Sorry, internet access here is dial up and not unlimited, and Mark is getting weird about us being onine long, even though I said I would pay our share when the bill comes. IThe following post isfrom a few days agao, and no pictures yet, sorry. I am back planning to go to tthe UK. We still have the out of our December 1st tickets back to the states, fromItaly, but we do NOT want to do this, although I am worried about money, etc... anyway..
Time just seems to be flying here, despite the fact that we are living the slow life.
We’ve been in Germany almost a month now, and I think here at Siebertal for about 3 weeks.
A typical day for me lately is sleeping in until noon, getting up, having some tea, throwing in some laundry, checking email…. If there are guests I’ll do the breakfast dishes and if anyone has left, clean the room, etc. Pretty boring stuff. In the even, Mark, the man who owns this place will open the bar up and Jess and I will just hang out, put a puzzle together, surf. I hate to see what the dial up internet bill is going to be. I think I should be going online every couple of days and checking to see is DSL is available here yet.
It looks like the end of November Nick is going to move in with some friends who will be renting a townhouse, so he will only be paying $150 a month, and should be able to afford the car payment and insurance on his own then. YES!
My mom wanted to see some pictures of US, not just scenery, so we took some pictures today, I may put one or two of me online. I’ve given up trying to look good in pictures, PLUS I want to show everyone the picture of me pulling my baggy jeans away from my legs so that you can see some of the 30 pounds I’ve lost!
I’ve decided that I am going to follow through with the Highly Skilled Migrant Program visa for the UK, just because if I get it, I can make a lot of money there, live cheaply and then save some up. Maybe even commute! Hey that would work. Fly back to Germany on the weekends, at least for a bit. Hmmm… Ideas seem to flow like crazy here. Making them happen is a LOT harder!
Mark is driving Jess into Osterode, a nearby town. A friend of ours, Nassir, owns a restaurant there named Ghandi and wanted Jess to come in this evening and earn some money doing some cleaning. The bar here is open when Mark should be going to get here, and he said something about me being able to take his car to drive and pick her up! That would be a big step for him, to lend us the car. That opens it up to the possibility we might be able to use it in the future, which would give us so much more mobility! Right now we are pretty much holed up here with no money and no place to go.
My friend Jodi, who is also my realtor……. by the way, my house has still not been sold! I feel so badly for her, we are hoping it goes soon! It’s been a real nightmare for her. She in effect bought me out of my equity so that we could leave for Europe before the house sold, so we owe her big time!
Anyway, we stand to get a bit more money when the house sells, but Nick is having a problem coming up with the last month of rent at the apt, so I rang her up and she was kind enough to advance me some money. She had mentioned possibly paying me the balance over the next two months. That would mean that maybe next month I will be able to buy a car! I have decided that even with the wonderful transportation system that the EU has, our being able to make it, as well as our sanity depends on getting a car. The transportation system is wonderful for getting to work and back, occasional long trips, but is way too expensive to use solely instead of a car. If I could get a car next month I could drive to the UK for job interviews, we could get to the bigger towns which would mean that we could get part time jobs, and get ourselves to and from them.
I am crossing my fingers that Jodi will make another payment to me next month. That would solve so many problems!!
Other than that, the Harz mountains are fantastic shades of orange and gold, but it seems to be raining non-stop the last week.
I don’t know if I have mentioned it before, but Jess and I have moved into the room next to the one we were staying in. The new one is sooooooo much nicer. It has a couch in it that the cats love, and two extra windows with sills that look out over the street so that the cats can sit there and see what is going on. They are much happoer there, though we still let them out to run the halls when possible, they need to stretch their legs.
I have a couple of pictures when we put them in the cat harnesses to let them run on the balcony outside the room, the pictures are pretty hysterical, the look shell shocked. If I had a video camera I would be able to show you what happens when they try to walk in them..It shows just how much they depend on their sense of balance, with the harnesses on the basically stand up, then fall over on their sides. Very funny but sad at the same time. Kitty and Bammy were starting to get used to them, but were still quite off balance. Kitty had taking to walking with one side up against the fence to keep her standing upright. Again, VERY funny, but we try not to laugh out loud and offend them!
Sunday, October 30, 2005
Sunday, October 16, 2005
Short, sorry
Ok then, yell at me, I know it´s been a long time since I´ve written, but I´ve been staying in a bed and breakfast in the Harz mountains,in the middle of Germany! Internet is dial-up and the man who owns the place only has 30 hours a month time online, so we have been trying to minimize the time online. We are out of money right now, so going into town ( a 4 mile walk one way) and paying 3€ an hour for an internet café is out of the question. Anyway, I am writing this offline and then going to paste it in, seem so it seems to be the only way to get this posted.
We are staying with a man who owns a bed and breakfast (excuse me if I have said this before) and I have been working hard cleaning (we all know how men clean!) and cooking in exchange for our room, but are not really making any cash, although I just made 10€ for making spaghetti, fries and a pizza for a couple of guys who live in the apartments next door. YES! Never did I think a 10€ bill would look so good! It will go for cat litter and food, and shampoo and conditioner and SODA!
Don´t feel sorry for us, we are having a heck of a time, other than being REALLY bored and wishing we had internet 24-7!
Right now we are torn between working temporary jobs in German companies or waiting to see if any of the army jobs we applied for come through. They say that if you make any money from a German company you will not be able to work at a military base, and the opposite as far as German companies go. I checked online the other day and one of the IT jobs I applied for in the army said I had made the first cut, so that is good news. Stuttgart is way south of here, but that is ok, anywhere in Germany is fine, preferably near a city please.
So things have been slow and lazy, which was fun for the first week or so, but is now starting to get old. I wish there were more people coming to stay here, I like being busy.
We are still waiting for the refund of our deposit from the apt in Italy to come through via wire, and in the meantime something I charged back in SEPT just came in, so I am minus.
We won´t even talk about Jess´ account…. UGH!
I wish the house would sell, that would be about $3500 and we could just go out and rent an apartment near a city and start looking for work locally.
Anyway, I have been sick the last two days, and now that I am actually writing, I don´t have much to say. BAD, I wanted to keep such a close tab on everything we have been doing.
Well, this is the best I can do for now……. I will try to start writing more.
We are staying with a man who owns a bed and breakfast (excuse me if I have said this before) and I have been working hard cleaning (we all know how men clean!) and cooking in exchange for our room, but are not really making any cash, although I just made 10€ for making spaghetti, fries and a pizza for a couple of guys who live in the apartments next door. YES! Never did I think a 10€ bill would look so good! It will go for cat litter and food, and shampoo and conditioner and SODA!
Don´t feel sorry for us, we are having a heck of a time, other than being REALLY bored and wishing we had internet 24-7!
Right now we are torn between working temporary jobs in German companies or waiting to see if any of the army jobs we applied for come through. They say that if you make any money from a German company you will not be able to work at a military base, and the opposite as far as German companies go. I checked online the other day and one of the IT jobs I applied for in the army said I had made the first cut, so that is good news. Stuttgart is way south of here, but that is ok, anywhere in Germany is fine, preferably near a city please.
So things have been slow and lazy, which was fun for the first week or so, but is now starting to get old. I wish there were more people coming to stay here, I like being busy.
We are still waiting for the refund of our deposit from the apt in Italy to come through via wire, and in the meantime something I charged back in SEPT just came in, so I am minus.
We won´t even talk about Jess´ account…. UGH!
I wish the house would sell, that would be about $3500 and we could just go out and rent an apartment near a city and start looking for work locally.
Anyway, I have been sick the last two days, and now that I am actually writing, I don´t have much to say. BAD, I wanted to keep such a close tab on everything we have been doing.
Well, this is the best I can do for now……. I will try to start writing more.
Friday, October 07, 2005
Wow, posting two days in a row!
Ok, where were we?
Oh yeah, at Amsterdam.... so basically I flew out of Amsterdam and into Hannover. By the time I got there, it was after 9, and Hertberg and Siber being the samll towns that they are, there were no more trains or busses going there that evening. Grrrrr..
I managed to get one to a town sort of near, and then called the place we were staying and the woner was nice enough to find me someone to come pick me up at the station and drive me back in exchange for gas money. Yeah!
The place we are staying is in a little town in the middle of Germany. we want to own this place badly, but it isn´t going to happen. We have a room with a balcony, and our own bathroom. A double bed, which in Europe means two singles put together. The Eurpeans obviously know the meaning of a good nights sleep, not feeling the person next to you tossing and turning. The place is old, when the owner said over 120 years old, we had to laugh, saying that in Italy that would be new, but then he reminded us that most of Germany was flattened in the wars, so this was pretty old for a house. That shut us up!
We have no transportation, the bus one way into town costs about $5 American, so we are walking, it´s about 8 km into town, takes us a bit over an hour to walk it if we need to shop and use the internet. We finally got on the internet yesterday, abotu a week after the owner of the place we are staying kept promising his would be up and running.
Yesterday we started applying for the civilian PX jobs at all the Army bases in Europe, Jess already got one reply saying she should stop in to get interviewed. Only problem is that it costs €30 one way for her to take the train. We should have stayed closer to the part of Germany we were job hunting in, but we couldn´t turn down the offer to stay here, we had no place to go at the time.
i also received a great email from the rental place in Italy. They were suprised to get the keys in the mailbox slot, but the woman was able to rent the place within a week, so we are getting a €314 refund!!!! yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!! so we are just a little less close to being broke.
Anyway, that is sort of up to date on everything, plus I am tired of typing. I will try to update this every other day, or if jobs happen, etc.
Love to you all!
Oh yeah, at Amsterdam.... so basically I flew out of Amsterdam and into Hannover. By the time I got there, it was after 9, and Hertberg and Siber being the samll towns that they are, there were no more trains or busses going there that evening. Grrrrr..
I managed to get one to a town sort of near, and then called the place we were staying and the woner was nice enough to find me someone to come pick me up at the station and drive me back in exchange for gas money. Yeah!
The place we are staying is in a little town in the middle of Germany. we want to own this place badly, but it isn´t going to happen. We have a room with a balcony, and our own bathroom. A double bed, which in Europe means two singles put together. The Eurpeans obviously know the meaning of a good nights sleep, not feeling the person next to you tossing and turning. The place is old, when the owner said over 120 years old, we had to laugh, saying that in Italy that would be new, but then he reminded us that most of Germany was flattened in the wars, so this was pretty old for a house. That shut us up!
We have no transportation, the bus one way into town costs about $5 American, so we are walking, it´s about 8 km into town, takes us a bit over an hour to walk it if we need to shop and use the internet. We finally got on the internet yesterday, abotu a week after the owner of the place we are staying kept promising his would be up and running.
Yesterday we started applying for the civilian PX jobs at all the Army bases in Europe, Jess already got one reply saying she should stop in to get interviewed. Only problem is that it costs €30 one way for her to take the train. We should have stayed closer to the part of Germany we were job hunting in, but we couldn´t turn down the offer to stay here, we had no place to go at the time.
i also received a great email from the rental place in Italy. They were suprised to get the keys in the mailbox slot, but the woman was able to rent the place within a week, so we are getting a €314 refund!!!! yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!! so we are just a little less close to being broke.
Anyway, that is sort of up to date on everything, plus I am tired of typing. I will try to update this every other day, or if jobs happen, etc.
Love to you all!
Thursday, October 06, 2005
Well hey there, long time no see!
Good god, what an interesting life Jess and I have been leading the last couple of weeks.
We have been just about homeless, I´ve been flying aroung Germany via Amsterdam, we are pretty much broke, but I did manage to steal a bunch of money from Jess´ account via the ATM so that I could get back fropm the airport, etc.
Anyway, I will just start typing like crazy to make up for lost time.
Oh before that, congratulations to the people from DEED! They won $4 in the lottery (with $75 worth of tickets)
Well, last I remember I was renting a car from Milan to bring Jess and I into Germany.
