Erin and I are on week two of this life altering event. This week had it’s moments, both good, bad, and funny (I suppose that’s how most weeks go, but I have never written about them before)
The first learning experience this week is that in Germany people don’t make eye contact with you while on your bike, walking down the street, or doing anything. Initially I was mildly offended by this. I don’t usually think much about my looks but when I do I don’t feel that I am painful to look at. So I walked around in my American bubble (that is how I feel not knowing the language or really were I am going) feeling like some sort of horribly disfigured outcast that was to painful to look at. It was starting to get to me; it kept me awake at night with thoughts about getting my second chin sucked away, or some bo tox to make my cheeks look fuller, or maybe I needed a nose job. Then I sat down at a little café and watched people (it’s really fun to do in the country, there wear a lot of spandex and still love the mullet). I started to notice that NO ONE LOOKS AT ANYONE! You could be on fire and they would not look at you. I was immediately relieved just thinking about the money I would save not getting all that plastic surgery done. So do me a favor next time you are walking down the street look at someone; hell maybe you could even smile, you never know when you are going to end up in Germany missing this little part of America.

So I came over to Germany without a job. This is a little detail that has been driving me NUTS! I rely on work to give structure to my hours, days, weeks, and years. I don’t want to “just be in school” I need to work. So I found my first job over here. I was a lab rat! They hooked me up to all these electrodes and made me answer questions about a bunch of sentences that were sung to me by an opera singer. I walked away with 21 euros ($30 US) for 3 hours of my life. The big hang up with finding work over here is the lack of work visas. Unemployment is as high as 20% so if a German can do it they want the work to go to them and not a foreigner. It looks like my best chance for work is going to be substitute teaching and/or painting houses.

Erin and I have bikes over here. They are our main form of transportation around town (they get great gas mileage) In our apartment complex there is a room for the bikes, at first I was a little weary about putting my expensive bike in the basement with everyone else’s bikes, but I thought I would give it a try. So I locked our bikes together and put them in the basement for the night. During the night the key to the lock walked off never to be found again. So in the morning I had to unlock the bikes with my leather man multi tool (thanks mike). I went down to the room to find our bikes thrown in a pile on the other side of the room from were I put them. This did not make me happy, who would be rude enough to throw our bikes in a pile to the other side of the room?
I went to work cutting, twisting, bending, the cable trying to get it undone, it was going rather well. Just as I was about finished someone started to open the door, this caused some concern because I was pretty sure I could not tell someone in German that I was breaking the lock to my own bike and had no intentions of stealing the bike. The lock broke just as they came threw the door. All the sudden the little old lady that walked threw the door starts yelling at me. Not about the broken lock but the fact that I “parked” our bikes in her spot last night and she had to move/ throw them in the corner. At least that is what I think she said because she was yelling at me in German. Not knowing how to say kiss my ass in German I smiled and walked away saying danca (thank you in German).

The last notable adventure this week was the five hours of my life spent going to, shopping at, and trying to get home from Ikea. For those of you that are not in the know Germans love Ikea more then they love David Haselhoff, and why not you could literally furnish your entire home with one stop to this store. So Tuesday after I got done playing test dummy and Erin got out of school we took the train to Ikea. Now I love nothing more then spending hours on end picking out the perfect towel pattern for the kitchen and bathroom but after 5 hours I was ready to pay up and get out of there to never look back. So $500 euros later (a new kayak in my language) we were done! Once we walked out of the doors I noticed all the taxi drivers averting there eyes and shaking there heads. There silence explained that there was no way our new bed was going to fit, and I would be forced to spend the rest of my life stranded at Ikea. Just then this random guy in his early 20’s swoops in and saves the day. He says that he has a van and could give us a ride if we wanted to hitch hike. Now back in Co I do a lot of hitching when I go kayaking. It is usually pretty safe, but some times you end up on the back of a Harley bear hugging a 300lb biker dude. Anyway back to hitching in Germany, after talking to this guy long enough I figured his intentions were good and he was not going to kidnap us or anything. So four of us crammed into the front of a 2 seater van for probably the funniest ride I have ever had. Turns out the one guy must of learned most of his English from rap music. I would like to elaborate more but you just had to be there.

(Relaxing after building everything we got from Ikea)

This weekend Erin and I are planning on going to Potsdam to see the castles and learn some more German history (you can’t turn around without running into some) then next weekend I am going to try to ride my bike to the Baltic sea (I should have one or two funny stories about that).