First I gotta say that my tooth hurts. It’s not really my tooth. It’s behind my left-lower wisdom tooth. Some food must have gotten stuck back there and fermented. I think I managed just to pop the infection or something like that, because it suddenly started to hurt a lot. Oh, well.
Anyhow, on the 4th of April, I promised you guys a “long saga” about signing up for the university. Little did I know on the 4th that the long saga wasn’t close to over. Well, all stories have a beginning, so I’ll start there. So there I was. To get into the university foreign students require permission (Germans who went to one type of high school often don’t even have to apply to get into the university, and Germans from another type of high school simply can’t get in. If you think the Americans track students, then you haven’t looked at Germany yet). Anyhow, we didn’t have to send the applications ourselves. Since we were with an exchange program, the program director sends our applications (which are guaranteed to be accepted as well, since the program director accepted us to the program and they have a deal with the German universities). After acceptance they send an acceptance letter called Zulassungsbescheid, which you need to register. However, it was already late March and we hadn’t heard a thing about the Zulassungsbescheid.
Our director said she probably misplaced them or something like that and that she’d send them as soon as they were found. Well, I decided on Tuesday, March 29th to go to the Rektorat, which is where they take care of stuff like that, and there I would ask them what would happen if these letters never show up. It so happened that on that day I had the final exam for my language class, so I had to go after the exam. I show up there around 2PM. No one there. Office hours end at 11:30AM. Note, this place is similar to the registrar at an American university. At UConn the hours of the registrar are 8AM to 5PM. 3.6 times longer! And UConn is smaller than the University of Freiburg. Silly lack of office hours. Day 1 down the drain.
Wednesday: The next day I show up promptly at 9AM (opening time). After searching around to find the right people (they were all hiding in the wrong rooms), I find someone with a computer. He tells me that he’ll be able to print up the letters we need and he just needs my name. I give him my name. He tells me my name is only there for the previous semester. I figure something could have gotten entered wrong. I get him to look up the name of another person the program. Not a trace. He tells me I have to go talk to someone whose office is across the hall. I go over there. On Friday and *Wednesday* she has no office hours. Day 2 down the drain.
Thursday: Again, I show up promptly first thing and go to the women who wasn’t there the day before. She looks around for a while and then assures me that nothing was received from our program. I ask her if it’s too late. It’s not. We can fill out a couple applications and we should be set. But we have to get some sort of notice from our program director because otherwise “anyone from Connecticut could come here and say they want to study here” (yes, because that’s what Americans do – show up in Germany and study towards a non-degree program without even thinking to apply). So I get the applications and head back to my place to find the telephone numbers of the other two in Freiburg and give them the forms. But… They were on vacation! So they won’t be able to fill out the forms. In the mean time, I call up the program director (at this point it’s about 4AM on the East Coast) and talk to her answering machine. I tell her we have an emergency situation and give her the details. At this point I thought “ok, I’ve done all I can. I guess the others won’t be able to sign up since it’s all so late, but I’ll fill out my form so that I can sign up at least.” Later that afternoon I get a phone call. It’s the director of the exchange program. The applications had been sent back in January, but they were sent to someone who doesn’t work at the university anymore and no one forwarded it. She had just faxed the applications to the university and emailed me copies to make sure that I have a copy in case something went wrong with the fax. She was very apologetic.
Friday: Well, there wasn’t anything more I could have done Thursday (offices closed, of course), so I show up again early Friday. After talking to a few people (I was starting to get to know them), I confirmed that they had received our applications and I made sure that the paper got promptly pushed through to the right department. They told me I could pick up our acceptance letters on Monday.
Monday: I come in early in the morning. After around an hour of waiting in lines, and trying to explain my situation to people who hadn’t been there for the earlier details, I find out that they haven’t yet processed our applications. And they can’t do it now, and they put that type of stuff in the computer in the afternoon. I can come by on Tuesday and pick it up.
Tuesday: Since we (the other two and myself) were planning to sign up on Wednesday, I actually didn’t go!
Wednesday: We meet at 8:30AM. We head off to the insurance place, as we need insurance to sign up. They inform us that we need our acceptance letter to get insurance. Thankfully the university office was across the street. We go over there, and after a little waiting, we find out that they finally actually printed our acceptance letters. Happiness. So we go back to the insurance place and get insurance. Then we have to go the city registration office to get Visas. We go there and fill out forms. The lines weren’t bad, however. I find out that I can only get a 2 month visa, since I wasn’t sent a letter informing me of my stipend (I could get a longer visa, but non-stipend receivers must pay for the visa, whereas I should get it for free). We head back to the university to sign up. After filling out the forms to sign up, we go over to the room to sign up. Sorry, it’s 11:30. “We’re closing. Come back tomorrow”.
Thursday: So, we meet again to sign up. We go there. The first person in our program signs up. Victory!! I go to sign up. The person looks at my application and then remarks that I was at the University of Freiburg a couple semesters ago and asks me where my Studiumsbuch is. That’s some sort of odd record book that the student has to keep track of. I thought the thing was silly and I probably lost it or threw it out or just didn’t bring it back to Germany. But for some reason I’m not allowed to sign up without this book (everyone else just gets one made there). I ask her what I can do. She says I have to go back to my place and get the book. I inform her that the book isn’t at my place, and may not be in one piece. She then informs me that I have to have a new copy made (so all the information in this book is in a computer anyway!). So I have to go back downstairs and do that (which costs 15 euros and 34 cents. Why they couldn’t round it is beyond me!). So I give the person the form and the person informs me “Ok, you can pick it up tomorrow.” What????? Why can’t you make it now? It’s a little green book with a couple stamps. It takes 3 minutes! I guess if you only have 2.5 offices hours per day, 3 minutes seem like a lot.
Friday: I come back again. I get my dumb little green book. I go upstairs. I sign up. Victory is mine. At long last, victory is mine.
Ok, that was a really long story. I hope it didn’t bore you too much. The moral of the story is that Germans don’t have anywhere near enough office hours. If Germany would just introduce the concept of “service”, they would solve their (pretty bad) unemployment problem.
Anyway, classes started today. I’ll post an update about that soon.
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