Awkward City

I only have to go to class two days a week but it still takes me a week to post things.

Last Saturday, Emily, Jess and I took a trip to the Basel Zoo.  We were sooooo excited!  “We’re going to the zoo!  We’re going to see the fun animals!!  YAYAYAYAY!!!”  I mean really, how awkward can the zoo be?

We got up early, got ready and made our way to the train station.  We tried to find a section of four seats so we could all sit together.  First car is full of children, keep going.  Second car is all full . . . mostly of one person sitting in the four section so it becomes useless.  Keep moving.  The next car is the same story as the second.  The next car has an abnormal number of older women who are sharing the four sections with their bags and their feet.  Now we’re just annoyed so we just sit in th normal seats.  About 45 seconds later, we get up and continued searching.  Finally, we found a  free section.  That wasn’t too bad.

We arrive in Basel.  “Oh! Brochures for the Zoo!! YAYAYAYAY ZOO!!!”  This wonderful brochure also made it very clear how to get to the zoo, this was very appreciated.  We struggled to buy our tram tickets but what else is new there?

Ruckus

We get to the zoo.  “YAYAAYAYAY ZOOO!!!!”  “Oh boy!  here’s the gate!  Let’s buy our tickets!”  The gate is wide open but there is no one selling tickets . . . “hmmmmm, the sign says they’re open . . . is there a bell somewhere to ring???  Can we just go in???”  This is awkward . . . we wandered in circles for about 2 minutes until finally some woman strolls out into the ticket booth, nice of her to do her job.  She sells us our tickets and we are not put off by this moment of awkward.  We go into the zoo where no one checks our tickets so we probably could have just walked in.  but anyway There are rhinos and hippos and things we don’t know and sea lions and all sorts of awesome animals.  Then we got to the llamas.  They were cool.  Then some sort of ruckus began.  “Oh gee, Llamas.  What’s up?  Then we found out what was up.  (Thanks for the pics, Emily!)

Mr. Llama failed with this lady but tried many a time with the others.  We could not really deny how awkward this was.  I’d like to say that this is the only time this happened.  Unfortunately, we saw this a lot that day.  Turtles, crickets, alligators, flamingos, etc.  All day.

After a few hours of walking around the zoo ogling at the animals we decided that it was time to eat.  We looked at our map and went to the nearest food place.  We walked in and saw only terrible looking pizza and bakery items.  We were sad.  We quickly huddled and began to have a conversation about whether or not this was the actual food place and whether or not we wanted to stay here.  Apparently, it was pretty clear what we were doing because the woman working there told us that there was more food over yonder.  After we huddled again to come to the conclusion that this must be what she had said, we ran out.  We were really hungry but this other food place was far away and we had yet to go to the aquarium that was right next to us.  We battled our hunger and saw the aquarium.  This was mostly for Jess’ benefit.  Emily and I probably could have done without and gone to get food but Jess loves Jellyfish.  The choice was beat up Jess and eat or just let her have the jellyfish.  Had we beat her up, there was a chance that we would get kicked out and never get to eat so that wasn’t worth it at all.  In the aquarium we saw Turtles having sex.  That was very uncomfortable.  The boy turtle had this terrible look on his face, I wanted him to stop.  After the aquarium we saw adorable hippos and got lost.  The Basel Zoo is doing a lot of renovation so we got a little confused.  Finally, we found the food.  We walked in and got our trays “YAAYAYAYA FOOD!”  Then there was all sorts of confusion.  They were selling sausages and french fries inside for like 13 swiss francs but just sausages outside for like 6.  There was all sorts of debate about which one to get.  Then we realized there was a real restaurant upstairs.  We decide to check this out.  We go upstairs and there’s a menu on the wall but it only shows specials so we go in and stand around awkwardly until we see someone who works there.  One of us eventually ask him to see a menu.  He hands us each a menu, we look at it and decide we don’t want this either so we put them somewhere and run out.  This is where the trouble starts.  We go back to the door from which we came and it is locked.  We go to the elevator and it doesn’t go anywhere.  There is a door that leads outside but it is not part of the zoo anymore.  For awhile we stood there and cried a little inside and decided to try the door again.  Emily pulled on it and it buzzed making her jump.  She tried it again and it buzzed again and finally opened.  We ran downstairs and went in the original room and just got some sausages with french fries.  We also got awesome Zoo cups.  Mine has lions on it, Jess and Emily have elephants.

