Plastic Bottle

Time to see where I work, Universität Ulm. The university is split into two parts, Universität West and Universität Süd (west and south, respectively). The former is where I work. It focuses on Engineering, and the other focuses on natural science and medicine. We'll start with some pictures of Universität West.

I'm not sure exactly what purpose this building serves, other than looking bizarre. But then, the whole campus accomplishes that, as you'll see.

That long portion of the building on the right runs through all of Universität West. Other buildings branch off of it.

More of that long corridor.

Mies would not approve of this campus.

Here's the inside of the long hallway.

My lab is up this spiral staircase.

And down this hallway. Dang. I forgot to take a picture of the inside of the lab. Hmm, maybe later.

Up ahead is the cafeteria for the west campus. I'm told the food isn't very good there, so I eat at the cafeteria in the south campus.

Speaking of which, here's some of that campus right now. These buildings are just so weird-looking.

I'm not really sure what this is, but it looks cool. (Yes, I know it's a sculpture, hypothetical reader. Pipe down.)

It takes a little patience, and a lot of strength, to master the art of metal origami.

In there is the cafeteria where I eat lunch.

Here's the sandwich I had for lunch. those big white things are large slices of cheese. There's actually no meat on this sandwich, apparently, but it was quite good. You see, since I can't read German, it's kind of an adventure every time I buy food.

Dessert! It was pretty good, until I dropped it in the mud. No, I'm kidding; those are cookie crumbs, or something chocolate. The cream cheese in the middle was a bit too much cheese and not enough cream, though.

So that was where I work, now you can see where I sleep. I finally took pictures of my room.

Here's my sink. There's a common bathroom down the hall. It's weird: all the walls in my room are white, except for a small bit of yellow here,

And an even smaller bit of red there.

Here's my closet.

And here's the bulk of my room. And I use the term "bulk" loosely. What's that on my desk, you ask? It's called a laptop. You see, they've come out with these portable computers that... Oh, next to that? Well, that's my dinner.

The sandwich has Bierwurst, which is some type of meat, and Räucher Pur, which means... Pure Smoking? Sorry, Google Tranlate, but I'm not so sure... Anyway, it's cheese.

And this is Grafenwalder Hefe Weissbier. They sold them in individual bottles at the grocery store. Speaking of bottles, they're plastic. And pretty cheap to. And then I drank it, and I realized why it was pretty cheap... At least I only bought one bottle instead of 6 or 12.

There's my bed. Sorry Mom, it's not made. Speaking of making beds, they do it differently in Germany. Instead of a fitted sheet, they just put a regular sheet on the mattress. Then, instead of a sheet on top of you, they use a blanket. And the blanket has a sheet that goes around it, pillowcase-style.

And now for some random pictures of downtown Ulm from my visit after work today.

Here's some street performers. The music was quite good. (But Matt, how are we supposed to take your word for that?) Well, hypothetical reader, I took a video, and posted it on YouTube. The quality isn't fantastic, and there's some background noise, but here it is:

The Ulm Münster, which has the highest steeple in the world. I can't even fit it in one picture.

There's a bunch of pictures of the inside. It's really beautiful, but the lighting made it hard to take good quality pictures.

What are the Shankara stones doing here? Kali maaaa... KALI MAAAA!

I tried to buy a ticket to climb to the top of the steeple, but apparently it was already closed. Luckily, the employee didn't poke me in the head a bunch of times while saying "The... tower... is... closed... for... the evening..." so Harry didn't have to beat the crap out of him. (I don't know if anyone besides Jessica will catch that reference.)

Okay, so now we're in some shop. I guess Germans like to buy cows dressed up as Hindu gods, different animals, Santa Claus, and Elvis? Okay...

Hmmm, is there some kind of major soccer event coming up?

Okay, folks, that's all I have for this installment. Tchüs!