Letters from Germany - 2008 - part 2

Hi

The Germans are, generally, nice people. Everyone's friendly and keen to help. They are even willing to struggle with English as I struggle with German. I still need to go shopping and buy real food. I think the store on campus is a bit expensive and I am hoping I'll find a cheaper one in town. They have more clothes stores and bakeries than they do super markets! And I finally found soap (shower gel). I had to go to one of those 'bio' shops. I could not find anything anywhere else. I found out I have to write two reports at the end of my trip , a technical one for my lecturers and a report-back to the German government because they sponsored my living expenses here. No more ideas of a holiday for me! But France is only 3.5 hours away and I don't need a visa! I was thinking of going to Greece :-) 

Today was the unofficial first day of work. We found out that it's only one train away. We were taken on a tour of the place where we will spend most of our time. It's a joint venture between the department of Building Physics (Lehrstuhl für Bauphysik) in the  Universitäit Stuttgart (http://www.lbp.uni-stuttgart.de/) and a consultancy firm called PE International (http://www.pe-international.com/). In summary, [no point boring you with the details] their work involves Life Cycle Assessments for different products. Their aim is to provide clients with a clear view of how the environmental, social and economical impact of their products. The idea has been around Europe for the last 50 or so years and the department is turning 20 years next year. They developed software that they use to do their assessments. I will be assigned a project, probably on an agricultural product or paper production (didn't see the point in analysing a Mercedes model which has little usefulness in the African context and I don't get a free car for doing it!) 

I was thinking that it's such a pity that there is little effort put into similar research in Uganda and in Africa as a whole. I understand that the needs we have at the moment are more pressing (poverty alleviation, disease eradication and energy supply) but I believe we can and will over come those soon enough. However, if we do not start considering the impact of our economical growth on, especially, the environment we might end up with the same stalemate that Europe and the US were at 50 years ago and the same scenario in Asia (mainly India, China and Japan) now. We ought to start thinking beyond tomorrow's breakfast and, at least, about our grand children's existence. Well, that's the end of the boring stuff for now :-) Now I know what I might be interested in doing after next year (hoping, I graduate next year! With UCT, you never know what's going on till the last minute).

The guys at work have this cooking thing where all the exchange students have to prepare a meal from their country of origin. I have no idea what to cook. I was thinking it would be really cool of someone at home (hint, hint) to send me a few bags of grasshoppers, since they are in season, or maybe some mushrooms (pse send with the relevant recipe) or dried gonja or something really Ugandan!  If you need my physical  or postal address ( I think it's the same), let me know :-) The other girl is probably going to make Pap (like posho) and, if we can find them, South African Boerewors (SA sausages). The best cook so far was an intern from China. 

It's supposed to snow today. Apparently, the temperature went down from 7 to -3 degC today! I'm still warm.

love you

C
p.s. I might send emails quite frequently. I have the time and seem to spend a lot of it it online esp since I'll be away from home for this break. If you don't want to receive emails from me, let me know and I'll stop flooding your inbox. Tchüs!