Day 6 - My picture of the day is not me in a hat, but I found a hat!

"They had to build their fortress on the biggest hill they could! After the second hill, they'd be like 'NOPE you can have it!'"

So first things first, I found a hat! It's a very nice black hat I got for only 8 euros. That's quite a steal when the hats I was looking at yesterday were in the range of 30-60 euros. That costs more than the phone I bought here! That's insane! This was a huge accomplishment for me, as I had been searching everywhere for a hat like this. I had even dragged everyone along that was with me in my quest to find a hat. To think, the store we could find over in America, but conveniently had a shop in town had the best priced hats. Funny how things work out.

Oh, so more on the topic of my actual picture of the day, we climbed a hill. Not any hill, but most likely the largest hill in Wurzburg, home to the Marienberg Fortress. And my god, this place was beautiful. From the very top we could see the entire city, the churches, the sky, the river and even a couple getting married at a church across the land. I could easily see why this is one of the most recommended places to visit if you come to Germany. A quick thing to note though is that there are billions upon billions of stairs and steep inclinations here. The walk up was quite... sterrible. *insert groan here*

Festung Marienberg

Today, a group of six of us decided to visit the Festung Marienberga. The fortress is the symbol of Würzburg and has served as the home of prince-bishops for nearly five centuries. Getting to Festung Marienberg was quite the hike (no really, it sucks for whoever is trying to invade the fortress), but it was worth every single step. Lets just say that I will never complain about the hills in Austin again. However, I really do wish I had my bike with me. It would have been some pretty great Texas 4000 training.

From left to right: Joseph, Numa, Julius, Thomas, Alex, Melody

The view of the city on the way to the fortress was absolutely breathtaking and no pictures could ever do it any justice.

The fortress itself was beautiful, so we took our sweet ol’ time exploring it. I am more than a little obsessed with Würzburg architecture, but really, can you blame me?

The fortress tower

Julius and I (the tallest and the shortest in the group) next to the tower for height reference

Random picture of the day:
My gelato flavor of the day was called Schlümpfeb. The only way I can possibly think of describing the flavor is that it literally tastes like a Smurf!

Danke schönc for reading my blog!

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Translation of German words:
a. Marienberg Fortressb. Smurfs
c. Thank you so much

Day 5 - I wanted to find a hat, but all I got were pretty pictures.

"My picture of the day was either going to be these locks, or me in a hat." 

So today I was set on finding a hat. Yesterday was a terrible, cloudy and slightly drizzling day. An annoying drizzle where one doesn't really need an umbrella or anything of that sort, but not annoying enough where one could not simply get around by just walking in this drizzle. From what I've experienced so far, this is a fairly common occurrence that happens here (today marks the first day I've seen the sun at all in Germany...). So instead of lugging around a heavy umbrella everywhere, I wanted to find a hat. A nice Gatsby hat, or a flat hat. Something good looking that would keep my head out of the rain.

On our quest to find a hat (I had met up with Numa and Thomas after doing some various chores that needed to be done), we found plenty of places around the city. We found the city's nerd shop (<3), the gummy bear store, and a place to find a pot for Thomas. Oh, we also found the bridge. Doing some research, it's the Main Bridge, and it was absolutely beautiful. We had a great view of the Old Bridge and the Fortress and the cathedral right behind us. But that isn't my picture of the day. More interestingly, we found locks. A bunch of locks. A bunch of them locked to the bridge with initials of romance and love and I'm guessing promises to never be apart. I found dates going back tens of years, and honestly, that's pretty awesome. I still find it a shame I couldn't find a hat though.

Second Friday!

Retroactively posting this due to being lazy, and lacking of time due to the various events that have occurred these past few days/week and a half.

So to update on what I've been doing. I met the research group and professor I'm going to be working under around a week ago and have been spending this past week learning much regarding condensed matter physics, and realizing I am severely underprepared for the work I am undertaking, but have spent much time attempting to catch up. The other students and staff here from what I've been introduced to consists of Master's track students, PhD tracks, and post-Doc's working on interconnected topics all under the idea of topological insulators. Still attempting to learn entirely what it is, and how to do an eli5 on a more fundamental level.

