Town Planning

I know people speak a lot of multiculturalism in Australia and it has an increasing amount of 24 hour convenience stores, but none can top Mannheim for convenince and multiculturalism. it's a very bad photo, but on the same block, from left to right, is an Asian supermarket, A Gun shop and an Irish pub. What else do you need?

In case you didn't believe me

Here it is, one of the wonders of the modern world. A salad made of nothing but sliced sausage.

Cheap beer anyone?

From the local supermarket you can pick up a 6-pack of 1/2 litre plastic bottles of beer for 1.65 Euros. The refund you get for returning a bottle is 0.25 Euros, so assuming you take back all your bottles, you end up getting all following 6-packs for 0.15 Euros, or what works out to be about 8 Australian cents per litre. At that price you really can't afford not to be drinking beer.

A multi-lateral foreign meat policy

One of the great things about living in a different culture is you get to experience different foods and different ways of eating. With local tastes and local produce, there are a number of differences to what your average Australian is used to. Bananas for example are an everyday food item in the Australian home, much loved for its telephone-like appearance. Cherries on the other hand are harder to come by and are associated with high prices and the onset of summer. At my local supermarket you can get both, together, in a juice.

The flavour of the day however is meat and bread. Ever since the Earl of Sandwich discovered how to combine the two together, the love of meat on bread has spread across the world. Daily fresh bread from the bakery is a normal part of most European cultures, with a wide variety of styles. If you are a student however, you get the stale supermarket loaf for 39cents. With your bread you must have meat, and at the local supermarket you can find many a way of obtaining meat. Its sold, as would be expected, raw in packets, as small goods, pre-cooked packs and frozen assortments. Then you have some sort of loose meat, floating in liquid packed in a jar. There are packets of something called wurstsalat, a salad made entirely of chopped up pieces of sausage. Then there is the option I chose, spreadable meat in a plastic tub.

The lid says "The day begins with...Fine Breakfast, Teewurst, fine, Top Quality".

Now I have never had it before and I couldn't find a dictionary meaning for Teewurst, so I'm only going to assume there was a typing error and what they meant to say was The wurst. There is however a warning that excessive consumption will lead to a day that never ends.

Here's a serving suggestion if you've never had The wurst. The best way to eat The wurst is to get a nice loaf of bread, some good butter and your The wurst. You cut two thick slices of your bread and lightly toast them. Then spread a generous layer of butter onto both slices. Now take your The wurst and place it evenly back in the refrigerator, and your delicious snack is ready to eat!

Note: This is only a serving suggestion, as The wurst can be not eaten with almost anything.

Enjoy!

Some Friday

My second Friday in Mannheim was quite a different day to others before and since. The day began at the Hochschule, although instead of working on the project I got to hang around my supervisor and one of the professors as the prepared practicals for the upcoming semester. I now know how and why milk is homogenised, its a lot simpler than I'd thought. The department I am in is the Biological Processing Engineering Institute, not the usual place for a Mechanical Engineer but that's what I got. The department has a lot of machines aimed at cleaning water and killing bacteria.

While we were packing up, the Head of the International Students Office came to grab me and asks me to tell a delegate from Melbourne's Swinbourne University about how much I was loving it here and how easy it is. Lucky I did drama at school. In return for some smiles and some good words, I got to join their tour of the Hochschule's more interesting research projects, such as the virtual reality centre. I was also bought lunch at the canteen. The cute delegate, I thought, seemed really happy to see me, it turns out she was just super enthusiastic about everything she saw.

As the lunch was ending I was introduced to Marco and Rene from the Hochschule Students Association. Both Mechanical Engineers and both party people, they invited me to a student party going on that night and, as seems to be quite the thing to do here, the pre-party drinks.

The photo is from the pre-party drinks. Clockwise from left with spellings unknown is Alida, Benny, Moegul, Simone, Marco, Micky, Eva and Rene.

Between lunch and the drinks though, I met up with Kai, a Chemical Engineering student who will be coming to Adelaide next year to do his practical work. He showed me around Mannheim a bit and we went and had a coffee, and it was really good to have a yarn with him. After the coffee and before the drinks, I stopped at a Kebab house. I sat down to wait for whatever it was that I had ordered and while I waited I was brought some of the best tea ever in this tiny little vase shaped glass on a glass saucer. It wasn't the best meal but it was there to line the stomach for drinking.

