Sorry about the lack of updates to the site recently. I just got my DSL connection set up in my apartment on Thursday (the 28th), so I should be able to resume semi-regular updates again. The update below was just put up today, despite the fact that I wrote it on the 20th.
The last week I've been really busy, and didn't really even have much of a chance to type an update. My household goods came on Friday the 22nd, and I was busy unpacking stuff and getting things moved around. And playing Rock Band. :) It feels like I live here now!
This evening I plan to go to a concert at the Wiesbaden Marktkirche. The concert is Mozart's Requiem and Symphony #40. I also plan to go to another concert tomorrow night: The Lord of the Rings in concert. It's basically Howard Shore's soundtrack from the movies performed live. Should be pretty fun.
Other than the concerts, I plan to spend the rest of the weekend getting some more stuff put away, and cleaning up. I also want to run a network cable from my bedroom into the living room for the Xbox, and I want to look into buying a 230 volt UPS for my computer equipment and projector. So much to do, so little time.
What a crazy week it's been so far. And it's only Wednesday! Before I get into the details of the week thus far, let me tell you about my trip to Belgium over the weekend.
My friend and I left for Belgium around 9:30 am on Saturday. We had to swing by work real quick so that he could pick up his passport, which he had left in his cubicle. (You don't need your passport to cross from Germany into Belgium, but since we're "strangers in a strange land" we kind of have to bring them along anyway, in case we get pulled over or something.) We also grabbed a quick breakfast at Burger King, which is right next to our building, because neither of us had eaten yet. My excuse was that the previous night was my first night in my new apartment, and I had literally nothing in the house to eat. I don't know what his excuse was.
So, we finally really got on the road around 10:15 am or so. We punched the destination address into Heidi, and off we went. (Heidi is the name of my GPS. It's a long story. Ok, maybe not so long. But I'm not going to tell it right now. Ok, fine. Short version--a friend of mine out here likes to name stuff, and told me I needed a name for my GPS. I came up with Heidi. Heidi Klum. Because the GPS is sexy. And so is Heidi. Anywho...) My friend had found a brewery/monastery (yes, you read that right) along the route that he wanted to stop at, so that was the first stop on the tour.
The brewery/monastery was pretty cool. It was a ways off of any major road, and we never would have found it had Heidi not told us where to go. (Heidi can tell me where to go anytime she wants to.) There were a lot of neat buildings that were really old. It was a little past our normal lunch time by this point, so we went to a little restaurant that was sort of across the street from the monastery. There was an awesome water wheel outside that was powering six light bulbs that were attached to it. Yep. That's it: six light bulbs. When we went inside the restaurant, it was clear that the water wheel at one point had turned a bunch of gears that eventually hooked into a grinding stone. Pretty cool.
Our waitress didn't speak English, so there was a lot of pointing and hoping. We had the extremely healthy lunch of crepes with vanilla ice cream, and a cheese plate. And beer. Well, I didn't have beer, but my friend did. (I had a Fanta, if you were wondering.) After "lunch" we got back on the road, headed for Brussels.
We made it into Brussels mid-afternoon. I think it was around 3:00 pm or so. After a brief debacle trying to a) make it into the middle of the city, and b) find parking, we got out of the car and started walking around. There were tons of restaurants and shops lining pretty much every street that we went down, and the town city square was really cool. My friend wanted to have "mussels in Brussels," but every restaurant that we found serving them was out of the price range that we were willing to pay. We ended up getting gyros at a very busy Greek restaurant. We ate them while we walked back to the car, then got in and headed for Bruges.
We made it to our hotel in Bruges around 7:30 pm. The downtown area of Bruges is a really confusing mess of narrow one-way streets that generally had a length of about two blocks. Thank goodness for Heidi. The parking immediately around the hotel was full, so the guy who checked us in told us that we could have his spot. He said he had to go buy something real quick, and to meet him back in front of the hotel in 15 minutes. We went and walked around for a little bit, then got the car and met him in front of the hotel. He hopped into the backseat, and told me to back up the one-way street that the hotel was on. (There was a lot of road construction going on just around the corner from the hotel, or we wouldn't have had to do this.) So after backing up the one-way, he tells me to drive the wrong way on another one-way street! Which, of course, I did. Well, after the car that was coming the other way had passed. We finally made it to his car a couple of blocks (and no further traffic violations) later, and I took his parking spot. We then walked around the town a little bit to try and figure out what we wanted to do the next day. And we ate at a little cafe thingy right on the town square. (For those of you keeping track, yes, that's the fourth meal of the day. Call it "second lunch" if it makes you feel better. That made me feel better about it.)
Sunday, we woke up around 9:00 am, went downstairs for breakfast in the hotel, and then hit the streets. The first thing we did was walk to the main square and into the main church, and buy tickets to climb up to the top. It was quite a hike--366 steps later we were there. And it was totally worth it. The view was amazing! You could pretty much see the whole town. The top of the spire is where all the bells of the carillon live, and during the day they're controlled by what I consider to be the world's biggest music box. You know on a little music box, that tiny little roller thing with the raised bumps? It rotates and hits the little differently-sized pieces of metal that then make a note. Well, this was the same kind of thing. Only the roller was about three feet in diameter, and instead of hitting the little metal things, the bumps pulled on the cords connected to the carillon bells. Cool stuff. Well, cool until the next song in the rotation came around and we were standing underneath all the bells. Fingers, meet ears. Ears, fingers. It really wasn't as loud as I would have expected, given that you can hear it all over the town. But it was still loud.
After climbing back down the 366 steps, we walked around the courtyard a little bit, and then out the back way onto one of the city streets. And at that point, I heard music. Growing louder. I said to my friend "I think we're about to witness a parade." Well, it wasn't really a parade. It was just a single marching band walking down the street. We decided to follow them. For about five minutes. By the time they turned into their final destination, we were on the outskirts of town. So we walked over a couple of streets, and headed back in to the middle. And then the chocolate happened.
