Changing Locale

Finally, the day had come to leave Munich and set out on my own adventure for the summer.  I had set my alarm for 6:30, but woke up before it out of some combination of nervousness and excitement.  It turned out to be a good thing I did, too, because packing took a lot longer than I planned on.  I didn't remember having so much stuff when I was packing to come to Germany... of course, back in Princeton I packed leisurely over the course of several days, which may have made some difference... I packed for about an hour, then went downstairs to say my final goodbyes to everyone who was flying out together.  I had also put out an all-call to the group for any foodstuffs and other nonperishables that they hadn't finished but didn't want to bring back to America - I never like to waste food, and anything I could bring with me to Clausthal was something I didn't have to buy once I was there.

I also had another motive for begging for food - money.  I had received a $1000 scholarship to help defray the $2500 tuition cost of Princeton in Munich, but we were still responsible for paying for our own food during the month we were there, and the wealth of cultural opportunities that I had taken advantage of weren't free, for the most part.  All in all, I had managed to spend around 900 Euros (that's almost $1300 at the average exchange rate for June) during my month in Munich - not exactly a small sum.  I hadn't worried too much about this - my internship in Clausthal came with a 1300 Euro stipend for the 8 weeks which I figured should be just about enough to live comfortably and have a little left over for traveling and souvenirs.  However, back in April when I was still ignorant about all of these kinds of grown-up living things, I thought that 1300 Euros wouldn't be nearly enough (I was calculating a monthly apartment rent in the neighborhood of 4-500 Euros/month, but fortunately my dorm in Clausthal is much cheaper than that).  Therefore, I requested financial aid from Princeton to help make up the perceived difference - and was awarded $1500.  I was delighted at this and now knew that I would have plenty of money, which is why I wasn't exactly living on a shoestring budget in Munich.  However, in the middle of my last week of Princeton in Munich, I received an ominous email from the DAAD, the organization sponsoring my internship.  Seems they had gotten wind of my aid from Princeton and had deemed that no student was allowed to receive more financial assistance during their internship than the minimal stipend they had allotted.  Though I tried hard to explain my situation - that I had already been living in-country for a month and didn't have access to thousands of dollars of my parents' money as I deem many of the other interns do, the DAAD had no mercy.  They declared they would dock my stipend by the amount of aid I had received from Princeton - suddenly I went from receiving 1300 Euros to about 250.  A *huge* difference.  Since my rent in Clausthal is 255 Euros/month (and the deposit on the room is 300 Euros), and my contract is technically for two and a half months (they tacked on a couple of weeks on either end of my stay, I'm not quite sure why), that in itself is almost a  900-Euro expense - yikes!  Ultimately, it's not a make-or-break thing - I worked very hard this past school year (even working four jobs at a time) and managed to bring my accounts up to about $3000 - but I had been considering buying a used car for ease of grocery trips during the coming school year, and this news that the $1300 I had just spent in June basically came out-of-pocket essentially eliminated that possibility.  Luckily, a bike still seems within my spending range (mine was stolen at the end of the school year and never recovered) and my especially frugal living in Clausthal has meant that I will only end up spending about 700 Euros more than the remains of my stipend (as opposed to the 1050 Euros that they docked me), but it was still an unpleasant surprise that effectively served to take most of the excitement out of my anticipation of Clausthal.

However, I may have bitten off more than I can chew by asking 40 people for anything extra they didn't want - my food pile, when I returned to my room after seeing the group off, was intimidatingly large.  In addition, my time was growing ever shorter - my train left the Munich Central Station at 10:16, so I had originally planned to leave at 9:30 to ensure that I made it to the station in plenty of time to find an empty seat on the train and a good place to store my luggage.  However, as 9:00 came and went and I was still sorting things into piles and playing a desperate sort of Tetris game to get everything to fit neatly into two suitcases and my backpack, it became clear that this wasn't happening.  In fact, I began to worry about even fitting in breakfast and still making it to the train - I had a couple of eggs left over that I was planning to make into scrambled eggs or an omelet for my last breakfast, but if I stopped to make it I would surely be too late.  An angel appeared about 9:15 in the form of another student who hadn't left with the group, coming to my room to return the USB stick I had given him to put pictures from the past month on (I am seriously planning to make a photo book this time and wanted as much source material as possible).  Seeing my desperation and the stuff I still had to pack, he asked, "When did you want to leave by again?" and immediately followed that with "Give me those eggs - I'll make breakfast for you."  I sheepishly agreed, knowing that it was the only way I was going to be able to eat before I left, but still kicking myself for not planning better.  In the end, I was able to wolf down the wonderful omelet he made for me, stuff everything I had brought to Germany in my various suitcases, and bring a selection of the food offered to me - but a large bag of it had to stay in the communal kitchen, to my chagrin.

