Paris!

I have been procrastinating in writing this post because I know there is so much to say and it will take forever. So, I will try to be as thorough and brief as I can be. Here it goes...

AHHH! Paris was awesome!

Friday I woke up at 5.30am to finish my laundry, pack my bag, and head to the Cottbus train station. I took a train to Berlin (2 hours) and then a bus to the Tegel airport where I caught a flight to Amsterdam (1 hour). Then I had a 1 and a half hour layover in Amsterdam after which I caught another flight to Paris (slightly over an hour). From the Paris airport I caught a train to the central station (45 minutes) where I met up with Katie and George. Finally. It was a crazy adventure just to get there, and once I arrived I was pooped.

Right after I got there we ate dinner because we were all starving. After that we headed to the hotel, dropped off our stuff, and headed out to explore the city. George went to a church service while Katie and I walked around and visited the Sacre Coeur basilica. It is a huge, gorgeous marble building that sits up on this huge hill overlooking all of Paris. On the way we were attacked by Africans who proceeded to tie friendship bracelets on our wrists and demand we pay them 15€ for them. We each paid 5€ and moved on. On the steps of the giant hill they had an open mic where everyone went to play. Most people sang (and butchered) many famous American songs, but it was very enjoyable. We eventually met up with George and wandered the city until 2am and caught a taxi ride home.

Saturday we ended up sleeping in, but made up for it by running around the city visiting all of the well known sites. Our second night was to be stayed in a different hotel, so we set off to find it right away and drop our bags off. Turns out our new home was right dab in the middle of the red light district of Paris. Haha. Sex shops and peep shows lined the streets. We shared a street with a little place entitled "Dirty Dicks" and a few others whose names I forgot. We were also about 2 blocks away from the infamous Moulin Rouge. I could have never imagined so many sex shops all in one place. Each peep show had porn plastered around it's doors encouraging those looking for a good time to go on in. The weird thing was the area was full of people, many of which brought their kids with them. The red light district was not a shady part of town, it just housed shady businesses. Interesting.

After dropping our bags off we hit up the Arc de Triomphe, the Champs-Élysées, the Louvre pyramids, the Eiffel Tower, and other things which are famous but I do not remember their significance or their names.

The Arc de Triomphe was huge! I had no idea. It stood in the middle of this giant star-shaped intersection - all roads near by lead to it. It was very cool with it's intricate sculptures and such. On the floor around it all of the French victories were written down. Very interesting.

The Champs-Élysées is the main road that runs through Paris and leads to the Arc de Triomphe. It has all of the really expensive stores of the famous French designers. We checked out the Virgin megastore and also grabbed some very expensive cappuccino. Very tasty, though.

We followed the Champs-Élysées down to the Louvre. We wandered through the gardens and up to the giant glass pyramids. We entered the lobby and looked around the gift store but decided not to actually enter the museum because we did not know enough about art to make the hours we would have spent inside worth it. Still, the glass pyramids were amazing and very cool to see in person.

Next we headed off to the Eiffel Tower. We could see it poking up above the skyline for most of the day, but it was totally different to see it up close and in person. It's so tall! I had no idea. Not the prettiest thing in the daylight (it's painted brown), but it was still very impressive. The lines were too long to go up to the top, but I felt that just seeing it was enough justification to come to Paris for a weekend.

Saturday night we met up with some friends of a friend of Katie's. They picked us up at the Moulin Rouge (classy, I know) and took us out to a nice lounge/bar. In front of the Moulin Rouge there is this large, circular, raised vent that shoots up air - probably from the metro or something. Katie had a dress on so we snapped some shots of her pretending to be Marylin Monroe. Absolutely hilarious. Everyone else was getting their picture taken with their hair blown around by the vent, but I would have to say that our picture was the best. While I took the picture George acted as "dress patrol" to make sure the back of Katie's dress didn't flash the onlooking tourists.

Finally our host arrived and picked us up in his car. He brought another car full of friends so there ended up being about 10 people in total. We drank and mingled and had a great time. A few hours later they took us to a small pub where we hung out some more and exchanged dance moves with the ever-so-stylish Europeans. It was a great time and we had a lot of fun meeting the Parisians.

Sunday morning we moved back to our other hotel and then split up: Katie and I went to explore some more of the city while George went to hang out with the people he met at the church service on Friday. Katie and I headed off to the Jewish district of Paris (a place Meredith had suggested we check out). It was very cool. Jewish shops everywhere and we had the pleasure of knowing that anything we decided to eat while we were there would be kosher. We grabbed a falafel (another one of Meredith's suggestions) and explored some more. The falafel was delicious although we had no idea what we were eating, haha. In one store we looked in we found the most amazing yarmulkes ever! We found a Harry Potter one, a Spiderman one, a Pokémon one, and many more. We were impressed that the Jews decided to embrace Harry Potter, much unlike the Catholics who decided to exile him.

