New clothes, ADSL, first impressions in Hannover and 220KM/h+ on the Autobahn

Bremen, Germany

12th October 2002

This week I went and put â?¬432 down on a new 3-piece suit and a nice long wool winter coat. My phone still isn"t working after Deutsch Telekom forgot to mail out 2 vital devices for our ISDN Phone / ADSL Internet. I should have internet on Monday and god knows when I"ll have a phone. On the bright side, when I do get a phone I can send and receive text messages from it.

On Thursday, Anja and I headed down to Hannover so I could get a feel for the town. It has a large shopping area in the center surrounding the trainstation and COMbridge is only about a 20 minute walk away but there was a cold feeling throughout the city. This is probably why Germany has a cold reputation to most outsiders that don"t get the opertunity to integrate.

On friday I received the word that the German Government issued me with a Residence and Work Permit. I was so glad to hear the information. When I initially applied for the permits in Germany they told me I would have to go back to Canada to get them.

Friday afternoon, Anja, My Boss and his wife and I drove up to Schafflund together. There was a huge traffic jam as we headed into the Elbtunnel. When we got closer to Schafflund the traffic cleared up and we were able to get upto 220KM/h+. It was amazing seeing everything fly by at that speed. We were on a road with grass and trees surrounding us and it was raining down pretty hard, so all of that added to the excitment. I guess it"s pretty normal for them since they didn"t seem to blink twice.

As well, I got my new laptop this weekend. It"s 1600MHz, 256MB RAM, 20GB HDD, Network Card, 56K Modem, 14.4" TFT Screen, GeForce 4 Video Card and the German Version of Windows 2K & XP. I got all my development software pre-loaded as well. It"s going to take some time to get used to using Visual C++ in German.

Friday night was my bosses birthday. It was held at one of Anja"s Parent"s Restaurants. It was mostly family there.

This Morning, Levke came by for a while to chat. Afterword I worked on the presentation for some software I"m writting and took it to my bosses to show him. They later discussed the posibility of going on a skiing trip for 2 weeks in Sweden this winter. Tonight Anja and I are going to a birthday party for one of her friends.

This week I"m going to be working on my software project so that I can display it at the company get together on friday. I think most of my co-workers speak English so I should be able to give the presentation with out any issues.