Piece of my Heart by Sam M. '07

DID YOU KNOW? The proliferation of “standing cafes” in Germany was apparently caused by a law requiring any restaurant with seating to also have at least three bathrooms.

Hey there. I’m in Leverkusen, Germany working on some important stuff for Bayer CropScience. Anyway, I’m not going to have full internet access from work until Tuesday, so don’t expet any great updates until then.

Anyways.

I’ve managed to get myself pretty well set up here–I opened a bank account, almost entirely in German, until the lady got tired with how incredibly stupid I was and started speaking English, I found the bus station and successfully negotiated the bus schedule, and I figured out how to eat.

Anyway, I’ve figured out that you can tell a lot from social cues, hand gestures, and a limited understanding of the language. For example if somebody at the bank says “blah blah blah blah WAIT blah blah FIVE MINUTES blah blah blah,” it’s a safe bet that you don’t have to do anything for the next five minutes.

So I started work today and had to see the doctor. The first thing she did was hand me a vial and said something like “blah blah blah blah blah URINE blah blah blah blah BRING blah blah blah.”

So sometimes you can’t pick up everything from social cues.