Week of the Burn

So, another week has passed. It has been rather quiet without my roommate here, although I never saw him much to begin with. It’s just different being guaranteed that when I leave in the morning, when I come back for lunch, when I come home from work, when I come home from running, etc. the apartment will be empty. I’m sure I’ll get used to it.

Coming home from Paris on Monday gave me a short week this week, so that was nice. I don’t mind work, but hey – who wants to go all five days a week? Psh.

Tuesday afternoon Annika, my boss, took me to one of her research sites to show me how to take soil samples. Four other people came alone with us – two other PhD students, one other undergraduate assistant, and one of the PhD student’s sisters. The site is about 25 minutes away driving. After driving some way on the highway (a small one, not the autobahn) we traveled about 5 more minutes on a dirt road that led to the fenced in area where all of the research sites are. It is a rather large plot and hold maybe 5 different sites. The plot is on a piece of land that has already been mined for brown coal. All of the studies done there are to look at what effects mining has on the soil and the development of a new ecosystem after the mining takes place. After the brown coal is mined, the mining company fills in the mine with a mixed up form of all the dirt that the dug out to create the mine. All of the soil in the area is man made so that is what makes it so different.

Annika and I specifically study how the soil will continue to develop and also how new plants will grow in the weird soil. While we were there we took some soil samples from a soil pit that was dug up earlier. Taking samples involves me hammering a 3 inch tall metal cylinder into the ground and then carefully removing it from the soil and leveling off the top and the bottom of the cylinder while trying to keep the soil within undisturbed. Not too difficult, but when there are large pieces of clay in the soil it’s hard to level them off without ripping a large chunk out – that means I have to start all over.

Another PhD student that uses the site is studying root formation of plants in the man-made soil. To do this she dug a huge hole in the ground and built a shed inside of the hole. The roof lies even with the top of the soil and you can enter by lifting up a flap in the roof. Along the walls of the underground shed there are 180 clear plexiglass pipes (about 2.5 inches in diameter) that go through the walls and into the surrounding soil. She then takes a very tiny camera and slides the camera along the pipes, taking a 180º picture every 5 cm or so. Around the shed she has planted a few different types of plants that are native to the area. She hopes to be able to see the roots growing around the pipes and learn how they form in the soil and how fast they form. So cool! She took me down into the underground shed to check it out. Very interesting.

The weather here in Cottbus is perfect for working in the field. The highs earlier this week were in the low 70’s and the site always has a nice breeze going on.

We went back to the site on Thursday to finish soil sampling. We only stayed for 3 hours the first day, but this time we were going for the whole day (8 hours). Not thinking, I didn’t wear or bring any sunscreen with me that day. Half of me thought it wasn’t that hot outside and I had a nice tan going so I didn’t really need it, while the other half of me decided to bring it in the end but forgot about it. Halfway through the day I could tell that I had made a bad decision. By the end of the day I was fried crispy. I rolled up my sleeves in hopes of decreasing the size of my amazing farmer’s tan, but that just hurt worse in the end. Where I had already got sun I became very dark and sunburned, but where I was originally white on my upper arms, I am now scarlet. Crap. I have a nice 2nd degree burn going on (blisters and all) which makes sleeping in any position but on my back very difficult. It’s getting better, but too slow for my taste. Next time I’ll wear sunscreen…

I went to the Apotheke (pharmacy) to ask if they had anything for sunburns. The pharmacies here you just go in, tell the doctor what is wrong with you, and then they give you something for it. Very different from the states. She ended up selling me this spray to put on my sunburn. It was next to a giant advertisement in front of the store and cost me 10€. Pretty sure she was paid by a company to promote it, but she said it worked the best. It works okay, but I keep thinking that Aloe Vera would feel even better. They didn’t have that at the pharmacy, so oh well. Next time I will just be certain to bring suncreen.

Note: I’ve fixed the picture link and updated the Cottbus photo album with pictures from the field. Paris pictures are still in the works. Should be up sometime this week.

