Just to give everyone an idea, what’s going on: I’ve been on “the streets of Philadelphia” today and it’s my last day at the east coast. Tomorrow heading for Dallas to take a car to Oklahoma City to get my flight back home. Yes, on Wednesday I’ll be home (if no flights are delayed or canceled or if anything else unforeseen happens) – in Germany, lovely home .

But back to topic – we’re exchange students in the United States, hence we primarly “learn” from the American way of life (instead vice versa). Maybe I should tell you more about other general habbits and things, like people are here in Oklahoma and in the university, or maybe I should not, because I did very often in the past. But I don’t care, because this blog is also a kind of diary for me, so I also want to remember these every day things myself later in a few months or years. If you’re bored of this, just skip the rest of this post!

You may know that in North America they have a lot of squirrels. And we have them too, right around our houses or anywhere else. And sometimes you can even touch them (I did by my bike… carefully ). Unfortunately some of them get hit by cars on the road and if you see this, just as it happens, it makes you feeling sad ;( – because they are so cuuute !

We have a lot of nice sunsets, too. It does not rain very often, so you can see the clear sky more often and enjoy the sunsets. And this definitely was one of the best things of our exchange semester (it just makes you much more happier ). By the way: There’s a lot of wind blowing strongly, too, maybe due to its location within the Great Plains. In the north west of Texas (right to the west border of Oklahoma) they have built the biggest wind park in the world!

Although, as I mentioned, it’s warm and so we sat in the pool and relaaaxxxed – in November
But this might not be a reason for them to put as much ice as possible in every soft drink, because they also do it in the colder winter. Worst thing about it: They always ask “On the rocks?” – “No, I wanna enjoy the pure taste of whiskey, man!” They have no idea about how to drink traditional tasty alcoholic drinks the right way (also what they call “beer” ).

(Thanks, Peter, for the photo )

In the university’s building they sometimes have some pianos, and actually a lot of students play on them very often. Most of the time some pop songs or pop ballads, but hey, they play it well and that’s so cool It seems to me that many students practise very hard in playing piano or some other instruments (Marching Band… okay, that’s not that “hard” ). What I know for sure is that they’re having exercise very often – the bad thing about it: Fashion and style is different here: very often sports clothes, always running shoes and the maroon OU hoodie. I also got exercise very often (5 days a week, in the gym or running outside), but I unfortunately stopped it at the beginning of our  Thanksgiving roadtrip and only did it two times the week in the following weeks so then I gained 3 kilograms – damn! *grrrr*

Perhaps pop ballads (like they play on the pianos) are not my favorite kind of music, so this reminds me of something else. Have I already talked about the AC/DC concert? No, I haven’t, thus here some words about it: AC/DC itself is just awesome, the “Rockopas” are still real Rock ‘n Roll champions. However, a concert inside a hall with a closed top (Ford Center in OKC) is not as good as open air and especially if every space is filled with chairs or benches – what the hell?! This is a rock concert!! Well, to be honest, I liked the U2 concert more – open air, much more impressive (show), cool feeling within a big stadium. But AC/DC also did a great job with a “nice” show as well (trailer at the beginning or the – let’s call it – “One And Only Angus Super Show Performance” or finishing with “Fire guns”… do I have to mention anything else?).

That’s it. I think I’ve tried to talk enough about life here in Oklahoma in poor English. Full stop. Fin. Finito. (Of course, there are two trips left, about which I will write, however nothing else about this “general stuff”)

PS.: That’s funny – I often wrote about the weather in November, when it was warm and we were able to go out with t-shirt and shorts. The reason why this impressed me so much is the following (besides the fact that the temperatures here are significant higher in general than in Germany): This year’s October was the coldest October in Norman ever recorded! Perhaps that fact gives you an idea how strange it is, to feel such change in temperatures from cold to warm (and also the opposite direction) within one or two days. Like in December (see post “No comment…”) from one to the next day it changed from a -8 °C low to a 22 °C high.

This is the “Arkansas crew” from the roadtrip at the beginning of November. Though it was just a trip for one weekend I definitely have to write about it, because it was very nice. Basically our intention was to see colorful “Indian Summer” with trees colored in red, yellow and brown. Instead, what we found were trees with no more leaves and without any color (except gray-brown). Nevertheless, this was one of the best roadtrips I’ve ever made (just because driving along the highways in the plain midwest + perfect country/rock music mix from the 60s to present  + cool relaxed people = real roadtrip feeling)!

We arrived in Fort Smith Friday afternoon, a town close to the border to Oklahoma, and spent the evening having dinner at a Burger House with cool Rock music and tasty burgers (even more tasty than in OKC ). Then we left and bought some beers and ciders to relax in the hotel.
The next day we first visited “Fort Caffee” where German soldiers had been prisoned during the second World War. We also had a real delicious IHOP breakfast on that day, with first breakfast sausages, bacon and eggs (the original British way) followed by blueberry/strawberry/anyberry pancakes (the American way) – glorious!
By the way: We were driving a Lincoln Town Car with 6 seats (3 + 3). This is the car of which most of the stretch limousines are made of and it’s a “typische Ami Karre – weicher geht’s nicht!”