You may have heard the phrase "Belgian chocolate" before. There's a good reason. There's a damn good reason. Holy crap these people know how to make good chocolate! We stopped at several little chocolate shops on the walk back in. I bought 100 grams of random truffles at one store for under 3 euro. That was probably the best money I've spent since I landed in Germany. Wow. Sooooo good. My friend got several boxes to use as gifts, and we headed back to the hotel to drop them off.
Our next little "adventure" was to try and find the remaining windmills at the edge of town. There used to be 20-something windmills on hills on the outskirts of the city. Now there are four. They were pretty cool. We both marveled at the fact that if the windmills had been spinning, you could have stood in front of one and been hit by the blade. They sure don't make them like that anymore!
After the windmills, we walked back to the middle of town to catch a ride on one of the many boat tours through the city's canals. That was fun, but it was a little hard to hear the tour guide over the boat noises. So I pretty much just took pictures and ignored what he was saying. After the boat ride, we dropped our stuff off at the hotel, went to eat dinner, came back to the hotel, and went out to take some night pictures of the city. After taking pictures for a while, we called it a night around 10:30 pm and went back to the hotel and went to bed.
We woke up a little later on Monday morning, somewhere around 9:15-9:30. Breakfast stopped at 10:00, so we took quick showers and went down to eat. We checked out of the hotel, stored our stuff in the car, and headed back to the "Basilica of the Holy Blood." Supposedly someone brought back some of the blood of Jesus to store in this church. It was a beautiful church--lots of statues, stained glass, tapestries, and other ornamental features. We did a little more shopping afterwards, and then got on the road, bound for Antwerp.
Antwerp was only about an hour away from Bruges. We looked at the atlas before we started the trip, and found a museum right in the middle of the city that looked like a good destination. We pushed some of Heidi's buttons (what beautiful, beautiful buttons), and she got us right into the middle of the city. We parked and got out to walk around for a while. We didn't really know much about Antwerp, such as what might be good things to see if you have, say, two hours to spend in the city. (Stupid timed parking.) We ended up walking along a dock for a little bit, then going into a big church at the edge of the city square (that we found by accident), then eating at a little cafe that was, literally, 30 feet away from the church. For "lunch," we had waffles. Belgian waffles. There's a reason you've heard of those, too. Probably the best waffle I've ever had. Crisp on the outside, light and fluffy on the inside, with some whipped cream and little chocolate sauce on the top. Absolutely awesome.
It was just about time to go, so we grabbed some "real" food for the walk back to the car. We stopped at a little place that had a giant rollaway sign shaped like a basket of fries. I got fries and some unknown fried substance. I tried asking the guy if it was chicken. He just said "Yeah, chicken." It wasn't chicken. I'm not really sure what it was. My best guess is pigeon, since that seemed to be the most abundant animal in close proximity. (Actually, my best guess is some soy-based product. It didn't really have the texture of meat.) Whatever it was, it tasted good, and I ate it.
We got back to the car a little after 3:00 pm, and made it back to Wiesbaden around 6:45 pm, without stopping. Which reminds me. I hadn't really mentioned any of the autobahn driving experience yet for this trip. I have now had the car up to just north of 125 mph. I'm not really sure of the exact number, because at that speed, if you glance down at the speedometer for even a split second, a whole lot of road goes by without you looking at it. And my friend was asleep for that particular straightaway. :( It's official--I have been completely spoiled for life. Driving in the States will never be the same again. I'm sure I'll get plenty of speeding tickets when I move back. There's no greater feeling driving on a road than to see the "End of Restrictions" sign and just floor it. And people actually get out of your way! Like I said, driving in the States will never be the same.
This was literally the first chance I've had to sit down and type up a note about the trip. I was exhausted the last two evenings, and went to bed pretty early. I spent the latter half of today waiting for my temporary furnishings to show up. I now have, in no particular order:
So, this post was typed while I was sitting on a real chair, with the laptop on a real table, in a real apartment! I feel like I've finally arrived. Well, mostly. My furnishings, if you can call them that, should all be arriving on Friday. I can't wait to play Rock Band again. It's been way too long. I've really got my work cut out for me this weekend, getting the apartment all set up.
Well, I've now been typing this for far too long, and I'm tired. Time to go to sleep. On a real bed.
Oh, I almost forgot.... pictures. Or rather, lack of pictures. Sorry about that. I haven't even had a chance at this point to copy the pictures from my camera to my laptop. I'm not even sure there's enough hard drive space for them at the moment. I think I took over 1000. Hopefully one of them turns out ok. ;) I'll try and post some soon.
... at least until Saturday night in Belgium. ;)
So, I got my apartment keys yesterday. The process was fairly painless, and all the pieces fell into place nicely. The apartment was cleaned today, and I plan on moving in tomorrow, when my lease officially starts. I won't get my temporary furnishings until Wednesday afternoon, so I'll be sleeping on an air mattress until then, but at least I won't be in the hotel anymore.
And in other news, I am going to Belgium this weekend. A friend and I are going to drive through Brussels on the way to Bruges, stay in Bruges on Saturday night, tour around the city on Sunday, stay there again on Sunday night, and then drive back through Antwerp on Monday. Should be a fun trip. I plan on taking a bunch of pictures. Look for those sometime next week.
Speaking of which... Since I'm moving out of the hotel, and hence moving away from my Internet connection, it might be a while before I have a chance to update the site again. I don't know how long it will be before I have Internet in my apartment. Hopefully not too long. It will be nice to have a good solid Internet connection again instead of the crappy wireless connection in the hotel.
And now... I sleep.
I spent a fair amount of today running around like a chicken with it's head cut off, trying to make sure everything is setup for me to get my apartment keys tomorrow. Part of that included walking around the city with my 5000 euro security deposit, in cash, in an envelope in my pocket. Well, I wasn't really just walking around the city all willy nilly. I just walked from the hotel parking lot to the bank. But it was still scary walking around with that much money.
