January 28, 2009: Vertically Entertained

Today was the earliest that I have ever been to work on a coop, 6:25. It was not too bad, said hi to the factory workers and enjoyed a coffee. I finally got another project to work on today so now I will spend less time looking up random engineering articles online.

Funny anecdote. There is a guy who I work with who knows English (a thousand times better then my German) but struggles along more then some. One of the things that I got a giggle out of today was when he was describing a processing step and repeatedly referred to this guy, who was grinding a piece of metal, with the wrong gender. For example we were standing right next to him, “now look how she does this step” or “she will spend all morning doing this.” After a few iterations of this mistake I kindly corrected him and now he has his “hims” and “hers” straightened out.

I left work at 3:10, because I showed up so early, and headed to the climbing wall. The wall was mostly empty except for my climbing buddy Ollie and a dad trying, terribly, to teach a crowd of rowdy kids how to climb. Ollie and I climbed for three hours and so hard that when I left the gym I could hardly turn the knob. A great day deserves a great nights rest. Goodnight.

January 27, 2009: Internet Down!

So it appears that Mr. NETGEAR, the owner of my Internet connection did not like me on his wireless. A way that I like to look at is that using your neighbors Internet for email and Internet is like borrowing a cup of sugar. However, in my greed I admit that I had upped my usage of the wireless to renting movies on itunes and torrenting movies. I think that this kind of Internet use is more like borrowing your neighbors sugar truck.

I got home and found myself with no Internet. Later I saw a guy on the opposite side of the courtyard with his window open shaking his fist at me. Alas I have no Internet at home now. Bummer.

January 26, 2009: Finding Things to do

Got up went to work and figured out that all the projects that I was working on needed other people to mail documents or finish a step in the construction process. I had a quiet empty day of reading articles on-line and chatting with coworkers.

January 25, 2009:Australia Day!!

I got up early and went for a run along the bottom of an old castle wall situated not far from my house. At the bottom is a small creek with a cobblestone path running parallel to it. The path meanders along the creek bed and occasionally crosses the creek with a little wooden bridge. This was nice, it was about 0 degrees Celsius and sunny out but it felt not too cold once the blood got flowing. I got back did the rest of my little workout and started my day. I was to meet Viola at 11 to get some German speaking in.

 

Just on time she arrived and we headed out to Kaiserswerth Park a neat little town north west of Düsseldorf right on the Rhine river. We walked along the Rhine and talked mostly in English for an hour or two then headed down town for some Starbucks. We walked along the Kö, a road lined with crazy expensive clothes and populated by old men and old ladies with fur coats and 2000 Euro shoes. Starbucks was a good time and afterwards Viola drove me back to Ratingen so that I could get ready for my next adventure of the day. Australia Day!

The same people from my previous adventure at the Irish Pub (Dusseldorf Expats meet up group) were hosting, together with the Dusseldorf couchsurfers a grand celebration of Australia Day on the shore of the Rhine River. I figured out where this was being held thanks to my great friend Goolge and has on my way. One S-Bahn and one U-Bahn trip later I found myself what I thought was quite close to where I was meant to be. I ended up walking for quite some time through a nice neighborhood filled with classy cars and classy homes. I walked past the yacht club and the outdoor pool, closed for the season of course, and finally and finally made it to a group of about 19 people mingling on the shore. They had a small portable barbeque and a decent size fire going.

 

“Hi, I’m Tom from Canada, is this the Australia Day celebration?” immediately I was invited into the circle and met with handshakes and “Hello I’m . . . from …” I met people from Pakistan, the USA, New Zeeland, Canada and of course Australia. There was Germans there too who knew people through the couch surfing thing or just wanted to work on their English. I would say the entire crowd was between 19 and 35 so I fit into the lower age demographic. Everyone had a different story to tell and it was great to meet people so excited about living in Germany. The Auzies made sure to yell the national anthem, sing songs and wave flags while we listened to Australian music and ate, from what I gather traditional Australian food, lamb and potatoes wrapped in tin foil cooked in the fire. I did not get around to trying the lamb, but enjoyed some baked potatoes and some beers. I met a nice girl named Patina from Germany who was quick to tell me the best clubs to go to and even offer me some German lessons, I got distracted by a rouge Frisbee and never got her contact info though.  After 5 hours of socializing it was getting cold and people decided to move things to a pub downtown.

 

I got a ride with a nice guy named JJ, a girl from Australia and a guy named Ryan from Mexico. We talked of Mexican politics and German beer and finally arrived at the pub. Here we continued the socializing until 23:00 when I decided to call it a night and head home because it takes me an hour to get home from there. I got home at 0:30 and hit the hay hard. 

January 24, 2009: Bottle Depot Findings

 

The goals for the day were to clean up, do laundry, return the bottles to the bottle depot, learn some German and finish Jurrasic Park. All the cleaning and washing went down in its standard fashion. I finished Jurrasic Park (a great book by the way) and gave myself a pat on the back as this is the first novel that I have had the time and motivation to finish in the past three or four years!