The Jewish district soon led us to the Gay district of town where we stopped in a bookstore and looked around at the stylish European clothing stores. The bookstore was quite scandalous, but after living in the red light district we were used to it by that point. From there we stumbled across this amazing little café where we feasted on cappuccinos and a large selection of bread with even a larger selection of spreads and toppings. Sprawled across our table we found the most delicious toppings: Nutella, white chocolate spread, chocolate/carmel spread, the most flavorful jams I have ever tasted (apricot and "5 red berries"), pralines, and so many more. It was absolutely the greated café experience of my life. The best thing I ate in Paris the whole weekend (and believe me, that's saying a lot - all the food was delicious!).

After the café we went to explore the Notre Dame cathedral. Because it was Sunday they were holding mass and we got to walk in while it was going on. It was cool getting to see the priest speak in French and hear people singing the hymns. The place was, like everything else in Paris, huge! It had beautiful stained glass and lots of displayed. There were many places where you could buy a prayer candle to light and display. The whole place smelled like incense - it was just awesome. The outside was just as amazing as the inside. I got to see the many flying buttresses that I have been hearing about for all these years! I'm no architect, but I still found them really cool looking. Plus all of the gargoyle statues that line the roof tops. Very cool.

After that we met up with George. We grabbed some dinner and then headed back to the Eiffel Tower so Katie could take pictures while it was lit up. It was really beautiful to see despite the rain and the cold. Every hour once it is lit up at night hundred of white lights placed on the tower sparkle and shimmer! We had no idea it did that! So cool. It looked like a giant space ship or something. Very cool.

After visiting the Eiffel Tower for the second time we headed back to the hotel, dried off, and then headed out to chill at one last café before we left the next day. We found a cute square up by the Sacre Coeur and sat down for crepes and wine. Yum.

The next morning we woke up for our last breakfast and then I headed off to the train station at noon to head back to the airport for my flight to Amsterdam and then Berlin. I eventually got back to my apartment at around 11.30pm that night. I think I caught the train a little too early and ended up taking the long way home, hah. Oh well, it all worked out in the end.

Overall my trip to Paris was amazing. I was slightly skeptical and wondered if I would like it that much, but I had the greatest time ever. The food was absolutely incredible - I don't think I've ever had food that tasty. I had salmon lasagna one night and even tried escargot! Yes, I Keaton Belli ate a cooked snail. George ordered them and he dug them out of their little shells and fed them to Katie and me. The waiters laughed at us as we freaked out. It ended up tasting pretty good - chewy like calamari, but even more so. Not sure if I'll ever order it in the future, but at least I can say I ate it.

Also, the wine in Paris is incredible! I made it a point to order it at just about every meal. Not the cheapest stuff ever, but definitely worth it. Meredith was right (again). I mostly stuck to chardonnay because I prefer white wines and it was the cheapest, but I think I also ordered some sauvignon one meal. Very delicious. So sweet and never tart. Yum. I will indeed miss it.

That pretty much sums things up. I'm sure I left out things here and there, but chances are you will hear me talk about it one day and it will be even better than having to read it on here. Also, I have about 200 pictures on my computer that I will get uploaded at some point. Look for the picture link on the right so you can check them out. They will probably be up sometime this weekend.

Until next time...

Yay for short weeks!

It's Thursday night and I just completed my first week of work. A short week, mind you, but it still counts in my book. Things are getting better here, but perhaps that is because I know that I won't be here for the next 4 days. That cheers me up a bit. Paris here I come!

Work isn't that bad. Tuesday and Thursday I brought my old German flashcards with me so I could brush up a little. I relearned all the verbs that I had to learn over the last year. I figure this will cut down on all of the hand gestures. The nouns on the other hand, who really knows... I can deal with the pointing, but trying to get someone to understand "open", "send", "find", "want", etc. That's another story.

Today I got to watch water drip with Anna. She is an undergrad student here that works for Annika as well. She is very nice and I think we got along pretty well. She's studying environmental engineering and is in her third year. Once she found out I could speak a little German she encouraged me - it was fun to practice today. I showed her my German book and she got a kick out of it. We laughed about all the phrases that are way out dated or they are only used in Bayern - southern Germany where they are thought to walk around in lederhosen all day.

We talked about lots of stuff - mostly the differences between here and the States. I found out that going to college in the state of Brandenburg is FREE! For all schools! Crazy. She laughed when I told her that we pay tens of thousands of dollars just for a year of school. All to obtain the same degree. Ridiculous. She knew english pretty well - enough for us to have a good conversation. She said she started learning it in school when she was 11, but nowadays they teach it when kids are 6 years old. I find it rather lame that we are not required to learn a second language in school. We are required to take two semesters to graduate high school and maybe three semesters in college but that is it. Definitely not enough.

Annika told her that I was going to Paris this weekend and we talked about traveling in Europe for a bit. I originally thought that trains would be a lot cheaper than flying, but as it turns out it is the other way around. Apparently trains are thought to be more comfortable - more leg room and such - so they cost more. Some of them go pretty fast so it's not that slow to travel in either. I mentioned how from London to Berlin is just like going from Atlanta to Dallas, TX and that it isn't that far away at all. In Europe, however, that is a great distance away so most people have never traveled that far. She showed me the different countries where she has been. I asked if she used English to communicate in all the different countries (clearly not everyone knows German) and she said yes. I guess it's cool to be brought up in a country that's national language is really the international language. I'm fortunate to have the ability to travel around to all these places with ease and not have to worry too much about language barriers, but at the same time I see why the United States get the reputation of laziness and superiority - we've never had to change our ways to fit in with others, we make others comply to our standard. Huh.

