Mailing restrictions for Germany

I am anxiously awaiting a package from the US containing ski pants for my trip to Austria next week. I leave at 8am on Monday morning so I am hoping that the pants somehow arrive today. Things are not looking so good. The USPS tracking system shows that my pants arrived in Germany on Wednesday and cleared customs late last night. However, as of yet, there has been no sign of them. :-/ I am still crossing my fingers and hoping for the best.

In the meantime, my office mate was trying to help me figure out what company will deliver my package today. While browsing the USPS website for Germany, he came across a list of things that are prohibited for shipping. I copied the list below.

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Prohibitions (130)

Absinthe.

Arms and weapons.

Articles bearing political or religious notations on the address side.

Human remains.

Live plants and animals.

Melatonin.

Perishable infectious biological substances.

Playing cards, except in complete decks properly wrapped.

Pulverized coca beans.

Radioactive materials.

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Improperly wrapped playing cards are banned? Seriously, you have got to be kidding me. Are the Germans worried that they have an overabundance of the Queen of spades?

Surprisingly, incomplete decks of playing cards are accepted in France, but prohibited in Spain.

I am rather curious to see if these prohibitions are ever enforced. So someone send me an incomplete and unwrapped set of playing cards.

:-)

Stranded!

I write this post on my macbook, hoping that I live to post it online. If you are reading this post on my blog, I obviously lived to tell the tale. I am currently sitting on a bus on the top of the hill where I work. Marburg is a city of hills and by hills, I mean mini mountains. The hills here are as steep (or steeper) than the alps, just not as tall. Taking the 7 minute bus ride from my dorm, which is already 40% of the way up the hill, to the building where I work, on the top of the hill, causes my ears to pop twice. The hill is called the Lahnberge and its the center of science and medicine in my little town.

When I came into work this morning, the sky was sunny, but snow started falling intermittantly. The snow continued to fall, but the streets were warmed by the sun, so the snow melted. As the sun set, the snow started to fall more heavily and the temperature started to drop. When I left to catch the bus around 9pm, the snow was not only sticking to the road, but covering it. From the time I walked out of the building at 8:58pm, the road went from black to solid white. The effect was quite lovely and I stood mesmorized, thinking about how I could describe the enchanting snowfall to my blog readers.

The bus arrives and I board. We make the first stop, the university clinic, and start the short trip (4 minutes) down the hill to my dorm. Like I said, the hills around Marburg are quite steep and the bus ride even in the best of weather sometimes feels like a children's roller coaster as we fly down the road. But the bus driver notices a problem as we start to pull away from the clinic, into the roundabout. Everytime he tries to brake, the bus slides 3-4 inches. This happens even when he moves the bus from a stop and hits the brakes as soon as the bus moves. While testing the brakes, the bus driver effectively moves us from inside the roundabout to halfway into the two lane road. He then decides (probably wisely), that he will not proceed down the hill to studentendorf. He radios the bus terminal and says (Ich stehe heir, Ich warte). Which means, I will stay* here, I will wait. I didn't catch what we were waiting for. (*stehen directly translates as "stand" and bleiben means "stay" but I guess the German bus driver has heard English speakers butcher the German language enough that he says stehen instead of bleiben)

That radio conversation happened 25 minutes ago. I am still on the bus. We haven't moved. The bus driver got out and walked for a bit. but the bus hasn't budged. I guess we are waiting for morning. :-/

However, while I have your attention, I should note that my German has progressed to the point where I can even understand a bus driver speaking 10 feet away from me. That's pretty cool. In fact, I understand a lot more German than I ever dreamed I would. I conversed entirely in German for 4 hours on Friday night and I regularly speak German to my lab mates. Pretty cool I think. Anyways, I digress.

30 minutes have passed....still nothing....I guess I will save this blog entry until the bus actual does something. .....

40 minutes have passed...the bus driver decided to conserve energy and turned the engine off. The heat is still on though...

1 hour later...the bus driver is "dancing" in front of the bus..actually...he is kicking snow around. I wish he would close the door, my toes are freezing. Now he is walking around the bus. Maybe a Chinese fire drill?

65 minutes later...I located the heater so my toes are starting to warm up...still no sign of whatever we are waiting for.. I have passed the time by writing this post and finishing a Daily German podcast....now I move to thesis writing? Four people just left the bus, probably to call a taxi....I may join them soon.

