Statistics in Tharandt

Last week our "bridging" or preparatory courses began. The first day consisted of a welcome, introductions, and introductory flood risk management lecture at the TU Dresden main campus. We spent most of the rest of the week reviewing basic statistics and learning how to use the open source statistics program R in Tharandt.

Tharandt is a short train ride away from Dresden. Since our classes began at 9 am we had to make sure we were on the right platform in the main train station (Hauptbanhof or Hbf for short) in time to catch the 8:07 am train every morning. I enjoyed the train rides with my classmates and looking out the windows at the passing scenery.

Tharandt is a picturesque town in the forest. The hall in which our statistics lessons was located had very interesting decor - dozens of antlers. We had our lessons in a computer lab outfitted with Apple computers. This is unusual for scientific work. It was a challenge getting used to using an Apple again, and even more of a challenge adapting to the Apple German keyboard. Many common keys (like brackets) had to be accessed through shortcuts, and on German keyboards the "z" and "y" are reversed.

We were happy to be done with statistics on Thursday afternoon. We will be back in Tharandt again the week after next for GIS classes.

A Comedy of Errors

Tonight I logged into my German bank account and discovered that a portion of my scholarship had been transferred from the course organizers in the Netherlands to me. This is excellent news, as my first few weeks in Germany have been expensive. However, I was a bit surprised at how much money had been transferred to me. It seemed like too much, too soon. Then I noticed that they had transferred two equal amounts of money to me on the same day. Looking at the memo lines, I noticed that one transaction had my last name on it, but that the other had another last name on it: my Georgian classmate's.

Just a few days ago I let my classmate borrow my laptop to send his bank account information to our organizers in the Netherlands. I teased him that he could provide my information, if he wished! Little did I know that this was exactly what he would end up doing, though by mistake.

We thought that IBAN numbers for the same bank branch were identical. Not so, it turns out (at least in our case). He provided the same IBAN number as mine, which resulted in his scholarship money being deposited directly into my bank account.

My classmate's reaction to this situation? "You are joking." No, sadly, I was not (but we did get a good laugh out of it, a little later). We determined the correct IBAN number for him and he sent it to the Netherlands. Tomorrow we'll go to the bank to transfer the extra money from my account to his.

Sundays are for Laundry

All my major shopping done, I decided that yesterday would be a good day to relax and get some laundry done. I carried my half-full Burpee seed/laundry bag down 6 flights of stairs to the laundry room in the basement to find that, not surprisingly, all of the washers were full, and there were bags of clothes next to them, of people waiting to do their loads next. There are countdown clocks on the washers, and three were within minutes of being done, so I decided to wait. Luckily, a German guy walked in. I asked him for help, and he graciously let me put my clothes in the first washer that was ready, even though one of the waiting bags was his. Here's what he showed me:

1. Press the unlock button.
2. Take out the done clothes and pile them on top of the washer. Stick your clothes in.
3. Choose one of the 6 or so washing programs. "A is best; I always use A," he said. A is for cotton and has three water temperatures: 40, 60, or 90 degrees. 40 degrees (over 100 deg F) seemed sufficient to me.
4. Pull out the little drawer in the machine and add detergent. Optionally, add softener. I had heard that German water was extra-hard, and that if you don't use softener you'll end up with stiff clothes. So when he offered to let me use his softener, I let him pour in tons. Bad idea, it later turned out, as I am sensitive to fragrance and that softener guaranteed my room will have a strong smell for days.
5. Go over to the pay machine, select your machine number, and pay 2.10 euro. That's right,
about $2.75 for a load about 50-75% the size of an American load. I asked the guy, "Really?" "Really," he assured me.
6. Press the green button to start the wash cycle.

The countdown timer showed 23 minutes. "Ok, so about half an hour?" I asked the guy. "No, no, an hour and 30 minutes! Maybe an hour and 20 minutes," he said. Oh man, and I had wanted to go down to the river. Oh well, what can you do?

