Dissertating

It's been a while since my last update, faithful reader(s). Rest assured that I am not holding back awe-inspiring experiences. My days have looked, almost without fail, like this:

7: wake up

8-6: work

6-11: I actually don't know what I do during this time. Definitely nothing productive. I watched the German version of "American Idol" and the American version of "Pimp My Ride," which inexplicably appears here without dubbing.

This has been enlivened by bureaucratic inanity and trips to the pool (these are not necessarily separate things; I'll describe the pool at some point later).

My German has been getting better, at least in terms of speaking enough to get around without humiliating myself. People still ask me for directions, though, immediately in English. I don't know why this is. I must exude an aura of fruited plains, purple mountain majesties, etc. I had another massive faux pas at the official registration office (to detail all of these would require a blog of its own). Everyone who stays here more than a month has to register their address. I'm sure there are perfectly good reasons but it seems like a complete waste of time. They didn't ask me any questions or anything; all I had to do was show up, say what my address was, and I was on my way. When could this information ever be useful to the city of Munich? If the mayor of Munich ever wakes up and says, "I wonder where that James Chappel is living," I'll eat my hat. Anyway, I was doing the whole thing in German but it was obvious as ever that it's not my Muttersprache. So the woman decides to switch to her own atrocious English, unnanounced, and she says, "Floor?" (asking me what floor I live on). I understood "Flo" and excitedly said, "Yes, he's my roommate! Do you know him?" (somehow she allowed this lunatic to register, which further demonstrates the absurdity of the process). The other German troubles have been of the unamusing, "I can't really read this even though I need it for my dissertation" kind. This is only funny if you hate me.

Oh, but at the library yesterday, the man told me that I could check out 5 items at a time, so 5 on Thursday and 5 on Friday. Not quite understanding, I said, "Do you mean five o'clock in the evening?" I understood his sentence just as soon as I'd finished mine and wanted to burst into flames. He allowed me a modicum of dignity and did not even respond.

I attended an "expat event" last week, for which I hated myself even before I went. I was trying, I guess, to preemptively ward off loneliness. I'm not really lonely, though, so my heart wasn't in it: my roommate is very friendly and, thanks to Skype, I have talked to my parents and girlfriend far more than I ever have in my life. Anyway, this event was an absolute nightmare. I won't name the event because it's a recurring thing, to which many are very attached, and I don't want them to read this and firebomb my house after looking up my address at the registration office.

Expats are extremely weird people, as a general rule. Almost everyone was over 40, which did not bode well. If a 20-year-old is in Munich, it could be for all sorts of exciting reasons. My reasons are not exciting but at least valid. But most of these people are here for no real reason at all: they've been here for ten years, some of them, and they still hang out with strangers from the internet. The strangest part is that everyone was extremely reluctant to talk about themselves: their pasts, their work, why they live in Munich, why they have no real friends, etc. It was like having dinner with a bunch of serial killers, except, judging by their conversation, their secrets would be extremely boring. I asked people why they had stayed in Munich for so long and the answers were extremely depressing: "Good beer, good food" was the most common one. This is not a reason to live in a country for ten years. This is a reason to go to Applebee's.

One of them asked me how long I was staying, and I said three months. "That's how it always starts," he replied.