 

My trip to the bottle depot consisted of me attempting to communicate with a guy who did not speak English and I ended up pointing at the bottles shrugging my shoulders and looking confused. He understood this and led me to the spot where I put my bottles. As I walked back with him I realized that this was not just a bottle depot but a drink depot too. I looked around. All the prices here were crazy low. I found a 20 pack of 500ml bottles of my favorite Altbier for 10.5 Euro. I had been missing out. Anyways I did not have the motivation to walk home with 10L of beer at this point and I continued with my chores.

 

Time to learn some German. I realized by this point that most everyone my age in this country speaks English so I have set my sights lower then being able to carry a full conversation in German. I find the most frustrating thing about not knowing the language is having nice old ladies ask you something at the bus stop and not having a clue what they are saying or people in a store asking a basic question that I do not know how to respond to. My goal is achieve this ultra-basic conversational German in the next couple weeks. To begin I watched MTV Germany; I like MTV Germany because it is a nice mix of English music videos, German commentary and the odd German music video. The only problem is that the only commercials are these really annoying commercials telling you to punch a code into your cell phone in order to get a lame X-Ray scanner video for your cell phone to “impress your friends”. I maintain, as Reston told me once, that I refuse to be friends with people that buy 5 Euro X-Ray Scanner videos or pay 1 Euro every day to get a new quote delivered to your “Handy”. Anyways I also listened to some German tapes and looked over my text book in preparation for my German/English exchange with Viola from work tomorrow.

January 23, 2009: Tom’s On the Rocks

Today was a fun day. I left for work at 6:21 the earliest that I ever have. I left my bus pass at home and instead of missing the bus I decided to pay the 2.2 Euro each way and save the 30 min of my life that I would have wasted going home. Work was uneventful because not much was going on in my part of the factory for some reason. There is good prospects of some really fun work on the horizon though, so I am pumped for that.

 

I left work at 15:27 and headed home. I stepped off the bus and into the light rain. My next objective was to get some eats. I hit up the Aldi bargain supermarket. Here I got the standard German food, pork, bratwurst, cheese and a bottle of 2 Euro wine (not the cheapest one there). I got home and cracked the wine, fried up some pork and made some spaghetti sauce. It was great. After talking to my mom on skype I decided to check out the Ratingen nightlife and went in search of a bar.

 

This is when the good times began to roll. I walked up and down two of the main shopping streets in town which have café/bars dispersed between the clothing stores, bakeries and the dozen cell phone stores. Most of the places that I saw were either empty or filled with old people drinking wine on tables with white tablecloths, not my scene. I eventually saw a place that was filled with mostly young people and seemed to be pretty happening, Tom’s On the Rocks. I walked in and immediately was hot with the inevitable wave of cigarette smoke. Three out of every five people were lit up, no joke. Despite the thick smoke the bar had good music and fair prices, 3Euro for a pint. So I took a seat. About half of the way into my Wheat beer I turned to the two guys next to me and asked them about where the best bar to go to in Ratingen was. This turned into a two hour long conversation on topics ranging from type 2 composite pressure vessels to the legal maximum velocity for paintball guns in Germany and the US (240ft/s Vs. 300ft/s). After a beer or two they, Sasha and Markus, decided to take me to another bar, Comic Bar.

 

Comic Bar was really neat. The walls were covered in newspaper and house music was blaring. This bar was only slightly larger then my apartment and jammed with people. It was in the basement of a shopping center. I continued my conversation with the two guys that I met and met some more nice German folk at this bar too. We left at 1:00, parted ways, and I left for home.

 

January 22, 2009: Lazy Donor Day

Today was slow. Not too much went down, I enjoyed a donor with the head of finance out here. I read some Jurrasic Park on the bus to and from work. I got home and enjoyed a bottle of Germany’s finest and hit the hay early.

January 21, 2009: Overhand Knots Save a Gangsta

Another fun day has come and gone. I got up early so that I could get off work at 4 and go climbing. I got a ride home from work with Mr. Sikorski (can't pronounce his first name so I call him Herr Sikorski). He recommended that I look for a used bike at the store directly adjacent to the train station. There was some nice cruiser bikes for 45 Euro, I think that I am going to pick one up after pay day.

I took the train after Mr. Sikorski dropped me off at the station. At the downtown station I picked up some deodorant (forgot one side again) and a tall Earl Grey tea at Starbucks. While at Starbucks I enjoyed a plentiful Internet harvest and got my talking to friends and family in for the day. I took the U-Bahn to the climbing wall stop, walked a while and finally made it there.

I walked into the climbing gym and something did not seem right. In front of me stood six or seven teenagers wearing XXL bunny hugs, jeans down to their knees, baseball caps with stickers still on them and yes one was wearing the stereotypical XXL Lakers jersey. These guys were climbing? I investigated further. I looked at the belayer uncomfortably wearing a harness and clumsily using a gri gri and noticed that there was overhand knots approximately every meter down the tailing end of the rope fed out of the gri gri. What could these be for? Never in my experience as a climbing instructor had I seen this before. One of the teens reached the top of the wall and his belayer reached for the handle of the gri gri. Although the kid climbing the wall was G'd up from the feet up I could still see that under those baggy clothes was a heavy chunky kid. The belayer was not so big.

