Trip to Heidelberg

First off, I want to apologize for my lack of frequent updates on this blog. I could update it more, but sometimes I just don't feel like it after getting back from the field. Nonetheless though, here is another update about my most recent trip  to the beautiful city of Heidelberg last weekend.
 
So last weekend (starting on Tuesday the 19th), I made my way to Heidelberg to attend a mandatory meeting for my internship. I did save a lot on this trip, which was good. Round trip, it only cost me 100 Euros. To think, however, that I would get away nicely with paying that price, think again. Although it was a cheap ticket round trip, the bus trip and long waits in Hannover would make you second guess the ticket. On Tuesday, I left the Berlin Hauptbahnof at 5:30pm to head towards Hannover. This was the easy part of the trip. It was nice, comfortable, and traveling through the German countryside made for beautiful views and pictures. Around 8:30pm, I arrived in the Hannover Hauptbahnof. This is where the journey wasn't so fun. I had to carry my luggage all around the bahnof for almost 4 hours and watch it like a hawk, when I had to get food. It was quite a boring 4 hours. I know in lots of places around America, you can find free wifi at most public transportation facilities, but in Germany, there is no such thing as free wifi. You either have to pay for it, or you have to be a customer at the restaurant and ask for the password. For those 4 hours I spent most of it just sitting in the McDonalds Cafe watching German TV that I couldn't understand. Besides that, I did enjoy some delicious Chinese food! Around an hour before departing Hannover, I preceded to the Hannover ZOB (bus station), to wait for the bus. I was only able to get one picture, but the Hannover ZOB was rough! The place looks like it hasn't been touched in years. I definitely had my head on a swivel there. The bus arrived shortly after 12:30am and I boarded the bus, and gave the driver my ticket. The bus  was packed, there wasn't much leg room, and the bus driver forgot to turn on the AC. Also, the passenger sitting next to me  didn't believe in using just one seat, as he would often be well into my seat when he leaned on the window to sleep. Thankfully though, I didn't have to sit near him for very long because 2 or 3 stops down the line, a whole bunch of people got off the bus. This opened up some seats, which I took advantage of. There weren't too many bad things about the bus, it was just the beginning of the trip that put a sour note on the whole journey. Sleeping on the bus was non-existent. I think I slept combine 2 hours on the bus. It was just so difficult to get comfortable.
  
To my joy, I arrived in Heidelberg almost 30 mins late to meet my good friend Victoria. After grabbing a quick breakfast at McDonalds, she drove me to her house so I could catch up on some sleep before starting the day. I was going to go out into the town with her mom, and sister, but that didn't happen because when she knocked on my door, I didn't hear a thing and was sound asleep! I woke up around noon and preceded to get ready to hang out with Victoria. First thing on our list was to go to a cafe. We went to a cafe where they sold big everything! I got an enormous cup of coffee and a large piece of cake (which I didn't finish). After that Tori showed me around the base at Heidelberg. It was a refreshing sight to see so many American things/people after being in the heart of Germany for 7 weeks. I also checked out the bowling alley on the base. It was one of the nicest bowling alley's I've seen. I wish I would have brought my bowling ball, otherwise I would have bowled a few games there! Later that day, Tori, her sister, and myself met her Mom and we went out to grab some dinner in Heidelberg. It was my first time in the city and it was awesome! Heidelberg is a very old city, but also beautiful! There were so many buildings on the hills, and everything has a great feel to it. I'll let the pictures tell the story, when I upload pictures on Wednesday or Thursday. We went to a restaurant that had all sorts of food. I decided to try these chicken strips that were backed with corn flakes! They were amazing. I've decided that I am making those when I get back to the States in 3 weeks! After dinner, we went to a Irish Pub. There, I had my first dark beer, a Guinness, and it was good. It had an interesting after taste, it tasted a little like coffee.
  
The next morning, I got all my stuff packed and ready for the start of the meeting. Around 1:30pm, Tori got off work and drove me to where my meeting was taking place. We parted ways, and I preceded to check in at the youth hostel. The meeting was an all expenses paid trip to Heidelberg that included a tour at the end of meeting. Around 4 we all boarded a bus to travel to the University of Heidelberg for a 2 hour discussion about DAAD, and our award RISE. We also enjoyed the talk of a keynote speaker. After the lecture presentation, we were served a delicious dinner buffet at a local restaurant, along with good beer! At the conclusion of dinner, we boarded buses back to the hostel where we were given the night to do with it as we would like. I decided, since it was late and I had to be up early the next day, to go to bed.  

