With a Bang and a Whimper

I strolled to work last Monday with a comforting feeling of familiarity. Li buzzed the door open for me and I headed to Biohybrid Systems, stopping at Karin's room along the way to inquire about a spring-form (for my Abschiedskuchen). She greeted me and said I should speak with Yvonne, who scheduled an appointment later in the day to discuss my seminar. I then chatted with Erwin about his vacation and bragged to Christian about how I enjoyed a Zwetschkekuchen that weekend.


Within 15 minutes, I had spoken and exchanged smiles with half of the department. This subtle feat was perhaps the "X-factor" that made the summer so special. I had become a part of the community, not just at work, but also in the village. At the end of three months, I could recognize a friend in the Fußgängerzone or even Kirti, one of "those kids" always to be found at the soccer-cage.


It was a bittersweet moment to leave the Insitut for the last time. My colleagues gave me a special towel with Saarlandish dialect written on it (I will no longer trockne mich ab, sondern druggele mich ab) and an 1. FC Saarbrücken scarf (Auf geht's FC, Schwarz-Blau ale!). I will really miss those guys.

My last few days in Deutschland were spent blissfully on the Bodensee. Julius and I went on a 110 km bike tour from Friedrichshafen through Lindau (Bavaria), Bregens (Austria), and Romanshal (Switzerland), taking the ferry across the lake from Konstanz back home. I highly recommend anyone going on a bike-tour to take an in-shape buddy along - riding in the slip-stream is so refreshing! We stopped along the way for some swimming and getting lost.

It will take a while before I can decipher what this summer in Germany meant for me. I already know it has spurred on new hobbies (jogging, reading, casual drinking), introduced new career possibilities, and shown that while Germany is a country where I feel at home, I am capable of feeling home-sickness for the USA. The feeling of immense personal growth contradicts the feeling that time flew too fast.

So now I sit in Frankfurt, with a tear in my eye and a smile on my face, ready for an American reunification. Who knows what the future will bring - the way ahead is unknown, but ripe for discovery. One thing, however, is for sure:

I'll be back.

Day 100 in 'Schland - The Homestretch

My 100th day here has just begun. I'll kick it off by going back (a good soccer tactic) to last weekend when I visited the Verwandschaft in Ravensburg, home of the famous puzzle-maker and former home of my dad!

There's nothing like visiting relatives. I felt like the Kaiser being served self-pressed Spätzle and home-grown Apfelstrudel. It just keeps coming! My aunt would have been seriously depressed if I had turned down her offer for a bonus-scoop of ice cream.


But schwäbische Spezialitäten aside, I feel like I really connected with all of my relatives this summer. I grasped the importance and appreciation of my family this time around, which has been one of the many things the past few months have made tangible.

I went for a walk in the historic town for some much needed exercise. I didn't expect much to be going on - the renowned Rutenfest had taken place the weekend before. Climbing up a knoll to find a good view of the city, I started to hear the festive clang of drums. On top of the Berg was indeed a parade of townsfolk in traditional costume. Germany, you are quite the party-animal.

To blend in, I ordered a Maß, which is a liter of beer. I advise ordering such a beverage with extreme caution. It is quite dangerous...your wrist can be really sore after carrying that thing.

Knowing this, Germans train from a young age in preparation for their first Maße.


There are many pleasant memories behind me, and more to come. Work is tapering off and many colleagues are on vacation, leaving me time to assemble my cumulative test results. As it turns out, the pieces are falling into place and I am able to draw some nice conclusions. Still, there's a lot of work to be done - I guess I did have a productive summer at the Institut.

Coming up is a typical (read: kick-ass) German weekend in Saarbrücken. This consists of watching an 1. FC Saarbrücken soccer game, going to a Diskothek, and attending yet another Stadtfest in the city. The weekend after that will feature a Tour de Bodensee, the last adventure before my flight home.

100 days...what a freakin' long time.

Spice of Life

Spice. Spannung. Panache.

I'm no Kobe, but I know a triple-double-entendre when I see one. This particula' trifecta describes last weekend to a T.