After I took care of that, I went and got the you-don't-have-to-pay-German-taxes form taken care of for the realtor fee that I have to pay tomorrow. That was another giant headache, but finally got resolved. So I think everything is good to for tomorrow.
I just got back to the hotel a little bit ago after dinner with a couple of friends, and I'm tired, and have a big day tomorrow. So now, I must go. But, I leave you with a picture of my security deposit:
(Yes, in answer to those of you thinking "Is he really that big of a dork, that he took a picture of his security deposit??" Yes. Yes I am.)
Nothing to exciting to report right now. I'm doing my laundry. But, I thought it would be fun to post an update while sitting in the hotel laundry room. I'm down in the basement, but still managed to get a wireless signal.
Once my laundry is done, I think I might go drive around a bit. Sunday is a pretty lazy day in Germany--most stores are closed, and I think quiet hours are enforced for most of the day. So it would be a good time to drive around downtown Wiesbaden and get lost, without someone behind me who is in a hurry to get somewhere. :)
If I end up doing anything exciting, I'll probably put up another post this evening.
Hello! Sorry it's been a couple of days since my last update. I literally haven't gotten back to the hotel until after 9:00 pm the last couple nights. I've either been at work late, exercising after work, going out to dinner with friends after work, or all of the above.
I have an appointment on Wednesday the 13th to pickup the keys to my apartment! I'm not sure why I'm getting the keys on the 13th when the lease is supposed to start on the 15th, but I'm just showing up when I'm told to. Before the 13th, I have to get my security deposit put into a local bank account and get them to give me some magical letter that I then give to the landlord. And I have to pay the immobilien (realtor) fee, too. It's going to be an expensive week. :(
I'm going to head over to the exchange in a couple minutes to buy some laundry detergent, then I'll come back to the hotel and do some laundry. Fun stuff. (Not really.) Then tonight, I'm going to see Untraceable with a couple of friends. I don't really have any plans yet for tomorrow. I'm sure I'll find something to do. I'm still playing around with Lightroom, and will probably spend some time organizing pictures tomorrow.If it's a nice day, I'll probably go walk around the city and shoot some more pictures, too. I also need to plan something for next weekend--it's Washington's Birthday on Monday the 18th.
Okie dokie. I'm off to do laundry. Until next time!
I literally just now got back to the hotel room at the "end" of the day. I was here a little earlier, but that was just to change clothes real quick after working out, and then I went to dinner with some friends. I've been doing some on-the-job training, and that has lasted into the late afternoon--past the time that I would normally have gone home. Then you tack a workout onto the end of that, and the day starts to get pretty long. I need to stop going in early.
So yeah, I'm pretty tired, and I'm just gonna check my email and then go to bed. Oh, and I think I strained a muscle in my neck. Well, "strained" might be a bit much. My neck hurts. I'll just leave it at that. :)
Sorry I didn't update the site yesterday. I didn't make it back to the hotel until late by the time I finished working out and grabbed some dinner on the way home.
Tonight I got back a little earlier, and met a couple friends at the bowling alley across the street to get some dinner (spaghetti) and bowl a couple of games. And boy did I suck. I didn't break 100 either game, and didn't get a single strike the whole night. I felt like it was my first time bowling. I'm gonna go ahead and blame my sore muscles for my poor showing. (I know--it's a lame excuse.)
Someone (you know who you are) complained that I hadn't posted enough pictures yet. It was enough of a guilt trip to actually make me do something about it. Here is a picture of the sunset from the first day of my ski trip:
And here is a picture of the church in Heidelberg, as viewed from the "castle" area:
I've acquired a lot of new photo managing and editing software recently, and I still haven't really figured out how to use all of it. That's my excuse. I also still need to decide what panoramic and HDR software I want to buy. The problem is, each piece of software has features that I like, and there isn't really one that stands out as a clear winner. I need to just lock myself in a room for 8 hours and stick with the same test pictures, instead of switching around all the time. Or maybe I'm just too fickle. I can't decide. ;)
There are a couple of firsts going on for me right now. The most obvious one is that it is midnight (well, a little after midnight), and I am about to start watching the Super Bowl. That is a strange feeling. The majority of Super Bowls that I've watched have been at 3:00 pm, with a couple at 6:00 pm. So to watch starting at midnight.... Well, it's just weird. It kind of puts a damper on Super Bowl parties. I'm sure I could have found one to go to (actually, I think they were throwing one at one of the local bases), but I'm watching it in my hotel room, by myself, in my pajamas. And if it's a boring game, I'll probably go back to bed and try to set my alarm to wake up in time to see the end of the game.
The other weird thing about watching the Super Bowl this year is that it will be the first football game I've watched this season. I've caught a few quarters here and there, but I haven't watched a full game yet. And like I said, if it's boring, I may end the football season without watching a full game. (Just so you know what time it is right now, they just announced that we're less than one minute from the kickoff.)
Today Yesterday, I went with a couple friends to Heidelberg (Wikipedia article, Google map). It was a pretty cool city. The first palace that was built there was built in the 1300s. 1300s!! (That actually didn't really hit me until I typed it just now. That's a really long time ago.) Over the years, more palaces were built by the successors of the rich people, and eventually there was a castle of sorts formed by all the separate palaces. We took the little tour that they had available, and learned more than I could possibly remember about the various people who had built the palaces.
After the tour, we stayed on the castle grounds for a bit to take some pictures (they'll be up eventually), and then we headed down into the town. The town was pretty much exactly what I would have expected for a little European town. Lots of touristy shops selling knick-knacks that would look extremely out of place in my house. We had some lunch, walked around for a while more, took some more pictures, then headed back home.
