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They treat me like an immigrant over here. Everything's settled with the bike. All it took was:
A copy of my passport
A copy of my residency permit
A copy of my town hall registration
A copy of my lease agreement
And finally, a copy of the purchase receipt for the bike proving i have owned it for more than six months (this miraculously turned up).
Today was a curious mix of heightened sense of accomplishment, tainted only with the briefest flashes of impotent rage. I started half-day German lessons to get me up to speed faster. In spite of leaving what I thought was a half hour early, I called 30 minutes before class was to start, thinking I was mired in traffic cause by an accident. That would be "nope." Don't take B14 into Stuttgart ever, unless you can't avoid it. So the normal traffic flow puts me a mere 20 minutes late for the first day of class plus an underground parking space I can't just pull into without some additional maneuvering. The creeping traffic, late arrival, missing the turn into the last street on the divided road, and the parking space all put me on the verge of what can only be characterized as a full breakdown punctuated by brief episodes of psychosis.
I was having tantrums in the car.
I managed to get to class, in exactly the ideal learning state, and spoke German through till lunch. Having made it that far, I decided work should also be entirely in German today and managed to get along fairly well. Yay me.
After work I dropped by a store I'd been seeing on the way home and bought a blender and tupperware. Not just any blender, the Bosch hand mixer, which comes with a 300 watt motor, serving pitcher, and food processor attachment. The competitor did not have the food processor attachment for the same price. 600 watts though.
I've also puzzled through the assembly of my curtain tracks. No rods, just these little rollers that you hang the curtain rings and curtain from. I bought the little rollers today to verify their function. Curtains to follow.
I've also decided to do a short segment title "Cars under $20,000 that Americans can't Buy" Look for it soon...
Slightly overdue but I've been busy. Here's the state of the living space thus far. Kind of spartan but at least it's getting to be mangeable and feel like home. Still no curtains but I'll find something soon...
Here's the kitchen I started with minus the cabinets which I'd already taken out:
and what I waited all that time for:
The shades of brown tending towards burnt orange tile wouldn't be my first choice and sorely hampered my color choices but it is what it is. The dishwasher's hiding just to the left of the sink and I did the floor. I paid for a complete kitchen assembly because my tools are 500 miles away and I just didn't feel like doing it. Just to the bottom right is the trash can specifically for non-recyclables.
Here's two shot of the bare living room:
Just under the picture on top of the couch is a wool blanket my mother gave me over 10 years ago, telling me it was too warm (true) for South Carolina but I would appreciate it one day. It stayed in its little sealed plastic bag alll that time and has trekked about 8000 miles since but here it is, finally being used and appreciated.
I don't quite like the "bare, yet cluttered" look, but I assume I'll figure out a few more storage solutions and accumulate a few more mementos. And a quick shot of the bedroom...
By German standards, I got the widest bed on the "normal" market. 2 meters long by 1.80 wide. The matress is in 2 sections because one big one would have been special order and the sheets are more difficult to find. Standard bedding is a fitted sheet and a comforter/duvet. No top sheet. There's a wardrobe off to the right and a dresser over to the far left. Absolutely no closets in the apartment so all the storage has to be brought in or you use the locked storage room down the hall.
I think I needed this weekend to be just the way it was. I was tired of setting up house and small disasters to deal with. Bill was visiting on his way to and from France so I decided to do some sight seeing. I took the picture below from a foot bridge across a two or three hundred foot ravine. Castle Neuschwanstein, (new swan rock) I think in English is allegedly the castle Disney copied for their theme park. It's new, being less than 200 years old, and was built, I guess, by just about the last king of Germany. No pictures were allowed inside and everything is original and unrestored. The castle in the background was mom and dad's but we figured one was enough for the day.
This was about 2 hours drive from Stuttgart and had some open autobahn with light traffic in places. I was able to cruise around 170km/h and wind out fifth gear at 215km/h. Bill even managed to nap for a few minutes. The weather was a bit grey but we were spared the rain except on the way home. Getting in the castle was about a 15-20 minute walk on a bit of an incline as you might imagine.
Here's the view down from the bridge we walked across:
There is a series of 3 or four of these pools, all crystal clear and about the size of s large swimming pool. Not too bad a summer walk for the king.
