Killing time

I moved out of my room today, so I've spent the past hour or so sitting in the kitchen killing time.

My last final went well.  Woot.

I feel like I haven't done an adequate job describing some of the cultural differences of Germany and the States.  While a lot of things are similar, I assure you that there are a lot of differences.  Please note that I speak for only the area of Germany in which I live.  Other areas may be different.

Stores

The majority of German stores close at 8 p.m., or sorry, 20:00 (Germans use the 24-hour clock.).  The mall nearby my dorm has a advertisement on the door that boasts that the store is open until 22:00 (10 p.m.) on Thursdays.  Most stores also aren't open on Sundays.  It's similar to America back in the old days of walking uphill both ways to school and white-picket fences.

Cars

This is probably more well-known, but the majority of cars here are small.  I have seen zero SUVS and maybe one or two pickup trucks.  Also, most Germans with cars own German-made cars.  Mercedes is a lot more common here than in the States, but they actually offer low(er) cost cars here and not just the luxury cars they offer in the U.S.  The majority of delivery trucks are also Mercedes, which was weird seeing at first.

Drinks

Drinks are expensive at restaurants here.  For about three euros, you can usually get 0.4 liters of Coke with zero refills.  Beer is usually cheaper at restaurants.

Bottled water here is carbonated a lot of the time.  I hate drinking carbonated water.  I just don't think it is refreshing.

Walking

You know how when you are walking down the sidewalk in the States and you will be on a collision course with another person walking the opposite direction?  And there is a mutual understanding between the two of you of "I'll go this way.  You go that way."?  Yea, that doesn't really happen here.  I've had to almost jump out of the way of people before.

That's all for now.  I'll add more later if I can think of some other things.

Until next time, Alles Gute.

One more...

Since my last update, I've had two more exams, both for my mechanical design class.

You may remember me mentioning in a previous post that the mechanical design class I'm in is the fourth semester of a four-semester class.  Besides the fact that we Purdue students were obviously three semesters behind anyway, the English lecture finished about four classes behind the German lecture.  Because of this, we Purdue students didn't have clutches or hydraulics covered in the class.  The professor scheduled make up classes and said, (and I quote) "You GEARE students are invited, but I don't think it is necessary for the exam."
None of us went to the make-up lectures because 1) we needed to study for other exams and 2) the professor flat out told us we didn't need to go.

Fast forward to yesterday and the sketch exam for mechanical design.  Before the exam, one of the tutors sent us an email discussing what would be on both exams and gave us an example sketch problem.  The example was a super simple boat transmission with a principal sketch of exactly what to draw.  Sure, there were a few bevel gears, but besides that, all the parts in the example were things we were comfortable with and, more importantly, had covered in class.  We walk as a group fairly calmly to the mechanical engineering building and pretty much expect to be in and out without any trouble.

Then the exam problem came out.

I struggled to read through exactly what was on the paper in front of me and then had a slight panic attack when I realized what we were expected to do.  I will demonstrate with a chart.

Topic                                     Covered in class?                                On exam?
Gears                                      Yes                                                     No
Transmissions                          Yes                                                    No
Clutches                                  No                                                     Yes
Hydraulic Pumps                     No                                                     Yes

Notice the theme.

The goal of the exam was to design a water pump driven by a crankshaft with a safety clutch between the motor and crankshaft.  I stared at the exam for the first twenty minutes trying to figure out what to do before finally beginning.  I managed to finish, and at least compared to the other students taking the exam with me, my drawing actually ended up looking decent.

Before the oral exam today, Dev and I did a few things in order to unregister from KIT.  On the way to the exam building, we called Zach to find out how the exam went.  Zach was the poor soul who had to go first and walked into a bit of a buzz saw.  Word spread between our group about what things to quickly cram for before the exam, but most of us didn't do super well.  Luckily, my drawing saved me, and I ended up with a good grade.

There's one more exam left.  It's on Thursday of Product Development.  I plan on updating again soon, possibly tomorrow.

Until next time, Alles Gute.

Finals

It's finals week, or well, two weeks.  Last week brought my first two exams, Production Management and Thermodynamics II.

Production Management is a course that is taught by three different institutes at KIT.  Each institute teaches the class for a span of four weeks.  The three topics covered were logistics, manufacturing, and process management.

