Europe Trip

I could write forever on this topic, and I know that pictures are far more interesting for everyone, so I'm just going to let the pictures do the talking on this one (with some comments of course). In a nutshell, however, Lydia and I took off for about a week to go to Bruges (Belgium), Paris (France), and Amsterdam (Netherlands).

But first....


Getting to destination #1 - Bruges, Belgium:




















Getting on the train to Belgium, Lydia and I thought we were totally set, because we had a Eurorail pass, which was good for 8 days of unlimited travel in Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, Holland, and France; this, however, was not the case (we ended up getting kicked off the train).















Still in Germany, when the ticket man came by, we got a bit of a shock. Apparently, the Eurorail passes aren't just get-up-and-go tickets, in most cases, you actually have to still reserve seats on the train, and depending on the train that you get on, this can still be quite expensive (i.e. 15 Euros per seat for Thalys trains, the most expensive of the mandatory reservation fees). Our Thalys official wasn't very happy with us just hoping on his train, so he kicked us off in the beautiful Aachen (still in Germany) train station.







< the beautifl Aachen train station







Whilst waiting the 2 hours for the next train, which we had to reserve, I managed to slice my hand open on some sort of metal shard that was sticking out of an elevator button.




















* Note to any future Eurorail travelers out there: When attempting international travels, make a reservation BEFORE you get on the train, otherwise you might end up in Aachen. Also, when making a reservation, try to avoid Thalys, which is by far the most expensive (although there is no other choice when going into Paris).

After our Aachen experience, we managed to get to the absolutely beautiful Bruges.

Departure/Arrival

Lydia and I finally arrived in Germany (after all of what was mentioned before). When first arriving in a new city, I highly recommend walking around for a couple of days so that you can get your bearings. That is exactly what Lydia and I did for a few days before our trip to Belgium, France, and Holland. Here are some of the pictures of our first few days of beautiful Bonn:


This is the beautiful city of Bonn, which is the birthplace of...

Beethoven

"Today, Bonn is a vibrant university city, a cultural centre that hosts prestigious concerts and exhibitions, a centre for technologies of the future and the headquarters for several United Nations organisations. People in and around Bonn really know how to enjoy the good things in life. In the summer they head for the wine bars along the Rhine to enjoy the views of the Siebengebirge hills where Riesling wines are produced" [from GermanyTourism.de]

Here we have some scenic, and some not so scenic images of Bonn (guess which one isn't scenic.....)















You can take boat tours to Cologne, Bonn's big brother city






























(if you said that this /\ one wasn't scenic, you would be correct)




















More scenic vs not scenic....(poor Dr. Lenne)







































After a long hard day of walking around Bonn, Lydia and I had our first Dinner in Germany. We ended up having a scrumptious currywurst (sausage and curry), which is the traditional meal of the area.




















Once we got some food in our bellies, we decided to check out the fair that was directly outside our house. It was quite crazy! There were dozens of beer and food tents, roller coasters, fair rides/games, thousands of people...good times had by all. We didn't spend too much time there however, because the next day we were planning on heading out for our grand Europe trip.

Certainly the coolest thing about the fair was this robot man that was dancing above the imagination ride. After about 5 minutes of watching the guy, I still couldn't tell whether or not it was actually a man in a suit or a real robot! The guy was incredible, so have a look!

Trip Preparation

In order to get ready to leave for this job, there were a few things that I first had to do:

a) Get a plane/other travel tickets
b) Find Lydia and I a place to live
c) Help Lydia find a job in Bonn

a)
Of those three things, getting my travel tickets was by faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar the easiest. When students needs to get tickets for a trip, the first thing they should do is check the Internet. Not only is the Internet your best bet for finding the cheapest tickets, but it also helps price things out (and with plane tickets, you really, really need to price things out.... for my trip, I found a price range of $300 after tax for a one-way economy class ticket to around $5000 for the same ticket). The winning ticket for me was found at the Air Transat site, which gives very cheap flights from Canada to Europe. The only catch is that the flights are budget, so there is little leg room, and you have to pay for any alcoholic drinks that you get, but when you're saving thousands of dollars, that doesn't really make a lick of difference. Here's a link to the AIR TRANSAT site, for any future travelers out there. I would also recommends going into Travel Cuts inside the Student Union building so that they can check with their resources to see if they can get you any deals. I am planning on doing a bit of extra traveling while I'm out here, so they were very helpful in arranging all of my extra little journeys (i.e. getting a Euro-rail pass), and with getting things like traveler's insurance.

b)
Finding a place to live ended up being a struggle. There were right away no shortage of web sites to look for accommodation in Bonn:

• http://www.e-rent.de/GEFSmrl.asp?Language=En&Stadt=Bonn

• http://www.zwischenmiete.de/

• http://www.mitwohnagentur-bonn.de/

etc.

