Munich this weekend

So I just reserved a hotel for two nights in Munich. You might be asking yourself why, since Munich is only 1/2 an hour from Augsburg on the train. A few reasons:

1. I have a ticket to the symphony in Munich tomorrow (Friday) night, and the concert starts at 8pm. Mozart with the Bayerischer Rundfunk Orchester. Should be interesting.

2. I don't know how far the Munich train station is from the symphony hall, but JS's apartment (where I'm staying) is at least 1/2 an hour away from the Augsburg station, and I don't like running around by myself that late, trying to find busses, etc.

3. JS's apartment is fine, but the shower is teeny and the water runs either too hot or too cold all the time, and I want a few days with a nice hotel shower/bath before I move into my own apartment on Monday.

4. I want to watch some TV.

Initially, I thought those reasons were not good enough to justify a 100-Euro hotel bill, but I was talking to SP about it and he convinced me it would be okay to spend the money, relax, and enjoy myself. So I booked it. I am actually pretty excited. Everyone I have ever known who has been to Munich loves it. My Bavaria book has a huge section on Munich, so I'll know where to go and how to get there.

The administrative things are all just about wrapped up -- I got my residence permit and I registered with the local authorities, and managed to get that done within about an hour this morning. Wunderbar. The main thing I have left to do is call the "Hausmeister" (landlord, I guess) of the student housing and confirm that I can move in there Monday at 8am. I hate using the phone over here and have been putting it off as long as possible. But I need to make sure I'm squared away for Monday, so I have to bite the bullet and just do it.

Dinner

Yum. Lasagna, salad, and two glasses of lovely chiante for less than 13 Euros. I read my Time magazine and listened with enjoyment to the group of ladies next to me and the birthday party on the other side. And they took my American Express. Wunderbar.

Pasta e Vino
Bergiusstraße 13
86199 Augsburg

Retail Therapy

I didn't make it to the resident registration office today because I got up too late. That's okay. Instead, I took my time getting ready this morning. I then went to the campus to sign my housing contract. The lady at the office was surprised I already had a bank account. I guess I'm doing okay on that score.

I then took the tram (Strassenbahn) to the Augsburg town center. I'm not sure how wise it was to walk around down there in the rain and blowing cold wind, but it felt great to get out and walk around, especially since I was in the town itself (which feels like a real German town). The university is out kind of in the middle of a field (and thus does not really feel like it's in Germany, somehow), and it takes about 20 minutes on the tram to get to the main train station from the campus. The tram runs straight through the middle of the campus, which is great. I kept thinking ahead while I was riding it to how easy it will be to get from the train station to my apartment (which is in a building practically on the campus itself) when people like my friend MA come to visit from the States (MA is coming over here for just over a week beginning in the middle of May).

Anyway, I went to the train station because I thought it would be nice to buy an English magazine or book (or both) at the bookshop there. I thought it might help my homesickness to get some English-language reading. I ended up getting a very long chick lit book (Marian Keyes, who I've read before in my weaker moments...the one I bought today must be one of her more prolific efforts), a Time magazine, and a Newsweek magazine. Total bill = 18 Euros (and totally worth it). As hard as it was, I resisted buying a New Yorker magazine (selling for a whopping 10.50 Euros).

I then went shoe shopping. Of course, I brought 7 pairs of shoes over here, but my heeled boots, clogs, and tennis shoes with mesh tops aren't great for life here due to so much rain and walking. I found two nice pairs of flat shoes that are not clogs and should keep both of my entire feet dry. Unfortunately the shoe shop didn't take credit cards, so I had to pay with cash. That's pretty normal in Germany.

Wow. I feel so much better now that I have English reading AND new shoes. I was really trying to resist buying a lot of things, but anyone who knows me knows how much I love shopping. And I had such a bad day yesterday with the homesickness I felt I really needed to treat myself.

Tonight, I'm going to try out the Italian restaurant around the corner and have dinner AND wine. Hopefully it will help me fall asleep earlier than last night, since I need to get an early start tomorrow and get some things done.

Homesick?

