Digital Adventure

It has also been a fun few days.

Ever since I arrived on Sunday, I have been meeting people from around the world and settling in.

My apartment is shared between 7 people. We have 5 guys, 2 girls, one kitchen, one small TV area and two bathrooms (sorta). So far only 6 of us are here. Four (Thomas, Raphael, Catherina and Sarah) are from different parts of Germany and one (Richard) is from Sydney, Australia. The missing tenant is Olli (I think) and he is also from Germany, but hasn't moved in yet. Everyone is very nice and we interact only in German, including my conversations with Richard.

In fact, I understand Richard's German better than his Australian accent.

Besides my apartment, I have made a few international friends who live in the same complex. There are a few Brits, another Australian (Tobias), a couple of Finns, and a few others. Tobias and I already had a few adventures in the past couple of days.

On Tuesday, Tobias and I saw each other in the same internet cafe before a day of orientation. I talked to him for a minute, printed something out, then left for orientation. I came back that way an hour and a half later and he is still on the same computer skyping with his girlfriend back in Australia.

He then explains to me that he ordered a laptop to be delivered to an electronics store in the southern part of the city, called Media Markt. I had nothing better to do, so I met up with him a bit later and we took the street car down there.

Since I don't have the semester transportation ticket yet, I didn't want to pay so much for rides so after the street car, we walked the rest of the way instead of the bus. We finally get to Media Markt to buy the laptop and we have trouble getting helped. After looking around at stuff and finally getting attention, we are told it will be 15 minutes until it is available. It's a huge electronics store, so that is not a big deal at all. We listened to music and it was fun.

Fifteen minutes pass and the laptop comes. Tobias goes to check out, BUT his Mastercard doesn't work at the register. He goes to the ATM in the store to withdraw 800 Euros, but it also doesn't work. We then have to schlepp out to a bank all the way near the street car station, about 1.5 miles away. We get there and he uses the ATM, but can only get 760 Euros out of the 800 he needs. Luckily, I had enough to lend him (he already paid me back, mom).

We walk all the way back to Media Markt and finally pays for the damn thing. Instead of having to walk again to the street car, we took the bus back all the way to a connecting bus station we needed to take to get back home.

It ended up taking 3 hours and was a lot of walking, but I tend to like these mini-adventures. We had fun with it, and now Tobias doesn't have to sit in an internet cafe all day. He repaid me also with help on all my bureaucratic problems described in the last post.

I also went out a few times, but you can look forward to reading that stuff later

Adam