Busy Week

Well I wrote this as the week progressed, so I'm not sure if all the tenses will make sense by the time I post this, I'll try to fix it up if necessary.

Monday night I ended up cooking a 'real' meal, consisting of chicken and asparagus. It was alright, nothing fancy at all. The international students at the school decided to have another beer pong night so I thought I'd head over for an hour or so since it wasn't starting until 9:40pm, they are night hawks here apparently. I walked over at 10pm, played a game or two, and met a bunch more people. One pretty drunk German guy even knew of Nova Scotia, and is a big Gretzky and Crosby fan, very rare around here. I typically just say I'm from the east coast of Canada by the Atlantic. I ended up staying there until 1am or so, and came back dreading the thought of having to get up a few hours later.

 I had a pretty good Tuesday, despite being rushed in the morning to make my lunch. I did much more testing of the solenoids at work, and was surprised by how much they let me do on my own, given the language barrier,  but it made the day go by pretty quick. I ended up staying until almost 5:30pm because of the bus schedule. I came home to my Nepalese roommate, Suman, cooking a bunch of dishes of traditional food from Nepal for all seven of us in the flat. It was all really excellent food, and it was nice to have dinner with a bunch of people, not something I expected when I decided to stay in student housing. After dinner I met up with Christian, a student that will be going to Canada for a semester at UNB this fall. We had been emailing/messaging for a while, so it was good to finally meet him. We went to an American sports bar where the World Hockey Championship game of Germany versus Russia was on. Unfortunately German lost, but I don't think the people in the bar were really that into it. I'm looking forward to going to a sports bar during the Euro Cup soccer/football championships next month. I tried a variety of different beer, all of it was really good, I didn't have any food, but I'll know where to go if I want some typical pub food (except for fish and chips).

I hit snooze for the first time Wednesday morning. I only slept 5 extra minutes, but I made to the bus with only a minute to spare, then I started to fall asleep on the bus, and I have a bit of a bad track record with sleeping on busses, as some of you might know, but I got off the bus at the right stop. I did more testing at work, and I was invited out to lunch with the guys that work in the lab. We drove about 10 minutes to the other side of town (I think) to a small restaurant that seemed very German. There were only two things to pick from for lunch, rigatoni with ham sauce or goulash, I went with the rigatoni as everyone else did. I was not ready for what came next, it was essentially a four course meal for lunch. First came tomato soup, then a salad, followed by the huge plate of pasta with ham pieces and a sauce, I could have stopped after eating half of it, but it might not have looked good, so I managed to eat it all, and then there was a piece of cake for dessert. It was all really good food, and now I can agree with my travel book that says some Germans eat the biggest meal of the day at lunch. That was 7 hours ago, and I haven't had to eat since! I left work a bit early with my supervisor to go to the Burgermat, which is like the town hall,  to register. I was able to register without a problem, although they took a lot of details, but to get a residency visa/permit was not so easy. I didn't have everything I needed, which is a ton of stuff, so hopefully I can get it all sorted and go back on Monday, although the hours are terrible, so I'm not sure how that'll work. I thought this would all be relatively simple, but Germany loves it's bureaucracy apparently. Wednesday evening I had supper with 5 of my flatmates and 2 friends of theirs. We had two different types of Spanish tortilla type dishes, both excellent, and a salad. We headed to another of their friend's at about 10pm, who was celebrating their birthday, so we walked about 10-15 minutes there, put on actual party hats and went to the apartment, and pretty much filled the remaining space in the place, it was a pretty tiny place. I met a bunch of other people, including a guy who was driving to the Mannheim/Heidelberg area that I was considering going to on the weekend, so I made plans to get a lift with him on Friday afternoon. I chatted for awhile with my Nepali roommate and the two girls that had been at our place for supper, always interesting and sometimes funny to talk with people from such different backgrounds. We headed back around 1am, and I was not looking forward to getting up at 6:30am yet again.

I made it through Thursday at work with no problems, and Thursday evening I caught the end of the International Evening at the university, where I met one of my 'buddies,'  Vanessa, and a few of her friends. She had earlier invited me to this club in a nearby town that the university rents busses and students can go to twice a semester. I wasn't going to go because I had to work Friday working, but hey, it's a onetime thing, so I changed my mind and said I'd go. There was predrinking in the 'courtyard' at the school, and I met some more people, and saw many that I met at beer pong. We didn't leave for the club until after 10:30pm and arrived there around 11pm. It was a great time, pretty impressive club, and some of the music they played, mostly English, was so old it made me laugh. I think the oldest was Mambo #5. We caught the bus back around 2:45am, it was a very entertaining bus ride, with the very enthusiastic Gretzky/Crosby fan from beer pong sitting nearby. I didn't end up getting to sleep until 3:30am. My alarm woke me up a very short 3 hours later, I had to run to get the bus, and had nothing to eat. The bus then proceeded to take a detour so I thought I got on the wrong one, but I only ended up arriving a few minutes later. Thankfully there was food at the morning break because it was someone's birthday, so I survived the morning, and caught the bus back here where I met the guy, Max, driving to Mannheim.

And that's how the week went. Not sure I could handle the partying/drinking combined with 6:30am mornings every week, but it was a fun week. I'll write another post, with lots of pictures, of my weekend trip, maybe tomorrow, depends on how detailed I start writing.