Walking to the post office today I saw this old man walking with his old wife. He had on leather pants. Not lederhosen, just plain black leather pants. He had to be about 70 years old. Clearly he must have been a rockstar when he was younger and decided to pull his old pants out from the back of his closet. Crazy.

I need to do laundry so I asked Toni, my roommate, where I could do it at. He told me that I had to ask the Hausmeister (the head custodial person for the building) for some coins and that the laundry machines are in the basement. I went to talk to the Hausmeister to get some coins. He speaks no english and I don't know the German word for "coin" and have nothing to point at. I tried to say something along the lines of "I need to buy a coin to wash my clothes". I'm not sure what it came out as but he just looked at me weird. He eventually got what I was saying and then asked me "How many?" in a way that implied I was stupid for not telling him already. This was our second time meeting and I get the sense that he does not like me. Whatever. I paid 5€ for 5 coins. Why I can't just put a Euro coin into the machine and get ride of the middle-man, I don't know. Oh well. I'm sure he will see more of me in the future. I know I'm excited.

I discovered the cellar the other day. I was looking for the place where I could do my laundry. The cellar is probably one of the top 10 scariest places I have ever been. It is a long dark hallway that runs underneath the building and is lit by a minimal number of lights. Pipes cover the ceiling and are about 3 inches too low for me to walk under without having to duck. Also, the hallway is separated into chambers that can be closed off by these large metal doors. In order to cross between chambers you have to step over a barrier and duck under another barrier. All along the hallway are rooms that can be used for various things. I heard people playing guitar in one the other day. There are 2 different laundry rooms that have 2 washers and 2 dryers in each. Connected to these rooms are a series of rooms that have rope hanging across them so you can air dry your clothes. There is only 1 light in each laundry room so it's very creepy and shadowy with all of the clothes hanging up. Very freaky. Although it's morbid, I'd have to say that if you ever needed to mug, rob, jump, or attack someone, the cellar of my apartment building would be the best place to do it.

I leave for Paris tomorrow! My flight from Berlin takes off at 12.25pm and heads to Amsterdam where I have an hour and 30 minute layover before I head to Paris. This means I need to catch an 8.15am train from Cottbus to Berlin. Awesome. I'll arrive in Paris Friday late afternoon and leave on Monday afternoon. Katie and her friend George are going to be there as well! I'm so excited! This will be the last time I get to see Katie before she leaves for California, so what better place to say goodbye than the City of Love? I can't wait!

I still need to do laundry and pack before leaving tomorrow morning. 4 washers for the whole 5 story apartment building makes it difficult to find one available. Packing shouldn't be an issue though because I'm only going to bring my backpack. Katie has sworn herself to only bringing a backpack so we all don't have to relive Italy and her enormous suitcase. So, if she's only bringing a backpack, then I most certainly can only fit my stuff in only a backpack... I think.

Until next time.

-Keaton

American Diner

Sunday I hunted down an internet café so I could talk with Joe online and look up details for next weekend with Kate. On Friday at dinner I asked my waitress if she knew of an internet café in the city and she point me towards one that was close by my apartment. I found it later that night and the sign said that it closes at 8pm on Sundays. It wasn’t a café, but rather just a store where you could make phone calls, fax, and surf the internet. Today around 6pm I headed off with the intent of talking online, sending a few emails, and researching travel costs for next weekend. Unfortunately I got to the place and it was closed. Apparently I didn’t see the part of the sign that said that it was opening up again on June 1st. Oh well. I had seen a similar place by my apartment the first day that I got here. I wanted to find another place because the one that I initially saw looked pretty sketchy. With my first choice gone, I headed off for the one right next to my apartment to check it out. All of the sign on the outside say that it has pool tables, darts, video games, chatting, etc. Apparently it is just a house that they have turned into this technology hub. It was pretty cool when I went in. The woman just told me to find computer 5 upstairs and I was good to go. The price was 1€ per hour. A lot cheaper than what I was expecting. And, turns out that their system went down half way through my stay there so I only paid 1€ instead of the 3€ that I really owed. Cool!

I left the internet place around 8pm. I hadn’t expected to stay there that long but I had nothing else to do besides eat dinner so it really didn’t matter. I have discovered that most everything in the city closes by 8pm so I really didn’t expect to find a place to eat at that night. But, with the thought of eating a 2nd turkey sandwich for the day, I headed off to the Aldstadt to check and see if anything was open. Luckily the American food restaurant was still open – their sign said that they close at midnight. Although this meal wasn’t very cultural or eye opening, I did need food so I figured I would grab a burger. I ordered a patty melt and a large glass of Lübzer Pils. Probably the best beer I had yet. Very tasty. I wish I could say the same thing for the patty melt. The place was almost exactly like Steak ‘N Shake. The interior was very similar except that this one had a large bar in it. I guess I expected a delicious patty melt much likes the ones I get at home. I read on the menu that they put onions on it – I didn’t mind at all because I love onions – but much to my surprise they put onions that were cooked in some type of brown gravy and then put the brown gravy all over the burger inside the two pieces of toast. Bleh. Not the best thing in the world. I felt like I was eating meatloaf in a sandwich. Gross. The fries were okay and the beer was good so I guess I can’t complain.

