We have now been here for one week. The work has been busy, lots of people to meet, the usual computer problems, etc. Most people, including us, are preparing for next week's annual meeting of the German Astronomical Society which is being held here in Bochum. We've had one seminar about galaxy jets, one lovely invitation for dinner at the home of Ralf-Juergen (in red) and his wife Marlies with their friend Tom (who was also the jet speaker)...
...one accidental deletion of Richard's powerpoint talk causing him to do it all over again, a loan of two fantastic bicycles from Ralf-Juergen and Marlies which will be well used and loved, and one TV put into the apartment with no English channels. Regarding the latter, we have learned how to pull up the closed captioning so that we can read the German as it is spoken. This allows us to catch some more words. We've also discovered google translator which is fantastic. The computer-generated spoken English words sound like Stephen Hawking, so as we listen to the computer-generated spoken German words, you can imagine how well we are learning spoken German and how well we will be understood.
But back to the shopping, Judith had accumulated a list of items that were needed for the apartment, including towels. Not that there were no towels, it's just that they were, well, icky. So off we went to the mall which was about 8 km away.
You can see it here in the background with the white peaked tent-like roof. All parking spaces are numbered. Everything is on a single level except for the interior of some of the larger stores.
We started out with coffee which was much fancier than it was efficient. After asking for the check twice and being basically ignored, we finally put down some money and left. We think that our purchase wasn't big enough to warrant service -- however, the coffee does look pretty good doesn't it?
Even the food park is fancier than what we're used to.
The long and the short of this experience is that only a single item from Judith's 'stuff-list' got purchased. There was *nothing else*. Why? Because the entire mall, which was pretty large, was devoted to clothing, which includes shoes and the ubiquitous restaurants. Not a towel to be found. Here is a nice little rack of cute traditional German dresses.
So we departed, somewhat disappointed, when en-route home, we came across a small area with some stores that looked more promising. The Bauhaus here is a slightly smaller version of Home Depot and several other useful stores were present. Almost everything on the 'stuff-list' got purchased in this area, including the towels.
Across the street is an American 1950's style diner where we had lunch. The food was good but, frankly, the Europeans just don't 'get' hamburgers -- even if they are from Hamburg. They insist on serving the meat medium rare, while everyone knows that hamburgers must be well-done.
Tonight, finally, we had a modest dinner and finished the Italian wine, truly bringing the Italian job -- and today's blog post -- to an end.
Oh my, how terrible!!! Richard's powerpoint) Hope it wasn't too much work to put together again... Fun update :) Wow, I never had medium rare burgers. Coming to think of it, I haven't had much burgers in Europe, except for the chains (which are identical everywhere). Have fun with the meeting! :)
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