The Week of January 13th

We are home from Israel. For me, this week will be busy at times and then not so busy.

Monday=Montag.
I had a meeting with Katherina Voget from the FH-Heidelberg school about my teaching Business English there. We spoke for about 90 minutes. I will only be able to work 10 hours a week and this is fairly standard. By German work laws, if you work more than 10 hours a week you are allowed to declare yourself a regular employee and are eligible for benefits and such. She did though give me several other contacts that I will be following up on.
The FH-Heidelberg at one time was primarily a rehab school for people who were not able to continue in the profession they were trained in because of injury. The Gov’t would pay for you to be educated in a new profession. Today, it is more for students who were not able to finish their degree at a gov’t sponsored university.
The semester is already started and they do not have a slot to place me in immediately. She said that they do have a situation where they can use someone to help students with the CV’s (resumes) and there may be some substituting when someone calls out or may not be able to complete the semester.

Tuesday=Dienstag

I met with Jutta (our relo person) and she and I went to Commerzbank to add my name to our bank account and apply for a EC card. She also said that she would check to make sure that I would be able to work in Germany with my current visa, but she was very confident that a particular law allowed me to work as a trailing spouse and also that the position is specifically for a native speaker would mean that it is not taking a job away from a German Citizen. She was also going to look into who I would speak with at the Rathaus (City Hall) in order to follow-up on my German Citizenship.

I then went to the Hauptstrasse (Main Street) and armed with the bank information, I got my German cell phone. I chose to get a new phone so that I would not have to worry about breaking or losing my US sim card. The phone is a Moto krzr one step down but a newer model than my other phone. The number for this phone is: 0176-61295708. My understanding is that you need to add a ‘0’ in front of the phone number.

Wednesday=Mittwoch (Mid Week)

Not much happened today. I went for a walk to scout out a run in the morning. I wanted to find a different way up to the Philosopher’s Way (Philiosophenweg). The new route will limit the amount of time I spend running the streets. The streets of most German Towns are narrow and the sidewalks even narrower.

In the afternoon, I sat in Starbucks for several hours and sent emails to some of the Business English Teaching contacts that Katherina gave to me and I chatted with a bunch of people.

Thursday=Donnerstag

Again, today was a pretty slow day, but still it flew by. I went for my run that I scouted out yesterday. The view from up on the Weg is beautiful. It was a little rainy, but after about 30 minutes the sun came out. That is how it is here, the weather is very changeable. It was a nice run, but I missed a turn and did not make it into Ziegelhausen. The hills are killer though, it just keeps going up and up and up. Essentially, I start out just above the river and am probably close to 800 feet above it.

I also went to Ikea and purchased a frying pan. There is no sense in having eggs in the house if you can’t eat them. It was the first time I used the stove it is one of those Quartz electric things. It is very different than cooking on gas. I am not sure how well I will like it.

Tomorrow will be a busier day with KabelBW coming to install Cable/Internet/Phone.

Friday=Freitag

The cable installation was interesting. In the US, the cable company tells you that someone is coming sometime between 8 an noon or 8 and 5. We were told they would be here at 9am and they were here at about 9:15. In the US, they connect a line to an available line and run a line to your house, drill a hole in your house and put the outlet in on the otherside (I have seen Comcast to this at least twice).
KabelBW arrives and plugs a machine in that test the signal strength. The signal strength was bad they have to check the two lines coming in downstairs to see which is best. That is not good enough. They disappear again and they are obviously doing something. They come back into the apartment and start doing other things. Installing a new outlet where the Internet Modem will go and more testing, the signal is too strong also not (nicht) good. Finally they hook up the modem and plug in the phone. We are also supposed to get a cable box and a wireless router. It turns out they can bring the phone and the modem, but the router and cable box are going to arrive Wednesday via UPS. All this was communicated in broken English and even more broken German. 4.5 hours after arriving, they leave. I honestly thought they would be here and gone inside an hour.

During all of this Pam calls to tell me that our stuff is coming next Wednesday (WOOHOO!!!!!).

Pam also went to IT to pick up her new laptop and phone (her other stuff has to go back to the US). They handed it her, in the box…..the same with the phone….they don’t even give her the number for her phone. Nice IT support. You ask a high level manager to set up their own technology. Does not seem to be an efficient use of resources.

Saturday=Samstag

Pam walked into town for a Manicure and girl stuff with Melissa (an SAP’r also relocated from the US) and I went for a run. I showered and called and met them both at Lavazza and had coffee with them. Good coffee. We then walked around the corner and went to the Bauhaus. The Bauhaus is kind of like a Home Depot/Lowes type thing. We needed to look at lighting. We needed bathmats and a shower curtain liner and some kind of storage for the bathroom, stuff is just laying on the floor in the bathroom right now. Melissa leaves us after the Bauhaus and Pam and I head to the Breitwieser. This is a store like Ikea but not as well laid out and with generally higher level of products. The only thing we find that we like, is out of stock until Mid-March, we go to Ikea. Ikea is Ikea. The same store. The product names are all the same Swedish names, the descriptions are in German. We find storage for the bathroom we like, buy it and bring it home. We now need a drill, Philips head screw driver and hammer to put it together. Screw driver and hammer are coming Wednesday. Running a 110 drill in 240 power….now that could be interesting, for about 5 minutes I imagine. Then you would probably see lots of smoke and smell ozone as the thing burned up!

By the time we were done at Ikea, we unloaded, went to dinner (never a quick thing in Germany. Within a five minute walk of our house there must be about 15 restaurants. We walked about 1.5 minutes, maybe less.