"Snow storm" on departure

Dear blog community,
its been almost a year since my last entry here. Now that I'm back to the US, I decided to continue blogging occasionally about my activities. I hope you enjoy reading and viewing the pictures. Please comment to make this a more rewarding exercise for me... ;-)

So... every journey starts with travelling. However, this start was not one of the best. In fact we had a mid March "snow storm" in Germany on the very same day I should have taken the flight. Well, there were about 10cm of new snow falling over night - one might think that a developed country used to this kind of climate is able to deal with that. It's not...

First, it took me more than 2 hours to get to the airport (which is usually a 20min ride). The freeway was just covered with snow and the traffic jams skyrocketed to 40+ km... Having arrived barely one hour before departure at the airport (!) I learned that all flights are suspended. The whole airport was closed down due to the weather conditions... Well, that could be an interesting day.

About 1h after the official boarding time, we were finally ushered into buses to get to the plane. Sitting in the plane for 15min... nothing happened. Finally, the captain told us that the runway is still closed until further notice... He kept repeating this about every 20 min until after 2 hours the first aircrafts could take off again. However, we were still waiting for a number in the de-icing sequence...

To cut the long story short:
- we never got that number
- the pilot canceled the flight (he would exceed the maximum duty time)
- took a cab back to Darmstadt
- had (at least!) a good sleep in my own bed (quite a few people actually had to sleep on the terminal floor)
- more than 800 out of 1200 flights got canceled
- I came back the next day to catch the same fligh

Finally, I happily arrived in Philly an I'm staying at the same cozy place as last time. I'm looking forward to an interesting and fruitful stay. I'll keep you updated.

Enjoy the picture series "flier and ice" ;-)

Gamblin' in Atlantic City

Last Sunday I went together with my land lord to Atlantic City. For those who don't now: Its something like a cheap version of Las Vegas on the east coast of the US. I was told that I should go there at least once to see this place... Well yeah.

We took some kind of casino bus there: You get the price of the bus ticket worth free credit in the casino. So the first thing we did was to waste the $25 in one of the slot machines. I can definitely not understand why people find this fun or exciting. You sit in this dull, dark place and get constantly annoyed by blinking lights an noisy machines. You hit some buttons and then the counter of you money goes either up or down... After five minutes I got already bored and felt an urge to leave... Luckily it doesn't take long to get rid of 25 bucks. At least I got 15 bucks back which almost paid for the lunch.

The lunch buffet was good, but not outstanding. Anyway, I only ate as much as I possibly could. :-) Then it was time to stroll along the famous board walk. Most of the casinos are situated directly at the beach. The board walk runs along between the beach and the buildings. Maybe it is nice to take a walk there in summer... with cold and windy weather it wasn't really fun. The overcast sky was not the perfect setting for taking pictures either. Well, you see the result.

The most interesting part was maybe the interior of some casinos. One had this Wild West theme from the outside and inside. That looked quite cool - kinda underwhelming though when you have already been to Las Vegas. Some of the places were not that glittering and shiny - rather run down and shabby.

All in all Atlantic City is probably a place where you don't have to go. It might be nice with great summer weather. But I still think that I can't quite get the hang of the casino business...

Princeton, New Jersey

Last weekend I've been visiting my friend in Princeton. I was invited (or I invited myself...) on a Siemens intern house party. It seems that they are doing those parties quite frequently. There was a huge bunch of people there in any case, so I didn't feel that I was out of place. Well lets start at the beginning...

I took the commuter train from Philly first to Trenton and then to Princeton. There is a direct Amtrak connection, too, but this is 4 times more expensive... Finally I managed to get there and I a was even picked up at the station. As public transport in US is highly developed, most interns have a car... We went to town first to have a hoagie (thats how they call sandwiches here) in famous Hoagie Haven (no typo). I got a Sanchez, which is a sandwich with chicken chop, fries, veggie and some greasy sauce. It was edible... you have to be adventurous if you try local specialties... Before the party started we had a stroll through the town and the campus. The town is basically one street with one restaurant after another. Apart from that there's not much to see.

The campus, however, is a different story. I can't even guess how big it is. We walked for quite a while and there was no apparent end. All the buildings look really fancy and old. Some look like castles, cathedrals or whatever mansion, but definitely not like university buildings. My friend said that especially at night it reminded her of Hogwarts. I guess she is right. Really impressive. On the Easter weekend I will go there again for a guided tour around campus. I hope that we will learn something about the history, the buildings and so on. Its always much more interesting if you hear the corresponding stories to a place.

The party was a kinda crazy thing. It was a house where a couple of (5?, 6?) Siemens interns are staying and they just transformed the place into a big party location. I think there were at least 50 to 60 people, mostly interns and Au-pairs (to make up for the girls ratio...). I guess this was the first opportunity where I talked to an actually American (one guy from Texas and one from New Jersey). So far I had only contact to internationals... (All my lab mates including the professors are non-natives). Hehe, it was fun talking about big cars and other American habits... Apparently even between NJ and TX there are big differences... :-) Apart from that I enjoyed myself, had a few beer (hard to get in Pennsylvania!) and mingled with people. I mean there is usually not much party going on in Villanova...

It was a cool weekend and I had a lot of fun there. Thanks for inviting me! :-)

Sorry I dont have any pics this time. Me and the weather were not in the right mood... I captured the posing goose in Philly.