conspiracy theory

call me paranoid, but i think someone is out to get my inner cynic.

people are being inexplicably nice. or cute or funny. even the random strangers i've been emailing to try to figure out a ride back from france on monday are just being adorable. what is going on?!??!

why i hate math

i should be sleeping. like, really. but oh well.

countries visited in the past week and a half: 3
cost of a tall coffee at starbucks in london: £1.79
amount by which i overdrew my checking account: $5.27
minutes wasted waiting at the creepiest train station on the planet in cerbere, france: 307
hours slept since sunday: 6
number of spiders i've had to "relocate" from my bedroom since my return: 3

common denominator?? anyone??

so after having like 3 conversations about the various linguistic functions of the word "like" in american english, i feel like i should demonstratively overuse it, you know, like, to make a point.
.......

sporadic internet access has made the blogging of recent adventures in the life of this wide-eyed wanderer a bit difficult, so this is the part where i try to sort the chaos that was my life a week ago from the chaos that it is now...

so THE greatest thing about my life at the moment is that southern germany has an ABSURD (that was for you, mel) number of religious holidays. thank god for the catholics, right?? we had a week off at the beginning of lent. we just had a week and half off for easter, and we get another two and half weeks off around pentecost. i love it.

granted, it makes little sense academically--as a teacher you spend the first week after the break trying to remind the students of whatever you'd been doing in class in the weeks before the break. then you spend a couple weeks actually introducing new material. then the week before the next holiday, the kids are already mentally on vacation, so that's basically more time lost... but as a student, can you think of anything better?? i can remember years when easter was later, and we didn't have a single day off of school between president's day and spring break... it was probably just about an 8 or 9 week stretch, but it seemed to drag on forever...

but what does one do with all of this free time, you might ask? weeeeell, if you're me, you spend more of it traveling to and from various destinations than in any of the places actually visited, apparently.

i'll spare you the details of why i decided to travel the way i did--as illogical as it sounds, it DID actually make sense at the time...

the short version:
travel begins on good friday:
bus/train to heidelberg, hang out for afternoon+evening
take night bus to obscure german airport
"sleep" at aforementioned airport
sat. a.m. early flight to girona, spain
sometime saturday: train to perpignan, france, to visit mel
hang out in and around perpignan 'til following friday
friday afternoon: train back to girona
friday night: flight to london, meet up with steph
hang out in london til monday afternoon/evening
monday night: flight back to stuttgart
"sleep" at airport again
tues. morning: early train+bus combination directly to school

yeah, i'm one of those people who tries to wring every last minute out of the free time available. sometimes. and as most of you know, i'm usually super last-minute about my travel plans. BUT this time, I had pretty much everything booked in advance. like, WEEKS in advance--not just hours or minutes!! because deep down, i know that the germans are right: Ordnung muss sein.

but someone should really tell that to the good folks at ryanair and pretty much everyone in spain and france. for alas, even the best-laid plans can blow up in your face. in an attempt to exercise my expertly honed skill of pointing out the painfully obvious: every time i travel, BAD THINGS happen. good things, occasionally great things, even, happen as well. but i know better than to *plan* for good things. if there's one thing i've learned in germany, it's never to expect anything. if you don't expect anything, you'll never be let down. you let the good things surprise you. if someone does or says something nice, it's like, the most amazing thing in the world. (i'm amazed daily.)

ok. sleep first. blog later.

traveling... again

well, i made it to france!! ...too bad my luggage didn't. in fact, my bag didn't even make it to spain. somewhere between frankfurt hahn and girona, the nice folks at ryanair seem to have lost it. greeeeaaat. can we talk about how something goes absurdly wrong every time i travel???? literally, EVERY TIME!! fortunately, mel's roommate has loaned me some of his clothes, so i haven't had to run around naked--or stinky--for the past 3 days, but yeah.

OH MY GOD. they just called me and said they found my bag!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

do you even understand how happy this makes me??!!
and that means i get to go back to spain this afternoon. woohooo!!!!

