Thursday, April 2, 2009
How long ago the first post seems! So…. naïve. I am here at Potsdam, about to spend my first night in a strange bed in a strange country. I’m tired-- exhausted really, but I felt like sharing the day before going to bed.
So… where should I start? The flights were pretty horrible. I’ve always had an aversion to flying, and each flight seemed to get worse. They gave me headaches, stomachaches, and when the plane got turbulent, it would give me the same dizzy, lightheaded feeling I get from riding a roller coaster. And I hate roller coasters. They had a bunch of really good movies on the flight to Amsterdam, and I watched one called Stroke of Genius.
But finally, we arrived in Berlin's Tegel airport, after almost missing our connecting flight in Amsterdam. Irene and I hit it off right away, she's a great girl. By the time we landed in Berlin, to our surprise, the school had arranged for a student volunteer to come pick us up from the airport and show us the way to our dorms, on a bus, a train, and then another bus. His name was Till or something, and he was really cool. He was a French major, so I practiced talking with him. I was surprised to learn that he was 27 years old and that his 20 year old sister was only now graduating from high school. Later, I would learn that all the students I met were between the ages of 26 and 29. Apparently, people in Germany just go to university way later than everyone else.
So Irene and I were so glad we had an escort to show us the way and even help us carry our luggage. The whole way, we kept commenting on our good luck, and how we never, ever would have been able to figure out where to go as smoothly on our own. We actually got to thinking that wow, the school was so organized, they had arranged everything for us!
We were so wrong!!!
So then we actually got to the dorms and I was shocked at how… informal it was. I think this was in part because I arrived a few days early, but there were no administrators, no offices. Just a few lone students lounging on the grass outside the dorms because it had been a sunny day. They gave us our room keys immediately and showed us to our dorms. No paperwork to sign whatsoever, although I did end up having to shell out 20 euros for the bedding. And they handed us “temporary bus passes” until we get our student cards, which were basically little slips of plain paper, that are supposedly supposed to work all over Potsdam and Berlin, with every bus driver in the city. Seems unlikely to me, but if it saves me from paying bus fare, I'll try it.
We were basically on our own. Totally independent and responsible for ourselves.
I’m in the newest building, number 50 at the end. I’m on the second floor and I’m in a suite with 3 other girls. When I first laid eyes on the room announcement, my first, rather strong and vocal, frantic reaction, was that I had to change rooms immediately! I saw that I had been placed with this girl that I thought was another girl from UCR. I only met her once in person, and emailed her once, but I had already deduced that she was a horrible, stuck up, immature brat. I forcefully insisted that I had to switch rooms with somebody, anybody. The students informed me that they didn’t have the authority to move me, and I would have to discuss it with woman who ran the program. They then proceeded to immediately rattle off a long set of complicated German directions to the building she worked in, which involved a bus and a lot of walking. This happened numerous times throughout conversation with them, when asking for directions to find a grocery store, H&M, etc.
All set to have it out with this lady, whoever she was, and DEMAND to be changed or else I would quit the program, I then actually went to go see my room. I thought it seemed rather spacious, pretty nice actually. The boys assured me that this apartment was a lot bigger than most of the other ones, and had extra little things like a kitchen table, two bathrooms (but only 1 shower). And that even though my room did not receive wireless, they vigorously assured me that the internet connection is much faster with a cable. I haven’t seen any of the roommates yet, although it looks as though some, if not all of them, have already been living here. It looked really lived in, with food in the fridge and shampoo in the shower. So my resolve to switch rooms has been dwindling. I’m going to have 2 other roommates in addition to the rude girl, and if those two are cool, I don’t think I’ll switch. But if I switched, it would have to be sooner rather than later.
Anyway, back to my room. First off, I tried to get my internet working. No luck. I got to Irene’s room. She’s a couple of buildings over, on the third floor, (no elevators anywhere) and her apartment looks totally different. There’s only 2 people living there, so they have a much smaller kitchen, smaller bathroom, way less space altogether, but her bedroom is bigger than mine, and carpeted. No drapes though, to keep the sun out in the morning. Her internet doesn’t work either. We walk downstairs and complain. They all try to be helpful, and finally, after making some calls and examining my laptop, conclude that I wont be able to get internet until next week, when I have registered my computer for an internet account, which I cannot do until I sign a room contract.
I am frustrated. Not with the Germans, but with the program. We are basically given no help with anything. Our room lacks essentials like hangers for the closet, complete bedding that will actually keep us warm in winter. The German kids, they don’t work for the school, they're not getting paid, it's not their job to help us. I can tell they're trying to be helpful and nice to us, one boy even offered to let us use his internet until ours gets set up. So I’m not annoyed with them or anything, the school simply didn’t assign anyone to help us. To further illustrate this point, one of the germs tried to talk me into playing hostess for a UCR boy arriving tomorrow, and give him his keys, the way they did for me and Irene today. I firmly declined, aghast at the laxity of the program.
Uni Potsdam supposedly has 14,000 kids, but it's vacation now and the campus is empty. A real ghost town. Irene and I chose to arrive early, and I don’t regret that we did. Well be able to get better situated this way.
So I shower, change, and Irene and I decide to embark on a journey to go find a grocery store and take care of some errands. After getting directions from the germies, we rode the bus to this shopping center/train station. It looked like your basic American shopping mall, except much more limited and much less nice. Like, no fountains and palm trees. A word about the bus route actually: It looks like that’s going to be the best way to get around here. They go pretty much everywhere.
Anyway, we were ravenous, so we bought some little pizzas. Then we saw a bunch of phone stores. Like, 6 right next to each other. I picked one and we walked in and I told the guy how we were students and needed prepaid phones. Irene bought hers on the spot, eager to get it over with, but after my experience in Paris, where the cell phone was so expensive, I was much less willing to take the first offer without shopping around all the other stores. So I went to every single other store, and to my bemusement, every single other phone plan was way worse than that first store. I had, by pure cooincidence, picked the store with by far the best deal. So we went back to that store, but my phone was out of battery so the guy couldn’t successfully unlock it. I promised to come back tomorrow, and I will.
I also bought a box of kinder chocolate, the first of what I'm sure will be many.
We found a grocery store there and picked out just a couple things, enough for breakfast the next day: a few apples, oranges, strawberries, pasta, and a bottle of water. I was pleasantly surprised at how cheap everything was. 6 apples for 99 cents, stuff like that. I only spent 3 euros or so. The cell phone stuff had taken a long time, so by this time, it was getting dark and chilly. It had been unusually hot and sunny the whole day. I even changed into flip flops! I later came to the conclusion that this was a faux pas, because I didn’t see anyone else wearing open toed shoes.
So, that basically concludes my first day! I am now in my room, unpacked, jet lagged, and sleepy. The plan for tomorrow is to find the school library, buy my phone, and explore!
