August 30

We woke early this morning at 5:30am, dressed and packed briefly then headed to the train station.  We got to our train with no problems, got our luggage stowed, and found some good seats.  Everything was going fine until 9am, when we were notified that there was a problem between stations, and we would be delayed.  After quite a while of waiting nervously, and a lot of praying for me, we were eventually told that we would arrive at Frankfurt Flughafen on time…they thought.  We just stayed on the train then, because that was all we could really do.  It ended up not taking quite as long as they had thought, mostly because we were moving at around 300km/hr, which is faster than typical, even for an ICE.  So, with plenty of time, we entered the station, found the place to go and then went through Passport Control.  I should say here first though that we had to drink all of the CapriSonne that I was bringing back for Brian, because my suitcase was over the limit.  I was quite sad about that L.  About Passport Control then.  Marc made it through just fine, then Joe and I were stopped because we had apparently been in Germany for a week too long.  Technically I was in Germany for under the three month limit, but due to me saying "we", referring to Marc and I, what Joe and I were saying did not match up, so we had to sit for a while so they could check things out.  Eventually we ended up having to sign a paper saying that we acknowledge that we were in Germany for too long, for legal reasons I presume.  The officers said that we shouldn't worry about not getting into Germany again though.  I hope they are right.  The summer in Europe has turned me into an international criminal!  That was our last big hiccup, which was good.  Eventually we met up with Marc after the security checkpoint and boarded.  Of course I had the last seat in the plane, but it was an aisle seat, so not so bad.  I also got to talk with a girl from Wisconsin (Amanda), who had been in Europe for a month, mostly in the Ukraine with TeenChallenge, hanging out and loving Methadone addicts and kids in orphanages.  She was really cool and it made the flight go a bit shorter.  We had some pretty good meals on the flight, including a nice little soft crust pizza.  Getting into Chicago went well.  Customs was a breeze in Chicago as was Passport Control.  We had plenty of time to spare and arrived at our gate with some time to wait.  The flight back to Grand Rapids was very short and quite uneventful to boot.  We arrived back and I was met by the wonderful sight of Mom, Jeff, Katie, Aunt Linda, Aunt Shirley and Steve.  It was pretty great.  We got our bags, said brief goodbyes to Marc, Joe and their families, and were off.  On the way home we drove to Calvin and said hi to Dad as well.  It was nice to see the whole family again!  At home I unpacked very few things, went online for a while then went to sleep.  Home sweet home.  Deutschland war schön, aber ich bin glücklich wieder Zuhause!

August 29

We got up a bit earlier this morning to take another walk around the city.  We actually didn't do so much walking today, because we were visiting a museum.  It was the Amsterdam historical museum, which had a history of the city, pretty much in its entirety.  There was a lot of history and culture to take in, and it was actually a little overwhelming.  At that point, there was no chance that we were going to see another museum either.  We were in there for quite a while, most of the day in fact, until we headed back to the hostel to get things packed and in order for an early morning departure.  It was mostly not too difficult, just required some reorganizing, and packing away of dirty clothes.  We are planning on getting up and walking to the train to leave on the 7am one to Frankfurt Flughafen.  That will put us there at 10:30, with plenty of time to get settled.  That is if everything goes well, and the train has no delays.

August 28

We woke up pretty late today because it was a late night last night.  Today we did some walking tours that Joe's guidebook had in it and got to get around the city pretty well.  It was a lot of walking to be sure, but I took comfort in the fact that I had lunch at a 'Wok to Walk' restaurant, which was similar to Mongolian BBQ, but as takeout.  It was delicious, and we ate, sitting behind the 'I amsterdam' sign/sculpture.  Like I said, our day consisted of a lot of walking and seeing the canals and houses, which start to look a lot alike.  Joe tried some herring on a bun as well.  We visited the Anne Frank house later in the evening to avoid the line, which only kind of worked.  It was quite amazing to see the place, even though the tree had fallen down a couple of weeks ago, which was unfortunate.  Following that, we found a Dutch grocery store and got some sandwich stuff, as well as some yummy waffley things that have a caramelly inside, like we had at Rob's house.  It was a pretty cheap meal, and quite filling actually.  We went back to the hostel and went to sleep around 12 tonight instead of 4 for the first time in 3 days.  Probably a good choice, because the day before was pretty dreadful until I took a nap.