Sometime this week I messaged a Couchsurfer that lives in Cottbus asking if she wanted to grab coffee or something sometime. She had posted on her profile that she was available for coffee and stuff so I figured why not. Knowing someone in this city would make things a lot easier. Not having anyone to hangout with has put a damper on things. She said that she would call sometime this weekend but I got an email earlier today saying that she had to cancel because she has to meet up with her parents. No worries – she said that we could meet up sometime next week instead. She invited me to an electronic music party on Thursday, but I figured I should meet her first and not just go crash a party where I knew absolutely nobody, hah. Maybe next time.

Anne, an undergrad student that also works for Annika, asked me on Friday if I was doing anything for the weekend. I told her no so she gave me her phone number and email address so I could call Saturday and we could hang out. I was really excited about this because she’s really nice and I figured we would have fun. I called Saturday afternoon and she invited me to make dinner with her and a friend of hers, Regina, that night. I went over around 7pm to her flat down the road and we made chicken fajitas. Well, I sat and watched while they made chicken fajitas. Her roommate joined us as well – he was nice. Most everything they said was in German, but her male roommate (Gah, I forget his name) made it a point to translate every now and then and talk to me a bit. Mostly we talked about how Germany and the US differ in a lot of ways and how he wants to visit the US because he loves basketball so much.

After dinner another one of Anna’s friends, Inga, came over. We hung out for a while and drank wine. There was a festival down in a park south of the city and they were shooting off fireworks at about 10.30pm so we climbed up to the top of the roof with a bottle of wine and enjoyed them from a distance. It was nice. It was one of those things where I was glad to be doing it but wished I were in the presence of other people.

Just about the whole time I was there everyone spoke German. Now, I speak very little German and understand much less, so it made understanding what was going on difficult. All of them were fluent in English (which I still find more impressive than anything else here) but only said something to me every now and then. At one time they asked me if I understood anything they were saying and I explained that I could pick up some stuff if it was slow, but for the most part, no. Regina proposed that perhaps they could just switch to English, but it sounded reluctant so I said it was fine. I ended up leaving early, about midnight, because I was kind of tired of just sitting around not understanding anything. I admit it was nice to hang out with people (this being the first time in 3 weeks since I’ve done so), but it was slightly disappointing at the same time. Baby steps, I guess.

On a brighter note, I just talked to Paul, my mom’s roommate’s old foreign exchange student, who will be hosting me in Hannover this weekend. I’m so excited to go! At first I thought it might be strange asking him to let me stay with him, but now I’ve found that he’s just as excited as me. I was originally going to take a train over on Friday and leave Sunday, but I think he convinced me to head over Thursday night instead (hopefully Annika won’t mind) because he said I shouldn’t be stuck any longer in Cottbus doing nothing. So true. He told me how he has friends that can show me the city on Friday, and then they can take me out partying on Saturday night and also how he rows and wants to show me the river and take me rowing sometime as well! I couldn’t be more excited! He also mentioned that his friend in Hamburg is very excited to host me at her apartment one weekend. I thought that I might not travel to Hamburg because it’s rather far, but now I figured I really should because it sounds like a lot of fun. I can’t wait!

The way it seems now, next weekend should out-do this weekend by far. Good.

I still haven’t had much luck with good food here. Everything I seem to buy at the store seems to suck. Perhaps it’s because I’m shopping at the equivalent to an Aldi and everything is off brand, but perhaps not. I would be able to cook more dinners if I had a freezer to store meat and stuff, but I just eat out for dinner every night. I’m most disappointed with the bread here. German Brot just isn’t that great. It seems when I buy a loaf at the store I buy it already stale. I thought that was just the white bread, so I bought another type and it turned out to be rubbery and nasty. Annika suggested I buy it at the bakery outside the store. I bought a load of white bread but the crust is so thick and hard and every time I cut a slice the end just gets hard because I have no way to store it. Oh well. I plan on going to the other grocery store tomorrow and trying my luck.

Funny thing: on weekends most of the street lights are out so cars and people just have to cross at their own risk. A way to conserve energy? Perhaps.

I’ve finished the His Dark Materials series (Golden Compass books). Loved them. But now I don’t have anything to read. Not cool. I’ll have to find a place that sells books in English or wait until London to get some new ones. We’ll see.

I think that’s all for now.

Until next time.