Rain, Beckham, Tea, Bureaucracy, and more Rain.

I do not yet have internet, but since I am not on clock at work yet, I will take this moment to upload all that I have written in the last ten days. I hope that you have a while...

And let the saga begin:

10 January 2007
15:37:40 MST: Denver International Airport

On the way to Denver, it just sort of hit me: I am on my way to Germany for six and a half months. That is sort of a long time. You think I would have thought about that before, but these things do not really come to you until you are actually en route. I am still nervous (predictably), but that is mixed with a little excitement—a real adventure, all on my own.

The airport in Phoenix is still swarming with people from Ohio State and Florida. (What a horrible game that was, and way to go Big Ten for being completely typical and losing most of the bowl games). My flight was full of people returning to Columbus.

My flight to Denver went off with out incident, though it did take me over a half and hour to get through security. Too many people do not pay attention to the world and knew nothing about the liquids, gels, etc thing. Every time some suspect showed up the TSA person would have to stop the entire line and have some one come over and double check what they saw, and if there was still a problem, then some one else would have to come over to remove the bag from the scanner. At one point, while I was near the front, all four open lines were stopped, luckily they decided to cancel the problem on mine, I was able to get through a little faster.

I had forgotten how incredibly large the Denver airport is. In terminal A alone, there are ninety-nine gates and there are three terminals. I arrived in terminal B and had to take a train to terminal A, from which my flight to Frankfurt will be leaving. There is definitely a lot of snow in Denver. Luckily the next storm is not supposed to come through until tomorrow night, so no being snowed into DEN for me.

Hopefully I will be able to write a little bit on the train tomorrow.

11 January 2007
12:25:45 West European ST: Some where between Frankfurt and Braunschweig

The flight to Frankfurt did not start boarding (or planing? Since getting off is deplaning? *shrug*) until the time we were supposed to be taking off, but the prevailing tail wind was so strong that we still arrived over an hour before schedule. I had an aisle seat, and no one was sitting next to me. Everything went without incident, except for the last couple hours of the flight, after which I had lost my neck pillow. Luckily it was located before deplaning, no worse for being dropped in the aisle on the way to the lavatory. (I never do seem to remember to take it from around my head before I get up, especially when I am half asleep.

Once getting to Frankfurt, things were a little more arduous. The guy at the passport check heckled me for quite some time about the fact that I did not have a visa, when everyone else (both at TUB and Purdue and the airport) told me that I would do that once I arrived in Braunschweig. He kept telling me that he knew the law and the stupid people in the Amerika did not know the law… yada yada yada…Germans ;-D. Anyway, as is in evidence he let me through anyway, telling me that ‘Next time I need to get a visa, because entering without one is a criminal offence, and I should never do it again…’ but it is really so horrible as he made out, why did he let me into the country? Anyway, whatever the deal is, I am on my way and a visa will be acquired upon my visiting the international office, hopefully tomorrow.

Once the Heckler was done with me, I found my suitcase without incident, made it to the train station, purchased a ticket (at which time I realized that my check card was missing, more on that later), made it to the subway and the train; where I am now sitting, about two hours away from my final destination. I was able to make the train before the one I was planning to take, but I decided that I would rather sit around in Braunschweig, if necessary, than sit around in Frankfurt and risk some other disaster befalling me. Better to get to the destination and wait.

The check card. I noticed that it was missing, and immediately thought ‘Oh shit. Where did I leave it? Or how had it managed to fall out of my wallet, since I barely was able to crush it in there in the first place?’ I had been in the country less than an hour and I have already lost something, great. I continue with the task of purchasing a train ticket (thankfully the Visa was still there) and making my way to Braunschweig, since there was nothing I could do until I had a phone or access to the internet.

I pull out my computer, to start writing this entry, and I decide that I am sort of hungry. I had purchased some snaky items in Denver, for such an eventuality. As I am digging around for the cashews I see the edge of the receipt from the purchase. And it hits me: Maybe I did a typical me and STUFFED THE CARD IN THE BAG WITH THE RECEIPT. So I dug into the bag a little farther, and Lo! there was my check card. Huzzah. So my first crisis was averted, and all that needs to go right now is me successfully meeting Mario at the train station in Braunschweig.

13 January 2007
It is two days since I last wrote. My internet is not working yet, so I will have to wait until I meet with the building super on Tuesday. Until then, I will continue to write, with hopes of eventually being able to post.

After all of the trouble I kept getting myself into on Thursday, meeting Mario at the train station was no problem at all. We were scheduled to meet with Dennis, with my key, at 16:30, but he never showed up. He said he had a doctor’s appointment, but did not manage to inform us of that. So we got to go over to campus in the cold rain and wind (very similar to West Lafayette weather, actually) and stand in the Altgebäude for fifteen minutes, asking random people if they were Dennis.

After deciding that Dennis was not there, we went back to Mario’s apartment to wait and call Dennis when his class was over at 18:15. We finally met with him, and were able to get into my apartment.

My apartment: way nicer than the one at school (though no Catie L). It seems like they just finished remodelling: everything is very new and it smells sort of like paint. I was not expecting it, but I have a bathroom and a little fridge and range in my room, which is exciting, because I thought that it would be communal.