August 27

We woke up this morning with not a lot of sleep (3,5 hours), and walked over to the Van Der Sloots for breakfast.  It was a nice breakfast as always (til yet, every meal in the Netherlands has been fantastic).  Oh, and by the way, Rob's family is vegetarian, but you really wouldn't even notice it.  We had a spaghetti sauce last night that had what you would have thought was meat in it, but it was actually something else with the same texture, whose name I have unfortunately forgotten.  After breakfast we said our goodbyes, then Rob took us to the train station.  There he bought us a ticket to Amsterdam, because the machine would only take cards and we had only cash.  I cannot overstate at all how generous Petra and her family were to us while we were in the Netherlands.  We arrived after about 45 minutes in Amsterdam Centraal station and then walked to our hotel based on directions that Leonoor and Marie-José had given us.  We were able to check in early, then take a walking tour of the city to get a sense of things.  This was our third walking tour by the same company, given on a tips only basis.  They have all had colorful funny guides, and this one was no exception.  Marc and I also went looking for jerseys again in Amsterdam, and the two places that we visited, which were recommended by Petra's son Marco were closed, but we talked to the people inside, who said they didn't have anything left.  That was unfortunate, but near the last one we bought some 'Rijstafel' for dinner, which was quite tasty.  We met Joe later that night, because his train was a bit mistimed with our arrival, but we found him nonetheless.  Later tonight at midnight we went to another club, this time in Amsterdam to meet Leonoor, Patrick and Roxy again.  It was a bigger one, and there were a lot more people, almost exclusively Dutch, so no tourists.  We danced for about 4 hours there, which was pretty tiring, and not something that I would normally enjoy doing.  There was a pretty good mix of American and Dutch mixes that the DJ was mixing (too many uses of the word 'mix'? maybe.).  So after that, we were pretty tired and fell right asleep back in the hostel. 

August 26

We headed out this morning around 9:45 to go to Petra's brother Rob's house in Lelystad, which is closer to Amsterdam.  Petra had to pick up her goddaughter from Amsterdam airport, so we stayed in Lelystad for the night, at some friends of the Van Der Sloots, who have kind of a small bed and breakfast type of place.  Marc and I went with Rob in the afternoon to see the Batavia, which is a boat that was constructed in the old ship building manner, to be a full scale replica of an old merchant ship.  It was pretty amazing to see, because aside from using some modern methods to produce old looking things, the entire ship was made exactly like it would have been.  I guess they learned a lot in the building of it, because no one has done it that way for many many years now, and really no one knew how to do it.  They are in the process of building another ship, which was actually a military boat.  It will take 15 years instead of the 10 for the Batavia, because the man who made the Batavia isn't really involved in it, and they have already made some more mistakes that cost time.  We took the tour of the ships and saw the video entirely in German, because there were only German tours going on at the time.  It was pretty easy to understand the Dutch tour guide's German, and I only had some difficulty with some of the more technical ship anatomy and industry terms.  We also tried again, in vain, to locate a Dutch national team jersey at the Outlet Mall right by the dock.  Back at the Van Der Sloots, we had some food, then hung around, played Cluedo (Clue) with Rob and Marie-José and then later went out with Leonoor and her two friends Roxy and Patrick to a club where we danced until 4:30 in the morning!  It was pretty fun, and definitely my first time at a disco like that one.  It was a quieter night because it was a Thursday, but there were still quite a few people there.  I should mention here that I am a terrible dancer, but had fun anyway.

August 25

This morning was another restful and delicious one here in Blijham.  We headed out a bit before noon again, this time just with Petra, to see a cool fortress in the shape of a 5 pointed star, surrounded by two moats.  It was a pretty important defense in the past, but now it is for historical purposes rebuilt, and actually, people still live in houses inside the fortress.  The walls are just made of dirt, but they are quite high and steep.  It was pretty cool to see, and even cooler because we could walk atop the walls all the way around it.  We had some coffee and cookies when we got back, then headed out later with Petra and Edward for a drive to the sea, to see a sluice system that regulates the water level in the canals there.  It had a lock in addition to the sluice, and was of course very windy there.  The landscape reminds me so much of West Michigan, down to the variable weather patterns and clouds that we have been seeing the last few days.  I could find myself at home here pretty easily, aside from the Dutch language of course (learning German helps you read some of it maybe, but it is not really close enough all the time for meaningful comprehension (maybe for Germans it does, but not me)).  After seeing the sea, we headed back into town to get some food stuffs for dinner, and to look for a Netherlands national team jersey from the World Cup, which no one had unfortunately.  After that we headed back to the house.  For supper tonight we had Edward's famous pumpkin soup, which was quite delicious indeed.  The main food was a stalwart meal of potatoes, beans and beef though and was quite tasty with some red wine.  We always have very interesting talks with Petra and Edward about a variety of things too, which is always fun.  They are full of interesting stories.

