An American Furry in Germany

Sigh... it happened again.

    I was visiting the Cinemaxx website today, looking up showtimes. I had heard good things about Iron Man and The Forbidden Kingdom, I hadn't been to a movie since Sweeney Todd, and my financial aid is finally coming through, so I thought I'd treat myself. Turns out they're not showing the Forbidden Kingdom, so I looked up the showtimes for Iron Man (and found, to my surprise, that they would be open tomorrow and Monday as well). Then I decided to look up the prices.
    I know I'm cheap, nobody has to tell me that. But when I go to the movies, I understand that it will be an expense. I expect to pay $5, minimum, if I'm lucky. usually around 7 or 8 dollars, sometimes up to $9 (although at that point I'll have to start rethinking it). And I'm in Europe, so I reasonably expect to pay around €7,50. Even though that comes out to more than $10, it's a once-in-a-while thing, so I won't let it worry me. So it wasn't the price pissed me off. It was the fact that underneath the price, there was a list of "Additional Fees". For 1 Euro more, you could get a box seat. (Nice idea, but I wasn't interested.) For movies longer than 120 minutes, there was an additional fee of 50 cents or 1 Euro, "depending on the film". Iron Man is 123 minutes long.
    If it's not clear exactly why I'm pissed off, I'd like to illustrate it by explaining a little phrase we have in English (I don't know if it's limited to America): "nickle-and-dime". It's used as a verb, and it basically means "charging additional small amounts for individual small reasons, which over time ends up raising the total cost much higher than expected".  Usually it's used when the original price is an atractively low "base" price that ends up being very misleading--but it's not limited to that. Generally nickle-and-diming your customers is seen as bad practice--it tells them that you don't respect them, and that you only want to get their money, even if you have to trick it out of them. In Germany, though, it seems to be a sort of cultural identity. I'm afraid I may be crossing the line into "arrogant American" here, but it really bugs me. I still want to go see Iron Man... but not on those terms. And of course that's the only theater in Bremen (that I know of). So in the end, they don't get my money, and I don't get to treat myself. So we both end up unhappy.

At this point I'm pretty sure that I'm not going to get the typical emotional high, then low usually associated with travel. At least not at any extreme level--I think I'm too moderate to let myself be that unbalanced. But I'm tired today, so I'm feeling a little put out by everything being so different. :P Pardon me while I bitch for a bit. I'd keep it to myself, but then I'd never know if some of my complaints might be reasonable.

• First of all, your keyboards. I can understand the need to have the umlauts and ß (I set up my US keyboard to display them on Ctrl+[, ], \, and 8 (for ß)). But that's still no excuse for "Alt gr". Admittedly it's not used much in everyday life, but when you're trying to program, the many important brackets are all assigned to that key--and it's in the most inconvenient place on the whole keyboard. It's under the knuckle of the middle finger on the right hand, where we just have a redundant Alt key, and I always end up hitting the spacebar whenever I go for it. Plus most of its useful features are on the same side of the keyboard, so you have to hit both keys with the right hand. I've tried to change the keyboard layout (it's been years since I actually needed to look at the keys) in the OS, but I was never able to do it--and I'm not sure why, because the operating systems in the computer labs are all in German. Either the English layout isn't installed, I don't have the right permissions, or I was doing something wrong.
• Actually I'm kind of growing fond of the money. All the bills are different sizes, which makes them easier to distinguish, and you can't shuff them all together--which is inconvenient sometimes, but it reminds you that if you have lots of different sizes, you have a lot of money in your hands. In America we just have to go by the numbers and the much less colorful styles. Plus here you can have a handful of change worth 10-20 Euros, if you let it accumulate. It makes the money more fun.
• I don't see why everything has to close on Sundays. It's just inconvenient. I'm actually mostly just surprised by it. Shouldn't capitalism have intervened by now? I'm used to the customer always being right.
• I'm really surprised at the amount of paperwork. It seems antiquated. And when I say "paperwork", I mean the literal paper--everthing is printed. It all goes into the computer eventually, but in the meantime countless resources (both time and trees) are wasted in writing things down, handing them over to be read, photocopied, and typed in, probably only for someone else in Berlin to read it off the screen and fill out some other forms on paper... I get the feeling that the people typing things into computers before granting me a visa would accept anything with a signature on it. (And a signature is just a scrawl of a pen, worn smooth through endless repetition.) I was almost tempted to test my theory, but I'm not stupid. :P Which sometimes leads to me having less fun.
• Jimi Hendrix was not German. Heh, got you there. :P
• O.J. Simpson was also not German... aww.

