Today was an exhausting but VERY successful and eventful day. I registered at the City of Bochum (Bürgerbüro – like an office for burgers, hoho-hohoho). I registered for my classes.  I registered for a one day 12 euro trip to Amsterdam in April. And I signed up for kickbox! I learned how to use the printer and the copy machine at the campus copy center. → I printed my NRW ticket with which I can travel for free across the whole extensive Bundesland Nordhein-Westfalen.

I also went to the Mensa which is, by the way, the biggest place I have ever seen. Since the Ruhr Universität Bochum is built as one huge campus (not spread throughout the city like most of the universities in the Czech Republic), it also has one Mensa in the center of it. For all of the 40 000 students. It is kind of scary to be in such a huge place with so many people but when you manage to overcome the anxiety, it is awesome. There are maybe hundreds (tens and tens at least) of different kinds of food you can chose, all labeled with pictures which show whether it is vegan, vegetarian, with fish or meat and also which allergens it contains. Everything works perfectly, there are no long lines at the cash-registers and after the campus guides explained us the logics of the place, one can even find the food they want.

After running between all the registration places there and back (and there and back again; not everything runs smoothly in Germany), I am at a peaceful place. Almost all the bureaucracy is done. I only need to take the German placement test and adjust my Learning agreement accordingly and that should be all, hopefully.

Huge thanks to Joana who helped me with all of this.

In the afternoon, we had a Campus Rallye;  a team competition which including (more) running around the campus, finding out different information and most importantly – challenges. For example stuffing as many marshmallows in your mouth and repeating a famous German sentence. Or singing a song at the most crowded bridge leading to the U-bahn station (of course our group decided to sing Du Hast by Rammstein).

ONLY ONE WEEK UNTIL THE SCHOOL STARTS.

Rule of the day: if you don’t know the word in German, try an English one with German accent / pronunciation. (blind = blind, e Postkarte = postcard)

New vocabulary:

-       r Trockenr = dryer

-       Schnürsenkel binden = to tie the shoe laces

-       r Briefkasten = mail box

• Storms in Bochum are intense.
• The group of people I hang out with most of the time consists of 4-8 Italians and me. The question “where are you from” is slowly being replaced by “are you from Italy?”.  Italians are awesome.
• On another note, a girl in the supermarket started talking to me. The strange language I couldn’t understand turned out to be Slovak. That´s how I met Monika, a student of medicine in Brno. (Tvoje Balabán placka mě seznamuje s krajany všude po světě, Markét!)
• I am living in a constant fear that I will lose / destroy my card which is the key to my room. Or that I will lock myself out. And then I will have to call a German number and pay so much money that I won´t have any left for the rest of my stay here. To check that I have the card by me has become my primary instinct. When I wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, the card is the first thing I think of.
• There was a very chaotic lunch at Corrado´s kitchen today, including losing people on the way there, stealing a pot from my kitchen, and starting an hour later. (Note to myself for later: always bring your own dishes when visiting an exchange student. There is never enough forks or plates or glasses.) But everything turned out great in the end, the pasta was delicious and I got to meet some awesome new (Turkish!) people. (And a big yay for something finally happening in our dorms!)

Threatening note in C.´s kitchen:

• You have two options:

1) You are quiet after 21:00.
2) I call the police.
I am a serious man.

Orientation week

•           At the welcome brunch we met our Campus guides (most of them have already gone through the Erasmus experience). For our East-Asian studies group they turned out to be these two super nice girls and I decided I want to join the ESN Olomouc when I come back. It is so nice and helpful when we have someone we can turn to who knows what the struggles of a foreign student can be. Also, several students of Japanese came so I got to meet some of my soon to be classmates.
•           On Saturday there was a guided tour around Bochum as a part of the orientation week. I decided to join the group with the German guide to practice my German. Well, I can´t say I understood much but I understood two things:
•   The old city center of Bochum consists of one building, where they now sell shoe insoles.
•  There is a church where the priest (?) tells a story about a window painting of Jesus with six fingers.
•           There was a flea market organized by the ESN today and I finally bought a spoon. Also, it is really fun to watch what people of different cultures consider as important items for their kitchens.
•          Tomorrow there is a special early date for foreign exchange students to sign up for university sports. Turns out that the online registration systems “works” pretty much the same way as STAG in Olomouc.

•  I have bought a blanket. Blankets are important. If there were more blankets and more people who would wrap up other people in blankets whenever needed, the world would be a better place.

Dečky jako první pomoc na všechno.

PINK for the bathroom. BLUE for the windows. ORANGE for EVERYTHING. There are step by step instructions in six different languages. With pictures. And the colors of the rags match the bottles! And we even got our very own "home clean home" sticker.

I wonder what (horrifying?) experience led to the decision to hand out these cleaning kits to the students.

