A Good Day

I am exhausted! Learning takes so much energy. Not to mention all the walking I am doing. Today I had an appointment with Deutsche Bank to sign some papers to get a debit card. I took the S-Bahn to Mitte where the bank is located. I'll quickly mention that I couldn't find it and had to call the guy I was meeting with and ask him how to get there. It turns out that I was literally across the street from it but had been confused because it was a HUGE street with several lanes going in each direction and separated by a median, and there was a lot of construction happening on my side of the street and I didn't even think to cross ALL the way over that huge street. What a dummy. When I hung up the phone with the guy he said "I'm very optimistic that you will find it."

Talk about an impressive building! It was a huge impressive stone building with a guard posted outside who asked me my business when I tried to enter. Inside it was a completely stark lobby with a semicircular desk to the left where two very proper young women in business attire with their hair pulled tightly back were standing. I told them what I was there for and then had a seat to wait. The lobby was completely silent but I think the two girls were trying to have a conversation under their breath. I was thinking that I would rather have almost any other job than to be the gatekeeper in a completely silent environment.

When I met the banker, the first thing he asked me for was my passport which of course I hadn't brought. Mental note: bring passport to all meetings. Luckily I had a digital scan that I was able to access through my phone and we got the bank stuff taken care of.

The more interesting part came next. On my way back to the train I noticed a real live drug store! A drugeriemarkt. I had some time before my next appointment so I stopped in. I have never been so excited to see shampoo and lotion and shaving cream. Remember my previous post about knowing which stores to buy things in? I hadn't yet come across a place to buy these things and I had compiled a mounting list of basic toiletries and household items that we were desperately needing. The things you need when you move into a new apartment, which I haven't done since college I think! I bought plastic wrap (I had been putting leftovers in a bowl and covering them with another bowl upside down), ziploc bags (Dan has been taking his lunch to work in leftover paper bags from the bakery), a razor (I haven't shaved in weeks! Too much information?? First I had no time, then for the last 9 days or so I haven't had a razor), hand soap for the kitchen (had been going to the bathroom to use the bar that was provided to us each time anyone needed to wash their hands), a kitchen scale (see a future post on cooking; all German recipes measure by weight not volume, so you need a metric scale. Plus Diablo and Rhythm's new food bags give the portion size as a weight), a small notebook to use to keep track of grocery lists and other notes (we have about 4000 notebooks that I packed away into storage at home and a few I shipped with our shipped items which haven't yet arrived; here I have been using the back of various papers the kids bring home from school), shampoo and conditioner (we have all been using the small hotel bottles that were in our travel bags. I did have the foresight to throw in some extra that we could use until we bought more), lotion (same as previous; that's not as urgent because it's so much wetter here than Missoula. My skin is happier but my hair is not...), some anti-frizz gel (see previous. My hair that lays so nice and flat in Missoula is much more frizzy and triangular here. Ugh. I'm going to need to spend some time learning to do some braids and up-dos because I can't really wear my hair down here. That was unexpected.), kitchen gloves so I can was dishes without touching nasty stuff, and some all-purpose cleaner (because we've been here a week now and it's time to clean some things.) Yay!

And then I made a friend. It turns out that the guy Dan is replacing lives in the area of our temporary apartment. His wife stays home with their 6 month old son and offered to meet me to give me a tour of the area. She was very nice and thankfully her English was very good, so we were able to chat and visit and had a very nice time. She took me to lunch at a neat Italian deli in a cute neighborhood that I hadn't explored yet. And she showed me a whole new world of shops closeby that I also hadn't explored, including a bigger grocery store, another drug store and a department store. I can't wait to go check them all out! She is bored at home all day by herself and wants to get together more, so that will be fun.

I also visited a different bigger grocery store on the way to get the kids from school (two grocery trips today, yikes) and found so many things that I hadn't found in the small shops I had been to so far. Clementines, cream, oatmeal, flour, brown sugar, raisins, etc. I also got smart and made out my list in English at home and then looked up each item to get the German translation. Then when I was going through the store instead of pondering each item I was able to just say "Oh, there's the Haferflocken." (oatmeal) I'm trying to set myself up to bake or at least make pancakes on Saturday.

And tonight I made a German meal! Since I'm having a little trouble finding ingredients here, I looked online for recipes that are German, thinking surely I'll be able to find those ingredients. It was more trouble than I thought but after the two grocery stores I had what I needed to make Geschnetzeltes with Dampfkartoffeln (pork with shallots in a wine/cream sauce with boiled potatoes). It was tasty! I really haven't found much of anything out on the internet for "easy expat cooking". I would think someone else would have assembled some recipes with ingredients that are easy to find and easy to cook when you're new to Germany, but I haven't really found anything. Maybe later I'll devote some space to trying to create that.