Kramermarkt

I got together with six classmates on Friday night at a restaurant called Litfass for all-you-can-eat pizza. Then tonight, the same group got together at the local fairgrounds to check out a 10-day carnival/fair in Oldenburg called Kramermarkt. It's a traditional, once-a-year fest, and this year marked the 400th annual! I wonder what it looked like in 1607? Isn't that about when the Mayflower pilgrims first arrived in New England? I didn't take any pics or video at the carnival, but I found the following YouTube video taken at this year's Kramermarkt that gives a good sampling of the event: www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEUS_X83PLw.

Several of us did some crazy carnival rides. One of the rides was, by far, the most intense amusement park ride I've ever done (briefly shown at 1:00 of the YouTube vid). It's this long 200-300' beam with a pivot in the center and a four-seater basket on each end. The connection to each basket is also a pivot, so that when the beam rotates slowly, the baskets stay upright (and all is right with the world). But then the big beam starts spinning at unbelievable, breathtaking speeds, so the centripetal forces make the basket start doing flips. The speed and G-forces were incredible -- I was screaming like a teenage girl (and I'm usually a big, tough-guy with my hands in the air on roller-coaster rides)!

Finally -- Classmates...

I met up with around ten of my 35 classmates today, when Jiota got us together to take care of some university admin/logistical things as a group. Everyone seems really nice (but younger -- I was the only one over thirty).

One of the guys I met, Petros, is Greek... and he also plans to travel next semester to Athens for the wind energy specialization. So I learned from him that campus housing is mostly non-existent in Athens, and we (students) may have a very difficult time just finding housing at all. Hopefully the university will help, but he was pessimistic about it. He also said that most bars in Athens stay open until 4am on weeknights and round-the-clock on weekends. He made Athens sound like party-central -- could be dangerous! :o

More Cameroonians

Last night was another late one... The Cameroonian pal from my dorm, Alinda, passed me in the hall, as I was returning to my room (with my newly washed laundry) and insisted that I come with him to meet a group of Cameroonians who were having a party on my floor. I had a really good time speaking Cameroonian English, mixed with French and (broken) German for 3-4 hours. All of them speak German fluently but with an African accent that makes it pretty much unintelligible to me. I also don't understand much when they switch into Pidgin English (most of them are Anglophones, from near the border of Nigeria). I had a good time talking about Cameroon and trading stories and cultural references. And the wife of one of the Cameroonian guys, who is German (but speaks English pretty well), did a really good job of teaching me how to use a few German words and grammar that have been giving me problems. Unfortunately, she and her husband are moving to Hamburg (around an hour away) and won't be around anymore after Friday. It's too bad -- they're both really nice people. I wish I'd had the opportunity to get to know them better.

Long Walk for a Pint

On Friday night I walked to the downtown area -- around 4-5 miles from my dorm -- because the busses run only once per hour after 9pm (and I arrived at the busstop around 55 minutes before the next bus arrival). I went back to an Irish pub called Fiddler's Green, that I'd passed earlier in the day, to drink a beer and listen to some live Irish tunes. My other motivation was that I thought perhaps I would happen upon a multi-cultural looking group or hear someone speaking English there... and they would turn out to be some of my future classmates. (I've been feeling bored lonely, since I got here, and I'm really ready to meet some folks who can speak English well enough to carry on a decent conversation.) But no such luck. Everyone looked local and was speaking German, so far as I heard (except the singer/guitar player, who was speaking and singing in English). It took me a even longer to get back home (in the dark in this still not-too-familiar place).

I've spent most of Saturday and Sunday holed up in my dorm room reviewing engineering and math concepts (so I don't look like a dunce when classes start) and listening to German-learning CDs. My cold is in full force now, so hopefully it'll wear itself out in the next couple of weeks.

Tomorrow I'm hoping to start a local bank account and buy a cell phone. Apparently -- as a counter-terrorism measure -- German telecom companies are required to get proof of residency/address before they can sell a cell phone to a customer. And since I don't yet have any documentation proving where I live, they won't sell me a dad-blamed cell phone! So tomorrow I plan to corner one of the university admin ladies and try to get the necessary goods.

Just because it means one thing in English, doesn't mean...