We drove up and decided to go to Wiesbaden instead of Darmstadt, I just had a feeling a really wanted to see the city. It was a LONG ride and the cat´s cages really didn´t fit into the rented car, but we managed. We ended up leaving Italy at about 11 pm, quite a few hours later than we wanted to, but we really wanted to leave the apartment in Italy clean. Well I did, Jess just wanted to leave. We did the cowards way out and slipped a note with the keys through the mail slot of the rental place. I haven´t heard back from them, so I am guessing they figured the one month deposit would cover everything.
Driving wasn´t bad, i had Jess as the navigator, so I was set. We got to Wiesbaden about noon, and I had made a hotel reservation, we were allowed in ealry, which was good because I was dead on my feet.
I decided that since the hotel had advertised as pet friendly, I was not going to ask if we could have four cats in our room. Of course that meant having to feel REALLY guilty (thanks mom) trying to get them into the room with a miimal amount of noise.
We managed and asked where an internet cafe was and walked down. Wiesbaden is a NICE city. Clean, cute, big enough but not too big.
We seem to be camerally challenged the last couple of weeks, so no pictures, sorry.
We had gone to try and find an apartment rental, then apply for jobs at the local Army base. we true to forom, the Ortega luck was running as bad as usual, we could NOT find anything.
we ended up staying a couple of extra days, and then our luck changed. Everytime I looked online for apartments, in Germany, I would run across this site for a hotel/hostel for sale, but it could be rented for €695 a month and you could pay €15,000 for the furniture. Well, in the back of my head I´ve alwasy wanted to own something like this, (no, we have not bought the place, at least not YET! ) BUT i kept thinking that maybe this guy would rent a room to us where we could have our cats.
Turns out he answered, said give him a call. I called an spoke to him, an Englishman, and he said that although he was closed for the season, we coudl come up, rent a room, have our cats with us, he could earn a bit of money, we could get the job and apartment business sorted out, etc. YES!!!!
We ended up driving up to his hostel in Sieber, Germany, kind of the middle, in the Harz mountains, which are really just BIG hills, but beatiful, all the trees have been turning wonderful colors, and the weather is perfect Indian summer.
It sounds peaceful, but lots of things have been happening during the last week or two.
I dropped Jess and the cats off and then had to turn around at 2 am the next morning and drive what Mapquest SAID was going to be a 9 hour drive down to Milan to bring the rental car back. Yeah, RIGHT! I even padded the driving time by couple of hours and was late.
The night I started out, I was having problems with one of my eyes and had been wering my glasses. I was going to bring the contacts with me, but forgot. Well about 2 miles I realized that in my old age, my eyes ahd REALLY changed since I had gotten my glasses about 9 months ago, I could not even read the road signs unless I sort of tipped the glasses forwardwith the ear pieces riding high on my head. By te time I realized this I was about 20 minutes away from Jess, and decided I would wing it, that it wouldn´t be too bad.
What followed next were about 15 of the most excrutiatingly HORRIBLE hours of my life.
The entire way down to Italy was horribly foggy, and I could not see the signs at all. I was probably a major danger onthe road, but I didn´t want to add another day´s rental to the car. (Everyone PLEASE give a HUGE round of applause to my mother, who was willing to pick up the rental car bill on her visa so that we would have a little cash. YYYEEEAAAHHH mom! I love you!!!)
I had booked a flight backup to Germany using my emergency frequent flyer miles because we truly did not have ANY money. I ended up bringing the car back with an empty tank, which I thought would go on my mom´s visa, but which went on mine, since it was the visa that I reserved the car on. i was TRULY lucky that the were reversig the charges for the rental and putting them on my mom´s visa, and that the reversal actually came in time so that nothing bounced.
Anyway, the directions mapquest gave me had me driving THROUGH the Alps, which has just received one of the first snowfalls. It was so amazing, (what I could see of it) it brought tears to my eyes. I could only imagine what it looked like had I been able to see clearly! I was so happy to be drivgn that way.... that is, until I realized that mapquest did NOT make allowances for driving through mountains behind very slow moving cars.
After a while I could tell that making my 1 pm flight was going to be too close for comfort. So close that I was pretty sure I was NOT going to make it.
With 45 minutes left, and being half blind, I saw a sign for an airport, and HOPING it was the one I was looking for, in desperation followed it. i found terminal 1, which was where the rental car place was, screached into a parkign spot and looked for the rental place. I asked a man in the lot and he said inside the terminal. I asked if he knew if the KLÖM checkin was in terminal 1 or 2. He gave me a funny look and said something I couldn´t understand, so I just ran for the termial, with a sinking feeling in my stomach, stopped the first person I saw and asked if this was the Malpensa airport near Milan. She said no, this was on the Swiss side of the border and the airport was probably an hour away, maybe less.
CRIPES! I have driven all this way UNABLE to see a street sign clearly, and now I am goign to miss my flight. SHIT! I may have said FUCK, but either way I was not happy.
By now the car has had the gas light on for about 25 minutes, and I knew I would have to put some amount of gas in it. I has stopped a couple of times to put €5 in just to keep going. I had no idea how much was in my bank account now, but was pretty sure it was close to zero, the same with Jess´ account. I drove into a gas station, and on the pump it said something about visas, and what I thought was after hours. i mean, I am so frazzled by this time, I assume it say you can pay by visa after hours. COOL! Maybe I have €5 still in my account.
I put 5 in the gas tank, and go to pay. The man behind the counter looks JUST like the Mr Bean consulate guy. UGH. Even worse, he is Italian and when I hand him my visa say, "DID you not read the sign outside, it says that we do NOT accpect visas!"
Yeah well Mr, I thought, that´s the way my luck is... But that´s ok I think, I have €5 on me. I hand him the money and he say no, it´s in Swiss Francs. SHIT!
Ok, how much in €? It was somethign like €10. I didn´t have it. Here! I say, I have €4......... No go... Well, what do I do? I could just TELL he was going to call the police. I FINALLY convinced him to let me go to an ATM to get cash (like I HAD any in there) by giving him my license, which he was NOT impressed with, he wanted the rental agreement from the car place.
TAKE it, I though. After roaming around 15 minutes liking for the bank, I finally find it. By now it is a little after 1, and I am hoping for some sort of mechanical failure on the plane I was supposed to be on, and that I would get there an hour late to find the flight had been delayed and everything would be wonderful.
I fnid the bank, and there were two ATMS. Oh, by the way, this bank was in the World Trade Center building, which was either 3 or 4 stories high. I thought this was hysterical, but when I think back on it now, they were VERY smart, should someone fly a plane into it, hey, only three stories go down in a blase. hmmmmm.....
Anyway, the one ATM will only let you take out like a minimum of 250. crap, then I notice it only dispenses Francs. SIIIGGHHHHH....... I want my MOMMY!
I ask the man at the other ATM, hoping to God he speaks English, how much 10 francs would be in Euros, he says about 15. ok, these numbers may be a bit skews, but you get the general drift. So now wait until he is done, and try to take out 20 francs. YES! some unknown God has let me do this. i´m pretty sure I don´t have that money in there, but you think I am going to question it at this time? NOOOOO..
So now, instead of 10 francs, (that was the amount now that I think of it, I have 20)
Being the smartass that I am , I drive up to the pump, go in, flash the 20 franc note at him and say. "ok, I´m going to go ahead and put another 10 francs in the gas tank!"
I know he thought he was never going to see me again, and trust me, I was thinking of the odds of getting to the border before the police caught up with me..
So now I´m set, 20 francs worth of gas in the car I head towards the border, and there´s aline there. There is no way in hell I could have ever gotten tot he airport on time. I get through, head towards Milan and pray to the gods that there are signs to Malpensa airport.
Oh yeah, I forgot to say, when i was getting the directions, the airport didn´t really have a street address, or I couldn´t find it, so I used the zipcode of it, and those were the wrong directions, I had even gone the right way according to the directions I had, they just weren´t the right directions.
So now I had no directions, but was really lucky and found the airport by going towards Milan, there were great signs, and managed to get to the airport, to the Europcar rental place.
I drop the car off, argue with them for a while, they want to charge the whole thing to my bank card. I explain that I had changed the billing with the US office to be on my mom´s card, and if they charged mine, they would not be getting their money.
I finally had to make her cal the US, I spoke to them and they were kind enough to send a fax to Milan saying the retal was on my mom´s card.
Unfortunately they had to charge the gas to my card. Whatever I thought.
I eaded to the terminal, thank heavens I had no luggage, etc. Squinted my way in trying to find the KLM desk. When I get there I explain I missed the flight, what can I do. I was soooooo lucky, there was another flight goign to Hannover at 4 something.
BUT there was a €45 penalty for changing the reservation. "Charge it to Mapquest" I thought, and explained to them i was broke and that was why I had used my frequent flier miles. Well, he said no exeptions. I told him that if he didn´t issue the ticket to me I would me forced to live in his termial like Tom Hanks in the movie "Terminal" I kid you not, I actually said that to him.. He wasn´t to impressed, but did send me to their account dept to talk to them about the fee.
15 minutes later, after saying the same thing about having to live in their terminal forever, as offering my mom´s credit card number even though I didn´t have the card (sorry mom)I had a boarding pass in hand. YES! I did not have to live in their terminal.
So off the Amsterdam I fly. From Amsterdam I switch planes to Hannover, Germany.
While waiting for them to say that boarding will start, i realize that I have no money to take the train down from Hannover to Siber, where the hotel is.
One note, in the Amsterdam airport, you wait to board, then you go into a bus and they bus you over to the plane out on a waiting area where all these planes are lined up.
I think, I NEED cash, it will cost around €30 to get from Hannover to Sieber. I go to the cash machine. I start with trying to pull out €50. No go. €40? no go. €20? No go.. I pull out Jess´ card and try €70, just for the fun of it. HOLY crap! It gave me money! Now I know for a fact theat there is not that much money in the account, but desperate times calls for desperate measures.. I try taking out another €50.... It gives it to me. I try another €70. It gives it to me, but by bnow I am looking over my shoulder and have a sinking feeling in my stomach. I´m trying to remember just how much money will make it a federal offense, and once again the guilt my mother instilled in me wins. i stop.
Standing in line waiting for the train i honestly feel like I have killed someone.
This will ahve to be continued in another day or so, sorry, almost out of internet time.
we are fine, out in the middle of the boonies in Germany, but will try to get back into town tomorrow. Buses stop running here at 6:30, so I have to run... LATER!
We have been just about homeless, I´ve been flying aroung Germany via Amsterdam, we are pretty much broke, but I did manage to steal a bunch of money from Jess´ account via the ATM so that I could get back fropm the airport, etc.
Anyway, I will just start typing like crazy to make up for lost time.
Oh before that, congratulations to the people from DEED! They won $4 in the lottery (with $75 worth of tickets)
Well, last I remember I was renting a car from Milan to bring Jess and I into Germany.
We drove up and decided to go to Wiesbaden instead of Darmstadt, I just had a feeling a really wanted to see the city. It was a LONG ride and the cat´s cages really didn´t fit into the rented car, but we managed. We ended up leaving Italy at about 11 pm, quite a few hours later than we wanted to, but we really wanted to leave the apartment in Italy clean. Well I did, Jess just wanted to leave. We did the cowards way out and slipped a note with the keys through the mail slot of the rental place. I haven´t heard back from them, so I am guessing they figured the one month deposit would cover everything.
Driving wasn´t bad, i had Jess as the navigator, so I was set. We got to Wiesbaden about noon, and I had made a hotel reservation, we were allowed in ealry, which was good because I was dead on my feet.
I decided that since the hotel had advertised as pet friendly, I was not going to ask if we could have four cats in our room. Of course that meant having to feel REALLY guilty (thanks mom) trying to get them into the room with a miimal amount of noise.
We managed and asked where an internet cafe was and walked down. Wiesbaden is a NICE city. Clean, cute, big enough but not too big.
We seem to be camerally challenged the last couple of weeks, so no pictures, sorry.
