TGIW, 2 June 2010

Wednesday was probably the fastest day of work I’ve had yet. After translating something I’d forgotten to on Monday, it was nine-thiry and I went down on an invitation from Frau Contenz to one of the break rooms. When they have time, everyone but the bosses go down around 9:30am for coffee, tea and first or second breakfasts. I just had some tea (I’m wondering if I should bring my own next time) and tried a weird sort of cracker. It was super hard and shaped like a skinny doughnut. But smaller than a normal Ritz cracker. We stayed and talked till about ten fifteen.
Then Frau Contenz came up and we looked over my translation. If I hadn’t mentioned it, she grew up in Tanzania, so her English is very good. We corrected a few things, but over all I was fine. We weren’t done yet, but she had an appointment at eleven, so while she was gone, I resized a lot of pictures, which she showed me how to do. That was a lot of clicking the mouse, and a little tedious because most of the pictures were of old stones and there would be five pictures of one stone. I understand the importance of cataloging the museum, but I resized over 300 pictures, which took three clicks of the mouse to complete one re-sizing.
I worked until after twelve, when I took my lunch break. I went to the library to check my mail, which I had some. I replied to a few Facebook messages, I think, and wrote down an address I’d forgotten to earlier. I was intent on mailing my postcards, which, yes I have. I also went and bought my dress from H&M, then stumbled upon a fabric store, from which I bought two meters worth of black ribbon. The dress doesn’t have a fitted waist, but I figure I can make one by using the ribbon as a belt. I also looked around the toy floor at Mueller. They had some vintage Barbies, which were cool to look at.
After lunch Frau Contenz came back and we finished looking over the translation. She said I did a good job. We then talked for almost two hours about all sorts of things. Like Harry Potter (she was flabbergasted when I told her that some American’s had had book burnings of HP books), Russell Crowe, rates of violence in teens in both countries, drug and alcohol abuse, the rising amount of child abuse in Germany, etc. It was nice and we laughed a lot. Then it was three thirty and she went back to work.
I amused myself by resizing more pictures. Then I packed up and went in search of the post office. This was a mess. I walked half way around the city in search of it (I knew I’d seen it around somewhere) in twenty minutes, to end up at the Museum again. I did discover a cool rose garden and whatnot, but not the post office. So, I grabbed a map from the museum tourist info center and went out again to look. Still couldn’t find it, just the cinema. But, when I was turning back, an Indian guy asked me if I knew where “the Bahnhof was.”
I replied in English, “It’s back that way, but I can’t find the post, so I’m going there myself.”
He was surprised to hear my English, but I showed him the way and learned that he was visiting his sister who worked in Schwenningen. I explained I was from the States and of course he had never heard of St. Louis. But once at the train station, I found the post office. I had been one street over too far. Dumb. And by now it was raining quite hard. It’s been gray all week. But, I had ten minutes before the train, and somehow I bought the stamps and sent off those cards. And made it to the train.
There must be something with Wednesday trains, because I think this happened last week, too. But it was not only late, but then we sat there for another ten minutes. There were a lot of soldiers in uniform on board, I think they were off to do their customary year of service. After we finally got going, it took the usual time, about eight minutes, to get St. Georgen and from there I walked home.
After dinner I got online and wrote my emails, etc. Then, to make a long story shot, I discovered that my family does in fact that wireless set up, they just didn’t know, and then spent a long time, with the aid of Gavin through Skype, trying to figure out the password (which was on the back of the router). By the end of it, the hypothesis is that the router settings are somehow funny and there’s nothing I can do at the moment. A cousin of theirs set up the whole network, so the Brauses don’t know anything, either. Oh well.