A man's man's pantry

There's not much to this post, but I didn't have any time to come up with a good topic since I spent so much time stocking my pantry!

That made me feel like a man

This weekend I got to go to a German high school dance. Not half bad, although I did feel kind of weird as a college sophomore/junior surrounded by a bunch of German highschoolers. I mean, a number of these kids were pre-pubescent, but you can’t argue with 1 Euro beers. And it probably wouldn't've been appropriate to hit on a girl who's still in braces… yea… But it did end about as well as any high school dance could have…

…with me grabbing some douchebag by the neck and yelling “Cut that shit out!” (in German of course). They were playing that (fun) game where a bunch of guys start body-checking each other on the dance floor. Needless to say, it pissed me off, and straightening that kid out made me feel like a man. In fact, it's probably very similar to how Charlie felt here (fast-forward 49 seconds), only I wasn't as cool as Charlie since I went straight for the neck, and I didn't say "Cool your jets!" But some things just don't translate.

"Now that would make a good blog post, minus the Paul in Love."
--Brian

Gots to get my prōt

So whenever you travel out of the country for an extended period of time, you typically worry about being able to purchase certain comfort items that you've grown accustomed to living in the U.S. Traveling to W. Europe, it's not as big of a deal, since all essential items are available, although not always where you think (e.g. for contact lens solution, you have to go to the optical shop. That might seem obvious to some people, but in the U.S. it's available at almost every grocery and/or drug store. Anyways, it's not like contacts are a necessity.). And it's really becoming less and less of a problem since Europe continues to become more and more culturally American with each passing year.

To my actual point, one thing I've gotten accustomed to is protein... whey protein. "Anybody got any whey protein?" Haha. Inside joke. But seriously. And in a country where the diet is considerably more carbohydrate rich than what I'm used to and where all food protein tends to have a disproportionate amount of fat attached to it (e.g. bratwurst), I gots to find a way to get my prōt. Luckily, German supermarkets have started stocking WHEY PROTEIN. It's a little more expensive, but it's also a little more concentrated. I am the kind of person who would find the price per gram of protein, but I haven't done that yet. But beyond just having prōt in supermarkets, they even have protein shakers (which is lucky, since I wasn't about to buy a blender and anyone who's ever made a protein shake by stirring knows why that's not an option). I mean, the protein shaker was sold as a salad dressing shaker, but the functional anatomy was the same.

Anyways, I just thought I'd pass that information along to anyone else who works out, and who needs their prōt to do so more successfully, and is thinking about coming to Deutschland.

Yes, I did actually write a post about whey protein.

Make-out parties at work

In an earlier post, I mentioned how I saw my boss brushing his teeth during the middle of the day. Over the past week or so, I've noticed more coworkers doing this and on a fairly regular basis, mostly before meetings. So I'm as aware of bad breath as the next man, but unless people sit a lot closer at meetings over here than in the U.S., there's only one other logical conclusion I can draw about all this teeth-brushing... these so called "meetings" are actually just make-out parties. I mean, a one hour make out party in the middle of the day? What middle-schooler could say no? Then again, all of the workers in my office are dudes... nerdy dudes...

Füd is so good

So I haven't posted in over a week, cuz I've been busy, lazy, not great at time management. Today was a holiday... unfortunately the last holiday of my internship.

A slight aside... I've become an MRI test subject. I get a free movie pass for every scan. (Plus it takes up work time!) I hope they'll let me keep some scans so I can, idk, put them on my wall, and tell people, "That's what I look like on the inside!"

But really what this post is about is... food. I find myself eating much better, meaning healthier and better tasting food, than I ever did in the U.S. (including when I lived at home). Partially I attribute this to the fact that I live right next door to a supermarket, so I go shopping every day (except for Sundays and holidays, when stores here aren't open...). Also, the food in Europe in general is just better tasting in my experience. I think part of that is because regional cuisines exist here to a greater degree than they do in the U.S., and the types of food are not as homogenized as they are in the U.S. (or at least my part of the U.S. and food that I consider to be in my price range).

To make somewhat of a counterpoint though, a German intern told me that a lot of what people eat here is determined by what the supermarket stocks. We reminisced about foods that we used to eat as children that are now much less common because German supermarkets stopped stocking them. I don't think this is that much unlike the U.S., although we (Americans) have the benefit of larger, more fully stocked supermarkets, so we're less likely to be affected by individual items no longer being carried by a given chain. Overall though, I am more pleased with the selection of supermarket food, slightly more limited as it may be, than in the U.S.

More asides... I still don't know who turned of the light in the bathroom my first night in the apartment. I have however now met both my roommates. One is a hardy-partying polisci major and the other is antisocial "Informatiker" (computer scientist). I'm guessing it was the latter who gave me that scare.

I finally have a working bike and have started biking to work... 6 km (3 ¾ miles) each way. I guess when I get back I might be so used to this that I might start biking up to North every day... but then again maybe not.

And I'm going to München (...Munich...) this weekend with some other students, which should hopefully be fun. When I schedule it into my calendar though, I came to the sad realization that I only have 5 free weekends (i.e. ones where I don't have other trips planned) left while I'm here. I know that may seem like a lot, but when you start with what seems like an infinite number, it's really not that many. But then again, from a cost perspective, and considering I haven't gotten paid yet, a finite number of "mini-Eurotrips" might be a good thing.

Oh yea, and then the last thing I wanted to mention is how awful weather forecasting is in this country. I guess I assumed it would be easier forecasting weather for a country that's about the size of Montana, but I guess it isn't. Also, each major city does not have "Dopper k*10^n" Radar as we do. But basically German weather forecasts, in my experience, are only accurate for about 24 hours into the future... beyond that you might as well roll dice.

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.

That was weird

So I finally found an apartment after I had been working for 10 days...
I could have rented the apartment 10 days earlier, but it's a long story and then the super went on vacation for 8 days (back to my point about vacations here...).

Then Thursday was AMAZING in that after work I got to move my 3 suitcases across town on the bus. It took multiple trips. But so I'm in an apartment with two other guys. I met one guy when I visited the apartment 10 days earlier, and he seemed pretty cool. The other guy I have yet to meet. On Thursday the super told me that it was likely they were both already gone for the long weekend (yea, we have a long weekend here too, but it's for Pentecost, not Memorial Day).

So yea, I move my stuff in. My bedroom is unfurnished, but you know... I needed a place to live. It did come with a semi-soiled mattress and a guitar with 5 of its 6 strings. Thus, I am significantly closer to my dream of living in an opium den.

But anyways, after sitting around for 2 hours, I decided to shower (or better said, take a bath since the shower head seemed to be broken...) So I take my laptop in the bathroom, to put on some 24 while I bathe... I mean, I need something to keep me occupied... bathing simply is not engaging enough on it's own. Then after about 5 minutes, I hear someone enter the apartment. I hear him walk in the hallway, jiggle the door handle to the bathroom (luckily I locked it), and then turn the bathroom light off (the switch was on the outside). So I announce that I'm the new roommate (and get no response), get dressed (only half bathed), and go outside to try and introduce myself. I look around and see that no one is in the apartment. Both other bedroom doors are locked. I look in the keyholes of both bedrooms, and there's a light on in one of them... the bedroom of the guy I haven't met. I ask if anyone's there, but no response.

Then I finished bathing, got ready for bed, and slept... not really sure if there was another person in the apartment or not that night. What added to the "suspense" was the fact that my bedroom door didn't have a lock, but rather was a flimsy plastic folding door. But as far as I know, nothing happened to me at night.

But yea, that was weird.