August 24 Pictures

August 24

We had a nice easy morning with a delicious breakfast by Petra and Edward, then headed out to see Groningen a bit before noon.  In Groningen province, going to Groningen the city is referred to as "going to town" because it is essentially the only large city among the rural countryside primarily used for farming.  It is a university town, which was quite apparent from the amount of young people that we saw.  It also confirmed something that I had known for a while, which is that the Dutch women are perhaps the prettiest in the world.  We saw a number of the sights in Groningen including the university and the most famous tower, called the "Old Grey Man".  The tower affords quite a nice view of the city as well, as long as you can handle the gusty wind at the top, and cramped winding staircase (we did of course not mind at all).  Additionally, we went on a boat tour of the canals which was a very cool way to see the city.  It was nice to be able to walk around a city with people who know it extremely well, and can tell you all about it.  The rain held off for essentially the entire day, then resumed as we were riding back in their car.  Pretty much perfect.  We had dinner at a nice Chinese/Indonesian restaurant by them, which was quite the treat.  Each of us ordered something completely different, so we could try a bit of everything.  Petra and Edward are really wonderful to be around, and are excellent, generous hosts.  We are really enjoying ourselves by them.

August 23

This morning I got my things ready to go that were still unpacked (which was not very many things), then headed in the rain with everything, first to the gate at Boehringer to drop off my apartment keys, then back to the Bahnhof, to wait for my train to Koblenz, then an IC train to Köln where I stopped to get a couple of souvenirs.  I met Marc there on the track just fine, and we took an ICE the rest of the way to Leer(Ostfriesl) where we met Petra and Edward who picked us up and brought us to their home which is about 10km in from the Netherlands/German border.  We had dinner with them and another retired doctor friend of theirs, which was quite wonderful and delicious, accompanied by two desserts.  I was quite quite full by the end of that.  After dinner I got to talk to the family because they have a nice Wifi connection here that I could use.  Petra and Edward have been nothing but completely hospitable to us, and I have enjoyed their company quite a lot.  I also caught up on email and my computer furiously updated itself as well, as soon as it could take a long sip of internet after a summer of mostly drought.  I am looking forward to staying in the Netherlands for a while, and not hurriedly traveling everywhere.  It is not that I didn't have a really great time traveling, but sometimes a slower pace is nice too.  A week from today I will be home too.  That is quite something to think about.

August 22

Well, it was Sunday today, so it was pretty quiet and restful for me.  During the afternoon and evening I met Dirk in Bad Kreuznach, and hung out with him and some friends, then with his niece (just turned 5 and has the same bday as Katie), sister and brother-in-law.  It was nice to see him one last time, and to see what a fair type thing looks like in Germany.  It was quite similar to what the Hudsonville fair is like, except with German food and such.  I spent the evening getting the rest of my things ready to leave on Monday morning.

August 21 Picture

August 21

I slept in until 8 this morning and got some things done in terms of getting organized and packed.  Most everything is in order now.  I just have to do some wash on Sunday, then pack that away, and pack my most immediate needs in my backpack.  In the afternoon I finally explored the Kaiser Pfalz area of Ingelheim.  It is where Charlemagne had a local palace/administrative location.  I went into the museum first, which had some relics and a lot of German to read.  That was tricky, so I looked around at a lot of the stuff, then actually went outside to see the grounds.  It is set up very strangely, because they began reconstruction and preservation after people already had homes and businesses there.  For this reason, you walk past a lot of backyards, and in some cases through yards.  The ruins often border private houses as well, so it is like walking through a neighborhood where people live, that is also a museum.  And furthermore, today there was a wedding that took place in the Pfalz.  They had the ceremony in the Aula regia, which was the throne room of Charlemagne.  It is now a grassy place, surrounded by some broken wall fragments, and an 18^th century Jewish cemetery.  So I spent my time just walking around and seeing the stuff there.  It was all free of course, except for the museum, because you can't charge admission to a neighborhood where people live.  The ground is all cobblestone there, as it is in many places in Ingelheim.  But what they have done is to outline in darker stones, where the old walls and towers are that do not remain standing.  It was a nice little walk about a part of town that I had inexplicably neglected to visit until the second to last day I was here.  In fact, there are a lot of parts of town that I have not seen, mostly because they look quite similar to the rest of the city.  I think that I have seen enough though; at least the most interesting parts.  Today was relaxing, which was nice before we travel next week and school starts.  Oh, and also, KATIE'S BIRTHDAY‼‼  I called home tonight and got to talk to her and Dad and Jeff for a while, which was quite nice.  Her card even arrived a day before her birthday, which was quite something, considering that I mailed in on Monday afternoon (4 days is pretty typical though I guess).  I like Ingelheim, but I am ready to be home now.

