lots of soccer

AIB:

This week, our bioscience group had the privilege of going to visit the company Bayer's offices in Cologne. There we had a guided tour basically outlining what the company was doing today as well as a brief history of what it had done in the past. When the tour guide first asked what we currently knew about Bayer the biggest thing everyone thought of was Aspirin. Turns out they do a lot more. Apart from pharmaceuticals, they also focus on the two other general fields of agriculture and materials. On our tour we were led through a variety of rooms, each with a different theme. Several had interactive games which is always fun. The first was a soccer challenge, which was a pretty discouraging prequel to our soccer game later that week. Next, we got to break out these super sweet 3D glasses and to see the actions of different proteins as never before. Following this, one of our students came close to breaking a record for the fastest time on a driving simulator (unfortunately the record for least fuel efficient was also close to broken). Finally, after a few students and Dr. Wasser tried out the iMoove, we learned that anything will sound cooler than it really is if you just put an i in front of the the name.

Personal: 

Not only did we get to attend a professional soccer game, but we also got to participate in our very own AIB soccer cub this week. The fc köln stadium wasn't nearly as dramatic as Kyle field but many of the fans were just as passionate. And not just the fans in the stadium. The entire path from central station in cologne to the actual stadium was jam packed with traffic and people trying to get to the game. Our tram car to the stadium literally could not have been any more full. We were lucky to make it on as it quit letting people in at stops after ours. All the AIB students got to sit together and enjoy drinks and bratwurst while watching the game which was fun. The score ended up being zero to zero but there were still some pretty intense points of the match. And it was raining so that automatically makes anything more intense. Our AIB game wasn't quite as intense but still pretty fun. We had some great sunny weather and got to play in a big park/field in front of the university and meet a few other friendly German students who were also hanging out there. Then as a reward for our slight amount of exercise we got free pizza and drinks.