Why yes, I am, thank you. I've lately been debating if I was totally insane to undertake this whole crazy scheme. Tonight has been especially tough. Nighttimes are the worst -- right after I turn off the computer, the light, and the radio it's just me in the dark there alone. Ugh.

To try to understand what's going on with me and to calm myself down, I've done some reading about homesickness online, and I have figured out that it's totally normal to feel this way while you're trying to adjust to being away from home. The sites also say that homesickness most frequently and severely occurs in children because they have not developed sufficient coping mechanisms when it comes to dealing with feelings of separation, anxiety, loneliness, etc.

That's cool. But I feel like what I am doing might take a special kind of coping mechanism that until now I never really needed to develop. I have never attempted to be so far away from SP for so long before, and I think it's normal to miss him and want to go home to him. I don't miss home per se ... I miss SP and want him to be here with me right now. His arrival here is tentatively scheduled for 100 days from now, and that feels like a long time away (at times too long).

Additionally, any negative feelings I currently have are probably exacerbated by the following:

1. I have to deal with everything in a foreign language that I haven't spoken on a long-term daily basis in almost 10 years.

2. I know very few people here and don't really want to talk about this with them because if I start crying I won't be able to stop and will be completely embarrassed.

3. I'm wading my way through German-style bureaucracy, most of the time without a clue as to what's going on and what I'm supposed to do next.

4. I'm living in someone else's apartment temporarily.

Put all that together, I'm having a hard time finding anything totally firm I can really grasp onto so far.

Ja, gut. I don't think my coping skills are necessarily malformed (in other words, I don't have the limited emotional development of an 8-year-old) -- those skills are being formed on the fly, as I type this and do everything else I've been doing over the past week. So the bottom line is that it's okay that I'm homesick, it's okay if I feel sad and want to cry a little (or a lot), it will get better as the time goes along, and by the end of the five months here I'll probably be crying because I won't want to leave (go figure).

The Lovely Frau Brueckner at the Sparkasse

It's interesting. As mean as yesterday's bus driver was, the lady who set up my account at the Sparkasse (one of the main banking firms in Germany) today was exceedingly nice. Frau Brueckner only works there three days a week, and I happened to go in there on a day she was there. GOTT SEI DANK.

Gerda Brueckner is a lovely lady. She set up my account with the minimum of attitude and the maximum of efficiency and friendliness. She went out of her way to explain to me how things work, how much I would get charged, how I should get money before I get my card, when my card would arrive and how I should pick it up, etc. She also gave me her card with her email address and told me to email her if I had questions or problems. Furthermore, she was very complimentary of my German and told me she thought I'd have a lot of success at the university. Honestly, I felt like I was at the Bank of America or something, getting the love from one of their over-eager customer service reps. Wunderbar!

So now I have a bank account, and soon it will have money in it (after I give SP the info he needs to transfer money over).

If you ever find yourself at the Stadtsparkasse Augsburg (Univiertel branch, located at Hermann-Koehl-Strasse 9) on a Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday, ask for Frau Brueckner. She'll take good care of you.

Getting Around

Augsburg is not a big city, but the suburbs are far enough away and spread out enough that you need to use public transportation to get around. Hmmm.... I hate trying to figure out public transportation in a new place. There should be a universal way of doing it.

Augsburg's public transportation is a little bit confusing. To get from JS's apartment to the center of town and the main train station, you need to take bus #41 in the direction of Koenigsplatz. Fair enough. The thing is, not every bus stop has a machine that sells tickets. Augsburg is also made up of a number of zones, and how much the ticket costs depends on how many zones you're travelling.

Yesterday, I was at a stop that had no machine, and I didn't know how many zones it was to get to the Koenigsplatz, which is the stop next to the train station (I was going to the train station to travel outside the city to meet CS, a friend of a friend who helped me find housing here before I arrived). So I was forced to ask the bus driver. Luckily he was nice, and he told me exactly how much each zone costs, and how many zones it was to get to where I was going (2 zones at 1.05 per zone, total is 2.10). He then told me to just put the coins in the slots in the machine next to him and he'd give me a ticket. So far so good. I understood him perfectly clearly and he had been very helpful, so I was feeling pretty good about the bus.

