An update

It's been 7 months since I last posted... how time has flown!

A lot has happened, and I'll try to summarize some of the key things, if I can remember it all.

● I've been travelling a bit - going on weekend adventures and taking some days off to go a bit further. I've been mostly around Germany - Freiburg, Nuremberg, Berlin (twice now), Frankfurt, Cologne, Hamburg, Trier (and side trip to Luxembourg). I also spent a weekend in Dublin, and a couple of snowboarding trips - twice in the Zillertal valley (in Austria), and once in Feldberg in Germany's Black Forest.

My family also came to visit me and we went on a two week trek around Europe, hitting Amsterdam, Paris, Munich, Lucerne, Florence, Pisa and Rome.

● Work has kept me relatively occupied and my current work contract (and work permit) officially lapses at the end of the month. Theoretically I would then return to NZ... but long story short, I got two really great offers - one is with a position in our division's main office in Amsterdam, and the other was in another department in the Fulda branch here.

I indicated that I would like to go for the job in Amsterdam, but after some administrative issues, looks like that can't be turned around quickly, so I will stay in Fulda and for the interim take the other job offer while they work on the paperwork to get me to Amsterdam. Main thing is, I'll still be in Europe, and while in the last weeks I've started to feel homesick, I'm happy to stay here and have more experiences. As much as I love NZ, to return after just nine months, feels like a little bit too soon to me.

● I broke my arm during one of the aforementioned snowboarding trips right after Christmas. You know something is wrong when your arm looks like this:

I had surgery back in Germany and was in hospital for about a week. It was not a fun time!

● Looking back to when I first arrived, my German language skills have really come a long way, and I'm quite proud of myself. I've started to use it more confidently and even with strangers... over the telephone even! I still have a long way to go, but today I don't feel so handicapped and am slowly being able to interact with people on a more personal level.

● I bought a scooter! For the time I had planned to be here and the fact I am living in town with no parking spots, buying a car didn't make financial sense. Not having ridden one before, it was quite a cool new experience. I even got to experience slipping and falling off my scooter one wet morning, running late for work (I wasn't too hurt, just a few grazes). All was well for about two months, when one day everything seemed to go wrong with it - engine wouldn't start, wouldn't run properly etc. Wasted a whole lot of money trying to get it fixed. In the end, I just gave up. I hate dealing with auto mechanics.

● Living in Fulda has been quite okay. An update on my housing situation - I ended up not needing to find a completely new flat at the end of my sublet agreement. Luckily there was a vacant room in the flat where I was already was, so I ended up hauling my stuff across the hallway before Christmas.
Oh, and I've been cooking pretty much all of my meals - and not doing a bad job if I say so myself. Mum would be proud. The next place that I move to will need to have a fully equipped kitchen, that's for sure.

When I'm not travelling, time is spent in Fulda mostly at home (especially over the winter when going out into the cold just isn't an appealing prospect). But some nights have been out with workmates or occasionally with my flatmate's group of friends. I've been also doing hip-hop classes - which is great, but just a little weird with the average age of participants being somewhere in the teens. (But since when have I let being 'weird' stop me from doing anything?)

On reflection, although Fulda is a nice town (there could have been worse places to be living in), I definitely would prefer to live in a bigger city with more to do and see.

As I mentioned winter earlier - it seems to be finally over and it is starting to warm up nicely. After two winters in a row, I'm ready for some sun. In comparison to NZ winters, the German winter has been bitterly cold and just a constant grey. It is really quite depressing, and although it isn't as wet as a NZ one, I think I prefer a NZ winter instead. As the daylight hours have started to get longer, I'm definitely more of a happy chappy.

This is near my bus stop which I take from work to go home

...

I think that covers all the interesting things that have been happening in my life so far. I'm gonna aim to add a whole lot more photos and go into a bit more detail on some on my travels and some of the experiences I mentioned in this post.

Laufen mit Herz

I did a 5km run with some work colleagues today at the Fulda Marathon event. Despite having done pretty much no physical activity since my snowboarding stint a few months ago I did ok and am pretty happy with my time of 32:13.

What's a German event without sausages and beer?!

WG-Gesucht

I can't believe it's been a month since I arrived in Germany. So much has happened and I won't be able to write (let alone recall) some of the small details that I hoped to have written down here.

Anyway I'm gonna talk about the main thing that's kept me busy in the last two weeks which is looking for a flat - or as they call it here: eine WG (short for Wohnungsgemeinschaft).

