Work! (I will not reference the Seven Dwarves song)

So I woke up fine this morning. As always, my immune system means business. My sudden return to health enabled me to go to work, and there was much rejoicing.

It actually wasn't that interesting. I met the head partner or the president or the chairman or whatever the hell he is - it doesn't matter, he's best friends with Armin. He took me into a conference room, asked me a few obligatory questions, spoke very quietly the whole time. Actually, the entire company mumbles. It reminded me of Conglom-O, with the guys tip-toeing around on the ceiling and along the walls. He brought in two women and they looked at my resumé, apparently for the first time, and talked about what to do with me. They eventually decided to put me on something called Crystal Reports, informed me that I'd start next Tuesday, and then Bigwig showed me around and introduced me to the entire company. The first three people in a row all asked immediately how long I'd be working here. I'm not sure what to make of that, but eventually Bigwig made it a part of his boilerplate introduction, so I can't say for sure whether everyone in that company was a scripted NPC.

That's really all there is to tell; more developments as they happen.

FEVER

"Woke up" (I slept three hours) with a 102° or thereabouts FEVER today. Couldn't go into work today by any means. Not good. Watched Pulp Fiction and Pi (twice) with the commentary tracks by Sean Gullette and Darren Aronofsky. And Spongebob Squarepants! Imagine - three hours of sleep, fever, I turn on the TV and Spongebob Squarepants comes on in German - THAT will make you question reality. German, by the way, is not a pithy language, and the German voice actors who do the dubs have to talk exceptionally fast. More surrealism.

Whuh-oh

Woke up sick today. I start work tomorrow. I hope. (It's the bird flu!!)

Today I was totally.....

(Best image I could find on short notice, I was hoping for one of the animated ones)

So the plan today was to go into the Hildesheim Zentrum, watch a movie (The Da Vinci Code, or Sacriledge, as they're styling it here), and then go back. Alone, in my Polo, which is a 4-speed manual that I can kiiiinda drive.

Angela showed me the way earlier that day, and I felt reasonably confident about going it alone; at least, as confident as can be expected of a guy who's driving alone in a foreign country in a car that is as difficult to control as it is unsafe in a crash.

Well, not even I was able to come up with the worst-case scenario that ultimately came of this sojourn. (And I'm amazing at coming up with worst-case scenarios that you'll lose sleep over) My first wrong turn, I ended up at the place where I work. Okay, I guess it was the next light. I turn around, make the correct left. Found the right exit. Go straight, take the right at the light. This is where it starts getting bad. I enter the initial Zentrum, and realize I have no idea where to make the left turn to the movie theater. Boy, was that fun. Did you know that "Einbahnstraße" means "one-way street?" Because no one told me!!

After breaking enough traffic laws to justify a summary execution, I find a parking lot near some bank, off the road that I started on in the Zentrum. It's a large gravel parking lot, several acres. After making sure I could park (sorry, Germany - I'm not falling for THAT one) I called Angela. She says oh yeah, that parking lot is where you want to be, now just go in the direction of the bank, make a left past the insurance company and you'll see the theater.

Now, here's where one of the problem-components occured. One of those things which, alone, would not have been a big deal, but when combined with the other problem-components, turns into a complete Pandora's Box.

Component 1: My car won't start

Now, I was just idly trying to start it for some reason that made sense of the time (I was actually going to walk to the movie theater), but I couldn't turn the key. I called Angela back.

Component 2: The last phone call

I say the last phone call, because that was indeed the last phone call I ever made for some time with that phone. After that call, I had a balance of $0.00 on my GSM card, and could only receive calls.

So, I went to see the movie. No trouble there. I actually arrived 15 or 20 minutes after the listed start time and still saw two or three trailors. This is the German way. Ultimately, the movie wasn't worth it for the trouble I went through to see it; I would comment further, but I never got the chance to reflect on the movie after seeing it, as I'll explain.

Anyway, I had to drive back, and the tricky part ended up being getting on the highway in the right direction. I have neither the desire nor the time to describe ALL the mistakes I made, so I'll condense the important stuff into a terse executive summary.

The biggest mistake was a left turn where I should have gone straight, and back onto the highway. The idea is, you go onto the highway, drive a ways, and then get to one of these roundabout things like they have in England, where you make a U-turn and go back home. (Imagine, a U-Turn on the highway - that's infrastructure!) I didn't realize this concept immediately, as it was counterintuitive to my American mind. So, when I got on the highway, I panicked and got off at some random intersection. I made similar mistakes like this (wrong turns), and one of them caused me to go back into some weird, Ghetto section of Hildesheim and spend about an hour and a half completely lost. Eventually I parked at some weird school parking lot, and wandered out of my car.

Component 3: Intractibly lost

Now, under normal circumstances, I would have called Angela and taken her up on her offer to pick me up and take me home. But as mentioned, I had to make that last phone call, and now I had no money on my card and couldn't call her. I waited a little bit for her to call me, asking where I was (it was more like total indecision and stupefaction on my part), but it was futile.

I walked around for a while; I had ended up near some library. This is pretty bad, I realized. Tomorrow's a Monday; I could sleep in my car and get help tomorrow. The school will be filling up, I'm probably parked in some reserved space.... I wonder what would happen if they didn't realize someone was in the car? What if I get towed away in my sleep and wake up in some godforsaken lot miles away from civilization and human contact?

There was a directory/confusing German map of the city of Hildesheim. After analyzing it for about half an hour, I got a sense of where I was, and where I had to go. (I also figured out the highway thing.) I drove around hither and yon, eventually finding and following signs back to the Zentrum. By sheer luck, I made it home from there with only one additional mistake (got off prematurely on the roundabout, promptly turned back). I got home and Angela, seeing her cue, fed me as much as she could.

