One week at the new job - and almost 2 in Germany
I've been in Germany for 1.5 week now and the first week at my new 'job' is over. I have my new position for writing my master thesis at Bosch car body (karosseri) unit in Abstatt, just north of Stuttgart in southern Germany. It's a really cool place with about 2700 employees and what we do is developing the electronic devices that one find in all cars. We have all kind of cars: e.g. BMW, Mercedes, Porsche, VW, Volvo and so on. Basically ALL car brands! My specific area is developing and testing some theory for an electronic device that will improve the new cars' road maintenance.
On Wednesday we drove to a testing district little north of here for doing some tests and there were all kind of tracks for testing the cars. A little bit as a swedish 'halkbana' where you can test a car's brake distance but here where all kind of tracks. I drove a BMW and pushed it to the limit on a curvy test road among others.
Everywhere you can also see the new cars covered in different disguises (förklädda) when driving around and doing tests, but avoiding the journalists cameras. At least I think it's a really cool environment and also in the garage it's much "cleaner" than I expected. Not a single spot of oil anywhere, you can almost eat your food from the floor there.
Wednesday night I also tested the lindy scene again in Stuttgart, I met some more interested people but the scene isn't very big, despite it's many jazz bands around. Yesterday Friday a lindy friend, Denise, brought me to a Jazz basement in Stuttgart and different live bands are playing there 3 nights per week. We danced about 3 hours and I really like these nice and cosy (mysiga) places that I've been to - so far only in USA and Germany - the very genuine and real jazz feeling is really there. We were the only dancing couple yesterday as most people were there to listen, so we got some hugs and applauses too (on top of the band) for dancing.
It's been very warm (according to me) here, yesterday night it was still 27C at 22.00 and most people think it's nice but when doing activities (as I always do), it make me sweat unlimited.
The other days this week have I been biking and some weight lifting, trying to find a good gym for my training. It's very expensive though (about twice the Swedish prices - 4000 kr/halvår) so a probably stick with the gym they have at Bosch.
I was biking quite a bit today, and it came some rain that made me a bit cold. I thought a bit about the nature and differences to other places, and most of the German (should I say south-german?) nature is made up of either leaf trees, fields or cities. In the city, it's like cities everywhere in the world. The fields can be found also in other countries but one (for me) new thing is that it's so many trails and bike roads crossing the fields everywhere. I'm also surprised it's so many farmers here, in Sweden it feels much more industrial than here. Also here in the village Abstatt with 5000 people, just in the "town" there are suddenly a lot with horses or goats (getter) so it's a very relaxed and country feeling.
It's many apple trees everywhere too. Along the roads, out in nowhere there are lots of trees with apples, free to take.
When biking a long some of the smaller roads it's still a lot of cars. Sometimes so many so I becomes annoyed, when I can't even cross the road because it's constantly coming cars and they all drive fast. I thought USA was a car-driven country but now I'm sure most industrial countries are so. Also in northern Sweden or a lot of other places, the way we live is a total dependancy of the car. Here they take the car just to drive around on the roads though in the weekends. That's not too usual in Sweden, maybe with motorcycles.
It's a little bit reserved people in general I've met here. Very bureaucratic too. Nobody want's to directly take care of anything (e.g. at the gym or bank/state departments) but all people want one to make an appointment and come back in a couple of weeks. No sense for service at all. Also the opening hours for most things are very bad, many food shops have open 08-20 wich isn't too bad, but many close as early as 16 too! And no shops are open on Sundays. A surprise though, is the post service. I ordered some bike parts on Friday, and today Saturday! it knocked on the door and some of them where delivered, to a very low price.
When living in another country as an exchange student, you get so much things automatically: a natural and direct contact with lots of people in the school, often many clubs with activities (as sports, dance, theater...) at the university, and can from there create your own life in whatever way you want. Here it's been very hard when I sit and works alone on a problem for many hours, in an office landscape, but still without a lot of speaking to other people There are neither many clubs right here, and it pushes me a lot more to search for activites in the near-by areas so I don't have to sit home alone in the nights. But till now, it's been a lot harder to making friends and "getting into" good groups of people than US.
