4th of July in Berlin

I realize it's not 4th of July anymore but yeah. Anyhow, the interns at Siemens invited all the MIT interns in Berlin to come to their place for a BBQ. I was feeling sick so I didn't go. It was a good choice, I think, since they live far away from my work and dorm. Instead I found Worchester sauce at the local supermarket and made sloppy joe. My other roommate and her friends had never even heard of sloppy joe. So it was kinda exciting for them. Unfortunately, the ketchup that I got was not very good. It didn't taste right and had too much water. So I had to boil the sauce for half an hour to get all the water out. It turned out okay but a little too tangy. My roommate and her friends made pasta and invited me to join them. So my 4th of July dinner consisted of sloppy joe, pasta, and salad. They even got Thousand Island dressing, which was labeled American Dressing.

Work

So work has been uh, interesting this week. So I finished up writing my research paper at work on Monday and gave it to my supervisor. So he sends me off to another office that is about 7 minutes away by train. They printed out directions for me and everything but of course I still went down the wrong street and got there kind of late. Anyhow, I get there and I meet Mr. Meyer who is in charge of the group there. Not the most talkative guy. The first thing he asked was do I speak German, even though I'm pretty sure Prof. Fischer had told him I didn't. He then said, "So uh, this is the former DDR and everyone learned Russian as their foreign language. There's only 2 other people in this office who speaks English besides me." I was pretty sad. Now I wish I'm working in Frankfurt. I was really happy to find out that I would be working in Berlin since there's so many other MIT people here. It would've been so hard for me to be the only one in Frankfurt but my coworkers would speak English....

Anyway, he hands me off to another guy, Michael. Michael speaks English because his wife is from Ghana where they speak English. His English is okay. He showed me some of the projects that they have been working on and tells me about what he does. We ended up talking about ourselves for about half an hour at the end.

Today I went back to the same office and met another person, Bastian. Bastian's English is really good. He's young and did an internship in South Carolina years ago. He was really confused as to why I was at their office. He actually works in the Central office, where I worked before. He comes to this office sometimes since he's got 2 positions. He tells me that everyone finds Prof Fischer really cryptic. He never tells them what he wants and they can never guess. Bastian thinks that maybe it's because Prof Fischer is a real professor at a university and professors are generally very cryptic people. Anyway, I tell Bastian that I wanted to do something useful and he said he totally understands. He felt the same way at his internship. So he actually gave me some stuff to do. It's just research but it's okay. I'm working at the same office as he is so I can ask him all the questions I want.

Hamburg - Part III: Coming back

These pictures are unrelated to what I'm writing about. They are of Hamburg. Anyhow, we got on the train to go back to Berlin. The train was really crowded and we had to walk through the whole train to find seats near each other. I mean, the whole train. At some point, a guy wanted to tag along with us since we had a weekend ticket. Weekend tickets are 33 Euros and allows you to travel on all local trains for one day and can be used for up to 5 people. But we think we thought we were crazy to keep walking around so he gave up on us.

The seats that we found were pretty nice. Carolyn and I got "tables" next to us, which was nice since we were trying to eat our burger. Carolyn and I talked about the most random stuff ever and were having lots of fun. The lady in front of us, however, was not. She was sitting near a guy who had his music on really loud (I'm going to call him the "music guy".) She asked him to turn it down and not only did he refused, he mumbled bad stuff at her for like 10 minutes. She asked him again and they got into a heated argument. The guy sitting behind us started yelling at the music guy too. I'm not sure what's with guys and arguments but those two started fighting. The music guy butted his head against the top of the other guy's nose. It didn't sound too good. They separate and the other rummaged through his stuff and took out a perfume bottle. I was afraid he would take out a knife or something sharp. But he hit the music guy and the music guy started bleeding. I don't think either of them were injured badly but yeah. All of them either got off the next station or left our car, which was good.