(this is the part where i have to admit that i am ridiculously attached to my stuff even though i know that it's just STUFF, and that really, i have too much as it is... but i was going to miss my favorite t-shirt, you know??)

more on the travels later--i'm off to girona =)

the neverending story

wow. this blogging everyday thing is a bit much for me...

so... where were we... right. i've been in salzburg for three days, and i'm pretty much ready to come home. i definitely don't want to pay for another night there, and really, i'm just kind of done with the city. but my MFG didn't work out last minute, so i'm assessing the train situation. it looks like my last chance to make it all the way home is at 3 in the afternoon, but since it's already past two, there's no way i'm going to make it back to my hostel, get my stuff and make it back to the train station, get a ticket, etc. in time to make that train. after that, there aren't any more buses from the train station to where i live. but at this point, i'm kind of like, screw it, i'm NOT staying here. something will work out. and there are still trains to waldenburg--which, granted, is some 18 km from where i actually live... but hey, it's a hell of a lot closer to home than salzburg, and all i really want is to go home and sleep in my own bed, and i'm kind of hoping i'll find some nice person who'll give me a lift home. or, worst case scenario, i have a loooooooong walk ahead of me.

now before you all point out how reckless and irresponsible it is to take a train to the middle of nowhere, knowing full well there's no guarantee i'll have a ride home, i'll save you the trouble =) i KNOW that. but since when am i rational?!?! it's not exactly brilliant on my part, but at this point, i'm determined to get home somehow. and you know, where there's a will, there's a way, right?? (see, deep down, i really am an american!!)

so i get to the train station, get my ticket and hop on the train. everything's going fine, then, for no apparent reason, we just stop. nowhere near a station, just in the middle of this stretch of track. ooook. we sit there for some 5-10 minutes. then finally this lady makes an announcement over the loudspeaker--we're stopped for unknown reasons. great. i mean, that's reassuring, right? we sit there for another 10 minutes. finally she comes over the loudspeaker again--we were stopped because of a problem with the signals, but we'll be moving again shortly, and they apologize for the delay, etc. riiiiight. for most of this time, i've been sitting there reading, not really paying attention. i mean, i knew we were stopped. and i knew it had been a while, but i hadn't really thought about it in terms of how this would affect the rest of my travels. i look at the clock and realize that it's about 8 minutes til 9. the train was scheduled to be in stuttgart at 9:06, and we still have two more stops before stuttgart. my heart stops. no. no way. i'm thinking that if i don't make my next train to heilbronn, which leaves at 9:15, then there's no way i'm going to make it to waldenburg. i have to make this train. period. thinking that if i beg and look desperate enough, i might be able to convince the bahn people to ask the train to heilbronn to wait, i run through the train looking for someone to ask. but all the DB people are in hiding. we make it to the next station faster than i thought we would, so i'm suddenly hopeful that we MIGHT just make it after all. we get to the next station. i'm still holding my breath. this has to work out. it just has to. i have to get home. (not because i really have to be home, but because i want to be...) i grab my stuff and join the others waiting to get off in stuttgart.

there are 3 of us standing there, all clearly anxiously hoping we'll still be able to make our connections. the one girl's train leaves at 9:18. the other woman and i are both hoping to make the 9:15 train to heilbronn, but neither of us are really hopeful. we're already in the very first train car, so we'll have the shortest distance to run to catch the train, and we're half joking about having me jump out first to run and hold the train for her, since she has a suitcase to carry, and all i've got is a backpack. but just before we pull into stuttgart, there's another announcement over the loudspeaker. the train to heilbronn was unfortunately unable to wait, and those headed to heilbronn will have to take the next train in an hour..blah blah blah. the 9:18 train couldn't wait either. so the 3 of us are all standing there, dejected and somewhat resigned to our fates.

the train stops, and we all file out. the other woman heading to heilbronn tries to ask the conductor something, but he brushes her off completely and tells her to ask at the information desk. i lost her somewhere in the crowd, but weaved my way through the masses and made it to the info desk and ended up second in line. pretty impressive considering how many people were in the line that developed behind me. i turn around, and my friend from the train has mysteriously reappeared. so we go up to the counter together and tell the guy where we need to go. i'm thinking there's not a chance in hell there's going to be a train to waldenburg this late on a sunday night, but evidently, i was wrong--there was still one last connection--but it wouldn't get me there until a quarter after midnight.

somehow the prospect of an 18km hike home post midnight was just too much for me, and i turn away from the counter and promptly burst into tears. it didn't seem like such a bad idea when i was going to be getting to waldenburg at 10:30. but now after midnight??? and i was soooo tired. i mean, all i'd done all weekend was wander around salzburg, which doesn't sound SO exhausting, but i'd been getting up relatively early every day and walking for hours on end, which i actually enjoy doing... but now?? i just wanted to lay down on the train station floor right then and there and go to sleep. which i obviously couldn't do. so the next best thing? crying, evidently.