It kicked off early with a Thursday-night outing to a Mexican restaurant with the colleagues. I flexed my taste-buds, ordering a Chimichanga - extra Scharf (spicy) and followed Erwin's example by washing it down with a Panache (beer with lemonade, also known as Radler and Alsterwasser in the non-Saarland parts of Germany...we're so French). Chilling outside of work with the colleagues is great. Getting to know their personal lives gave me a hint at what mine could be like in a couple years if I continue with this research stuff.

Ah, the research stuff. On Friday, I struggled to diagnose my sick circuit. The dual analog inputs were causing problems; apparently they were interfering with one another, and I had to call German tech-support to decipher why the Spannung (voltage) was abnormally high. It apparently had something to do with "cross-talk" or "ghosting", but since technical German is pretty much lost on me and it isn't anywhere near Halloween, I left it to Monday.

Consequently, the Spannung (also: tension) remained elevated. I went jogging to combat the two Goodbye-Cakes at work ;.( no more Jan) and strayed off the beaten path in search of the setting sun. A poetic run resembled an extended metaphor after I got lost in the woods. When I finally reached civilization, I thought to myself, "Oh, Scheidt!". I was in the neighboring town, facing a green sign that read "St. Ingbert 5 km". My foot was killing me. Without money for a bus, I hobbled to the next green sign: "St. Ingbert 4,7 km". Ouch. And the next green sign: "St. Ingbert 4,7 km". Huh?! When I finally got to the WG, my foot tut Weh from gehing, so much so that I was afraid my Saturday on the Salsa Ship was in jeopardy.

Das Salsa-Schiff (Fanfare Please)

I had been looking forward to the Salsa Ship all month. Every Wednesday I attended Salsa-Tanzschule (dance lessons) to prepare myself for a glorious evening on the Saar. To remedy my ailing foot, I visited an Apotheke (pharmacy) for pain-killers and improvised with some tape and a couple extra socks. It was gonna take more than some aches and pains to stop this Queen from spreading his spice on the dance flo'.

In spite of the weekend's tribulations, the evening was a great success. Imagine a floating Diskothek with higher mean age and mean dancing ability. It was by far the most funked-up ship that ever sailed the Saar. I accomplished my objective of showing those Germans the true meaning of "panache" and got flagged down by an Italian man who told me to dance more "macho".

Dance Partnerin - wawaweewa

Italian Man

Home-Dawg Klaus with Band

No, I may not have seen the sunset, but above the Saar the stars were aligned.

Mark@Work

Today I assigned Jan the important task of photodocumenting my day for y'all. Here's what the ol' boy came up with:

Compiling Taguchi Test Results

Lacing Cells with Nanoparticles

Programming!

Yep, it sure is a long day...

...but you get through it somehow.

Holy Schnitzel!

Last weekend was my cousin's B-day party. She turned 20, and invited lots of her friends to celebrate. I played some guitar. There were 4 kilos of schnitzel.

Heaven on Earth?

Plan B

And now an update on the Praktikum I've been up to at the Fraunhofer Institute:

After 8 weeks on the job, I'm entering the homestretch of the internship firing on all Bunsen burners. The first month was mostly an Ausbildung where I learned and gained experience with aseptic technique and the culturing, counting, and torturing of cells. I also learned the basics of a completely different style of computer programming (LabView) and assembled a nice little program that reads in data from pressure sensors. There had been plenty of odd jobs to do, like building capillaries, assembling an adaptor/interface for a machine (soldered for the first time), and correcting my colleagues' grammar. And train my Praktikant.

I was happy to absorb all of the information and experience during June, but after running tests for a whole month, I realized that not only were the cytotoxicity assays losing their edge, but my results indicated that the water was more toxic than the notorious silver particles swimming in it. OsNOsis it what it should be called.

In light of the circumstances, I negotiated with my supervisor and replaced the rest of the scheduled cytotoxicity tests with an experiment to optimize an assay. I designed an experiment modeled after the Taguchi Method and hope to find more reproducible and robust parameters for a test which measures membrane damage. As far as I can tell, no one has ever tried to optimize a cytotoxicity test using this method before...time will tell if that makes my idea groundbreaking or incredibly far-fetched and stupid.

