Wind on the Daily Show

If you're a Daily Show fan, then you may have already seen this clip on TV. I'm generally not a television watcher (even when I own a TV, and I currently don't), so I hadn't seen it. A classmate, Alan, who is a big Daily Show fan, sent this link to me:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=91140&title=jason-jones-180-%E2%80%93-nantucket

One of the philosophical things I decided, during my 3-year stint of working in residential wind energy is that most Americans -- especially those not living on a coast -- are completely oblivious to wind energy (actually to all renewable energy). It's just not a part of their "real" lives. They don't see wind turbines during their drive to work... they don't have neighbors using solar panels, solar water-heating collectors, micro-hydro, or wind generators in their back yards... Renewable energy doesn't enter most people's consciousness, because their exposure level is nearly zero. And when something (like renewable energy equipment) seems extremely rare, it's easy to make an assumption that this is because these technologies don't yet work or are not affordable.

While renewable energy technologies can certainly improve, in terms of reliability and cost-competitiveness, they are currently available (in both large-scale installations and small residential set-ups), are reliable, and are affordable (frequently even money-making).

Hopefully this Daily Show clip is a signal that mainstream media (or at least left-wing mainstream comedy media) is starting to pay attention to renewable energy. And in my opinion, even when no one's preaching about the benefits of clean energy: if America's mainstream media expose everyday folk to renewable energy, it will quickly become a common, everyday part of real life (not just on TV). Media imitates life... and life imitates media.

Lessons in Humility - German Style

Writing Instruments
Around a week ago, I was riding my bike to campus and passed a grocery store. I had recently run out of usable pens, so I decided to stop and buy some more. I went inside the store, thought carefully about my words, and asked where I could find the Schreibtische. I wasn't sure if this word meant pen or pencil, but either way, I figured it would at least get me pointed in the right direction. As I asked the question, I even made a writing gesture with my hand, in case my pronunciation was poor. The two sales clerks looked at me, dumbfounded -- like I had three heads. When they didn't answer, I decided to try a different angle: Haben Sie Papier? [Do you have paper?] I asked. They both looked relieved by this question and responded with confidence that they don't sell paper. I thanked them, left the store, and continued to campus. A little later, I was thinking about the look of bewilderment that the clerks gave me, and it hit me: a Bleistift is a pencil... but a Schreibtisch is a desk.


Clean-up on Aisle 2
A few hours later, I went with some classmates to the campus Mensa [cafeteria] for lunch. I got a tray, silverware, and a plate of the pasta grub-o-the-day. Then I decided to get a small bowl of cheesy cauliflower, but something distracted me (I don't remember what happened exactly), and my tray (and everything on it) landed upside-down on the floor. Oops. I froze for a second -- embarrassed that the long line of people behind me would have to step through (or hop over the gigantic mess I'd made) until the lunchroom staff arrived for the clean-up. Then one of the cafeteria ladies shouted out something I didn't understand in German. She pointed to a certain corner of the lunchroom, so walked in the direction she pointed. "Maybe I'm supposed to inform the back kitchen staff of my spill, so they could clean it up," I thought. I arrived at the designated location and was provided a broom and a dustpan to clean up my own mess. Once I'd scooped up the big stuff, this was traded for a mop and a bucket of soapy water to fully remove my schmutz.


Upon reflection, I think it's very logical (and fair) that I should clean up my own mess... but it was an interesting cultural lesson: in Germany, personal responsibility is taken much more seriously than in America, where the customer is king. (Even though they made me clean up my mess, they didn't make me pay for the wasted plate of pasta and bowl of cauliflower... for which I was thankful.)


Happy Thanksgiving, by the way. I had Chinese food tonight to celebrate the holiday. Tomorrow I'll be joining a large group of international students from my university on a 3-day trip to Berlin. I'll try to post some pics next week.

German Generalizations...

