Frag mich nicht, ich bin nur ein Mädchen

Strange thing about March: I had been expecting things to get a lot quieter here, and that they did. But even so, the month has gone like snow off a dyke—not much time left at all! And April looks set to be quite busy, happily so. I'm going to see Flora next week, I can't wait!! An epic traversing of the Alps. Not having seen friends and relatives, apart from Mum, in the flesh for a while, it's been odd, almost like the pictures of people in your mind's eye are a little smudged... This might just be peculiar to me. It happens even when I haven't seen our dog Danny in a few weeks; he becomes a smudgy, waggy, black and tan mass of hair and enthusiasm, how awful. This might speak of inattentiveness to my environment more than anything else. Anyway, proper excited! And then Mum is planning to return with my sister the weekend following, and there's talk of visiting Prague and/or Berlin with the girls here. And, apparently, because I and the Italian biologist Cristiana are both leaving the group at the end of April, and my birthday falls somewhat fatefully then, we have to organise a big party. We'll have a firework show and a brass band, no question. We'll hire the whole Mensa, and Cristiana can cover several tables with antipasti, pasta, gelati, panettone, prosecco, and I'll make... Mince and tatties. I never take long to describe typical Scottish cuisine... Although explaining haggis is a bit of a stumbling block. For expediency, I've taken to describing it as a really fat sausage, filled with oatmeal, fat and a range of organs. But still, I love it just the same. So, you wait for buses, and... an Airbus potentially arrives. But all of it sounds great! I can recuperate when I get home.

Good news on the project front: I managed to isolate a single compound apparently completely purely, its NMR spectra are delightful! Yep, it looked like it would be a piece of Schokoladenkuchen to solve. I'll tell you, I'll probably go looking for a good portion of that when/if we solve it... It´s harder than it looked! We seem to be coming really close when comparing our ideas to predicted ones, but not quite getting there. It´s really like doing a jigsaw—it's addictive, you don't want to leave it until you've tried everything you can think of at the time. Hopefully we're not that far away! And maybe it´s even novel... Isn't it exciting, to think that nothing is actually 'novel', that everything in Creation is known and accounted for but that things are always being revealed to us, and we learn more about the Creator by them?

I'm definitely an amateur in this Lent business (c.f. Nutella above). Some folk give up almost everything 'fun'; giving up sweet things is common. Today after lunch, we went to get some coffee—I went for a hot chocolate, thinking, 'yus, win, nae (or nae much) caffeine!' But, when chocolate is often something people give up, it didn´t seem like I was foresaking much. Guido, fellow coffee-up-giver, had a chai latte without coffee. That sounds a bit better. But I'm a first-timer, mind. I've surprised myself, but I don't think I really miss coffee now, and I seem to be quite alert, even more so, without it. Or, maybe, my standards have been raised so much that the instant coffee in my room isn't so appealing anymore. British readers, we're really quite crude in our drinking habits compared to Continentals! Here, instant coffee is considered the lowest of the low; tea is a delicate business, commonly involving fruits and herbs. Tetley, milk and sugar? Na ah. But I have found decaf black tea which I obviously splodge with milk. But drink out of a glass mug. Not entirely the philistine.

Looking forward to people returning in April: my neighbour Uli will be back from having been in Ireland, interested to hear how she found it! And the other Julia will also be back from 'holiday' (science students don't seem to really get time off here, either having exams to prepare for or practical placements—we really have a fine time of it, having all those months off in summer in Scotland!). Found out this week that I'm going to have to move out of my room here on my birthday, will be memorable in a way! Also, I wonder if I'll have the right to a holiday, even though on foreign soil, when Will and Kate get married the next day. Surely. I'll have Lizzie on the phone to them here, if not.

There are many words and catchphrases from the lab which stick in my mind. When Bayern München lost to Inter Milan last week, Susanne (decidedly not a Bayern fan) periodically sang "zieht den Bayern die Lederhosen aus" (pull off Bayern´s Lederhosen) to the tune of Yellow Submarine. Daniel in the lab next door is a bit of a character. He quotes from the German version of the Simpsons, where Homer says, "Ich bin so klug! K-L-U-K!" (a bit like, "I'm so clever! C-L-E-F-E-R!"). And when someone asks his opinion, he says in falsetto, "Frag mich nicht, ich bin nur ein Mädchen" ("Don't ask me, I'm just a little girl"). I might start using it myself.

