Oh man . . .
Thursday seems like such a long time ago . . . I'm trying to remember
what happened. I feel like I had a fun story for that day. I think I
just went out with one of the other MIT students--Neel--and had dinner
at a little restaurant in the old city. And then ice cream :-D. I also
tried to plan my weekend with Sam and Ling (also from MIT working for
Bayer and living in ?Leverkusen? about an hour from here by train). We
couldn't really decide where we wanted to go and if all the German on
the website meant that our ticket was really cheap or really expensive.
At the very same time, Herr Weber had a man named Can (pronounced Jon)
over who had lived in my room before. He said he had the same problem
with the internet, and he said he would try to fix it. He needed a CD
from his friend, so he would call us tomorrow.
Anyway, yesterday was a much more exciting day. By exciting I mean it
was awful. Well, most of it wasn't. In the morning, I paid my "student
fee" in order to get an ID and a bus pass (I think I spent 20€ on the
bus last week), then I opened a checking account at Sparkasse and a
crazy thing happened. I was walking down the street, and noticed that
the person walking in front of me looked kinda like Can. "Can?" "Oh hi!"
It turns out he was just on his way to the bus stop where his friend
would give him the CD. We walked about a block, and 2 seconds later
along came a bus. He friend handed him the CD, stayed on the bus, he
gave it to me, and that was that. I spose Aachen is really kinda small.
After that I went to work for awhile, but my grad student wasn't there,
so I decided to go home and work from there for awhile before I met some
people at a bar for World Cup! That was pretty cool. And it was amazing
how excited everyone was. After the game, there were people in the
streets for hours. Yelling and singing about "Deutschland." We sat down
at a table in the street while everyone cheered by in their
yellow-red-black face paint with the German flags around their
shoulders. (I think maybe they like soccer)
* (stars mean there's a picture that should go there, but I haven't put
it up yet)
Anyway, after all that fuss, I got home . . . and I realized I had
forgotten my key. Seriously? How many times have I done that? I'm sure
all of you have witnessed some form of my locking my keys in or leaving
my keys somewhere. (or even just thinking I had left my keys somewhere,
but actually having them in my pocket--which sadly was not the case this
time) This time it was pretty bad. So I freaked out because it was
9:45pm and I had to get up at 4 to go visit Sam and Ling in Köln. I
asked the neighbor who I knew had the key last week, but she said she
didn't have it anymore. She also didn't know a lot of english, and I was
freaking out so my German was awful, i'm sure, so we didn't really
understand eachother. Herr Weber wasn't going to get back until the next
morning, so I went down to the grill about a block away where I knew
there had been a girl who spoke English. She wasn't there, but I was a
little calmer, and could tell them what the problem was. They and a man
who lives down the street decided that they would see if there were any
open windows or anything. Everything was solid. They even got a really
long stick to try and pull some keys out. They were hanging opposite the
mailbox on a wall, so we reached about half of them, but none of the
ones we reached worked in any lock. After an hour of that, they decided
that there were no more options. So everyone's number that I have is in
my room, as is my cell phone--it was charging. But even if I had had my
cell phone, the texting wasn't working and I still hadn't figured out
how to make international calls with it (arrrrrrgh). So what was I to
do? by that time it was around 10:30, the grill was closing at 11, I had
no place to stay, and no way to tell the people I was supposed to
leaving with at 6am from Köln that I couldn't make it. So I called a
locksmith . . . now for those of you who don't know, a lock smith
doesn't pick locks like in the movies. That's what I thought he would
do. Instead a lock smith destroys the lock and puts in a new one. man.
This one actually tried sticking some wire in through the door to jigger
the mechanism, but it turns out the door was bolted, so that would never
work. I had no idea what to do. I didn't want to ruin the lock, because
it wasn't my house, but I didn't know what I could do. I (tried to) ask
the locksmith if he would want that if someone was staying in his house,
and he said basically that something like it happens all the time, and
that it would be OK. I thought about it for awhile, and I had no idea
where any hotel or anything even was, so I was at a loss. I said OK. He
drilled out the lock, put a new one in and it turned out costing 400€. I
had 2 on me in order to pay him (the guys at the grill had told me it
woul cost around 100-150€. He drove me to the ATM to get more money, but
unfortunatly, my bank wouldn't let me get any more money out in one day,
since I had just pulled out 300€ to open the bank account that morning.
So we tried other things like transfering over the phone (my bank was
closed. it was 12:30 am here and 5:30 there) and over the internet. When
I heard the front door open. It was Herr Weber, the man who lives here.
He was quite confused as to why his lock was changed. I told him the
whole story (freaking out the whole time). He told the guy he didn't
want the cylinder in the door, so the guy took it out, knocked his hours
down a little bit, and got it to around 200€. After he left Herr Weber
told me that I might have gotten myself involved with the Turkish mafia
in Germany . . . umm wow. Well, I'm not too worried, because the guy was
really nice, and I was crying the whole time, so I don't think he could
have really been trying to take advantage of me, but who knows?
Well, that was an exciting day all around. I think I'll go shopping.
Kendall
posted by Kendall @ 5:37 AM
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