A day in Berlin has three stages.
First there’s the here-goes-nothing stage, in which one leaves one’s apartment with a goal and a definite but revisable plan for how to accomplish it. This stage is always the same.
Then there’s the what-have-I-gotten-myself-into stage, in which the falling apart of all one’s plans coincides with the breaking loose of all hell. Today, for me, that stage began at exactly 15:06 when I forgot to signal that I wanted the bus to stop. It lasted until 17: 37, right before I took this picture outside the FU-Berlin’s Akademisches Auslandsamt.
Then there’s the final stage, which I shall call the now-you-tell-me stage. At this point, one has learned everything one needed to know to start out, although it is by now completely and utterly useless and although it ought to be promptly forgotten, it never will be. Days in Paris have this stage, too. Ask me how to order cheap wine at a café or book a sleeper for two from Paris to Milan sometime.
During the here-goes-nothing stage today, I went back to the Rathaus-Steglitz (the red building that I walked right past two days ago) to sit in the lobby for an hour. Most people hate going to these offices, but free Wi-Fi is not something I scoff at. I was there to do two things: 1) update my blog and 2) check by Bloomington bank account to see if my transfer from savings went through. Without that transfer, I couldn’t get the money I needed to register at the FU.
By 7:00 Eastern time the money still wasn’t there. I blogged. I waited. At 8:00, miraculously, it showed up. So I went right across the street to my new bank, Deutsche Bank, and tried to withdraw 300 Euros. It wouldn’t let me. So I tried to take out 200 Euros. It spit out my card. Then it spit out 200 Euros.
That was good, because I owed the FU almost 197 Euros. I took my Monopoly money and hopped a bus to the FU. It was a double-decker bus. My first since London.
Actually it wasn’t my first since London, since I had taken one earlier that day and in fact, that’s where I took this picture. But *today* I rode a double-decker bus for the first time since London. So whatever.
I changed buses where I needed to and that is when I forgot to signal the bus to stop. It skipped the FU. Begin what-have-I-gotten-myself-into stage. I walked down a really long block, through the campus. I saw what I presume is a math building.
Either that or some graffiti artist is super nerdy.
Oh, I didn’t have any problems paying my 200 Euros. People find it relaxing to take cash from foreigners. But when I got to the building to buy my health insurance, the guy told me I couldn’t have any. Because I’m not a bachelor’s or master’s student. He is the one that said we should speak English, but he had no idea what a PhD was. Annoyed. Disappointed. Frustrated. Suspicious. I walked back to the Akademisches Auslandsamt. There I barged into a room full of people and was told I must wait outside. I wasn’t handling the disappointment with my usual level of devil-may-care sang-froid. On second thought, yes I was. Which means none at all.
That’s when I ran into my old friend Herr Günther Schepker. Oh, Herr Schepker, you’ll never read this blog, but I wish you knew how much your kind help has meant to me. He was the one who asked me two days ago if I’d rather speak English and told me everything I needed to know to get settled.
“Haben Sie es geschafft?” he asked me. You know what that means: Did you get everything done? “Nein, ich habe es nicht geschafft,” I answered. Then I told him about how the mean man made told me I couldn’t have health insurance. My tone of voice evoked that of Ralphie in A Christmas Story when he told his mom how an icicle fell on his face and broke his glasses.
Herr Schepker took me into a room, sat me down, and told me the man was wrong. He then went out and queried a few people who told him there was more than one representative in that building selling health insurance and that I should go back and just talk to a different person.
So that’s what I did. And after wandering aimlessly among several stories, talking fruitlessly to the information bureau, and with trepidation approaching a bored-looking woman sitting alone in a hallway and asking her if she sold health insurance, I finally got my verdammt PLFICHTKRANKENVERSICHERUNG.
So here I am at the now-you-tell-me stage. Ask me sometime whether when you want to register for school in Berlin the over-tanned blonde lady sitting alone in the hallway is the one who can sell you the required health insurance plan. She is.
And now I’m registered with the university, I have health insurance, I’ve got a bank account, I’ve got a transit pass, I’ve registered with the local authorities, I’ve signed my lease, paid my rent, and bought my groceries. I’m all set. Almost.
Now I have to get a cell phone, get the Internet, and get a residence permit. And a guy I met today said he had to sit in a waiting room for seven hours to get his residence permit. Let’s just hope they’ve got free wireless.
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