my new traveling buddy is confused. why am i crying? aren't i going to be able to make it to waldenburg? i explain that i live in the middle of nowhere, and there aren't any more buses that late at night, and who the hell am i suppose to ask to pick me up at the train station after midnight?? she feels terribly sorry for me and wishes she could help somehow. i shrug. i mean, yeah, it sucks, but what can you do, you know? that's life. (and freaking out about it certainly isn't going to get me there any faster.) she disappears for a bit in the direction of the toilets, leaving me a few minutes to pull myself together and come up with a game plan. basically i'm trying to decide which train station to sleep at.

i buy myself a cup of coffee--it's going to be a long night!! and my train buddy returns. on the one hand, it's nice that i'm not stranded here alone. on the other hand, i'm pissy and frustrated and tired and not exactly feeling social....but we've got an hour to kill, so we might as well get to know each other, right? so i start asking questions--mostly to avoid having to ANSWER questions =) she'd mentioned earlier that she'd contemplated taking the ICE from munich, so she'd have more time between transfers, but the guy at the train station had talked to her out of it--needless to say, she was regretting that decision! so i knew she'd gotten on the train in munich but had gathered that she was from around here, so i asked what she'd been doing in munich.

turns out she's decided to go back to school and is studying literature and art history and has an art history exam coming up and wanted to look at some of the paintings in real life again before the exam. i'm like...what?!?! i mean, she's older than my mom and younger than my grandma, but still old enough to be *somebody's* grandma, you know? and going back to school?? i mean, that's pretty cool, right? i guess she'd always wanted to study art history and had just never gotten around to it when she was younger--had gotten married and had kids and then lived abroad for a while, etc. so now i'm intrigued. AND i've calmed down significantly. i'm almost even having FUN chatting with this woman, you know? weird. ok. i'm slowly coming to terms with the situation. i'm not feeling QUITE as hopeless and desperate about the whole thing. something will work out. somehow.

we continue chatting; our trains arrives and we board--we now have to switch trains somewhere between stuttgart and heilbronn instead of taking a direct train, but oh well. we're still talking--i'd asked if she'd learned any japanese while living in tokyo, so we're discussing fun linguistic stuff. then somewhere during this leg of the journey, it occurs to her that she knows nothing about me, except that i'd been in salzburg for the weekend, and she'd clearly realized that i'm not german--i mean, it's pretty obvious!! so she's asks me where i'm from, england? scotland? i laugh. people always think i'm from england--which i don't understand. i mean, i've HEARD british people speak german. they have WAY cooler accents than americans =) but ok. so i tell her i'm from the US. ohhhhh, america!! this changes things, evidently. she thinks for a minute. she has friends who live in america. in tennessee.

*sidenote, because i got in trouble when i told this part of the story earlier: this ALWAYS happens. as soon as someone tells you where they're from, you try to make some sort of connection, right? "oh, you're from germany? my friend studied in berlin for a year." "oh, you're from america? chicago? i was in new york once." or "oh, i have a cousin there." something like that, right?? it happens with "foreigners." it happens with people who live in different parts of the US. it's just a part of life. but it's kind of funny, right? i mean, you'd agree it's a little weird?? i mean, maybe it's not that weird unless it happens to you daily. and it's really NOT weird--it's normal, i suppose. logical, at least. it's just funny somehow. or maybe just to me... i don't know.

so now she wants to know where i learned such good german--not in school, certainly? i laugh again. see, it's always these older women, usually former schoolteachers, that i meet on trains, who say things like this to me. ALWAYS. and ok, my german is decent--i can get around, usually get what i need without embarassing myself *completely* but i babble utter nonsense probably just as often as i say things correctly. and besides, basic questions like, "where are you from? what are you doing in germany?"--i mean, i've been answering those since mid-september. it's like learning lines for a play. i could say that stuff in my sleep--hell, i probably do!! all i'm saying is that being able to answer a few simple questions--of the sort you learn on your VERY FIRST DAY in german class--is hardly the litmus test for language proficiency. but i digress...

we get to whereever it was that we had to switch trains and do so. we join another older woman who had also experienced some sort of deutsche bahn drama/delay coming from nuremberg, so we exchange our list of grievances with the DB. suddenly, we realize the train hasn't left yet. that's kind of odd. then my traveling buddy looks out the window and sees that our train is delayed--we have to wait for another train to get it, and that train is delayed. great. it's supposed to be an 8-minute delay. i look at my itinerary. there's an 11-minute window in which i'm supposed to switch trains in heilbronn. that's gonna be a little close, but ok. we sit there and sit there. 8 minutes. 9 minutes. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. this isn't looking good. if i don't make my connecting train from heilbronn, i'm pretty much stuck there. and it doesn't look like i'm going to make it...

