Arrival

Date: Feb 7 1993

The following miscellaneous ramblings is about my environment and isn't very adventurous. This letter has taken a long time to write because a few days after I write something in here, a lot changes. But I guess now I'm finally getting settled in. A lot of the following is what my conditions were weeks ago. This is probably only useful to those of you who don't know anything about Germany and are interested in knowing something.
This is kinda long...

Arrival:

Arrived on Lufthansa. Pretty boring trip. Germans clap when planes they are on successfully land. I don't know what they do if they crash. Due to a weird set of events, I had to pretend I was the 'Taxi and Limosine Service - TLS', standing there in the airport with this name tag of this lady while she ran off to make phone calls and find the other people besides myself that were too stupid to find the rendezvous area. A lot of people now probably think that the TLS are a bunch of morons. "Gorp gorp gorp?" "duh, i dunno - go away". We're bombing along the autobahn going 1,563 million billion miles an hour in a beat up crappy van and took lots of really neat twistie roads up hills to get to EMBL (European Molecular Biology Laboratory) where they were supposed to have my new apartment key and didn't. But I finally got the key at the EMBL Guest House where I'm currently staying and figured out fairly easily how to flush the toilet all by myself.

Home Environment:

I am living in a 0 bedroom (what Germans call a 1 room ) apartment about 10 minutes walk from work. I walk up a hill through the bush to get to work. It's actually a nice walk. My apartment has cooking facilities which are required since we're out in the sticks, and a bathroom and single bed.

The shower is evil and I'm not quite sure how Europeans take showers. It has a bathtub with a shower nozzle on a hose - designed for a legless midget. When at rest on its hook, it will spray one of your knees. In order to not freeze while playing with shampoo and soap and stuff, I sit in a seiza position (kneeling position used in some martial arts while you're waiting for your turn to get beat up) so that the spray will get up to 20% of my torso instead of 0%. Then you rock back and forth to get the rest of your body. Without years of Kendo experience, you guys wouldn't survive kneeling on the hard surface for long periods.

Finding a place to live is almost impossible. It's not as bad as in Hell, sometimes more commonly known as Zürich. However, one of the secretaries here is helping me and has placed an ad in the paper saying something like 'World Famous Canadian EMBL Scientist wants blah blah...' So now I'm avoiding my place because whenever I try to sleep or go to the bathroom, somebody phones and starts saying "Gorp gorp gorp (this is German) gorp gorp...". I spent all day looking at apartments, and missed the 4 hours of allowed Saturday shopping and will end up doing 2 hour excursions to find food again this weekend.

A nice 2 room (1 bedroom) apartment in a choice location would probably be around 1200 DM (around $1000) a month. I'm currently paying 750 DM for my 0 bedroom apartment which is a bit expensive for this place. However, they want you to move out since it's intended for guests. I have it reserved for up to a year.

Ok, an update on my living conditions. I moved to a large 1 bedroom apartment in Leimen, about 2 or 3 km from Heidelberg. It's huge, furnished and amazingly amazing. The landlord/landlady are super nice. They are an old (around 70) German couple and are super helpful. It costs 1200 DM/month plus electricity. (around $1000 CDN + electricity) I am heaps more comfortable than the barn I was living in, in Waterloo.

Work Environment:

Since this is not a computer place, getting computer resources, like a workstation, can be a little slow. These guys are biologists, not computer geeks. So at the moment, I'm typing on a ancient DEC VT220 terminal that sits on a cardboard box that keeps collapsing. Using my enormous brain, I have managed to avoid having to use VMS mail now in favor of Unix mail, which no-one uses. If it were known, the evil Imperial Computer Group people would probably stop it. I share a broom closet with 3 insane people who are all quite nice people but they use VMS so they can't help being insane. Actually, 2 use VMS, 1 uses DOS and wants to use Unix. In my 3rd week here, I got the desk I ordered thanks to teams of workers whose task it was to obtain a table for me. I also got a filing cabinet and a pencil holder. Now all I really need is a chair and workstation (both on order)

If you've ever seen the movie 'Brazil', where they have all these pipes and ducts everywhere, then maybe you can picture it here where the pipes and ducts we have in our ceilings makes 'Brazil' look boring. Workman blast, hammer and drill a lot making more of these ducts go insane places. When I look up, there are lots that end and don't go anywhere, ranging from several inches diameter to a couple of feet. I'm not sure why a department that makes genetic databases available to the world needs all these ducts and fume hoods that they keep installing. I've never asked.

