Well, I figured since I’ll be starting at the university on Monday, I should probably update my blog. I’m going to go ahead and blame the long gap on the fact that we lost our internet for a week. Well, it’s been three weeks now, I believe, since I last wrote and a lot of things have happened. I ended my internship in Grasslandwissenschaft and started and ended another one that was in Plant/crop quality, and now, like I said, I will be auditing lectures at the Uni. In between there someplace I went to Hungary and did some other cool stuff. I’ll just write it as it comes to me.
Internship
So, my last week with the grassland science people was fairly uneventful. I basically got to work outside one day, and that was it. I had to make the final measurement of the grass heights. Other than that it was counting grass, entering data, and so on. It was kind of frustrating since I wanted to start in plant quality that week, but it got pushed back, even though they didn’t need me. Oh well. I got a nice little going away card from them; it was quite pleasant. I still go back to visit every once and a while.
The next internship was in plant quality. Basically, it’s more like what I wanted to do in the first place. There’s different experiments going on with strawberries, potatoes, tomatoes, and even potato chips. My first day I titrated a solution that consisted of dissolved, freeze dried strawberry powder. What that means is I measured how much acid was in the strawberry by adding a base to the solution (a base is basically the opposite of an acid. When mixed they form water and a salt). When I write down how much base I needed to neutralize the acid in the solution, I can determine the amount of acid that was originally there. The process is quite slow and the work was extremely boring after a while, but that’s why iPods were invented.
After that day it went a little better, or at least it was more interesting. When I was working in Grassland science I got to see one of the projects that involved different types of tomatoes and different ways of growing them. There was wild ones, ones you see in a store, big ones, and tiny ones, grown either hanging or left on the ground. Well after they grew them they were subject to a few taste tests earlier in the year. The participants were asked to grade taste, juiciness, sweetness, ect. Then what I did is take the remaining tomatoes and test them in the lab. I measured juiciness, sugar content, and acidity, which involved using all sorts of cool machines and stuff. A blender to liquify it, a giant refrigerated centrifuge to separate the solid from the liquid, and a refractometer (or something like that) to measure the sugar content for example.
Other then those two things I also worked once more with the strawberries. I did this whole big process involving different chemical reactions in order to measure the Phenol content. Phenol is a common antioxidant found it red stuff or blue stuff and sometimes yellow stuff, such as strawberries, blueberries, and other brightly colored fruits and vegetables. That was pretty cool. I got to use a photo-spectrometer hooked up to computer. I felt like a pro. After that internship I got a nice little coffee mug, pen, and bag from the university as a thank you. It was quite lovely.
Excuse me while I rant (actually a lot smaller than my original rant)
I’ve been devouring podcasts like crazy: “Radio Lab”, “This American Life”, “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me”, “All Songs Considered”, and I’ve even started with BBC and NBC daily news podcasts. As a result, I’ve been quite up on things such as the election coming up in the states. I apologize if you agree with them, but some of the interviews that I hear of Tea Party members makes me a little bit embarrassed to be an American. And being American, I often get questions about what the heck their goal is. I still have no idea. In fact in one interview I even heard a man use the Bible and Christianity to support using fossil fuels. No joke. “God created the earth for us to utilize. . . I read my Bible,” he said. Really? God created the earth for us to utilize, and not to preserve? That’s not the way I interpret it. I don’t think I ever read “You have heard that it was said ‘Be fruitful and increase in number,’ but I tell you ‘DRILL BABY DRILL!!!!’” but maybe I missed that part. I just want to see some people suggesting constructive ideas instead of just being anti-whatever they need to to get them in office. I’m afraid this movement is making our conservatives more conservative and our liberals more liberal and inhibiting our ability to compromise. If the Republicans do win the majority in both the Senate and the House, I want to see them work with the president instead of against him. By the way, I know the Tea Party does not even represent a significant percentage of the American people, but it’s the only thing that gets covered here, which bothers me a lot. Sigh. . . rant over.
Ungarn
Thats German for Hungary. They didn’t like the “H” I guess. I went to Hungary last weekend, from Thursday night until 1 in the morning on Tuesday. Our little town’s soccer team has a partnership with another little town’s in Hungary called Aba. No, not ABBA, Aba. They’re actually about 4000 in population, double the size of Ebergötzen, but a small town nonetheless. It’s about 80 km south of Budapest, but at the same time a world apart. Aba is very old-fashioned, poor looking town in my opinion. It’s still very agriculture based, with plots of crops mixed in between the houses. I’m talking about good old family farms, that you don’t really see in developed countries anymore. It was something that I’d never really seen. The houses are not so well maintained and there probably hasn’t been a new one built since forever. The streets look dusty and worn out, although there isn’t really any pot holes. They do, however, look more like dirt roads than paved ones. Budapest is completely different. It’s a big city with beautiful architecture and even a gigantic modern shopping mall that reminded me of the Circle City in Indianapolis. Next to it Aba looks rather pathetic.