The exam on Thursday was an hour-long oral exam split with 15 minutes in each institute and five minute break periods between each.  I began my exam with IFAB, the process management institute.  My oral exam went something to the effect of this.

Professor:  What is the basic element of process management?
Me:  An activity.
Prof.: No.  Think wider.
Me:  A process?
Prof:  No.  More general.
Me:  System?
Prof:  Yes.  What is the basic element of a system?
Me:  Activity?
Prof:  No
Me:  Process?

I think I attempted to say process roughly ten times before actually being able to answer his questions.  The other two institutes went more smoothly (I dominated logistics.), and I received a 2.0, which transfers to Purdue as an A.

Thermodynamics on Friday was less of an exam and more of an exercise in futility.  The "exam" (if we have to call it that) was a two-hour written exam that was fairly similar to those given at Purdue with about 2/3 the time needed.  Before the "exam", I remarked to the others that I've never gone into an exam hoping for a 53% (enough for an A) and not been sure I would get it.  I haven't received my grade yet, but I'm fairly confident that I'll never have to take thermo again.  That's all I can really say.  Let's hope that they look favorably on my exam and give me an A.

Studying for my last three exams has been minimal with me going to Das Fest, Karlsruhe's annual music festival on Friday and just kind of lounging around since.  I'm gonna go study now.

Until next time, Alles Gute.

All in all, you're just another brick in the Wall

This past weekend I traveled with Zach and Steve to Hamburg and Berlin.

Before our journey we each bought a special 170-hour rail pass from Deutsche Bahn.  This pass allows us to hop on any DB train from midnight July 8 to 7:00 a.m. July 16.

After leaving an 8 a.m. class early, we caught a train towards Braunschweig.  We arrived in Braunschweig Hauptbahnhof to find an awesome site--Mountain Dew in Germany.  Apparently, there is MD in northern Germany, but not southern.  Boo.

After our Mountain Dew-induced delirium wore off, we hopped on a train to Wolfenbuettel in an attempt to visit the Jaegermeister factory.  We did, indeed, visit the factory only to find out that one has to schedule a tour ahead of time.  The receptionist was nice, though, giving us each a Jaeger sticker, sunglasses, lanyard, and blinky-thing. I call the visit a success based on the gifts.

After catching a couple more trains, we arrived in Hamburg, took a train then bus to our hostel, and got settled in.  Due to the intense heat, we all took showers, and Steve proceeded to misplace the locker key.  None of our stuff was in the locker at the time, so it wasn't a big deal in our six-person room.

It being early evening in Hamburg, we ate and then walked down the infamous Reeperbahn, Hamburg's red-light district.  While it wasn't exactly family-friendly, I assure you (especially you, Mom) that it wasn't as bad as I'm sure many would assume.  A fun fact about the Reeperbahn is that the Beatles got their start there, playing in Indra Musikclub and Kaiserkeller.  We stopped by both places (though they were both dead, and we didn't go in) as well as Beatlesplatz where I did my best George-impression.

Saturday, we attempted to go the Ballinstadt Emigration Museum.  Before leaving for here, my aunt Sharon gave me a bit of info on the German part of my mom's side of the family, the Schoemehl's.  I had a good feeling that Peter Schoemehl, the one to come over from Germany, left through Hamburg Harbor.  Sadly, I was unable to check the passenger lists as the museum attempted to charge us 12 euros instead of the expected 4 euros.  Oh well...

We walked around the Altstadt a bit before catching a train to Berlin.  The train ride was a bit warm.  I'm not sure the ICE trains have that great of air-conditioning.  We arrived in Berlin around 3, found our hostel after a train/subway ride, and went out to explore a bit of Berlin.  We eventually ended up finding the International FIFA Fan Fest in Berlin and watched the third-place Germany-Uruguay game with about 100k-200k Germans.  It was quite fun, though I couldn't help but think how crazy it would have been if Germany would have been in the final.  Drat.

Sunday we joined a free walking city tour at 11 a.m.  The company that runs the free tour is Sandemans NewEurope which does tours in other European cities, and I highly recommended it.  Our guide was quite knowledgeable and worked on a purely tips-only basis.  Some interesting facts from the trip:

--The Reichstag, Germany's house of parliament, has a glass dome above it that is free to the public to walk through and look down on the parliament.  This signifies that the people come first.