I came down just over an hour later, to help one of my classmates with his first load of laundry. Someone had taken out my clothes and piled them on top of the washer, so I guess they were done. I went through the steps with my classmate, but when he showed me his detergent, I was skeptical. It had a picture of a washer and clothes on it, but it was called something like Anti-Calc Pulver. I turned the box over, which showed a clean metal coil and a metal coil covered with calcium deposits, and I told him that I didn't think it was detergent, but powder for removing hard water deposits from the washer. We really need our German class! I grabbed my clothes and went back up 6 flights of stairs to get my detergent for him to use.

Right after he started his washing program, the machine showed 20-some minutes, but a few minutes later it showed over 40 minutes. Another German guy came in and I asked him if the machines really take an hour and a half per laod. He said it's more like 50 minutes. We also showed him the anti-calc pulver but he wasn't sure what it was. "Sorry!" he said.

Back upstairs, I grabbed a drying rack from the bathroom, opened my window wide, and hung my clothes. The drying rack was more than large enough for all the clothes I had washed. Nice! This morning, after dreaming about reading an article about washing laundry in Germany, which said that the kind of laundry detergent I'd bought was "not recommended for beginners," I found that all my clothes were dry. Very fragrant, but dry. I am satisfied. I just have to buy some of my own laundry softener, as my classmate, who used my detergent without any softener, said his clothes ended up a bit hard.

I'm grateful that I actually did make it out of the dorms and down to the Elbe river yesterday. My classmate and I caught the tram there. We walked around a bit and crossed the river to go into the Neustadt district. There was a nice pedestrian corridor there. Lots of people were out, enjoying the good weather and eating ice cream. We got some frozen yogurt that was delicious, even though it was the "rotten fruit" flavor. No, not really, "roten" means red here.

The old buildings in Dresden are impressive. I need to buy a guide book and start reading up on them and the city's history. The Elbe is a nice river as well, though I have to admit I like natural or at least more natural rivers better than rivers with a lot of development built up next to them. The Mississippi has spoiled me for life!

Bier, Beer, and more Bier

I can tell that this is going to be another recurring theme during my time in Dresden. Yesterday I met three of my classmates, from Canada, Colombia, and Albania. Today I met two more, from China and Georgia (the country, not the state), who live in my dorm. We went shopping together, then came back, cooked dinner, and drank beer. My Chinese classmate, who's not a fan of beer, had some white wine instead - his first time trying anything other than Chinese or Korean wine.

It is so interesting to talk to my classmates, and to learn about countries I'm not that familiar with. Georgia sounds beautiful - mountains within an hour from the sea. Tonight we tried the local Dresden beer, Dresdner Felsenkeller, which one of us had heard was so-so. We tried the Pilsner and the Urhell varieties. The Urhell tasted great to me, and a large bottle cost less than 1 euro. I even preferred it to our third bottle of beer, the Czech Pilsner Urquell. We tried another beer, but it was not memorable. I think the name was something like Vorhang, but that's not right, because Vorhang means curtain... I have curtains on the brain because I bought and had my neighbor hang one for me yesterday, hallelujah, and showed my classmates where to buy some today. We have very big windows and curtains are essential for privacy and blocking the outside light at night. Don't even get me started on the very specific type of curtain hooks we had to find before we could buy curtains, or how much they cost. How much everything for our rooms cost, in fact - I'd rather forget that.

I will meet most of the rest of my classmates on Monday morning at our course welcome. A few won't make it to Dresden until later due to visa delays, etc. My Chinese classmate said that he had to pass an oral hydraulics and hydrology examination at the German embassy before they'd give him a study visa! I'm sure glad I didn't have to fly down to the German consulate in Houston for something like that.