We had gone to try and find an apartment rental, then apply for jobs at the local Army base. we true to forom, the Ortega luck was running as bad as usual, we could NOT find anything.
we ended up staying a couple of extra days, and then our luck changed. Everytime I looked online for apartments, in Germany, I would run across this site for a hotel/hostel for sale, but it could be rented for €695 a month and you could pay €15,000 for the furniture. Well, in the back of my head I´ve alwasy wanted to own something like this, (no, we have not bought the place, at least not YET! ) BUT i kept thinking that maybe this guy would rent a room to us where we could have our cats.
Turns out he answered, said give him a call. I called an spoke to him, an Englishman, and he said that although he was closed for the season, we coudl come up, rent a room, have our cats with us, he could earn a bit of money, we could get the job and apartment business sorted out, etc. YES!!!!
We ended up driving up to his hostel in Sieber, Germany, kind of the middle, in the Harz mountains, which are really just BIG hills, but beatiful, all the trees have been turning wonderful colors, and the weather is perfect Indian summer.
It sounds peaceful, but lots of things have been happening during the last week or two.
I dropped Jess and the cats off and then had to turn around at 2 am the next morning and drive what Mapquest SAID was going to be a 9 hour drive down to Milan to bring the rental car back. Yeah, RIGHT! I even padded the driving time by couple of hours and was late.
The night I started out, I was having problems with one of my eyes and had been wering my glasses. I was going to bring the contacts with me, but forgot. Well about 2 miles I realized that in my old age, my eyes ahd REALLY changed since I had gotten my glasses about 9 months ago, I could not even read the road signs unless I sort of tipped the glasses forwardwith the ear pieces riding high on my head. By te time I realized this I was about 20 minutes away from Jess, and decided I would wing it, that it wouldn´t be too bad.
What followed next were about 15 of the most excrutiatingly HORRIBLE hours of my life.
The entire way down to Italy was horribly foggy, and I could not see the signs at all. I was probably a major danger onthe road, but I didn´t want to add another day´s rental to the car. (Everyone PLEASE give a HUGE round of applause to my mother, who was willing to pick up the rental car bill on her visa so that we would have a little cash. YYYEEEAAAHHH mom! I love you!!!)
I had booked a flight backup to Germany using my emergency frequent flyer miles because we truly did not have ANY money. I ended up bringing the car back with an empty tank, which I thought would go on my mom´s visa, but which went on mine, since it was the visa that I reserved the car on. i was TRULY lucky that the were reversig the charges for the rental and putting them on my mom´s visa, and that the reversal actually came in time so that nothing bounced.
Anyway, the directions mapquest gave me had me driving THROUGH the Alps, which has just received one of the first snowfalls. It was so amazing, (what I could see of it) it brought tears to my eyes. I could only imagine what it looked like had I been able to see clearly! I was so happy to be drivgn that way.... that is, until I realized that mapquest did NOT make allowances for driving through mountains behind very slow moving cars.
After a while I could tell that making my 1 pm flight was going to be too close for comfort. So close that I was pretty sure I was NOT going to make it.
With 45 minutes left, and being half blind, I saw a sign for an airport, and HOPING it was the one I was looking for, in desperation followed it. i found terminal 1, which was where the rental car place was, screached into a parkign spot and looked for the rental place. I asked a man in the lot and he said inside the terminal. I asked if he knew if the KLÖM checkin was in terminal 1 or 2. He gave me a funny look and said something I couldn´t understand, so I just ran for the termial, with a sinking feeling in my stomach, stopped the first person I saw and asked if this was the Malpensa airport near Milan. She said no, this was on the Swiss side of the border and the airport was probably an hour away, maybe less.
CRIPES! I have driven all this way UNABLE to see a street sign clearly, and now I am goign to miss my flight. SHIT! I may have said FUCK, but either way I was not happy.
By now the car has had the gas light on for about 25 minutes, and I knew I would have to put some amount of gas in it. I has stopped a couple of times to put €5 in just to keep going. I had no idea how much was in my bank account now, but was pretty sure it was close to zero, the same with Jess´ account. I drove into a gas station, and on the pump it said something about visas, and what I thought was after hours. i mean, I am so frazzled by this time, I assume it say you can pay by visa after hours. COOL! Maybe I have €5 still in my account.
I put 5 in the gas tank, and go to pay. The man behind the counter looks JUST like the Mr Bean consulate guy. UGH. Even worse, he is Italian and when I hand him my visa say, "DID you not read the sign outside, it says that we do NOT accpect visas!"
Yeah well Mr, I thought, that´s the way my luck is... But that´s ok I think, I have €5 on me. I hand him the money and he say no, it´s in Swiss Francs. SHIT!
Ok, how much in €? It was somethign like €10. I didn´t have it. Here! I say, I have €4......... No go... Well, what do I do? I could just TELL he was going to call the police. I FINALLY convinced him to let me go to an ATM to get cash (like I HAD any in there) by giving him my license, which he was NOT impressed with, he wanted the rental agreement from the car place.
TAKE it, I though. After roaming around 15 minutes liking for the bank, I finally find it. By now it is a little after 1, and I am hoping for some sort of mechanical failure on the plane I was supposed to be on, and that I would get there an hour late to find the flight had been delayed and everything would be wonderful.
I fnid the bank, and there were two ATMS. Oh, by the way, this bank was in the World Trade Center building, which was either 3 or 4 stories high. I thought this was hysterical, but when I think back on it now, they were VERY smart, should someone fly a plane into it, hey, only three stories go down in a blase. hmmmmm.....
Anyway, the one ATM will only let you take out like a minimum of 250. crap, then I notice it only dispenses Francs. SIIIGGHHHHH....... I want my MOMMY!
I ask the man at the other ATM, hoping to God he speaks English, how much 10 francs would be in Euros, he says about 15. ok, these numbers may be a bit skews, but you get the general drift. So now wait until he is done, and try to take out 20 francs. YES! some unknown God has let me do this. i´m pretty sure I don´t have that money in there, but you think I am going to question it at this time? NOOOOO..
So now, instead of 10 francs, (that was the amount now that I think of it, I have 20)
Being the smartass that I am , I drive up to the pump, go in, flash the 20 franc note at him and say. "ok, I´m going to go ahead and put another 10 francs in the gas tank!"
I know he thought he was never going to see me again, and trust me, I was thinking of the odds of getting to the border before the police caught up with me..
So now I´m set, 20 francs worth of gas in the car I head towards the border, and there´s aline there. There is no way in hell I could have ever gotten tot he airport on time. I get through, head towards Milan and pray to the gods that there are signs to Malpensa airport.
Oh yeah, I forgot to say, when i was getting the directions, the airport didn´t really have a street address, or I couldn´t find it, so I used the zipcode of it, and those were the wrong directions, I had even gone the right way according to the directions I had, they just weren´t the right directions.
So now I had no directions, but was really lucky and found the airport by going towards Milan, there were great signs, and managed to get to the airport, to the Europcar rental place.
I drop the car off, argue with them for a while, they want to charge the whole thing to my bank card. I explain that I had changed the billing with the US office to be on my mom´s card, and if they charged mine, they would not be getting their money.
I finally had to make her cal the US, I spoke to them and they were kind enough to send a fax to Milan saying the retal was on my mom´s card.
Unfortunately they had to charge the gas to my card. Whatever I thought.
I eaded to the terminal, thank heavens I had no luggage, etc. Squinted my way in trying to find the KLM desk. When I get there I explain I missed the flight, what can I do. I was soooooo lucky, there was another flight goign to Hannover at 4 something.
BUT there was a €45 penalty for changing the reservation. "Charge it to Mapquest" I thought, and explained to them i was broke and that was why I had used my frequent flier miles. Well, he said no exeptions. I told him that if he didn´t issue the ticket to me I would me forced to live in his termial like Tom Hanks in the movie "Terminal" I kid you not, I actually said that to him.. He wasn´t to impressed, but did send me to their account dept to talk to them about the fee.
15 minutes later, after saying the same thing about having to live in their terminal forever, as offering my mom´s credit card number even though I didn´t have the card (sorry mom)I had a boarding pass in hand. YES! I did not have to live in their terminal.
So off the Amsterdam I fly. From Amsterdam I switch planes to Hannover, Germany.
While waiting for them to say that boarding will start, i realize that I have no money to take the train down from Hannover to Siber, where the hotel is.
One note, in the Amsterdam airport, you wait to board, then you go into a bus and they bus you over to the plane out on a waiting area where all these planes are lined up.
I think, I NEED cash, it will cost around €30 to get from Hannover to Sieber. I go to the cash machine. I start with trying to pull out €50. No go. €40? no go. €20? No go.. I pull out Jess´ card and try €70, just for the fun of it. HOLY crap! It gave me money! Now I know for a fact theat there is not that much money in the account, but desperate times calls for desperate measures.. I try taking out another €50.... It gives it to me. I try another €70. It gives it to me, but by bnow I am looking over my shoulder and have a sinking feeling in my stomach. I´m trying to remember just how much money will make it a federal offense, and once again the guilt my mother instilled in me wins. i stop.
Standing in line waiting for the train i honestly feel like I have killed someone.
This will ahve to be continued in another day or so, sorry, almost out of internet time.
we are fine, out in the middle of the boonies in Germany, but will try to get back into town tomorrow. Buses stop running here at 6:30, so I have to run... LATER!
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Why renting car in Milano
Just a quick note, I am renting from Milano because then I only have to fly from there back to Germany when I drop the car off. I can drop it right off at the airport Ryanair runs out of. There were no cheap fares from Pisa or Rome going out back to Germany on that day, but I got a €22 fare out of Milan.
It reall ends up the same mileage no matter where you start from, because you have to end up there also. It was the cost of getting back to Germany that made me rent it from Milan. The rental price was exactly the same no matter where I rented from. Trust me, I spent HOURS looking up the best way to go...
It reall ends up the same mileage no matter where you start from, because you have to end up there also. It was the cost of getting back to Germany that made me rent it from Milan. The rental price was exactly the same no matter where I rented from. Trust me, I spent HOURS looking up the best way to go...
Why renting car in Milano
Just a quick note, I am renting from Milano because then I only have to fly from there back to Germany when I drop the car off. I can drop it right off at the airport Ryanair runs out of. There were no cheap fares from Pisa or Rome going out back to Germany on that day, but I got a €22 fare out of Milan.
Monday, September 26, 2005
I feel like a yo-yo
Back and forth, back and forth.
Well, I couldn't wait any longer to make a decision, time and money are running out. I booked a little station wagon from Milan for three days.
I take the train up to Milan, drive back to Perugia, we load it up with assorted boxes, luggage and animals, and head up to Germany the next day.
Oct 1st I drive back down only to Milan, grab a Ryanair cheap flight to Hahn Frankfurt, and train/bus it back to Darmstadt.
We THINK we have a place to stay.
A 2 bedroom apartment, we can't afford the rent, but I just emailed him to ask it if was indeed 2 bedrooms, and that if he would let us pay one week's rent, we would look for a quiet female student who needs a place. The place is 80 sq meters, which is like double the size of our apt, with a small basement, etc. It is in a house.....
He sort of said yes to the cats, and it's right by the rail station, so that will be nice.
Soo..... cross your fingers again.
OH, the United Nations job in Vienna? I emailed the woman last week sometime to ask about it, said I had an interview in Germany, and needed to take the first job offered, but WANTED that job. She didn't even bother to email back t say he wasn't interested, etc... GRRR.. not very professional.
I have still been looking for UN jobs around Europe. Why not?
Soooo.. tomorrow we have to get on the stick, pack everything and CLEAN like crazy..... because we all know that while I am going up to Milan to get the car, and driving back, I would NOT be able to get Jess to clean.
Well, keeping this short, am hungry and cold.... will write more tomorrow.
Well, I couldn't wait any longer to make a decision, time and money are running out. I booked a little station wagon from Milan for three days.
I take the train up to Milan, drive back to Perugia, we load it up with assorted boxes, luggage and animals, and head up to Germany the next day.
Oct 1st I drive back down only to Milan, grab a Ryanair cheap flight to Hahn Frankfurt, and train/bus it back to Darmstadt.
