Pics! And words.

I took a walk today. And I mean a REALLLLLLLY long walk. About an hour-and-a-half, just walking. Here, lemme ask google just how far I walked. . . wow, 3.35 miles. Reeeediculous. But hey, if I hadn’t done that, I might not have found all of THESE: (short preface, you are about to take this walk with me)

Koenigs, holla!

I walked about 40 more yards (haven't converted to metric yet) and found THIS billboard:

I kind of (okay, not "kind of") REALLY like how disturbed this child looks in the picture. It goes along so well with my opinion that Germans tell it like it is. 

To the right, please find a picture of the Straßenbahn tracks. Straight down the middle of the street (which I might have already discussed). Through a lawn. Incredible.

Below, I pictured one of the Tors to the Altstadt. This time, it has peoples pictured right next to it so you can grasp the size of these gargantuan structures. SO big.

So I keep walking, and it appears that I've entered the arabic corner of Altstadt. Strange smells are in my nose, and there are arabic subtitles on some of the shops (hence the guess about the ethnicity of the area. couldn't pinpoint it on smell alone.). But anyway, I did NOT expect to see this:

But I DID get really happy :D

One more boring picture, then I'll leave you alone:

Taken from a bridge in the Altstadt

I’ve come to learn that germans are very suspicious of anyone they haven’t met. Anja, my couch surfing hostess a week and a half ago, was dubious of me going to tour an apartment in Swabach (a smaller town directly south of Nürnberg) and was wary of the guy I was supposed to meet (as it turns out I didn’t need to meet him, anyways, so she was very happy, lol). And yesterday, because my boss was dubious of my roommate, he wanted me to fully understand my renting agreement before I went over it with her.

I feel super frail when wearing girly things. “Girly” as in, un-baggy clothes. Well anyways, I feel weak. Like, I won’t be able to open a door anymore. I guess the more material I’m wearing, the bigger the “m” in my momentum equation, so I guess it IS easier for me to open doors in that case...

So Monday, I paid 20 euro to get a guest card for lunch (15 of which was loaded on as usable lunch money, the other 5 I will receive back when I return the guest card. Man, everything in Germany does this! Back home, it was (and prolly still is) only Aldi. Surprise surprise, they’re a German store, so yeah. Even the guy at the counter in the Einwohneramt (residential office) made me pay a euro for his crappy pen, but that is definitely incentive to return the pen.). Today after I “paid” for lunch, I found out that I have exactly 2 Euros left on the card! Wow. couldn’t ha’ been more exact if I tried!

Speaking of the Einwohneramt, I successfully registered this morning! Dude, she didn’t even LOOK at my work or my rent contracts while processing the registration form. Okay, lemme back up. I found the building okay. It was easy enough to spot, with the tall, imposing old-fashioned stone façade, with really out-of-place huge, unadorned steel doors which were also awkward to open. I stepped in, and there was a sign facing me with a bunch of german on it with an arrow pointing down the stairs. Of course I had my blinders on, and didn’t read ANY of it, so down the stairs I went! And I was promptly turned around and sent back up the stairs. To where the guy bullied me into giving him a euro for the cheap-o pen which was the german equivalent of a Staples pen. So I got a number, went into the waiting room, ignored everything, started TRYING to fill out my registration form, stopped when I was worried about getting stuff wrong, turned around, realized the big tower of numbers in the middle of the room was there for a reason, FURTHER realized that my number had been skipped over, marched over to mister stuffy-pants and demanded a new number, then sat there staring at said tower of numbers determined not to miss my number this time. So I go to my counter, where the woman looked over my half-filled out form and gave it straight back to me telling me she’d help me once I’ve filled it out in peace (aka, “I’m busy, so you just sit here and struggle for a little bit longer while I do really important bureaucratic things.”). But before she could ignore me, I pitifully tried to ask for help, and thankfully she actually DID help me, a little. She never asked to see anything but my passport during the entire process! Then when it was over, she said “Es ist fertig. Bitte sehr!” but she said it really fast and really quiet. American equivalent of “K-bye.” I know Germans are brusque and really efficient, but I kinda miss the unecessary polite-ness of Americans. Yeah, I kinda like the "let's not cause a problem" culture we got goin' on in the states.

In direct opposition to what transpired at the Einwohneramt, my interaction with the banker man who helped me open an account was extremely pleasant! True, there wasn’t a really high volume of people at the bank this morning, but still... And by the way, registration took about 15 minutes, and opening the bank took about an hour. Sheesh.

There’s been a couple times over here where I know I must have come across as dumb as a rock. I can’t help it! It’s so easy to miss a key word or two in a foreign language. I will forever be extremely sympathetic of foreigners.

Today, my boss took a drink from his soft drink or whatever it is, set it down, looked at me, and proceeded to be distressed that I didn’t have anything to drink. “It is not enough! You need somesing!”

So, Maria said a whole sentence to me in english. It was really weird, I’ll let you know. I had to add a whole new dimension to her in my brain.

SCRUBS SEASON 8 WAS SOOOOO GOOD!! For some random reason today, I thought of Todd in the earlier seasons, which led me to the new version of scrubs, then I was really sad, because I can’t think of scrubs season 8 without remembering that all those CLOSED-MINDED lovers of scrubs didn’t like it because it “just wasn’t the same!” Yes, I am mocking them, and yes, I am most definitely whining.

So far, three people have told me that they’re impressed with my german! Not counting my mother. I guess any american who doesn’t make them talk in english impresses the Germans. But Anja said “Sie spricht ganz gut Deutsch!” to one of her buddies the night I met her, I met a girl named Jessica at church Sunday who was also surprised at my german speaking abilities, and Herr Tühya at the bank was also pleased that I could converse with him entirely in german.

My wiles are awesome. :D