Today, I went to a Turkish döner [gyros] place for lunch -- it's pretty popular here. I ordered a chicken gyros meal with veggies and rice, but it didn't come with any pita bread. So I asked the waiter (in my very best Deutsch) for two pitas and some hot sauce... I stopped eating my food to wait for the pitas, because I wanted to stuff them with my meat, veggies, and rice. 15 minutes later, when I asked the waiter again about my pitas, he looked perturbed and said they were almost done. "Does he have to bake them from scratch?" I wondered. When he finally returned to my table, instead of bringing two pieces of pita bread, he had made two complete pita meals (pita bread, stuffed with meat, veggies, rice... and the hot sauce I ordered). What a lesson in word choice and making sure I'm understood! To me, a pita's just a bread pocket, but to him it was a menu item. Looks like I'll be eating Turkish food back at the ranch for the next few meals...

Intro to Oldenburg...

Tuesday brought its own set of challenges, like learning how to use the bus system. My dorm is several miles from the university's main campus, so the students I'd met on Monday night suggested that I take the bus to campus and meet with the Studentenwerks [campus administration] personnel to take care of paperwork, payments, etc. Marcelo had drawn me a map and did a good job of explaining which busses to take, but the bus system was still a little confusing at first. When I found my way to the Studentenwerks office (at around 11am), I stuck my head into one of the offices and asked one lady if she speaks English. "No", she replied in English. "Wo ist Ninas buro?" [Where is Nina's office?] I asked. Then she rattled off something in German. I understood "14:00", so I figured she wouldn't arrive at the office until 2pm.

I decided to have lunch at the Mensa [campus cafeteria]. It's a very different set-up than in U.S. campus cafeterias. There are three different meal routes -- each marked on the floor with dots of a particular color. Each lunch choice has its own theme (and price). One is the main (cheap) food option-of-the-day (€1.80 / $2.40); another's a vegetarian meal (€2 / $3); and the third is an a la carte line with two or three food choices. I did the a la carte line and took rice with tomato-cabbage-meat sauce. I also got a small bowl of sliced cucumber and a small bowl of yogurt with fruit and cereal mixed in (cost: €3 / $4.20). There are no "meal plans", where you pay for a certain number of meals before the semester starts and slide a card through a reader to deduct a meal each time. Instead, everyone just pays for each meal individually. Mensa's are only open at lunchtime, so it looks like I'll still need to cook a little in evenings (or else eat my dinners at restaurants and Turkish food shacks).

At 2pm, I met with Nina;J... and found her to be different than I expected. Based on my correspondence with her, I'd expected a ditzy, shy, 18-year-old, fairly clueless girl. I'm not sure of her age, but she seems very competent, in person. I think one of the reasons her communications were so late is that she's a student and only works at the Studentenwerks office one afternoon per week (and is overworked, as the only English speaker in the office). Nina speaks English perfectly -- like a native speaker -- but with a slight Kiwi accent (she spent a year during high school living in New Zealand). She was genuine and helpful, and I got campus maps and other useful info from her.

Then I decided to buy some necessities in town. I had slept, fully clothed, on a bare mattress (with a pile of clothes for a pillow) on Monday night, so sheets, a pillow, and a blanket were high priorities. I also needed clothes hangers. I enjoyed wandering around the town just looking at the shops and available goods, trying to get a sense of the town. It seems to have quite a busy, bustling downtown area.

Although I want to improve my German while I'm here, I'm still getting acclimated, so I was hoping to sort of "ease" into speaking German. But as I walked around to the various shops, very few shopkeepers and sales clerks were able (or willing) to speak English. So much for easing in! I'd gotten used to Stockholm where every single person I spoke to responded very confidently to my questions in English. I'd forgotten how exhausting it is to be a language novice in a foreign land where English isn't spoken much. It requires so much focused concentration to gather the right words in roughly the right order so that I’m understood. And then it’s even harder, I think, to decipher the German response, which is frequently spouted off quickly and with a different accent than I’m used to hearing. I returned to my dorm room around 7pm.

My missions for the evening: get internet set up and get a good night of sleep (on my new sheets and pillow). In order to use internet in the dorm, I needed to find a particular resident named Hanjo (pronounced "Hahn-yo"). After filling out a request form, Hanjo installed the internet connection onto my laptop. Hanjo speaks English very well and is a nice guy, so I also took the opportunity to ask him several other questions: Where's my roommate? (He hasn't been here since I arrived). Where do I throw out trash and recycling? What restaurants and stores are within walking distance of the dorm? He said he doesn't know my roommate well, but he knows that he's a black guy. He also answered my other questions.

