April 2013 – Page 2 – The Bittesuite

TexMexpatriats: Scoring an Apartment in Munich #1

This is part 1 of the story of how Roxana and I found our new apartment in Munich. As you read, you may notice a Usain-Bolt-worthy coat of arrogance over the story’s substance. I imagine you’ll want a barf bag handy in case the eye rolling makes you dizzy.

Roxana’s Tuesday Morning

Roxana woke up Tuesday morning in a frenzy. Not a normal, obvious frenzy, though. Her frenzies are quiet and internal–polite, even. During one of her frenzies, she blacks out in a hurricane of productivity. After a frenzy, she couldn’t tell you exactly what she did or how she got it done.

Anyway, this particular frenzy took her to work and drove her to apply for apartment viewings during her breaks and, of course, on the train to work. She thinks she applied to about 8 apartments, but reality could have that figure around 8 million. She also doesn’t remember to which apartments she sent applications. Frenzy.

The important and impressive thing about Roxana’s apartment search blackout is that it resulted in 3 invitations to view apartments–almost immediately. We would view one room on Wednesday, one on Thursday, and the third on Saturday. She nabbed the Wednesday invitation during the 10 or so minutes the apartment’s listing even existed. Wolfgang, the agent, called her about 3 hours after she applied for it on the train. Frenzy.

I wouldn’t truly know what all of these invitations meant for us until later that afternoon.

Post #7: Bavaria is the Texas of Germany

In Junior High, I had to learn a second language, and I had three choices in school: Spanish, French, and German. I’m pretty sure most Gen Y Americans can relate to that (I think iGen are learning Mandarin, too). As a Texan, Spanish was the practical choice. Mexico is our neighbor and a major inspiration for our culture. Not to mention, a Texan without a Mexican acquaintance is a person who never leaves the house.

In college, as my mind opened to other world cultures, I would affirm my choice in a different way. Germany (and bits of its neighbors) speak German, France (and Canada) speak French, while South America, Central America and Spain speak Spanish. Travel potential earns Spanish an extra 100 points.

Then, I met Roxana. 100 extra points for Spanish.

Now, I’m in Munich, and I’m about to give Spanish an extra 100 points. I am learning that people speak Spanish everywhere. For instance, in my heart of hearts, I feel like a ton of people in Munich speak Spanish natively. For the life of me, I can’t find the statistics to support it, but I don’t have the nerve to deny it, either. Let’s talk about my misadventures through statistics before I get into why I think so many Spanish speakers live here. That way, you’ll know how how supremely justified by science my perspective is.

First, I tried to find out how many people who live in Germany are Germans. According to the CIA’s World Factbook, that stat is right around 91%. Damn. That’s doesn’t verify my suspicion at all. Well, maybe many of the country’s immigrants come from Spanish-speaking nations. The same source says that 6.1% of Germany’s residents are non-Turkish and non-German, and then lists Spain as one of the six major “other” immigrant groups. No other Spanish-speaking nations are listed. Crap.

But, Germany’s a complex nation, right? The World Factbook, for instance, says that Roman Catholics are 34% of Germany, but a whopping 80% of Bayern, and my German teacher said to us that Munich is pretty much a complete mix of religions (those stats and vague informative summary zoom in from nation to state to city, for anyone unfamiliar with the country). So cities don’t necessarily represent states or the nation, here. Maybe Munich has an especially high Spanish-speaker population, even though Germany as a whole does not. Well, a 10-minute round of research didn’t reveal anything very telling, except that no Spanish-speaking nation is among the top 6 immigrant populations in Munich (Wikipedia). 22% of Munich residents are from other countries, and the top-6 nations make up about half of those people. That leaves a max of about 10% of Munich for the Spanish-speaking countries. Not much, unless they are all of the 10%.

So, Spanish speakers still don’t seem to be very numerous, here. But maybe every non-top-6 nation in Munich is a Spanish-speaking nation. That would put their numbers at about 10% of Munich residents, and I could finally say that Munich is full of Spanish speakers! Maybe I’ll find out that a lot of Germans learn Spanish as a kid, inspired by all of their Spanish-speaking neighbors. Maybe I can use Spanish education to infer a large Spanish-speaking population, like one can with the Texas population.

5% of Germans learn Spanish.

Thanks for nothing, Wikipedia. I still have my gut feeling that Munich is full of Spanish speakers, but I don’t have any data to reinforce it. Well, I do have something. I have met and spent solid time with about 17 people so far in Munich. Of those, 11 speak Spanish as their native language. And no, I did not meet all 11 through Roxana. That puts the makeup of my new friends in Munich at 65% hispanohablante. Wow, Munich is full of Spanish speakers!

This educational rant brought to you by: A Misguided Use of Statistics

Misc. Post: An Update on My Assets

If you’ve read my first post, you know that I began life in Munich without a phone (having given mine back to my former employer). Now, I have one, since coordinating activities in this city would take about 10 times as long without one. It’s that one Blackberry that the dinosaurs invented, and my “plan” gives me 100 minutes of talking per month, 100 texts per month, and 200 mb of data per month. YouTube’s gonna need a few extra servers to handle all of the requests I’ll be throwing its way.

