Props to whom props are due….

As you may know, my time here in the US is running out. I have exactly four days left until flight LH427 takes me back home – or at least to the place where I happen to live. For seven months, this was my home away from home. And that’s where all the people come into play who make it feel like home for me. Now if that wasn’t a great introduction

First and foremost, I need to thank everyone who contributed to my awesome farewell lunch on Friday and the totally unexpected gift. That totally blew me away and I would once again like to thank everyone involved and especially whoever came up with the idea….(M?)

Which leads me to my personal props section, which I have promised to do for a long time but now finally get to do.

Let’s start with Kate, because she was actually the person enabling me to come here in the first place. Unfortunately, I did not have the pleasure working under her for the whole period of my internship. I thank you for giving me this possibility and for the knowledge I was able to gain, not only on the ‘regulatory professional’ level You always took the time to explain if something wasn’t clear (and I guess at the beginning that was quite a lot), and you always provided me with demanding tasks.

Probably, I was one of the few interns who had two managers over the course of his internship. Thanks Mike, I now have to walk to your office instead of just leaning over the cube wall if I need something;) No, seriously. Thanks for always patiently answering all my stupid questions, for letting me work on parts of the complaint process, for giving me the challenge of trying to figure out how to extract reliable information from the ‘random number generator’ – and, of course, thanks for granting me the extra month over here!!! I guess we’ll just postpone the Kobe-steak dinner to some point when you’re over in Germany again.

Now to my favorite co-worker Meredith. Apart from making me get spoons, fill water bottles and pick up folders from the floor, you did so much more for me. Like waiting until one month before the official end of my internship to set me up for a date;) Also, I think most of our lunchbreaks would have been pretty lame without you (and your talent in choosing always the most appropriate conversational topics).

Then there’s Harald, aka Uncle Bad Touch. Thank you for always being able to lower the standard for any conversation, whatever the topic may be! Spaß beiseite, it was a pleasure working next to you and occasionally being able to switch to German. Some jokes just don’t translate into English (and vice versa)! Also, our consensus about the German ‘Spießbürgertum’ is probably the best indicator that I should in fact move here.

Of course, I can’t go away without mentioning Joe, who introduced me to American specialties such as the meatloaf. Thank you for sharing some of your tremendous experience, both work related and private.

….and of course, thanks to all the other people I’ve had the pleasure meeting and working with!!!!!

Also, today we had a great farewell breakfast for Richie (another German – but not an intern – who will leave shortly) and me at the office, of which I’ve taken some photos. Thanks Mike for the very touching speech!

Pure awesomeness. I skipped lunch because I was so full.

BREAKING NEWS

Yesterday, I drove past a batallion of FOX 29 TV vans on my way home from Malvern to West Chester. The center of town was blocked by police, fire trucks and ambulances and I rode right past a TV journalist, who was apparently at that point preparing for going on air for a live broadcast. After investigating, I found out that there had been findings of a „suspicious device“ in a parking garage on High Street (the one where we usually leave our cars when we go out in WC city and don’t want to drive home).

Now. What is going on in this little town? First, Jennifer Aniston and Owen Wilson come here to shoot parts of a movie and the whole town is blocked by film crews, then someone tries to blow up a parking garage….has the whole world gone crazy??

Here is the link. If you watch the footage, the pretty lady with the beige dress reporting live is the one I saw on my way home.

Writer’s block or another boring entry

Just as novelists don’t know in advance whether their new publication is going to turn into a bestseller, I’m not sure whether this entry is going to be a bore. It might turn out to be really interesting and entertaining. But if it doesn’t: don’t complain, because I warned you in the headline….

Well….where to start….first of all it’s been party non-stop during the past few weeks. There was a Red Bull soapbox race that took place in Manayunk two weeks ago. We went there (on a Saturday) still a little off from the night before. After an Advil-and-Beef Jerky breakfast in the car and a long drive, it started to pour. I mean it had been raining on and off all day, but the moment we got out of the car heaven’s floodgates opened. We were drenched instantly and I could have left my umbrella in the car, because it was totally futile to carry that thing around. We got wet from below, from the side and the water came through the fabric of the umbrella. Plus people almost took each others eyes out with the little pins sticking out from the corners of their umbrellas (umbrellae?). So we headed to the racetrack and didn’t really see anything until we climbed into the front yard of a house, where a colleague of another intern was standing and offered us beer. The place was totally packed and the house owners kindly asked us not to pee in their yard. By then, I was already soaked down to my undies. We ended up going to the colleague’s house and throwing our wet clothes in the dryer. Dressed in randomly picked shirts and shorts that we borrowed from the host, we started drinking beer and talking to a lot of interesting people. Too bad I had field duty on the gliderport the next day.