Ok, I think I know now. It's to route evil stuff from the fume-hoods they just installed in the next offices to unknown places. The workmen have covered up the ceiling and gone away to make ducts somewhere else.

They have the most amazing library. I never knew there were so many different magazines on molecular biology. Hundreds. There's even 1 dedicated solely to the mouse genome. The computer section comes close to rivaling the UW book store. There are at least 10 copies of the C white book. If you want anything from the Snobol 4 (at least 4 different books) to Compiler writing, it's there. Anything that isn't there, order it. It's got many books that I've always wanted to get around to buying. They've even got BCPL, Programming Pearls, blah blah blah... They get Scientific American, Unix Review, the Economist, etc...

There is a CD and VHS movie club. Rental is something like $1 a night. I think the movie club has around 2000 movies. In English. I've seen the list of stolen/non-returned movies. It was hundreds. Lots of great stuff ranging from Elvira to Fawlty Towers and Black Adder.

Ok, I have a chair now. Somebody stole it for me. The one I have ordered will probably take six months because it comes from Holland and I think they push it to get it here. The filing cabinet I have was liberated from my boss. To get one (with a lock) comes from the same above company and takes six months. My secretary was able to get rid of the crappy typing table that was in the way of my desk for a couple of weeks. Not an easy task. I have a temporary SPARCstation 2 on my desk and I may be a Superuser on it real soon. I have to wait for the great and mighty 'Computer Group' to come type 4 commands that I could do in 30 seconds so I won't be on their cluster anymore. Maybe in another week they can do it. The DECstation I'm supposed to get has finally been ordered. It took a month to order it. I have no idea how long it will take.

A 9600 baud modem has been ordered for me for home use. There's no point in getting a faster modem because right now the crappy German phone lines wouldn't be able to handle it. I haven't ordered a workstation yet to go with it. I still have to sign a piece of paper authorizing the Phone Police to install a work line to my apartment. EMBL encourages home working environments and foots all the bills.

p.s. I lied about the cardboard box table and I'm not really in a broom closet.

My Luggage:

It took me more than 1.5 weeks to get my excess luggage (2 trunks) that arrived on the same flight as me which Lufthansa said after a week that it hadn't. Then some unknown company got ahold of it. And another... Personnel wasn't very helpful in doing anything about finding my luggage, like picking up the phone and maybe calling somebody, so I finally started tracking it down myself. I finally got it. Only 1 lock had been pried off and lost and there was only a moderate amount of evidence of dropping the trunks from great heights. One of the trunks is no longer lockable.

The Doctor:

So to work at EMBL, you have to have a medical checkup at the doctor. I think this guy is a unknown Nazi War Criminal. First, this nurse rams this monster needle in my arm and fills five huge vats up with my blood. Collects some other liquids too. Go back to the waiting room and look at the pretty colours. Another nurse grabs me. Goes to take my blood pressure. Same arm. Pumps it up to 7,857,657 lbs pressure. The bandage blows off and a stream of my remaining blood goes flying across the room. I almost manage to finish writing my name on the wall from my blood spray before she lets off the pressure. Back to the waiting room. more colours... Another Nurse grabs me. Asks me how long it's been since I had an X-ray. ok, I'm ready for this. Another guy told me he said 2 years and they told him it was time that he had another then.

"How long since you had a X-ray White!?"
"uh - 1 week"
"Ach! Then it's time you had another!! Here stand like this..."
 
She goes away...
 
"Hey, it's kinda hot in here...."
"Hey! Its getting HOT in here!!..."
"HEY!!!.....EEEEEEYYYYYAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!......."
"Ach! Sorry, dee stop button ist kaput again. Is fixed now, ok?"
 
Back to the waiting room... seeing colors and smoke...
Next evil nurse comes, makes me lie down and straps wires to my ankles, wrists, and around my heart area for a total of 10 wires.
 
"You know this? You recognize this White?"
"yeh, it's a EKG machine thingie"
ZAP! "EEEEEYYYYYOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!"
"ack, gut! vocal chords functioning perfectly. You thought this was EKG machine? hawhawhaw. You funny man!"
 
Back to the waiting room... Finally I get to see Dr Death. He slugs me a few times to see if I have a functioning nervous system.
 
