October 11th, 2001

Hello all,

            I am alive and well in Munich.  First of all, I apologize for this being a mass emailing, but it is easier for letting all my friends know what's going on in my life.  I've been keeping a journal of my travels and experiences.  I'm going to share some of it with you all here.  I also plan to make monthly updates on my travels here in Germany and Europe. 

            As you know, I left Portland on Tuesday Sept. 25th.  I went into work for about half a day to pack up my office and wrap up some minor things.  My group took me out for lunch.  It was very sad for me in many ways, because it really hit home then that I was saying goodbye to a fantastic group of people.  It was always more than just the people to work with, they are close friends.  They even gave me a couple of going away presents, two of which have been extremely useful: calling card and German phrase book.  The phrase book is very useful because it contains the English phonetics for the German phrases.  Oh Linda, I did pick up the Lonely Planet version of the phrase book, and yes if I start dating here in Germany it will be very useful!

            Shortly after the lunch, my close friend, Dan, gave me a ride to the airport.  So we left at 3:30pm and it was slow traffic all the way from 185th Ave to the Airport!  I don't think we got above 40 mph until we got on Airport Road.  It took us close to an hour an half to get there.  Sadly this was to be a foreshadowing of my traveling experience.  However, once we got to the airport checking in was extremely fast.  The airport was virtually deserted, sadly for obvious reasons.  Security was indeed tighter; they even ran my check-in luggage through a special high power x-ray with me present.  Apparently they aren't doing this to everyone, but with a high frequency.  Eventually I sad my goodbyes to Dan, and got on my flight to Arizona. 

            But wait, Arizona?!?  You thought I was going to Germany?  Well, I decided to go to Arizona for a day to accomplish two goals: 1) Visit my close friend Joanna, and 2) Get an Arizona driver's license.  Why would I get an Arizona driver's license?  Well, turns out that AZ has an agreement with Germany to transfer Driver's licenses, whereas Oregon does not!  And Arizona happens to be extremely easy to get a transfer license, all I needed was my Oregon license, and another id (In my case passport).  I had to give an Arizona address but they didn't ask for proof.  Don't worry I used Joanna's address  :)  So after spending a most splendid day and a few hours with my good friend Joanna, I was dropped off at Phoenix airport 3 hours before my flight.  And I needed every minute.  It took an hour and fifteen minutes to check in and then another 15 minutes to get through security.  The check-in wait was annoying but most everyone was quietly resigned to our wait.  It was also nice to see security walking around the airport with dogs, etc.  Eventually I got on my flight.  The flight was uneventful; I connected through Dulles and had a 2-hour delay.  The Dulles to Munich had a lot of turbulence, but not too bad.   At least it doesn't bother me.

            So I arrive into Munich, and that's when it really hits me full force the magnitude of what I have done.  I've moved to Munich, Germany!  I really don't speak the language at all, however I realized that I'm pretty good at reading simple signs, like the ones with pictures :)  I took a taxi from the airport to the hotel I had reservations; this is where the phrase book was very useful, as I was able to direct the taxi in German.  And the taxi's are not cheap.  It was 95 DM (~$45; DM-> US is roughly DM divided by 2) from the airport to the hotel.  The hotel was in a suburb on the same side of the city as the airport.  Apparently from the hotel to Munich center would have been another 30 DM.  Well I check into the Hotel, luckily they speak English at the front desk, I'm fairly tired but not wiped out.  BTW, I used melatonin on the flight when I needed to sleep on recommendation from a couple of friends.  This works incredibly!  I left Phoenix Thursday Morning and I arrived in Munich Friday morning, so I needed to stay awake. 

            Later that afternoon I had an appointment with the Relocation Services Company (an external vendor that is paid for by Intel Relocation).  They gave me a wealth of information, and I filled out a bunch of paperwork to begin some of the processes.  Being a foreign worker in Germany, you need to get a residence permit and a work permit.  The former requires you to register with the local police as to your location.  But lucky for me Relocation Services takes care of this completely, I gave them my passport and filled out some paperwork and they do all the leg work.

            So I used the weekend to explore Munich.  Granted I had been to Munich the previous year for about 4 days, so I had some idea of where some things were.  My main means of transportation was, and still is, the absolutely awesome public trans. system.  It consists of the U and S Bahn's (Bahn = train).  U Bahn is mostly underground around the city center.  S Bahn is mostly above ground and goes much further into the suburbs.  Anyhow the system is extremely easy to use and understand.  Although I did have an English map of the system, but its still pretty easy to use and figure out.  So I explored Marienplatz and ViktualienMarkt.  The former is where the Old Town hall is which houses the Glockenspiel (oldest animated clock).  But the latter, ViktualienMarkt, is the city market where you can get fresh fruit, fresh meat, fresh cheese, fresh everything!  Very cool to grab some bread and cheese and just snack on it.  I also walked north of Marienplatz to Schwabing which is an area I'm looking for an apartment in.  It reminded me a lot of the area around Brown University in East Providence crossed with NW 23rd Ave in Portland.  Lots of small shops, but lots of college influence.  This make sense the large university is primarily in Schwabing. 