Fast forward to today. I had to come back from the Uni, where I had spent the day taking care of administrative things. This mainly involved registration as a student at the University -- I was actually almost able to accomplish this completely due to the nice lady at the registration office who helped me fill out my form; I just needed a few additional documents (involving health insurance and proof of payment of fees) that I was able to get today, so I can bring the whole thing back to her tomorrow and wrap up the entire process. Registering is very important because you need to register to get a student ID card, which serves as nothing less than the holy grail of German university life. You can use it to get discounts on everything. The fees you pay to get it include the purchase of a Semester-Ticket, which basically lets you use your student ID to RIDE ALL PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION IN TOWN FOR FREE. After reading the rest of this post, it will be clear how important this will be to the enjoyment of the rest of my time in Augsburg.

While I was at the Uni today, I also had lunch in the Mensa (student cafeteria) with SR and her friends. SR showed me how to get a Mensa card, which you need to buy food there. The food is good and quite cheap -- I was surprised about the former, but not the latter. By the way, SR has been incredibly helpful, showing me how everything works, etc.

So after lunch I walked around the Uni area a bit, and then I decided to come back home and take a nap. I got on the bus to come back, and I knew it was only one zone from the Uni to where JS's apartment is, so I had my 1.05 ready. When I got on the bus I put the coins in the slots on the machine next to the driver, just as I had done the day before. The driver (a fat man with a red face, ugly blond hair, and a scraggly beard) looked at me in disgust, and said something completely incomprehensible. I assumed he was talking to me in the Bayern dialect because I had no idea what he said. I told him I had just arrived in town recently and didn't understand him. Here's how the rest of the conversation went (roughly translated):

Him: "Why did you just throw those coins in the slots like that?"

Me: "Excuse me? I thought that's what I was supposed to do."

Him (condescendingly, as if talking to a 5-year-old): "No. Why would you think that? You have to lay them on top of the thing, then I can see how much you're paying, then put them in. How am I supposed to know how much you pay if you just put them in the slots without me seeing what they are?!"

Me: "But the bus driver I talked to yesterday told me to just put the coins in the slots, he didn't say anything about leaving them on top. I'm sorry I did it wrong."

Him (very mad now): "One of my colleagues never would have told you to do something like that. So how much did you pay anyway?"

Me: "I promise he did say that. I paid 1 Euro 5."

Him (somewhat beaten, probably because I'd gotten the ticket amount right): "Okay." He then handed me the ticket.

I thanked him as graciously as I could, sweating profusely and red to the roots of my hair. I was sure everyone on the bus could hear our conversation and thought I was a total idiot. He did say "you're welcome" but I don't think he really meant it. I then stamped the ticket (which I also learned from the nice bus driver yesterday you're supposed to do), and sat down near an elderly couple who were doing their best not to look at me.

Ugh. I felt completely humiliated. Up until that point I'd been having a pretty good day, and this complete a**hole totally ruined it for me. I spent the short ride and walk home wishing I could spend 5 minutes in a room alone with him (so that I wouldn't embarrass him in front of everyone, too bad he didn't pay me the same courtesy). Here's what I'd say:

"You know, for those of us who are brave enough to travel to another country and to try to get around speaking a foreign langauge, it's hard enough to figure things out without being totally yelled at and humiliated for something as small is putting the coins in the slots on the bus by mistake. I hope you come to America sometime, buddy. I hope you come there and experience the American version of customer service and politeness. I hope that you realize that even though you probably don't speak a word of English, people will go out of their way to be nice to you and help you figure things out, and no one will EVER talk to you the way you just talked to me. Of course you will never do that because you undoubtedly will never be brave enough to leave your sad little life driving a bus here in Augsburg to travel as far as America. So go home to your fat wife and your obnoxious kids and enjoy eating your sausages and drinking your beer. Go ahead and have a good laugh at my expense -- the dumb lady who couldn't figure out how to pay on the bus. When you're done lauging, think about what you did, and consider how the other person might feel before you start yelling at them."

