I feel about 1,000 times better than I did two days ago, because I was offered a new au pair job and I accepted it! Beata and her Lebenspartner, Helmut, invited me to Helmut’s house in the Alps for the weekend. It was a short weekend because I had to work until two on Saturday and be back by seven on Sunday night, but it was enough to erase any doubt that this family would be my best option. 
 
Beata and Helmut met me at the train station in Nesselweg. The train was like a bus, you had to press a button and request a stop. When we got to the house I met baby Julia and her nanny Christina. Julia is just about the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. She can walk, although cautiously, and she loves to talk but not in any language. Her hair is growing in like a mowhawk and she has four teeth. Christina is an older lady who is going back to Poland next week because of her back problems.

We made a vegetable pizza for dinner and for dessert Helmut taught me how to make this traditional German wine foam thing (I forgot the name) which was good but strong. So I slept really well. They usually rent out the apartment upstairs, but since there were no renters this weekend I got to spend the night there.

In the morning we bundled Julia up and put her in her stroller to go to the bakery and take a tour of Nesselweg, which took about five minutes. It’s the kind of town where you stop and say Grüß Gott should you cross paths with another human. After breakfast we drove over to the airfield where Helmut gives flying lessons. Christina, Beata, and I took turns flying with him in his tiny two-person plane and keeping an eye on Julia who was sleeping in the car. I was a little scared and a lot nauseous when the wind started rocking the plane, but it was still really fun. I got a lot of good pictures of the Neuschwanstein Castle, the one built by the crazy kind Ludwig and the model for the castle in the beginning of every Disney movie.

After everyone had a turn flying we said good bye to Helmut and drove back to Putzbrunn. Julia started crying during the drive. She was in the backseat with Christina, then she sat in my lap and calmed down. After showing me the apartment in Putzbrunn, Beata drove me back to Gauting, and I got back in time to babysit these brats. But it’s a lot less miserable now knowing that my days of this Scheiß are numbered.

I’m still coming to terms with the fact that last weekend is over, Ader is back in Paris, and the only things that I have to look forward to now are still uncertain. So I’m just going to reminisce. 
 
Friday night I dropped the kids off, grabbed my backpack stuffed with clothes, and ran out the door like I was in some kind of rush. I got to the airport early enough to eat an overpriced pretzel and bubble over with anticipation.

The arrival gate at the Munich airport is one of the most stoic I’ve ever visited-- lots of people in business attire coming out and shaking hands with people holding signs with names on it. I think Ader and I deserve a prize for the most dramatic reunification of the night. We took the S-Bahn to Neuperlach, the neighborhood where our hotel was and, according to my German teacher, one of the two sketchy neighborhoods in Munich. By the time we got to our room it was around eleven and we just decided to curl up in bed and go to sleep.

The next day we went on the walking tour (http://www.newmunichtours.com/daily-tours/munich-free-tour.html), although we stopped for krapfen on the way there which made us a little late. Our tour guide, Craig from Chicago, brought his ten year old son with to help narrate, and they did a better job of showing all the highlights of the city than I would have been able to. Then, once we were sufficiently hungry we went to an all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant that I had heard good things about. It was one of those places where the sushi comes by on a conveyor belt, and you can either pay 1 Euro/plate or 13 Euros for as much as you can eat in an hour. We of course chose the latter. The sushi wasn’t terrible and we certainly ate our money’s worth. But a lot of it was bland (plane cucumber rolls) or bizarre (cherry tomatoes and arugula stuck on top). So I have yet to find really good sushi anywhere in Germany.

Sunday we wandered around for a little bit taking pictures and then ate at a slow but delicious Bulgarian restaurant. I plan on taking anyone who comes to visit me there. We made it to the airport exactly on time, and I only cried a little bit, while I stood there with my giant backpack and watched Ader pass through security. I took my time getting home. Sleeping by myself again was no treat.

In other news I finally got over to the Gasteig to pay for my next German class. Now I just have to wait and see if I’ll get to stick around long enough to take it.            

I feel like no one else in the world gets locked out of doors for which they have the keys as much as I do. In Ader’s last apartment in the dixième, I had a key but needed someone strong enough to come open the door for me any time I wanted to go in. Once in my apartment on campus last year my key went in the lock but just wouldn’t turn. I had to go to the residential life office and explain, I have my key but I’m still locked out. The RA on duty looked at me like I was crazy, and I was so sleep deprived (this was finals week), that I worried that I was. Then the maintenance guy who finally got the door open with his master key told me that he had never seen a door stuck like that. 
 
