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?