So, I've been neglecting my blog lately...

It's been a busy month.  I've been really busy at work, I helped Lindsey move, I went to a cruise ship festival with Antonia and saw the Queen Mary II, parents came and we drove to Amsterdam, and... tomorrow is work again.  Dang.

Anyway, here are some pictures of my recent adventures:

Busy busy!

So, it's been a while.  The past two weeks have seen lots of stuff going on.  Lots of work, but also some fun stuff mixed in, too.  Last weekend we had our "grill fest" at work, which was sort of fun.  Lots of free, gourmet food, and tons of people told me how great I am at my job and how I should come work for them when I graduate, and how great my German is.  Two good signs.  The next day, Jakob had his going-away party, which was also fun.  

This last Thursday, I took a trip down to Freiburg.  I got a Sparangebot (reduced price tickets), and even managed to ride back 1st class.  Which was the first time I've ever ridden 1st class anything, and it was great.  I look forward to trying to do it again in the future.  On the way back, I almost missed my train and got stuck down there for another day, due to construction work on the rails.  We left for the 7-minute trip to the train station with about an hour and a half to spare, and ended up getting there just minutes before the train left.

This week looks like another busy one.  Don't they all seem to be busy ones, though?  I've got swing dancing tomorrow, work all week long, and some extra work to take care of, and I have to clear some stuff up with my bank.

Anyway, it's been a long (but fun!) weekend, and I'm tired out.  Time to go to sleep, so I can get up early for work tomorrow!

New Happenings

This last week wasn't bad at all.  It had a nice end last night when Jakob invited me to go to a student play at the university.  It was some weird British story about a psychiatrist, that was written after some censorship laws were revoked.  Which made for an interesting play.  But it was still pretty funny.

In other news, I might have found a little side job doing translations.  Which could potentially pay much better than my "real" job, but money isn't really the point of an internship anyway.  The neat thing about this translating gig is that I could feasibly continue doing it from the US.  And, translating doesn't take up TOO much time.  I figure it's also a pretty good way to maintain prolonged exposure to business German, and work on business English skills.  Anyway, I sent off my test-expose, and we'll see what they say.  

My real job (aka. internship at Varengold) is holding its annual Grill Fest this Friday.  Our hedge fund might reach an all-time high this week too, so this week should be a pretty good looking week at work.  Jakob is planning his Abschiedsparty, or leaving party, for this upcoming weekend, so that's another thing to look forward too.  

Parents are coming to Europe in August sometime, but it's sort of unclear whether they're going to make to Hamburg, or whether I'm going to have to take the train out to Amsterdam.  If I book now, I can get good prices.  The Deutsche Bahn (and seemingly other train systems over here) works so that if you buy tickets way in advance, you can get them for like... 75% off or so.  For my upcoming trip to Freiburg, I was able to book some tickets for about half price, including 1st class for my return trip.  I've never really had a 1st class experience before, so it should be neat.  In the Bahn, I don't expect it to be too much different, like it would be in a plane, but it should still be fun.  

So since Germany (and Europe as a whole) has state-sponsored media corporations that produce tons of informative content in good German, I've started downloading podcasts and video-podcasts from iTunes.  There are also a few "commercial" ones that I've found that are interesting.  I managed to find one podcast that's done in Plattdeutsch, or low German, which is (or was, it's been dying out for a while) the regional language around here in northern Germany.  I can't really understand it without reading along, but it's still sort of fun.

I'm thinking about asking to end my internship a week early, so that I can have a week to go on a bike trip, or visit Freiburg, or something along those lines.  On the other hand, if the U.S. political and economic situation gets too much worse, maybe I'll just stay here in Germany.  Hehe.  Kind of farfetched, but it's a backup plan.

We'll see what today has in store for me.  Tomorrow, I'm maybe meeting up with Jakob and Antonia after work, and after that, I'm going to swing dancing.  Granted I've only been at this new place for a week, but I really like it there so far, and seem to be doing pretty well.

Gourmet Food

So, I've been treated to some decent food this week.  Monday and Tuesday I was at a Reuters workshop, where they had a nice breakfast waiting for us.  On Monday, they took us out to lunch and I had a gourmet cheeseburger, which they recommended, and it turned out to be one of the best cheeseburgers I've ever had.  Tuesday, we went to an Asian restaurant, and I got some Thai curry.  That really hit the spot.

Last night, Antonia called me up and said she had tickets to some film festival at the planetarium.  We both checked out the website, but still didn't really have any idea what to expect.  Of course, they had free food at the event.  The films were sort of strange, (some were good, others weren't), but the food was tasty.  And gourmet.  It was a pretty mixed event, since I wasn't at all out of place in my suit, and Antonia wasn't either (she wasn't wearing a suit).

Today was a long day at work, but I got a bunch of stuff accomplished, and had a fairly decent Italian pizza for lunch.  I'm back to good old spaghetti for dinner tonight, but I think I did a decent job, and it tastes pretty good.

The latest from Hamburg!

So, I've fallen behind on my blog posting.  I've had a pretty busy week, or so.  Last Sunday, meaning June 30, I went to the Fischmarkt in Hamburg again.  I didn't get a free plant, but I did take some pictures:

I had a pretty busy week last week with work, but so far, things seem to be working out just fine.

Yesterday (Sunday), I went swing dancing at this swing dance party, and today I went to a lesson.  Lots of fun!

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!