another update!

Not TOO much has happened in the past few days.  The biggest news was Germany's defeat of Turkey in the semi-final game.  There's a pretty big Turkish population in Germany, so it was a really exciting game for everyone here, and everyone was out cheering after the game was over.  It was a pretty close game, with Germany scoring the last goal in the last couple minutes, making the score 3 - 2.

I was going to go to AudiMax, which is a huge hall at the University where I watched the other Germany game, but it was full at 7:45.  The game started at 8:45, so we (Antonia aka. Christina, Manfred aka. Tobias and I) wandered off to find somewhere to watch the game.  In Germany, EVERY little restaurant, imbiss, bar, and almost every food shop, seems to have a TV with the latest Fußball news on.  Tobias, having grown up in Lüneburg, which is a city not far from Hamburg, and being a student at Hamburg University, knew the area and found us a little restaurant / bar where we watched the game.  The Stimmung wasn't quite as good as it would have been at the AudiMax, but it was still fun.  We were sitting outside, and had to stand to get a good view of the TV.  During the game, the streets were pretty much empty, with the exception of the occasional bus.  Of course Germany won, and the crowds went wild...

I went to two Reuters seminars this week, and am doing a Reuters certification program in a week or two.  It's pretty neat that they're sending me to all of this stuff for work.

Today's laundry day again.  German washing machines always take a LONG time to wash.  As in, 2 - 3 hours.  It's ridiculous, but that's just how it is.  Some washers have a "short" mode, but mine doesn't.

Right now, we've got typical Hamburg weather.  Rain.  Apparently the past month or so that I've been here has had some really atypical weather, since it was sunny almost every day.  Today looks like it might start to clear up in a bit, which will be nice.  I might go for a bike ride.  I think it's probably too late for today, but I'm thinking about biking to the ocean (or at least close to it) next weekend.  Now that I have my bike, I can go on these adventures.  Assuming I can maintain 20 kph (12 mph), which I'm pretty sure I can even exceed, it should just be a nice day trip there and back, with a scenic view of the north German country side.  Some other possible goals are Lübeck, Kiel, or Denmark! (Denmark would probably take a whole weekend there, and then I'd have to take the train back.)

No new pictures lately, but I'll try to take some tomorrow, when I visit the Fischmarkt again.  The sun's starting to come out, and I might meet up with Jakob aka. Jake and Christina tonight for something to do.

Woosh

It's been a busy past few days.  Germany's been winning soccer games, and it looks good for their semi-final game tomorrow.

Lindsey came to visit last weekend, and brought my bike!  It needs a little bit of tuning up still, but it sure beats the bus.  Lindsey and I found some "tents" put up by some fancy restaurant in the middle of the city, and got some relatively cheap gourmet food.  On Sunday, we woke up early and saw the Fischmarkt.  

Work's been busy lately.  I had a Reuters seminar today that I went to, and tomorrow's part II.  Gotta go make dinner and tomorrow's lunch!

Ein stralender Sieg für Deutschland!

So, it's been a busy past few days.  I got a haircut on Saturday, and spent a lot of the weekend working on some translations for work.  I can now read German legalese, and write it in English.

Yesterday was a blast.  It was the Germany vs. Austria soccer game in the EM, so you bet it was exciting.  Jake and I met after work, and got some dinner.  Antonia, who works at Google and gets free food there, met us afterward.  We hung out for a bit, and then Jake had a prior engagement to attend to, so we parted ways.  Antonia and I had 45 minutes to find a good place to watch the game, and get there.

After about 10 minutes of walking around, we got ahold of Manfred, another Waldseer, who lives in the area, and made our way to the University.  Did a little bit of Hamburg exploration along the way.  When we got there, we went into the "viewing room", which is really a lecture hall with 1000+ seats, and a huuuuge projector.  The collective atmosphere was great; everyone was super excited.  Watching some of the Germans get excited about the game was almost as good as the game itself sometimes.  They get really into it.

It was a pretty intense game; the head coaches of both teams got ejected from the game, and it was pretty funny to watch the coach and the guy who got a red card last game (meaning he couldn't play in this game) hang out with Angela Merkel, the Bundeskanzlerin.  Germany ended up winning 1 - 0, and they play again on Thursday!