the calm that had settled in earlier disappears and the familiar damn-it-all-to-hell, you-have-GOT-to-be-kidding-me, this-CANNOT-be-happening, what-am-i-supposed-to-do-now???! frustration returns. this is all so ridiculous that i'm not even really angry--or worried, for that matter. i'm just blown away by the absurdity of the whole situation. the little old ladies are quite concerned about me now. what am i going to do?? i CAN'T sleep outside the train station. a young girl, all by herself. that just won't do. they start trying to figure out how much a cab would cost. no, that's too expensive. maybe there's a hostel or something where i can stay? they go on and on. the one woman--my new art student friend--had mentioned earlier--several times, actually--that she can't drive at night, otherwise she would be glad to drive me home. i'd thanked her for her concern, of course, but really, it wasn't HER problem, and everything was going to fine, i reassured her--and myself =) she'd also mentioned that i could stay at her house for the night and take the train the rest of the way in the morning, but we'd sort of dismissed the idea--at that point, i'd still had a chance of making it to waldenburg, and i REALLY wanted to get home that night and not the next day.

as it becomes increasingly clear that there's not a chance in hell i'm going to make the connecting train in heilbronn, my train buddy repeats her offer. i'm thinking about it. but i reeeeeaaaaally want to go home... we'll see, i tell her. maybe if it looks like i'm not going to make my train... she's somewhat annoyed--i mean, it's pretty clear that i'm not going to make my train. and i COULDN'T POSSIBLY stay at the train station. that's much too dangerous. she keeps giving me this look--it says, "you should just come with me, i'm telling you"... all i can do is offer, she says, it's up to you. i'm torn. i mean, irrational as it is, there's a part of me that is determined to get home, convinced that somehow, something will work out. but on the other hand, maybe this is the solution to the whole situation, staring me in the face??? i mean, we don't always get what we want in life, right? and isn't it time i grow up and accept that?? =) grrrr. what am i supposed to do?!?!?!?!

we're getting closer to heilbronn. both women are staying on that train. i'm the only one who would have to get out at heilbronn. and if i get off at heilbronn and DON'T make my connecting train, i'll be more or less stranded there until the trains start running again in the morning. so if i want to take her up on her offer--and a bed DOES sound really nice--i have to decide. now. i look at my watch. there still a very very very slim CHANCE i'll make my train... MAYBE... and i do SO want to go home... i tell the nice ladies i'm going to give it a shot, grab my stuff and stand up. they both look at me like, you're making the wrong decision, but suit yourself.

i stand there for a minute with the others waiting to get off in heilbronn. even on the off chance that i DO actually make the next train, AND the one after that... i still have no idea how i'm going to get home from waldenburg... i could walk/try to hitch hike...but on country roads in the middle of the night, where i'll probably just end up lost anyway?? or wait at the station and take the bus the next morning. either way, i'd probably get home about the same time!! this is absurd, i tell myself. here i have an offer of a bed to sleep in--in the indoors, as opposed to in the cold and soon to be rainy outdoors. what the hell am i thinking!??! i turn around and ask the woman if she's serious about the invitation. of course she is. alright then, i say, and sit back down.

she's clearly pleased with my decision. i'm still not so sure. i mean, it's a rational decision. and i don't DO rational decisions... but she seems to really want to help me, and let's face it--i need help =) we get off at her stop and throw our stuff in her car. as we're driving along, she starts, in true grandma fashion, fussing about all the things that people start thinking about when they have an unexpected guest: she's been gone all weekend and doesn't know if she has any food in the house; she wasn't expecting anyone, and the house isn't as clean as she'd like it to be, etc. very cute. i assure her it's fine, and i'm just glad to have a place to sleep, really. at some point, it occurs to me, i don't even know her name... and it's kind of awkward to ask now, isn't it!??! i mean, the only way to phrase that question this far into things is something like, "so what's your name anyway?" which almost sounds a bit accusatory. i suppose i could have said, "by the way i'm bethany," but then there's the whole weird german thing about names and titles, and i hate introducing myself with my last name, because that just seems weird to me, and it's, of course, almost weird NOT to in germany... but besides that, no one here ever understands my name the first time i say it anyway. deciding this is too complicated, and there's too much potential for awkwardness, i let it go. names are for losers.

we get to her house, and she gives me the quick tour--it is, predictably, perfectly clean, and there's plenty of food in the house. she insists on feeding me--really, do they teach this in grandma school!?! why do they always insists that you eat something?! she asks if i eat meat--umm, no, not really, i say, hoping not to sound too picky or ungrateful or something. she gives a knowing nod--" you look like someone who would be vegetarian." yeeeeaaaah i do. awesome =) after the midnight snack, there's showering--"to get the train dirt off of you"--and then it's off to bed. i was still kind of reeling from the whole thing, so it took me a bit to fall asleep, tired as i was. but when i woke up around 3 and heard it raining outside, you can imagine how grateful i was to be NOT to be outside somewhere, trudging along the highway or on a bench outside the train station.