75 minutes later, the AST service showed up and offered to take people to the southern part of town. I live in the northern part, its faster for me to walk home from here than from that part of town.

80 minutes later...we were just told that the bus isn't budging and they ordered three mini AST buses. They arrive in 10 minutes. ...yeah I get to go home!

95 minutes later...I walked in the door...made some warm tea and slipped on my fuzzy slippers (thanks Lala!) We talked to the bus driver, turns out that the Marburg buses don't run if the roads are slick, its too dangerous. In a really interesting twist, I learned how tall Marburg hills really are. At the Lahnberge on the top of the hill, it was snowing heavily while near the bottom of the hill (my dorm) there is no snow at all. Gotta love the weather.

Now that I am home, I guess I should feel lucky for
1) a bus driver who knew to check his brakes before heading down the hill
2) the chance to live a in a town where a 7 minute bus ride is the difference from a mild winter storm and a foggy evening
3) A fully charged macbook, loaded with podcasts and things to do. I probably would not have made it through this ordeal without crying had I not been distracted for so long.

I am posting the only picture I was able to take tonight. In this photo you see two AST mini buses preparing to take the remaining people down the hill. In the back, you can barely see the bus sitting in the roundabout. The dude with the backpack is a Russian who catches the bus nearly every weeknight from the University Clinic. I have never talked to him, but he seems nice.

Election Night 2008

I am beginning to write on the backlog of posts detailing events that I never discussed on my blog. Tonight, I will begin with a discussion of Election Night 2008.

I was really curious about how the election would be covered in Germany. Would Germans know that the US was electing a new president? How would I watch election night coverage? Would I need to camp out in my lab to enjoy the privilege of streaming video? Would people be offended if I wore red, white, and blue?

Anyone who red the news knew that not only did Germans know we were electing a new president, they were counting down the days until Bush is gone. Not surprisingly, most Germans were fans of Obama and would shout out "Yes we can!" anytime they saw an American. (I liked to respond to these exclamations with Nein, wir können nicht!) In the days leading up the the election, the energy became noticeably more powerful. I often overheard "Obama" and "McCain" in the school mensa (cafeteria) and saw signs for Obama in the hallways. The day of the election, however, felt suprisingly normal. I kept wanting to scream, hello, my country is electing a new leader today! Lets get excited! But in reality, the real excitement would not start until midnight my time, when polls started closing on the east coast.

I tried to find information about an election night party from the large American contingent in Marburg (large but invisible for the most part, but that's another post) but I found no information. So I decided to have my own little election night party in my room. I borrowed a large lcd screen from my lab, trucked it back to my dorm, and hooked it up to my laptop for a two screen election night experience, as you can see below.

I attired myself in red, white, and blue and sat down with some pretzels, fruit, and cnn.com to watch the results come in. (I am on this healthy food kick, unlike my fiance) The results start out pretty boring, Kentucky was called early for McCain (big shock there) and around 2am, I seriously regretted my decision to stay up until I had a new president-elect. However, as the returns continued to come in, the list slowly started to tip for Obama, and you could feel the excitement building through the TV screen. When they finally called Ohio (and the race) for Obama at 4am, I started dancing and jumping up and down.

I ran into the hallways, expecting to hear whoops of joy. I ran onto the balconey, expecting to see fireworks. Instead, I was met with silence. Not the nervous, scary kind of silence, but the calm and restful silence experienced at peace. I was very sad to hear my whoops of joy met with such uter-nothingness, and that's when it hit me. Of course its calm and peaceful here. A new American president won't make a difference to how the Germans sleep at night. The real excitement lies with the Americans. Oh how I wished to be with friends and family in the states, reveling in the excitement of the election, but instead I was here in Germany, celebrating my joy secretly.

However, I did not celebrate completely alone. I called one of the other Fulbrighters in Frankfurt (where she actually found a party) and was able to share a brief moment of joy with an American voice. I stayed up to watch McCain's consession speech and then Obama's acceptance speech, BOTH of which filled me with pride to be an American. I finally forced myself into bed around 5am. I woke up the next morning from a horrible nightmare, that the election continued like the 2000 election. :-) However, when I woke up, I realized that the election was not a dream. I smiled and began the day as an American with a new president.

Here are some pictures and videos from German and Turkish news programs that night.

Election 2008 - Germany

Why am I here?

After successfully defeating insomnia for 5 days (I actually went to bed before midnight)...it return this week with a vengance. This time, however, I realize the shear amount of work I have to do before I leave Germany. Which leads me to the topic of the post, why am I here in Germany.

