Reactions to life in Germany explained in GIFS.

My reaction every time I get home and realize that our apartment is on the 4th floor and there’s no elevator:

Borja walking up the stairs when we get home:

Me walking up the stairs when we get home:

My reaction when I saw the vegetarian selection at the grocery store:

My reaction when a tiny child walked up to Borja and I at the store and started speaking to us in German:

My reaction when I found out that you can drink alcohol while walking down the street here and you won’t get arrested:

My reaction when I was told that you have to carry your glass bottles to a third party receptacle THAT IS NOT LOCATED AT YOUR APARTMENT BUILDING WITH THE REST OF THE RECYCLABLES:

My reaction when I ordered enchilada’s with sour cream the other day and I got them and realized that they didn’t have any sour cream on, in, or near them:

My reaction when a group of people were walking by the beer garden while blasting Rammstein:

My reaction when I heard people blasting Shakira outside of our apartment at noon on a Saturday:

My reaction when I realize that I have not seen one cat outside since I’ve been here:

My reaction when I realized the cheese section doesn’t have ANY orange cheddar:

My reaction when Borja’s coworker gave us Peanut Butter M&M’s:

My reaction when we get on the train and it smells worse like pee than any Seattle alley ever:

Me walking in to go apply for health insurance:

My reaction when I’m told that I don’t qualify for the cheap insurance:

Borja’s reaction when I tell him that I have to apply for private health insurance:

My friend taking me to register for German classes:

Me walking into class late on the 2nd day:

Borja’s reaction when I burn his Flammkuchen because I don’t understand the oven settings:

My reaction when we finally have decent Mexican food:

My reaction when I am waiting in line at the store and feel like everyone is judging the amount of cat food and wine that I have in my basket:

My reaction when I took a drink of my soda and realized that they don’t serve it with ice here but then I notice that the waiter is staring at me so I pretend to enjoy it:

My reaction when I am walking in our apartment and suddenly hear our landlord in the hallway so I try to be quiet so she doesn’t think we’re home and want to talk to us:

My reaction when I realize that we need cat litter again and the store is far away:

Our reaction when we get buzzed at 7am by the garbage man every goddamn Tuesday:

Our reaction when we remember that all of the grocery stores are closed every Sunday:

Me trying to mingle with the realtor at apartment viewings:

Me when I’m somewhere and can’t read the menu:

Our reaction when a restaurant offers us an English menu:

Our reaction when we go to take the train home really late at night and we don’t recognize any of the train numbers:

Borja’s reaction when I make him listen to Rihanna, Beyonce, or Ginuwine:

My reaction to all of the people who are walking around eating ice cream cones here no matter the time of the day or how shitty the weather is:

What we thought the reaction would be regarding apartment searching:

What we realized our apartment might actually end up being like:

Our reaction when our internet is actually working and we can watch Homeland:

My reaction when I thought that I smelled Marijuana that one time:

My reaction when I see pizza through a window of a restaurant:

My reaction when my teacher tries to make me talk about my plans for the upcoming weekend in German to everyone:

My reaction when I realize that I actually understood what the cashier was saying when she said how much I owed her:

My reaction when the same cashier asks me a follow up question that I don’t understand:

Me when I’ve had a little too much to drink alone at home:

My reaction when we finally find sugar after buying the wrong “sugar” 2x already:

My reaction right now realizing that it’s 3:30pm and basically dark outside already and I still need to put pants on and leave the apartment:

Goodnight.

Clarissa

Almost at the half-way mark until Deportation Doomsday.

Hallo.

A lot of you have asked me about our apartment search so I want to start out with a glimpse of how that has been going so you all can stop being at the edge of your seats wondering (Spoiler: we have not found an apartment yet). PS you can click to enlarge all of the pictures posted in this blog!

I have messaged 91 ads as of today:

BUT we have had a few more invitations to view some places. Here’s just one example!!!