After this we began our “real” roadtrip off any interstate highway but along such small mountains:

As I mentioned before, all the leaves had been gone. However the nature in the mountains was pretty nice, a lot of trees and forests (quite a good contrast to Oklahoma):

Beside those mountains with the trees we also had green meadows in between:

Even some colored leaves were left on the trees around there:

On this day we could watch the sunset – 3 times! (By driving up a hill)

At night we arrived in Eureka Springs, which actually is a jewel of a town. It’s “different” to rest of the towns you’re used to have here in the midwest: The people are kind of mind-forward (we went to a bar were some drag queens met later on!), the city is European style (as far as an American town can be “European”) and there was also a city fest with a lot of Harley Davidson bikers and their “girls” – so we could find people on the streets (up to here this was very unusual in all the other cities we had been before in Oklahoma or Arkansas)

Finally we had great lunch the next morning is yet another “colorful” restaurant down in the basement of a building and then left to drive back to Norman, because this took a few hours. Hence, here’re some last three impressions from Eureka Springs (except third picture taken on the way home):

I can only recommend you to visit this city if you’re around there!!

So this was “only” an introduction to an American road trip, the fantastic big one should follow two weeks later in California…

Unfortunately we’ve to learn for the finals right now…

so long,
Christian

Our new album “Death Valley” – out now!

Now heading for the last stop in Grand Canyon and Las Vegas…

This weekend was “homecoming” of the football team. It’s a special tradition: The first gameday in Norman after the game in Dallas is celebrated by a so called homecoming weekend. So, what do they do at such a weekend? For instance, on friday we went to the volleyball gym and watched associations, fraternities or sororities performing their own dances and shouts about the homecoming football team. All their members on the echelons were cheering and supporting about 30 – 50 guys on the floor, who performed a mixture of electric line dance, cheerleading moves and typical pop choreographies that you may know if you have ever seen a performance of Britney Spears or one of the other pop stars on stage. In the following pictures you can see all the big trucks (and those are real trucks, twice the size of a big European caravan(!)) on the parking lot because of the game day:

On Saturday before the game there was a parade – a pretty small one – around the northern part of the campus. All the groups from the day before were showing their dressed up cars and a lot of Misses and Misters were driven through the streets as well as a few marching bands making, what a suprise, some marching music (man, how boring this can get after some time ). Here’re some impressions; of course, typically the Germans are laying on the grass and drink beer while watching the parade :

And yesterday was also the 31st of October: Halloween. So we went to a house where five meteorology students live together (Richard told me that I and some others can join), so it was a real American house party (was great!) with no time restrictions but a lot of beer and in particular a special cider-rum-mix tasting like “Apfelstrudel” but causing a much bigger hangover on the next morning than Apfelstrudel does . How I dressed up? Ehm, I just bought a wig at Walmart (see picture in the last post), took my sunglasses and a shirt wide opened and combined it with running shoes that I finally looked anti-social (uh, scary, right? ) – so I could drink as much as I wanted without taking care. Actually it was not that bad, as the others said.

But there’s one thing I don’t want to miss to tell you: We’ve also been to a Bavarian restaurant in Moore, a town between Norman and Oklahoma City, which really looked like a “Bayrisch Hüttn” in the inside. I ate delicious “Schweinhaxn” and “Knödel” – tasted great! The beer they brew by their own, however, is not competing with the German beer at all. It’s rather one of the smooth American beers you’re usually used to drink here.

And today (1st of November!) it’s 25 degree Celcius hot! We just have a week of above 20 degrees again and take sunbaths every afternoon (now I’m more brown than in the summer – and yes, I’m so facinated to look like this in November ):

Ciao!

PS.: However, it’s fall here, too. You can see it by having a look on the trees:

Because I did not take my camera into the stadium you can have a look, for instance, on the flickr account of elvisripley for some pics: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

By the way: We just have a few days of almost 80°F (about 25°C) right now after some cold, dark and sometimes rainy days. I like it: Bermudas  + T-Shirt and getting sunburned at the end of October!

So now I’m really looking forward to AC/DC in OKC on the 4th of November

Today we’ve been to Oklahoma City, the capital of Oklahoma. We went by bus on the interstate highway (!) – was an ordinary bus like all the others which usually drive in the cities – and it lasted approximately one hour, so we arrived at 9 am in Downtown OKC. The third of the following pictures shows the morning sun in the Myriad Botanical Gardens.

After leaving the art district behind we head for the Oklahoma City National Memorial. Before 9/11 this has been the worst terrorist attack in the United States – if you want to know more about it I can recommend you the Wikipedia article on en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing (if you’re German you can also get a short overview by having a look on the German article).