The Fulbright program is meant to be both a cultural and intellectual exchange. My exchange focuses mostly on the intellectual part. I came to Germany to work with a specific research group that specializes in computational analysis of chemical reactions. Since the research group is multinational, cultural exchange means dealing with scientists from 4 different continents and the Middle East. For a scientist, cultural exchange typically means that we discuss how science works (or doesn't work at times) in our home countries. For example, a recent lunch conversation discussed how PhD students are evaluated for a degree. In Germany, students receive a grade on their PhD thesis while Brazilian, Turkish, and US students receive a pass or fail on their oral defense and written thesis. We discussed this issue at length for about 20 minutes (it really was an exciting conversation). Other conversations discussed how software codes work on various platforms and the difficulty of obtaining software for your research....but I digress...

The real reason I am here is to engage in intellectual exchange with the German computational group. My research group in the states actually makes the molecules in lab while the computational group just makes models. In my Fulbright proposal I stated that my synthetic knowledge would help the German group improve their models to match the real world while the German group helps me learn computational tools that enable me to make predictions for the real molecules. The interchange is quite nice, but heavily weighted in my favor; I learn much more from my research colleagues than they could ever hope to learn from me. I am in great debt to the amount they have taught me already, but I still have so much more to learn.

In addition, I strongly desire to defend my thesis shortly upon my return to the US, mostly so I can finally move to the same zip code as my fiance. Thus, I end up spending extremely long hours in lab. For a while, I was very disappointed that I could not experience German life as Germans live it but then I remembered, I am not just here to learn about German culture, but to become a better scientist. Thus, I SHOULD be spending long hours in lab, working to create better models (and publish papers) that connect a synthetic group in the US with a computational group in Germany. Besides, my German labmates are there working long hours as well.

I met with my German boss last week and ended up starting three new projects. One project with a postdoc is finished, while the other two projects are barely started. I hope to finish most of the work for one project and write it up (science lingo for write an article) before March 5th. Why March 5th do you ask? That's the day my next (scheduled) guest arrives. Maria, one of my German sisters, will be visiting Marburg for a conference. On March 6th, my US sister (the one that I am legally related to) arrive for a weeklong visit. I want to enjoy all my time with them. Thus, I want to finish as much work as possible. On that note, I should either return to my studies...or try to fall asleep....hopefully the latter.

As I deal with insomnia more, I hope to start posting highlights of the last few months, including pictures and descriptions of the few things that took place outside of research. (what, there is life outside of research?)

I saw Neo!...and other random tidbits

Things have improved slightly since my last post. I have tried to overcome my lagging heart by absorbing myself more fully into German life. That means reducing facebook face time and forcing myself into bed sooner. Last night, I finally succeeded in falling asleep before midnight. Actually, I fell asleep around 10pm and woke up at 5.30 this morning! It turns out that the promise of a skype date with Andy in the wee hours provides a strong incentive to wake up. :-) Andy and I had the chance to talk for nearly an hour, which was a nice little taste of home.

The skype date brightened my spirits for the day, but I am also celebrating little victories of embracing my German life. My lightbulb went out this morning and I had to go find the house master to figure out how to fix it. Even with my limited German, I succeeded in obtaining the needed Glühlampe (sounds like Gloompa when spoken by meine housemeisterin) and thus will actually have light tonight. My second little victory actually came from paying bills. Bill payment is rarely a pleasant activity, but I am happy that I successfully navigated my German bank website to pay my student fees for the next semester AND pay my German medical bills. (I should be reimbursed for the bills by my Fulbright health insurance). I successfully paid the bills all by myself. :-) Of course, my bank website comes in English so I cheated a little bit. ;-)

My third little victory came at the post office. I ussually went to the automatic post machines each time I needed stamps for the postcards I mail back to the US. However, the automatic machines only accept Münzen (coinage) and I never carry more than 4 Euros in coins. It became really annoying to walk all the way to the Post just to get 1-2 stamps at a time. Today I was able to ask for and recieve a packet of stamps and make sure that my reimbursement letter for health insurance was mailed. All in German of course! So day by day, my ability to navigate this country becomes easier.

