The last 2 weeks

Sorry, I forgot to post an update last weekend, so here are some selected highlights of the last 2 weeks.

Last Thursday I got on the bus to come home and heard someone wish someone else a good weekend. Luckily I asked someone why they said that, and then I found out that Friday was a holiday! It was something to do with Martin Luther (not King) nailing a list on a church door, and for some reason it was a holiday in Potsdam but not in Berlin. So everyone from Potsdam goes shopping in Berlin on this day. I took the chance to visit the NZ embassy and do a special vote. I don't think they get many visitors because they talked to me for about an hour! On the topic of the election, I hear that Helen's reign is over. It wasn't really a surprise, as it's exactly what all the polls had been saying, and to avoid offending anyone, I will not comment any further on this topic. 

On a completely different topic, I went ice skating last weekend in Berlin at an outdoor (but artificial) rink. I expressed my surprise it was outdoors, and the Germans sounded equally suprised that indoor rinks exist. My muscles were quite sore after that but I'm still going back tomorrow again with the same people. On that Sunday, I noticed that it was getting quite foggy as we left the ice skating rink. And it has stayed foggy since then. I actually haven't seen the sun for a week now, people say this is quite standard, it's definitely a little depressing, though.

I've also joined a (very) social uni ultimate frisbee team. Ultimate frisbee seems to be a cross between netball and american football, but played with a frisbee. It's a lot of fun, and really hard work too. I also had trouble walking the day after our first practice. Everybody speaks German, so I just make sure I'm never at the front of the line and it's all good. The team talks about tactics etc are kind of lost on me, though. I think I am picking up a bit of German now, sometimes I can guess what topic people are talking about. German lessons at the institute start on Monday so that'll be good.

Hope all of you are well.

Adam

I went to Potsdam's one and only Abenteuer (adventure) Park this weekend with a group from the institute. As you can see in the picture they've put all these little platforms up in these trees, with ropes, and bridges, and nets, and stuff between them. You get attached to a metal cable and do different courses. It was a lot of fun, but really exhausting, and my muscles are pretty sore today. In German they say Muskelkater, literally "muscle hangover".

Afterwards we went to an Italian restaurant for brunch. All you can eat brunch! I tried my first bowl of quark, a yoghurty cheese thing, and yea, it was ok. One of my flatmates moved out today, so we had a BIG dinner last night with stews and cabbage and dumplings. So I'm definitely not starving! I also went into Berlin to meet up with a German and a Kiwi I met at Massey in Auckland who are now working in Northern Germany. Had a really good night, it was good to see a couple of familiar faces.

I scored an awesome free bed this week. An elderly couple in a coworker's/friend's apartment had to get rid of a fold out couch quickly before their new couch arrived. It's from Ikea (everything here is, I think), but it's much more comfortable than the mattress I had on the floor before. You can see it in the cool 360 degree picture of my room. Sorry I didn't clean up, at least it's real! I also scored some shelves I haven't put up yet, and a very 80s bike (just wait for the pictures!).

I was invited to a board games evening at my supervisor's last night, we played a version of spoons and a crazy 6 person twist on speed. Board/dice/card games seem to be pretty popular, especially Kniffel which as far as I can tell is the same as Yahtzee.

In other news, I had my first lectures today. Plant Metabolomics at 9 then The Uses of Plants for the Future at 11. They were pretty interesting, although not hugely closely related to my project, but the choices are narrowed down a lot by not understanding German. The ball is starting to get rolling on my project, sorting out the little details of how to do stuff mostly, and probably will try to get some real data this week or early next week.

I am pleased to hear the weather isn't fantastic back home, it's a beautiful autumn day here today - clear skies (apart from hundreds of jetstreams), not too much wind, etc. Hope you are all well, and if you have exams, hope you aren't/weren't too stressed.

The week that was (#5)

I've found that living in a new country there is so much that is new and unfamiliar, it's impossible to take it all in. I think if I mentally noted every time something suprised me, I'd be exhausted. The first example I noticed of this was very early on in the guesthouse. Someone else asked me if I thought the pillows were strange. I knew that they were big and floppy, but it wasn't until she asked that I realised that this was weird. An example from this week, I went a bar called Waesch Bar (I think that's how you spell it). It was only several hours after I left that I realised that it was very unusual that half the bar was a laundromat.

I am officially enrolled at the University of Potsdam! This means, amongst other things, that I get to use all the public transport in Brandenburg and Berlin for free. This is a good thing, because the buses were costing me a fortune (~nz$3.50 for a bus to town). I took advantage of this and took a trip to a big mall in Berlin where I bought lots of useful but not-very-interesting stuff (eg towels, lamp...).

I'm starting to get into some work in the lab, which is very good, but also quite frustrating at the start because things take 5x longer than they should because you don't know where to find everything. Yea, nah it's all good.

Sorry this hasn't been a very exciting post, I'll try harder next week! I hope you are enjoying the sunshine back home!

Four weeks

First of all, the trip to Czechoslavakia was called off :( The weather wasn't looking the greatest and I think it was getting quite complicated. I should still have enough material to fill a blog post, though.

Walking back from the institute, I heard a noise in the bushes beside me. First I thought it was a neighbour tending their garden, then I saw it was some kind of animal. It was too big to be a cat, and didn't really look like a dog. After quite a bit of staring, I realised I was looking at a fox rummaging through the compost bin! They're smaller than I thought, and I was tempted to try to pat it. You'll probably be happy to hear that I decided to take the option with a 0% chance of rabies.

On Wednesday night, I went to an Indonesian karaoke restaurant! Melanie from the institute's Dad is Indonesian, so she was friends with the owners there, which was kind of lucky, because it was pretty much their living room. Because I speak English, they expected me to know all the words to every English song that has ever been written, which isn't exactly the case. Nonetheless it was a very fun night, and I found out that "Lemon Tree" (...all that I can see is just another lemon tree...) is by a german band!

Here are a couple of photos from Berlin.

Autumn colours somewhere quite close to Brandenburger Tur. So many people were taking photos here, I definitely felt like a tourist.

Stage at the Brandenburger Tur where they were celebrating German Unity Day (anniversary of official reunification of East and West Germany. It was much busier on Friday night, but I forgot to take photos then. I think I must have looked pretty suspicious because they searched my bag twice on the way in.

Thanks for reading, hope you are all good.