--There's a lot of controversy surrounding the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, but the most controversial is the fact that the memorial has an anti-graffiti coating that just happens to be made by the same company that made Zyklon-B, the gas used at concentration camps.

--The former Nazi Luftwaffe headquarters became the first Soviet government building after WWII and is now the tax office for Berlin.

--Victoria, the Roman goddess of victory atop the Brandenburg Gate, looks directly at the French embassy after it was recovered from the Louvre after Napolean's defeat.

--Berlin's city motto translates to "Poor but sexy".  The city is nice but will tell you up front that it has no money.  The city is, get this, 67...billion euros in debt.  Yes, that's a "b" on that "illion".  

The tour really reignited my love of history (I really thought about being a history major.).  I really liked the tour and would definitely go on one of the (not-free) more in-depth tours that are offered if I had more time.

Being exhausted by the four-hour walking tour in temperatures roughly between Mercury and Hades, the three of us bought slushies at the Hauptbahnhof before taking a nap at the hostel, which I should talk about before I forget.  Both of our hostels in Hamburg and Berlin lacked air conditioning as we expected.  This led to three long, hot nights with little sleep.  Our hostel in Berlin also lacked much privacy in the shower room, being one step up from the gym showers of Sullivan High School.  Each shower was covered by one curtain that began approximately 2 1/2 feet above the floor, or in other words, just low enough to be legal for TV-viewing.

After our nap, we went to the East Side Gallery, Berlin's largest "section" of the Wall.  I say "section" because the East Side Gallery is a remake of the original wall.  The city did, however, pay the original artists to redo their original wall paintings which is very cool.  We then found a restaurant to watch the final and eat at.  In the words of our friend Oscar, Go-ah Spain!

We caught the 8:32 train back to Karlsruhe on Monday.  We barely made the train and didn't have time to grab breakfast before the five-hour ride.  This was the beginning of a whole host of problems with our journey back.  First, the train was full, so we all sat on the floor between seating sections.  No big deal.  Before too long, though, our train apparently developed some mechanical failure, and we were forced to switch trains in some little station.  We hopped on the next train to Frankfurt.  No big deal.  Well, no big deal except the train was full before becoming even more full with the addition of riders from our original train.

Standing this time between the seating sections, we were slowly cooked on our two-hour ride to Frankfurt.  Remember how I said that I wasn't sure the A/C on ICE trains is very good?  Scratch that.  It's awful.  We did meet a nice Canadian girl from Vancouver named Geneva, though, that helped pass the time and situation with conversation.

We finally arrived in Frankfurt, medium to slightly medium-well.  Luckily, a large group of our fellow sardines exited the train which allowed us to find seats for our "30-minute" ride to Mannheim before switching to a train to Karlsruhe.  Our "30-minute" train ride turned into about a "2-hour" train ride because our train had to switch tracks and wait at another station for half an hour.  Little did we know at the time, but apparently, there had been a "personal accident" (read:  suicide) further up the track.  Needless to say, we weren't as pissed when we heard about the reason for the delay.

Finally, our Odyssey was over as we arrived in Karlsruhe around 4:30, or three hours after schedule.  Luckily, none of us had anything else planned for the day.

Welp, that's all for now.  Until next time,  Alles Gute.

Barca

So, I didn't exactly update about Barcelona as quickly as I was planning on.  My bad.

A week ago last Friday, Zach, Steve, and I ventured to sunny Barcelona for the weekend.  Being the hardened travelers we are, we took the long train/bus ride to the Karlsruhe airport, two hour uncomfortable Ryanair flight to Girona, and long bus ride from Girona to Barcelona with ease.  Apparently in our experiences traveling, however, we forgot that one needs to know how to get to one's hostel (or at least the location of said hostel) before arriving in the city.  Luckily, the bus station had an internet terminal, so we weren't left to wandering around Barcelona.

After checking in, we all quickly changed and went to the beach.  It was quite the relaxing time with the bright sun, the cool water, and just the general ambiance of the area, though the endless stream of people trying to sell water, beer, pop, massages, etc. was a bit tiresome.  Oh yea, we were asked on the beach a few times if we wanted to buy marijuana or cocaine.  That was weird.

