Blackberry II

Eine Kleine Fortschreibung.

Ich hab' eine Bekannte von mir heute getroffen. Sie ist auch der einzelnen anderen Amerikaner des ca. 100-personen Kurses.

Ich hab' ihr gefragt, ob sie gestern in den Unterricht gegangen war. Was für einen Zufall! Sie hat mir gesagt, ja, sie war dort gegangen, aber es gab keinen Unterricht. Er war abgesagt! So ich habe gestern nichts in den Literatur Kurs verpasst. Und ich habe immer noch zwei unentschuldigten Fehlen zu benutzen. :-)

Grüße von meinem Blackberry:

Ein Geschenk für Tante P.

Ich bin heute Morgen früh aufgestanden. Ich sollte Unterricht um acht Uhr besuchen, aber ich war einfach zu Müde. Ich habe mich geduscht, ein paar Emails geschickt, und dann habe ich um acht Uhr entscheiden, nicht im Unterricht zu gehen. Zwar meine einzelne echte deutsche Vorlesung: Literatur in der DDR. Aber während des Semesters dürfen wir zweimal unentschuldigt fehlen. Heute morgen habe ich eine meiner zwei Fehlen benutzt.

Später habe ich versucht meinen anderen Mittwoch Kurs zu besuchen. Ich bin mit meinem Rad gefahren, nur herauszufinden, dass niemand ins Klassenzimmer war. Ich suchte ein Schild, irgendwo, das sagen würde, dass die Lehrerin Krank war. Aber es gab kein. Nach eine Minute habe ich mich erinnert, dass wir sollten heute am Marktplatz treffen. Die Hälfte der Leute des Kurses sind ganz neulich in Gießen angekommen, und die Lehrerin wollte uns die Stadt zeigen. Ich wusste schon, dass ich Spät wäre, und ich kenne die Stadt schon. So ich bin einfach gerade zurück nach Hause gefahren.

Ich hatte denn Zeit, mein „Blackberry“ zu benutzen, mehr in meinem Blog zu schreiben.

Which Way to Norway?

Bus. Feet. Bus. Train. Bus. Plane. Bus. Train.

7 am wake up call from my alarm clock.

Finished drying my laundry from the night before. Shower. Start packing. Finish packing. Out the door just after 9am. Caught the 9:09 bus right outside my building and took it to Berliner Platz. Walked from there to Marktplatz, searching for an internet café along the way (or anywhere with a printer, really).

Found one.
Opens at 10:30am.
Scheiße.

Arrived at Marktplatz. Spotted an internet café with open doors.

Kann ich hier Sachen vom Internet ausdrücken?
:: Ja.
OK. Gut.
:: Nummer fünf bitte.

Printed off my online tickets for Ryanair. Decided to also print off the confirmation email for my train in Norway, even though the email said it wasn’t a valid ticket, and all you needed was the confirmation number and phone number, both of which I’d stored in my Handy, to print the necessary ticket from a machine at the station.
Good decision.

6 minutes, 2 printed pages: €1,10.

Walked outside. Saw none of the buses I could take to the Bahnhof had arrived at Marktplatz yet. Headed for a bakery with a walk-up service counter. I needed breakfast.

Waited behind a lady apparently buying bread to feed the five-thousand. Saw one of my potential buses pull up. Sometimes buses sit for as long as five minutes at Marktplatz to adjust their schedules. Is this one of those buses, or should I ditch this bakery and hurry for that bus? I decided to play it safe and jogged across Marktplatz to catch the bus. Good decision. The bus took off as soon as I was on board.

Got to the Bahnhof with about 20 minutes to spare. My train to Frankfurt doesn’t leave until 09:53. I used my time to spend less than €2 on a Croissant and Bretzel. Take that McDonalds. In retrospect, it vaguely reminds me of World War II. (The clip is 5 minutes, but WWII is only the first 1:30)

I caught my free 42-minute train to Frankfurt Hbf. Free with my student ID. …well, “free” courtesy of €70-80 of the €180,95 student fee I paid upon my arrival here in Gießen. And Hbf: that’s Hauptbahnhof. As in: main train station. As in: not the airport. I wasn’t trying to get to Frankfurt International. My €37 Ryanair flight departs from Frankfurt Hahn, which really isn’t in Frankfurt at all. …in fact it’s not even in Hessen.

After twenty minutes, two trips outside, and asking the service desk where the heck I’m supposed to find this bus, I finally found it. I had just under ten minutes to spare. And then it was an hour and a half bus ride to Frankfurt Hahn.

I checked in online before I even left Gießen. With my printed online ticket, I attempted to make my way thru security. The first guy manning the entrance to the queue let me right though. But the second security guard standing at the metal detector looked at my ticket and shook his head. He knew the rule is dumb, but played by it anyway. With “Check and Go” (online check in), you have to be from the EU or one of the other Schengen countries (which explains why I initially couldn’t select “USA” where it asked for the country of the passport to check in. But I found a way around that..).

