auf dem Kriegspfad

Normally my blogposts are filled with cutesy turns of phrase and jokes about how much I love Germany. This blog post will be different, it will be like the drunken text you send to your ex boyfriend: you regret it the next morning, but it needed to be said at the time. Today's phrase means “on the warpath,” and I am ready to burn some shit down. Scorched earth, Sherman's March to the Sea, The Battle of Lakarian City-style

My problem is one, Sparkasse Financial Group. The last time I was in Germany I had Sparkasse as my bank and it was awesome. There were branches everywhere and the tellers were efficient and the fees were non-existent.

My current problem with German banking starting back in Radolfzell. As part of the program, we all opened bank accounts as a group so that GIZ knew our account numbers and was able to deposit our stipends in a timely fashion. Originally we were going to open our accounts with Postbank, which is somehow connected to the German postal service. Convenient since every town has a post office, and thus a branch of this bank. The language school took care of all the details for us, which, at the time, I thought was really nice. The Postbank fiasco went on for about a month, wherein our forms were filled out wrong and had to be redone, our forms were sent back on some other technicality, and eventually our forms were completely lost by Postbank. At this point it was the language school director's turn to be on the warpath. You don't know her, but Frau Heintze can be very imposing when she wants to be.

Frau Heintze is...you have to meet her. Off-topic: The CDC was so much better because of her.

It was then decided that we would all open up accounts with the Sparkasse, the entire process from leaving Postbank to getting my Sparkasse debit card took about a week. Damn fast. I was pleased. We were informed that we had online banking, and that all we had to do was tell them our new location when we moved and everything would be fine. Wunderbar!

It was all a pack of lies!

I got to Neubrandenburg and wanted to deposit some money in my shiny new Sparkasse account from my Bank of America account. I walked into the local branch and was met with a frowning cashier who informed me that depositing money into my own account would cost 10€. I asked why and was informed that I was a Sparkasse Singen-Radolfzell customer and not a Sparkasse Demmin-Neubrandenburg customer, which is the biggest load of bullshit I've heard since I was talking to the crazy lady in the Rosslyn Metro Station.

I tried to email my banker at the Sparkasse Singen-Radolfzell, but she has yet to respond (it's been 5 months). I also tried to use my online banking, but I need my banker's approval to log in the first time, and she won't respond. I then went to an ATM to print a statement, since I can't access it online and I can't use the teller service, and was surprised (read: livid) to discover that I had been wracked with fees for every time I'd used my card to do anything. I would later discover that the Language School had set up (accidentally, I assume) savings accounts for us, not checking accounts. Fan-fucking-tastic.

At about the same time, all of the other PPP'lers were making the same shitty discoveries that I was, and a flurry of emails were sent to our program about getting new bank accounts. They resoundingly denied that option, for a reason that was never fully explained to me.

But fine, it's shitty that I have a savings account, and that I can't actually use the bank tellers, and that I don't get online banking, and that I'm being charged fees constantly, but I still have access to my money.

And then...I needed to wire money (checks don't exist here) to my friend who payed upfront for our rental car to Cologne, so I went to the teller in the Sparkasse, and was informed that I had to use the wire transfer machine...in the lobby. I could have sworn I heard her say “back of the bus” under her breath, but then again maybe not. 

I go to the machine and it won't let me wire the money. It gives no explanation. I walk back in and ask the service desk what the problem is. Her response: “The problem is, you're not a customer here, so I can't even look at your account to see what the real problem is.”

I almost punched her.

So I guess my only solution is to withdraw the money in cash and strap it to a carrier pigeon bound for Leipzig. I don't care if this country is the financial powerhouse of Europe, their banking system is a load of garbage.

If you wake up tomorrow and there is a news report about a series of arson attacks against German financial institutions, don't be surprised. And also could you wire me bail money?

die Insel

The Bodensee is large, I'm not sure exactly how big it is, but trust me it's big. Because it's so large it has more than enough room to contain some islands. Today's word by the way means 'island'.

One of the islands is Insel Reichenau, which is a UNESCO WorldHeritage Site. Reichenau is also the place where most of the food around here is grown. The first week we were here, there was also a wine festival there.

But as pretty as Reichenau is, it's not the reason I'm writing today.The last time I was in Germany, my uncle strongly recommended that I visit a place called Insel Mainau, which is located off the coast of Konstanz. Sadly I didn't get the time and I missed it.

Insel Mainau is a botanical island and is somehow loosely related to a Swedish count who I believe lived on the island.

Now you know how I get about plants; it's bad. I just know that one day I'll end up like Seymore from Little Shop of Horrors with some crazy venus flytrap ordering me around. So when my Language School offered a trip there, I was on it like white on rice.

