This week at my internship I continued my task of creating an automated tool for standardizing file names and inputs. Each day I did different things with it because the instructions are always changing. When I complete one thing, it usually changes and needs to be done a different way. This is usually because the other person working on this with me realizes there is a better way to do the coding. Sometimes it is my supervisor that gives different instructions because he thinks there is a better way it should be done. I have made progress on this project, but sometimes it does not seem like it with the amount of work actually produced. There is a lot of things that end up being deleted because they are not needed anymore. I would say this is something that is hard to adapt to. There is a large attention to detail in these projects. I am not sure if it is because of the thoroughness and attention to detail of the German culture, or that the projects normally go like this. I am not used for the work I am doing to go unnoticed in this way. I am hoping that we are getting to a point now that it is the final version.

Other than work, on Tuesday night we had a dinner with our program director Britta. We went to dinner at an outdoor restaurant near the zoo. It was along a small lake that we had to walk through a long path to get to. I did not get the meat that was being offered, but I ate potato salad and a soft pretzel. Well it was supposed to be a soft pretzel, but it was actually rock hard. This dinner was with the rest of the Pitt students and other students doing internships through Intrax. It was nice meeting the other students I have not met before. It was interesting to hear about their internships and their experiences in Berlin. Three of them that I just met have actually been in Berlin since January. They did the semester abroad and then started their internships for the summer.

Over the weekend I went to Hamburg for one night. We go there at 10 after a 2 hour train ride. This train was not included in our train pass, so we had to pay to travel there. When we were first sitting down we realized people kept getting kicked out of their seats because other people reserved them. We were hoping we would not have to move but eventually people approached us saying the seats we were in were theirs. We walked through other parts of the train and sat down another time and ended up having to move again. After that, we found two other people that just sat in area meant for exiting the train. We ended up sitting there on the floor with them because we did not think we would have any luck finding seats. We now know that we should select our seats when we book train tickets to other places.

Aside for the problems we had on the train getting there, we had a great time in Hamburg. When we got off the train, we went over to the hotel to drop off our bags and then went for breakfast. We went to a restaurant right down the street. When we were done with breakfast we were able to check into the hotel, so it was perfect timing. We got ready for the day and then went over to St. Michael’s church. We went to the top of the clock tower and had a view of all of Hamburg. It was very cool to see the whole city from up there. We walked around that area after and saw this one little area that was not destroyed in the 1906 fire. After seeing the church and that area, we went closer to the harbor to walk around there. There is a newer apartment building/concert hall/hotel that is on the water that has very cool architecture. The building on the street around that were made of all brick. The architecture in this area was very impressive. After our walk around the harbor, we went back into the center of the city and got stuck in the rain. We went back to the hotel and got ready for dinner while we waited for the rain to stop. We ended up going to dinner at one of the restaurants near the hotel on the water. On Sunday we did a lot of walking around. We walked up the side of the lake and looked at all the houses and buildings there. We then went into the area there and walked down those streets. Overall the trip to Hamburg consisted of a lot of walking, but it was all worth it. I would love to go back to Hamburg another weekend, I loved it there so much.