Before I left for Germany, I was told by my work that my accommodation would be "sorted out". Without a lot of things clear at that stage anyway, I said fine, and arrived and was put up in a hotel. The first week and a half went by and I was thinking they were looking for something for me, until I received a nice email from the HR team which said more or less:

"Hi! Here are some nice websites where you can find a flat! We'll extend your hotel for two more weeks while you look. Good luck!"

And though I was a little annoyed at first, I thought this would be a nice experience; that I would learn something. So "los geht's!" I said to myself.

I did learn some things, but I must say the experience was far from rosy.

Challenge number #1 - furnished apartments are few and far between.

Without the luxury, or even foresight of bringing furniture with me, I of course needed a room with some furniture. You know, like a bed to sleep on, for example.

I had read about this beforehand and had expected to find fewer furnished apartments. My initial search result turned out about 70 places, activating the möbliert filter whittled it down to about 30.

Lovely room, but no furniture.

Challenge number #2 - flathunting is like dating.

The article linked above I think sums up the experience better than I could write it. But anyway, this aspect was challenging for me on a personal level, having to overcome slight social anxiety and general inexperience in this field :)

What I can say is that when I sent messages to people letting flats, I was pretty up-front with the fact that I was a Filipino-Kiwi who didn't know too much German. "Du musst mit mir geduldig sein!" I'm not sure if this helped or hurt my cause. I don't think it's worth speculating over.

Challenge number #3 - time and timing.

August is the month between semesters, so a lot of students starting in the new semester are flat-hunting and competition is high in Fulda (there's a Hochschule - kind of like a uni/polytech and a few smaller schools - but it's definitely a kind of student town).

I had effectively only 2 weeks to find a place, which didn't help the stress levels either.

Challenge number #4 - location.

As I don't have a car, I needed to find a place near a bus stop, preferably on the route that goes to my work place. That pretty much limited me to the town centre), which of course commanded the highest prices and smallest rooms.

Challenge number #5 - living alone was not an option.

I wanted very much to connect with some local people outside of work. And the thought of living alone was a bit depressing (even though I'm not the type of person that needs to constantly be with someone). There were some nice options for single-room apartments, which I thought would make for a nice backup in case I got desperate and really couldn't find a flat in time.

My two weeks of flat hunting kind of went by in a blur. I lost a lot of sleep poring through search websites, looking at pictures, reading/translating flat descriptions (very, very slowly at first), and writing/responding to people advertising the flats. I must have sent about 10-15 inquiries (definitely more than half of the appropriate options, given my specific needs!). No replies from half, and the other half with a "thanks for inquiring, we'll get back to you", which they either didn't, or took an impolite amount of time to message back saying "sorry, we've filled the room, good luck with your search!"

I ended up having one flat visit - it was for a 15m² room in a good location. The pictures looked reasonable and the girl I was texting about the room was friendly and responsive. Finding this place was a funny experience - I arrived well on time (as has now become the norm for me ;) ) but for some reason when arrived at the door, the doorbell didn't have the names that I was looking for, i.e. it wasn't the right place.

I called the girl on my phone and what ensued was a comical 8-minute conversation in my terrible German while I was running up and down the road trying to find the place, understand what the girl was asking, and trying to describe where I was. I got so flustered, the only thing I could understand from what she was saying was "wo bist du?!" many times over.

I ended up finding the place (it was down an obscure, unsignposted right-of-way), met the girl and the other flat mate there - who, by the way, ended up actually knowing fluent English; why they didn't switch to English puzzles me, but I'm happy they didn't as I got a good German lesson out of it.

They showed me to my room and... it was empty. Ok, well bar a set of drawers, there was nothing. "You can't tick the 'furnished' symbol when you have no furniture!" I wanted to say. But then I settled for "this is a little less furnished than what I had expected..."

I had a short conversation with them - they were nice people - but I needed furniture, and the room, kitchen and living room were rather small and a little bit dingy.

So it was a bit of a failure and I was hopeful to find another place. But then my allocated time at the hotel was running short and I was starting to get desperate. I thought, okay, I'll start inquiring about single-room apartments. I sent a few messages for some good options - they were about 50% more expensive than a room in a shared flat - but they were properly furnished and looked half-decent. Most of these places were being offered through 1 or 2 real-estate agents - and when I got their reply, I came across:

Challenge number #6 - "sorry, I'm not interested in renting to you for less than a 2-year contract period"

"What? Are you serious?" I wanted to say.

