Saturday, April 7, 2007

Due to an unfortunate lack of internet, I haven't been able to update in a while, so this is the first of quite a few back issues here.

Well, it was my birthday the other day. I went with Kurt and Jared to a party over at the university (not my school, the Fachhochshule) for international students. The whole thing kind of reminded me of an early 90s high school dance (not that I’ve been to any, but it’s what I imagine they were like), but with beer. For some reason, the DJ also seemed to think selections such as “We Will Rock You” and “Eye of the Tiger” made for good dancing. Don’t get me wrong, they aren’t bad songs (if a bit over played), but what they really did was make me want to go punch a side of beef and drink a raw egg energy smoothie. I think the Romanian girls the three of us Kettering guys were dancing with ditched us multiple times, although we were never quite sure whether they just wanted to hangout with their other Romanian friends, or if our dancing was really that bad. After the Romanian contingent, which constituted about half the party goers, quit the establishment, the party began to wind down very quickly, until it consisted of one very oblivious Indian student still grooving to the tunes out on the dance floor.

After walking back to the residence, which is made up of one large main building – in which I live – and about 16 smaller houses of 12 rooms each, we went back to Kurt’s house and socialized with the other residents there in the kitchen/living room. I think I’m going to have to hang out there more often because the people living there are way more entertaining than anyone on my floor of the main building. I believe I mentioned before how everyone who lives on my floor seems to be terribly withdrawn and anti-social, but I’m glad to see this is not the status quo for everywhere in the complex. The core set of people I’ve met at Kurt’s house is made up of a French guy who understands English, but will only speak in German, a girl whose nationality I’m unsure of, but who seems to think that just about every thing is funny (I’ve never heard anyone laugh so much, but I’d much rather have that than a sour puss), an Estonian guy who seems kind of socially awkward but isn’t really, and a Romanian guy named Mikhail, the only one whose name I can remember, who was rather entertaining, and who I believe said something to the effect of, “English isn’t a foreign language. It’s just English.” I think Kurt had asked him something about how he felt having to speak to us in English, if it was a burden to have to converse in a foreign language. I don’t really remember the question, but I remember the answer.

Oh, I just remembered that I found out the other day that in some cases, beer is indeed cheaper than water. Kurt decided he wanted to buy some of whatever the cheapest beer here is, and when we got to the store, we discovered it was 0.25€ (roughly $0.33) per bottle. This means it would cost 0.75€ for 1.5 liters of beer, versus about 1.00€ for 1.5 liters of water. Overjoyed at the find, Kurt decided he would buy an entire case. Shortly thereafter, he was relieved that we were able to catch the last bus back to Jacob-Burckhardt Straße, our street, since he had quickly realized that even with two of us, the crate may have been heavy enough that he’d have to dump some ballast. Knowing Kurt wouldn’t want to waste it, I think he may have ended up excessively intoxicated and would have been little help in carrying what was leftover.

I just went and made myself some dinner, and I was reminded of the Romanian girls we met at the party the other night. We ended up going to the thing in the first place because Loud Harold and found us at some point and told us that he’d met some Romanian girls who thought he was very interesting because he was American, and had told him to bring his American friends to the party at the university that night. Now that I think about this in retrospect, I’m guessing they were only talking to him because he probably wouldn’t stop talking to them. I’m also guessing that the part about them wanting him to bring his American friends probably went something like this:

LH: “Hey, I’ll come to the party tonight and bring some of my American friends.”
Romanian Girls: “Uh, okay.”