But anyway, we were there because of this partnership. We did play soccer at 11am on saturday as a friendship game type thing, but other than that it was just a bunch of eating and drinking. I ate soooo much food. This one night we basically got a huge platter per 4 people with a bunch of goodies on it, and we weren’t limited to just one. Schnitzel, deep-fried mushrooms, chicken breast, flank steak, fried eggs, rice, vegetable mix, and onions. . . ‘nuff said. It was delicious. Then, after we were all stuffed full of food, they were like “dessert?” and we were like “Heck yes!” and they gave us crepes stuffed with nutella-like chocolate deliciousness and topped with whipped cream. Oh and there were sprinkles on top, just for kicks. I was so full. And then this drunk guy bought me a Weizen beer even though I insisted that I didn’t want it because I was stuffed to the brim and Weizen takes up quite a bit of room. Yeah, I had to pretty much stay put for an hour before I could actually move.
But not all of the food was that well appreciated. Ok, I’m jumping forward in time a bit now to our last dinner in Hungary: the notorious fish soup. They served us this traditional Hungarian soup in which they tood a huge fish, chopped it up perpendicular to the spine, and dropped it in. Every bowl had a chunk of fish in it shaped like a U (part of the spine and ribs with the meat being around the ribs). I honestly did not think it was that bad, but you just had to get past the way the soggy, overcooked fish looked and not be grossed out by taking out the spine and ribs. But, yeah . . . It made this one guy puke even though he hadn’t even drank anything. Other people were puking for the very opposite reason. They drank a bunch without eating anything, because the fish soup looked gross.
So, back to Saturday, we went to a big festival after the soccer game. What we did was get into the back of a horse drawn wagon and ride around the town in a parade, stopping only to drink wine, eat food, and dance some traditional Hungarian dances. I mean, we didn’t dance, rather the other people participating in the parade. Some other carts carried the dancers, who were kids dressed in traditional clothing. There was even one dance where the girls danced around with big flasks of wine on they’re heads. It was pretty cool. The wine was the focus of the festival, so I got to try all sorts of different wines that were all made right there. Actually, not all of them. That stuff take a toll on the system after three hours of parading, so I eventually stopped and switched to the tea.
And that was that. Afterwards we went to the pathetically tiny disco there and danced it up. It was a good time, especially for the sober people. Some of the people that were not so sober started relationships that they largely regretted the next morning. So it goes. I found it amusing, considering they couldn’t really communicate to each other. Oh and at the end of the night, like 3am, this guy decided to push a little too hard on the door, broke the glass, and then proceeded to run away. My host dad, being the good policeman he is, chased after him in vain before returning and instructing us to be very careful going home. It was kind of frightening, but ended up not being a big deal because there were so many witnesses and they new that we didn’t do it.
Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. Budapest was on Sunday. Like I said, we visited the big, beautiful, touristy buildings and statues. There’s a really nice area that’s on top of a mountain looking over the Danube (I think that’s the translation for “Donau” right?”), which had a beautiful view of the whole city, including the really cool looking parliament building. There was also this gigantic church. Because no great European city is complete without a gigantic church.
Yeah, so that was it. I explained Sunday night already. Nothing else really to say there, besides that these kids drink like crazy. Sunday these two guys had drunken 13.5 liters of beer, starting at 8 in the morning. While drunk they challenged me that if they could reach 15, I would have to drink a bunch of shots or something, but I convinced them that I should just have to sing instead. So I promised to belt our National Anthem if they made it, as long as they promised to sing the German Anthem if they lost. Well, they lost and I’m still waiting on the German Anthem to be sung to me. How disappointing.
Last Week
So, last week, like I said, was my last internship week before starting at the University. This weekend was pretty fun. It was relaxing at least. It’s starting to get super cold here. It feels a lot colder than it is, too, because it’s moist and windy as well. I watched our soccer team lose on Saturday and froze my butt off while doing it. I opted to stay inside most of the rest of the weekend. On Friday night my host parents had friends over to make some Gluhwein, which was pretty cool. What you do is get a big cauldron and put it on a propane stove, and then fill it with the bottled wine. After heating it up, they took a chunk of sugar, doused it with rum, and then burned it, letting the liquid sugar drip into the wine. What resulted was a sweet, hot, delicious drink. It’s normally for Christmas time, but seeing as it was really cold, they decided to officially start the celebrating. So that was a cultural experience.
Ende
That’s about it. As I’m now well adjusted here in Ebergötzen, I’m starting to get a little homesick. It’s always a little bit depressing watching my friends facebook statuses roll by saying stuff like “Going home for fall break, woo!” or “Heading back to Carmel this weekend, anyone wanna hang out?” while I sit there thinking “Yeah. . . how about in 8 months or so?” I would also like to point out that living in a small town with only a bus that comes every hour to access the city, plus being a university student, equals awful. The bus times are terrible for getting to the lectures on time, resulting in me just having an hour to burn in the cold mornings. And afternoon classes? Forget it, it’s so pointless because they are timed perfectly so that I would either have to wait two hours or go home only to immediately take the bus back again. Grrr. . . It makes for a terrible combination and it’s really hard to get to know people only going to morning classes, not to mention the fact that they already know each other from department orientation stuff that I wasn’t invited too, because the University apparently thinks it’s ok to let me turn in my form and then ignore me. . . sigh.
I promise I’m having a good time, though. It’s just turning into a rather frustrating transition right now that I don’t really want to deal with at all. Classes are looking to be decently interesting, and at least I’ll be learning a lot.
Skez
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