So, kids, here's an important lesson if you ever ride a public bus in Augsburg, and you can't buy a ticket before you get on: PUT THE FREAKING COINS ON TOP OF THE THING AND NOT DIRECTLY IN THE SLOTS. In fact, I will never drop coins directly in slots on a bus ever again in my whole life. It may be this way throughout Germany as far as I know. And if you ever see a fat, ugly, red-faced German man, wandering alone and confused through your neighborhood, he will undoubtedly need your help. Curse him silently, then treat him with kindness. Thank you.

Arrival

Well, I made it. I landed in Germany late Wednesday night, and after one night in a hotel near the airport, I arrived in Augsburg Thursday afternoon. It has been such a whirlwind, with so many conflicting emotions.

I guess the easiest emotion to predict is, well, sadness. I was sad when we drove away from the house (after saying goodbye to the kitties) and sad at the airport when SP finally left me at the security gate. I cried a lot. I didn't want to but there was no controlling it. It was finally real and I was really going. Since then the sadness has come and gone, which I'm sure it will do more as the newness of arriving here wears off.

The trip itself wasn't too eventful. I slept most of the flight to London (thank you Tylenol PM) and just chilled out on the short hop to Munich. I was glad no one was there to meet me in Munich because I looked terrible -- all my makeup had been cried off, my hair was all over the place, and I was sweating and exhausted. I went through customs okay, entering as a tourist only. I decided not to try to get my Aufenthaltserlaubnis, or residence permit, at that point because the customs guy looked mean and I didn't realistically see him extending himself much beyond stamping my passport. So I figured I'd just go in as a tourist, and then play dumb when I got to Augsburg ("Oh really, I should have gotten my Aufenthaltserlaubnis at the airport? But I didn't know!"). My luggage presented itself right on schedule, and once I saw it I remembered how much of it there was and decided not to try to figure out how to use the S-Bahn (Munich's light rail train system) to get to the hotel, and instead found a taxi.

The airport in Munich is in the middle of nowhere, north of the city. I didn't really realize I was in Germany until the taxi driver got on the Autobahn and the spedometer hit 160kms. He was a nice enough guy after the initial misunderstanding about the name of the hotel and where it was, and complimented me on my German. I guess that's a good sign, but how well could he really discern considering he was from Turkey or Lebanon or somewhere and spoke with a heavy accent himself? But it was still nice to get around in German without too many hassles in the first hour on the ground.

The hotel stay was pretty uneventful, except when I tried to use the exercise room. It was more like an exercise corridor in the basement with apparatuses lined up along the wall that must have been popular in the early 1970's. Some of them had been repaired with duct tape (!). I got on this thing which must have been the precursor to the elliptical trainer (called a "walker") and did my best to get my heart rate up, but it was really just a non-starter. So I decided to put on my coat and walk around outside instead. The first thing that struck me was how COLD it was. I was neither prepared nor dressed for it in my lightweight exercise pants. Oh well, once I got going I warmed up. The area around the hotel was nothing so special -- a small suburb in north Munich. I realized at the time that it's unfair to arrive in March and gather a first impression of anywhere that has a serious winter. There was still a bit of dirty snow left on the ground, the trees were bare, and the lawns were brown. All the people also look like they'd give their eyeteeth to be on the Canary Islands right at the moment. So my first impression of Germany this time around was not generally favorable -- it's dirty, it's gray, and it's cold, and the people look like they've been beaten by life.

My German friend SR (also an Augsburg student, she studied at my law school last semester through the exchange program) met me at the hotel, and we schlepped my massively heavy luggage on the train to Augsburg from Munich. We came over on the ICE (Germany's high speed train) that was totally full and we had to stand near the smoking car. For those of us in California where it will likely soon be the law that you will be arrested and jailed if you light a cigarette anywhere outside your tiny bedroom closet, actually being in a train car that is full of people smoking is a very strange sensation. I happen to love the smell of secondhand smoke (but don't much like actually smoking myself), so I wasn't really BOTHERED -- "disoriented" is a better word. We were actually standing in the passage between a smoking car and a non-smoking car, and our location made it difficult to prevent the automatic door to the non-smoking car from opening and staying open. This old German lady was obviously very bothered by this, and yelled at us for standing there because the door didn't close. I'm sorry -- if you don't like smelling the smoke, then don't sit directly next to the door of the non-smoking car that is directly next to the door of the smoking car. Oh yes, I forgot, it's Germany. Those anal old ladies are everywhere over here, best handled by a roll of the eyes and a "ja, ja" in their direction.

