Sunday, Sunday, Sunday

Believe it or not, I am actually BORED today. Which for me is a wonderful thing to be. I hopped the bus into Heidelberg and I am just going to surf all day.. I guess that means I have to update the blog. Sheesh, you guys are sooo demanding! :-)

Cell phone service when you are moving around Europe SUCKS!
I have wasted more freaking money farting around trying to be able to call Jess in Italy, and THINKING I had great minutes and calling mom. NOOO. So now my mom is going to buy a German or International calling card, hopefully from Sprint with the same 5 cents a minute deal as she has to Italy, then she can call me and I get free incoming, so that will save money.

Jess and I are still struggling to find a way to communicate without it costing a fortune. I am hoping I will have a land line soon and then it will be cheap for me to call her from that with a calling card.

Before I get to the next chapter of the adventure of on my first day in Germany. (MAN that day was long)I want to tell you about my latest roommates in the hostel.

Yesterday afternoon I came back from the city and there was someone sleeping in the top bunk in my room, so I put my stuff away and tiptoed out to watch TV in the TV room to let them rest. I had bought chicken tikki masala from a place in Heidelberg, OH YEAH, good stuff. Makes me drool to think of it, unfortunately everything is closed today. Anyway I sat and ate that, and watched "Double Jeopardy" in German, which worked fine because I practically know every word, so I knew what was going on.

The only thing that bugged me was that the person dubbing Tommy Lee Jones´ voice, his voice was too high and it was making me crazy for some odd reason. Most of the time they really get people who sound similar when they dub movies nowdays, and I have been realy impressed at how there is no longer the old stereotype of the lips not moving even close to what is being said (somehow that brought to mind some sort of Saturday night live skit where they were making fun of the old Japanese films dubbed so badly....). They do a GREAT job of starting at stopping at the same time. That´s got to be tricky, but it really helps watching a dubbed show, it isn´t so distracting.

I came back to my room later and there were two girls there. One from Berlin, who had just been visiting her parents in Singapore, and one from.... ITALY! We talk all the time of missing the cafe (espresso there)

Then as we were introducing ourselves 4th girl came in. German also.
Don´t ask me the names, I have a horrible memory.
But I was impressed at these girls. The last one to come in, when I spoke to her, is ging to Boston in a couple of months to finish her PHD in medicine. She is doing research on alzhiemers (i forgot how to spell it - yes that was a lame attempt at a joke).

When I asked her why Boston, she said they have different ways of doing their reseach and she was interested in watching and maybe learning them. VERY smart.

The girl from Italy is looking at coming to Germany to finish her Masters in Social something, I forgt. But again, very intelligent.

Makes me feel dumb with my two associates degrees. But the difference is that many countries in Europe offer college education for only the cost of books and living expenses. I mean, can we say SMART? Then you have educated people who are able to help the economy by being able to purchase more since they are not up to their necks in student loans..... Ahhhhh... a simple but effective idea. I think in America we are so caught up in the NO DO NOT RAISE OUR TAXES that we will never get the point of being able to do this. Oh well......

Anyway, the third girl, for some reason I cannot remember why she was at the hostel, but I´m sure that she was really intelligent too. LOL

OK, i need to look at my list of things I wanted to say...

Oh yes! There is a late night talk show host that tries to be Johnny Carson! It is the weirdest thing to watch and slightly agravating. It first I thought it was just a fluke, but he does ALL the mannerism. I wonder is anyone else realizes that´s what he is doing? He has probably been called "The Johnny Carson of German television" by the press a some point.. LOL

Ah, his name is Harald Schmidt. I tried to find pictures of both he and Johnny in the same sort of pose, but couldn´t.........

Okay, okay, I have put it off long enough. I´m taking a quick pogo break and I will start the next episode of my first day in Germany.....

OK, back...

OK, where were we, Iranian taxi driver... terrorists, apartments, driving on sidewalks....

