Please pass the air freshener. This city stinks.

Today the funny thing I saw included a slightly chubby goth sitting in the subway. He was dressed from head to toe in black, including a black rocker T-shirt and long stringy black hair. What didn't fit in to the picture? The gothic guy was reading a cookbook called "Trendy Muffins" complete with colorful, happy muffin pictures. He would even pause from time to time to stare off at the ceiling, as if envisioning the very baking, or tasting, of one of these fine, trendy muffins.

Speaking of the subway, this evening as I left the music school and started my way home, I decided to take advantage of the nice evening and ride the above-ground train home. With one transfer, the train isn't quite as time-efficient as the direct route with the subway, but it's worth it when the weather is nice and you want to look out the window a little bit.

So I made my way to the train platform, but as soon as I got in the train, I realized it had been a big mistake. I was hit with a wall of stinky, body odor-filled air. It smelled worse than a boy's locker room after a game (okay, I don't know that smell personally, but can pretty well imagine it).

With the overload of World Cup guests, the trains are over-filled the whole day, and with the added heat of this city (plus did I mention some people that aren't Americans sometimes have different hygienic habits?) it makes for some very stinky air. So since I was basically gagging, I transferred back to the subway after the first stop. Since the subway is underground, it is cooler and seems to stay "fresher," if subway air is ever fresh. At least I could breathe normally again.

In unrelated news, I have a very unwanted addition to my apartment. On Monday night I woke up and went to the bathroom. When I turned on the light I gasped: my entire bathroom floor was swarming with ants! I stood there stunned and thought about what I could do to kill them. I ended up grabbing window cleaner and spraying the heck and life out of them things. I didn't stop till the floor was blue from the spray and the ants were not moving anymore.

The next morning I called the apartment manager and demanded someone come by and seal the bottom of the shower where they were coming out of. The repairman finally came at noon and (very generously) cleaned up the rest of the ants for me as well as fixing the shower. I thought the problem was solved but bought ant traps anyway.

Well, the problem is not solved. The ants aren't coming out onto the floor anymore, but rather through tiny, barely-visible slits in the shower door tracks. I have no idea where they are coming from and going, or what they want in my shower, but they are there. I put an ant trap in the corner of the shower and instead of killing them, I waited and watched them to see if they would go into the ant traps. Apparently they also bring the poisonous food with them back to the source where the other ants are waiting.

But after not killing any ants the whole day, I just looked in the bathroom and it had gotten a lot worse again. There were two long trails going from the bottom corners of my shower up to the top where there is a ledge. So I got out my weapon, the window cleaner, and sprayed them and then rinsed them all down the drain with the shower head in nice, hot water. After killing the last several by hand, I hope that I got the dumb things till the exterminator comes on Friday.

Apparently many people have been hit with ants this summer, not just in this apartment complex. Now I just have the feeling that there are ants all over me and I keep seeing things I think are moving but it's just a fuzz or a shadow, or nothing. I've become even more bug-panicky than before which was already bad! There is just always something weird here to worry about.

In other (oboe) news, I'm just continuing to practice and rehearse for my up-coming recitals. I called another oboe professor here who only has a few students at the music school because he is the English hornist of the Berlin State Opera. He agreed to listen to my play through my orchestral excerpts because next week I have two orchestral auditions: Frankfurt and Duisburg (an internship position).

While in Frankfurt I will be staying with my old friends Ronald and Franziska for a few days for the audition which will be fun. Then next weekend Matthias and I are driving to Poland (just a few hrs. from Berlin) to a wedding of his best friend and his Polish bride. Then right after that is the workshop concert in the Philharmonic with Daniel Barenboim where I'm playing first oboe in Beethoven's Lenore III Overture (which I'm really excited about since I begged my prof. to let me play that part!).

So for the next several weeks it's busy, busy, but really fun. It'll just be strange when the semester is over because then I'll suddenly have no more responsibilities. I guess that's normal in a summer break. Only this time it won't be a short break, but the end of my education! Then I'll be able to relax and enjoy possibly my last couple months in Germany, which includes having visitors Katy and Matt.

One thing is sure: I love my apartment, but I am very ready to leave all the weirdness here which includes calling the police on my neighbor's drunken, psychotic, screaming son at all hours of the night, the Turks and their love for setting off fireworks outside my window, and the current bug problem. After that, a trip home to my parents' quiet house seems like a true vacation!

Life Lessons and Strange Pets

So today I learned not to trust the drugstore lady on her advice about mascara. Yesterday I went to the drugstore to and picked out some mascara. I was on my way to a rehearsal and didn't have much time, so I just glanced at the price before going to the check-out counter. When the price rang up one euro more than I had expected, I told her the price I thought it was. She went to check and showed me that I had picked out "waterproof" mascara which was, in fact, one euro more expensive than the "non-waterproof mascara".

Then she asked me if the mascara was for daily use and I said yes, to which she answered that waterproof mascara is not healthy for everyday use because it is too strong and should only be used when swimming. So I decided to take her advice, mostly because I wanted to save a euro, and purchased the non-waterproof mascara.