The belayer pulled the handle and the climber shot down the wall. As a response to this the belayer let go of the rope with both hands. The rope slipped through the gri gri until it got caught on the overhand knot. This ugly process made my inner climbing instructor cringe in pain. This apparently is how the instructor was teaching the kids to climb. I reiterate that in Germany people at the wall regularly climb using Munter hitches, figure eight belay devices and I even saw a guy solo lead climb the wall today. I guess there is no lawyers in Germany. That is the end of my climbing rant, don't worry.

After those shenanigans I met up with a guy named Thomas who is an electrical engineer here in Dusseldorf and we enjoyed some climbing. I headed home and after a brief skype sesh with ma and Sarah hit the hay.

January 20, 2009: Planes Trains and Beer Troubles

Today Kate and I finished up travel bookings for Kate, Eric and my trip through Europe. I am hella-stoked. They arrive in Düsseldorf spend two days here then Paris for two days then Amsterdam for two days before we return to Düsseldorf. A whirlwind tour no doubt but I think that some real good times will result, plus it will be nice to see some familiar faces. Just today Martin at work was making fun of Americans for doing Europe in one week, I guess I am one of them.

 

In other news I found a new perch for my Internet harvest, my kitchen windowsill. Today the crop pushed past the four bar region briefly. To counter this excitement I have to report disaster from the other side of the field. Today I poured a pint of Altbier, turned the bottle around to the side with the label and there it was, Alkoholfrei. Even to non-German speaker this is a no brainier, I had made a mistake. I finished it anyways but I was left unsatisfied. Some Jurassic Park before bed should make me feel better. Over and out.

 

 

 

Atomium: My first picture of me in Europe

January 19, 2009: Nanaimo Bar Relaxation

At lunch today I went out with Martin and bought some eats at the Real supermarket. He again spent the ride out to the store tearing apart the American auto industry and telling me that the Germans make the best cars. His straightforwardness and passion for his job really make him a nice fellow to hang around at the office. Anyways I stayed late talking to Calgary on the phone and left for home at 6:30pm.

 

One of the absolutely amazing things about Germany that anyone who has not lived there probably does not know is that most of the grocery stores sell hammer-drills. That’s right, hammer-drills. I spent ages looking for one of these in Calgary but here they sit right next to the eggs under a big sign with a price on it. I love Germany.

 

I got home tonight and made up some Nanaimo bars to bring into work, hope that they taste good. Well, keep it real y’all it is bed time for me.

January 18, 2009: Atomium, Manneken Pis and Riot Practice

Today was great. I got up early, 7:30, and headed down for a fairly good free continental breakfast. I packed up the little stuff that I had, threw my sheets in the hamper and went down to the main lobby to meet Richard. After a couple minutes he came down and we were off. It took two metros to get to the fair grounds but man was it worth it. We got out of the station and saw it, the Atomium. It is a 100m tall replica of an iron molecule magnified 165 billion times. The Atomium was made for the 1958 world fair and me being an engineer and Richard being a chemist we took particular interest in it. 6 Euro got us in and we piled into the elevator along with a bunch of other tourists. The elevator in the Atomium is the fastest in Europe at 5m/s. We shot up to the top of the molecule and got off for a sweet panoramic view of the city. Then we took the elevator back down and hopped on the escalators that ascended the angled bonds of the structure. It was really neat seeing all the exhibits on the 1958 world fair and exchanging talk of Canada vs. Australia. Our visit was soon over and we headed out through the rain to take some pictures and head back into the city. We shook hands and parted ways.

 

I then headed out to see my final two objectives: Mannekin Pis and the Parc du Cinquantenaire. The later of the two is a big park with huge stone arches and a massive parabolic wall. This was the setting for my favorite part of the day. On my way there I was approached by a police officer who asked me something in French and when I responded that I did not speak the language he flagged me on. It turned out that there was going to be a riot control practice for the EU riot squad. This was hella-bad-ass. There was this massive police tank with turret mounted machine guns, bulletproof glass and massive tires; the horse division of the police; a ton of 4x4 police trucks and loads of Mercedes Benz Sprinter Vans filled with dudes holding plastic shields. Wow, this rocks I thought to myself and carried on. The gates and the Mannekin Pis were sweet too. My day was nearing an end and I headed back to the train station to rest my feet and read some Jurassic Park. Four trains and five hours later I was home and I collapsed on my bed.

January 17, 2009: Brussels sprouts and Reggae Shouts

Up at 4:45am to the full blast thrashing of Children of Bodom. Early start for what I hope to be a great day. I caught a train into the main station an hour early for my train to Cologne as I wanted to be sure not to miss it. The train station at 5am is really one of the wonders of society. Where else do you find seniors in formal dress, hammered people drinking beer and yelling obscenities and regular people heading out to work for the day? I sat enjoying a cup of coffee from the 24 hour Mcdonelds at the train station while two eastern European guys (17-18 years old) exchanged all the most foul things that they knew in the English language and then yelled them for the world to hear. This really amused me.