We'll hope for the former, since in one month I'll be officially presenting my body of work in front of the Department of Biohybrid Systems. Seminars are held in our department every Tuesday in which someone presents his or her research and findings, or discusses a topic on the cutting edge of biotechnology. I'm looking forward to it, but I'll be hard-pressed to condense everything I learned and worked on this summer into a single presentation. It should go well, but just in case, Plan B is a well-rehearsed, half-minute hip-hop dance routine that'll show those jokers the meaning of cytotoxic.

Scenic World, Fictional World

Years later, when facing the screen brightly illuminated with memories of the past, I'll remember the day I discovered the world is a vibrant work of fiction.

Although the sensation did not truly occur in the span of 24 hours, it will be conceived in such a way, as memories often are, so the soothing stretch of rail winding through the dark and familiar tunnels in a cloud-crested forest will reside next to the neuron occupied by refreshing waters inviting tired-legged teammates to a post-game bath.


This process will inevitably distill my recollection, but it need not be so, for reality was perfect as it was. I might not have realized this truth hadn't a pinnacle of fiction been lying in my lap, but the novel held the key to what had previously been an indecipherable manuscript. Upon my fifth visit to the Bodensee, I could therefore live in the nostalgia of the present, as if I was reading a really good book. It's hard to comprehend in this world that a little angel could pause mid-sentence to pick up a four-leaf-clover and hand it to you with nonchalance, or that a family could walk a path past dusk toward woods alight with the shimmer of a trillion glow-worms. But I now believe that utopias aren't the inventions of authors, but rather their inspirations.


Applying this lesson to places other than the Bodensee has yielded encouraging results. A little reflection can uncover the extraordinary embedded in every day. It might take some internal rewording to see things in this light, but it is not to be confused with passive acceptance or with gasping at the slightest provocation. I believe instead this summer is and has been genuinely amazing, and with this realization I plan on living like the "good ol' days" are here and now.

Quantiful Quality

After 11 cytotoxicity assays, hundreds of rubber gloves, dozens of reviewed articles, and spreadsheets upon spreadsheets of juicy data, you could argue it's been an eventful first month at Fraunhofer IBMT St Ingbert. Throw on top of that bags of fresh-baked goods, rounds of fine pilsner, and a plethora of wursts, and you could call that last weekend.

But it's not the quantity that matters in times like these; it's about the qualiteee. That's why I enjoyed the quality time spent with my coworkers in the past few days.

My colleagues at the Department of Biohybrid Systems are just like any other group of fun-loving, grill-loving, and nanoparticle-loving people. That is, except Christian and Impi, who are monstrous. As I went tranieren with them last Wednesday, their go-to phrase was "noch 20 dazu?" after I finished lifting. Apparently there is no such thing as spotting in Germany; instead, it's the person's duty to push down on the bar for added weight...as if kilograms weren't heavy enough.

We waved off the work-week with a more leisurely activity and patronized a Biergarten overlooking the Saar. I hazily recall an interesting discussion about how many Germans mistake Saarland, Germany's smallest state, for a part of France. The suggestion was then posed that Michigan is practically Canada, which I vehemently denied with considerable outrage. Reppin' the Wolverine State with pride, baby.

Saarland custom was observed Sunday with some lecker grilling. The practice is called schwenken in this corner of the country, and what a magical word it is...it is possible to say "Der Schwenker schwenkt Schwenker aufem Schwenker," i.e. "The chef cooks steaks on the grill". This brings my total of German grill-related-sayings up to two. I gave my associates a taste of American culture as well and brought materials for s'mores...of course you can't find Hershey's or graham crackers here, so it was more like a German adaptation...Schmehrs? It was exciting to share that little cultural gem of ours, and also Germans roasting 'shmallows is always good for a laugh.

As if that wasn't enough, I just returned from our competitive weekly pick-up soccer outings. Jan played admirably - the young grasshopper is learning well.