In this first picture you can see the lovely entrance way (not sure if the junk pile is included or not):

I believe this was the living room or the bedroom (not sure because they all looked like grey dirt rooms with garbage in the middle of the floor):

Once we were able to walk through the dangling wires and rubble, we entered the kitchen (fully renovated to include the sticker wall apparently):

Believe it or not, we decided to not go for that one but there were 10+ other people there who I think were genuinely interested. I’m pretty sure this is how Borja and I looked at each other when we were walking through this place (Pictures courtesy of our IPhone camera’s while watching Homeland one night):

                                                               

Here’s a common response that I get when I email about apartments:

APPARENTLY ANIMAL HUSBANDRY IS FORBIDDEN HERE, WHO KNEW?!

It should be getting better now though because all of the brat college students should be housed and done stealing our dream homes, so hopefully we will find something good soon!!

—-

I’ve been wanting to put some very serious rumours to rest about Germany. Before we left Seattle, I was told time and time again (AND BELIEVED THIS TO BE TRUE) that Germany was lacking some very crucial food items. This is a goddamn lie.

Exhibit A: Maple Syrup

Exhibit B: Peanut Butter

Exhibit C: Boxed Macaroni and Cheese

Yes, I know, that peanut butter isn’t organic and probably has a lot of preservatives and weird shit in it. But guess what, I always liked that peanut butter the best and now I don’t have to try to be cool anymore and get the unsalted-organic-vegan-gluten free kind that costs $5 bucks, tastes like cement, and gets the weird oil lake on top THAT NEVER REALLY MIXES IN WHEN STIRRED. I’ve always been a Barney’s Best girl at heart.

—-

I started German Language School this past week. I go Mon-Thurs for 4 hours per day. It’s a very small class and there’s people from Iran, Russia, Morocco, Turkey, Syria, and Italy in it.

Day 1: I showed up and realized that the other 8 students already spoke decent German. So I spent the next 4 hours thinking that I was in the wrong class. The teacher only speaks Deutsch and we’re only allowed to speak Deutsch. I was expected to know how to already introduce myself, talk about where I was from, and to count to 10. I ended up just saying “I don’t know what you’re saying” about 10x through out the day.

Here are some notes that I took:

WHAT?

Day 2: I spent all morning before class learning how to count to 10 and to say hello. I showed up to class feeling so fucking proud of myself but then she asked me to count in the 100’s and assumed that I would be able to talk about my “profession”. I spoke in English and explained what my job was in Seattle and how I worked with the homeless etc, and someone translated it to her. She sat talking for awhile trying to make sense of it all and then she blurted out “Streetwalker!” at me. So she may or may not think that I am a prostitute just trying to learn a second language.

The next two days got exceptionally better and I’ve grown to like the class a lot. I still have no idea what’s happening and can’t have a conversation in Deutsch, but at least I can count to 100 and say GUTEN TAG. That should get me a job right?

—-

Other things that have happened..

Borja’s foot got sliced open by our cat when said cat got startled at literally nothing:

This Christ store happened:

They have really cute brown squirrel’s here!

The cat painter happened:

Borja keeps getting drunk and trying to get Yufka’s at 2am because they’re supposed to be open until 3am but they’re always closed when he gets there and he gets really upset:

Leroy managed to somehow get an oddly familiar looking Litter-Stache just beneath his nose:

I got late night post-boozing pizza slices and had a nervous breakdown because of how terrible it was. This is the first time in my life that I have literally thrown pizza into the garbage. I think that night changed me forever. Here’s a reenactment:

I lost my wallet and I was real upset over it at first but then I remembered that it doesn’t have anything in it that does anything cool anymore.

I think that’s it for now.

Tschüss!! (I copied and pasted that)

They haven’t kicked me out yet.

Since the last post we’ve been crazy apartment hunting AND HAVE ONLY BEEN ABLE TO VIEW 1 APARTMENT AFTER MESSAGING MILLIONS (no exaggeration).

This is how it all goes down:

1.) I sit frantically refreshing the website every 5 minutes for new apartment listings within our budget and desired area. There’s only about 1-2 posted each day, sometimes nothing.

2.) When a miracle happens and someone that I message emails me back, I panic and turn to my good friend Online Translation to have a conversation about next steps, it looks exactly like this:

3.) After the very successful email exchange due to me practically being a professional German speaker, they may invite us for an open viewing or vow to avoid me for the rest of their lives and put me on the “Do Not Rent” list.

