Adventures of NaDave: Dave Germany: 22-26 (back to first apartment)

In Week 4, I started riding my bike to work. It's ~2 mile ride, and mostly on a path that is along the road. It makes for a pleasant start to the morning, and a therapeutic end to the day.

Monday was my conference with the Portland office. It started at 5pm (8am their time) and more first impressions, which are always critical in the workplace. But my presentation went well again & I got to meet members of the Portland team. Paul (my boss) also seemed pleased

I had made friends with the new tenant in the PhD Flat (a female Masters student from Vienna doing her Thesis with adidas) and on Tuesday, she told me that she had to go back to Vienna the following week for exams. She said I could move back into the PhD Flat, until moving into my new apartment. This was great news! This meant I only had 3 more nights on the floor. Plus, my laundry pile was getting large! (At this temporary apartment, there was only 1 washing machine for the ~15 adidas interns...yikes...and it was always busy).

I also finally got my Health Insurance card! Hopefully I never need to use it, but neat to actually have Health Insurance in a foreign country. That also reminded me to take care of my bank card.

On Wednesday morning, I headed to the bank in Herzo (it was no longer under renovation!). I had received my bank card in the mail, but not the follow-up letter with the PIN card...that is needed to actually use your card. I figured they would be able to change it there (as they did for me in Australia). HA, wrong again! The local bank is unable to change your pin & it must be sent out by the main Munich office. Then the bank teller told me I probably didn't receive the PIN b/c the German post is on strike. So when they sent a new one, who knows when it will arrive. &#$%! I said to send it again anyway, because otherwise I have a useless piece of plastic.

I also had a meeting with Paul about my next 5 potential projects. It was pretty exciting stuff, and I even heard a bit about their plans for the soccer balls for the upcoming 2018 & 2022 World Cups. So once again, work was moving along great, but personal things were a daily train-wreck.

On Thursday, I had a very busy day, as I was hosting an intern engineer from the adidas-Portland office who was visiting Herzo. It was a 23 year old woman from Auckland, NZ who was interviewing internally for an 18 month 'rotational-type' program. She had just graduated with a personalized Sports Eng degree (sound familiar?). We had so much in common, and so we had great conversation all day. (Spoiler, she got the job offer, and will start in Herzo inOctober!)

On Friday, I got the key back to the PhD Flat, said goodbye & many 'thank yous' to the indian guys. We spent several evenings chatting together, and would say, we are now friends! It took two trips to move all my stuff back, but I finally had a bed again! I went to the grocery store, and loaded up for (hopefully) only 6 more days of living as a nomad.

I was happy to see a rainy weekend forecast...perfect for sleeping in! But I had also setup a visit to look at furniture (through the adidas bulletin board) that I would desperately need to outfit my apartment.