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.