I made it!

Greetings from Germany. Here's some pics:

Here's the place where they stamped my passport.

And here's the stamp on my passport. Yeah, I know, it's blurry.

And then I got lost, and wandered around the airport, trying to find the train. Eventually I found someone that worked there, and I asked them where to go. Here's the subway station under the airport.

"This is a very nice train," I thought. "Hope it's the right one..."

(Don't worry, hypothetical reader. It was.) Germany is beautiful.

So, then I switched trains and got on one from Stuttgart to Ulm. CTA could take a few pointers from Germany.

More beautiful scenery:

Photo fail. Those trees were not there when I pressed the button on my camera.

Check out this church in Ulm. Tallest steeple in the world, folks.

No, I'm not going to bother rotating that picture. Just tilt your head right. Okay, so the flat I'll be staying at this summer turned out not to be available yet (the previous occupant hasn't emptied it yet). So here's the Pension I'm staying at this weekend.

I took a nap, because I was uber-jet-lagged. Then I went out and explored, and found a pizza place. Either "peperoni" actually means "pepper," or the guy heard me wrong...

I sat down to eat my pizza, and took some pictures:

(tilt your head left this time)

Then, some German high schoolers who were also hanging out in the square I was in called me over. And asked me to buy them a pizza. I politely declined. They asked what brought me to Germany, and I told them about my internship. One of them was on the phone, and asked me to say something in English to the person on the other end. It was an interesting experience. They had to leave, then. I finished my pizza and did some more exploring.

I found a Catholic Church:

I ended up falling asleep at 10 last night, and then woke up at 5:30 this morning. It's gonna take a while to shake off this jet-lag.

Okay, I'm off to explore more of Ulm. See you soon, folks.

The Deep Breath Before the Plunge

No pics today, folks. Just some final thoughts while I'm on American soil.

Less than 24 hours until my flight leaves. Then I will spend a ridiculous amount of time in the air, and land in Stuttgart, Germany.

I'm a bit nervous, as this is my first time leaving the country (excluding the Boundary Waters in Canada). I'm all set to go, but I don't think it will really hit me until I'm physically in Germany.

In the words of Rocco, "Catch you on the flip side."

Star Wars in Concert

So, this has nothing to do with my internship in Germany, but I thought I'd write about my experience at Star Wars in Concert. And hey, it's my blog, so I can post whatever I want on it, right?

Here we go:

Patrick and I with the troops.

Yoda. Y-O-D-A Yoda.

Scout Trooper helmet and Clone Pilot helmet. And something else. Guess I didn't pick a good angle.

It's hard to see, but this is an original piece of sheet music on which John Williams composed some brilliant Star Wars music by hand.

Some blasters. And, cleverly concealed behind the blasters, my brother Patrick.

Boba Fett? Boba Fett? Where?

Patrick and I, chillin' with Han. (Haha, get it?)

The Marks brothers, contemplating our place in the universe, Skywalker style.

At last, we have the mighty Chewbacca.

"Did anyone tell this guy the ship's exploding?"

Two words: Yub nub.

We are fluent in over 6 million forms of communication. (But not German, unfortunately.)

The stage from our seats. That screen was showin' HD Star Wars scenes during the concert.

The rest of the arena from our seats.

Yeah, that's right. We had front row seats. I was within 15 feet of Anthony Daniels several times. I'm pretty sure he looked right at me at one point. The concert was amazing. It was so cool to see Star Wars music being performed live, right in front of me. I'm glad this thing came to Wichita.

All right folks, the next time I update this blog, I should be in Germany. Until then, may the Force be with you. 

More preparations

Okay, second post. Here we go!

Here's some more boring pictures for you to look at. Here's the phone I'll be using:

Why do I need a new phone? Because Virgin Mobile, a company that isn't even based in the US, does not support SIM cards. I know, ridiculous. Speaking of SIM cards, check this out:

Yup, that's a SIM card. And a mouse. I'm not taking that mouse with me. It just happened to be next to the SIM card. Why did I show you a SIM card? I don't know, hypothetical reader. Maybe you didn't know what a SIM card looked like. I didn't know.

Oh, here's a treat. I got Euros.

Crap. That's Monopoly money. Where did I put those Euros? Oh well.

Until next time, Tschüs!

First Post (creative title, I know)

All right. Here we go. The first of what will theoretically be many blog posts. Theoretically, I will use more complete sentences in the future, also.

For those of you who don't know, I will be travelling to Germany this summer for an internship. Whenever I tell people this, they inevitably ask, "An internship doing what?" To which I respond, "I'll be working with a PhD student designing filters for ultra-high frequency communications." Most respond with "...Oh. Well, that's um...that should be good..."

So Matt, what have you done to prepare for this trip? Well, I'm glad you asked, hypothetical reader. I bought a camera from Woot:

But if the camera's in the picture, how are you taking the picture? Magic, hypothetical reader, magic.

I also got my passport:

You'll notice that the picture is a bit blurry. That's partially because I'm new to the whole photography thing, and partially because I was holding the camera in one hand. You'll also notice that there's a box of Earl Grey tea in the background. That's not relevant, I just thought I'd point it out. (Matt, can we expect to see boxes of Earl Grey tea hiding in future pictures as well? I wouldn't count on it, hypothetical reader.)

My flight leaves on May 27, so until then, I'll basically sit on my butt and do nothing. I'll keep you updated on my preparations in the meantime. Auf Wiedersehen!