DB Interns

On Thursday night there was a gathering of DB interns to hang out/have dinner. Carolyn tagged along with us. We got there kinda late since we were wandering around the Altes museum. The staff of that museum was so grumpy. First they made me check in my lunch but not my purse. Then they wouldn't let me take off my sweater while inside. I guess I should've check it in if I wanted it to be off. Then they didn't like it when we were leaning against a display. Sigh. Anyhow, back to the intern gathering.

When we finally found the place, we had no idea how we were supposed to know who the interns are. We were going to ask a waiter but they were all busy. We saw some people sitting outside who were pretty young so we thought they might be the interns.
Carolyn to Jingwen: Well, they're dressed like you.
And it turns out that we were right. They were all pretty cool people. Most of them can speak English as well. One of them is a grad student at Berkeley. Another one is actually from L.A. and is a junior at Stanford. He and I talked about Catalina and other California things for a while. It was fun except it started raining and the restaurant people wouldn't let us open up their big umbrellas. So we opened up all our umbrellas. It was pretty hilarious. But it started pouring so we waited for a while inside, confirmed that there was no room, and went to another place. All in all it was a fun evening. We need to convince them to hold this gathering on some other weekday though. Thursdays is for museum hopping.

Another Weekend!

Get ready for another series of long entries! Tomorrow we're hitting the Berlin Zoo to see Knut, the polar bear. After that we're going shopping all day long even though it will be cold and rainy. On Sunday we are going to Hamburg. And no, we are not taking the nice, new train that goes from Berlin to Hamburg in 1 hour. We'll be taking the Regional Express which takes 4 hours and will save us 6x the money.

As for work, I am almost finish with my current project. I'm supposed to be finished by today but I had to wait until 5pm to make a call to Los Angeles. It was a good call though since I got all the information I needed. I will finish up my project on Monday and start working on something else. I'm supposed to be meeting with someone who will show me what the department actually does. I'm kinda excited except I think this means I will be working in a different office. I feel like I've just gotten to know the people I work with. I even showed them the the videos of 1.102 today. Anyhow, I don't think I would be working elsewhere for long though.

Mac & Cheese

So before I left MIT, I grabbed some Easy Mac off of the kitchen table in the Annex since I thought I might need some food on the first few days. I realized I haven't eaten them and bought 2 packs to work today. I was looking over the instructions and Oli comes over, wondering what I have. I tried to ask him if they have Mac & Cheese here and I think he said yes. I told him that Easy Mac works by magic. You just put water and microwave it for a few minutes. He thought it was cool.

So I go and microwave the thing and was stirring the sauce in when Oli comes back with his lunch. It only took him like 5 minutes to go buy lunch. I was impressed. Anyway, he waves me over to where he's sitting with the 2 ladies who work in the same department as we do and shows them my mac and cheese. I asked them again if they have this in Germany and one of the ladies said yes and was trying to say they come in a box. It was cool since they were all so amazed by it.

Oli then took apart each part of his salad and taught me the German names for them. He wanted to learn the English names for them too so we did this for chicken, pepper, cucumber, kidney beans, and corn. It was funny. Anyway, he tried some of my Easy Mac so I decided to give the other bag to him. When I bought over the unprepared bag, they were all so excited and wanted to see. haha. That was a fun lunch. Maybe I should introduce them to peanut butter too.

Bad Weather

Why did I ever leave California? I could've been there where it's sunny and warm everyday. Instead I'm here in Berlin where the weather changes by the hour. 2 weeks ago, it was blazing hot. So hot that you can feel the heat from the pavement. This week is really cool. It was 55F out there today. And the rain. It's low pressure here all the time. You see the clouds roll in and rain just start pouring out from the sky. Thunder and lightning is very common. These usually last about 10, 15 minutes and then it's sunny again.

These pictures are from last Saturday. There was a gay pride parade downtown. There were so many people watching! The streets were filled even though it rained on and off the whole day. You can see the dark clouds in the second picture. 2 minutes after I took these pictures, it started raining really, really hard. Luckily I got under a bridge before the rain started pouring. I waited it out even though I had an umbrella. It wouldn't have helped anyway.

Cologne and Koblenz - Part III

We took a Regional Express to go from Cologne to Koblenz. The trip took an hour. Last week when we went to Dresden, we sat on the second deck of the train and it was nice. So we climbed up onto the second deck again. Towards the end of the trip, someone came to inspect our ticket and informed us that we were in the First Class section. He pointed to the "1" written on the wall.

Train official: First class. That's why it's so empty.
Us: oooo sorry...