Friday the 13th?

Today, despite being Friday the 13th, was a pretty good day.  Herr Schmidt has a birthday today, so he brought some kuchen.  A lot of people have had birthdays lately, which has meant a lot of pie and cake in the office.  A few of us went to a little restaurant / cafe sort of a deal down the street for lunch with Herrn Schmidt, which was fun.  After being moved to the trading office, work has gotten more interesting, since the traders and Frau Heiden are closer to my age.

After work, I was able to get ahold of Antonia (a fellow Waldsee counselor), and we toured around the city a bit.  She's also new in Hamburg, and is doing an internship at Google for the summer.  Pretty cool, huh?  Anyway, we went and explored a bit.  After wandering around for a while, we ended up at the public viewing area for the EM, or Europameisterschaft, which is the European soccer tournament going on right now.  

Here's a picture of the big screen.  It's neat, because entrance is free, and there are a ton of little places to get food or something to drink inside of the area.  We caught the last half of the Netherlands vs France game, which ended in an epic Dutch victory.  We arrived and the score was 2 - 0, and then the French scored after a few minutes.  After the French goal, we turned around to go check out some of the stuff behind us, and suddenly everyone roared out "TOR!", meaning that somehow in the 20 or 30 seconds since the last goal when we turned around, the Dutch had scored on the French.  The game ended up with a final score of 4 - 1, and was pretty fun to watch.  The Germans really like their Fußball, and even announce the scores on their electronic subway schedules.  In the picture, you can sort of see them announcing the final score of 4 - 1 for the "Niederlände - Frankreich" game.

After the game, we headed out, and hopped on train.  On the Reeperbahn, we found a little place that sells 2€ pizzas.  They were small and not outstanding quality, but definitely not bad for 2€.  We decided that none of the places over there were really what we were looking for as far as sitting down to eat or get something to drink, so we headed over to the Alster.  Here, we went to a little restaurant / cafe on the lake, and sat around for a while.

On our way to Alex's, the name of the place we stopped at, the strangest thing happened.  Now, Antonia is one of the few, if not the only, German who I'll speak English with as the main language (since it's pretty much her 2nd native language).  So as we were walking along, this one guy started making some not so pleasant comments to his wife and child, as he heard us speaking.  I think we surprised him a bit when we snapped back at him in German as we passed him.  It was sort of a weird experience, since neither of us have ever really heard of Germans having such a problem with hearing English.

Anyway, after we parted our ways, I managed to catch the train back.  Luckily, it runs all night on the weekends.  I did miss the last bus though, by about 30 seconds.  Oh well.  

On a finishing note, I should learn how to use my camera and all of its settings.  I tried to take some pictures of the Rathaus (you can see them in my photo album), but due to the funny lighting situations, they didn't really turn out.

Update

Work's been going well so far.  Over the past day or two, Haris (French intern) and I prepared a report and some research about commodities for our current boss, Frau Heiden.  Frau Heiden had a meeting with a journalist today, and made use of our research.  It was pretty close, we were doing our last edits and information updates right up until the deadline.  But after the meeting, she seemed pretty pleased, and she really seemed to like my idea of comparing historical commodity price to gold prices.  Ok, enough of that.

I took some pictures the other day, and thought I'd put them up here.

This is the Rathaus, or town hall, in Hamburg.

Here's a shot of the area in front of the Rathaus.  I didn't really do it justice, so I'll have to go back and take some better pictures.

Here's where I live.  Doris, my Vermieterin, lives next door in an attached house, and her brother lives in this house on the first floor.  Marian and I share the upstairs, and those windows you see up on the 2nd floor (1. German floor) are for my room.  There's a little doorway from the hallway that can take you on to the "balcony."

Here's another wonderful invention from Germany to finish this one up:

Yum!

Fun Evening on the Elbe

Today started out with regular old chores - laundry, cooking, etc.  The day became a little more exciting when I got ahold of Farin and Nora (two Waldsee Betreuer).   Nora goes to the Uni here, and Farin lives in Brussels.  We meet up at Oevelgönne, which is a little spot on the Elbe.  It's a pretty little area, and it's where all of the beach clubs are.  We spent a while hanging out at a couple of the beach clubs, Nora gave me some ideas for more places in Hamburg that I should visit. 