"So, you wants HIV? Is not necessary for your job - is option"
 
I declined.
I finally escaped. went back to work still looking at the pretty colours and stars. I learned from Al Bundy in "Married with Children" that the brain doesn't need blood, it just needs to be wet. So I replenished my precious bodily fluids with WeizenBier (Weis Beer) in the EMBL mini cafeteria. ($2) It works. (Weis-Bier is $1 in supermarkets)

Weather:

It was super cold the first few days I arrived. Around -15 C or so. Since then it's been around 5 to 10 C above and usually lightly raining. There is no snow.

Shopping Hours:

Stores close around 6pm on weekdays, except Thurs when they are open till 8 pm. On Saturdays, stores are open from around 10am to 2 pm. Many close at 1pm. On 'long' Saturdays, the first Sat of each month, Germans go wild and keep some stores open till 4pm. Stores are closed on Sunday.
So on Thursday evenings, and for a few hours on Saturday, it's a shopping madhouse.

Transportation:

At the moment, I'm car-less and have a unlimited monthly tram/bus ticket which costs about $50. The parking of cars here is insane, and I can't figure out what is legal or not. If you buy a $60 yearly special parking thingie, you can do insane things like park in the middle of the street between tram lines where cars don't drive, park on sidewalks, in front of big garbage thingies and so on. Most people park half on the sidewalk and half on the road, because other- wise there would not be enough room for a car to drive down the road.

In the city, they actually have parking lines made out where the line is about 3 feet from the curb and the other line is 3 feet in the middle of the sidewalk. You park between them. Yes, you climb the curb. Many streets in the choice housing district downtown are like this.

Ok, I got a car now. I bought a used 1985 Toyota MR2. (Thats a small impractical 2 seater mid-engine sports car for you car illiterates). It cost me 11,300 DM (around $9000 CDN). A new MR2 costs around 50,000 DM. Cars (and bikes) are killer expensive here. This car sure sucks up gas... Oh, gas is about 3 times as expensive as in Canada.

Food:

Mr T(ilden) asked me about food. I've been cooking at home alot, and the restaurants I have been eating at haven't really been German. I've eaten at excellent Italian, good Mexican, and a great Chinese restaurant. A very yummy meal will typically cost me around $20 CDN. The actual food thing is around $13 or so, but after you add drinks, other stuff, tip, etc, it's about $20. If I make stuff at home, it probably costs me about $3. For you unsophisticates, the McDonalds (there are at least 3 in Heidelberg) in the Old City is the 2nd best I've ever been to. (The best was in a unknown place on I-95 in some hick town returning from Florida) The other 2 here are crappy as usual. A quarter-pounder with cheese (Hamburger Royal mit Kase), a small coke, small fries, ketchup, and a strawberry sundae costs 10 DM (around $8).

Germans:

Several people commented about Germany maybe not being a fun place because of all the reports of Neo-Nazis and everything and expected me to get beat up everyday. Well, I'm not exaggerating when I say that on average, Germans here are more friendly and helpful than in Canada. Maybe that's because in Canada I didn't look like a clue-less idiot who needed help, but here, several people, ranging from kids to little old ladies will go out of their way to help me when they see me looking at a map, or looking confused. Most of these times I don't need help at all, I'm just looking at a map on a tram trying to figure out Heidelberg better, not trying to figure out where to get off. I've only seen a couple of old miserable snots. I figure they're still upset about having an excess number of bombs dropped on them 45 years ago...

FYI, I think that the anti-violence demonstration in Munich that started all the other anti-violence protests in other cities was started by something like 3 guys by word of mouth. No advertising. Nothing on TV or radio. These guys just decided that there were pissed off with Neo-Nazi violence giving Germany a bad name, so they walked into a pub of around 100 people or so, and announced they were going to hold a protest and that everyone should tell 10 people, and they should tell 10 people and so on. And 500,000 showed up with candles and the streets ended up covered in wax. Somebody (the Govt?) gave these 3 guys awards, which they were embarrassed about and they donated them to a museum.

ok, so I maybe exaggerated a bit about the Doctor visit...

Anyway, I'm having a very good time. Sometimes I'm so happy that I start jumping up and down and making funny noises and everyone stops and stares.

Anybody wanting to e-mail me, the best is to probably still use rjwhite@math.uwaterloo.ca which will be aliased appropriately. Currently it's pointing at white@felix.EMBL-Heidelberg.de where there is no evil MX record making it go someplace awful... Anybody wanting to drop by, I'm living at:

I don't have a phone yet and haven't had time to order one. My work phone is probably 6221 387 466. From Canada, 011 49 6221 387 466.