By walking through the city I found some interesting pics like the first of the following ones: Seems to be the car of a guy who’s completely against Mr Obama. Well, we’re here in the south, in the bible belt, it’s not Chicago or Washington – and such stickers remind you about this fact . Bible belt also means to find an office of the Y.M.C.A. in the city. This is the Young Men’s Christian Association that the Village People were singing about in their smashing disco hit in the 70s. So next to the office I saw this car which looks like one of the cars of those famous 70s (3rd pic). Although the Americans do not often use the railway you always hear the sound of the cargo trains honking for minutes while passing the crossings – in OKC as well as in Norman, unfortunately. However, in OKC someone drew some nice graffities along the railway (4th pic):

Here you see a comprehensive image of the OKC Downtown, a model neighborhood of european styled houses and the “entrance” of so called Bricktown, a very nice district where you can find a lot of… guess…ah?… right, red brick buildings:

There’s also the Baseball stadium of OKC located in Bricktown:

Not only the brick lined buildings make it a nice place to stay, especially the canal between those is kind of “attraction”, if you haven’t expected to see this in such an ordinary US city like OKC :

Meanwhile, after getting up early in the morning, we became hungry. So I decided that we have to eat real American food: Burgers. But not from a fast food restaurant as we had known already! As a result I probably ate one of the best burgers in my life (was a smokehouse BBQ burger, great American stuff made of tastful beef) at “Stumpy’s Burger House”:

After lunch we’re heading for the capitol, seeing a lot of oil pumps randomly placed around the city, strange sidewalks (it seems that they have a weakness for curves as you can see in the second picture) and the OU Medical Center besides (the Health Science Center’s main campus of the OU is located in OKC).

We also passed by some nice houses in a residental neighborhood… Yeah, these are the “attractions” of Oklahoma City!

Finally we arrived at the Oklahoma State Capitol. All the following photos were taken around the capitol: the first shows a Veteran’s Memorial; the third a statue of a native American in front of the capitol; the fourth one of the federal buildings behind the capitol; the fifth the rear view of the capitol; and the sixth shows you a site surrounded by the flags with the names of native tribes (also behind the capitol).

Back at OU campus the weather changed to completely cloud-free conditions so I decided to make some more photographs of the campus to show off a bit more :

Here you can see “Campus Corner”, a few bars, clubs and shops at the north end of the campus – this is where you can go without the need of a car:

Next to Campus Corner you can also find the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art (left) and music halls and some theatres, like the one where we watched “Die Fledermaus” (the right building):

As I told you tomorrow is gameday so they recently refreshed the following “reminder” on the sidewalk:

Last but not least some flowers, a building once again named by a suspicious “Mr Gaylord” and the preparation of the 360° stage for the U2 concert on sunday:

So, this has been Oklahoma City (and OU campus). To tell you one last fact about the trip: The streets are empty! Just empty! Sometimes you feel like walking through a ghost town in the wild west or Will Smith in “I am Legend” . Of course, there’re some cars driving on the streets but if you think about the size of the streets (three lanes is normal) and the number of cars driving on it… Furthermore not anyone, except some poor people crossing the streets, is walking around there. I’m not sure, it may be caused by several reasons: (1) Americans do not walk, they go by car! (2) Once again: They use their cars! (3) It was friday. (4) It was the day before gameday in Texas, where the OU football team is having the most important match against its biggest rival. (5) It’s Oklahoma City, not really popular for its nice capital but rather to have higher crime rates than the average of the US cities . Sounds not nice, but actually it’s a matter of fact (www.cityrating.com).

ciao!

PS.: Oops, my harddisk got partly damaged. Still able to work with it and hope the Dell support in the US will be as reliable as in Germany.

Okay, here’s how it works: First, you need to get alcohol from the liqour store – what a luck, there is one located near the campus. Second: Head for the stadium to be there in time, otherwise there won’t be enough cheap students seats left to stay together. Third: While keep going have a look to the right and to the left into the tents for some free stuff (food, drinks, whatever) and join singing “Sweeet Caroliiine… bup – bup – bup…” . By following these steps you’ll be well prepared for having a nice gameday in the stadium.

There may be a lot of seats left, as you can see on the first of the following pictures, but they have numbers and student ticket owners are not allowed to sit there. Consequently we had to find some in the big red area beside:

About half an hour before each game the marching band is giving its first performance:

After that the people are making a special kind of conversion: The people from one side of the stadium is yelling “Boomer…” and the opposite side responds “… Sooner…”, and then others start again to shout “… Boomer…” and so on. This lasts, let’s say, half of a minute – and everyone is facinated, even the European exchange students . And, of course, don’t forget the “Oooooooooh… U” (rigth picture)!

Finally, after some further performances, introduction of the players and the anthem, the game will really begin:

And then you wait for the one and only moment: TOUCHDOWN! (when it’s time to celebrate this with fireworks and to cheer… – Ladies, what about changing your major to “cheerleading”? Your’re really good at it ).

The fireworks is followed by a ride of the “Sooner Schooner” and a performance of the cheerleaders. Yes, entertainment is everything. And then the people begin rising up their right index finger (right picture) for the OU Chant or making some noise for a powerful defensive, because now it’s the turn of the other team.

And finally, after maybe 1.5 hours, the “Pride of Oklahoma” – that’s how the marching band is called – performs their half time show.