So we moved downstairs but we were almost there and had taken a nice nap on the large comfy chairs. Even though it was already 10:30am, there were still no one on the streets. I guess people sleep pretty late here on Sundays. We walked around the city. Koblenz is were the Mosel and Rhine Rivers met. This first picture is of the Mosel River. There were lots of ferries. We saw a Spanish one and a French one. This second picture is of a museum/boat/castle. They have a miniature armor of a knight on the boat along with a real horse and real pony. There were kids riding on the horses. Seems very popular with the kids.

After walking along the river, we came to a restaurant that was recommended by my guide book. It was a nice place. Service and food was pretty good.

This third picture shows both rivers, Mosel on the left and the Rhine on the right. At this corner there is a huge statue of Kaiser Wilheim (4th picture). By this time there were a lot more people around. Lots of families riding bikes and German tourists.

Across the Rhine there is a really big fortress, second largest in Europe. I wanted to take the ferry over and explore. But Jingwen wanted to take a ferry or train to Loreley Rock which is further down the Rhine and is supposed to be really, really pretty. So we went to check out the ferries but they all leave at 2pm and comes back at 7pm. We had to be back at Cologne at 4pm in order for Jingwen to make her train.

So at this point we decided to walk back to the train station to check out the train schedules. Something that we should've done before we left the station since walking back takes a while. When we got there it was almost 3pm so there was no way we could go anywhere else. So we walked back to the river and sat at a bench for a while before taking the train back to Cologne.

We decided that we would still go on a ferry down the Rhine at some point. It is supposed to be very beautiful, with vineyards and castles everywhere. We will probably go when we go visit Fan, my pen pal, who is in Bonn. Bonn is also very close by.

When we got back to Cologne, it was 4:30pm. Jingwen's train leaves for Frankfurt at 5:15pm. We wanted to climb the church since we didn't get a chance in the morning. Normally they open at 9am but the day we were there they opened at noon. There were many, many people also trying to climb up and down the church. The stairs were very narrow and twisted up. But we got up there in 10 minutes even though the sign said that round trip would take 30 minutes. The view was amazing. We only stayed for a little while and took lots of pictures. I went to see the bells while Jingwen left to catch her train. There were lots of bells in the church. The biggest one is huge, bigger than the Liberty Bell. I helped a couple take a picture.

After climbing down, I had to find a bathroom. Public bathrooms in Germany cost money. The one at the train station costs 1.10 Euros. I didn't even have that much in change so I went to find somewhere else cheaper. I came across a museum and their bathrooms were free.

There's a chocolate museum in Cologne but my train left at 6:48pm so I didn't have much time. I couldn't find it anyhow. My map from the guide book didn't show exactly where it was. So I just walked around the city some more and took more pictures. There were some ruins near the City Hall. People say that every time a hole is dug in Cologne, there's a very real chance of finding some ancient ruins.

At some point, I realized I was really hungry and went back to the train station to get some food. I got a bismark herring sandwich along with a bottle of Fanta. Bismark herring is a type of pickled herring that was supposed to be the favorite of King Bismark. Carolyn says she really likes it and recommended it to me. I didn't like it very much though. Tasted too fishy to me. Fanta is very popular here. It's in just as many places as Coke.

The train that I took to go from Cologne to Berlin is an Intercity Express (ICE). It's the fastest class of trains in Germany. It took only 4 hours. They have a digital display of the speed and the fastest that I saw was 250 km/hr. I was impressed. I had a seat reservation but it was in a smoker's compartment. A lot more people smoke in Germany than in the US. It would've been okay except the guy in front of me just kept smoking. He must have smoked a pack or two! I ended up moving to another compartment. The train has an onboard restaurant, music that you can listen to if you had headphones, and very nice bathrooms.

I got back to Berlin at around 11pm and go to the S-Bahn to go home. When I got off, I saw Jingwen. We ended up taking the same S-Bahn. Which was good since we had to wait a while at the bus stop for the bus. After getting back and showering, I slept at like 1:30am. I was so tired at work the next day...

Cologne and Koblenz - Part II

So I finally got to Cologne at 7am Sunday morning. I met up with Jingwen at the train station. She came in on an earlier train. We then proceeded to walk around the city, which was completely empty of people since it was so early on a Sunday. We didn't start to see a good amount of people until after noon.

We went to the famous Kölner Dom which is a huge church, very beautiful Catholic church. There's an alter inside that is supposed to contain the bones of the Three Wise Men. There was service since it was Sunday but they were only in a corner of the church. Did I mention this place is huge? All the windows had stain glass. They were really, really nice. I took a picture of one but it didn't come out very well.

The church is really tall as well as big. We couldn't get the whole church in a picture unless we were really far away. You can pay to climb up the 509 steps to the top and get an amazying view of the city. We did that in the afternoon and that's where the picture of the city came from.

After looking around in the church for a while, we walked around the city. The city has a pretty big shopping district. But again, it's Sunday so nothing's open. The city was pretty quiet since it was so early. We got bored so we went back to the train station to check on tickets to go to Koblenz.