I smuggled a Roombe into the country my last trip home. Those of you who know me may realize that I do not often enjoy mundane tasks such as sweeping. Now I do it several times a week.
A week or so ago as I was thoroughly sweeping, I looked up to see this neighbor staring intently at my little robot's activities.
I should forward this by calling it a piece of creative writing to fend off the scared, pathetic, or otherwise litigious-happy imbeciles in the world. They are simply digested thoughts that, unlike the Bush administration would have you believe, are not yet a crime in and of themselves. I’ll probably be listed as a dissident anyway. I do transfer money and phone calls to foreign countries.
Let me further state that I do not yet fully have a daily routine established.
Today started out "normal." I got up and went to work at the usual time, had some interesting design discussion regarding a product change, and generally interacted in a mundane, work-day sort of way with the environment. Then my mountain bike, which I had shipped to the plant, arrived. If I do nothing, the worst that can happen is I get charged with an 800 Euro tariff for importing my 8 year old bike. After some phone calls and a very nice man at the local customs office, we get down to the gist of the matter. It will be fine, but I have to show up and fill out some forms. On its own, this might not be such a crushing blow but I'm afraid nothing has been as it was lately and life has turned into a seemingly endless string of isolated incidents. I no longer like isolated incidents.
I am not knocking Germany here by any means. Any foreigner moving to any foreign country to live has gone through a lot of what I’m seeing now. As a resident and not a tourist, I have to re-learn a lot of cultural rules, behaviors, and boundaries in order to fit in and not disrupt the flow of the society I’ve been thrust into. Some of the rules are the same, some of them are similar, and some of them make absolutely no sense to an outsider.
Saturday I finally found protein powder, and a pretty good one at that. It turned out to be unflavored and tasted a little bit not good mixed with water. Monday, I finally found soy milk, a staple of mine. At breakfast this morning, I read a little closer because I bought unflavored on purpose but didn’t realize it was completely devoid of any flavor - for cooking. Mixed with the protein powder, it had the appeal of mud that has not yet turned rancid. I tried, but ended up pouring it out and having a banana. Then work, then the bike. I don’t know if the bike has cleared customs yet but they gave it to me anyway - another rule violation but the customs officer I spoke to said, incredibly, that I didn’t know and it wasn't my fault. I've also had a mouth ulcer since Thursday. Those of you who get them know what charms it can add to chewing or breating cold air the wrong way.
So now I'm driving home with illegally imported goods, on the second day of a six week streak where I've yet to work five full days without an incident that causes me to be late for or miss work. I was 0.25 hours away from getting out of the hole and actually having overtime. It’s too much, I'm beaten up for the day, and on the way to the gym, some f**k cuts in front of me at a long stop light - not even the legally sanctioned way. Is it any wonder I wish I had a set of brass knuckles and a kevlar glove to climb out of the car with and make my own rude point through his windows? I've got a lot on my mind these days and the heavily suppressed rage is sitting just below the surface at this point. Of course, on the heels of reading a book full of graphic violence which I typically avoid if it's realistic fiction. Fortunately, I stay in the car and let someone in between us. Then I have the chance to sit and boil my thoughts as the city traffic creeps along and it's just plain bad. I don't like badness but there it is.I get to the gym without incident and start a workout with all the anger and frustration that a, hopefully, sane person can have, basically fuming at all the inequities of the world. By the time I get to shoulders, my thoughts have turned more serene like "gee, this seat is hard and I'm a little saddle-sore from the bike yesterday." I really started off thinking anger like that couldn't be channeled. I see that I am wrong. I've re-centered a bit and remembered that this happens to everyone. I've also remembered that I'm not suffering in a vacuum - the people around me have feelings too.
I often tell people that I need to have a routine and I seldom make idle statements. A routine, even a fitness routine, is the thing that lets me smile at you in the morning and help with your problems.
I never mentioned how nice the hand soap over here smells. Very citrousy.
The office chairs are a bit firmer as well and it occurs to me that design engineers have very butt-sitting intensive jobs. I wonder if a smaller butt would help?
For those of you interested, my height in centimeters is 198. The, probably, German standard height for doorways is 200cm. That would leave me a generous clearance of about 0.74" Now lets assume I'm wearing shoes and further assume I decide to look up for some reason whilst crossing a threshold...
I had to take a few moments to myself this morning.