After two months living in small-town Germany, here are some of my impressions of some differences between Germany and the U.S. Some of these jumped out at me immediately, and other observations have taken a while longer to appreciate:

1. Jay-walking is non-existent. I'm not kidding. Even if it's night-time, and there are no cars in sight, Germans will reliably stop at a cross-walk and wait patiently for the "little green man" to give permission to walk across the road.
2. There's a world 'nother world of yoghurt over here. In America, we have: plain, cherry, strawberry, strawberry-banana, blueberry, raspberry, mixed berry, peach, vanilla, chocolate... and that's pretty much it, right? Well, in addition to the American standard fare, the Germans have: peach-passionfruit, strawberry-rhubarb, watermelon-kiwi, grapefuit-apple, pineapple-orange, pear, nectarine-guava, honeydoo melon-peach, walnut, cinnamon-plum... and the list goes on. Sehr gut!
3. Goth is way in right now. You know the died-black hair, black make-up, lots of body piercings & tattoos, black clothes, etc.? Well, this style is very chic here right now among the youth of Oldenburg. I befriended a piercings artist at a bus stop soon after my arrival, and he explained that there's an American reality TV show (I don't know the name) which is very popular here. Apparently, ever since the show began airing here -- 7 or 8 years ago -- the popularity of tats and body piercing has sky-rocketed. I don't know if the goth stylings are part of the same trend... or not.
4. Bikers, bikers everywhere. Bicycling, as a primary means of transportation, is very widespread here in Oldenburg -- not only with university students, but with people of all ages. On weekend evenings, there's an awesome congregation of bikes -- easily two hundred -- parked on one of the main squares (Julius-Mosenplatz) until the wee hours of the morning providing the late-night party animals their return transportation. But beware, police ticket here for bicycling under the influence -- no joke!
5. Smoking... and biking. I realized, even before arriving, that Germans (or more generally, Europeans) are bigger tobacco-smokers than Americans (on average). But it still surprises me how much tobacco smoke I encounter here. There are even cigarette vending machines in my dorm and in the cafeteria. Since smoking and biking are both so ubiquitous here, it's not uncommon to see bikers puffing away on cigarettes.
6. Bladder control is a virtue. Anyone who's vacationed in Europe probably already realizes this, but: (1) restaurant restrooms are generally only for patrons; and (2) even customers are expected to pay for use of restrooms in department stores. So if you're downtown and gotta go... hopefully you're also hungry. At least most restrooms have toilets and toilet paper here!
7. Drinking fountain extinction. Drinking fountain: what's that? You know that metal device, where you push a button and a constant stream of water flows from a nozzle? Well, so far as I've seen, this innovation simply does not exist here. Come to think of it, I don't think I saw them in Sweden either... but an English classmate confirmed for me that England has them, so it must not be a Europe-wide extinction.
8. Weekends are not for shopping. I'm so spoiled by America's anything-you-want anytime-you-want-it mentality. But here, the grocery stores (and most other shops) close at noon on Saturdays (if they're open at all). And other than some restaurants, nearly nothing is open on Sundays. I still forget, sometimes, to stock the frig before the weekend -- it stinks to run out of food and go to bed hungry! I talked a few weeks ago, however, with a guy from Berlin, and he informed me that the stingy store hours are more of a small-town German thing. In contrast, he said, he can find stores open at nearly all hours, every day of the week in Berlin.
9. Oldenburgers are a friendly lot. Somewhere along the way, I picked up an unfortunate stereotype of Germans as cold, stern, unemotional, impatient, and ultra-efficient (to a fault). I have certainly met a few of these exaggerated type-A's here (as with anyplace), but in general, it just isn't so. A few weeks back, when I bought my (first) bike (which was stolen a few days later), I got lost on my way home from the bike store. As many of my long-time friends know, I tend be slightly direction-impaired, in general, but in my defense: I had only ever used the buses to get around town, so this was the first time I actually needed to know where I was going. When I stopped at a street corner and began studying my map, a 60-ish German man (who was driving past the intersection) rolled down the window and asked if he could help me. I told him I was lost and looking for my dorm -- Otto-Suhr Strasse -- and he told me to follow him with my bike. He drove slow enough for me to follow him for the 2-3 miles to my dorm. What a nice gesture! There have been several similar situations, in which I've been pleasantly surprised to be the beneficiary of warm, genuine, selfless acts of kindness.