So the landlady tracks me down and asks if I still want to see the apartment. I say sure,and go over with Madjedeh, (that is her name) and see the apartment. It is big, but nothing amazing, just like an apartment in the states, except that you turn the hot water on and off from under the sink and over the sink in the bathroom to save energy, and turn the water off completely when you leave the apart. It´s furnished, has a nice balcony where you can dry clothes, blah, blah...

We sit down and talk, and decide that yes, i´ll take the apt but not until tomorrow since I have already paid for the hotel and my luggage is back there. Plus she does not have the rental forms with her, she lives up in the city part of Frankfurt.

I can have it for the rest of the month, but Jess and the cats can´t come up, because there is carpet and they are trying to sell the apt, etc, etc... I am really dissapointed by this, but it´s only one month and will give me time to look for a job and apt.

Since I am going to meet her the next day by jumping a bus from the hotel, she suggests that when she brings me back to the hotel, I can give her one of my pieces of luggage, so I only have to drag one around. (Yeah, yeah, I know, being an American, this immediately rings warning bells in my head, but the thought of not having to drag the second danmn piece of luggage around me sounds too nice. Besides, she is very well dressed, her husband is a German scientist who had been at the university, but they just laid him off, and now he is in Africa looking for a job)LOLOLOL

We go back to the hotel and I get what I need out of my second piece of luggage. To be honest, I had packed the piece I took with me on the plane from Italy with everything important, papers, etc, and the second bag with clothes and odds and ends, knowing it would be checked baggage. This means I only had to take a couple of things out and there was nothing of importance. (see, I´m not THAT stupid, you have no confidence in me)

I brought it back out and gave it to here, we said goodbye and went our ways for the evening.

It was VERY hot that day in Darmstadt and as my room was sort of half underground, it was a bit cooler, but I couldn´t really open the windows all night.
I checked email and went to the in-house restaurant to get some food to go.
He said they would call my room in about 20 minutes and I could come pick it up as there was no room service.

That worked for me, so I checked mail again and went down the room to sit very quietly in one spot without moving so that I could sweat as little as possible.

After a bit there is a knock on the door, and there is one of the front desk men with my dinner on a tray! Very nice (but I wasn´t going to tip, sorry)

This was what my dinner consisted of, and this is why I am thankful I may not be living in Germany...

Main course was pork, i forgot the word for the way they were cut, but call them in the size and shape of chicken nuggets, though no breading. These were covered by an amazing dark brown gravy. On the side were fresh green beans. There was also a side salad and wonder of wonders..... potatoes sliced up into little round pieces, cooked with cabbage and butter.

AUUGGHHHH. I have been starving myself to lose almost 20 pounds in Italy, and I will now gain it all back in one evening. (you thought the food was going to be horrible, didn´t you?)

The food here is amazing. POTATOES!!! You don´t get potatoes in Italy, thank GOD.. Lots of pasta in Italy, but somehow pasta burns off way quicker than potatoes. Also in Italy, EVERYthing is cooked in olive oil, you will very seldom if ever get something with butter on it. I cooked zucchini once in olive oil and onions, garlic and honest to God, you would think it was cooked in butter!

I now regretting that I had ordered dessert, but it was fresh fruit was some whipped cream on top, so not too bad, but man, those potatoes and cabbage.. My stomach is growling just thinking baout it.

Anyway, I watch CNN in English and catch up on all the Katrina news, then go to bed in a sweltering hotel room.

Sometime during the night, the TV switches on by itself and wakes me up. There is a mesaging system in the hotel that goes through the TV instead of your phone. Very freaky and a little unsettling to be woken up in the middle of the night by the freaking TV turning on.

Anyway, it was a message from the landlady about the next morning. For the life of me I can´t remember what it said, but i think that it said that if I was going to be up early, to come to the apt by 9:30 before she went to work and I could get in then.

No WAY was I going to be up and about by 9:30, I was exhausted from the midnight flight the night before, all the trains, planes and automobiles from the day before.
So i figured i would just ignore it and meet her at 3pm as we had arranged.