We THINK we have a place to stay.
A 2 bedroom apartment, we can't afford the rent, but I just emailed him to ask it if was indeed 2 bedrooms, and that if he would let us pay one week's rent, we would look for a quiet female student who needs a place. The place is 80 sq meters, which is like double the size of our apt, with a small basement, etc. It is in a house.....
He sort of said yes to the cats, and it's right by the rail station, so that will be nice.
Soo..... cross your fingers again.
OH, the United Nations job in Vienna? I emailed the woman last week sometime to ask about it, said I had an interview in Germany, and needed to take the first job offered, but WANTED that job. She didn't even bother to email back t say he wasn't interested, etc... GRRR.. not very professional.
I have still been looking for UN jobs around Europe. Why not?
Soooo.. tomorrow we have to get on the stick, pack everything and CLEAN like crazy..... because we all know that while I am going up to Milan to get the car, and driving back, I would NOT be able to get Jess to clean.
Well, keeping this short, am hungry and cold.... will write more tomorrow.
Sunday, September 25, 2005
HMMMM........ WHERE are we giong?
Good question. Things seem to be changing minute by minute, amazing but true.
Yesterday, well actually even today we were planning to go to the UK, all Novell and GroupWise systems there, I can make good money..... But you need a visa.. I could apply for the Highly Skilled Migrant Program and probaly get the visa, but the fee is about $500, and that's about half of all of our money in the world.. Uh-oh. So now we are back going to Germany at least temporarily. Trying to get a handle on a place to stay, I mayhave one if I can convince him to drop the rent, the deposit and let us pay by the week. (Hey, I did that before, though I probably didn't write about it, maybe I did, the whole Darmstadt fiasco!!) and a cheap way to bring the cats up. Then we park outside an army base and beg for cashier jobs.
LOLOL Gawd.....
I will write more tomorrow, I do promise. I have about 10 minutes left here, then the place closes down.
Damn, I should have gone to Germany to apply for the job handing out badges I was supposed to go interview for last Thursday.. well, live and learn, maybe I will get a head cashier job, or a BK job! yeah!
Things have been pretty crazy the last couple of weeks, just trying to find a way to stay in Europe. Money is getting MIGHTY low, which of course is the main problem as usual. Anyway, i will write more tomorrow, nothing too interesting so you haven't been missing much!
Yesterday, well actually even today we were planning to go to the UK, all Novell and GroupWise systems there, I can make good money..... But you need a visa.. I could apply for the Highly Skilled Migrant Program and probaly get the visa, but the fee is about $500, and that's about half of all of our money in the world.. Uh-oh. So now we are back going to Germany at least temporarily. Trying to get a handle on a place to stay, I mayhave one if I can convince him to drop the rent, the deposit and let us pay by the week. (Hey, I did that before, though I probably didn't write about it, maybe I did, the whole Darmstadt fiasco!!) and a cheap way to bring the cats up. Then we park outside an army base and beg for cashier jobs.
LOLOL Gawd.....
I will write more tomorrow, I do promise. I have about 10 minutes left here, then the place closes down.
Damn, I should have gone to Germany to apply for the job handing out badges I was supposed to go interview for last Thursday.. well, live and learn, maybe I will get a head cashier job, or a BK job! yeah!
Things have been pretty crazy the last couple of weeks, just trying to find a way to stay in Europe. Money is getting MIGHTY low, which of course is the main problem as usual. Anyway, i will write more tomorrow, nothing too interesting so you haven't been missing much!
Friday, September 23, 2005
HA!
Fooled you!You thought I was going to write today. Nope, sorry. BUT I promise I will tomorrow. I have been sending in crazy amounts of job applications to everywhere in Europe, but I need to look for a place for us to live, so tomorrow should be less crazy and I promise I willwrite!
Monday, September 12, 2005
Freaking Blogger
I started typing today´s blog, only did about 10 minutes worth, but this was good stuff! I went to save it before i wrote more and the dang thing dissapeared on me. That´s it, I´m going back to the hostel. Will write tomorrow.
Sunday, September 11, 2005
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!!!!
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!!!!
Saturday, September 10, 2005
Part 2 of first day in Germany and other assorted ramblings
I think I am going to do the assorted ramblings because they are fresh in my mind.
Note: If you take a train in Germany, DO NOT go into the first car behind the engine unless you are a smoker. And also know that this car has VERY TINY windows and as soon as it takes off, everyone (including the 33 kids under 16 yrs old) lights up at once. *cough, cough*
Note: If you buy a "Go Bananas" calling card for 25€ in Germany, to take advantage of the 2 cents a minute calling to Italy and the 1 cent a minute calling to the US (I KID YOU NOT) be aware that you have to call from a land line. If you call from your cell, that 25€ gets used up in about 14 and 1/2 minutes. I learned this personally, yesterday.
Note, everything seems cheaper when you buy it in euros, until you get home and add it up, and then pass out on the floor when you realize just how much you spent in dollars.
Note: I have had more people do amazing things to help me in the 4 days that I have been here, then I had in 10 years of living in the USA. (sorry, but it is true)
Youth hostels in Germany.... I know, I even heard some of you groan out loud when I said youth hostels, (and that does include you, mom)
Youth hostels in Germany, well the majority of them are run by the government which, now that I think of it, explains WHY you have to pay for everything there.
Anyway, I am staying at one in Heidelberg since last night and until Monday morning, when I will have an apartment in Darmstadt for the rest of the month. (and that too is another story waiting to be told) The hostel is a pretty amazing place, but has its good and bad, that´s for sure.
The rooms are CLEAN, beds nice, food good, though I think I did a non-no by putting peanut sauce on my fish last night (it sounded good to me, but I think it was for something else by the way the serving girl looked at me ((those crazy fat Americans!!))).
The room I am staying in houses 4, there are two sets of bunkbeds, they look like they would come from IKEA, light wood, very plan, but nice.
There is a table with 4 chairs, a shower, sink, toilet room, and cabinets that lock for 1 € a time.
GERMAN WINDOWS ROCK! One more thing the US should really be picking up on. Ok, you have these huge windows, maye 4 feet high. When you turn the handle one way, it swings wide open, ( letting in the damn fly that kept landing on me all night last night) and when you close the window and turn the handle the other way, the window opens out FROM THE TOP about 8-10 inches. This way you get air coming in at night, but no one can break in. I am truly amazed at what a simple idea this is.
Anyway..... I checked in to the hostel yesterday afternoon, after catching a train from Darmstadt to Heidelberg. Staying there 3 nights cost me 81€, and would have cost me about 20€ less, but I had to buy a Hostel International card in order to be able to stay there.
Hostels in Germany, i mean there are businessmen staying there to save money! LOL
I saw several families (and heard there kids yelling and running up and down the halls) saw two or three of what looked like travelling youth sports teams, assorted bikers, kids with backbacks etc, and then there was me. I have to be honest, I pretty much look like I am homeless right now, which is kind of fun for me, playing the middle aged, homeless woman, when in fact it looks like I have a god shot at a nice job in Vienna, Austria. (YES)
I had no towels with me, 1€ each, my clothes REALLY needed washing (about 5€) I had no shampoo or soap, cause they are in my suitcase that is sitting at the last hotel I stayed in, in Darmstadt. (that too is another story) So I had to go buy that, cause they were out of soap to buy at the hostel. Sheets and breakfast IS however, included in your daily fee.
Let´s talk comforters and hotels in Germany and I am guessing the Netherlands. You know how the US always has those exposes on the news about what is on the comforters in hotels? Well, there is another great idea here. You have the comforter, you have a cover (duve??) they put the cover on the comforter, then when you leave, take off the cover, and put a clean one on for the next person. Shockingly simple, isn´t it???
Anyway, i had two roomates last night, but they both left this morning. One from Asia, the other from Germany, she looking for an apartment in Heidelberg because she is going to school here starting October. I love traveling alone, I think I said that before, but it is still true. I make myself sit down and talk to people, and you learn so much about the country you are in that way. Like The green bottle of water is fizzy, the pink bottle is sort of fizzy and the blue bottle is not fizzy. You don´t even have to know German to read the labels!
Last night the German girl and I sat in a side room watching TV and talking. German TV is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much better than Italian. There was a show on, the same stle as a couple of American one. The dufuss husband, the in Germany, was hysterical. A lot of the time I didn´t even know what was going on, but it didn´t matter, it was just fascinating watching the expressions on his face. i mean, this was a GOOD show, you could tell. Pretty cool.
The German girl and I got into sort of the standard conversation I seem to be having with people here. The differences between America and Germany, what a dumbutt Bush is, etc. Fast food and how Americans are all though of as fat, which I found interesting cause there are some WIDE people here, in fact I love the clothing depts, because regular sizes go up to a XXL, and THEN there is the fat section, which is called Grosse, which to me is hysterical.
Wireless internet, cost me FOUR € for an hour. Now that is just highway robbery. It´s like 2 € or $2.60 for every 15 minutes. AUGGGGHHHH. Times that by how many hours you there surf per day... YEAH, right... Internet cafes cost between 1-2 € an hour.
OK, enough of the hostel. It was nice, room was stuffy, fly bugged the shit out of me, I am going back tonight. :-)
OK; I am tired of typing, going to play pogo for a bit and then write more.
OK, I am back, I need to just push myself to get it done before I never do it.
Sooo.. let´s see, first day in German, I have managed to get myself onto a train, and the gentleman with a bike say he will help me at the next stop, he is going the same direction.(get your minds out of the gutter, this man is NICE)
Since he is staying in the bike section of the train,(YES!! so many people ride bikes, there are cars that have two levels, top has seats, bottom is open for the bike riders to store their bikes)and he wil meet me at the next stop and point me in the right direction of Darmstadt.
Well, he was such a huge help. showed me how to use the ticket thingy (ok, i admit i knew how to, but he was being so nice, i let him think i didn´t know how to get my ticket)
He got directions from the conductor on what stops to get on and off, what trains to catch, etc for each of the three or for connections I had to make. That made it so much easier on me, I wouldn´t be forced to make the dreaded "anyone here speak English?" shout again.... *grin*
While we waited at the station for the next train. (it left in like 7 minutes, and he sits down and starts to smoke a cigarrette. I guess the trains are pretty timely here, we got on with like 2 minutes left, and I was sweating bullets thinking we were going to miss it)
This man was the first person I had the America vs Germany talk with, so it was themost interesting. We talked about Prez George W, transportation systems, Europe´s vs.... well the US has none, so..
Gas prices, fitness, fast food, the whole nine yards. See, if I had written this the day after there would be more information, but now it´s sort of old for me.
Part of the train ride was along the Rhine river, and let me tell you, there must be a castle up on a hill ever 3 miles! pretty awesome, big old castles just sitting alone up on hills. pictures will follow if I ever see Jess again, she has the cable that we use to transfer from the camera to pc, to burn the CD...
Another thing that I have noticed every time I have taken a train, there are plots of land along the tracks. Long plots that are perpendicular(sp) to the tracks, that are gardens! No one living nearby, just all these amazing gardens, with little sheds and fences and one even had a table with the umbrella and chairs!
When I old my mom about it, she was suprised and said they used to call them "Victory Gardens" during the war. I had no idea that´s what a victory garden was, but what a smart way to use land by the railroad, where no one wants to live. I saw quite a few along the rivers´edge also.
Anway, it was fascinating to hear a European´s point of view on America. I have to tell you though, i think quite a lot of people think that America is this amazing place and would like to go...
Once my friend got off at his stop, I went the rest of the way into Franfurt and then down to darmstadt. OH! I don´t think I wrote about this yet, maybe I did,. but I am nt going back to check in the blog.
MAPS and Germany. HA! On the map I got offline, it showed the airport to the southeast of Frankfurt, and closer to Darmstadt than Franfurt. I guess Darmstadt is considered a suburb. Anyway, faced with the choice of a hotel close to the airport, or to the train station, I chose train station.
