30 March 2012

A Shopping Breakdown

Today I decided to go bike hunting--I went to four different stores, three of which had no used bikes, one of which had no used bikes under 700 euros.  Require new plan immediately, preferably one that results in a bike, pronto.  I'm borrowing my roommate's extra one at the moment, which is giant and purple and roars like a dragon when the headlamp is turned on, but I'd prefer to have my own.  I'm terrified of this one getting stolen on my watch.  Although granted, if it did get stolen, I could theoretically just sit on a street corner in the dark until I heard the dragon roar, and then pounce on whomever was riding it.  And scream "full movie experience!" just so they'd have something to go on next time they watched a movie involving dragons.

Yesterday I got hit on by a random Sri Lankan guy in the supermarket of all places. Was highly entertained.  Was happy to talk to somebody about something other than why I should get off the grass.  

I was super productive yesterday and found my way over to campus, where I hooked myself up with my student ID card, email account, and all that jazz.  The fun thing about the ID card was that you have to take your own pictures for it using their handy dandy machines, which turn out horrendous because they're bad cameras, and I'm me and can't take a decent picture to save my life.  So I came out looking like a whitewashed zombie with mismatching eyebrows.  Luckily there's an "automatic improvement" button, which I hit, only to discover that all "automatic improvement" does is the darken the picture enough to make you look like a zombie in mood lighting, but does nothing for the eyebrows.  Then I had to attempt to explain to the poor guy at the desk why my name is spelled one way on my application, one way on my Portuguese ID card, and one way on my American driver's license, which totally didn't confuse him at all.  Ding ding ding, was that the sarcasm bell?

According to couchsurfing.org, there was a meetup in Göttingen at a local bar.  Being the highly introverted hermit crab that I am, I had to psych myself up for about two hours before hand, only to get there and find no one.  Or, if they were there, they didn't connect my awkward loops around the bar staring at people with someone looking for the couchsurfing group.  So I went food shopping instead.

A note on food shopping:  I am the queen of weird eating, this we know.  When people ask me what I eat, I generally say "everything," because no matter what the situation, I will always find something I can eat...I just don't always eat it the way it's meant to be enjoyed.  But I've gotten older, and my tastebuds have started dying, so I really am way, way better about food than I used to be.  However, this doesn't stop food shopping from turning into weird, aimless, rambling through the supermarket, avoiding some aisles like they'll give me AIDS, and spending obscene amounts of time in others.  Broken down, my food shopping habits look like this:

Step 1:  Wander into vegetable aisle.  Stop and do mental evaluation of whether I'm feeling extravagant, ambitious, or have just watched Ratatouille.  If the answer to any of these is yes, buy onions, broccoli, spinach, potatoes, and carrots.  Know it will take me a year to eat all of them.  If the answer is "no," remind myself that one day my body will stop doing what I want it to, and I will require vegetables to fit into my pants. Wonder if I should start getting in the habit now.  Decide I still have decades.  Move on.

Step 2:  Walk past the bags of lettuce.  Locate caesar dressing, be really excited, pick out a bag of lettuce, but only if it's only dark leaves.  Realize caesar dressing in hand is actually yogurt dressing.  Hate everything.  Put salad and gross dressing back.  Move on.

Step 3:  Find self in fruit aisle.  Buy berries and/or oranges.  If these are not available, mentally tell the fruit aisle to suck it, you stupid non-berry-carrying fruit aisle.  Feel superior to fruit aisle.  Move on.

Step 4:  Bread aisle.  Stare at carbs.  Love carbs.  Pretty carbs.  Buy white bread. Drool a little.  Move on.

Step 5:  Get lost in the alcohol aisle.  Become distracted by all the attractive bottles. Feel the pull of advertising and imagine myself being a wine connoisseur and boring people to death with talk about oak barrels.  Remember I hate wine.  Wish Jean were here to mix me cocktails.  Decide my personal happiness requires Jean and a bottle of Everclear.  Have neither.  Move on.  

Step 6:  Find self in the organic aisle.  Stick chin out in protest.  Decide to be indignant.  Look at prices, and be indignant about spending three times as much on things that go in my stomach.  Briefly think about healthy living.  Remember indignantly that I have money-saving principles.  Remember indignantly that I have money-spending priorities.  Remember indignantly that I require a certain amount of MSG in my food to taste it.  

Step 7:  Wander through the frozen foods aisle.  Buy either fish sticks, or dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets.  Briefly consider growing up.  Decide against it.  Move on.  