Die Kaffeetage sind vorbei...

I learned a very good German word on Monday, more of a concept, actually: der Schweinehund. Auf Englisch: pigdog. What´re ye on about, I hear you scraich. Ok, as it is, it can mean swine, as a derogatory term - I´m not that big a user of the word swine, I´d probably naturally go for something more infantile just so I could giggle, and enjoy the all too transient giggly-tummy feeling. Possibly, it´s been a wise choice to lean away from paths in life which would take me into debating chambers, obviously for this reason alone in my case. Ahem. But I learned about the innere Schweinehund: the pigdog within. You see, there´s this fellow inside you who is always happy to persuade you to be lazy, to choose easy options when it might do you good to try harder ones. When you make an effort to do something, especially when you´ve been tempted otherwise, you beat the Schweinehund. Maybe I´m overlooking an English equivalent, but I quite like this. Something is at work to make you complacent; you can take action to fight and overcome it. It made me look back at Romans 7:17, where Paul says that it´s not him that´s doing the wrong thing (or not doing the right thing), but sin living in him... And reminded me of how I find the last part of chapter 7 difficult to relate to verses like 1 John 3:6, as far as continuing to sin goes. Maybe there are commentaries on this, I need to look.

Yes, so, things carry on, pretty well I think. Continually realising I´m very fortunate in many things - you know what I said a while ago about being bombarded with German even despite my poor ability to reply in kind, and knowing it to be a good thing though sometimes difficult? It turns out that that isn´t the experience of every native English speaker who has come here. Some find that even when they start a conversation in German, they are usually replied to in English. It´s very understandable and commendable that some Germans will be keen to use the opportunity to practise their English. I think the problem is when the English speaker starts to believe that their efforts in German aren´t being considered worthy of being engaged with... That could stunt confidence, and actually hurt, even though it is likely totally not intended to do so. This is, astoundingly, not an issue I´ve experienced enough to be affected by it in this way. Maybe I´m even guilty of allowing an uneven balance between my German practice and the English practice of those I speak with. I share a kitchen with an English language student who probably wishes I´d ask ´how are you?` rather than ´wie geht´s?` at least once in a while. It´s difficult to find a balance, as with anything. And I´m only here for the shortest of times - I´m sure things will only get better for the other native-Englishers who are all here for longer.

Hopefully, in the next week or so, I´m going to be able to identify some compounds, even if they aren´t exactly the ones we´re after (though there´re signs that we might have tracked down at least one of those!) - it´s taken a lot longer than I´d expected to whittle fractions down and purify them, but I´m getting excited to be close to actually putting a finger on a compound (not literally, these grubby paws ain´t gonna thwart results at this late stage). Wherefore hast the time gone? Even more hopefully, there´s still enough left not to have any loose ends by the time I have to leave...

Did I mention how much more hugging seems to go on here than at home? I think the further south you go, in Europe at least, the less personal space you can expect to be entitled to. Haha. Sometimes this prudish Brit among prudish Brits is quite alarmed at how compressed queues are in shops. But mostly, it´s nice. At church, maybe especially, a lot of people hug when they meet and depart, every Sunday. At this church at least, there seems to be a determination to live like a family, really: a man called Niels spoke to me for just a couple of minutes before the service one Sunday, then invited me and others to lunch the same day. When I met him the next Sunday, we hugged. Having met twice in history. I know I´m no hug ambassador, but I´d say that normally in Scotland, you have to earn your hugs, especially if you´re a young woman and the other is a married man. Like, you have to have gone through a challenging experience with someone else such that your shared endurance brought you closer (c.f. eating doughnuts without licking your lips), or you have to be in the same family. The second doesn´t always hold, day on day... Sometimes Hogmanay on Hogmanay. But in this case, I don´t think I did much hug-earning, by my usual thinking. I think I just showed up as a sister in Christ. I think it´s been wonderful to be shown that we can be, and ought to be, closer. The flipside to this was the account of a woman at church´s experiences of living in the north of England for a few years: she said that she couldn´t understand why people would stand a metre away from you when talking, or, if you sat down beside someone at a bus stop, they would move away. After a few months, someone put their arm on her shoulder when speaking to her, and she nearly fainted in relief. Funny, but don´t doubt it´s true. Before I put my foot in it again, I know that not all British people are guarded in the way this suggests; some people are veritable hug merchants, some aren´t and yet are some of the warmest you will meet here.