Pizza, Kebabs and Bakery goods are the fast food here including the big soft pretzels There are hardly any McDonanlds or Burger Kings, it is easier to get a beer and a kebab than it is to find a McDonalds. Beer can be bought at any supermarket for very little money, just like it should be. Kebeab houses are everywhere, apparently because there is such a large Turkish immigrant community here.

The pre-party drinks was really good, everyone was having a good laugh, and everyone was helping me out with my German. The level of smoking here is a lot higher than Australia, and the next day my clothes didn't just smell smoky, they smelled like an overflowing ashtray. The actual party was in the basement of a student residence like mine. It was sardine style packed, music a blaring just like any popular nightclub, but I came across something new. When you bought a bottle of beer, you had to pay a deposit for the bottle, a great way to reduce broken glass, also, recycling refunds are worth a lot more money here. It wasn't as much fun as the pre-party drinks, because you couldn't really talk to anyone properly and I thought it was hard talking to women before, its even worse when you can't speak there language properly.

The day had been pretty good until it came time to leave, I found some people who lived the next house down from me and thought it would be good to travel home together. I got some bogus information on the tram schedule, and we rocked up half an hour too early for our tram, so the decision was to walk. The other people were a Polish guy, and a French girl and with the Polish guy's romantic intentions, I was only making it a crowd. I followed them because I thought for safety it would be best to stay together and they seemed confident of knowing the way home. I got really angry with them when I could see our tram traveling away but the next stop out of running distance. Then the girl began pointing south and the guy was pointing west and I knew for certain our place was north east, so I left them for dead and headed off on my own. It took about 3 hours altogether to walk from the party to home, but I guess I got to see some more of Mannheim and get some exercise.

The moral of the story is don't bother ordering Pide mit Hackfleisch, it doesn't have much flavour.

Snow puns are good puns

On my second morning , this is what I saw out the window when I woke up. A blanket of white over everything, looks beautiful, for a lot of people its a real headache, for kids its time to make snowballs and throw them at trams and buses or eachother. The beige building in the foreground is a residence compound bar, open Sunday and Wednesday nights.





This is the same day I started working on my project, which is not either of the two options I was told I had before I left Australia but I've got a good work space and a good supervisor.

The photo on the right is taken from the tram stop, the building in the foreground is the oldest building at the Hochschule Mannheim. The school has changed names many times since it was founded, only up until recently, they were called the Fachhochschule Mannheim, but to improve the image of the school the thought they'd better get the Fach out.





The photo on the left was taken a day later, right in the heart of the campus, canteen on the right, library in the background and some installation art doing what installation art does best, not much.

All traffic is on the other side of the road, I have to be careful because I'll be looking the wrong direction down a street as a car is coming towards me. The pigeons here are some staunch mutation of regular pigeons, they have no fear. They wait until a tram is touching their tail feathers before the fly off and if you are walking down the street and you are in their flight path, you'd do well to get out of their way.

Its all part of big city life, and you need to adapt to survive, or else you wont survive.

Note: In Mannheim the response you should expect to the question, "Which is the best bus/tram to get from a to b?" is "I don't know, I ride a bicycle.", its a type of pleasant farewell often used to greet other folk. Used mainly by tram and bus drivers.

Gudrun and Rockland

This is the room I'm living in at the moment, its a good size and got all the furniture you need. Internet connection is charged whether you use it or not and its connection is dependent on whether someone can tell the difference between a B and an 8. It has state of the art inside/outside sound insulation, this means you can hardly hear anything else happening inside the flat, but you can hear with perfect clarity everything that happens outside the flat. My room is next to the house stairwell and my window faces the student residence bar. Sleep quality on nights when the bar is open is poor to say the least. This also due to the fact that my pillow is much like a 2kg bag of rice with only 100g of rice in it. The radiator is temp-ermental controlled, its good for drying clothes but luckily the thermal insulation is so good its not relied on for heating. When its washing day, the whole room turns into a steamy laundry room, which is probably why the pot plant I was given as a present is wilting. Most things in the flat though are pretty good and setup well for sharing.

