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.
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