German Punctuality

The purpose of this post is not to offend Deutsche Bahn in any way - I am sure they do a great job coordinating all those trains, but rather to inform anyone reading this how to actually plan their time when traveling in Germany.

5:30 AM - It's Monday again, and the alarm clock buzzes the beginning of a new week. I wake up ready to face it, happy that I live in a German country, where everything and everybody is Punctual. I know... that here, no matter where I am, German Punctuality applies. So, I want to also be Punctual. I want to arrive at 9:00 AM in Aachen, to get my student card from the Secretary, and afterwards, at 10 - to attend my lecture. Normally, this is a 90 km track, 2 hours time. I can do it.
With help from German Punctuality, I will catch the train at 7:01 AM, and will be in Aachen at precisely 08:48 AM.
6:00 AM - Shower, breakfast. German Punctuality works.
6:30 AM - Outside, air is fresh. It's still dark, in a cloudy cold and rainy Punctual day.
6:48 AM - I am at the train station, I buy the ticket. Train is announced to be 10 minutes late. I think I am still able to make it in time to catch the connection train - Koeln - Aachen. Few people wait silently on the platform.
7:01 AM - The billboard changes. 10 minutes suddenly change to 15 minutes. Hmm, no problem.. I am lucky to be young and can run to catch the connection in Köln. I'll do my best to be Punctual.
7:10 AM - 15 minutes become 20. OK, my connection in Köln is lost. I'll have to catch the next one, which will arrive half an hour later in Aachen. As of now I am no longer Punctual for my appointment.
7:20 AM - Billboard announces 25 minutes delay now. One employee of the Deutsche Bahn mumbles some bored excuses on a microphone. One old guy near me starts to dance something like a chicken dance.
7:25 AM - Train is still not in Bonn. You can barely move around the station, as now, the station is full of people which waited the train and 7:01, and also the ones who came for the 7:30 train.
7:30 AM - Train arrives, fully packed with people and with a delay of 30 minutes. The employee announces on the speaker that this train, although Regional EXPRESS, will have to stop in every stop on the way to Köln. That's 2 times more stops than usual.
7:40 AM - Still not at the first stop. The train advances a few kilometers, than stops for a pause. Probably this is what it takes to be Punctual.
08:10 AM - I am in Köln. Yeah!!!
Now where's the train? I look on the display on the train station. I find out that my next train which was supposed to be there at 8:20 AM will be 20 minutes late. All trains on the billboard were at least 15 minutes late. Ok, that adds up another 20 minutes to my wasted time.
8:40 AM - I step into the train from Köln to Aachen.
9:50 AM - I am finally in Aachen, almost 4 hours after leaving my house. Bummer, I won't be Punctual today. I quickly WALK to the secretary office, pick up my ID, and finally arrive at school at 11:00 AM. I enjoy the remaining half an hour left of the lecture. Wow, that's a deal: 4 hours travel for half an hour lecture.

It would be OK if this was an one-time case, but it happens 4 times out of 5 when traveling to Aachen and back. One good friend also had this happening to him, but in his case he didn't miss one lecture, but a whole flight. In return, he didn't receive at least one excuse, but had to buy a brand new plane ticket. That was at least 5 times more expensive than the one for the flight he lost.

Bungee jumping

A weekend or two ago I finally did something I wanted to try out for a lot of time. Together with Bianca and Cristi, we went to Stockhorn, near Interlaken to see how falling 135 meters really feels like. It's an interesting experience, filled with lots of existential questions and adrenaline rush.
They call it "bungy" here. Funny :)

Below, it's me in the picture, doing my bungee jump.
And here are some impressions from other people too:

Rheinfal and Rapperswil

Last weekend I got to see yet another amazing places in Switzerland. One was Rheinfall, a nice waterfall on Rhine river, and the other was Rapperswil, in the South of Lake Zurich. Like always, I took some photos.


More pictures here

Zürich mountains

Last week I got to do a little bit of hitch-hiking through the Swiss Alps. It takes around two hours to get there from Zürich (we went to Gimmelwald, a nice place near Interlaaken), but the road is really scenic, with many beautiful landscapes (lakes and green alpine plains surrounded by high mountains and many waterfalls). I should maybe let the pictures speak.





More pics here: Swiss Mountains

Zürich - Cultural milkshake

I've decided to call Zürich "cultural milkshake". It represents best the diversity of the people you see in the street, or in the bus/tram.
In the last post, I was complaining of how hard it is to find a place to live. I didn't mention the nice things that impressed me here, and it would be unfair leave it so.
I also made some photos, sorry for the bad quality. I'll get a proper camera soon.

Cool things in Zürich:
- "green" and clean city;
- relaxing walk from Central to Bellevue during twilight;
- scenic landscape of Alps at horizon;
- tall hills surrounding the city;
- many old beautiful buildings by the main river;
- smaller rivers cutting their way through the city.

Renting a room in Zürich

It is very difficult to find a room to rent in Zürich:
- because most adds are in German, and you need to switch to German;
- because you only get mails from persons who might accept you (which might be scam attempts);
- because you need to send around 10 mails to get an answer;
- because you don't know your way around the city;
- because there's lots of paperwork to be done;
- because you haven't seen the city yet and instead of doing so, you need to search for rooms.

Luckily for me, Emi and Matthias were nice enough to help me with all these. Thank you guys!

Moved to Zürich

Written on Tuesday, 1st of July:
I just finished my second semester in Media Informatics, and now I am heading towards Switzerland. New thing ahead: I will be doing now an internship in Zürich for the next couple of months.
I'm now in the train, somewhere near Basel and I already feel the difference between the two countries. Swiss language is like a weird mix of German and French, spoken with strong Italian accent. Probably because of the 3 official languages spoken in Switzerland.
Two policemen just passed by me without asking for my passport. Damn... no control! I could have taken two bottles of Jägermeister with me.