August 20

LAST DAY OF WORK!  It was a good last day too.  In the morning I had to run around a little bit to take care of getting paid for August, but got everything taken care of just fine, and in German.  Luckily my last reaction only had a couple of non-messy steps for me to take care of, which was a nice way to finish.  My protocols were mostly all in order, so now it is just a matter of Dirk getting the results, appending them, then finalizing the reports.  Quite a simple process.  I am glad that I gave my cards to everyone yesterday, because a lot of people were gone early today.  I got to say my goodbyes to the people that I wanted to, and got some email addresses and such as well.  It really was a nice last day.  On the way out, I talked to a guy that I had known very peripherally in one of the neighboring labs.  He will have worked at Boehringer for 40 years on September 1.  I was happy that I could hold a decent conversation with him, because sometimes Germans who are a little older (maybe like in the States too), are harder to understand; he was not the rule though.  All I had to do at the gate was then turn in my card, and that was it.  Now I just have to pack up, hang out with Dirk on Sunday, then be ready to head to the Netherlands on Monday morning.  Oh, and I gave running a try tonight.  I made it a good ways before it felt like I had done enough.

August 19

It was my second to last day of work today!  Unbelievable!  I finished up the last bit of work with my parallel reactions today, the colorful ones.  The second step of my last reaction went pretty well I think, but I still had no crystals by the end of the day, which could prove to be a problem tomorrow.  It was also my last day at work with Dirk, which was too bad, but I suppose that this summer has to come to an end.  And really, right now I am very much looking forward to being home around the people that I love.  I handed out some thank you cards to people at work today as well.  I wrote them all in German, which was kind of what I did for the last couple of nights on my computer, because there were maybe 8 of them to write, to 8 very cool people.  Hopefully there weren't too many mistakes made.  I think that they could at least understand quite well what I was getting at.  Proficiency would be a plus though.  After work I went to ALDI to get some last groceries to hold me over the weekend.  I am going to miss that ALDI (not really, it's just a store), it was like most every other ALDI that I have been in.

August 18

It was another very busy day for me today.  I actually managed to get a lot of crystals, rather messily, out of my mother liquor, but it was really quite a pain.  But that is behind me, because now they are drying, and I am looking forward to quite a good yield on them amazingly.  It is amazing what a little cold and some stirring will produce.  My other reaction also went well I think, although I won't be able to tell until Friday really.  Things will be a little down to the wire, but ok I expect.  After work I closed my bank account here, which didn't require a lot of input on my part, and was nice.  I also mailed a couple of last postcards.  I hope that they have all made it through.

August 17

Well, it certainly won't be a quiet last week of work.  I have just enough work to do that will still keep me plenty busy, which is quite nice.  Of the two simultaneous reactions that I had running, one went well, and the other not so much.  So we will see tomorrow what happens with that.  So yeah, all in all it was a pretty productive day.  I even cleaned out the Rotovap by myself after a little bit of my batch bubbled through it.  It might not sound like much, but it was a very independent moment considering how much lab protocol I was taught at the beginning of summer.  Also, vacuum distillations are fun to do.  All in all though it was another quiet night, that was threatening rain in Ingelheim.

August 16

I got to use my new chemicals today!  There are two batches with slightly different chemicals, that I have running simultaneously, but they turned slightly different, yet still very bright and very cool colors.  It was pretty cool.  Hopefully they are the cool kind of colors that we actually want.  In addition to that, I got a lot of the paperwork finished up, so I only have to worry about the reactions that I am doing now, and redoing another reaction because of a slight, yet pivotal misunderstanding.  It looks like it should be a nice last week, assuming that the situation with my bank account goes well everything gets closed ok.  After work the apartment got a little cleaner, and some more things were put in order, laundry was washed, that sort of thing.  Oh, and also, the Transporter was on.  I will watch pretty much any movie with either Mark Wahlberg or Jason Statham in it, so that was alright with me.  One last observation: I still wish that people didn't always talk so quickly.

August 15

This morning we went to church at a non denominational church here that is not actually supported by the government.  There was some great contemporary music, some German versions of songs that I already knew in English (like Majesty for example: Majestät).  It was much different of course than the hymns that we sing at the Burg Kirche in Ingelheim.  The sermon was quite theological in content, drawing from Romans significantly, and elaborating on how we belong to God, and are in and have our names written on his hands.  It turned out to last about two hours, and there were people speaking in tongues both on stage and in the congregation.  There was no one there to interpret though (to English or German), and they kept on repeating over and over what they were saying.  I had never witnessed anything like that before.  It was quite the experience.  After church we had some lunch, I hung around for a while then headed back in the afternoon, amidst the rain that was still coming down, to the Hauptbahnhof and then of course to Ingelheim.  I really wish that I had brought along an umbrella from home that wasn't broken three times over.  The rain kind of kept me inside today, listening to music and reading.