After that there is nothing new to tell you, just yet two other quarters remaining, which you can watch also on TV like every game or on one of the stadium’s big screens (which in the breaks (caused by a lot of timeouts) also display some lotteries á la “Guess who of the players is shown on this photo as a young boy”). And so here are the last pics from the stadium:

Once again (I wrote about it in one of the older posts): In the following picture you can see the only police cars I’ve seen on that day. Absolutely not imaginable in Germany during a football (soccer) game!

After the game – where my face got sunburned(!) a bit – we went to Martin’s (one of the German exchange students) BBBQ (Birthday Barbecue ) and it became really cold out now. Crazy weather: Usually Oklahoma has higher temperatures than we have in Germany (although there might be some faster temperature changes sometimes), but this fall is one of the coldest. So within 24 hours the temperatures fell from around humid 25 to cold 10 degree celsius. At wednesday we will have again around 25 degree after having had 15 or 10 (and in the morning even 5) degree the last days. Up, down, up, down… wassup? Dear Weather, please, come down (in the meaning of holding 20 degrees and not of going down with the temperatures) and relax! Anyway, here are the left photos of the day:

ciao!

PS.: Today I wrote a stupid midterm exam – so, not everything works that nice (just… “almost everything” ). Thankfully this has been the last one until december, so it’s okay now. Kind of. Because now I have to do some projects that I ignored so far in order to concentrate myself on the midterms…

PSS.: As I found out, wordpress added two miniature images on each photo page to navigate through the collection of photos. Unfortunately I have a different order in my posts so don’t be surprised if you want to use that feature and it gets out of order.

Yet some other updates:

Next Sunday: U2 and Black Eyed Peas, yeah! And in November AC/DC in Oklahoma City, hell yeah! Oklahoma rocks .

If you don’t like to “rock”: You can also watch an operetta on campus (they have a theater, an opera theather, cinema et et et…) – as we did, last friday: 10 bucks for students, the “Fledermaus” von Johann Strauss. Funny to listen to German singing and English talking Americans calling each other with names like “Mr Eisenstein”. By the way: English subtitles are displayed all the time they sing in German. Actually, it was a really good “show” and much fun!

Last but not least: Today I’ve got a letter from an authority to ensure that my registration information is correct. Beside this they included a flyer and a reply card of the US Armed Forces (Today’s Military) – do they know that I am an exchange student with an exchange visa and not a citizen of the US? What I know for sure is, that I’m not the only one who got this letter…

(Thanks Richard for the picture above) Yep, this is on the back of pickup and the police doesn’t care at all!

It explains a lot just by its existence. Apparently you can have fun here, yes we can! Even in Norman, Oklahoma. Somewhere in the middle of no… – No, that would not coincide with my real experience. Now I really like to live here, you simply learn to appreciate the things around you, all the stuff you find and you stop thinking about the nice stuff of Germany as often as you do when you just have arrived.

First of all: We were attending a football game two weekends ago in the stadium on campus. The “Sooners”, that’s the name of our football team, won 45-0 against Tulsa’s college team (second largest city in Oklahoma). The weekend before, another game day in Norman, they had also won 64-0 the game versus Idaho State University (an University I also applied for… that seems to be destiny, and Oklahoma even beat them out, hehe ). It was raining a lot and the first half time we stood at the entrance of the stadium under a roof where we could see the game on a big screen. After that we were heading for home but stopped at one of the uncountable tents the Amercians had set around the stadium where they watch the game on a flatscreen-TV powered by a generator, equippped with light beer and even an own lavatory . A friendly (only a bit drunk) guy invited us to stay until the end and watch the game with him and three other people. That’s the great thing about game days: Because the police has not enough officiers to catch all the people who drink alcohol they tolerate the people drinking beer in the public. You can imagine how great this is for us German guys: First time for us to celebrate our “culture” extensively

The next weekend was the game against Tulsa which we watched inside the stadium. It’s really a lot of entertainment (Commercials, elecronic signs calling on you to “Make some noise!” or “Get loud!”, Marching Band, etc.) Unfortunately I did not take my camera with me, so no more photos so far (But I’m heading for another game to take some). To be honest this sport is quite easy to understand and as a result also not that exciting like a football match in Germany. First: They only “play” (in the meaning of the word “play”) for a few seconds to get some yards closer to the opposite endzone and run against each other only to try it once again for 3 times – and only this to get 10 yards closer. And then after that the next 10 yards and so on… But sometimes a player mind… eh, sees the gap and can run the entire way to the endzone to make a touchdown. In this case the stadium is partying . But usually, to give you an idea of the rest of the game, it takes at least 3 (sometimes even about 4) hours to finish the whole game, which actually has 4 quarters á 15 minutes(!).