The lack of natural contact with people also prevent me a bit from developing my language, as I don't get as much speaking practice as I would like to. Hopefully everything becomes better after a bit, beacuse many clubs and activities I've found have "summer vacation" until next week. I feel quite OK with reading now and also kind of OK with listening to someone speaking to me, but not listen on the TV. Neither my own speaking is close to what it has to be for calling it "fluent".
Well, more time to come!
On Wednesday we drove to a testing district little north of here for doing some tests and there were all kind of tracks for testing the cars. A little bit as a swedish 'halkbana' where you can test a car's brake distance but here where all kind of tracks. I drove a BMW and pushed it to the limit on a curvy test road among others.
Everywhere you can also see the new cars covered in different disguises (förklädda) when driving around and doing tests, but avoiding the journalists cameras. At least I think it's a really cool environment and also in the garage it's much "cleaner" than I expected. Not a single spot of oil anywhere, you can almost eat your food from the floor there.
Wednesday night I also tested the lindy scene again in Stuttgart, I met some more interested people but the scene isn't very big, despite it's many jazz bands around. Yesterday Friday a lindy friend, Denise, brought me to a Jazz basement in Stuttgart and different live bands are playing there 3 nights per week. We danced about 3 hours and I really like these nice and cosy (mysiga) places that I've been to - so far only in USA and Germany - the very genuine and real jazz feeling is really there. We were the only dancing couple yesterday as most people were there to listen, so we got some hugs and applauses too (on top of the band) for dancing.
It's been very warm (according to me) here, yesterday night it was still 27C at 22.00 and most people think it's nice but when doing activities (as I always do), it make me sweat unlimited.
The other days this week have I been biking and some weight lifting, trying to find a good gym for my training. It's very expensive though (about twice the Swedish prices - 4000 kr/halvår) so a probably stick with the gym they have at Bosch.
I was biking quite a bit today, and it came some rain that made me a bit cold. I thought a bit about the nature and differences to other places, and most of the German (should I say south-german?) nature is made up of either leaf trees, fields or cities. In the city, it's like cities everywhere in the world. The fields can be found also in other countries but one (for me) new thing is that it's so many trails and bike roads crossing the fields everywhere. I'm also surprised it's so many farmers here, in Sweden it feels much more industrial than here. Also here in the village Abstatt with 5000 people, just in the "town" there are suddenly a lot with horses or goats (getter) so it's a very relaxed and country feeling.
It's many apple trees everywhere too. Along the roads, out in nowhere there are lots of trees with apples, free to take.
When biking a long some of the smaller roads it's still a lot of cars. Sometimes so many so I becomes annoyed, when I can't even cross the road because it's constantly coming cars and they all drive fast. I thought USA was a car-driven country but now I'm sure most industrial countries are so. Also in northern Sweden or a lot of other places, the way we live is a total dependancy of the car. Here they take the car just to drive around on the roads though in the weekends. That's not too usual in Sweden, maybe with motorcycles.
It's a little bit reserved people in general I've met here. Very bureaucratic too. Nobody want's to directly take care of anything (e.g. at the gym or bank/state departments) but all people want one to make an appointment and come back in a couple of weeks. No sense for service at all. Also the opening hours for most things are very bad, many food shops have open 08-20 wich isn't too bad, but many close as early as 16 too! And no shops are open on Sundays. A surprise though, is the post service. I ordered some bike parts on Friday, and today Saturday! it knocked on the door and some of them where delivered, to a very low price.
When living in another country as an exchange student, you get so much things automatically: a natural and direct contact with lots of people in the school, often many clubs with activities (as sports, dance, theater...) at the university, and can from there create your own life in whatever way you want. Here it's been very hard when I sit and works alone on a problem for many hours, in an office landscape, but still without a lot of speaking to other people There are neither many clubs right here, and it pushes me a lot more to search for activites in the near-by areas so I don't have to sit home alone in the nights. But till now, it's been a lot harder to making friends and "getting into" good groups of people than US.
The lack of natural contact with people also prevent me a bit from developing my language, as I don't get as much speaking practice as I would like to. Hopefully everything becomes better after a bit, beacuse many clubs and activities I've found have "summer vacation" until next week. I feel quite OK with reading now and also kind of OK with listening to someone speaking to me, but not listen on the TV. Neither my own speaking is close to what it has to be for calling it "fluent".
Well, more time to come!
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