new home, new keyboard

Chase the sun around
The world, find a new place, and
Everything is easy.

IIIIIIIIIIIt's...... Germany! If you had asked me 9 months ago, I probably would never have guessed that I'd be writing a blog post from here. :)

The flight was long... but it was okay. I stayed up for about 2 days before collapsing into bed for 20 hours at 16:00 yesterday, but I think I may have beaten jet lag already! Huzzah! It was nice to have a layover in Toronto for a few hours; it was enough time to meet up with Evan and his friend AMac for lunch, anyway. We went to Kensington Market and had dericious empanadas and red bean cakes. Mmmmm...

Then, of course, I met some wonderful Canadians on both flights (IND->YYZ and YYZ->FRA) who told me about all the fabulous things that I'll have to try to do this summer. On the flight to Europe, all passengers were served complimentary wine/beer/etc. with dinner, and with breakfast we were offered Bailey's to go with our coffee. Hahahaha! This summer is surely going to be something different.

Upon landing, everything, as I mentioned, was easy. The immigration person didn't even ask why I came to Germany. He took my passport, looked at me, and stamped it. I got a phone for €49.95, including €15 of included talk time. I guess calls are pretty expensive on it, but I don't think I'll be using it much, anyway. Buses are simple enough to figure out, and if ever I find myself lost, it isn't difficult to come by someone who speaks English.

Probably the hardest things to get used to here are going to be the keyboards (the z and y are swapped, which has led to my spelling my own name wrong several times, and there are €, µ, ß, ö, ä, and ü scattered where I expect other keys to be, not to mention that the special characters across the number keys are reorganised in an awful sort of way) and the... well, maybe just the keyboards. I can't think of anything else I've had a lot of trouble with yet.

Since Torsten is off to someplace-or-other tomorrow, I don't start work until Monday. So I think I'm going to go pay a visit to Mathieu in Berlin this weekend. Hopefully I'll get set up with some internets in my room, too, soon, since right now I'm "at work." Today there are some kind of presentations for the group; it's their one-year anniversary.

I'll get on that whole posting pictures thing as soon as I can... for the moment, I haven't taken many, since I was practically a zombie yesterday (that sentence was hella hard to type, for the record. thanks, keyboard.). Oh! But I need to update y'all on my address. It isn't quite what I expected:

Valkyrie Savage
Haus 22
Zimmer 004
Max Planck Straße 4
Dieburg 64807
Germany

I like the progression here, though. B-town, C-bus, D-burg. It's pronounced that way, too! :D