 

I bought a copy of JP (Jurassic Park) shout out to Emily, my first book that I intend to read this year, at the little book store in the station and then proceeded to the train platform, way to early to catch my train. The train ride was dark filled with genetically engineered dinosaurs and pretty uneventful. I got to Aachen Hbf and switched trains to a shabby looking 1970’s era flat-fronted train designed for Liege-Guillemins. At this point the language of choice immediately switched from one that I understand 5% of to one that I understand less of, French. I figured out the reason that the train was not as nice; it was French. I got off at a semi-under-construction train station somewhere in Belgium and waited for half an hour to catch the next train into Brussels. While at the train station I enjoyed some world-class people watching. At the train station there was an old man with a box of guinea pigs that he took out one by one and kissed and the least intimidating gangster I have ever seen; he was 5’2”, white, had black spiked hair, overweight, had a blingen ear ring and a hardcore Air-Jordan track suit. I tried not to laugh.

 

After the train ride I headed out of the station and outwards to see the city. Brussels is a much older city then Düsseldorf and everything seems to have a brass statue on it. I saw the Grand Central Square and went into the breweries of Belgium museum. It turns out that the museum is extremely small (about twice the size of The Castle) so my 6 Euro tour did not take that long. It involved a lengthy movie about the origins and types of Belgian beer so it was not all bad. As I left I picked up my pint of beer, that I did not know that I would get, and sat back on my wooden 18^th century keg-stool and took it all in. Next I was off to find some eats, this is where the biggest mistake of the day came about. I headed in desperation for food, having not eaten since my Mars Bar on the train, and thought that I really wanted French fries. I ended up going to a donor place and eating the Sultans platter for 8.5 Euro; way too much.

 

After my eating I checked into the Hostel and put my bag in a sketchy bag-room in the basement because I could not check in until 3pm. I continued to explore the city for a few hours, took some pictures then headed back to the hostel to check in. I got into the room and was greeted by the smell of a fat guy after a half-marathon. It was gross, every breath was painful, turns out one of the guys in the room did not know the meaning of deodorant and on top of that was a genetic freak of nature with extra large stink glands. Luckily he soon left and I was able to enjoy a siesta and read a little JP. I got up and headed down stairs and was greeted by a reggae band, freakin sweet. I headed out and got a dinner consisting of a “Grande Frites” and mayo. It was decent, but afterwards came the best tasting thing I had had in a long time, Belgian chocolate. It was like a party in my mouth and everyone was invited. 150g of the stuff lasted no time at all and I was damn happy at the end of it. Well, it is now time for some more beer and some more reggae, I will finish this entry tomorrow. Go out and do something spectacular today. Good luck and God’s speed.

 

I am back, yesterday ended earlier then I expected. I was talking to Marija on MSN while taking a break from the reggae and an Australian guy came into the room, his name was Richard. Richard and I got to talking and it turned out that he wanted to go to the same place as me tomorrow, the Atomium. I was excited to have a travel buddy and decided that because he wanted to leave early that I should get an early night in. I was originally going to go to a rave that ran from 2am to 7am with two American girls that I met at the hostel. Oh well. I read a chapter of JP and hit the hay.

January 16, 2009: Vegetarian Preparation

Today was another day of the German experience. Work was full of learning and emailing Calgary with no expectation of a response because of the 9-hour time change. After work I took it easy, had a nap, talked to my mom over a broken internet connection and packed my bag for Belgium. I had a vegetarian dinner for the first time since my arrival because I did not wan to thaw out any meat.

I have big expectations for Belgium even though I am only there for less then 48 hours. I really want to visit the Automium, have some French fries (they were invented there), brusselsprouts and beer.

January 15, 2009: English spoken and Belgium broken

Here I am again, another great day in Germany. Today I had the opportunity to correspond with my colleagues in Calgary and get the inside scoop on a project I am working on. This means I can finally start what I am meant to do at work. I read lots of documents today and managed to fit some drafting in too. Today my boss sat down at his desk and casually lit his pipe. This is fine in Germany. He makes smoking look bad ass, don’t worry mom I am not going to pick it up.

 

After work was when my fun began. I went out shopping at the bargin store for my groceries and managed to pick up a surprising amount for 25 Euro. I then went next door, to the more expensive grocery store, and picked up what I thought were the ingredients for Nanaimo bars. Turns out what I thought was graham cracker crumbs was sugar, bummer. I got home ate some food and headed out to meet some actual English speaking people.

 

I showed up at O’Rielly’s Irish Pub at around 9:30 and the place was already shoulder-to-shoulder young English speaking people. One guy immediately grabbed my hand and began introducing me to all sorts of people for the US, Germany, Belgium and the UK. It was a great time; I met some new people and exchanged some email addresses. It turns out that this is a regular event; I will be sure to be a regular. After these shenanigans I went to the train station to head home. There was a deal on train tickets to Belgium, so I bought some. I am leaving this Saturday at 6:40am and returning Sunday at 16:30. Boo Yeah.

January 14, 2009: Sore and Loving it

I caught the late bus into work today, made it in at 8:30. I got to design a new project that I am working on with Martin’s computer while he was in a meeting. Martin is the only one in Dynetek who has 3D modeling software on his computer and it is a German program called OneScene or something similar to that. Anyways I was having a devil of a time figuring it out. I went to the post office with Julia and picked up some post cards at lunch as well as to the bakery to pick up what I thought was a date square but ended up not being one. By the way expect cards in the mail if I have your addresses.