At last, at 9:50 I raced down the steps and bolted out of the Wohnheim, remembering to return my key on the way out but forgetting in my haste to empty the trash cans in my room or even empty out my refrigerator (I had a bit of OJ left, some margarine, and a tupperware of cooked chicken and tortellini that was intended for my supper :P).  I had had to use the expansion compartment of my large suitcase, and it probably weighed a good 80 pounds on its own - my carry-on containing all of my books added a good 30 pounds at least, and my backpack was stuffed with food and entertainment for the train including my laptop - another 20 pounds, if not more.  Even then I had another shopping bag with a few things which just wouldn't fit in my backpack but I really wanted to have for Clausthal - needless to say, I was heavy laden.  No time to take my ease, however - I trotted down the sidewalk at a pace as close to a run as I could with all of the weight I was lugging.  My arms were aching well before I got to the S-Bahn station, where I stared desperately at the several flights of stairs before looking around frantically for the elevator.  However, there was no lift to the city-bound platform and I still had to drag my bags up a full flight of stairs - I physically couldn't do this all at once but had to make two trips, one to get my carry-on and another for the bigger suitcase, which I could barely lift more than three stairs at a time.  All of this exertion, combined with the North Face jacket I had to wear for the pocket space, meant that by the time I was standing on the S-Bahn platform I was panting hard and sweat was streaming down my face as it hadn't for years - not since my days in high school as a cross-country runner when I would give my all at the end of those first races of the season, when the hot weather and my still-soft muscles conspired against me.  The entire journey, from the elevator in the Wohnheim through the familiar 10-minute S-Bahn ride - was one long desperate prayer.  I knew that nothing but a miracle would get me to my train in time, and to miss it meant hours of hassle and expense and not getting to Clausthal that day.  Finally the S-Bahn pulled up to the Hauptbahnhof and I dashed off the train and ran to the nearest escalator - at this point there was no way I was getting my luggage up more stairs, so I had to ride the escalator stationary like a normal person instead of my usual method of using it as a turbo-stair.  At the top I looked around frantically for the signs to "long-distance trains" and dashed off in the direction the sign indicated, praying that the station wouldn't be too crowded or the trains too far away.  My constant stream of "Oh Lord, You're the only one who can get me on this train, so please do a miracle" didn't stop even when I saw my train still sitting in the station - only when I had sprinted the length of it to find the first second-class car and given my luggage one last mighty heave onto the train did I pause, completely winded and shaking, to say one of the most thankful prayers of my life.  It was 10:14 when I got on the train, and I had only just collected my bearings and begun traipsing through the train searching for an empty seat when I felt the jerk of the train beginning to move out of the station.  I finally found an empty seat, stowed my big suitcase in a space at one end of the train car, and collapsed, still trying to catch my breath.  The sweat didn't stop pouring off of me for a good 30 minutes, and my shirt was soaked in several places, but I was safely on my way to Clausthal, and that's all that really mattered.  That is potentially the closest I have ever been to missing a public transit connection and still making it - and these trains aren't the kind that leave every half-hour.  If I had not made my train I would most likely not have been able to find another until the next morning, and I had already relinquished my key which was my entry into my living quarters, so I would have had nowhere to stay for the night.  But God is good even to those of His children who don't deserve it, and I made it on the train safely and only a little worse for wear.

Although I had not reserved my seat beforehand, thankfully no one else had either, so I was left in peace for the entire three-hour train ride to Göttingen.  I spent the time alternately in looking out the window at Germany passing me by, catching up on The Case for Christ, napping, and listening to my iPod.  At Göttingen I had a 45-minute layover, so there was plenty of time to lug my bags over to my departure track (now I know why they call it "luggage") and look around at the station - it was quite small compared to Munich (which was basically all of Germany I had seen so far), but I was to see much smaller before my journey was done.  The regional train ride which took me from Göttingen to Goslar lasted another hour, so it was mid-afternoon by the time I detrained in Goslar for the last leg of my journey, by bus.  This proved to be a little more problematic than the trains, as far as luggage went - I couldn't lift them up the cramped space of the bus steps, so the driver generously said (after glancing at my ticket), "Why don't you just use the back door?" and opened the door in the middle of the bus which was designed for people with bikes and strollers and was a much more open area.  The bags were still heavy, but I eventually got them on the bus and sat down, panting again.  The next 40 minutes was a bumpy ride along winding mountain roads, mostly going up.  All that could be seen on either side of the road were trees lining seemingly endless ridges and hills, and I realized that I wasn't exactly in Munich anymore.  A slow smile spread across my face as I surveyed the area which was to be my home for the next eight weeks - I liked it already.

When we finally reached the Clausthal Central Bus Station (nothing more than two bus stops in a medium-sized parking lot), I was relieved to see an old beat-up Toyota parked in the corner and a confident, smiling, balding man striding towards the bus.  He said, "Erin, I presume?" and upon my relieved nod, beamed and grabbed the handle of my larger suitcase.  The two-minute ride to the institute consisted of him spewing information and questions (all in English) and me nodding meekly and looking around at what could be seen of the town from the windows of the car, more glad to have arrived than anything else.  That night I was shown my dorm, the institute where I would be working and how to get between the two before Leif shooed me off to my room to settle in and clear my head.  Supper was an improvised meal of some no-longer-frozen veggies that I had rather unwittingly packed, made with extra water to which I added a bit of instant potato mix (which also makes a great cheap thickener for soups and such ;]).  And so, as much as I wanted to find out everything about my new surroundings, I paid attention to first things first - starting to unpack and getting a good night's sleep, which is my primary key to success.  Which is also what I will do right now, with the intention to (finally) tell you everything you've been dying to know about my life here, which I've been living for FIVE weeks now (my, how time does fly), in the very near future.