Whew. Over a day in Germany and I do not seem to be freaking out yet. Excellent.
Yesterday, I arrived at the airport after a long flight from SF to London and another flight to Munich. When passing through customs, the customs officer asked me something in English with a German accent that I didn't understand, and I instantly replied, "¿cómo?" He repeated the question, asking how long I would be staying in Germany and, eager to make up for slipping into Spanish, answered "la mitad de un mes-er, a couple weeks." Oh yes, this bodes well for the twelve months ahead of me... After getting my baggage, I was picked up by Lenke, one of the people who works with the LC program here, who was really sweet and helpful and speaking in English (I had spent the last hour of my flight from England to Germany trying to remember how to say anything in German that would be particularly useful, but kept falling asleep without coming up with any memory boosts, as the Spanish through customs demonstrates). She showed me my room (single room dorm, with shared kitchen, bathroom and showers, but my own sink and bed/study room) and gave me my orientation information for the program before running off to find the next student at the airport. I managed to unpack and put away everything neatly (Carrie would be so proud) and decorate my room to the best of my abilities given my resources (a sarong and two pretty scarves) before falling asleep at about 5 pm.
This morning, I woke up early (well, 8:30, which I suppose isn't very impressive after over 15 hours of sleep), and pulled out my lovely touristy Lonely Planet book on Bavaria to plan my day. I decided to go to the Marienplatz and walk around from there in the Altstadt (old city) of Munich, where most of the touristy sites are (churches, fountains, really old buildings the like), to get some of my touristy ya-yas out before the program orientation starts on Monday. Before I finished drawing out a copy of the map in the book (because I would rather be caught dead than pull out a tourist book or obvious map in the middle of a city - however, taking pictures of everything that does not display an American flag is acceptable behavior), I had a visit. I didn't know about it at first, I thought it was a fire alarm beeping or something when I heard the doorbell ring; I'm not accustomed to dorms with doorbells. But on the third ring I decided to go see if someone was at the door. As it turns out, it was Jay, a student in my German class from LC. It was exciting to see him, not only because he is the first non-Spanish-speaking LC student I've seen since December, but also because it reminded me that I really am here and will be studying for a year. Yay for studying abroad. Furthermore, of all the students that I saw on the list, I believe that Jay is the only one who was ever in my class. So yay for Katja's 101 students.
After Jay left to go shopping for electrical plug converters, I began my touristy outing to München's Altstadt. For the most part, it was a success: I rode the correct U-Bahns, I took a bunch of pictures, purchased a pesto-like spread, grapes, and a loaf of bread from a farmers market without having to resort to points and grunts (or English), and didn't get lost. In fact, two people asked me for directions (but I had no clue about anything outside of the little route I'd designed for myself, and of course would not pull out a map in public, so I was of no help to them). It's the little things that count, I suppose. I didn't get to see everything I had planned to see because I got tired after the first five hours of wandering in not-particularly-good walking shoes, but will continue my wandering tomorrow (and buy tape so that I can put pretty pictures on the walls of my room).
The only setback of the day came when I slipped into a cellular shop to buy a new SIM card for my cell phone. I would like to preface this mini-story with two facts: (1) I purchased a very nice, rather expensive tri band cell phone in Chile for the specific purpose of continuing to use it when I got to Germany. A single band would have worked just fine in Chile. And the retail lady at the Entel store assured me that I could indeed change SIM cards in the phone without a problem. Foreshadowing, anyone? Read on. (2) Cell phone vocabulary is not exactly in the German curriculum at LC. Back to my attempts to buy a SIM card, which luckily is a cognate in German, Spanish, and English. After a bit of difficulties regarding the card that I wanted (apparently there are multiple versions), and various bits of paperwork, the man who was helping me put the new SIM card in my phone and gave me the new PIN. I entered the PIN number and the phone instantly blocked me. Apparently, my phone does NOT work with any other SIM cards. Not only was I vaguely annoyed (I mean, I can't exactly march back to the store in Valparaíso and demand a refund), but quite confused - what is the point of selling tri-band phones in Chile if they can only use the Chilean SIM card that they start with- which would be single band, and much cheaper. Oh, now I get it... Well, touché, Chileans, as the customers will obviously not discover this until they are in another country. But ARG... One more bit of complaining: this is NOT a rant that translates well into German given my vocabulary. So, after mentally beating myself for sounding so ridiculous, I had to buy a new phone (which will not work with other SIM cards, but at least it was cheap and, as the guy at the cell phone store pointed out, sehr chic). And, upon leaving the store, I think we all know what that guy was thinking: Dume Gringa.
Right. Well, it happens. As I recall, my first attempt to buy a cell phone in Chile sent me straight into my only day of culture shocked bitchiness in my entire semester in Chile, listing on the bus ride home all things Chilean that grated my nerves (first and foremost: incessant honking in traffic jams). Stephanie remembers this lovely episode, I'm sure... So, at least I am not likely to assault anyone who speaks German near me or anything extreme like that.
I will finish the touristy explorations of Munich tomorrow, and then our program orientation starts on Monday. I'm excited about starting! But at the same time, I am definitely worried about the fact that I haven't been able to practice German for a semester... Positive thinking, yeah? And hey, if I'm the most poorly-prepared person here, I'll just have to improve my German that much faster, because those German linguistic courses in the main University are really calling to me for second semester. Sanskrit too... so that will be the contingency plan if my German still sucks at the end of this semester: Sanskrit, Japanese, French, Arabic, and Italian as my courses. No German necessary. I wonder how quickly my advisers would block my e-mail if I seriously suggested that. Maybe Juan would go with it if I took a Spanish literature course...
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