This weekend we had another great night out in West Chester city. This is starting to become an institution. Saturday night saw yet another farewell party and as usual, I was chosen to give a short farewell speech and hand over some memorabilia to one of our leavers. This is also becoming an institution. And anyone who has ever heard me talk in front of people knows how pathetic I am at giving speeches. Especially when I haven’t prepared anything and already had a few beers.

Also, we visited Princeton University on Saturday and took a guided tour around the campus. I wasn’t quite as impressed with the tour guide as with the one in Harvard, but the university as such seems to offer more arts and humanities than the other Ivy League colleges. I even had a look inside the premises of the German department and instantly felt at home. Luckily, Princeton’s admission requirements are way too high. So my dear parents need not worry. The tuition is 40.000 $ a year. But the individual support seems to be very unique and exceptional. Maybe I should apply just for fun.

What more is there to say? Time is running out once more, it’s only three more weeks. I’m having my very own farewell party this week on Friday, of course everyone’s invited. There are various things that still need taking care of. Among these are: 1) Send a postcard. 2) Buy various items. 3) Buy a suitcase. 3) Hope that I get my deposit back from my landlord. 4) Figure out what to do with that deposit. 4.1) Decide whether to spend all of it incrementally on many little things, or 4.2) Buy something big. (Dodge RAM trucks are cheap at the moment). 5) Find my house keys. There couldn’t possibly be anything more embarrassing than coming home and not getting in. It’s got to be here somewhere. Probably I put it in a drawer and just don’t remember which one. Well. Whatever.

On Wednesday I’m going to see Opeth at the Troc in Philly. There’s been quite a number of interesting releases in the last weeks. The Human Abstract put out a new record and I totally dig it. Really complex, demanding, artistic, exceptional music. Tomorrow, All That Remains’ new record hits the shelves and it’s going to be killer as well, judging from the snippets on myspace.

I will keep you updated on my last weeks.

Peace, I’m out….

New York – again

First and foremost: A great big honest SORRY to Sas. The Library was closed. Proof: This picture. Notice the closed doors in the background.

Other than that, we were at the Museum of Modern Art, which contains, well, a lot of modern works of art. Now, I’m not exactly a fan of modern art, especially the kind that I don’t understand. And that seems to be more than I’d thought, because I went through some of the expositions constantly shaking my head. There was however one exposition that really was worth it, which was the Dalí-exposition. The topic was Dalí and film and it showed some of Dalí’s film script autographs, some sketches for film scenes that he wrote and a few paintings that showed his affinity to the medium of film. Also, there were screenings of some film scenes from movies such as „Un chien andalou“. I know, I’ve never seen it myself, and it is quite wacked, but since that applies to almost all of Dalí’s work, that came as no surprise.

This time around, we also stayed overnight. All I knew up front was that we were staying in a hostel that just opened a few weeks ago. What I did NOT know, however, was that this hostel was in the middle of Harlem. What I also didn’t know is that Harlem is not a bad part of New York at all. As a European, the first thing that came to my mind were crime, gang violence and drug dealing. But it’s really not like that at all. Actually, apart from the occasional run-down parts that you have in almost every city, it was pretty nice. During the last few years, the city of NY invested a lot of money to bring Harlem back on track, and it seems like these incentives showed some results.

What else…concerning my arrival back home, it will be on the 4th of October at 12 noon. I am still looking for a victim to pick me and my seven bags of luggage up from the airport in Nuremberg….so, if anyone’s still interested…(Jon?)

That’s it for now, I guess I’ll be getting back to you later this week if there’s any more interesting stuff.

BAAMM!

It’s official, I’m stayin’.

See you all in October!

I’ll change my flight tomorrow, it’ll probably be the 4th of October. So be ready, my parents won’t be there to pick me up, and someone’s gotta do it, right?