One of the topics that got us laughing the hardest tonight was the deposits we had to wire transfer to the dormitory contractor's bank account. Our room contracts started on the 1st of September but since we didn't arrive until the second week, they asked us to send them a 70 euro deposit in advance. My local bank hadn't done an international wire transfer in two years, so it was a little touch-and-go. I looked up how many dollars there were in 70 euros, and figured I'd be safe if I wired $100. My bank charges a flat $40 fee for international wire transfers, but they cannot guarantee that the money will make it its intended destination. Anyway, a few days later, I heard back from my contact at the dormitory office that they had only received 61.52 euro. I freaked out that I would have to pay another $40 to wire 9 more euro to Germany, but luckily after I wrote and explained the situation, my contact wrote back that my room was reserved. My Georgian classmate, hilariously, also wired the office what he believed was over 70 euro, then heard back they had only received 62 euro. Unlike me, though, his strategy was to write back that he would wire them the remaining 8 euro as soon as possible. To pay his deposit, my Chinese classmate took advantage of the worldwide Chinese network and, using the Internet, paid a Chinese guy living in Germany to deposit the money for him!

The weirdest thing about tonight was that the kitchen we were cooking in had a photo of a half-naked lady taped to the cupboard just above the kitchen sink. I guess washing dishes can get kind of boring. I also found it bizarre that that kitchen had almost exactly the same collection of empty bottles of alcohol placed on top of the cupboard as there are in my kitchen. My suite mates and I are just waiting until the official beginning of the semester to see if any students from last year come back before we throw all that kind of stuff out and redo the kitchen to our liking.

Walk 'Til You Drop

The week is almost over and it feels like I have spent most of my time in Germany walking and shopping. I have no car here, so I cannot drive to stores and load up. I need to buy a little every day. Today I met up with some classmates and we went shopping for some household necessities together. I ended up spending several hours walking around carrying hangers, a broom, a yoga mat, a pan cover, curtain hooks, and other random stuff. All this walking is exhausting, especially since I haven't been getting enough sleep at night, drinking enough water, or eating as often or as healthily as I normally do. My feet, legs, and back ache.

Here are some more funny (or at least different) things about life in Germany:

• Trash needs to be sorted into several different categories here. As I understand it so far, you have your organic waste or compost; your glass (brown, clear, and green separated); your paper, which includes cardboard; your newspaper; plastic and foil; and everything else. Maybe by the time I leave I'll have it all figured out.
• Doors open in instead of out. In the U.S. you have fire codes that require doors to open out. Not so here. I tried to go into a copy shop two days ago and thought they closed early because the door would not open for me. Then I realized I hadn't tried pushing it in. D'oh!
• The light rail or tram doors do not slide open unless you push a button on one of the doors. I was very confused one night when I ran to a newly arrived tram, waited for the doors to open, and waited, and waited, and then the tram left. The next time I watched other people waiting and saw them press a button on the doors. At first I thought this was annoying, but then I realized it's probably a good idea not to open the doors unnecessarily when it's cold outside. As a side note, German trains are very punctual.
• Grocery stores and many other stores do not accept credit cards for payment - you must use a German MasterCard debit card or cash. As one clerk sternly told me when I handed her my credit card, "Visa nein!"
• Most grocery stores and many other stores do not give you bags. You need to bring your own bag(s) or pay to buy one from them (if they're even available). I paid 10 cents (euro) for a small bag at a household goods store today.
• Also, you must bag all your own purchases, including groceries. They do not stop the next person in line for you. A lot of the stores have bagging areas that people can move over to to finish the job.
• At the Autumn Fair, you can buy beer in a glass, but you have to pay a 2 euro deposit for the glass. You get it back when you give them the glass back. I had some excellent seasonal fermented alcohol called Federweisser at the fair today, by the way. It reminded me a bit of Kombucha. Probably because I was eating mushrooms at the time - a whole bowl full of mushrooms. I probably won't be able to eat any more mushrooms for a month.
• You can take some plastic bottles back to grocery stores for a refund (called pfand). There are no refunds for glass, though. According to one of my classmates who has lived in Germany before, this system was implemented to combat littering.
• The washing machines here are tiny (about the size of two 1-gal buckets), and the dryers don't work. No seriously, from what I've heard, Germans do not use dryers. In my dorm there are two dryers in the basement, but my neighbor warned me not to try to use them because they are expensive and work less than half the time. Everyone just uses drying racks or indoor clothes lines instead. Jeans can take several days to dry when the weather's damp, my classmate said. My mom suggested I handwash all my clothes, but without the spin cycle I think my clothes would really take a long time to dry. Plus, I'm lazy. We'll see.
• Free public restrooms are hard to come by. At the main train station in Dresden, you have to pay 70 euro cents and go through a turnstile to use the restrooms. Not all restaurants have restrooms. In many shopping malls, there are restroom attendants who you are expected to tip when you are done.
• Free water is also hard to come by (I guess this helps reduce restroom use). At a restaurant the other day my jaw nearly dropped when I asked for some water and was charged 1.40 euro. At least it was carbonated (mit gas). A glass of beer would've only cost me 20 more cents. I have a water bottle I carry around with me, but haven't seen drinking fountains I could fill up at when I'm out and about.
• You're supposed to tip the restroom attendant, but aren't expected to tip taxi drivers or restaurant servers/cashiers!