Friday morning started bright and early at 7am with breakfast. Everyone at the RISE meeting was given companies to tour with while we were here. I was scheduled to go to Frankfurt to see a waste processing plant that burns garbage for energy. It was a fascinating experience and cool to see all the work that the city of Frankfurt has put into recycling energy. After viewing the waste processing plant, we went to hear a lecture on efforts to build a zero energy suburb of Frankfurt called Riedberg. It focuses on constructing buildings that minimize their carbon footprint. An interesting thing about Riedberg is that they not only construct apartments and houses that minimalize the carbon footprint, they also design public buildings such as hospitals and gymnasiums to reduce the carbon footprint as much as possible. All of this sounds fascinating, but they didn't discuss prices. Oh well. After this, we went to view a natural science museum in the heart of Frankfurt. Our tour guide was amazing! He knew so much about his discussion topics, and all the talks he gave were very interesting and thought provoking. Finally, after the museum, we went to the greenest skyscraper in Frankfurt, the CommerzBank (spelling?) tower. The building was focused on providing it's workers a very relaxing environment. They accomplished this through 3 large gardens placed inside the center-frame. This also serves to provide the offices light from not just one angle, but two. The building's primary heating and cooling services are computer controlled, allowing for maximum efficiency. Remember the garbage burning plant earlier? Well that plant provides a good amount of the power that this building uses for heating and cooling. The tour of this amazing building concluded with a trip to the uppermost floor (the roof), of the tower. It provided an unmatched view of the city of Frankfurt. You could see everything from up here; the Hauptbahnof, the stadium in which the world cup was played, and the airport. All three of these were many kilometers away. I'll let the pictures do the talking in my "picture-post" on Wednesday or Thursday. After the conclusion of the tour, we headed back to Heidelberg. When I got back to the hostel, I grabbed a quick dinner and then got ready to go our to see Heidelberg at night. On the way to the city, we met a German local who was looking for something to do. She joined along with us, and we asked her if she knew of any good bars we could swing by. She showed us to a Irish Pub (different one then I went to on Wednesday night). We all sat down and had some very good cider, and laughs. Besides that, I didn't really do much in Heidelberg, unlike a good amount of other RISEers. I heard that lots of RISEers were out very late and had a lot to drink. That wasn't for me, but nonetheless, I returned back to the hostel around 1:30am to grab some needed sleep (our day started early again the next day).   

The last day of the meeting started with a short lecture about future opportunities with DAAD down the line. I'm thinking about possibly pursuing one in the future (perhaps my masters), but it would be a lot to give up here in the States. It will require much prayer and thought before I make a decision! After the lecture, students gave presentations of their current research. I went to the Physics presentations, because I thought it would match closely to my major, that wasn't the case. Lots of the presentations were on very complex physics that I did not understand at all! Maybe I should have chosen Chemistry, or the Biology presentations instead. Alas, after lunch, we headed towards the center of Heidelberg to meet our tour guide of Heidelberg. Touring through Heidelberg was incredible! It was Saturday and the city was packed with everything from tourists, merchants, and others alike. We even saw a few weddings when we passed by the churches. Again, the pictures do a much better job of describing the tour than myself. With this tour, the meeting was finished, and my awesome 5 day trip to Heidelberg was concluded. 

Sorry if there are errors, it's getting late and I'm going to the field again early tomorrow morning. Tomorrow, I am going to Dedelow, remember the Maize a few weeks ago? Well now, it's almost 6 feet taller. I'll discuss this in a blog post on Friday. Hopefully I don't forget!

I miss all of you!!!! See you all soon. 

-Wright

Hello!

I must say, it's been a very quiet week since I last updated my blog. I am hoping everyone had a safe and fun July 4th holiday! I celebrated like the Germans do on July 4th, they called it:  "Work-Day."
This week is starting off slow too. I'll describe some of the events of the last week and a half.

Monday (July 4th) was spent in the warehouse working on protocols. On a typical week, if I'm not in the field, I am sorting roots, sorting grass, matching data written by hand to the data loggers, or helping with various other research projects around ZALF. Tuesday morning was spend doing the same thing. In the morning I helped load the trailer for a group of interns who were going to a field site to measure methane. After they left, I spent the rest of the day doing protocols. I was going to go on this field trip, but I decided to hold off for a little as my back was still a little tight and I didn't want to risk injuring it further and destroying my upcoming bowling season which I am looking forward to very much. 