August 14

For the first Saturday in a while, I slept in a bit and hung around Ingelheim getting things cleaned up and straightened around in my apartment.  It was pretty relaxing, and very welcome.  In the early afternoon I took a train to Koblenz to meet Joe and Marc to hang out before Rhein in Flammen (it's a celebration with fireworks that takes place all along the Rhein river on different days, from Bingen to Koblenz).  We walked to Deutches Eck initially just to see what was up, then took a walk into the Alt Stadt, because there really wasn't much going on yet.  While we were there I managed to find an item that I had been looking for, to bring back to the States for a certain Jeff.  We had some supper in Joe's apartment then headed out to watch the fireworks from the campground across the river from the fortress.  For a while we walked around looking for a spot to sit.  The fireworks were pretty great, and very reminiscent of the Fourth in Grand Haven, but with even more epic music, in three movements.  It was pretty great.

August 13

It was another pretty slow day today at work, but the good news is that my chemicals came!  That means that I will have something to do on Monday, and will be able to finish up the last reaction before it is time to be done here and leave *sniffle*.  Luckily for me, in my periods of inaction I have been able to converse with Thomas quite a bit.  He is a big fan of speaking English and having me correct him.  I say things in German of course, and ask him questions too, so it is good for the both of us.  I have been looking forward to downloading Brian's new album that he made and finished earlier this summer, and was finally able to do that today, to listen to after work.  I am pretty sure that doing something like that is against company policy, but I really wanted to hear it, and it really doesn't hurt anybody, so I did it anyway.  At the end of the day I got to chat with Nathan as well, which was quite fantastic.  After work I went looking for a German jersey at the local Sporthaus, but unfortunately, they will not have them until October.  I am not a fan of that.  Anyway, I will be in Koblenz this weekend and look for one there I guess.  It is Rheininflammen this weekend there, which means fireworks all up and down the Rhein, from Bingen all the way to Köln I believe (the Mittelrhein).  So finally this afternoon then, I was able to listen to Brian's new album (you can find it on PureVolume.com by looking for the Straits).  At first I did not connect any dots.  The name of the album was just words to me.  As I kept on listening to songs though, I kept thinking, "Wow, that sounds a lot like something we did in Mackinac" and other related thoughts like that, until maybe in the 5^th song I realized that that was exactly what the whole album was about.  When I realized it I almost hyperventilated from happiness, and while listening to 'the Golden Egg' for the first time, laughed myself lightheaded.  The album was a fantastic pickmeup to my day and really put me in a good mood for the rest of the night.  I listened to it over and over again.  I would say that if your name is Ken, Ruth, Jeff or Katie you should probably listen to it (I am sure that Dan, Andrea and Scott already have).  He put to song years of wonderful experiences and memories of camping in the Straits, with an absolutely wonderful sound.  It probably will mean more to our two families, but even if you have never heard of Mackinac, or Michigan, it is still a great listen.  It was quite a timely release as well, because we really won't be able to camp at all in Mackinac this summer or even Labor Day, but now I feel like I was there anyway.

August 12 Pictures

August 12

Today I found that not at all to my surprise, I had no crystals, just like last time.  Nevertheless I continued, knowing that I would get some terrible, irascible and oily substance.  Then, Dirk said hey, why don't we try to recrystallize it?  The first solvent only went so-so, but man did the second one work well.  Instead of a mess there were some marginally nice crystals coming out of solution.  So I did that with the batch, and it turned out much better.  Not amazing, but better.  The yield wasn't very great yet, so I still have more work to do tomorrow to try and coax some more substance out.  I had lunch with Nadine today, which was nice.  She is leaving for a three week vacation starting tomorrow, so it was the last chance I had to see her.  Also during lunch they were giving away a lot of paraphernalia for a drug like bags, pens and USB drives, so there was a massive rummaging fest going on.  I managed to cache in on some stuff to bring back, but didn't go crazy like some people I saw, because I actually have to be able to bring stuff back in a suitcase.  Since I have been sitting at a computer in a different part of the offices here, I have been able to talk with Thomas more, which has been helpful both for my German and his English.  He always claims that his English is so terrible, but really, only the people that have never learned English before have terrible English.  That is not many people.  There is only one person in the lab that knows English and does not speak it with me.  I guess everyone realizes that practice makes perfect.  Lately I've been getting a little overwhelmed by trying to speak German all of the time, because I will have a thought that I want to express, but my vocabulary is quite filled with holes, which is frustrating.  I can write in English all day about what I want to say, but when you don't have the words at your disposal, and the structure is still a new construct for your mind to utilize, it can take more time.  Luckily for me, most people here are very patient with me.  After work I organized my room a bit, putting unneeded things in my suitcase already.  Wow, time to consider leaving already, pretty crazy.  We are currently planning with Petra about what we are going to do.  I had a plan of what I wanted to do, but it turns out that due to some other work circumstances, we have to do something completely different.  I suppose that there is nothing to be done about it though.  We will still be able to see cool stuff and have a good time in the Netherlands.