From what I've heard, Heidelberg is a pretty popular spot to bring visitors to. So come visit. We'll go to Heidelberg. :)
(One other first for me concerning the Super Bowl. Apparently AFN is not allowed to broadcast commercials because they are non-profit. So in the place of the always-entertaining Super Bowl commercials during breaks, I get to watch anti-smoking and anti-getting-killed-while-riding-a-motorcycle ads. While I'm officially for both causes, I'd really rather just see the commercials. I guess I'll just have to watch them on the Internet tomorrow later today.)
Well, the game is in full swing now. The Giants just stopped the Patriots on a 1st-and-goal play from the 1 yard line. I hope they keep on doing it. As cool as it would be for a team to go undefeated for a whole season, I really don't want the Patriots to be that team. I'm still bitter about the tuck rule. I might write a little something a bit later. If I'm still awake. Happy Super Bowl watching!
Today was a great day! I drove over to Frankfurt to meet a couple of friends from high school for church. After church, they showed me around the city. We had Indian food for lunch, and then stopped at a Starbucks for something to keep us warm as we walked around. I took a few pictures, but haven't had a chance to get them transferred over from the camera yet. I will. Sometime.
The drive back was fun. I hit 100 MPH legally for the first time in my life. ;) Gotta love the unlimited sections of the autobahns. Good times.
Sorry I didn't update the site last night. I got back to the hotel around 6:45 pm after working out, took a quick shower, and then went to eat dinner at Paulaner, the same place I ate at the night I got to Germany three weeks ago. A co-worker's girlfriend was having a birthday party there. I didn't end up getting back to the hotel until 10:30 pm, at which point I wrestled with the strangely-slower-than-normal hotel Internet trying to sign up for Vonage.
I gave up for the evening after Vonage told me that the state of AE wasn't valid for my billing address. What a nightmare this has been. On the plus side, I found out that Vonage was giving rebates for items purchased at CompUSA, and for some reason the CompUSA that I bought them at didn't have the forms out. Probably because they were going out of business, and accidentally sold them in the liquidation. Anyways, it looks like I'll end up making at least $8 for buying two Vonage products, since they were 40% off. :)
Alright, I'm off to church. I'll probably put up another update tonight.
I had a "surprise" meeting today with my hopefully soon-to-be landlord. It was a surprise in that I didn't know about it until about 9:15 am, when I was already at work. The housing guy and I swung by the hotel, where I grabbed my passport (which the landlord wanted to see for some reason--to make sure I wasn't lying about being American??), and change from blue jeans into khakis.
The meeting was a little overwhelming, since it was pretty much all in German, despite the fact that pretty much everyone at the table spoke English. It was basically just a discussion about what exactly would be included in the rent, and the stipulations that I'm required to have in any lease that I sign. Everything went pretty well, and with any luck, I'll be able to sign the lease tomorrow.
That was the big news for today. In other news, I'm still sore, and we have another workout tomorrow. My arms and chest hate me right now. I'm gonna pop a couple of Advil and go to bed. See ya!
Nothing major today. I called the housing guy and told him I wanted the apartment that I wrote about yesterday. Things seem to be rolling along. Hopefully we can get the lease drawn up and get it signed soon! It will feel great to have my own place again. This coming Saturday, the 2nd, will be my one-month anniversary of staying in a hotel. :( I'll admit it's nice to have someone come in and make your bed every day, but it will be nice to have some space again.
I'm now over halfway through my first week of working out. Today we ran two miles, then did 4x20 situps, 4x15 pushups, 3x3 pullups, and 15 minutes of stretching. And then we had protein shakes, which tasted much better than I thought they would. And now, I'm tired. Time to take some Advil and go to bed. Tschüss!
I think I may have found an apartment today! I went and looked at it earlier with the housing guy, and I think it will work out really well. If you want to check it out, the website is http://www.immobilienscout24.de, and the Scout ID is 44267597. Scroll down to where it says "Scout-ID-Suche," type in that number, hit "Suchen," and hopefully it will come up. Here are the quick details:
So yeah, check it out online. I plan on going in tomorrow and telling the housing guy I want to take it. He wanted to show me more stuff today, but I think it's further out from the city, and this place pretty much hits all the main points on my list. Really the only thing it doesn't have is a dining room, but I wouldn't really use a dining room, anyway. Wiesbaden is my dining room. ;)
In other news, I went over to a friend's place for dinner tonight, played with their dogs, then got my butt kicked in a game of Settlers of Catan. Good times. And now, and this seems to be the theme of my European Vacation Adventure so far, I'm tired, and I'm going to bed.
Quick update again, because I'm tired and want to go to bed.
I went to look at another apartment today. This one couldn't get much closer to downtown. You could stick your head out the window and see the Hessen parliament building (Wiesbaden is the capitol of the state of Hessen). Unfortunately, the apartment was roughly the size of a postage stamp. A small postage stamp. In part of the bathroom, if I stood on my tiptoes, my head hit the ceiling. And I'm not even that tall! The rooms also had a lot of weird shapes. They weren't really rectangular--more like trapezoidal. It was weird. Oh, and the parking spot was about a 5-minute walk away. I'm not trying to say that I'm lazy, but that's a long way to carry groceries. Oh, who am I kidding? I don't buy groceries. And I'm lazy.
Speaking of being lazy, my friend has helped me push myself into a workout routine. Our first day was today. The last scheduled day is May 17. He even made a Google Calendar to keep track of what we have to do each time we workout. Today was 3x15 pushups, 3x15 situps, 2x3 pullups, 2x3 dips, and a 2-mile run. (I did the elliptical machine instead of running. My knees hate running. So does the rest of me.) It's gonna be tough, especially having to do all that over again on Wednesday when I'm sore, but I think it will be worth it in the end. Speaking of the end, I have now reached the end of my energy for today. See ya.
