Abenteuer am Samstag!

Hello all!

First let me say that The Great German Laundry Experiment was a success! It helped that all of the instructions for using the machines were in both German and English. I did have a bit of trouble getting the dryer to start (I had put my token in and pushed the start button, but the machine wouldn't start). Finally, a really nice Italian guy came by and told me that the door may not be closed well, and when I tried opening and closing the door again, it worked. Whoo! It's a shame I didn't think of that on my own. Oh well. Silly me. Afterwards the Italian guy and I had a nice conversation, half in English, half in German, until he had collected all of his clothing and left. Oh, and one really weird thing about doing laundry here is that the you don't get a lot of time for drying your clothes. One token (which is 80 cents for the dryers) is only good for twelve minutes. I ended up using 2 tokens and then just bringing my slightly damp clothing home to hang up.

Erm, so after that, I had planned to walk to the city and buy a ticket for a concert that I wanted to see. However, once I got there I couldn't find where they were selling the tickets. I checked the Altes Rathaus and the University Mensa because tickets were supposed to be sold in both places. No luck. Nobody seemed to know. I finally just gave up. They are having another performance tomorrow night, so maybe I can try again then.

So, somewhat disheartened by my failure, I decided to go into a few book stores. Because bookstores are magical places and no one can possibly feel sad or disappointed inside one of them. They are just that cool. The first bookstore I went to didn't have The One Thing that I was looking for, but I did pick up a really neat looking Agatha Christie story collection that should be fun to read. (My former German professor highly recommended reading Agatha Christie novels in German. She said that they are fairly easy reads, and great practice.) I also learned a new word when I went to check out. The word for bag, I discovered, is Tute, with a u-umlaut. I was momentarily baffled when I was asked if I wanted a Tute, but realized after a second what the lady was asking me. By that point though, I had declined. My reflex when I'm not sure what someone is asking me is to 1. say no, thank you or 2. say nothing at all and hope that it wasn't important. This is not always a good strategy.

I wandered around for a bit, had a wonderful scoop of Tiramisu flavored ice cream (AMAZING!), and eventually found my way to another bookstore in search of The One Thing. I searched through the whole store, and just as I was about to give up, I spotted it. YAY! It was much more expensive than I would have liked, but this was one of the only things that I specifically came to Germany intending to buy, so I got it anyway. ::Grins:: Here's a picture:

Yup! That's right! And what is even cooler about it is that this is not the cover of the book (although, it would be a pretty awesome cover, yeah?) This is actually a metal case, and the book rests inside of it. As far as I know, this is done only for the German edition of The Graveyard Book. Here is a picture of the book and the case:

I was so excited that I had finally found it that I ended up coming straight home. I completely forgot about having dinner and all of the other stuff that I had wanted to do while I was in the city. Oh well! When I got back, I did run out to the grocery store to grab a few things, but I've been sitting and reading/translating since then. It's wonderful! Teehee!

Anyway, back to my book!