            Okay, so that night, Saturday, I make my way down to Oktoberfest, which again is easily accessible from the U-Bahn.  It was absolutely crazy!  I went around 7pm, and remember this thing opens around 10am and there were lots of drunk people.  Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get any beer to drink.  The beer tents were packed and there were lines 5 to 6 wide and 7 to 8 deep at virtually every tent I checked.  So I managed to eat some good German Bratwurst and take a few pictures.  And then headed back to the hotel.  Let me interject something I found very odd about this hotel room.  The shower was in the middle of one of the wall's of the room, not in a separate bathroom, but weirder was that the shower stall was see through, some kind of glass or plexi-glass. So I thought upon arriving back at the hotel, the night would be over, but no!  The fire alarm went off as I was getting ready for bed.  It took me an extra couple of minutes to realize it was a fire alarm, because the alarm was very different sounding than those in the US that I was familiar with.  The rest of weekend was spent wandering around.  I will add that the food is generally cheaper here if you stay away from the "American" restaurants like McDonalds and Burger King.  They're about the same price as one in say Chicago downtown.  Otherwise, there are a plethora of Italian restaurants and pizzerias.  Although note that the pizza here is somewhat different, its all thin-crust and topping choices are slightly different; instead of pepperoni they use salami; yuck.  However, sandwich shops are everywhere.  They mostly pre-made sandwiches but they're still very good, because the bread is better than you get even in made-to-order sandwich places like Subway.

            So the first business day in Munich, and I stopped in the office and of course they didn't have a notebook computer for me.  So I got that ordered along with a bunch other misc. things.  However, because I didn't have a work permit, I couldn't stay in the office and work.  But I did meet several of the people in my group.  They appear to be a great bunch, I'm still getting to know them, but they're very friendly and have offered help with anything several times.  The rest of the week was punctuated with occasional visits to the office to check up on things and then wandering around Munich some more.

            I did however move to another hotel actually in the city limits.  It's not as nice a room, but more than makes up for it by being walking distance to tons of things, while the previous hotel was not walking distance to anything.  During the week I began searching for apartments which I was aided by the Relocation Services.  Basically they have a person who helps me completely.  She locates possible apartments and arranges the viewing, etc.  Just to give you an idea how helpful this, let me explain about how tight the rental market is here.  The newspaper comes out Wednesday and Friday morning (~ 6am or so) and by 10am most apartments will have had 200 or so people sign up to view the apartment that afternoon.  And the apartment is usually gone that day.  So given the fact that I can't speak German very well, nor read it all that well, having an agent help me with the search is extremely useful. 

            I won't bore people with the details of the places I looked at but I will summarize some things I've found about apartment renting here in Munich that is very different than the US.  First, virtually all rentals go through real estate agents.  The real estate agents work for the landlord, BUT, the tenant pays the real estate agent's fee for renting out, which amounts to 2 months rent + 16% Tax!!!  And then the security deposit is between 2-3 months rent.  So its entirely possible you can have to shell out in the ball park for 6 months rent just to get into a place.  I can understand why people don't move often.  So the next big thing I noticed is that apartments don't necessarily come with Kitchens.  It used to be the case that they never came with Kitchen's.  People always had their own Kitchens that they brought with them or bought.  By Kitchen here, I mean sink, counter tops, cabinets, dishwasher, etc.  But apparently this has started to change, as people begin to move around more in Germany, many people leave there kitchens.  I guess right now its about 40% have kitchens and 60% don't have kitchens at least that's in Munich.  So given all this, I still haven't found a place yet.  I've got a lead on a place but the landlord wants to meet me personally.  I guess given the high demand, landlords can afford to be choosy and there is virtually no laws against landlord discrimination etc.

            Towards the end of the week I was very proud of myself, I was able to go to a grocery store and buy several supplies: cereal, milk, cheese, bread, soda.  Oh that reminds me soda is very expensive everywhere but that the grocery stores.  And it comes in glass bottles not plastic most of the time.  I also managed to start going out and trying more restaurants here and there, I've had Indian (very bland), Italian, and some German. 

            But my mandatory vacation and explorations were cut short  when my work permit came through faster than anticipated.  So I began working full time in the office on Monday.  Which is about when they finally got my laptop all ready, so it worked out pretty good in that respect.  The first couple of days of work have been great.  I've got tons of reading and research to go through and a lot of setting up computers in my cube, etc.  I'm in that mode where I'm absorbing tons of new stuff for my new position.  Having been in the Rotation Eng. Program, I'm not stressed by this at all, rather I'm very excited and trying to find ways to contribute as soon as possible.  Oh yeah my cube absolutely rocks!  It's probably just a little bit bigger than a full size cube in Oregon, but I'm missing one wall.... In it's place I have a window view!  I know its not completely unheard of in Intel these days, but its nice.  Unfortunately, I'm on the first floor so I don't have a view of the Alps.  I also learned that the Munich office is not Intel headquarters for Europe, rather Swindon in the UK is, but the Munich office is the next biggest office, and both offices work very closely together. 

            Today I just got my accounts, these are the software companies that I'll be responsible for working with to optimize they're software for future Intel processors, etc.  Needless to say, I'll get to travel to these accounts and they are in UK, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, France and maybe Croatia (Hey you G3D guys, can you guess what's in Croatia?  :)  It's exciting and scary, it's quite a few accounts, but it will be very exciting to work with them and travel to see them. 

            Well that about wraps up my life here in Germany from when I left until present.  And surprisingly I haven't made any major social blunders.... yet.  Also after I get settled into an apartment, I'll be putting together a web site and uploading my pictures. 

I love to get email so feel free to write back to chat or just say hi.

Take Care and Be Safe,

Aaron Coday