Quick update tonight. I looked at another apartment today. This one had a lot of potential, and is currently my number one backup if I don't find something downtown that I like. This place was a little ways out of town, but due to that fact the parking situation was great. It has two parking spots, one of them inside of a garage with a remote opener! The other one is outside right in front of the building. Other nice things include two nice bathrooms, a big living room, a nice terrace with electric awnings that pull over it, and a kitchen with room to store enough food to feed me for a year. Well, maybe not a year. 10 minutes, maybe? ;) In all seriousness, it had a lot of cupboards. Not to mention an on-the-wall scale and a bread/meat/cheese slicer that folded up from one of the lower cupboards.
Unfortunately, the place is a little further out of town than I would like. Really the only other negative was that the walls had some weird textured wallpaper thing on them that could screw up my projector image, but I could always buy a screen.
I have another appointment to look at a place that's right downtown tomorrow.I also have a few other places that I want to make appointments to see. Hopefully I'll like one of the ones in the city as much as I liked this place.
Until next time!
I spent the whole afternoon reading about how to make HDR photos from exposure-bracketed shots. Pretty cool stuff. Here are examples from three different programs:
This one is from a program called Easy HDR.
I'm not as happy with the results of that program as I am with the results of Dynamic Photo HDR, which are below.
There is another program called Photomatix, but I'm not crazy about the results from that one, either.
So there you have it. All three programs are trial versions, and all of them put a watermark on the final file until you buy them. The DPHDR one is really tiny, down in the lower left corner. The other ones should be obvious. ;)
Well, I'm off to bed. But before I go, I'm going to let the computer start cranking on that same panorama that's below. This time, though, I'm going to stitch the three separate bracketed versions, and then try making an HDR image out of three panoramas that come out of that. Should be cool if it works.
Today I went to church in Germany for the first time! The church is about a 15 minute or so walk from my hotel. I accidentally showed up a little early (the sign out front said church was at 10:30, and it was really about 10:45), so I killed some time by looking at all of the standard SDA church literature in German.
I ended up sitting next to a church elder, who spoke pretty good English. He asked where I worked and all the other usual questions that Adventists love to ask. I found out that he took a trip to California in 1981, and visited PUC. It's really a small world.
The hymnal was interesting. Not only was it in German, which I was expecting, the extra verses for each hymn were just printed at the end of the hymn. In other words, unlike the American hymnal that has each verse printed in the actual music score, they just had the first verse in the score, and then verse two and onward were printed as a paragraph of text. What that means, then, is that if you don't know the tune to the song, you essentially have to memorize it on the first verse, or be able to cross your eyes. It felt pretty weird singing in another language. I had no idea what I was singing about, except for a word here and there.
Speaking of not understanding things, the sermon was hard to follow. Again, I caught a few words, and a couple of times I think I even understood two sentences in a row. But then I'd get lost again. I think that listening to sermons in German will be a good way to pick up how to pronounce words. Not only am I listening to a native speaker of the language, but preachers tend to put lots of space between their words, and extra pauses at the end of sentences. Basically, my brain can actually catch all of the words, even if I have no clue what they mean.
After the service, the elder I sat next to introduced me to a few people in the church who spoke English. One of them works at the same base I do. Another has actually taught English for the last 30 or 40 years. She offered to sit next to me the next time I come and translate the sermon for me.
After church, I wandered over into the downtown area to find some food. I ended up getting some Chinese food to-go, and took it back to the hotel. Now I'm just sitting around and relaxing. I plan on trying to find some videos to watch so that I can learn Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, which I picked up from my mailbox yesterday. I need to learn how to use it well so that I can post more pictures. ;)
Not really much to talk about today. I worked. Yeeha. On my way home from work I stopped at the main exchange to get some toiletries, and a nice American meal at the food court: Taco Bell. Yes, there is a real life Taco Ball here in Wiesbaden, at least in the American base.
Once I got back to the hotel, I pretty much surfed the web looking for more apartments. I have a few that I'm interested in.
Oh, just FYI for those of you in the DC area. It looks like I'll be in the area for a class mid-August. Hopefully I'll get to see some of you.
Alrighty. Sorry for the boring post. I'll try and do something more exciting tomorrow. :)
What a bunch of drama it is to port a cell phone number. Tonight I called three different VOIP providers to try and get my number ported.
First I called Vonage, who had the best customer service of all of them. I said that I wanted to see if my number could be ported, they asked for the number, said that it couldn't be ported because they didn't have a contract with that rate center, and then explained what that meant. It was confusing, but it was at least a justified answer.
The next call was to Lingo, which was by far the worst customer service I've had in a long time. I asked if I could port my number. The answer was "Of course," followed by him asking me if I had broadband and a U.S.-issued credit card. I said yes, and said again that I wanted to make sure they could port my number. I explained that I had just gotten off the phone with Vonage and that they couldn't port it. He said "We are not Vonage. We are the best at what we do..." Blah blah blah. I said again that I just wanted to make sure. Then I got some crap about Wired Magazine picking Lingo as their Editor's Choice for something I didn't care about. I said "I don't care what Wired Magazine says about you, I want to know if I can port my number." Then I got fed some line that 95.5% of customers have successful number portability. I asked "What about the other 4.5%?" At some point, he finally, of his own accord, transferred me to his supervisor. The supervisor said "How can I help you?" I said "I want to find out if I can port my current cell phone number to your service." Instantly his response came back: "We can't port cell phone numbers." I told him to educate his stupid sales staff, in a very-slightly-more-polite tone than that, and hung up.
My final call was to Verizon VoiceWing, which I didn't even know existed until tonight. I thought for sure this would work. I have a Verizon cell phone number, and this is a Verizon VOIP provider. No dice. Apparently I could port a Verizon land line number to VoiceWing, but not a cell phone number.
So here are my two options, assuming I want to keep my number:
Why do I want to keep my number? Well... Everyone knows it. And I've had it since the summer of 1999. And I just want to keep it. Maybe I'm crazy. I just don't like change, I guess.