Step 7:  Milk products aisle.  Stop, freeze, stare in wonder at the plethora of delicious things I could possibly eat.  Thank the gods my brief affair with lactose intolerance was purely a result of my anxiety.  Walk slowly along the wall, examining every single product.  Turn around, and examine every single product in reverse.  Go back and stand in the middle of the wall.  Look at everything from far away.  Get close.  Think. Back up.  Think.  Repeat.  Do another lap to clear brain.  Consider carefully.   Buy the same products I always do.  Variety may be the spice of life, but nutmeg is a hallucinogen in large quantities.  

Step 8:  Get to check out line.  Spend less than twenty euros for the week.  Feel smug.  

Step 9:  Arrive home.  Eat yogurt to celebrate successful shopping trip.

And that, my friends, is how food shopping works when you live in my brain.  Yay!

Adios!

28 March 2012

The way back

Well, I am officially back in Germany-land.  The way over was long, harrowing, and full of ridiculous stories, which I am numbering for reference:

1)  In Newark, the security guy turned out to be British, which just made the whole "Take off your shoes, make sure your laptop is in it's own bin, take off your jackets and scarves" announcement that much better.  He was yelling it at everyone, except when he turned to yell it at me, he saw that I was already totally prepared.  He closed his mouth, then said, "There are two kinds of people I like.  People who listen, and people who are professional travelers."  "Lucky for you, I am both those things," I said. He turned his attention to a giant woman, and said, "Ma'am, please take your coat off."  "My CLOTHES!?" she yelled, all indignant.  "No ma'am, your coat.  I don't want you to take off all your clothes.  Just your coat."  This is that wonderfully wry and sarcastic way requires a British accent and a ten hour shift in front of you to pull off.

2)  I was so exhausted by the time I got on the plane, I did exactly what I said I wouldn't, and fell asleep before we even took off.  This meant that when they woke me up for dinner, I couldn't fall back asleep afterwards.  Sigh.

3)  The plane was a half hour late taking off, which meant my layover was going to be pretty tight.  However, when the plane landed, they told me it was 7.30 AM, not 8.30 AM, which meant that I took my sweet sweet time walking from the plane to passport control, even stopping to change my clothes in the bathroom.  When I hit passport control, I asked the guy for the local time, just to make sure.  "It's 9AM!" he cheerfully told me.  I looked down at my boarding pass: boarding started at 8.55.  I flipped shit, because I still had to get through security, and I was absolutely positive there was no way I was making the flight.  I got stuck behind a group of Spanish guys going through security, who were all about pushing their bags as slowly as possible through the X-ray machine.  But thankfully my second flight was delayed as well.  And there were only like seven other people on it.

4)  When I arrived in Hannover, I was met by a baggage lady, who happily informed me that my one suitcase was still in Belgium.  I asked how it's possible to load one of my suitcases, but not the other.  She said she had no idea, but that I could probably expect my luggage tonight.  I suppose this is progress, last time I flew into Hannover, they left both bags in Copenhagen.

5)  On the train to Göttingen, I put on Sherlock, because Zack has got me watching it and it's awesome.  As interesting as the episode was, however, I felt my eyelids growing heavy, so I put Sherlock down and decided to sleep.  A little while later, I heard someone moving behind me, so I woke up and turned around to check on my suitcase.  And it was Sherlock sitting behind me, or at least, his German counterpart that looked eerily similar.  I wasn't sure if I was dreaming, hallucinating, or being accurate, so I started at him really awkwardly until I realized he was staring back.  So I pretended I was extremely interested in the seat behind him...and then promptly went back to sleep.

6)  Two minutes later, I heard someone talking to me, telling me to wake up because he didn't want me to miss my stop.  I opened my eyes, and sure enough, it was Sherlock, and he was awfully nice about how I swung from staring to sleeping like a baby on coke.  Not awkward at all.

7)  I took a taxi back to my apartment, let myself in, and then went to throw away some trash I had in my hand.  BOOM, the apartment door closed behind me.  German doors are not like American doors, which have a handy dandy door handle.  In Germany, your key is your door handle, and without a key, you are locked out.  Which I had somehow managed to accomplish less than thirty seconds after arriving, and my roommate wasn't coming back for five hours.  But at that point I was in such a state of exhaustion, I stared at the door blankly, and thought, "Man, when I recover my emotions, I'm going to be really, really upset with myself."

8)  I curled up on the stairs leading to my apartment and tried to sleep.  No luck.  The neighbors below us weren't home, so I went next door to ask if there was any number I could call for such a thing.  The guy said, "No," and hung up on me.  So I promptly turned tail and started walking back to the train station to go back to America.  I made it as far as my stairs when I realized that my money was locked in my apartment.  So scratch that plan.