This is gonna be awesome…

It ain’t over til it’s over…

It’s over. Almost. Not quite. This could have been one of my last entries. I could have written about my farewell party next weekend, about my last trip to New York, also next weekend, and I could have written the last time from the US just after I packed my suitcases and just before I drove to the airport on September 1st.

Instead, I’ve applied for an extension of my internship.

There are reasons, of course. One: My team needs me (for entertainment purposes, as well as workforce). Two: I won’t have anything to do in September. Initially, I had planned it exactly this way, so that I’d have September to ‘get home’. But the more I think about it, the more I fear that I might regret not taking this chance. Now that I’m here anyway, I might as well stay as long as I possibly can. Three: I really love it here. I don’t want to go home now that I’m having such a great time.

The bad thing is: I won’t see me mates back on Olde Germany for another four weeks. I hope you’ll forgive me. It’s only four weeks. If I consider how fast the last four weeks went by, that’ll be absolutely nothing. But something tells me that this is a chance I should take.

I’ll keep you updated with details. As I said, nothing’s carved in stone yet, but there’s a good chance. Ah, and by the way, my new arrival date could be the 4th of October, 12 noon, Nürnberg International Airport;)

Planes, graves and dates…

Sorry for not writing anything for so long, but I was busy. I know, bad excuse. Okay, let’s put it differently: I had better things to do than update my blog. I’ll refrain from losing myself in ramblings about how I don’t want to come back but stay here and give you some insight into what I’ve been up to instead.

Two weeks ago, I took a fellow intern up in a glider, which was something he’s been begging me to do for some time and so we took one of PGC’s 103s and went for a nice 47-minute ride over beautiful Pennsylvania;)

Staying with airplanes, yesterday we went to the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, VA. It’s a branch of the National Air and Space Museum that is located next to Dulles International airport. Since not all of the Smithsonian Institution’s exhibits fit into the Museum on the Mall, they had to relocate the „big things“ out there. Among the planes exhibited there are an SR 71 Blackbird, a Space Shuttle and the B-29 „Enola Gay“, which came to be known as the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945.

The most interesting of all – at least for me as a glider pilot – was this:

That’s right, an example of high-performance German engineering right there For those of you who might not know: This is a Grob 102 „Standard Astir“, which is today mainly used as a trainer for student pilots who transition from two-seaters to single-seaters. Hanging from the ceiling of a museum, however, the uninformed layman might think that this is the cutting edge in glider design or some kind of classic. Neither of which applies.

For aviation freaks, this is definitely the place to go. Imagine it like the „Flugwerft Schleissheim“, only twice as big and with waaay more interesting planes in it.

The next stop on our itinerary was Arlington Cemetery, known to many from countless movies such as….I don’t know, was it in Red October? I believe so….

Anyway. Lots of white marble gravestones, a very dignified atmosphere and a great view over Washington. We found out that there are around 250.000 gravesites there.

In the next few weeks, I’ll try to keep this site updated more frequently as some might be wondering how I spent the remainder of my stay here. But be assured: I won’t be wallowing in grief

In two weeks, I’ll be going to NYC for the last time on Saturday and celebrating my farewell party on Friday, along with a few other people who’ll leave soon. Until then, as mentioned, I’ll try to write something every once in a while, even if it’s only pointless blaa blaa.

Peace, I’m out.

Meat Heaven

There is steak. And then, there is churrasco. The Brazilian way to cook and serve meat. For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about: The concept is having a choice of meats on skewers, from which the waiters carve pieces of your choice directly onto your plate. In a rotating principle, different waiters with different sorts of meat come by and offer you a slice of whatever they happen to be carrying around. There is little cardboard discs on the table that are green on one side and red on the other. Needless to say, green means go and red means ‘leave me alone, I wanna eat first’. It’s all you can eat, so there’s a little bit of tactics to the game: If you waste your energy on chicken and sausage, you’ll have less room for all the high-end beef.

