up wandering around for at least an hour and half before we finally found it. It was quite fun. We all had a great time there. At one point Jim started singing the national anthem. All of the Canadians joined in too, which I thought was really confusing but still neat (Ginni, Kyle, and Andrew are all Canadian. Jamie is from Britian. He just sort of sat there, completely clueless, until we finished, and then he shouted "God Save the Queen!"). By the way, we all pick on each other relentlessly about our nationalities. It is really quite a lot of fun. Jim and I harass Jamie to

death about being "a snobby Brit" and of course, he teases us all the time about being "mannerless Americans."

And here are a few pictures of everyone:

From left to right, it is Ginni, Jamie, Jim, and Kyle. Here's another one, where Jim is actually looking at the camera and you can see Andrew too.

After dessert, a few of people went out to a club and the rest went back to the hostel. I went to the hostel, as I was tired and in no mood to do anymore partying. Once in a week is enough for me, thank you.

Sunday we weren't really sure what we were going to do. While we were at the train station saying goodbye to Kyle (who wanted to get back to Gottingen early), it started raining. Which was sort of gross. But we waited for a bit and the rain stopped, so we ended up going to this place called the Englische Gartens. Essentially, it is a huge park that has a place in the middle where you can buy food. I ended up sharing this delicious pancake/waffle/french toast-like thing with Ginni. It had fresh strawberries on it and it was wonderful! We spent the rest of the afternoon in the park, sometimes walking around, sometimes just laying in the grass or on a park bench and enjoying the weather (which had very much improved and had turned into a warm, breezy, beautiful day).

We got lost while we were leaving the park and missed the train that we were originally going to take back home. At first we thought that the only other train was leaving at 8 PM and arriving at 3AM, but Jim managed to find another train that was leaving at six and getting in at around ten. No, I can't really explain why there is such a vast difference in the length of time to get back to Gottingen. I think that it is very odd. But anyway, Jamie, Ginni and I took the 6PM train to get home. Andrew and Jim were staying in Munich because they were leaving to go spend a few days hiking in the mountains. They are supposed to meet everyone at Heidelberg this weekend.

And so, that was my trip. It was excellent, and I loved every minute of it. I can't wait for Heidelberg this weekend with all of these folks!

Another Super Quick One

Hi all!

This is just another super quick post to let you all know that I am home from Munich and I had a really fantastic time. Unfortunately, I didn't get home until about 10:30, so I think that I am going to go ahead and go to bed. A full post (covering events from Thursday to today, so pull out your reading glasses, folks, 'cause it is going to be a long one!) will be magically appearing sometime tomorrow, so keep your eyes peeled! Night!

And I'm Off!

Hi everybody.

This will be a very short post, just to say that I am leaving any minute to go to the train station and then off to Munich! I hope that everyone has a great weekend and a wonderful 4th of July, and I will tell you all about my trip when I get back. Wish me luck!

Kace

Busy Busy Busy

Hi all!

Sorry about the lack of updates! Pingkalai has been keeping me absolutely hopping the last two days. Yesterday I was so busy, I didn't even have time to sit down until about 4 in the afternoon. I got to work only to find that a pipe in the cold room had burst during the night and flooded the entire lab (what a mess!). Everything was sopping wet, and we spent the morning dancing around puddles and trying not to get too soggy. After we had sort of dealt with that problem (the carpets are still wet), I had to transfer two boxes of flies to new tubes, collect the antenna from a bunch of flies, do an RNA extraction, an RT-PCR and I was going to do my behavioral assays as well, but I was so tired by that point that I just couldn't bring myself to do it. So essentially, I came home and crashed after that.

Then today, I had to do a regular PCR, make and run the gel from that, design primers for 6 or 7 sets of genes, and aliquot a gazillion tubes of agarose. I still haven't quite figured out why they bother to do that. It is so much easier to just measure out the agarose as you need it. That way, you can make any percentage gel that you want. Instead, I spent more than two hours measuring out .80 grams of agarose powder and then pouring each bit into a tube. It was crazy. There was actually a really funny moment when William walked into the room, gave me this look of pure pity, said "Oh, I see what you're doing" and then turned around and walked out. It appears he has had to do that before. He knows what a pain it is. At one other point, David walked into the lab looking for paper towels (because we are running short of them after the flood from yesterday morning), looked very perplexed, asked me what I was doing, and then seemed just as baffled by it as I was. ::Shrugs:: Oh well. When in Rome, I guess.....

One problem that I may run into is that Pingkalai has a very specific way that she likes to do things and have them done. I'm used to things in my lab at home where they don't really care how you do it, as long as nothing gets contaminated and everything gets done. The other big problem is that there seems to be a battle of wills going on in the laboratory. Ute also has a very specific way that she likes to do things, and even though she isn't here right now (she's still sick) it is very obvious that Pingkalai's way and Ute's way are often very different. And seeing that I've already been mildly fussed at by both of them for something that I did that they didn't agree with, I have a feeling that I will get caught in the middle of their mild feud (i.e. if Ute sees me doing something Pingkalai's way, and she doesn't like it, then she may try to correct me, and vice versa.) So...it could get interesting. I'm just going to try to hold my ground and not let either one of them push me around too much. Or, failing that, I'll do it Pingkalai's way, since technically I'm working for her.

So...erm...what else....Oh yeah, after all of the other stuff I did today, I still had to go and do my behavioral tests, because honestly, I couldn't let it wait any longer. I was actually the last one to leave the lab today (I left at around 8:15 or 8:30). It has been a really long day because I got to the lab at 9:00 this morning. Hopefully tomorrow will be easier/not so crazy.

In other news, though, I have PLANS for the weekend! I am so excited! A few of the other kids from my program and I are all going to go to Munich this weekend. I think that the plan is to take the 4 or 5 o'clock train Friday night to Munich and then stay until Sunday. I think that we're all chipping in to get a couple of hotel rooms for all of us. I'm hoping that it will be fun, but I guess we'll see how it goes! Wish me luck!

Also, as a side note, while the weather is infinitely nicer here than at home (due to the lack of humidity) it still gets really warm sometimes, and there is no A/C in any of the buildings. This is frustrating, becacuse it means that I have a bug infestation (you know, those big mosquito looking things, and spiders) becauce I leave my window open 24/7 to keep it from getting too hot. It also makes it very difficult to sleep. And I'm afraid of swallowing spiders.

Okay, it is almost 1AM here, and I need to be up at 7:00, so I will talk to all of you later! Love you!