A continued list of differences

So, we made it to the Toy Museum on Sunday. A lot smaller than expected, but still neat. It had a lot of old teddy bears, train sets, soldiers, cars, barbies... all from a long time ago. We then went to go see James Bond. There was a showing in English, which was surprisingly more crowded than I would have expected. We learned something new about German theaters which is the actual cause of this post... See below. We then went to dinner... MEXICAN! Nicole had actually eaten at a Mexican restaurant. One of the members of our foursome is half-Mexican and the rest of us were craving. I hadn't had Mexican in 6.5 weeks. It was good! But, like all other food in Germany, even the "spicy" was not spicy. Germany, by the way, has two tastes that they use. Sweet and Salty. Sour does not exist. Spicy definitely does not exist. Their spicy is my mild and we all know my mild...

Anyway, other new news is that I have a "job". It was suggested to me by another international student I know in my dorm. It's not really a "job" per se, but it's work. I'm working in the cafe in the building next to me. It's student-operated and open for students. It basically sells drinks- coffee, tea, apple/orange/banana/cherry juice, beer, hot chocolate, coke... anyway, it's volunteer basis on time and I only have to work 3-4 times a semester and I get all my drinks half-price (and then free when I'm working). My first night was Tuesday. It's a good opportunity to meet people, and it was actually a lot of fun even thought the night was slow. I met three other people in my dorm.

Anyway, the purpose of the post:
I've been continuing my list of differences I've noticed by means of writing myself a text and saving it as a draft on my phone whenever I note one. Since my drafts are now getting relatively full, I thought I'd post them.

Though this is actually a list of things I find annoying in Germany...

1. Movie Theaters: you get assigned seats on your ticket. We discover this when Hans buys his ticket. Then I ask for the exact same thing as him and the lady at the counter actually starts close to yelling at me for not telling her ahead of time (Meanwhile, Ashley had bought her ticket earlier). If you don't buy them together, you don't sit together. Now we know. We got around this by sitting in the empty rows in the front where none of us were assigned.

2. Water fountains: they don't exist. Anywhere. At least in Austria you could find them in the school. Not here. You don't have water and you're thirsty you either buy it (and individual drinks here are so overpriced it's ridiculous- think 2 Euro for a small bottle of coke) or you wait.

3. Faucets: Cold water. That's it. No hot water knob, just one for cold water. This is going to get very annoying in winter, because it's really, really cold.

4. Text books: At first I liked the fact that there wasn't a required text book to buy for each class. Certainly cheaper anyway. In the meantime it's become annoying. There are suggested books... usually a list of like 2-5. You can buy them or check them out of the well-stocked libraries. The problem is, without one required book, the teacher does not in fact teach out of a single book. So if you're trying to catch up or read ahead on your own, good luck trying to figure out where and when the information is.

5. Lines: Germans need to learn what a line is, that's all I can say. They clutter. The lines they do make are 3 or 4 people wide.

5. Exception to above: The exception is when you're in a line to get information or go into an office of something. In this case, you are all lined up outside the (closed) office door. The doors here are all closed, even during office hours, just so they can make a point of how much they don't want to talk to you even though they are required to have open office hours. So there are 4 people in line outside the door. Then someone comes out. One person goes in. There are one or two people standing inline inside the very small office while the first person is being helped. It's kinda weird.

6. Pause: Germans love their "Pause". Pause basically means "break" in context. Germans need breaks. Quite often. There is a pause in everything. There is a Pause in the middle of the day for all the shops for lunch. This is conveniently on everyone's lunch hour so you can't do anything on break. It covers some range of the hours of 12-2. Pause also occur in the middle of any class 2 hours or longer. Now, you'd think you'd take like a 5 minute break maybe to stretch, right? My German class is supposed to go from 3-6. At 4:30 we routinely take a Pause (the teacher likes her Pause. We aren't allowed to ask her questions during the Pause). The Pause generally lasts 30 minutes. Aaaaand... I went to go see Juno at the school movie showing, if you remember. Juno is like a 90 minute movie. In the middle of said 90 minute movie we take a Pause (okay... otherwise known as intermission, but the movie was 90 minutes!!!) for a good 20 minutes.

7. I've mentioned before that the store hours in general are mildly annoying? All stores are closed on Sundays except for bakeries which are generally open till 2 or so. Otherwise stores open at 9 or 10, take their 1-2 hour break in the middle of the day, and typically close at 6. We are in Munich, though, which is an advantage since it's so internationalized. Most of our stores actually stay open till... 8! Which is fun on certain days when I don't get home till after 8, such as Wednesdays. This also means stocking up on food for Sunday beforehand or you'll be eating a lot of bread.

Oh, and on another note, I saw a shop that amused me. It's called "American Apparel" and it's a store of clothing made in the USA. I found this amusing because I was pretty sure all of our clothing actually wasn't? No?