I did go on a field trip this past week though. I was scheduled to go to Landgraben on Wednesday and Thursday. Landgraben, which is in far northern Germany, is a farming region  that is a lot more wet than the other locations we measure at. Some places in Landgraben are easily 2 feet underwater and if you don't wear boots you're getting wet. If you want to, you could go barefoot through the waters, but that's probably not the best idea. One, it's safe to assume that there are probably numerous types of bacteria living in the soil that aren't too friendly to humans, and second, I've been told that there are blood-sucking leeches in the water. Luckily for me, I had a very dry location. I only had to watch my footing when going back to the main site, and I did not need boots.  It took us almost 3 hours to get there (which is  long time compared to most of the locations we travel to). When we got there we unloaded all the materials and got straight to work. Day 1 wasn't too bad, but Landgraben is one of the harder places to measure for sure. One of the sites has three extensions, plus the chamber on top. The height of the chambers and extensions together was 10-11 feet tall.  Most of Day was spent on my dry-site and trying to stay out of the sun, and maybe work on a little tan to make up for the Florida sun while making measurements of CO2. The day was pretty normal, and very hot (for Germany), and filled with a little surprise at the end. While attempting to turn the van around, one of the interns accidentally got the van stuck in the mud of the field, and we spent an hour tracking down a farmer to pull us out after an hour of fruitlessly trying to push the van out ourselves. After work, we settled down in the hostel and everyone took showers and we then had some delicious pizza under a beautiful sunset, a nice beer, and enjoyed the company of a mother cat and her kitten wrestling in the grass around us. I, of course, had to play with the kitten for a little! Sorry Miranda, I couldn't keep him.  Day 2 started early we arrived at the field at 5am to start measurements under a tremendously foggy morning. I believe the visibility was  a small 500 feet. We weren't able to get many measurements for most of the day beacuse an intern was feeling a little ill and she had to visit the hospital, all the while the clouds were preventing us from getting measurements in the middle range of the PAR-spectrum. Later in the day the clouds, but by that time the PAR was already up to values we retrieved the previous day. The rest of the day was spend running around making dark chambered measurements (dark chamber measurements don't depend on PAR), cutting grass for samples, and taking soil samples. The hard part of Day 2 wasn't taking measurements and running around, it was running around in the mud, and probably taking measurements with the 3 extension site. Mud is not the easiest thing to walk in, it is very viscous. In addition to taking some dark chamber measurements, we also took methane measurements at all the sites. After all this, we left to head back to Muncheberg.

Friday was a relaxed day, spent most of it protocolising data, and towards the end of the day, I helped sort some of the grass that we collected at the field sites.

Some of the interns went to Berlin Friday night but I decided to hang back. I loved going out on an all night adventure in Berlin with them the last time, but I really wanted to get some rest and spend a relaxing evening with a movie, good dinner, and a refreshing beer to unwind from the week. Saturday I walked around Berlin to explore the city a little bit. The highlight of my day had to come from a dance group called: "Street Life Gang." They put on a great performance, that was very entertaining (see video below).

Sunday I spent the earlier part of the day with Javier. Me and Javier went bowling at the bowling alley I found when I first came here. It was my first time bowling in over three weeks because of my back. I didn't bowl very well, but it was good to get back on the lanes. My back gave me ZERO trouble; a blessing. Afterwards, I came back to attempt to help with a event ZALF was putting on. The event, called Turen Auf, was based on a popular children's show here that has been on the air for almost 40 years. The event was all about promoting science to the Germany's youngest minds. For our part of the event, kids would go under an automatic transparent chamber and we would close them in it. While they were in the chamber, a screen was set up in front of them so they could see the CO2 levels rise in chamber because of their breathing. After 2 or 3 minutes, we would raise the chamber and then give the kids a CO2 certificate that had the amount of CO2 they admitted written on the sheet. It was a pretty cool experience. I only wish that I had been there for a longer part of the event. Apparently there were many thousands of people here. After the event, all us interns got together and we walked 2km to a lake to go for a little swim. The lake was a little chilly, but it did make for a refreshing swim on an otherwise warm afternoon. I will bring my picture the next time I go to the lake. When we got back from the lake, I retired to my room to take a shower and watch the U.S. Woman's soccer team win a crazy game against Brazil. Just watch the replays of Wambach's header to tie the game in the 122nd minute.

The past two days, there hasn't been much going on, just a lot of computer work with Excel. I was scheduled to go to the field on Thursday and Friday, but I was told today that it might not happen because of a low pressure system that's expected to move in starting late tomorrow. It will bring clouds and some rain that will make measuring CO2 almost a worthless process (clear sky and sunshine is the optimal condition for measuring CO2).

Next week I'm going to Heidelberg, I'll have more details about that later this week.

It's been awhile!

    Sorry for the very long delay of updating my blog! The past two weeks have been busy! In a short explanation, I've taken two trips to the field to measure CO2.  I won't go into much detail with this post, but I'll try to include a general picture of what has happened the past two weeks.

     Last week, a field trip was scheduled for Monday and Tuesday. This was my second trip the field, and we were scheduled to measure methane. We met at ZALF at 7:30am and headed on our way to Dedelow. Dedelow is a cool place north of Berlin that is one of the most windiest places in Germany. The drive to Dedelow was easy and quick (probably because I slept during most of it haha!). Once we got to the field, I pulled out my camera and snapped a few pictures. The place is so beautiful, although hard to see in some of the pictures, there were a lot of gently sloping as far as the eye could see. There were also a ton of wind farms all over the horizon. The cool thing about all the wind farms is that the make great tools for a meteorologist who doesn't have access to the best information about the wind direction. If you have a compass (which I need to install on my phone), determining the wind direction is quite simple, just look at a wind-mill! The weather wasn't too bad as I was thinking it was going to be. The early afternoon was a little chilly, the winds were whipping a solid 15-20mph, and occasional gusts got up to 25mph. Thank you Mom for suggesting that I bring the red wind/rain breaker. The workload there was quite easy, the only thing we did was put chambers on the sites, open the bottle, close the bottle, and then go back to the shed and wait 20 minutes to open another bottle, and then go back to the shed and hangout. Measuring methane is a nice break once you've experienced measuring CO2. The weather at Dedelow eventually progressed into a much calmer, and sunny scene. The winds by the end of the day calmed down quite a bit, and went down to 5mph. Pretty much that's all that happened on Monday. Tuesday was a day to sort more roots, protocolize data, and get ready for my first 2 day field trip to measure CO2. We were headed back to Dedelow (with better weather expected).