we had breakfast together in the morning, and afterwards i looked through the photo album from her trip to the US. and somehow it just hit me how absurd this whole thing was. i mean, these things don't happen in real life, do they?!?! i mean, here i am just sitting in this woman's apartment, drinking coffee, looking at her photos like we're old friends getting together for the first time after she's returned from a trip... surreal.

obviously, i made it home after all of this--she insisted on driving me, actually, which was kind of funny. but yeah. i got home, and it was still raining, and my room was a mess, and everything suddenly seemed so...ordinary. except i did (finally!) clean my room. it was back to business as usual, except that every now and then, i'd stop and just kind of be like, umm, did that just happen??

part deux: the beginning of the end

so you've heard my rant about the deutsche post. now it's time to turn our attention to the deutsche bahn. i feel the need to preface this by saying that i'm a huge fan of the german train system. the idea of it, at least. but that said, i have something of a love-hate relationship with the deutsche bahn.

i mean, they've got some 1.5 million people riding their trains everyday, and who even knows how many trains to keep track of... and although stats and probability was never my best subject, it just seems statistically impossible that everything would run smoothly all of the time, right? but on the other hand, shouldn't it be just as unlikely that something goes wrong EVERY TIME i take the train??

for example, when alicia was here visiting, we took the train to berlin. i looked online, purchased the tickets and printed out the itinerary. because i live so in the middle of nowhere and we don't have a train station in kuenzelsau, we have to take a bus. two buses, actually. one from ingelfingen to kuenzelsau. then one from kuenzelsau to the train station in bad mergentheim. according to the good folk at the deutsche bahn, there was supposed to be a bus in ingelfingen at 9:46 on sunday morning, which we were to take to kuenzelsau. NO SUCH BUS EXISTS. so in order to make the connecting bus, alicia and i had the pleasure of trudging the 3-4 kilometers to kuenzelsau through the snow, carrying our provisions for a week and half of travel. good times. fortunately, we made the bus to bad mergentheim, and amazingly enough, had no trouble with the train to wuerzburg. in wuerzburg, however, where we were supposed to take the ICE to goettingen and then transfer to the ICE to berlin, they put on us on some other train with absolutely no explanation--with incredibly rude people no less, and while i realize the DB has no control over who rides its trains, it really just doesn't help their reputation when their customers are absolute assholes.

alicia and i are traveling on the same ticket but not sitting together because the train is that crowded, so after the conductor-lady comes along and figures out the ticket situation, she tells me that because this train isn't an ICE, it can't go fast enough to make our connection in goettingen and we're going to have to get off at the next stop and take the ICE from there to berlin instead. ok. so i go to let alicia know we're going to have to get off soon--all the while being glared at by the world's biggest asshole sitting across from her. seriously, there are some things i will never understand. and about 3 minutes before we get off the train, they announce that those of us heading to berlin should all get off at the next station and take the next ICE to berlin...BUT that train is, unfortunately, going to be delayed--by an HOUR. greeeeaaaaat. (i'm going to take this opportunity to point out, that i had considered flying to berlin because it cost about the same, but decided on taking the train, because the only flight i could find would have gotten us to berlin later than i wanted to get there.) so we get off the train, and since it's waaaay to cold to hang out on the platform for an hour, we find somewhere to sit inside and get some coffee. and wait. and wait. and wait some more. some 50 minutes later, we head back to the platform. it's going to be another half an hour. lovely. by now there's quite the crowd gathered on the platform, as everyone is apparently trying to get to berlin on this particular sunday afternoon.

after about 30 different announcements over the PA, most of us on the platform are thoroughly confused. eventually it's been determined that our train will be the next one, and that it is now going to arrive on the opposite side of the platform. a mad scramble to get to the other side ensues. old ladies wielding their suitcases like weapons shove their way to the front, giving reproachful out-of-my-way-i'm-an-old-lady-have-you-no-decency?! looks to anyone and everyone in the way. somehow, we make it onto the train. of course, since this is apparently the first train headed towards to berlin to actually make it this far north, it's FULL to the max. alicia and i make ourselves comfortable on the floor between piles of luggage stowed outside the actual seating compartments and settle in for a loooooong ride. other than having to get up and shift to one side or the other every time we stopped and they opened the doors, we pretty much stayed camped out there until the last 45 min. of the journey, when a few seats opened up.