We arrived in Augsburg and I dropped my stuff in my friend JS's apartment, where I will be staying for a week until I can move into my place (it is empty because he is doing an internship in Stuttgart at the moment). Hmmm. It's spare and small, in a rickety old building. He doesn't have a TV and there are no sheets on his bed. He also turned off his phone because he didn't want to pay the bill anymore. Great. At least it's free.

After SR and I walked around the Uni a bit (good first impression, more later), ate a pizza, and went shopping (bought a few groceries and sheets), I was alone in the apartment. By then I was really needing to talk to SP. There was a LAN cable, so I tried to plug it in to my computer -- no luck. The computer found a wireless LAN but it said it needed a network key. D'oh. So I took my Onesuite PIN # downstairs and tried to call him through the pay phone. Onesuite's toll free access # didn't work, and I hadn't bought a German phone card (and the phone didn't take coins). Double d'oh. I was pretty desperate and upset at that point. So I decided to dig through JS's desk drawers (sorry JS) and see if I could find, well, anything that would help me connect to the internet. Pay dirt -- I found instructions for connecting to the LAN, and managed to figure them out even though they were in German. Within 5 minutes I was online and IMing with SP. What a relief! I was very proud of myself because even though I was upset I didn't panic to the point of weeping incapacity, and I took care of business for myself.

That leads me to one of my goals for my time over here. I used to be fairly independent, but now when I'm home SP takes care of a lot of things for me, especially things that are really hard or that I don't want to do. It's not his fault -- he is a generous person who just wants to help, and I just let it happen. But it has made me soft, I think. I think it's okay to be mutually dependent, but it's also good when each person can take care of him/herself. While I'm hear my goal is to gain some of that back. I think it will help everything in the long run.

So I am doing better now. Of course, I am awake at 2am after sleeping less than 2 hours. My body clock is all thrown off. But adjusting takes time, and I have the time (no real pressing engagements at the moment).

3 more days...

I'm almost out of here! I can't believe it's so close now. I've done most of my preparations, bought the things I need, played my last hockey game for 5 months (I even scored a goal with 2 seconds left) and said good-bye to my friends. SP gave me a fabulous Bon Voyage party last night at a restaurant near our house. It was wonderful to see everyone and to hear how excited they are for me. It really helped turn my nervousness into excitement, and some of the dread/fear has been replaced with a good/calm anticipation of an exciting 5 months. Thank goodness for that because I have been a wreck over the last week.

I am not a great flyer. I know planes are safer than cars but I still get so nervous flying in the sky. I am flying on British Airways this time (thanks to my wonderful and generous father, who took care of my flight for me). I have heard nothing but good things about BA, and I know we're going to have a self-assured, calm, relaxed, competent British pilot (complete with accent) named Roger who got all his A-levels, graduated from Oxford, and flew missions in the Faukland Islands for the RAF. Turbulence, terrorists, engine failure ... nothing will phase him. God, I hope so anyway. And of course all of the mechanics will have graduated first in their class from mechanics' school as well.

Things are shaping up well for my arrival too. I have a place to stay when I get there. I will have a mountain of luggage -- even though I haven't started packing yet I already know this. 5 months is just long enough to be away that the weather will turn from freezing to hot while I'm there (see here for the current weather in Augsburg), which means I'll need various clothes and shoes. Plus I am going to STUDY so I have my big German dictionary and various other books. It will not be fun to take all that stuff on the train but it's not like I haven't done it before.

Speaking of before, I have lived in Germany one other time in my life. I was there as a Fulbright teaching assistant in 1995, and I lived in Stadthagen, which is near Hannover. A lot of people are impressed when they hear that I had a Fulbright scholarship (SP likes to tell people about it -- I don't really bring it up on my own too often). I guess they are somewhat prestiguous, but I care less about the status of it than the actually opportunity it provided.