August 11

I did the second part of my three step reaction today at work.  It was another reaction that is intensive at the onset, yet requires little to be done throughout the day, with exception to some monitoring to assure that the temperature is stable; though that is really no job, because the electronic temperature control is pretty fantastic.  Barbara went through my protocols, so I was able to finalize a lot of them today, leaving a much smaller amount of paperwork left to be done before I am finished here.  After work I hung out at home again, starting to write thank you notes to people, because tomorrow is the last day that I see someone and I would like to have that done.  Writing in German obviously takes a lot more time than English writing for me, so that was fun.  Actually it was pretty fun…I like the people here, so thanking them is hardly a chore.

August 10

Today I retried to make a side product.  The reaction takes 6 hours, so aside from some busyness in the morning I had a pretty quiet day.  After work I headed to Real to do some shopping for a few small things.  For dinner I had some Turkish pizza, which was pretty fantastic, then hunkered down for the rest of the night because of my stupid leg.

August 9

One of the first things that I did today at work was to put mother liquor with a volatile halogen component in the non-Halogenated waste, and since it had some water in it, it reacted quite strongly.  That also meant that instead of two things to dispose of, we had three.  So that meant three massive buckets of ice to kill the solvent.  The whole place smelled pretty terribly for a while, but the cool thing was that I got to use a massive separating funnel (probably a little less than 10L) to separate the phases for further disposal.  Ten liters is a pretty big amount to use, considering that previously, in OChem lab at Calvin we were making about a gram of substance and using maybe 15 mL maximum of solvent.  At that point it was too late to start another reaction, so I will do that tomorrow, after preparing for it today.  After work I wrote some postcards and got some groceries at ALDI.  I'll mail the cards tomorrow hopefully.  Most of them will then be sent out, I just have one or two more to get.  Biking is going to be a pain if this injury lingers I think.  Doable, but a pain for sure.  That will be nice because then neither Nathan nor I will be at 100%.  I cannot believe that I only have one week left after this one.  It is kind of crazy to think.  I am kind of ready to get back though.

August 8 Pictures

August 7 Pictures

August 7 and 8

On Saturday morning I got up early and made it to Koblenz by 8:00.  We went on a walking tour of Koblenz with the students, which was pretty interesting, though I had already seen a lot of Koblenz.  After the tour, we had lunch then headed to the boat we took down the Rhine to Köln.  The boat cruise was relaxing and gave us some good views of the Middle Rhine country side and towns.  We made it to Köln around 8:00pm, poked around the amazing cathedral there, got set in our rooms then headed to a restaurant for some food.  I shared a schnitzel plate and a cheese plate with Matt the Canadian J, which was quite delicious, and had some pretty good Kölsch beer with the students.  After that I headed back to the room, rather tired and with my leg still in pain, just to rest.  A lot of people went out and saw a bit of the town.  I guess the Gay Olympics were going on there, which made the place interesting.

Sunday morning we met at the Kölner Dom for worship.  Most of the students used their meal at the hotel for breakfast, but I saved it for lunch.  It was a fantastic meal and very much typical German fare, with plenty of meats and things to make Brötchen with (essentially breakfast sandwiches).  We hung around in Köln for a bit, visited the Chocolate Museum, walked along the Rhine, tried another variety of Kölsch then headed home on the train.  A pretty relaxing weekend.  It was really nice for Joe, Marc and I, because the trip fund covered our meal in Koblenz, the boat trip and our hotel room in Köln.  The hotel was really quite nice, they put us up well.  I also appreciated being able to hang out with some people closer to my age and from the States, as well as with Prof. Nielsen, who is always very engaging to talk with.  The group with Prof. Nielsen still had to take the train all the way back to Berlin though, so it was probably a pretty boring day for them. 

August 6

There wasn't anything much to do today because I didn't have the chemicals for the next step.  The day went well enough though.  I went home a bit early and went for a run at night.  It was actually my best run so far, but in the last two kilometers I felt something kind of get pulled.  So that wasn't very fun.  I went to bed a bit early because tomorrow morning I am meeting the Berlin students in Koblenz.

