Week 1

Greetings all from Deutschland!
I promised that I would tell you all about settling in and traveling around in Germany, so here is a summary of the first couple days. 

First of all, business class is awesome! That is the way to travel.  I chatted with a very friendly German, Wolfgang, on the flight.  He suggested a number of places to visit, including the Christmas market in Nürnberg, which he pointed out is called a Christkindlmarkt in that city, instead of Weihnachtsmarkt, which is the name in the rest of Germany. Aside from impressing Germans with my knowledge of their fair country, I don't think knowing that distinction is really that useful.

I arrived in what appeared to be a monsoon, but shortly after that it cleared up and we had a lovely, if rather cool, day.  When I left Boston, it was 90F. I am currently in long-sleeves and sweater here. Clearly I had severely overestimated the temperature in Darmstadt this time of year.  Autumn, or Herbst, has arrived, but my cold weather clothes are still somewhere in transit.  Everyone is very pleased with the sunny weather, which seemed to have arrived when I did. I have, of course, taken complete credit for that.

For the first day I mostly filled out paperwork in the morning and then pretty much crashed in the afternoon in my hotel room.  Like everyone else who has come over recently, I was stuck in the Maritim. Definitely liked the Welcome better.

Oh, and for anyone who was following my continuing frustrations with the Blackberry, it turns out that the new "Curve" model does not have 3G access, which means that my coverage in Europe is patchy.  For instance I can get email messages in my apartment and in central Darmstadt, but not at work or when I was at the Maritim. I thought this might be useful to mention because if anyone is heading over, they might want to know that a lack of 3G on the phone can create some difficulty with the email access. The problem was not, as I originally thought, an issue with international roaming.

Day two, I wandered around Darmastadt and figured out where most of the main stores were. I have to admit that I quite liked that central area with all the shopping.  It was nice to wander around, drink tea and munch on German pastries. And in true Jessica fashion, as I was walking back to the hotel, a woman pulled over her car and said, "Entschuldigung Sie, wo ist...."  That is, "Excuse me, where is..." Even in Germany random people will stop me for directions. I guess I look knowledgeable and helpful across multiple cultures. For those who don't know, I get stopped for directions 9 times out of 10 when I visit Boston.

So far, I have managed to get by okay with my mediocre German.  My biggest problem is when they ask me something back or give me instructions and I haven't the slightest clue what they are saying. Part of that may be that I just don't have enough vocabulary and some is not recognizing the words I do know.  At lunch I have lots of time to practice listening to German because that's pretty much all the speak at the table. Occasionally I can catch a whole sentence... Suffice to say that I'm pretty quiet at lunch.

Okay, I'm going to stop there for now and when I have a chance fill you all in on the rest.  I have to share the story of the evening at the Weinfest with some strange looking characters, including the singer who wore a gold glittering Elvis style ensemble.  Actually, it was kind of like Elvis meets Liberace. Too strange for words...

Missing you all and I'll let you know when I can update again.