My Classmates

I study with a great group of people in the renewable energy master's program. We're very diverse mixture of cultures, languages, backgrounds, personalities, experiences, etc., but we get along really well together. We're composed of 31 students from 20 different countries -- Austria, Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, Columbia, England, France, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Indonesia, Ireland, Mexico, Nepal, Nigeria, Sudan, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda, and the U.S. Around half of us are mechanical engineers, and the other half are electrical engineers, material scientists, physicists, environmental scientists, or combinations of these specialties. 15 of us are in the EUREC program, which means that we'll move to a different university for the second semester (location depends upon our chosen area of specialization). The other 16 of our classmates are enrolled in a program called PPRE, which entirely takes place at the University of Oldenburg.




All of the students in the two programs are fluent English speakers, but only a few have significant German language skills (and I don't yet count myself as one of these). Since all of our classes are taught in English, and we nearly always speak English to each other as the only common language... it's sometimes easy to forget that I'm living in a non-English-speaking country. I'm planning to sign up for a language exchange program called Sprachtandem soon, which pairs up native German-speakers with international students to exchange language skills. It would be a real shame for me to have lived in Germany for 4+ months without picking up any appreciable German language skills...

To sing, or not to sing...

I've had an internal debate (since before I arrived in Germany) about whether or not to get involved with singing during my studies in Europe. Whenever I'm not singing, I miss it a lot... but I can also tend to get too focused music, to the detriment of other priorities. I had preliminarily planned to participate in a university-sponsored choir, so I could do a little singing each week but without much pressure to spend lots of time on music outside of rehearsals.

There are two choirs sponsored by the university's music department in Oldenburg. One is a classical choir called "Uni-Chor"; and the is called "JazzChor". I attended one rehearsal for each of these groups last week and... it was pretty disappointing. For one thing, it hadn't occurred to me how difficult it would be to get excited about singing not-so-challenging music. But secondly, both groups are singing primarily American show tunes -- "West Side Story" medley, "Let the Sunshine In" (Hair), "Memory" and "Jellicle Cats" (Cats)... And I feel -- how should I say it diplomatically? -- overexposed... to most of this music. Perhaps to Germans, this music is fresh and new... and of course, for them it's "foreign language" music. But for me: BLYECH!

So I did some websurfing and networking over the weekend... I corresponded with a guy from a local group called QuintEssence, and he directed me to another local group -- Jaco de Musio. Last night, I became the tenor for this 5-person (SATBB) jazz vocal group. The group has two arrangers -- the alto and bari (which is nice, since I've promised myself that I won't get involved with arranging during my studies!). They realize that I'm only here in Oldenburg for four months, but they want me to fill in for their tenor (who recently moved away) during the Christmas season. There are several small (2-3 song) performances in the coming weeks, and we're hoping to put on a 30-minute Christmas concert at the local St. Lamberti church in mid-December. In addition to arrangements by two of the members, we are singing several Real Group ditties and one by Take 6 (revoiced slightly for mixed voices). It's fun to be singing again, and it's nice to feel needed (and useful) -- they desperately wanted to continue singing during the holiday season, but when their tenor left them high-n-dry a couple of months ago, they thought it would be impossible. Although the group members all speak English very well -- and talk to me exclusively in English (except when they forget) -- they frequently talk to each other in German during the rehearsal, which will hopefully continue to train/improve my ears for German vocab and grammar (by osmosis, so to speak).

Wind Farm Excursion

Yesterday, my class took a field trip to several wind-energy related sites. First we visited an old-style windmill that uses the wind to produce rotating motion in grinding tools (to grind grain).



Then we visited an EnerCon (www.enercon.de) manufacturing plant, where they manufacture 330kW - 4.5MW wind generators for the European market. It was such a surprise to learn that EnerCon uses very similar alternator technology as Abundant Renewable Energy, my former workplace (www.AbundantRE.com) -- gearless, direct-drive, variable speed generators. I went into the factory expecting to see a new technology, and it looked almost identical to the equipment I'm already familiar with (albeit on a mammoth scale)! The football-field length blades -- fitted with individual heating systems -- were a sight to see too.