It´s Lent, and I thought that since I am in a place where apparently a lot more people observe it than at home, I should try to tag along. Some people go all out: Guido, one of the PhD supervisors, is giving up meat, coffee, sweets, television... I have decided to cut out just coffee. Big deal for me, you know. Except, I sort of cheated/modified my plans: it´s not a good idea to stop drinking coffee abruptly, if you have been quite a moderate to heavy user. Ahem. So, I decided I´d have one cup a day for a week... And now, until Easter, I´m a cold turkey. This here is to be my staple for the ensuing:

Apple tea. Yumm-eeee.

Die Ferien? Aber ich bin schon im Ausland...

It´s a curious time here: holidays have started for students, although quite a few seem to have exams right now, even into March (it´s so strange! Even stranger to imagine having holidays quite soon after Christmas. I think I´d go for a big, long summer break every time, but it could be nice to be on holiday when spring is springing, too.) - even so, more people seem to be leaving every day. My immediate neighbours are still here for a wee while - Uli, the fiddler next door, is going to Ireland next week, and taking her violin with her! This morning, I helped Ronit take her luggage to the railway station, on her way to Colorado (Frankfurt first). I find it hard to imagine how big the U.S.A. really is, and that it´s really quite something to travel out of it to Europe. I thought Munich was far away when I first flew here - it takes twice that flight time to get from New York to Denver, and that´s you only roughly halfway to the west coast! Jings. When you (I) think about travelling, it usually involves leaving your own country. But you could scour all of Europe and still, you could cover the same area in the States and still not have seen everything (I´m not totally sure about this, Wikipedia isn´t agreeing with other Google results... I´m going with my gut, like a good scientist). In any case, this put any notions of my own intrepidity into some perspective.

My mum came to visit last weekend - it was quite surreal, welcoming someone to a country also foreign to you! We had a great time in Munich and Regensburg, wandering around. Mum confirmed that there´s a different sort of cold here, it´s more... Cold. This was one morning out my window, I think it was -7°C:

It gets through your gloves and tingles your ears, and makes you realise that, though you thought your scottishness made you to be of inherently, William-Wallacey, born-in-a-northerly-gale, tougher stuff, the Gulf Stream weans you as a big climatic softy. Cold? - guffaws Central Europe - I´ll give you cold! Introducing: the Alps.

I am going to mention the war. We visited Munich University, hoping to see the memorial of the White Rose, the anti-Nazi resistance group which included two Munich students, Hans and Sophie Scholl, brother and sister. They were caught distributing leaflets on campus on February 18th, 1943; they were found guilty of treason and beheaded, four days later. Today, there are streets, schools and buildings all over Germany named after Sophie Scholl or die Geschwister (siblings) Scholl. Theirs is a remarkable story. This is an aside, but do you know the impression I get: Germans feel a lot less awkward about German history than we do. Why should they feel awkward at all? It can´t be changed. I think we can perceive the idea that we should be very, very cagey about mentioning World War Two in the presence of Germans - and indeed, if it isn´t necessary to talk about it, it´s perhaps more comfortable to avoid. But from what I have seen here, this part of history isn´t tucked away - it is borne out as a lesson to all the generations which followed it. What´s worst about any British guardedness is that it´s not just Germany´s history at all - it´s human history. This is what man is capable of doing to man. This struck me more than ever in my life when we visited Dachau the next day.