I found the whole concept of the restaurant pretty amusing. It said in large letters “American Restaurant” on the outside so I assumed that this is what the German people thought of America. I got to eat with an American flag napkin that also had Lady Liberty on the front. Up on the walls they had all the typical Steak ‘N Shake style décor. The thing I liked most was the large Smirnoff advertisement that had an airbrushed picture of Janise Dickinson on it dressed as a scandalous Lady Liberty. Yes, the one and only, Janise Dickinson: the first ever super model and of course one of America’s Next Top Model’s judges. I found it really funny that she was pinned up on their walls next to Marilyn Monroe and Elvis. Good times. The music in the place was funny too. At one time they played the “In the jungle, the mighty jungle, a lion sleeps tonight…” song from The Lion King. Now, I’m not sure if another group sang that before Disney added it to their movie, but if so I have never heard it before. Ultimately, I learned that America equals Janice Dickinson, Disney, and Lady Liberty. Pretty good stuff.

One cool thing about German restaurants is that most of the time, when you order the server has a handheld wireless PDA that they type your order into. It goes directly back to the kitchens and let’s them know what they need to make. Pretty cool. It has been at most places I’ve eaten at. Also, each server carries around a large coin purse on their belt that they keep bills and coins in. They bring you your check and wait at the table for you to pay and then give you change from their coin purse. This startled me the first time it happened but now it’s fine. Also, they always include the tip in the bill. Something I should have probably known before I got here. Now it makes sense why the servers were so thankful when I gave them an extra Euro or two before I left, hah.

I am very excited about next weekend! Originally Kate and I planned to meet in Amsterdam while she was living in London for the summer. Amsterdam is almost directly between Berlin and London so we figured it was the cheapest way for both of us. Unfortunately Kate couldn’t book a flight to Amsterdam – they were all full. So, change of plans, we are going to Paris this weekend! Before this summer I had no intentions of visiting France – it just never appealed to me. Since we’ve decided to go there I’ve got excited. I got even more excited once I read Meredith’s reply to an email I sent her asking her for cool stuff to do while in Paris. Since she lived there for 9 months I figured she could hook me up. Turns out I was right – I’m excited to check out some of the things she mentioned. Somehow the city sounds a lot cooler now.

I just got internet in my apartment! Yay! I’m pretty sure some student just created a network and put up a bunch of wireless routers. Whatever, I emailed him and he let me join for a small fee of 20€. No biggie. Turns out I can only get decent signal if I put the computer on the edge of the kitchen table. Even then the signal fades in and out the whole time. Great. Whatever, I can’t complain because at least now I can Skype! Yay! Definitely worth it.

Click here to check out my pictures!

Second Letter Home

Meine Erste Wochenende (My First Weekend)

Friday was a really short day at work. Annika and I went over exactly what I will be doing for the first week or two. She showed me the samples of soil that I will be working with and she explained to me some of the background information about what we are studying. It was pretty interesting. I wasn’t sure how excited I would be to be working with soil, but so far it has caught my interested, so I’m excited to start working. We got done with everything around 1.30pm and she said that I was free to leave whenever. Because my office is the only place where I have internet access, I stayed there until about 5pm talking with a few people online, checking email, looking up travel information (cost of train rides, flights, etc), etc. Unfortunately the building my office is in is closed over the weekend so I am not able to access my computer over the weekend.

After coming back from the office and relaxing a while I set off to find some dinner. I have been making it a point to fix breakfast and lunch in my apartment and then go out for dinner. I walked around the Altstadt for a while looking at different food options. The Altstadt is a large square in the “downtown” area of Cottbus. Altstadt means “old city”, so it is the part of town that was there from the beginning. There are a few restaurants around the square (one that I have already eaten at) and some ice cream parlors and the like. After looking around at all of the restaurants I decided not to eat at them because it would look really weird if I went in all by myself. Many were very crowded and it would just look sad if I went in and took up a four person table by myself. I walked around some of the smaller streets looking for a restaurant but again, I didn’t really feel comfortable eating in many of them alone. Finally, after a while of looking, I found a place that had a lot of tables outside, many of which were empty. I decided to eat there. I ordered this delicious pasta – it was like fettuccini shrimp scampi and the sauce tasted exactly like coconut! I knew there was coconut in the dish somewhere because I saw it on the menu, but I had no idea that it would be a coconut sauce. It was really good! I also ordered a few beers – Beck’s. I think we have those in the states, but that’s all they had. It was a fancier place but I didn’t feel like paying for any nicer drinks. After that I headed back to the apartment and watched a few more episodes of The Office.

It was surprising to see everything close so early on a Friday night. It was kind of sad because I had planned on checking out a lot of the shops and stuff in the city. Oh well. I ended up going to bed pretty early for lack of anything else to do (I was pretty tired though) and was then woken up at about 2am by other students hanging out in the apartments and making lots of noise. Reminded me of home, hah. Except I wouldn’t be sleeping that early. Oh well.