I have been acquainted with this specialty ever since my family and me lived in Singapore, which is where I first went to a churrascaria. But it wasn’t nearly as big and as expensive and as pompous as Fogo de Chao in Philadelphia. One of my fellow interns, Henning, discovered this location not long ago and, since he’ll be leaving next week, he took some of us to „meat heaven“ to celebrate the approaching end of his internship with us. So we got there, had a little „appetizer“ at the bar and were then guided to our table. We ordered wine (42 $/bottle) and headed for the humongous salad bar, which had everything to offer that a true vegetarian could dream of. Not so vegatarian-ish was the start of our feast on all sorts of meat (top and bottom sirloin, lamb chops, leg of lamb, rump steak, garlic filet, filet mignon, rib eye, you name it). Everything was cooked to perfection, there were hardly any sides on any of the plates and I always had the rare parts of the meat cut down for me. Now, the only problem is that you really have to push yourself to say NO when you’ve reached the point where you just can’t stack any more meat into your stomach. I exceeded this point by maybe one or two slices of meat and I started feeling like a big giant balloon. This feeling basically lasted until today at around lunch time. The good thing was that everytime I burped, I was surrounded by the smell of garlic steak.

The evening was truly worthy of the occasion. We all had a great time, ate loads of meat, and dined in a unique atmosphere (the interior was awesome) in center city Philly. This is not a place where you would go every week. It’s really pricy, but it’s well worth it. Too bad none of you folks at home ever came visit me. You missed out on some great food here!!

Independence Day and New England…

…are mutually intertwined, as the American history scholars among you may know. The Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, the Declaration of Independence was first read to the public in Boston and some American folks threw some bags o’ tea off of some ship in the Boston harbor – known as the Boston Tea Party. No taxation without representation, and so forth. I’m sure most of my German readers are well familiar with these events, needless to say my American colleagues probably also know what I’m talking about. To make a long story short and to somehow weave my own personal history into this randomly thrown together display of historical expertise, we were in Boston over the Independence Day weekend.

We were promised some great fireworks and a lot of traffic on the way up as well as on the way back home. Apparently, we should not have been the only ones that had the great idea of spending the most important American holiday there. We got to Boston faster than we had expected and checked in with our hotel. The most challenging part of this endeavour was to somehow manage to convince the concierge that we were not 12 but 8 people divided up into two rooms with 2 king size double beds each. Done the math? Right, 8 people, four double-beds – fits. But it’s cheaper to accomodate all 12 of us in these two rooms. So, we were running around all over the hotel lobby, back and forth from the elevators to the cars, from the reception to the elevators and from the restrooms to the reception to confuse the guy that checked us in. Not successful, as it turned out, because the other hotel guy asked how many people we were. I replied that we were 8, and he nodded and said „Right. Need any extra blankets?“. Confusion tactics was never my strength.

The next day. 4th of July. We headed into town and took the „Freedom Trail“, that leads all the way around Boston, passing the most interesting sights.

First thing that struck me was that Boston appeared much less American than any other American city I had ever seen. In fact, Boston could well be anywhere in Europe (especially in Britain somewhere). Maybe that’s why they call it New England…hmm..

One place to recommend to anyone coming to Boston is the area around Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market. Especially in South Market, there’s an unbelievable amount of food stalls and stands, where they serve food from nearly everywhere in the world. Walking through there is like entering some kind of Elysian field of food. After having staggered along Freedom Trail for long enough we went back to the hotel to take a quick shower and then headed down to the harbor side, where the Independence Day festivities were taking place. The Boston Pops were already playing when we got there and later that night, Rascal Flatts laid down a great lipsynch-playback performance. When the wailing had finally stopped, the fireworks commenced and let me tell you – I have never seen fireworks more impressive than that. Half and hour of pure impressiveness. Towards the end, one could hardly see the fireworks through tha massive haze that was hanging over the harbor. Take the biggest new year’s fireworks and imagine it four times longer, bigger, higher and brighter, then you might get an impression of what took place that night in Boston.

Next day, we visited my prospective university in Cambridge, MA. We took a guided tour around the campus that was led by two students who did a really great job at making the whole thing very entertaining.

To the right, you can see a proof that now, I, too, am a Harvard student. Well, at least I was there and was able to suck in some of the genuine atmosphere of the great, dignified learning facility that it is.

Leaving Boston that day, we stopped by at M.I.T., to get yet another glimpse of yet another university that none of us would ever be able to afford to attend – let alone have the intellect to even pass the admission tests. But, I bought a „HAHVAHD“-T-Shirt. (Bostonians have their own accent, which incorporates not pronouncing any ‘R’s)

Our next stop was Orleans on Cape Cod, where we moved into a hostel that was mainly a few wooden huts with bunk beds. From there, we headed out to check off another topic on the to-do-list: Eat lobster.