Besides the large amount of time I am spending in the office learning, and reading, I've gotten to know a few of the graduate and post-Docs and they are seem very helpful in being able to explain things to me and understanding of my lack of knowledge in this field. Even though it is a daunting thought to step into an office and be working alongside people who have spent much of their lives devoted to this field I hope to be able to come out of this experience knowing much more.

A bit of a more bland post, though I hope to be able to make better ones as time goes on. Though if you care to follow more my own personal life, my personal blog and flickr album are linked at the end to stay updated visually!

Personal Blog! - http://jordazwurzburg.wordpress.com/

Flickr! - https://flic.kr/s/aHsjYCJf8T

A Plethora Of Photos

Hallo!a

Two posts within a span of 24 hours – I must say, I’m pretty impressed with myself right now. Here’s to hoping that I can keep this up, but if there is too much blog silence, please feel free to send me strongly worded messages.

I spent most of my morning running around the city crossing everything off my long list of things to do, and it felt so wonderful finally being done with everything. Random story of the day: I went to register in the Rathausb in Gerbrunn, and they gave me a “welcome to the town” present! Normally, you would expect something like a flag, or a pen, but no, Gerbrunn refuses to conform to such norms. They gave me a giant roll of trash-bags. I don’t have to buy trash-bags now, so thank you Gerbrunn?

I’ve been going to the Marktplatzc in Würzburg every day since I got here, but today, I actually explored it. We finally had a day without rain! After a terribly cold and cloudy morning, the sun came out this afternoon, and it was absolutely gorgeous outside. I walked around the Marktplatz for hours. The Marktplatz is located in the Old Town.

Brief history of Würzburg: During World War II, the city of Würzburg was completely destroyed in 17 minutes by the 225 British Lancaster bombers. Only 3% of the city remained. Buildings of historical importance were accurately replicated.

Würzburg is home to some of the finest Baroque architecture in Europe. Being an Art History nerd, I have been in absolute awe by all the architecture in the city. The city is fairly cluttered, and the buildings are huge which makes it difficult to take good photos, but I tried, and I will probably keep trying for the next three months.

St. Mary’s Chapel:

Dom St. Kilian:

While in the city, I ran into two of my friends (it’s such a small city – you run into everyone!), and we went to see the river.

The Romantic Road

View from The Romantic Road #1

View from the Romantic Road #2

View of the Marienberg Fortress

View of the Alte Mainbrücke (Old Main Bridge)

Locks of love

Street performer

Take note of the two beer bottles in his hand

We also found the gummy bear store. It was the highlight of my day.

Gummy bear heaven

I didn’t realize how many different kinds of gummy bears existed

Gummy bear pizza and gummy bear cakes

A plethora of photos isn’t complete without random pictures that don’t fit in anywhere:

Würzburg has more bakeries in close vicinity than I could have ever dreamed possible

I took a picture, and he said, danke schön, which means thank you very much in German

Once again, can we discuss how delicious gelato in Würzburg is?

Till next time, freilos!d

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Translation of German words:
a. Hello
b. Town Hall
c. Marketplace
d. Bye

Würzburg: An Introduction

Grußa,

I apologize for taking a couple days to post on here (and for disappearing off social media). Getting internet access in Würzburg has been quite an issue. The past three days have made me realize my dependence on smartphone data and wifi. Being as directionally challenged as I am, getting around the city without Google Maps is a struggle. Yesterday, I attempted to walk to campus which should have been only a 15 minute walk from my flat. I left with directions and a map. After a good 40 minutes of walking and realizing how terribly lost I was, I gave up and took the bus. Clearly, I need Siri to give me directions. I’m also currently facing Snapchat withdrawals. I go through phases where I pick a social network and constantly use it (while abandoning the rest), and for the past two months, Snapchat has been my social network of choice. I finally managed to get wifi access at a restaurant today, and the 30-something new snaps made me so incredibly happy.

Oh well, moving along. I haven’t had much time to breathe since we left Austin. Despite not having slept much the night before, I couldn’t sleep at all during either flight (AUS to JFK, and then JFK to FRA), so I arrived in Würzburg (on Tuesday afternoon) exhausted and sleep deprived. There is quite a long list of things an international student needs to do to be able to study at Universität Würzburg ranging from opening a bank account to registering in the Town Hall. I spent the rest of Tuesday and part of Wednesday trying to accomplish some of these, and I will be so so happy to be done with this fairly long list tomorrow (fingers crossed!).

On Wednesday morning, I met with the professor I’m doing research with this summer. Dr. Martin Kamp is a Technical Physicist, and he speaks fluent English. I was told that language would not be an issue in Würzburg, but I’ve come across very few people who speak English fluently, and everything (no really, everything - signs, menus, etc.) is in German. So yes, I’d say it’s an issue. However, it gives me more incentive to pick up some German when I’m here. Going back to talking about some fun Physics: a major topic in my professor’s research group is the spectroscopy of semiconducting nano-structures, focusing on spectroscopy of single quantum dots (often in combination with optical cavities) and polaritons. The combination of single quantum dots is a fairly decent model for investigations of light-matter interactions at the nanometer scale, leading to applications involving single photon sources, quantum cryptography, and quantum information processing. Polaritons are quasi-particles formed by a coherent combination of excitons and photons in an optical cavity. Since they are bosons, they can undergo a phase transition into a Bose-Einstein condensate, with some similarities to superfluid helium or superconductivity. In particular, I will be working on the spectroscopy of large quantum dots. I have a bunch of papers to read and research to do before I officially start working in lab on Monday, so I will talk more about my specific research project later on. But in non-Physics terms, most of my research involves playing with a whole bunch of lasers in a dark room. If you know anything about my unconditional love for lasers, you can probably imagine my excitement about this research project.

Today was a national holiday in Germany. The Germans love holidays and they apparently have quite a few of them. My professor told me not to show up on Friday because everyone takes a four day weekend when holidays fall on a Thursday – I could get used to this. Holidays in Würzburg essentially mean that the entire city is shut down and buses only run every hour. However, there was a wine festival today in the city. I’ve been told that there are a lot of wineries/vineyards around Würzburg, so wine festivals are apparently a very frequent thing. Prost!b

At the wine festival

Random observations/scattered thoughts:

1. Würzburg is a tiny, tiny city and everything closes at or before 8 PM. Living in huge city like Houston, and going to school in Austin where nothing closes before 4 AM, this is odd. However, the architecture here is absolutely gorgeous and I’m waiting for a not rainy day (it has rained every single day I’ve been here so far) so I can go all around the city and take pictures of every single building.

2. Instead of mints, banks here have little gummy bear packets. There is supposedly a gummy bear store in the city that gives out free large gummy bears. I am determined to find it this weekend.

3. I recently discovered that I don’t actually live in Würzburg. I live in Gerbrunn, which is supposed to be another town, but really, it’s literally just a street. There is ONE restaurant.

4. There is a shower in my room. There is a bed, a desk, a closet, and…a shower. Does anyone think this is as weird as I do? I live on the top floor, so I also have a sunroof with a pretty sweet view and a decent sized balcony.

5.  Can we take a moment to discuss just how delicious gelato is here? I’m legitimately considering getting gelato after every single meal.

6. The sun sets here around 10 PM and rises at 5 AM. Long days much?!

7. I have an office with my own desk and computer. I feel so fancy and official. I’ve been doing research at the Center for Nonlinear Dynamics at UT Austin for over a year now, and they have yet to give me my own desk and computer. CNLD, step it up.

8. We discovered “Robby Bubble.” It is a non-alcoholic sparkling drink aimed at children. In other words, it’s champagne for kids.

Robby drinking Robby

I promise I’ll try to update more frequently, tschuess!c

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Translation of German words:

a. Greetings
b. Cheersc. Goodbye

Meeting the Research Group

 Today I met the research group that I'll be working with. I had an email with directions to the room but accidentally left it in the apartment when I left for the morning. I arrived with an hour to spare and was sure that—combined with the building directory and the presence of Robby and Miquela—would be enough. Well, Robby and Miquela abandoned me after twenty or thirty minutes, and I was left to find E02. I'm pretty sure I found every other room in the E block...but not that one. I eventually inquired of some German students who spoke some English, and they let me use their phone to access my email. They didn't know where E02 was, so they stopped by an office. The guy there didn't know either, and he had to ask his colleague!

the poppy/der mohn

Turns out, there is this little section of E rooms that are through the C block. Of course. Because that makes sense. :) It is the nicest and newest part of the building, very nice for a physics building. It was 10:36 when I finally arrived, and I was supposed to meet Dr. Dyakonov at 11am. There is a foyer with lots of plants, and I sat there for a few minutes before noticing the flowers outside. Poppies! Dr. Dyakonov saw me outside taking in the view, asked if I was Melody, and informed me that I was allowed indoors. :) We went to his office and chatted briefly, and then he decided to show me around. First order of business? The cappuccino machine and an unlimited stash of tea {with sugar cubes}. I met several of the grad students that I'll be working with. They are all a very cool, laid-back group of people. It's a laid-back community, and I like it. :) There was one girl in the bunch I met today, Frenzesca, and she was the one who showed me around the different labs.

