Kölle Alaaf!

It is a statistical certainty¹ that when a person falls asleep on public transportation, the moment they awaken, they assume RIGHT NOW is the time to get off the train/bus/tram. In reality, this is rarely the case. Keep this little bit of knowledge. It'll be useful in a few paragraphs.

Last weekend I went to Cologne for Karneval! If you're unfamiliar, Cologne is in western Germany and is the place people go to celebrate Karneval. Karneval itself is essentially the same thing as Mardi Gras. I say “essentially” because I'm not religious, and I wanna hedge my bets in case there really is a difference. A few of us PPP'lers who are stranded in the GDR², decided to meet up in Berlin, rent a car, and drive to Karneval. We stayed with another American girl's host family near Düsseldorf, which is close enough to the revelry.

This of course means that we got to drive on the autobahn, which has been on my bucket list since the first time I was in Germany. The car we rented was a stick-shift, but luckily my mom insisted that I at least learn how to drive stick. I won't lie, I was rusty as hell when I started off, but I drove a stretch that was almost all autobahn, so it was only rough until I got on the on ramp. The German autobahn gods must have been watching me, because right as I got on the autobahn, we hit a section that actually does have a speed limit. After about 30 minutes of that garbage, we finally made it to an unrestricted section. I can't properly describe the feeling of piloting a vehicle at 130 miles per hour. Pure speed. (Mom, if you're reading this, 130 was a typo, I mean 75. Yeah, slow, safe, reasonable 75 mph). Another cool thing about Germany is that there is no open container law, which means that we enjoyed our autobahn trip with some nice East German beers in the car. Of course the driver can't drink, but someone has to take one for the team.

Andrea and Jen packing our car

I do find it odd, that a country that has laws for everything doesn't have a speed limit and allows alcohol consumption (starting at 16) while driving. It took me some thinking, but when I consider that two of Germany's most popular (and politically powerful) industries are beer brewing and automobile manufacture, it makes sense that they would have the political clout to keep away restrictive laws.

I am what you call a "young ambassador"

But eventually, we get to Cologne. A few of us had decided to make a group costume, something which in my opinion never ends up happening in the end. Big plans are made “The Seven Dwarves, but Sexy” or “All the Presidential Candidates” and then in the end everyone shows up as something boring like a cheerleader.. Somehow though this time it actually worked, and damned well too! We all dressed up as characters from Super Mario. I almost ended up going as Princess Peach since Ive got the best legs of the group, but I dressed up as Luigi instead. Of course there was partying and revelry, so I'll skip the stories about that, and jump to my public transit story from the beginning of the post.

On Saturday night, I got separated from my group. In truth, I probably just walked away as I'm prone to do when there is a lull in activity. It's a great way to meet new people in my opinion. Regardless, I get separated from my group. I text to see where they are, and they are heading back to the tiny town we are sleeping in. (Incidentally the path from the train station to our house is a concrete jungle, I'd only walked it one time at 7am on Saturday morning. So it is advantageous to meet up with my friends and navigate it together.) Ok, cool, they're heading back, I will too. I get on the train and promptly fall asleep. When I wake up, that statistical certainty I mentioned earlier comes into play and I get off the train. I get off the train in the middle of nowhere. So I go to the ticket machine and check when the next train comes. The next train comes at 5 after the hour, so I wait. Five after comes....and goes. So I go back to the machine, and I realize that the next train comes at five after 5am, which is 3 hours from now. It's freezing, and I'm still dressed as Luigi. So I curl up in a ball next to the machine and, shivering, I fall into a very light (but not light enough sleep). I am awoken by the sound of the 5:05 train as it leaves the station. “Well fuck,” I said aloud to no one in particular. I'm just gonna call a cab, I can't be that far from home, I think. My phone however is dead, so I go around the neighborhood knocking on doors of houses and businesses alike to find a phone. I eventually find a casino, and the owner asks where I am heading. He then informs me that the ride will probably cost 70€, but the next train comes in an hour. “Well fuck,” I say quietly and mostly to myself. He then offers to let me sleep in the casino for the next hour. This man is a saint. I eventually catch the train back home, and don't make any mistakes this time.

Wario and I.

One of the things I pride myself on is my good memory. It's how I made it through college, it's how I've learned German as quickly as I have, its how I remember funny jokes and turns of phrase. Thanks to this wonderful memory, I was able to successfully navigate my way back to the house from the train station without getting lost. I arrived at 7:30am, again still dressed as Luigi, and have to wake the host parents up to be let in. A total trip time of just over 5 hours.

