I'll just start by saying Monday... was interesting.
We ended up starting our morning a little later than intended, but managed all the same. We got on the bus, made it to the Hauptbahnhof, looked at each other and shrugged we probably didn't need a ticket. Besides, we were buying one for the next sixth months in an hour or two anyways. We got on the tram, were chatting and then a guy got up asking for tickets. We were startled and decided we wanted to get off. Of course, that didn't happen. We sat down with two of the checkers, who seemed to completely not understand that we were new and did not have "Ausweis"s because we hadn't gotten from the Hochschule yet (I realized later that Ausweis is a very general term for IDs), nor that we weren't registered at our addresses yet. After sometime we seemed to maybe be on the same level, however we were handed tickets, for 40 euros each. I looked at my ticket and realized that the woman who wrote it spelled my name wrong even though she had an ID of mine anyhow. They let us leave the tram and turn around to go back the way we came. We were a little on edge and grumpy at this point because we were quite beyond our stop, and I realized on our way back that I think we had already missed our stop by the time they called for tickets. If we had gotten off like normal, it might not have been an issue.
I wrote down how to get to where we needed to go, and we made it to the Auslandsamt, foreign student office to find out that we had arrived 5 minutes before they closed and we would have to come back in an hour and a half or so. We wandered around looking for the Mensa/ Cafe, found it without much of an issue, however when we got there, it was very different than what we were used to. It was very small and there were only two workers. The food menu looked awesome though. We both ordered some food, chicken breast curry, with tomato basil soup, and vegetables. We got to the checkout line, looking to pull out 2,60 for the food, but when she saw we weren't using a card we had to pay 3,12. We sat down, ate and chatted. The whole situation and morning made us feel quite unwelcome. At least the name was fun.
(MA is a club at ISU called Materials Advantage, which Rachel is apart of.)
We went back to the Auslandsamt, where the woman was kind enough to see us even though they were normally closed for the day. She gave us the paperwork we needed to fill out and told us where and what we needed to do. She, Frau Krauth, was very friendly and definitely made us feel a lot better. We went to the next building over to pay new student fees, that went over pretty easily aside from not knowing what we actually needed to give her. The next step was to go to the lower level and receive our Ausweisen, Student ID cards so that we could get our semester tickets and not run into more Bahn issues. Turns out we got there just as they were closing too. (This is all still before 2pm). They spoke with us a little, but we had to come back the following day to get our IDs. So, no semester tickets and we would have to buy another 9,60 24-hour PLUS ticket for us. In the meantime we decided to go see where our advising professor's office was, if he was there, and when his office hours were. He wasn't there, which was okay, but he had only one hour on Wednesday or something short like that. Now, it was time to go home.
As we approached the ticket machine, it only had a slot for coins (2, 1, .50, .20, .10, .5). Of course we didn't have enough coins to buy a ticket and catch the train, so we went to the closest gas station to get change. I assumed we had to buy something to get change, we bought ice cream. As we stepped out, we still managed to not have enough. I went in and asked to exchange the 5 for smaller coins and it wasn't a problem. We made it to the ticket machine but I didn't have my money out soon enough to buy a ticket for us so we missed the next tram. We survived and decided that we were just going to go home. I was investigating things to do and I found a restaurant called "Murphy's Law" (Irish), it seemed quite befitting of our day.
(We want your head, your haircutter doesn't matter! - Another "Amerikaner (hell)", the very thin round ones with frosting - Murphy's Law)
I looked online how to get there, took a picture with my iPhod and figured we good to go! It shouldn't be too hard to find the place. Just a turn and a turn. It took us at least 30 minutes to find this place. Our issue is that block sizes are completely different here in Germany, they're probably at least the size of what we're used to. After traveling down so many different streets and turning and accidentally back-tracking we were fed-up with trying to find this place. We walked down an alley and saw the Hauptbahnhof to the left. I turned to look at Rachel and there it was in the background. I was so flabbergasted that I was speechless for a moment. Then I tugged on Rachel's coat and pointed. It was such a relief, however that wasn't the end of it. There was Bingo, so we figured we would wait around for it, it was only at 8. It started at 8:30, and then after playing for a while (top row was a free drink, blackout was jackpot) someone finally got blackout. She called one more, and I was one away from winning. Oh well, it was fun and it was really easy to get home because the Hauptbahnhof was only a two minute walk away...
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