     Wednesday morning started at 7:30AM with meeting the other interns at the warehouse to load the vans with materials for the trip. We loaded chambers, data loggers, chamber extensions, and other tools vital for the research. I fell asleep again on the trip over. I think do this date, I have fallen asleep on all of our trips to the fields. Once we got to Dedelow we unloaded the vans and dispersed quickly to our measuring sites. The weather was nice, a comfortable 82 degrees and a nice 10mph breeze to keep things cooled off. First on the list was to measure CO2. Measuring CO2 isn't the easiest thing to do. First, you have to be very careful to avoid breaking all of the maize (corn) plants. They are very fragile and break at the slightest bit of pressure. In order to do this (specially if you have extensions like I did), you have to position yourself very awkwardly to put the chamber down in the correct spot. After you put the chamber on, you have to immediately turn the ventilator on, switch the status on, and run to the logger and record values of: CO2, PAR (sunlight), temperature of the inside, and the time on the logger. In order to be correct, you're supposed to do all of this within 5 seconds, but this usually doesn't happen and we strive to get all results within 10 seconds. This isn't all too difficult but the process that makes this difficult is: repetition. At each measuring site, there are 3 plots, and you have to measure all three over the course of the day, aiming to measuring when the temperature falls within pre-set ranges. You're also trying to get measurements under certain PAR values. These values need to be measured at ALL three plots. For the duration of the measurement, your eyes are fixed on the logger's output screen because if the CO2  goes up/down by more than 30ppm, you're supposed to stop the measurement. If the PAR goes up/down by more than 10% you stop the measurement, and lastly, if the temperature goes up by more than 1.5 degrees C you stop the measurement. All these values must adhere to these rules for a hopeful 2 minutes. Between the clouds passing over the measurement site in a sporadic fashion, and the sun heating the insides of the transparent chambers like a green house, it isn't an easy task to complete. By the end of the day you've have lifted these 20 pound chambers at least 200 times, or more, because you'll start the measurement only for it to have to be redone when the data goes awry. Besides the warm temperatures slowing things down slightly, it is a pretty easy thing to do. It is also fun trying to make a game out of it and catch all the PAR slots. The best part of the trip had to be the wonderful dinner prepared by some of the ZALF interns. It was a wonderful spaghetti, with meat sauce and some other ingredients. We all had a nice beer to wash down the dinner as well. After dinner at 7:30pm, we all got ready for bed. On field trips, you have to get to sleep very early (often while it is still light outside), because the next morning, we had to be up by 3:30am to beat the sunrise.

     The next morning we started out very early, arriving to the field at 4:30am (30 minutes before sunrise). Things had to start quickly so we were able to get a measurement while there was zero PAR. Everything went according to plan, at least all the measurements before around 10am. The only downside to my first CO2 measurement trip was pulling a muscle in my back. I did it while bending down to put a chamber on one of the plots in the early morning. My back hurt the whole day after that and it still hurts to this day (although the pain has been wearing away, only to flare up when I went to the field this past Tuesday and Wednesday). Despite hurting my back, one thing did make it better, and that was the most beautiful sunrise I have seen in awhile. I forgot my camera on this trip, but will say that there were some cirrus clouds streaming over the horizon and just brought out so many colors in the sunrise. Hopefully I'll remember to bring my camera whenever I head to Dedelow later in the summer. The rest of the field trip wasn't anything too special, just a repeat of Wednesday. The only thing that was aggravating was getting the par values between 1200-1650. For some reason, the PAR just jumped from below 1200, to above 1650 in about 30 minutes, leaving me no time to get those measurements (clouds were also in the area messing with the PAR). When I came back to Muncheberg from the trip, I took a nice cold shower, and ate a large meal, and relaxed! Friday was a nice and easy day at work, with not much to do. 