Post #6: Getting Yelled at by an Old German Man: A How-To

If you want an old German man to get upset and yell at you, two things need to be true. 1) You need to know very little German and 2) something about German society needs to confuse you. Once you have those things, that stern reprimand you always wanted is just a metro ticket machine away.

Overgeneralizations aside, this is the story of what happened to me, yesterday.

It’s 5pm and I’m leaving class. In an hour and twenty minutes, I’ll be meeting Roxana at the train station so that we can take the metro to the Isar River and drink beer and eat pretzels (you know, as we Germans are wont to do).

Right next to the school I attend is an automated kiosk that sells metro tickets. I’m after the kind that lets you ride the metro an unlimited number of times around most of Munich for one week.

I tap a few on-screen icons in a way which I think roughly translates to “I would like one week-long pass to ride the metro around Munich, please” in automated machinese. However, what I really couldn’t stop saying was “I would like a week-long pass to travel to other cities in Germany by the train, please.” My school doesn’t offer a class in this language, so I’m stumped.

I decide to call Roxana to see if she’s purchased something similar in the past. She hasn’t but she wants to help, anyway. So, I start reading screens and narrating my progress to her.

Roxana: You want a pass that lets you travel among 2 or 3 rings inside Munich.

Ryan: When I tap “season pass–weekly,” it wants me to input a destination, like a city or something.

Roxana: Well, that’s-

Now, behind me, I hear some loud German words in a male voice. Distracted by them, I turn to investigate. A grumpy man-face greets me, and I can tell the words are directed at (or are at least about) me. I’m a little confused, but I assume he’s trying to give me instructions. Something like “press that button, dummy.” But he’s not. I apologetically ask “Englisch?” and he responds with “Get off the phone if you’re going to use the machine! I need to use it!”

It’s clear he doesn’t perceive the relationship between my phone call and the adventure I’m on with the machine. I shrug at him and start to say “I am on the phone asking for-” and he says “Go!”

Now, my temper is a little short, but I’m in a country that’s not my own. So, I hit “cancel,” step back, usher him forward, tell him “Go,” and walk away.

So, that’s it. Just a story about an angry guy for your entertainment. I’m trying to learn something from the experience, but I’m not sure I can avoid the same event in the future. If I need to accomplish something, and I don’t know how to do it, yet, then I think I have to hope that whomever is nearby will teach me how to do it. Or someone will have to yell at me and I’ll have to learn some kind of guilt trip technique.

The universe heard my wish later, though, when I met Roxana and we both tried to figure out how to use the machine in the train station. We spent about two seconds in confusion when the guy next to us offered to help. Now, I know how to use that machine. So it ended well. Viele dank, train station guy!

Post #5 – Two More Classmates, Hideki Still on his Own

Right now I would be writing about how many native Spanish speakers live in Munich, but something important developed in my German class, today. So, I’m going to save my excitement over the extra utility of my childhood Spanish classes for another day.

Two new people joined our class. I’ll call them James and Nastia. James is from the US (Los Angeles) and only speaks English. Nastia is from Belarus and only speaks Russian.

Hideki is still from Japan and only speaks Japanese.

These additions are interesting because they add balance to our roster that could be either amazing or terrible. You may have read my second post and remember that our class communicate kind of like this:

Isabella, Victor, Paulius and I make do with our various language skills and communicate with words, while Hideki is a complete boss and manages to fit in without using words (or understanding them). Seriously, that guy rules. What will happen now that our two new classmates have joined us, though? My hope is that we have more perspective. We can all compare California with Texas, and figure out how diverse the US is. We can also compare Lithuania with Belarus and learn what the two countries share besides Russian. All the while, Paulius is translating to and from Russian, and I’m translating to and from Spanish. Even typing that sentence made me want to do jumping jacks.

Isabella and Victor give us hope. From the two of them, we’ve been learning how Venezuela differs from Spain (including how Spanish differs between the two countries). What I’m worried about though, is how foreboding our class’s newfound balance is. Behold…

With the addition of these two new classmates comes the creation of comfort zones. One zone speaks English, another Russian, and a third Spanish. James and I get to practice our English, Isabella and Victor get to practice their Spanish, Nastia and Paulius get to practice their Russian, and Hideki takes residences in zone #4–the ultimate discomfort zone.

Hopefully that’s not how things work for us. Hopefully the addition of two new classmates comes with the addition of two new perspectives and languages we can all share. Hopefully we can keep getting drinks and playing nonverbal guessing games with Hideki the Boss.

Also, I’m not sure where to write this, since I don’t foresee a whole post dedicated to it, so I’ll mention it here. We were talking about sports we like to play the other day, and when I said “Ultimate Frisbee” the entire class died laughing. Welcome to Europe, American.