I have a German Tandem Partner! In case you have no idea what that means, a Tandem Partner is someone who speaks fluently a language you want to learn. So in exchange for talking to you in that language you talk with them in your mother language. Anyways her name is Kati, and I met her through Herbert. Herbert is Helen's Tandem Partner. Usually I call him "Helen's Herbert", though never to his face. (I really hope he doesn't read this). Having a Tandem, makes me feel better about speaking English all the time and not having any real German friends. I think the ersatz comfort will really help.
Right after I got Kati's number, I was sitting in my room, writing in my journal. This sounds really pensive and deep, but really it was Earth Day and google was shut down so I had nothing else to do. In my journal, I was ruminating on Earth Day, and I thought to myself, "you know the only electronic thing I'm using right now is my cell phone. It would be really easy to just turn that off and use absolutely no electricity." So I promptly turned my cell phone off. About 10 minutes later I realized that now I had no way to tell time and that I had class sometime soon. So I caved in and turned my cell phone on. It did the little Voda-Fone Salute and then...well let me read you the journal passage:
...Speaking of the environment, I think I'm going to start line-drying my clothes, I really don't see a difference in them and normally the dryers here are ineffective.
FUCK
I just turned my phone off, and when I turned it back on, it wanted the PIN. I don't know my PIN number. I g2g.
One of the many things that I share with my mom is an almost obsessive compulsion to throw things away, everything in fact, including my PIN. My logic was, "well the phone knows my PIN why would it want it again?" I maintain that this logic is still steadfast. A word of wisdom, don't lose your PIN. Because I bought my phone through not-Vodafone, they cant just give me my PIN. I had to pay 18€ and then wait 3 days for the money to get there. They told me to give them a call to get my new PIN...With what fucking phone?! Anyways, it was a Zen exercise in not knowing the time.
Hmmm. Short Post, but enjoy none the less.
As a Midwest American, I drive my car EVERYWHERE. Basically, if I can't see it from where I am, I'm driving there. With that set-up, I'd like to explain how I get around now.
Before I'd left the States, I'd looked at the bus schedule from Stuttgart Airport to Tübingen and found out that there's a bus that will get me here (the 828, if you're dying to know). I never thought to check when it left, how much it cost, where in this monstrous airport it left from, or which stop I was supposed to get off at. So, once I got to the Stuttgart Airport, I asked tourist information all that jazz. She knew where it left from, that was it. Now, I've never ridden a bus before; I dont know, where you pay, whom you pay, or any of the other finer points of public transit. After much frightened indecision, I decide to just get on the bus and hope for the best. Once I'm there, I talk to the driver (who looks EXACTLY like Burt Reynolds), and he mutters in his cantankterous Schwäbian-accented German that the bus costs €5.30. As the bus drives, it hits me that I don't know where Tübingen is relative to Stuttgart, south I thought. Then I remember my tattoo, and think, it's kind of ironic that you have a tattoo of the uncertainty principle and you're freaking out about which bus stop you're going to take. That calmed me a little bit. As luck would have it the Tübingen Hauptbahnhof (Main Station) is the last stop, and I was forced to get out there.
On a day-to-day basis, I use the TüBus, whose name I love. I'm getting farily good with knowing which lines go where, but it's still a 'new thing' for me to ride the bus. I've decided that this whole German Eco-Friendly thing is pretty cool and that once I'm back in the States, I want to keep it up. I've already been looking at the Des Moines Bus Schedule to see where I can go, and I looked into taking a greyhound bus from Des Moines to Topeka, but that turns out to be more expensive than driving, plus when I drive I can pee whenever I want. But I digress.
