mychai's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Surviving the grind in Germany... Greetings from Germany! I had my first full night of sleep last night, which was amazing. The night before I woke up at 2:00am and lay there and stared at the wall, the ceiling, the clock (which loses 10 minutes every hour due to the voltage difference here in Germany), the other wall, out the window, under my bead, and everywhere else that wasn�t the backside of my eyelid. Jetlag sucks, and there isn�t anything in the world that will make it better. It is just like a hangover in that you can�t make it go away. Another annoying thing? Germans aren�t in a hurry to do anything. Take for instance my telephone and internet service. Everywhere I have lived, I would call the phone company (usually from the apartment where I would be getting the phone service), give them my info, and within a day I would have my phone. Not here. Nope. Five to ten business days. Maybe. And the internet? Two weeks. It�s like that everywhere. An especially nice place is at a restaurant. You go in, have a beer, sit at your table, have a beer, order a starter, have a beer, eat your appetizer, have a beer, order your dinner, have a beer, eat your dinner with a beer, have a beer, order dessert, have a beer, have dessert either with a beer or coffee, then drink beer until either you pass out or get hungry again. Dinner is an event you have to plan most of an evening for. No wonder kids drink early here. Parents can�t afford to buy a babysitter for that long, so they just bring them along. Two beers in a little tot will shut them up for most of the evening. I�ve gotten in the habit of saying �I like it� after anything happens I like. And it�s not a simple, quick �I like it!� It�s more like, �Aaaayyyyyyeeeeeee laikkit!� Like when I spent five minutes reading this about whether a BK or Mikky-D's burger is better. I like it. Wanna see where I am living? Good. First, when driving up to Sembach, you will see this view. Straight ahead are the dorms, and since I have a front-view apartment, looking back down the road is my view. Pretty, ain�t it? Speaking of where I live, this is a view of the dorms. My dorm is hidden in all three pictures, but in the top picture, mine is the one hidden by the tree. I work here. It is from this building where I am writing this entry right now. Since I�m a newbie, there isn�t much for me to do yet. They are still giving me breathing room to acclimate to the new time. I�m glad they are because, like I said before, jetlag sucks. The OWS (Operational Weather Squadron) is pretty much the center of the base. It takes two minutes of walking to get anywhere I need to go. My dorm, two minutes. The shoppette, two minutes. The fitness center, four minutes. But I don�t count that because I don�t go. Well, that�s about it from Germany. I have a coffee break coming up and I don�t want to miss that. Then, after the coffee break, I have to come back and sit down and check news sites to see what�s going on in the world. It�s a hard job. I hope I can handle the stress. 11:42 a.m. - Thursday, Mar. 25, 2004 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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