Bill was here so I couldn't quite have a proper tantrum and I'm afraid the dent in my head got me off to a bad start all around. I'm pretty sure there's a bruise and I lost a few more brain cells.
I"m writing this from home. Somehow, some way, I was able to set up my wireless box et. al. entirely in German. Susanne, the relocation lady, was kind enough to sign me up and take care of the paperwork. Who, in the U.S.A. would ever, ever, ever have thought that email access would be separate? That's right, I have none.
On the one hand, you only pay for what you use here. On the other, you pay for every damn thing.
I'm off to build another piece of furniture...pictures soon.
So the kitchen is installed. Seems a bit anti-climactic given everything I had to go through to get it but there you have it. Unfortunately, I forgot to take down my Bush Countdown Calendar and the installers had to look at it the entire time. They probably made the same mistake Susanne did. She asked "So, you are a Bush supporter?" I quickly explained the calendar's purpose and resolved to not have it out around Germans. Funny, and a bit sad, at being ashamed of your country's leader. I'd probably get more positive reactions from a picture of Chairman Mao on my wall. 23 months to go.
Through some quirk of German (Bosch) bureaucracy, I find myself in the position of being a design engineer with no design tools. 5 weeks into the job, I still have no Unigraphics license which is the primary modeling and drafting software we use. It all started out with me (in November)explaining to the department manager that I didn't want him to treat me like an intern (drafter) because that made me a damn expensive drafter. He assumed from that I didn't want UG, which I still need for part design. It beats a napkin. From there I started work in January and requested a license through my supervisor. Nothing happened and we had to follow up with Timo Weiler (which is a pretty cool name if pronounced properly). Timo initially just said no, which set all of us thinking "Who the f*** are you anyway?" Further prodding produced what the department manager had said. Fortunately, the department manger reversed himself and said "make it a priority" and had to say it twice because Timo forgot. "Priority" apparently means two days as I was just told, as I sit here and type, that it has been made so. Let's see about that.
A question many of you have asked, I'm sure.
Lunch today I decided to get with a side salad and I was looking forward to it because it looked to be a pretty good one with red bell peppers, etc. Right beside the cashier, just past the vats of salad dressing are bottles of olive oil, vinegar, hot sauce and so on. I opted for some balsamic vinegar and poured some of the brown stuff on without paying to much attention to the bottle. At the table, I did not taste vinegar. I had to ask. After some debate about consistency, it was decided that I had put pumpkin seed oil on my salad. Yum-dilly-icious. (assume that to be a flat, deadpan delivery)
Although they say this week some time. Also, legend has it that my internet equipment will show up some time so I can do fun things like pay bills. Strange how access to the internet has become such a necessity for modern life. At this point, I need it to pay bills, do my taxes, correspond with my friends, read the news, and etc.
I realize there was a lapse in posting. I had a week long visit to the U.S. for Bill's 40th birthday. Hopefully it was a surprise. It was also a nice break but it disrupted my indoctrination here and now I'm working on getting some kind of routine. Of course, the weekend was filled with new things. I found a tv for less that I budgeted, which was good. It was dual voltage, meaning it will run on U.S. electricity, and, in spite of the omission from the documentation, seems to have no trouble with NTSC signals from my laptop. NTSC is the U.S. picture format while PAL is a European standard. What that means for me is that the tv can come home with me. One less financial loss.
I also got a shower curtain.
I used my gym membership for the first time on Sunday. All seemed to be going well except I wore a sleeveless shirt to work out in. The desk clerk, wearing a suit, informed me of the rule. That explained the rude stares I was getting. He said it was ok for the day but I felt uncomfortable and left to try again on Monday. And so I shall...
You wouldn't know it from reading most of my postings, because they're mainly an outlet for frustrations, but I do enjoy Germany and thought I'd take some time to list the things that are good:
the food, German food is almost always hot, hearty, and comforting.
the people are in general very nice once you engage them
the countryside. It reminds me a lot of the rolling hills in Ohio.
the public transportation is awesome.
the parks and streets are clean
Wal-Mart is not allowed to sell at a loss by law, thereby preventing them from undercutting local businesses. This is considered an unfair business practice.
the autobahn still has open sections with no speed limits.
good beer and wine are cheap (if you have a palette for good beer)
Now back to the complaints...