"Asking only workman's wages..."

Hallo damen und herren!

As I have now finished my first week in Germany, I thought that I'd get you up to speed with what has been happening thus far and what will be happening in the near future. First of all, the people at the Institute for Steel Construction and Materials Mechanics are great. Throughout the learning process, they have been nothing but patient and kind to me.

It just so happens that the lead professor at the Institute turned 50 the previous weekend, so he put on a lunch for all the members of the department on Monday. Here is a picture of the food spread (in honor of you, Mom), and here is a picture of some of people in the department at the party. While I am at it, here is a picture of an office that I share with an especially nice individual in the department.

And the research itself is going well. I can now do the entire testing without assistance. I work in two different buildings: the main building which houses the department (here), and the lab (here) where I do my testing. My lab is the room to the right of the door. Here is a picture of me at work in the lab, and here, here, and here are some shots of the equipment with which I am working.

This weekend there is a big (and free) music festival here in Darmstadt. Tomorrow night I will be meeting up with one of my North American counterparts and her friends, so that should be pretty fun. On Sunday I will be going to a barbecue at the house of the PhD student for whom I do research. Much of her family will be there. I wonder how it will compare to a Hubbard reunion! I'll be sure to keep you posted!

Life is good.

“The Atlantic was born today and I’ll tell you how.” - Part II

After talking with Regine (who speaks very good English) on the payphone, she picked me up in about fifteen minutes and drove me to my dormitory apartment, which is very near to my place of work (on the campus of TU Darmstadt) and a trolley station. Also near my apartment are a swimming pool, stadium, and some open fields. Regine had warned me via email that the apartment would be small (and indeed it is), but upon entering and seeing it for myself, I tried to keep a positive attitude despite the small quarters in addition to the dirt, dust, hair, and insects (dead and alive) that were on the floor, in the cabinets, in the sink, and on the wall. One of the first things I did was to check the Internet to see if it worked but it did not, and as I had arrived on a Saturday, I would be unable to seek help with it until Monday. At that, we left together so that Regine could show me how to get to the trolley and to the city center, where to buy groceries, and how (and when) to get to Church. Despite being with someone who could understand what I was saying and was there to help me out, walking through the city under the bright sun, already emotionally and physically exhausted, was pretty overwhelming, and my upset stomach hadn’t yet left me.

After about an hour of being shown about the city, we parted ways at a mall in the city center. If Regine and her family wouldn’t have had a very important party to go to shortly thereafter, I wouldn’t have been left so soon. But, circumstances were what they were, and there were a few things I had to take care of before I could return to my room. It was now Saturday afternoon in Darmstadt, and my last substantial meal had been on Thursday night at Sam and Marcy’s, so I was extremely hungry. I found a Chinese place in the mall and ordered the only thing on the menu with the German word for chicken on it that looked remotely good. Apparently, I agreed to purchase an alcoholic beverage with my meal which probably served to dehydrate me more. In any case, after eating my less than satisfying meal, I went to the grocery store (also in the mall) and tried to purchase enough bread, peanut butter (made in the USA!), jelly, and bananas to provide dinner for that night and breakfast for the next morning. I also bought a few newspapers for the construction of my curtains.

So I left the mall, and went to the trolley stop carrying my awkward grocery bag. I tried to purchase a trolley ticket from a machine, but as this machine was different from what I was shown earlier and as it was entirely in German, I had no idea which ticket to buy or how to buy one. When a line would build up behind me, I would act finished and casually linger until there was no one else working on the machine only to resume my increasingly frustrating efforts. But, eventually I made it back to the room only to be confronted by the difficulties that awaited me there.

When I arrived, I cleaned off all the shelves and put away all my things. For some reason, when I found that my power adapter for my laptop, shaver, and camera would not work in the room, all of the emotion that I had been holding back the entire time came forth, so I heavily cried. It didn’t take too long, however, to distract myself in the work of creating my curtains. After that was completed, I took a warm shower (which felt awesome) and proceed to make myself dinner. Between the time I took a shower and the time when I went to bed, at various times for different reasons my emotional composure would break down and I would heavily cry. None of these breakdowns lasted more than thirty seconds at a time, but with every breakdown I knew that it was more and more important for me to get to sleep as I was in no state to fully consider what lay behind or before me.

I went to sleep somewhat hungry at 6:00 PM local time while it was still daylight and slept until 8:00 AM the next morning. I ate breakfast and began to write about transition from the United States to Germany. Perhaps because I was still tired or perhaps it was too soon to a traumatic experience, but I almost lost my emotional composure as I had done the day earlier. So I distracted myself in my search for the church and found it in due time, praying for the virtues necessary to get me through everything all the while. After Mass, I headed to the city center (which came with its own set of difficulties) to find a substantial meal and chanced across a Chicken House. Even though I am sure now that the meal was terrible, it was one of the best I had tasted in a while. After getting a solid meal in me, things really started turning themselves around. I wouldn’t say that I was a completely different person or that there haven’t been further difficulties, but things would from that point only get better. The sights and sounds weren’t quite so daunting and my challenges weren’t nearly as difficult. I was able to walk through the city without any plan to where I was going. Eventually, I made it back to my apartment and ate the last of my bananas (for peanut butter sandwiches) and went to sleep again early. My first weekend in Germany was over.

