Another one bites... my leg! (updated)

I was originally planning to write a post about my September course and the marvelously eccentric teacher administering it, but it seems that some local stinging fauna took a fancy to my legs and now I will have to write about that.

On Friday afternoon along with a bunch of international students I played some soccer. As is to be expected from someone who is out of shape (which I am at the moment), I woke up a bit sore the next morning, my legs covered with minuscule cuts, scrapes and insect bites. I went about the business of the day, took part in a tour of the center of town with other students from my language orientation course, napped on a grassy bank of the Rhine and then helped my roommates set up for a party that we were throwing.

The party was a blast, thanks to all who came. Unfortunately, midway through it my left leg started hurting right above the ankle in a way similar to how a pulled muscle would. At first we speculated that this was indeed the reason for the pain and that some soccer injury was to blame. This theory, however, had a couple of flaws. I could not come up with any recollection of a collision or movement that would have caused such a trauma. Usually one remembers such moments, even if the pain recedes temporarily afterwards during play. I, however, did not recall any particular pain in that muscle until Saturday evening. This in itself was also strange because, from what I know, athletic traumas manifest themselves normally within hours of occurring, usually when one is done with the sport and the adrenalin level drops. What kind of pulled muscle decides to start hurting more than 24 hours after it has been pulled?

Despite these doubts that night I put some ice on the leg before I went to bed, still thinking that perhaps this will help. In the morning on Sunday I saw that this didn't help and also noticed that there was something that looked like a big insect bite, red, itchy and slightly disgusting-looking. "This looks less and less like a pulled muscle and more like an infection/allergy caused by a bite" - I thought to myself and, after doing some superficial post-party cleaning followed by breakfast, headed over to the hospital around 1 pm.

To be honest, I was not expecting to have to have dealings with German doctors this early on in the year and was feeling a bit nervous trekking over to the Krankenhaus and trying to explain my problem to its personnel. Most likely because of this (and a lack of signs) it took me some time to find the actual emergency section. The waiting room was a mildly lit lobby at the corner of two converging corridors with one ceiling tile missing and some inconsequential decorations on its walls. I remember only noticing a child's drawing on one of the cabinets that showed a brown horse with a red cross on its side. I suspect this must have been the child's idea of an ancient ambulance (red cross included). I sat in this room for about 10 minutes before realizing that in fact I should come into the office and let someone know I needed help. My only excuse for this forgetfulness is that I was listening to some Andrew Bird and, not having to stand on my leg, was fairly content with my situation.

Fortunately for me, the lady at the reception desk was good at following my slow-paced somewhat awkward mixture of languages. She explained that the doctor was currently out on lunch break and that I would have to register for an appointment later in the day. I'm guessing this was because my problem did not require an immediate remedy of some sort. I signed up for a slot at 16:00, went back home and tried to understand my finances. After epicly failing at that for a couple of hours, I came back to the hospital, was taken to a room and told to wait for the doctor there.

Shortly a tall man in his late forties hurried in. He had nothing in his hands, no stethoscope or clipboard, and he was not wearing a white coat. He patiently listened to my staggering attempt at describing my problem in German, quickly decided that it would be more expedient to speak in English and for the remainder of our fairly short conversation stuck to that language. He passed his hand over the swollen areas a couple of times, observed the bite and pointed out that I had a very similar one on my other leg which for some reason was only itchy. Then he quickly said something about an oil bandage to the nurse, who proceeded to put some yellow liquid on the swollen leg and then a bandage over it. I was amazed to discover that the pain disappeared almost right away and I could walk with only a minor discomfort. As the nurse was bandaging my leg, the doctor scribbled some barely legible names of dermatologists as a prescription and handed me over the sheet with their names, saying I should contact one of them asap for further treatment. This being done, the doctor said he had work to do and left.

I chuckled to myself, because in the US it would unthinkable for a doctor to tell his patients he had to leave an appointment due to ongoing work. "I am your work!" - an american patient would claim, I think. I didn't claim so, however, and proceeded to leave the premises. The whole transaction took less than 20 minutes and my second trip to the hospital overall lasted exactly one hour. German efficiency for the win!