      I didn't do much that weekend, but I did get a chance to experience the Berlin nightlife. Right after the sun goes down, Berlin turns into a different city completely. Most days (except Friday afternoon's), you will rarely see citizens drinking on the streets. On a side note, it is completely legal to drink on the streets of Germany. When Saturday night rolled around however, probably 60-70% of the people walking on the street had a beer in their hands, and a cigarette in between their fingers. Nathan, Andrej, and myself headed to Warschauer Straße around 11pm to meet up with some of the interns who lived in Berlin, and they would show us around the city at night (night being allllllll night.). It took them a little while to meet us so we walked around for an hour and a half. It was very interesting seeing the variety of people in the streets. It was actually pretty cool how diverse the nightlife was. After some time, we met up with Javier and we walked to a Mexican bar. We all sat down and ordered a 4 Euro wheat beer. It was the best 4 Euro's I've spent on a beer here yet. It was a very mellow beer, but also had a very subtle sweetness to it that just made it fantastic! I'm definitely going to have another one while I'm here some other day. We left the bar at 2am and headed for some pizza. After the pizza, we went looking for a club to go to listen to some music and dance a little. When we couldn't find one, we all just went to another bar that had airline seats in it. At that bar, we played some Foosball with Javier's friends local to Berlin. We beat them in a close game (6-5). After that, we played two German locals who were phenomenal at Foosball, and sadly we lost 6-5. It was a blast though, and they were very nice, and it was cool that they could speak some English. By this time, it was 4am, and we were debating if we should stay the "night" at Javier's place (as it was already light outside). After walking for a little we decided to just take the first train back to Muncheberg at 5:34am. To kill some time we walked to Alexanderplatz, and saw how deserted the place was at 4:45 in the morning. It was a cool, and also eery sight. When 5:00am rolled around, we headed back to Lichtenberg to catch the train back to Muncheberg. A fun night it was.

     This past week was a pretty normal week I could say. Nothing much happened. Monday was spent sorting roots, protocolizing data, and getting preparations finished for everyone's field trips. On Tuesday and Wednesday I went to Spreewald for CO2 measurements. Spreewald, besides Dedelow, is a favorite place of mine here. I took pictures earlier this summer of the location, but it basically is a forest region. Some of the locations for the plots are rather wet, but 3 out of the 4 were dry this time. The only bad parts about the trip were: my back pain flared up again (the day I left for the trip, just when it was getting better), and the bugs. There are so many bugs at Spreewald, especially mosquitoes. The mosquitoes are quite large, I wouldn't know what to compare them too, but trust me, they're bigger than American mosquitoes! Wednesday was a quick day in the field, but a long drive back to Muncheberg. Wednesday was a quick day because were able to attain almost all the possible measurements of CO2 that were able to be attained. Later on Wednesday, I picked up a new intern from Poland who will be starting with all of us on Monday.

      This weekend was filled with adventures around Berlin. Yesterday we visited the Brandenburg Gate, German Parliament, and the Berlin HBnf (a large train station). Today we spent all day in Potsdam. I will post some pictures of out adventures the past two days and let them do the talking. (A picture is worth 1000 words correct?).

      Well, now I prepare for another week of work. Today is Independence Day in America! Here, we just call it July 4th. Like you would any other day. I miss everyone from the States! Have a safe Independence Day!!

If you click the picture thumbnail in the top left of my blog's homepage, you will be directed to an album where I am uploading all these pictures. Check them out!
  

-Wright

Adventures in the First Work Week.

Hello! Here is another update of my adventures in Germany!

So I have officially completed my first week of work at my research internship in Germany. Some parts of the week were great, and I enjoyed them very much. Others were not as much as fun (will describe later). So let me give you a run down on the week!

Monday started at the beautiful time of 9:00am. Yes, I said 9:00am. That is when I had to report for work, which couldn't have been a better time in my opinion. I get to sleep in until 8, and by that time, I am already awake to an extent. Thanks to the sun rising at 4:30 in the morning. Monday was a pretty slow day. I first started out helping others load the van for a group of interns that were going out for a few days to get methane and CO2 measurements. After that, I started to learn how to protocolize data. This involves matching the observed data that the interns wrote with the data from the loggers. When this is done, it helps Michael and the others model the trace gases as a function of soil temperature. It's quite interesting, and I cannot wait to see the results from our data later in the summer. After I was taught the ropes of protocolizing data, I attempted it on my own. I barely got half of it done by the end of the day. The reason being is that it was hard to get a pattern down to typing in the soil temperature measurements into the Excel worksheet. Excel doesn't have many keyboard shortcuts to aid in our work. So lots of it is manual clicking and dragging, and typing data in. Lunch on Monday was good as usual. They always seem to have a lot of good stuff for cheap, lunch is only around 3 euros for me everyday. After lunch, we were called to sort roots in the ZALF greenhouse (I'll get some pictures up another time). Sorting roots in my opinion is the worst part about this internship, it's very mind numbing, and I have absolutely no clue what the purpose of the experiment is. It's actually not part of Michael's work, it's an other professor's work. The aggravating thing is that some of the interns have mentioned that there is a lot easier way of measuring the biomass of the corn plants. Sorting roots seems very inaccurate, considering how many small roots there are. It seems to me that if many of these small roots are missed when we collect them, they could add up to a statistically significant difference in the biomass value. This could just be me though, I still have to take a statistics course. Overall though, they probably don't matter much, and this is just me complaining about sorting roots haha.