August 5

The current project that I am working on is to make a reference substance for another campaign.  It is a three reaction set, with yesterday being the first part.  I got my dry crystals from the drying oven today and did the second reaction.  It was rather simple, but still quite interesting, as I get to make crystals with really bright and vibrant colors.  Most all of the batches that I have done at Böhringer have been larger than I ever did in lab at Calvin, but yesterday and today have certainly been my largest, in the neighborhood of 40 grams (in O. Chem lab, in our final synthesis, we made around 5 grams of our lactone and thought that was crazy).  I'm not sure what will happen tomorrow, because we are waiting on materials to use in the third reaction.  Ideally the reaction went well though, and we will have enough to reach our final target amount.

August 4

Today I did a reaction as the first step in making a reference substance for another campaign.  It wasn't too difficult, but it was very colorful and fun to do.  It started out a faint orange, deepened in orangeness over the day, then when I added the final component, it turned into a thick yellow suspension, which was great.  Because everyone loves to hear about chemicals.  Luckily for me, this is my blog and journal, so I can include details that people mostly won't care about J.  After work I went with Dirk and some coworkers to the Golden Angel, a beer garden in Ingelheim where we hung out for a bit.  Dirk's girlfriend and Christians wife showed up eventually, and after looking at the plans for Dirk's bathroom that he is putting together, I got a ride home from Christian and his wife, who live in Ingelheim.

August 1 (3)

August 1 (2)

August 1

July 31 pic

July 30-August 3

This is going to be a longer post spread into parts for each day (the pics in this post are from July 31), since it really has no appropriate stopping point and belongs together.  Friday morning we took a tour of part of the production plant here at Böhringer, from Georg, who used to work in Development where we do now.  We went with Dirk, Joel, Tamara and Nadine; it was a very interesting place to visit because of how it scaled up so directly and elegantly from what we do in lab.  Everything is very precisely controlled and mostly automated there, and it is quite impressive.  In the early afternoon I made sure my hood was clear, and did some work on my batch, trying to get some crystals to go, a bit unsuccessfully.  After things were finished up there I headed straight to the train station in Ingelheim, took a train to Mainz, then a bus to the Frankfurt Hahn airport.  We made sure to get there plenty early, and ended up waiting for several hours just to be safe.  Our flight went well and quite smoothly; we arrived in Rome around 22:00, got to our hostel and then straight to sleep after finding a bit of overpriced water from a street vendor.

On Saturday morning we woke up, got breakfast, and then headed to the Vatican City.  First of all, our hostel is quite the place.  It is run by a guy and his family as far as we could tell; his hair was quite impressively everywhere and awesome.  The hostel was pretty cheap and so it had quite a bit of character as well.  It was rather dirty, and one of the sinks was in the process of falling off of the wall.  It ended up coming completely off by the time we arrived back in the evening.  The place was nice in that it provided a place to sleep and a bit of food to eat, but in most of the other respects such as cleanliness and comfortability it failed.  That was no problem though, because we weren't in Rome to stay in the hostel all day.  On the first day, at the Vatican City, we saw St. Peter's Basilica and the Papal crypt, where we walked past the closely guarded remains of John Paul II as well as most all of the others in history as well.  After seeing the Basilica we headed to the Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel around 1pm.  Amazingly there was no line and we were able to get right in.  There was a lot to see in the Museum there of art from most periods of the church's history and before.  The tour culminates by seeing the Sistine Chapel.  It is something else!  You are not allowed to take photos, and are supposed to be silent, but both of those things kind of get overlooked, even though there is security running around everywhere scolding people.  Everything about the Vatican City is steeped in history and is very impressive; really so much so that it is difficult to communicate in writing and perhaps futile to try.  Following the Chapel we visited some Catacombs in Rome, which was cool, most importantly in temperature.  They really weren't used for hiding from persecution, as is typically believed, but for burial grounds only really.  Everyone knew that they were there and even pagans built underground places like that too apparently.  The Catacombs are very extensive, and apparently they have only uncovered around 5 of the 60 locations.  We got some cheapish food from an Italian supermarket and accidentally saw one of the buildings that we missed in our tour.  After our first day of seeing Rome, we headed back to the hostel, dropped off our stuff then took a little walk at night around the city, seeing a little bit while we still had our public transit day passes to use.  Joe found an Italian beer, which we learned tasted nearly the same as the local Koblenz beer.  After our walk we collapsed in bed, wanting to have enough energy for another day of walking about.

