The Return of the Roving Internationals

Germany has too many castles. In the US, giving people directions using castles as landmarks would be very clear communication. (though there might not be any useful directions one could give using castles) Here, however, it just serves as more points of confusion.

For example, this morning we were told to meet behind the old castle, where the bus would pick us up for our day trip to Heidelberg. Great. No problem, right? Wrong. We got there half an hour early, and were really glad we did. After walking around 3 different "castles" that bordered bus areas in around a two block area in downtown Stuttgart, we finally found the correct area. (Conveniently distinguished by the massive gathering of international college-age students speaking every language except German)

I had actually already been to Heidelberg once before, when I was here visiting my uncle, but as we walked around the only thing I managed to remember/recognize from the last time I was there, was the student kiss chocolates. That left a good portion of the city open to re-exploration.

The majority of the time was preplanned by the international student program. We started with a nice ferry ride up the river. With our group added to the regular ferry group, we probably almost reached on average the average age of Germany. (ie there were a lot of senior citizens, tiny children but no middle aged adults) Their comments (made oh so secretly in German) ranged from speculating about our purpose on the ferry (we were clearly members of the dangerous"teenage" species they had heard about) to a rather in depth literary discussion which I was, sadly, unable to completely follow.

Arriving in Heidelberg we got to eat lunch (finally- it was almost 1pm) at a popular German-student restaurant. Their entire tables looked like overly graffitied desks in certain ancient lecture halls. There was graffiti on the graffiti.

Because walking after eating comes highly recommended, we then immediately went on a walking tour of Heidelberg seeing such sights as: a monkey statue (simultaneously bringing you luck, dissing some long dead ruler of the north and elevating everyone's education through archaic German poetry), the pedestrian bridge (to be honest, I was distracted by the view and didn't hear anything. I think maybe the river flooded a few times. They blamed some volcano in Iceland) and the student prison (since real prison might've actually worked, they needed to come up with their own system to make sure it didn't).

The view from the bridge was really distracting

With the little amount of free time left we walked the length of their pedestrian main street (supposedly the longest in Europe) snacking on delicious cake (without forks) and buying gummi bears in new exciting flavors. (but not the spicy ones, because that's just weird)

Local cakes are really tasty

Meeting the Locals

Instead of working at the university today, I had the opportunity to visit (with my pseudo adviser, since my real adviser is absent this week) a small forklift manufacturing company. The project he's consulting with looks at the oscillations of the forklift under load (as in over a ton) at various extended heights (up to 13 meters. That's really really tall in feet)

It was a really big forklift, in a really big room

As a EECS major, I found this fascinating. It had everything shiny - awesome sensors, clean control code, colorful diagrams (they even meant something!), and an impressive looking system. I guess you had to be there to truly appreciate it, since whenever I tried to explain it, people for some reason got this dazed and bored look.

It's a looooong way down

Though that might have had more to do with the thinking required on a weekend. Trying to avoid getting lost in a forrest, we opted this weekend to go with a native Stuttgartian into the city. (Though it might not have been as pretty, we didn't get lost and got to see a lot more of the city's culture)

We started at a nice restaurant, but that was really only to eat dinner. Our first "official" stop of the evening was (for me).. a bookstore! We couldn't stay long though- our host for the night was beginning to think we were nerds or something (he had no idea what he was getting into), and a few really wanted beers.

In search of drinks, we ended up at sky beach. It's this 'sandy' (it's really, really fake looking white/blue sand) area on top of a building. Despite being basically nothing like a beach, it was a good place to relax, watch the sun set and wait for the clubs/bars to open.

At this point, the group split. Some people decided since they had to get up 'early' (7:30 isn't thaaaat early.... well maybe it kinda is, but who cares?) so they were going to leave. Or they had to check email. (lame) So it was just the host, one other research intern and me left.

Since it was still a bit too early to go anywhere, we spent time walking around the older parts of Stuttgart until we got hungry again- since we were loosely in the area, we got Döner. Döner is turkish. and amazing. It's probably the one food I'll actually miss when I go back to MIT.

Having finally wasted enough time, we made our way back to a bar where most of the international students hang out. From what I saw tonight, it looked more like it was where basically everyone hangs out. There was no room inside, or by the door outside. People spilled around the pub in a giant mob at least 3-4 times wider than the building itself.

It was a nice night out though, and since everyone was just standing around outside, it was really easy to get to know people. This was good since we got to meet our host's friends and sing a few people happy birthday as they turned a year older at midnight. It was also a bit unfortunate as one guy really wanted to buy one of the group's jackets. (He was fairly persistent. It was almost amusing if it wasn't so bizarre)

I think I've finally experienced Stuttgart like a local. Now all I need to do is magically convince myself to get up tomorrow like a local and not be late.