Surprisingly though, we were invited to and attended our first viewing this week!!!! We asked these very basic questions and received these incredibly helpful and elaborate answers from the person who gets paid to show and rent out the apartments (this person is not the owner or landlord):

Q: Does the landlord accept pets?

A: I’m not sure. You would have to ask the landlord.

Q: Is there any additional storage?

A: Hm, I don’t really know.

Q: Is there parking?

A: No idea.

Q: Does the kitchen come with the unit?

A: That is something that you would have to ask the current renters. 

Us:

Seriously though. These people get paid a ton to do this and apparently they don’t need to know anything. PLEASE JOB ME.

Also, we’re looking in a lot of areas and there’s a neighborhood here called WOLFARTSsomethingsomethingwhocaresabouttherest.

Here’s some other things that have happened:

The other night Borja and I were having beers outside somewhere and a group of people walked by blasting Rammstein.

We went to an “American Diner” and they didn’t have Ranch Dressing or real pickles.

We made pasta that looked like male genitalia:

I looked up Karlsruhe tags on Instagram and 99.9% of them are selfies of young attractive people being young and attractive AND THEY PROBABLY ALSO HAVE JOBS AND MONEY AND AN APARTMENT WITH FURNITURE.

We have to remember that “Entschuldigung” means Sorry. Jesus Christ.

Leroy got stung by a wasp for not minding his own business:

I’ve come to the conclusion that the old people here are way cuter than the old people in the United States (except for my grandma Mary Gerling: she’s the number 1 cute). BUT THEY WEAR OVERALLS AND RIDE BICYCLES WITH BASKETS ON THE FRONT HERE.

Finally and most importantly, we had an emotional farewell with our very last Peanut Butter M&M:

Auf wiedersehen! 

OCHOA

83 days before possible deportation.

It’s been exactly one week since arrival and I haven’t done anything important. The last 7 days have consisted of Homeland, alcohol, crying at the 1,000,000,000 wasps everywhere, and snacks.

But then today happened and I finally went to the Bürgerbüro (I found out last Friday that I apparently had a week to do this post-arrival so of course I ended up there on the last day possible). They ended up serving me this (and not any actual burgers):

That’s my goddamn to-do list. It’s OK that it’s blurry, it wouldn’t make any fucking sense if the picture was clear anyway. I need to complete everything that’s checked and fill out an attached 3 page application that’s all in German. I felt like deporting myself after it was handed to me.

But then I went to the language school to get information about German classes and I saw this:

LOOK AT ALL OF THOSE THUMBS UPS. Even the old man on the top right seems okay with how things are going.

Basically it sounds like I have 90 days since arriving to complete my to-do list and to enroll in intensive German language courses (which will last approx. 8-9 months and are 4 hrs per day Mon-Fri). Once that’s approved, I will get a temporary visa and be given a year to complete the language courses, pass the exams, and find a job. BUT HOLD ON:

I forgot to mention that you pretty much need a PhD to clean toilets here. That’s an exaggeration but not too far off.

Outside of the scary stuff:

Borja started his job today.

We’ve been apartment searching online which is an entire separate post in itself. 70% OF THEM DON’T HAVE KITCHENS OR LIGHT FIXTURES. Give me one good reason!

We have a little friend group already which is lovely and incredibly helpful. None of the stuff above would have happened without them!

The cats are still alive but they aren’t huge fans of the cat food here (which is wild because they’d eat bottle caps if we let them).

I’m 9 hours ahead now so I have to deal with Monday’s before you.

I had the best croissant of my life today and I got it at the 7-11 equivalent of Karlsruhe.

There is outdoor seating EVERYWHERE and they even provide little blankets if you get cold. EVEN. AT. THE. PIZZA. HUT.

I was expecting to show up to Karlsruhe only to see a total of 3 people in a field somewhere. However, there are a TON of people around and they all dress better than me, so I feel right at home.

One last note – these are a complete waste of time:

Stop it, Germany.