the rest of the trip to berlin--at least the train-related portions--were uneventful. and the rest of our travels during the week were via MFG, so there wasn't a whole lot of opportunity for the DB to redeem itself.

while that was a rather extreme example of the DB drama, it's still not unusual. in fact, alicia was only here for two weeks, and of the 4 train trips taken that time period, exactly ONE was without drama. the first train we took from the airport was mysteriously delayed for 45 minutes. the next one was the uneventful one. then there was the berlin adventure. then when alicia was heading back to the airport, we had another complete BS itinerary from the deutsche bahn, which resulted in a missed bus and a great deal of stress and running around, trying to figure out how to get alicia to the airport on time. this is where my frustration with the deutsche bahn turns to appreciation, however, because i had to pack alicia off on a bus and run into the school to make it to my first class, HOPING she would be able to get a new ticket and make the string of trains i had just jotted down for her as a makeshift itinerary in the few minutes we had between realizing the info we had was wrong and when the next bus to a different train station was coming, and the very nice DB people took care of her and helped her figure everything out and went out of their way to make sure she made it to the right platforms, etc. good job, DB people!!

i've had plenty of DB drama without alicia though, but i'll spare you the gory details. but bahn drama aside, as a rule, i prefer to travel with MFGs--they're just cheaper, faster and way more fun.

but when my MFG for the return trip from salzburg didn't work out, i turned to the deutsche bahn... i promise, i'll finish the story tomorrow.

i've failed you all a.k.a. "SALZBURG"

*melodramtic sigh*

it's about time i put the "travelogue" back into this blog, right??

that said, i'm listening to the kings of convenience song "homesick" at the moment, and as y'all have probably noticed, i've been miserably homesick on and off over the past few weeks, so i've spent a frightening amount of time online looking for flights home. rather unsuccessfully. but if i can't go home, i'm at least going to go somewhere right? i sure as hell wasn't going to stay here, so... the question was, of course, where to go. vienna was on the list, which got me looking at various flights, trains, and MFGs (mitfahrgelegenheiten--the online rideboard thing...) to Austria. long story short, ended up finding an MFG to salzburg and figured i'd stay there for a couple of days and either head somewhere else for a couple of days or just head back, but i hadn't worked out the travel details for the return trip yet. typical. but whatev. have a plan. going to salzburg. cool.

GETTING THERE
meeting up with the guy i was supposed to ride with was kind of an adventure in itself. i live in the middle of nowhere, as you all know, so the bus connections are, well, sketchy at best on occasion, and as it happens, there was exactly ONE bus that travels to this particular stop--a parking lot along the highway--in the afternoons. great. so we arrange tentatively to meet at 5. but seeing as there's only one bus, i'm going to be getting there shortly after 4 and just hanging around. fine. so then the guy calls a bit after 4 and is like, umm, i'm going to be a bit later, maybe 5:30. i'll call you when i get closer. sure. so now i've got well over an hour to kill, and you know, why not explore the area a bit. so i wander into the nearby, umm, "town"--consisting of about 20 houses, a church the size of my bedroom, a playground for the kiddies-and there are several-because there can't be much to do in this town other than procreate, and... a barn full of pigs. yes, that's right, a barn full of pigs. just hanging out on an otherwise residential street. right. ok. so i walk up and down the main drag a couple of times. i mean, it took about 3 minutes, you know. then sat on a bench near the playground and read in the remains of the afternoon sun for a good 45 minutes. still not having heard from MFG guy, i'm beginning to get a little nervous. i mean, if he doesn't show, i'm kind of screwed, because there's not another bus heading anywhere near a place where i can catch a bus back home. fabulous. then a little after 5:30 MFG guy calls. he's in the parking lot. cool.

so we take off. first of all, could hardly understand the guy. to avoid propagating any sorts of rumours about dialects in germany, i'm not going to tell you where he's from, but daaaaamn. plus, he's a guy, and weird as this sounds, i sometimes have a harder time understanding guys in german than girls. don't really know what that's about, but yeah. after the initial adjustment period--me with my accent, him with his, what a pair!--we were cool. had a nice chat about all the places i still need to see in germany, which other european cities i should visit, where i should go on vacation--when i'm rich and can afford things like vacation, that is!! patagonia, anyone!??! then he asks me when i'm heading back. not sure, i tell him, maybe sunday or monday. he's like, oh yeah? i'm heading back sunday, if you want to ride back with me then. cool. he's not sure what time exactly, probably in the afternoon, so i'm supposed to text him sometime and let him know if i want to ride back on sunday. he drops me off, and i head to my hostel.