In turns out than in reality, the freaking airport is reall on the southWEST side of the city, WAAAAAY far away from darmstadt. It would have been smarter to take a train from the airport to Franfurt and spend the night. But then of course I would not have met the people I did, but damn it, it took me 4 hours of rain riding to get where I thought I would be able to go in about an hour.
WHICH brings me to the next part of the adventure. The reason I was going to darmstadt was to check out an apartment to rent. I put an add out on a student rental place and this person had responded about an apartment they had, it sounded perfect! I was supposed to meet them at 4 pm that day. Well, with all the train riding, I wasn´t able to get into Darmstadt until at least 4:30. AUGH. AND of course my cell phone with an Italian SIM card in it was not behaving, and I had no clue what numbers to dial from Germany, I mean phone numbers here are confusing to me. I am slowly getting the idea of what to put and when, but this person´s number was this:017627217288and then sometimes number have this extra number- 0176(0)27217288 and I have NO clue what THAT thing is for... GRRR..
i was calling back and forth with Jess and she was leaving messages, etc...a mess.
So I get into Darmstadt and grab a taxi to meet this person at the apt. This is when my second hero comes in. The cab driver was Iranian, and spoke German and 15 other middle eastern languages (honest, he told me) but was a bit behind in his English.
I hand him the address and he heads out, we start talking, most of which he understood, MOST being the key word, as I find out later.
He asks if I am a tourist, blah, blah, and we end up in rush hour traffic, so I am telling him how I am going to meet someone about an aprtment, etc... We get to where the place should be, but it is a block of all sorts of building, we see number 13, 11, 10, 15, no 12. At this point he decides to pullthe car up on the sidewalk and drive between the buildings. Oh yeah, and his favorite English word is shit. the German people treat him like shit, Taxi driving is a shit job, shit! when he almost hits a lady walking her bike across the street. (the only reason he didn´t is because I screamed AH!!!!)
Anyway, we can´t find the building and he tells me to stay in the cab, (which is parked illegally in the middle of a walkway between like 6 apartment building)and he gets out and looks around. AHA! he finds it, so we take off and go along a pathway that I don´t think was really big enough for a car to go through. He manages to get to a more open spot, and then to where you can leagally park a car, and we are there!
I tell him, "wow, you can REALLY drive a car" Thank you, he says.
We are at the building, but there is no one there we are about 45 minutes late, so.. I tell him I have no idea which apartment and the person who is going to rent to me does not live there. I show him the piece of paper with the person´s email address on it. We have no idea if it is female or male, but by the last name we have both deduced that the person is also Iranian.
He proceeds to go up and check all the names on the mailboxes. Nope, no person by that name. I have no idea what to do and I´ve decide the person left and I´ll need to email them, cause I can´t dial the damn number correctly on my Italian phone.
Now he is telling me that this could be a crazy man, just hwaiting to rape or kill me. OH GOD!!!!! By the time he was done, even I was worried.
I ask him to just take me to a decent, cheap hotel and I´ll deal with it later. I am tired, it is HOT, been travelling like5 hours and I just want a shower...
No, no, let me try to call. He calls the number using his taxi hone, and can´t get through.. PLEASE, i am saying, a hotel.... Finally he say the one right next door is good and how much do I want to pay? I say 70€???? not knowing what the hell that will get me in this town.. Ok, he decides we will go to the hotel next door and he will personally check to see what the prices are.
OH!!!!!!!!! also, and unheard of thing, every time we stop, he actually stops the meter!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
S I wait while he goes in, meter stopped. He takes about 10 minutes, and he has me so worked up I am thinking, ok, what are they plotting in there for me??
When he comes back out, it turns out they didn´t have any available rooms and he made them call other hotels til they found one with a room that I could afford. Do you believe that?
So off we go to the other hotel, and he is still trying to call the rapist murderer. He finally gets through and a woman answers. He starts talking to her in whatever language, and doesn´t seem to get the right information from her, so finally hangs up. NOW he has decided that the evil rapist murderer lives with a woman and she has no clue what he has been doing on the side. (NOT making this up)
He takes me to the hotel, brings my bags in, and insists on talking to the people at the desk first to make sure they know just who I am.. LOLOLO
I thank him over and over, shake his hand, give him a big tip because of all the times he turned the meter off, and he leaves.
I get into my room, basement floor, cell not really working, hoter then hell, no air or fan or anything, and decide to go up to the lobby to the computer to check mail.
All this took about 45 minutes til I got to the computer, and after about 3 minutes a well dressed, Iranian woman comes around the corner and asks if I am Diana.
YES! I say, and this woman turns out to be the person who was going to show me the apt. For some odd reason she said she had been waiting in the underground parking for me. Here Englis is prety dang good, but this is just the first of MANY misunderstanding we have.
She tells me that the taxi driver had called her and told her to rent out the apartment to me, that I was a VERY nice woman and should have the apartment. Along the way he also told her I was scared of terrorists showing me the apartment, and that I was a man from Iran. LOLOLOLOLOL Ok then!
The woman wants to know if I want to go see the apt now. Again, I am amazed. I mean she sat there waiting for me for like an hour, and after a crzy Iranian taxi driver calls and chews her out for her behavior, she gets in the car and comes over to see if I still want to look at the apartment! Life is weird.
OK, getting tired of typing again, so I am going to stop for the day, and you will have to wait to hear MORE of the great, ongoing adventure. Trust me, I can pretty much going over the entire day, every minute somethign seemed to be going on!!!!
Will stop back in tomorrow if this place is open. If not, then Monday. Guten tag
Note: If you take a train in Germany, DO NOT go into the first car behind the engine unless you are a smoker. And also know that this car has VERY TINY windows and as soon as it takes off, everyone (including the 33 kids under 16 yrs old) lights up at once. *cough, cough*
Note: If you buy a "Go Bananas" calling card for 25€ in Germany, to take advantage of the 2 cents a minute calling to Italy and the 1 cent a minute calling to the US (I KID YOU NOT) be aware that you have to call from a land line. If you call from your cell, that 25€ gets used up in about 14 and 1/2 minutes. I learned this personally, yesterday.
Note, everything seems cheaper when you buy it in euros, until you get home and add it up, and then pass out on the floor when you realize just how much you spent in dollars.
Note: I have had more people do amazing things to help me in the 4 days that I have been here, then I had in 10 years of living in the USA. (sorry, but it is true)
Youth hostels in Germany.... I know, I even heard some of you groan out loud when I said youth hostels, (and that does include you, mom)
Youth hostels in Germany, well the majority of them are run by the government which, now that I think of it, explains WHY you have to pay for everything there.
Anyway, I am staying at one in Heidelberg since last night and until Monday morning, when I will have an apartment in Darmstadt for the rest of the month. (and that too is another story waiting to be told) The hostel is a pretty amazing place, but has its good and bad, that´s for sure.
The rooms are CLEAN, beds nice, food good, though I think I did a non-no by putting peanut sauce on my fish last night (it sounded good to me, but I think it was for something else by the way the serving girl looked at me ((those crazy fat Americans!!))).
The room I am staying in houses 4, there are two sets of bunkbeds, they look like they would come from IKEA, light wood, very plan, but nice.
There is a table with 4 chairs, a shower, sink, toilet room, and cabinets that lock for 1 € a time.
GERMAN WINDOWS ROCK! One more thing the US should really be picking up on. Ok, you have these huge windows, maye 4 feet high. When you turn the handle one way, it swings wide open, ( letting in the damn fly that kept landing on me all night last night) and when you close the window and turn the handle the other way, the window opens out FROM THE TOP about 8-10 inches. This way you get air coming in at night, but no one can break in. I am truly amazed at what a simple idea this is.
Anyway..... I checked in to the hostel yesterday afternoon, after catching a train from Darmstadt to Heidelberg. Staying there 3 nights cost me 81€, and would have cost me about 20€ less, but I had to buy a Hostel International card in order to be able to stay there.
Hostels in Germany, i mean there are businessmen staying there to save money! LOL
I saw several families (and heard there kids yelling and running up and down the halls) saw two or three of what looked like travelling youth sports teams, assorted bikers, kids with backbacks etc, and then there was me. I have to be honest, I pretty much look like I am homeless right now, which is kind of fun for me, playing the middle aged, homeless woman, when in fact it looks like I have a god shot at a nice job in Vienna, Austria. (YES)
I had no towels with me, 1€ each, my clothes REALLY needed washing (about 5€) I had no shampoo or soap, cause they are in my suitcase that is sitting at the last hotel I stayed in, in Darmstadt. (that too is another story) So I had to go buy that, cause they were out of soap to buy at the hostel. Sheets and breakfast IS however, included in your daily fee.
Let´s talk comforters and hotels in Germany and I am guessing the Netherlands. You know how the US always has those exposes on the news about what is on the comforters in hotels? Well, there is another great idea here. You have the comforter, you have a cover (duve??) they put the cover on the comforter, then when you leave, take off the cover, and put a clean one on for the next person. Shockingly simple, isn´t it???
Anyway, i had two roomates last night, but they both left this morning. One from Asia, the other from Germany, she looking for an apartment in Heidelberg because she is going to school here starting October. I love traveling alone, I think I said that before, but it is still true. I make myself sit down and talk to people, and you learn so much about the country you are in that way. Like The green bottle of water is fizzy, the pink bottle is sort of fizzy and the blue bottle is not fizzy. You don´t even have to know German to read the labels!
Last night the German girl and I sat in a side room watching TV and talking. German TV is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much better than Italian. There was a show on, the same stle as a couple of American one. The dufuss husband, the in Germany, was hysterical. A lot of the time I didn´t even know what was going on, but it didn´t matter, it was just fascinating watching the expressions on his face. i mean, this was a GOOD show, you could tell. Pretty cool.
The German girl and I got into sort of the standard conversation I seem to be having with people here. The differences between America and Germany, what a dumbutt Bush is, etc. Fast food and how Americans are all though of as fat, which I found interesting cause there are some WIDE people here, in fact I love the clothing depts, because regular sizes go up to a XXL, and THEN there is the fat section, which is called Grosse, which to me is hysterical.
Wireless internet, cost me FOUR € for an hour. Now that is just highway robbery. It´s like 2 € or $2.60 for every 15 minutes. AUGGGGHHHH. Times that by how many hours you there surf per day... YEAH, right... Internet cafes cost between 1-2 € an hour.
OK, enough of the hostel. It was nice, room was stuffy, fly bugged the shit out of me, I am going back tonight. :-)
OK; I am tired of typing, going to play pogo for a bit and then write more.
OK, I am back, I need to just push myself to get it done before I never do it.
Sooo.. let´s see, first day in German, I have managed to get myself onto a train, and the gentleman with a bike say he will help me at the next stop, he is going the same direction.(get your minds out of the gutter, this man is NICE)
Since he is staying in the bike section of the train,(YES!! so many people ride bikes, there are cars that have two levels, top has seats, bottom is open for the bike riders to store their bikes)and he wil meet me at the next stop and point me in the right direction of Darmstadt.
Well, he was such a huge help. showed me how to use the ticket thingy (ok, i admit i knew how to, but he was being so nice, i let him think i didn´t know how to get my ticket)
He got directions from the conductor on what stops to get on and off, what trains to catch, etc for each of the three or for connections I had to make. That made it so much easier on me, I wouldn´t be forced to make the dreaded "anyone here speak English?" shout again.... *grin*
While we waited at the station for the next train. (it left in like 7 minutes, and he sits down and starts to smoke a cigarrette. I guess the trains are pretty timely here, we got on with like 2 minutes left, and I was sweating bullets thinking we were going to miss it)
This man was the first person I had the America vs Germany talk with, so it was themost interesting. We talked about Prez George W, transportation systems, Europe´s vs.... well the US has none, so..
Gas prices, fitness, fast food, the whole nine yards. See, if I had written this the day after there would be more information, but now it´s sort of old for me.
Part of the train ride was along the Rhine river, and let me tell you, there must be a castle up on a hill ever 3 miles! pretty awesome, big old castles just sitting alone up on hills. pictures will follow if I ever see Jess again, she has the cable that we use to transfer from the camera to pc, to burn the CD...