My next stop on this road of illness is the office of one of the dermatologists in town. At this point, I'm almost looking forward to it.

***Update***

This comes somewhat late as I will describe here events that happened this past Monday.
As per the advice of the doctor in the Emergency Room of the hospital, I called up one of the dermatologists on Monday before my classes started. I was planning to schedule an appointment, but the lady on the other end of the line said: "Come on over now, there is almost no line." I realized that my German was not good enough to argue for an appointment. I tried it in English, but the connection was too bad for the lady to understand anything, so I gave up and decided to ask my teacher if I could leave class for a couple of hours.

Because my teacher is a cool guy, he let me go, albeit after giving a lecture to all of us on healthcare in Germany that took almost an hour. My desire to learn new words and laugh at some cheesy jokes overpowered my reason and when I finally left the University on a bus headed for the center of town, I was sure that I would have to spend hours in line. Waiting was not that big of a problem, I then thought, because I happened to have a book (in German) with me that I had been trying to finish for an embarrassingly long time and a big line would mean an opportunity to further that goal. It also meant I could stay out of class for longer, but I think some people that know me will argue that I do not treat that as necessarily a good thing.

The dermatologist I was to see had his office in one of the very fancy old buildings on the north waterfront exactly where the lake becomes the Rhine (very reasonably called Seestraße). I found his house without a problem, climbed a flight or two of wide stone stairs, walked on a floor paved with simple mosaic patterns and entered a waiting room. I do not remember now what the exact color of the walls was (either salad green or orange), but it reflected the morning sunlight very well that day and the room was neither overpoweringly bright, nor gloomy.

To match the atmosphere in the room, the lady at the front desk was cheerful and understanding. She recognized me as someone who called earlier when I was only half-way done with the description of my problem, added me to the list of patients, told me where to go. As expected, the line was indeed considerable at that time: 6 or 7 people of all ages needed to have their skin looked at for one reason or another. I took out my book and consumed a chapter before being called into the doctor's office. While I waited for the doctor to come I observed that the room was not much different from doctor's offices in the US: bandages, pills and obscure utensils filled the cabinets on one wall, various informational and space-filling posters lined the other.

After about five minutes, a tall thin lady walked in briskly, shook my hand and introduced herself (I forgot the name, I'm afraid, I'm bad with names). I gave her a description of my problem, then, on her request, took off the bandage I was given the day before in the ER. She quickly glanced over the bite and the leg (which, by the way, had become bright yellow as a result of the ointment used by the emergency staff), passed her fingers over it just like the hospital doctor had done the day before. Her conclusion, however, was a bit different.

"It's not an allergy" - she said - "because if it was, you would be having reactions and itching all over your body, not just the area of the bite."
She then proceeded to say that in fact, the problem was due to a peculiarity of circulation in the legs. Blood there has a harder time (because of gravity) moving up into the body than coming down into the leg itself. A regular bite always causes some blood to accumulate around it. In a leg, however, this blood doesn't always get a chance to disperse and keeps accumulating further. This leads to swelling and that in turn - to pain and decreased muscle elasticity. The doctor said this was exactly what happened to me and that the restrictive bandage originally helped by containing the swelling.

She recommended that I keep the leg up while sitting for a couple of days and avoid standing for prolonged periods of time. When I asked about sports and dancing, she said: "You are young, play football, go to clubs and enjoy yourself! All will be fine."
I was very pleased to hear such a prescription and left the doctor's office in good spirits. As with the hospital visit the day before, the whole interaction took less than fifteen minutes. Overall, I have to say I'm impressed so far by the way doctors operate in Germany. Compared to the ones in the US, they are fast, efficient, and to the point. In the US, most of the doctor's I've been to tend to introduce small talk, jokes etc into the conversation and try to give the impression that they do not have any other appointments. A German doctor, on the other hand, broadcasts the message: "I am here to help as many people as possible. Tell me what's wrong, I will do my best to provide you a remedy. As soon as we are done, however, I must leave, I have 50 more patients waiting to be helped." This message, while it might seem a bit dehumanizing, is, I think, a very practical and useful one. I'd rather be treated this way. This is, of course, just an impression and one based on only two experiences.

