Fruit of the Sea

Against better judgement (I claim brain dysfunctionality due to sickness) I decided to go to Boden See. (Lake Constnace?) The first sign that this was a poor idea: having to wake up at 7am. Nothing good ever happens at 7am.

Well, almost never. Our day started out well with a surprisingly nice fast train towards Singen. You had to buy tickets for that train. We had only a regional pass. Which meant that the nice ticket lady didn't fine us, but kicked us out in the middle of nowhere to wait an hour for the regional train. (We were just really happy we didn't get fined)

Following the sort-of plan we had, we immediately crossed the lake by ferry (totally making the ferry man's day by paying in all sorts of loose change) to a small lake side town perfect for renting boats and wading in the water. That is if you could rent the boats (one place was under re-construction, the other - though advertised as "Open on good-weather weekends"- was not open. - We had nice weather.) or go in the water. (The nice beach was a private-pay-lots-of-money-to-enter-here type of beach.)

We were resilient (northern) Americans though, so we carefully picked our own path down to the lake to wade and skip stones. (In my case, sink stones) I hadn't realized how much I'd missed lakes/oceans/rivers until I was wading in the water. Something about standing there (in the basically perfectly temperatured and beautifully clear water) is just so peaceful.

I didn't want to get out of the water

Since standing in awe of nature is rather energy consuming, we next foraged on for food. The cheapest food we came across with lake side seating was a fish restaurant that served pizza. Despite ordering 2 pizzas with seafood (fruit of the sea and shrimp) the vegetarian pizza was the clear favorite. To top off the meal, we picked up some Spagetti Eis (Ice cream served to look like spaghetti) to keep us going on the ~5km walk to the next town over.

Between the ice cream and the view, the short(ish) walk was soon over, and we found ourselves at another marina. This time however, we were able to find a boat rental place that was open (sadly, no sail boats). Taking out the largest paddle boat they had, the 5 of us piled in to the Police paddle boat (complete with kiddy slide) and set off toward the middle of the lake.

We didn't make it very far. Despite turning the steering wheel with all of our might, the boat just wouldn't go in a straight line out of the marina. The dock staff, after watching "those stupid Americans" flounder for a while, eventually came over to help. They also diagnosed our problem: no rudder. Makes steering hard.

For our second try, we took out the Ferrari. (nice, easy-to-see bright red, still with a kiddy slide!) What do ya know. Boats with rudders are waaaay easier to steer. :D We took our little paddle boat out onto the lake and played "please don't hit us we're tiny and have no speed" with all the other boats.

Paddling is hard work. It's good to take breaks

And there were a lot of boats. First off the ferries. That go EVERYWHERE. all the time. And then the legit sailors. (With really pretty wooden decks and colorful spinnakers) And the motor boats (with varying levels of BAC in their skippers) And then closer to our size, tiny sailboats. (Like a really cool fleet of tiny catamarans. They went by soooooo fast)

There was actually a good amount of wind

As we learned, there is not only other boats on the water. The lake also provides to it's visitors. As a welcoming present to us foreigners, it bequeathed half a watermelon; A true fruit of the (Boden) See.

Those times when the lake is so big, that it's almost no longer a lake

Since we enjoyed so much time on the water, we quickly moved over the next city down to end up in Sipplingen for dinner. After getting directions to the restaurant that was recommended ("You're standing right in front of it".. yea, we were observant) and discovering we had needed reservations, we chose a different slightly cheaper- definitely more casual dinning location. Here yet another American fell victim to the salat = salad conundrum. I repeat. Wurstsalat != salad. It's just a pile of meat with cheese bits.

At this point we were running a bit late. Which was kind of worrisome since we had been planning on taking the last train from Singen to Stuttgart that night. Luckily, the ticket printer is knowledgeable, and gave us a new plan to follow that would get us back at around the same time. The only catch was that we were running the other way around Baden-Württemberg taking a long hemispherical path starting with the first leg in the opposite direction from Stuttgart. Not at all worrying. Particularly when you add in that all of the connections were only 5 minutes. (And the first train was already running 7 minutes late)

Luckily, all of the trains were delayed so although we looked like idiots running from one train to the next, just to have them sit there for another 5 minutes, we made it back home without getting caught out in the middle of nowhere.

The Grass Is Always Greener

I admit it. I'm beginning to miss home a tiiiiiny bit. Particularly the internet. (Which doesn't default the language to German, and then not let you change it back) and the libraries (with lots of books. In English.) I mean castles, history, exciting cities I've never been to? Please. How could that compare with good old home town suburbia?

Ok, so maybe I'm not actually missing home that much yet. But not having as much instant access to distractions is well, forcing me to think about things. (How terrible. Doesn't the universe recognize summer as brain-is-turned-off time?) Thinking about things is only fun though is something can actually come out of it. Which isn't super likely if you're sick. (yea, I'm back to that again, sorry)

On the bright(er) side though, I think I'm getting better (whoo!) So I should be able to do stuff this weekend (the important part of being in Europe, clearly) I'll get to see lots of great German countryside where the hills truly are greener (especially with all the rain that's been coming through) than at home. :D (CA is known for the golden hills-- translation: brown, possibly dead, certainly dry-- not green grassy meadows)

Present for Presents and Presentations

The world has it out for me. Normally I don't give in to the depressing, "how can it possibly be worse?" moments. I maybe deviated a bit last night around 3am when I still wasn't asleep due to the never-ending party. (I mean, it's a weekday for goodness' sake. Don't people have class tomorrow?!)

