More Odds and Ends

So here's some more random little pieces for you.


Uni Paderborn does not have any school colors or an official team mascot. Dr. Tiemann did remember that occasionally a rhino is used on school pamphlets on the like, but maybe 1 of every 200 students knows this. I was like, what do you mean you have no school colors?? I can understand no mascot (sort of), but you have got to have a color scheme. Nope. What do your teams wear? No teams. Germany (and really the rest of Europe too) do not have collegiate sports. They have club teams and intramurals and the like, but no official school teams. Very different system.

Windows here open in two directions. Turn the handle sideways and it swings open like a cabinet door. Turn the handle up and it leans in from the top, to form an opening of about 3 in. Turn the handle down and it locks in place.

Everything shuts down on sundays. I complained about this when I was in France, I'm complaining about it here, and I will probably complain about it somewhere else. I'm sorry, but it's not like they're all in church all day or something. The least you could do is have the grocery open for reduced hours so I can go get fresh bread. Geez. Also, the whole town shuts down at about 6. Literally every thing is closed except the movie theater and there is no one around.

It stays light here until like 10:30 and the sun rises at like 5 am. I've never thought about it before, but people talk about "the dark Georgia night" as just so encompassing. I guess if you're used to this, the southern US would seem to have a very deep shade of night.

I've tried a few sodas over here. Mezzomix is pretty good. I'm not sure if I've only been getting the orange flavor (like Cherry Coke) or if that's what Mezzomix is: a coke-like soda with some orange flavoring. I was also in the grocery store and saw "The Spirit of Georgia: Traditional Refreshment". (It also clearly says "Made in Germany"). It comes in two flavors, Blood Orange, and Peach-Lime. I felt compelled as a person actually from Georgia to try both and test the validity of their claims. Neither would I call a "traditional refreshment", at least not traditional to Georgia, but that said both were pretty decent. The Peach-Lime is better than the Blood Orange.

Universities in Germany are almost never campuses. They're usually a conglomeration of different buildings around a city or an area. Steffi tells me that where she did her undergrad, the science buildings were located a full 30 minutes away from the university offices. Uni Paderborn is apparently very much a special case in that it is a campus university. However, it is still not  a residential campus the way you see in the US. In the US, most college students live in on-campus housing of some kind, with the rest in nearby off-campus housing, and commuter students being the minority. At Paderborn, they do have 2 campus "dorms" (loosely defined here), but the vast majority of students live around the city or commute from home. Two of the guys I work with come from small towns about 20-30 minutes away so they just live at home and commute. This accounts for the fact that the mensa only serves lunch and even the snack bar is closed by 4.