"I dropped my €.50 in the olives!"--Mitchell Holthaus

After class today I headed over to the Hauptbahnhof (main train station) in order to buy a train ticket to Paris for my vacation next week. I was pretty nervous about buying a train ticket in German, I'm not going to lie. I had to take a number like going to the deli and wait for my turn. When my number was finally called, the man who waited on me did not help to calm my fears! I went up to him and asked for a ticket to Paris and he was just like, "Wait! Wait! Are you number 449?" I said that I was and he was like, "Ok good, congratulations, you're in the right place then." I don't need any sass from you, buddy. Then I began to explain that I wanted a ticket for Paris for March 31st, and he had this funny smirk on his face, I could tell that he thought my terrible American accent was hilarious, but I think I did a pretty good job of explaining what I wanted! It was especially hard to concentrate because this man had the longest fingernails that I have ever seen in my life, and I couldn't stop thinking about what my mom always said about guys with long fingernails: that they snort coke off of them. Thanks, Mom. I did it though; I got my ticket to Paris for €74 with one change in Mannheim. Interacting with real Germans about real issues like this and having them understand is a confidence booster for me so hopefully I will be able to do it more often in the coming months. I feel like I do not speak as much German here as I should, and I feel guilty about that. Sometimes my friends and I speak German to each other for a while, but then we always go back into English, for convenience sake.

After getting train tickets (Emily bought some too for her European adventures), me, her, Mitch, and Jon all went to a Döner Kepab place near by for some delicious Turkish food for lunch. We all payed individually and then waited outside for the rest of the group to finish paying. Mitch was the last to leave the restaurant and when he came out he was shaking his head and complaining that he always makes a fool of himself. We asked him what was wrong and he told us that when he went to pay the man, he accidentally dropped his €.50 coin in the bowl of olives behind the counter! The man took pity on poor Mitch and told him not to worry about it. We all died laughing. I'm glad we weren't in the restaurant to witness that because we probably would have caused a riot with our hysterical laughter.

I also got to set up my Uni Freiburg email account today. I had three options for domain names, either @uranus.uni-freiburg.de, @neptun.uni-freiburg.de, or @merkur.uni-freiburg.de. THIS WAS THE HARDEST DECISION I HAVE HAD TO MAKE ALL WEEK! I ended up going with uranus because I thought it was funny. Someday I hope to have the maturity level beyond that of a 10 year old boy, but I don't know if that is going to happen anytime soon.