Tuesday was about the same as Monday. I spent all of the morning attempting to finish my first protocol. By the time lunch rolled around, I was about 75% finished. A typical lunch plan for me involves meeting up with everyone outside House 19. Most of us just call it the warehouse because it pretty much looks like one (hopefully will take pictures of sometime in the future). When we all met up together outside the warehouse, we walked to the kantine as they call it here. While on the way there, Michael told me and Kofi that we would be heading to the field on Thursday to measure methane concentrations in the dark chambers. After lunch we met with Michael, Nathan, and Andrej. (Nathan and Andrej are two interns from Canada). Along with Michael, Nathan and Andrej showed Kofi, Nogul (intern from Kazakhstan), another person who I can't remember, and myself how to operate the clear chambers. The clear chambers measure CO2 concentrations. It's a fairly simple procedure that I'll describe more in depth when I come back from a field trip where we measure CO2, and not just methane. Later on Tuesday I finished up the protocol after Michael released us.

Wednesday, besides the root sorting, was a fun day. It started out with a delicious cup of coffee courtesy of the interns. Despite how boring protocolizing data might seem, it's actually not, and I enjoy it. I don't know if it's because I like entering the data, or if I like to use it as an excuse to listen to some new music! The morning was spent starting a new protocol of data from a site called Dedelow (I think I spelled that correctly). It was nothing special. Lunch was very good, as usual. After lunch we all went to go sort roots for 3 hours before work got out at 4. You're probably wondering what made today fun? Well here it is. Every Wednesday about 10-16 people get together from ZALF and we play soccer (football), at a local park about 2km from ZALF. I was looking forward to it the whole day and couldn't wait to play. I must admit, I'm pretty awful when it comes to offense, but on defense I thought I did pretty decent. Some of the players were very good with their feet, it's crazy what they can do with a ball. I should probably mention that I scored a goal. The game was very fun all throughout. It was a tie game, 6-6, all along until Michael said that next goal wins. Five minutes later, an opposing player kicks it to our goal and our own player accidentally kicks it in, scoring an "own-goal". They win 7-6. Kofi, who was on the opposing team, would not stop giving the guy who scored the own-goal crap the next two days, it was pretty funny!

Thursday started very early, and this was because I was headed towards the field. I got up and arrived to the warehouse at 7:30. We loaded the large ZALF van and we're started our 1.5 hour drive to the field location, which was about 65km NW of Berlin. On the way there we picked up two other interns who took the train from Berlin to a location only 4km away from the site. Once we arrived at the site, we unloaded all the chambers and set them up. We put them on their respective stands on all the sites (we usually split up and did two sites at a time),  and started measuring methane concentrations by opening/closing a valve on these bottles every 20 minutes for one hour. This is about all we did and then we came back to ZALF around 4pm with all the samples. These samples will be analyzed at a later date and their contents will be recorded to develop a model on the respiration of methane from soil. It was a very cool area and there were lots of cows, hopefully I'll be smarter next time and bring my camera. ( I won't forget that tomorrow, I promise!).

I'm going to skip Friday because all I did was sort roots with some interns. We all also had a very nice dinner outside the guesthouse under the beautiful German weather. Enjoyed some beers, some more than others. I just had two, a very strong pilsner, and the other was a beer-cola mix which I have taken a liking to.

On Saturday we were supposed to go to Poland, but a good number of the interns (all but me and one other), had a little too much to drink the previous night, and they decided to sleep in a little. I woke up around 9 to start my day of relaxing! I met Nathan around 10:30 and we started the process of putting Windows 7 on my laptop, which I am fully enjoying now. After getting all that settled, and hanging out with everyone, I retired to my room early to get back in touch with Miranda, whom I miss so much!!

Today was a good day I would say. I went bowling this morning to keep the muscle memory going strong through the summer. I did fairly well, averaging 194 (Would have been higher if I didn't leave 4 pocket 7-10 splits!). After the bowling alley, I made my way towards Alexanderplatz to take some of the beautiful scenery that is the Berlin City-Center. There was a very cool Lego exhibit on one of the displays in Alexanderplatz, there was some crazy creations. I also found a Dunkin Donuts which I will be visiting fairly often now! Click the slideshow on the top left of my blog's home page to view photo's from my trip, and all other photos. After enjoying the donuts, I headed back towards Müncheberg to hang out with the other interns before settling down for the night.

Tomorrow, I'm headed back out towards the field again. I'm excited on one end to be going to the field, but not excited on the weather end of the spectrum. It's supposed to be a little rainy and cloudy, but it won't be all bad. As long as I can stay dry and warm, it will be all good. I'll remember to bring my camera, I promise! I'll try to update at least twice a week from now on out!

Sorry if there is some grammar/punctuation, mistakes. I wrote this fairly quick and I need to be up early tomorrow (It's 12:00am here now). 

Thanks for reading, shoot me an email if you have any questions! wrightdobbs@gmail.com

-Wright

Internship Starts Tomorrow!

Hallo!! Guten Tag! It's been a few days since I have updated my blog, I have been running around the big city of Berlin a lot this weekend. Here's what's been going on the past 3 days since I last updated my blog.

