Berlin

Last Thursday was Corpus Christi {or something catholic}, so of course I had a four day weekend, which I spent in Berlin with the zukunftliche Frau Doctor Kukies {jetztliche gastkusine Alina}.

The primary reason for my visit was that I needed extra passport pages so that there would be room for my Spainish student visa. This process was pretty easy (they didn't care that my form was filled out in blue instead of the required black ink), but there were two noteworthy parts:

1. As an American you are supposed to cut the security line. There aren't two separate lines, a sign that says Americans are meant to go to the front, which is super awkward when there are Germans who have been waiting for who knows how long in the drizzle.
2. As you walk from the U-bahn to the Embassy there is a McDonalds directional sign that points towards the American compound (mickeydees isn't actually inside it's a few kilometers away)

After my successful interaction with bureaucracy, I went shopping then Alina and I did some very hip Berlin things. It would be incredibly uncool of me to tell you about them, but I'm going to anyways... I mean I'm a ruhrgebeit girl now, so I have to gush about the big city.

• Went to a 'party' slash art-thing in a crumbling-mostly roofless building, which was an homeless shelter in the 1800s and a nazi flag factory afterwards. There were those acrobats that twist themselves up in what looks like bedsheets then let go and stop six inches off of the ground, poetry and a quasi decent guywithguitar,
• Fleamarketed
• Club-Mate + Dönner u-bahn dinner (mate like the tea, not your homeboy; however, it is also your friend, because it keeps you awake). All the cool kids drink this carbonated acquired taste tea so they can leave to go out at 2 AM.
• Four story super awesome thrift store
• Watched the Christopher Street Day parade - basically Berlin Pride. It was really nice and interesting. Everyone was happy and dancing to the techno and the gaga. I mean mad respect for anyone who walks {or hoops} a whole parade route... especially in those shoes.

From Drop Box Met different groups of Alina's Berlin friends for dinner, coffee, beer, waiting in lines... watched rugby, ultimate and soccer being played in a park that didn't really have sports fields The not so awesome part: stupid knee pain thwarted all efforts to go clubbing in Berlin {again}... someday in the future I won't be so old and broken. Overall, it was a nice a productive weekend. I'm in Bonn right now for the DAAD RISEpro meeting, which has been fun, but I haven't been sleeping well...more on this weekend later.

In der Arbeit...

This is really basically totally what my first few weeks at work were like. I surf the net for info on energy storage(predominately batteries). Now that I "understand" electricity transmission, generation, distribution and storage in Europe and North America, I'm moving onto more legal/political/technical/economic stuff and making lots of powerpoints. It has also gotten better socially, because I found where all the other interns sit at lunch and we can talk about things other than vegetables {well I'm sure my department has moved onto another topic by now, but I wasn't there, so I don't actually know} at a pace that I can keep up with and contribute to the conversation {most of them aren't native speakers}.

{Wikipedia has been great for this because you can just change the language of the article and get a pretty reliable translation of technical terms, which my traditional translation sources sometimes have a problem with. I also really like how Tintin's rocket is in the comic.}

The office is really nice, the building is outside of the chemical park and only 6 years old, so it's shiny and we have coffee, esspesso drinks, bottled water and fancy swipe cards, but old computers (it takes me twenty minutes from pressing the on buttion to seeing my Notes inbox).

Contrary to the title of the post, I'm not actually at work today {It's a Catholic holiday and NRW takes those seriously}. I'm in Berlin getting extra passport pages, finishing up old work, seeing friends, shopping, riding the u-bahn... but I have internet that isn't from my phone, so I thought I'd take a bit of time to blog.

Essen

Currently, it seems that I'm locked inside my house. The door won't open and the key that lets me in, won't let me out. Usually it just opens from the inside. It's okay though, my plan for the afternoon was just to watch the French Open (let's go Rafa!). I only discovered that o was locked in when I heard rain and tried to cover my bike. If it won't open in the morning, I can just climb out my window (one of them doesn't have a screen) in my suit and heels. No problem.

Yesterday, I went to Essen, which is sort of the closest city. I don't know what I was expecting, but I didn't enjoy it much. It was you basic german main street stores. I bought a preptastic sweater, but couldn't find a blazer or skirt that suited me. I went to HEMA, which you may remember from previous post about Amsterdam, and bought some blue nail polish, these super adorable mini stroopwafels and a towel. On my way into town I noticed an ice cream cafe because they had pink chairs on the side walk and their menu said a scoop was 1.50€ (a typical scoop is seventy or eighty euro cent). On my way out of town I stopped and got a scoop of their chili cherry chocolate (simply because I wanted to see if they could justify charging double). They can! It was delicious, at least twice the size of a normal scoop and came in a proper waffle cone. 

I think I didn't enjoy it because there were lots of crazy people on the streets, especially if you consider the size of the city.

I'm using the Android blogger app, so I don't know if the photos are where they are supposed to be.

twittering! first day!

I wrote a post about my journey over... then found out I don't have internet at my house and work blocks gmail and blogger, I'm working on a work around so I can post meaningful narritives from my phone, but in the meantime I
will be tweeting so follow @seesaul for snapshots of my life (+hopfully adventutes).

Quick recap of first day at work:
Checked out by doctor, signed contract, had id made, we have a coffee machine!, learn about project, open bank account, lunch (grilled turkey), wait one hour at bugerbüro (we really needed to be at finanzamt), more about project, nod off at desk, leave a little early. NAPTIME!