9)  More or less defeated, exhausted, and hungry, I sat on my stoop.  Shortly thereafter, I was joined by an old gypsy guy who spoke not a word of German.  I asked him what time it was, then broke out the sign language, at which point he stared intently at the sun before holding up two fingers at me.

10)  I decided to go sit by the river.  Sitting turned into laying, and laying turned into my jacket balled up underneath my head, napping.  I woke up about two hours later, when the temperature had dropped enough that I was starting to shiver.  On my way back to my apartment, I got asked to go out on a group date by seven gypsy teenagers.

11)  I sat on my stoop some more watching the gypsies, who are actually pretty entertaining.  I watched two little girls push a shopping cart out their front door like it was a perfectly normal occurrence.  Then I walked into town and read Game of Thrones for a while.

12).  On the way back, I made friends with an old guy from Ghana who cursed German weather a lot, although granted, I probably would too if I were from a tropical climate.

13)  When my roommate arrived, I told her my sad story, and she said, "Did you forget that there's a hidden key up here in case we lock ourselves out?"  At that point, all I could do was laugh.  

And that is how I traded continents.  Tomorrow, off to buy food, lots of domestic things, and hopefully, a bike.

Adios!

27 March 2012

America America!

Oh hey Amurrica!  How's it hanging?

In a nutshell, these past three weeks have possibly been the greatest ever.  Here is a small sample of the things I did:

--Rode lots of horses, some of which tried to kill me, some of which didn't.
--Baked, excessively.
--Scared myself shitless watching The Walking Dead, but continued watching it anyway.
--Made my sister accompany me around the house after dark when I was scared shitless from watching The Walking Dead.
--Slammed Tim-Tams
--Sat on frozen pizza dough to warm it up "naturally."
--Forced Vegemite on as many people as possible.
--Decorated a cake to resemble the gummi bear version of the Civil War, with the addition of a Gone With The Wind love affair in the corner, except in our version, Scarlett O'Hara was also a man.  At least until the napalm came, then it at went to hell.
--Ate oatmeal.
--Bought a lot of clothes.  Or rather, sat in the dressing room complaining about buying clothes while my mother and sister picked out attractive things and told me to put them on or else walk home.
--Was morally opposed to Lauren Conrad.
--Played music with people far more talented than I am.
--Saved money buying lots of things in America, such as jeans, a hamper, and a mattress topper.
--Rediscovered a lot of important things I forgot to pack the first time I left.  For example, my Nerf gun.
--Tried to learn to Dougie.  Did not succeed.
--Played with lots and lots of puppies.
--Took singing boot camp with my Jersey voice coach.
--Went to Seaside Heights with Claire and danced in front of all the locations featured on Jersey Shore.
--Saw Memphis on Broadway and made friends with San Fran people in a speakeasy.
--Picked up not one, but two babies, neither of which screamed.
--Saw The Hunger Games and it was awesome.
--Celebrated my birthday!

Now that I'm 24, marriage and children has come up in conversation a few times, either Aversions To, Musings On, or Gossip About.  I knew that the gods of statistics were predicting these things for my near future, so decided to look it up on the Interwebs, and discovered that I'm a mere 1.1 years away from statistically having a child, and 2.5 years away from statistically getting married, in that order.  Joseph helpfully pointed out that would mean getting knocked up in the next three months or so, but I have a secret, and it ensures I will never get pregnant.  And that secret is, every time I see a super cute baby or a radiant pregnant woman, all I have to do is remember the three days I spent picking nits out of my hair, and those primal hormones fizzle out like a can of coke thrown violently into a box of wet fireworks.  Because by the time I recover from that special experience, I'll either be menopausal or dead.  Although I did play with two fiendishly cute babies, but....nope.  Nope.  May get headlice one day.

Final thoughts, just in case I hadn't already made it apparent: America was amazing. So, so, so amazing.  I saw brilliant people, I did brilliant things, and most importantly, I had a much needed mental-health break.  I got to relax, to breathe, to relearn to be myself--I didn't realize what a nervous, anxious wreck I had become until I didn't have to hide in my room being a nervous, anxious wreck.  And my mom left notes reminding me to drink all the milk, which is how I know she loves me.  So I figure if you have kickass people in your life who love you in spite of, or perhaps due to, all your collective weirdness, then you need to hold on to them with both hands and bribe them with candy to keep them around.  Which is why I brought so much chocolate home with me.

It's been a rough couple months, but all in all, I feel like myself again.  I feel mentally and emotionally recharged.  I feel like I can kick the whole world's ass.  I am fully ready to take on grad school.  So watch your face Göttingen, I'm about to be all up in it.

