There and back again - 21.12.12

I got up, had some oatmeal, and took trains to the Frankfurt airport.  My bags were overweight.  It was annoying and I got some snickers when people saw me put them on, but wearing 7 layers and putting all your books in your pockets is an effective way to get more weight through security.  I had to leave the Almdudler, though, because they don't let you carry fluids through security.
I listened to Timaeus on the transatlantic flight.  You know a book is interesting if the introduction is longer than the book itself.  After that flight, though, I was too tired to listen anymore.  There's only so much Plato you can take in one day.
When I got to the Dallas airport, they were giving all soldiers priority boarding.  When I got to Albuquerque, I noticed that Americans are much more patriotic than Germans.  This would have never happened in Germany:

I took a shuttle to Santa Fe where Daniel picked me up and took me to Los Alamos, where I went straight to bed.  Yep, I'm writing this the next day.
That's my trip!  Thanks for reading.  I had fun and learned a lot.  I'd recommend it to anyone adventurous enough to do it.

Test - 20.12.12

This morning I got up early, took a bus to Pinneberg to get a book I had lent, and took a train to Hamburg.  I walked to the Goethe Institut Hamburg for the last time to take my C1 test.  It was pretty hard, but I feel like I passed it. The reading, listening, and writing tests took the whole morning, and the speaking test took a half an hour in the afternoon.
I got my suitcases I had stored in the staff break room during the tests and went back to the train station.  All of the trains from Hamburg to Frankfurt were canceled, so I jumped on a train to Hanover, where the trains were running without delay.

Last day of work - 19.12.12

I went to work, got a lot done, sold my bike, went out to lunch with the Grubers, and had a web meeting with the Swedes and Brits.  Talk about a productive last day.  Afterwards I went to institute in Hamburg, where they had a Christmas party complete with an improvisational play and a cookie competition.  It was fun.  I had my roommate tell me to turn the light off for the last time.  Now I need to pack all my belongings into my bags for tomorrow and get as much sleep as possible.

Class ends - 18.12.12

After sleeping in a little, I went to Hamburg, walked around a lot, and finished up my Christmas shopping.  I went to Miniature Wonderland and saw the world's largest model train system with trains, cars, boats, airplanes, hot air balloons, and lots of little people in a little world.  It was like being a kid reading a Where's Waldo book, except there was no Waldo.  Maybe I just didn't look hard enough.
I had my last German class in Hamburg.  We finished getting ready for the test on Thursday.
I thought of another benefit of not seeing the sun for weeks at a time: no tan lines!
I got home late, and now I need to pack.

Fast fertig - 17.12.12

This morning I unregistered my residence with the German government and went to Ralf's house and "didn't work" because my work permit expired on the 15th.  Actually, there wasn't much for me to do, so I left after a few hours and came "home" to the apartment where I lived yesterday.  Officially I'm a homeless, jobless bum for the next week, but I'm doing fine.  I'm just bored.  I have nothing to accomplish for the next few days, and no friends within easy visiting distance.  I'll make it.

Neumünster - 16.12.12

Today we sang a Christmas program during sacrament meeting in Neumünster.  It was nice.  We had our own Sunday school, in which we were told that as a result of some changes in the European church organization, next year is the last year the church will officially support the Vocalis choir.  They're trying to make stronger stake activities instead of maintaining a regional choir, which is understandable.  But everybody is sad about the end of the 7-year tradition that some people call the German tabernacle choir, especially after yesterday, but the decision comes directly from the area presidency, and we support the area presidency.
Everybody in the choir lives south of Kiel, so it was easy to find a ride south to Quickborn.  The time is coming for me to start finishing things and packing up.  I'll probably watch a movie or something this afternoon, too.

Weihnachtskonzert - 15.12.12

I got up at 5:30 this morning and took trains to Neumünster and then to Kiel.  I had a lovely walk along the port.  I've never been to Hawaii, but I imagine the Baltic Sea during December is pretty much the same experience:

I arrived at the Petruskirche in Kiel.  It's a cool old Catholic church whose roof is an upside-down hull.  I guess there are more shipbuilders than architects in Kiel, but it looks really cool and the acoustics are quite good:

We practiced, did some recording, sang in an old-folks home, and prepared for our concert.  We sang the same songs as the other concert (Vivaldi, Haydn, etc.) but we did a much better job.  When I was told that we needed to have a second encore ready, I thought, "who do we think we are?"  Some important politician talked about our charity contribution (Schleswig-Holstein something Vorsitzender), we gave our concert, and we gave the two encores after standing ovations.  After the second encore, though, the person who introduced us took the microphone and asked for another encore.  We sang our Noel song again, and after a few minutes of applause we left the stage.  It was an amazing night.  I'm glad Ralf and Anke were there, since I don't have any family in Germany.
We went to various church members to spend the night.

Coming to an end - 14.12.12

Ralf and I settled all our finances today, then I did a bit more programming.  I accomplished what I meant to accomplish today before lunch, so I spent the rest of the day playing with some javascript libraries.  It's hard to focus when you know you're leaving in a few days and you've already presented your work.  I ended up leaving a bit early.  I watched some TV in my apartment.
I'm going to bed early to rise early.  I'm healthy and wise.

Back home - 13.12.12

I just got back home to Quickborn.  It's strange that the number of pageviews on my blog hasn't gone down even though I haven't updated my blog in almost a week.  You're all in a routine you'll have to break in a few weeks when I stop updating.
I started the day by showing Brandon the Berlin subway system.  I last saw him on a bus headed to the airport.  Then I took a train to Wittenberg, which means not only that I visited the last German Bundesland (now I've been to all 16!), but I saw yet another city that claims to be the birthplace of the reformation.  This one has a legitimate claim, though.  I visited the church that had the first German mass, then the bigger Schlosskirche.