At Hanjo’s suggestion, I went downstairs to a bar in the dorm basement that opens every Tuesday night (and for special occasions). Even though all of Hanjo's friends were speaking (very quickly) in German with him and each other, he carefully made certain that I knew what was going on by translating into English for me periodically. Hanjo’s a nice fellow.

Then at around midnight, I noticed a black guy standing next to me at the bar. I asked Hanjo if this was my long lost roommate. He said it was not, but he introduced me to him and said that this man, Alinda, knows my roommate well. I began talking to Alinda (in English) and learned that he's from Cameroon... and so is my roommate, Lionel! Small world, eh? My roommate is apparently on vacation in Yaoundé (Cameroon's capital city) right now. It was a little like finding a long lost brother (and the promise of meeting another, who will be my roommate). As often happened in my Cameroonian Peace Corps days, Alinda started buying me beers. I was already on my fourth when I met him, and he bought me a fifth and sixth. This was a very nice gesture, but we didn't leave the bar until 3:15am when the bartenders (gently and kindly) threw us out. We continued talking in the hallway about Cameroon and Cameroonians until 4am. I've been slowly catching a cold over the past few days, so I really shouldn't have had more than one beer and should've gone to bed "early" (12 or 1)... but it was just too nice to have some interesting conversation in this new land with Hanjo and his friends at first and then with Alinda later -- especially after a somewhat rough day trying to negotiate the downtown district and shopping with a city full of people who couldn't speak my language. But today, as a result of my early-morning carousing, my cold has worsened, and I have a bit of a hangover. Ah-well... thankfully, I've got two weeks before classes start.

Deutschland Arrival

I arrived in Germany on Monday and had a challenging time getting to my new campus. Here's the story:

I flew from Stockholm to London first. I had booked my flights through Orbitz, and I'd assumed they would only book connecting flights that provided adequate layover time. I haven't traveled internationally since returning from Peace Corps in 2004 and didn't realize that you now have to go through security checks between international flights (even if you're arriving and departing again on the same airline -- e.g. British Airways). Upon arrival at London-Heathrow, there was a gi-normous mob of passengers waiting just to get into the room where security checks occur. By the time I made my way to the front of the mob, I had five minutes until boarding would close (per my ticket). Thankfully British Air had its own special "fast-track" security station to speed through their customers. I arrived at the gate around a minute or two before they stopped boarding (5-10 minutes later than what was printed on my ticket) and was the one of the last people to board the plane.

I arrived at the Hamburg airport at around 5:30pm, and became immediately confused. After getting through customs -- which was much quicker and easier than I expected -- I followed what I thought were signs leading to the baggage claim area... but I ended up in the baggage claim area of a different terminal than we had arrived in. The Germans all knew what to do, I guess, but there were three or four of us ignorant, non-German-speaking Brits and Americans who somehow ended up descending the wrong set of stairs. Once we got to the correct terminal and I found my duffle bag, I sought out the info desk and asked (in English) where to catch the train for Oldenburg. I learned that, unfortunately, I had to take a shuttle to the Hamburg train station -- around 20 miles away from the airport -- before I could catch the train to Oldenburg. I went outside and stood at the designated area until the bus arrived. Then I noticed that everyone was paying as they entered the bus, and I didn't yet have any euros (€) -- Sweden still uses their own currency (krona). So I went back into the airport terminal and found an ATM, bought a water and a yogurt at an airport shop (to get smaller bills and because I was starved), and returned to the bus pick-up location. When the next shuttle arrived, I entered and handed the driver €3.50 (the fare, I thought) and he rattled off something quickly and angrily in German that I didn't understand. I assumed I hadn't given him enough money, so I pulled the other coins out of my pocket and allowed him to take the correct amount -- €5. Then I began walking onto the bus to take my seat, and he started barking at me again in unintelligible German. He was printing out a receipt that he wanted me to take from him, and the only word I recognized was "Kontrolle", which means supervisor... but at the time, I thought it meant police, so I thought perhaps he was threatening to call the police on me for giving him the wrong amount of money and then not taking his receipt.

