Heya folks! Week 2 is over and time is really speeding up here.

This past week I feel much more relaxed and at home in Bad Homburg. My colleagues at Fresenius are a major part of that since they've made me feel so welcome. I've gotten used to breakfast in the café at 9:30 every morning - sitting down with all of the student interns and chatting in english or just simply listening to them speaking german (I'm slowly improving but I still find I can understand it much better than I can speak it). It's not just the interns who have been so friendly either - several of the other staff have introduced themselves and chatted with me over lunch or coffee. Basically it feels like one big happy family! And yes, I'm aware of how corny that sounds.

On wednesday I was invited to play badminton after work with 7 other colleagues, "just for some fun" they said. "We're not professionals or competetive or anything". They lied. Well, partly. It was amazing fun but, WOW, was it competetive! I played doubles with Sebastian, Peter and Monika, swapping teams after best of 3 games. After somehow not cursing Peter and Sebastian with bad luck while they were on my team, Monika and I teamed up to see if I could make it 3 wins with 3 different team members. Although we lost the first game, we fought back in the second, and were winning when we ran out of court time. Monika and I both agreed that the others had just called it because they scared! The rematch is on this wednesday - I'll let you know the verdict.

Thursday and Friday saw me racking my brains for a solution to a couple of design problems I've set myself with my project. Although I have plenty of data and such so far, I didn't realise how hard it would be to try and come up with a mathematical solution to describe this. However I'm sure it can be done, and I still have a few more ideas to try. The meal out on thursday night definitely helped me relax about it a bit. Had a great time sampling the local schnitzel and then realised the bar had an entire range of scottish malt whiskys! Turns out the germans (and polish) appreciate good whisky too!

This weekend (and last weekend as well) has seen me explore Frankfurt inside out on foot. I've spent hours walking from new skyscraper financial buildings to older, more historical, areas whilst taking pictures all the way. Once I've had them developed I'll scan them and put them on here (says the technology literate engineer without a digital camera). I also visited the Goethe-Universität, which isn't far from the city centre, and saw a strange mix of the very sad and very funny.

First, the whole campus has signs next to trees with pictures of people on them. Every sign has a number. It turns out they're all memorials for victims of the Buna/Monowitz concentration camp. Every number was a prisoner number.

Second, was a red squirrel with a caffeine addiction. I stumbled across him trying to drag a mainly empty coffee cup up a pine tree, and every time he dropped it he'd try again. Pictures were nigh on impossible though, since he wouldn't slow down!

Right thats enough from me. Enjoy your week everyone! Have fun, Iain.