Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Assisted by Friendly Natives

We acquired our new apartment in Offenburg this week and started exploring the area around it. The good news here is that Offenburg is bigger than Kehl, and correspondingly more civilized as we define it. The stores are larger and have a better assortment of goods to choose from, plus being a little further from the French border it has fewer Tobacco stores and Casinos.

Anyways, none of that is as important as what I am about to tell you.

We were exploring the nearby stores and stepped into a local pet shop. It had the usual assortment of dog/cat products, fish, and the customary small furry animals section. Since that is always a favorite of mine, we headed over to check them out and were rewarded by a nice assortment of gerbils, guinea pigs, hamsters, mice, etc.. and some really cute soft bunnies. It was good to see gerbils and long-haired hamsters, which were kind of scarce at the pet stores back in LA, apparently having been ousted by the less cute and more spazzy dwarf hamsters and short-hairs that were there instead.

Ok, all that is well and fine, but it was only then that we made our key discovery: They had a chipmunk for sale! That's right, the same little stripey tree squirrel that you see all over the states in the wild was here for sale as a household pet. And, giving him a little pat, he seemed completely ok with that idea. Cool!

A little research later turned up that apparently they are kind of a tough pet to actually have the right environment for. Quite energetic, they require a lot of room and not much noise. They seem to largely like the same sort of space and environment a chinchilla does. Not for us clearly, but still cool nevertheless.

All right, that doesn't segue at all into my real point for the day, so I'll just abruptly switch over to it in an awkward fashion instead. One of the things that I have noticed since I arrived here, is that the locals have been pretty darn helpful in getting us set up. That's great you might think, but trust me, when it is a struggle to do stuff like buy trash bags or order a pizza you really appreciate any help you can get. So with that in mind, I just thought I'd share a couple folks who have made my life easier since I got here. It'll let you put some faces to the names, and it will give me a brief moment to once again say Thanks All!


First up - Vladimir


Vladimir was the guy who originally convinced me to come to Germany. He's kind of a 'zany adventure' type and engages in pastimes like random trips to Spain and sleeping in train stations. He won't blink at getting up obscenely early in the morning to help out after a 3am bender. He tromped across the countryside with me to negotiate for my used car in Russian. We're off to France for more misadventures next week so pray for our safe return. :)


Next Stop - Mathias

Mathias is another programmer in my special projects group and sits next to me. He's a thoughtful and effective coder and has a quiet sense of humor that makes for a very pleasant work environment. Now when I first arrived in Germany, being the well-prepared guy that I was, I came equipped with several adaptors to allow me to use my US electronics here in Germany. Now that was a great idea except for one small detail. All the stupid adaptors had their plugs sticking straight out of the adaptor. Perhaps 20 years ago that would have been fine, but these days all German outlets are recessed to provide grounding. None of my stuff would work, and several trips to local electronics stores (who largely had English speaking workers) couldn't solve it. Mathias thought about it, checked the French stores (he lives in Strasbourg), and then when these didn't turn up a solution, took an old extension cord and hand-modified it to fit one of my adaptors! Yahoo! That was some cool stuff.


Here's Cay (pronounced "Ky")

Cay's the fellow who ended up with me working for him (instead of Vladimir) since his group needed someone more senior to build stuff. His English is great (he spent several years in England) and he'll happily translate menus, explain German cultural norms, figure out directions, and scratch his head at what he has decided are my 'list of food rules'. We joke a fair bit about who eats what and why, and he's willing to eat those green grubs on pizza. Oh, and recently he helped me find and arrange for my soon-to-be-installed high speed cable internet connection. Much kudos for that one!

Finally, my local guardian angel - Sanja

Sanja is the office manager at work - that person that just gets stuff done and makes everything magically happen. I'm not sure what prompted her to take me under her wing and help out, but to whichever deity was responsible - Thank you! She arranged for our temporary housing, chaufered me around town and translated for me to fill out the dazzling array of German legal paperwork. She actually found and negotiated the rental of our new apartment! She showed me where to buy groceries, acquire bus tickets, use trains, set up utilities, search for cars, order lunch, get to work in the morning, and more absolutely useful stuff than I could even vaguely begin to count. She says its because she is an immigrant herself, with her family having come from Croatia (when she was 5). I think she speaks 4 languages fleuntly, has 2 kids basically the same age as ours, and is just amazingly useful. I have no idea how we would have survived without her help. I hope any of you moving to a foreign country get a local Sanja equivalent to help you out too!

2 comments:

  1. you are getting more help in Germany than I am in LA! :-P

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  2. It is nice to finally put a face on many of these folks!

    ReplyDelete