 

I caught the bus downtown after work and went to the Starbucks to get some internet time in. As a side note Germans have a much higher tolerance for PDA (Public Displays of Affection) then Canadians. I was sitting opposite a couple who I figured had just got engaged and for the entirety of my hour long internet harvest they were sucking face just five feet in front of me. This is also common place on the train platform, at bus stops and pretty much anywhere there is room. Anyways, I got my internet fix and headed out to the train, but I really had to go to the bathroom. I decided to go to the public train station bathroom. The bathroom cost 70 Euro Cents and was rather clean. I got into the stall and the person to my right started speaking in what sounded like some sort of satanic language and the person on my left proceeded to light up some crack. Hmmm . . . sketchy. Well time to go, I hopped on the U-Bahn and headed to the climbing wall.

 

My buddy Peter was just heading out after a 3 hour climbing sesh, so I bid him adue and proceeded to ask people if they needed another belayer for there group. The first group of three that I ask gratuitously agreed for me to join them and I enjoyed a great afternoon of conversation and climbing. I made it home in a slightly longer then expected hour and a half, had some goulash soup and now it is time for bed. Please send my your address to tominatoris@shaw.ca if you want some sweet sweet German post cards. Tommy: out.

January 13, 2009: Trip Planning and Starbucks Drinking

Today at work I asked Martin, one of my fellow engineers at work who travels home to Berlin every second weekend, if he would take me along with him on one of his next trips. I asked him this in an email along with some work related questions. Within a few minutes he was at my desk; I don’t actually have a desk, I work on a laptop in the secondary meeting room. Martin began enthusiastically talking about taking me on the Autobahn, this was quickly followed by him telling me about the compression ratio in his modified Mazda MX-3 and why I should wait to drive it on the Autobahn instead of his winter car, a diesel Mazda 3. He then spent 15 minutes telling me how terrible American made cars were. So . . . long story short I am going to Berlin towards the end of the month, if I can coordinate it with my trip with Nancy (a friend I met through Sarah and have yet to actually meet) to Belgium.

 

I also continued the process of planning Kate, Eric and my trip to Paris and Amsterdam over Spring Break. I booked us into a hostel called St. Christopher’s in Paris and the Flying Pig in Amsterdam. I also partially dealt with setting up the travel in-between all these locations. Oh logistics, how I loath thee. Well a big shout out to Vic town and to Langdon Auger for reminding me of home with your dope beats.

January 12, 2009: I Fall in Love

Today I was given the task of drafting up a new prototype at work; but I did not have CAD! No problem, I would draft this by hand, it can’t be that hard. I proceeded to sketch out some rough shapes but could not line anything up properly with out a ruler. I headed to the supply room and there she was, the Rotring Geometry Set Square with Handel. This is by far the best ruler that I have ever used. For four hours today I was making drawings for this project and literally every fifteen minutes I found a new feature, a new scale in a place I had never seen one before, lines to measure distances between parallel lines, a scale set in the center of the ruler to evenly space objects from a midpoint; she had it all.

 

After work I went to the discount grocery store that Julia, the Dynetek secretary, had told me about. The prices were the best that I had seen yet in Germany so I picked up a large thing of spatsel, milk, bread and 30 Toffifies all for less the 5 Euro. One thing that has been hard for me to adjust to in Germany is the brutal speed at which German cashiers operate. There is a small 2 square foot platform behind the cashier where the groceries go after they are scanned. You are expected to as quickly as possible put all the scanned items back into your cart without bagging them, and pay about 20 times faster then in Canada. By the time the last item enters your cart the lady is halfway through the next persons order. That was all the fun and excitement that went down today, see you all tomorrow.

PICS

Here are some of the pictures of my trip this far, not in order.

Legoland

My Favorite Staircase

Sun Sets on my Street

My Home Away From Home

What I wish was my Home Away From Home (Media Harbor)

January 11, 2009: Duisburg on a Budget

Today I got up with the goal of either heading south to Köln with my climbing friends to check out the wall there, or if that fell through go and explore another city that I had not seen yet that was within my transit pass area; with my bus pass I can travel one fare zone in any direction from Düsseldorf. I packed up a salami sandwich on some bread that I had made that morning from pre-made dough, my laptop, camera and ipod and I was out the door. I caught the S-Bahn into Düsseldorf and headed to the source of my only reliable Internet, Starbucks. Here I got my coffee fix and planned my journey. Today I would head northeast to Duisburg.

 

I got to the train platform and boarded the nicest train that I had been on up to this point in Germany. It was an RE class train, usually I only ride the R-trains. This means that the train stops at fewer stops, runs faster and smoother. These are double-decker trains as well. I was very at peace as I sat in the much comfier seat of the RE train and scooted along the track. I arrived sooner then expected, got off the train and started my adventure.

 

As most of you know, I sometimes lack a plan of attack when it comes to traveling places and this was no exception, I got off the train with no game plan at all. I really had no idea what there was in Duisburg, I did not even know how big the city was. That aside I got out of the station and naturally headed down the most important looking road. This lead me to a bunch of neat historical buildings, for example the theater house and several parliament buildings. The theater/opera was 124 Euro a seat and slightly out of my price range so I continued on. I saw the Duisburg TV tower, a sort of 1970’s looking tower with a geodesic teal blue top on it. There was an epic German made steel gate blocking me from approaching too close to the tower so I took a picture and continued on.

