Welcome
Hello all. As long ago promised, I'm going to keep you updated on the exciting things happening in Germany, Greece and hopefully in the Americas! No worries, I won't talk about research.
Who I am : A PhD student at Boston University, doing research on tissue engineering.
Why in English: I occasionally may write in Greek (or Catalan), but because I want you all to read my adventures, let's start with English.
I don't want this to be a one-way correspondence, so please write back to me!
Up till now After two weeks in Athens (it was hot and there were days that I did
nothing other than going to the beach) I arrived in Göttingen, Germany. Right on time for the
World Cup. Oh yes! You know I was a hard core Italy supporter, so watching two games in Boston, two in Athens, and two in Germany, one was in Frankfurt's fan area - it was CRAZY- as well as the final here in Göttingen, was really exciting. And, hehe...we won !!
Göttingen is really nice. Small, with tons of students, a old city with biergartens and a very nice working environment. The lab people are extremely nice I have to say. I'm at the Max Planck for Dynamics and Self-organisation, and in the area there are 3 more MPIs, next door is the Aerospace Institute, and in the other side of the city is the Georg-August Universitat. Also, a very international environment. I speak no German, so I appreciate the existence of French, Swedish, Americans, Australians and of course all the English-speaking Germans. By the way, ALL Germans seem to speak English: lab people, bakery people, market people, everyone. But I feel I should learn some German. I'll try.
Some fast observations: Everyone here is uber-tall. The spiders in Göttingen are huge. German keyboards have 'z' and 'y' interchanged. The trains are rather expensive, but there are youth passes, bahncards50, that make them cheap; not to mention that they run almost all the time. Highly convenient.
Munich, Dachau and SalzburgI think I fell in love with Munich!! After having spend a weekend in Göttingen, time came to go somewhere else. Since everyone was telling me how nice Salzburg is, I left at 5.30am to go to Austria! I didn't even understand when we crossed the German-Austrian borders! Ah, Emma!
Indeed, Salzburg is beautiful. With its castle that is worth a few hours' visit, its Motzart house which I'd advise you to avoid, it's fountains, the paved roads, the horses. At a break from sightseeing, I ran into a bunch of Greeks from Chania, in Crete and then a few children from football team from Lemessos heard us talking and joined us...I smiled inside me. I've found Greeks everywhere! I found one at the building where I work, and when watching the Italy-France game we found a few more Göttingen Greeks! I don't really spend time with them, but it's nice to know they're around.
In any case, after 6 hours at Salzburg, I arrived to Munich, which in the beginning I have to admit scared me a little. Going towards the central Marienplatz I found hordes of other tourists, and felt OK again! What a pain: 11pm and the only placed open to eat were the kebab guys and one -yes one- german beer place right on Marienplatz. I tried weiss bier , this white beer that I had never heard of before, which was really interesting. Now I'm on the lookout wherever I go.
My morning plan included some sightseeing near the centre, waiting for the Glockenspiel -it's sooooo ridiculous that it's extremely funny- and then heading to Dachau. BUT...I ran into the 'free walking tours' offered by some extremely funny people (and free), so I joined them. Btw, I recommend them, because you learn the Bavarian history and enjoy it! I had such a good time, that I decided to go with them to Dachau. Met a bunch of loud Mexicans and could not resist talking to them in my catalan. It turns out that one of the girls was studying in Barcelona! The world is small. Of course she made fun of me for learning catalan! We laughed a lot. I mostly laughed because she's from Guadalahara - Diego, I laughed uncontrollably!!
As for Dachau, it's huge, a lot of it is destroyed and partly reconstructed (including the front gate), but it is still worth a visit. They've prepared very detailed information posters about the rooms, the prisoners and the daily life. I thought I would feel deeply sad while wondering in the buildings of the prison and seeing the crematoria, but I found myself thinking why this happened and I spend a lot of time trying to combine the historical facts and offer myself an explanation (without success). I think that the human mind cannot understand this horror. The part where I felt scared was when we walked into the gas chamber (although I knew it was never used in Dachau). The dark room with the low ceilings with the 'shower-like' openings was
SCARY.
