I wanna go home!München, Deutschland

Yeah yeah. bitch moan, i know. Still, I have pretty much had it with Germany and all its Germans (and non-Germans). The whole place smells like an ash tray, all of Munich is overpriced (for a relative drop in quality from the rest of the world), technological advances seemed to have passed Bavaria by (cash-register AND a scale in a grocery store? ridiculous! You must weigh all your produce before hand. But only those that are sold by the kilo. some of them are marked. others are not. many are marked incorrectly. BUT, if you weight it and it is pro Stuck (by the piece), the cashier will think you're an idiot. ... S/He will, in fact, also think you're an idiot if you (a) do not have exact change (b) DIDN'T weigh something that you should have, or (c) don't speak with a perfect Bavarian accent. Just the top three, but oh trust me, there's more.)

What else... Oh, the University. That is not an "oh" as in, "oh! i know", nor as in "oh, right", but rather "oh god why". Stuck in the stone age and elite about it, this is a great place for you to test out your language skills if you are a masochistic self-hating freak. The profs care more about the layout of your paper than the content, they don't trust the internet as a source, but their libraries are filled with books so old that many are, under the dust, fading to the point of illegibility. That's for the German department. The Spanish department has a decent selection of literature-related books, but nothing even remotely recent (or objective) regarding the history of Spain. I therefore had to sift through books for my final paper on the Arab rule in Spain, with the only available resources being written either by Nazis or, more likely, members of the Spanish inquisition. Neutrality= nonexistant and the Christian church is (but of course) always in the right. Fabulous. Screw that, I'm using Wikepidia for some VALID information.

That paper is, of course, due on Thursday. 10+ pages, and what have I done? The introduction. I have no motivation other than to go home. I know this because, although it's like pulling teeth to force myself to sit and write even 1/2 a page for a class, I spent the first half hour after I woke up to pack everything but the clothes I will need for the (breathe. say it) 5 more days I'm in this damn country.

5 days in which I have to take my theater final, write that paper for my history class, finish packing, move to Jay's room (we have to move ALL our stuff to do this), clean my room (without the availability of any cleaning supplies. Vaccuum cleaner? But surely you jest), and turn in my key. Oh, and close my bank account and help one of my profs translate some speech thingy into English and not kill my hallmates.

The last one, I regret to say, will be tricky. I somehow managed to slip under the wire to gain access to a hall that seems to require its residents to be lazy, rude, loud, messy, or stupid. Over-achievers that they are, the rest of my hallmates tend to push themselves that extra mile to achieve excellence in all 5 categories.

Let's just go through the run-down, shall we? And no, I don't know names, so i'm going by ethnicity or appearance.

We have... (1) obnoxious Chinese girl who hocks (don't even know how to spell that) up phlegm at every possible moment (especially while she and/or others are in the kitchen cooking) and who's German is impossible to differenciate from her Chinese, and who seems to be a bit of a shy pisser, as, when she is in one of the TWO hall bathroom stalls and someone uses the other, she will wait until the other is long gone before breathing. Never mind that she uses the one stall with a seat to do this. Jay and I are tempted to bring a novel and just see if she'll pass out. (2) her idiotic blonde roommate, who does not seem to function if the hall TV is not turned on (i swear she lives on the couch in the main room), never cleans up her dishes, and is incapable of distinguishing between a bathtub and a shower. See, the shower is next to the bathtub, in one room. Using one effectively occupies the other as well, as you lock the main door to do so. The shower is tiled, with a slightly raised rim on the floor to prevent flooding. The bathtub has a faucet and a movable showerhead, but no curtain. There is a spot on the wall (about 6+ feet from the ground) upon which you can hang the showerhead. If you are idiotic enough to do this, the water goes straight onto the floor, missing the edge of the tub by a few feet (at least we have good water pressure?). Blondie cannot seem to come to terms with this, and every time she takes a shower, she simply MUST do so in the bathtub, leaving a small lake behind, without using a towel or the provided giant squeegy to clean it up. (3) Loud Asian guy. He sings loudly and out of tune (in English) every time he walks down the hall. He spends most of his time on the balcony immediately next to our room talking (either to himself or to a friend, I don't know) so insanely loudly that it wakes me up in the mornings, and I can hear it well after I've left the building on my way to the U-Bahn. He also has a penchant for high-pitched and piercing laughter. again, loud. (4) our newest gem, man-who-cannot-breathe-if-not-using-a-cigarette. I think he's french, but the cigarette thing beats that out as far as descriptive features go. He smokes non-stop, normally in one of the two balconies on our hall, though leaving the door open so as to share the joy with us all. One of these two balconies is the one immediately adjacent not only to my room, but also to the kitchen's two giant windows. He doesn't bother to shut them before lighting up a pack.

Other than these specific four pains-in-the-ass, general annoyances abound: food stealing (and someone actually stole the TOP to one of my icecube trays. not the tray, just the top), inability to clean dishes (esp. common ones), using can-openers and sieves with meat (the former for cutting, the latter for thawing), inability to go to the bathroom without (a) peeing on the seat (b) stuffing the toilet with paper, or (c) leaving a trail of crap in the bowl, although there's a toilet bowl brush thing in every stall. They leave hair in the shower. they take the time to STUFF IT DOWN THE BATHTUB DRAIN, they're obnoxious, they're dumb, and they just keep on living. Honestly, at this point of filth, I'd expect them to have died off from eboli or siphilis or something, but i think they're pretty much immune to everything by now.

I live with cockroaches.

I have no motivation, and no interest to do anything. I tried distracting myself with video games for a bit, but now i've beaten donkey kong and dungeon master and am sick of frying my brain. I'm sick of germany. i'm sick of feeling so BLAH. I wanna go home.

*sigh*. Just 5 more days. On the plus side, Jay and I went to the zoo on Saturday and it was WONDERFUL and I have tons of lovely pictures to sort through.


...right after I take my last final and write this last paper of course.... which I don't want to do.

Germany has, I realized today, given me total and utter disillusionment regarding academics. I hate the university here. I hate that it makes me hate it. I hate that this year has, instead of broadening my horizons and igniting my will to learn (as my semester in Chile did), killed my morale and made me consider, on various occasions, dropping one or both of my majors, not to mention quelched any and all interest in pursuing graduate study in languages, or at all, for the time being.

Damn.

Is it home yet?