Stories from Aachen

The following story was written in the train while I was coming back from Aachen (to Hamburg)on the 27th August.

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27.08.2008

Today I had a phone interview. My 1st one. Very stressful. Not necessary bcs if was on the phone, but bcs it was an interview.
Ahh. For what? For my internship. My eternal problem. Everybody got tired, I think, of this ‘problem’ of mine.

The time couldn’t have been more interesting. Why interesting? Because of the many obstacles I met. I will name shortly some of them.

I was in Aachen with Lore and Radu. Lore is my childhood best friend. Radu, her bf. Why in Aachen? They came here to study. A master program very similar with mine, i.e. Media Informatics. No longer than 1 year ago they were on their way to Hamburg to visit me. After 2 weeks they came to the conclusion that Germany isn’t such a bad place. So they started the hard work (I know what I am saying), with little help from me, and they applied and applied and here they are after 1 year.
To make the story short, I went for few days to Aachen to help them get acquainted with the German system. It can be very hard if u don’t know the language. Well, here is where I come in. And besides knowing the language I’ve also been through the same things so I wanted to make their life a little bit easier, not to suffer a culture shock.

We found a nice place in Aachen, where they are going to live for the 1st month cause afterwards they will move to Bonn, where they start their classes. Aachen will be only for registration and for the german course. Who knows maybe in 1 month I will update this story with ‘Stories from Bonn’ instead of ‘Stories from Aachen’. hehe

So among the tasks for this week the following can be mentioned: register the new address, open a bank account, take a bescheinigung from the insurance company, learn some hints about how the german ppl think, learn some German basic words ( how to count; how to make the diff btw hähnchen, schwein und puten; how to say ‘Ich heisse …. ‘). They caught them pretty fast. That makes me believe that in one month they will be able to speak some German.

The problems I encountered were:
- no internet in the apartment ( :O:O:O can one imagine a life without the internet ?!?!?!??! haha), so we had to share the stinky air from the icafes with some low level ppl (sorry for them, but this was the fact).
- I couldn’t sleep :P
- I couldn’t finish my new letter of intention. Couldn’t get the only sentence I was missing.
- spent some more money.  - eating in the city (hv to admit Aachen is cheaper than in HH, it is after all a student city), buying a dress for the wedding I am attending this we (hopefully I will have more time to write about it), printing the pages for the interview. (10 cents/page).
- pretty much every person we met in the administration environment couldn’t (or didn’t want to) speak German. This made things a little bit harder. For all the parts involved. Not even the guy in the bank. ( :O:O ). Not even the direct banking option had an English version. Radu said he will file a complain. He should of course. I should do that, too. This made me feel a little uncomfortable. How can I explain to my friends that the Germans aren’t that nationalists (at least not more than the French people), when so many things like these happen? When you work / live in a city, where at least 30-40% of the people are international, and u don’t speak another language, you should maybe ask yourself: ‘shouldn’t I feel incompetent?‘

The good things:
- I helped my friends. Hope they realised that. 
- I got to know myself a little more in the sense that I am glad I chosed this way of life and this way of thinking.
- I got to know another city in Germany. A very nice one I might add. The pictures will be uploaded (when?). I am proud to say that I also got the run a little every morning. A little cause a hill needs more effort. :D
- Bcs of the internet the possibility of preparing for the interview were limited. But I have a good feeling ab the interview. It isn’t over. I have the 2nd part on the 4th in Berlin.