Taking my time

It comes to the end of the weekend... and I'm still living in Weende. Haven't begun packing. And Monday I have a full schedule. Hmm...

In other news, I can get internet access in my dorm room set up on Tuesday night. I've already paid for it (not to mention the fact that I've paid rent for a room I'm not using for the past month.) It's a five minute walk from the lab and a five to ten minute bike ride to the center of town.

So why am I still here? Why am I dragging my heels? Is it the free breakfasts and dinners? Am I afraid of independence? (Is that such a bad thing?)

The last week has been decent, with only a couple of glitches. Such as: I still haven't managed to make it to a lecture... and I can't find my helmet... and my bike broke.

I'm not especially worried about the first on the list. I know I have a place in the Neuro class, and I'll assume for now that getting lost/going to the wrong place/finally going to the right place at the right time only to once again find an empty classroom... is simply a string of bad luck. So I missed some interesting topics (I actually was close to tears at missing the Neuroplasticity lecture) but since every block starts fresh I can't actually say I'm behind.

As for my bike helmet, I think I know where it is. I spent Friday morning trying to track it down after I left it in my writing class Thursday night as I rushed to meet with another Fulbrighter in Göttingen. It didn't help that when I finally got to the building in which my class is held, my old trouble came back... with every bike I've ever owned, it's the same thing: shifting gears is the bane of my existance. With my crap $50 Wal-Mart Special at Kenyon I blamed the technology, and learned to carry around a little tool to yank the chain back onto the gear every couple of miles... but with Flora? It must be me. The one advantage with Flora is that she rolls even with the chain stuck, rather than the back wheel sticking too, forcing me to physically carry my bike around until I fix it.

Anyway, back to the story. I decided to check out the classroom, which was of course locked. On Friday morning. I had no idea who to ask about getting in, so I decided to walk to the Lektorat and see if my writing teacher had rescued my helmet. On the way I saw my grammar teacher, so I stopped to ask if she'd heard anything. Nope. And she didn't think that the writing teacher was in that day... but she did know of a bike shop in the vicinity.

So, let's get things set to rights! Except that when I get there (only got a little lost on the way) they told me it would be €10, and they'd have to keep Flora until Monday night. I could come pick her up in the half hour between my German classes. Sigh. I decided to go for it, since I don't own any tools and the guy also said he'd fix it so the chain didn't over-shift anymore.

So I walked to the Lektorat, and bumped into my writing teacher. She hadn't seen a bike helmet, and the teachers had had a conference that night... the teacher from the class immediately after in that room hadn't mentioned anything about finding anything. But... the building had a guy who could let me in to check out the classroom. I should go talk to him.

I walked back to the first building and checked out the office. No helpful guy with keys, just a secretary lady who hadn't recieved any lost and found items.

Me, in German: Could I possibly see the classroom?
Secretary lady, auf Deutsch, natürlich: No, not today. But you have to come back Monday for class anyway, right?
Me, still in German: Oh, right. Okay.
Inside my head, in English: Argh! What is with these people and their obsessive objection to opening a locked door for a couple minutes?? Are they that busy? How the heck do you say "My bike broke down on the way here and it's a 45 minute walk home, so you'd better damn well take five minutes out of your day to find a way to unlock the frickin' door so this entire morning isn't a waste of my time, energy, and money!"
Me, in German: Thanks.

Nearly an hour later I get back to Weende and have tea with Christina and Oma. When I explain what happened to my bike, Christina was incredulous. She insisted that we go pick it up, called to tell the shop we were coming, and assembled a few tools with which to fix it when we got there.

The only problem was that the chain turned out to be really well stuck, so I ended up having to walk Flora back to Weende anyway... but I saved €10 and Christina told me about a better shop that does repairs on the fly, should I need their services in the future. Or of course I could always use her and Wolfgang's tools. I ended up feeling a little silly, but no harm done.

We also visited my future room to see what I need to buy. Curtains, for one thing, especially since it's on the ground floor. I also learned that the provided clip-on desk lamp is completely stupid and cannot physically be attached to the desk, and that the light over my sink is already burned out. And my room smells ever-so-faintly of smoke. And it's frickin' tiny... but that I already knew.

It's not a total hell-hole... but neither is is particularly nice.

Maybe that's why I haven't packed yet. It's actually homey here. And it doesn't smell like smoke.

Then there's the rest of the weekend. When I should have been putting everything in my suitcases, I instead had adventures with the Krebses. Saturday was crazy. There was a big NPD demonstration in Göttingen. The NPD is a rather-far-right-wing party, and, at least in this generally leftish academic town, not very well liked. Their platform is pro-German (and anti-outsider... so does that mean me?) and possibly has ties to the neo-Nazi movement. Supposedly they like to assemble here precisely because it's a leftish university town, and of course the students arranged a protest counter-demonstration. The police were out in force to keep the peace and preserve the NPD demonstraters' right to do their thing... and not just Göttingen police. There were vans and ambulances EVERYWHERE from all over the country, and huge numbers of cops in green uniforms barricading the streets where the march took place, apparently at a huge cost to the state. It seemed like half of downtown was blocked off. Christina and I biked down to check it out, and we saw one of the march protesters get arrested for being too rowdy about 20 feet away. We met up with Wolfgang and he said that the demonstraters had put together their own barricades and a big pile of trash at an intersection to the east of town, and then set it on fire. The whole street was black and the smell will probably be around for at least a week. The demonstration was supposed to last until 7pm, but the participants were asked to leave town a little early, what with the destruction of proprerty and all.

After the marchers went by, we found a way into the center of town and ate ice cream while listening to street musicians. Shops were doing business as usual, and you'd never know anything was going on just a few blocks north. Then we biked south of town to the garden. It's pretty common in Germany for a family to own a small fenced-in plot of land, especially if they live in a city. There is a small backyard at the house, but the garden has plenty of space for flowers and vegetables, plus a little furnished hut. Lots of families have gardens at the same place, and the couple across the way are friends of Wolfgang and Christina's, so we had cakes and coffee (and tea for me) together. Then we worked a little bit, mowing the grass, trimming a tree, and planting.

That night we had pizza and watched The Firm auf Deutsch, and the first half of an old Bond film, Moonraker, which was absolutely hilarious. Today I got an extra hour of sleep (yay!) and afterwards went to an art gallery opening with Wolfgang and Christina. There was interesting work from a couple of young Berlin artists, a mostly decent band, and a speech about the works that was pretty incomprehensible. I could plead language barrier twice in this case, since I haven't taken an art class since high school... but really, I wasn't paying attention. Other than a general interest in music and film/theater, I am unfortunately not much of an appreciator of the fine arts. Maybe it stems from a couple of bad experiences in art class... that time in a grade school summer program when my instructor poured orange and red and yellow paint all over my intentionally blue sculpture to "make it more interesting," or at MSA when the teacher asked me if the body of the ceramic frog I was sculpting was supposed to be a uterus, or maybe missing tech week rehearsals of Tom Jones at Rosati because I was put on academic probation after turning in my sketchbook a day late when said day just happened to be midquarters... at any rate, I don't particularly mind going to museums and gallery openings... and we'll just leave it at that.

Afterwards we biked to Weende-nord (even further away from Göttingen than the part of the village where we live) and had coffee (and tea) and cakes with another couple who are friends of the Krebs'. So... I haven't packed, I haven't done my German homework for tomorrow... but I'm happy, and I find that I like being dragged along to social occasions. I still think that I need to move soon, if only for access to Skype and my internet messaging programs.

But... maybe I'll wait until I'm good and ready.