There were no theses nailed to the door.  There wasn't even a hole where there used to be a nail:

After I had pulled my suitcase around in the snow enough, I got on a train back to Berlin.  All the trains to Hamburg were delayed or canceled, so I tried going to Hanover, which usually has many trains to Hamburg, but they were all canceled or delayed, too.  I finally got on a train going to Kiel, and got off in Hamburg.  I have no idea what is going on, but it's good to be back home.

More Berlin - 12.12.12

We took a taxi over to the intercontinental hotel for the exciting conclusion of the winter simulation conference.  I actually got to talk to a few people who passed by.  After we had taken down the booth, we had the rest of the day to see Berlin.  We changed clothes and went straight for the Pergamonmuseum.  I think it was the coolest museum I've ever seen, and that includes the British Museum.
They had all the freezes from the Altar of Pergamo.  The Byzantines had used the stone from the old Hellenistic temple to help build the walls around the city.  In the 1800's they were using the marble from the walls to make lye, so the Germans took all of the sculptures that had been hidden in the walls to Berlin to put in the museum.

Pergamo was one of the seven cities that John wrote to in the Book of Revelation, but that wasn't the most impressive thing in the museum.  I also saw the Ishtar Gate reconstructed from original bricks from the gates King Nebuchadnezzar built around Babylon.

The most ornate stonework was in the market gate, which had been destroyed by an earthquake.  Some people wanted to use only traditional techniques when reconstructing the gate in the museum, but those techniques had failed once before, so they put an iron frame to reinforce it.

There was also an amazing Islamic art display.  You'll have to go to Berlin.  We took some time to walk around the city and see the Brandenburg Gate again, but now I want to go to bed early.

Winter Simulation Conference, Day 2 - 11.12.12

Today was a bit more interesting.  We manned the booth for a few hours, then we had a little meeting with Stephan.  I presented my work for the last few months, what I added, what changes I made, the organization, etc.  It went over well.  We had lunch and went back to the booth.
At the end of the day, we packed up and went to dinner at a nice restaurant.  I had some duck.  It was fun.

Winter Simulation Conference, Day 1 - 10.12.12

I think today may have been the most boring day of my entire life.  I spent most of the day in a booth with Brandon (from America), Ralf (from Germany), and Steven (from Holland).  We are exhibitors, and we have an exhibitors booth with all the other exhibitors.  Not very many people walked by, and we only had the chance to talk to a few of those that did.
We went to the presentation by Stephan Seidel from the Fraunhofer Institut.  He presented the project I've been working on for the last few months.  It was in a group of three presentations, and it was by far the most interesting, even though I didn't learn anything from it because I had proofread his presentation paper.
The other presentations were an hour of jargon so technical and abstract that I had no idea what they were about (and I'm not an uneducated person) and almost nobody had any questions.
I walked around a little and talked to people about their software, but by far the most interesting was the booth of the Math Works.  I started talking to them about my optimized linear algebra software, and one of the people there used to be in the numerical group.  He said he could get me in contact with people who are interested in my project, of which there are only a handful in the world.  He also said that he knows the guy who started the LINPACK project, the predecessor to LAPACK.  That's kind of like telling a history buff that you could arrange a personal meeting with George Washington, except this guy is actually still alive.
We had a nice dinner in our hotel, talked, and now I'm in bed.

Christmas Market - 9.12.12

Today we had a little meeting with our distributors from Switzerland and Poland and we set up the stand for tomorrow, but we had a good portion of the day free.  My coworker Brandon came from the USA, and it's kind of fun to see his first experience in Germany.  We went to a restaurant and he tried to order just water to drink, which you can't really do, etc.  We went to the Christmas market and had Kinderpunsch.  We walked around town a bit.  I've decided which car I'm going to buy when I get back home:

All in all, it was a pretty relaxing day.

Berlin - 8.12.12

I didn't sleep well last night.  I was too excited.  Today I went to Berlin!
I got up and took the train to Ralf's, where we started our drive to Berlin.  We drove, added some oil, drove, and put our clothes in the hotel.  Then we were free to explore Berlin.
We walked through the Brandenburg Gate.

We Walked up and down the dome of the Bundestag.

We ate currywurst and went to the Checkpoint Charlie museum.  I watched some of Regan's speech at the Brandenburg Gate.  I've heard the quote "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" so many times followed immediately with videos of people with sledge hammers tearing down the wall, I thought the events happened one right after another.  There was actually a good portion of the speech after that quote and a few years of politics before the wall came down.  I guess film juxtaposition isn't always in real time.

Manschettenknöpfe - 7.12.12

I finished my code migration today, which was weeks of work.  After lunch, Ralf and I went and bought a few things for next week.  When we got back, I wrote a function that converts a binary adjacency matrix into a next-vertex-along-the-shortest-path matrix.  It was like eating dessert after a large meal.  I just wish there were a proper term in graph theory to describe it.
I did my laundry this evening to get ready for next week.  Our apartment complex shares laundry machines and driers in the basement.  When I went to put my laundry in the drier, someone had already filled both of them.  I assumed they belonged to the same person, so I put them both into one and put my clothes into the other.  The lady came down to put more money in the electric switch.  I put more money in her switch and tried to explain to her what I had done, but my charades were more effective than my German.  If only I knew Turkish.
The switches turn off at 8:40PM.  I was reading when it turned off.  I heard a click in the next room, and went around the corner to find the timer under a removable cover.  My clothes were dry, though, and I didn't want to mess with it.

