17th March 2006 - Day 151

In today's lab, we learnt to determine some Stoffdaten of Benzin and Diesel. Not in the right state of mind today. I keep thinking cars run on motor oil.

The idea of octane number has been drilled into me finally. I had read up on the topic several times in the past, only to forget it in a few day's time. Seems like it's more effective to learn somethings under some pressure.

After a very through questioning session lasting more than 1.5 hours, we finally began with the experiment. It went on largely without any hiccups. Except that I had some problems with switching on the gas pipe. Not that difficult, I just had to push it down and turn.

The session was finished at about 1245. I went to lunch with Alex in the Mensa. Alex is a very quiet person. A few days ago, Martina K. asked him, "Bist du 100% deutsch?". Her argument was that Alex was too nice to be a... ahem... German.

He told me that because he was too light, he need not do the Wehrdienst. How convenient. Seriously, he's small sized compared to the other Germans I see here. I am quite confident I'll be able to fireman lift him for quite a distance, even in my current state of unfitness.

We went to the cafeteria after lunch to continue with writing the lab report. You know someone hasn't been making much progress with the language when you see all the corrections Alex made. Articles remain curiously hard to get a feel of. Which is why I tend to skip the problem by using plural if possible. Then again, with the plural form, the noun changes too. But that's another problem.

Another 2 Ausländer and a very patient German. The perfect combination to a lot of Quatsch.

I went to the Rechenzentrum to print out a train ticket for my trip from Nürnberg to Wien. Why not directly from Karlsruhe to Wien? I figured I'll save 18€ by breaking down the trip this way due to some online offers.

But I haven't brought the ticket from Karlsruhe to Nürnberg yet. That will come on Monday.

Although there's not much time left, I'm still haven't found a hostel in Wien. I don't even know what is interesting there! If I don't like it there, I can simply ride on to the next destination. As long as I reach Karlsruhe again by 29th night, there should not be any problems.

So, finding places to visit is on tomorrow's to-do-list.