This is awesome. I don´t think cleaning could get any easier now.

Yay for watching the solar eclipse on Friday.

I love these random conversations about random topics with people from all over the world. Yesterday, Anna, Martina and I met a Turkish guy whose name I couldn´t remember. But in translation it means sky-related. While having the conversation about the meanings of our names, I realized that I don´t know what mine means.

I looked it up, it means "she who brings victory".

First time doing laundry here. Let´s hope the washing machine understood what I wanted... (And of course I forgot to buy the washing powder...)

- I had a German conversation with a Vietnamese girl whose milk spilled over my food. I am pretty sure she thinks I was apologizing to her for spilling the milk.

- I went to the public library, gave my library card to the lady at the desk (a regular procedure for the people who want to use the computers there). After a while I decided to borrow a book. So I go to the desk with my Von Mäusen und Menschen: 

Kann ich dieses Buch...? (forgeting the word for "borrow")

??

Um… kann ich dieses Buch… (desperately waving with the book)

??

…mit mir bringen? (I mean, what does she think I want to do with the book?!!)

Ausleihen?

Ja, ausleihen…

- I went jogging! There is a very nice park on the other side of Bochum and my new Italien friend Anna volunteered to join me in my turtle-like pace.

- Basically, I live here on vegetable and chocolate. So I guess I´m back to normal.

- Wild life everywhere! I met two rabbits on my way to Hardy´s and four another ones when I was returning to the dorms. There was a supercute hedgehog running around during the bright day and on my way to school I regularly meet a fluffy and very cuddly cat with a (slightly disturbingly) perfectly round head. 

Vocabulary of the week:

- wifi = WLAN (why. just why.)

- izolepa / scotch tape (a nebo v mém anglickém podání "see through tape") = Klebefilm

- vypůjčit si (knihu) / to borrow (a book) = ausleihen

- ramínko / hanger = r Kleiderbügel


(Laundry update: How the dryer works is a little bit of a mystery but none of my clothes seem to be destroyed so that´s a success.)

German textbooks of Japanese. What have I gotten myself into?

So apparently, people can ring at my door. Anyone knows what these symbols mean? I wanted to ask who´s downstairs and tried pushing the the telephone receiver button but it only started buzzing and wouldn´t stop until I pushed it again. (It is starting to get a little creepy. People keep ringing...)

To bring a German dictionary ("in case there are some problems with the Internet connection during the semester") was the best last minute decision I have ever made.

Second day:

- I spent 15 minutes looking for "Help for international students" office, feeling like an idiot that I can't find it even though there are signs all over the place. Turns out I am not an idiot; they moved the office to a completely different place but left the old signs there.

- Someone's milk spilled all over my food in the fridge. 

- That's it for the less fortunate part of the second day! Yay!

Now for the awesome part:
- I had a 15 minute dialog in German all the way through (!!) which successfully led to me signing up in the public library. They don't have wifi there but I can use their computers to check my e-mails and to look up places where I need to register for classes and such.

- I now have Internet on my cell phone and my credit card is activated again.

- I have my very own mailbox! „grin“-Emoticon

- I took U-bahn for the first time and got to celebrate St. Patrick's day with some really nice foreign exchange students and ESN people „smile“-Emoticon (And for those who know my sense of direction: I HAVEN'T GOT LOST!)

Questions of the day:
- Where does one buy hangers?!
- How to decide on the size of the trash can bags? (Of course I bought them too small. And now the spiders from my salad don't have enough space.)

My first day:

- The caretaker of the dorms decided to go on holiday exactly the week when all the exchange students arrive to Bochum. There is no one at the office where I am supposed to get the keys to my room. (There is a note in German ...in comic sans... on the door)

- When trying to pay for my groceries, I am informed that my credit card isn't accepted at most places in Bochum. When I try to pay with my German credit card (which I was not supposed to use), I manage to get it blocked because my PIN code doesn't work for some reason.

- I need to contact my bank but all my paperwork is left at my room.

- I try to look for some information online and I find out my SIM card I bought this morning hasn't got activated and I can't use my Internet data.

- The guy at the store can only help me if it still doesn't work 24 hours later. 

- I won't have any Internet access at my dorms until I register at the university. The soonest when I can do that is in three days. Besides, I don't know where to register since I don't have access to my email. 

- People either don't understand English or they don't understand my German or they don't know where a library / place with wifi (NOWHERE) is.

- I realise that basically, I can't do anything until I register as a RUB student. Like, travelling at a reasonable price, going to a library, finding any information online or paying for the dorms.

- At 5pm I finally get back to the dorms and sit down to eat my lunch, only to find out that there are TENS OF LITTLE SPIDERS CRAWLING ALL OVER MY SALAD.

On the plus side, I bought Nutella, which is nice.