Craziness in Constance

About a month ago two men tried planting two bombs on trains leaving
Cologne. Fortunately, the detonators for the bombs went off, but not
the bombs themselves, so nothing really happened. Last week they
arrested two suspects in the case. One was arrested in Lebanon, the
other in Kiel (northern Germany). Yesterday they arrested a third
suspect. Where did they arrest him? They arrested him in the same
student housing here in Constance where I lived when I first got
here!!! (I lived in house Q. It looks like this guy was in house M.)
The guy is supposedly in the same terrorist cell as the other two. They
also took two more students in for questioning.

Anyway, it’ll be interesting to see how this all plays out. I hope the
Germans have their act together and are on top of things. So far it has
been one of the fortunate countries here in Europe and not had any
successful terrorist attacks.

Chris

Two Months!

Wow, two months ago to the day was my last post. I have a good excuse, though. This last semester has been very stressful. The funny things is, the biggest stress has not been my classes themselves, but all of the bureaucratic bullshit that the Germans like to put each other through. First, the head administrator in the physics department informed me that I failed a test that a) I didn’t take, and b) I wasn’t even allowed to take at the time. He told me, and others who were also blind-sided by this, “tough luck”. So we went to the dean, who squared everything out for us. Then at the end of June I found out that the university had actually kicked me out of school way back in March, before the semester even started, without bothering to give me my money back or try and contact me. Trying to deal with the administrative beast at the university was a nightmare. One lady didn’t feel like helping me anymore and just got up and walked away in the middle of the conversation. Anyway, after a few sleepless nights and lots of meetings things got sorted out. How? I’m still not sure, but I’m just glad they did.