Losing Keys

A friend of mine lost his key chain; again. Its nothing simple to lose keys in Germany. Keys are very difficult and costy to get copied; and worst, each copy has to be registered somewhere with the government. So first he paid to get the lock of his room changed (that's mostly the solution). Then he was directed to check regularly an office in the city where people give items they find on road etc. His keys were not found. The key ring also contained the key to his room in university. So may be they changed that lock as well.

The university also gives a special "transponder" to researchers which is used to unlock doors of the building which contains your room. This way, they can enter their labs or rooms at night or on holidays. This is a blue-tooth device which sends signal to the electronic door lock on every building. Each building has a different lock and hence different transponder. They told my friend that changing of these locks of one building costed them hundreds of euros, though they didn't charge him. He was shocked when he lost the keys the second time, but thanked God when he found them. The first keys are still nowhere to be found.

German Bar-B-Que night & a house on hill

Yesterday my advisor invited everyone in our group to his house for Bar-B-Que (Grill). We all went there in the evening from the university in cars and reached his house. It was in the North of the city. The house was located diagonally along the side of a hill. After parking the cars, we went up the stairs to his house. There the professor handed us some things to be taken to the Grill location which was located higher on the hill. So we climbed more stairs uphill and found a magnificent place there. It was a beautiful lawn with a small swimming pool and flowers all around. After some minutes, the professor came and said, "why have you stopped here; i asked you to go up". And at that moment we looked up, hust to find another storey up the hill. So we again climbed the stairs to find another lawn with a wooden cabin, a shed with lots and lots of fire-wood and a tree-house for the kids. This was finally the end of professor's house. It was sorrounded on one side by an iron fence and beyond were the woods.

Admiring the four storey house, we sat and started the Grill. It was a very cold period going on (even in July), so after eating, we sat under a shed and placed the fire near us, throwing wood every once a while into it. It is here that one German commented on my German speaking. He said that foreigners normally speak German in their own accent (close to their mother-tongue), but i speak without any accent and pronounce it very accurately. Anyways, they surprised me by sitting very late, although it was no holiday tomorrow. When they finally got up at 12:30 am, i was sure nobody would reach on time in the morning. But they are Germans after all. Everbody was on time, except of course. . .

I did catch a cold that lasted many days.

Chilling July

This week has been very cold. I can't blieve it is July. The temperature drops to 12 degrees. People are wearing jackets and drinking coffees. The weather changed in just one day. Last week was very hot. It has been raining as well during last half of the week. Weather forecast tells next week to be very hot. hmmmmm

I heard that there has been much raining and flooding in Pakistan as well. Even Multan is flooded. My friend's house's cellar was flooded among others in a nearby village of Germany. They say that this kind of flooding occurs once in a century here. Global warming!!?

becoming philosophers

This weekend we went to a town called "Zwingenberg" near Frankfurt to meet some Pakistanis. They were really nice and served us with "parathas" and "pa'ay" (feet of an animal). This town was located in the lap of mountains and gave a very spectacular view.

On our return journey, we decided to visit Heidelberg once more. This time we wanted to find "iqbal street". We knew it was located on top of mountains but didn't know where exaclty. We also found out that there was a "Philosophers' Passage" near it. So we climbed the hill and finally reached the Philosophers' Passage. We didn't know where to look for Iqbal Street and there was no resident in sight: only tourists. We figured out that the tourists wouldn't know of Iqbal Street. So, we walked on the beautiful Philosophers' Passage. The Fortress on the hill and the old city were clearly visible from here. These were located on the other side of the river "Neckar". We returned soon as the time was short, hoping to find Iqbal Streest some other day. You can find the photos here:
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/yasirniazkhan/album?.dir=c91d

Wapda in Germany

This week something unexpected happened. We were some friends sitting in my room one evening, and at once, the electrcity went out. This was the first time i had experienced it in Germany. Friends told me that this happens very rarely but does happen. Although the power interruption was only for ten minutes or so, it reminded me of our beloved Wapda.

German Hair cut & Pizza

Today, i decided to finally get a hair-cut. I went to a big German shop. After waiting for one hour, a mid-aged lady started on me. She first washed my hair and then started cutting them. When asked for lenght, i told her to cut the hair very small. Towards the end of cutting, she was asking: ok? ok? Although the hair looked a little shorter than i wanted, i thought it would be a new experience, and said yes to let her do what she did. In this sequence of OKs, she asked me: "gel?" (read "g" as in girl). I realized after saying yes that i don't know this word. She put some lotion on my hair. So when she finished i looked in the mirror and i looked no longer like myself. She had produced spikes on my head, like a steep mountain starting from my forehead and extending backwards. This was too radical a change. Nevertheless, a new experience.

In the evening, my research group watched the movie "I, Robot" together on the projector. We ordered pizzas. I ordered a fish-pizza. Instead, perhaps due to misunderstanding, i had a pizza with sea-shells in it. I hardly ate a little more than half of it. After the movie, everybody worked together to wash the cutlery, dry it and put it back in the cupboards. The movie was really interesting. It had rained in the evening and i took my first journey back home on bicycle at night.

Top of the city

Last Sunday we went to an ancient tower located some kilometers away from the city. It is erected on a hill and probably served for scouting around. The way was beautiful, through the forest; but continuously uphill. So we climbed for about an hour blaming the leader for not taking the bus which would take us half way through, although it was fun. We put most of the luggage on my cycle and dragged it along; but later one of us decided that riding the bike is more fun. So the luggage was back on us and the cycle was under him. Guessing about the directions and making juice-drinking stopovers, we finally reached the tower.

The tower was not so high, but nice. We took some snacks, then started preparing the main dish (chicken karahi). We soon realized that we were running out of water. Anyways, after somehow putting the pot on fire, we climbed the tower, and behold... we could see the whole city, and beyond. We came back to have a very delicious meal and then lied down using each other as pillows. The way back was easier but it had become very warm. All in all, we look forward to making more of these trips. The pictures of the trip are viewable at: http://photos.yahoo.com/yasirniazkhan