Saturday I slept in until noon. I decided to sleep in and then go explore this really large park that is south of the city. I left around noon and packed my backpack with my books, some snacks, water, and my camera. The plan was to find a nice place in the park to read and relax. I headed out with my map and started my journey. I passed through many smaller parks on the way to the large one that I was looking for. I was walking through this one park that ran along the river when I came upon this large group of people with lots of 90’s music playing. The music was in English, which made me happy. When Germans listen to English music they are a decade or more behind – it’s pretty amusing. Turns out it was a radio station putting on something in the park. Oddly enough, everyone was carrying rubber ducks with them. I looked and the ducks had writing on them – numbers and letters – but no words or anything. Huh. Well, I kept on walking, passing all the people, until I got to a bridge that had a large sign on it that said “START”. I’m pretty sure that they had a giant rubber duck race in the river! It makes sense because when I saw all the people, there were workers removing this huge inflatable tube that stretched across the river – that must have been the finish line and the way that they kept all of the ducks from continuing to float along the river. I’m really upset I missed it – it would have been awesome to see all these yellow rubber ducks racing down the river! I’ll keep my eyes open to see if it happens again.

I keep going through the parks, walking along the river most of the way. I was walking and saw these people standing off to the side of the path next to the river. They were looking at something so I stopped to investigate. There, a few feet away from the water on the bank, is a giant otter! It had to be about the size of Pokey! First I wasn’t sure if it was an otter or a beaver – it had big teeth and really long whiskers, but no large tail, just a little thin one. Without the huge tail I assumed it had to be an otter. The people were trying to feed it something and a few more of them came out of the water to investigate. I began to take out my camera but I think I scared them off or something because they all ran back into the water. The people left but I stayed to take some pictures of them swimming in the river. A few minutes later they all started to come out of the water again. There were probably 5 or 6 total. You could see at the bottom of the nearby trees where they had been biting the bark. I continue taking pictures and this other family comes up, lead by two little girls and their dog. The dog sees the otters and immediately starts barking and chases them into the water. It was pretty funny. For the next 15 minutes the family comes up and we all watch the otters and watch their dog bark at them and try to run into the water the catch them. At one point the otter and dog were about 1 foot apart from each other and sniffing each other. I have a great picture of it – pretty funny. I wanted to ask the family how to say “otter” in German, but I never did. I’ll have to look it up.

I continued walking and found a planetarium. It was closed but I might check it out before the summer is over. The place looked really run down, but it could still be interesting, even if it is all in German. Annika explained that Cottbus is a really poor town with bad infrastructure. The planetarium showed that well. She told me that it used to be a big mining town – that was where most of the people that lived in it worked. After the Reunification of Germany, many of the mines were shut down, people lost their jobs, and the city hasn’t really recovered ever since. Most things here are covered in graffiti and there are many buildings that are just abandoned with graffiti everywhere and their windows broken in. Kind of sad. Throughout the Planetarium Park they had scaled down models of the plants that were placed throughout the park at scaled down distances from the planetarium, which represented the sun. Many of the larger planets were covered in graffiti and torn up. I saw Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus. Uranus was really far from the planetarium, way after I stopped looking out for them. Not quite sure where Pluto was, or why they would even put it up because it is so tiny and far away from the planetarium, hah.

Continuing on my walk toward the park, I started walking down this large street and then stopped for a minute to check my map. This man on a bike rode up and stopped and said something to me in German. I told him, in German, that I didn’t speak it well so he switched to English. I assumed that he needed help or had a question because he saw me with my giant map pulled out, but it turned out he stopped to help me because he could tell I was lost a little. How nice! He spoke some broken English, I spoke some broken German, and he pointed me in the right direction and gave me some background information on the park and what all was inside of it. It was really cool that he stopped and helped.

As I continued to the park the sky started to get dark and I could tell it was going to eventually rain. I ended up finding the park and began to walk and explore it. There was supposed to be a large dirt pyramid in the park, which I ended up finding. I also wanted to see the “water pyramid” that was supposed to be there as well. It is a very large dirt pyramid that is in the middle of this lake. It’s really cool! It’s essentially this big island but it is all just a giant pyramid that sticks out of the water. Pretty neat-o. By the time I found that it was raining pretty steadily and I decided to try and find the café that was supposed to be in the back of the park. I started following the signs that lead toward the Schloß because they had a picture of a fork and spoon on them, which I figured meant food. I eventually found the café by the time it was pouring rain. Apparently everyone in the park was headed that way to get out of the rain so it was pretty crowded. I successfully ordered a cappuccino and a piece of cake entirely in German. I asked her where to pay, how much the post cards cost, and a few other things all in German! I was very proud of myself. I can work my way through a restaurant in German, which is pretty cool. Kudos me.

