The first weeks

I would like to apologize to all the people who are reading my blog for not updating it for a while. As you can imagine the first couple of week kept me pretty busy. Well, a couple of weeks ago I arrived at my university in Tuscaloosa. Two things struck me immediately within the first couple hours. A: the southern hospitality (everybody is so friendly over here), which is sort of confusing when you used to live in Berlin where people yell at you for no specific reason. B: people are addicted to air condition. Indeed the weather in Alabama is something to get used to. Just imagine a Finish infusion sauna which has the size of Germany and you get the idea. So much for the weather in Alabama.

The biggest thing around here of course is the football team. The Crimson Tide are #2 in the nation and pretty much everything in Tuscaloosa revolves around the football team. This however, is not something that is entirely new to me since I went to High School in Green Bay where we have pretty much the same deal with the Packers.

I had sort of a bumpy start at the University because all the classes I intended to take were already full and the international office didn’t really make an effort to help me out. After taking to each of the professors I finally got into the classes that I had planned to take. The orientation days were, as expected, pretty boring. However, I’m glad that I’ve moved into the German House on campus. Not only did I have immediate contact to a bunch of people, it is also probably the most liberal place in Tuscaloosa County, in which by the way it is prohibited to by beer on Sunday’s.


Well, I guess we’ll find out pretty soon to how many more things I’ll have to get used to.

Best,

Eike

Think Big

If there is one thing that is typical for America it is definitely the fact that everything is big and that some things are even bigger. The country is big, the cars are big, and most of the people are even bigger. Although German citizens were recently rated number one in Europe’s obesity ranking, there is no way that we will beat the USA which is ranked number one in the world.

While still in NJ my friend Chris was kind enough to show me a grocery store which might be normal for American standards but definitely falls into the category “ridicules” from a European perspective.



But decide for yourself.