THE HOSTEL
get to the hostel, check in, head to my room. it's about 10 p.m. someone's already sleeping. there's another american girl in the hallway, who's also staying in the room--and also about to go to bed. ok, guess i'll go to bed, too. granted, it's not even 10:30, but hey, sleep is never a bad idea, right? try telling that to the 3000 pre-teens running up and down the halls screaming all night!! =) seriously, wasn't that THE COOLEST, when you were in jr. high, and you went away on a school trip for the weekend?!?!? man, those were the days... props to the teachers who chaperoned us. seriously.

anyway. i drift in and out of various stages of not quite sleeping until our finnish roommate comes in around 11:30 and turns on the light. the other american girl does not like this and makes that quite clear. i'm hiding under my pillow, pretending to sleep. finnish girl leaves the room for about 10 minutes. returns and turns on the light again. american girl: "are you going to be doing that a lot???" finnish girl: "obviously, you've never lived in a dormitory before." american girl: (pauses) "actually i have, that's why i brought a FLASHLIGHT." (this is the part where i'm stifling laughter, still pretending to sleep with my head under my pillow.) i make up my mind to avoid american girl at all costs during this trip.

THE CITY
get up the next morning, breakfast with the aforementioned 3000 preteens, and head out into the town. the short version: you know how sometimes you walk into a city, and you just fit? you just love it right from the beginning? you know you could LIVE there? this did NOT happen with salzburg. it was..nice. i mean, i liked it. it was an interesting place, full of history and architecture, lots to see--and lots of tourists, of course. but it wasn't someplace that really grabbed me the way some other cities have. i don't know.

so yeah, i spent most of the day wandering around, checking out some of the tourist sites--the house where mozart was born, lots of churches and cemeteries, an exhibit of old russian icons, a few of the sites from The Sound of Music--i'm not hardcore enough to do the whole Sound of Music Tour!!--exploring little side streets and peering into shop windows, hiking and admiring the views, sitting by fountains writing postcards, drinking coffee. you know, the usual.

get back to the hostel to find the american girl has also returned. we end up chatting for quite a while. decide i don't need to avoid her after all. so we eat dinner and wander around the city for a bit in the evening. watch part of the sound of music in the lobby when we got back--they show it every night, believe it or not!!

the next morning i have to tell the nice hostel people that i want to stay another night, because i had only booked two nights ahead of time, because i wasn't sure what my plans were. but there's a whole group moving into my room, so they move me to another room, but i have to check out and then check back in sometime in the afternoon. whatev. wander around the city some more, check out the Festung ... check back into the hostel in the early afternoon. get my stuff settled. in walk two more american girls. they're pretty cool and have just spent 3 weeks in italy. we end up walking around the town for the rest of the afternoon. they want to go for a run, and at this point, i'm about to fall asleep standing up. so i go back to the room to get something to read. run into former american roommate in the hall. she's had a bit of hostel drama and was randomly moved to another room as well. i grab my magazine and find a bench outside in the sun and read for bit in town--because it is GORGEOUS outside. i even got a baby sunburn!! then head back to the hostel again. am about to fall asleep reading, when two more american girls walk in. semester abroad. great. of the "yeah, i've been to england, france, italy, germany, umm, let's see, oh yeah, spain..." type. but what they really mean is that they spent about 24 hours in a major city within that country. so they spend a weekend in paris, for example, and come home and say, "yeah, i went to france." ok, i know i'm not being entirely fair, but you know what i mean, right?!?!?

end up watching another part of The Sound of Music--from the beginning up until "sixteen going on seventeen"--i just couldn't handle it at that point!!

another american girl joins our room later in the evening. seriously, do they put us all together on purpose!?!? (to spare the poor europeans from the torture of our company, probably... *rolling of the eyes*)

GETTING HOME
sunday, more of the same, text MFG guy, wander around town for a while, do a bit more hiking. don't hear anything from MFG guy, find an internet cafe and look for trains back home. wander around some more. still haven't heard anything from MFG guy, kind of assume he didn't get my message and head to the train station.

this is where the real adventure begins! but i'm tired of writing, and you're tired of reading, so in true cliffhanger fashion (oh, don't worry, it's not THAT exciting), "to be continued..."