Anyway, today was dance class and I learned to tango. Tomorrow both of my classes got canceled (well, the morning one meets every other week and this is the off week), and I have no class Friday so I'll be doing a lot of catch up learning both days and running some errands. Saturday, my mom and grandmother come to visit!

And Monday I stop being a teenager... scary, no?

Nuremberg

So I kept pretty busy this week. Monday was the biweekly TUMi gathering. The French cooked for us. It was tasty. Tuesday I stayed late at school to go to the TU Film (they show a weekly movie) in the most uncomfortable lecture hall in that school most likely as the seats were straight up and very hard wood, such that after about 30 minutes of sitting you were starting to wish you could not be sitting anymore). I watched Juno. I figured since I'd seen it, it would be good. Not the case. If you haven't seen it, Juno is very much spoken in slang. This is hard to translate into German. I caught about 30% of the movie, and that only because I knew what was coming. But still, it was fun. Wednesday was my dance class again. We learned the Wiener Waltz (Viennese). Thursday, Nicole and I went to dinner with Eli, the TUMI person who picked us both up from the airport. We went to an Asian place. Quite good. Nice change of diet, too! Haven't had Asian food in 6 weeks... And then Friday was our dinner party! Nicole organized and hosted. I went over early and she made a salad, we cooked spaghetti, later some guys brought garlic bread. We had nine internationals and two of Nicole's roommates (well, there are 7 of them that share a kitchen/living area and have separate bedrooms) joined us for supper and dessert. It was quite fun! Today I've just been hanging around, actually "studying". Hoping to keep busy tonight though. Tomorrow the plan is to check out another church, go to the Toy Museum (100 Years of Teddy Bears exhibit!) and then go to the James Bond movie (we found an English theater).

But back to Nuremberg. We were about two weeks early for catching Christkindlmarkt (a Christmas open market throughout advent), and Nuremberg is home to the largest in Germany. But there were still a fair amount of Christmas decorations up. I met Tao's penpal. Story behind that one: Tao has a German pen pal (they write in English) who lives right by Nuremberg. Tao gave me a gift he brought back from China this summer for said pen pal, Felicia. I had written Felicia once in German at Tao's request, so let her know I was coming. We met up, I handed off the gift, and she took us around Nuremberg. We went to the city center, the two big churches, the golden well (there's a ring that was supposedly inserted in teh gate around the well without cutting the ring- as in, keeping it in one piece... now it's good luck to turn the ring), the farmer's market (where Christkindlmarkt will be), up to the castle, past the Rathaus (town halls...), etc. It was quite fun. It's a gorgeous city. It's also home to Lebkuchen, which is Christmasy and similar to gingerbread.

Pictures:
The castle
One of the churches
Another church
The view of the city (look at all those red roofs!) from the top of the castle tower
The inside of one of the churches- one of my favorite in Germany. It's really different and I like it a lot.
The golden well with the second church in the background

My week

In case you were wondering.

Monday:
Wake up at 7 to run out the door at 7:40 to catch the 7:45 subway to Garching. My stop is near the start of the line so there's always empty seats. Have to switch lines though. Second subway holds all the students going to Garching. Usually don't get a seat. Hover over a group of seats in the hope that someone gets off at a stop. Grab seat. Get to Garching. Determine which day it is. On Monday lecture is in the Mechanical Engineering building. On Wednesday it's in the Computer Science building. Go to lecture. 8:30-10:00 Get out of lecture. Trek over to Computer Science building to turn in homework in a mail box. Chill/work/internet in a library/at a table until lunch. Eat lunch. Return to Computer Science building and chill/work/internet until "Central Discussion section" where another professor works problems for us. 2:15-3:45 Run to catch subway. Take subway across Munich to my main campus stop and walk 12 minutes north to random group of buildings with all the psych/sociology classes. Go to Developmental Psych lecture. 5-6:30. Head home. Every other Monday a nearby church opens its doors as a meeting place for all the exchange students from 8 pm until late. A different country of students takes turns cooking for 200 or so. Every other Monday I attend.

Tuesday:
Wake up at 7:45 to catch the 8:35 subway to get to main campus stop at 8:45 to walk 12 minutes north to Religion Sociology class which 9-10:30. Attend. Have probably read the 10 pages or so of sociologists' writings in Germany but not understood a word. Trek 17 minutes back to main campus and chill in library till lunch. Nxt class not till 3. Intensive German as Foreign Language. Study German grammar till 6. Class should to till 6:30 but teacher continuously lets us out at 6. Dinner. Studying.