Don't Forget Your Hausschuhe

So, I have a pair of old suede Birkenstock clogs that I decided to bring with me because hey, they're comfortable and they're German. I wore them out walking around the other day, which turned out to be a bad idea because it rained and my feet got wet. Last night I was chatting with some of the older American students from BU in my dorm. One of the RAs was wearing clogs similar to mine except they're half smooth leather and half felt. She called them her Hausschuhe, or house shoes. The other girls were saying they see Hausschuhe for sale everywhere, even the grocery store Aldi. They told me that though Birkenstock clogs are acceptable outside wear in the States, if you wear them out here you will get some weird looks from Germans. It's pretty much the equivalent of wearing slippers to go shopping in the U.S. Oh well, I guess I shouldn't wear my clogs outside but at least I have a nice pair of Hausschuhe!

Arrival in Dresden

I arrived in Dresden, Germany two days ago. My first days have definitely been overwhelming. I have been trying to get all my ducks in a row before my course begins next week. What I've accomplished so far: signed my dorm room contract; moved into my dorm room and unpacked; registered with the local authorities; opened a German bank account; got Internet set up in my room; bought some groceries; and started buying some necessities for my room (trash can, towels). What I have left to do: convert my entry permit to a student visa; get a mobile phone; start cooking lunch and dinner for myself; and buy some more necessities for my room (rug, desk lamp, curtains?). I also must LEARN GERMAN, asap. I have lived in other countries before so I don't know why I'm having such a hard time dealing with the lack of English here, especially since most younger Germans in Dresden do speak pretty decent English. I think it is because I am on my own, and it is quite isolating when you can't communicate very well with anyone. I am very much looking forward to the arrival of my classmates!

Funny things so far:

• At the registration office I had to tell them my religion. They are only interested in if you are Catholic or Evangelical, though. Buddhist = no religion.
• At the registration office I asked if Germans also have to register when they move to a new city. "Of course!" the guy replied.
• I have to pay a monthly fee for my bank account because even though I am a student, I am over 30. I cracked up the guy helping me open my account when I said it was an "old age fee."
• I already posted this on FB, but on my first evening, seriously exhausted after my flights, I went out looking for food. There was a fair going on in one of the town squares. I tried to decipher the German names of food and found Nudeln mit Tomaten und Käse, or noodles with tomatoes and cheese. I ordered some. The lady handed it to me and I looked around for a fork. I couldn't see any. Finally I asked her. She pointed to my hand, which was holding a fork, and said, "That's awesome!" Geez...
• There is a 8GB per week per room limit on Internet use in my dorm, supposedly to restrict Internet use to academic purposes. My American suite mate (dorm rooms in my building are divided into suites, or groups of six rooms that share a kitchen and bathroom) warned me not to try to illegally upload or download anything, "It's a small country; they track you." Apparently the police came after another American student for illegally downloading three songs - they wanted 1000s of Euros but he got a lawyer and only had to pay a few hundred.
• In my dorm (all German dorms?), the students have to clean their own rooms, bathrooms, and kitchens. Wish me luck!
• Everyone, and I mean everyone, I've interacted with has tried to speak to me in German first. Reactions to me explaining that sorry, I don't speak German, have ranged from amused to exasperated. Today in a department store one lady just sighed and walked away!