I was also going to write tonight about the apartment I went to see today, but time has gotten away from me, and I'm too tired, so you're only going to get the short version. I liked the place, and I could make it work, but the entrance to get to the parking area behind the building is only 2 meters wide by 1.77 meters tall. For those of you without the gift of math, let me convert those numbers to another scale for you--it's FREAKIN' TINY! Based on the specs I found online for the size of my car, I would have 12" of clearance on the top, and 10" of clearance side-to-side. That's only 5" on either side of the car. And I'm not sure they accounted for mirrors, which I might have to fold in. So, I'm still looking for places. If you find one that looks cool, let me know.
I'm back! I had a great time down in Sankt Veit, but my butt is still sore from snowboarding. :(
We left my hotel around 7:45 am on Saturday. We stopped several times along the way, and ended up making it to Sankt Veit around 3:30 pm. We checked in and got our "hotel" assignments. I put hotel in quotes because we were basically staying in bed & breakfasts. The lady who ran mine, Frau Hettegger, was probably the nicest old lady I have ever met. It made me wish that I spoke German so that I could thank her properly for everything.
After we got our stuff unloaded, we headed to Sankt Johann, the town just to the north of us, to try and find a grocery store to buy some water and other supplies. We got some stuff, and headed back to put the bindings on the snowboard that I borrowed from a friend. Once we got those put on, we headed to dinner.
The dinners each night were good, but not spectacular. I had "spicy" turkey and pasta the first night (which wasn't spicy at all), wiener schnitzel the second night, and chicken "schnitzel" and spatzle the third night (it was really just a grilled chicken breast, not really schnitzel). Dessert was a banana split the first night, some kind of sour cream/cream cheese thing with pieces of fruit the second night, and apple strudel the third night. The apple strudel was great! Nice and warm. Mmmmm. But, I'm getting ahead of myself...
Sunday morning after breakfast, we drove to Alpendorf to hit the slopes. We got in the gondola around 9:15 am or so, and rode up towards the top of the mountain. It was a little foggy lower on the mountain, and suddenly, the gondola cleared the fog and we could really see where we were. The view, literally, took my breath away. All I could say was "wow" for about two minutes. The closest I had come to the Alps prior to this trip was looking at the Matterhorn at Disneyland. In other words... not close at all. So to be in the middle of the Pongau valley, surrounded by the real Alps, was absolutely amazing.
We got up to the top of the mountain, and I got strapped into my snowboard. I was extremely surprised that I remembered as much as I did, but I still fell quite a bit. Only one or two really hard falls, though. I still can't turn worth crap. I think next time I go to the snow with people, I might try skiing. One of the hardest parts of the day was using the "chair" lifts. For the bunny slopes, they didn't actually have chair lifts. They had a t-bar lift for the lower slope, and a button lift for the upper lift.
The t-bar wasn't so bad, once I got my balance. That was just a bar that the skier is supposed to put against their butt to push them from behind. Snowboarders have to put it against their hip, and go up the hill facing sideways. The button lift, on the other hand, I'm pretty sure was invented to punish snowboarders for not skiing. The way this one works for skiers is they grab this little "button" that's on a spool of wire coming down from the main wire that goes up the hill. You shove that between your legs and basically sit on it, and it pulls you up the hill. On a snowboard, you still have to go up the hill sideways, so it basically pulls against the inside of your leg. I did fine the first time I rode it up, but the second time I fell up about one-fourth of the way up, and just crawled to the side out of the way of the person behind me, and rode down from there. So all in all, it was a decent day snowboarding, but I was still pretty sore in the evening.
On the second day (Monday), I decided to bring the board with me in the car, but leave it there and just take my camera and associated accoutrements up the gondola with me. So I know you've all been waiting for it. In fact, I bet some of you even just skipped straight down past the text until you saw a picture. Here it is, a 360 degree panorama from the top of the gondola run:
And here's another one of me with the Alps in the background, just to prove I was there:
The panorama needs some work. The main work that needs to be done on it includes registering the program so that it doesn't say "AUTOPANO" all over it like it does now. But I also want to try and combine the exposure bracketed shots that I did for the panorama so that it has more dynamic range. (Or in layman's terms: "So that it looks purtier.")
Lunch was an interesting adventure on Monday. As most of you know, I don't eat pork. That has been an adventure in itself, because Germans do eat pork. In vast quantities. And because of all their pork eating, they've had to come up with numerous names for pork. One of those names is dangerously close to "chicken." So when I ordered the "Schinken Pizzabaguette," I was under the impression that I was getting a chicken pizza. Well, I was wrong. Schinken is yet another German word for meat from a pig. I realized this as I was standing in line, and decided to just buy it and eat it anyway. And I'm still alive.
After lunch, I rode the chairlift to the even higher ski slope to take some more pictures. Then I rode the chairlift back down. The views from the chairlift were great, but my camera was in it's bag, which I didn't dare try to open while on the lift. I had a death grip on that thing so that I wouldn't drop it.
After riding the chairlift down, I rode the gondola back down to the car to drop off the camera and pick up the snowboard. I came back up, rode up the t-bar lift, and started down the hill. I fell a couple times, but managed to get back to the bottom of the t-bar lift somewhat gracefully. My second time down the hill however, while I was going toe-side across the mountain, the heel edge of my board caught in the snow, and I ate it pretty hard. Hard enough that I decided to do one more run, and then call it quits for the day.
Once everyone else decided they'd had enough, we headed back to Sankt Veit, took showers, then went to a little town nearby that had a hotel with a spa in it. By the time we made it there, it was about 5:40, and dinner was at 6:00 back in Sankt Veit. It was 15 euro for use of the spa for the day, and we decided to go for it. We showed up to dinner at 6:00, ate, and then went back to the spa until about 9:00 or so. I'm not sure I've ever felt more relaxed in my life. There were some awesome steam rooms, and a really hot sauna. Like 86 degrees Celsius hot. And the saunas, and really most of the spa, if you wanted to go that way, were textilfrei. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out what that means. ;) When we got back to Sankt Veit, I was so tired and relaxed that I pretty much just went to bed. I slept from 9:45 pm until 7:30 am. And it felt great.