Nikolaustag - 6.12.12

When I got home yesterday, my shoes were muddy from walking through the snow, so I put them on the balcony.  They were really cold when I walked to the train station this morning.
Last night I stayed up late for an important interview via Skype.  Of course I was in my pajamas during the interview so I could go to bed immediately afterwards, but it was hard to sleep.  This morning I got up and was walking to the train station as the sun rose:

Seeing the sun rise before I get to work means I'm late to work.  It's not much of a problem.  I just worked a little late.  It was dark when I got home, too.  In a few days the sun will only be 13 degrees above the horizon at its zenith.
When I got to work, I had a box of chocolates on my mousepad.  I didn't think much of it:  "Thanks Grubers."  During our lunch conversation, though, I realized that my thanks had been falsely directed:  it's St. Nikolaus' day.  Last night all the children put their shoes outside so he could fill them with chocolate.  Since my shoes were on the balcony instead of on the ground floor, he brought my treats by the office.

Winter - 5.12.12

Today was beautiful.  I saw this out of the window in my office:

I got a good amount of work done today, then bought some groceries on the way home.  I started my German language comprehension practice, but the DVD audio was in English.  There were German subtitles, but that doesn't help much.  To make sure it wasn't just the first episode, I watched the second and third.  They were also only in English.  I decided to just watch whatever is on TV in German.  Is this really what normal people do with their spare time?
I have to stay up until 11:00, which is 2PM California time.

The day backwards - 4.12.12

The sky precipitated all day today, ranging from a drizzle to a mild downpour, until I walked home from the train stop through a peaceful snow.  I rode the train home from my class in Hamburg, where I learned more vocab and grammar.  I need to learn a lot more vocab than grammar.  Before my class I borrowed some DVDs from the library that I'll use for "German language comprehension practice" aka watching Seinfeld in German in my very little free time.  I went into the library to warm up from walking around the Christmas market and buying a few presents, which was my reward to myself for making another small milestone at work, even though it was pouring rain.

Schnee im Norden - 3.12.12

I went to work this morning as usual where I finished a few things from my Italy trip, then continued my development project.  Every once in a while Ralf and I will talk about something, then we'll continue working.  I somewhat prefer sharing an office.

After work I brought my marzipan Adventscalendar home and took the bus to Pinneberg where I played some games with some friends from church at the Eggers' apartment.  On the way back big fluffy flakes of snow started falling and coating the ground.

Adventsempfang - 2.12.12

This morning we went to church in Friedrichsdorf.  I hadn't realized this before, but the Gospel of Luke begins and ends in the temple.  Luke is always full of surprises.
After church we had another dress rehearsal, but this time in the Villa next to the temple where the temple presidency lives.  I had never realized how different acoustics and instrument availability affect traveling musical groups.
The dress rehearsal was preparing for the Adventsempfang, an annual event in the Villa on the 1st Advent.  From the information I could gather by talking to various choir members, the choir has existed for 7-8 years and Adventsempfang has happened since the Frankfurt temple was dedicated in 1987.  Adventsempfang was started to calm some political opposition to the construction of the temple.  Relations are now much better, but still every year they welcome the mayor of Friedrichsdorf, various pastors, and a few other local leaders to a VIP musical celebration in the villa.  It was simply beautiful, but I don't have any pictures.
We sang most of our songs except for the Glorias, but there was still some Vivaldi: the Meissner family came from Vienna wearing very Austrian clothes, and they played the violin, cello, and harp, and sang a few songs, too.  It was the kind of Christmas party I want to have in my house in a few years, with very fancy snacks afterwards.
There was another performance of the same thing for the area and mission presidencies, but those of us from the north left before that one.  I got home in Quickborn quite late as it is, and others are driving further north.

Geburtstag - 1.12.12

This morning we got up and drove into the heart of Rheinland-Pfalz.  We arrived in Idar-Oberstein and went to the Christuskirche, a beautiful protestant church where we had our concert.

After the dress rehersal, we had lunch and went up to the Burg Oberstein, a cool castle where we sang at the local Christmas market.

We had a few minutes to walk around the castle and look at the shops that had been set up.  When we were in a little room in the dungeon, a salesman noticed that I had a songbook in my hand and made us sing a song, so we sang the alto and bass parts of a Christmas song.  It was fun!
After dinner, we warmed up and sang our concert.  We made a few mistakes, but we were given a standing ovation at the end.
For those of you that weren't there (probably everybody reading my blog), here is a link to a youtube video of an Armenian choir singing Vivaldi's Gloira in D.  Yes, we also sang all twelve parts.  That was about half of our concert.  I was the guy in the back with the bow tie, except our choir was less Armenian and more German, and instead of an orchestra we had a pipe organ, a harpsichord, a piano, a cello, and a flute.  It was a beautiful Christmas concert, and probably the classiest thing I've ever done.  After the concert, I got to play a little Bach on the harpsichord:

When we got back to Frankfurt, it was snowing.  It was probably the best birthday I've ever had.

Alps Flight - 30.11.12

What a day.  I started by discussing Mercurial and answering a few other questions, then Luciano took me to the airport.

I flew over the fresh snow of Swiss cities (try saying that 10 times fast) and looked down on the alps and clouds.  It was simply majestic.

I landed in Frankfurt and walked around the city with a friend and ate at the Christmas market.  Then I had choir practice for a few hours.  I've done many very different things today.

Training Italians - 29.11.12

I spent all day today talking to Italians about HTTP servers and modules.  Well, that's not entirely true.  We went to the mall and had some tasty bacon-spaghetti for lunch.  The rain had let up, so I could see the fresh snow on the alps.  Here's a view from their parking lot.  Turino is a beautiful place after all.