ARD on the IBMT

ARD (Arbeitsgemeinschaft der öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunkanstalten der Bundesrepublik Deutschland), the public television broadcaster in Germany, visited the Fraunhofer IBMT (Institut von Biomedizinische Technik) where I work! They reported on future medical technologies as a part of "Science Summer in Saarland"

If you can understand German, you may find these videos interesting. If you cannot understand German, you may find these videos funny/confusing.





Although these videos aren't from the "biohybrid systems" department I work in, they do talk about antibody-laced gold nanoparticles being used in imaging applications...I am going to start testing similar particles next week for cytotoxic FX. Coo'.

The New Guy

The past week offered some fresh perspectives on work, Saarland, dancing, and the Black Forest.

Let's start with work, where a reality check manifested itself in the form of a new intern named Jan (pronounced with a soft J, rhymes with...uhh...electron). Since he's only staying for four weeks, rather than starting up with his own assignment, his job is to follow me around. That's right, I have an intern.

I took the sniffling and clueless lad under my wing and taught him everything I know about passaging cells and running cytotoxicity tests. It was painfully obvious that didn't encompass a large volume of information. Jan caught on quickly, though he still talks funny and spells things wrong. Oh yeah, did I mention he's English?

Jan reminded me of my humble beginnings as a Praktikant at the Institute as well as showed me how far I've come and how far I've yet to go. I plan to delegate him my "busy work" tasks so I can learn new things, design my own tests, and implement special elements in a sensor program I'm (supposed to be) working on. This is pretty much what my boss is doing with me...moving up the food chain, baby!
On Wednesday, the day of my first Salsa lesson, the elevated sketch-factor of the situation aroused apprehension along with my excitement. It may it may have been because the instructor was over-eager to have me join and even organized a ride to some Kuhdorf (cow-village) outside town, or that there was no website or building or anything, but it was only when we pulled over in the middle of nowhere and started driving up a steep, narrow road that I started having premonitions of my death.

And all of a sudden I couldn't breathe. Since I had arrived in Saarland, some obstacle had always stood in between me and the horizon, but the pinnacle of the Erlenbacher Hof at dusk provided a panorama which was both typical German and extremely beautiful (two qualities that, in my opinion, go hand-in-hand!).

The lesson featured a dash of Merengue with a kick of Bachata, and was topped off with a whole lot of Salsa. If that sounds tasty, it may be because at least two of those dances are edible. They were very unlike my previous ballroom dance experiences at UM in both technicality and attitude, but I feel like I can benefit from the looseness of these latin lessons. They are more about having fun than trying to impress adjudicators (but man, those heel-leads everyone was pulling were SO whack).

ACHTUNG: SPANDEX (wawaweewa)

For the weekend, I trained to the Black Forest and visited Onkel Hans-Peter and Tante Monika. The Schwarzwald is really pretty and packed with scenic routes. In addition to a Rad-Tour and hitting up my favorite local waterpark, I ate/drank many local delicacies from the region famous for its cakes. My relatives showed me pictures from their travels in New Zealand and Fiji, but I can think of nothing more spectacular than the train ride back to Saarland through the heart of the Black Forest, between mountains and through tunnels in a bright red train...seriously, that s*** could've been in Polar Express or something.

Things I Miss and Things That Make Me Forget I Miss Things

I've assembled a list of some things I miss and things that make....ok you know the rest.

I decided that no people should appear in these lists, because I don't have enough time to write about all of that. The hardest thing about leaving the States was knowing I would miss out on time with you guys...we will have to do lots of catching up this August!

And without further ado...

Things I Miss
1) TB & J

I know this contradicts what I just wrote, but...I miss you man! One of the reasons why I miss Tyler is that we were so close. At first it was proximity-wise, as we were in an 11'x12' dorm room. Inevitably, we became what I affectionately call "brotha's 2 da ******' grave".

In the WG, I still live in a 132 square foot room, but alone! This has made getting to know my WG-mates a slow process. I miss the bear hugs and intimate bedtime conversations...aren't those supposed to come standard in any room-sharing relationship?