Words can´t do any justice. There is a museum which describes the story of the camp in great detail; there´s no pretence, only the truth as it was drawn from survivors and others. As clear as it is, it is so hard to believe - but it must be believed. We must know how evil can work. I have tried to write more, but I don´t know what else to say.

The weekend just past made be very appreciative of the company I´ve found here - now, making friends is not one of my strong points. I don´t know that it´s even one of my weak points - it´s through very little of my own doing that I have good friends. Here, though I get on ok in the lab with others, most people are a few years older than me and work in pharmacies at the weekend anyway, when I have most time to meet others. So I know that I´ve been very fortunate to meet other students outwith the lab and to have the chance to spend time with them. I met Laura for cake on Saturday and a good long walk, and then went another walk with Uli on Sunday on her study break, then went to see The King´s Speech in English with German subtitles (that is an excellent film by the way! I didn´t expect to laugh so much!) with another Julia who had been doing her pharmacy project in our lab, all quite spur-of-the-moment, and the more fun for it! Soon even these guys will leave on holiday... But it´ll be ok, I´ve been perfecting the purposeful walk of a non-native trying to blend in since I arrived. The problem might be, though, that I actually walk faster than most people now, certainly all the people I overtake, and maybe draw more attention that way. But it´s so hard to stop the arms swinging once they get going. 

This is a photo of Mum in Munich, to prove that there has been a Paterson in Bavaria (since there are suspiciously few of myself...):

Hahaha, that´s the only expression I seem able to catch of hers when snapping!

  

Jetzt im Februar.

The story continues... A bit more quickly than I´d expected, and than I´d like! The days pass with such speed that I often lose track of which one we´re on: I spent most of a recent Wednesday thinking it was Tuesday. Maybe this is good, we say time flies when you´re having fun - it sure speeds along when you´re busy scurrying about a lab for most of the day (I don´t think scurrying is typical lab etiquette, but I do suspect I do it), then come home to make dinner, and sometimes only really have 2-3 hours after that before you ought to hit the kipper - or hang on a bit too much longer on Facebook or Skype Chat... I´m suddenly realising that four months, like people here have said, really is ´ganz kurz` (very short). I didn´t believe it at all to begin with! And it struck me in the past week that I don´t feel like a ´real` student anymore: I´m not going to lectures, I don´t have exams to prepare for... It´s like I´ve started a full-time job! If this is sort of what it´s like to be really working (I can´t believe it absolutely is, I feel like a tourist on holiday a lot of the time; just wait until it gets warmer and I whip out my straw hat and shades. Or not. I´d get self-conscious about perhaps looking like a bug-eyed bug trapped under a basket.), I understand why some people say time goes by faster as you get older. Sorry, I didn´t mean this to be morose-sounding; it´s just interesting to be noticing what changes as I grow up.

My project life is going well, I think: this week we reckoned we´d isolated one relevant compound, and we just need to interpret structural data to make sure of this. I´ve been realising that it´s quite something for Sebastian to be entrusting some of the practical work of his research to someone, in me, whom he had never met before the start of this year. If I was in the same position as him, it would make me nervous to have someone else do part of my work when a high standard of results were important to me, and I didn´t know if the other person could deliver that. But I think this is teaching me a very important lesson about trust, and also about honouring it when it is given. Maybe I wouldn´t be having these reflections if my efforts had been flawless so far, but they haven´t been - and I´m very aware of the danger of being afraid of making mistakes. But hopefully I´m learning properly, and becoming more confident - I think I´ve developed enough thin layer chromatography plates to completely line the walls of my room here!

There was some bad news last Friday: a thief struck our kitchen, and almost all 15 of us had something stolen from us. They took my couscous, my tomato purée... And my coffee. Oh no, sirreeee. When I discovered this on Friday evening, and most shops shut early on Fridays, wiz no a happy bunneh, frankly. But, again, there was something good to learn from this - how petty it was for me to be hurt by losing just these few things! Romans 12:21 was a big help. We don´t think the thief is ´among us`, they took a lot of things which needed to be stored in the fridge, and surely they didn´t eat it all in one go... But we´ve realised that we can lock the kitchen door, so everyone is now dutifully doing that when finished in the kitchen.

