I can tell that this is going to be another recurring theme during my time in Dresden. Yesterday I met three of my classmates, from Canada, Colombia, and Albania. Today I met two more, from China and Georgia (the country, not the state), who live in my dorm. We went shopping together, then came back, cooked dinner, and drank beer. My Chinese classmate, who's not a fan of beer, had some white wine instead - his first time trying anything other than Chinese or Korean wine.
It is so interesting to talk to my classmates, and to learn about countries I'm not that familiar with. Georgia sounds beautiful - mountains within an hour from the sea. Tonight we tried the local Dresden beer, Dresdner Felsenkeller, which one of us had heard was so-so. We tried the Pilsner and the Urhell varieties. The Urhell tasted great to me, and a large bottle cost less than 1 euro. I even preferred it to our third bottle of beer, the Czech Pilsner Urquell. We tried another beer, but it was not memorable. I think the name was something like Vorhang, but that's not right, because Vorhang means curtain... I have curtains on the brain because I bought and had my neighbor hang one for me yesterday, hallelujah, and showed my classmates where to buy some today. We have very big windows and curtains are essential for privacy and blocking the outside light at night. Don't even get me started on the very specific type of curtain hooks we had to find before we could buy curtains, or how much they cost. How much everything for our rooms cost, in fact - I'd rather forget that.
I will meet most of the rest of my classmates on Monday morning at our course welcome. A few won't make it to Dresden until later due to visa delays, etc. My Chinese classmate said that he had to pass an oral hydraulics and hydrology examination at the German embassy before they'd give him a study visa! I'm sure glad I didn't have to fly down to the German consulate in Houston for something like that.
One of the topics that got us laughing the hardest tonight was the deposits we had to wire transfer to the dormitory contractor's bank account. Our room contracts started on the 1st of September but since we didn't arrive until the second week, they asked us to send them a 70 euro deposit in advance. My local bank hadn't done an international wire transfer in two years, so it was a little touch-and-go. I looked up how many dollars there were in 70 euros, and figured I'd be safe if I wired $100. My bank charges a flat $40 fee for international wire transfers, but they cannot guarantee that the money will make it its intended destination. Anyway, a few days later, I heard back from my contact at the dormitory office that they had only received 61.52 euro. I freaked out that I would have to pay another $40 to wire 9 more euro to Germany, but luckily after I wrote and explained the situation, my contact wrote back that my room was reserved. My Georgian classmate, hilariously, also wired the office what he believed was over 70 euro, then heard back they had only received 62 euro. Unlike me, though, his strategy was to write back that he would wire them the remaining 8 euro as soon as possible. To pay his deposit, my Chinese classmate took advantage of the worldwide Chinese network and, using the Internet, paid a Chinese guy living in Germany to deposit the money for him!
The weirdest thing about tonight was that the kitchen we were cooking in had a photo of a half-naked lady taped to the cupboard just above the kitchen sink. I guess washing dishes can get kind of boring. I also found it bizarre that that kitchen had almost exactly the same collection of empty bottles of alcohol placed on top of the cupboard as there are in my kitchen. My suite mates and I are just waiting until the official beginning of the semester to see if any students from last year come back before we throw all that kind of stuff out and redo the kitchen to our liking.
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