Storytime

This entry is perhaps a bit disjointed, but I thought I would share a small collection of anecdotes that I experienced this week. I suppose they are not particularly exciting, but they stood out to me as situations that I would likely not have experienced if I was at home. To me, that probably means that they are, in some way, important. I hope I don't put you to sleep!

Trust the Crazy Canadian
I was learning how to perform a particular assay at work, and my supervisor asked me to do some calculations for her that she needed in order to begin. These calculations were extremely important, and if I screwed them up, her experiment would be ruined. I was so nervous because it was one of the first times I actually got to contribute to a project - I wanted to get it right, even if math isn't my forte! I did the calculations, and after nervously examining my answers to see if they made sense, I finally just gave them to her to check over. But she didn't check them! She said thanks, and then immediately began withdrawing the amount of medium I said she would need. WOW! Honestly, if I was supervising an inexperienced intern from a foreign country, there's no way I would put that much faith in them without at least giving them a test run first! One of the things we learned at orientation was that when a German asks you to do something and you agree, they assume that you will do it and that you will do it properly. My first day in the lab, and already that point was driven home! I was flattered, but I'm fairly certain that I didn't have any reason to be.

Please Don't Make Me Choose
At lunch our department has 2 tables, so I end up sitting with the same bunch of colleagues every day. However, there was one guy that was on holiday last week, so I didn't meet him until this week. We sat down at the table, he noticed me, and we started to talk. He quickly realized I'm not German, and started speaking English.
"So are you American?" he asked me.
"No, actually I'm Canadian."
"Oh, that's better!"

Uhhhhh....awkward. How am I supposed to reply to that?? While I had a hunch that this type of conversation might come up, I had no idea it would appear so...bluntly. On one hand, I'm a fairly patriotic Canadian, but on the other hand, I've been living mostly in the US for 3 years, and it has been a great 3 years! I can't possibly say that one country is better than the other, because both have offered me brilliant friends, experiences, and opportunities (like this one!).

So how did I deal with this situation? I laughed and then changed the subject back to my colleague and Germany. Phew.

Unsatisfactory Service
I was sitting on the train home from work, waiting for it to leave the station, when an elderly couple came over to one of the train doors. The man got on but the woman didn't, and then they started arguing. Listening closely, I first noticed that they were speaking French, and that they were in fact not arguing. They were complaining. Specifically, about the size of the gap between the platform and the train. "Et avec une valise? Impossible!" While I realize that it might be slightly more difficult to jump a gap for an elderly person with a cane, I need to clarify something. This gap was maybe 8 centimetres across. We are not talking about a massive crevise where, when unsuccessful at stepping or hopping over, one might fall. The train was 20 minutes late, and they were complaining about a little gap. Fascinating.




RANDOM GERMAN FACT: Germany's post popular tourist attraction is most likely Cologne's Cathedral, which I included a picture of in a previous post. This cathedral is approximately 157m tall, and took over 632 years to build! If you ever visit, I highly recommend climbing to the top - although it requires you to climb up over 500 stairs and is unfortunately badly graffitied, the view is definitely worth it.