30.07.02

Departure - no comments and no picture documentation

After 12 long hours for Christos and Sergio (mine one has slept) arrival in Rio de Janeiro. All suit-cases arrive, also Sergio's. But his suit-case stays wide open. So the only one, who was able to help, was a guy with a tape role. After our stop-over we proceeded forward to Curitiba, where Mr. Arndt was waiting to fetch us up by car. But because it was the car of a friend of Mr. Anrdt, he first had to rembember, what kind of car it was, we have now been hunting for. After we had successfully located the car, we finally arrived at our new temporary residence, the " Kings Apart Hotel ". The " King" however, obviously has already left a long time ago. Therefore we made ourselves pretty fast on our way to change a few € in R$. It was at high noon, when the blond guy with the permanent smile on his face, appeared. The guy, named Oli, was our fourth member for our flat-sharing community.He lead us to a lunchplace, where we got a lunch with noodles, fish, beans, salad, sweet potatoes for only R$ 1,90. And the food was even good. Fresh rested, we wen't back to our lovely hotel #smile# to meet our professor again. But wait. There is a important part missing. "The phonecall". To let Germany know, that we already had reached our goal, we tried to call any people, living in this great country. Those people, of course, were our parents, or something like this.

So - my one was the first, who tried to come along with a brazilian telephone.
Step one - choose a number to get a provider, step two - the 49 for Germany, step three - try to rember the number you once was thinking about to call. If you successfully completed those steps, then but just then, you might be a lucky guy and reach somebody to talk to.

Well then, after we did, what men have to do. Or in other words, we told our parents that we were still alive in Brazil yet. We started to search for an apartment to hire. Or is the word to use rent? Don't know - I guess, you understand, what I try to tell you. If not, so please e-mail me. We had a look to over half a dozen apartments until we finally decided to take the first one.

After we made our contract for our new residence, we went out again, to find more things worth to eat. So we reached a place, where we ordered some burgers and french fries. I don't know what came up to the owner of this restaurant, but anyhow in a almost miracle way, he found out, that we are not brazilian. So we told him about our nationality, to get the response, that his 2 daughters are living in Germany. The Germany where they have to pay 300 US$ for a pair of shoes. Because we didn't want to scare this guy, we never told him, that you really easily find cheaper shoes in Germany and his daughter might had other plans for the use of the money.

Well then, that was already the end of the day. Our first day in Curitiba. The city with a wet welcome-rain and only 15°C.
 

Yeah - now I will tell you about the Curitiba Ap.203 prescription: 

Fist you take a greek guy, today 27 years old, black eyes, black hairs. That one, you have to place at the Technical University of Konstanz. Then you add a Portuguese, aged 24 years, brown eyes and also black hairs. If you are that far, search for a Swabia, who once was studiing a bit of electrical engineering but nowadays tries to improve himself with computer science. To get this mixture really delicious, finally we add a Bavarian. Aged 26 years, but in oposite to the rest, he has got to be a student of software engineering. Blond with blue eyes.

Back to life. The weather, which still was the same, was pure made of 100% rain. Nothing else. That's why the temperature went down to 10°C. And while Oli made his first visit at SIEMENS, the rest of us made the first contact with the shopping centers of Curitiba. There we had to buy very important stuff. Thick, warm blankets.

!!! Hint: for all those, who might come to Brazil at any time, the buildings don't have heaters !!!

After we've got our blankets, pillows and few other stuff, we tried one more time to contact good old Germany. Smart, as German students are, this time we wanted to make our luck by using the internet. But, for surprise, we still didn't reach Germany. This time, the reason, why we didn't get Germany online, were the well trained admins of our University.  Each single way to enter the network from our university, was down. Thank you, dear bastard operator from hell. (in this case: the admins of the FHKN - network)

 

To add: yesterday we received our mattresses but however no other furnitures. And, as if this wouldn't have been enough, Curitiba didn't supply us with electricity. So we made ourselfes comfortable with some candles and the cheapest whiskey cola, we ever had. A laptop was playing quietly some background music until one after the other fell asleep. Good fight - good night.