 

I went down a road lined with semi-dilapidated/partially burnt looking buildings lining the sides. I was about to turn around when I saw a sign that would change my trip.

 

The LEGOLAND DISCOVERY CENTER! Heck yes, there was a road sign pointing the way. I immediately decided to go. A few kilometers of walking lead to the building. There was a giant LEGO giraffe and a LEGO man on a park bench outside. I went in and was thoroughly disappointed to find out that it was a center for kids, not engineers! Plus it cost 10.50 Euro, not for me, I am a big kid now. I went down the road to the Museum Küppersmühle. I had no idea what the museum was for but I went in anyways. I paid my 4 Euro student entrance fee with only a slight feeling that it was an art museum and headed in.

 

This museum had some of the largest pieces of art that I had ever seen. There were photo prints of everything from busy offices, to the inside of opulent churches, to houses that were do dilapidated that they even put the castle to shame, it is possible I found out. My favorite pieces were a painting of swirled colors on a large canvas, an enormous painting of a Myan temple (40’x16’) painted with extremely thick paint and gold flake. The staircase of all things was my favorite part of the museum it was dark red concrete and reminded my of pictures of Caribou Canyon Arizona.

 

I left the museum, ate my sandwich by the river on a park bench and headed home. On the way back I stopped by the LEGOLAND shop to look around. It was great, they had all the LEGO sets that I thought were only legend, like the Millennium Falcon. I almost bought Reston a LEGO corkscrew and bottle opener but decided it was too expensive. Finally the day was over and I headed home. All the train connections went smoothly and I was home to 19a in no time. I did some laundry, and tried to harvest some Internet with moderate success. I now have to pick up my laundry fold it then I am off to bed. It is time for another great week of work at Dynetek Europe.

January 10, 2009: Lazy day in Ratingen

Today was characterized by a mild hangover, waiting for prospective tenants for the summer to come by and a relaxing walk/photo shoot around town.

 

Last night was the company New Years party. We went to XXL Bowling in Dusberg. I am terrible at bowling and last night was no exception, I managed to not come in last and was satisfied. All night I managed to pick up pieces of what people were saying and even had some English conversation come my way. I got some lessons in German over dinner and even an invite to exchange German for English lessons with one of the Controllers, which I gladly accepted. I figured out that Germans know how to drink beer, I was drinking one for every two that the 70 year old company accountant that was sitting next to me was drinking. As a foreigner I was obliged to try out the different varieties of liquor native to the region. The most extreme of these being Killapish (I am not sure of the spelling), this drink was rumored to have been developed by two German guys in a bomb shelter during world war two with nothing better to do then mix the random containers of things in the basement together to make booze. The translation of the drink name is “killer drink” because the guys were drinking this before they thought they were going to die. Anyways it was a great night and I got a ride home, together with the company electrician, with Julia the secretary who lives close by. We got home quite late and I did not have time to write much yesterday.

 

Today I lazily awoke at 9:30, cleaned up the house and waited for the prospective tenents to arrive. They were going to be late to I headed to the local “Rewe” grocery store to beef up food stash for the coming week. I got 44 Euro worth of everything from schnitzel to sauerkraut and headed home. The people came by to check out the place then I went out again for some fresh air and to take some pictures. I went over the bridge by my house and discovered a new shopping center and a bike store that I did not know existed. I got home again and carefully crafted myself a dinner of chicken, pasta and vegetables. I have no Bob to share food with so half went into the fridge for tomorrow.

 

Tomorrow I am going to hopefully meet up with the climbers to hit up a wall in another city. If not I think that I am just going to take the train until it looks interesting and go explore. Ahhh Germany.

 

By the way my address here is

 

Freiligrathring 19a

40878 Ratingen Germany

 

If anyone wants to send fan mail

January 8, 2009: BOWLING

Wow . . . another great day at the office. I rocked the socks off the German bowling and won second in the Canadian division of bowling. I am off to bed now, too much German beer post bowling, I will keep you up to date. Cheers all, Tom.

January 8, 2009: Multilingual Madness

Woke up to some Dr. Dre this morning, made me remember Victoria for some reason. At the bus stop a disgruntled old man gave the bus driver a piece of his mind thinking that the bus should have left earlier, turns out that his watch was wrong. I arrived at work and spent a lazy morning reading over material relevant to the project that I am working on. Had a pizza for the third day in a row, they are really good but a bit pricy at 5-8 Euro.

 

The best part of my day today started after lunch when Dr. Rau, Roman and myself piled into Dr. Rau’s Audi A6 and hit the Autobahn en route to one of the companies that Dynetek sub-contracts to. We were cruising at 140 km/h and I noticed that there was a small sticker on the speedometer, turns out that with the winter tires on the car was limited to a recommended 210 km/h. People were passing us going easily 190-200 km/h while we calmly pushed towards this warehouse in the middle of a rural area about an hour out of Lintorf.

 

We arrived, shook hands with the people who worked there and got a tour of the factory. The factory had a magical duo of machines, a CNC laser sheet cutter and a CNC laser tube cutter. I stood memorized by the high power laser as it went from engraving serial numbers to cutting elaborate shapes into sheet metal. There were also small welding machines designed to weld 1/8” to 1” stainless steel tubing, they were also fun to watch.