To train me never to think that way again, I was rewarded with oversleeping my alarm, running out with no breakfast to catch an early morning (8 is totally an early morning) bus to the group that's sponsoring us to give a presentation. Oh. Right. I'm still sick. Life's awesome!!! :D :D :D (for the people that don't get it: sarcasm is prevalent here)

Jokes aside though, I am not one for public speaking (even at the best of times). So despite being well prepared on the subject matter (introduce yourself) I was actually quite nervous. Luckily they also were. (Though that might have to do more with the I'm-presenting-in-English-which-isn't-my-native-language type jitters)

After getting introductions out of the way, we got to first hear about, then tour the company. It was really awesome- we got to see their R&D labs as well as one of their smaller production facilities (complete with 3D printer and too-many-axis-to-count mills) There were a lot of industrial robots. :D

Since the visit was 'so hard' and/or the drive was 'so long' we visited a tiny little town to take a break and get ice cream. (Thanks to a misunderstanding between the server and a certain member of our group, we all ended up with ice cream in cups with cones on top. >< oh well)

Munching on ice cream, we got a nice tour of the city marveling at old German 'engineering' solutions (If the wall can't hold back your church from sliding down the hill, use a hemisphere mound instead and then disguise them as (53) stairs... "we totally meant to do that") and calculating the market value of salt, (really high) finishing just in time to miss the rainstorm.

Unfortunately? Fortunately? Either way, the rain followed us back to Stuttgart. At least it'll be colder now. Hopefully my sickness will take the hint and be washed away as well.

Is This All Just a Dream?

Sometimes I can't really believe I actually decided to go abroad for a summer. Normally I think things through (down to really random details- it's inherited behavior. I have engineers for parents) but this was (for the most part) fairly last minute/spontaneous. I never really expected it to actually happen.

Like right now, especially. There's a giant party right outside my dorm. (This is not normal. Probably because at MIT my room's on the top floor of a tall building) I have recently discovered that dorms here hold summer parties over the summer. They have way more food than people can possibly eat, lots of loud music, and are attended in such numbers that having personal space is no longer a conceivable option.

For better or worse, however, I'm sick. At least I'm not totally missing out though. I can hear the bands playing from inside my room.

Temperature's Rising

Apparently taking time off because it's too warm is a thing in Germany. On that note, air conditioning is not a thing. (Which is really quite unfortunate) It's supposed to cool off and rain soon though, so this won't last too long. (hopefully)

With all this "free" time in the afternoon, I probably should have done something exciting, like explore the Freibad, (eventually translated to be something like an outdoor swimming pool- but HUGE) but it was so hot that I lost interest in well doing... anything.

On the data analysis front, my graphs are looking a bit better. For some reason I remain unable to get two supposedly identical frames to produce the same results. At least though, the two systems are now (mostly) internally consistent- as in all angle deflections within one model end up complementing/ cancelling correctly.

I also just finished reading my first German language for fun book. (All previous German language books have been read for classes) I was pleasantly shocked that I didn't need to use the dictionary nearly as much as I had thought. (I did need to concentrate a lot more. I would glaze over sections, realize my brain had wandered, and need to go back a few pages to re-read) While it likely doesn't help too much with my pronunciation (Eichhornchen is proving particularly difficult) I am getting a bit faster at thinking of what to say in German conversations. (yay!)

Since language improvement goes both ways, as part of the summer research, one of the other internationals is being used as an English paper correcter. Looking over professional papers and fixing grammar/spelling/translation mistakes is weird. Looking over your supervisor's paper is really weird. It also tests your own understanding of English. (A lot of the time we came across sentences that were really awkward sounding, but maybe not technically incorrect)

And So the Work Continues

Yea, not much of anything happened today. I spent a lot of time trying to compute rotation matrices in my head. It was not particularly successful. (Pro Tip: Human checking of computer calculations is painful. It should be avoided at all costs)

Another pro tip: German keyboards are weird. (they do silly things like switch the 'y' and 'z' keys, shift ( )s left by one key, and add extra keys for their fancy dotted letters (these dots ¨ in case you didn't know)) Since the keyboard is weird you should find the (probably already installed) software that changes confused German keyboards into English ones. So many less headaches and typos.   

In other news, groceries are still really cheap (compared to the US). Maybe this is why they all have the money to buy water. Unfortunately, books remain a bit expensive. I guess for someone like me, it'll all even out.

Photo Journal: Zurich

 Zurich is a nice place to walk around and take pictures of. And has a lot of churches (where you can't take pictures in). I'm really tired, so you'll have to do that picture-to-word conversion factor to read the rest of this. (It's easily my longest one yet :P)

Zurich is really pretty

It also has really nice rose gardens

I have never seen water this color blue

This pathway was positioned purposefully to frame the clock tower

I still can't believe the water is so clear

Some views I don't think it's possible to get tired of

They're really hard to see, but there's a whole school of fish

The 'stained glass' windows here are made of geodes

City side view from the church tower

From this side you can even see the Alps

It was really, really high up

Finally, a church we can take pictures in

Swans have no fear in swimming right up to you

Old city shopping districts are abandoned on Sundays