Also, feel free to leave comments.  The only one I have so far that's not from me is about a stylistic error I made.  Now, here are some pictures from the day:



Nora and Farin

Here was one of the neat ships that sailed by.  The one in the background is loading up.

Here's a shot of the little path that led from the road (and the bus stop) down to the beach clubs.  Clicking on it should, as usual, take you to the album, which has more pictures.

The reverse is true.

So I totally forgot to take a picture of the market yesterday.  I was pretty wound up in work, training in the new real employee who's going to be doing the work that I've been doing in the Compliance department.  Training continued on to today, but the point is, I forgot my camera when I went to lunch yesterday.  Oops.  My lunch used to be a 4.50€ pizza from a little restaurant, and then I decided that was way too expensive, so I started making little egg-cucumber-lettuce-cheese sandwiches.  Yum.  Those are a lot cheaper, taste pretty good, and are probably healthier.  On Thursdays from the market, or other days from some other little restaurant, I like to buy a cheap fish sandwich to augment my meal.  Fresh fish!

It's not that I can't eventually afford to have those pizzas, it's that right now, I have no money.  I don't know if I've gotten paid yet from work, since I don't have the one time initiation password for my online banking.  I'm pretty sure they sent it when my name wasn't written next to our mail slot.  So let me clarify real quick for those of you who aren't familiar with the German Post system.  If your name isn't on the mailbox or next to the mail slot, you're not getting any mail.  Which is always pretty exciting, when you're expecting your EC Karte, or your bank password, and it gets returned to the sender because your name either 1. isn't on the sign yet, or 2. the sign got taken down when the last people moved out and whoever took it down didn't put a new one up.  So, I probably have some money in my account from getting paid, but I can't find out until Monday.  Which is OK, since I bought food today.  I still have some traveller's checks, so if worst comes to worst, I cash them on Monday.

Not having money is sort of too bad, because Farin (a Waldsee counselor, from Belgium, dating a German) is coming to Hamburg this weekend, and told me to give them a call.  It'd be fun to hang out with them, but I don't want to show up and go to a restaurant and pull out my last 4€ and say "Hi, I'll order... tea.  Yeah, that sounds nice and filling..."  I'm sure something will work out.

The other day, I met Jakob for a movie after work.  It worked out perfectly, because going to the movie helped avoid the rain.  We went to Indiana Jones.  Pretty German, huh?  It was kind of a fun movie.  Not brilliant, but about what I expected as far as quality.

Plans for the weekend:  wash clothes maybe, clean bathroom / kitchen (it's my turn), maybe meet up with Farin and Nora (and Jakob and Manfred? and ??), think of ideas for my report at work, explore more of Hamburg, maybe find someone who will hire me to help them do yardwork, think about an internship for next spring (part time during the school year), think of interesting food ideas, and so forth.  Maybe I'll get a chance to take some neat pictures!

Oh.  I suppose you might want to see a picture of where I live.  I should do that, too.

Hamburger in Hamburg

Hi.  Things are going well.  My new roommate is pretty cool.  He's a few years older than I am, I think he's in his 30's, but we seem to get along pretty well.  We work in the same part of the city, so he's even offered to drive me to a subway station 2 stops away from work.

I still don't have my visa (I'm calling again tomorrow), my train pass (I need a special paper that lets be buy the student ticket), and therefore I haven't gone to swing dance yet, either.  I also lose my desk and phone at work tomorrow, since a real full time employee is starting up and taking it over.  So, I'm not sure where I'll be sitting.  I've been working on more and more "important" presentations and write ups and reports lately.

I've been eating a bit of fish lately!  Fish is supposed to be healthy for you, and it's tasty, it's cheaper than regular meat, and is quite plentiful in Hamburg.  Tomorrow, there's a market near work, so I'll try to take a picture.

The past few days have had enough excitement that I can now make another post.  Hurrah!  Over the weekend, my old roommate Leya, moved out.  Packed up most of her stuff, and gave the rest to me.  The one exception is a box of hers which she's planning on retrieving in July.  To celebrate a little, we went to a street bar / cafe on the Reeperbahn, located in St. Pauli.  We hung out at the cafe / bar for a while, and some of her friends showed up, and then we wandered off to go to a party.  On our way to the party, we stopped by the video store where one of Leya's friend's boyfriend works.  German video stores aren't too different from US ones, other than they're less classy and corporate.  At least this one was like that.