2) Cars
Time to change gears...NOT! Because I don't have a car. I have no bike, no scooter, not even those shoes with little wheels on the bottom! I have to walk everywhere and step by step I am going crazy!

But seriously, a bike would be nice...maybe I'll hit up eBay.

3) Being Busy
Sure, work keeps me busy from 9-17. But after that, my schedule is as clear as the control column of a 96 well-plate running an LDH assay. Jens and Tobias usually aren't back from the Uni yet, so I usually resort to one of my recent hobbies: walking around and getting lost. Slowly I am getting familiar with the town, so even that has lost some of its jazz.

To solve this I am trying to get involved with weekly activities. This is promising, but in a new place it takes a while to get the (soccer) ball rolling. Soon I expect to be playing Fußball twice a week (once with co-workers, once with friends). If I can manage to wake up on time, I'd also like to go to church and maybe join a youth group. Furthermore, I also am contacting local Tanzschulen, which brings me to my last item:

4) Dancing
I love to get my groove on, and even though there are plenty of opportunities around here to funk your trunk, whenever I step off the parquet it beckons me to return.

Thankfully, last month was not a total departure from dancing; i did learn a few steps, and am proud to present...

Discofoxy

Song: "Can't get enough of your love" by Barry White

And now for a pictorial list of items that keep me sane...because I'm not spending all of my time moping around, for the most part I am stoked up on the fact that I'm in Germany and livin' it up!

Things that make me forget I miss things
1)Finished this one already...loved it, and up next is "100 Years of Solitude"
2)Ordered this very guitar off eBay. (It hasn't come yet, so it should actually be in the first list, but it should arrive any day now.)
3)

Döner Kebab...a Berlinish-Turkish delicacy that is sooo good (comparable to a Gyro).

4)
The Fraunhofer Institute of Biomedical Technology in St Ingbert...it's coo'.



That does it for my lists...and by the way, if anyone has cooking or room-decorating tips HELP ME PLEASE!

das Leben tut WG

It was a blissful month of visiting friends and family in Germany, but now it's time to head out on my own and be selbständig. After searching frantically for a place to live (sounds dramatic, doesn't it?), zee Eentehrnet led me to a Wohngemeinschaft (WG) in the quaint town of Sankt Ingbert, just outside of Saarbrücken. It's an apartment just above a bakery, so the habit I developed at Markley Hall of walking downstairs for a fresh(ish) breakfast need not be broken.

My WGmates (wait, that sounded wrong) are Jens and Tobias. They are studying informatics and mechatronics at Uni Saarbrücken and put up with my clueless, foreign self. Very nice guys. Over the next two months, we will endure the independant student life, with its joys (par-tay!) and struggles (Abendessen?), ultimately forging an unbreakable Germanic alliance.

...and the water's just fine.

Getting accustomed to life in Saarland is like entering a cold lake. There are two ways to do so:

1) Take it slow and wade in.

This method might seem easy, but when you hesitate and skeptically analyse every oddity, it can become quite uncomfortable. For instance, you might wonder what language they speak over here. (It's referred to as the local Platt, and just to give you an idea, some of the locals require subtitles to watch movies that are already in German.)

I'm here for three months, but if I would immerse myself in centimeter intervals I still wouldn't get the head-to-toe experience I'm looking for. That's why I instead favor...

2) CANONBALL!

Yeah, that's right. Pile that brownish mush of a local delicacy on. Let's go bolzen, whatever that means (clue: check out the picture!). What's that, we missed the bus? Let's invent a way home...Saarland isn't that big anyway, it's not like we could get lost or anything.

The way to learn a language and a culture is definitely this method...although "cannonball" might be an overly delicate phrase for this approach. A typical day for me could be better likened to being shoved off the 10 meter platform. Of course, there are also the "graceful swan dive with the swimsuit's drawstrings too loose" days as well.

Although I might have been tempted to "wade in", fate has led me to the brink of German life and given a good push. Yesterday I signed some papers, in what appeared to be some sort of ritual one performs upon joining a Wohngemeinschaft, a group of students who live and pay rent together. I was surprised to learn that my landlord is actually a 12-year-old boy named Langerhans who will only accept Bundesliga trading cards as payment. Just kidding, I wasn't that surprised.