After this we changed to another train on which we rode for only 10 minutes. Then as we were changing to our final train, Carolyn noticed a guy wearing an MIT 2009 sweatshirt. We were debating whether or not to say hi to him. He was waiting for the same train as well and we chatted near him until Jingwen and Carolyn finally made me ask him whether or not he's from MIT. Turns out he goes to Princeton but his brother goes to MIT. He's also Class of '09. So we ended up chatting with him the whole way back to Berlin, which was another 2 hour long train ride. We had a really interesting conversation.

He grew up in Germany but was born in the US. He's studying psychology at Princeton and is working for the Parliament this summer. Which is really cool since Carolyn was born in Germany but grew up in the US. His English is really good, by the way. Anyhow, we swapped stories about college life and other things. At one point, Jingwen mentioned that she really likes the British accent and he said he might pick one up when he goes to England for an exchange program next year. Turns out, he's going to Oxford. Too bad he's not going to Cambridge but man, what a coincidence! At some point, he asked about Carolyn's Brass Rat. So she told him all about the details of the ring. This took a while and a guy who was sitting in front of us poked around and was really interested as well. He is serving his time in the army but wants to get a degree at a university. He's thinking about going to the US and asked us about financial aid and admissions. He had done an exchange program and lived in the US for a while in high school. Seems like a pretty smart guy. His English is definitely good enough. He got off the train before we did to go to his army base. The four of us kept talking about random stuff and decided to go museum hopping together on Thursday. That was one amazing train ride.

Hamburg - Part II: We're Here!

So after 4 hours on the train, we finally get to Hamburg. We ate at the train station and headed out to the city. Even though it was 1pm, the city was still pretty quite. We more or less followed the path shown by my guide book. We walked through the shopping district where everything's closed since it was Sunday. We looked at a couple of churches and then got to the Rathaus (City Hall). We all thought this place was really, really nice. There was a wine fest going on too. We all took pictures and continued walking.

Hamburg is a harbor city. It has many, many canals and waterways. It's a major river port so it's not near the ocean. We walked to the habor where they're building the new Hafen City. Still in construction but the plans for it looks pretty cool. They're building multifamily housing and retail right along the harbor. We walked around there for a while and went to look for a really tall church that we saw on the way there. We thought it was St. Micheal's church since that's really famous. But it turned out to be St. Nicholas' church. It was pretty impressive anyway. There was an elevator going up on the inside of it but we didn't go.

After taking pictures of it, we decided to go check out the botanic garden. We took the U-Bahn and got off right at the garden, which was really nice. I will have pictures of the garden in the next post. We walked around the garden for nearly 2 hours. Everything was really pretty. There were a fair amount of people there. We even saw people taking wedding pictures. They had a rose garden which had lot of pretty flowers. Some of the roses weren't in very good condition though. After taking this nice walk and eating ice cream (I've eaten more ice cream in the past month than I have in the past 2 years), we went back to the Hamburg Haufbahnhof. At the train station, we got Burger King with Carolyn's coupons and ate on the train. The next post is really interesting, I promise!

Hamburg - Part II: We're Here!

So after 4 hours on the train, we finally get to Hamburg. We ate at the train station and headed out to the city. Even though it was 1pm, the city was still pretty quite. We more or less followed the path shown by my guide book. We walked through the shopping district where everything's closed since it was Sunday. We looked at a couple of churches and then got to the Rathaus (City Hall). We all thought this place was really, really nice. There was a wine fest going on too. We all took pictures and continued walking.

Hamburg is a harbor city. It has many, many canals and waterways. It's a major river port so it's not near the ocean. We walked to the habor where they're building the new Hafen City. Still in construction but the plans for it looks pretty cool. They're building multifamily housing and retail right along the harbor. We walked around there for a while and went to look for a really tall church that we saw on the way there. We thought it was St. Micheal's church since that's really famous. But it turned out to be St. Nicholas' church. It was pretty impressive anyway. There was an elevator going up on the inside of it but we didn't go.