P.S.
It is now Saturday as I write this and the leg is fine. Thank you all who inquired about it this week :)

Weekend (Continued or 'Part 2')

N.B.
Some of my descriptions in this entry (and most likely future ones too) will include references to areas and streets that I'm guessing might be obscure to some readers. To provide some context, here (make sure to click out of the pop-up ad) is a fairly good map of Konstanz with all the areas as well as the streets marked. I will try to re-post it occasionally or add it as a "useful link" to the blog page.

Saturday
That day I had to wake up relatively early because there was talk of a used bike fair in a certain veloshop 5 minutes away from my dorm starting at ten. It must be said that in Konstanz, a city where it takes at most half an hour to get to the historical center on foot from even the farthest corners of town, one should most definitely have a bike. It's usefulness increases if one takes into account that practically all of the city center is a car-free zone and that so many streets have designated bicycle lanes.
All of this meant that if I was to enjoy any freedom and efficiency in my movement around the city, I was to get a bicycle somehow.

My only problem was lack of finances. I was not willing to spend anything more than one hundred euros on the two-wheel wonder and that put me in a very low-end bracket of buyers (decent new bikes being all around 400 euro). As of yet I haven't surmounted the challenge of acquiring some mildly respectable velocipede for the much less respectable price I have to offer. I hope sometime in the foreseeable future I will prevail.

I digress, however, and forget that on Saturday morning I was much less aware of these impediments in my way and actually hoped to purchase a bicycle by the end of the day. For that reason I got up at 8, made myself breakfast (oatmeal, of course!) and was going to sit down and read for a bit before heading out. This plan had to be abandoned because Jannis woke up around the same time and invited me to go to the farmer's market. I could not pass up such an opportunity and promptly set out with him to a street a couple of blocks to the east, where we were greeted by all sorts of fantastic-smelling produce and slightly old-fashioned people.

I noticed one slight difference between the market I found myself at and the ones I was used to. Every food group was almost evenly represented, with vegetables and fruit making up less of the overall offerings. In Massachusetts (maybe I went to the wrong farmer's markets?), one could usually find more fruit and veggies than anything else. Here there were a couple of solid-looking meat, fish and bread stands and one fellow was selling marinaded/pickled foods, mostly olives and pastes.

I bought myself half a kilo of plums, a loaf of ciabatta bread, 500 grams of German honey. After I deposited all of these treasures at home I headed over to the bike shop. Surprisingly enough, given my luck with locating places in Konstanz thus far, I barely found it. In addition to this, upon arriving I was told that there was no used bike sale that day. I was instead directed to a fellow named Paul 200 meters down the road who, I was told, sold used bikes all the time. I followed the directions given and arrived at a small yard just off the street in front of a yellow house, filled with antique cars and bicycles. "This doesn't look very promising, all of these must cost a fortune" - I said to myself and asked for Paul. I was told to wait a bit and Paul did appear shortly. He looked a bit pensive when he heard my price,  took me to some back storage room of his house and showed me a couple of bikes, none of which were to my liking. I know I shouldn't be picky in my situation, but I didn't really want to choose between an overweight mountain bike with no lights or fenders and a purple female-frame bike with a seat that was too low. I told Paul I might come back on Monday. Sadly, I didn't get a chance to follow up on that (but I'm getting ahead of myself again!). I then went home, feeling a bit defeated and did something utterly unmemorable like folding laundry or reviewing my documents or staring at a (Facebook) wall.

In the evening there was once more a gathering at Hafen Halle, this time for a Pub-Crawl in Konstanz. Parts of that night are to this day somewhat hazy in my memory, but I remember going to Klimerkasten, Casba, Shooters (never have the drink called Picasso in there, it's a waste of your time/money) and, finally, Shamrock, an irish pub. I remember having a great time, drinking beer, discussing whales, universal truth and lost friends. The locations of all of these places I remember only very approximately. If you were to ask me to take a group of tourists to these places, I don't think I couldn't.
I also do not remember when I fell asleep that night, but I do know that it was in my room and that it was dark outside.