This would probably explain why they weren’t particularly interested when we got there and ended up (I think) trying to lose us. Now, this wouldn’t be so bad if things had gone as I had expected and never seen them again. But no… They live in the same complex as me. And what’s worse? In the same building. On the same floor. But even better, at least one of them lives in the room directly across the hall from me! I knew they looked familiar, but I guess I didn’t put two and two together. It was a horrifying experience walking into the communal kitchen the day after the party, only to realize that Romanians at the table were indeed the same ones who had witnessed my disco moves just the night before. I think I’m over it now, but it was an… unexpected surprise. I guess I couldn’t have traumatized them too badly though, since later that day, they offered me and Kurt some tasty little Romanian edibles made of rice and cheese (?) wrapped in grape leaves. I think if anything, I can rest safely in the fact that at least I’m held in higher regard than Loud Harold, who was seriously shut down just a few minutes ago when I was cooking my dinner. I wasn’t following the conversation closely, but I think he kept asking them (and it’s always “them”; I don’t think I’ve ever seen any of the Romanians without at least three others) to go somewhere or do something with him, and finally one of them said, “Actually, we’re really busy.” Ooh, ouch. From the way it was said, I think that could have been more accurately heard as, “Actually, we’ll always be busy.” But I think he should have seen it coming.

Because my Eurail pass is still in transit (getting here on Tuesday, according to Sanjay!), I wasn’t able to travel anywhere this weekend – not without paying for another ticket, so today and yesterday, I spent most of my time walking around Konstanz and exploring the city center. It’s a very nifty town, although some of its quirks (which are only so to outsiders I’m sure) take a little getting used to. Konstanz is a very bike friendly city, and has bike lanes designated on the street or on parts of the sidewalk virtually everywhere except for the residential side streets and smaller alleys with too little traffic to matter. This means though that you’d better stay out of the bike path unless you intend on getting run over. The first day we were out and about on our own, Tuesday I think, Rafal kept walking in the bike path out of absent mindedness, and came close to being maimed several times. One thing that is very noticeable about the traffic flow here is the strict adherence to right-of-way. Although in the US, theoretically pedestrians take precedence, followed by bicycles, and lastly cars, I challenge any of you to walk out into traffic and test your right-of-way. Here, cars will stop in mid-turn if they see someone standing on the corner waiting to cross, and will wait at a green light if it looks like someone on the sidewalk was about to cross the street. The same goes for bikers, one of whom had a baby chariot thing attached to the bike, making it rather oversized, and kept a bus crawling at around 7mph until the biker reached the part of the bike path that was on the sidewalk, allowing the bus to pass. I’m also glad to say that it seems that Germans, or at least those from Konstanz actually know how to parallel park. In Paris, I had a hard time finding a car without dents in its bumpers from the “tap” method of parking. Here, every car I’ve seen is quite unmarred.

I have yet to figure out though what the prevailing opinion of jaywalking is. Occasionally I’ll see someone cross the street when it’s clear that there’s nothing coming their way, while at other times, I’ll see a whole group of people standing patiently at a crosswalk, waiting for the signal, even though no car has passed in the last half a minute, nor does it seem that one will in the next. I do make an effort to cross at designated crossing areas though, since except on the small residential streets, I’ve never seen anyone cross where they aren’t supposed to. In the downtown area though, there are streets that seem to technically be open to traffic, but are usually flooded with people walking around at a leisurely pace, in no hurry to get out of the way of a car.

I’ve been sleeping in till about noon the past few days, since I’ve been quite unable to find any justification for getting up any earlier than that, other than because I ought to. I’m justifying it by the argument that when I sleep that late, I only eat two meals during the day, and thereby save money. The first thing I’ve been doing upon getting up halfway through the day has been going through my German grammar book and looking up lots and lots of words and conjugations and making lists for myself to memorize. After about two hours, I usually get tired of it, set it aside, and go make lunch. Really, I usually quit more out of frustration than anything else really, since I still can’t say a lot of what I want to, but I guess I should be more patient, since I think I’ve probably learned a lot more in the past few days than I give myself credit for. Perhaps my German still isn’t at the point where I can really use it particularly effectively, but I’m pretty sure it’s better than it was. I suppose I have only been here for about five days, so if I can maintain my rate of improvement, hopefully it will show at the end of three months. At least I don’t feel as helpless as I did in France. That really makes me happy.

I think I’m going to stop here, since I feel like this is turning into more of a show of quantity than quality, so I’ll pick up next time with something more interesting, meaning lots of pictures.