After I was done at work, Maurizio took me to a nice Italian restaurant for a 4 course dinner.  The restaurant was on a little cobblestone street in a little town high in the Piemonte hills near where he lives.  There were sets of silverware on the table for each course.  The waitress poured a little wine in his glass, had him taste it, and then poured the rest after he said it was good.  We started with slices of meat with a scoop of tuna sauce which we rolled up inside the meat.  Then we had bell peppers with Bagna Couda, a sauce made from ground up anchovies and garlic in oil, which tastes just like garlic.  I had some little potato balls with a local cheese sauce on it, then we had a selection of 14 different cheeses with jam, chestnut honey, and maple honey.  It was one of the fanciest meals I've ever had, and everything was delicious.

Torino - 28.11.12

This morning I got up at 4AM, took a taxi to the airport, and took airplanes to Torino, Italy.  I was picked up at the airport and driven through the rain to Flexcon, our Italian distributors.  We got to know each other and discussed the week, then went to lunch at a pizza place in the style of Napoli.  After the Napoleon pizza, we had some zeppola, which is like a giant cream-stuffed eclair, but somehow much better.  Then the afternoon I started to go through the training materials I had prepared.  This group is much more advanced than I had anticipated.  When I was going to introduce the idea of our browser to them, they showed me some things they have done with the browser that I had never even thought of.  They kept asking questions while I was explaining things, so it was hard to stay on track, but we covered a lot of topics.

For dinner we went to a restaurant called Eataly, which is like an organic foods store with little restaurants in it.  We had some really good ravioli and some gelato.  It was really good, and I saw some interesting vegetables:

Weihnachtsmarkt - 27.11.12

I was really distracted today at work for some reason.  I guess there's a lot going on in my life right now, so there's a lot about which to think, about which that I can't do anything.  I did some tedious code proofreading and formatting that needed to be done anyway, but I couldn't focus enough to debug.  At least I got something done.
I took a few hours this evening and walked around downtown.  It's really pretty.

I brought some pumpkin bread to my German class tonight.  They thought I brought it because of my birthday.  I guess my birthday is coming up, but I had it leftover from Thanksgiving.  It's apparently bad luck to wish someone a happy birthday in Germany before their birthday, but my Latvian classmate had already done the wishing.  Also, I should have thought about this before I brought it, but the bread is halal and vegetarian  so everybody had some.
The class concluded with the teacher asking me a question right at 9:00PM when I had completely zoned out.  I think I need to get away from it all for a few days by doing something completely different, like going  to Italy or something.

I heard two slang words on the way home that I'd heard before.  "Simsen" is the slang verb to send a text message, or SMS (try saying SMS-en) and "Naschi" seems to be a term for junk food, like the verb "naschen".

Theaterstück - 26.11.12

Today I made some progress at work, but it's hard to debug a big project whose behavior is not well defined.  I'm doing my best, though, and I'm trying to have something working and expandable by the time I'm done in a few weeks.
Afterwards I went to the institute center in Hamburg.  Carsten, one of the young single adults, had written a play which he and some of his friends performed on a stage somewhere in Hamburg 2 weeks ago.  He showed us the highlights tonight.  It was professionally filmed, and a DVD of it is being made, so I was expecting good filmography.  Instead he showed us some clips that his mom had filmed, complete with the occasional camera in front of the video camera to take a picture.  It looked like it was a very good play live, but it was hard to hear in the recording I saw, and I couldn't hear what was going on, but I had the commentary of the playwright.  There were some funny moments, especially when one character kidnapped another.  It's always been Carsten's dream to direct a play, and he wants to do it again next year.  I'm glad I saw this little "promotional event".  I think everyone ought to live their dreams like he's doing.

Kiel - 25.11.12

Whenever there's a CES devotional, the Hamburg and Neumünster stakes have a combined young single adult sacrament meeting and watch it.  I was picked up and drove with Tibor and the Richters to Kiel.  We went to the institute center there, which is the old ward building.  We had a sacrament meeting then watched the devotional in English upstairs and German downstairs.  Afterwards we all had some chili and talked for a while with people from all over northern Germany.

I heard a good joke today when disputing who lived in a more boring town:
Two farmers were talking one day.  "My farm is 10000 acres," said one.  The other replied, "My farm is so big that it takes two whole days to drive around the edge," to which the first said, "yeah, I used to have a truck like that, too."

On the way home we saw the Kiel Canal which connects the North and Baltic Seas.  Lots of big boats go through it.
When I got home, I helped my roommate translate his curriculum vitae from English into German.  It says that his German isn't as good as his English or Hindi, but it's important to communicate his incredible technical background.  He wrote his masters thesis on LCD manufacturing (not LSD) and has worked on many advanced electronics development projects.
I watched some TV.  I always feel like I'm wasting time when I watch TV, but in this case I'm practicing my German comprehension skills.

Giving - 24.11.12

It turns out my little village, Quickborn, has produced a somewhat famous star.  Mike Krüger was a German comedian/songwriter in the '70s and '80s.  I listened to some of his songs this morning on youtube.  They're fun to listen to.
I think a good metric for the happiness of a year is the number of Thanksgiving dinners enjoyed.  This is a 2-thanksgiving-dinner year.  This afternoon I went to Ralf's house and joined him and his family for their Thanksgiving celebration.  It was somewhat different.  In addition to the usual, Ralf's son's American girlfriend had prepared her family's traditional Thanksgiving chicken noodle soup and a strange jello/cream cheese/whipped cream/pretzel dessert.  It was certainly worth trying.
Sometimes this trip I've been quite lonely, but this weekend I've had a wealth of family inclusion.

I got home, and my Pakistani roommate Hassan had prepared me biryani, a traditional Pakistani dish.  I felt bad, but I don't think there's any way I can fit it in tonight even though it smells so good.  I'll have it for breakfast.

