in germany now

well: here begins the germany chapter of my blog.....and my life.
i will be in berlin, germany, doing a 10-week internship at Biotronik and returning around thanksgiving time.

last thursday, dad took me to stroudburg to catch the bus to nyc. i arrived in the city around 1030am, hung out with my friend josh, and had an amazing dinner at il buco at night. on friday, i spent a little time strolling through the city with josh. then i headed to penn station to take nj transit to the newark airport for my flight to berlin via coppenhagen.

flight was fine, but i missed my connecting flight on saturday morning in coppenhagen despite running about a kilometer through the terminal. i had a new flight around noon, and i arrived in berlin shortly thereafter. nick met me at the airport and it took about 2 hours to get to his apartment which is on the other side of the city. i was rather dazed and exhausted after so much travel and confusion, but that's no excuse for staying in and not experiencing a foreign place. so on saturday we toured the city until pretty late. then i slept for about 12 hours and felt that i could have slept a few more haha. we did mostly the same thing on sunday.

monday, i had my first day of work. here's the jist of the day: contract signing, meeting everyone on my floor, learning about my project, lunch with the guys, a little more about my project. i went home early to get moved into my new apartment. and by move in i mean i moved my backpack and my bag across the hallway from nick's apartment.

the apartments and fairly nice and fairly expensive. it's pretty much two rooms: there's the bathroom and then the living room with a sofa/bed and an attached kitchen. the kitchen is pretty much full-size except for the frig. also, it's all furnished including a tv with cable, silverware, coffee maker, water boiler, vaccuum cleaner, and even toilet paper. the sofa/bed thing pretty much sucks, but it's better than the floor.

the bus station is about a five-minute walk away, and it's about a five minute ride on the bus to the subway station. an unlimited public transport pass costs 50 € per month.

i've been studying german every night and getting a little bit better. but it's still pretty much impossible to understand germans when they speak normally, although i can understand nick fairly well (i can at least pick out all the words...).

oh yeah, here's a rough description of the project im going to be working on: Developing an electrode impedance model for implementation in heart
simulation for use in pace maker and defibrillator research and development.

pictures this weekend.