German wildflower mix

I had been more nervous about the physics side of this trip than any other part, but when I walked into those labs, I felt only relief. I have been gallivanting around Wuerzburg tripping over my German and doing my best to have an idea of what's going on. In the physics lab, at least my lack of knowledge was familiar, haha. And even then, I actually understood some things! It has been left to the group of grad students and myself to decide what project I shall embark on for the summer. They work on a lot of different things: micro-Raman spectroscopy, organic solar cells, and magnetic resonance stuff. Most likely I'll be helping to build a confocal optical something for the magnetic resonance lab. One of the upper-level grad students is a fan of this idea because I'll learn the project as I build it and have a really good understanding of what's going on. I'm also on board with this.

Oh, and I have my own desk! It's all cleared off just for me! Not to mention a key and everything. Super cool! I feel very official. I want to learn and accomplish something worthy of that desk this summer. :)

I went to lunch with a few of the grad students. {Sorry, I don't recall a lot of names, and the ones I do, I'm not sure who they belong to or how to spell them. The only one I know for sure besides Frenzesca is Dmitri, the Russian in the group, and anyone who knows me well knows why I am able to remember that.} We went to a cafeteria-style place down south. Very large portion sizes! I had Jaegenschnitzel {the size and texture of a porkchop, but the taste of sausage} with vegetables and something beginning with  'k' {I think now it was some variation of the German word kartoffel}. I wasn't sure what the 'K' word was; I must have given it a suspicious look before eating, and my new friends found that funny. “It's potatoes, isn't it?” I inquired, after chewing.

“Yes, fried potatoes,” they said.

Indeed, the foreign objects were tater-tots. Except they are twice as long as ours, and the inside is mashed potatoes instead of textured. They're good, though, especially soaked in brown mushroom gravy.

As for the group, they all speak good English, and it is understood that it is an international group {there is more than one Russian, not to mention a Pennsylvanian somewhere that I haven't met} and so English is spoken. However, they fall into German very easily. Then they apologize. I have already asked them questions about the language and informed them that I am eager to learn as much as I can. Schnitzel, for instance, is neuter—das Schnitzel. And people in southern Germany pronounce fewer letters; for instance, they don't really say the 'l' in Brezel (pretzel). I guess this is the equivalent of a southern drawl

Speaking of pretzels, they make an excellent breakfast. Not the healthiest, but sufficient while I slowly add to my grocery collection. {I have butter now; it was part of my spoils from our dinner party on Thursday. Thick and creamy European butter. Soooooo good. I don't know if I'll be able to go back to normal butter back in the States.}

I typed this in the university library. All libraries feel the same, and it's one of my favorite feelings in the world.

A Quick & Scattered Update

Hello everyone!
So sorry for the blog silence. We haven't had a moment to rest since we departed AUS, and some of us are still figuring out internet things.

JFK airport

Our flights were uneventful, though more turbulence than I'm used to. Flying across the Atlantic made me realize just how BIG it is. That is one long flight. They did give us a ton of movies to choose from. I finally watched Catching Fire, while others of us watched the Lego movie and more. I wanted to stay up all night and watch movies...but night while flying east is only about four hours long. Very odd to see the sunrise ~4 hours after sunset! I got a little bit of sleep while watching my favorite episode of Sherlock, but it wasn't enough to keep me from sleeping again on the train ride from Frankfurt to Würzburg.