I'm going to speculate here why this is - until only very recently (a few months ago, I think), real estate agents used to charge letting fees to the tenants. So when you find a rental property, you would then have to pay the real-estate agent this "provisions" fee, which I think is about 2 months' rent - this is already on top of a security deposit (of up to 3 months' rent) , and any rent payable in advance.

Of course, this is completely crazy and opposite to almost all other first-world countries, where the landlord bears the cost of letting fees. And eventually the law was changed because the German people finally realised how unfair this was.

Which comes to the point of why I think they won't rent for less than two years - because then the landlord will have to pay the letting fee more often, for each new tenant. The explanation makes sense to me anyway, but I am happy to be enlightened if this isn't the case.

The real-estate agent did give me two names of places where I might be able to find a short-term furnished rental.

I got in contact with one of them, and from the website it looks like I would be paying double the rent compared to a flat - but at this point, I was going to settle for almost anything.

I went for a room viewing on Sunday and the place was not too bad - it had the basic amenities I would need, but it was really quite cramped, and the room stunk of smoke (even though smoking was not allowed in the rooms).

I got a copy of the rental contract and mulled over it for a good 15 minutes, trying to translate all the words in it. "You don't have to sign it now, you can look at it tonight and we can sign it tomorrow, " the owner said.

I arrived at work on Monday morning and opened up my emails - "Hi there, sorry for the late reply, I've just moved to New York and haven't had time to go through my emails. Are you still interested in my room by any chance? (in a shared flat)"

"Umm, hells yes. But I was literally about to sign for another place so we need to organise a flat viewing, like, tonight. And I need a yes/no pretty much asap, because I'm going to sign for the other place if I don't feel secure about this arrangement. No pressure. Lol."

Okay, it wasn't so casual like that. But he quickly got back to me and gave me the contact for the other flatmate living there already.

I had my colleague help me call the person I visited yesterday to ask if he would hold the room/contract for one more day because I was looking at another place. "You need to tell me by morning, otherwise I have to offer it to someone else."

I arrived to the flat that evening, and hallelujah I hit the jackpot - a top notch location, a nice big room (21sqm - big enough!) with all the furniture I needed, kitchen, washing room, two toilets and a bathroom, and best of all a really nice flatmate who was so nice and taking my broken German in her stride. It turns out she'd been an au-pair in NZ for a year, and when I saw the Six60 poster in her room, I was like, "you and I are gonna get along just fine".

Home for the next 4 months

 "Thanks for visiting. I've got two other people who want to view the flat so I will be in touch. " she said.

And then I explained the situation to her about needing an answer by the morning - hoping that I wasn't killing my chanced by insisting on a quick reply.

"I'll have to get in touch with (the guy sub-letting his room) and will let you know in the morning then."

I was at work when I got the message - "we'd love to have you take the room if you are still interested :)"

And the rest is history.

We've already cooked dinner together (pasta!) and I got to meet her friends one Saturday night out. There's another guy living there who I haven't met yet as he's on holidays and will be back in the coming days. If he's as good as the girl is then I will be completely stoked.

The only tricky thing about this is that I only have the place until the end of the year as the tenant will be back as he returns from his semester abroad.

So I will have to find another place at the end of the year, and play this game all over again. #notlookingforwardtoit

How to Be German in 25 Easy Steps

Things have been a bit busy lately, but I will be posting soon. Just thought I'd link to this great article in the mean time :)

http://unorderedlistadventures.blogspot.co.at/2012/11/how-to-be-german-in-25-easy-steps.html

Deutsche Sprache, schwere Sprache

I knew that the language barrier would probably be the most difficult part of my stay here. Not being able to communicate is probably one of the most debilitating handicaps you could have - imagine not being able to interact with others in the way you want to.

I started studying German about a year ago in anticipation of this move, but I knew of course that it would only get me so far. The 90 minute 'immersion' course you do once a week is nothing compared to when you arrive in actual Germany. Then you understand what real immersion is like - no 'get out of jail' cards when you get stuck and want to switch back to English!

I've had this experience before when I moved to Tokyo. I thought having had this experience already would make this transition easy, but as I've found out, it hasn't been quite the same.

Firstly there is a big difference between having the language barrier as a student, and as a worker. As a student you're in an environment where people know and understand you are trying to learn the language. You get a lot of leeway, and people are generally more patient and have more time for you.

