berlin!

while we were in zurich, i got several phone calls about jobs that i had applied to, so we decided to take a detour on our way back to solingen and stay overnight in berlin, so i could go to some interviews. we stayed in a really clean and fairly cheap hotel/hostel called A&O, which had free breakfast. it was fairly quiet and the room was nice, although the elevator didn't work past the 6th floor. it wasn't too far from downtown (we managed to walk to the middle of the city that night in about 40 minutes).

altogether, i had three interviews. the first was in a real estate financing office as a bilingual secretary/project manager, and although the people in the office were super nice, it was a little over my head. i thought i did pretty well until they asked me to translate some real estate documents which i didn't even really understand in english. alas. it seemed like it would have been really well-paying but sort of boring, so i wasn't too disappointed when i got an email yesterday saying that they picked someone else. the second interview was with a tutoring school, and it was pretty cool. i liked the school and the lady who runs it, and she offered me a freelance contract. the only problem is that they don't issue contracts for visas, but it would be great as a part time side job. the last interview was with a language school- it was supposed to be for a receptionist position but she got excited that i had so much teaching experience. i didn't do super well on the grammar questions, mostly because i don't really know the names of grammar tenses: that's not something we focus on when teaching public school ESL. still, she wants me to come back for a second interview (after i study grammar tense terminology) next week. that school does help with visa paperwork, which is cool.
i have two more interviews next week as well- one with a kindersprachschule, a language school for kids, and one as an english-speaking callcenter agent. the call center thing isn't super exciting, but i really want to stay, and i am pretty suer that that job will give me a letter to complete my visa paperwork, so i guess we'll go back to berlin again- i'm hoping that after this, maybe i'll have a job. . .that night we went to a really neat thai/viet restaurant and sat in these excellent chairs. it was really fun, even though the waitress spoke practically no german and just a tiny bit of english. she got excited when i tried out my two sentences of vietnamese! i told her that i want to visit vietnam someday and she thought that was really cool. i hear that it's such a beautiful country.

that night we took a night train back to solingen- the earlier evening trains had long layovers and we thought this one would be nicer, because it was a much shorter trip, even though it left at 12:23 pm. the unfortunate part is that we didn't know that you need reservations for night trains, so we had to pay on the train (we didn't find this out until we were about to board! it was crazy). there were two polish or maybe russian or maybe italian businesslooking guys who lost their tickets, so we all looked together for the onboard ticketman. the train employee selling tickets was nice, and he found us a sleeper car by ourselves. i've never slept on the train before- it was excellent. and cozy. we got back at about seven in the morning, took the bus home, let ourselves in, and went to sleep. anna, fred & regine are on vacation in sardenia for fall break, and won't be back until the 11th, so we're watching the house for them.

xoxo!!!