My favourite place in Romania

The video was taken last year, in Bucegi Mountains, Romania. This is one of the most amazing places in Romania. What you see is just one of the breathtaking landscapes along the pathway to the top of the Omu Peak. If you decide to spend the night on top at Omu Cabin, take a glimpse of the sky at midnight. You will see millions of shiny stars that punch an infinite immaculate black curtain. An exclusive nature show only for you.
Sometimes in the morning, you find near the two thousand meters plateau a sea of clouds, and give you the impression you really are in an isolated, heavenly place.

I go there at least once per year. Unfortunately, this year I'll be far away. :(

Credits for video and pictures goes to Ionut and his cool Canon S5. :D

Gmail domain taken

"Give to Germans what belong to Germans"! Today, when trying to access gmail.com, I got the following message:



Apparently, Gmail lost a trademark trial in Germany, with some guy who owns G-mail, another website. Now, I have to access my mail using the address http://mail.google.com/. I don't like it.

Google translates Romanian

Finally, Google translates from Romanian to English and vice-versa. Is this a sign that the number of Romanian programmers at Google is getting bigger? :D

Via Vivi

Translate this post in Romanian

WTF

This song just keeps popping into my mind with apparently no reason.



Weird, it took me some time to find it.

Iasi on Google Maps

Finally, Iasi - my home city - can be seen in better quality on Google Maps. I could even find my block of flats.
Thanks Loredana :)

What I learned today

These are some random things that I learned/found out today:

- If you loose something in Germany, you have big chances to find it at the local City Hall. If you don't claim it in 6 months, the City Hall sells your stuff for almost free, in a public auction.

- If you loose your wallet in Germany and police recovers it, you receive it by post. One friend Ada, lost her wallet. After two days, she received it by post - sent by the local police. Both money and documents, cards were still there.

- Buying a bike in Germany is cheaper than buying a new wheel for an old one.

- I have 6 phone numbers where I can be reached. Two of them can be used to perfectly track where I am with a precision of less than a meter.

- If you listen to your mp3-player while riding your bike - and have an accident - insurance company won't pay you any money. I still listen to music when I ride my bike.

- One in three women will trade their password for free chocolate (sorry, it's only in German :(). I will try this during the next month.

- Bucharest, a city that I don't personally find special, can look very well from up above.

Image of Bucharest, Copyright doisase

Romanian words - ciufut

Ciufút
English pronounciation: cioo-foot

One that is ciufút can either be avaricious or simply somebody who has bad moods very often. I personally think that the second definition fits better.
Ciufút can also be an attitude, a way of living. Ciufút people can also be funny sometimes.

Example of ciufút attitude:
- I can't find my watch.
- You lost it! (notice the ciufútness)
- Hmm, I don't think so.. I never loose things.
- Then one of your friends must have stolen it from you.

The future has come

Yesterday I took part at a very interesting speech of Professor Hiroshi Ishii from MIT, which was the keynote of the TEI Conference taking part in Bonn. He presented very interesting work in the area of Tangible User Interfaces coordinated by him at MIT. It wasn't one of that boring technology speeches, but more like a quick look into the future. It was more like a vision of a creative and happy humankind interacting with high-tech physical objects.

At the end of his presentation, one of his students showed the video of a project on which he worked on, and which will be released in 2-3 months from now: G-Speak (an identical application like the one Tom Cruise used in Minority Report). Cool! That's even more science fiction than Microsoft Surface! Imagine 3 years from now, every police department having such a wall.

Plumb - Damaged

Here is a song that just sticks in your memory once you hear it. I like its soft & melancholic rhythm (doubled from time to time with short piano strokes), simple lyrics and the spatial and dreamy melodic line.

Recommended by Tudor.

UAE shocks again

After shocking the world with Burj Dubai, an almost 1 kilometer tall skyscraper, UAE does it again: Masdar City will be the first non-polluting city on Earth.
I definitely would like to see other cities investing big amounts of money in that, in the near future.

German grade conversion formula

Today, I got my first result from a German exam. If you didn't know, the German grading system is a bit different from the Romanian one: the grades are from 1 to 5, where 1 is the maximum grade and 4 is the last passing grade (5=failed). So, if you get 1 at your exam in Germany, you don't have to cut your veins, or jump from a building - but rather go out and buy your friends some beer, because you're da' man.
Also, you can have grades with fractions, like 1.3, 1.5, and so on.

Today I got a result that didn't tell me too much, because where I come from, the grading system goes from 1 to 10 (where 10 is the maximum grade). So, I came up with a formula to convert from German grades to Romanian grades:

RomanianGrade = 5/3 * (7 - GermanGrade)

If you want to have fun converting your grades from Romanian to German grading system, use the following formula:

GermanGrade = 7 - 3/5 * RomanianGrade

Glass noodles

Today, my colleagues from China gathered in my flat's kitchen to celebrate Chinese New Year's Eve. They also cooked "glass noodles", and invited me to try. They are really tasty, and very spicy. Actually, delicious!!!

Plate of "glass noodles"

The upper-left part says "medium spicy", but my mouth was already burning :D

This is how the pot looks like.

People gather around the pot, and eat for a couple of hours. It's more of a social thing like shisha, or chimarrao. Everybody picks stuff from the pot (shrimps, noodles) and when it gets empty, they refill. Cool!

Rheinland goes crazy

Tomorrow is Altweiber. All shops will close, and the carnival will be celebrated on the streets. Everyone will wear costumes, dance and sing carnival songs. Although I am not a fan of buying costumes for just one day, at least I tried some of them on. :D

Funky ...

Jailbird costume :)