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*