I crash cold and weary into bed next to Andrea (nothing happened!) and awoke the next morning to play with the children and have a barbeque. All in all a successful weekend of revelry, boozing, costuming, speeding, and “living of the land”.

Oh and before I forget, today's word is a Narrenruf (Fool's Cry) from Cologne, and means Cologne Alive!

1. Not Really.

2. There is no GDR anymore, despite what many old people say.

die Mobilität

Right now I'm knee deep in a project that I expect to consume my weekend, and I'm taking a break to consider my options, plan tomorrow's schedule, and to write this post.

Today's word means “mobility” and the project I'm knee deep in is me trying to repair/steal/obtain a bicycle. My history with bicycles and Germany is a long (and reprehensible) one. My first German bike I bought from a double amputee at a flea market, I learned later that it was likely stolen and was subsequently fenced to me. Strike one. The next bike I got was an ill-conceived solution to a temporary problem. It was my last night in Tübingen, and I was stranded in the student village at 3am. I had to check out of my room at 6am. So I poked around until I found a bike that wasn't chained up and rode it home. This bike was clearly abandoned; it had vines growing on it. But still, strike two. My third bike was found in a wooded area in Radolfzell. Ok, not a wooded area, it was a hedgerow, by an apartment complex. I refused to buy a lock for this bike because that would be a “capital investment.” I just banked on people thinking the bike was too crappy to steal, which ended up working until 2 days before I left Radolfzell. Strike two and a half. My current bike is probably the only one that is neither stolen nor...stolen. I bought it off my Tandem partner. And the first time I rode it, I fell and scraped the crap out of my knee. Like all the bikes it needs some work, namely new tires and inner tubes (The tires proudly advertise that they were made in "East Germany"). A new bell would be nice. OH and a basket! No. No basket, let's not get greedy.

Why, you may ask yourselves, does Alex go to such lengths to acquire a bicycle? Doesn't he have a bus pass? Can't he just walk? Let me explain myself. In Germany everyone has a bicycle and these people pay stupid money to have a bicycle. I was talking to a friend on Sunday night and he said his bike was pretty cheap at 400€, or about $500. I've seen bikes here that cost well into the thousands. Mine cost 25€ with a lock. But these people love their bikes, and they have the calves and butts to prove it.

Bike culture is a lot more developed here, mostly I think because owning a car is so expensive. In the States all of my friends have cars, all of them. In Germany driver's licenses are expensive, and driver's ed is also expensive, and gas is expensive, and cars themselves are expensive, and parking said car is nearly impossible...and of course expensive. At home my driver's license cost $25, I got it when I was 15, and when I left the states, gas was about $3.10/gallon, and I bitched about that! In Germany you can't start the driver's license process until you're 17. Driver's Ed, which ends with you getting the license hopefully, costs about $1300. Oh and gas is around 1.59€/liter, which is about $7.90/gallon. So it's understandable why bikes are a big deal here.

So, that explanation aside, I need to get new tires on my bike, but this has presented two problems. 1. I only have pliers, a screwdriver, a butter knife, and a razor blade for tools. 2. I don't wanna drop twice the price of the bike to replace its tires and whatnot. But then a sort of solution presented itself when I was doing laundry. I walked into the basement and saw this:

The thieving Polack* in me gasped

Yes folks, a cellar full of bikes. I did a quick pass to see if any bikes weren't locked up, but of course it couldn't be that easy. I did however find some bikes that had already been picked at by the bicycle vultures. So I started making an inventory of those bikes and what they had to offer me. Several of the bikes have their front wheel locked to their frame, which means the back wheel, seat, and other things are mine! Several other bikes have their frame locked to the wall, which of course means a front tire for me. It has taken some careful planning, but I've managed to piece together a second bike from parts of broken bikes, and I'm learning significant amounts about bicycle (de)construction! Currently this is how my bedroom looks.

I've been sneaking bike parts into my room all night. I make sure to wear a coat to the bike cellar so it looks like I just came in from outside. The green bike is the one I bought, and the red one was chained to itself with a combination lock. I spent some time trying to crack the lock's code, and then gave up and hacked the cable apart with a razor blade and pliers. At this point my only hurdle remaining is not having a wrench or a pump. If I had those things I could fix both bikes (and probably sell the red one to cover my costs). The alternative is to simply go to a bike shop and ask to use their tools if I agree to buy the materials from them. This of course saves me tool costs, but prevents me from using most of my found materials. This part I'm still hashing out in my head. If I find cheap tools though, the bike shop is a non-issue.

