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