A miscellany of tales

Here is a short list of funny/noteworthy things that have happened to me recently:

1) Laughable American
I was in Starbucks in the centre of Frankfurt, enjoying an English Breakfast tea with fresh (not UHT) milk, and reading Charles Dickens. I'd like to point out, before the once-gentle reader throws up his hands in self-righteous outrage, loudly bemoaning the lack of German authnenticity of this situation, that I am like a Jewish man in Israel. A Jewish man in Israel doesn't need to go to synagogue or refrain from pig-pocketing (this is not a suitable euphemism for not eating pork, but I liked it so it remained in this sentence). Just by being in Israel he is already Jewish enough, thank you very much. The trappings that we know as Jewish culture are only sops to remind us diasporites what it's all about. Just by being in Germany I'm German enough. All the Grande Caramel Macchiati in the world can't take that away from me.

Anyway, as I say, I was in Starbucks when I overheard, in a laughably poor German accent, the rarely heard phrase "Wo ist der Hard Rock Cafe?". A large lady clearly considered herself essentially to be in a more ubiquitous (and easier to ask questions of) verion of the American Embassy, the German girl behind the counter expected to act as a consoling consolate to the lost and frightened American abroad. When the confusion as to where the Hard Rock Cafe was reached fever pitch, I stepped in and told that lady that, despite my several weeks of cycling around the streets of Frankfurt, I hadn't seen a Hard Rock Cafe. Did she know of there definitely being one in Frankfurt?

Her reply to this question was made infinitely funnier by the crumpled face, knitted brow, and sorrowful tone of a child who's just been told there is no Barack Obama, just her parents in a suit; she said:

"I just kinda assumed there would be"

Ho ho ho.

2) Accidental Children's Party Attendee
It sounded like such a great idea. A start-of-semester party! On campus! Drinks at "Student Prices"!

When the small group of us Economics Masters people arrived at the allotted hour, 3 things rapidly became clear:
i. This year's intake of first-years had, under some mysterious German government rule, been allowed to start university at age 11.
ii. There were one-hundred-and-forty-thousand of these scamps, and all of them had chosen to come to the party, and arrived simultaneously in some unseen, but later dreamed of, horrifying giant school coach.
iii. We were supposed to have brought invitations. Otherwise, the entry fee was five euro. FIVE EURO! To go to a university party on my own campus. Radical action was required.

Word quickly went around our small band of adventuring over-25s that if we could convince someone to let us be their plus one, we could both skip the queue and the entrance fee. I like to think there is no-one better equipped for this kind of challenge than me. I travelled up and down the front one per cent of the queue, shouting that I needed to become someone's plus one right away. After much embarrassed shuffling of feet (Germans = Brits, ha!), I was taken in by one group of weedy saplings who said I could come in with them if I bought them a drink. Needless to say, I teased them with talk of minimum alcohol consumption age, which they greatly enjoyed.

Anyway, to cut what is becoming a very long story short, I lost all of my course-mates via this procedure and spent the whole evening in the company of three 8-year-olds first years, engaged in the following exercise: Male 8-year-old would point out a group of girls he'd like to talk to, if only he was good at talking to girls. I went over to this group of girls and got their attention by saying something funny in English. Winning their favour, I then introduced them to my young, handsome beau. I then withdrew once chat had successfully been established, and knowlingly sipped my Apfelwein waiting for the results to come in. The young lad had two phone numbers by the end of the evening. I consider this a job well done.

3) A willing jump into drudgery
An American coursemate of mine told me that he was applying for a job he'd seen advertised in the House of Finance (see previous post re. Bockenheim and Westend) for a student IT assistant, 10-20 hours a week. He was using this as an example of how poorly Germans used email in comparison to his fellow Americans. He told me tales of waiting a week for a reply to an email. I was shocked and appauled of course. I quizzed him about his credentials in applying for the role and he told me he'd used a piece of Accounting software in his previous job as an accountant. How hard could it be? To be fair on me, I was honest with him at this point. I told him that if so much as one fifteen-year-old with no social skills and reduced literacy applied for the job, then my American friend would stand no chance of getting it, as the fifteen-year-old would trump him for IT experience immediately.

After having a good old laugh to myself about this possible other explanation for the lack of response to his application, I suddenly thought: hey, why don't I apply for the job? It's on campus. It pays well. I could do it with my brain closed, and my CV corroborates it.

So I did.

And the same evening, I had an email asking me to come for interview the following morning.

Now I'm not saying I'll get the job. I'm not even absolutely saying I'll take it if do. But it does demonstrate neatly something I've long suspected about this world of instant communication in which we now live.

If you text/email/call/Facebook/MSN someone and they don't respond, maybe, just maybe, rather than the "too busy/on holiday/out of credit/spam filter malfunction" stuff your loyal friends will have you believe, the person you're trying to get hold of just doesn't want to talk to you.

Auf wiedersehen, pets.

Rob