Yes, I should be practicing. Lord knows I need to be practicing, and today I even wanted to practice. Unfortunately for me, I'm currently locked out of the Hochschule für Musik.
I arrived in Freiburg, Germany on Tuesday, September 29th at exactly 12:08 PM and for the next ten months I will be traveling thousands of miles, drinking a copious amount of beer in a righteous quest to find the best brew in all of Europe, conveniently under the guise of attending a music conservatory...
Well, I suppose it is too early to begin blurring the line between reality and fantasy, although I couldn't find any hard and fast rules on the Internet regarding how to conduct one's behavior on a Blog. And, while I wouldn't mind stumbling across Europe's best ale, the hard and fast truth is that I'm here to study music at a great conservatory (in German, Hochschule), and I have a great opportunity to work with a fabulous cellist and teacher, Professor Christoph Henkel. It is an experience I have dreamed about for many years and I was thrilled to discover I was invited to study in Germany for a year. However, I've digressed from the pressing situation about being locked out of the school.
See, until I have formally enrolled at the university and have received my StudentCard, which allows me to access practice rooms during non-business/class hours, I am limited to practicing only while the doors are open. That should all change tomorrow, when classes begin and the roughly 500 students at the Hochschule will be busy finalizing their schedules.
As I mentioned earlier, I arrived on Tuesday of this week, which has given me plenty of time to tackle a long laundry list of tasks. The extra time has also been useful as it takes me a great deal of effort to decipher some of the seemingly endless words the Germans love to possess in their vocabulary. Naturally, one of the first stops I had to make in the city was at the Citizen Registration Office, or as they call it the Öffentliche Ordnung Ausländer-und Staatsgehörigkeitenabteilung. All of my attempts to gracefully recite this office in public have been aborted by the third syllable, and have resulted with a "speaking-in-tongues" expression in response. To reside in Freiburg, I'm required to have a local residence permit (Freistellungsbescheinigung), which I should have by next week. The office is run very similar to a DMV in the US, so after having figured out what documentation was necessary, it was as simple as taking a number and waiting in the queue. The officials were most friendly and seemed to humor me in my attempt to get by with German. After an hour and a half of waiting (and a four minute meeting) I had another appointment scheduled and should be well on my way to becoming a legitimate student abroad. Needless to say, after having survived the Staatsangehörigkeitabteilung, I felt as though I could conquer the world (or at least a small Italian state). Unfortunately that dream was dashed at the Volks-Bank, where I opened a local checking account. Apparently I will have to wait a couple weeks before I receive my checking card and even then, I will lack the funds to support even the smallest militia. For now, I suppose I'll stay out of the "command and conquer" business and stick with the cello.
Tschüss!
PLEASE NOTE: It should be noted that I have no issue with the use of long words by the German people, nor do I approve of the random seizure of small Italian provinces. In fact, provided one understands all the small words that join to make one of the exceptionally long words above, it makes a great deal of sense and is perfectly descriptive.
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