My first international flight was mostly uneventful.  I had a short layover in Chicago.  When they scanned my passport during boarding, there was an error in their system.  I got momentarily a little nervous, as I had to go to the gateside ticket counter to get it all straightened out, but it was a relatively painless process.  I got on a massive plane at about 3:30PM local time.  (I’d never been on the planes that sat 7 across in 3 sections before, only the ones that seat 6 across in 2 sections.  I guess in reality it’s only one more person in each row, but there are two aisles and a lot more rows so it FEELS a lot bigger.)  There were two small meals included – dinner an hour or two after we took off, then breakfast about two or three hours before landing.  I’ve been having a real appetite problem lately (probably due to nerves/stress because of the trip and moving and other crap in my life right now), so I didn’t finish either meal, but I ate what I could.  Airplane food has a reputation for a reason; I wouldn’t want to eat it all the time, but it is fine for the two long flights I’ll be taking in the span of 3 weeks.  I was also glad that they supplied everyone, not just first class, with a blanket and pillow.  I was kind of banking on that, as I didn’t have room to pack my own.

About an hour before we landed, we passed over the southern coast of Ireland.  I snapped a couple not-very-good pictures of that…  You can see some coastline under the wing in the first break in the clouds.

Getting through the Dusseldorf airport was really easy, mostly because my adviser (which is who I am here visiting and working with) arrived here a week ago in the same airport and e-mailed me about what to expect.  I probably would have figured it all out on my own, but with the heads up information, it was even easier.  I bypassed customs because I had nothing to declare and no one stopped me.  I walked down a couple of hallways to passport control.  There were only 2 people in front of me in line there.  The guy asked me why I was here, I told him, he stamped my passport before I was even done talking, and then I went to baggage claim.  It took a while for the bags to start coming (just like in the US), but my two bags were both toward the front of the line.  The whole process from getting off the plane to getting out of the secure zone with my bags took about 30 minutes – not too bad all things considered.

My adviser was waiting for me and we took the two trains (one from Dusseldorf to Bochum, one local to Bochum) needed to get to my apartment.  The place I’m staying is cute, and perfect for one person for this length of stay, I think.  It’s a little expensive, but I am here for over two weeks, so it makes sense that it would cost a lot.  (It’s more than the rent I’m paying for my apartment in Texas for a month…)  I have pictures!

 

 

 

Oh, as for the timeline of all these events, I went to bed Tuesday night after 1AM.  I woke up at 6:30AM and left my Texas apartment at 7:45AM on Wednesday.  Got some breakfast and then got to DFW about 9:30AM.  Left DFW for Chicago at 12:30PM.  Left Chicago for Germany around 4PM.  (All of these times are CST.)  Landed in Dusseldorf at 7AM local time (midnight CST).  Got to my apartment in Bochum at 9:15AM local time (2:15 CST).  I tried, but I couldn’t get any sleep on the flight.  So, after only a little more than 5 hours of sleep Tuesday night, I’d already been awake on Wednesday/Thursday for 20 hours by the time I got to my apartment in Germany, which is when my day actually started.  I was still feeling okay at this point, though, probably due to adrenaline.  Looking back, it doesn’t even feel like I experienced a Wednesday this week.  I experienced Tuesday-airport-plane-Thursday instead.

After getting acclimated to my apartment and changing clothes (out of plane-sweatpants and Batman T-shirt into something more presentable), we headed to campus.  It’s about a 15 minute walk from my apartment (comparable to the distance from my old Texas apartment to the math building I go to every day, although it’s a little farther), and a 5-10 minute train ride that is sandwiched between a couple of minutes of walking to and from the train station.

 

 

Anyway, we walked around campus a little bit, explored the grocery store, generally introduced me to the layout of the area.  Then I got to meet the mathematicians I’m here to work with (made it to the department about 11AM local time).  I won’t go into most of the differences I learned about between math departments in the US vs math departments in Germany (if my math friends are interested, we can talk about it later), but I will say that the department is much more divided here.  Each senior level professor has postdocs/grad students working underneath them and there doesn’t seem to be much interaction among different professors’ workgroups.  So, as a consequence, I’m interacting with just one small group of people, which is probably better for me so I don’t have to meet a ton of people and try to remember them all.

I went to lunch with them on campus.  That is/was a little challenging.  The conversation is great, but the act of reading the menu, acquiring food, and then paying the correct amount for that food is nontrivial when you don’t know a single word of German.  The guys in the department have been helpful, though, giving me a general idea of what’s on the menu.  Then at the food stations, some of the monitors cycle between German and English.  To pay I just wait for the cashier to ring it up and then hope whatever number is displayed on the register is my total, because I can’t understand her when she verbally tells me the total.

After lunch I went back to my apartment to take a short (an hour or so) nap and grab my laptop.  I went back to campus and did a little math before going to dinner in town with my adviser.  I had authentic pork schnitzel drowned in cheese.  It was delicious.  We walked around town a little bit, then I took the train back to my apartment and finally got to sleep at 9:30PM local time (2:30PM Texas time, so I’d been awake for about 32 hours straight, except for the very minor nap after lunch).