Elbe - 23.11.12

This morning I was awakened at about 9 to the sound of children playing, which was actually quite nice for a change.  I got up and had a great German breakfast of rolls, cheese, and meats.  I was also introduced to a tasty combination of Nutella and cream cheese.  After a relaxing morning, I hit the road.  Actually I hit the railroad.
On the way home I saw the Müllers, some of my friends from my mission.  It was good to see them again.
When I got to Hamburg, I got out of the train at Landungsbrücken and walked through the old Elbe tunnel, which was built in the days of Emperor Wilhelm II.  They didn't have enough room in the city to make ramps down to the tunnel, so there are four car-sized elevators at both entrances which go straight down to below the river.  As usual, Wikipedia has a better picture than mine, but neither picture can capture the awesomeness of walking down 133 stairs through turn-of-the-20th-century-style heavy steel structures.

My refrigerator space now consists of cheese, cheese for frying, cheesecake, and cake.  I need to go grocery shopping.

Thanks - 23.11.12

I started my day by having a sandwich with cheese that is either medium-aged or from the middle ages, I'm not sure which.  "Mittelalter Käse" is somewhat ambiguous.  Oh, and I'm not sure if "eingetragener Verein" means that the members are registered or that the club is registered.  I've been wrong before, believe it or not.
I got on the train and headed to Cologne.  In Hamburg, I realized that I had packed so lightly that I had forgotten to bring anything to do in the train, so I bought a book to read.  I wasn't the only one in the train reading, though.  There was a man reading Mozart sheet music just like I read words or computer code.  He said he was in the Hamburger orchestra.
I got to Cologne and had a few minutes to look around.  I saw that they're building their Christmas market, too!

 I went to visit my friend Oliver and his family who live not far from Cologne.  He had prepared an amazing American Thanksgiving meal that we enjoyed with several other guests.  I was stuffed AND thankful.

Costly apparel - 21.11.12

Today I got a lot of work done.  I usually have daily goals of what I want to get working, and I finished mine today at 4:00, so I went home.  Sometimes I accomplish my goal at 10AM, but then I need to think of something more to do for the day.

Ralf was working on his German tax forms a little today.  I don't think I'll ever again think that American taxes are too bureaucratic.

I didn't ride my bike to the train station today so I could bring my suit home.  I read online, looked at directions, and watched youtube videos, but I could not figure out how to tie my bow tie.  After enough fussing around I finally figured out where the second loop goes through the knot.

Now I'm baking a surprise for tomorrow that has the same color as the walls surrounding the mirror that helped so much in my adventure this evening.

Here comes the sun - 20.11.12

I saw the sun in Hamburg today!  You desert dwellers may think that's nothing to write home about, but here I am ... writing home about it.  After a typical day at work proofreading German/English/C++, I rode the train to Hamburg and bought a bow tie that I can tie myself.  It was a bit on the pricey side, but I'll probably only buy one in my life.  While I was shopping downtown I saw that they're starting to set up the Weihnachtsmarkt, or Christmas market.  This is about 10 meters tall:

I'm sooooo excited for the Christmas markets.  After I was done with my riotous living I went to my home away from home, the Hamburg library.  I made sure the moon was in the picture:

Here I did the final proofread of my paper, which actually took a few hours.  That's much longer than I thought it would take.  I've spent a long time on the paper, so I feel like a great burden was lifted off my shoulders when I turned it in.  I finished just in time to run upstairs to the Goethe Institut for my class.  We did some sample test exercises, learned about clubs, and practiced formal speaking.  I learned that the abbreviation e.V., which I've seen many times, is short for eingetragener Verein, a club for which you must register.

Fliege - 19.11.12

This morning I went to work a little early.  Ralf flew to Frankfurt, and I wanted to be sure we had time to clarify anything for while he's gone.  Turns out it's just going to be business as usual.  I did get good feedback for my training last week, though.
After lunch we went to pick up my suit.  It looks really good, but more importantly I look really good in it.  That's not too hard, because I think I look good in anything.  I asked the lady at the counter if they sold bow ties.  Of course they do.  It's a men's suit store.  But they didn't have any that I can tie myself.  They were trying to convince me that nobody does that anymore.  I guess their bow tie market consists of classless commoners.  I'll have to look elsewhere.
I got home to a dwindling stock of Swiss chocolate.  I have well under two pounds in my cupboard.  I'll have to stock up before I go home.
I'm going to relax, watch TV, and finalize my capstone paper tonight.  It'll be nice to have that burden off my shoulders.

Musikabend - 18.11.12

Today at church I met the Bast family.  They're an older couple who live practically across the street from me.  Now I have a ride home from church.  They told me all about their temple mission.  I never thought about it before, but I guess if you spent enough time in the Frankfurt temple, you'd get to know people from all over Europe.
After church I ate a big lunch and took a long nap.  I may or may not have been wearing my suit the whole time.
This evening the Basts took me to the Musikabend at the church.  It's an annual event in Pinneberg kind of like the Jensens' recitals, but with singing, guitar, and cello along with the piano music.  A 10-year-old boy played Rondo a Capriccio about 5 times as fast and as well as I can.  An older gentleman had a tremor so bad that he could hardly hold his music, but when he played one of Chopin's Etudes it seemed to disappear.

HSV - 17.11.12

Today I met up with my friends Nicolay and Emmely from Glückstadt and went to the stadium of the Hamburg Sport Verein. After listening to fans singing in the train and being pat down to make sure I don't have any knives or anything I would throw at the players like bottles or batteries, we got into the stadium where we found Aaron from Pinneberg.

We got there about an hour early, so we watched people wave big blue flags and watched the players come in the stadium. Once the game started, most of it looked like this:

The score was 1:0 for Hamburg against Mainz. It was exciting to see a goal.
Afterwards, they invited me to go to the Dom. "Dom" means "cathedral". I like cathedrals, and I haven't seen the Hamburg cathedral yet, so I agreed to go. We didn't actually go to the cathedral, though. We went to a festival near the St. Pauli stadium that is called "Dom":

We met with a few other people, walked around, ate Bratwurst, and rode the roller coaster with 2 loop-de-loops. It was much more exciting than anything I've ever seen in a cathedral.