I get up the next morning with just enough time to shower and check out by 11. Now I have several hours to kill.

OK, this part is boring even me. Here is the quick version. I check mail before going. There is an email from her saying she will pick me up at the hotel at 11 am.. i wait, and wait, and wait, finally another email, now it say she will be there at 1 pm. I wait and wait and wait. Finally at 4 pm, feeling VERY foolish, i book a cheaper hotel online and ask the desk clerk to call a cab for me, hoping to hell it isn´t the same man from the day before. SHIT!

Thank God it isn´t, and I go to the new hotel... SMACK in the middle of an incredible shopping area. CRAP!!! :-)

By now I am figuring my luggage is gone and good riddence to it, one less thing for me to drag around in the heat. I ask the desk clerk at the new hotel if they are allowed to give my name out if someone were to call there looking for me.

There is just a millisecond of fear in his face, so I assure him i am not running from the law or anything. this actually makes him look even more worried, and I noticed he puts me in the second part of the hotel, and there is no one else in any of the rooms. (expecting a shootout maybe??)

OH! One thing I may not have explained well enough is that half of the problems here are because I still have the Italian SIM card in my phone and no one seems to be able to contact anyone else by phone, and we both have limited internet availability. This is fixed later when I get a German SIM card, and then can no longer talk to my mom or Jess.

So I get settled in the room, go out and see what there is to eat. I can´t stand it, I NEED Burger King...There is actually a BK there. I go in, and being the good, healthy person I now am, only order a cheesburger, fries and medium coke. LOL


THE COKE HAS FREAKING ICE IN IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry, but there is no ice in the entire country of Italy, and I practically have dream of it at night, so this is just about better than sex for me. (sorry Jess)

When I´m done eating, I smoke a cigarrette (just joking) and go back to the internet (God, sorry this is dragging along and is not really funny) and there are several messages from the landlord askign why I didn´t make it to the apartment. She had waited there for 4 hours, then called the hotel and they said I had just left. Did I want my luggage? It was obvious that were not gonig to be able to communicate effectively to each other. (slight understatement)

At this point I was just plain TIRED of the contact the landlady game. I wrote her back and said she was supposed to pick me up at the hotel and never did and I waited 4 hours, etc....

Ok, that´s it, I am skipping the rest of the story and getting straight to the end..

Landlady goes out of town for weekend. I go to Heidelberg to stay in hostel. We email and she asks if I still want apt, and tells me she left luggage at hotel for me. i call hotel and they will hold luggage til Monday.
I tell landloard I want apartment but can´t afford to pay deposit because will need money to find other apt.

She says no problem, no deposit necessary, meet monday (tomorrow) at 1 and I can have apartment, she´s been in same situation. The end.

God, that was PAINFUL to write it was so long and boring.

SOO.. starting tomorrow I have an apartment for the rest of the month.

NEW turn of events. I wasn´t going to talk about it so that I didn´t jinx it, but daughter wrote about it on her blog already, so....

When I was online at one of the forums on living in Germany, an IT recruiter told someone else to email their resume to her.

Taking a chance, I sent her an email with mine, asking if she could help me.

Turns out she said she might have something for me, but to make my resume bigger. In Europe resumes are called CVs and can be quite a bit different. You don´t just put in what your job duties are, you talk up how good you were at them! I can do that, so I did. After a couple more contacts via email and one chat on the phone with her, I have a lead on an IT job at the United Nations in Vienna!

I do NOT want to jinx it, so I´m not giving any other details for now, but please, wish me luck, pray for me, whatever it is you do to help someone, I can really use it right now.!

Sooooo...... now we are up to date I think. Shew......... I´m worn out and I think my carpal tunnel is starting to come back in my right hand!

Ok then, i am going to hang out here and do some fun stuff on the PC, and will let you know if the landlady and I actually connect and if I get my apartment tomorrow..

I miss you all, take care!!!!