Don't erase your bingo cards, the next update will be coming shortly.

Fraunhofer Vokabelliste

This list of essential vocabulary might give you some idea of what I do during the week, or at least teach you something!

der Kittel...................White Lab Coat (awwww yea)
Mahlzeit....................Lunchtime Greeting
pipettieren................to pipette (by far the most important verb)
die Pipettenspitze......Pipette tips
die Platte...................(96 well) plate
das Assay..................test to determine properties of a substance
die Zellen...................Cells
adhärieren auf..........to adhere to
passagieren...............Process of moving cells from one...
das Gefäß..................Container to another, performed in a...
Die Sterilbank...........Sterile work bench with foot-activated(!)...
der Bunsenbrenner....Bunsen burner
der Überstand...........Supernatant (? I just smile and nod)

Pinch Me!

The first week of my internship here in Saarland has been phenomenal. I'm working at the Fraunhofer Institut near Saarbrücken, a biomedical research institution. (That's Fraunhofer, not to be confused with Frauenhof...although that would surely also be a great place to work...)

My supervisor had given me two options for the summer:
1) Develop a program to analyze impedance data for spherical cell models
2) Study the effect of nanoparticles on cells

I liked the first option because it had a definite goal and sounded very concrete. The second option, however, seemed like a really fun biotech project. It was tough to decide, and I wanted to get more information from my supervisor on the first day.

Ah, the first day. I kind of had this feeling they weren't really ready for me. Of course that could have been because I forgot to set up a time with my supervisor and ended up just coming really early. When I finally spoke with Herr Doktor Supervisor, he didn't stare deep into my eyes and gauge my biotechnological competence like I feared; he simply asked what I wanted to do, and I told him both, and he said a'ight.

Ok, I may remember the conversation being a tad more casual than how it really went down, but it's not far from the truth. In this research hotbed where lots of people are finishing up doctoral studies, the team is young and the official pants are blue jeans. This place gives me a loose, locker feeling. I have the freedom to do as much or as little as I want. Right now I'm choosing the former, but the topics really interest me and I enjoy the workload. Well, it's not so much a "workload" per say, but I sure am keeping myself busy trying to learn as much as I can.

More to Come, Jin Quei

These Hips Don't Lie - Nor Translate

There are three important things everyone should know before going to Germany: Right is left, left is right, and you are wrong.

OK, maybe that's not entirely true. But it certainly is when it comes to ballroom dancing. When Germans line up to get on the dance floor, girls are on the left and guys on the right. Huh!? Also, when starting a waltz, guys step forward on their right foot and start going in a box counter-clockwise. WTF!?! This country has a knack for taking things that are familiar to me and turning them inside-out and upside-down. (Don't even get me started on recycling.)

So how did I get into this situation?

After 13 long years of school, Germans receive their Abitur (diploma) and are finally able to accomplish what they have strived to do for so long: Party it up! After taking their exit exams, they parade/go wild around the school, called Abistreich. Then there is the Abifahrt, a week-long class trip. And natürlich there are Abipartys galore. But the climax is the Abiball, the German version of Prom, complete with ballroom dancing!

Thankfully, the Germans are sensible enough to practice these dances as a grade beforehand. You can imagine my excitement as I entered the Tanzkurs with my friend Lena - after all, dancing and German girls are pretty much my two favorite hobbies. The music started, and the shock shortly thereafter. It was a strange hybrid of being in my element while experiencing something new.

When it was all said and done, dance practice was a great success. I danced with four German girls (cha-ching!) and learned a fun new dance called the Disco-fox (video to come?). During the cha-cha, I also managed to attract somewhat of a crowd with my hip-movements (Wa-wa-wee-wa). Alas, I was focusing on the rhythm and couldn't quite catch if they were gawking or laughing at me, but it's all good. After all I learned from them, it was the least I could to show them how we shake it in the States.