So because I had a US passport, I had to go back to the check-in desk, pay the extra €4 check-in fee, and then back to security with my “real” boarding pass. …as if the first one was fake. Eventually, I boarded my 14:10 flight to Oslo Torp.

…Which isn’t Olso at all. Sandefjord, actually. Just over an hour south of Oslo by train. But I knew that beforehand. What I didn’t know was that the Sandefjord Torp Flughaven train station wasn’t actually connected to the Sandefjord Torp Flughaven. My plane arrived 15 minutes early, so it gave me time to figure out where I needed to go and how I was supposed to get there. It was only 10 minutes to 16:00. My train didn’t leave until 16:40.

There’s a free shuttle bus to take passengers from the airport to the train station. …I’m gonna stop calling it that though. It wasn’t a station. In fact, there wasn’t even a building there. There was just a covered bench. A single bench. Like a bus stop.

…So there’s a free bus to take passengers to the train stop. But there’re two different buses. One for the northbound side and one for the southbound side. At 16:18, I found the shuttle bus.

The southbound shuttle bus.

After a short conversation with the bus driver (in perfect English mind you – it seems most Norwegians are more fluent in English than I am), I found out the bus for the northbound side leaves at 16:33. …:33???? My train leaves at :40!! How is that ever going to give me enough time to get to the station, print out my ticket, and catch the train? I decided to grab one of these taxis instead. …at least I tried to. The driver I approached was actually about to refuse my money. He explained to me that he can’t drive the same way the buses can – he has to go all the way around the airport, which would take about 10 minutes. It only takes the buses three. On top of that, the 10 minute taxi fare would be about 200 NOK, or roughly $40. The shuttle bus is free. I explained to him I would feel much more comfortable if I got there with 5 extra minutes, figuring that would give me enough time to get my ticket. …That’s when I found out it’s not a real station.

Norwegian refusing money: there’s no place to print off a ticket. It’s a small station in the middle of no where. There’s nothing there. You’ll make the train in time. That’s why they have the buses – it works perfectly.

So it does. I hopped on the bus once it showed up at 16:31. Left the airport at 16:33. Arrived at Sandefjord Torp Flughaven “Station” at 16:36. Train showed up at 16:39. Showed the conductor my email confirmation (that I “didn’t need to print out”) and asked how I get my ticket. He explained to me that there’s no where here to print off or pick up a ticket (thanks, I already figured that one out), and that the email confirmation would suffice. So I hopped on the train at 16:40 and immediately departed for Ringebu.

Just under two hours after leaving the bench (I really wish I’d snapped a picture, but the perfect Norwegian scheduling doesn’t account for dumb American tourist photographers), the train passed the real Oslo airport (50 km north of Olso), and I thought to myself, “It would have only been 3.5 hours to Tim’s if I’d flown in here…”

One stop, or 50 minutes, after Lillehammer, I met Tim at Ringebu. Current time: 21:45.

Just over 5 hours since leaving the bench, and a mere 13 hours after leaving my front door.

Hung Up

The brother of a friend of a friend I'm still getting to know
committed suicide last week.
But it's not too late for me to learn something from him.
Through this tragic event, my eyes have been opened to
his amazing work.
It was a tough (...nearly impossible) choice to choose a tribute photo.



I told you it was impossible
to choose just one.



But do yourself a favor and check out that link above.
Or maybe save it for when you have an hour to spend.

Fast Food Philosophy

I’ve received a few comments/questions regarding the debut of my profile picture here on my blog. This is my response.

Yes. That is me diving into a delicious cheeseburger from McDonalds, here in Gießen. …ok, delicious might be debatable, but it satisfies my taste buds nonetheless.

Yes. Last semester, I made the effort to avoid McDonalds the entire time I was in Italy. And I succeeded.

But if there are two things Europeans know of America, they are McDonalds and Coca-Cola. …ok, and Bush. But for the most part, they know 70% of America is embarrassed to admit that third one. Regardless, he’s still led America to become fodder for foreigners’ jokes. ..Thanks Mr. President. Those jokes are about at funny as Hillary’s.

McDonalds is more imperialistic than Bush appears to be. It seems there’s a McDonalds in every single German town. And here in Gießen, it’s impossible to avoid. The McDonalds sits right at the intersection leading into the Innenstadt from the university’s side of town. That forces everyone to walk past it when they go out to the bars, or come back from the bars, or when they’re simply running downtown to do some shopping.

The picture comes from my second week here in Gießen. ....a week that caused my Facebook status, for which the general formula is: (name) is (fill in the blank), to read “Adam is a stereotype.”

In this week, I forced six cheeseburgers into my body, including four in one day. It was a Monday. Early in the afternoon, I was heading downtown to buy something – can’t remember what. It was somewhere around 2:30 or 3:00. At the unavoidable crossroads, I spotted the McDs and remembered I hadn’t eaten lunch yet. I was a little hungry, so I walked in, laid my €2 coin on the counter and walked away with two cheeseburgers.