Yesterday I unpacked and then went on a Catie-esque walk ;-) (ie: really long). I walked down towards the city and then back again. It was a lot of fun walking around and taking everything in. In the evening, we went out to a thrift shop and got some basic homey things: pot, pan, utensils, broom, etc.

I am still not quite accustomed to the time here, I went to bed at ten and then woke up randomly between three and four and then managed to sleep until ten this morning. I certainly have been getting more sleep lately than I usually ever am able. I am sure that the bliss will not continue.

This afternoon I went to the market and got some more basic kitchen essentials: milk, sugar and tea. (I also got some more cheese, bread and some cereal (yes, cereal)). There was quite a debacle while putting away the carts, because, of the three rows, two had a different style cart in them and one did not have another cart in it. (I have to explain here, that to use a German shopping cart, you have to insert a 50 cent or 1 Euro piece. When you put you cart back, you get you coin back.) And since everyone wanted their coin back, there was quite a to do, as you can imagine. It was quite amusing, and since I did not have anything else to do, I stuck around until the problem was solved. (With the input of many a bystander, and finally the summoning of a store clerk.)

(By the way, I have a phone now. Send me an email if you want to get the number.)

15 January 2007
Happy Martin Luther King Day, and while all of you were off work and school (I will not start on my opinion of that), I had my first day of work today.

After some confusion as to which building near the airport I was to go, it was all figured out (with a couple of almost panicky phone calls to Mario), and I arrived at the correct location only five minutes late.

My day at work was longer than I intended, however, a lot of it was being shown around the place. I spent the rest of my time trying to figure out a programme and programme in it in VBScript. Which work out fine, until I realized that VBScript does not have arcsine functions, of which I was in need. Hence, I had to start all over again, in Jscript, which gave me quite a headache, because it would not function correctly. Luckily, just before I gave up, it decided to be happy. So I packed up and went back to my apartment.

Side note: German keyboards are very complicated, they have two different Alt keys, as well as Fn and Ctrl keys, and most every key on the keyboard (which is much bigger than the American Standard) has options for all of these. Though some of the keys are in interesting positions (from my perspective) I found it much more useful than the American keyboard.

My meetings with the International Office and the building super are tomorrow. Hopefully this means that my visas, work permits, and internet will be figured out. It is amazing how much time internet and television take, especially when you have not a whole of anything else to do. I can live without the television, but it would be really nice to have the internet. I never realised how much I depended on it. With the lack of modern media distractions, I have finished my book on Mr. Darcy’s perspective on the Pride and Prejudice story (which was very interesting), I have also finished Sense and Sensibility and I have started the real version of Pride and Prejudice. Yes, it does seem like I am on a Jane Austen kick, but it was the most economical (as far as weight, space, and number of stories) thing to bring. Luckily, there are still seven more stories left in that volume (if you count Emma, which I still have never been able to get through), as well as a book about the myths of the Bible, left for me to read. And if that all gets read, there is always my Aerodynamics textbook… ummm, fortunately I will not have quite as much reading time, since I will be at work at least part of the day, and I think I will start running, once I get my knees back up to shape.

16 January 2007
DAVID BECKHAM IS COMING TO THE US. He must be mental. (This information, I heard while in the International Office, said in German, so I was not too sure that is what I heard and was then confirmed while talking to my mother on the phone this evening.) Catie, we have a new task: Go to LA to see a Galaxy game. Good thing they have always been one of my favourite MLS teams (yay Kobe Jones).


17 January 2007
I was informed today that I do not look like a ‘typical American girl’. I am not really sure what a typical American girl looks like, but I guess I might be able to take it as a compliment. More bureaucratic blah today: To get a visa, I need to wait on my work contract, and because of some issues with that, hopefully it will be done on Monday, and because I do not have a visa, I cannot get a bank account, and because I do not have a bank account, I cannot get internet, because, evidently you have to pay, or make some sort of security fee, or whatever. So it means that I will not have internet for at least a couple more weeks, since the International Office is only open on Mondays and Wednesdays, so I will have to wait until next Wednesday to go back to them to turn in my paperwork with my contract. AAHHHH!!! This is insane. Though it would be nice to have access to my email and be able to communicate easier with people at home, I can live for a couple more weeks with out the ‘Net, it would just be something else to do while I am in my room. I gets dark quite early here, the sun starts setting around four, and I would go walking, but I do not really want to do that in the dark, so, that leaves me with about six hours in the afternoon with which to try not to eat all of my food, work on my cross stitch and read, all with the constant background of my music. When I am done typing this, though I am going to surf the German airwaves and see what they have to offer. (My music, as much and as varied as it is, is starting to get old.)

I successfully managed to do my laundry today. Nothing died and I did not break the washing machine or the dryer. The other good thing about that is that I have clean clothes now.

19 January 2007

As a postscript, I will add that my paperwork will hopefully be finished on Monday, when I will be able to get a bank account and thence, internet at my apartment. We had quite a large storm last evening, many trees were blown over and there was a lot of nice lightning.