I'm in Berlin! (and have been for almost a month)

It's embarrassing that I haven't posted from Berlin yet. My only excuse is that in the beginning I was really busy, and then there was so much to write about that it was overwhelming. So I put my head in the sand and hoped that the problem would solve itself. In the mean time, I kept having little adventures and thinking "that would be fun to write about... too bad I need to write a big catch-up post first" - and here we are, almost a month later, with no posts. Today I decided to just skip the catch-up post and get to the fun stuff. So here's the really short version of my first month in Berlin.

I arrived on Jan 7, and stayed for the first three weeks with Dubi, who I knew from my years at UMASS. He is a PhD student, and when his advisor (now my temporary employer) took a faculty position in Berlin, Dubi and his family followed. Gili (Dubi's wife) and the kids were gone to visit the grandparents for three weeks, so I stayed in the baby's room. When they returned, I had to get serious about finding an apartment. Now I'm in a three-room flat across town, in Kreuzberg, one of the artsy, hip, up and coming parts of town. My flatmates are a French musician and an American painter. I have a long commute, but since part of it involves walking along a cobblestone street beside a canal, and the other part involves me reading or knitting while riding the train, I don't mind.

My job has been pretty good so far. I'm in a robotics lab, with robots that I remember from UMASS. So far nothing major has broken, and I'm designing a few hardware fixes for students in the lab - a timed camera trigger for one project, a camera mount for another, etc. My big project is a compliant (soft and squishy, but not too soft and squishy) tool to hold a paintbrush or crayon or marker, for experiments into robotic art. The first prototype has been designed, and we'll get parts back from the shop sometime next week!

Outside of work and finding housing and doing all of the administrative stuff needed for working in a foreign country, I have been pretty low key. I've made some new friends in the lab and found a women's football (soccer) team. I've walked all around the city and explored the different neighborhoods. I've visited museums and markets and churches. And I've eaten. A lot. Chocolate croissants, snitzels, Turkish Swarmas, Indian food, potatoes in every form imaginable, curry wurst, yum yum yum!

So that's the short version, and now I'm going to feel free to post on little details that I find interesting, and not sweat the big picture anymore!