Procrastination - 16.11.12

Ralf's going on vacation for the weekend, so I worked from home today.  I did some work, then rode my bike through a few snowflakes to get my hair cut.  When I got home, I read a bunch from my book about Ferdinand Porsche.  I've been putting off finishing my paper for too long.  The time is come.
I watched a little TV.  I don't watch TV much.  Among the things I saw was the music video of "Gangnam Style" for the first time.  The German government has different laws about what can be seen on youtube, so I couldn't see it before now.  You in shouldn't take the American government's relatively open internet policies for granted.

Programming - 15.11.12

Today I finished my training class with IMA.  Everything went well.  At lunchtime I walked around the production floor again with Tobias.  On the door is a sign that says "fotografieren verboten".  It's kind of a bummer that I'm not allowed to photograph some of the coolest things I see.
I learned another cool word.  "Der Ruck".  It's the German word for "jerk".  No, not that kind of jerk.  It's what you ought to think about when you hear the word "jerk": the third derivative of position with respect to time.  Position, velocity, acceleration, jerk.  Position, Geschwindigkeit, Beschleunigung, Ruck.
In other news, another contribution of mine was approved for inclusion in WebKit today, which is in turn included in Chrome and Safari.  And it only took 5 months to go through the review process.  Woohoo!

No, I'm not in Lubeck - 14.11.12

This morning I got up early and was picked up by Ralf, who got up even earlier.  We drove down to Lübbecke, a little town by Osnabrück where the furniture manufacturing equipment manufacturer IMA Klessmann has its factory.  We went through some of my training materials all day.  I'm glad I prepared so well.  It's the first technical training I've ever done in German.  My language doesn't seem to be much of a hindrance (I can understand myself, anyways), but it's good to have Ralf dabei.
We took a few breaks, and on one break the engineers I'm training took me on a tour of the factory floor.  It was one of the coolest things I have ever seen.  There were people making everything from conveyors to robotic milling machines the size of my entire apartment.  Like the VW factory, I think every engineering student ought to see something like that.
At the end of the day, we went to a little Gasthof, where we'll spend the night.  I had a really hammer Jägerschnitzel.  I'm really tired and ready for bed.  A picture cannot adequately portray just how German this place looks and feels, but here's one anyway:

Vocabulary - 13.11.12

Typical Tuesday.  Traveled to train.  Typed.  Talked.  Trekked to teacher.  Talked.  Traveled to ... apartment. Ok, there's only so much you can say like that.  After lunch with the Grubers I went to my class in Hamburg and now I'm going to bed.
There's a new "German" word that I've heard several times all over Germany.  It's the verb "jailbreaken", most commonly used in its past participle form "gejailbreakt".  It seems to conjugate like other regular verbs.  I'll bet you can guess what it means.  It just sounds kind of goofy to hear someone ask, "Hej, hast du dein neues Smartphone gejailbreakt?"

FHE - 12.11.12

This morning I went to work as usual and spent the whole morning proofreading code.  There is a lot of code in this project, and I want to use what's already been done, but it all needs manual proofreading.  After lunch, though, I went and bought a suit.  I need a black suit for my choir concerts in a few weeks, and I wanted a black suit anyway, so I broke up the monotony of the day by going and buying one.  Ralf's wife Anke came with me.  It was good to have someone with me who knows a little about clothes.
After work I rode my bike to Pinneberg (about 10km away) for family home evening with some of the people in the area.  It was fun.  We ate dinner and talked a lot.  We only have an organized FHE once a month because the young single adults are so sparsely dispersed, and most of them live with their families anyway, but I'm glad I got to go.
I listened to some music as I rode my bike back, and I stopped in the middle of a field in the country to look at the stars, which I haven't noticed since I came to Germany.  I'm not usually in the country at night, and it's usually cloudy anyways.  I would've uploaded a picture, but I don't have a fancy camera, and it would've looked just like it does anywhere else.

Back Home - 11.11.12

I went to church in Friedrichsdorf this morning with the choir.  We had potatoes and salad for lunch, had one last choir practice, then we all got in cars and trains and went home.  We dropped off Simon in Hanover and Jan in Celle, then I was dropped off in Quickborn.  We talked and listened to music on the way.  It seems like everyone in the choir has been the best of friends their entire lives, and that is often literally the case, but I don't feel like an outcast.  I just feel like a new and welcome member of the choir.

Frankfurt - 10.11.12

The choir breakfasted and drove to Frankfurt to practice because a wedding reception kicked us out of the chapel right next to the temple.  We sang, ate, sang, ate, sang, talked, and sang.  We're getting better.  This is our last big practice before our Christmas concerts in December.  I'm really excited.
After practice, we played a little soccer in the gym and drove back to Friedrichsdorf where we'll sleep in the little hostel.  We ate some leftover wedding cake, and now we're talking, and we're about to go to bed.  I'm making a lot of new friends.

Road Trip - 9.11.12

This morning I got up and went to Hamburg.  I got there a few hours early, so I did some research for my paper at the city library.

 I met with my friends Jared and Mildred at the train station, and we drove to Frankfurt where we have choir practice for the Vocalis choir.  On the way we picked up Jan in Celle and Simon in Hannover.  Of course, on our way through Celle we stopped at the Bahlsen and Leibnitz outlet store and got some cheap chocolate and cookies.

In the car we talked about the choir, the election, Les Miserables, and many other things.  We got to Frankfurt in time for the last part of the practice, then we drove to Friedrichsdorf, where we're going to sleep.

