On Monday, my second day here I went shopping. After I went inside I realized that I needed a shopping cart but I had no idea where they were. I did manage to find a shopping cart in the store that was empty and nobody was around it. I watched for 5 minutes or so but couldn't see anybody that had ownership of this cart. After several minutes I finally decided to take it. I grabbed it and started walking off with it and that's when a middle-aged lady came running from the other side of the fruit stand. She started yelling at me in German and then took the cart away (I have no idea what she said). I looked around some more and found that the carts were out front but the doors wouldn't let me back out. I had to walk through the whole store and out the exit in order to go out and get a cart. It turns out that to get a cart you have to put in a euro coin and snap it into a plastic box on the cart. This releases the cart from the other carts, you get your coin back when you connect it to the carts again. I'm pretty sure that's why the lady was so protective of her cart.
On wednesday when we went to the Mensa it was my turn to buy the drink. When you return the bottle you get some change back. The other students had told me that you get 50 cents back. On my way to the cashier I found a candy bar for 50 cents. I figured I would just exchange the bottle for a candy bar and it would work out great. However, when I gave her the bottle and started walking away with the candy bar she started yelling at me in German. I had no idea what to do so I just started giving her 20 cent coins until she was appeased. Turns out you get 15 cents back for a bottle, not 50. I had misheard the amount.
Observations:
The strategy for making hot water for the guest house I'm living in is to make the hot water as hot as possible, which is nice because I'll probably never run out of hot water but it has also resulted in a lot of pain. In the U.S. when you're in the shower for a while the water starts to get colder, in germany it starts to get hotter and it happens pretty fast sometimes. There have been times when I was in the middle of a good scrub in the shower and the next thing I knew my skin was melting off. I've learned to manage the temperature a little better since then.
The land is so green here! I wasn't expecting to see so many trees and plants. This land has to be exceptionally fertile. I'm starting to see why Europe became a dominant super power that colonized the rest of the world.
Beautiful tree in front of the Max Planck institute. The flowers on it are huge.
Cheap offbrand birkenstocks. Tenery is going to love it.
Registering at the burgermeister
The mountain bike hill. This is more my speed.
Wandering through the 4G forest
I have to find a bigger stream if I want to catch a 2 kilo brown trout.
No comments:
Post a Comment