Anyhow, after the café I explored the rest of the park. It stopped raining and sun came out again so it was nice. I spent good while there and took lots of pictures. It was a really cool place. There’s a castle (well, a large palace/house) in the back of the park and I walked around that and all of the other buildings around it. There were two people, a man and a woman, dressed up as the people who lived in the palace. I avoided running into them because I didn’t want them to talk and embarrass me in German, hah. I’m not that good yet…

About 6.30pm I ended up back at my apartment. I showered (because I was dirty from walking in the park while it was raining) and got all nice to go out to dinner. By myself. I found this Mexican restaurant on the way back to my apartment that looked good and it stayed open late, so that’s really what I was looking for. I started out of the apartment building and it started to rain. Then pour. Then torrential downpour. I had my little umbrella but ended just making a circle around the block and headed back inside. Yesterday I bought some chicken nuggets at the store just for this occasion. I don’t have a freezer, just a mini-fridge, but I figured they would be okay because they are precooked and it’s okay if they thaw a little. Well, I opened the box and found that “chicken nuggets” in Germany are really cut up pieces of uncooked chicken that are breaded. Go figure. Apparently Germany isn’t big on the frozen foods. Probably for the best. Well, I cooked them in my frying pan (Annika let me borrow cooking stuff). Turns out they were gross and as soon as I started cooking them the sun came out. I decided to throw the nuggets away and head back to the restaurant that I set off to in the first place.

The restaurant was good. I ordered gnocchi (potato pasta) with chicken. Yes, although the restaurant was called “El Mexico”, they actually specialized in Mexican, Italian, and Argentinean food. Go figure. This was no Mexico Tipico… Which actually makes sense if Mexico Tipico means “typical mexico” (but I’m not sure if that’s right or not, so whatever). The gnocchi were good but the sauce wasn’t the best. Oh well, it was still much better than my chicken nuggets, just not as good as my coconut pasta. Once again I checked out the beer menu. They had a large selection, unlike the last place that I ate at. At every restaurant I’ve been to someone has ordered some drink and it looks like red beer. Looking over the drink menu I found what I had been seeing all of these other people get. It’s called a “Potsdamer”. Potsdam is another city in Germany. The description was “red lemonade with beer”. Hmmm. I decided to go for it – why not? It was actually pretty good! Tasted like strawberry/lemon beer. More strawberry, less lemon. I liked it. The beer they used was Warsteiner. Sounds German enough. They also had a drink called “Diesel”, which is coke and beer. I think we have those in the states, but I’m not sure. I’ll have that for another time. So, two successful restaurant trips in one day! And I spoke in German the whole time! Go me!

After dinner I headed back to the apartment to do what I’ve been doing every night since I’ve gotten here – watch The Office. I find it’s a great way to end the day.

Sunday I slept really late for lack of better things to do. Then I cleaned my room a bit and downloaded the pictures that I took the last few days. And now I’m here finishing up this letter. Woohoo.

First Letter Home

Hallo!

So here it is, the thing you’ve all been waiting for: a recap of how things have been going since I left the States! Okay, here it goes…

The plane ride from Atlanta to New York wasn’t that bad. It was only a few hours long and I got to sit next to this crazy woman, Janet. She informed me that she is originally from New York but she moved down to Atlanta to take care of her parents. They recently died so she was heading back up to New York to start a doggie-daycare business. I asked if she had a business partner or any prior business experience and she replied “No.” She pulled out a “How to start a doggie-daycare!” brochure, showed it to me, and claimed to have done her research about the whole ordeal. She recently volunteered at a doggie-daycare in Kennesaw (one which I have never heard of) and that inspired her. Interesting… She was going to give me her address so I could send her a postcard from Germany but she didn’t know it so she gave me her business card instead. I promised to email her a picture of two from my travels. Oh geeze…

The flight from New York to Berlin wasn’t as nice as the first one. Although shorter than I expected, it was 8 hours long. Bleh. We taxied on the runway for 45 minutes before taking off because they were having some bad winds. I ended up watched the movie that they played (The Golden Compass) and then tried to sleep the rest of the way. I guess I did a good job because I woke up with about an hour left until Berlin. It would help if I were able to sleep on planes. And if I rode in 1st class next time…

We arrived in Berlin about 45 minutes late. I had no way of informing my boss, Annika, so I just hoped that she was still there waiting for me. After I waited another 20 minutes for my luggage I made my way to where Annika told me she would be. There’s a designated “meeting point” in the airport with a giant flashing light above it. I went and stood under the light along with this other woman. After a minute or so we looked at each other and realized that we were both waiting on each other. Go figure, hah. We shook hands, etc. then she lead me to the busses that would take us to the Berlin train station. Annika is really nice. She’s a quite person who immediately reminded me of a much younger Frau Brücker from the movie, Young Frankenstein. Let’s just say that she looks German and she looks like she studies soil for a living (which she in fact does). We got on the bus and started making small talk. She received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Agriculture with a focus in soil. Now she’s working on her PhD with Brandenburg Technische Universität in the Chair of Soil Protection and Recultivation. She’s specifically studying soil recultivation of the soil left behind from the lignite mines near Cottbus that were shut down after the reunification of Germany. That’s what I’m going to be helping her with. Anyways, we got to the train station (which is REALLY big and REALLY cool looking) and realized that our train would be coming in 30 minutes. Then she told me that it would be a 2 hour ride to Cottbus. By the time we got to the train station we were slowing down on the small talk and by the time we got on the train we were running on fumes. I think we sat in silence for about 90 minutes of the ride. I was exhausted and really just wanted to go to bed…

We finally arrived in Cottbus and boarded another bus that would drop us off at the university. We were dropped off and after 30 minutes of searching we found the building that I needed to get to in order to check in and get the keys to my apartment. Luckily Annika speaks very good English because the people who work for the university’s housing office speak absolutely none. Frau Rigo went over my housing contract in Germany with Annika and then Annika would briefly explain what I needed to know. Nothing came as a surprise to me so I just signed away. Apparently I was expected to pay 110 Euro on the spot for my first months rent (which I didn’t have because I only received 100 Euro at the airport and had already used some of it to buy lunch with). Annika was going to cover me the extra money but Frau Rigo said I could pay later.