At the Hamburg train station, I had a tough time finding out where to buy my train tickets. Eventually I found automated ticket machines, which located an appropriate train itinerary to get me to Oldenburg but wouldn't let me buy an actual ticket. I had to wait in a long line in order to pay a cashier. By the time I paid and got my ticket, I had only around ten minutes to get to the platform in a different part of the station. This wouldn't have been a big problem, except that the student liaison -- a 2nd-year, Greek renewable energy student named Jiota, who planned to meet me at the Oldenburg train station -- was expecting me to arrive in Oldenburg at 8:25pm... and it was already 8:45, at this point. I had her cell phone number, but since I don't yet own a cell phone, I had to buy a telephone card (for use in a public pay phone). By then, it was 8:51, and my train was to depart at 8:55 sharp. I decided that I would miss my train if I used a pay phone first, so I ran to the platform to catch the train. But then, I noticed a pink "T" (telephone) sign on the platform near one of the open train doors. I frantically inserted the phone card and began dialing Jiota's phone number... but the dial tone began beeping (something was wrong). I tried it again with the same results. 8:53. I ran to a shop (located conveniently just a few yards away on the platform) and asked the shopkeeper (who was, conveniently, an African man who could speak English) what I was doing wrong. He looked at the telephone number and said that it had too many numbers (Jiota had given her number to me as an international number, not one to call within Germany). He carefully wrote the number for me in the correct format; I thanked him and dashed to the phone and called her. "Hello, Jiota, I have no time to talk, but I'm going to be late. My train will arrive at 22:22 [10:22pm]. See you then." I heard her repeat "22:22" as I hung up the phone. I grabbed my bags and scrambled onto the train 30 seconds before the doors closed, and the train rolled westward toward Oldenburg.

Jiota (pronounced Yawta) and two other 2nd-year renewable energy students -- Byrak from Turkey and Marcelo from Brazil -- met me at the Oldenburg train station and drove me to my dorm. Very nice, helpful folks. Very competent English speakers and full of useful advice about the town, the university, and the renewable energy program. They also quizzed me about my background, age, U.S. state of origin, etc. They were all very surprised and impressed by how little luggage I brought. I didn't tell them I'm planning to ask my parents to mail me at least a couple of boxes of stuff I didn't pack onto the plane.

Here are some pics of my slightly spartan, but very adequate dorm room (and the view from my window).

Shared kitchen and bathroom with one roommate

Parking lot and park/playground (beyond the trees) outside my 5th floor window

Sweden Visit

On my way to Germany, I visited a college pal, Phil Austin, in Stockholm, Sweden. I had a great time hanging out for four days and getting a brief sampling of Scandinavian life. Unfortunately, I didn't take many photos, but here are the few that I took.

I learned that bycycling is pretty serious business in Stockholm. If you're not sure where your going... if you like to saunter along aimlessly/slowly on your bike... or if you aren't in the habit of using hand signals before stopping or turning... then beware: You may encounter a slightly testy Swede. Even the little, old, blue-haired ladies drove faster than I did on their bikes in Stockholm. But hey, the Swedes seemed generally to be slim, trim people, so maybe that serious biking is paying off in health dividends.

I also found that nearly everyone in Stockholm (that I came in contact with) was a competent, confident English-speaker (unlike in my new German hometown). Except for one incident with an irate biker and another with a grumpy bus driver, the Stockholmers seemed to be pleasant, if somewhat reserved, folk.

Besides cycling around town, Phil & I went to see a wonderful concert by the world-class Swedish pop/jazz a cappella group, The Real Group, in Eskilstuna, a small neighboring town; kayaked through several of the many waterways in Stockholm; and went to see Sweden's most popular tourist attraction (I'm told): The Vasa Museum (some pics below). This ship set sail on its maiden voyage -- in front of a large crowd of spectators and with much fanfare -- in 1628... and sank within a few minutes of leaving the dock. This ship is famous not only for the spectacular disaster of its sinking but for the successful engineering feat of lifting the wreckage out of the sea in 1962. It's a pretty fascinating museum, and I highly recommend it for anyone traveling to Stockholm.

I caught my plane for Hamburg, Germany on Monday morning, September 17.