Wednesday:
See morning same as Monday except Linear Algebra is in a different building. Hang out after class with laptop. Run to eat early lunch at 11:30 to get back for the TA Discussion section from 12:15-1:45. Homework in library. Head to chemistry building (the only class I'm there for...) for 4-7 pm Bio lecture. If lucky, the assistant is teaching the class in which case I pay attention. If not, the mono-tone professor who does not like speaking loudly or clearly is teaching in which case I read the slides on my own and multitask on computer. Hope he lets us out in time to catch the 6:50 subway. If not, leave early. Take subway back to Olympiazentrum. Get in at 7:20. Grab a sandwich at the bakery on way to dance class (held in sports center). Go to dance class. Learn how to: (as of now), dance the blues, disco fox (apparently a European thing?), fox trot, cha-cha-cha, international waltz and viennese waltz. Class 7:30-8:30. Walk back with Oana, an international student from Romania who's studying here all four years and lives in my building.

Thursday:
Every other Thursday wake up as Tuesday to get to Basic Sociology class that meets every other week in same building as all other soc/psych classes. There are five of us in the class including a girl who was born in the US but has lived in Germany since she was like 5 or 6. We discuss the 23 page article in German over sociology we read over coffee and cookies. Actually, quite a fun class. Head back to main campus for lunch. Head to LMU (Ludwig-Maximilian University, the "liberal arts college" that the TUM (Technical University of Munich) kids look down on but is actually also an extremely good university) for my Economic History of the New Worlds, a class taught... in English!... by a professor from New Zealand. That one is fun. Class 2-4. Done for the day (4 is my early day...) and for the week. No class on Friday.

Friday, Saturday, Sunday:
Explore Munich and the surrounding area, hopefully hang out with friends at night, and at some point fit in reading the combined 30 pages of sociology in German and doing the linear algebra homework. Eventually I'll also get around to learning the material for psych and economics.


Coming up- We went to Nuremberg last weekend!

Dad came to visit!

Okay, so many of you know my dad was here last weekend to visit. He was working in Germany and came down for the weekend.

Friday we hit all the main Munich spots again. BMW World, a large circle of all the main buildings/churches/towers in the Alt Stadt of Munich, the English Garden, the three city gates, and then Olympia Park. We went up in the tower. Wow! I wish I'd gone up sooner. You really can see the Alps. Quite impressive, too! And obviously a lot more besides that!

Saturday we took the train to Salzburg. There's a Bavarian Ticket here that's good for up to 5 people to travel with. It takes you anywhere in Bavaria for a day. Salzburg isn't actually in Bavaria, as it's in Austria, but it's on the border, so it works.
Salzburg was SUNNY! That never happens from what I hear. We were expecting cold and rainy and thus took coats and umbrellas... then got there to find it was 70 degrees and sunny. We started up in the Fortress on the hill, which we did not see the last time we were in Salzburg. It was pretty neat. Awesome view, and it's pretty big. There's a lot to see. Came down, ate sausages and then did a quick tour of the city. Went out to dinner that night at a nice little Bavarian restaurant in downtown Munich.

Sunday we went to the Deutsche Musuem, which is HUGE. Seven floors. We were there from 10-2:30 or so and didn't see everything. We skipped a couple of floors and a couple exhibits on floors we did look at. Later that evening we went to visit the Munich stadium, Alianz Arena, where Bayern (soccer) plays. It's a huge stadium and made up of individual pieces that light up individually. (Wikipedia it, it's kinda neat) Would have been nicer if the fog hadn't decided to settle in right before we left. I'm pretty sure dad didn't believe me when I said we were actually walking towards it... you couldn't see anything! Then we realized the sky in front of us was red (the stadium lights up red/blue/white depending on the colors of the home team). Once we got within 50 feet or so we could actually see it. Right as we were walking away, it turned blue. That was cool.

Anyway, since then, my dad has left. It's lonely without someone to go out to dinner with every night! The elections are tonight, as you all know. A Canadian, some of the Brits and I are going to a cafe/bar with live coverage for a couple of hours once the poles start closing. I guess that means I'll be up kinda late tonight.

Tomorrow I got invited by my Religion Sociology classmates to a party for the Sociology students at the University at 9. Since my Wednesday goes from 8:30 (class in Garching... I get up at 7) through 7 (Biology ends) and then I have my Standard/Latin dance course from 7:30-8:30, I'm going to have a long day tomorrow!

Thursday Erika, Nicole and I are getting together for dinner.
Saturday Nicole, Hans (Fulbright student from Texas) and a couple of his friends are going to Nuremberg for the day.


Pictures:
Olympia Park: View from the top of the Olympia tower. One is of the BMW collection (Factory, Museum, Offices, BMW world), the other a not as good as in real life view of the Bavarian Alps and part of Munich
Salzburg: The Alps from the top of the castle, Me with the mountains, Salzburg from the top, Dad with a canon (to prove he was there), the castle from the ground
Alianz Arena: close up in the fog