The island is absolutely breath taking. And the fact that it's in Germany makes it all that much better. The island has a winding footpath that takes you all around the grounds. The displays are split between very natural looking scenes of wild flowers and native plants or wildly shaped flower displays. There is also a small petting zoo, but the dwarf pony looked ridiculous and I didn't wanna chance getting anthrax or bird flu by interacting with the animals, so I speed walked past that. I'm gonna stop talking and just leave the rest to be described in pictures.

Here is a map of the Bodensee in flowers. The tall ones represent that agricultural island, Reichenau.

The Swedish Count's Castle

I have no idea who the dude is, but he is standing in front of a really cool waterfall that leads into the Bodensee.

Here is an alley of Redwood Trees!

This is one of those flower sculptures I was talking about earlier.

das Bodensee-Wasserversorgungswerk

Some of you may be asking, “Alex, I’ve heard that European water is nearly undrinkable, how do you cope with your coming lead poisoning or how do you afford bottled water at every meal?” My response to these people is usually that I lived in Iowa, if the agricultural run-off hasn’t fire bombed my endocrine system yet, I think I can handle anything.

In all seriousness though, many people in Europe are completely afraid of drinking tap water, and if you order it at a restaurant waiters will often tell you it’s impotable. Bottled water is even more popular here than in the US, and worse, Germans drink soda water instead of regular water. You will have to look high and low to find water that isn’t bubbly. Maybe to dispel the poison water myth or maybe to show off a local bit of pride, our Language School organized a trip to the Bodensee-Wasserversorgungswerk in Sipplingen. The word looks imposing, but it’s not difficult. When you break down a German compound word, start from the right, which is usually the stem word. In this case the stem is das Werk, which is a factory. All the words and word parts to the left are going to describe this factory. Sorgen is to worry about or care for something, Versorgung is a related noun that means supply or care. Finally Wasser is a cognate and means water. Bodensee is the location. So this place is a factory that supplies the water from the Bodensee. And it was cool as hell!

Most people are not allowed to tour the factory, and our school is only allowed to do it once a year, so they time their tour to the season when the CBYX students arrive. The plant takes water from the Bodensee at a rate of about 4000 liters per second. I figured they’d have the Lake emptied in no time, but it turns out that the Lake evaporates more than twice that amount per second. The water is very clean to begin with and doesn’t have much or any farm runoff and such that would make it toxic. It’s taken from deep in the Lake but it has a greenish color to it.

Once the water is taken out of the Lake it’s filtered to remove algae and other debris. The water is then mixed with ozone to kill any bacteria or viruses (and destroy almost any other things) that are in the water. Finally the water is filtered through a sort of sand trap to catch all of the remaining debris that was destroyed by the ozone.

The factory is at the top of a mountain. This is important because the factory supplies water to people living as far away as Stuttgart all without pumping it. Since Stuttgart, and most of Baden-Württemburg, is at a lower altitude the water flows naturally to it. The Factory supplies 4 million people with water, and I tried this water myself, so the next time some jerk waiter tries to tell me that I have to buy bottled water, I’m gonna drop some knowledge on him.

Finally, after our tour we left the plant, but the busses that took us up the mountain were nowhere to be seen. We soon realized that we’d be hiking down the mountain to get to our train. I wasn’t even mad because after the first turn, I saw this and really stopped caring about the hike.

das Wanderleben

German has this obsession with compound words. Today's word, Wanderleben, is a combination of the words Leben, which means life, and Wander, which pretty obviously means wander. Wanderleben translates as something like "an itinerant lifestyle" or "vagrancy."

I mentioned before that I'll be moving around a bit when I'm in Germany. My program has three distinct phases. The first phase is language school. The 75 participants are divided among 4 cities for a two month stay at a language institute. My language school is in a town called Radolfzell. Right! That Radolfzell, with all of those famous...erm...things and...events. I've never heard of the town and it turns out, I traveled through it once.

Honestly, I was kind of bummed that I didn't get a bigger city, but this one is in the Alps. And it's on an enormous lake. So I'll shut my damned mouth.

The second part of the program is a semester at a university, and the third part is a 5-month internship with a German company. For both of these parts, I'm assigned to a specific German state. I can leave, but my job and university have to be in that state. I found about about 2 months ago that my state is Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (MVP). I know, again with all these famous and popular places...they spoil me really.

Chances are good that I'll have to move between my university city and my internship city, but they could be the same. I'm excited though, because MVP is right next to Denmark (where LegoLand is) and Poland (where my people are from).

From May 2011 until July 2012 I will have slept in 11 different beds. Not counting sleepovers.