That night we watched the Uruguay-Ghana game in an Irish pub then turned in early.  Saturday involved arising early and heading to Parc Guell, an urban park in Barcelona designed by the architect Gaudi.  It was a really nice park providing nice views of the city, particularly from the cross at the top of the hill.  We next went to see the Sagrada Familia, a Gaudi-designed cathedral.  Then it was off to the beach.

About a third of the way to the beach, we suddenly came to the realization that none of us had put any sunscreen on.  "Eh, we'll be fine if we're there for only a couple of hours."

Man, were we ever wrong.

After leaving the beach with the beginnings of our lobster-like skin tones, we met up with our Spanish friend Oscar who had lived in the ID a couple of months before.  We all ate at a legit (read: no one spoke English) tapas place before watching the Spain-Paraguay game in a bar.  The streets were packed and crazy after the game.

Sunday, we went to the beach again for about four or five hours.  It was fun, though it did make my sunburn even worse.  A trip to the castle/fort and a nighttime walk on the beach concluded our last night in Barcelona.

I really enjoyed Barcelona.  This trip didn't involve a ton of touristy site-seeing.  It was a nice and relaxing change-of-pace to just relax on the beach.

I'll update about this past weekend's trip to Hamburg/Berlin soon.  (Promise!)

Until next time, Alles Gute.

Long Time Gone

Please forgive my recent lack of updates.  The past couple of weeks have been a bit hectic, but I'm back.  I'm sure you've all been waiting patiently for another post.

So here we go.

As I alluded to in my last update, I received the awful news from back home of my great friend Bryan's passing. Bryan had been fighting cancer for little shy of a year when that damned disease finally took him.  This is the second person very close to me (the other being my father) that has been claimed by cancer in the span of three years.  Needless to say, I'm a bit sick (no pun intended) of the disease.

But rather than mope about, I'm reminded of Bryan's "Activities" on Facebook.

"Activities:      Life.
                      That's my big one right now.  It will probably stay that way forever.  I do some other stuff, but I like to live mostly."

I know that Bryan would like me to continue to make the most of this opportunity, so I'm going to do my damnest to do so.

As I mentioned, the past couple of weeks have been hectic.  I flew back home for a week after hearing the news in order to go to the services.  It was nice to see my family and friends and get to be home for a while.  It's kind of a unique opportunity for a student studying abroad to go back home only to come back a week later. Seeing how things have changed, and more importantly, how my view of things has changed since leaving the country a few months ago was important.  It is impossible to not compare the different aspects and customs of your home nation and your study abroad nation.  It makes you appreciate the subtle (and not so subtle) differences between both.

After returning to Karlsruhe and sleeping the majority of the day, I was back to work on my design project.  My team was a bit behind on the different goals we needed to complete for the coming Monday's meeting.  The weekend was full of hard work and attempted hard work.  I say "attempted hard work" because various factors (servers being down, computer labs being locked) prevented the team from getting any CAD work done on Saturday.  Sunday was spent drawing for about 10 hours and trying to ignore the blaring of car horns outside after Germany's demolishing of England in the World Cup.  Monday, the team gathered very early and quickly attempted to finish as much CAD as possible.  The final result was a scooter with an full drivetrain and chassis but no side panels.  This seemed to not matter much, though, as our tutor never looked at the team's CAD.  We still received pretty good grades, so I was happy.  I was even happier that the project is done.  I'll attempt to post pictures of the scooter sometime.

Wednesday brought about a visit with about 25 fellow ID students to Europapark.  Europapark is an amusement park near Freiburg, Germany which is about an 1 1/2 hours away by train.  Each area of the park is themed after a different European country from Germany to Iceland.  The park was a lot of fun, though on my second trip on Silver Star, a tall and fast coaster, my cellphone decided that it wasn't comfortable in my pocket and jumped out.  Zach apparently heard a crunch, so I'm assuming that mein Handy ist kaputt.

Awesome

+

Awesome

=

Totally not awesome

That's all for now.  I'll update soon about this past weekend's trip to Barcelona.  I'm going to go ice my sunburn now.

Until next time, Alles Gute!