At work, people generally want to get things done. As much as people say they would like to help if I wanted to speak in German, it starts to feel a little bit selfish to take away too much of their time fumbling over broken German - especially when many of them are very good - fluent even - in German.

"But you'll never better if you don't even try!" I hear you say.

I get it. It's a balance. I'm trying to find this and have recently started making more of an effort to try even when it feels super uncomfortable.

Another difference is the cultural aspect. In Japan, you get instant gratification for just trying. You only have to say as much as arigato gozaimasu, to get "nihongo jyouzu ne!" in return ("your Japanese is so good!"), even if you butcher the pronunciation, and if you bow deeply with your palms flexed together Buddhist-style. Whether or not the compliment is sincere is a different topic though ;)

You could say that the Germans are more direct and truthful - which in my experience feels like the case. But that doesn't mean to say that they can't also be happy for you for attempting to speak German. When they tell you that your German is nicht schlecht, or even doch wirklich sehr gut, they usually mean what they say. If they look annoyed or scoff at you, then they mean it too. But my workplace, people are generally the kind of people who are very happy to help and I'm happy about this.

I've written this post over a couple of days and was going to say that because of this difference, it is harder to have confidence to speak German, because you can meet people who are short with you and give you a negative response. But over the last days I've changed my mind. I've been in too many situations where speaking in German (or trying to) has been generally met with a positive response. Sure you don't get positive feedback every time, but you do get positive feedback!

To share some interesting anecdotes, what I consider to be my first fully German conversation (a rally of 4/5 sentences each!) with a stranger was with the girl at the sushi shop, who herself was Vietnamese (but grew up in Germany). She recognised me the second time I visited and asked me where I was from. The conversation flowed well and it was a great feeling.

I had another 8 minute phone conversation with a girl whose flat I was wanting to look at, but when I got to the address she gave, I couldn't find the place. I was running up and down the road trying to describe my surroundings in German using the very few simple words coming to mind, and only understanding a quarter of what she was asking/saying back to me. "Ich bin vor dem(?) Garage? Der Ort wo mann das Auto... fixen...? (kann)"

Another story from a work meet-and-greet the newbies - picture this - a Kiwi, Frenchman and Russian start to speak to each other all in broken German. It was pretty funny joke.

For those who have spent any time in a country whose language they couldn't speak - and for those who haven't had this experience and are apprehensive about it - I do have to also talk about this issue of becoming a deer in the headlights, or "the yes man".

You know - you've been staring at the menu for a good 15 minutes, meanwhile reciting exactly what you are going to say, over and over again. You've even anticipated what they might say and start preparing and reciting possible responses. You go to the counter.

"Uhh... ein Big Mac bitte... Nummer 3...?"

"**sthg I can't understand** Menu?" (I think she's asking if I want the combo. Yes, I know what to say! [I think])

"Uhh... ja danke." (Ok, not exactly what I had planned to say, but it'll do.)

"**still can't understand**"

"uh..."

"Cola?" (Oh, I get it. Wish I knew what she had said though.)

"Oh. Ja bitte."

"**sthg else incomprehensible**"

"Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..." (Yeah, I give up) "...ja, danke" (I hope I didn't just agree to sell my kidney.)

*puts ketchup on my tray* (Oh.)

I have to say that this has happened way more times than the more positive stories above. It can be incredibly disheartening, and when I started writing this post I was in a kind of negative space. But the thing I learned is that because of the way the world works, this will of course happen way more in the beginning. It seems like a catch-22 (need confidence to try, but when you try, you end up losing confidence), but somehow it's not really true.

As simple and boring as it sounds, you just have to try. And every failure is actually a learning experience - even if you feel like you've learned nothing. You might be a deer in the headlights, but the truck heading towards you is completely imaginary.

Don't worry about looking stupid either. Because you will look stupid and (many) people will think you are stupid or a foreigner (with possible negative connotations). For the strangers you will never see again, you will probably never see them again. And for those you might deal with often, they'll see your improvement, and one day (have patience!) will tell you a nice story about how you arrived looking so lost and are now a million miles from there.

Every day I learn more, and from day 1, understanding maybe 2%, and today after three weeks here, now at 7% or so :)

My company was supposed to organise language classes for me, but this has been a bit of a mission. Apparently they can't find an appropriate language school/course for me that has availability. No German teachers in Germany? Apparently it's true! They are still working on this and will update again when I learn more. In the mean time, language learning blogs and Duolingo should tide me over.