On the Merits of Sleep

Turns out, getting sleep is important. When you're rested you don't fall asleep sitting up staring at your computer screen. (Most of the time at least) I didn't think it was possible to sleep sitting up straight. I think I surprised everyone in the room when I sort of fell forward onto the desk. It was maybe time for me to get a nap, and work later. Luckily, my adviser was pretty understanding - as long as I put in the time when I wasn't falling asleep, he didn't care if I worked at the institute or on my laptop later.

Which meant afternoon naps for me. :D yay. I don't know why I haven't done any sort of napping before- I mean, they're so nice, and convenient. Probably because I had something to do. Like classes. Or sailing practice.

I think I might've been able to get through today if I hadn't had to get up so early after the 4am meeting. Throughout the summer, us internationals are invited about once a week to tour some lab or department around the institute.

This morning we toured the applied optics lab. It was actually fairly interesting - they explained how they use the interference between the phases of light waves to determine the thickness of objects and then create holographic images of them, or study minute details of the surface, or grab yeast cells with light and move them around, or rotate them in 3D. It was pretty cool. We even got to go through some of the basement which had exposed piping and cabling on the ceiling. It felt like I was back at MIT.

Hangingout with the USA

Today was a fairly lazy day. Since I was still working through finding the one bug in my.. many.. rotation matrices, I couldn't exactly say I was "enthusiastic" or "excited." I mean, I'm a CS person. I don't really care so much about how to change a vector in the frame of the joint from the position of the base to a vector from the platform in the frame of the world. I mean, I see it's useful, but actually figuring out all the right rotations... (especially when you can only rotate in specific directions depending on the joint - and it matters which order rotating x then y != rotating y then x. Though computer correctly, either can get you to the right place. ><

What it looks like to be verifying your model's accuracy

Also my computer is slow. Like reaaaaalllllllllyyyy slow. It's often the case that I'll click something and then get to wait around 30 seconds before something happens. It just sort of sets the mood for it to be a lazy day.


As a group of internationals, we've been trying hard to get a good "German experience." I guess that it was a bit too much though for some of our non-German speakers. So today instead of going to a German restaurant, we went to.... an Asian place. Now I was the one who didn't know what people were talking about. It was a good reminder to take it a bit slower with the people who didn't know the language.

The reason though, that this post is so late/early, is because today there was a meeting to plan Simmons' REX events. (A dorm-recruitment thing that happens before classes start in the fall at MIT) Since people are all split up around the world for the summer, they decided to have the meeting at 10pm. EST. Which works out to be 4am. woooo! (yea, I'm not sleepy at all...)

Unfortunately due to some previously mentioned internet issues (current working hypothesis at least), I wasn't able to join in on the discussion. Maybe next time I'll try from somewhere else on campus. Though going somewhere else on campus seems a little sketch at 4am. (no 24 hour library D: ) 

Books, Books, Books

I like reading. Probably too much, but I don't believe in such a horrific idea. Hence, I continued (from yesterday) my search for books. First off, I went back to the small probably-not-a-chain book store (hard to tell, but it looked.. smaller?) and checked out... the middle school grade range. woo! By reading the first few pages of different books, I discovered my reading level in German was about that of a 7th graders. I feel so smart. ><

I was also looking for some stuff in English. I was originally going to download books to an eReader, but I've run into this cool I-have-no-interenet problem. So, back to paper. (I'm actually not too upset about this particular side affect). However, the small bookstore didn't have English books, so I tried to follow their directions to a different book store.

However, I know almost nothing about how Stuttgartians? refer to their towns/ surrounding villages, so I went the wrong way. Despite that, I found a book store with a similar sounding name. It was even a bookstore I didn't expect to exist. You see, unlike in American malls where all the shops are listed on every floor, in the Schwaben Galerie, only shops on that floor are listed on the sign. SO WEIRD.

After being directed at that store back to where I had come from, they suggested... the library. It was around the main train station and was a cube. I "couldn't miss it." They clearly hadn't met me.

First I had to decipher "main train station." I was in Vahingen. Which had Vahingen Hauptbahnhof (main station) then there was the Hauptbahnhof in downtown Stuttgart. Then there was Hauptbahnhofs for every other tiny village-town-district thing like Vahingen. After staring at the map for around 5 minutes, I found a station labeled "Stadtbibliothek".. yay libraries!