And the prices were great (i.e. the average cost for a furnished, 1 bedroom apartment was around 350€ a month (equal to about $500 Canadian), it was simply getting a place that was difficult. It wasn't until the day before I flew to Germany (close to 3 months of searching) before I finally managed to secure an apartment (or so I thought it was secured). There were many reasons why it was difficult, but just to name a few:

• All but the first rental sites were in German, meaning I had to use the online translator Babelfish to translate the web sites. Babelfish is a very useful tool. It allows you to translate entire pages, then (attempt to) navigate through them as it translates, or you can use it for simple word to word translations in about a billion different languages; however, the tool is far from perfect, so I had tonnes of fun with that.

• Once I managed to find a place that I liked, I had to contact the people, which was a problem, because I don't speak German, and from what I have found so far in Germany, not too many people here speak English (compaired with what I have seen in other non-English speaking countries). Because of this, I would again have to use Babelfish to translate, this time my English apartment request into German. If anyone has ever used an internet translator before, they know the funny results that one can get through the translations, so when I thought that I was asking the landlord for an apartment, I could have really been asking for a frog for my curtains for all I know. After a while, I gave up on sending email requests due to my feeble response rate of around 60 emails sent and 6 emails returned. Instead, I asked to use the phone of the co-op office for my German calls (since calling Germany repetitively isn't too nice on the student budget), and luckily, they agreed. After I started using the phone, I started to find some German landlords who spoke English, and who had apartments that I wanted. This brings me to my next issue in finding an apartment:

• Germans have #*$@-loads of ways to reject you for an apartment! Here are just some of my favorites.....You are not allowed to stay here because: You have a girlfriend, You don't speak German (even though that person was speaking English, and I told him that I had someone to speak German on my behalf), You aren't staying long enough, You are staying too long, You are not currently in Germany (even though I would be there at the time the apartment was available, and I was willing to send a deposit in the mail)........but the winner is.............You aren't a young catholic male (I've got young and male down, and I probably could have faked being catholic, but that's just a weird criteria for an apartment).

As I said before, I managed to finally find an apartment for Lydia and I on the day before I got on the plane to Germany. I talked to the landlord on the phone, and he guaranteed that he would have a lovely, furnished, private, 1 bedroom apartment waiting for me in Bonn. Unfortunately, around 24 hours later, when I met with him in his house in Bonn, he discussed with me how in that 24 hours, he had given the apartment to someone else..... #$(@ Luckily (or unluckily, depending on how you look at it), he had a room at his house where Lydia and I could stay for the time being. The problem with that is that he was a very shady looking character, who lived in a very shady house, with a lot of shady looking people, who included Jakob (a man who violently screams in German while he sleeps), Gerhard (who looked like Albert Einstein on drugs), Yetta (who was really the only nice one of the group, but she had a bit of a temper), Nick (a former roadi for Queen, which was awsome, but he liked to wander around in pajamas a lot, and he was quite weired, and Mustafa (a fishmonger who tried to rent out his shack next door for around ten times its value). With no other option, Lydia and I took the room, just so we had a place to stay for the time being. It turned out that they weren't all that bad, but the room was about the size of a double bed, and the house only had one washroom, with a shower/bath that had no curtain, so it was still far from ideal for us, but we did manage to get a new, far better place after we got back from our Europe trip (which I'll discuss in a different section).





- The view from our first apartment's driveway (there was a massive PNE type fair going on when we got there, which went on for the first week. It was fun at first, but falling asleep to the sound of screams gets old fast)












- The Shire (our first apartment here)
*Notice the lack of ROOM in the room











c) Getting Lydia a job was at first going to be a major issue, what with her not speaking German as well, and us only being in Bonn for around 3 months, but it ended up not being all that bad. During my first day at Empirica, Lydia went around Bonn with her resume while I worked. As it turns out, she didn't even have to go around, because the people at Empirica were kind enough to offer her some short term work to participate in while we're here.

Getting the Job

After Dave gave me the idea to work in Germany, Dave and I both contacted Benjamin about the possibility of me acquiring a co-op position at Empirica for the Sept-Dec term. Benjamin was right away interested in the idea, but wasn't really sure if it was logistically possible for his company. Empirica had never had a Canadian co-op before (they had only had European interns beforehand), so it was going to be difficult for them to work out a contract for me. I had taken 3 classes with Benjamin before, though, so he felt that he already had a good idea of what I was capable of, meaning I at least didn't have to worry about an interview (seeing as how we had basically had a 12 month interview already).

