i am getting so frustrated with myself. everyday i have this choice to make: whether to do serious job/apt hunting or to do something cool, like go to nuernberg or potsdam. everyday i resolve to do some *serious* job hunting. and yet everyday i manage to do absolutely nothing. my most productive day consists of reading, futzing about on the internet, and maybe seeing a film (and if i'm really feeling industrious, it might even be auf deutsch). i have options. there are tons of apartments to call about. some people have even emailed me back. several companies have emailed me about my resume, asking me to call. tomorrow. it's this german thing - i am more than a little insecure about my speaking ability. there is no situation in which my incompetence would be more apparent, i muse.

ambulance drivers must have to wear earplugs - their sirens are so damn loud. sometimes i practice sounds while walking down the street, assessing how my mouth and tongue change with similar constructions. occasionally, i will catch myself in the middle of a string of practice "ch" sounds on the ubahn. "hhhhyyyyy hhhhkkk," as other passengers attempt to avoid eye contact. making primal noises in a language is an important part of feigning being a native. you can't say "oh," you have to say "achso." not "um," but "em." there are many more that i don't know, and this makes me uncomfortable. sometimes when i am sitting on the subway or something, i look down at myself and my knuckles are white, holding a deathgrip on my backpack, my teeth are clenched, and my muscles are tense. i am constantly hallucinating green-clad patrol men with their berets on the ubahn. i rarely ride with a validated ticket, and consequently guilt follows me always on the ubahn. evidentally, i am the *sole* person in berlin (and perhaps the rest of germany as well) taking advantage of their naive subway system. even other travelers apparently don't: they'll mention how they "really forgot" to stamp their ticket and got caught, but i am the only one who willingly and knowingly cheats the system. it's too expensive anyway. went back to the hostel. chatted with michelle and two germans from berlin whose reason from being at the hostel was not entirely obvious. michelle has been increasingly more nice to me, in her manic little way. i am not entirely sure how to interpret this, but mu subconscious cynic says it's neediness. michelle is also in berlin for the long haul. she confided in me about her crappy day and how she is having a hard time adjusting, which was a nice gesture. i bullshitted with the two germans, an older looking andy and young and wholesome kyle, before heading off to bed. kathi sent me an email saying she chose someone else for the room. crushing.

the germans strike me as more systematic that efficient (which is of course, a major steretype about germans). efficiency seems to be an occasional, inadvertant side effect of this systematic approach to everything. there are few ways to help cashiers out in germany, other than paying exact change: 2 coins is the maximum you'll ever get back for any dollar (or coin) amount (as opposed to the US's 4), due to the 2dm coin and the 2p coin. my favorite lazy technique of paying, say, 21dm for a 16dm bill is scarcely less irritating than 20dm (as 4dm can be paid out in two coins). saw muppets weihnachtsgeschichte. "it's a children's movie," the man at the counter warned. i nodded, sagely. for 2 bucks i got the theater to myself. this movie choice turned out to be a less than wise one, as the squeaky german muppet voices were difficult to understand. ever wonder why 7 is two syllables? all the other single digits are one.

i never really felt as though i fit in with the whole backpacker culture, but now i feel even more removed. i can hardly participate in the where-have-you-been/going conversations. it's like someone asking "how are you?" and being the one who launches into the grim details of their upper resperatory infection: there is no graceful, brief way to tell my story. in german i have a new curtness to my interactions with the service industry. where i was previously always fumbling and twisting and winding to find politeness, i am now very to-the-point. it's a nice change, bit i feel it often accidentally comes off as rudeness. open flames abound in european restaurants - never in the US. chivalry doesn't really exist in germany, unlike spain, whose public transportation is a constant game of musical chairs. standing and sitting, young and old, male and female.

starting to reassess my opinions of daylight savings. having a whole nation do something as arbitrary and trivial as set their clocks back an hour is kind of silly while you are a participant, but it would sure be nice not to have complete darkness at 4 pm. i can usually tell when something doesn't sound right in german, which is a nice bit of intuition to possess. the hard part, of course, is knowing how to correct it. too often i find myself saying something i *know* is wrong, because my verbal brain can't move fast enough to correct it. this drives me insane.after almost every conversation with a german, i find myself mumbling, replaying the conversation with the things i should have said. prepositional phrases really get me. they are so idiomatic.