On Friday, I woke up around 7:30 and walked down to one of the buildings here at ZALF where all the chambers are stored, and I helped unload the chambers from the truck with Kofi. Late Thursday, the interns came back from the fields where the research is conducted. They saved most of the unloading for me and Kofi ;-) (just kidding). Here is a random fact about my morning's: it is very easy to get up and get going. The sun rises just after 4:30 here, and by 5:15-5:30, the sun is already shinning through my window, and onto my face. This makes sleeping in a difficult task (it still is possible here though!). After me and Kofi finished unloading all the chambers, we met Mathias. Mathias showed us what we'll be doing when we get back from the field. This involved very heavy (20-30 pound) machines called "loggers." These loggers measure the CO2 concentrations in the chambers every 20 seconds or so I believe. Mathias showed us how to upload the data from the loggers onto a laptop, and then from the laptop to ZALF's servers. I then met Andrej and Nathan. Two environmental science students who just finished their junior year of school at the University of Calgary. The plan for us was to go to Berlin and buy my rail ticket (the quickest and cheapest way to go back and forth to Berlin from Muncheberg), and set up my bank account so I could receive my stipend from ZALF, and DAAD. My rail ticket wasn't cheap at all, but it's worth it. My train ticket to get to Berlin cost me 7.80 euros, that is if you include the bus that took us from ZALF to the train station. This fare is only a one way pass, and when compared to my 90.00 euro monthly pass, you can easily see which is the better deal. So we went to Berlin and bought my rail ticket, and set up my bank account. We also did some sight seeing in Berlin. I just want to say that Berlin from far away doesn't look like a big city. It doesn't have a lot of tall buildings so it's very deceiving. Once you get to the city center and see how large Alexanderplatz is, your perceptions instantly change. I cannot wait to explore more of Berlin later this summer during my weekends off! After setting everything up, we got lunch at a hamburger place south of the city center, and I had a delicious hamburger! After lunch we made our way back towards Muncheberg, as it was late afternoon and we were all tired from walking around the city all day.

The next three days I did not do very much, and used them to explore things I could do in my free time here. Saturday I checked out a bowling alley on the southern side of the city. It was called East-side Bowling, and it looked like a promising spot for me to get in some practice for the off-season. After looking at their prices, (the cheapest was 13 Euro, an hour) I decided to look elsewhere. I must admit though, it was a very cool bowling alley, it was a 20 lane center that was on the 6th floor of an 8-story building. When I was through with that, I rode the Underground to a beer store to buy some alcoholic cider (believe it or not, that's how the original cider was made). I bought two bottles for 8 euros, but when I drank them on Saturday and Sunday, they were definitely worth the price. On Sunday, I woke up around 9 am to go to try my luck at an old brunswick bowling alley in north-east Berlin. On their website they offered a special on Sunday's for 1 euro a game. To my luck, they did offer games at 1 euro per game and I bowled 5 games. Averaging 205.8! :). See picture on left for the bowling alley.

As for today, we had a holiday and I took this day to sleep in until 10am! I didn't do all that much today, just checked some e-mails and chatted with friends. I watched a lot of South Park which thankfully is available in Germany! Tomorrow I will be starting work at my internship, I don't know what's in store, but I'm guessing I'll still be learning the ropes a little more tomorrow so it won't be too difficult! I'll try to get an update in tomorrow.

Auf Wiedersen (I think I spelled that correctly)!!
-Wright

Well, I'm here in Germany!

Well, it's crazy but I'm here in Germany! After a pretty long day of flying, I arrived in Berlin yesterday at 8:15am local time. Although the flight was very long and exhausting (only got about 3 hours worth of sleep, and that is an overestimate), I felt great! We got off the flight by a truck that had stairs built onto it, and from the stairs, we then proceeded to a bus which drove us to the terminal. After I arrived to the terminal, I had to go through customs. Customs was extremely nerve racking because before I left Miami, the Airberlin employee warned me that Germany might not let me into their country because I hadn't booked my return flight yet. All along on the trip over I was stressing that I would be denied entrance into the country. To my relief though, the customs official did not ask to see my return ticket and he picked up his stamp and stamped my passport. Here I come Germany!

After entering the country, I got my luggage and walked out of the terminal to meet Michael (my supervisor for my internship). We then walked to his car and then proceeded towards Müncheberg. Riding along while on the Autobahn was an interesting experience. As you may already know, there is usually no speed limit on the Autobahn. Some people were flying down the highway at speeds most likely well in excess of 110mph. Most of the time, we were going around 90-95mph. It was pretty cool when Michael picked up some speed on a section of the road and we were going almost 110mph! Definitely want to do that on my own sometime. When we got to Müncheberg, Michael showed me around ZALF which stands for: Leibniz-Zentrums für Agrarlandschaftsforschung. I haven't taken any pictures of ZALF, but it's a pretty cool place. There are many buildings that research is conducted in,  and in each of these buildings there is a lot of analyzation equipment. Later on in the internship, I will be using the gas sample analyzer. I'll explain what it does in a later blog. After I was shown the property at ZALF, I got lunch at the cafeteria with Michael, Zachary (a student with a PhD working at ZALF), and Kofi (graduate student from Ghana). I had a weird kind of scrambled eggs and potatoes. The eggs weren't really what we think of as scrambled, they were more like hard-boiled eggs that were chopped up and put into a sauce.