Then we drove to a wind farm and climbed the spiral staircase of a 2MW turbine's tower to the observation deck (at the 65-meter / 213' hub height) to see a good view of the rest of the wind farm and to check out the turbine's guts -- very cool.

2-MW EnerCon wind turbine


View from the top of wind turbine's lookout deck (that's part of its blade swinging past)


Another view of wind farm from the lookout deck

For lunch, we stopped at a fish-n-chips joint on the North Sea, which was the only disappointing part of the trip. I'd planned to dip a toe into the North Sea (just to say I'd done it)... but the coast (at least where we were) was just muddy (not sandy) for a good 200 yards before the actual water-line began. I'm sure if we'd waited, the tide would've brought the sea closer, but alas, we had to load the bus and head south. En route back to Oldenburg, we stopped at a little harbor village (photo below) and a wind turbine testing/research facility, where they do comparisons between the big turbines from various manufacturers.


North Sea harbor in a nearby town


One-bladed turbine at wind turbine testing facility (theoretically, a one-bladed turbine seemed like a good idea to the designers... but in practice, it rarely rotated)

Take a look around town...

My current hometown -- Oldenburg -- is a really pleasant little place. It's a town of 160,000 inhabitants (about twice the size of Evanston, my last college town), so it's not a huge metropolis, but it's large enough to have decent services, restaurants, stores, etc. There are bike lanes (which are constantly in use) on every street, and there are forested areas and creeks and ponds all over the place. I mostly use my bike to get around town, but we (students) also have free access to all public transport (buses & trains) throughout Oldenburg and the surrounding region (e.g. we can ride the train to Hamburg for free).

Here are some pics of Oldenburg that I took while biking into the city center yesterday:

House from the neighborhood near my dorm

.

Next door to previous pic

.

Bakery near my dorm with sign written in "Platdeutsch" (the local dialect)

.

Artistic doctor's office facade

.

Another medical center

.

Downtown square (one of several)

.

Grand old building (now used as a telecom company's office)

St. Lamberti church

.

It says "Mexican Restaurant"... and it's dressed up like a Mexican restaurant... but unfortunately, their food is only a very distant approximation of Mexican food

Fiddler's Green Irish pub, where we sometimes gather on Friday nights for a pint and some live music

Can you spot the insidious American influence in the distance? (if not, see below)

.

Kinda spoils the European charm, doesn't it?

.

The "burg" [castle] that gives Oldenburg its name

End of the Intro

I had my intro lab exam earlier today... and it went................................ OK. (I think I may have even passed). It didn't seem nearly as hard as I expected.

Until now, we've been in the "intro lab" preliminary session, but tomorrow, our normal classes of the "winter semester" will begin. Upcoming lecture topics during the next 14 weeks include: micro-hydro electric systems, wind energy, RE physics, solar radiation, photovoltaics, biogas production, energy storage, hydrogen systems / fuel cells, energy meteorology, RE economics, solar thermal energy, and electric power systems. Sounds exciting!

Badzwischenahn

On Monday -- after a group study session for our big "Intro Lab" exam -- a group of six classmates and I took a 9-mile walk around a lake called Zwischenahner Meer in a small neighboring town called Badzwischenahn ["Bad" = bath, "zwischen" = between, "ahn" = ancestor]. Here are some pics from our journey:


R-L: Alan, Bedro, François, Andreas, Mairéad, Craig


Map of Zwischenahner Meer


Mairéad finds a stick made for walkin'


Big furry cow


François is king of the... stump


Colorful lakefront condos


Sittin' on the dock of the... Meer


Nice view

Where in the world am I?