Sunday (the day I almost got lost)
I woke up at around 11 again ('rise and shine' for me seems to be stably oscillating between 8 and 11), performed an inspection of the room and myself and discovered that I had drunk half of the water I prepared the night before, that my head was still in one piece, there was a very small cut on my left thumb and some muscles in my left knee felt extremely sore. I limped to the kitchen, brewed myself some Earl Grey (I'm sure that if I were ever to meet an earl who happened to be named 'Grey' we'd be really good friends, there's just too many good emotions associated for me with the name). I then tried to go online, but spent almost 10 minutes blankly staring at my Facebook newsfeed, as if expecting it to explode with updates (on a Sunday morning!). When this naturally didn't happen, I tried to write a bit, but had trouble concentrating, so as a result spent over four hours on an entry, taking frequent breaks to chat on Facebook, watch videos of German comedians (thanks, Jannis!) and stare at the walls of my room (my favorite pastime). Around 5 I headed over to Shamrock to watch what was left of a game of hurling that started at 4:30 with whoever of the international students showed up. I assumed this would also be good exercise for my knee, get some blood circulating in there, etc.

As I mentioned, I did not remember where any of the pubs were so it took me over half an hour of trial and error to locate Shamrock. Luckily for me, the game was still on when I did finally find the place and friends from Ireland, Czech Republic and America were sitting there. I joined, got a Guiness (pricey stuff in Germany, I later discovered) and saw Kilkenny beat Tipperary and reclaim the Irish national hurling championship title again, as I was informed by the Irish present, after winning it consistently for at least the past decade.

After the game ended, we proceeded to use the white paper place mats on our tables to first list all 32 Irish counties, then all 50 US states. I think when we did a tally, we ended up one short on the number of counties and 2 over on the number of States. I was never strong in arithmetic, however, so I could have been wrong. I left around half past 8.

Two memorable things happened on my way home. First of all, I came close to actually being lost. I took some of the winding streets in the center of town to get to Paradies, from where I planned to take the pedestrian bridge over to my side of the river and follow Markgrafen Straße home. However, I missed the street that led directly to the pedestrian bridge and made a right turn several streets later onto Brüelstraße. When I later that evening (already at home) consulted a map of Konstanz I understood that this was in fact a decent way to get home by itself (passing the Paradies dorms and crossing the Rhein via another bridge). At the time, however, as far as I could tell in the dark and rain, I was bearing too much to the left. At some point I even suspected I was headed for the Swiss countryside. While on any other day this prospect would not have daunted me, at 9pm on a rainy Sunday night before my first Sprachkurs lesson the last place I would have seen myself heading were the fields of Switzerland. So I ultimately retraced my steps to the right street, took the pedestrian bridge across and was home shortly before 10. I then frantically ate some plums (see below why), brushed my teeth, wrote this entry and went to bed.

The second memorable occurrence during this walk home was my first attempt at ordering a Döner. I had been meaning to do this for a couple of days and this was my chance: all of the other stores were closed, I hadn't eaten properly since breakfast, the weather outside was miserable. I walked into a place called, I think, Paradies Pizza and started figuring out their menu. I have an inexplicably serious weakness when it comes to fast food menus: for some strange reason (perhaps it's lack of practice or just some idiosyncrasy of my reading skills) I can never order anything from a fast food joint properly and manage to botch up the simplest requests. When I go to restaurants and even plain eateries or coffee shops, all works out well. And yet a trip to McDonald's or Dunkin Donuts is always a nightmare of misunderstandings, duplicate orders or mixed up combos and it's always because I didn't understand what an item on the menu says. I had hoped this would be different in Germany, but I apparently was wrong.

The menu at Paradies Pizza contained the usual extensive list of various types of foods offered by the place. I found the Döner section, reviewed all the choices available, but could not understand all of the ingredients mentioned in descriptions of items. All the while the picture next to the Döner helpfully illustrated the product by showing a picture of a flatbread filled with various food stuffs. I tried asking the fellow at the counter which Döner he would recommend, but he didn't understand me. I assumed this was because I made a mistake somewhere in my German and asked him in English, but he still didn't understand me. I then decided to go with something simple and ordered the first item on the list called a 'Döner Box'. As I was waiting for it to be prepared, I kept wondering why 'Box' was in the name and speculated that maybe this was because the flatbread was made to look like a box or perhaps I got several minidöners in one box... To my horror, however, the fellow at the counter took a chinese-food-style take-out box and filled it with meat shavings and french fries, then topped all of this fatty 'goodness' with something similar to ranch cheese and handed the whole mess to me.