Today we pretty much just drove back. Fairly uneventful. I got back to the hotel around 4:30 this afternoon, and after putzing around for a bit I decided to take a walk to see where the apartment I'm going to look at tomorrow is located. I ended up walking around the city for about an hour. Then I came back to the hotel and sat around looking at the pictures that I took over the weekend, and typed this up. And now I'm tired, so I'm going to bed. Until next time!
I leave today for Sankt Veit im Pongau, Austria for the ski trip. I have no idea if they'll have Internet access available there, so you might not hear from me again until Tuesday night. You have been warned.
Yet another short update today. I tried to go to the military off-base housing briefing today, but I missed it by half an hour because the lady who gave the on-base housing briefing told me the wrong time. So instead, I ate lunch and then went to pick up the package that I had sent myself before leaving the States. Then I went back to the hotel to drop the package off and pick up some extra paperwork that I needed to finish filling out another reimbursement form. I've now turned in the forms to be reimbursed for:
After all that, my sponsor's sponsor's supervisor helped me make an appointment to look at an apartment on Wednesday. Here is a link to the info on it. If that link doesn't work, try going to http://www.immobilienscout24.de, scroll down to where you see "Scout-ID-Suche," type in 43659366, and then click on the button that says "Suchen," and it should bring you to the page for the apartment. The site is a little wonky, and won't really give a "plain looking" link that I can post. We'll see what happens Wednesday.
I went to Thai food tonight with a few friends, and got to visit two friend's apartments that I hadn't seen yet. There are some pretty nice places available. I just need to find one that fits me. With room left over for all of you when you come visit. ;)
Another short update today. I got to go look at a couple of houses. I didn't really like either of them. So now I'm looking for places on the Internet. The site I'm using is http://www.immobilientscout24.de, if anyone wants to help me. Send me an email if you find me a good one. Oh, and good luck with the German. ;)
In other news, my GPS worked quite well today. I don't really need it to go between the hotel and work, but I used it anyway. I think it will be a bit before I get used to driving over here.
Today was easily my scariest day so far. But, it was also the most exciting! I have my car!!! What a process it was to pick it up. Here are all of the steps. Try not to get lost.
That pretty much sums it up. Nice and easy. Didn't even have to fill out any paperwork. ;)
After all that, I followed my sponsor's sponsor back to his house. We brought our GPSs GPSes GPS units into the house so that I could copy some addresses into mine. For instance, the address of my hotel. (That one came in very handy later.) Then we got pizza from a little pizza place around the corner from his house. Mmmm, pizza. And then I drove back to the hotel.
Unfortunately, I somehow made the GPS not have sound on the drive back, so I had to just look at the map and street names and kind of wing it a couple times. But I didn't get lost!
Alright. I'm tired, and I need to figure out how to make my GPS talk to me. That way I won't be lonely in the car on the way to work tomorrow. I feel like I'm 16 again and just got my license.
Very short update tonight. I didn't end up looking at houses today because the housing guy was out sick. I basically spent the day getting some paperwork done and studying for the driver's test tomorrow.
I spent most of the night catching up on my finances and studying some more for my driver's test. I also read a few reviews of GPS units. I need to get one soon because I still haven't quite got my bearings out here yet. And Google Maps doesn't seem to work on the hotel's Internet connection for some reason. I'm still troubleshooting it. I think I can make it from the hotel to work and back without the GPS, but anything else and I'd pretty much be screwed. :)
Alright. That's it for tonight. A little more studying, and then I'm off to bed. See ya!
Hello to the random group of people that reads this! Apparently there actually are a couple reading it, because I've received some comments in my email. A couple of the comments said "How can I make a comment?" Well, the answer is, you can't. Notice I didn't say you may not; I said you cannot. The site just can't handle it right now.
BEGIN GEEKY EXPLANATION. This site is not your typical blog. I have no fancy interface that I use to type this text in. (Actually, I do. It's called vim, but it's a level of fancy that most people don't understand or appreciate.) I'm literally just SSHing into the server that's hosting my web site and editing the index.html file. All the pictures are manually shrunk down, uploaded, and pulled into the page using HTML. Look at the HTML source--it ain't generated by a computer. END GEEKY EXPLANATION.
Eventually the site will get a little fancier. I may even start using a spellchecker at some point. ;) I want to figure out how to make it so that I can have people log on at a certain time and see updates happen as I type. That would be cool. Or, I could host live chat sessions or something. And eventually, the site will be password protected, and everyone who reads it will have their own account. I don't neccesarily want the Internet-at-large to be able to read everything I might put here. Speaking of which, I just did a Google search on "jason in europe" and this site is the first hit! That's kinda cool.
So yeah, the site sucks right now. Sorry. If you want to make a comment, send me an email, tell me which day's post it's a comment about, and if I approve of the content, I'll post it up and give you credit. If you don't like those rules... well... tough--it's my web site. :P
One more note about the site... all the times that I'm writing down for the post are the times that I started typing the post, not the time it was posted. I just found it easier to write the time down at the beginning. Just in case anyone cared.
So, on to other things.... Today was my first day at work!! I had the day I was pretty much expecting--meet a lot of people, shake a lot of hands, sign a lot of forms, read a lot of user agreements, and get my final hepatitis A shot. (It's not most people's typical first day, but I'm not most people. :P) I met way more people than anyone could possibly remember the names of. Oh, and I signed up for the ski trip this weekend to Saint Veit, Austria! That should be a good time.
For dinner we went to a Croatian restaurant. I had Wiener schnitzel, which was quite tasty. And Ken, if you're out there... well, let's just say what you told me about Croatia was true. (That's an inside story. All of you, except for one, are on the outside. Although, you can probably figure it out.)
