Week 3

Returning after 3 nights without sleep last Weekend, I woke up late as expected on Monday and soon became a trend for the week.I had excuses ready 'The tram changed its route', 'went to an ATM and was figuring out the German keys for an hour' or 'I found a lost kid, took him to the polizei and then his mom came and it turned out she was the mayor's daughter and ...'; however its so cool out here that I didn't even have to mutter half an excuse.Despite enjoying every moment, work happens in an awesome manner with deadlines being met on time and interactions swinging between politics to soccer to project to .... I love this work environment!

Highlights of the week range from my cooking experiments which have subdued now that I have reached standards beyond the expectations of the finest chefs and cuisines, being caught by the police for cycling on the pedestrian track, withdrawing Money from German ATM's using the 'love me, love me not' protocol to last night's Mexican party.I realized that Mexico is another of the Wonderful places to go to despite being the epicenter of the Swine Flu.Also my first acquaintance here being from Mexico I had a soft corner for that :) and it was well worth it, especially the shredded chicken in (... that was the only identifiable thing in the otherwise delicious dinner).I met this guy called Kevin from France with an India connection living in Brittany and we had a great time discussing business Informatics and life in France,India,Spain and Germany.He told me about a better VoIP service with which you can almost call worldwide for free than SKYPE and I think its way better than anything else available so all students planning to travel over the world should buy some credit,it helps keep CONTACTS :).I also met this German Girl who just came from her exam and every weekend travelled to her home in Munich(Same-Same to BITS and Margao :|)Later into the night this friend of his from Palestine went for a night drive and dropped me home.I'm globe trotting every week!

..yeah and not to forget today just had its share of Ice Cream and Microsoft Surfaces(Must watch for someone who doesn't know about it), the best part of working in such a high-tech environment is you get to experience everything that would normally would have been restricted to people's gtalk status and news.

Clockwise from top left -Me :), Intentionally embosed pic of the party, BITS Pilani Goa Campus,Collage of Prachi and Me at Bastei in Saxony-Switzerland

Lastly I would like to thank all the 4 (+1 whoz sleeping currently, its late night!) in the pic above for everything this week(And of course plenty in the past and future too) :).The weekends still left, sometime someone nice asks me Y should i have all the fun?

Keep smiling and you'll find out...else add me on gtalk- Pratik Mandrekar, I like reading your smart status messages :)

P.S-All the text in a funny color or underlined as per your browser above can be clicked to access the corresponding entertaining content!

Bowling Night

Well for the first time I had Italian Food made by Italians at this restaurant around the corner near the university.Great food, awesome people. T'was to be followed by bowling at the ABC Arena.We talked about the EU and why Turkey is seemingly the sick man of Europe and how everything works out there in bulgaria and bosnia et all.Well I met someone very interesting but I would comment on that only after a week of development.Well the city is seemingly unpolluted despite the huge number of cars and trams and tains and that's coz Germany promote's people to have solar panels on their rooftops and has stringent eco-management laws...psst I also heard some nuclear stockpile will be soon blowing up somewhere in the north and that's y Germany is shutting down its dependence on Nuclear power, well that dawned BARC'ing memories and I had fun discussing them with People.




For more pics click here

The Bowling was fun, I finished last first round and pretty much near the top with double strikes the next one, spent what I did when I was at Essel world, and plenty of other amazing things which I'm a bit tired to discuss..I bet i'll get dat new cam 2mrw and let d pictures describe more..i went to buy 1 and looking at the deals found it difficult to make a choice between a handycam and digcam..came back and read blogs and hopefully I should go for the digcam coz that's what I guess I need..

Chao

Gute Nacht

Kissing

Ideally Mumbai should have been the place I should have started from.There was an option of doing it starting in flight too as I watched 'The Reader'.Munich was so romantic that morning that well it had to happen but I had to wait...and wait...a few stations later, getting lost in the desperation to not miss it, I finally got it done...

Well its just been three nights here and don't strain your grey cells much for that 'coz the title refers to this beautiful town on my way to Augsburg.

For those who may stumble upon this while searching for summer internships or higher education, I'm on a DAAD funded WISE internship program in which I had to find a project of Interest and a host Institute.I chose this place called Augsburg which is in Bavaria and around 40 kms away from Munich.The universitat Augsburg's faculty of Informatik are involved in the Organic Computing project and I'm currently working on some specifications relating to deadlocks after reconfigurations and the details wouldn't make much sense to you.If you would like to know more about the Internship or the project mail me on pratikmandrekar@gmail.com.

Now continuing with myself, I arrived at the station at around some time close to noon, my watch had stopped working at this temperature and all other devices on me showed Indian time, so I just presumed it that way.However the sun shines all day here in Summer(like 6am-11pm) and so that was a bad presumption.

The streets were almost deserted but I was made comfortable here thanks to the guy with whom I would be working here ofcourse under the guidance of Prof. Dr.Wolfgang Reif and his team.My address to be:Hermanstr. 33a, H.no 30, Augsburg turned out be a room in proper european style house with a window facing an amazing garden and better than most hotel rooms I have lived in.I had my personal kitchen too and am still experimenting with cooking(Have managed my past 3 days of breakfast and dinner in there :) ).

Bavaria is an awesome place with the Bavarian Alps,Switzerland and Austria to the South and Paris et all to the west.The Romantic Road passes right through Augsburg and have a look at this for a rough idea of Augsburg(It's much more amazing though, the city was reconstructed after WW-II bombings and is one of the oldest settlements in Europe-An ideal place to experience europe and have the best of contemporary as well as rennaisance culture)The University is amazing too, have a preview here. I'm supposedly the only Indian studying here amid students from over 95 countries and it seems they have been receiving many applicants from Indians off late and well, lets c :p

I walked up to the university witha 4 euros(approx 250 bucks) map in hand exploring the streets.It took me 2 hours and then1.5 hours back another route.Phew!The next day I got myself a monthly pass on the tram.Either way the transport system is amazing and beautiful in all aspects and respects especially considering the fact that with little knowledge of german I could navigate evrything in German perfectly.The food's more of a choice I have to make based on the price on its appearance 'coz 95% of the times I have no idea what it stands for(I entered a store which was supposedly a Drugstore and picked up some baby food thinking its mayonnaise, fortunately the younger generation knows English and that helped me save a few euros!) but I love the cherry yoghurt pudding and ummm..I don't know what the rest of the stuff's called.

I'm sleepy now with all this cooking and hogging and hard-working and so am sleeping, dats enough for an intro I guess and yeah Augsburg's the place where Mozart spent most of his time and his father was born here, and so was Rudolf Diesel, the one whose engine runs your car...and remember this?



Its the castle you see in every walt disney movie, its not very far from here...prolly I'll be rock climbing, or kayaking at the olympic stadium or sun-bathing at the lake on campus or at the zoo or simply getting lost at one of the streets by now, but I need to catch by 400 winks before that..

chao

Guten Tag!