At this point I would again like to emphasize that I only scavenged on the bikes that were already all torn to hell. Not the bikes that were just missing something; I went after the bikes that barely fit the description of bikes anymore, and a fair amount of parts are simply littering the floor of the basement. So my conscience is clean, I think.

I didn't even touch this one; it looked too pathetic.

*I know "Polack" is derogatory, but I'm using it self-deprecatingly here.

der Umzug

I have been in my new home, Rostock, for just over a week now. I would have written yesterday on the one week mark, but I was wicked tired since I stayed up late to watch the Superbowl.

Last week I checked out of my room in Neubrandenburg. I'd spent the previous 24 hours scrubbing my walls with an eraser after the horror stories I'd heard from the Latvian students about room damage fees. In the end I got away with somewhere between 6.25€ and whatever a painter costs for a day in damages. The Purple Hair Lady (which surprisingly doesn't narrow the field of possible people much in Germany) claimed that the place I leaned against the wall would need to be repaired...or the entire room be painted. Maybe if they didn't paint the walls with CHALK it wouldn't be a problem, but I digress. I've moved out. Today's word by the way mean “relocation.”

This. This right here. This is what my life fits into. No bullshit.

I've moved to Rostock now because I am starting my internship phase of the program. I have my internship at the University of Rostock in the Agrobiotechnology Lab. Their website is mostly in German, but the gist of the research is getting plants to grow things that are expensive, difficult, or environmentally damaging for humans to produce normally. The two main things we trick the plants into making are immune system proteins (which normally require you to infect an animal and harvest it's blood in order to produce) and plastics (which take a lot of oil and never break down in a landfill). I'm über-excited!

The painted wooden cow in the foyer should have been the first tip that my workplace would be non-traditional

Beforehand, I was expecting the really serious work environment that everyone kept alluding to. Namely that you are always on time, your coworkers are NOT your friends, you dress well, and you are meticulously thorough. I scoped out my lab the day before I started to make sure I knew where it was in the morning, and be damned if I didn't stumble onto my boss during my casing of the building. She was happy and laughed a lot and was generally very friendly. I immediately assumed that she had to be the exception to the rule. So the next day, I walk in, and everyone is very friendly, they (surprisingly) approach me and ask me about my home and my life. In the first 2 minutes, my boss informs me that everyone there uses the informal version of “you” when the address each other, which I also didn't expect. I mean my cell phone doesn't even use the informal version of “you” with me, and god knows the secrets that thing knows about me. My coworkers are really cool people. We have two Christophs. One of whom has been showing me around in the lab. He sort of looks like Einstein, and he's also pretty smart. The other one has been showing me around the city, and has an impressive list of hobbies including cooking, vaulting, photography, and farming...oh and he's a trained carpenter. Oh and in his spare time he's in the national guard. (Ladies, the German bachelors are a fantastic lot, if I do say so myself.) Anyways my work is fantastic and I love it there.

The food in the cafeteria is awesome. Also I stole that cup.

The city of Rostock is pretty big, nothing out of control, but like 200,000 people. I found the bar district, and may or may not have a favorite bar already. Also, north of town is a suburb (sort of) called Warnemünde. It's a beach town. Christoph, some of his friends, and I went there on Sunday. It was bitterly cold, as expected, but still there were loads of people there for a 10° day. I'm excited to see how it looks in the summer, I heard there's a nude beach...

My dorm is a shared apartment, which I shared with a German named Matthias and a Palestinian named Hani. I thought Hani's name was “Honey” for the longest time. Lemme tell you, it's really bizarre when you meet someone and right away he tells you to call him Honey. Also my apartment is huge, and it took me some thinking to figure out why. I finally solved the puzzle when I was in the bathroom. Nothing immodest, we have the handicapped apartment and so our bathroom is tricked out with all kinds of guard rails and emergency call buttons. That was what tipped me off. Also the doors are super wide and we are on the first floor. I really hope there aren't any poor students in wheel-chairs living on the third floor someone because of me.

I found this little gem near the grocery store. Big Long Asia....too easy.

So, all in all I could not be happier with my current placement, and if any of you readers are from Rostock (I highly doubt this) I'm gladly taking suggestions of new things to do, see, and try in the city.