Laura in Dresden
First
June 29, 2010
[As you can see, Dresden is a beautiful city on the River Elbe. Residents bike (everywhere, also:) along the trails following the river. Behind me visible are the fleet of river steamboats (one of the oldest?) and (despite a bridge) the old city's "skyline," in some wonderful 21 degree weather. (--Celsius, that is. Duh!)]
Well. It may look like I'm behind, if I'm only starting my first REAL post now, after I've been here in Dresden for a week. But it's been all this time an overload to try to comprehend everything, get used to everything, and keep on truckin'.
One of the weirdest things I realized is that for my time here in Germany, being in Germany could and maybe should be one of the huge differences in my life, but it isn't necessarily the greatest one. Another huge difference is that the research internship is like a job. And it's not just a job on a college campus. It's in a real, true, private institute, with real, live, scientists going to the same place as I am every day because it's their career, and because they are employed. And while the time when I should log in and log out hasn't been set in stone, and I'm on a stipend and not hourly wage, I am still pretty much working 9-5, except when it's often more than that, and less often less than that.
Having lived the lifestyle typical of a student for almost two consecutive years now, (read: college is awesome! sometimes, but rarely, I don't have early classes! even when I have lots of classes they are relatively brief and I get to walk around and go to a class about something different and hang out with other students!), I anticipated that switching gears to something more resembling "the daily grind" would be difficult. Well, it is.
It's not necessarily the waking up, (which those familiar with my sleeping patterns might find surprising), the breakfast, the walking to the office, the routine [well, at 7 work days completed, there's been little time to have much routine besides general confusion], but instead the afternoons, which always surprise me to have transformed into evenings, when I walk home. I am hungry and tired and while I have the vague urge to find adventure or history downtown, somewhere, exercise perhaps by the river even, I also feel like I need to walk in the other direction back to my room, back to get things or maybe stop or groceries and then eat, I guess. Gosh, and by then it's so late, almost getting dark, even changing from warmish to cooler without the sun (p.s. I hear it's wretchedly hot+humid in Knoxville, a problem that doesn't necessarily end when the sun sets.). It's weird, because as a student, I feel like there's always plans, either long-term or spontaneous, for outings. Now, those outings may be to Wal-Mart or Waffle House, not necessarily "outings" of the high quality one might expect in Germany (history, architecture, art, nature--plenty of quality to choose from), but at least I'm out.
But all that is not to say I haven't had any adventures. The weekends have been interesting, and I do go out some nights because there's WM viewing (Welt Meisterschaft, which may be called the World Cup where you're used to hearing it about it). The games we can watch are actually at 4 and 8:30, since I guess we're on the same time zone as the games themselves. That might be a good illustration of the time difference for those used to watching games at weird times in the morning and whatnot.
The view out my window, to the right, is pretty enough, right? This is really just a residential/near campus community, as far as I understand--I'm high up on the 10th floor in the International Guesthouse for the University, even though I don't attend or work there. Luckily, this place was still available to me.
There are a lot of hot air balloons here. When my roommate took this picture for me, I think we both thought it would look a lot larger and magnificent, because it seemed so close where we were walking.
I'll write more about the work I'm doing here, too. Until then, I'll upload the picture of the research institute I am working at, the Leibniz Institute for Polymer Research. It's quaint-looking from the street (like many things in Germany), but it's a deceptively large labyrinth of connected and adjacent buildings once inside the complex.
Laura Poland is sophomore in Materials Science. She is working on materials science research at the Leibniz Institute for Polymer Research in Summer 2010.