After lunch we finished up with the zoo and headed back to the train station.  We figure out which platform our train comes in on and head out.  You have to walk through a check point in order to get to the platforms and we did and it was fine.  Emily had to go pee so Jess and I were hanging out in the hall near the checkpoint.  Plenty of people just walked on by.  Suddenly, three black guys walk through and are stopped.  They have Swiss Passports and are still getting lip from the German guards.  There was apparently no big problem because they made it through.  Jess and I just watched in curiosity of this apparent racial profiling.  They have different racism in Europe than we do.  We found this out the first week when we saw this Cafe sign here in Freiburg. This sign always makes us feel super awkward because of how much it would not fly in America.  We’re always like “wow! super offensive.”  When this was brought up by Jess to one of her teachers, her teacher basically said “oh, everything is offensive nowadays, lol”  We consider this “old school racism” however.  This is something you would see in the 50’s.

Anyway, back to the zoo, or the way back at least.  This is where the awkward really starts to build up.  When we first got to Germany, we were given a month long pass that allowed us to use the trams, buses and regional trains in the area.  Once April came, we had to buy our own for the semester and we took them to be one in the same except that our new one would last longer.  We have a little map from our old ones that show where we can go and when.  On this map it shows that we can get to Basel on the weekends.  On the way down, no one checked our tickets so it didn’t really matter.  About 10 minutes into the trip home, however, a dude came around checking tickets.  We confidently whipped ours out and he took them, inspected them, and frowned.  He said something and we looked at each other.  He said something again and we made a confused/sad face.  He then asked us where we came from and where we were going and then explained to us that we can not do this with this ticket.  I showed him the map and he replied that that map is for the first ticket we had, not for the semester ticket.  I asked what was the difference.  He replied “Well, The first one is for high school students and college students.  The Semester ticket is for college students only.”  I said “okkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk”  I still don’t know how that makes any difference but it does.  He whipped out his little machine and took our passports and started writing us up.  He was a nice guy.  He did not make us pay the 40 euro fee for not having a ticket but did make us pay for the price of the ticket we didn’t have.  This is nice, I understand but I really hate not having the ability to defend myself.  If we were in America I would have been like “Well, that was great of anyone to tell us there was a difference.  How were we supposed to know that?  Why are you wasting your time writing us all up just because no one communicates in this place?  I appreciate you not charging me the 40 euros but I think it’s a little silly this is still an official case here.”  However, none of us have the German to do that so all we could do was look at each other, laugh and be awkward. We quickly got over this since there was really no way that we could have known and we were thankful it at least happened with a nice guy.

When we pulled into Freiburg there were people and cops everywhere.  Apparently, there had been some big soccer game.  I hate soccer so this means nothing but that we will soon be bothered by a bunch of drunk people.  YAY!  We went up to wait for the tram with said drunk people.  The tram, as it always is after soccer games, was packed.  I mean super super packed.  We were squished together and it was super uncomfortable.  We got a few stops and a few more people squish on then we get to a stop where a woman is waiting with her huge baby carriage.  We think, “No, there’s no way”.  Apparently, there is a fucking way because this woman jams her way onto the tram using her baby as a battering ram to shove people out of the way.  It took everything I had not to punch her in the face and eat her baby.

Finally, we got off the soccer, hell tram.  Emily had to go to the grocery store so Jess and I said goodbye and made our way back to our buildings.  We crossed the street and walked down the sidewalk.  We turned to go down the path towards our buildings and there, on the side of the open path, in broad daylight is a dude with his whole junk hanging out taking a pee.  Once he saw us, he jumped and shoved his junk back in.  We walk by and then lost it.  We laughed uncontrollably and pretty much just wanted this day to stop.  This was awkward but we passed it up as drunk soccer fans.  However, since then it has become apparent that this guy was not just a drunk soccer fan but he is a serial exposer.  He is known by all who have been here before.  We have all seen him now.  He stands there and does his whole pretending to be peeing and get startled act.  WTF!?!?

Anyway, we got back to our rooms and quit that day.  Way too much awkward for one day.  We just wanted to go to the zoo.