After taking care of all the paperwork we headed to my apartment and waited outside for the maintenance guy to bring me my keys. After 20 minutes of waiting he came along, I signed for my keys, and he showed me to my apartment. Well, I don’t know if you can really call it an apartment… I share it with one other person (Toni) and we have a wall of cabinets, a mini-fridge, 2 hot plates, and a bathroom to share. Oh, and a little itty bitty table with 2 stools that look like they came from an elementary school. To go along with the elementary school theme, the apartment is all white and is accented with the primary colors, red, yellow, and blue. In my room I have a foam mattress, a desk, a bookshelf, and a wardrobe type thing. The room here is bigger than my room at Tech, so that’s nice. The only thing I dislike is that there is no window in our kitchen, just windows in the bedrooms. So when you walk in it’s completely black and you have to find the light switch to see anything. Oh well. I have a place to live.

Toni, my roommate, is really nice and was very excited to see me when he came home that afternoon. I think that he just finished his first year here, but unfortunately he is moving out next week. He was majoring in Environmental Engineering but decided school wasn’t for him and took a job back home in Leipzig instead. I was really bummed to hear that he was leaving because I was really hoping on getting to know him and then have him introduce me to other people around campus. He’s never here so I haven’t had much luck yet. He said that he’s going to be having a going away party in our apartment and the one across the hall so I’m excited for that because hopefully I’ll meet some people. We’ll see…

I still don’t have internet in my apartment yet. That really sucks. Toni said that it’s wireless but you have to pay for it. Apparently I have to talk to the maintenance guy to get it taken care of. Turns out he is only in his office for 1 hour each day Monday through Thursday. I missed him today so now I have to wait until Monday to speak with him. Kind of disappointing. I have internet in my office but I’m not sure if I will be able to access it over the weekend or at a decent hour to use skype to talk to you. Hopefully I’ll be able to get wireless sometime next week. I hope so…

As far as food goes Annika told me of a store just down the street. She told me it’s really cheap and it’s the one that she goes to. It’s called Liebl and it’s just like a Aldi back at home. You have to pay to use the shopping carts and everything is off brand. Took me a while to figure it out but now it’s not that bad. I bought a few reusable bags so I can carry stuff back to my place. I bought some cereal, yogurt, pasta, and some sandwich stuff so I can eat breakfast and lunch at the apartment. The breakfast stuff has been working out well and so has the sandwich stuff. The pasta I made tonight for dinner (it was drizzling outside so I didn’t want to walk to the center of town) and it was pretty gross. Not sure why, but it tasted nasty. I’ll pass on making my own pasta here. It was probably the sauce – I’ve had better. I’ve made better, actually. Oh well.

Funny Story: So, I’ve been told that just about all of the students in town know how to speak English because they’re required to learn it in schools. The adults however do not know because they grew up before the reunification of Germany and because Cottbus is in East Germany they were forced to learn Russian instead of English (like the West Germans). I think “Sprechen Sie Englisch?” has been my most used German phrase thus far. I can’t understand much of what anyone says because they speak it really fast and I wasn’t really that good at German to start with. Even when I do come up with a well thought out phrase and try and say it the people look at me funny. I haven’t decided if it’s because I’m saying it incorrectly, my grammar is really bad, or if I just look funny. Who knows. Anyways, so I’m about to checkout at the register will all of my groceries and out of my satchel slips the jar of mustard that I was purchasing for my sandwiches. It falls, breaks, the mustard goes everywhere, and I’m stuck waiting in line holding the container waiting to try and tell the cashier. I’m trying to think of how to say it in Germany, but I think me holding a broken container of mustard pretty much says it all. It’s my turn and she just looks at me and gives me the evil eye. I try to say something but she just starts talking in Germany really fast and I have no idea what she’s saying. Apparently she was telling me that I could go get a new one but I had no idea. I just continued to check out with the rest of my stuff. Then, because I finally realized what she was saying, I shove my way back through the line with all of my bags to go and find a new mustard. I find one and then try to find my way out of the store. I guess to keep people from stealing things the ONLY way to get out of the store is to go back through the line for the cash register – all of the closed cash register aisles are blocked and the doors at the front of the store only open one way and there is not enough time to sneak by while someone enters the store. Crap. So I end up awkwardly standing in line with my large bags of groceries until the woman sees me, yells at me in German, and I end up pushing through the line one more time, say “Danke!” a few times, and run for the door. Good times, good times…

