Nürnberg gab mir viel Erfolg!

Hey dudes. :D So, on my start bar (on the computer), where it has a list of quick-choose programs, the most-used programs are iTunes, Word, Paint, Notepad, Skype, and Adobe Reader. This means that it is truly no longer an academic quarter. :D Because during school, my most-used programs are iTunes, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Adobe Reader, and MATLAB. Boooooring!!

Okay, so here’s something weird: I took the IC train to Nürnberg, and the ICE on my return trip, AND THE IC WAS FASTER!!!! ICE’s supposed to be the fastest train available,  but it took a half hour longer than the IC did. I mean, it didn’t bother me, but still, when you say something’s the fastest and it’s not, I cannot help but have an issue with you.

EWWWW!! These vitamin C tablets I bought (for one euro) are FIZZY!!! outta control... and I can’t seem to be able to handle it. Schade. Is there anything that’s not carbonated here, or more precisely, fizzing when it shouldn’t be? I don’t like mineralwasser at all, because it’s usually carbonated. And these vitamin tablets are like lemon-flavored alkaseltzer.

Anyways, it turns out that Anja really IS 60 years old! She and her husband Norbert were my first couch surfing hosts (but really it was only Anja, since Norbert was out of town). She is tiny and spry as a cat. We went someplace Saturday night that had a dance floor, and she danced like that calvin and hobbes cartoon where calvin’s wearing those sunglasses and PJs, and dancing all over the place. Yeah, that’s Anja. :D

But anyways, when we were sitting in her house Friday night, she fed me breakfast. Or rather, Frühstück, since when I think “breakfast” I think cereal, eggs, pancakes, bacon, etc etc. German Frühstück is sliced meats, cheese, bread, butter, usw usw. I took the regular-looking bread and made a sandwich (you know, top and bottom layer of bread, middle layers of meat and cheese), and Anja was quick to tell me that what I was doing was “wrong,” lol. In Germany, since the bread is so dense, the bread layer on top of the sandwich just gets in the way of the whole taste experience. These aren’t her words, it’s just my hypothesis, but I believe it to be pretty accurate. The bread rocks my socks off over here, plus it’s pretty dry, so two layers of (dry) awesomeness would overwhelm the rest of the sandwich (make you thirsty). So I concede, and shall now eat my German sandwiches with only one layer of bread. Shoot, I did it today at breakfast, and it was deeeeelicious! Well, I usually only have one piece of bread at breakfast, but this time I didn’t fold it over on itself. Anja had also, Friday night, cut me a piece of bread with lots of seeds and nuts in it. I ate it, because I’m the guest. Garr, was it awful!! Mom would have loved it. :D

So Friday night, after I was well fed, she pulled out every map she had of Nürnberg as well as bus and subway timetables, and we mapped out a plan of action for me to take Saturday when I visited all my apartments. It was very thorough, and time consuming, and I just wanted to go to bed (finally did at 2 AM), but all that planning helped me tremendously on Saturday. See, I had to wake up, make and eat breakfast, walk about half a mile to the bus stop, get on the bus to Fürth Rathaus (city hall), take the subway four stops to Maximillian Straße, then walk another half mile or so to my first apartment tour. Here’s how it really went down: wake up, fall back asleep, wake up, grab bread and cheese and ham and eat on the go, walk to bus stop, miss bus, call Mr. Vogel (guy renting out the first place I was to see) to let him know I was going to be about 15 minutes late, grab bus to Rathaus, Vogel calls me again and tells me which bus to take to make it faster after the subway, take the subway, take the bus two stops down, and wait for Herr Vogel to pick me up. Phew. Goodness gracious. This was all in German, too. I was kinda proud of myself. :) After the tour, he tells me that his neighbor is also looking for people for rooms in her house, so I say sure I’d love to talk to her! She was a whole lot more talkative than Vogel was. I think he was put off by the fact that German wasn’t my best language. But That woman taaaalked and talked and talked, but it was good because I understood all of it. :D Though, she was a smoker, so the house kinda smelled like smoke. :-\

Next was the tour of the house on Gugelstraße. If I thought the lady was speaking a lot, this girl proved me to be sorely mistaken. She ran lingual circles around the other woman! But she was oh so nice. The fourth tour I had almost didn’t happen. I called his number three, four times before he answered, and when I met him, it was obvious that he had just woken up. At 2 in the afternoon! Haha, he apologized and said something about being out last night with friends, so that really musta been quite a night! His apartment was nice, but the area was not so nice. Also, I walked circles around three or four blocks before I found the street. Even with all those maps Anja had equipped me with!

Saturday night, I went with Anja and her friends to a wine tasting dinner at an italian restaurant. At one point, Thomas asked for some pasta, and they brought out this ENORMOUS bowl of pasta and sauce. I definitely took a picture!!

Then once again (and because of the time zone), I was kept up until the wee hours of the morning, this time 4. Gosh, was it awful getting up for church... Turns out I could’ve slept for longer, since I arrived at 9:40 (after the walking→bus→subway routine), and church didn’t start until 10:30. Sigh. But church was awesome. I understood about 70% of the sermon, and we even sang some songs in english! Before service (or, Gottdienst) I met face-to-face with Nathan Hershey. Woot woot! And he actually showed me on the map where exactly I would be working, which is also located on Gugelstraße. hmmm.....

I then had one more apartment tour after church. yeah, definitely smelled like marijuana. Pretty sure the guy’s cat was blazed. He was nice enough, but.... I don’t want to be in the same living quarters as that monkey business. So then and there, I decided to take the apartment on Gugelstraße. Spaß!! So YES, boys and girls, it’s tiiiiiime for the—just kidding. I HAVE AN ADDRESS!!!! I’m going to live right above a bakery, so here’s to hoping I don’t become fat during my time in Deutschland.

So, comment on this post, or send me an email if you wanna see my pictures. Since some of them include alcohol, I’m not going to make the photo album available for all to see. :D