Humdrum - 8.11.12

I got a lot of work done on my program today.  I got to the point where I could test a section of it.  Does it work?  Yes.  Am I surprised?  No.
I fixed a "bug" in my server program that caused problems because the version of Internet Explorer 8 distributed in Sweden uploads files differently than the rest of the world's Internet Explorer 8.  That's the world of internet development in a nutshell for you.
It rained today, and it was dark when I got out of the office.  I did my laundry, and the previous user of the laundry machine somehow removed their laundry 20 minutes before the cycle was over, so after I put my clothes and soap in I had to wait for it to "rinse" and spin before I could start.
When I got home, my roommate got mad at me for spilling on the stove he just cleaned.  What did I spill on the stove?  Distilled water.  I wonder how his day was.
I am completely unfazed and happy.  I've got a great weekend before me.

Institutionalization - 7.11.12

Today I got my program to the point where I can start testing it.  It's typically bad form to work on a program for several days without testing it, but I've done it before and I'll probably do it again.
After work I went to institute in Hamburg.  Sometimes I wonder why I spend several hours in the train just to go to institute, but the Hamburg institute is really amazing, as most of them are.  Today's topic: what is heaven like?  It's simple theological question, but it's quite hard to answer.
I rode the train back home.  I got home late, but I did some reading in the train about the development of the mathematical definitions of the lunar month (which has nothing to do with the paper I'm writing).  Those Muslims preserved and developed a lot of math through the dark ages.  And I also read about the computer revolution (which fits quite nicely into my paper).

Wahlkampf fast vorbei - 6.11.12

At work I took another tech support call.  It's remarkably like taking tech support calls in America.  You ask them questions to ask what they did wrong, and if they could answer them informatively they wouldn't be calling tech support.  You end up having them email you an example, you fix the example, and you email it back with an explanation.  In America, however, it's the person on the other end of the line who has a thick foreign accent and limited vocabulary; in Germany that's me.
Today in my German class we covered der/die/das gender determination rules and their exceptions.  I was shocked to find out that the phrase I thought I heard the most from 2009-2011 (by a factor of about 10) is grammatically incorrect.  "Keine Interesse" should indeed be "kein Interesse" because it's das Interesse, even though Interesse ends with an 'e'.
The election is a hot topic here, too.  Almost every European I've ever talked to likes Obama.  My Pakistani roommate says that almost every Pakistani he's talked to hopes that Romney will win the election.  My classmate from Afghanistan doesn't care who wins.  I'm kind of excited to see who wins, but I won't lose sleep tonight.  I voted several weeks ago.

Whole Grains = Healthy, Right? - 5.11.12

I got an incredible amount of work done today on the Fraunhofer project.  Sometimes I think the most productive thing I do as a programmer is take a few days and don't program.  It helps to get a fresh look at a problem, especially when reorganizing large programs.

Ralf is gone for a few days, so I answered the phone a few times.  It's kind of scary to be trying to understand people's technological problems over the phone in German, which is hard enough in English.  One I solved right away.  I told two people just to email Ralf.

It was raining this morning when I went to work, and when 5:00 PM came around it was pitch black.  I face the prospect of only seeing the sun a handful of times the rest of the time I'm here.  But don't worry, I'm far from depressed.  I rediscovered my favorite cereal: Nougat Bits.  Imagine the chocolatiest cereal you could possibly eat while watching cartoons on a Saturday.  Now fill each piece with Nutella.  There, now you have what I'm going to eat for breakfast tomorrow morning.  I tried something similar in America one time, but it didn't compare.

Passah - 4.11.12

I went to church this morning by bus.  The Elders' quorum went to a small room for our lesson.  There was one empty chair.  Someone mentioned that it's like the Passover.  Elijah didn't come, but about halfway through the lesson a guy whom the missionaries had invited came!
It was a nice day, so I walked home from the bus stop.  I made myself a nice lunch.  I discovered that canola honey tastes really good on Leibniz butter cookies.  I watched a little TV, which is pro-Obama news coverage of the election on almost every channel.  I did some reading.
I'm really excited to go to work tomorrow and get something done after I've been home sick all weekend.

Technologiegeschichte - 3.11.12

I'm feeling better, but I'm still sick, and that capstone paper doesn't write itself, so I spent about 90% of the day reading books about technology in Germany, taking notes, and writing my paper.  It's over halfway done!

Krank - 2.11.12

I'm still sick. It's just a cold so I'm not going to die, but it's not much fun, either. So while my body fixes itself, I took the day to read and write for my German capstone paper. I got a lot done, but I still have a LONG way to go. I watched the German news for a few minutes with my roommate (that's all he ever does). It seems like the entire eastern United States has been destroyed.

I figured I'd write something interesting, even though it has nothing to do with anything:
In the USA, if you dig a hole straight down, where will it go? China? Nope. The USA is in the northern hemisphere, and if you dig a hole straight down through the center of the earth, it will go through to the southern hemisphere, around Australia. To dig a hole to China, which is also in the northern hemisphere, you would have to dig a diagonal hole a little under 45° down to the north. Don't believe me? Go dig a hole to Australia.

Husten - 1.11.12

I've got a cold, so got lots of juice at the grocery store, worked some from home, took a nap, worked a little more, took a long shower, called my mom, and did some homework.  It's raining.  What a great day!

Scandinavia - 31.10.12

For Halloween, I dressed up like an Eskimo.  I put 5 layers on the top and 3 layers on the bottom and got on the train to Sweden, the land of Volvo, Ikea, H&M, and many other thriving socialist success stories.  I just went across the really long Øresund Bridge to Malmö, walked around, had lunch, and went back.  It's a lot like Denmark.  There are, however, many interesting statues in Malmö:

When I got back to Copenhagen, I had a few hours until the next train to Hamburg left, so I walked around the city some more.  I've always been a big fan of Hans Christian Andersen (ever since I was about 2 years old), so I decided to go see the little mermaid in the harbor.

