Internship in the USA - Part I

Prelude
On Wednesday 14th February, I got ready for my six month trip to the States, which would start on the next day. I had already had a look at several housing options and got in contact with 4 of them to make arrangements for a meeting once I would arrive in Princeton. The problem though was related to the organization within Siemens, since they had promised me to arrange an intern picking me up at the airport, a reservation for a hotel (for the first 13 nights) and for my rental car, but on Wednesday, I still had not got any further informations about that. Fortunately, I could contact another intern working at Siemens (thank you once again Urs) and he could reassure me that everything was being taken care of. The problem was only that the guy coordinating the intern-pickups had been sick until Tuesday and my HR contact person as well as my supervisor stayed at home on Wednesday because of the heavy snowfalls. In the end, I had all the informations on Wednesday evening (late evening!) and could finally look forward to my arrival in the States without too many worries...

Chapter I - The Arrival
So on Thursday, I took off from Zurich Kloten with British Airways to London, where we had a few problems with the landing. I mean, we managed to land safely finally, but due to air-traffic and strong winds we made several round-trips over London (looks like a nice city from above... ;-)) and had a rather shaky landing. A small lunch and a few hours later, I took the next flight...the long one all over the Atlantic Ocean to Newark (New Jersey) just next to New York City. In some of the pictures you can see how a Boeing 777 (was the airplane I took from London) with its huge engines (the largest of its kind) looks like. After some eating, TV-watching (Flushed Away...funny) and reading (USA travel guide), I was already in Newark, where we again encountered strong winds and a shaky landing. A few passport checks later, I was finally out of the airport, where I met Robert, another intern working for Siemens (something like 1/3 of the 300 people working for Siemens Corporate Research (SCR) in princeton are interns!), and was brought to the Holiday Inn. But before we arrived at the nice hotel, where I planned to spend just a few days before moving into my permanent accommodation (see chapter IV), we stopped at a real American steak house (Outback) to have dinner. It was also quite interesting to get a first impression of what I may expect on the US highways...well in the end, it was as expected: big cars, large lanes and low speed limits (in New Jersey: 55 mph (88.5 km/h) on the "highways" (usually big and multiple lanes, but with some traffic lights) like the US Route 1 and 65 mph (104.6 km/h) on the interstates like the I-95...although people usually drive 80mph and more there).

Chapter II - First Impressions
On Friday, another intern from Switzerland (electrical engineering student at ETH) brought me from the Hotel to the car rental offices (it's half way from Princeton to NYC and he had to go to NYC anyway), where I got my nice rental car...a modern, big and nice Saturn Aura XR 3.6. You can find some pictures of my car in the web albums and some more informations here. And yes, you absolutely need a car to live in the USA (unless you live in one of the really big cities like New York City, Los Angeles and so on), since the public transportation is not really good (although the East-Coast is reasonably good for US-standards and it's possible to easily get to NYC by train from Princeton). Although I had the mobility now, I preferred staying at the hotel to watch some NBA basketball (All-Star Weekend!).
On Saturday, I finally had a look at two of the housing options and in the evening I got to my first Siemens intern party...or at least a party where they were all invited (it was actually the birthday of a Brazilian au-pair girl). So, I could meet quite a lot of co-workers even before I actually started to work at all. It was also quite a funny situation to meet Ivan (he's studying computer science with me in Zurich) at that party...I mean, although we know each other from school, none of us knew that the other was doing/going to do an internship with Siemens in the States, so we were both like "what are YOU doing here??"... ;-)
On Sunday, I went to have a walk through Princeton and take some pictures of the well-known (claimed to be one of the best in the world) university...well at least it looks nice...in the evening then, I relaxed and watched the NBA All-Star Game...just wanted to mention this for all NBA fans in Europe, who (like me) hadn't had the possibility to watch the game for several years, because it was only shown on Pay-TV... :p
Then on Monday, I started to work...or at least something like this. I arrived at Siemens to take care of some paperwork and was then introduced to the small team, I'll be working with. So, I'll be working on a Siemens application used to aid the design and development of automated factories. The team consists of around 6 persons (btw: Ivan is one of them) and the office is organized in classic US-style cubicles...but at least it isn't one of these huge office buildings where you're next window is a mile away...I mean, I'm actually right next to a window...and right next to my supervisor...still have to decide, if that's good or bad...

(to be continued...and no, I won't continue day-by-day...don't worry... ;-))