I spent three Months in Koeln, Germany for my ISU placement. My project
was Advanced Integrated Life Support Systems fot the Moon and Mars
Using Natural Resources.
21 February 2000
I made it to Köln OK. Merdahd met me at the train station, and
everything's good at my apartment. Dr. Reichart is not here until
Wednesday or Thursday, but he left some things for me to read & said
to check the Internet for corresponding publications & activities. I
have already started reading. Tomarrow I will go to the foreign office
to get the residence permit.
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3 März 2000
Sorry it's been a while. There was a bit of a problem getting my
computer here at the DLR connected to the Internet. I've also been
realy busy on my project. I found the church okay last Sunday, and am
all settled in here. Yesterday was Weiberfastnacht- the women's day.
If I understand correctly, It's the first day of Carnival. This is a
really huge celebration, and people dress up in costumes and have a
lot of fun. There's a big parade on Monday, which everybody has off,
although I've been told that most of the public services things are
closed since yesterday.
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15 März 2000
Well, the parade was great. I went with a bunch of kids from church,
and we had a lot of fun. There was a Young Single Adult conference here
this wekend, and so there were a lot of kids from other cities. In the
evening there was a dance, wich was also pretty fun. Since then I've
been working really hard on my project, and I have discovered it's a
lot easier to have adventures when in school than when working somewhere.
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17 März 2000
Yesterday was a superlative day. The planetary
Exploration section here at DLR went up to the mag-lev
train north of here for a "field trip." Because the
ride on the mag-lev train was so short (once around
the track), we had planned for several other
activities as well. We saw the largest plow in the
world (at a moor museum, used to dig up peat), the
oldest Germans (well, not really, just some rocks
piled for a gravesite or something around 3000-1500
BC), the fastest train in the world (the mag-lev @ 350
kph), and the largest shipbuilding building in the
world (Meyer Werft, in Papenburg).
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27 März 2000
Daylight Savings Time is started. Yeah! On Friday I got a letter from
the train station Fundburo (lost & found). They found my keys, but I
had to pay 30 Marks to get them back. So this morning I stopped by the
bank to take care of that, & afterwards decided to walk to work. Well,
I got about a block, and a car stopped alongside me and the person in
the car asked if I knew how to get to DLR. Well, naturally I do, so I
said that if they had room, I could show them, not just tell them,
because that's where I was going. I make good decisions sometimes.
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2 April 2000
Placement is now halfway through. And I had really better get to work
- last week I had writer's block for most of the week. It's really
frustrating to just stare at the screen all day and read the references
over and over, but not be able to write anything that makes sense.
This weekend was General Conference, which I always enjoy. It was neat
to see the new building, and funny too see people taking pitures of it
afterwards! My favorite part of Conference is, of course, listening to
the prophet. I am so glad he spoke during the Sunday 'morning' session,
'cause the one problem with being in Europe is that the afternoon
sessions are in the middle of the night.
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14 April 2000
This Tuesday there was a "Mars Event" at one of the Gymnasiums nearby.
Robert Zubrin (head of the Mars Society) was there. I was a little
skeptical about how good of a speaker he would be at first, but once
he got going, he gave a very good presentation. Lots of jokes, and
some that most of the audience totally missed (ie. Shanon Lucid was OK
after 6 months in space 'cause she actually did the exercises,
but since we will probably have to send men to Mars, it will
still be useful to have artificial gravity in the spaceship).
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27 April 2000
One of the girls from church had a video/slumber party on Tuesday. I went to it, but didn't know that the
people I got a ride with were planning to stay all night. But I'm glad I did, because ot was a lot of fun. The
girl who was hosting it said that you could see the bay from her porch at night, so once it got dark, we
went outside to look. Unfortunately, we couldn't figure out where it was (the trees must have been in the
way). Which reminds me, everything is incredibly GREEN around here. And while I was outside, i tipped
my head back to look at the stars, and directly above me was the Big Dipper. Now, I knew intellectually
that I am a lot further north than I've ever been before, but nothing quite makes it real like that. I wonder,
if I had ever been in the country at night while I was in Scotland, would the Big Dipper have been South
and Polaris straight up? Probably not quite, but I'll have to check it out.