Adios!

11 March 2012

Oh, did I say Amsterdam? I meant Amurrica.

Having surprised everyone I wanted to surprise, I can officially say: yeah, Amsterdam was total bullshit, I'm in America!

I left March 5th, and, due to some discrepancies between the bus schedule on the internet, and the bus schedule in real life, I wound up having to book it to the the train station on foot, dragging my giant bookbag and suitcase, barely making it onto the train in time.  I slept in the airport, which I swore I'd never do again after Portugal, but I didn't have much of an option.  This time I discovered that I could sort of lie down, as long as I slept on my left side, spooned the armrests, and didn't mind a deep armrest massage to the appendix.  I think I slept an hour, maybe, which is approximately a forty-five minute improvement over the last time I slept in Hannover International.

From there, it was off to Brussels, then Newark.  I sat behind a Swedish couple that kept making out and then turning around to stare at me, so I watched Sleepers and Real Steel while I was attempting to ignore them.  The flight was very long, I helped a Belgian guy fill out his passport control papers, and I learned that planes are a terrible place to try Indian food for the first time.  But after many long hours, we eventually touched down in Newark, and the Swedes in front of me had total freak-outs when they saw the Ikea.  I imagine the conversation went something like, "Darling, did you see that?  Our quest for Swedish world domination has borne smoggy fruit right off the Jersey Turnpike."  "That's wonderful news, crumpet.  Stellan Skarsgård for President. Now kiss me so we can stare at the American behind us again, it's funny how uncomfortable it makes her."  

America, America!  How I have missed certain parts of thee!  Seeing my friends and family again has been absolutely amazing, and it's wonderful to be back in a house where adults drink milk, and coats only go in the closet when we run out of chairs to put them on.  I also totally forgot how cool my room is here, between the bright yellow walls and the decorating scheme my sister fondly refers to as "murdered clown colors.".  Little things, however, keep throwing me for a loop, and I'm finding those things particularly fascinating: sorting my trash only to get to the trashcan and realize I don't have to, giant dishwashers, people that smile at you when you walk into stores. And my left foot keeps twitching for wont of something to do when I drive.

So, that's all I've got.  Seeing as how I'm officially in America, I can skip posting my stupid stories to the blog, and just tell you all in person.  I guess this means the blog is officially going on hiatus until I get back to Europe, also known as March 28th.  In the meantime, I've got to hang out with everyone I love and celebrate my birthday.  And don't forget to ask me for stupid stories, because I have them!

Adios!

05 March 2012

I'm matriculated!

The hula-hooping through-jumping for at least this portion of the saga is officially over. I'm all sorts of matriculated!  Everything more or less came together at the eleventh hour.  This morning, for the hell of it, I decided to try my luck at a different insurance company and see if my Aetna card was good enough for them.  To save my conscience from sore muscles, I even pointed out to the lady that my Aetna card expired in 2005, but my parents are still with the same company.  She didn't  care, she said, "All I need is something with your name on it," and that was that.  Ten minutes later, I had the letter from the insurance company in my hand.  Then it was off to town hall to get more official copies made, then finally to the foreign student services.  Who told me I was good to go, minus the fact that I took my DSH test in Hannover, not Göttingen, which meant I needed to go to the DSH Göttingen people and get them to officially sign off on the validity of my test scores.

Agh.

This lead to an hour of hunting down the tiny office on campus, then tracking down the guy in charge, who turned out to be super nice.  He signed me off, and gave me some awesome references for free courses I can take to improve my ability to write academically in German.  Which I absolutely plan on taking.

With that form, it was back to the foreign student services office, where I triumphantly handed it over, grilled the staff about all the things I have to do next, and...I'm done!  I can pick up my ID card after we get back from Amsterdam, and everything starts moving from here!

Hooray!

Adios!

03 March 2012

Tina vs the Red Tape Dragon

I was a total FIEND last night, and beat my Ikea crap shelves into submission.  And I even did all the screws by hand, which was  feat unto itself, seeing as how they really resisted being screwed.  The result is that I now have two bookshelves that are pretty shelf-like, although as a general rule, shelves shouldn't wobble this much.  

Pictures of my room!  It's actually quite giant, 150 square feet, and now that I've started putting things on the walls, it almost looks like I live here:



Above my desk are all the random pieces of artwork my friends have sent me, including Jean's dramatic interpretation of Europe in winter, and Claire and Jen's epic "WHORE BAG Merry Christmas or something I guess" sign.  