Early the next morning we moved out to drive to Provincetown to do some whale watching. Ever since I was a young boy, I have always dreamed of seeing whales. Though I’d given up on wanting to be a marine biologist, I still hoped that someday I might encounter whales in their natural environment. I couldn’t have imagined, though, that it would be that breathtaking. The first whales we saw on the way out to the feeding grounds of the humpbacks were Minke whales. Though they are not much bigger than dolphins, I was pretty excited. The highlight, as I’ve indicated, was the humpback whales that we saw out at sea. There was a layer of fog hanging over the water and suddenly two of them appeared out of nowhere and circled the boat, checking out what was going on. As it turned out, it was a mother with her calf, in search for food. This was one of the most impressive experiences I have ever made. Seriously. Can’t really put it into words.

Coming back to Provincetown only to remember (and see) that it’s home to a large gay and lesbian community was like the starkest contrast between pure nature and, well, ungraceful mankind that one could imagine. I don’t ever want to go there again. Yuck.

On our way home we stopped by at Yale University in New Haven, CT, just to see what it was like.

What a trip.

Please feel free to leave absolutely ridiculous comments!

The Infamous Cape May Party Weekend

First of all – I want to apologize to MIKE and MEREDITH (!!!) for writing in German until now and by doing so keeping them from reading all the crap I have posted here. Now maybe some friends back home in Germany (home to the vice-European soccer champions) might not be able to understand all of my blabbering here, but I can switch languages every once in a while…

This weekend some of my fellow interns synchronically celebrated their birthday. And, instead of throwing just another party with truckloads of beer, barbecue and even more beer, they threw a party with truckloads of beer, barbecue and even more beer in Cape May, New Jersey. So there we were, 27 people in a house that is designed to hold 10 persons. After arriving Friday, the first thing me and the guys I travelled with did was get a beer and then move into our room. For some reason I had to sleep on the floor both nights we spent there, but, thanks to the fluffy carpet floor, I didn’t have too much of a backache in the mornings. Already having discovered a diner/family restaurant called „Uncle Bill’s Pancake House“ while trying to find the house Friday night, we decided to have a nice pancake breakfast on Saturday morning. What a place: Unlimited coffee refills, classic American pancakes with whipped butter and maple syrup, friendly waitresses (not too common in Germany) and a great atmosphere. Kinda reminded me of the opening sequence of Pulp Fiction („..everybody be cool this is a robbery!!“)

After getting stuffed with pancakes we started to make our way around Cape May. Even though cruising around the place in a very uncoordinated manner, we soon found a beach, where we first made contact with the ocean – or the bay, for that matter. Later we cruised to the boardwalk and had another swim and walk along the promenade. In case anyone saw a white G6 (with a Nebraska license plate) with 5 sort of dumb looking people with no shirts on, listening to absolutely gay music, rolling around in the streets of Cape May that weekend: that was us. After getting back from the beach, we made our way to ACME to buy some meat to throw on the grill. Hell, meat aisles in US supermarkets sure are one great thing. We bought approximately 6 pounds of steak, along with some shells as an entrée. Steak and seafood, as they say. On we went back to the party house (conveniently located, not far from a very quiet yet beautiful beach), cooked the shells, ate the shells, threw our half cow on the grill, ate the half cow. Washed it down with some Bud and headed down to the beach to watch the sunset (quite cliché, huh?). The whole thing had a somewhat sixties-hippie vibe to it (except having devoured a helpless cow beforehand – live and let live…). But we saw dolphins and even helped some stone age relic type of crabs back into the sea, because they were constantly being washed to the shore – on their backs…I wonder how these things ever even got to survive the precambrium with that survival strategy…Anyway. Saturday night party was awesome, lots of fun with lots of people I enjoy hanging out with anyway.

Sunday saw another pancake breakfast after the mandatory clean-up of the house. We produced about as much trash as would a family with three kids in one week. Needless to say, most of the items thrown away were beer cans and bottles.

After another stop-over at the beach we all gathered at a local beach bar to watch the European championships’ final. I will not go into detail, but *coughboooooooringcough*….

Nutshellwise, it was a very chilled out weekend and I am looking forward to writing to you soon about my experiences in Boston, which is where we are going to go next weekend. (Independence Day, y’all!)

Peace, I’m out (a nod to Jon at this point)