It's been a rather hectic week so far getting settled in and meeting people and such and I still haven't figured everything out, but I'm getting there. As I write I'm working towards doing laundry, which is a little trickier than back home and I need to be careful not to ruin my clothes. That might be a bit drastic.
Anyway, I figured I would try to at least write down the big things of the past week to get caught up with where I should be here in blog-land. The one thing that always foils my attempt to write something is the clash between my desire to be detailed and my need to be doing a million things at once. This means I want to take my time but also don't. As such, I may skip over details and come back some other time, all in the name of finishing. Let's get started, shall we?
We landed last Sunday in Munich fairly early in the morning and took a taxi over to the hotel. We would come to learn that we spent way too much money on the taxi and could have instead taken the subway and train right to the hotel. Of course we didn't know that at the time.
The hotel was very nice and in a fairly central "businessy" location. The beds were really soft.
After dropping off our stuff, my dad and I hit the subway to go check out the surroundings. We first went up to the StudentenStadt (Student Village auf Deutsch) where I would be living, but I couldn't move in until Monday as my room was still occupied. I'll put up a picture soon. It snowed most of the morning and everything was pretty dead all over. Sundays in Bavaria are pretty low key, with only restaurants open (if that) and not too many people walking around. It wasn't terribly exciting but we at least got a chance to learn the city a little bit.
I started work on Monday in the town of Garching b. Munich just north of town on the U-Bahn (the subway). The office is fairly new and sits on the outskirts of town in sort of an industrial park type area. All around there is rural farm-ish land. This company, Jacobs, is a U.S. company that does construction and other technology consulting, though this particular office designs automotive wind tunnels, like the one for BMW I got to see later that week. Incidentally, they also have an office in Southfield MI that serves the industrial life-blood of sunny Detroit. The office is small and half American, which helps my getting adjusted. The Americans have funny sounding American accents in German.
Work was sorta slow all week (as I've come to expect), though by Friday I was at least doing grunt work for them. They had a proposal to send off today so I was in charge of printing and assembling two 3" binders full of appendices. They had another one full of livers. It actually wasn't too bad and it did keep me occupied.
Enough work for now though.
Side note: There are 3 washing machines in this entire building. Ridiculous.
Munich has been pretty cool so far. My dad and I ate in a couple German restaurants and we even had Doener for lunch one day (that's a Turkish thing kinda like shiwarma or maybe a gyro). Yes, we did go to the Hofbräuhaus. Downtown there are loads of old buildings and new buildings and big churches and such, all very European feeling. When I have some pictures ready I'll put them up somewhere. Be patient.
On Wednesday morning my dad headed back home. Despite the snow storms he made it back alright.
I feel like this is a decent place to stop for now; maybe I'll do more later today. I will, at least, leave you with this picture:
This is the bedspread they provided me. No mistake, it's light blue with flowers on it. Hilarious.
Tchuss.
Ooo pretty pretty bedspread!
ReplyDelete:)