Kaur Alasoo's home

Another very interesting week has passed. So here are three new snippets from Deutschland.

Buying from the Internet

One of the things that I really like about being in Heidelberg is that it is located in Germany, which means that it is big enough market for companies like Amazon or Google to actually care about it. A few days ago I bought my first MP3-album from Amazon.de. This is something I have always wanted to do, because download versions are usually cheaper, shipping takes time and I do not have a CD-player anyways. Unfortunately, I had to come to Germany to achieve this, because neither Amazon nor iTunes sell their music in Estonia. (As a side note: I used my Estonian credit card for payment, so theoretically a VPN connection or proxy should also work).

So why did I mention Google? Well because if you have an Android phone (like I do) and do not live in one of the few selected countries then you cannot download (or even see) paid apps from the Android Market. I have not tried to buy anything from there yet, but it’s pleasing to at least see that paid apps also exist.

Food

The food at the supermarket does not seem to be much more expensive than in Estonia. Some things cost more but some things are actually cheaper. On average, I think that I am probably spending about 20-30% more on food. And now that I have even found kodujuust (cottage cheese, korner Frischkäse in German) there’s not much left to complain about. Still looking for proper hapukoor (sour cream) though …

Oh, and the food at EMBL is just great

Working Permit

I have actually encountered much less bureaucracy than I would have expected. Most probably the administrative staff at EMBL is doing a great job at hiding it from me. I just had to do first register my arrival at a local Bürgeramt and then a week later go to the Ausländerbehörde to get my Bescheinigung. The only interesting part here was when sent an e-mail in English to the Ausländerbehörde to set an appointment. They replied me in just a few hours, in German. Luckily I know some German so that I was able to continue the conversation in that language. It turned out that I actually did not need the appointment and could just go there the next day.

I have also added some new pictures to the Picasa album.

Kaur :: Apr.19.2010 :: Muu :: No Comments »

In January I applied for ISCB Student Council internship at Schneider Lab at EMBL (Eurpean Molecular Biology Laboratory) Heidelberg. Luckily I was selected and now I am spending the first days of the five months in Heidelberg, Germany. So what have I noticed so far?

Heidelberg

Heidelberg is a nice small town near Frankfurt. As somebody said, it’s just like Tartu but only in Germany. It has a university, very beautiful small houses and picturesque narrow streets in the old town.

EMBL campus and the guesthouse where I am staying are a few kilometers away from the city center. The distance itself is not very noteworthy and would actually be totally walkable in normal (Estonian) circumstances. The problem is, however, that this part of the town is on top of a hill (or a mountain, by Estonian standards) which is about 300 meters high. I walked up here on the first day, but from now on I will probably mostly be preferring buses .

Bank Account

Getting it was acutally pretty easy. Turns out that somebody from Sparkasse-Heidelberg comes to EMBL every Tuesday. I just had to meet him, fill in some forms and the bank card should be arriving by mail in a few days. They seem to be quite small bank mostly operating in Heidelberg and their online banking is only in German, but I think I’ll survive that.

Pre-paid SIM Card

This turned out to be more complicated than I expected. In Estonia, you would just buy a SIM card, insert it into your phone and start talking. In Germany, they first ask for your ZIP code when you are trying to buy the card. Then you have to activate it by either calling or filling in a web form in which they ask for your name, exact address, birth datw, e-mail and your passport or national identity card number. Finally, somebody has to manually verify that information. This means that when you fill in the form in the evening then your phone won’t start to work before the next day.

Some pictures can be seen here.

In the next episodes: Working Permit, The Double Helix and Food.

Kaur :: Apr.08.2010 :: Muu :: 1 Comment »