Well it's Day 2 in Germany and this whole trip is off to an interesting start. For those of you who may not know, I'm in Germany until the 20th of December working on an audit. I arrived yesterday in Stasbourg (which is actually in France) and met my cab driver. Once we established that I was indeed the person she was there to pick up she asked me "Do you speak French?" Nope. Then "Do you speak German?" Nope. So we put my stuff in the car and settled in for a nice silent 45 min road trip to Baden-Baden, Germany where I'm staying. The ride was accented by her occasionally pointing out the window and saying things like "village" and "city".
I arrived at my hotel which is actually a spa and it's in the downtown area so that's fun. I went into my room and started exploring. First thing I noticed--there is not actually a shower curtain. In it's place there is a piece of glass that goes about a quarter of a way across the front of the tub and since it's clear it offers about as much privacy as a high school girls locker room. But privacy won't really be an issue since they limited me having any guests by giving me a twin bed. Did anyone know those were even an option at hotels?
I soon discovered that i couldn't use my calling card from my hotel room so I ventured off into the streets to find a pay phone. For some reason I had the hardest time finding one and when I finally stumbled across one i realized i'd already walked by 1--3times (I had backtracked a couple times b/c I was told it would be "right there"). After I talked to my parents I ventured into the Christmas Festival area that is currently going on in Baden-Baden. I thought maybe it would be a good place to find something to eat. And I'm sure it would be--if you ate sausages. So after realizing that the majority of the things for sale were candles and sausages, i ventured back towards the mainstream restaurants.
I founds a cute little bistro that even offered me a English menu. I'm currently recovering from a case of food poisoning and was told to "ease myself back into eating" so I figured I would just order an appetizer. 6 of the 7 appetizers were --go figure--SAUSAGE!! And the 7th--snails. So I settled for good old pasta instead. Something else that i've noticed is on the menu alot to is "rump roast" and while I think that's from a cow, i won't be eating that while i'm here either.
After dinner I walked around a bit more and then headed back to the hotel. After a few minutes flipping between 90s songs on some music channel and German rap on German MTV, I decided that it's perfectly acceptable to go to bed at 6pm after a long plane ride and went to sleep.
This morning I got up, took my shower trying to keep as much water in the tub as possible, and then set about getting ready for my first day of work. First thing I did was plug in my straightener. Now, i'm not a complete idiot so I did bring a converter but the hotel plug has the option of what voltage you want so i just switched it to 115 (b/c it 120 wasn't an option) and turned it on. 5 seconds later...it turned off. So then I tried to use my converter...same deal. So I figured, we didn't always have straighteners, I can totally just blow dry my hair straight like I did back in the day (like the Amish). So 30 minutes later once I'd lost the feeling in my arms from holding them above my head for so long I looked in the mirror at my somewhat straight and unavoidably "volumized" hair, fished out a hair tie, and secured my hair into a ponytail.
And now I'm at work. You have to order your food every day using this menu system which is conveniently written in german. I ordered the first thing i saw that didn't have meat in it and i'm hoping its good so i can just get it every time.
Please don't misunderstand this e-mail. I'm having a good time here! I still have yet to find the gym in hotel and I somehow forgot to pack a swimsuit so I'm sure there are many more adventures on the way. Imagine if I had a rental car!
I miss you all!
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