Okay, that should be enough about football in general. If you want to see how the stadium looks like on gamedays have a look on Google Images. From the football stadium to the gym: Great thing about it is, they have some drinking water stations in quite every big building. On campus, in the gym as well as in the mall – this is very great especially in the summer when the temperatures can rise up to over 45 degree celsius. We still had over 30 sunny degrees celsius last week – and I just want to show you the forecast of that week for Paderborn :

We often also have very nice bright yellow sunsets, but only for a short range of time. Hence it’s mostly gone before I can take my camera from home to take some shots. I made the following one and it suddenly came to my mind to use this for an imaginary marketing campaign . You may not know what “Kraettli” is: These are the apartments where I and most of the international students (as well as American students and families) live in. Furthermore they have the towers (for an image you can have a look on my first post) for the students beginning their studies at OU and the more expensive but newer/nicer apartments called “Traditions”, which you can see on the second picture. And, last but not least, an ordinary street with american houses looks like the third one:

And have I ever shown you the following picture? When I saw this for the first time I was not sure whether to smile and make fun about it or to have some concerns. Finally I did not care about it at all – thanks to the fact that the tornado season is around April and May. Puh… (*relax*).

I mentioned the mall a few lines above: I’ve been to the “Sooner Mall” last weekend. I think it’s not that big (for an American one), but they have Levi’s jeans for 33 bucks (one German bought 3 trousers and he still wants to have more ) and a shop especially for emos – how funny (all the guys inside – they looked so… emo ). Did they invented such strange street signs like this? (kinda strange if you translate it word by word):

Who knows (by the way: I don’t want to blame anyone here in this blog! Actually I like some emo music, too). I hope the emos follow the instructions that you can see on the following sign, because emotional sickness and guns – that doesn’t work. It is located at the Norman High School. And in the right picture you can see the school busses of which you can find a lot in the streets of Norman when school ends:

I mean, sure, it’s better and not unusual to have no guns at school, BUT… it’s more disturbing for me to know that in a lot of other buildings guys can go around with their guns and it’s just no big deal. Moreover, most weird, you cannot have any kind of alcoholic drinks in the public but you can have… ehm, okay, I guess you know how to finish this sentence. Okay, “and now to something completely different”:

First is a BMW with a Bavarian flag… and the second shows you a nice old American car. I saw it, I liked it, I took a shot (By the way: You can find a lot of Ford Mustangs (the latest one, retro styled) here – that’s one of a few modern American cars I really like (beside Dodge Challenger – retro again – and Charger). But the others, especially the limousines… not nice at all). Well, nobody has to have problems with parking, as you can see by the huge parking lots (for the visitors for the football games – the stadium is always full(!) – and for some other stadiums around there, e.g.: tennis, soccer or baseball, which you can see on the second picture). And today one could see some strange wavy clouds at the sky, so I took a second shot of the parking lot from another direction (and I also saw an AWACS aircraft, which sometimes, like today, fly over Norman):

So, what else? Well, was picked up by so called Community Officiers. You have to care about everything you do in public, Police is always around you!  (at night you see a police car every 5 minutes) If you get “catched” by these community officiers you’re one of the “lucky” guys, because they are the ones driving on campus (but police, as well!) and in most cases younger, friendlier guys who look after drunk/violent/… students. We’re only taking some pictures in the night with some fancy light effects, set bags somewhere around in the grass and then after 2 minutes they stopped their car, said something like “stop, don’t do anything, stand still” and looked at our bags and into the grass for some drugs . Funny. I felt like a criminal. In particular when the police car arrived 1 minute later .

It’s similar to what you are in college. They look after you and your grades, offer a lot of support, you’re not as “grown up” as you are in other countries. Well, this eases life a lot (not to mention the several recreation etc. facilities on campus). But on the other side you also have to do a lot of homework, projects or exams during(!) the semester (not the best for exchange students, even if you only take 3 courses for your major). You have much to do, but it’s not as hard as in Germany. To me it looks like you may learn less of the theoretical stuff… but to be honest: I’ve no idea how the courses are compared to the ones in Germany (except attendance – definitely more often mandatory here). But what I know for sure is, that the books (you really need for homeworks etc.) are pretty expensive (about $300 each semester). Jonas and I share two of them, so it was cheaper for us .

To give you an example of what they have on campus: I’m attending the Latin Dance Club’s 4 week salsa beginner’s course. Hope I can learn some nice dancing in only 4 lessons… Anyway , funny fact: When you introduce yourself in the dancing classes and say that you’re from Germany, in most of the cases they will tell you how many ancestors or friends they have in Germany and when they visited or will visit it – and they even have German family names like “Speiser” (and are proud of it) and call their dogs “Jaeger” . Yes, Germany… we are still informed about our home country: Last weekend we watched the elections via internet stream at a “Bundesbrunch” in one of the German’s apartment. Was fun – the brunch, not the result of the election .

Yeah, last point. Got an ID – now I am an official resident of Oklahoma :

PS.: It took me 5 hours to create this blog entry. I provide you this information just if you’re interested in…

PSS.: One hour ago we booked our flights to San Francisco on Thanksgiving vacations . West coast roadtrip down to L.A. and San Diego, Grand Canyon and finishing in Las Vegas. This definitely will be an awesome trip!

The following captions describe the pictures above.

