Apr 19, 2014

first paycheck

Since Friday was a holiday, Thursday night Saori and I joined intern Alejandro, his visiting novia, intern Xiao Wei, and Lina at a popular drinking spot in Stadtmitte. The bar was just a round, glassed-in pavilion with just enough space for a bar and a few tables, with the most ghetto bathrooms I've seen in Germany down a spiraling concrete staircase. However, the building was just the center of the space since the entire plaza around it was filled with people drinking outside, just plonked down on the few chairs, asphalt and concrete.

Alejandro has been working with me in the office; his roommate and friend Alfredo works for Behnisch and they both come from the same Uni in Monterrey, Mexico. The three of us talked wistfully about Mexican food.

For the record, I had 2.5 small (.33 liter!) Wolle beers and that was it, which makes me wonder why I was so ill the next day. Not one week before I'd downed at least a liter and a half of champagne. Granted, I'd not eaten well up to that point- lots of suspects: old Fleischsalat, which is basically potato salad if you swap out the potatoes with chopped ham and leberkäse, then there was the prepacked sandwich lunch with more mayonaise. Or it could have been all the chocolate and the entire bag of gummy bears I ate basically for dinner. At any rate, it was a rough friday morning, which was especially disappointing since we'd planned on getting out friday to explore the region.

There is a special card you can buy for 24 Euro which grants unlimited travel for one day through the Baden-Wurttenburg region. This is a very large area which actually stretches all the way to the French, Swiss, and tip of Austria borders. The second person on the ticket is only an extra four euros.

I bought a map of what was supposed to be Stuttgart on Amazon.com before I left- it turned out to be basically most of Baden-Wurttenburg. Useless for city navigation, but I taped it up on the wall and now its kind of a regional map for explorations. There's quite a lot to see in the region- medieval half-timbered villages, castles, the entire freaking Black Forest, Lake Constance, Basel, the Rhine.

Anyway, while I recuperated with toast and water at the city apartment, Saori practiced German and when she took off for yoga, I felt well enough to bus it up back to Camp Fox. I did actually see a fox near here the other night, crossing the street.

After Yoga, Saori joined me up here and I made __Salzkartoffel_ (salt potatoes) which is a very simple recipe of boiling new potatoes in brine and throwing some melted butter on top. Guuuut.

Today, Saori hiked back down the hill for more yoga and I went to find a better grocery store than the tiny, overpriced one down at the bottom of Zeppelinstr.

A few days ago, Jochen at the office gave me my first paystub, I guess the first bit of money to get me started or to get me current for the usual work cycle. It was deposited into my bank account, and today was the first time I spent money I'd earned at the new job. I found a good place to spend it too, the biggest supermarket I'd seen in Germany, tantilizingly close to Weisenhof, a collection of buildings by European Modernist superstars- Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, Mies Van Der Rohe, and a few other teachers from the Bauhaus.

I used my first paycheck to basically buy an assortment of basic living goods- toilet paper, yogurt, a bottle of water in a cool glass bottle, white tea, wheat bread, baking powder and baking soda (damned hard to find but for the record it's backpulver and natron respectively). Also picked up museli for breakfast, a plastic container to hold it, a bar of chocolate, and some onions. Pretty prosaic stuff, actually.

Coming back, I jumped on what I thought was the right bus until it pulled a U turn and went in the completely wrong direction. Since the supermarket was basically a bus hub turnaround, I decided to ride it down to the hauptbahnhof (train station) and catch a bus back which I knew would drop me right by the house. The easiest way by far to get around here, is to simply start by going to the Hauptbahnhof. Stuttgart is well connected radially, but not so well concentrically.

Today we were thinking about going to the Fruhlingsfest but its still cold and mostly overcast, although the sun is making an effort to show itself. Fruhlingsfest is the spring equal to Octoberfest- a fairground filled with massive tents for drinking beer, carnival rides and games, and people getting generally wasted. Actually, the one in Stuttgart is supposed to be the biggest one in Germany, which the more I hear about it, seems less and less laudatory.

I've also been working on my German bucket list since I've been here nearly four weeks and still haven't hit any of the sights other than Konigstr. and wandering around Stadtmitte. Granted, we did spend one of those weekends in Paris and the rest of the time running around trying to get me settled in. Oh and we also walked through the Kraherwald, a large forest park which begins across the street from my WG.

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I moved the blog again. I deleted the Tumblr account and moved everything to Medium.com, a more writing-centric website. medium.com/@wende