Back to today. Early in the morning, thus at 9 o'clock, we had an appointment with Mr. Arndt, who I will only call now "Arni " (tap-technical relief), to visit our new working home: VW/Audi. Oli, which would like to become a SIEMENSianer, was not allowed to come along. He gave himself again to his R$ 27, - language learning hours. After we a short car trip in Arni's VOLKSWAGEN GOL - without F, we arrived at the VW/Audi factory. My father to dear, in the future, I am just writing AUDI, when I talk about this company. Finally he drives since decades just AUDIs.
The factory for my surprise, was build very spaciously. Nothing was as closely packed, as for example in the Mercedes car production plant in Untertuerkheim. Actually, the whole venture should have lasted only until noon, but we spend that much time there that we didn't have time for out second objective, the PUCi.
So, when we were back to Curitiba city, our professor knew somebody for the money business, we had to deal with. The bank man Ernesto de Vaer, or something like that, told us about the rules of his company and how to change money there. After a short while, we noted his account number. For a happy money exchange - cheers.
Then, back at our apartment, we finally had "energia". Power supply and still no furnitures. But look there. What was that? In our kitchen stood  a enormous refrigerator and next to it, a small nice gas cooker. The washing machine was also available in the wash room. Yeah! Already almost a real household.
 

today we have the 09.08. There somebody must have been somewhat writeputrid. * gg * or perhaps it is because Christos, Sergio and I meanwhile get up every day at 06:00 o'clock to go to work. Back, we come always only between 18.15 and 18.30 o'clock.

Yesterday evening, were we at the "Bagdad Cafe" where the eastern hepmovements of young antinode bulge dancers have been more or less admired. However the public and my Shisha were substantially more interesting than the dancing "Meninas".
 

And already again some days passed, without I having time to deal with you - dear diary. Since our arrival in Curitiba the AUDI-Team (Christos, Sergio and Alex) is busy, to get all the documents together. Like f.e. the documents of identification, the students card and the residence permit. But unfortunately our efforts, to complete everything briskly and properly, got not answered with a appropriate teamplay. The gentleman of factory security does not emerge. The ladies from the PUCi, want to see us only again on another day, in order to make then exactly one copy from our documents of identification. And Tatiana's (from the department human ressources -- no further comment necessarily...) informationflow because of Send/receive comes also only very rarely to status. All over all, 2 weeks are already gone and and our tasklist is still very long.
B.t.w. such an 42 hours work week is really tiring. The AUDI team is pleased meanwhile about each minute of sleep. In addition, Oli, which still is only occupied with Portuguese, is just as early in bed, as we others.
 

Now, as you can see, already some more days have passed. And there are just a view things, which might be interesting for you, dear reader. First of all something to our theses (diploma). We maintained ourselves meanwhile at AUDI and so we already received a link to the Intranet. If everything goes well, then we should get in approximately 2 weeks an acces to the internet. However, in addition, our request must be signed by 4 persons, where one at present is on vacation and the other works in Sao Paulo.

What ever. Until yet, our apartment didn't look pretty comfortable. Pictures and poster are hard to find. Perhaps we should steal one of the nice KAISER beer advertisement posters. The advertisement posters of emperor are substantially better, than the beer. The ones we can recommend here, are SKOL, Antarctica and Bohemian. The Caipirinha runs down the throat without any problems. That's because they just use white sugar, only 3-4 ice cubes and best Cachaca. This evening is the party of Christoph, a colleague from KN, which brought its thesis (diploma) behind himself in Curitiba, too. We should throw ourselves in bowl for this now. But actually, we prefere to hide once more in our beds for a while. Thats because yesterday evening in the "Crossroads" it was, as far as I remember, completely unique damp and merry. Late - also.

Dear diary.... #smile# thus, we have the sidereal time SOMETHING, logfile entry of the captain. Got hit by an ion storm, and now we have heavy losses to accept. Oli is still not able to make its table-ware independently clean. Christos and Sergio are powerfully afflicted with a cold. And mine one dreams still about the first kitesurf attempts. " Captain, Captain - an us unknown object appears on the display " - " All right Chekov - this is only our new screensaver " (anytime, when we have enough of beautiful pictures, we will place a link to download a great screensaver)
OK the truth - our ion storm was nothing else than some more cold and partial rainy days. But it got our south countries already. So I prefer to get called a crazy Germans , if I am wearing a  t-shirt in the morning that only starts with 10°C, the main thing for me is to remains healthy. ("Dran - drauf - drueber " - is the only thing I can say so, in addition with greetings to Lutz and Christopher)
Last weekend Christos, Sergio and I have been in a park. Having a good weather, Curitiba is really able to be a nice place to stay at the weekends.