Hamburger Bilder der Woche 2

Hamburg Pictures of the Week 2

Guten Tag! (Good day!--Not a bad start, right?) One month of German language lessons down and many, many more needed. My language school, Colon, offers more than twenty languages as well as classes in all formats. My class meets three evenings each week for 1.5 hours and although I want to bang my head against the table for the majority of each class, it is not nearly enough. The sixteen different forms of "the" are, well, darn near impossible to wrap my brain around as is the fact that the language includes sounds and letters that are not a part of the good 'ole ABCs. I know, I know...give it time.

There are eight students in my class and we are as multicultural as Seedlings. Two are from Mexico and are in Hamburg for graduate internships, there are two video game programmers--one from Italy and one from Poland, a Russian scientist/professor that has been living in Chicago but moved here to do science-y things, and a Brazilian and Brit also here for work. All speak fluent English. Another point for Hamburg for offering me a lesson in multculturalism.

When my fabulous friend Colleen offered to send me the hair product and travel book that I was so desperately missing from the mitten we expected the normal post office routine we're all familiar with. The plan was simple: Colleen would take it to the post office, Lauren would pick it up from the post office. That all seems so naive now. Much to our dismay, a month-long battle with USPS and Deutsche Postbank got in the way of me and my beloved goods. Upon arrival at USPS in early August Colleen was told that the package would take about two weeks to reach me. We discussed that having it shipped to our new apartment would be best because we'd be moving in within that time.

Several packages arrived during the next few weeks and each time I got the golden ticket notification, I hurried to the post office (offices, rather, as we are serviced by three different ones (?)). Lovely teaching books and supplies from thoughtful friends were very much appreciated and a thrill to receive, but I couldn't help but wonder when September 1 rolled around and I was still without my Aveda hair product and Rick Steves' travel-planning assistance. We both made massive attempts to track down the mysterious package. Colleen, without any help from UPS, was able to find out that the package had in fact left the US. She gave me the customs numbers which we were sure would help but alas, only provided me with confused, wrinkled brows from my pals at Deutsche Postbank. "It'll never come," my American friends here told me. "That's happened to me many times."

Lucky for me, Colleen refused to give up. Two weeks into September she surprised me and mailed another care package. The day after she did, the original package showed up at her door. It turns out it arrived in Hamburg early and Reg and I had not moved into our new place yet, so it was returned--slowly. As you can see, it's a mess. It looks like, well, it looks like it's been to Germany and back.