Now for the last little detail...I saw Neo on the bus today! Perhaps I am in the Matrix? A very tall slender man with long black hair stepped onto the bus wearing a long black leather jacket and dark sunglasses. I seriously expected him to break into a fight with an agent at any moment. Perhaps my time in Germany is just a very complex computer simulation?

jet lag or lagging heart

Here I am again, suffering through another night of insomnia. I've been meaning to write a post about about my stateside visit but I haven't been able to force myself to write the words. Now that sleep has escaped me yet again (despite 20 minutes of nightime yoga, relaxing music, and two sleeping pills) perhaps now is the time to compose another blog entry.

I have suffered insomnia ever since I returned from the states nearly 3 weeks ago. At first, I blamed jet lag, as my last days in the states were spent in Seattle, which is 9 hours behind Marburg. Seattlites wake up at 5pm Marburg time and go to sleep at 8am Marburg time so it was no suprise that I struggled to wake up before 2pm during the first few days. However, a few days turned into a few weeks and here I am composing a blog post when most Marburgers are fast asleep in their beds. I pull myself out of bed at 10am during the week (noon or 1pm on weekends). I wander around the office in a daze, finally becoming coherent and productive around 4pm. I hit my stride between 6 and 9pm but I have to rush out of the office by 9pm in order to catch the last bus back to the dorm. I then spend the next 3-4 hours working or trying to respond to friends and family online. I finally force myself into bed around 2am, then lay awake and think about all the exciting email and skype conversations I have to miss because I am 6-9 hours ahead of all the people in the states. After 3 weeks back in Germany, jet lag should no longer be an issue for sleeping. I think the real problem is that my heart is still in the states.

As much as I enjoy my time in Germany, it does not feel like home, which is really surprising for me to admit. Because I moved so often as a child, I have always been proud of the fact that I could make anyplace feel like home in under two months. I was always able to establish friendships and attachments to my new town. However, in all of those cases, I was able to make a clean break from my past. I rarely left loved ones behind. Until college, my family always moved with me. I still kept in contact with friends from my old locations (one girl and I kept a pen pal friendship for 5 years) but I quickly made friends in new locations and didn't worry about maintaining close ties with my old friends.

This time, I leave behind not only my family, but my fiance and many dear friends. The internet has enabled us to stay together, but it has also kept me from taking a clean break. In the past, the minutia of my friend's lives became irrelevant once I moved away. Now with facebook and skype, I know what they had for breakfast, even if their breakfast took place at the same time as my dinner. Because I am feel so involved with my friends lives, I haven't had to force my heart to break off from them. Thus, I suffer not from jet lag, but a lagging heart. My heart refuses to hop on a plane back to Germany.

Jet lag I can treat with a combination of sleeping pills and coffee, I am not sure how to treat lagging heart. Cutting myself off from my fiance is not an option (sorry sweetie, you can't get rid of me that easily ;-) Neither is avoiding my sisters when they call me at night. I have taken steps to absorb myself more fully in my German life. I spend at least two nights a week eating in the kitchen instead of in front of my computer. I try to envelope myself in work during the day, but that seems to fail to get me out of bed. (Sorry, waking up to perform calculations in lab where I can just as easily do them from my laptop on a wifi signal in tahiti is NOT a good incentive to wake up). Sadly, the strategy that seems to work best is to remember that I only have 168 mornings left until I wake up on the same continent as my loved ones. Thus, I wake up every morning in Germany counting down the days until I leave Germany. This is NOT how I pictured spending my time in Europe.

I am unsure of other ways to fix this problem, so I finish this post with a plea for advice. If you know of treatments for lagging heart, please let me know so I can get back to enjoying the precious oppurtunity I have to live here.

Inauguration thoughts

Its really difficult to derive complete thoughts or sentences about watching the inauguration of the 44th president. But I can begin with a bit of background.

Germans, for the most part, love Obama. In fact, most people outside the US adore Obama. But there is something to note about their love of Obama....they know who Obama is and much about the country that elected him. How many US citizens can say they know the Chancellor of Germany (hint, infamous backrub moment with #43)? How many people know the prime minister of England, which is supposedly our biggest trade partner and ally in the war on terror? Even more so, how many people can name people in Chinese leadership? (Especially important considering that China holds the loans for over 500 billion dollars in US debt) On the other hand, there are few pople in the world that can not name the 43rd and 44th presidents of the US. What is even more telling is that German citizens can often provide more information on US politics (including VP Joe Biden's home state) than German politics. In fact, most countries all over the world could debate the strength and weaknesses of the two main (and some minor) parties. The cititens knew enough to actually prefer one candidate over another. There are not many people outside of Germany that can give an opinion of the Social Democratic Party versus the Christian Democratic Union. One thing the 2008 election confirmed is that the United States of America is incredibly relevant for global politics.

