Beers with the boss

So Thursday was stressful and creepy (see That was weird), and Friday sucked knowing I would have to work a whole day and then ride the train for 5 hours to go back and visit my family in Saarland for the long weekend.

So I'm there, at my desk (well, not my desk, but the desk I get to use while some co-worker is on an unusually long vacation...), drudging along as usual... every so often drawing some circuit element or something. Then I hear my boss. He had only been here 2 of the 9 days I had worked so far. I think he was on vacation or at a conference or some combination of those two. Then I heard someone brushing his teeth at the lab sink... due to an identical experience later in the day, I'm going to assume it was my boss brushing his teeth.

Anyways, about 20 minutes later, he goes around and invites everyone to the Bergkirchweih, with the plan to head there at 12:30pm. The Bergkirchweih is one of the biggest draws of Erlangen, it being the 3rd largest Volksfest in Germany. It started the evening before, and riding around on the buses with my luggage I got to see droves of people flocking there. All the teenagers in town seemed to be drunk, and it was great to see drunk bike riders weaving through traffic (Erlangen is a huge bike town). It looked like a whole lot of fun, and I was sad that I couldn't partake :-(.

Anywho, hearing my boss's invite totally made up for all the stress of Thursday and the not being able to attend the night before. I mean this was a chance to go to the Fest and miss work and drink while doing so! Later I even learned that my boss was buying! So we get there, and most people ordered non-alcoholic beverages or Radlers (half beer, half pop) or smaller beers, but I ordered a Maß. Most of my coworkers looked at me, but they didn't really care that much... after all, I was an American. (You'd be amazed how much you can get away with for that very reason.) I also ordered bratwurst and sauerkraut, just to totally German it up. Then of course, I got a picture with my boss, both with our beers, just to immortalize this story. (I'm obviously not posting it here though...)

I had originally intended to end the work day after the mid-day excursion, but after a liter of beer, I decided to go back to work for an hour. When I got back, I saw my boss brushing his teeth at the lab sink. About 5 seconds later I found out why. The odor of beer, sauerkraut and bratwurst was now on my breath. I went to talk to my boss to ask him about an assignment he had given me, and noticed that his breath smelled minty fresh (unlike mine). Then I went back to work, doing vector wave field calculations for an elliptical cylinder (a.k.a. God knows what) for an hour, with a reasonable buzz still on.

This is costing me how much???

So today is a holiday in Germany, meaning I didn't have to go to work... whooo! But it also meant all the stores were closed.... booo. I was also only able to eat one meal today, but that's probably a good thing. Also, since the bus doesn't really come very often on holidays, I spent all of today in my room, except for the time I took my trash out and ate.

But more to the point, today I found out how much this room in the bread-and-breakfast is costing me: 48€/night! And the earliest I can get out of here is Saturday because I can't move all my luggage out of here by tomorrow morning cuz I have work, and the only place I could store it is at a friend's house who is kinda far away.

I did find a room in a WG (Wohngemeinschaft) that I liked, but it's in an apartment building and the super is on vacation for a week so I can't rent it or move in until he's back. So I'm prolly going to get a private room in someone's house (which isn't an uncommon thing over here) for 15€ a night.

On the topic vacation... everyone here seems to take a lot of it. The law sets the minimum number of vacation days as 24 days/year, but most places give you 30 -- that's 6 working weeks of paid vacation or about 11% of the working year. And that's not including all the national holidays, 9 of which fall on weekdays this year (vs. the 5 national holidays in the U.S. where you get work off). Unfortunately, as an intern, I'm not entitled to any vacation time, but on the bright side, it's a 35 hour work week here vs. the 40 hour back home.