And then Tuesday. I left for my German class at 7:45 in the morning and then came back a little before I had to start work at three. I put the key in the door and couldn’t turn it. Pushing and pulling with all my strength didn’t make the door budge. I went to pick up Robin hoping that by the time we got back someone else would have figured out a way into the house and let us in. Instead, I got back with Robin and found Max outside without a jacket. He forgot his key and was thus standing outside muttering profanities and shivering. He couldn’t open the door either. Ten minutes later Aga came with Sophie. She couldn’t open the door with my key or her own. So we called Axel so he could come home early and let us in through the garage. In the meantime we took the kids to the bakery down the street for some hot chocolate. Turns out some guys had come to install a lamp or something and closed the door behind them at a weird angle or…I don’t understand what happened really. But anyway, this is the third door that I couldn’t open even with a key. I’m just curious, has this ever happened to anyone else? Because I’ve never heard of it happening to anyone else, and when I tell people “I had my key but was still locked out”, they look at me like I’m stupid/delusional/lying.

Well in other news, I will be on my way to the airport this time tomorrow to meet Ader. I’m so happy I feel dizzy. And although the waiting is still torturous, every day I’m closer to when I should hear about my visa and law schools, which is kind of a nice thought. In two weeks it’ll already be December, and I’m going to Göttingen for a weekend to meet another potential new au pair family. But mostly I’m just thinking about tomorrow for right now.     

Robin has puked twice tonight. Maybe he’ll feel all better tomorrow and will go to kindergarten, but I have to brace myself for the possibility that tomorrow I’ll have to miss my German class to stay home with a puking kid. The bright side of this is that I might get reimbursed for a portion of my class and earn some overtime which I can cash in around Christmas. But damn, tomorrow is going to suck if I have to stay here.

This weekend, if my visa doesn’t get here between now and then, I’m going to the airport to buy a ticket back to the States for December eleventh. Besides the fact that I won’t be able to spend my birthday with Ader, going back to New Jersey for a month might not be the worst thing in the world, if only because it will be a break from the lovely household I’m currently residing in. This weekend I’m also going to find the hotel I reserved and do a walkthrough of all the places I want to take Ader. Maybe that sounds a little crazy, but he’s here for such a short time that I don’t want to waste any of it being lost. Plus I’ve filled up this weekend with plenty of coffee dates so that I have plenty of excuses not to be here.

This next week is going to be unbearably slow and next weekend way too fast. I wish there were something I could do about that. And while I’m wishing, I wish someone would just tell me already if I go accepted into law school.

The weekend after Ader visits, I have to babysit on Friday and Sunday nights, which is miserable but results in more overtime. That Saturday afternoon I’m hopefully (knocking on wood) going to visit Beata, a Polish lady who lives in Putzbrunn and is looking for an au pair for her eighteen month old daughter, Julia. We’ve only had one phone conversation so I’m trying not to be too optimistic, but this job sounds infinitely better than my current one. Even if Beata turns into Mr. Hyde once I sign the contract, she would still only be one miserable person instead of five. And I know that babies, especially babies who are learning to walk, can be exhausting, but they’re still cute enough that you can’t really get frustrated with them. The job, as Beata described it is picking Julia up from day care, playing with her, and then cooking dinner for the three of us. Not my dream career, but kind of my dream au pair job. So basically, I just have to keep hoping that things will work out as I want them to.        

I spent almost all my money this morning, but I have lots of new warm fuzzy clothes to show for it, plus a new book and hand cream. I had my visa appointment at two o’clock in Stamberg, so I didn’t have time to go to the Hauptbahnhof and ask about tickets to Göttingen. There’s a family there who’s looking for a new au pair in January, and they invited me to come visit for the weekend. They seem super nice. I know I said that before about my current family, but this new family actually volunteered to put me in touch with their current au pair before I even asked, and I heard first hand from her how much she likes living with and working for them.

My only real reservation at this point is that they don’t live in Munich, which means if I move there I have to find a new German class, new friends, and generally get used to a whole new city. All of that is doable but daunting. They also said they were looking for someone for a whole year and I can only stay until June or July. In any case, I really want to take them up on their offer to come visit, because when has visiting a new city and meeting new people ever been a bad thing? The problem is that the intercity trains are ridiculously priced, and the reasonably priced trains are ridiculously slow because they stop in every single town. I’ll just have to see…

I also didn’t get a chance to go ask about my next German class. It starts December sixth, goes until mid February, and costs 220 Euros. I don’t know if I pay for it and then find out that I’ll need to go home for a month on December 11, or that I’m moving to another city, if I can then get my money back. I also don’t know how long I can put off paying and still have my place reserved. I like my class; I’m learning a lot and have friends in it. It puts me in a good mood before a crappy afternoon of work. So if I’m going to stay in the vicinity of Munich for December through February, it would kind of suck if I couldn’t continue going.

The visa appointment today made me feel slightly better. I got the paper that says my official visa is coming and I’m allowed to work in the meantime. It’s nice to no longer be breaking the law. But it’s still true that all I can do is sit around, waiting for some office in Berlin to get their act together and hope that they do soon enough for me to be allowed to stay in Europe for my birthday.