After lunch, I was given a quick safety briefing of the area by someone at ZALF. Then I completed some paperwork with Michael and Kofi, and after that, we were released for the day. When released I went to go check-in to where I am staying: The ZALF Guesthouse. It's a very nice single room apartment with a separate bathroom. Not a bad deal considering that when all said and done, the rent with everything included will be a little under 200 Euros. When I was all settled in, I walked to the grocery store to get a little food. This was an interesting experience as all my selections were made by looks because I couldn't decipher a single word of German! I'll remember my dictionary next time. The side effects of just going on looks led to me buying much more coffee than I needed. When I thought I was buying coffee creamer, I bought instant coffee instead. Next time I will remember my dictionary for sure. After I came back from the market, I unloaded all my food and got ready for bed as I had to be up at 5:30am this morning.

This morning I woke up at 5:30 and had some instant coffee to get going. At 6:25 I meet up with Kofi outside the guesthouse to walk to the bus stop. From the bus stop, the bus would take us to the train so we could meet Michael. We got on the train just before 7 and arrived in Lichtenburg to meet Michael who would take us to the field site we we're going to today. The train ride was fast, and the high amount of people who took public transportation from such a small city was great to see. It makes me wish that public transportation was promoted more in the States. From Lichtenberg, we drove about 90 kilometeres south to a state run forest. On the way there we stopped at a market called LIDL to get some lunch and drinks. They just happened to have a bakery there and they made donuts. With myself having the nickname Donut Dobbs, I had to grab some donuts. I got three donuts at the bakery and then went next door to buy some water. Some of the containers they sell water in are a lot different compared to the States. They sell water in a very tall and slender 1.5 liter bottle. When we finished taking care of everything in the grocery store, we headed to the forest to help some soil scientists with their research from the University of Berlin. We didn't really do much today out in the field, but Michael did walk us around the 4 sites established at this location. He showed us the places where the chambers to measure the trace gas emissions were placed. He also showed us a very cool 50m structure in the middle of the forest. The structure, which costs a little more than 500,000 Euros is used to analyze CO2 concentrations 10 times a sec above the forest canopy (that's a lot of data!). The structure also measures temperature at the surface and the top of the tower, albedo, incoming solar radiation, and the solar radiation under the canopy. Michael said this structure will be used in combination with all the results found here to observe patterns in CO2 emissions form the forest. One cool fact about this experiment going on here is that not only are CO2 emissions being analyzed, many other research projects are going on here in close coordination with Michael's. This project has only been in existence for 4-6 years, but the data they are collecting will hopefully reveal many new discoveries! I am glad to be a part of this! If you want to learn more about what we're doing check out this Powerpoint.

Tomorrow I'm headed back to Berlin with Nathan (one of the interns), to get my bank account set up and buy my rail pass (so much cheaper than buying individual tickets). I get a three day weekend this week! It's a national holiday on Monday!

There are so many details that are left out in this blog, and I will try to include as many as I can, and as many as time will let me type! Sorry for any spelling/grammatical errors in this blog. I had to write this pretty quick! ENJOY!!!

-Wright

Four Days and Counting!

Hello again! Well it is getting very close to that day that I've been looking forward to ever since early March! I have yet to do any packing, as I've been spending most of my time enjoying my last few days in the States. Tomorrow I'm going to start getting ready for real. I'm going to head to Target and other stores tomorrow and Saturday to get important things like: a power converter (they don't use 120V outlets and Europe, and my electronics will all get fried over there), a few more clothes, and all the necessary preparations for the trip. I also need to finish up some last minute paperwork and copy important documents that I'll need just in case I lose them.

One of my favorite, but sometimes not my favorite, parts about preparing for this trip has been navigating the Berlin public transportation system. The trains that run daily in Berlin have been in existence since 1924, and continue to run flawlessly today. Lucky for me, I will have the luxury of navigating this complex system of rails. For most of the day, I have been trying to determine how I'm going to get to.....ah wait! I just found a ride guide that's very nicely laid out! Well it's good news that I shouldn't be getting lost here, I hope. Here's the ride guide. When I leave on Tuesday, I will land in Tegal Airport Wednesday morning and will take a bus to the main subway lines, and then I will take a train to a station called Litchenburg where I will board a train that goes to my final destination in Müncheberg. This shouldn't be too difficult, but because I lack any experience in German, it adds an interesting dynamic.

In case you're wondering, this is where I will be staying the first two weeks or so before I can hopefully move into Berlin. 

In other news, I'm going to the Florida Aquarium in Tampa on Monday with Miranda (my girlfriend), just before I leave the U.S. It's a very awesome place indeed, you should check it out one day!

I'll try to have an update on Tuesday when I'm sitting in the Orlando airport waiting for my flight. Otherwise, my next update will be from Germany Wednesday morning!!!!

Stay safe!

-Wright