I know that this post and the one prior to it have mostly been doom and gloom, but for the first 48 hours in Germany, my experience was mostly and significantly negative. I don’t want you to think that things haven’t improved at all – they absolutely have. Seriously, things are going amazingly well right now. After experiencing my first couple of days of work, meeting my excellent coworkers, getting a regular eating and sleeping schedule, and walking through the city on my own, I can honestly say that I now have complete comfort getting to everywhere in the city that I need to go. But I hope that my current comfort and happiness is due to more than simply knowing how to go everywhere in the city that I need to, because in life you can never know everywhere that you need to go. I hope that my experiences the last few days, the good and the bad, will have helped me to grow and to learn about myself and the world around me. I know that things won’t always be easy from here on out and that that I will face hardships and shortcomings further down the road, but I can honestly say that I am now better prepared to face them. I look forward to seeing where my experiences take me. Now, it is “full speed ahead!”

“The Atlantic was born today and I’ll tell you how.” - Part I

[NOTE: I am very sorry about the delayed post regarding my arrival in Germany. I have had loads of Internet / computer problems which should (hopefully) soon be done for good. Pictures will be added when time is available.]

Where to begin? I guess where I left off. Mom, Dad, and I made it to Chicago in plenty of time despite the bad weather. After checking in my luggage, the line to get past security was rapidly growing, so it was time for me to depart from my parents. I tried not to show any outward sadness at our departure, but when my parents started to cry, so did I. After quickly gaining my composure, I made it through the rest of the events at O’Hare uneventfully and boarded the plane, which left at 3:45 PM CST. My plans for the flight were to listen to music, study German, and sleep. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to do much at all of the latter two, but the flight still went relatively quickly. Surprisingly, although I felt some excitement listening to various songs and thinking about what was ahead of me, my primary sensation for much of the flight was an upset stomach which actually wasn’t that bad. I am not sure if I lacked emotion because I was numbing myself in preparation for things to come or because I felt that things would work out one way or another.

In any case, I arrived in Frankfurt at 11:55 PM CST. My plans for Frankfurt were as follows: pick up my luggage, find the bus station, and take a bus to Darmstadt.

Having landed in Germany, without a cell phone and not really knowing any of the language, I was pretty tense, and every step I took brought me further away from my family and friends and further into the uncomfortable unknown. I found and picked up my luggage with no problem and proceeded to find the bus station also with no problem. Finding the correct bus was a different story entirely, however. There was no central information desk or attendant at the bus station, and the bus station was almost completely empty, so it up to me to read the signs and figure things out. But, since I was unable to do this even with the help of a German-English dictionary, I sought the help of a young German family, some of the only people around, but they didn’t speak any English whatsoever. They were, after much effort, able to tell me to wait for a certain bus that would arrive in several minutes and take me where I needed to go. Upon boarding the bus, I asked the Greek bus driver (just to be safe) if this bus would take me to Darmstadt, and he informed me that I had boarded the wrong bus (although I had followed the family’s instructions accurately). The driver told me to look for a specific bus at a different stop, so I set out in search of the new stop.

As I was unable to find this new stop, I sought the assistance of a nearby (and different) bus driver and got absolutely nowhere with him. Prior to my not-really-a-conversation with the second bus driver, I felt that I had achieved at least the illusion of understanding in each of my previous conversations. After several failed attempts to make my needs known to the second bus driver, he left me abruptly in frustration. I was completely alone. Throughout all of my previous encounters at the bus station, my nervousness had been building, so eventually I was cursing myself for not having the discipline to learn at least the most basic of German before I arrived, the government for not having a better organized transportation system, and the German people for not knowing English. I wanted to go home but knew that I shouldn’t. I couldn’t let myself fail so completely this early in the journey. I mostly just wanted to escape, from my situation, from my feelings, and from my inadequacies, but I couldn’t.

So I just kept moving forward and happened across the place I believed that I was supposed to be, but I could never be too sure. There was no bus to be seen and no visible markings denoting Darmstadt but I waited anyway, sitting on a bench at an empty outdoor McDonalds. An old man sat on a bench next to me and I (vainly, I thought) asked him if he knew where the bus was going in my best German (after my English failed) and he told me that the bus went to Darmstadt. I was very relieved and put a lot of faith that the old man understood me and knew what was going on. I don’t know how I would have felt or what I would have done if he had not been completely right, but he was (and thank God). All told, my search for the correct bus took an hour and a half.

The bus ride from Frankfurt to Darmstadt was obviously encouraging, and I took the thirty minute bus ride to snap pictures of the countryside. The plan for once I had arrived in Darmstadt was to call Regine Schneider, my PhD supervisor from the transit station, from where she would pick me up in fifteen minutes after my call. Luckily, the bus had taken me to the desired place and luckily the facility had a central information desk. While the attendant did not speak any English, one of her friend coworkers did speak Spanish, so I was able to get the information I needed to get to right place in the facility and use the payphone correctly. Who would have thought that I would have used Spanish in Germany for information? Based upon that short exchange, I decided that working in a Spanish-speaking country would have been a hell of a lot easier for me, but it was a little late for that. Mostly I was thankful to be able to get a hold of Regine. The whole day thus far seemed to be an exhausting, emotional roller coaster of highs and lows, but my day was far from over and many more set-backs and triumphs would follow....

"Then it begins."

Hello family, friends, and strangers!

Thanks to an extremely patient effort by Mom, I am now fully packed and ready to depart on my journey to Darmstadt, Germany. For those of you who are a little hazy as to what exactly I will be doing over in Europe for the summer, I will be conducting research at the Technische Universität Darmstadt for eight weeks, and then traveling for about two and a half weeks. My research will involve the study of high temperature stress-strain behavior of structural steel. Apparently, not much research has been done in this area, so the end goal is to have compiled a lot of data by the end of the summer that will then be used to make future steel framed structures more fireproof.

I will be leaving from O'Hare tomorrow afternoon and will be arriving in Frankfurt early Saturday morning. I'll let you all know when I have settled into my apartment, but until then, "I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing."