germany
grrlscientist | December 5, 2009tags: shocking news, Expat Life, wireless internet
Image: FunToosh.
Shocking news, everybody!
No seriously, I have some shocking news for you: I FINALLY have internet access from my beautiful flat (otherwise known as the peregrine's nest, since it is perched on the 13th -- top -- floor of the building overlooking the city and is inhabited by two peregrinating humans).
It only took a few weeks' wait (while I was here), before the router was installed (a process that took an engineer a mere 20 minutes to accomplish), and then it took another four days, two dozen phone calls, two scientists…
grrlscientist | December 4, 2009tags: Frankfurt am Main U-Bahn-Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Expat+Life, Frankfurt Subway Art, photography
Frankfurt am Main U-Bahn-Kunst.
NordWestZentrum, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Image: GrrlScientist, 24 November 2009 [larger view].
Overall, I have been disappointed with the subway art in Frankfurt -- something that makes me appreciate NYC subway art even more than I had before. That said, this one man is the exception to my disappointment. Here he is, making chalk art on the floor of one of the subway stations. I was told that he does this every weekday and then the artwork is…
grrlscientist | December 4, 2009tags: MyZeil Einkaufszentrum, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Expat+Life, Frankfurt through my eye, photography, image of the day
Weihnachten in My Zeil Einkaufszentrum.
My Zeil Einkaufszentrum, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Image: GrrlScientist, 24 November 2009 [larger view].
As you can see in this image, Frankfurt am Main is giving NYC some competition in the "does Christmas extremely well" category. I think I am being spoiled by living in these two cites at Christmas since they both are class acts in my opinion.
edyong | December 3, 2009In the forests of Germany live large numbers of blackcaps, a small species of songbird. They all look very similar, but they actually belong to two genetically distinct groups that are becoming more disparate with time. For the moment, the best way to tell them apart is to wait for winter. As the cold sets in, one group of blackcaps flies southwest to Spain, while a smaller group heads northwest towards Britain.
If the prospect of spending winter in Britain rather than Spain seems odd to you, you're not alone. Indeed, blackcaps were hardly ever ventured across these shores before the 1950s.…
grrlscientist | November 25, 2009
A morning view of downtown Frankfurt am Main from the window of the building where I live in Frankfurt. You can also see a large passenger plane flying over the city. It is likely following the same flight path that my plane was on when I arrived on 20 November 2009.
Image: GrrlScientist, 25 November 2009.
This morning, I snapped the above image of downtown Frankfurt from the top floor window of the building where I live, whilst waiting for the elevator.
Our flat does not have wireless yet, and likely won't have it until sometime around the 2nd of December. Of course, this has inspired…
grrlscientist | November 22, 2009I have arrived! And I've already done some important things;
Offended the saleslady at the mattress store. Oops!
Met a bunch of government officials in Customs, veterinary services and fellow travelers who just plain love birds. They all were a helluva lot nicer than the authorities in the USA!
Ordered alcoholic beverages in the German language (I'll leave it to you to guess what I ordered! and I will be updating this with the answer).
Slept on the floor, AGAIN!! OUCH!! Our mattress arrives in 4 weeks (right before Christmas, woopie!) so this is going to make for a veeery long month…
grrlscientist | November 19, 2009When this publishes, it will be 8 am in Germany and my plane will have landed in Frankfurt a few minutes ago. As you are getting ready to snuggle into a warm bed, I will be jet-lagged, waiting to collect my checked bags and to work my way through Customs with my birds. Hopefully, I have all my permits, certificates and other paperwork in order so the authorities will simply wave me through and let me go home -- to a place I've never seen -- and take a hot shower! Even though I've said I will collapse and sleep for three days after reaching Frankfurt, this is unlikely (based on what I do after…
grrlscientist | November 19, 2009By the time this publishes, I will be on the plane with my parrots somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean (hopefully not in it!), flying to Frankfurt! So while I am preoccupied with doing that, I thought I would write this list to amuse you (and to remind you that I am thinking about all of you, even while relocating);
Why I WILL miss living in NYC:
NYC's vibrant cash economy, which made it possible (barely) for me to pay my rent without having a "real job." As much as I love Seattle (my home), I am well aware that I could not have survived in Seattle if I had to rely on their cash economy.…
grrlscientist | November 16, 2009Today is far more stressful than it deserves to be. I spent a good part of today either bleeding all over my apartment (one of my lories bit me) or on the telephone, talking with the police department, trying to determine if my "good citizen certificate" is ready to pick up. Even though I saw at least two police officers with desks that had functioning telephones on them while I was there, I was told there are no telephones into that office. WTF?
