Things I am learning in Germany (in no particular order)

1) I _think_ the German word for "a quarter of a loaf of bread" is "vittel" - I learned it at the bakery, but unfortunately I have a terrible memory for words when I don't see them in writing - in fact the only way for me to really memorize them without seeing them in writing is to imagine the written word over and over in my head. Anyway, after learning this word I tried to verify it online, but cannot find a single instance of it. I shall have to verify it again, but I'm reticent to do so since the woman at the bakery terrifies me - she's large and menacing and has no patience for the local village idiot foreigner.
2) Just like it's not the heat, it's the humidity, it's not the cold - it's the humidity. It's been slightly above freezing here with about 90% humidity, and man is it cold - it's a horrible, pentrating cold that you can't seem to keep out.
3) IP phones ROCK! I have an IP phone that's tied into 30 Rock, so it's like I have a 30 Rock number - I can just dial extensions to talk to folks in 30 Rock, plus I can call the U.S., people can call my 212 number, and (most importantly) I can call 1-800 numbers, which comes up a lot more often than you might think (like, for example, conference calls). I'm going to see if it works in my office here, but I doubt it will, which means I'll have to find another solution for conference calling. You would think that GE would have international conference numbers, but whatever...
4) I missed Clau a lot - at one point she was offered a six-month assignment, and we even considered it, which seems foolish now.
5) Moving to a foreign country is a lot different from visiting it. For example, even though as a tourist you get the idea that everybody speaks English, you find out that it just isn't so when you move here (although thankfully everyone in my office speaks English). Also, things that go wrong in normal life can be a lot more exasperating than things that go wrong when on vacation; what might end up as a fun story from visiting a place ends up being an exasperating experience when you live there.

As an example of #5, Claudia tripped while walking up the stairs to the apartment last night and banged her knee up pretty bad. We thought it would be better by morning, but it was even worse and she was in a lot of pain. I went to the pharmacy in search of some Arnica or Ben-Gay, and it was a pretty frustrating experience. I ended up getting an ointment, but of course it didn't help right away, and she was in no shape to go to work. She called her boss, who told her she should go to the nearby clinic and get the knee checked out. We don't have insurance (yet), and we decided that even though we would have to pay for everything out of pocket, we should still go. Needless to say, going to the urgent care was an adventure, and everybody there was very nice (although there were a lot of folks who didn't speak English). She got X-rays and had an intern check out her leg, who thought it was OK, but wanted to have the chief of medicine look at it just to be sure. We waited for a good hour for the chief, but it was almost worth it; he had a giant flock of students around him watching his every move. I'm guessing that Claudia's condition was an interesting case for them, and they all wanted to see how the boss would determine if there was anything seriously wrong with her knee, or if it was just banged up. He poked at her, made her do a couple of things and kept asking "does that hurt?", to which most times the answer was "no, not especially". Finally, he finished it by saying to his interns (as best I could gather) "if she can do this, this and this, then she's OK and it's just a very bad hit, which will heal over time." He then grabbed her knee and pressed on it to emphasize his point - Claudia screamed "WOW! THAT HURTS!", to which he replied "Yes, I know." Afterwards, he left with his entourage minus the intern who had treated Clau, who then wrapped up her leg in a bandage to immobilize it and told her to keep it on for a day or two.
The point of this story is not to demostrate what a dick the chief was (because he actually was rather nice, although obviously busy), but really what good care Claudia received. And, for those who are curious, the total bill including the X-rays was about 100 Euros. And, to further emphasize the difference in culture, when we first got to the clinic we discovered that Claudia's boss had called the clinic ahead of time to describe what had happened and to let them know that a foreigner would be coming to see them. After we got back home, Claudia called her boss, who told her to take the day off tomorrow to ensure that the leg would heal. That's definitely different from New York!
I'll write about my new office in another post, but suffice it to say it's pretty neat - everyone there is generally a bit younger and relatively relaxed. I found out that I get meal vouchers for lunch (which apparantly is normal, either that or else places will have a subsidized cafeteria) and I actually got a real office, and it's very swanky (I'll post pictures when I get a chance). The office is temporary, though - I'll be moving soon enough, although hopefully I can convince them I'm important enough to warrant a similarly swanky location after we're all done moving around.

--Nate