David’s Ramblings

(Posted after I finally got internet in my room)

Day two in Aachen went about as well and exhaustingly as day one. Class starts at 8:15, which means I have to get to the bus stop by 7:45, which means I have to be up by 7:00. Anyone who knows me knows that 7:00 is not typically an hour I would choose to wake up. To go to sleep? Maybe. But to get up for class? No.

After the 3 1/2 hours straight of German class, we were left with free time until 5. So I decided to wander around the center of town with a few of my classmates. We eventually found our way to a German bookstore, where I attempted to find the two books I’ve promised to obtain for friends back in the US – Die Undendliche Geschicte and a translated copy of Elfstones of Shanara. I managed to find some books by Terry Brooks, but only the latest ones. I couldn’t figure out where to find the Neverending Story.

From there, I spent the majority of time sitting around in a student cafe waiting for our program’s welcome meeting. This gave me a chance to meet Audrey and Ryan, two other participants in the UROP program.

The meeting was interesting. It was presented mostly by two professors who are actually from North America. Afterwards, we had the opportunity to meet with our advisors who will be working with us during the research part of the program, and also got to eat the well-known German food known as “pizza” (and apparently the worst pizza in Aachen by my advisor’s opinion). It’s okay it wasn’t actually a traditional German dish, seeing as I did have schnitzel for lunch (which was delicious, by the way).

The meeting concluded and a large group of us headed over to a bar, where we proceeded to do what one typically does at bars–drink beer and make friends. There’s an interesting smattering of students in this program. Majors range everywhere from Rhetoric to Psychology to Chemical Engineering, and home towns range from Costa Rica to Canada. Interestingly, the largest group of students from any school comes from Georgia Tech.

Unfortunately, I am still left without internet in my dorm. I shall be taking my laptop to class tomorrow to catch up with the world.

(Posted after I finally got internet in my room)

Tonight I write from Aachen, Germany. Of course, when I say tonight, I really mean this afternoon (in Atlanta time), but you get the idea. The trip here was incredibly long, but also incredibly uneventful.

It all started with the nine hour drive to Virginia, so that I could catch my flight from there to JFK. The hope was to spend an evening with family there, but unfortunately that evening went away as I delayed my trip with various last-minute tasks and a goodbye lunch with friends in Atlanta. After the long drive to Virginia, I arrived in time to get a 2 hour nap before having to wake back up and fly out of Norfolk.

After arriving in JFK I took a lot of time and just wandered around a bit. I had plenty of time, seeing as my Düsseldorf departure was 5 PM and I got in to JFK before 9 AM. More importantly, I had no idea which terminal to check into for my international flight, so I ended up visiting three different terminals (JFK apparently has before finding the terminal with Air Berlin.

After finding my terminal, there was a good deal of sitting and waiting, which gave me an opportunity to work on reading a good book. (Meeting at Corvallis, by SM Stirling – part of a great series) My flight did eventually board, after what seemed like years in my exhausted state, and then we were off to Germany.

Flying to Europe would have been the perfect time to catch up on that sleep I missed, unfortunately, I find it near impossible to get more than short two minute micronaps on planes. When my brain finally gets so exhausted it absolutely needs sleep, it’s generous enough to let me nod off, but once I get just that tiny bit of sleep on a plane, my brain will be like, “Okay, enough of that. Sitting up while sleeping sucks. Let’s wake up and wait for a real bed.” So my redeye flight was not any more restful than the night preceding it.

The flight was made even worse was the fact that the man sitting next to me was not big on respecting personal space, so his elbow and knees were consistently pushing on me.

After landing in Düsseldorf, I found customs to be much less of a hassle than I’d imagined it would be. I’d heard stories of bags being searched and the like, but all I had to do was flash my passport and get it stamped. There was also the medical form, with doctors making sure nobody was showing symptoms of Swine Flu before debarking, but that’s rather understandable.

After getting my bag, I found myself with the fun task of trying to catch a train in a country that I don’t speak the language. Luckily, I found that the ticketing system was all automated, with 6 languages to choose from. From there, all I had to do was hope I bought the right ticket and made the right connection, but it’s pretty hard to go wrong when the machine tells you which platforms to be on at which times. I found it slightly weird that during my entire ride nobody ever checked my ticket, but I imagine they check often enough it wouldn’t be worth the risk of not buying one.

Picking me up from the Westbahnhof was Felix, my Aachen buddy. He helped me find my dorm room and was even kind enough to buy me food so I’d have some, since most German stores are closed Sunday.

I settled down after getting to my dorm to take a nap, after which I met Felix so that we could walk around town a bit. We stopped to get some food at a restaurant, and then made our way to the local bar, where we had a few drinks and waited for Felix’s friend Christian, who is also a buddy in the UROP program and was bringing her along from the bahnhof.

All in all, it was a pretty good first day. Unfortunately, tomorrow begins at 7:00, and it’s currently 12. Time for some sleep.