I decided to carry on with the normal co-op search (from within mycoop.ca), so I wouldn't end up jobless at the end of the term. During this time, my emails with Benjamin, and Benjamin's negotiations with his company continued until I was finally offered a contract for 3 months at 1000 Euros a month, around a week before the final co-op ranking day (decision day). This was both good and bad for me, good - because I was offered this amazing work-term opportunity, and bad - because it was for 1000 Euro a month (around $1500), which wasn't the greatest comparatively to the salaries that I would be making if I were to stay in Canada, which would be at least double that......and then I had to figure in the extra costs of moving across the world (i.e. plane tickets, storage, etc.)..... and then I had to figure in the fact that Lydia would also be coming with me, and it could be next to impossible for her to get a job in that time...... and then I had to figure in the fact that I was also really liking the other work term opportunities that I had through the normal mycoop.ca route...... so all in all it was a very complicated decision that I had about a week to make.

The decision process included a mad scramble on the Internet to figure out just how much money it would cost to fly and to live in Germany, a long talk with Lydia about how she would feel about moving to the foreign land, and in the end, a huuuuuuuuuge leap of faith, by saying what the $%Q#, let's go for it!

Finding a Job in Germany

Quite early before my last co-op term (I think it was mid-way before the term before the co-op term), I started contacting Dave about the possibilities of doing my last co-op abroad. I started out with just a couple of emails, and then once it was the term before my last co-op term (which was a school term for me), I started going to his office. At first we looked into getting a position at the WHO, but we quickly found that that looked to be next to impossible for an undergrad co-op student who only speaks one language. I believe their minimum requirement for taking in an unpaid intern was a Masters degree, at least bi-lingual, and 5 years international work experience, or something along those lines......not quite matching with my resume thus far. We then began to brain storm other possibilities, and one of the first ideas that came up was Dave's suggestion to work for my old professor, Benjamin Jung, who had just left UVic for Germany to work at a consulting firm for the European Union. At last word with Dave, Benjamin told him to keep in touch for possible co-ops (hence Dave's epiphany).

Working for Benjamin in Germany was quite the idea, especially considering that during his run at UVic, he was the most notorious professors for difficulty, and due to the fact that in Germany.....people speak German......and I don't. This didn't really bother me, however, since I had gone through 3 of Benjamin's classes, and although they were challenging, I managed to do fairly well in them. Also, through those classes, I had the chance to spend some time with Benjamin, both for school and away from school (HINF PUBCRAWL!!!!), and he wasn't always the hard-nosed professor he wanted to make himself out to be.... he's actually quite nice on his own time! I also didn't mind the German barrier, since I have found in my past travels, that even in non-English countries, one can normally get by on English, so that really wasn't (seeming to be) an issue either.

History of my Co-op

This all starts back to when I decided to join the joint csc (Computer Science) + Hinf (Health and Information Science) program half way through my csc major at UVic. Before I joined the combined major, co-op wasn't mandatory, so I never really thought about going into it, especially since I managed to get the ultimate summer job at the UVic daycare center in my first year. When I joined the combined major program, however, co-op was mandatory, so it was bye bye road hockey and rice crispy squares with pre-teens, and hello office work. Thanks to Dave Hutchinson and the rest of the Hinf co-op program at UVic, this ended up being a very good opportunity for me, since it gave me the chance to travel to many different places, meet many different people, and acquire a lot of useful work experience.

Long story short, when I joined the co-op program at UVic, my girlfriend (Lydia - who has been with me pretty much since I started at UVic) and I decided that we wanted to do two co-ops outside of Victoria and one inside of Victoria. I also thought that it would be cool for my last co-op to go out with a bit of a bang, and do an international co-op, a - to get some much needed international experience (since my ultimate career goal is to go into international heath work like the WHO), and b - because traveling is always amazing (even when it's bad....which is also something I've had experience with, but that's another blog), so why not.










- Lydia and I about to make yet another departure from beautiful B.C.

Introduction

Greetings all from Bonn Germany!

This is my first ever post on my first ever blog, so lets see how this will go....

I'm already a couple of weeks into my trip, and a few months into my co-op journey, so I definitely have some catching up to do. This catch-up process is going to be very difficult, seeing as how I'm already very busy at work (even though it's only my third day here at Empirica), I have just moved AGAIN into a new apartment in Bonn (so I have to get this new apartment in order), I have friends coming from Canada to visit my girlfriend (Lydia) and me later tonight, and I leave for Oktoberfest on Friday.....it's a very busy time in the life of Tyrone right now.

Before I get too caught up in my current activities, however, I should start from the very beginning, which was:

How on earth did I choose to end up in Germany?