Good times, Germany, Part V

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August 12th, 2010
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The rest of the pictures for this post. :)

My borrowed office:


The storks (my camera doesn't zoom far enough) in the rain:


And scenes from our no-utensils Medieval meal at Der Wallensteinkeller. Please note how wet and bedraggled we look.

First, we have the menus in old German, next to our delicious mead:


Here are Ralf from Norway, Georg from Germany, Dustin from Dartmouth, and Simone from Germany:


Here is my COMPLETELY DELICIOUS AND AMAZING and not really meant to be eaten without utensils meal of rabbit, Knödel, and cabbage:


Here I am, eating my rabbit, with Eva from Poland looking on:


Here is Eva from Poland laughing at my attempt to eat rapidly-falling-apart potato balls:


Our darling server washed all of the boys' hands for them...



...and made the boys wash OUR hands! Here Dustin takes care of Stephanie:


The restaurant was in a basement (Keller=basement) and had sweet decor:






Knight, I shall name you Fritz.


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August 13th, 2010
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The last couple of days, I'd been feeling overwhelmed by being totally surrounded by German and depressed by my lack of understanding. I was in a shy mood, and feeling intimidated by the group of physicists on my floor who briefly spoke in English to me for an introduction and ignored me (I felt) and spoke in fast German all through tea time and lunch. Boo. I was also a bit lost in my research and needed to see my collaborator again, but still hadn't heard from him.

THEN. Friday the 13th dawned. I woke up happy and cheerfully arrived at work. Half an hour later, P showed up! Yaaay! We had a good chat and he set me off in a new, productive direction. Excellent.

At lunch, they actually talked to me! We had a good English conversation, and then I understood a good bit of the German (but didn't participate :)). I think physicists are just shy. But we are slowly warming up to each other.

I biked downtown after work to get more Quark und Heidelbeere Eis and hang out in a bookstore. I found a short, easy-looking novel which was on (German newspaper) Der Spiegel's bestseller list: Der Geschmack von Apfelkernen (the Taste of Apple Seeds). I also bought a present for Mom (one of her favorite kids' books in German) and a history book of Greifswald.

That evening, a sweet Swedish couple invited Karla and I over for tea and cookies. They are moving back to Sweden and were saying goodbye to Karla; they kindly included me. :)

Edit:
I FORGOT one of the most important parts of the day. I got fed up with my gear shifter thingy falling off every three minutes, so I got out my pink duct tape (yes, which I brought from home, for perfectly good reasons) and fixed it:


It's held for many, many miles and through much rain. :)