Alrighty, that's about it for now. I still haven't had a chance to make any progress on the VoIP provider search. Hopefully that happens soon. Here's a quick look at what I've got going on the next couple days:
Until next time, auf Wiedersehen!
Another quick update tonight. (This one really will be quick.) Woke up at 6:15 am and headed for Neuss. That's where the year-round ski/snowboard place is. It's web site is here. Pretty interesting place. It's basically a giant bunny slope that's completely indoors. It's literally open 365 days a year--you can ski in July if you want to.
I didn't end up snowboarding today, for a couple of reasons. One reason is that I didn't want to be sore on my first day of work, and based on the last time I went snowboarding... well, I would have been sore. I pretty much only know how to stop by falling. :) The other reason is that there's a work-sponsored ski trip to some place in Austria next weekend, and I will probably try and go to that.
So instead of snowboarding, I surfed the web a bit on the free wireless Internet, watched people ski and snowboard from the comfort of a table, and read the "Say It In German" book that was given to me before I left the States. I'm starting to pick up a few things with the language, but it's going to be rough for a while.
Alright... first day at work tomorrow. I need some sleep. There will be pictures forthcoming. I don't know when, but they are forthcoming.
I'm pretty tired, so this is going to be a short update. Last night around 10:30 pm or so, I called my friend who was supposed to be stopping by to say hi and drop off a pre-paid cell phone for me to see how far away he was. He said 10 minutes. And I thought "Oh, good. I can go to bed soon." I was pretty tired. He shows up at the hotel with another friend of mine, and says "Get your shoes on, we're going to play Halo." So I sighed and started putting my shoes on. Long story short (because I'm tired), I made it to bed at 1:30 am.
I woke up at 9:00 am to my alarm, took a shower, got some breakfast, and tried to activate Vonage. When I typed in my phone number to have them port it, the site said that they can't port numbers from that geographical region. Which sucks. I'm going to try calling them before I give up, but it's looking like I might not be able to port my number to Vonage. I will look into other VoIP providers to see if anyone else can port it.
My stand-in sponsor picked me up around noon, and shuttled me around to the various American base services. I saw the main commissary, which was pretty much just like an American grocery store. I also saw the Power Zone, which is right across the street from the building I will be working in. Which is scary, because that's the Best Buy/Circuit City equivalent.
After the base touring, we went to the mall and ate lunch at a place called Noodles. They serve.... wait for it..... noodles! Then we checked out the T-Mobile store for cell phones, and Saturn, which is the German equivalent of a Best Buy or Circuit City. Pretty cool store.
After the mall, we headed over to my stand-in sponsor's parents' house. We spent a little time there, played with the dog, watched most of an episode of Night Court (I hadn't seen that show in years!), and then headed to dinner with some of my friends. We went to an Italian place in the downtown area. I had a mushroom pizza. Good stuff.
And finally, the highlight of the evening. After dinner, we went back to another person's house to play poker. Now, I should say, my only poker experience has pretty much been on Xbox, playing against the computer. I've played against people before, but I don't think we even finished the round. So when they said there was a five euro buy in, I was a little skeptical. And I only had a 50 euro bill in my wallet. So I figured, oh well, may as well play and see what happens. I told them I only had a 50, so my friend covered my buy in. In the interest of saving time (read: I want to go to bed), I won the game. We split the pot between me and the second place guy. I ended up with a 20 euro profit. Beginner's luck? There's no other possible way to explain it. :)
Alright. I'm off to bed. I'm waking up at 6:15 am to go snowboarding. Or at least to go to where other people will be snowboarding. Where that is... well I have no clue. I'm just gonna get in a car with a couple friends and head out.
(Apparently "short update" means no pictures, because I think that's the most text I've typed into an update yet.)
I made it! I landed in Germany this morning a little before 1200 local time. (Germany's time zone is CET--Central European Time. It's one hour ahead of GMT, six hours ahead of EST, and nine hours ahead of PST.) I went through passport control, picked up my bags (which came out pretty quickly), went through customs, and got picked up by my sponsor's sponsor. (My sponsor is out of town right now.)
The first thing we did was go to my hotel to get me checked in. I dropped all my stuff off, changed my clothes, and we headed to lunch. We went to downtown Wiesbaden and got a little pizza-like thing from a place called Ditsch. Then we went and did some administrative stuff, like get my mailbox combination. After that, we went back to his place to hang out for a while, then went to get some dinner. I had a steak with fried onions on top, and some spatzle on the side. Spatzle is good stuff!
Right now, I'm sitting in my hotel room typing this post and letting everything sink in. I'm in Germany now! I live here. It's going to be a while before that really hits home.
Here are a few more pictures. This one is my last going away party from Wednesday night:
Here is a random one I took on an autobahn today:
Here is the view from my hotel window:
And finally, here are three shots of the really cool window in my hotel room:
The window is awesome, because it can either be closed (with the handle in the down position), swung open (with the handle in the middle position), or tilted open from the top (with the handle in the up position). It's a little hard to tell in the last picture that the window is tilted forward. Compare it to the first picture, where you can see the hinges. Either that's really cool, or I'm easily entertained. Or both.
Well, here it is. Pretty exciting, huh? Don't worry--it will be soon (I hope).
I find it very apropos that my first post/upload to my new web site, that I purchased hosting for about an hour ago, will be made from a car driving down the DC beltway. I am currently being driven to Dulles International Airport to catch my flight to Germany. And, in true DC fashion, there is horrendous traffic. Thanks for making my last day a good one, Maryland!
Most of you who will be looking at this site will be expecting pictures. So, I didn't want to disappoint by having my first post not have a picture. This is the moving truck parked in front of my house last week.
I hope that will last everyone until I get a chance to get some more pictures put up. Honestly, it might be a while. I'll be too busy enjoying Germany! Until next time!
Edit 20080111-2114 CET: My brother pointed out that I accidentally typed 2007 instead of 2008 for the year on my earlier post. Woops. That's one of the first times I've typed the new year, and I messed it up. :)