Ich bin doch Schwerbehindert

It wasn't my first time on the ICE, so as I strolled to find a seat on Germany's fastest train I felt like quite the Europameister. All of the cabins in the car had at least one occupant...so I unsheathed my most charming smile and approached an elderly woman, sitting alone, with one of my well-rehearsed German phrases:

"Entschuldigung, sind diese Plätze frei?" (Excuse me, may I sit down?)

The woman lifted her eyes from her Zeitung and stared at me. After a short pause,

"Ja, wenn Sie schwerbehindert sind." (Yes, if you are retarded.)

I wish a third person was in the cabin to flash the retarded "awkward turtle" this situation so desperately deserved. Sure enough, the outside of the cabin was clearly denoted with several schwerbehindert markings which I hadn't noticed.

Sure, mistakes are bound to happen when you're thrust into a new environment. Mistakes like locking yourself out of the cell phone your cousin gave you and finding yourself on the wrong side of the tracks when trying a catch the U-bahn. Everything seems to confuse me, so the message is crystal clear: You are not immune to culture shock no matter how experienced you think you are. I just wish I didn't have to learn these lessons as if I was severely handicapped.

Blunderings aside, my first week in Germany was pretty memorable. My cousin Anne picked me up from the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof and I crashed at her apartment for a couple days. Notable undertakings included eating homemade Bavarian dumplings, swigging Apfelwein (made with happy apples :), and a 14-hour jet-coma, and my first ever foray into the German nightlife scene.

I also headed to the Lake of Constance, where I reunited with my old Gastfamilie, the Tillys. They are quite possibly the most hospitable people on Earth. Not only am I visiting them for a week, but also the appropriately-named foreign exchange student Germán from Mexico.

So far, I've played high level pick-up soccer (the average German's soccer skills are a notch higher than the average American's basketball skills), enjoyed my first Schnitzel, rode a bike alongside the beautiful Bodensee, and attended Gymnasium with Julius and Germán. Though I don't have any homework, the days still seem to pass at 100 mph because in this country, even the daily grind is exhilirating. Even the mundane "beer run" or making push-button coffee gets me excited.

Okay, you could argue that's because I normally don't drink coffee or go on beer runs...but that's the point! I have reassessed my stances on these topics since I'm in a different setting, and in this new cultural context, I've been letting myself go. (Don't laugh!...alright, fine, laugh.) I detect myself aligning with the German culture, though I stubbornly refuse to do the same back home. Buying some locally made wine and turning on the espresso machine are completely different than the fake ID alcohol purchases and $3 mochas you may find in the States.

Like the ringing in my ears from last Saturday's Diskothek, I suppose this novel sensation will too fade away given enough time. It will be interesting to see if this does occur, given that I am a true German addict (and a schwerbehindert one at that).



Myself, Julius, Maxi, Germán, and Sophie rocking out in the Tilly's sound-proof room.

Märchenpräludium

Soccer cleats... check.
Laptop... check.
Deutsch skillz... check....NOT
Passport... check. (with new photo (wa wa wee wa))

Sure, I've got all the items on my checklist. But really, who am I kidding? What could possibly prepare me for this summer? March 8 through August 18. What is that, over three months? 103 days?

Nothing, I guess. I might as well dive into the summer and immerse myself in the sea of paradoxical ambiguity that is the German culture, and pray that it's not the shallow end.

But seriously, what do I expect from this experience? I'm fortunate enough to have visited the "Vaterland" before, and each time has made a novel impression on me. It's like I'm an original document and the country is a freshly-inked stamp. And as any German knows, there's nothing like a good stamp.

This time as I venture into the Land of Fairytales, I'll arrive with the familiar hopes of maturing, mastering a language, meeting new friends and reuniting with old ones. But for once, I'll also settle down and stay a while. Come August, I might just feel a deeper connection with the German culture. I have experienced it before, but this time, I'll have lived it.

Farewell, friends and neighbors of America! I wish you luck and great success in your summer endeavors, whether they be classes, jobs, dance steps, breakthroughs, workouts, peanut gift shops, Rubik's cubes, music gigs, or simply enjoying life. May we all grow from these experiences and collect a few new stamps to show one another next fall!

Auf Wiedersehen!