Ha, Things I've Learned This Week

I’m losing myself here and I like it. This doesn’t feel like a vacation anymore. This is home. I’m meeting a lot of people and becoming more integrated within both my German and academic circles. I’ve met so many nice, smart, cool, friendly people, I’m just sort of taken aback. It’s fucking incredible. Of course, this is just the beginning, so I’m sure I’ll be seeing some true colors in the coming weeks.

My first day of class was yesterday. So far, pretty good I guess. The concept of “strings” was reintroduced to me, but from a computational logic perspective. I found that I quickly would need to adjust how I think about computation. This is not a programming course.

So yeah, more of this to come.

• So I hella fucked up. Berlin is not in Saxony. LOL. Live and learn. But, it’s just a 10 euro ride share away.
• This is a thing that considers itself a country that I didn’t know existed.
• Google translate has come in handy a lot lately as I’ve been interacting increasingly with government and university officials that don’t speak English. Got to get that shit RIGHT.
• Germans seems to know a lot about the U.S. They know more about it than I do. I’m embarrassed.
• I love this cafe in Neustadt that has super antique furniture and plays rap. They have fucking excellent drinks.
• I’ve lost ~10 lbs. Yeah. I’m generally eating less and walking A LOT. This is my best guess as to why.
• Food is hella cheap…still. Whatever.
• Yelp is, for the most part, worthless. Google Maps has been my goto thing, not necessarily for reviews, but just for discovery. There is an app called Qype that is equivalent. Unfortunately, I am unable to download it because I can’t switch stores because I still have an active iTunes Match subscription. Dumb.
• There is an extensive tram system in Dresden, but Google Maps does not know how to use it to route you places. It knows about the stops and what trams stop at them, but I guess nothing about the times. I want to change that.
• The government gives 150 euros to students starting in Dresden. Hollar.
• I am finishing the steps to open a bank account with comdirect. They were running a promotion where, if you execute 3 or 4 transactions within 3 months, they give you 100 euros. More free money. Yay.
• The internet in my dorm has a limit on it. I am using backblaze to back up all my shit to the cloud, which was chewing through my bandwidth limit as it proceeded to upload data at a theoretical rate of 66GB/day. Right now, my internet is blocked, although I should have received another allowance of gigabytes. Not sure what is happening. Luckily my roommate is the network admin for my building so I’ll just go to him. Anyways, the limit fucking sucks. A lot. Like, a lot. Like COME ON.
• Jesus, the party here is just some next level shit. I found out I could dance for 9 hours last Saturday, well actually Sunday. The music is so great, the people are hella approachable, and it just keeps goooooiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnngggggggggggg.
• Point of pride: called out in the club for being Spanish by a Spanish girl who then, upon realizing I was not, asked if I was Italian, all the while speaking the most fluent-ass Spanish I have in a while. I think being in Germany has re-primed my Spanish speaking skills, which is awesome. It also helps that some of my classmates are from Spanish-speaking countries and I talk to them occasionally in Spanish. SPANISH OK?

Whew, good lawrd, this is getting cool.