First and most important (or most awesome =) – 4 panoramas (large sized!):

The south end (Downtown) of Manhatten (on the right pic together with the Statue Of Liberty and New Jersey skyline)

Panorama left: View uptown Manhattan with Central Park; above right: View Downtown Manhattan to the Financial District in the middle and Brooklyn on the left and New Jersey Skyline right.

4 a clock in the morning: meeting a skunk (in Norman).
The view out of our hotel room – great! The Hampton Inn in Soho (rightmost pic) is located directly in Downtown Manhattan.

The World Trade Center Site.

Some skyscrapers in the financial district Downtown Manhattan.

Center: Brooklyn behind the helicopter; Right: BMW Manhattan

Wall Street, with Deutsche Bank branch (see left pic).

The NY subway: Like in jail (left)… and the cars look like “Blechbüchsen”.

Both right pics are Brooklyn, yet…

From the Brooklyn Heights you have a real nice view to Manhattan. Thus: Monthly rate of $2500 – but Jo thinks: “Wayne?!” (means: who cares?) =)

All pics above: Brooklyn Bridge.

Top left: Manhattan Bridge close to Brooklyn Bridge. Bottom left and top right: Somewhere in the “harbour part” of Brooklyn close to the East River (e.g.: there they handling fish…). All the other photos were taken in Brooklyn, too.

Back in Manhattan. Believe it or not: There is still some space left! (right)

Once again somewhere around Wall Street. Funny people in the showcase

We made a boat tour on the Hudson River, as well. Top left: The “Peking” from Hamburg in New York City Center bottom: Brooklyn.  Bottom right: New Jersey Skyline (This is no more New York, neither the city nor the state! But the Port Authority is resposible for both… that’s confusing… somehow )

Ellis Island, Liberty Island and Manhattan – the south end.

At a spanish styled food restaurant in Manhattan close to the East River and at a wine bar in Brooklyn, also outside (nice temperatures that weekend – even at night around 20 degree celsius). By the way: On this pic you see from left to right: Jo, Jonas and Philipp.

Taking some night shots – amazing views to Brooklyn Bridge/Manhattan!

Next Day: Heading for Empire State Building… Passing by Macy’s, maybe the biggest store in the world. And a lot of Ford Crown Victoria are passing you by in NYC, especially in the form of cabs.

Some more pictures taken on top of the ESB.

5th Avenue: Prada & Co. After having lunch at Friday’s we went down the 5th Ave to Central Park:

Damn big, like everything else. And now on the way to Times Square:

With an Army’s Recruiting Station (see pic on the bottom right) – crazy

But what we were heading for was “Shrek”, not “The Lion King”, “Mamma Mia!” or any other of the uncountable musicals they play every day on Broadway. Why Shrek? Because on Times Square there is also a ticket station, so we got tickets with 50% off the price 1 hour before the show began – and it is one of the funniest musicals, I think.

That has been New York City. No doubt, it’s an awesome city. To my mind this could not be the city I wanna live in. It has its own unique style, but you will probably miss a lot of the “small things” other cities can offer you, I think.

By the way: I’m pretty tired now, so I’ll try to write short sentences today (does not mean they do not include much information). Would be interesting to know, what sentences the woman in front of the TV camera told inside the empty stadium…

As mentioned above and in the first post of this blog the Americans basically are very friendly. This becomes apparent in their way of talking especially to us international students. In doing so, they overuse one awesome word so much: Awesome. Everything is “awesome”. “What’s your name/major/country?” You will hear at least one time per minute how “awesome” your major, your country or your hobbies are. For us as exchange students who often talk to American students for the first time, these are always striking moments in such a conversation

Another kind of pleasure is the calm traffic here. Okay, sometimes the drivers forget that there exist some bikers (not a big amount…) who could cross the street due to green traffic lights… but hey, by expecting this behaviour, everything works fine. Assumed he sees me, quite every driver waits for me crossing the street, no matter what color the lights displays. Moreover they have a lot of Stop-signs on the streets. It’s remarkable how relaxed every car driver stops and how well all this works (a lot of 4 way stops; that means a lot of deadlocks; that means first come, first served ). Maybe the police fines hard? I don’t know. What I know now after one weekend staying ill at my apartment (virus infection?) is that the police passes by our apartment very often a day…

Hm, haven’t I said I don’t wanna write so much…?! So here’re some nice pics:

Now brief: I changed some courses. Dropped “Western Civilization II” – too much misunderstanding of the instructor, too much reading, too much writing. Instead I have choosen Ballroom Dancing (that’s real fun with over 100 people in the ballroom, changing partners and changing steps like from Swing, Cha Cha Cha, Waltz and T-A-NGO ) and Individual Fitness.

All our Computer Science classes are held in “Sarkey’s Energy Center” – the most northeastern building on campus – by one instructor originally from China, I guess, and the other two maybe around India or Pakistan. What I know for sure is, that it’s hard to understand what they say if they’re talking about off-topic stuff. However, in class – I was surprised – it’s no problem to follow at all.