I was starving, so I swallowed all of it on the way home, but the following questions kept bothering me: "Since when is a meal prepared with no vegetables or fruit and this amount of fat and cholesterol instead? Why is such an item on the menu of any self-respecting eatery? And finally, how on earth did I end up with this abomination of a meal when I had so much else to choose from??"

I was so unimpressed with carbs and meat by the time I got home, that I required some other kind of food to settle my mind and stomach. Luckily, I had a considerable supply of plums from the day before and proceeded to blissfully consume a couple. Someone won't be ordering from fast food places for a while.

Weekend (part 1)

I personally always lumped Fridays with weekends. In fact, if I were to have the power to pass any one law for the whole planet, it would be to institute 3 day weekends. Seeing as I don't have this power yet, I will instead describe the weekend starting with what happened on Friday.

Friday
I woke up at the ripe hour of eleven in the morning to a drizzle slightly knocking on my window. I got up and decided to give the oatmeal that I purchased the day before a shot. I made it the usual way: two to one ratio of water to oats, then an addition of honey (kindly lent by Jannis) once the porridge was out of the pot. It tasted pretty much the same as the Quaker oatmeal I'd been eating all summer. I found this encouraging, because it meant that for 35 Eurocents I had breakfast meals for as long as half a kilo of oats lasted.

After this reassuring meal I wrote and read till about four, then borrowed a bike from Jannis (the constant borrowing seems to be a thing these past couple of days) and pedaled up the hill to see the University.

I suspect that the architects of Uni Konstanz decided to compensate for the relative simplicity of the town's geography by creating something that was actually challenging to navigate. I have to admit, they succeeded. The University of Konstanz, at least upon first inspection, seems to house all of its departments in one giant building complex. I wouldn't be surprised if one could visit all of them without ever having to go outdoors.

My agenda was much humbler: I only wanted to find the linguistics department, since I would probably be spending considerable time in it and would prefer to know how to there ahead of time. According to some information that I gathered online before my arrival, linguistics was on the second floor of building G. I had with me a plan of the university very thoughtfully provided by the International Programs office in one of their bulky packages that I got before my departure. I studied this plan for a couple of minutes, then decided to wing it based on an approximation of where I thought G was.

This was a mistake and I paid for it by having to meander in loops through corridors with pipes, wires and armature hanging down from the ceilings, balconies with life-size statuettes of falcons or hawks, closed cafeterias and complex systems of terraces and stairs. I also passed some rooms called "Buchbereich" that looked like mini libraries and had extensive lists of items one was prohibited to bring into them (one might think one was entering some sort or temple of knowledge because the lists made it seem that one could come in only if one left practically all of one's worldly possessions behind).
One increasingly annoying recurring theme in this first round of wandering was that instead of building  G I kept running into M. No matter where I started and how many different floors I traversed, I always ended up somewhere in building M. I learned by heart that it was the biology department and that it had a stuffed animals exhibit that contained a fairly large fox. I would rather have known the most efficient route to G.

After some time I got fed up with this loop and decided to first go outside, then enter the labyrinth from some other point and in that way break out of whatever passage system I was stuck in. Just to be fair, I decided to go into the first door I encountered while outside. But this ruse didn't work: I entered a basement full of white walls and machinery and after some wandering around discovered that (surprise!) I was again in building M. At this point I'd been walking for at least half an hour and really wanted to end the tour.

I pulled out the plan and consulted it again before attempting one last time to reach building G. Now, however, I had a better understanding of how the real buildings correlated with the rectangles shown on my map and also realized that if one were to start at the main entrance, there were signs to all of the buildings that made life much easier. Thus I was finally was able to find G, see some classrooms, yet another Buchbereich and some posters about current (and not so current: there was an ad for a computational linguistics workshop from 2009) events, courses and research at the department.