So, eventually around 12 or 12:30, we made it to this party.  Calling it a party is sort of a stretch, since it was more like the area infront of an apartment building fenced off, pretending to be a club.  After sitting around and talking to some mildly intoxicated Germans for a while (a few hours), we decided to leave.  Leya said goodbye to her friends, and we left.  On our way out, we ran into some people who wanted our wristbands, required for entry.  We gave them up, but ended up staying another hour or two, conversing with some of the... interesting... people we found.  All in all, I stayed up way too late, and fell asleep almost immediately after my teeth were brushed, when I made it home.

So, that was Saturday night, which was a lot more exciting than Saturday daytime.  I walked to Real, which is a huge superstore chain that bought the Walmart stores when German Walmart closed down.  So, Real is HUGE.  Not only is it massive and cover lots of area, maybe the size of a regular US Walmart, but it also has an upstairs.  Yeah.  It's huge.  After my adventure at Real, and accomplishing my mission of buying laundry detergent, I made my way home and did laundry.  yippee.

On Sunday, I decided I needed to do something more interesting than laundry, so I got up and walked into the city.  For those of you not in the know, I live in a suburb or area in Hamburg called Lurup.  Here's where I live on Google, so you can get a better idea.  I made it the stop before my work, Altona, and took the S-Bahn home.  I also bought Eis, and found some stores that are open on Sunday.  If you didn't already know, Germany is closed on Sunday, except for restaurants and places that can somehow justify to pay the extra taxes required to be open on Sunday.  So, finding somewhere to buy groceries (!!) on a Sunday is a big deal.

Also on Sunday, my new roommate moved in.  I think the first thing he said to me was "Hi, you must be... kann ich mit dir auf Deutsch reden?"  (can I talk with you in German)  So, apparently Germans appreciate the fact that I not only can, but want to speak German with them.  He's a little older than I am, but I think we'll get along just fine.  We found out today that he studied finance and is now working in computers, and I'm studying computers and trying to work in finance.

I'm just a few days away from getting my Monatskarte, which will give me a lot better access to the bus and trains.  Once I have that, I'm going to give the Swing Club a try, and see if that's any fun.  It turns out that I'll definitely have time after work.  One really cool thing that happened at work, was we were all working away in the Back Office, work work work, and then I look out the window, where river is.  Instead of the river and the port, I saw a wall floating by.  A ship that's larger than our office building just happened to be cruising by.

Work seems to be really flexible as far as hours go.  I get to show up anywhere from a little before 9, to 9:30 (and I could probably show up even later if I wanted) without incident, and I can leave between 4 and 7 (depending on what I'm doing) without causing a fuss, AND, I get to take time off for work related things.  Like getting a visa.  I don't think I could get a whole week off though, unfortunately.  I've even been ordered to go home before 5:00, because it was a Friday, and I should go home and relax!  Unfortunately, I didn't make it out until 6:00 that day but the next time that I was ordered to leave by 4:30 or 5, I made it .  This whole relaxed attitude leads me to believe that they wont be too hard about me taking a day or so off if I have visitors, or go on a little trip.  

I kind of want to go to Flensburg, and visit the Valentinerallee, or see a little bit Denmark (and hear them speak funny Danish!).  We're pretty close to the border, so it wouldn't be that long or expensive of a train ride.  I'm sure I can find some other interesting places in the area...

Here are a couple pictures I took recently:

From Germany 2008

Here's my dinner from a day or two ago.

From Germany 2008

This is a bridge that reaches across the street into the building in which I work, and a shot from it.  What's it for? you may ask.  I did too.  I thought it was just decorational.  Herr Joost corrected me though.  Apparently, about 3 times per year, the Elbe floods so high, that they need to use that bridge to access the building.  That's also why all of the stores on the ground level have these metal doors for their windows.  I thought it was just so they could pretend they were ships.  Unfortunately, I don't think it will be flooding while I'm here.  Oh well.