Day One: Willkommen in Deutschland

All in all, things went really well today. I made it to PDX a little later than I should have, but I was able to make it through security and to the gate just as the flight was boarding, with at least a few minutes to spare. On my way through security I bumped into a young gentleman about my age who was on the same flight as me, though he was headed off to Stockholm after Frankfurt. Oddly enough, he sat in the row behind me, though we didn’t chat much through the almost ten-hour flight. Instead, I watched the beginning of Paul Blart: Mall Cop before I decided it was garbage and switched to Transporter 3 and then Pink Panther 2 and then Bedtime Story after those. Pretty much a day at the movies. Or a night really, because it was like 2AM local time in Germany when I finished Transporter 3.

Customs wasn’t an issue in Frankfurt. I just grabbed my bag and skillfully avoided any of the security booths and I was soon on my way to the train station. Which I also found without any issues. But this is where the story gets really odd. As I was sitting waiting for my train (I had about an hour break) I started taking photos with Flat Benny (you can check them out on the Photos Page). All the sudden, the gentlemen sitting a little ways away from me said “Hey, that’s the OSU beavers!”. Can you imagine that? Here I am sitting in a train station in Germany and the guy just down from me is an OSU Resource Conservation graduate returning from spending two years in Kazakhstan with the Peace Corps. Not only that, but the two ladies that he had been trying to speak with (he didn’t know any German) were both from Würzburg (the city I was born in) and knew Üttingen (the town we used to live in) very well. CRAZY!!! The world is sooo small.

Thankfully I was able to meet up with my host-PhD student in Karlsruhe without any trouble after a solid 60 minutes on the ICE train (incredible things, they go ridiculously fast and yet are so aerodynamic that you literally can’t feel the breeze as they rocket by). I’ve gotten all settled in my apartment (more on the apartment later) and I have spent a little time exploring Karlsruhe (more on the former capitol of Baden later). All in all, a pretty successful day without any major mishaps. Now only to get through this culture shock and over the language barrier.