On Sunday we did a walking tour of the city of Rome, seeing essentially all of the famous sites.  Breakfast was quite the affair.  It took place in a cramped little room, far too small to be effective, but I guess it functioned well enough.  I got to talk to some German students in German there, which was surprising, because they typically switch to English the moment you miss-speak.  One was from Kassel and the others from Freiburg.  We only talked briefly, but it was nice to hear something other than Italian.  Our walking tour of Rome covered all of what you would expect to see in Rome and more like I said before, but in a very zig-zaggy manner, as we were figuring things out as we went.  It was relatively easy to find our way around thanks to a helpful map we picked up at the hostel.  The Coliseum was probably the most impressive part of it, but just walking around and seeing old ruins and stately impressive architecture everywhere was also incredible.  Rome is a city for walking and photos, that is for sure.  We found a pizza place at the end of our day that was set back in a small alley a bit away from the frenzy that is the Trevi fountain.  It was empty when we got there and we had some nice authentic Roman pizza, served by a waiter from Munich of all places.  We talked with him in German for a while, found out that he knows 9 languages and that he is a pretty cool guy, but certainly not the only one we would meet.  We walked back to our hostel after that and switched rooms, which is what we had to do to get the cheaper rate we were paying.  It was a good switch though because we were now in a 6 bed room rather than a 10 bed room, and now had our own bathroom.  Our roommates were two Argentineans and a Japanese guy.  We got to know Diego (24 yrs old) the best of the three, because the girl from Argentina was mostly gone, and the Japanese guy kept to himself and didn't speak English well, German or Spanish.  We went out with Diego for a beer, and spoke with him almost completely in Spanish, which was really quite cool.  Joe and I would translate for Marc when necessary and we got along well that way.  It took me a bit to get back into Spanish, from trying to use German all the time, but it happened eventually, and I found that my Spanish comprehension is still quite a bit better than my German comprehension, even given his Argentinean Spanish, which does something crazy with the 'll' sound.  It does sound cool though.  The limits of our abilities became clear in an amusing way, when were explaining what we are doing in Europe.  As it was going, I realized that the more we were talking about it, the more they were thinking that Joe and Marc were professional car drivers rather than working as automotive engineering interns.  Our technical Spanish relating to cars is virtually nonexistent, but eventually one of us just blurted out, "somos Ingenieros", which made all things clear, at least I hope.  There was a bar/club below the hostel where we hung out with Diego for a while as well.  Joe and I tried an Argentinean mixed drink recommended by Diego, attempted some terrible dancing, then headed back upstairs to try and get some rest for our final day.

On Monday morning Diego left to go to Scotland for work.  It was his first time out of the country, and he was headed to Scotland for a job, where he had some family.  That will be quite a change for him, moving from Patagonia for the first time, to Scotland, and I wish him all the best.  He was a lot of fun to hang out with, and was actually half Argentine, half Italian it turned out.  As I write this it is sounding less and less smoothly connected to me, but I think communicates well enough.  My apologies if it is incomprehensible.  We checked out on Monday morning after breakfast, and as in all of our trips, we had no idea what to do.  It seems like we always leave the last day completely without a plan.  Today we ended up walking around some more, hanging out in a park with a pond, and going past the Borghese Gallery which was closed (we could see inside through a window in the back though, enough to notice that it was a very art filled place).  We walked though an area of Rome that we hadn't seen before though, which was nice, and we didn't get lost, which was nicer.  In the manner that we arrived, we made it to the airport with more than enough time to spare and waited there for a while for our late evening flight to leave.  It was a little late, but they really cranked on the engines, so we arrived on time in Germany.  There was a crazy Indian guy that just kind of plunked himself down in line directly in front of us and behind the Mexican family that was there by us.  I think he was drunk though because he was swaying a lot and left every five minutes or so to go to the bathroom.  The Turkish guy next to me was pretty mad at him, but it turned out ok, because he was in the bathroom when the line started moving through the gate.  He must have been either really a jerk, or really overly drunk.  Either way, he was a character.  We got back in Koblenz with enough time to make the bus.  I crashed in Joe's room, and then took the 7:00 train on Tuesday morning back to Ingelheim on four hours of sleep.

I got back in Ingelheim a little before 8, very tired and quite dirty and stinky and hungry.  I rushed over to my apartment, showered, got something to eat, then headed to work a little later than usual, which was ok, because I told them I would be.  Barbara was back from Greece, and it was nice to see her again.  I worked today mostly on my protocols and getting ready for starting a reference substance reaction tomorrow.  Even though I was tired, the day went quite well and I managed to get things done.  After work I got things in order in terms of unpacking and washing, bought some contact solution, then essentially slept until it was time for bed, which is now.