Starting Fresh with a Job and a Car

After lots of waiting, two trips to the visa office in Munich, and much, much paperwork later, I can officially declare that I’ve started my new job at Roche (December 2^nd) and we are extending our stay here for up to 3 more years.  Julie’s already signed the iPhone contract for another 2 years so that pretty much sealed the deal.

I’ve upgraded my title in the same department from Postdoc to Senior Scientist which basically means a nice pay raise (though a lot of that goes straight to the German Government in the form of taxes!).  My work is still mostly research oriented in the laboratory - exploring and developing new techniques for routine analytical chemistry.  It seems I have finally passed the right of passage from student, to graduate student, to postdoc student, to Research Scientist (aka my first ‘real’ job), and it feels really good to finally reach that next milestone (no more student status!).  Now it’s time to put that school theory to work and try to make this company some money.

I’m also more integrated in the company now, which brings business trips and communicating about half of the time in German.  My first week I made a 24-hour trip to Sweden and this week I had a 3-day trip to Saarbrücken.

Holy crap….we thought this whole ‘living in Germany’ thing would be temporary and now we are staying 3 more years!  And now I am speaking this weird language even more on a daily basis, which feels pretty strange to me at times.  The blogs will have to continue!

Two months ago we felt like our time here was up (when it didn’t seem like a job would appear at Roche), but now we feel like it is a bit of a fresh start.  We can start mapping out new travel destinations and buy all of those things we had been holding off on, like a car!  Say hello to the new-to-us 2010 Honda Fit (here known as the Honda Jazz):

I will now save ~45 minutes a day by driving or car-pooling the 60 mile round trip commute.  In the end it adds up to about 10 extra days for the year.  I wonder what I will do!? And while red cars are common in the US, bright colored cars are pretty rare here.  Germans prefer nice conservative blends of dark gray, dark blue, and (dark) black.  Cars are serious business here, and they look it too.  So ours will be easy to find when buried in snow.  Honda Jazz is go!

And while I am the one who got the car (since Julie doesn’t have a German license), Julie says not to feel bad for her.  She gets to roll to work every day in a Benz. 

Yes, the public buses here are Mercedes Benzes

So here is to the next ~3 years!  I wonder what our blog might sound like then, or if anyone will still be reading them… assuming we are still writing them.  Now it’s back to work for two more weeks before our family comes for a European holiday vacation.  It will be nice to have the new car and Christmas markets to keep us entertained until then.