But the global impact of Obama's election and inauguration have been discussed in many articles and many blogs by people much more qualified than me. (just google global reaction to Obama to find a few). I want to focus on thoughts that are unique to my situation.

Just like many expats, and quite a few Americans, I watched the inauguration proceedings online. I logged on to the cnn/facebook partnership around 1pm German time which was 6am EST so I beat the internet traffic jam that others experienced later. My initial reaction was one of annoyance. The commentators at CNN (and I believe all US stations) kept talking about the peaceful change of power that can only take place in the US. So the election of new parties in nearly every Western European nation doesn't count? Great Britain recently elected the first Scottish Prime Minister, switching the center of British power from London to the Scotts (remember Braveheart?). Nobody died in the transition. The inauguration coverage reminded me about all the reasons why Western Europeans consider Americans to be so self-centered. However, I realized that inauguration day was special so I pushed my annoyance to the side to focus on the exciting day.

I logged into the cnn/facebook interface in hopes of connecting with friends and colleagues back in the states who would share comments as the action took place. Sadly, very few of my friends could log in, so I basically had to watch the proceedings alone. Since I was at work, I had to keep up appearances, so I wrote job scripts while listening to Obama's speech. Thus I did not cry or even tear up during the speech. Keeping with the annoyance theme, I actually grew angry at Obama for making such grandiose claims about the specialness of the US. However, after the speech concluded, it hit me, Obama is really my president. I no longer have to listen to 30 minute diatribes about how President Bush's policies have ruined the world. Although I was never afraid to say, 'Ich bin Amerikanerin', I no longer have to wait for the inevietable statement, 'Your president is an idiot.' (heard many times in my travels). I finally have a president that not only understands global culture, he experiences it through his own family (See Obama's family tree). Someone who realizes that our decisions impact not only Joe the Plumber in Ohio, but Soli the seamstress in Indonesia and Chie the Car parts factory worker in China. America's role is no longer just to provide prudent leadership to American citizens, but to global citizens, because the globe impacts America as well.

Because I was unable to celebrate with friends in the US, I decided to throw a spontaneous celebration with my housemates. After a quick run to the supermarket, I returned with 4 bottles of wine and several types of cheeses and set up a spread in the shared kitchen. I grabbed the arms of every person who entered and said 'Ich habe einen neuen Präsident!' Most people smiled and moved on, but about 7 people sat down and partook of my meager feast. Between these 7 people, 7 nationalities were represented. Every one wanted to talk about the new president (see, the US is relevant!) and provided several interesting comments. The conversation lasted for 3 hours and took place in German, English, and French while we watched parade coverage in German.

The conversation that stuck most in my mind focused on the party atmosphere for the US election. One person said, 'The US is the only country where the inauguratioin of a democratic transfer of power resembles that of a dictatorship.' I stopped cold in my tracks. 'Is this guy comparing the US to North Korea?' I thought. It turns out he was not. Part of his comment meant that he was a little jealous that German people and the world would never express that much excitement of the election of a new Chancellor. I responded that I was grateful to be a citizen of a country that captivates the rest of the world. In makes it harder to become homesick and means that I will always be able to converse with people about I feel passionate about (my home country). The rest of his comment dealt with the faith that Americans put into their democratically elected leaders, which provided a very interesting criticism. In his perspective, Americans spend more time electing leaders than actually following what the leaders do. Thus, we place all the responsibility on our elected leaders and none of the responsibility on ourselves.

The US is a democracy, meaning that we have the right to elect our leaders, but we also have the responsibility to lead ourselves. By placing a large amount of trust and all the responsibilty into our leaders, we become people under a democratic dictatorship. Thus, when I went back to watch Obama's inauguration speech two days later, I started to cry. Obama's speech discussed how our leaders have sometimes failed us, but emphasized that its time for individuals to take responsibilty for their actions. We need to 'Pick OURSELVES up, dust OURSELVES up, and begin again the work of renewing America'.

Obama's speech inspired me to go from a self-absorbed student trying desperately to experience an American inaugurationto celebrating a party with people from all over the world. Although I may not agree with everything Obama does, I am overjoyed to have a president who speeches inspire me to become a better American, even a continent away.