The Wheels on the Bus

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

JESUS TITS AMERICA

So I'm finally in Tübingen. My flight got delayed because of weather in Chicago, and by the time I got to Chicago, of course there was no one there to help, and naturally there were no more flights to take to London. I had to overnight in Chicago, which wasn't that bad actually. Then I had to sleep in the Heathrow terminal because 1) my flight was the next day and 2) a hotel would have cost more than my flight. On the flight to London I met an insurance salesman (looking back this should have been a warning sign). As we started to talk I noticed that his hands were shaking as he read his book. Personable little me, I actually talked to him for a while. He took up the entire armrest, which at first kinda pissed me off, but I figured I could cut a guy who is either afraid of flying or has Parkinson's a break (looking bad this was my first mistake). Sometime around the Denver omlette they served for breakfast, his hand ended up on my leg. Now, at this point I thought "maybe he has some sort of arthritis and he can't feel his hand on my leg," and then I rationalized it with "I always complain about how Americans are so afraid of being touched by a stranger and it's so stupid." Armed with these lies I let his hand sit. Somewhere around Iceland, his hand had travelled partway up my leg and was now resting dangerously close to my junk. I decided that I had had enough with this BS. I say that very forcefully but in reality I just started a passive-aggressive war where my hand slowly tried to win back the territory I had lost. During this time, in true passive-aggressive fashion, we had held on a polite conversation. He was flying to London for a meeting and then on to Budapest, for no apparent reason. I told him of my tribulations at the Chicago airport, and he offered to share his London hotel room with me, adding rather ominously that when your abroad you have to try everything. I nearly vomitted, but I held it together because he could have killed me and dumped my body out of the Airplane bathroom across the glaciers of Iceland. You do what you have to do to stay alive.
By the time I was in Germany I had decided that I could wait to call my family and that they would understand that without a phone or internet, such things were difficult. This proved to be very wrong. My mom assumed that because I hadn't phoned (in my sister's words) "You had been killed in some Euro-trash alley." In her hysteria, she phoned my uncle who lives in Germany. Together they spend a day and a half calling O'Hare Airport, Heathrow Airport, Stuttgart Airport, London Police, Tübingen Police, The Wohnheimverwaltung (housing adminstration), and every dorm in Tübingen (there are about 30). As I walked carefree and rested into the Bus Station BurgerKing to check my facebook and email, they were about to file a missing persons report with the Federal Government. I would like to point out, and this is nothing against my mom specifically, that the word "Hysteria" comes from the Greek word "Hystera" meaning uterus because they thought it was caused by a disturbance in that organ. Women are Crazy.
In Tübingen things are going pretty good. I don't have internet in my room yet, so I'm writing this from the Afro-Café or something like that. And the room itself is kind of depressing, it's furnished but not very colorfully or happily. A little bit of advice to anyone who wants to study in Tübingen: familiarize yourself with the bus schedule and a map of the city. I was lost for an hour because I thought the busses weren't running and I tried to walk to my dorm. The other three times I've gotten lost in this city have been because I decided to just set out on foot somewhere.
My Sprachkurs has begun and so far I've met lots of people from England and the USA. It's nice to speak with them, but it kinda feels like cheating when I speak English. I'm also very critical of the other Americans because they are what people see of the whole nationality. I can only be so funny and cool, I can't make up for all of us!