würzburg
ah, bliss. i can connect to the internet.
in würzburg, glorious bavaria, germany. picking up german- rather slowly much to my dismay. i can find my way around the city center, and ask for eine tageskarte for the commute to class and back, so i'm surviving better than i hoped. never in my life have i gotten up before 6am on a regular basis, but i now have to, thanks to an hour-long commute to the hubland campus where my classes are. it sucks muchly, but on the upside, i am looking forward to meeting other folks besides the ones on my program. and they should all be here when school officially begins on the 18th.
as for the program, it looks pretty exciting. and all my random undergraduate coursework seems perfectly suited for it because it's one of those inter-disciplinary things (i think the only thing i'm missing is astrophysics, which i read up on while working with gary over the summer, but not nearly as much as i should've). thanks to living far away and not really having much of a social life (because my dorm's empty and the medical students that are around tend to keep to themselves), i should be able to get my work done. the first semester's basically courses on space physics and spacecraft design, in addition to the expected physics and compsci stuff. we need to only take four courses, although we do have optional seminars (and being me, i do want to sign up for most of them, but i promised myself that i'd stop stretching myself too thin post-smith). it looks mild compared to the insanity that was smith, so i'll see if i can volunteer my time at one of the distributed systems labs. because i care more about that sort of thing anyway.
the folks in the program are alright. most of them are older than i, although there's a handful that were born in 83/84. we've not even known each other a week, but you already have the cliques. organized partly by dorms, and mostly by linguistic commonalities. it feels like high school all over again, but that should pass once everyone settles in. i guess we all feel terribly awkward and do everything in semi-big groups because save for a tiny handful, none of us speaks any german. on the upside, the superintensive crash course in german seems to be helping, which is good. a few more trips to town and my room should have the semi-essentials i'm still missing, and i should've learned a few new words i probably won't have to use again.
as for things to do in würzburg, it has its fair share of history and old, beautiful buildings (including a canary yellow and white tourist information office that would look like haven house, if it wasn't baroque). and the streets are a little quiet at night, but that's only because everyone's drinking inside the many bars. there don't seem to be many drunken hooligans in this patch of bavaria, but perhaps i shall have to wait for the wc qualifiers that folks in this patch would care about. when i finally shall have internet access in my room, i'll probably upload some pictures. yeah.
i'll be sending the first batch of postcards soon- if you're at smith, i should be able to find your box number. xi, smith should forward, but i'd rather send it directly to you (email me or post&delete a comment). other folks in other patches of the world, if you want a post card, send me your address one way or another.
as for music, looks like i'll have to go to frankfurt for everything. at some point, i shall have to get animal collective tickets. because i plan to make it to all the germany stops, if nothing else. the glasgow date seemed perfect, but looks like we're going to have exams that week. (we've this super-intense four hourlong class at the crack of dawn, which isn't really that bad, but it's amazing how little i remember from math methods first year or regression analysis in high school. and i can't really fuck up this early in the semester.)
in würzburg, glorious bavaria, germany. picking up german- rather slowly much to my dismay. i can find my way around the city center, and ask for eine tageskarte for the commute to class and back, so i'm surviving better than i hoped. never in my life have i gotten up before 6am on a regular basis, but i now have to, thanks to an hour-long commute to the hubland campus where my classes are. it sucks muchly, but on the upside, i am looking forward to meeting other folks besides the ones on my program. and they should all be here when school officially begins on the 18th.
as for the program, it looks pretty exciting. and all my random undergraduate coursework seems perfectly suited for it because it's one of those inter-disciplinary things (i think the only thing i'm missing is astrophysics, which i read up on while working with gary over the summer, but not nearly as much as i should've). thanks to living far away and not really having much of a social life (because my dorm's empty and the medical students that are around tend to keep to themselves), i should be able to get my work done. the first semester's basically courses on space physics and spacecraft design, in addition to the expected physics and compsci stuff. we need to only take four courses, although we do have optional seminars (and being me, i do want to sign up for most of them, but i promised myself that i'd stop stretching myself too thin post-smith). it looks mild compared to the insanity that was smith, so i'll see if i can volunteer my time at one of the distributed systems labs. because i care more about that sort of thing anyway.
the folks in the program are alright. most of them are older than i, although there's a handful that were born in 83/84. we've not even known each other a week, but you already have the cliques. organized partly by dorms, and mostly by linguistic commonalities. it feels like high school all over again, but that should pass once everyone settles in. i guess we all feel terribly awkward and do everything in semi-big groups because save for a tiny handful, none of us speaks any german. on the upside, the superintensive crash course in german seems to be helping, which is good. a few more trips to town and my room should have the semi-essentials i'm still missing, and i should've learned a few new words i probably won't have to use again.
as for things to do in würzburg, it has its fair share of history and old, beautiful buildings (including a canary yellow and white tourist information office that would look like haven house, if it wasn't baroque). and the streets are a little quiet at night, but that's only because everyone's drinking inside the many bars. there don't seem to be many drunken hooligans in this patch of bavaria, but perhaps i shall have to wait for the wc qualifiers that folks in this patch would care about. when i finally shall have internet access in my room, i'll probably upload some pictures. yeah.
i'll be sending the first batch of postcards soon- if you're at smith, i should be able to find your box number. xi, smith should forward, but i'd rather send it directly to you (email me or post&delete a comment). other folks in other patches of the world, if you want a post card, send me your address one way or another.
as for music, looks like i'll have to go to frankfurt for everything. at some point, i shall have to get animal collective tickets. because i plan to make it to all the germany stops, if nothing else. the glasgow date seemed perfect, but looks like we're going to have exams that week. (we've this super-intense four hourlong class at the crack of dawn, which isn't really that bad, but it's amazing how little i remember from math methods first year or regression analysis in high school. and i can't really fuck up this early in the semester.)