 

We arrived at the area of the factory designated to assembling Dynetek products. Everyone began discussing the details of the project in German as I looked around while trying to translate pieces of the conversation. Our client took me aside and tried to talk to me in French thinking that all Canadians speak French; he then switched to perfect English when he figured out that that was my language of choice/only language. He immediately continued the technical discussion in perfect English. Everyone else took a cue and switched to English. It is amazing here how so many people can speak all these languages so well. After the discussion we all shook hands and I was back on the Autobahn heading to Lintorf.

 

After a quick bus ride I bought some candy, vegetables, beer and onions and arrived at home. Tonight was a particularly good night for the Internet harvest and I was able to talk to both my mother and Sarah on Skype. I hope my mom can figure it out for next time. Well . . . goodnight world, see you again on the morrow.

January 7, 2009: Busses, Trains and Climbing

Today was another great day in Germany. Hopped the O16 Bus to work and squeezed in between all the school kids for the 21min ride to work. Düsseldorf has one of the best transit systems that I have ever seen. There is Trams and U-Bahns for the downtown region, S-Bahns for the longer distances and Buss routes blanketing the whole region. After a quiet day at work I caught the SB55 to Düsseldorf Hbf station then the U75 U-Bahn train to the climbing wall.

 

Climbing today was great! I got there and the pipes were frozen and therefore no water. The nice guy at the counter explained to me in broken English that the water was out so I can only do “small business” not “large business” in the toilet. Because of the lack of water I got a discount, only 8 Euro. At the climbing wall I met my buddies Ollie, Frank, Derek and Peter and did some sweet extreme Euro-climbing. I climbed by first 8 today, approximately 5.11c/d and I am on my way to an 8+. The best part of the night came when my new climbing friends invited me to come out climbing with them in Köln about an hour south of Düsseldorf. I am really excited. I just barely caught the U75 back to downtown then the S1 home. I bought a bottle of Cherry Brandy at the train station before I left, just finished a small glass; it was great.

 

Tomorrow at work I get to visit a Dynetek subsidiary to see how they do their thing. Killer.

 

January 6, 2009: Free Pizza and Getting Lost

Hello sports fans. Today I got to work slightly later then I would of liked due to my continuing lack of alarm clock. Once at work I set about reading some English user manuals and checking out the factory floor. A solid morning filled with the expected start-up busy work given at the start of all the co-ops that I have had thus far. Pizza was ordered for lunch and I enjoyed it with a TÜV auditor and my college Martin. We talked of the weather, accents and why not to sleep with girls from Saxony. Good times. On the way home I decided to stop for an alarm clock and in my typical manner managed to go the wrong way, fortunately the wrong way was towards my house. An hour of walking hampered my big plans to go rock climbing so I stayed home and made mashed potatoes, broccoli and bratwurst for dinner. An early night in order to have an early start to another day in my little cold slice of paradise.

January 5th: Germany is quite . . . German

Today was a day that just kept on getting better. That being said it started off quite poorly. I had trouble getting to bed last night and my lack of alarm clock at the moment kept my sleep light, as I had to get up at 8am in order to have time to get ready for work, I was meant to be there between 9 and 10.

I got up at 20 to nine, jumped in the shower and headed out the door. After my tiny banana breakfast I was at the bus stop just after the first bus that I should of caught left. The next bus decided not to show up so I headed up the bus line to the main depot and caught a bus at 9:40. For some reason the bus stopped about 15min from the depot at a station in “downtown” Lintorf and I thought that the driver waived us off and onto the bus in front of us because the suspension was making a strange grinding noise. Turns out that no I was meant to stay on the bus, the two busses headed off. 40min later I caught a bus and was on my way to work.

I showed up at Dynetek Europe and one of the friendly factory workers pointed me to the office. I met my new boss Rowan, a very nice German fellow, who showed me around the factory and the office. All the people that I met were among the friendliest of all the engineers that I have worked with. There was however one little surprise at work, it turns out that everyone speaks German as their first language at work here! This means that most documents and all machinery is labeled in German, yikes. I figured out that my first job is going to be to establish a systems assembly and testing facility and optimize the workflow of the place. This is going to be a challenging job due to the language barrier but I think that I can make the most of it.
I bought groceries in German after work, I was very proud of myself. I then made it halfway through my donor order before switching to English, damn. I still need to figure out how to ask to eat in the restaurant as opposed to taking it out. I am now at home and about to enjoy some Jagermeister. Today just keeps on getting better.

January 4, 2009

My legs hurt. Over the past couple days I have been walking for hours each day usually after taking the wrong tram or bus and trying to get back where I should be. My terrible sense of direction has really given me a work out. Today I got up at 11am after briefly (for 2 hours) getting up at 4am to eat some food and watch CNN. It turns out that despite me being proud of being able to order a coffee in German it may not be the best thing ever if I drink the coffee late at night.