What else... I´ve been enjoying being invited round for pancakes and films at the flats of the girls I´ve met here! Last Sunday, Katariina hosted an interesting night, hahaha... It had been her birthday recently and a black forest gateau was bought as a surprise: when it was being opened, its base gave way and it splatted on the floor! Hilarity only grew when it seemed like the best plan would be to put the candles on the cake as it lay, and have them blown out on the floor. I´m giggling at the memory! Then there were issues with singed popcorn, haha. We watched Stardust - you know, it hadn´t struck me how much of a ninny the main chap Tristan is at various points! And I´d forgotten some of it was filmed on Skye - oh, the homeland. I´m so grateful to have been received by these guys - I really wish my German speech was so much better so that I could join in when they speak it together!

Today saw a cycling adventure. Sebastian had told me that if I wanted to spend some of the weekend cycling, I should try to reach Kallmünz if I could. It´s up the river Naab, which is a tributary of the Danube, and is 25km (about 15.5 miles) from Regensburg. He even gave me a map, and I was all sorted. I set off at 10am, and I was worried that I´d left too late to be able to get to Kallmünz and back in time to watch the France vs. Scotland game (hooray for iPlayer!) - but actually, I got halfway there in an hour, arriving at Pielenhofen, a pretty wee place with a former monastery. The cycle track was great especially to begin with, I was whizzing along full of touristy glee - it got a bit more mucky and bumpy in parts as I went on, but your intrepid pedaller was unfazed, and finally came to Pielenhofen:

I thought it would be a good idea to check that my tyres weren´t going soft at this stage. The back tyre was a bit squidgy, and there seemed to be something unusual about the valve, but I made to try to attach the pump. Then, part of the valve flew off with a ´spoooosh!`. When I recovered it, I realised that it had been missing an important part beforehand, which might have been lost during the journey - I don´t know how the tyre was remaining inflated at all. Hmm. What to do... Pielenhofen only had a couple of shops and what I think is a brewery, certainly not a bike shop. The only option was to walk back to Regensburg - 10 miles. I reckoned I could get back within 3 hours, allowing for bike-pushing, which would be fine. So, off I set. And you know, I was glad: you get to see more of a place you´re travelling through when on a bike rather than in a car, but you see yet more when you´re walking. I was taking in more of the landscape as I walked back, even seeing things I hadn´t noticed first time, and the sun was coming out more and more. I hardly met anyone on the way - it was so peaceful! I wish I spent more time just looking at and listening to and smelling Creation.

 A postie stopped and asked me what was up - I only knew how to say I had a puncture, which wasn´t really true, so he probably thought I was a bit crackers for apparently not having a repair kit, but I think he would´ve tried to give me a lift if I hadn´t indicated I was happy to walk. An epic journey home... Back before 3pm! And with dirty shoes. I felt a spectacle in town. But I enjoyed that ill-fated trip!

Man, I write too much. And so much more has happened. But I should stop here! But must say I´m excited that Mum´s coming to visit next weekend... Maybe I can learn enough before then to dazzle her with nonchalant, natural German. Har dee harhar.

A Working Week

What´s new? I´ve just had my first week of practical work in the lab. Well, really, we got started last Friday, when I was taught how to use the Thin Layer Chromatography (TLC) spotter machine - that´s not the true technical name, but it´ll do. But I made a bit of a boo-boo: I´d been watching others using it before I myself would be given a go, and Sebastian trusted me enough to leave me to try it without supervision. There´s nothing to it, it´s actually pretty cool - you fill a syringe with your sample, and then a robot finger presses down gently and evenly on the plunger so that you get better coverage on the TLC plate than if your shaky self (or myself) was doing it. So, there I was, happily placing my syringe in the slot, and pressing the ´Go` button, when a scratchy noise ensued... And I saw the tip of the syringe slowly bending until it had almost bent back on itself. Uh. Oh. I hadn´t pushed the syringe far enough in. Not the best start I could´ve imagined. Sebastian came back and discovered what had happened, but didn´t get angry at all and told me not to worry - I think he was feeling bad that he had left me unsupervised on my first go. I very stupidly felt very bad for the rest of the afternoon and put a damper on the mood as we worked together. But Monday saw a fresh start. What did Mr Wilde say: "experience is simply the name we give to our mistakes" - as long as I learn from errors it´ll be ok; think the problem is that I´m not often humble enough to learn!