This being done, I left that maze without delay and rode down the opposite hillside from the one I went up earlier in the day. I soon reached a town called Egg that naturally looked nothing like an egg and from there followed a picturesque alley lined with old trees that took me to the entrance to the isle of Mainau. Because there was a fee for admission to the island (and I didn't want to pay it), I turned back, retraced my steps to Egg and from there took small streets to the adjacent towns of Allmannsdorf and Staad. From there I biked to the Rheinbrücke and home through Sonnenbühlstraße. On the way I saw loads of other cyclists, two breweries (on a stretch of at most 1,5 kilometers), a ferry and a casino. These, I observed, seem to be legal in the city (unlike in the US, where gambling is confined to certain districts) but tastefully few and unobtrusive (unlike Moscow, as I remember it, with practically a one-to-one ratio of grocery shops and huge neon gaming signs).

I came back home for a very short while, then left again for the now almost traditional Hafenhalle meet up with the folks from the LEI programme. There I heard that a pub-crawl was happening the day after. More on that in my next entry.

First Post (couldn't think of anything better at this point)

This is my first entry in this blog in which I hope to describe with varying extent of detail what happens during the year that I will spend in Konstanz (Constance in English), Germany. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not reflect any positions or opinions of the International Office at Umass or Uni Konstanz. If you find any inaccuracies or offensive entries, please let me know. If you find the blog boring, also let me know, because I tend to get carried away with details sometimes and forget that brevity is the sister of genius.

Day 1 (September 1st)
After a safe and uneventful flight from Boston (the most exciting things that happened were me spilling a glass of orange juice on myself after breakfast and a lion chasing a rhino on the TV screen in the back of the seat before me), I arrived at Zurich airport around 10:30, local time.

I disembarked from the plane, showed my passport to some Swiss official with a huge black tooth-shaped earring, who recommended that I get a German visa if I plan to stay there for more than a month, assured him that this was in fact my plan, and went in search of my luggage. It so happened that my flight arrived at a terminal that was separate from the main airport building, so I had to take something called SkyMetro to reach my stuff. This SkyMetro turned out to be an "unpiloted" (there was no conductor to be seen) chain of two or three subway-like cars that cruised between the terminal of my arrival and the main airport building. It accompanied this cruising with showing in its windows holograms of traditionally-dressed Swiss girls yodeling something about cheese at the passengers from the tunnel. This awesome (literally) device delivered me to the main terminal, where I was able to find all of my luggage and haul it over to the conveniently adjacent proper train station.

There I ran into one unexpected and ultimately insignificant problem with money. I had forgotten that Switzerland was not in the Eurozone and was still using its own franks. I was strongly discouraged by everyone I talked to in Zurich from exchanging dollars for euros there because that would involve changing them for Swiss franks as an intermediary step and since that would incur an additional transaction fee, I would lose a considerable amount of cash. It would make more sense, I was told, to exchange currencies upon my arrival at Konstanz. Thus my only hope was that the Swiss railroad accepts dollars as payment for a train ticket. The thought of this hope being in vain (and my possible courses of action if it were so) occupied me most of the time that I spent in line (which was fairly long) at the ticket booth.
When it was finally my turn I  came up to the counter and said:
"This will most likely sound like a very American question, but can I pay for a ticket to Konstanz with US dollars?"
The ticket booth lady, however, seemed unphased by this and replied "Yes, sure." with a smile. She then proceeded to break my $100 bill by giving me change from the ticket price in a mixture of three Swiss coins ("souvenirs from Switzerland" as she called them) and dollar bills that she brought from some recesses of the booth. I was surprised to discover that the dollar portion of the change contained a $50 bill with the stern face of Ulysses Grant peering at me from it. I do not remember ever encountering this denomination in the US. I thought it would be amusing (and definitely not realistic) if the Swiss railroad ordered a special package of bills every time the US Treasury printed a batch.

The train ride to Konstanz, much like the flight to Zurich, consisted mostly of restless napping with occasional peeking at the scenery that was flying by in the window (for some reason no yodeling maidens showed up this time).