I spent today exploring the city and learned that there are three languages you can expect to hear on a daily basis: German (for obvious reasons), Chinese (partner university in China) and Spanish (ditto, except in Spain).  If you're me and you live right across from a giant building currently housing gypsy refugees, you can also expect to hear a constant stream of Serbian and Roma being shouted out windows and falling onto the deaf ears of screaming children down below.  Of these five languages, there's only one I look like I should speak.  Three guesses, and the first two don't count.

In other news, I'm trying desperately to matriculate, but the hula-hoop jumping never actually ends.  Now I'm fighting with two insurance companies on both sides of the Atlantic, one of which doesn't want to send copies of the contract to people who aren't the purchasers of said contract (i.e, my parents), and one of which doesn't want to give me a letter for matriculation saying they don't have to insure me without proof times one hundred that I have health insurance elsewhere.  In this case, 'proof times one hundred' means, oh, hey, the insurance card with your name on it isn't good enough, and why should we help you anyway, seeing as how you're not insured with us? Which is a pretty fair point, it's just a difficult one to work around when you desperately need this letter for your studies.

Agh.

Germany is well known for many things, one of them being permanently ensnared in an exhaustive, contradictory, and generally ineffable system of bureaucracy.  Said system mostly boils down to an obsessive need for proof proof proof that's vaguely reminiscent of a triumphant five year old dancing around on the playground yelling "na na na na boo boo."  A copy of your bachelor's degree is not enough--you also need to prove you went to high school, which is totally not redundant even though you can't get a bachelor's degree without first going to high school.  Copies of important documents are not enough--you need to take the originals to town hall and pay them for the privilege of watching them copy, print, and stamp it for you.  Letters of recommendation from your college professor are not enough--said professor needs to get them stamped by the university, or, if your professor is American, where they are not so overly fond of the stamp, you need to enclose a letter saying "Hey, this isn't getting stamped because the American educational institution has not yet developed a passionate love affair with its insignia."  Paying rent is not enough--you have to prove not only your own citizenship, but your parents' as well, and, when you can't, you get a subletting contract instead of a main renter contract.  

It's an endless cycle of pointless bureaucracy, and every time you congratulate yourself for having done it, the Red Tape Dragon rears its ugly head and sends you on yet another quest.  And off you go, to this building or that building, to get this signed and that stamped, navigating weird opening hours and an army of unhelpful representatives--a quest that's completely lacking in even the most basic of Redeeming Quest Features, such as the Holy Grail or migrating coconuts.  And not once will you be asked the airspeed velocity of a European swallow.

I know it'll all eventually work out, because it has no other option but to work out.  In the meantime, however, it's not so much a pain in my ass as it is a colossal hernia.  

01 March 2012

Happy March!

Happy first day of March!

The only thing actually exciting about it being the first of March was that I realized today I turn 24 in less than two weeks.  Which gives me the heebie-jeebies.

In other news, life has been pretty hectic, and by hectic, I mean short bursts of activity broken up by long breaks in the bookstore reading The Hunger Games.  Yesterday I turned in my scholarship application, registered with the city, and checked out the university campus a little with my roommate.  I've also spent spent a crap ton of money on things like curtains, light bulbs, and coat hangers.  My roommate and I made a pretty epic Ikea run in Kassel last night.  I picked up two bookshelves, only to discover later that literacy is apparently no longer a requirement for Ikea installation projects--which is awesome if Pictionary is your strong suit, less so if you require words to put things together.  Not that it matters much anyway, seeing as how you apparently needed a power screwdriver whatever-those-things-are-called, which we don't have, so my bookshelves are currently sitting in pieces on my floor until this situation resolves itself.

My roommate also had a little party the other day, so I got to meet a good many of her friends, and they are a fabulous time.  We have revived the games German Words Americans Can't Say and English Words Germans Can't Say, and are currently locked in Facebook debate as to whether or not any German will ever be able to say the word "squirrel."  The answer is probably no.  But aside from this discovery, my roommate and I have also found that we have the same horrible taste in television, so we've spent the last couple evenings up late watching model shows.  Which is pretty fabulous, I must say.

And, that's all I've got!  I've got a crap ton of bureaucracy to wade through tomorrow, a Hunger Games trilogy to finish, and detail arranging for Amsterdam to arrange in detail. But the good news is that our hostel is booked (we're staying on a BOAT!  How awesome is that!  I for one plan on singing the "I'm on a boat" song the entire weekend).  We're leaving on Thursday the 8th, and coming back on my birthday. I'm so excited I can barely sit still.  But I have to sit still.  At least, long enough to matriculate.

New favorite song!  Still on an epic Ed Sheeran kick, so here, have some more of my favorite singing ginger!