Weekend Update

It has been a mild, sunny, slightly windy weekend.  I did a ten mile run on Saturday, and then mostly read and did the German DVD the rest of the day.  And ate.  And drank a lot of water (and a ‘Coke Light’ which is European for Diet Coke.)  Today I did a little sight-seeing, went to the grocery store, and am catching up on e-mail and bills.  So, not the most exciting of weekends, but I am planning some travel for June so it should get better!

To make up for the lack of excitement, I did upload some more pictures.  I’ll start with the view from my office.  This is looking out to the NNW.  There is a little bay area at the top of the island; that is the water you can see.  There is a nature walk that goes right along the lab building.

Here is the view moving a little more to the west.  The ‘hills’ in the FAR background are actually just vegetated sand dunes.

 

Here is the rabbit that lives outside my apartment building.  I have named him Elton, although he doesn’t come when called or anything.  Not the highest quality photo, but he can be shy.

 

Here are some of the quintessential Sylt houses, then a detail of the roof. 

 

 

Most Popular News Story in Germany, at this moment

Driver naps while drunk

passenger steers on

Autobahn

Published: 19 May 08 17:06 CET
Online: http://www.thelocal.de/11961/

Drive-time became sleepy-time for one Frenchman on Germany’s Autobahn until an off-duty police officer caught him napping while his inebriated passenger steered the car, police said on Monday.

The off-duty officer was driving to work near the town of Bruchsal-Büchenau on the A5 in the southwestern German state of Baden-Württemberg when he saw the driver of a Renault with French license plates sleeping openly, his head lolling against the window as his companion in the front passenger seat steered the car at a speed of about 110 kilometres (68 miles) per hour, Karlsruhe police said.

The officer – who was not in uniform – followed the car, honking his horn repeatedly as the driver slept.

More than nine kilometres later, after his copilot swerved wildly while changing lanes, the driver awoke and accelerated to about 160 kilometres per hour, according to the officer’s report.

Police intercepted the car just north of the city of Karlsruhe.

The passenger, also a French national, was under the influence of heroin and had a blood alcohol content of nearly 0.05 percent, police said. He being investigated on suspicion of driving while drunk, under the influence of drugs and without a driver’s license.

The sleeping driver was sober and is not being charged, according to the police.

 

The Local (news@thelocal.de)

Well, this is kind of surreal…

There is a cocktail party for the opening of the new lab going on, and I am hiding in my office because all mingling is going on in German.  I will venture out eventually I guess, only because I’m starving to death.  But in the meantime, there is some German guy playing guitar and singing spanish songs outside my office (for the entertainment of the party attendees, not just serenading me).  Hearing ‘Guantanamera’… it is giving me flashbacks to intro Spanish, and I have too many languages floating around in my head now as it is…

 

 

 

Out like a lamb?

I am taking a break from German Rosetta Stone to update my blog.  Having done most of my language study in the classroom, I can’t really tell you if Rosetta Stone is the best way to independently learn a language, but it does get a little mind-numbing after a while.  I am trying to do an hour a day of German study (in addition to hearing it spoken all around me all day and being clueless) but it is starting to wear on me.  I am apparently quite good at listening, reading, and writing, but bad at grammar and speaking.  I consistently have to repeat the grammar sections…I would like to say that this is because the examples are not sufficient to learn the grammar rules (I’ve looked at enough web-sites to know that there are a lot of rules to German and I am fairly convinced the example:rule ratio in Rosetta Stone is too low) but I could just be inept.  I’m also bad with repetitive-ness and language learning is a lot of repetition.

I did a long-ish run today, 7 miles, and it was pretty pleasant.  Sunny, but not very hot, and a light wind.  Especially light compared to yesterday, when we had 20+ mph winds all day and it was unpleasant to even go outside.  The most interesting part of  the run was the number of sheep wandering about next to the walking/running/biking path.  Usually, the sheep are in the fenced areas.  Today, there were sheep lounging on the sand dune next to one part of the path, and at one point I rounded a corner and there was a ewe and two lambs practically on the path.  I kind of stared at them, and the closest lamb stared right back.  Glad I don’t have a weird sheep-phobia.  (While I was writing this, I could hear another rogue sheep baa-ing through my open office window).

It has been a rough week for my family on Bainbridge, and I’m sending lots of positive thoughts to the Cranes and the Johnsons–love you all!!!  Very much. 

Small political aside. Ignore if you only came here for Europe pictures and stories.