Koblenz is about midway between Cologne and Frankfurt. Cologne being north of Frankfurt. All three cities are near or on the Rhine River. It's a smaller town but has a few historical sites and just a really nice, pleasant atmosphere. It takes about an hour to get there on the Regional trains so we left Cologne at around 9:30am. More on that part of the trip in Part III.

Cologne and Koblenz - Part I

We went to Cologne on Sunday! In German, it's actually Köln in German. Anyway, it was quiet an adventure. Let's start at the beginning.

We decided to go to Cologne because Jingwen was in Frankfurt for work. They are both cities on the west side of Germany. We had planned to go on Saturday but Jingwen couldn't get the special priced ticket for Saturday in time so we went on Sunday. So I wandered around Berlin on Saturday by myself. I will post about that later. Sorry, these past few posts have been out of order.

Anyway, I got a ticket to go on a night train that would from Berlin to Cologne in 6 hours. It's like a red-eye flight, except on a train. I left my dorm pretty early, around 10pm. The sky was still bright. It didn't get dark until almost 11pm. You might have heard that beer is the national drink in Germany. They actually have a drinking age but no one even knows what it is. Teenagers have a lot more freedom to drink and party here than in the States. Schools let out at 1pm so we always see high school students just sitting around looking bored. These high school kids go out and drink on Saturday nights. I met a bunch of them while on the Berlin local trains. They were really drunk.

I got to Berlin Haufbahnhof pretty early for my train. Haufbahnhof means main train station. Most cities have one. Most of the stores were closed except for a few food places. So I was walking around when I got stopped by 2 police officers. One of them spoke English and asked me for my passport. I had thought about bringing my passport with me but didn't see a need since I wasn't going to leave the country. They then asked if I had any other ID. I handed over my ID card for the local train, MIT student ID, and later my Bank of America card. None of which they were satisfied with. I was really confused. The first thought that came to my mind was that something really bad, like a robbery, must've happened and now they're looking for the bad guys. But that didn't seem like the case. Anyway, I had to go with them to the police station, which is still in the train station. They asked me for my name, date of birth, and later my address here in Berlin (which I managed to mess up). They kept asking me where I live in Berlin. I told them and they seemed disappointed. I think that had I lived any closer they would've taken me there and got me to show them my passport. After all this, they said it was okay and let me go. I asked if it was normal procedure multiple times but I don't think they understood me. Finally as I was leaving, one of the guys answered and said that everyone in Berlin carries their passport around with them. Not sure if this is actually true but was pretty shocking to me since the shortage of passports in the States had been on the news lately. And I read on a website today written by a German national who went to the US for grad school about the differences he noticed in the two countries. He said that German police frequently stops people and asks for ID, especially if you're a foreigner or look foreign.

Even after all this I still had to wait a while for my train to come. But I guess it's good that I went so early. When I was on the platform, there were fireworks off in the distance. It was a pretty nice view from the platform. That went on for a few minutes. My train came a little late, 5 minutes or so.

When I got on and found my seat (you have to reserve a seat for night trains), there were already people in the compartment. In fact, all 6 seats were already taken. One of the guys asked me to switch a seat with one of them and showed me a ticket with seat number 85 on it. I was supposed to be in 95. Well, he didn't really speak English but I figured that's what he was trying to say. So I was like "okay" and went to the next cabin, which has seat number 85. I opened the door and these 2 ladies did not seem too happy to see me. One of them insisted that I show her my ticket and pointed me back to 95. I looked over at seat number 85 and sure enough, that seat was taken up by the other woman's feet. I made it pretty clear to her that I had switched seats with the people in the next cabin but they didn't want me to sit with them. So I went back to the other cabin to try to get that guy to show them his ticket. But one of the train officials came and asked the group of people to go back to their original seats.

Which all worked out in the end since that guy had already asked quite a few people to move to different seats. The seat reservations don't really matter unless you're sitting in someone's seat and that person actually cared about where they sat. So I ended up in the cabin with one other person. We sat there for a minute or two and this French couple walked in with a huge suitcase. The husband didn't seem too happy with the seats. I think they had reserved a cabin with beds. He goes off to talk to the train officials for a while. The other lady and I wanted to turn off the lights to the cabin so we can look out the window. Only problem was, the French lady didn't speak any English. Neither did we. Well, the other lady spoke a little bit but she didn't know how to say "light". And later we found out that the French lady didn't have her prescription glasses and couldn't see anything. So all the pointing at the lights was useless. We just ended up turning the lights off and she was okay with it. The couple moved after a while to another cabin and the 2 of us had the whole cabin to ourselves. Which was really nice since we got to lay down and sleep.

So this thing is getting pretty long and I still haven't gotten to the actual trip yet. This trip might take 3 parts. heh.