I woke up before 4:30AM Friday morning and COULD NOT fall back asleep.  It was really frustrating.  I guess this is my version of jetlag.  I stayed in bed until about 6:30.  At first I tried to go back to sleep.  When it was obvious that wasn’t going to happen, I started thinking about the math I’m supposed to be working on while I’m here and will be giving a seminar talk about on Monday.  Then I started feeling intensely lonely for the first time since I landed in Germany.  I wrote for a while – first some things for myself, then a couple of e-mails.  When I finished writing, I decided it was time to start the day.  I got a shower, got dressed, and unpacked.  I headed to the university to get to work.  I stopped for coffee and still made it to my office before 8AM.

The rest of Friday was a blur of food breaks and work.  These German mathematicians love their group coffee breaks, which is really great and I might have to integrate into my own work routine when I get back to the States.  It’ll be harder to make it a social event back home, though, because everyone has different schedules.  It works here because almost everyone works approx 9-5 and they don’t have any classes to take or teach, so they can afford two 10 min trips to the cafeteria for coffee throughout the day.  Anyway, I worked all morning (with one coffee break) until lunch, went to lunch, then worked all afternoon (with one more coffee break).  I left the office at about 5:30PM and got a 1.5 hour nap in before meeting up with my adviser for dinner at 7:30PM.  I woke up from that nap still pretty groggy so I wasn’t great company at first, but eventually I woke up and we had a good home-cooked dinner and chatted until after midnight.

I had a rough time sleeping again last night and only got about 5 hours of sleep.  This morning we met up again to work on my seminar talk for Monday.  (I’m wishing I’d spent more time preparing it before I got here so it wouldn’t be such a pressing issue now.)  I had started an outline of my talk already, but I got stuck.  I was trudging through tedious details that I knew I probably should have been glossing over.  But without the details, I didn’t know how to justify the rest of the things I wanted to talk about.  I think most of this came from a place of not really knowing my audience.  I didn’t know what to include and what not to include.  With the things I knew/wanted to include, I didn’t know how much detail to give.  So, a meeting that was just supposed to be a practice run of my talk ended up being a complete rewrite.  I feel a lot better about it now. I guess we’ll see how it goes on Monday…

After our meeting, we walked around a different part of downtown (lots of stores & bars), then met up with someone from the department here for lunch.  We parted ways and I stopped at the grocery store on the way back to my apartment.  That was also an interesting experience.  Two different people tried to talk to me while I was in the store and I had to awkwardly stare at them, not understanding a word, until I sensed a break where they were waiting for me to respond so I could nervously say “I don’t speak German.”  They were both nice enough about it.  The first lady said “Oh, English?” then a couple other unintelligible words that I think were “I’m not German either, I’m Russian.”  The second lady said “Oh, you want try?”  She was offering me a sample of something I think was bottled tea or soda.  I took it so as not to appear rude.

In the end, I acquired things like cheese, pudding, and Froot Loops and took the train to my apartment.  As an aside, I always heard great things about public transportation in Europe.  It is exactly as advertised.  You can get anywhere easily and relatively cheaply.  My only modes of transportation since I got here have been train and walking.  Both are really easy to do here.  I wish more places in the US were like this, but the only place I can think of right now is New York City.  There may be other US cities with great public transit, but I don’t know of them.  And there’s certainly no good nationwide system.  Of course, the US has 3.79 million square miles and is the third largest country by land area and Germany has 137,000+ square miles and is the 63rd largest country by land area (according to Wikipedia).  Germany is somewhere between New Mexico and Montana in size.  Just considering land area, I can see why it’s easier to keep all of Germany connected than all of the US.  But even within cities, US cities have comparatively zero infrastructure.

Once I got back to my apartment, I was on the computer for a little while, but then I took a too-long nap.  “Too-long” because now it’s 4AM and I’m still awake.  I’ll get to bed soon and hopefully stay asleep for at least 6 hours. Then it’s back to finalizing my talk for Monday.  After the talk is over with, I don’t really know what my next steps are.  I know what my next goal is, but I’m not sure how to get there.  So, it’s probably good that I’m around people who are equipped to help me get there.

Generally, the trip is going great so far.  Nothing terrible or scary has happened *knock on wood* and some of my worries have been manifested (issues with not speaking the language, jet lag), but are completely manageable and really not very big problems.  With the state of my life right now, I was also worried about feeling lonely/depressed/isolated but I feel fine so far.  I do feel a little lonely sometimes, but just a quick pang, like a pinprick.  I do feel isolated, but only because I really am separated from all the people I’ve grown accustomed to seeing several times per week for the past year.  It’s not that bad.  Technology is keeping me somewhat connected via Facebook, Twitter, e-mails, texting, and Skype.  Plus, I haven’t had that much free time yet.  The most disappointing things so far are (1) Netflix & Hulu don’t work internationally but I was expecting/hoping they would, and (2) no WiFi in my apartment rendering my tablet almost useless.  I’m somehow surviving, though.  🙂

Hopefully the next entry will be musings and interesting things I’ve seen/heard rather than a boring schedule of things I’ve done.  For now, I’ll leave you with this photo of a sign that I took earlier today when I was out and about.