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2 Mai 2000
Only two weeks left of Placement. And I still haven't really seen Koln.
But I have made arrangements to do soon my last day here. I just hope I
am not rushing to get things finished at the last minute. May Day in
Germany is an official holiday, and since we got both the Friday before
and the Monday after off for Easter, I have gotten behind. I did take
the opportunity this weekend to make webpages for my
mother and
grandmother. I hope they like them.
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5 Mai 2000
Today the astronauts from the mapping mission (SRTM) a couple of months ago were
here at DLR. And several busloads of teenagers came to hear them speak.
the result was horrendously long lines for lunch. as I was on my way to
lunch, one bus was just unloading, and since I knew I didn't want to wait
forever to eat, I started running, and managed to get ahead of all these
kids before they got into the building. I also got into an argument with
another grad student over who the commander of the mission was. I thought
that was the mission that Eileen Collins commanded, but I was wrong. The
commander was Kevin Kregel, & Com. Collins' mission included deployment
of the Chandra X-Ray Observatory.
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9 Mai 2000
There was a young adult conference in Dusseldorf this weekend. It started on Friday
with the Maitanz (May Dance), then on Saturday there were workshops on Isaih 49,
the Geography of the Book of Mormon, and Living with Change (I think that's what it
said). In the evening there was a choir practice, and afterwards, a bunch of us
caravaned to one girl's apartment and watched "Notting Hill". On Sunday we sang the songs we'd learned the night before as
the prelude before Sacrament Meeting (which I think is called Gottesdienst, it's taken me 3 months to figure that out!). It was a
lot of fun, even though I was struggling most of the time to understand.
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17 Mai 2000
Since placement was done last Friday, and I didn't have to be back in
France before the 21st, I took the opportunity to do some
sightseeing. On Monday I want to Bonn and saw the University, walked
along the Rhine (finally!), and went to the Bethoven house. That
last was for my mom, although she will probably go herself when she comes
to get my brother in less than a month! The best part about it was that
the Bonn open market (farmer's market) is on Mondays, so I was able to get
some fresh fruit for lunch. The main bridge in Bonn is called the
Kennedy Bridge, for JFK whou visited there once. It was still fairly early
in the afternoon when I finished this, so instead of going back to my apartment,
I went into Koeln and went up the top of the Dom (Cathedral). It is a
really long climb, and I was almost out of water when I started it. By the
time I finished, I was out of water, but none of the people I passed
either going up or coming down had brought any water. On Tuesday I went to
the Neanderthal Museum. It was pretty cool, and had displays on Religion and
Myth and Nature and the Environment, besides just stuff about early
hominids and Neanderthal Man. I think, though, that I spent at least as
much time on trains as seeing anything these last two days. And that's
the end for now of my Adventures in Germany; I made it safely back to
Strasbourg this afternoon.
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11 June 2000
This was my Mom's birthday - it was really cool to be able to spend it with
her. I didn't get her a present though. :( But I figure that since she was in
Germany, that I was able to be there was pretty special. When I came to Europe,
I didn't expect to be able to be with any of my family on any special
days for an entire year. We went to church at a brand new building. My brother
Scott knew a lot of the people because this was his first area. He had been there
on his birthday & had given candy to all the youth for his birthday. So my Mom
wanted to do something similar, but different. She is the Young Women's (Junge
Damen in German) leader at home, and got all the girls to provide a picture and
write something to the girls in Annaberg-Buckholtz. Unfortunately, that weekend
also happened to be their camp weekend, so no one was there. She left it with
the one leader who happened to be there, instead. I wonder if anything has come
of it. Several of the Las Vegas girls included their addresses.
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©2000
Laura Swift
Created 2 May 2000
Last updated 27 June 2000
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