Another thing that I have noticed every time I have taken a train, there are plots of land along the tracks. Long plots that are perpendicular(sp) to the tracks, that are gardens! No one living nearby, just all these amazing gardens, with little sheds and fences and one even had a table with the umbrella and chairs!
When I old my mom about it, she was suprised and said they used to call them "Victory Gardens" during the war. I had no idea that´s what a victory garden was, but what a smart way to use land by the railroad, where no one wants to live. I saw quite a few along the rivers´edge also.
Anway, it was fascinating to hear a European´s point of view on America. I have to tell you though, i think quite a lot of people think that America is this amazing place and would like to go...
Once my friend got off at his stop, I went the rest of the way into Franfurt and then down to darmstadt. OH! I don´t think I wrote about this yet, maybe I did,. but I am nt going back to check in the blog.
MAPS and Germany. HA! On the map I got offline, it showed the airport to the southeast of Frankfurt, and closer to Darmstadt than Franfurt. I guess Darmstadt is considered a suburb. Anyway, faced with the choice of a hotel close to the airport, or to the train station, I chose train station.
In turns out than in reality, the freaking airport is reall on the southWEST side of the city, WAAAAAY far away from darmstadt. It would have been smarter to take a train from the airport to Franfurt and spend the night. But then of course I would not have met the people I did, but damn it, it took me 4 hours of rain riding to get where I thought I would be able to go in about an hour.
WHICH brings me to the next part of the adventure. The reason I was going to darmstadt was to check out an apartment to rent. I put an add out on a student rental place and this person had responded about an apartment they had, it sounded perfect! I was supposed to meet them at 4 pm that day. Well, with all the train riding, I wasn´t able to get into Darmstadt until at least 4:30. AUGH. AND of course my cell phone with an Italian SIM card in it was not behaving, and I had no clue what numbers to dial from Germany, I mean phone numbers here are confusing to me. I am slowly getting the idea of what to put and when, but this person´s number was this:017627217288and then sometimes number have this extra number- 0176(0)27217288 and I have NO clue what THAT thing is for... GRRR..
i was calling back and forth with Jess and she was leaving messages, etc...a mess.
So I get into Darmstadt and grab a taxi to meet this person at the apt. This is when my second hero comes in. The cab driver was Iranian, and spoke German and 15 other middle eastern languages (honest, he told me) but was a bit behind in his English.
I hand him the address and he heads out, we start talking, most of which he understood, MOST being the key word, as I find out later.
He asks if I am a tourist, blah, blah, and we end up in rush hour traffic, so I am telling him how I am going to meet someone about an aprtment, etc... We get to where the place should be, but it is a block of all sorts of building, we see number 13, 11, 10, 15, no 12. At this point he decides to pullthe car up on the sidewalk and drive between the buildings. Oh yeah, and his favorite English word is shit. the German people treat him like shit, Taxi driving is a shit job, shit! when he almost hits a lady walking her bike across the street. (the only reason he didn´t is because I screamed AH!!!!)
Anyway, we can´t find the building and he tells me to stay in the cab, (which is parked illegally in the middle of a walkway between like 6 apartment building)and he gets out and looks around. AHA! he finds it, so we take off and go along a pathway that I don´t think was really big enough for a car to go through. He manages to get to a more open spot, and then to where you can leagally park a car, and we are there!
I tell him, "wow, you can REALLY drive a car" Thank you, he says.
We are at the building, but there is no one there we are about 45 minutes late, so.. I tell him I have no idea which apartment and the person who is going to rent to me does not live there. I show him the piece of paper with the person´s email address on it. We have no idea if it is female or male, but by the last name we have both deduced that the person is also Iranian.
He proceeds to go up and check all the names on the mailboxes. Nope, no person by that name. I have no idea what to do and I´ve decide the person left and I´ll need to email them, cause I can´t dial the damn number correctly on my Italian phone.
Now he is telling me that this could be a crazy man, just hwaiting to rape or kill me. OH GOD!!!!! By the time he was done, even I was worried.
I ask him to just take me to a decent, cheap hotel and I´ll deal with it later. I am tired, it is HOT, been travelling like5 hours and I just want a shower...
No, no, let me try to call. He calls the number using his taxi hone, and can´t get through.. PLEASE, i am saying, a hotel.... Finally he say the one right next door is good and how much do I want to pay? I say 70€???? not knowing what the hell that will get me in this town.. Ok, he decides we will go to the hotel next door and he will personally check to see what the prices are.
OH!!!!!!!!! also, and unheard of thing, every time we stop, he actually stops the meter!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
S I wait while he goes in, meter stopped. He takes about 10 minutes, and he has me so worked up I am thinking, ok, what are they plotting in there for me??
When he comes back out, it turns out they didn´t have any available rooms and he made them call other hotels til they found one with a room that I could afford. Do you believe that?
So off we go to the other hotel, and he is still trying to call the rapist murderer. He finally gets through and a woman answers. He starts talking to her in whatever language, and doesn´t seem to get the right information from her, so finally hangs up. NOW he has decided that the evil rapist murderer lives with a woman and she has no clue what he has been doing on the side. (NOT making this up)
He takes me to the hotel, brings my bags in, and insists on talking to the people at the desk first to make sure they know just who I am.. LOLOLO
I thank him over and over, shake his hand, give him a big tip because of all the times he turned the meter off, and he leaves.
I get into my room, basement floor, cell not really working, hoter then hell, no air or fan or anything, and decide to go up to the lobby to the computer to check mail.
All this took about 45 minutes til I got to the computer, and after about 3 minutes a well dressed, Iranian woman comes around the corner and asks if I am Diana.
YES! I say, and this woman turns out to be the person who was going to show me the apt. For some odd reason she said she had been waiting in the underground parking for me. Here Englis is prety dang good, but this is just the first of MANY misunderstanding we have.
She tells me that the taxi driver had called her and told her to rent out the apartment to me, that I was a VERY nice woman and should have the apartment. Along the way he also told her I was scared of terrorists showing me the apartment, and that I was a man from Iran. LOLOLOLOLOL Ok then!
The woman wants to know if I want to go see the apt now. Again, I am amazed. I mean she sat there waiting for me for like an hour, and after a crzy Iranian taxi driver calls and chews her out for her behavior, she gets in the car and comes over to see if I still want to look at the apartment! Life is weird.
OK, getting tired of typing again, so I am going to stop for the day, and you will have to wait to hear MORE of the great, ongoing adventure. Trust me, I can pretty much going over the entire day, every minute somethign seemed to be going on!!!!
Will stop back in tomorrow if this place is open. If not, then Monday. Guten tag
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
well this day has certainly been an adventure.
I am sitting in the lobby of a Darmstadt hotel this evening, exhausted.. homesick... not so much for the US, but jess in particular... she is still in Italy and probably will be until the end of the month.
I flew out of Pisa last night, into Frankfurt Hahn airport in Germany at about midnight. Paid a taxi too much money to bring me to a little hotel sort of near the airport. I picked it because it said it was near a rail station and it only cost 36 euro for the night.
I got there about 12:30, took the room key, washed some of the grime off me and fell into bed.
About7 am I wake up and start worrying because the clock radio they had said it was an hour later than my time. I call the front desk, wake up someone only to find that my time is correct. I wanted to sleep as long as I could before I had to wake up... Sometime later the maid knocks one time on the door, then opens it! I heard her say something in German and back out the door. I didn´t even move my head out from under the covers, I was too tired to worry about it. At 9:45, I get a call from the owner of the hotel asking if I wanted breakfast because they stop serving in 15 minutes. UGH! yes, I say, thanks, not intending to make it down. But guilt gets the best of me, and I don´t even brush my hair, I just stagger down, grab some museli and some bread and ask for coffe. 15 minutes later I am back in my room showering, then checking out by 11.
I ask how to get to the rail station. The owner´s wife, who looks just like a German family hotel owner would look like, gets a quizzical look on her face. OH NO... I think..
AH! you´ll have to take the ferry across the river. She calls to make sure it´s running today!!! AAAAHHHHHH
She says that it´s about 3\4 mile away down the road. Just go to the river and wave him down and he´ll come get you. I ask if it´s a big or small boat. She laughs.. Oh no, no... It only holds about 4 people. I now have this vision of me hanging on to the side of some little dingy, big waves rolling by, and the guy stopping in the middle of the river and demanding all my money. (shades of Brad Johnston)
I head out down the road, and this is a BEAUTIFUL German town. It´s in the wine section of the country, gravevines everywhere! Bavarian style houses, the whole thing.. I will post pictures later.
Cool, I´m thinking, I can do this....
I end up getting lost, going into a local food store and saying loudly. DOES ANYONE SPEAK ENGLISH? (I kid you not. I know this is why jess hates me)
They point me in the right direction and I cross a big lot full of campers. I later can tell, when taking the train, the Germans LOVE to camp on the river.
Anyway, the ferry turns out to be a decent sized flat type of barge looking thingy. I wave him down and he comes over, talking to me in German... I try saying something like no sprekken deutsch, but he has no clue. Finally I point to him, to the shore, to me, to the shore, to my suitcases and back to him a couple more times and he gets it. ( I mean, THIS is what the guy does, do we have to have conversation too???)
We head across, it´s a pretty small river, which I later find out is the Mosel(sp)
and sure enough there is a train tracks on the other side. We get to the other side, I pay him 1 euro, and lug my two HEAVY suitcases up about 400 stairs... 2 suitcases, THE dumbest thing I have done since sticking my tongue to the frozen pole in winter when I was little.. (Okay, maybe I have done dumber things since, but we aren´t talking about those today, so just pay attention to the story, will you?)
I get to the top, and there are.... tracks..... no station, nothing. There are houses, businesses, but all closd, not a soul in side.
what the hell do i do?? i sit.... the tracks are rusty and i think, what if this train comes like once a day, and it was at 8 this morning? i mean, if i have to cross a river on a ferry, this is one SMALL town......
So i sit, and i sit.... and suddenly there is a train coming at me!!! I wave and wave, and it passes me by..
OK... now i know I must be doing something wrong here.....
I see a woman coming out of a shop to put out her sign.. i go over... I know NO, NEIN German, and I am saying, excuse me, excuse, me.. Finally I say it loud enough and she spots me... All i can do is show her the map of the Germain rail system i printed out. (SMARTEST thing I have done in years, it saved my butt today more than once today.)
Anyway, i wanted to know which direction to take the train so once again, there was much pointing and german and english spoken that no one understood. Finally she pointed which way to go, then amazingly somehow she communicated something like, hey dummy, the train doesn´t stop here, go down the road some more. WOW!!!
Off i go, dragging the luggage, and sure enough a train station... well, it´s like a plastic bus stop building bu that works for me. Even better is near to it, is one of those fountains like they have all over italy where you can fill up your water bottle with cold water.. there were some german words on the front, i figured it to say something like... drinking water.. I pour out my half bottle of warm water and start filling. an old man appears out of no where! No one else for miles and suddenly he is there yelling something in German.... I heard NEIN, so i figure that he is trying to tell me not to drink the water. oh CRAP.. so that´s what the sign said. and now i´ve dumped my bottle of water out, and no water.
I thank him and go over to the train stop. A schedule!!! I see my town on the list, 15 minutes. YES! I start thinking, should i be buying a ticket somewhere?
Across the tracks I hear rustling and see a woman watering plants. EXCUSE ME! Where do I buy a ticket for the train? I ask, waving a 10 euro note around and pointing at the tracks..
I just want you all to know, I am not even embellishing this a LITTLE, it really happened like this.
She says something in German about floof. OK, no clue... she might have even said buy ticket on floof, i am not sure.. i mean in english... FLOOF? I ask.
FLOOF, she say, then makes the sound of a train, laughing.