On the following pictures you see the Sarkey’s (left) and the Engineering/Computer Science-Building (okay, that’s hard to see… you can guess it behind the trees, it’s not that breathtaking like the other buildings on campus – but what have you expected?! I mean, Engineers )

In class the men-women-ratio is also as bad as we know it from Germany. In particular, you don’t find any native-born American girl there (but Indians, Chinese). And you don’t find “fat” students anywhere on campus – maybe thanks to the integrated-desktop-chairs you find instead in a lot of classrooms which only allow you to take a seat if your waist does not exceed its dimensions . That means, they do not only have all the possibilities in the gym, they also use them! (it consists of so much weight and cardio machines you would not find in any “fitness studio” in Germany – and all the exchange students can use them for free, yippie)

To get energy for all the excercises, you need do buy tasty food. As I told you, there’re two Wal-Marts located in Norman. And what do they do at the counter? They put quite every product in a single small bag! That’s crazy, all these white bags you get. And then you buy tasty bacon and eggs, go home, put both into the pan to make tasty ham & eggs and what happens? The crappy fire alarm turns on due to the smoke this tasty meal produces *grrr*. And so your thoughts change from “tasty” into “nerve-wracking loudness”…

By the way: The shower is also made of faulty design… see picture and you will know (Who knows, maybe 20 years ago all students had been 30 centimeters shorter than we are today?)! On the following pictures you’ll see shower, fire alarm, the only A/C control panel in our apartment and part of a food hall in the “Oklahoma Memorial Union” (or simply “student’s union”) – a central multi-functional building on campus:

Okay, some final words about the weather again: There had been some thunderstorms, during our flight from Oklahoma City to Norman at our arrival as well as here in Norman a few days ago. They might be louder and more impressive – but basically do not seem to be more severe than in Europe due to the fact that only a few flashes reach earth’s surface. And a few days after having had over 101 degrees Fahrenheit the temperatures fell down close to the lowest level ever measured at the 31st August. That’s typically Oklahoma: In fall temperatures can change very quickly, even within one day.

Ah, before I end, yet another anecdote: I found a Starbuck’s with a (frequently used) Drive-Thru, too.

PS.: On Friday Jonas and I are going to fly to NYC, it’s Labour-Day-Weekend – yeeha!

To get some recreation (beside the refreshings in the pools ), I was also jogging today to the National Weather Center and the gym. Even at 6 pm it was actually still to hot outside to do this. And maybe tomorrow the temperatures will rise up to over 100 degrees Fahrenheit again… that’s what my roommate told me – remember: he’s a meteorologist, so I trust him in his forecasts.

Anything else? Sure. I got a ticket for U2, 18 Oct, 360° Tour in the football stadium on campus – only $40! Yeah, it’s very cool to be in the US . I also bought a bike from Wal-Mart, hopefully it lasts until the end of the semester (it doesn’t look like if you have a detailed view on it). Apropos Wal-Mart: Beside the two Wal-Marts there exists another supermarket in Norman called “Target”. For all the freshmen (i.e. the students that are attending the OU for the first time) they offered a “Target-Party”. That means they closed for the regular customers as usual at 10 pm and opened the market half an hour later again for the students, who could use free shuttle busses to the market. US-like they directly announced a cell phone lottery in the bus, at the entrance to the market offered free cokes and inside they always animated to “win” and “buy” special offers while playing some music from the charts. Anyway, there are a lot of free offers at the beginning of the semester – that means a lot of chips and drinks full of sugar for free…

Finally, I want to talk about American clubs: Actually they don’t look that different to the clubs we’re used to go in Europe. We (like many other internationals) went to a party of the French students association in a club called “Club 101″. First thing about it: Yes, they always play Black and Rap Music (sometimes interrupted by Lady Gaga, Black Eyed Peas or Katy Perry). And they (must) close at 2 pm. How boring is that?! I don’t have to mention, that it’s not allowed to carry alcohol visible in the public and that they only sell “light beer” – except in the liqueur stores (The Germans found all of them very quickly ).

Yet another anecdote: A bank that only offers Drive-in cash machines – I’ve never seen that in Germany before.

So long!

PS.: Sorry, no more pics I’m sure, the next posts will be more flickr-like (rather than like a textbook).

Recently I’ve updated the links to the full-size images – everything should work fine now. Sorry for the troubles before.

Okay, let’s start with the departure: My family drove me from Paderborn to Frankfurt the day before we should depart – thanks a lot for all the great efforts you have made (not only on this day!!!). But who’s “we”? We – these are two guys from the University of Paderborn, studying Computer Science, now in the 3rd year. My comrade’s name is Jonas and he’s a German and US citizen, thus he saved a lot of time at the US Border and Customs Protection Checkpoint – but I will tell you more about this later on.

If you see images of the typical big cities in the US, Frankfurt seems to be the best German city to become acquainted with the style of the American downtowns, I think, thanks to all its skyscrapers. Drinking German beer and wine one last time there and then I had to say “Bye, bye, Germany” for the next four months. Passing the Security Checkpoints at the airport was no problem so we took of at 2:30 pm UTC+1.