It´s only been the second week of my project, but I already feel like I´ve fallen into a routine: I walk to the lab and arrive a bit before 9, a guy Daniel who works in the next lab usually unlocks the door of my ´office` for me (it´s just a wee room which I put my things in because there isn´t space elsewhere), I put on my labcoat:

 and instantly become Chemistwoman and fly through the building saving people from potential explosions, low percentage yields, Schrödinger equations, the like... Or, I unassumingly look over what I wrote in my lab book the day before. Quietly concealing my true identity.

Then Sebastian arrives and we get to it, but just for a while before lunchtime comes at 11 and we´re off to the Mensa, then afterwards mainly the women head to the coffee joint in the Maths building. At lunch and coffee, almost all the talk is in German, quite naturally, but I think I get the jist of most things. It´s going to be a big step to become confident enough to join in... But I hope I get there before I have to leave!

Then back to work. It´s quite weird to be working over what would be lunchtime at home, but I think my tummy´s gettting quite used to it; even though I have breakfast at the back of 8, I´m getting quite hungry by 10. Maybe I am also an increasing pie, getting too used to big helpings at lunchtime and delighting in the multitude of bakeries I encounter when I go down to the Altstadt. Who can say. At 3 o´clock, we break for more coffee, and maybe possibly probably some form of confection. I don´t entirely mind this excursion. Then back to the lab for the final push, until between 5 and 6, then home!

I left too big a gap between the last post and this one, there´s a lot I could talk about. Last Sunday, I went to a church with Laura and Ronit, English and American girls whom I´d met the Sunday before. We went to the Open Door church which happens in a cinema. I used to think that going to church in a cinema would be very surreal, but it actually works very well; the seating is really just like the arrangements upstairs in bigger churches but you´re obviously closer to the action, and there´s a lot of space down at the front for speakers - and a band! I enjoyed the music, the first song was ´Better is One Day`, which took me by surprise! The other songs were in German, but lyrics were given, I still have some of them in my head now. After the first song, a man and wife were officially admitted as members of the church. After the second, a woman was introduced as having suffered from problems with her skin for ten years, and with reference to James 5:14, one of the elders put oil on her forehead, and then the preacher and two elders placed their hands on her shoulders. Later at lunch, someone told me that the same had been done for another woman who had very similar problems, and she´s now totally healed. You know, I´d never given credence to that verse as describing something that could be done nowadays, and be effective - I was inwardly embarrassed that I often underestimate the power of prayer. And again when someone else said that that same morning, the young daughter of the singer in the band had asked her mum to turn on a CD player which everyone thought was broken, and her mum told her as much... But then the girl prayed that it would be fixed, and then immediately asked her mum to turn it on because it would work this time. The mum was so worried about how she would have to explain why the CD player still wasn´t working... Except, it was now. I think that made me beam and blush at the same time. I think I understood the main ideas of what the preacher went on to talk about - he used videos too, which helped a bit. In any case, it was apparently a lot easier to engage with than sermons at other protestant churches here, and we were warmly welcomed.

Later that day, Laura hosted a viewing of The Sound of Music, which I´d never seen before (!!!!!!!!!!!). It is, actually, brilliant and magical. How Maria can play a tune with the children, who represent different notes, by pointing at them, as though they´d practised this for months... How Maria so conveniently knows Sixteen Going On Seventeen later on even though it was just sung between Liesl and Rolf at first... No, I did really rather like it. I would go to Salzburg and do ´the tour`. That much.

Tomorrow will hopefully see a Burns Supper at the ESG, I´m excited to see haggis in a foreign land! I hope I´m not called on for a recital as one of the two Scottish people likely to be present... I know the first couple of verses of To a Mouse, and it gets very patchy until "the best laid plans of mice and men aft gang agly". Maybe that´s a good thing to remember in the lab.

