...kitchen anxiety and more

Ok, so finally a blog entry where I sit down and take my time to write. So it could be cleverer or longer. I am for both.

So what have I done since getting here? First off, going through customs in Germany is ridiculous. Albeit I've only been through the following customs previously

US > Mexico
Mexico > US
US > England
England > US
US > Trinidad
Trinidad > US

Ok so maybe US > Mexico was still the easiest. You gotta love the revolving door across the border. Is that still there or was it killed off? But in both of the other instances where I entered a country from the US they at least wanted to know where I was going. Even in Trinidad they wanted an address where I could be located. Not so here, they just looked at my passport at passport control, stamped and waved me through. Customs declaration is always easy though, as I never have anything to declare. Maybe that only happens for Americans and EU nationals though? I did see some people getting hassled through customs declaration even though they went through the nothing to declare line. They had come from Tanzania (I think) but I don't know what their nationality was. They were very Indian looking though. There was some violence a week or so ago on some Indian people, my dad was trying to tell me about it but I didn't want to listen. I think I look pretty Western though to the untrained eye, and Bremen is pretty diverse because of the universities and such. I don't think I'll get hassled.

So what about people I've met so far...
Xinlei is my future roommate, he's been taking me around getting somewhat situated. He brought me to my hostel, let me nap, came back and took me to the apartment for dinner. After that I managed to find my way back to the hostel on my own.

So interesting story, the girl in the bed next to mine (Kristine?) tried to get me to go to the disco with her. At first I said yes because it's hard for me to turn down dancing. But the more I thought about it I realized
1) I had to meet with my contact person at the school the next morning
2) It was my first night in a strange city in a strange country which, while I know the language, if someone said something lewd to me I probably wouldn't understand.
3) There was something strange about the girl's speech.
I'm not talking about her English per-se, I spoke with her briefly in both English and German and something was off. She may have been hard of hearing but I don't feel I had to talk louder to her or anything and I doubt she was mentally impaired either. But just something about that made me nervous. Oh, and the fact she was 17.

Anyway, I gave a lame excuse (jetlag) and stayed behind with a very interesting 24 year old from Australia who I don't know the name of. He was nice though. He had been backpacking through Europe for the last 3 1/2 months and was on the final leg of his journey (he came to Bremen for the Becks brewery, then on to Amsterdam, then England for the third time, then home).

Oh yeah, so the 17 year old went to the club around 10pm and never came back. I mean...I assume she came back at some point because now her bags are gone. But she certainly didn't sleep here. I wonder what ever happened to her. When I left the hostel at 9:45am she still hadn't come back.

Xinlei met me at the trainstation at 10am and we went to my school. We were a bit early so we then walked back so he could mail packages. Walked back to my school, he went home and I met with my contact at the school. I spent about an hour and a half with him learning about the school, including this gem of a story.

So in Bremen there are maybe 4 or 5 Gymnasium left, they're considered kind of outdated I guess. Anyway, until the 1980s or so, the Gymnasium where I'm working had a rivalry with one about five minutes walk away. In the 1940s their way of competing was saying how many American fighter pilots they had shot down. Afterwards they became infantry units and most of them died.

Aren't German stories great?

Also he told me that when he was a little boy he and his friends would play in the ruins of the center of the city hoping to find bodies or gold. They never found either.

You know, the thing is I almost forgot where I was until he told these stories. Everyone is so nice here. But it's still Germany.

Also everything, by which I mean food, is cheap here. Let's list what I've eaten and approximate prices.

almond croissant + fanta = aprox. 2.50 Euros
pasta + canned herring in dill = I actually don't know, Xinlei bought all of that, but less than 2 Euro for the both of us
lunch in the university cafeteria (fish filet, broccoli, potatoes, muffin, milk) 2.75 Euro

Things I've bought but haven't eaten yet
box of 6 cereal bars + 1.5 liter bottle of water = 1.14 Euro
can of tuna, oven bake garlic bread, frozen peas, yogurt = 2.88 Euro

Now I realize that yeah, conversion rate and such, but its still hella cheap.

Anyway, all I've done since coming back from the school is nap and go food shopping. Oh, and talk to Justin online for a bit about the social implications of facebook. I think somewhere in there I played Nintendogs.

Before someone berrates me about how I'm in Germany and I shouldn't spend all my time in a hostel, that's exactly what I plan on doing until I actually get settled. Once I have my papers in order (which won't be until after the 6th) I'll start doing things, like going to Hamburg, Berlin and Hannover and maybe Munich, though Munich is so far away. And then when I'm really quite settled Amsterdam, Prague, and Vienna (Amsterdam is super close)

Also I love the street cars here. I prefer any mode of transportation on a rail as opposed to buses. The rail insures there are only so many places you can accidentally end up.

I'm going to go eat my cereal bar now.

Also, tomorrow, I'm going to try to find somewhere with prepared food. There is a kitchen here but my unnamed social anxiety issue prevents me from using it. So the frozen peas I bought yesterday are pretty much just sitting in the fridge, I may leave them behind. Right now I'm trying to work up to going in there, getting my can of tuna, opening it, and eating it directly from the can. Baby steps.