Well on the way to the subway this morning it was windy and my eyes watered, but since I have never used non-waterproof mascara, I didn't even think twice about it. So I certainly wasn't prepared for the shock I got when I went to the bathroom at the music school upon arrival. I gasped in shock at the huge, I mean, HUGE black smudge all under one eye. Think: baseball player black eye smudges (okay, maybe not that bad, but close).

As I wiped the mess off I had to wonder what the people in the subway, as well as music school elevator, must have thought of the terrible display as I chuckled to myself. For the rest of the day, however, I made sure to do a safety check every now and then to prevent a re-occurrence. Guess the euro saved wasn't really worth it... And the question is: is water-proof mascara really not meant for everyday use?

Once in awhile I mention something that has struck me as weird from my life in Berlin, because true to the description of this blog, there are really strange things that happen pretty much on a daily basis in the life of an expatriate. Now, the last thing that gave me the heebeegeebies was the rat on a leash that I saw a guy walking down the street from my apartment. Gross! But yesterday I saw something even worse.

As I was walking to the subway yesterday there was a punk in front of me with his dog. For Berlin and most of Germany this is nothing out of the ordinary. Punks are people who have chosen to live against the "societal norm" - not work, pay taxes, keep an apartment - and usually wear black, rocker clothes and have strange, multi-color, punky hair styles. They are all over but there are certain areas where they congregate to beg for money or just sit around drinking beer with their punk friends. It's also rare to see a punk without a dog.

But this punk didn't just have a dog for a pet. Upon closer look, I saw that this punk also had a big pet rat - on his shoulder! Though I purposely didn't look closely out of sheer fear, from what I could see it was pretty furry and had a long rat tail (literally) going partly down his back. It was also running back and forth from shoulder to shoulder! Eww!! I was SO shocked and horrified that I slowed my pace way down just so I didn't have to be anywhere near him. What I have to see in this city!

This has been a really hectic week for me. With my upcoming graduating recitals, one solo and one chamber music, there has been a lot of preparation, i.e. finding music in the library, making photo copies (of course at local shops since the music school doesn't have any copy machines for students), finding people to play in my ensembles, and finally practicing and rehearsing, the best part. But rehearsing aside, the biggest challenge lately has been signing up for the recitals.

Sounds easy enough - you sign a form confirming your upcoming graduation and graduating recitals - how hard could it be? But then you remember it's Germany, not America, and there's a catch to everything plus about 6 hours of paperwork for every seemingly easy task. And the funny thing is - and I say the word "funny" in a really so-annoyed-I-could-scream sort of ironic way - is that no one seems to really know what is expected until it's almost too late.

In this case, I thought I was on top of things. I picked out recital dates instead of waiting decades for my professor to finally do the task that is actually his responsibility. Then I signed up with our department secretary and thought everything was taken care of. That's until I heard that we can't do the recitals until we've registered with the Office of Matriculation and Examinations.

For me and every other foreigner or transfer student this means getting the classes recognized from our previous institutions. Although I already have a Bachelor's Degree, in order to grant me a degree from my music school in Berlin I need to either take all the music theory, history, instrumentation, etc. over again, or prove that I've had it all previously and have it recognized.

The process of getting the courses recognized has not been easy. Just looking at my transcripts to see the course title and grade wasn't enough. They have wanted course descriptions from the my university, proof from my professors at home about how often we met/were tested, and topics we covered.

So even though this has been something I've worked on in the past but never quite finished, now with the pressure of having it all taken care of for the recital registration, I have been running around getting everything taken care of and have all but one theory class recognized. They just need one more e-mail from a prof. at home and then I'll get the credit.

I also only have 2 out of 4 "sport" credits. Apparently (and again - no one ever explained this to us) we Master's students were supposed to take 2 sport classes and 2 breathing/movement classes in our 4 semesters. However I was under the impression that we just needed 2 total (and even asked my current sport teacher who confirmed it) and so just I took one sport class, "healthy back," and am taking my breathing/movement class this semester.

But as much as they seem to have such strict rules, sometimes they are also really easy to bend. The secretary told me that all I need is permission from my department that states I didn't need all 4 classes and then I'm fine. *sigh* What a lot of trouble for nothing! And it's good to know that I will, indeed, get the proper certification when I graduate for having all the course-work done/recognized.

The last thing I had been putting off was taking my piano examination. But since that was a grade also necessary for the registration, I had to make a last minute appointment Monday with the piano professor and took the exam 2 days later, on Wed. So for those 2 days early this week I slaved over the piano, practicing and wondering if I'd ever pass.

But when I got to the exam, I found that the professor was luckily very forgiving. I was doing okay until halfway through the 2nd piece everything kind of fell apart. After attempting to help me by playing the left-hand part, she just decided to give me the grade. That was a relief - and now I don't the piano exam lingering in the back of my mind, yay!

And to top it all off, I barely slept Tues. night because the drunken neighbor's son was back screaming in the middle of the night. After calling the police, waiting a half hour for them to come, finally calling them back tell them the neighbor had gone to sleep and they shouldn't come anymore....I couldn't fall back asleep and lay awake for hours in bed. The next day was of course my busiest with rehearsals, appointments, piano exam, work, and so it certainly put me in an even worse mood. But tomorrow I have a hair appointment - new highlights and a trim - so that'll be the end-of-a-busy-week perk!