Okay, I think I'm good for another month. :P

I was trying to figure out how to say that in German on the way to the bank just a moment ago. On the way back to the bank, that is. I had gone to the bank previously, and they said that I couldn't get an EC-Card (check card, basically, but better), because I would be here less than 6 months. I asked at Sparkasse Bremen and Deutsche Bank, and received the same response. But because I already have 600-odd Euros in Paypal, I need some kind of account here, even if it wouldn't be optimally convenient. So I went back to the Sparkasse, the one branch out of all fifteen-thousand in Bremen that was closest to where I live, and this time they said that it would be no problem! So, I'm happy.
Except that shortly after I returned, I got a phone call from them, saying that I had left my Semesterticket there. They didn't need it for anything--it had just fallen out of my pocket. So I had to head right back. It's these terrible pants--the pockets are like an inch deep, and only hold stuff when I'm standing up. I lost my comb today, too. But I need my Semesterticket a whole lot more. So from now on I need to be a lot more careful, and stop wearing these pants.
And then when I was walking back, I ran into a pole. I think I should really try not to leave the house again today...

I've been reading a lot of Ayn Rand lately--and by a lot, I mean Atlas Shrugged. One very long book... fortunately it only took me one month to finish the whole thing. This whole tumultuous month, while I've been moving back to my hometown, preparing for a semester in Germany, and going through one existential crisis after another, I've been reading Ayn Rand. Scary, I know. Turns out that I didn't like it now as much as I did when I was young and impressionable (in high school), and now I disagree with a lot of it--but not all. I can't blame her for it; she grew up in communist Russia, and although she escaped from it, her entire philosophy is a reaction to it. Not to mention her writing style is more like propaganda than decent fiction--I guess you can never truly escape your roots. But her basic premise is only slightly flawed, and along the way to taking it way too far, she makes a lot of good points. So I think I've learned a few things.

But this post isn't about Ayn Rand--it's about Germany. Again. I think I've figured out their underlying premise.

You see, nothing is free in Germany. I know we have the saying "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch" (tanstaafl, for short), but we don't really mean it. We get ketchup free, water free, bread and butter, free refills, etc. I haven't gone to a doctor, but I bet they don't even give out little lollipops here. In Germany, nothing is free--tanstaafl.

But reality is like that, isn't it? We only say that because it's true--you can't get a free lunch, you can only get someone else to pay it for you. America is ruled by corporations that have realized that buy people free lunches can be a good business practice. It's not immediately obvious, but people will give you more money if they have the choice, instead of being nickle-and-dimed out of it. If you change their reality, and don't charge them for 2 cents worth of ketchup, they'll order 50 cents more worth of fries! If you give them a plastic bag that costs 1/100th of a cent for free, they'll do all their shopping at your stores! And so America is gradually slipping away from our hold on reality. Either that, or we were founded with a national mentality firmly outside of reality--either way, the result is obvious. Disneyland, Ronald McDonald, The Brady Bunch, all-you-can-eat, etc. Each asks for nothing but your money, and offers you nothing but a brighter and more perfect fantasy. Isn't it nice to escape reality for a while?
Don't get the idea that I'm saying one is better than the other--I've tried to avoid doing that. I'm certain that there is a difference, and I have a pretty good idea of its nature, but I'm not yet certain which is "better"--of if one can be better. Germans as a people tend to have a more bleak worldview--the cost of accepting reality. Is it worth rejecting reality, at least in part, if it makes you happy? Or is it our "duty" to keep ourselves firmly rooted in reality--I mean, look what the American way of life is doing to the world. Seeking individual happiness would seem to be a good enough meaning of life, but when everyone does it, it turns out it's not sustainable. But for what should life be sustained, if not happiness? It's certainly a quandary. Maybe I need to figure out what premises I'm working from--if any really exist.

This got off topic fast, but suffice it to say that the Germans have a very realistic worldview. This makes them at once less fun, and more responsible. So if you want to lay back and enjoy life, go to America. If you want to prolong life, and I mean all life on earth, I'd suggest Germany.

The first week I was here, I did a lot of exploring. Fortunately the public transit system here is very convenient--unfortunately, the price is not so convenient. It's €2.15 each way, which, for a student at least, is pretty expensive. I could by five bars of chocolate in the price it costs to travel to the city center and back!
Fortunately I now have my Semesterticket, so I don't have to worry about that (not to mention I can go as far as Hamburg or Hannover for free). But even when I was paying for it, nobody ever checked my ticket. I wondered if the whole thing was based on the honor system. I'm a pretty honorable guy, so I guess it worked for me--not to mention, I didn't want to risk potentially breaking the law, because that's not something you want to do in a foreign country. I don't even know where the nearest embassy is. So as I shelled out Euro after Euro for each trip, a little pang inside me said that I might be wasting my money.