Ah, yes.  The sacrifices we all must make due to the war–Bush weighs in on his (excerpted from an article by Mike Allen for Politico, link below):

For the first time, Bush revealed a personal way in which he has tried to acknowledge the sacrifice of soldiers and their families: He has given up golf.

“I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf,” he said. “I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.”

Bush said he made that decision after the August 2003 bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, which killed Sergio Vieira de Mello, the top U.N. official in Iraq and the organization’s high commissioner for human rights.

“I remember when de Mello, who was at the U.N., got killed in Baghdad as a result of these murderers taking this good man’s life,” he said. “I was playing golf — I think I was in central Texas — and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, ‘It’s just not worth it anymore to do.’“

You can see the interview at: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0508/10314.html

Iron Maiden

When I was staying at the Hilton at Charles de Gaulle before flying to Germany (Hotwire is my new hero, I stayed in a $600 room for $150 including taxes) I happened to look out at the airplane ‘parking lot’ across from my room and saw a jet that had ‘Iron Maiden’ painted down the side of it.

I am not a big follower of heavy metal, so I thought that maybe some European airline was really into Iron Maiden, or that it was some new advertising gimmick.  It crossed my mind that it might be an Iron Maiden tour plane, but then I looked at it in comparison to surrounding vehicles and thought, ‘No, it is much too large a jet…Iron Maiden couldn’t possibly be so big still that they could afford a jet like that. 

One would think that was enough brain cells to expend on Iron Maiden, and I sort of forgot about the incident.  THEN, Saturday, I was watching CNN International during lunch and there was a SPECIAL on about Iron Maiden on tour.  Yes, a CNN reporter actually accompanied Iron Maiden on their South American tour (which apparently sold out quite rapidly), and THERE WAS THE JET!  Iron Maiden is in fact still on tour (they look to be my father’s age, although my dad looks young for his age, so I don’t know), and they are in fact successful enough to have a large private jet.  And here I thought having access to CNN International would keep me informed about, well, news.

The only other special on CNN this weekend here was about some tragedy involving the babies in Papua, New Guinea (I was interested in watching this but was out running when it was on), so I can’t quite tell what drives the ’special report’ choices for station.  There was a cool report the other day by Christiane Amanpour about North Korea, they even let her into the nuclear reactor they are dismantling.  So I haven’t totally given up on learning things on the news…

Holiday?

Either it is a holiday today, or a plague has befallen everyone at work and I am the only one left standing. 

I guess that gives me lots of time to work on my German lessons, so that maybe next time there is a holiday I will know about it ahead of time.

My little German world, thus far

Above is the pier area across the street from my apartment, just down the street from the lab.

This is a picture of my apartment building, taken from the same spot as the pier photo (to be specific, I rotated 90 degrees).  The water was at my back as I took this picture.  The crane is part of the construction of a new center that will educate the public on the effects of climate change, which is being built across the street from my apartment and just a little down the street from the lab where I work (which is also under construction, although past the crane point).

So far, so good…

I’m still liking Germany.  I have managed to go to the grocery store once by myself, I found two great running paths, it has been sunny every day…okay, my only complaint is that my bed is hard as a rock so my back is killing me.  I feel like Goldilocks, in that in France the bed was too soft so my back was always killing me.  It is not just general back problems, because I was fine in hotel beds and in my bed in NC.  Hopefully I will eventually get used to it, or I will just walk around like Frankenstein’s monster for the first hour of every morning.

I have finally uploaded pictures to my computer, so my task for the day is to get them onto this website somehow.  Stay tuned (if you care).

Made It To Germany

I am in Germany now (let the second round of culture shock begin).  I flew from Paris to Hambourg yesterday morning, and took the train from Hambourg to Westerland, which is the main town on the island of Sylt.  List, the town where I will live and work for six months, is at the northern tip of Sylt, just across the water from Denmark.  I have a brand new office in a brand new building; the building is right on the water although my office has a view of houses and sand dunes on the land side.  My new bosses seem friendly and helpful, although we have yet to talk much about work as I am getting keys, finding the grocery store, etc.  I live across the street from the lab and from a pier area with stores and restaurants (if I need overpriced Roxy clothes, there they are a two-minute walk from my door!).  The pier area reminds me a bit of the pier in Monterey, CA, although without the barking of sea lions. 

Sylt looks a lot like Cape Cod, but with peaked roof houses, some with thatched roofs.  Huge sand dunes, water on either side, tourists everywhere.  The train ride up had me believing that Germany has more cows than people; perhaps if I had given it some thought before I would have put together that Schleswig-Holstein might have Holstein cows, or at least some type of cows. 

I do have my laptop, so hopefully I can put up pictures soon…