I currently study at Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg in northwest Germany. Here's a map with Oldenburg highlighted (+ marks the spot):

My second semester will take place in Athens, Greece. You may already know where Athens is, but here's a Greek map:

I've always had the impression that Europe is a pretty small place... and that you can get from any European country to all the other European countries within a day or two (by car or train)... but it ain't necessarily so. Per Google Maps, it's around a four day trip (car or train) to get from Oldenburg to Athens. When my parents arrive in early February to help me move south, we're still trying to decide our route and mode of transportation (car, train, plane). The most direct car/train route takes us through Austria, Hungary, Serbia, and Macedonia before arriving in Greece. That sounds fun to me, but my folks and I don't speak any Hungarian, Serbo-Croatian, or Macedonian... which might make for quite an adventure. Another possible route could take us along the border of Austria and Lichtenstein -- both German-speaking countries -- into Italy, where we can take a ferry boat from one of several Italian port towns to Greece. Or we could hang out in Germany for a few days and hop on a plane for Athens. I'm not yet sure how much time I'll have between my semesters. The official start date in Athens is February 11... but rumor has it that things don't really get started at the university until around Feb 25. Hmmmm...

.

Grocery Store Blues

I just got back from my local grocery, where I bought out the whole place (you know how they say you shouldn't shop for food when you're hungry?). I bought salad and pasta ingredients galore. Here in Deutschland, they don't bag your groceries for you. In fact, you have to pay 10 cents extra for each plastic or paper bag you take, so most folks bring their own reusable cloth bag. And there's not much room at the end of the check-out counter for bagging your groceries. I think you're supposed to bag them at the same time that you're paying, but I haven't caught on to this complicated maneuver yet.

Back to the story: So I've paid and am frantically stuffing things into my reusable cloth bag (because there's a long line of hurried people coming through the check-out after me), and a guy walks up and starts asking the check-out woman where his bottle of wine is (I don't understand him well enough to know what exactly he's looking for, but I can tell he's looking for something). I reach into my bag, find a bottle of wine that I didn't buy, and hand it to him. Of course, I hadn't intended to steal it, but I was in such a rush that I just grabbed everything at the end of the checkout register and stuffed it into my bag as quickly as I could. You shoulda seen the "thief!" accusatory look on his face (and the equally shocked/surprised look on the face of the check-out woman, with whom I've struck up a friendship). And there was 0% chance of explaining this complicated situation to either of them (with my limited German and their likely non-existent English). So all I could do was smile, excuse myself, and walk away. "Entschuldigung... danke... tschüss.." [Excuse me... thanks... bye].

I need a holiday...

As a result of the cold, rainy weather, combined with a difficult change in schedule (ie. lack of sleep), I seem to be getting sick again -- the achy, feverish kind. I don't have a fever (yet), but I have that really run-down, exhausted feeling I get when my body's working hard to get rid of a bug.

Classes started -- full-force -- on Monday. And it's not easy getting back into the swing of regular classes, studying, homework, and early mornings. From our schedule, it looks like we hardly have a break in the schedule (8am - 5pm, M-F) from now until Dec. 22 (start of Christmas break). We had a 4-1/2 hour physics and electronics lab this morning that kicked my rear... followed by a lecture on energy sources (batteries) and power supplies in the afternoon, which went too fast for me to keep up. I really need to spend some significant time review the electrical concepts, writing out my lab report, preparing for our next lab, etc... but I'm dead tired and just need to sleep.

So -- thank heaven! -- Germany's reunification holiday celebration is tomorrow -- HURRAY! I'm gonna sleep in and spend most of the day trying to catch up and get ahead of the 8-ball for Thursday's lab session.

Bikes

This morning I went outside to get my bike and ride to campus for my first day of classes... and my new bike (4 days old) had been stolen. Well, that sure didn't take long! The thief had poked something small and sharp into the place on the lock where the male end attaches to the female end and forced the two ends apart. There went €100 (bike), plus €30 (lock and headlamp) down the drain. Plus, I then had to take the bus this morning, which meant I was 30 minutes late for the first class.

I bought another bike today that cost only €55. The second bike is used and a quite a bit uglier than the first (which was bright, shiny blue with red trim). Hopefully the ugly-factor will help keep this one from walking away so quickly, since obviously I can't trust bike locks any farther than I can throw them.

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