After taking pictures of it, we decided to go check out the botanic garden. We took the U-Bahn and got off right at the garden, which was really nice. I will have pictures of the garden in the next post. We walked around the garden for nearly 2 hours. Everything was really pretty. There were a fair amount of people there. We even saw people taking wedding pictures. They had a rose garden which had lot of pretty flowers. Some of the roses weren't in very good condition though. After taking this nice walk and eating ice cream (I've eaten more ice cream in the past month than I have in the past 2 years), we went back to the Hamburg Haufbahnhof. At the train station, we got Burger King with Carolyn's coupons and ate on the train. The next post is really interesting, I promise!

Hamburg - Part I: Getting there

We had planned to take the 7am train to Hamburg. This way we can get there at 11am and then come back at 6pm. But Jingwen took a while getting ready in the morning and we missed the bus. The next bus comes in half an hour. I had told her which bus and subway we had to take in order to catch the train to Hamburg the night before. But she looked at the bus schedule in the morning and thought that there was another bus that comes 10 minutes after the one I said to take. But she was looking at the wrong hour and we ended up walking to the train station. It took us 35 minutes to get to Wannsee. And then from Wannsee, we took a S-Bahn to the Haufbahnhof and got there about 10, 20 minutes after the train left. Carolyn had been waiting for us. So then we looked up schedules for other places that we can possibly go. In the end, we decided to wait 2 hours and still go to Hamburg.

We wandered around the train station and got some pastries. While we were eating, some guys came and sat next to us. They told us to go and check out the sand sculptures. There had been a competition yesterday. So we did. It was amazing, as you can see from the pictures. The big one is really, really big.

After this, we finally got on the train. We had to transfer at Schwerin after about 2 and a half hours. We chatted the whole way there. It was an enjoyable ride. When we got to Schwerin, we had half an hour before our next train came. So we walked around the city. There was a big lake with a fountain. It was really nice and quiet since it was early afternoon on Sunday. Not many people out.

Berlin Zoo

Last Saturday we went to the Berlin Zoo. We were supposed to meet up at 10am but we were late since Jingwen took a long time getting ready in the morning. We got there at like 11:30. Anyway, the student ticket was 8 Euros and comes with a picture of an animal. There's an aquarium too but we decided not to go since we thought the zoo alone would be big enough. We were also planning to go shopping afterwards.

This cat here is one of the first creatures that we saw on this trip. Isn't it soooo cute? We all stared at it for a long time. Poor guy, I think it just wants to sleep. We kept walking around and saw a lot of rodents. They had a noternal animals exhibit too. All the animals were so cute and fuzzy.

After this we wandered around and found a bridge overlooking lots of ducks. It was pretty so we stayed here for a while. Then we decided that we were hungry and went out of the zoo to get some lunch. We went to Nordsee and all got a sandwich. On the way there and back we passed by this store with lots of stuffed animals. One of them was Pookie! You know, Garfield's bear? It was sooo cute. But it was also 10 Euros so none of us got it.

The zoo is huge. We saw so many different animals. There were also lots and lots of bird houses. At some point, we got sick and tired of birds. We were so tired when we finally walked the whole zoo. I'm not kidding, we walked the whole thing. It took us more than 5 hours to do it.

I saved the best picture for last. Well, not really the best picture but that white ball of fur you see behind me is Knut, the first captive born and still alive polar bear. There were so many people crowded around to see him. The other polar bears were pretty active and more interesting, I think.

After the zoo, we did a little bit of shopping. I was really tired and wasn't in the mood for shopping. Jingwen and Carolyn both got something though. And after this, we went to the Haufbahnhof, the main train station, to get monthly passes. Carolyn had to find a place to take a picture. That took a while. She was able to convince the lady that she's a student and got the student rate. It was so much easier for me this time. I just showed the guy my old ticket and the ID that I got last time and he issued me a new one.