Sleepless in Stuttgart

Hello All!

It's been awhile! I'm a couple weeks behind on my updates so hopefully
I remember all the important details.

July 14-17, 2005

This weekend there was a student meeting in Heidelberg for all the
Americans and Canadians that are part of the Research and Internships
in Science and Engineering Program (RISE). I went to work Thursday
morning and in the afternoon left with Shawn (since he is in the same
program as me) to take a train to the meeting. Once in Heidelberg we
almost immediately met up with other students…..there were about 90
students and we were all put up at a very nice youth hostel. The DAAD
(German Academic exchange program), who runs the RISE program and
provides the students with the stipend, organized and paid for the
entire weekend. At the giant Hostel we met other students got settled
in our rooms and then listened to a few presentations. There was a
short presentation about the DAAD and the weekend activities and of
course we were served cake and dinner. We were also told about
studying opportunities in Germany. There is this one Masters program
that seems ideal.....multiple universities from different EU countries
got together and developed a masters program . This collaboration
means that I could potentially study in 3 different countries in order
to get my masters degree. And the DAAD has scholarship money available
for the program.

That night we went downtown for a little ......we found a jazz club
that seemed to be in an
old wine cellar but sadly there was no live music.

There were actually 2 other people in the RISE program from my school, Carleton
University.  One of the girls, Theresa, was actually in engineering in
the same year as
me, and in the co-op program but I had never met her before....she
didn't even look
familiar.....but now when I go back to school in September I'll have
to meet up with Theresa.

Early the next morning we were divided into groups and were driven to
different German companies to learn a little more about job
opportunities in Germany. Since I'm an engineer, I was sent to Daimler
Crystler. I wasn't too excited about this since one of the other
groups was going to BASF, a chemical company that does some work with
wastewater. Also I had to go by bus all the way back to Stuttgart.
There was no possibility of going to another company because the exact
names of the visitors were needed weeks in advance for security
reasons.

Anyways it didn't end up being so bad as there was a presentation
concerning Daimler Crystlers' commitment to the environment. As well
we got to go to the Mercedes Benz museum and got a tour of a car motor
assembly plant. Emil, I'm sure you would have enjoyed it.

That night there was a dinner at a downtown restaurant where we had
some real German food and German beer……. this meal was courtesy of
German tax payers ;) (DAAD is government funded).

The next day there were some more presentations and then we were taken
on a walking tour of Heidelberg. I had already had a pretty complete
tour from my cousin Mike and his girlfriend Nadine a few weeks earlier
but I did learn a few new things. At one point a few of us strayed
from the tour in order to enjoy the warm sun and our packed lunches.
After the goodbyes I and a few other people walked the philosopher
path. We headed back to Stuttgart around 4.

On Saturday night I went with a couple friends downtown  Stuttgart. We
didn't get back
till 3am and I had to get up at 5 the next morning in order to catch
the train to
EuropaPark (an amusement park near Freiburg). I had arranged to meet
David, the boys, my German cousin Ariane and her boyfriend Marcus at
9:30 at the park. We had a lot of fun and one roller coaster really
knocked my socks off......it had one of the biggest drops I've ever
been on but no loops. It was weird that I ended up seeing David and
his boys more in Germany than I would have if we were both back home.

As you can imagine I didn't get much sleep during the students meeting
in Heidelberg since we had such a busy schedule and I only had a
couple days to learn about all the other students' experiences. And
then on top of that I ended up taking advantage of the opportunity to
see my cousin (et al) one last time in Europa park. After my busy
weekend I was able to make it to bed before midnight and naturally
slept like a baby.

Gruß,

Steph