After being bounced a dozen times between operator 2231 and operator 174 (or whatever their names were), my throbbing finger wrapped in half a roll…
grrlscientist | November 15, 2009Things are moving really quickly now, and of course, I also had several emergencies I had to take care of, plus I have several other things I must do, such as must notify my DonorsChoose prize winners, and finish rewrites on a Nature piece that are overdue. (I've never missed a deadline before, so this alone is extremely stressful). So basically, my stress levels are still extremely high, but I've just traded one source of stressors for another.
All last week was a nightmare, since I had been calling all the East Coast offices of USFWS -- as many as a dozen phone calls per day, trying to…
grrlscientist | November 10, 2009In one week and two days, I will be in Germany, beginning my new life as an American expat. Even though I thought I'd be more likely to live in the UK, in Finland, Iceland, or even on one of the South Pacific Islands where my research birds are found, I would be lying if I told you that I am not excited to relocate to Germany. I always thought I'd end up living overseas as an expat, even when I was a child.
Despite my excitement about my impending move, I am also extremely stressed out.
I have spent the past couple days trying to find my CITES permit, which was mailed to me last Wednesday,…
grrlscientist | October 22, 2009This week has not gone very well, probably because I've been ill since Sunday with some sort of illness that makes me vomit a lot. Last week, I thought I had everything figured out, but this week, I've been confronted by an increasingly complex tangle of paperwork and problems and with having to make decisions about how to spend huge sums of money (well, huge sums in the view of this unemployed scientist). All the while, I am reminded how intelligent I was to resist the pressure put on me to relocate anywhere unless I knew I had a job first.
Here's a list of everything that has gone wrong so…
grrlscientist | October 18, 2009tags: 2009 Frankfurt Book Fair, Frankfurt Messe, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, image of the day
Frankfurt Messe.
Frankfurt Book Fair 2009.
Image: Bob O'Hara, 18 October 2009 [larger view].
grrlscientist | October 17, 2009The good news is that things are really falling into place now -- something I thought would never ever happen.
First, I walked through icy winds and a light dusting of snow to bring my ailing lory to my veterinarian, Simon Starkey, on Thursday morning to get blood drawn so they could look again to see if she's diabetic. The blood tests came back Friday morning, showing that she had blood glucose levels that were twice the normal values, which is something that can result from stress or from mild diabetes. Since she was so ill when I initially brought her in (yay, for poverty for making me…
grrlscientist | October 16, 2009tags: Memorial to the Synagogue, Platz der Synagoge, Göttingen, Germany, image of the day
The memorial to the Synagogue in Göttingen, Germany, burnt down 1938 during the Kristallnacht, at the Platz der Synagoge (Synagogue Square) as seen from the inside looking straight up.
Image: Bob O'Hara, October 2009 [larger view].
Synagogue Memorial, Obere-Masch-Str. and Untere-Masch-Str. This memorial, designed by Corrado Cagli in 1973, stands on the site of a synagogue that was destroyed in 1938. The names of Göttingen's Jewish residents who were murdered during the "dark time" are listed below…
grrlscientist | October 14, 2009Today was another day spent entirely on the telephone, talking to people and clearing up my misunderstandings (or theirs) about this moving process. If you hate telephones, as I do, then today is one of those days that you avoid for as long as possible. Originally, I was going to reward myself for sticking to my telephone plan by going out for a beer after wards, but I cannot do this because I have to bring my sick yellow-bibbed lory to the veterinarian tomorrow morning to see if she's really diabetic, and then develop a treatment plan to keep her alive and healthy.
The first thing this…
grrlscientist | October 13, 2009Today was a breakthrough because I view everything very differently than I did yesterday or three days ago, and because I made significant progress towards my goal. In fact, I made so much progress today that I even decided upon a tentative target departure week that I am working towards (I've even narrowed my departure down to three days within that week). But more about that later; let me tell you what I've managed to accomplish today.
First, I called my USFWS agent, Katherine, and I learned that I have my CITES permit (she gave me the CITES permit number, which I need to begin working…
grrlscientist | October 12, 2009After experiencing astonishing frustration levels, I decided that relocating overseas is just like finishing the PhD, except it's far more confusing and there's no clear authority figure (like an adviser, a departmental chair or a dean) to appeal to when everything goes to hell. But I have to do what I did in grad school: I have to (somehow) control the USFWS and the USDA instead of allowing them to control me.
In this situation, this requires that I spend a lot of time researching every possible angle involved with the export and import process and become as expert as all the agents and…
grrlscientist | October 9, 2009I was so upset about the likelihood that I would spend the next six months (or probably longer) trapped in a bureaucratic cesspool of confusion and conflicting information whilst spending thousands of dollars on rent, penalties and veterinary bills, that I was ready to do something drastic. So I called USFWS.
The USFWS computerized telephone voice warned me that they are experiencing "significant delays" in processing CITES permit applications for birds, so I expected I'd only be able to talk to a real person after appealing to my congresscritter, Charlie Rangell, who is under investigation…