After 9 hours of sitting in an uncomfortable seat of the economy class in an American Airlines’ 767 (Probably the smallest aircraft to fly across the Atlantic Ocean) that bored me a lot – I wasn’t able to sleep – we landed with a 10 minutes delay. “This is a bad day at O’Hare”, was a quote from a service assistant at the Chigago O’Hare airport. That’s the reason why the airplane had to wait 25 minutes first somewhere beside the start and landing lanes before we were able to exit the Boeing 767. I have to add that our flight itinerary “tolerated” only 2 hours of, let’s call it “exit-and-enter-time”, between this and the following connection flight. Not expecting to wait almost 2 more hours in the “visitors” queue in front of the US Customs and Border Protection Ceckpoint, I expected not to get our connection flight. BUT… as quite every other flight at this day the flight from Chicago to Oklahoma City in a pretty small Regional Jet was delayed as well (3 hours). Thus we arrived at Oklahoma City half past midnight, took a taxi to the hotel in Norman half of an hour away and went to bed. And the first thing we found out about Norman:

Actually there are subtropical temperatures. Now we had not only read them on the paper but felt them the first time – the next day the temperatures even rised up to 100 degree Fahrenheit (i.e. over 40 degree celsius – Norman is located at the same latitude as Tunis in North Africa)! Thanks god that every car and every room provides an A/C (crazy thing about it: it feels like they always cool down to 18 degree celsius – often we were “freezing” inside the buildings). This reminds me to write about some other things, that are related with the american way of wasting energ… eh, way of life: “Huh, everything’s so big!” were the words I had to repeat in my head again and again and also when I was asked by an American. The streets, the cars – and especially the cars -, the flat building et cetera. There’s so much space, so they don’t care about higher buildings and more “compact” towns, because almost everyone has his (or her) own Pick-Up or at least a “simple” smaller car to reach every destination he wants to, no matter how far away (or how close!) it is. Even the freshmen (i.e. the young people first attending the university) drive big Pick-Ups – and almost always only one person per Pick-Up. As an European guy, aware of climate change and such issues all the time, I have some concerns about it

The next day we had to wait a lot while we were passing the housing move-in process, so it took at least 6 hours, which is an unusual duration of time, until I got to see my new room the first time (in the following picture you’ll see building 201, in which I’m living in). A trip to Wal-Mart (I only want to mention “Natural Cheese” with 2%(!) of cheese and even milk(!) – that’s what they advertised on the cover) and 120 US-Dollars lost later I got to know my new roommate, a student from Hamburg (yes, “unfortunately” a German roommate) studying meteorology (The OU, as being located in the middle of Oklahoma, the state with the most tornados appearing per year, owns the National Weather Center). Together with him there are two other students from Hamburg, three from the TU Berlin, three from the University of Paderborn (including me and Jonas) and one from the University of Stuttgart (and maybe one more I don’t know, yet). Furthermore ten Austrians came to OU, too, all from Graz.

On the following days there were mandatory events for all the new international and exchange students (OU has students from 66 countries all over the world) – most of them are french students. And, of course, you get a lot of invitations from all the helpful guys around the International office and international organizations (as well as from strange religious communities, e.g. the “Korean First Presbyterian Church of Oklahoma” ). That impresses me a lot, all the people are really helpful, open and friendly. It’s a mess not to have any idea who stands behind a name in the contact list of your mobile, because they are too much in such a short time. Even the people behind the counter in the supermarket are kinda friendly. I mean, that’s the typical American “friendliness” you can’t find in Germany, even not at our International Office. I don’t want to blame the great people that take care of all the international students in Paderborn, but there are simply less people paid for those jobs than here at the OU.

And this reminds me not to forget saying a word about the campus: As I said, everything is big (How big? Well, almost 90,000 people in the football stadium on campus – is this big enough?). It’s not only big but also nice, and most of the new buildings look like stolen from Disney Land. Of course, they do not look exactly the same, but the style does and the campus is also very clean. In particular the newest student apartments facilities (I’m not living in) do not only look like but really are comparable with maybe German 4-star rated holiday resorts. I’m not kidding: This is having vacation while studying – not to mention that the apartments surround a big swimming pool, a hot Jacuzzi (this is awesome, I tested both today ) and a volleyball court. You have lots of free oportunities in the gym or on other sport fields (e.g. Tennis), as well!

Apropos pool: I would prefer to drink water from the pool rather than the tap water, if I had to make a decision. There’s so much chlorine in it that you have to spit it out after at most one glass of it. However, thanks to a water-filtering-bottle my roommate bought, it’s possible to drink tap water and cheaper/easier than buying it from the market.

Okay, up to now, that’s it. I think I’ve forgotten to mention a lot of things and on the other side gave you so much details about so much uninteresting things – but who cares? I don’t – so you should not either

PS.: Going to another country does not mean that one (i.e. me) is highly proficient in the corresponding language. So, please, excuse my English as it goes wrong from time to time. I can neither improve it within a few days, nor in a few weeks! But YOU CAN… honor that I try to