Well, I finally realized how it works. Today I was on the tram, and suddenly everyone reached for their wallets. I looked around, confused, and saw a couple of nondescript people moving through the tram, checking tickets. So I got mine out, and a few seconds later, they were finished. Then when we arrived at the next stop, they got off. I think they must have gotten on, one at each entrance, and moved towards each other. It was very efficient, but the lack of uniforms was kind of confusing. Usually a person doing a public service is easily identifiable. These people were just wearing whatever--jackets, sweaters, dark colors mostly. If they were wearing uniforms, I would have recognized what they were doing faster. But when I see a group of strangers in casual clothing, moving efficiently and with a common purpose, I don't immediately assume they're working in the public interest. :P

I made up the word all by myself, although I don't claim to have been the first. It means "foreigner tax", and no, it's not literal.
One of the things I discovered about going to another country is that I don't know the rules, the customs, or even the brands. I mean, I expected that, but what I discovered was that this has a very real financial result. The "Ausländergebühr" is paid every time I buy a new train ticket, not knowing that I could have transferred, or every time I eat at McDonald's because I didn't want to take a chance on whatever "Backfisch" might turn out to be, or every time I accidentally buy lipstick instead of ChapStick. And no, none of those examples actually happened. :P The train tickets don't transfer, I know what Backfisch is, and I found the Blistex just fine, thank you (I don't think they have ChapStick here...). But I have been noticing the effect.

Oh, and there's no free refills here at McDonald's. What the hell?

I think. It's the weekend, so I'm pretty sure the booking hasn't gone through yet. Hopefully I'll get the e-ticket tomorrow, and I can reserve my seat. As I predicted... I still can't believe it. One thing that scared me, though...
The day I was going to buy the ticket, from a little site called Student Universe, I was waffling. I could either get a cheap flight, or a reliable carrier, and it was a tough choice. In the end I decided that Air India had reviews far too bad to risk--more for my luggage than myself--so I would get the $900 United Airways flight out of SFO. So, a few hours later, I went back to the site to double-check, and possibly buy the flight right then. Only to find that every fare on their website had jumped by about $200. Now the only flight I could find for less than $1000 (most around $1,100) was Air India. So I was freaking out about this for a while, until I went to the other site I had been looking at. This one couldn't offer me better fares, because Student Universe sells tickets that aren't available to the general public--I have a slight advantage, being a college student. It was competitive, though, and this site hadn't raised their fares by $200. So rather than risk waiting again, I pounced on a $950 United ticket out of SJC. This had the added benefit of going out of San Jose instead of SFO or LAX.
So now I'm somewhat relieved that it's over and done with, hoping that www.airlineconsolidator.com is a reliable agent, and pissed that suddenly Student Universe's prices are back to what they were earlier yesterday. Mostly just confused, though. And it's still the weekend, which probably explains why I haven't gotten an e-ticket yet, and my bank account hasn't been debited.

Phew.

I just converted $1000 of my Paypal balance into Euros. As I suspected, this was cheaper than doing it through my bank. I love how things that come from the internet (Google, Paypal, to some extent Linux) are usually much more commonsense, much better, and at the same time much cheaper and much more profitable than the alternative. Breaking with tradition is always fun. On that note, props to ING DIRECT for having a simple, pleasant-looking interface. Bank websites tend to have too much information, and too many "offers". The ING DIRECT site has just what you came there for.
So, at once I'm hoping that the interest I earned on the balance (about 5%) was enough to offset the continual slide of the dollar's value against the Euro, yet I'm also hoping that transferring the money will help my money retain more value than just keeping it in dollars. I wonder if I can still put my Euros into the money-market account. Actually... what I'm really hoping for is for the US dollar to plummet once I get into Europe. Heh, heh. Then my student loans will be easier than ever to repay. :D
I mean, we're already worth less than the Canadian dollar. That's scary. Without someone to denigrate, what American culture will we have?

I read a news article a while back saying that student loan interest rates were going down--by about 50%. Wonderful news, I though... but I didn't think until now to check if it was retroactive. Apparently it isn't. I'm stuck at 6.8% interest. :( After I had gotten my hopes up and everything.
At least if inflation keeps ramping up, the dollar amount that I owe might lose value faster than interest can accrue. Fingers crossed!