She looked quite cold out on that rock on a breezy October afternoon.  I offered her my jacket, but she didn't even acknowledge me.

On the ferry ride I was inside eating pickled herring instead of exposing my face to the Baltic winds.  After a long train ride, I'm back in the middle of nowhere.

Linux - 30.10.12

This morning I walked to Bella Center in Copenhagen just in time for the Ubuntu Enterprise Summit.

It's the business conference of Canonical, the supporters of the Ubuntu Linux distribution.  There were various lectures all day.  It was aimed to the business side of open source software (not an oxymoron), but I got a lot out of it.  I learned that Windows XP support is ending and Windows 8 is "jarring and bizarre," so of course they hope that everyone will make the switch to Linux now.  I learned that every day more than 570 man-years are spent playing angry birds.  They also demoed some of their new server management tools, but I think the most valuable thing for me was to get a better glimpse into the modern cloud computing architecture.
There were a lot of businessmen in suits who took themselves a little too seriously, and a lot of hackers in XKCD T-shirts, so I fit in well with my Einstein T-shirt.  If I had a Bohr T-shirt, I would've worn it.
At lunch I saw one of my personal heroes, Mark Shuttleworth, who gives tens of millions of his own British pounds to support open-source software development.  I want to do that someday.  At lunch I talked to him a little about Webkit (because I wanted something intelligent to say), and asked if I could take our picture for my blog.

In the afternoon there were some more lectures, a Q&A panel with some of the leaders, and some fancy Danish hors d'oeuvres, which aren't quite as French as the French hors d'oeuvres I had a few weeks ago.  I rode the train back.  There are a lot of interesting conversations on the train going away from a Linux developer conference.  I ended up going to a late but delicious dinner with some graphics card driver developers.  I fit in quite well: they were talking about the Planck's constant, and I had Max Planck's biography in my pocket.

The Copenhagen Interpretation - 29.10.12

It was the longest day. It was the shortest day.
I awoke from my nap a little earlier than anticipated.  I got to skype with my mom from outside the church on the temple grounds.  I'd never done a video call from outside before.

I got on the train at 11:30 with a ticket that wasn't valid until the 29th and I got my ticket checked twice, but neither time was anything said.  I took a train through the Rhine river valley to Cologne then Hamburg.  I kind of slept most of the time in the train.  Then I got on a little train to Copenhagen.  I wondered why it was so short until we went slowly into a well-lit tunnel, everybody got out of the train, and we went up an elevator.  We were on a train in a big boat!
I didn't want to have my first experience with the Baltic sea be tainted by heating and windows, so I sat out on the deck for the whole ferry ride, mostly by myself.

After the ferry ride, we got back into the train in the boat and the train took us into Denmark.  I said "Hi" to Thorvaldsen's Christus:

I went and stood where my great great grandmother stood:

There are a lot more cars and bikes than there were back then:

Now I'm exhausted.  I'm going to sleep in my little hostel.

Friederichsdorf - 28.10.12

This morning was the time shift. I thought my cell phone would update automatically, so I set my alarm for 8:45, since I took a shower last night. When it rang, I got up, turned it off, and said, "viertel vor neun," to which everybody jumped out of bed and was about to quickly get ready when someone said that it was quarter to eight. We all slept for another half hour.
We sang in the Friederichsdorf ward's sacrament meeting, ate lunch, then sang for the Usingen ward. We had a bit more practice, then everybody said goodbye and left. My train to Copenhagen leaves at 1:00 in the morning, so I'm going to take a long nap before I turn in my key.

Vorsingen - 27.10.12

I don't think I've ever sung so much in my life.  We pretty much had choir practice all day, except for a few breaks to eat.  I had to try out at noon, and I was actually a little bit nervous, which is quite atypical for me.  I sang "Gloria in Excelsis Deo" from Haydn's Heiligmesse and the first half of "O Magnum Mysterium" by Tomas Luis de Victoria with a soprano, an alto, and a tenor.  Then I sang the melody and bass lines of "Seht, der Herr ist auferstanden", and explained why I am here.  It wasn't so bad since I was quite prepared, but unfortunately not everybody that tried out made it.
My voice hurts.  They try to cram in as much choir practice into one weekend as possible, since people come from all over German-speaking Europe to sing.  Everyone else had already practiced this music one weekend, but I caught on quickly.  The Christmas music we're preparing includes some German and English songs, but most of it is classical Latin.  I spent a good portion of the day singing, "Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax, pax hominibus, bonae voluntatis.  Laudamus te." et cetera.
Today was the first snow of the year in Frankfurt:

ProWo - 26.10.12

This morning I awoke in Quickborn as usual, but it was no ordinary day.  First of all, the first frost of the year was on the freshly fallen oak leaves:

I got on the train to Hamburg, and I had almost an hour before my bullet train left, so I went and said hi to Ralf's wife Anke and his son's girlfriend Morganne (a confusing name in German), who was taking a test at the Goethe Institut not far from the train station.  Then off to Frankfurt.  There was a policeman and an older lady in the train with me, and we all talked.  Germans almost never talk to strangers in the train.
I got to Frankfurt and went to the church about 2 hours early.  This weekend is ProWo, Probe Wochenende.  That's what they call the practice weekend for Vocalis, a German-area choir.  It's probably not a coincidence that ProWo is a homonym of Provo, since it was named by a bunch of German mormons.  After a few hours of waiting, people came, we sang, a few of us went to McDonalds, and now I'm going to go to sleep in the little hostel next to the temple.