Our student tutors met us at the train station and we split up to go to our respective dorms. Miquela and I spent the rest of the day registering with the city, doing some grocery shopping, and getting our phones. We got €20 phones with €15/month plans of unlimited Germany texting and 100 minutes of Germany calling. Not bad, except it's a phone that hails from the 2000s. Texting brevity has once again become a thing.

in front of the physics building

The next day, yesterday, we were officially admitted to the university, got our student ID cards, got our insurance confirmed, did more grocery shopping ("Haben Sie ein baguette?"), explored the physics and astronomy buildings, and got German bank accounts. Not in that order, haha.

We've all dealt with jet lag differently. For me, I basically didn't sleep {except for those brief stints on the flight and train} from when I woke up Monday morning until 11pm Tuesday night, Germany time. That's over 24 hours awake, but it got me on the German schedule really fast. Tried to take it out all in one day instead of spreading it out. I'm not much for naps, anyway.

The part of Würzburg that we have explored the most is called the Marketplace on the map, though my tutor told me it was called, in German, the Old City. It is street after street of small, specialized shops. There is nothing really to compare it to in the US. Times Square and NYC come the closest, in my experience, and maybe parts of San Antonio. Miquela commented that it was like a glorified downtown Austin. There is an abundance of clothing stores and bakeries. So many bakeries! So much bread! I want to eat it all. Yesterday, Miquela, Robby, Thomas, and I had pretzels for breakfast. They were delicious. We've also sampled Käsebrötchen {cheese bread} and a Schokocreme Croissant {a croissant filled with chocolate and drizzled with chocolate}. Everything feels cheaper here because it's in Euros; you have to remind yourself that something that costs €0.62 is actually close to a dollar of your money.

We were informed before coming that you don't have to know German, that everyone speaks English. Ehh, not so true. For one thing, everything is written in German. And we've only encountered a few people who were fluent in English. English here is comparable to Spanish in Austin and the surrounding areas. Most people know it, but only enough to get by. German is definitely the preferred language. Within the university, it may be different, but in town, German is spoken.

the Marketplace at dusk

Also an interesting discovery, the city shuts down at about 8pm. The shops close, good night. It's very disorienting for us Austin college students. We're used to a city that barely sleeps, to an Amy's ice cream that's open until 1 in the morning. Not so here.

All in all, things are going well. Miquela and I {our rooms are next door to each other} were accosted yesterday morning by cold showers. Ugh! {All I could think of was that, here I was in Germany forced to take a cold shower, while my friend in Uganda had access to hot showers. Ha!} {She has informed me that she does, though it is not always hot.} We were considering alternative sources of showers when we met an Australian student in our hall. She told us that her roommate had complained about a cold shower yesterday morning; it is not a normal thing, thank goodness. True enough, the hot water in the shower was working when we went to bed last night! {We spent over an hour chatting with our Australian friend last night. This was the first time we'd had a chance to really converse with someone about things. She's awesome, super helpful, and I'm so glad we met!}

Day 4 - Our first German holiday.

"Let's drink Robby's Bubbles!" 

So this is Robby. And in his hands, we found Robby Bubbles, a non-alcoholic sparkling drink according to Wikipediea (on a side note, Wikipedia has literally everything). Today was a holiday here in Germany thanks to Jesus ascending to Heaven and do y'all know what holidays mean in Germany? Everything is closed. Like, almost everything. We, as a group, decided it would be an amazing idea to get together and have a small food-making party-thing to hang out and enjoy the company of each other. It was a shame it was raining all day, and that the buses ran on the hour instead of every ten minutes, and that Robby's apartment is so far away that it feels like I'm Frodo taking a journey to Mordor, but other than that it was great! Bruschetta is delicious by the way. Heck, all the food I've had here in Germany has been delicious thus far. Okay, I'll take that one back. Habaneros was okay.

Day 3 - Found our home away from home... maybe.

"We didn't come all the way to Germany to eat Tex-Mex!"

So our first meal together as a group in Germany was at a Tex-Mex place. Yes, Texas-Mexican cuisine (in the loosest definition of the phrase). For laughs, we decided to try out this place: Habaneros. A place where the salsa was sweet and slightly spicy (okay, I didn't find it spicy but others did) and was heavily plopped onto their "Mexican Rice." Honestly, it reminded me of a weird style of Taco Bell. But this is Germany, and Wurzburg nonetheless. As a group, we could not resist the temptation of seeing what Germans thought of our food. The gelato we got after this was much better though. Much better. Make sure to get the gelato if you're in Europe.