The only bad thing about the bus is that since my dorm is in the middle of nowhere Germany, the bus doesn't run on weekends or after 8 pm. The walk to the Hauptbahnhof is actually quite pleasant, but still a little annoying when you just want to get a döner-kebab at 1am. So, when I saw the poster for the Fahrrad Flohmarkt (Bicycle Fleamarket) in Derendingen, it got me thinking. Derendingen by the way is the next suburb/town south, conveniently located within walking distance of my middle of nowhere dorm. I've run though Derendingen (it takes like 7 minutes) and it's quite pretty. So last Saturday, I decided that I was gonna get me a bike at this Flohmarkt. I had, by the way, already checked Kaufland (German Wal-mart) and their bikes were like 170€，so I tossed out a big "fuck that" and decided that walking is easier. But a used bike, now that sounds more in my price range. At the Flohmarkt, I found a bike for 25€. I tested it out and it seemed great. The guy I bought it from had no hands (I took this as the reason from his selling the bike so cheap). After the exchange I drove off a happy little camper. I went to buy a chain for the bike, which cost half as much as the bike itself. And now I have this great sense of freedom; I can go anywhere anytime. More recently Evelina (Jake named the bike) has had some problems. Her back tire is rubbing on the frame. I found this out on my way to the Asian Market (I just wanted to go somewhere). I think after I finish writing this and eating my nutella toast, I might try to fix her.
Oh Evelina is red
I'm slowly but surely loosing my ability to spell in English, in fact I just had to stop myself from spelling "English" with and -sch at the end like in German. It's not just my spelling that's going to crap, I now speaking what would best be defined as Denglisch, at mixture of Deutsch and Englisch.
Here are some of my normal mistakes:
- Yes, bitte
- Pass me the Messer (knife)
- I still haven't melded an (anmelden=register)
- When are we going to make the test? (in German you machst eine Prüfung--literally make a test)
It makes for some funny looks from the Germans and laughter from the English speakers.Speaking of funny looks, yesterday, Craig and I went to Kaufland to get groceries (I almost called it Lebensmittel). One thing I should mention about German grocery stores is that there are no sackers for your groceries, in fact there are no sacks. In fairness they have them, but you have to pay 19 Eurocents for them, which I find ridiculous, but then again I'm a bit of a miser. But I digress, anyways, we bought a shit ton of groceries, and the bus doesnt run to Mühlbachäcker (our dorm) on Saturday so we would have had to schlepp all of these bags about ~2 km back home. We decided to use the cart (for which we had to pay a 1€ deposit) to get the groceries home. I have never been stared at so much in my life! You would have thought we were carrying a dead body in the cart, the way people stared at us. One guy looked at us and then faced away but kept his eyes on us as he walked past...it was hilarious. We did look a little crazy because the sidewalk slopes and Craig had to push the cart at a 45 degree angle to keep it from going into the road.
In other news, my Sprachkurs is over. On the balance I liked it, I didn't learn a whole lot, but I got to practice speaking, met lots of cool people, and got help with the verdammt deutsche Bureaucracy. I do wish that they had helped us register for classes, but that turned out to be easier that I expected. The online course catalog is shit, and by the time we were enrolled in the Uni the registration period was over, so we had to email professors and ask to be in their class. Turns out you can just show up for a class and ask to register there, apparently it's quite common. One thing that Sara, our Tutorin who has the most amazing voice ever, said was "it is your right to study". She said it in German of course, but it was very reminiscent of the French student riots. I just thought it was cool.
Oh and just a quick aside, I (rather we, there were 20 of us) went to Stuttgart for a day. The weather was shit, and the Italians ended up leaving a person behind, but it was fun. The first thing we see when we get out of the train station is--Hold on, I need to set this up right before I tell you. Ok in the movie Eurotrip, there is a running joke that nothing sexual shocks Europeans because "they have orange juice commercials with lesbians and dildos." So armed with this stereotype I can tell you the story. We get out of the underground train station and the first thing we see of Stuttgart is a giant poster with a bottle of hunts ketchup and a naked woman behind it. You can actually see nipple. Needless to say, I bought the poster. 7€ well spent.