Taking the instructed route (S Bahn, then U Bahn) seemed way too simple, so I of course decided to walk from the Hauptbahnhof to the library. It was in the area, right? So they couldn't be thaaaat far apart. And they weren't

But I literally almost walked right past it (the giant gray cube and all -- literally a cube. It's surprisingly easy to get lost/confused inside.) In the salesperson's defense, there was quite a bit of construction blocking the way. And it did say LIBRARY (in English even) in big bright shiny letters.

There were a lot of cranes

The final barrier between me and books and DVDS (in German and English, can be checked out for four weeks) was getting a library card. Just like in the US, you needed proof of residence. You also needed a passport. I had one of the two. (but they were nice and accepted a weird PDF saying some generic things about where I would be living as proof I was living in Stuttgart) So, for 4 euro/ month I can now check out items from the library! (I'm actually really, really, really excited about this :D :D :D :D :D... can you tell? :D :D :D )

If at First You Don't Succeed...

Today was a day of second tries. For the project, I was trying to get was working on Friday morning (but not Friday afternoon) to work again. I'm now ALMOST to where I should've been on Friday. Have I mentioned how much I enjoy debugging? (A whole lot. It's like totally my most favorite thing in the whole wide world. blegh) Currently I can change some of my variables by using some cool functions (very badly/not at all documented) in Matlab. But not all of them. And I can't figure out why. Debugging is great.

Since everything was closed yesterday, I went to get groceries today. So did everyone else. It was a massive pilgrimage to the grocery store. For me though, I got to take a second shot at getting on the bus, after forgetting my bus pass. (getting things right the first time would be too easy).

Safely (though a bit wet- it's raining here. again. I thought it was summer?) arriving in the center of Vahingen, I go first to find a bookstore. I like to read. A lot. I also didn't bring that many books with me. And it's been a WHOLE WEEK. So, I needed to find a bookstore. Unfortunately, unlike American bookstores which stay open fairly late any day of the week, the few ones I had marked on my super deatailed sketched-on-the-back-of-my-hand map closed before I got there. So I'll have to try again.

The grocery store, more importantly perhaps, was open though. Stocking up with enough food for the week, I re-discovered the tiny book section they had. Despite the small selection, they did have a few titles I was interested in. I ended up going for a book I hoped would be at a middle-school range reading level: a translated version of The Host by Stephanie Meyer. If her writing is anything like people complain about, I might actually have a chance of getting though this book.

Going to See the Polar Bears (try 2)

Waking up early in the morning is hard. Waking up early in the morning after hiking all day yesterday and getting back late is really hard. However, if you know there's going to be a brass ensemble at the church service you're waking up for AND waking up before everyone else means you get an actually hot shower, it's almost worth it. (No, I am no longer a morning person)

Since we were all so tired from yesterday's excursion, we decided to take it easy today. Destination: park. Goal: relax. After meeting up with the later risers, we enjoyed some late breakfast-lunchy food in front of a (different) brass ensemble. Apparently Stuttgart is a major jazz city.

The brass ensemble sounded amazing

I guess when I walked around the park last Sunday, I sort of didn't pay too much attention to how far apart everything was. I mean there's the first park, where we saw some really cute little ducklings, and then over a suspension bridge to a slightly larger park- with a river. Then another bridge which will eventually deposit you by the main station. (but not until 2021)

Following that, a rather long stretch of park. This bit is large enough to have some interesting attractions for the easily bored - like cafes and restaurants, playgrounds (with seesaws! and swings!), and giant chess boards. (comes complete with ALL the pieces AND free unsolicited advice from old Germans who have nothing better to do than critique your chess playing non-ability) ((We totally didn't even lose though - after a rather horrific blood bath of pieces we ended up stalemating with only the kings left on the board!))

 Our eventual goal however was the zoo, so we had to keep going... and going.... and going. Unfortunately from the direction we were coming, the entrance was at the further end of the zoo from us. Fortunately, parts of the zoo border along the park, so we could (attempt to) identify the animals as we walked toward the entrance.

Unlike in America, the zoos here aren't free entry or cheap. For an adult it was 14.00! For a student, it was 7, so we were at least considering it. However, because we couldn't prove we were CURRENTLY studying, our student IDs didn't give us any student discount. Since we actually are students (and broke/cheap) we decided to come back later with verification of our summer student status.

Unable to see polar bears, we consoled ourselves with some nice slices of cake- rhubarb, plum and apple. (separate, not all together). Eating them put all of us into a bit of a food coma. Or maybe that was all the hiking yesterday. Either way, we all just sort of sat down. And then didn't get up. For an hour. Luckily, that's not weird in Germany.