That’s the problem. It’s just so easy. And it was the first place I came across. …and around bar-time, McDs is one of the only places open for food after 8pm. And most of the Döner places (the only other places open past 8pm) aren’t on the route to/from the bars.

So naturally when I was headed out later that evening to celebrate Happy Monday and I realized I hadn’t eaten anything since my 3pm burgers, I decided it was best to stop in and throw another €2 on the counter so I wasn’t drinking on an empty stomach.

Later that week, on Friday, McDs became a post-bar stop. And I once again gave in.

I’ve “only” had three burgers in the three (or four?) weeks since then. Still more than I normally eat at home. Though, that’s a little hard to judge, seeing as how I’ve only been home for 2 of the last 7 months.

But don’t worry about my German experience. I’ve eaten almost as much Schnitzel in the Mensa. Plus, in many ways, Germans are practically American anyway. …in some respects, maybe more than Americans themselves, if by definition that’s even possible.

And P.S. The film The Day After Tomorrow has the same English title in Germany, even though the title is translated in every other non-English speaking country. …I told you they’re practically Americans.

So for a true German experience, I'm heading to Norway for the weekend.

Mein Kampf against Fruit Flies

I’ve been fighting an ongoing battle against fruit flies off-and-on ever since I moved here. The full garbage can when I first moved in, even though my roommates were all or mostly gone for at least a week and a half prior to my arrival, might be the origin of my problem.

The population started small, and slowly grew. It became a nuisance when we used my kitchen to host the first of our semi-regular dinner parties. But the nuisance was also a blessing in disguise, as it led to a significant decline in the fruit fly presence courtesy of several pairs of hands. It also added a tiny bit more protein to the dinner. …but I don’t think I should let the others know that.

….just kidding about that last part.

……..the others know.

The problem subsided for some time, until recently. I pitched an apple core in my trash five or six days ago. “Apple in a trash can” must be the new local hot spot for honeymooning fruit flies. I emptied my trash vorgestern (a single German word meaning “the day before yesterday.” Similarly, übermorgen means “the day after tomorrow,” which makes me wonder how the 2004 Dennis Quaid film title was translated, if at all).

I opened the lid to empty the trash and was greeted by a swarm of 20-30 fruit flies.

Immediately, I developed a better exit strategy than a leafy green shrub. I dropped the lid back on the garbage can, trapping about half the swarm inside. I opened my window (which is half a step from the garbage can) as much as possible, and quarantined my room, shutting my bedroom door to prevent a second front in the kitchen.

I swatted the flies towards my wide open window with a hand towel, killing the stubborn ones with my bare hands. Soon it was time to open the lid near the window, hope most of the remaining flies flew away, and start the extermination all over again.

My room and kitchen are now almost entirely fruit fly free. (Say that 10 times fast.) I say almost because I’ve seen one or two since. ..I think the regular removal of garbage from the kitchen helps, now that people live here again.

Oh yeah, by the way, people live here again.

"It's a Small World Afterall"

Many (about 20) of the exchange students went out to a nearby billiard hall Tuesday night to celebrate Sweden's birthday. At the billiard hall, I unexpectedly ran into a girl I went to highschool with back home. Through the grapevine, I knew Megan was in Gießen, but given that Gießen is about the size of Appleton and I'm taking strictly Germanistik courses here, I didn't expect to run into her. Turns out Megan is in one of Josefin's classes, so she (and a couple others from that class) came out to celebrate too.

This chance meeting makes me feel less like I'm in Germany and more like I'm sitting on a boat in "It's a Small World" at EPCOT in Disney World. The attached clip is sped up, so it sounds like a bunch of chipmunks singing, but I think it's less torture that way.

I can even hear the annoying repetitive song in my head now.
(for the disturbingly curious, I came across a techno remix on YouTube)

..and I think how the stupid ride i used to love is likely the highest concentration of stereotypes in the world.

...and as I project the prejudices Disney has taught me, I picture all my German Mitbewohners in Lederhosen and Dirndels - even though none of them are from Bavaria - and all the Polish students in their traditional dresses as well. The Greeks all wear togas. ...everyday, not just at toga parties. And the french students all have handlebar mustaches. ..even though all the french students I've met have been female. ...and Josefin has to have blonde hair and blue eyes. ...wait, she does already. But now she lives in a little scandenavian cottage at the end of a Fjord, too.

..and I picture all my friends as 3 feet tall dolls standing on the edge of the lazy river on this Disney ride, repeatedly chanting the darn tune over and over again. The only problem is that the people I know are alive. ..Not that that's a problem. It just means my stereotype is more like a Chuckie horror movie than a lovely little ride at Disney World. ...and this thought has carried way too far....

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"I dislike feeling at home while I'm abroad."
-George Bernard Shaw