How to end? Here´s a picture of my German steed:

I bought it from a Flohmarkt (flea market), apparently that´s the thing to do for good value - mine was 25€! I hope the mannie wasn´t saying things like, "you know, I don´t think the brakes will last much longer, hehehe, good luck to you!", I don´t know what the German for that would´ve sounded like - but the cycle home was ok, I think I should´ve trusted it more!

Getting into the swing...I hope...

To me, it honestly feels like yonkeroonies since my last post. A lot of things have happened to fill the time, mainly with putting things in place for my stay here, which I´m now grateful for! It´s strange though: rather than feeling very much like a short-term visitor, as I expected to, even in the course of the last couple of days I´ve begun to feel like I´m a ´real` student here. Indeed, I´ve been enroled as a student, and here I am in halls - here´s me room, in Ludwig-Thoma Heim:

 There is a bed too, don´t worry (it feels quite strange, to have been living in this sort of set-up at the start of my studies and returning to it pretty much at the end...there are moments when I could almost be in Johnston...but do you ever look back at certain times of life and think them so distant that for a moment it´s hard to comprehend that they belong to the same life you´re living now?...Maybe not!). But beyond these, there´s a peculiar feeling of beginning to integrate more than I´d expected I would. Please humour me in this, I will use more words than are necessary... For our project placements, it hasn´t been expected of us that we have more than a rough knowledge of the language of the country we´re visiting, if even that. I bet I could get by in Regensburg just fine without a word of German...if I could hold out long enough from the squirming feeling of ignorance that´d probably germinate. But, because I do have some German, I´m feeling obliged to at least begin exchanges in it...I´m not doing a very good job, but it´s happening! It feels more like the experience of an exchange student trying to get to grips with the language, even though, really, it´d be OK if I conducted everything in English. If I worried that I wouldn´t get much of a chance to use German because everyone would want to practice their English on me all the time...pahahaha. If you could learn foreign languages by osmosis, right now I´d look like Violet Beauregarde post-Willy Wonka´s three-course meal chewing gum episode. I hope you know what I mean. If not, imagine me, spherical. Not hard.

That isn´t a very accurate picture. Really, most people speak English, to a much better standard than I think they realise, and it even excites some of them to be able to speak to a native speaker (that seems to be a real buzzword with English learners here), because some of them never have before. That´s quite surreal, isn´t it? People have evidently put years of hard work into learning English...and never had the benefit of using it with the people they maybe most intended to! Although that also testifies to how popular English is as a means of communication between non-British Europeans. I don´t think I´ve really appreciated how fortunate I am to have been born into English...if I was in the same position as the German students who really want to have a high standard of English to improve their prospects, I´d long for it to come as naturally to me as a native speaker! And maybe it´s my own generation who have felt the obligation to learn English most...in the 80´s, it was still OK for German scientists to publish research in German...that doesn´t happen now! I´d appreciate it if it was resented - but it doesn´t seem to be. Almost everyone I´ve spoken to wants to perfect their English, and they apologise that they aren´t better. This is extraordinary of them, firstly because their English is great and even we native speakers make various mistakes all the time, but secondly because I´m here in their country, bludgeoning their language with each incorrect article and every wrong tense. And forgetting to say ´please` after stumbling to the end of questions; I deserve a good clip round the lug.

Anyway.

Joining the group I´m going to be working with, that´s actually started off better than my nervous self could´ve anticipated. Waaaaay better! I´m working with a PhD student called Sebastian, on the isolation, fractionation and structural elucidation of acylphoroglucinol derivatives from Hypericum Empetrifolium. Ja. This week was intended to be an introduction for me - so far, so good! All the people working in the lab, mainly pharmacy PhD students and postdocs, have been very friendly and accommodating. We all go to lunch at 11, before the students hit the Mensa at noon, and have coffee breaks together later on. Kaffee and Kuchen really are had all the time here, I thought it was just the same as the idea that every Scottish man wears a kilt, always. And I had a Currywurst for lunch today. Mental. Mostly they speak in English to me, but sometimes try German - if I haven´t been expecting it and I´m not tuned in, I appear slower than I really am. It´s a handy enough excuse...