AHHH,. Floof means train, though I know it is not spelled that way. Now i know to buy the ticket on the train.. i thank her and sit back t wait for the train, right on time it comes.. YEAH, it even says the next town on the front.. cool. i get on, it is like a the size of a regular train engine with seats... places for bikes in the middle.. oh yes, EVERYONE bikes, there are millions of miles of bike trails along the rivers, and the train accomadates them.
Anyway, I needed to go to a town further than what the train said, so again, more flailing of arms to find out no, it stops at this first town only, i´ll have to change trains..
Next stop, a few bikes get on.. by this time i am wondering about how i buy a ticket..... I see a machine... ok, BUT something about the message worries me. one line message, about 10 buttons on each side.... I take a chance, wave at the ticket machine and ask one of the men who just came on.. ticket???
ENGLISH! THe older man speaks english. I almost fall on my knees to thank god.. (ok, for those of you who wonder why i came so unprepared, YOU try buying a German to English dictionary in Italy. They don´t exist.. only italian to german... and for those of you who have heard my Italian. HA!)
He says the ticket machine is broken.. i ask how we buy tickets? He says, you don´t! Works for me.
THIS gentleman became my first savior of the day...
AND i am going to bed, so you´ll have to wait until tomorrow to hear more... :-p
I flew out of Pisa last night, into Frankfurt Hahn airport in Germany at about midnight. Paid a taxi too much money to bring me to a little hotel sort of near the airport. I picked it because it said it was near a rail station and it only cost 36 euro for the night.
I got there about 12:30, took the room key, washed some of the grime off me and fell into bed.
About7 am I wake up and start worrying because the clock radio they had said it was an hour later than my time. I call the front desk, wake up someone only to find that my time is correct. I wanted to sleep as long as I could before I had to wake up... Sometime later the maid knocks one time on the door, then opens it! I heard her say something in German and back out the door. I didn´t even move my head out from under the covers, I was too tired to worry about it. At 9:45, I get a call from the owner of the hotel asking if I wanted breakfast because they stop serving in 15 minutes. UGH! yes, I say, thanks, not intending to make it down. But guilt gets the best of me, and I don´t even brush my hair, I just stagger down, grab some museli and some bread and ask for coffe. 15 minutes later I am back in my room showering, then checking out by 11.
I ask how to get to the rail station. The owner´s wife, who looks just like a German family hotel owner would look like, gets a quizzical look on her face. OH NO... I think..
AH! you´ll have to take the ferry across the river. She calls to make sure it´s running today!!! AAAAHHHHHH
She says that it´s about 3\4 mile away down the road. Just go to the river and wave him down and he´ll come get you. I ask if it´s a big or small boat. She laughs.. Oh no, no... It only holds about 4 people. I now have this vision of me hanging on to the side of some little dingy, big waves rolling by, and the guy stopping in the middle of the river and demanding all my money. (shades of Brad Johnston)
I head out down the road, and this is a BEAUTIFUL German town. It´s in the wine section of the country, gravevines everywhere! Bavarian style houses, the whole thing.. I will post pictures later.
Cool, I´m thinking, I can do this....
I end up getting lost, going into a local food store and saying loudly. DOES ANYONE SPEAK ENGLISH? (I kid you not. I know this is why jess hates me)
They point me in the right direction and I cross a big lot full of campers. I later can tell, when taking the train, the Germans LOVE to camp on the river.
Anyway, the ferry turns out to be a decent sized flat type of barge looking thingy. I wave him down and he comes over, talking to me in German... I try saying something like no sprekken deutsch, but he has no clue. Finally I point to him, to the shore, to me, to the shore, to my suitcases and back to him a couple more times and he gets it. ( I mean, THIS is what the guy does, do we have to have conversation too???)
We head across, it´s a pretty small river, which I later find out is the Mosel(sp)
and sure enough there is a train tracks on the other side. We get to the other side, I pay him 1 euro, and lug my two HEAVY suitcases up about 400 stairs... 2 suitcases, THE dumbest thing I have done since sticking my tongue to the frozen pole in winter when I was little.. (Okay, maybe I have done dumber things since, but we aren´t talking about those today, so just pay attention to the story, will you?)
I get to the top, and there are.... tracks..... no station, nothing. There are houses, businesses, but all closd, not a soul in side.
what the hell do i do?? i sit.... the tracks are rusty and i think, what if this train comes like once a day, and it was at 8 this morning? i mean, if i have to cross a river on a ferry, this is one SMALL town......
So i sit, and i sit.... and suddenly there is a train coming at me!!! I wave and wave, and it passes me by..
OK... now i know I must be doing something wrong here.....
I see a woman coming out of a shop to put out her sign.. i go over... I know NO, NEIN German, and I am saying, excuse me, excuse, me.. Finally I say it loud enough and she spots me... All i can do is show her the map of the Germain rail system i printed out. (SMARTEST thing I have done in years, it saved my butt today more than once today.)
Anyway, i wanted to know which direction to take the train so once again, there was much pointing and german and english spoken that no one understood. Finally she pointed which way to go, then amazingly somehow she communicated something like, hey dummy, the train doesn´t stop here, go down the road some more. WOW!!!
Off i go, dragging the luggage, and sure enough a train station... well, it´s like a plastic bus stop building bu that works for me. Even better is near to it, is one of those fountains like they have all over italy where you can fill up your water bottle with cold water.. there were some german words on the front, i figured it to say something like... drinking water.. I pour out my half bottle of warm water and start filling. an old man appears out of no where! No one else for miles and suddenly he is there yelling something in German.... I heard NEIN, so i figure that he is trying to tell me not to drink the water. oh CRAP.. so that´s what the sign said. and now i´ve dumped my bottle of water out, and no water.
I thank him and go over to the train stop. A schedule!!! I see my town on the list, 15 minutes. YES! I start thinking, should i be buying a ticket somewhere?
Across the tracks I hear rustling and see a woman watering plants. EXCUSE ME! Where do I buy a ticket for the train? I ask, waving a 10 euro note around and pointing at the tracks..
I just want you all to know, I am not even embellishing this a LITTLE, it really happened like this.
She says something in German about floof. OK, no clue... she might have even said buy ticket on floof, i am not sure.. i mean in english... FLOOF? I ask.
FLOOF, she say, then makes the sound of a train, laughing.
AHHH,. Floof means train, though I know it is not spelled that way. Now i know to buy the ticket on the train.. i thank her and sit back t wait for the train, right on time it comes.. YEAH, it even says the next town on the front.. cool. i get on, it is like a the size of a regular train engine with seats... places for bikes in the middle.. oh yes, EVERYONE bikes, there are millions of miles of bike trails along the rivers, and the train accomadates them.
Anyway, I needed to go to a town further than what the train said, so again, more flailing of arms to find out no, it stops at this first town only, i´ll have to change trains..
Next stop, a few bikes get on.. by this time i am wondering about how i buy a ticket..... I see a machine... ok, BUT something about the message worries me. one line message, about 10 buttons on each side.... I take a chance, wave at the ticket machine and ask one of the men who just came on.. ticket???
ENGLISH! THe older man speaks english. I almost fall on my knees to thank god.. (ok, for those of you who wonder why i came so unprepared, YOU try buying a German to English dictionary in Italy. They don´t exist.. only italian to german... and for those of you who have heard my Italian. HA!)
He says the ticket machine is broken.. i ask how we buy tickets? He says, you don´t! Works for me.
THIS gentleman became my first savior of the day...
AND i am going to bed, so you´ll have to wait until tomorrow to hear more... :-p
Sunday, September 04, 2005
Countdown to Germany
Well, only a couple of days until I leave for Germany. I looked at the Trenitalia site for strike info on the day I leave and first it said strike, then it said trains run regularly, then something about only certain trains running. Typical Italian.
I decided I'd better get on the ball and go to the train station tomorrow and get some information.
Jess still hasn't gotten ner Mbag with books from the states. She is staying behind until ashe does, or until the first of Oct, or until she gets tired of waiting. Either way I'll be on my own in Germany. A little disconcerning, but I will be fine. I'm just so used to being joined at the hip to her. I might just find I like traveling alone. GULP
Tonight we are going to eat at the 4 course restaurant again.We were going to tomorrow night, but it is filled. No bookings. This is a nice little restaurant.
Tomorrow we do laudry like crazy. All the sheets, blankets, the rest of my clothing. The I will need to start packing. Or maybe I'll just do it Tuesday. We are still wondering about whether or not I should take Jess' laptop with me. Mine seems to have dies. I can' format it. I can fdisk, but that is it.
It was such a nice little computer. Oh well..... sigh.
Short post tonight, as we have to head down to the restaurant.
I decided I'd better get on the ball and go to the train station tomorrow and get some information.
Jess still hasn't gotten ner Mbag with books from the states. She is staying behind until ashe does, or until the first of Oct, or until she gets tired of waiting. Either way I'll be on my own in Germany. A little disconcerning, but I will be fine. I'm just so used to being joined at the hip to her. I might just find I like traveling alone. GULP
Tonight we are going to eat at the 4 course restaurant again.We were going to tomorrow night, but it is filled. No bookings. This is a nice little restaurant.
Tomorrow we do laudry like crazy. All the sheets, blankets, the rest of my clothing. The I will need to start packing. Or maybe I'll just do it Tuesday. We are still wondering about whether or not I should take Jess' laptop with me. Mine seems to have dies. I can' format it. I can fdisk, but that is it.
It was such a nice little computer. Oh well..... sigh.
Short post tonight, as we have to head down to the restaurant.
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
My Family Tree
OK, as I said yesterday, forget the web page, I am now making my family tree.
I always knew my great grandfather came from Ireland, but couldn't get any info from my dad, and my grandfather is gone.
Anyway,w as doing searches, and through the death record online that I can buy, I found my grandfather's mother's maiden name, which open up a whole bunch of new information. I got the passenger list when she came across.
Anyway, am getting info on my dads side in, then my moms side (sorry mom, all the dad's side is on slips of paper , need to get them down first, here's the site.
family tree
I always knew my great grandfather came from Ireland, but couldn't get any info from my dad, and my grandfather is gone.
Anyway,w as doing searches, and through the death record online that I can buy, I found my grandfather's mother's maiden name, which open up a whole bunch of new information. I got the passenger list when she came across.
Anyway, am getting info on my dads side in, then my moms side (sorry mom, all the dad's side is on slips of paper , need to get them down first, here's the site.
family tree
Monday, August 29, 2005
Random thoughts
Even though I love Italy, I really don't mind leaving to go to Germany.
Chinese food tastes good in any country.
It's easy to get Jess mad, just flick toothpicks at her when out to dinner.
I'm really not much of a wine drinker.
My son Nick, with his first piercing. He just got it..... GRRRRRR
I miss wireless internet, or any kind of internet at home.
I've just discovered that I am lazy and I DON'T WANNA GO BACK TO WORK!!!!
I'm worried I will stop losing weight when I get to Germany.
I have applied to about 30 jobs in Germany.
This whole writing in blogs thing kind of comes and goes. It's fun to do when I have done touristy things, otherwise it's not so fun.
Oh yeah, forget my new web page, I am already bored with it.
I like to sleep until noon.
I'm bored. A whole week til I leave for Germany.
Night.... :-p
Chinese food tastes good in any country.
It's easy to get Jess mad, just flick toothpicks at her when out to dinner.
I'm really not much of a wine drinker.
My son Nick, with his first piercing. He just got it..... GRRRRRRI miss wireless internet, or any kind of internet at home.
I've just discovered that I am lazy and I DON'T WANNA GO BACK TO WORK!!!!
I'm worried I will stop losing weight when I get to Germany.
I have applied to about 30 jobs in Germany.
This whole writing in blogs thing kind of comes and goes. It's fun to do when I have done touristy things, otherwise it's not so fun.
Oh yeah, forget my new web page, I am already bored with it.
I like to sleep until noon.
I'm bored. A whole week til I leave for Germany.
Night.... :-p
Sunday, August 28, 2005
web page
ok, I have been farting around for the last few hours while downloading Linux for my computer, it's hosed..