Thursday I went to the gemäldegalerie with some other RISErs. It was pretty nice they have some big name artists, but it's relativity small. I really want Botticelli to do my hair (see above...this one is cooler, but wasn't at that museum). They had a room full of Rembrandts, which included the first painting of his I had ever seen (man with the golden helmet - I had to copy it for my going into sixth grade summer project- I remember being amazed that there was green paint used to make something gold!). Ever since tenth grade the older Bruegel has been one of my faves because there is always so much going on in his paintings. They had one of his that illustrated dozens of Dutch sayings/catchphrases/proverbs. All in all, my main impression of the museum is that Dutch art trounces itailian art. MOST of the Italian stuff was sooooo boring... so to the point and covered in gold.

Hup Holland Hup!

I was in Amsterdam for the World Cup Final (The Netherlands vs Sapin)! On the way back from Heidelberg, I was with a group of Berliners who opted to take an indirect route home (changing in Frankfurt and Köln) so that we could ride a REALLY fast train (300+ km/hr). We had kickass seats right behind the driver.

The final destination of the reallly fast train was Amsterdam and I've been to Köln several times, so it was kinda like the Deutsche Bahn/fate was telling me to stay on that train. (Until we had to wait 40 minutes in Köln for them to change the engine and even longer after we left the station because someone had stolen the overhead wire). Some of the group stopped in Köln to look at the Dom then headed back to Berlin, but I remembered how we were going to be working with really smelly substrate and how you can get away with blaming the german train company for just about anything, so I texted Mandy to tell her that there were train problems and that in order to be able to watch the game, I'd need to stay in the West and that I'd be back sometime in the early afternoon on Monday {all of these things are true}. It seemed like a worthwhile risk, the chance to celebrate a world cup championship in the capital of the winning country and even though they lost, it was still totally worth it.

I was basically the only person/thing in the whole city who wasn't wearing orange (with the exception of Spain fans), so I bought this awesome hat.

According to the internet, the public viewing options in Amsterdam were slim. We first checked out Rembrandtplein were there was a huge screen and quite a few people. While I was off buying a tshirt to sit down on (that didn't survive the trip), someone informed Jon that the screen was just a billboard and that the game wouldn't be shown. We asked the police were we could find a public viewing. They said that there was only one and it was full.

Liars!!!!! We trekked to Museumplein (near the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum) where we found a 120,000+ other orange clad people. This was the FIFA official public viewing, but it was quite different then the Berlin one. We just walked right in. In Berlin there were security guards, pat downs and a long list of things you couldn't bring in (glass bottles, no plastic bottles that are larger than 0,5 litres, canned drinks, fireworks, umbrellas, hard liquor, vuvuzelas or trumpets, particularly large flags or signs, excessive amounts of toilet paper, weapons of any kind, dogs...). With the exception of weapons, I saw all of those things.

(this is pretty low energy because it was after Spain scored)

Before the game there was a concert and helicopters dropped flowers on all of the fans.

They played this song a lot (totes a rip off of Viva Colonia, but still fun) (not my video):

I was only able to see about 10 minutes total of the game, but it was a great atmosphere (until Spain scored). The Germans have better cheers, but the Dutch handled their defeat better (more crying in the streets, but no airborne glass bottles). One fan had a funny sign about grilling the octopus and eating it.

Due to more train complications, I got back to work 30 minutes before everybody usually starts leaving for the day aka just in time for a birthday party!!! I was going to explain the whole saga and take whatever wrath was due, but I started explaining and then everyone else started telling their Deutsche Bahn horror stories and so I didn't have to admit that I was being irresponsible or give them the apology gift that I brought back - a big bag of Stroopwafels!

Amsterdam - Windmill Windup

This past weekend I went to Windmill Windup - "Europe's greatest grass tournament" in Amsterdam. Upon arriving in the city after some massive, annoying and expensive train drama, I wandered around the city. I got food from a FEBO automat, browsed HEMA- a dutch departmentish store (although they website is quite right in stating "HEMA is not a store, it is a discovery") where everything is colorful and they have a beautiful card selection (I found the absolute most perfect one for an upcoming wedding), stopped by Rembrandt's house, but he wasn't there and I found a grocery store. I love grocery stores. This one was very similar to Belgian one that I frequented, but it had this cool logo:

Then I headed to the fields where I was greeted by the elephant pictured at the top of this post. I was picking up with a womens team from London called ISO, but I didn't know what any of them looked like, so I gravitated towards British accents and found Dirty Olive, another London-based womens team that was short on players. They tried to get me to play for them, but I couldn't betray ISO, which was a good call. They were really fun girls - we killed the pub quiz and were 2 and two halves Americans strong for World Cup cheering. We posted up 75 minutes before the kickoff of the USA-England match to ensure good seats in the viewing tipi (see below), which was soon overflowing. The US fans were out numbered like 25 to1, there was lots of cheers and banter all in good fun. The English had proper cheers, whereas the Americans' cheers consisted of "U-S-A U-S-A U-S-A" and of course "America, Fuck Yeah!"

Ultimate-wise we didn't do that great (low numbers {injuries, diarrhea, infection, pregnancy... }, lots of pick-ups - which led to a kind of awkward clash of schools of playing ultimate), but it was still lots of fun and I did some cool stuff . I fell oddly on my knee and finally got to try some of that kinesio tape that is all the rage with trainers these days - it didn't really help- the physio who taped it said she had just learned it yesterday, but at least it matched my water bottle and gave me fun tan lines.