I was greeted at the Konstanz train station by Sabrina, one of the tutors at the International Programs Office at Uni Konstanz. She took me and my two heavy bags first to the currency exchange, then to a bus station. From there we rode a bus (naturally) to my dorm on Schürmann-Hoster-Weg, where I met Jannis, one of my suite-mates. He kindly offered to take me on a tour of the area (points of interest mainly being grocery shops) and I accepted. After we had seen all there was to see in our neighborhood, Jannis went home to continue working on his bachelor thesis and I crossed the Rhine into the center of town in my first attempt that day to get lost in Konstanz. I find that getting lost in places and then discovering your way back home is the best way to learn the lay of the land and encounter spots and people that would have otherwise remained unknown if one just stuck to one's regular commute routes. This might also be an elaborately practical and mundane excuse for my love to wander around somewhat aimlessly, but I like to pretend it's the real reason. In any case, despite my efforts, I did not get lost and was back home around 4:30 pm.

Sabrina mentioned that a gathering of international exchange students was happening at a biergarten called Hafen Halle (Harbour Hall, because it is located on the waterfront of Konstanz harbour) at 8:00 that evening, so I unpacked most of my stuff, made a 'to-buy' list and went grocery shopping with Jannis and Clair (my other suite-mate who showed up in the evening). I got myself some black bread, butter, Gouda cheese (I didn't want to start experimenting with German cheeses just yet), oatmeal flakes (these took some time to find because none of my suite-mates had heard of oatmeal porridge), a box of Earl Grey and a bag of some local version of dumplings called Maultaschen. By my calculations, that would last me the first couple of days or, in the case of oatmeal, weeks.

Clair had a car for all of our groceries and after we were done with them dropped me off at the train station (amazing cyclicity: my day at Konstanz began at the train station and ended practically there too) , from where I walked to Hafen Halle. It was a short walk, because the place was directly next to the tracks, I just had to make a bit of a loop to get to the other side of them.

Even though I got there about five minutes after 8, I turned out to be the first one on the spot and made several loops through the biergarten before noticing a group of English-speaking young people arrive at the establishment. I joined them, had my first non-imported German beer in years (it was some brand of Edelstoff) and, as I'm beginning to find increasingly typical for international youth gatherings, learned/taught some curses and obscenities from languages, the speakers of which were present at the table (me included). We were interrupted once by an unusual occurence.

On the waterfront next to the biergarten is a youth theatre building, the foyer of which has floor-to-ceiling glass windows and doors. I had noticed its neon red sign while I was searching for the group, but didn't pay much attention to it afterwards. Suddenly, we heard commotion from that direction and when we looked there we saw a man banging on the windows and shrieking as if trying to get in or express utter despair at something. Inside the building a woman jumped up from the desk and started actively gesticulating something to the man, pointing in some direction as if directing him to a door (or just away from her?). She might have been yelling too, but we couldn't hear anything because of the glass. The man seemed to ignore her and kept throwing himself at the glass as if he was actually trying to break it. We couldn't understand what he was saying and after at most five minutes he ran away, leaving us all perplexed as to what had happened. Personally, I suspect this might have just been a staged act, maybe even an audition. I mean, I'd take anyone for a play that was willing to put up a row like that in public and do it in a believable way.

After this brief interjection from a rowdy stranger, we continued our discussion, though I do not remember what it was about at that point. I walked home through the area called Paradies because some of the students at the table lived in the dorms Europahaus and Paradies (everything in the Paradies area is called 'Paradies': dorms, cafes; I find that confusing). As all my new acquaintances left me, I decided it was time for a second attempt at getting lost in Konstanz.

This time it was night and I was a bit more tired which should have made things harder. In addition, I had a beer to drink at the cafe. "This will be fun" - I thought to myself. But it wasn't. I knew pretty much the whole way where I was and aside from an immense desire to go to visit a bathroom (beer will do that to you) experienced no discomfort whatsoever during the journey. I came home at midnight, blissfully pilgrimaged to the bathroom, brushed my teeth and went to bed.