All in all it was a pretty good time -- I spoke a lot of German, taught kids some English, and drank a lot of beer and messed with the Germans who hung out at the Hannen-Fass bar in Hannover.

(Speaking of the Hannen-Fass, I just read in the Hannover newspaper online that it closed last year and they're putting in a high-class "Gastronomie" there -- what a bummer because that was a really fun bar.)

So my next German adventure is coming up, and it's time to go. I've had an awful long time to think about it.

Where is Augsburg?

Augsburg is in the German state of Bavaria, in the south of the country. It is marked by a the red star on this map.

It is about 1/2 an hour by train from the German city of Munich (where they have Oktoberfest). As far as Europe is concerned, it is centrally located for easy access to multiple countries (and believe me I'm planning to take advantage of that).

Entry #1 -- Leaving in 1.5 Weeks

It's weird to think so much about Germany while I'm sitting here in front of my computer in Los Angeles. In less than two weeks I will be on a plane heading to London, and after a short layover there I will be continuing to Munich. I am about to undertake what is probably the craziest proposition I have ever faced -- I am going to attend the University of Augsburg law school for an entire semester as an exchange student from the United States.

I am currently a second-year law student at a well-known Southern California law school. My law school offers a summer program to take classes for 6 weeks in Augsburg, but those classes are in English. When I heard about that program, I thought, "Sounds fun, but why not stay longer and take classes in German if possible?" As a fluent German speaker, I thought I might be able to succeed at this. So I started asking around to see if this could work. I spoke to a professor from Augsburg who was visiting our law school, and then I wrote him a letter when he returned to Germany. I did my best to use big and formal German words, as well as complicated grammatical construction...all of which were basically a pathetic effort on my part to show them I wasn't a total hack when it came to speaking German. Apparently that was good enough for him and for everyone else over there, and I learned toward the end of the second semester of my first year that they'd approved my admission for the semester.

Of course, I was really excited about this, although I did have a flash of a thought at the time -- "Maybe I'm crazy and I will crash and burn so hard that they'll never let anyone else try this AND kick me out of school as well for embarrassing them." That flash came and went pretty quickly, and while it still comes back during my lowest self-esteem moments, overall I feel pretty okay about doing this. It really helped to boost my confidence that we had four fantastic students from Germany studying at our school last semester, and they managed to pass all their classes. I know that my German is probably comparable to their English, and their success made me feel that if they could do it, so could I.

Over the last few months, as all of my friends at school have returned to the standard routine of reading, class, outlining, etc., I have basically been hanging out and getting ready to go to Germany. Why? Because German universities are on a totally different timetable -- they have a Winter semester (September-January), a big writing/testing break, and then a Summer semester (April-July). So basically I have had my summer over the last few months. I did not totally waste my time, because I worked in the library on campus a few days a week, I worked on a paper that won a publication contest and will be published in a law journal next year, and I worked as a research assistant to one of the professors at school, and she had a lot of work for me to do. Since I want to become a law librarian, I don't need that summer-intern-working-in-a-big-firm experience after second year, which is a good thing since I'll still be studying in my tiny room in Augsburg until the end of July. The bad thing about this break is that I've been somewhat lazy -- naps every afternoon, hanging out with the cats, reading Jane Austen novels, etc. It's been nice to have some downtime but I hope I haven't developed bad habits and can get back into the swing of studying in a few weeks.

I have also been dealing with the bureaucracy of setting myself up as a German law student. This is a nightmare and worthy of a separate post.

Finally, I've been hanging out with my husband SP. Yep, I'm leaving my husband for 5 months to go and study in Germany. Since we got married almost 3 years ago I have done very little on my own without at least seeing him at the end of the day. That might be the hardest thing about what I'm trying to do. We'll have the phone, email, instant messaging, etc. But I know that won't replace seeing each other. Everyone says the time will pass so fast and we'll be together again before we know it. I have a few thoughts about that -- (1) I don't want it to pass fast because I want to savor my time over there; (2) I hope it flies to make the time apart seem like only a few minutes. I suppose this is normal.

So I hope that readers will enjoy this online diary of my German law adventure. I'll try to make it funny AND educational. :-)