 

Today I went to K21, the museum of modern art here in Düsseldorf. The basement had a massive display of Lawrence Weiner’s art. He was a painter, doodler and word artist from the 70’s and 80’s who made some really interesting art. The rest of the museum contained some of the strangest art that I have ever seen including a fake forest with TV’s dispersed between the leaves all playing a strange synthesized version of a 1970’s TV show. There was also a sculpture of a giant mouse (5’ tall) standing on top of a man lying down in bed. Another of my favorites was a hairy Italian man curled up the fetal position in a blanket like a baby. Half way up one of the staircases was a doll with a face made of white material with an LCD projector projecting a movie of a ladies face onto the doll. The lady was making sounds as if she was being operated on and making the respective faces. It was a great day of modern art, German Subway, trams and altbier. Tomorrow is my first day of work; I am very excited.

 

Hello again. Today was my day to check out my new place of work . . . Dynetek Europe. I awoke at a surprisingly late 12:00 noon and set about catching the O16 Speedbus to Lintorf where I will be working for the next four months. I caught the bus and enjoyed some great people watching on the 21 minute ride to Lintorf. I got off the bus and checked that Dynetek Europe actually exists, everything checked out and I was on my way home. I got home and enjoyed an amazing salami, gouda and hot mustard sandwich, mmmm.

 

After my sandwich, I finished off another great euro-day with a 20-minute train ride into Düsseldorf to the Starbucks where I harvest my Internet. Got home and unfortunately watched the CNN (the only English channel that I get) coverage of the invasion of the Gaza Strip, which was sadly preceded by the coverage of the death of John Travolta’s 16 year old son. I sign off today while watching some English pop music videos on a show in German, some with Japanese subtitles . . . odd.  Tomorrow the plan is to wake up early and explore some more of Düsseldorf.

January 2nd: Hit the Climbing wall

On January 2^nd I decided to hit the (now open) town and buy my groceries, get me some internet and some shaving crème. The place that I live is quite conveniently located directly beside one of the coolest bunch of German store streets that I have ever seen, and trust me I know my German shop streets. I headed down the street and checked out the dozens of stores selling everything from cell phones to high-end fashion to meat. I stopped by a grocery store (weirdly located in the basement of a clothes store) and proceeded to pick up all the necessities for starting up my house. After gathering everything I went to the check out. First thing on the conveyer belt was two re-useable grocery bags. The lady kindly asks me something in German and I proceed to say “Ja” not having a clue what just went down. Once more and slightly more frustrated the lady repeats the comment. She the says “Do you speak English” in a kind voice, I nod and the check out proceeds as normal. Turns out that most people know English in Germany you just have to squeeze it out of them.

 

After the grocery run I decided to check out the German train system and head down to Düsseldorf Central to buy a rail pass, go climbing and get me some internet. First stop the pass. 337.20 Euro later I had had four months of train, tram and bus with Düsseldorf, Ratingen and Lintorf. I was off to the climbing wall, it turns out that the wall is only 800m from the train station as I read in a sketchy T-Mobile Hot Zone (spot with internet) that I later figured out was located right next to an extremely less sketchy Starbucks with the same internet. I arrived at the climbing wall after about an hour of walking around Düsseldorf hopelessly lost, I now know the way, the place looked great. Despite some clever phtoshopping on the website the wall was still quite large and was the home of some great and friendly Euro-Climbers. My new buddies Oliver and Derek took me around and introduced me to the French rating system of climbs and showed me the choice routes. The only downside was that the admission was 9.50 Euro and a glass of water was 1.20 Euro! I also noticed that in this German climbing wall (Kletterhalle) that all the officially un-cooth methods of belaying at Canadian climbing walls went down here with no problem. Munter hitches off fixed ground anchors and figure-eight belay devices were used left-right and center. I cringed slightly as I saw this hot girl being taught by her boy friend how to belay off a Munter hitch. I wrapped up my climbing experience with extremely sore arms and headed home.

 

I found a Starbucks to sit down and get my internet fix. On the way back to my house I noticed a few things that were just a bit odd. A forty year old lady with a three wheeled Razor scooter and a nose ring scooting along the station platform like it was no big deal and a ton of strange euro-haircuts including the faux-hawk, the euro-mullet and the euro-puff hairstyle. It was all quite entertaining. I am now a master of the Rheinbahn train system.

January 1st: A NEW HOME

On the first of January I moved into my new house, Freiligrathring 19, Ratingen. I took a cab from the DJH Hostel to my new house. My new landlord Mr. Grossman was there to meet me. My little slice of heaven in about 40 m^2 and has a small mudroom right at the front door with a tiny kitchen that has a sink, oven/stove, fridge and all sorts of small appliances including an egg boiler.

 

After moving in I decided to take a look around the town of Ratingen. I started my tour with the main street. It turns out that people in Germany take their New Years quite seriously and thus there is very little open New Years Day. I did however find one small café/bakery that was open and since I had no food decided to go in and check it out. I went in and immediately eyed a loaf of what looked to be sourdough bread with a light flour dusting; the sign above it said 1.90 Euro.  I picked up the loaf along with some apricot jam for 2.95 Euro and headed for the till. The lady rang through the loaf . . . 12.50!! I could not believe it and I only had 10 Euro left, I then began my feeble German attempt at telling her that I wanted to get a smaller loaf. It turns out that she thought that I was handicapped and let me have the loaf and the jam for only 10 Euro. I got home and realized that it was actually a Christmas loaf filled with marzipan. It was both the most expensive and most tasty bread I have ever had.