I'm feeling somewhat gunshy as it were about driving, now; I had enough anxiety about controlling the car. I'll drive to work and back, that's not a problem, but anything more adventurous than that might be a ways off.

Wuuuurst!!

As I mentioned earlier, I have my own car here. The only wrinkle, is that it has a manual transmission, and I'd only driven manual three times before today. Armin, sensing this, took me out for a proper drive today. It was sort of an ambush, because I thought I would just be practicing starting the car. (For those who don't know, the only aspect of driving stick that's actually difficult is getting the car up to about five miles an hour without putting yourself your passengers and the people behind you and in front of you in the hospital.) He took me to some empty road in the middle of nowhere, parked it on the sidewalk (apparently, you can do that in Germany for short periods of time without this happening), and we did a Chinese fire drill. He gave me the best lesson I've ever had in driving stick - get the car going without using the gas. Once you do that a few times, it's easier to get your shit together in terms of the interaction between the clutch and the gas.

Well, that was all well and good, except it pretty much went downhill from there (except literally). He took me out driving for over an hour; we probably went through half a dozen towns. Let me tell you, driving without glasses on in a foreign country in a manual transmission vehicle that you can barely drive is scarier than terrorism. It wasn't so bad for the most part; Armin only grabbed the Oh Shit Handle once. The worst, was when we were stopped on a slight grade. As expected, the car rolled backwards a bit before I got it going. I mentioned that that can be avoided by using the hand brake technique, but that's advanced. Well, I must have given him ideas, because he directed me straight to what must be one of the top ten steepest hills in Lower Saxony. I made the right onto the street, and Armin told me to stop the car and pull over to the right. Good, I thought, he's going to take over and drive us home. Then he tells me to start the car. I was pretty sure that we would end up calling AAA's german counterpart, but I actually pulled it off well. I'm certain that that was due to beginner's luck, and he probably was too; pleased as he was, he didn't ask for a repeat performance.

I should probably explain who these people are. Angela and Armin are the wife and husband in my host family. I'm distantly related to Angela through my mom's mom... whatever. Armin has the two businesses I mentioned, and Angela is a hair stylist; I think she used to have a salon. They have three kids - Lou-Ann (12), Joshua (9, I think) and Emilie (18 months?). Emily's awesome, she's like, my hero. She's a Wurstkind; whenever we're eating one of our stereotypical German meals, she demands "Wuuuuuursht!!" in the cutest way imaginable. Today, she was playing with some Play-Doh, and I joined her. She would hold out the cap of one of the playdoh containers for me to take, but when I reached out to take it, she would snatch her arm back. It was brilliant; she's going to be involved in the space program or something.

Armin and I are planning a trip to Prague, because Czech is awesome (the country and the language); we both hate flying and want to take the camper. The camper affords a ton of freedom; for instance, if we want to stay an extra day, no problem. Our only expense would be gas (and diesel at that); don't have to worry about a hotel or any of that nonsense. Personally, if we end up doing this, one of the first things I want to do is drive to the nearest bookstore and spend about ten thousand dollars. (And the Czech currency, I'm told, is quite weak, so I could buy a hell of a lot of books.) Czech is the next language I want to learn and having lots of books would be an invaluable resource. I'm going to buy a few books here as well, but just two or three. That is, once I find an ATM. Anyway, time to go find a camp ground outside of Prague.

Their damn keyboards swap y and z

News article of the day - enjoz!

OK, so I'm in Germany now. My typing speed has slowed to a crawl because of keyboard weirdness, and I'm trying to think of a way to compose posts offline. It's not like I need ümläüts or anything.

I got in yesterday at noon; flight was hellish and they lost one of my bags. Well, technically it got left behind in Munich so that customs officials could stomp through it. It showed up at 4pm or so at the house, so that's pretty decent, I suppose. The Philadelphia airport confiscated my fucking screwdriver bits because if you need to take a tool longer than seven inches onto a plane, you're with Al CIAda, I mean Al Qaeda. Oh, but I can take the actual screwdriver. Just not the bits. Did I mention that the hijackers were trained at top US spy schools?

The jet lag has been the worst part - thanks to Herculean efforts yesterday, I'm already over it, but it was difficult. I had to stay up for like 28 hours yesterday, ultimately going to bed at 8:30. (Did I mention that it stays light here as late as 10:30pm?) I actually don't remember a whole lot after seven o' clock; entire sections of my brain went on strike. Including, apparently, the part of my brain responsible for distinguishing reality from a 5th generation copy of a VHS tape.

Today I got up at eight or so and had a large (for me) breakfast; Nutella on kickass German bread (predictably) and a bunch of meat (predictably). In fact, everything about the food I've had so far is pretty stereotypical except for the fact that it's actually enjoyable. Last time I came here, I hated the food.

Most of today was spent doing an impromptu job shadow with Armin. He has two companies (a florist and a landscaping business) so he's got some damn schedules. Today he had to get up at 4:15 to buy flowers from some crazy bulk flower dealer. We made some deliveries, bought some more flowers, he got into an argument with some Mitarbeiter, gave a bunch of orders, it was pretty cool. Then we had lunch (late), I played some video games, and now here I am. By the way, here's the mapping from German meals to American meals:

Breakfast -> Thanksgiving
Lunch -> Dinner
Dinner -> Lunch

I'd think of more to type, but I'm using IE on some sort of pre-cambrian dialup connection and I'm afraid of losing everything I've written, so I'm just gonna publish what I've got so far and then go eat some chocolate.

One week

Okay, so it's about one week until my flight. I need to think of something I can bring as a gift for the family I'm staying with. Not a book. They have three kids, they don't have time to read books. Not wine, I'll get arrested. Not flowers. Any suggestions?