So I decided to create a webpage. Hey mom! (or anyone else for that matter), click on the link below to go to my webpage, then click on Live chat. If I am online, we can talk!! And if we get Jess on too, all htree of us can talk to each other.
http://www.dianaleavesamerica.bravehost.com/
Keep an eye on it, great things will be coming.. I will have chat on it, so maybe I can even talk live to someone!
Weekly poll, etc. Should be fun, or it will die a sad death if I never have a chance to work on it... YOU decide..
So I decided to create a webpage. Hey mom! (or anyone else for that matter), click on the link below to go to my webpage, then click on Live chat. If I am online, we can talk!! And if we get Jess on too, all htree of us can talk to each other.
http://www.dianaleavesamerica.bravehost.com/
Keep an eye on it, great things will be coming.. I will have chat on it, so maybe I can even talk live to someone!
Weekly poll, etc. Should be fun, or it will die a sad death if I never have a chance to work on it... YOU decide..
Saturday, August 27, 2005
tomorrow
Getting late today, but just wanted to post. I've been online trying to come up with a way to fix my pc that doesn't want to boot.
I've been spending HOURS finding the cheapest way to get to Germany.
I also deceided to go to Tues Sept 6th (6th??) because Ryanair had airfare to Frankfurt for 4.99 euro. Can't beat that with a stick. Ends up with taxes being 25 euro. I'll need to take a train to the Pisa/Florence airport for about 10 euro and from Franfurt to Heidelberg for about 13 euro. So for 50 euro or about 65 US dollars I can get from Italy up to Germany. Not bad. Train fare WITH a special through Munich was going to run 144.00 euro.
Anyway, a week later than I wanted to, but that's ok.
Will make a HUGE effort to remember to write a decent blog here tomorrow. - di
I've been spending HOURS finding the cheapest way to get to Germany.
I also deceided to go to Tues Sept 6th (6th??) because Ryanair had airfare to Frankfurt for 4.99 euro. Can't beat that with a stick. Ends up with taxes being 25 euro. I'll need to take a train to the Pisa/Florence airport for about 10 euro and from Franfurt to Heidelberg for about 13 euro. So for 50 euro or about 65 US dollars I can get from Italy up to Germany. Not bad. Train fare WITH a special through Munich was going to run 144.00 euro.
Anyway, a week later than I wanted to, but that's ok.
Will make a HUGE effort to remember to write a decent blog here tomorrow. - di
Thursday, August 25, 2005
Phase Three
Ok, no question mark on this keyboard, well at least I can not get to it.
I kind of ended in the middle of the Germany trip, last time I blogged.
Basically we headed back through Austria this time to avoid the traffic. No such luck, then it rained so hard, it flooded Germany, Switzerland AND Austria.. I didnt do it!! *short version*
Today was the last full day we had the rental car, so we went back down to Naples to see Pompeii.. We actually got in this time!
The joke of the day for me was.. Hey Jess, look over there... MORE RUINS!!! She was pretty mad after the first 30 times I said it to her..
Trust me, once you see the people they dug up, it-s no fun anymore, at least to me. But Jess loved it, it is HUGE, the people in front of us were Americans, saying they had an hour and a half to do it... Fools.. We were there like 3 hours, it was too hot, no water anywhere to be found, etc, so we left. But you could spend way more time there....
Of course Mt Vesuvius was sunny, but we had taken too long at Pompeii, so no looking into the volcano.
Pictures will be online tomorrow.
Right now we are in a mini crisis. Funds getting low.
Jess is waiting in Italy until her books that she shipped from the US come, that could be another week or two. We have the apt until Oct 1st, and can legally be in Italy until the 3rd of Oct, but I need to start making money.
The plan is for me to fly up to Germany this Sunday night. You can fly Ryanair for 40 euros, takes two hours. Then I can stay in a hostel and look for work and a place to live.
Ryanair is one of my friend Eric-s airlines.... YEAH!
Hopefully getting that will coincide with her, then I will rent a van, drive it down to Italy, pick up the gang, and drive back up to Germany.
Boy, it is getting interesting now!
I have applied to a ton of civilian jobs at the military bases in Germany, and about 6 private companies.
OK Wayne, before you say anything about how come I would work for the US if I want out of the country, hey. We get paid dollars and spend them in Germany...... Plus we are not in the US......
Though I would much rather have a German job that gets paid in euros, I will take what I can get right now!
Ok, going to do some job searching, will post photos of Pompeii tomorrow.
BYE!
I kind of ended in the middle of the Germany trip, last time I blogged.
Basically we headed back through Austria this time to avoid the traffic. No such luck, then it rained so hard, it flooded Germany, Switzerland AND Austria.. I didnt do it!! *short version*
Today was the last full day we had the rental car, so we went back down to Naples to see Pompeii.. We actually got in this time!
The joke of the day for me was.. Hey Jess, look over there... MORE RUINS!!! She was pretty mad after the first 30 times I said it to her..
Trust me, once you see the people they dug up, it-s no fun anymore, at least to me. But Jess loved it, it is HUGE, the people in front of us were Americans, saying they had an hour and a half to do it... Fools.. We were there like 3 hours, it was too hot, no water anywhere to be found, etc, so we left. But you could spend way more time there....
Of course Mt Vesuvius was sunny, but we had taken too long at Pompeii, so no looking into the volcano.
Pictures will be online tomorrow.
Right now we are in a mini crisis. Funds getting low.
Jess is waiting in Italy until her books that she shipped from the US come, that could be another week or two. We have the apt until Oct 1st, and can legally be in Italy until the 3rd of Oct, but I need to start making money.
The plan is for me to fly up to Germany this Sunday night. You can fly Ryanair for 40 euros, takes two hours. Then I can stay in a hostel and look for work and a place to live.
Ryanair is one of my friend Eric-s airlines.... YEAH!
Hopefully getting that will coincide with her, then I will rent a van, drive it down to Italy, pick up the gang, and drive back up to Germany.
Boy, it is getting interesting now!
I have applied to a ton of civilian jobs at the military bases in Germany, and about 6 private companies.
OK Wayne, before you say anything about how come I would work for the US if I want out of the country, hey. We get paid dollars and spend them in Germany...... Plus we are not in the US......
Though I would much rather have a German job that gets paid in euros, I will take what I can get right now!
Ok, going to do some job searching, will post photos of Pompeii tomorrow.
BYE!
Monday, August 22, 2005
On to Germany
A couple of shots of when we took off to Siena last week for the Palio (horse race) We never stayed for the race, the crowds were too intense.
What I am assuming was a glacial lake along the way. Unfortunately with the long drive we really didn't get a chance to stop and find out about any of these places. Next time!!
Any kind of open area was beatiful and green. This was the same in Germany. The color doesn't even begin to show how bright and green it really was.
I know this is blurry, but each one of the rectangular shapes was actually a window box shaped planter actually embedded in the side of the highway with plants or flowers growing it it. This was in Germany.
A sign in Germany.
Jess caught an amazing German sunset on film!
The view from the window of our hotel in Heidelberg, Germany. This was on the Neckar river.
Again, the view from our hotel window.
Amazing view!
A shot of our hotel room (for mom to see)
We saw several groups of people rowing against the current on the Neckar river.
A view of the front of our hotel. Our room was a floor highter, which was made up of soffets (sp?)
The view to one side of our hotel .Beautiful! Cobblestone streets everywhere in the town.
The street on the right side of our hotel
We were laughing when setting this picture up. You have the beautiful architecture and then this "Sex Shop" sign!
A beautiful hotel.
I took this picture to also show the flowers the run along the mid section of this. They don't show up here, but were bright red and looked wonderful!
Looking down the main street. If you like to shop, this place is for you. It is FULL of great shops.
This building had a lot more gold on the upper part, but I was shooting into light and if I tried to get more of it, the picture would black out.
From a Christmas store. Mom, maybe you know of this person? There were so MANY beautiful things, but these were all I could afford, they cost .75 euros each!
A picture across the square from where we sat and ate lunch.
A slightly different view. Mom, they all ride bikes here, you'd love it!
The castle up on the hill. We didn't have time to visit it. Next time.
Jess loved that the radio stations in Switzerland would show the name of the song and the artist. Pretty slick!
Siena
Siena
SienaOn Satuday morning I even managed to get up at 4:00 am to start off for Germany! We left about 5:40 am and didn't get to Heidelberg until about 10:30 that evening. the drive should have taken 10 hours, I added on another 2 for us stopping, but it took about 15 to get there because of a traffic jam in Switzerland. Everyone was coming home from their vacations. There is a loooooong tunnel in Switzerland when the road goes form 2 lanes into 1. That was what hung us up for two hours.
I really hated that tunnel because it pretty much cuts right through the Alps, so we missed seeing so much, though I am sure I would love it if I had to travel through Switzerland in the middle of winter when it was snowing like crazy.
Below is a picture of the border of Italy and Switzerland. They pretty much waved everything through. Of course when it came to our turn they waved us off to the side.. I swear, if there is any kind of security check, they see me and grin.
Luckily it wasn't a security check (though I had nothing to hide). Unluckily we had to buy a 30 euro sticker to to put on the windshield to allow to drive through Switzerland.
We were also mad because not ONE border stamped our passports. We were going to ask them to do that on the way home, but neither the German or Austrian border even had people there. Grrrr.
The border between Italy and Switzerland.
I could barely stand it once we got into Switzerland. I had been dying to see the Alps since I first started planning the trip to Italy. I was even considering flying into Zurich so that we could drive or take the train down into Italy when we first arrived in Europe. No wishy washy hills for me, I wanted to see MOUNTAINS!
One of our first glimpses of the Alps
A peek at some of the higher mountains in the distance
I love how the clouds hang
You would be driving and suddenly there would be littles waterfalls coming down the sides of the mountains!
As luck would have it, all of the peaks were covered by clouds that day, no sun or anything.. I missed the ALPS!! *LOL* I never used to feel like an unlucky person, but I have to tell you, I am starting to wonder if I left my luck in the US.
Unfortunately the day we went (and came back) All the peaks were covered in clouds. I was so mad!
A little village at the bottom of one of the mountains
We passed by an amazing lake, the water was green like you would see in the Caribbean. I would love to see it when it was sunny out.
It is starting to get late tonight, so I am going to just leave you with some pictures for now. I will get more into the adventure tomorrow. Enjoy!
What I am assuming was a glacial lake along the way. Unfortunately with the long drive we really didn't get a chance to stop and find out about any of these places. Next time!!
Any kind of open area was beatiful and green. This was the same in Germany. The color doesn't even begin to show how bright and green it really was.
I know this is blurry, but each one of the rectangular shapes was actually a window box shaped planter actually embedded in the side of the highway with plants or flowers growing it it. This was in Germany.
A sign in Germany.
Jess caught an amazing German sunset on film!
The view from the window of our hotel in Heidelberg, Germany. This was on the Neckar river.
Again, the view from our hotel window.
Amazing view!
A shot of our hotel room (for mom to see)
We saw several groups of people rowing against the current on the Neckar river.
A view of the front of our hotel. Our room was a floor highter, which was made up of soffets (sp?)
The view to one side of our hotel .Beautiful! Cobblestone streets everywhere in the town.
The street on the right side of our hotel
We were laughing when setting this picture up. You have the beautiful architecture and then this "Sex Shop" sign!
A beautiful hotel.
I took this picture to also show the flowers the run along the mid section of this. They don't show up here, but were bright red and looked wonderful!
Looking down the main street. If you like to shop, this place is for you. It is FULL of great shops.
This building had a lot more gold on the upper part, but I was shooting into light and if I tried to get more of it, the picture would black out.
From a Christmas store. Mom, maybe you know of this person? There were so MANY beautiful things, but these were all I could afford, they cost .75 euros each!
A picture across the square from where we sat and ate lunch.
A slightly different view. Mom, they all ride bikes here, you'd love it!
The castle up on the hill. We didn't have time to visit it. Next time.
Jess loved that the radio stations in Switzerland would show the name of the song and the artist. Pretty slick!
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