Adventure Overload!

Today I woke up determined to be productive after a weekend of actually doing nothing. I sat in my room and played instruments for three days, which is well and good, but somewhere around day two you start to feel like a failure.  I crossed this line Saturday night, after the entire world was already closed, knowing I had to get through all of Sunday as well.  So this morning I got up so ready to go, I started making lists.

First things first, I borrowed my roommate's bike (which, since my last blog post, we have taken to fondly calling "The Dragon") and went to the bank.  A note on German banks: they are highly, highly irritating.  Unlike in the US, your German bank account does not belong to the bank as a corporation, it belongs to the bank as a spot on Google Maps.  Which makes for great annoyance when you go to change money or cash a check at the Göttingen branch, only to find out you can't because your account itself is in Celle.  Therefore I decided I needed to hit up the bank to get my Celle account closed down and transferred to Göttingen...mostly just so I could change said money and cash said check.

This brings us to Adventure 1: BANK FIGHT!
While standing in line waiting to be helped, I heard an angry accented voice yell, "WHAT DID YOU SAY?"  I turned around to see a giant angry black lady storming across the bank after a little German woman, who kept snapping "I didn't say anything," in that cold shoulder way that lets everyone within earshot know that she a) did, in fact, say something, and b) it was probably derogatory and racist.  They screamed at each other for a few minutes, and then the angry black lady started wailing on the German woman.  I looked around waiting for a bank employee, a security guard, anybody to do something, but everyone did exactly what I was doing, namely, staring.  They just kept hitting each other and screaming for a few minutes, until finally some random lady walked up with her hands up and said, "That's not very nice."  Perfectly logical, I know.  But the dogs stopped and separated, although they kept spitting insults at each other from across the bank.  When the black lady finally left, it was with a loud, "I'm waiting for you outside."

Not that I saw what, if anything, happened next, because my turn was up.  The guy helping me was super ridiculously attractive, which made the bank bureaucracy if not easier, at least way more pleasing to look at.  In what is becoming a reoccurring theme, my ID cards from three countries confused the crap out of him, and I had to go back and explain my life story, which was fine with me because like I said, he was cute.  So it was in a good mood that I left the bank and went hair crap shopping.

Adventure 2: NO ONE LIKES BRUNETTES!
Not really an adventure, more like an observation.  As happy as I am that braids are back in style, I've decided I need to branch out slightly and start doing buns. Unfortunately, Germany apparently discriminates against people with dark hair, because I had to go into like nine different stores before I found a bun-maker-donut-thing that wasn't blond.  Likewise, I have yet to locate a store in this country which sells eye shadow palettes for brown eyes.  I call racism.

Also the lady checking me out asked if my hair was real.

Adventure 3:  YAY BIKES!
I went to yet another bike store, talked to more cute boys, and this time actually tested a bike. While it's in my price range, it's also a slightly bigger, slightly more silver version of The Dragon, and I've decided hand brakes are a requirement to my personal happiness.  But I was still in a really good mood.

Adventure 4:  CAFETERIA FOOD!
Then I met up with Roommate and some of her friends to go eat lunch on campus.  It was my first time in the cafeteria, and I almost got lost and tripped going up the stairs, because I'm just that smooth.  Sitting with nice people eating food...I actually stopped being terrified of my impending studies, and started being excited.  At least for half an hour or so.

Adventure 5: PUNCH TEST PUNCH!
In order to take German-as-a-second-language classes, I had to take yet another proficiency test.  Which annoyed me, because I already had the DSH, but remember this is Germany where they require documentation that your heart is beating before they look you in the eye.  So I took the goddamn test, and I didn't care, and I still scored in the highest level.  Suck it, test.

What's particularly annoying about these sorts of proficiency test is that they don't ask you to read or comprehend or answer questions.  Instead, you have to fill in the blanks in the various words of the sentence. Like so:

There we__ two dog_, one nam__ Jack, one ca__ Jill.  Jack a__ Jill wer__ best fri__, at least unt__ Jack g__ hit by a ca__.  Then Jill fou__ a new man.

Q:  Is this irritating as all get-out?
A:  Yes.  Yes it is.  But I'll still kick its ass.

After punching the test in the face in a quarter of the allotted time, I wandered over to the tandem partner board to see if anybody wanted to trade languages with me.  There were three people who wanted to exchange German for English, all of which I have emailed, and two of which I already have plans with.  Hopefully I'll make a few friends out of this!

Adventure 6: FAMOUS FRIENDS?
On my way out the door, I had this conversation with the lady who lives below me:

Her:  Where are you off to!
Me:  To meet up with Roommate and go see a concert.
Her:  How are you getting there?
Me:  I'm borrowing The Dragon, I still haven't bought my own bike yet.
Her:  I have a brand new bike sitting in the basement that I can't ride.  If it fits you, pay me whatever you feel like, and you can have it.
Me:  Good mood points plus a hundred.

Then I found Roommate and we headed over to the bar where the concert was being held.  While we were waiting for her friends, we hung out outside on the makeshift astroturf stage which included, among other things, a row of airplane seats.  Everyone arrived, we went inside, and took our seats on the stairs leading down to the basement.

The very first opening act was, and I have no other way to describe it, hilarious.  I give him props for trying, but if your mother tongue is German, and your command of English is infantile at best, then do not write songs in English.  Stick to your mother tongue, everyone will be happier, and your lyrics will come out slightly more profound than "You're in a car/You're in a hall/I'm right here/But that's too far," or, my favorite, "I met a stranger on the street/I bought some fish for us to eat."  Plus, he played his guitar with his body arched up over it all strange, and when he turned to look at the audience, he turned his whole body and glared out of one eye like his neck was broken.  I was dying.  Thank god I was too far away for him to hear me practically gagging myself to get myself to shut up.  When I looked around, everyone else was being very grave about it, which leads me to believe either a) I was the only one in the room who found it hilarious, or b) everyone else was much better about holding themselves together.

The second opening act was much better all around, but while she was playing it occurred to me that there's been a recent songwriting trend that really needs to die.  I call this trend "Listing Mundane Things," and it occurs when songwriters, instead of writing songs, sing their shopping list.  Done well, it turns Shopping List into a metaphor for life, death, and the secrets of Stephen Hawking's brain.  Done poorly, it makes me want to choke myself with the free-range contents of your handspun organic shopping bag.

Back to the story.  Around the middle of her set, some guy asked if he could steal the seat next to me.  Having only seen a thirty second video clip of the person we were at the concert to see, I didn't recognize That Guy as him--all I saw was a dude with intense facial hair folding something out of the label of his beer bottle, and I wanted to know what.  We had a lovely long conversation about origami (he didn't believe me when I said I can fold pigs), travelling (he's toured in China), and Philadelphia (gay pride).  He corrected my German, told me fun stories, and proved to be a pretty awesome and interesting guy.

His set was really, really good, and afterwards Roommate went down and bought a CD, and I folded him a pig, and said, "See?  Told you so."

In case you were wondering, meeting famous people changes me not at all.  He shook my hand.

So, here's my new favorite song of the day, also known as, That Guy's.  The guy is German, but the song is in English, and it's really really good:

And that concludes my day full of adventures.

Adios!