Lately I’ve found myself with quite a bit of free time, mostly due to a lack of classes this week. It appears that each class runs about 2 hours a week, in stark contrast to the strict 4 hours/week I’m used to at RIT. Well I’m certainly not complaining, especially since these classes seem like they’ll be pretty damn easy anyway.

However, this post was originally going to be devoted to my entrance in Osnabrück and what has happened since. Well, in short, a lot…

So Tuesday I moved in. My flatmates were very nice and I soon realized that there may be a bit of a language barrier (duh). One of them did speak quite good English so we chatted for awhile, and he pointed out I needed bedsheets. Ah yes, sheets would be nice. So he walked me down to Plus, a small chain grocery store down the street where I proceeded to buy some sheets and a ton of other food. Excellent. And as I’m rounding the freezer section a familiar face appears. Brittany?!! (A friend from RIT who had spent some time in Germany as well beforehand) So we discuss the eccentricities of the Germans and finish up shopping.

Around then I realized I probably wouldn’t have enough cash, since apparently debit/credit doesn’t really exist in most marketplaces. Brittany was kind enough to lend me some cash and we went through the checkout line. Surprise! The cashier yells at me to start bagging groceries so I start throwing them back in the shopping cart. Surprise! They don’t provide the good ol’ shopping bags we’ve gotten so accustomed to. By this time I had a shitload of food and other stuff so I just wheeled the damn thing back to my apartment (there’s a euro deposit to try and prevent this, haha; the next day somebody returned it for me). What fun.

The rest of the week consisted of group leaders taking us around Osnabrück, getting us set up: bank account, health insurance, etc. This was all well and good, I must admit I didn’t know what the hell was going on for most of it. Just about all fo the other foreign students have over a year of German experience, while I have six months with some major gaps in between. That is, their German is good, mine sucks. This has become frustrating, but it’s slowly coming back…

They did organize a few social events as well, a party, pub crawl (which I regret missing to go to a movie), and some other things in the evenings. Somehow they managed to pack things in every day of the week from about 9 am til 12 midnight. By the weekend I was exhausted.

On Saturday we went to Köln (Cologne to you westerners). This was quite fun, and deserves it’s own post (along with my photos).