cleaning house

this one's dedicated to all of you who have had to live with me =)

so my room has achieved a rather uncharacteristic state of messiness over the past few weeks. granted, it's not actually "messy"--not even really by my standards! (i don't exactly consider myself a neat-freak, although a few of my previous roommates might disagree!!=)) but the piles of crap to deal with have grown, and i'm not even going to tell you how badly i need to vacuum. the laundry was dealt with over the weekend, which improved things drastically, but still. the thing that concerns me about the current state of affairs is that i have no real desire to deal with it. normally, i get really freakish about such things--as those of you who've lived with me can attest to!--and come home one day and just clean the whole thing up in an hour, and then all is right with the world again. but i've been aware of and annoyed by the mess for a good two weeks now and have yet to actually DO anything about it--other than the laundry, which had a lot more to do with vanity than with cleanliness...

but thinking about roommates and various sketchy apartments and houses reminded me--in a roundabout way--of one of life's greatest mysteries...

when i started my first year of college, our incoming class was huge, and the university had something of housing crisis, and i ended up in a triple--sharing the world's smallest dorm room with not one, but TWO other people. despite general disgruntledness about the whole thing at the beginning, we all got along so well that we VOLUNTARILY shared the same room the following year. BUT both of my roommates were snoozers. I am not. I can neither understand nor appreciate the snooze button and highly doubt that i ever will. so the first couple of weeks were a little rough. 3 alarm clocks, 2 of which went off every 9 minutes for about an hour every morning. but then, somehow, we learned to sleep through each other's alarms, each only waking up to our own. but HOW?? how does your brain know which is yours? our alarms all sounded the same. we had classes or worked at different times every day, so it wasn't like we had developed anything even resembling regular sleeping patterns. (sleep?? what is this word "sleep"? we were college students, for crying out loud...) Seriously, though, i've been wondering about this for a good six years now--insight, anyone??

deutsche post

so in my utter and complete destituteness of late--seriously, i never thought i'd be poorer than i was as a student--i was wrong!!--i've been paying more attention to what i spend money on: food, obviously; coffee--yes, it's a separate category; postcards; at the post office. and really, that's pretty much it. i think. i'm not allowed to buy clothes, partially because i'm broke, but also because i have no idea how i'm going to get all my stuff home as it is, so the last thing i need is...more STUFF. maybe the occasional movie or theatre and/or live music production. and travel--that's where the largest chunk goes... but travel aside, i've recently noticed that i spend the most money at the post office, of all places. it's also one of the places i spend the most time, somehow. i feel like i'm constantly going to the post office.... weird.

but that said, here's the thing about the post office... first of all, it costs a euro to send a postcard to the US and 1.70 to send a letter. does that seem like a lot to anyone else??? i mean, a standard LETTER from the US to germany costs, what? 90 cents??? and it costs ONE WHOLE EURO just to send a freaking POSTCARD from here to the US???? and i assure you, it's not because of any great superiority on the part of the deutsche post. it takes the same amount of time for stuff to get from germany to the US as it does to get something from the US to germany. alicia and i tested this: we sent letters on the same day, a friday, i believe, and we both received our respective letters on the following wednesday. it just cost twice as much for me to send mine. (shaking head in disbelief.) and it's not like the postal workers are any friendlier here. in fact, there's one guy in particular who absolutely hates me. (there's also one who's really nice and always jokes with me, just to be fair!!) but the angsty guy...he always happens to be there when i have something complicated to mail. like today. i had two thing to send within germany, one going to the UK, two to the US. i explain all of this to him. he looks at me like it's NOT his job to deal with this. unbelievable. i would have purchased stamps as well, but he just scares me, so i didn't want to ask!! plus--something else i simply do not understand--the 1 euro stamp doesn't seem to exist!!! if it costs a euro to send a postcard to north america, don't you think it would be logical to have a 1 euro stamp!?!? not to mention that 1 euro is just a nice round even amount anyway. i know they USED to exist. but now, whenever i ask for them, they give me some other combination 90 cents and 10 cents. or two 50 cent stamps. i just don't get it. you can buy 1 euro stamps from the little automated machines outside the post office, but they're a) really big, and b) just ugly. angsty postal worker man actually got mad at me once, because i had a couple of postcards and needed stamps for them. i had already written on the postcards, leaving room for a stamp--A stamp--a 1 euro stamp, because this made sense to me. but when you send something directly from the post office, they just print up a sticker stamp, rather than putting actual stamps on whatever you're sending. and the sticker stamp is like 3 inches wide, for no apparent reason. this, of course, would not have fit on the postcards without covering up half of what i'd written, and he was irritated that he had to use real stamps. but seriously, if it's costing me a whole euro to send a stinking postcard, you better believe i'm going to fit as much on that postcard as i can!!!! don't expect me to leave 3 inches of blank space for your stinking sticker!!! when they COULD just be normal and sell 1 EURO stamps in the first place... yet another example of german INefficiency!!!! *grin*