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December 11th, 2001
Hi all,
I know it's been quite awhile since I last sent out an update
about life here in Germany. But, I'm back with the latest
installment excitement central.... Okay maybe you read this
because you're friend .... oh wait, maybe my mother pays you
to be my friend!?! Well either way I hope its fun reading.
.... When last we left our hero, he was wondering around
Munich without an apartment. Luck prevailed and many of you
noticed that I know have an apartment. The apartment is quite
nice, it's about 82 square meters (10 square meters is roughly
100 square feet). I share it with a close friend of mine
from Illinois, Greg Rudnick. Greg happened to be starting
a post-doc in astrophysics in Munich, so we decided to share
an apartment.
Moving into the apartment wasn't difficult.
We didn't have any furniture so we had to go buy it all!
We went to Ikea, which is an international furniture store
where you can take the furniture with you and assemble it
yourself. How Lucky! Anyhow, it's fairly cheap, I got a
nice bed, desk & chair, and wardrobe for about $1200.
However, I think Ikea should include a six pack of beer with
each furniture item that you must assemble. It took Greg
and I at least 2 weeks to assemble our stuff. Some of this
was complicated by having to work, but the other half of it
is that here in Munich, and I gather in much of Germany, there
are laws about being quite after 9pm at night and some weird
times on Saturdays and Sundays. For example between 1-3 pm
on Sunday, you can't do much of anything. That's okay because
nothing much is open on Sunday anyways. Actually that's my
biggest complaint, that nothing is open on Sundays!
So after a couple of weeks of rushing home from
work to put furniture together, we were beginning to take
things slower. There's a few things that have caused a lot
of grief though. Setting up the telephone was not trivial.
It's amazing how not being able to read the instructions makes
it difficult just to set up a telephone. That took one whole
weekend..... There are two main things that we are struggling
to finish up in the apartment. Overhead lights and curtains.
Apartments here don't come with overhead lights so we have
to install them.... And just finding curtains that are the
right size can be difficult. I have to admit we probably
could have had all these things done by now, but we have actually
managed to go out and have some fun!
So on to the fun things that I've encountered.
Greg, my Boss, another friend, and myself went out for dinner
and drinks at this placed called Augustainer Bier & Restaurant.
The Augustainer Bier has been around for 700 years or so.
It's pretty widespread in Bavaria, but we were at one of their
oldest breweries. It was indeed great Bier, and we had a
very traditional Bavarian meal: some pork, half a chicken,
roast beef, and some potato dumpling. Very nice!
During Thanksgiving weekend, my friend Andrea
came to visit me. I got to show her around Munich a bit.
We got to see the Royal Residence of the Bavarian Royal Family.
The Residence, as its called, housed the royal family up
until World War II. It was mostly destroyed by Allied bombing
in WWII. However, it was completely rebuilt and made to look
like it was before the war. It was pretty extravagant. I've
got some pictures of it that will be going up in my web page.
Which the by the way, I intend to get that all up by the end
of the year.
We also went to the BMW museum. For those of
you who don't know, BMW is headquartered here in Munich.
Bavarian Motor Works. The museum was a little bit of a let
down. There was some nice history, but many of the video
exhibits didn't work. And there was very little in way of
prototypes and futuristic type stuff. However, you can sign
up for a tour of the factory and I am going to do that :)
Starting the first weekend of December, Munich
has several Weinachtsmarkts. These are basically Christmas
Markets. They are open every day from about noon until 9
pm or 10pm or so. The one down in Marienplatz, the main square,
is rather touristy so the stuff is pretty mass produced.
There is another Weinachtsmarkt near in Müncher Freiheit that
is much less touristy and has a lot of nice hand made things
from the region. Glühwein is nice specialiaty that pops up
with the Weinachtsmarkts. Glühwein is hot spiced wine. It's
a little rough, but after a couple of sips, its great and
it keeps you nice and warm. And lucky me, there is some right
as I get out of my subway stop to come home :)
Well in an effort to keep this letter to a manageable
size so that some of you may actually read it.... I'll end
here. I wish everyone a happy holidays and happy new year!!!
Aaron Coday
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