My room is 1 of 5 in the flat, we share a kitchen/dining space, 2 bar fridges, toilets and shower. The first day I met everyone else in the flat, and talked to some for a while, and found out their names. This was luck, most of the time my flatmates are in their room, and before I arrived they didn't speak to each other and didn't know any of the others names.

The separation, isolation and whole bunch of mishaps started to pile on. Two things helped get me through, the two things that became my best friends. Through my mobile phone I was able to pick up a radio station that plays old rock classics, Rockland. Some over played hits of the 60s, 70s and 80s some how took me back home or at least somewhere else. The real savior was Gudrun, the only flatmate I saw regularly. She shared her dinner and breakfast with me, which was a real help before I had any plates, cups or any kitchenware. Mostly it was someone to talk to. I seem to rely a lot on the friendships in share-house living. One week after my arrival, a friend of Gudrun's from her class, Isa, came to stay. This is because it was exam time and it takes Isa a 5 hour round trip to commute from home to their campus. Where it was once dark and quiet, the three of us turned the kitchen area into our little dinner party almost every night.

That's Gudrun on the right, Isa in the middle, a combined effort on the table, and Rockland is somewhere in the background.

The three of us got really close in a short amount of time, which happens sometimes in these situations but it ended when their exams ended and they both moved back home. We had a last dinner together, and last breakfast together before saying goodbye. It really does still surprise me how much closer you can get to people in some situations than you do to others you've known for years.

I can't help moaning on about all the bad things but at least I can show you some of the positives that came out of it, a couple of good friends and some good memories, and , whenever I need it, I've still got Rockland.

Dislocation

Evening all,

It has been a long and hard road up to this point, I've been dealing with a number of things, such as a different language, different environment, isolation and a severe case of the damn unfortunates. Things are starting to fall into place, but I'm still not sure why I came here. I really feel like a foreign exchange student, and for the most part I haven't been coping to well and the worst part is knowing that a lot of other people are hell of a lot worse of and can still take it. A range of issues has kept me from communicating, but I hope, as I do for all things here that the situation will improve.

For those who haven't been there, this a picture of the beach I used to swim at (five minutes walk from where I was living) taken the day I left for Germany. Sunny, warm, inviting.

This is a photo taken the day after I arrived. I'm not sure if you recognise my finger over the lense. Cold, dark and strange. I've been to the "Snow " before but haven't really had to deal much with with snow falling. I can say there isn't too much like catching a snow flake in the eye, or someone with big hair who doesn't realise there is a whole pile of snow on their head, ready to turn into a cold trickle of water.

This photo was taken at the Neckarauer Bergerdienst which I was at to try to get the residence permit that I needed to get a bank account so I could get the scholarship and so I could pay rent so I would have a place to live.

I headed to the registration office in the Mannheim CBD, which like Adelaide is in grid formation, except the blocks are named Battleships style; Q3, J2 and so on, and numbered depending on where you are in relation to the Schloss (400 room Castle converted for University and other shenanigans).

I arrived at the Registration office to find they were all on strike, but still kind enough to direct me to a place that could sort me out.

At this point I'd like to say that I overestimated my ability to speak German and the number of Germans in administrative roles that can speak English.

The people who pick up the trash, or Garbologists have been on strike for a long time, so there is trash spewing out of trash cans like little trash fountains all over the city. Only recently doctors at the nearby Hospital (a constant source of ambulance sirens) joined in on the strike too.

Trams are everywhere and the publice transport is excellent, luckily, because of the possible student accomodation places I got the one furthest away from my campus.

I took a tram to the outside of town, where the Bergerdienst was, and in broken German, I got a form stamped and OK'd and when I walked outside it was snowing so I took a photo to capture the moment. The whether is very unusual for this time of year so I thought this may be my only chance to photograph snow falling. It turns out that we'd get more snow and that what I got was only part of what I needed and even now can not get a residence permit until the strike ends.

Only recently did I manage to get a bank account, as some banks don't require residence permits if there is enough other data. Prior to that, the whole bank issue was a fiasco that really does not warrant telling.

What I can say about people who've been involved with organisational/adminitrative goins-on is that most people have been very nice, but not always helpful, in such a way as what I am told turns out to be bad advice.

My tales at present are wordy and wingey but I hope that will change. The journey is young and I still believe there is time for things to get better, and hopefully I can share it when it does.

Alexander Molnar