I’ve eaten out twice already and both have been really good experiences. The first time I ate across the street at some restaurant Annika told me about. I had a few awkward experiences with figuring out if I had to sit down or order at the bar or what, but after I ordered it was fine. I had this amazing pasta dish which was delicious. I also decided to order a beer (now that I can) and asked the waitress what she suggested. She showed me my options: German beer or English beer. Because I’m in Germany I decided to go with the German beer and so she brought me out a glass of it (I don’t remember the name). It was okay – I’m not a beer drinker back at home (never really liked the taste that much) but I figured I should get accustomed to it now that I’m here. It wasn’t half bad. I don’t really have much to compare it to, so I guess it was better than the beers at home? Who knows.
The next time I ate out I went to the center of the city and sat down at this outside restaurant. The weather has been amazing here so I figured I shouldn’t be inside all the time. I ordered some sort of Strüdel that came with French fries and a salad. It was delicious! I forgot all the food words that I learned in German class so I was really just guess and what everything in the menu meant. I ended up choosing very well. Once again, I ordered some beer (this time it was a much larger glass) and it was, once again, okay, I guess. If anything it was nice to walk around the city for a bit after I finished eating with a little buzz, haha. I still haven’t gotten the hang of ordering in German restaurants (I need to look it up in my text book) so it has mostly been me pointing and the waitress being very nice. So far so good.

Today, Thursday, was my first day of work so Tuesday night and all day Wednesday were free for me to do whatever with. I’ve walked around the city some – there’s a “downtown” area that has a lot of stores and restaurants here and there. I’ve been doing a lot of reading on some park benches that I’ve found. There is a really really large park that is south of the city (I live north of the city) that I want to get to this weekend. I think I’m just going to walk there instead of worrying about public transportation and how to work it. I have all day Saturday so I figure I’ll find the park eventually.

Just about everybody here rides a bike. I see grandmas daily riding their bike around. I wish I had one here. Annika explained that Cottbus is extremely flat so that’s why everyone rides – no hills to worry about. Probably why I don’t want a bike in Atlanta – too many hills, hah. Lots of people have cars here as well, even the students. Toni told me that he drives home every weekend to Leipzig to visit friends back there. He said all of his friends do the same on the weekends. Cottbus is not a very happening place so I can see why… Annika said that most of the kids just come here for school and then leave after they graduate and move to bigger cities. I don’t blame them. Hopefully this weekend will be one of the only ones I spend in Cottbus as I plan to travel and such the rest of the time. As soon as my internet is up I need to start making living arrangements for when I travel…

I started “work” today. Basically Annika showed me around the labs and introduced me to her boss and some people that she works with. Everyone asks if I’m a Master’s or PhD student, hah. Then I have to tell them that I just finished my 2nd year of my undergraduate degree. Whoops. Annika gave me some books to read so I could brush up on what I’ll be doing this summer. Right now I’m going to learn how to operate this new machine that they just bought (Annika and I get to learn how to use it together next week because she’ll be doing it for the 1st time as well). It’s a permeameter – it measures the permeability of soil (how easily water flows through it). From it’s readings we can calculate the hydraulic conductivity – another measure of how well water flows through it. The books that she gave me were extremely complicated and had lots of physics and calculus in them – who knew that soil was so complex?! Crazy stuff. Anyways, it should be interesting work. We get to go and take samples about every 2 weeks so that’s something to look forward to. She also said that I just need to work 25 hrs per week and I can do that however I want. I figure I can squeeze 25 hrs into 3 or 4 days which will give me either 4-day or 3-day weekends so I can travel. I had ideas that I would travel to a few other countries, but apparently I thought that trains traveled faster because Annika told me that I would barely be able to make it to some cities in Germany and back again if I had planned on working 5 day weeks and traveling. Now that I’ve sort of experienced Cottbus I realize that I want to be gone as much as possible so I have no problem working a little longer for only a few days a week so I can get some traveling it, hah. Anyways, I’ll keep you more up-to-date with what I’ll be doing as soon as I know more. I have no idea what Annika has in store for me but I’ll know in a few weeks.

Overall I guess my experience has been okay. I have my ups and downs. The lack of communication is killing me right now. There’s really nothing to do here when I get back from work except read and watch TV shows I have on my computer. I’ve been watching The Office every night which has cheered me up a lot, but other than that I just really hope this all gets better when I start traveling. I’m finding it pretty impossible to meet new people because of not knowing anyone to begin with and the whole language barrier thing. There are some couchsurfers (the people that I’m trying to meet online so I have a place to stay with when I travel to different cities) in Cottbus that I think I want to write to online and see if they want to get some coffee one day or something. We’ll see. The plan is to meet new people when I travel either in the hostels or the people that I’ve found to stay with – whatever I end up doing. I think it will get better – Cottbus just isn’t that great of a city for this thing. Oh well…

Well, I’ve been typing for over an hour now so I think I’m going to call it quits and watch a few more episodes of The Office before bed. I’m sure I’ve left some stuff out and I’ll fill you in the next time I write (or hopefully I’ll have my internet up so we can talk on Skype instead). I haven’t taken any pictures yet but I’ve decided to be touristy this weekend and begin the picture taking process. I’ll find someway to put them online so everyone can see them. I’ll let you know. Hope everything is going well at home and I’ll talk to you again shortly.

Tschüss!

- Keaton