My first job was to help Sebastian prepare a presentation in English. We´ve made a deal that if I help him in his English, he´ll help me with my German - I really need to start being more brave and use more complex German for him to help with! But I´ve actually really been enjoying giving English help; it´s rewarding when you feel that your support is valued! Man, this is turning into a ode to Germanic languages, sorry. What else has happened...had hoped to take pictures of campus today, but it was raining - yus! Felt like home! But, yeah, I´ll regret it if I don´t start prolifically snapping, I know. I´ll get on it, rain or shine.

For now, here´s my favourite documented case of Denglish (German-English) so far: Germany has taken Hob Nobs for her own:

Sonntag

I don´t know if I´ll continue to post as regularly as I´ve started out doing, but today has been interesting so far and I want to write about it while it´s still fresh in my mind! This morning I went to the English language service I mentioned last time, at a centre for protestant groups in the old town. It was led by Rhona Dunphy, who´s been here for quite a long time, 17 years if I remember correctly! I find the idea of being an expat very interesting, especially when people start families outside their home country, as she has. It´s hard for me to imagine what it´s like to make such concrete plans to be quite far away from where you came from. Think that shows just how much of an island mentality I have. She wasn´t expecting many others as students are only just returning for the start of term, but two students about my age came, as well as a few older women (maybe mature students). Normally services are held in a little chapel in the centre, but this time we met in a wee room, with a wreath and candles on a table in the middle. It was like a normal Church of Scotland service except with comfy chairs and with the minister playing the piano for the hymns...quite surreal and funny now I reflect on it! But I enjoyed it. Rhona talked about Jesus being the light of the world; she said she´d found this a difficult topic to talk about in recent years, as through cancer she has lost the use of one eye, and when it´s dark, even her good eye doesn´t work well at all. But she talked about the power that Jesus´ light has, and how, when people reflect clearly his light (she mentioned Mother Teresa), it has a greater evangelical impact than almost anything else.There was communion at the end, where we stood in a circle, and I wasn´t quite sure what was going to happen - Rhona passed me a cracker (think savoury snack, not Christmas), broke off a piece of it, and said "this is Christ´s body, broken for you" and passed me the piece. It took a while for me to realise that I was meant to do the same for the person next in the circle! Then the wine was passed round, and we held hands for the blessing, and then shook each other´s hands afterwards. I know it mightn´t be practically possible to have communion in this way with a bigger congregation, but I liked it; I also know it´s obvious that Christians all over the world are part of the same family, but this brought it home to me in a very clear way- I hadn´t known these folk first thing today, but we already shared a bond!

Some of us stayed after the meeting for tea and coffee. All through my career as a chemistry student, my explanation that I am that very thing usually arouses the same sentiment, tellingly expressed as an "...oh." Today wasn´t much different...except that one of the other students studies maths, so we share common ground in the reaction-of-others-on-disclosure-of-our-subject-of-study stakes I think, that´s always comforting. She lives next to the halls I think I´ll be staying in (it´s curious that the student office is being quite shady about the details of my accommodation...but all will become clear tomorrow!) and said I could pop round if I liked, which was very nice! Rhona talked about a meeting of the Church of Scotland presbytery of Europe which is coming up...did you know that Bermuda and Sri Lanka are part of that? Long story - they nearly joined with the CoS presbytery of the Scottish Western Isles beforehand...hahaha! And Rhona used to be a minister in Culloden so knows David Meredith, and knows people who used to go to Bon Accord. This world is distinctly small.

Afterwards, I went a walk and finally properly got my camera out! This here is the cathedral, der Regensburger Dom:



It´s a big chap.

Here´s the Danube, in spate with all the snowmelt:

And here´s my first real German Kaffee und Kuchen! :D A mocha and a Donauwelle (Danube wave), which was creamy and had cherries in it, scrumdiddly.

Because not many places are open today, I bought myself a cheese pretzel to have sometime today (I have fruit and things too, never fear!). Alas, you don´t get to see this. My belly already has.