Cologne Week 1, Monday

Today we had our first class at the Carl Duisberg Center (CDC).  Two ladies from giz met us in the lobby and led us to the train station where they gave us group tickets to the CDC.  When we got there, our professor, Herr Doktor Mainka, greeted us at the door and told us to meet him in a classroom on the second floor.  We had heard great things about Doktor Mainka, especially about his polka dot bowties.  He entered the classroom filled with energy and making us all laugh.  He is very flamboyant, has a fun personality, and entertains us with a great sense of humor.  This made the day go by fast because the class was actually pretty fun.  First we reviewed some grammar.  Sounds boring, but somehow he manages to make it interesting.  Then we talked about the theme sports and got into groups and invented our own sports.  We then presented our sport to the class, which was a lot of fun and filled with laughter.  After class ended around noon, we had a lunch break, where Joe Heekin (Elec. Eng., Pilz, Stuttgart), Julie Hess, Elizabeth Thesing (Chem. Eng., Forschung Zentrum Jeuling, Jeuling), and Michael Downing (Aero. Eng., Siemens, Muehlheim) and I walked down the street and found a street vender selling sausages and fries.  I got a currywurst on bread with ketchup and mustard and a Gilden Koelsch beer.  Unlike in the U.S., you can drink in public in Germany.  So after we finished eating, I drank my beer while walking down the street and finished it inside the learning center.  Here, one of the ladies from giz took us to the Deutsche Bahn at the Hauptbahnhof and we bought S-bahn passes on the 1-b network that gave us unlimited travel within the city for the whole week.  This will be nice to have so that we can go out and explore the city after class.

After that, we took the train to an electronics store called Saturn, which is the German equivalent of Best Buy.  We bought our unlocked phones and some people bought T-Mobil prepaid SIM cards.  We then went to Aldi grocery store, where I and many others bought our prepaid SIM cards.  It offered the cheapest rate at 3 cents per minute and 11 cents for other providers and 13 cents per minute international.  I’m only worried about how many people actually use Aldi’s service.  Otherwise I’m going to spend 11 cents a minute most of the time, which is relatively expensive compared to the T-Mobile, O₂, and Vodafone networks.  I also bought some apples and oranges as snacks for the week.  Another big difference in Germany is that they don’t give you bags for your groceries or any of your purchases.  Here you have to buy your plastic bags.  I think they cost 0.50 euros per bag, which can add up if you are buying a lot of things.  This reminds me, another difference is that you also have to pay for most public restrooms.  Usually it costs around 0.50 euros.  Or you can do what I did and go to Starbucks, where you are supposed to type in a passcode to get into the bathroom (not sure how to get the code yet), and just wait for someone to come out and grab the door before it closes.  Sometimes you have to get strategic. 

Then we came back to the hostel and tried to figure out how to register our SIM cards.  We sat together in the lounge and worked through the online registration in German and we eventually got all of our phones working and exchanged each other’s numbers.  Then we went out to the inner city to get some dinner.  I ate an orange along the way and wasn’t so hungry, but we walked around Hoch Strasse again and found a pizza place everyone wanted to go to.  I wasn’t very hungry, so I went with Elizabeth Thesing and Claire Koenig (Mech. Eng., Deutsche Bahn, Karlsruhe) to Gelato’s, a well-known Italian ice cream shop that had absolut lecker (absolutely delicious) ice cream.  The best part is that it’s super cheap!  Who would have thought that of all things ice cream would be cheap in a city so expensive!  It’s 1 euro per scoop, and the key is to get one scoop at a time so that you get a new cone each time.  I got one scoop of the raspberry yogurt and then went back and got another scoop of the plain raspberry.  I hope next time to try their mint chocolate chip, which is my favorite.  Then we came back and worked on homework for a little bit, and now I’m writing this before I go to bed.