May 25

Today was my first day at Böhringer, and it was certainly a well filled day. I arrived at gate three around 8:45 per request of Dr. Heckmann, and got a provisional ID card which I would trade in shortly for a more permanent one. I first met the members of his lab and got a short tour of the equipment. We work in a very nice lab, the equipment is all top notch, as are the people. Today there were only two others with me in the lab: Herr Kemmer and a girl whose name I cannot remember, but had better get soon, she’s already gotten me coffee. Herr Kemmer (Dirk) and Dr. Heckmann speak good English, but she doesn’t really; it’s ok though, because now I can practice my German better. I went around with Dirk for the better part of the morning, just visiting various departments that they have contact with and meeting a host of people. I only remember maybe two or three names though. Sad day. The Cantina (mensa or cafeteria) is fantastic. I paid ~2.5 Euro today and had a very nice lunch. It’s good food, and relatively cheap too. It will come out of my “salary,” or I can put in Euro like I did today. During the afternoon I worked on deciphering the technical details of the synthesis step I’ll be working on tomorrow. Luckily many of the chemicals are similar enough to English, unfortunately most of the technical terms are not, and have to be learned. Oh well, good stuff. I’ll be working with a part of a drug that they have been working on since Diane was here last year, and maybe longer, who knows. I’m not supposed to say much about what I’m doing, so I’ll err on the side of caution and not really say anything. This will be tough, because I’m excited about it! I’ll have internet access at work, and might be able to blog from there, but til then, these posts will just stay on my computer in .docx format. I hope to find a way to get them up, as well as pictures. They others left at a bit after 15:00, so I did too, after talking with Dr. Heckmann for a bit. I went home and lay on the bed, reading through my old Organic Chemistry documents that I saved meticulously, to try and refresh my memory, somewhat helpfully. I really wish I had decided to bring my book now. Oh well, I’ll probably be fine. After a brief snooze and read, I got up at about 18:00 for a walk to ALDI. It isn’t actually in Ingelheim, so I ended up walking the better part of 4 miles to get there and 4 back. ALDI here is just exactly like ALDI in the U.S. The carts here require 1 € coins instead of a quarter though. I shuffled around the store awkwardly for a while trying to find a box and attempting to look like a normal German person. I think I looked more like a psychotic mute though. Eventually I emptied out a mostly full box of spaghetti and filled it up with some necessities: milk, detergent, spaghetti, sauce (they only had an extra hot variety, this will probably be a bad experience), lunch meat and cereal like Frosted Flakes. The walk back was “fun” and I got plenty of stares from drivers and others as I carried my groceries the miles back to my apartment. By this time it was getting dark and threatening to rain, so I stayed in and read a bit, looking up German words from my antiquated dictionary that Dad and Aunt Shirley had when they lived at home (there’s a Calvin College book slip in there for Kafka’s Metamorphosis from the 1600s. It’s raining now, so it will be cooler (read: normal) tomorrow than the warm and sunny days we’ve been having since I arrived.