Week Five

Well it turns out that they did in fact want me to be at the trade show every single day. At first I was angry, because the only thing Agnes (the head boss) told me was that they would need me to keep the product display cases clean, so I was imagining being the maid all week. Also, no one was going to be able to drive me to and from Frankfurt, so I was going to have to take the train - a two hour trip for a total of four hours of commute every single day of the week. That meant getting up at 5am in order to be ready. Yeah, I wasn't pleased.

However, the trade show turned out to be a rather fun experience. I used the time in the trains to nap or read a book. At the actual booth, what they really needed me to do was sit at the information desk and hand out information sheets and booklets about the various products or direct customers to the appropriate sales person when they had question. This was rather boring at times, particularly on Friday when almost no one was there, but it was kind of fun attempting to field really technical questions in German, and I was even able to answer some questions about the products! I also suspect that the reason they asked me to do this chore was so they could put a young female out into the front of the booth to attract all the weird techie guys. One of my funniest observations was that whenever there was an attractive young man walking around, there was always a girl with him - as if the girlfriends were afraid of their guys being stolen away because they were the only cute ones in a veritable sea of mullets and Teeva sandals.

Everyone who worked at the trade show was super nice to me. I got lots of compliments on my German, and many of my coworkers made time to tell me about their experiences with Schott. Before I felt like even though I knew their faces, I never really talked to anyone, because our office setting is not particularly conducive to socializing. There's certainly no watercooler culture in my department. After this week, I feel a bit like the department pet. One of the French employees who I talked with a lot during the initial training session told me about how French people describe wine using the same terms they would use to describe a woman's dress. I thought that was pretty funny (they actually call the legs on the wine - for those of you familiar with wine - the thighs. Yeah they are pretty sensual about their wine). The eastern European employee in the office told me how he was in my position at the trade show three years ago. I don't know. It was kind of cool to talk to everyone.

My roommate and I got into a pretty big fight this week. It started off with a dirty pan that she left sitting around and ended with her accusing me of ignoring her and being rude. It made things pretty awkward, so it was probably good that I was hardly ever home this week. Last night we ended up hanging out together with some of the other interns at Johannesfest. I guess now we're just pretending like the fight didn't happen. I don't really care since I'm only here for another two months anyway, so I don't want to make a big issue out of stupid little stuff.

Johannesfest is pretty awesome. I dropped my stuff off at Ashley's apartment in Mainz and we went to meet up with Anne. Linda joined up with us later after we'd already gone on the Tilt-A-Whirl (so much fun) and done some walking around. They basically have little booths set up everywhere and people sell almost anything you can imagine, almost like a craft fair. I found a purse I really liked, but they didn't have it in black, so I didn't buy it. I did get a very pretty necklace and I ate chocolate covered strawberries - yum! I also found the funniest t-shirt I've ever seen. It said the following:

"Caution!"
When you go me on the Nerven,
I shall put you into a Gully,
do the Deckel drauff,
and you will never come back
to the Tageslicht!

This is the best example of Genglish I have ever seen. It's supposed to mean, "If you piss me off, I will put you in a hole, cover it with a blanket, and you will never see the light of day." Obviously someone didn't pay attention in their English class ha ha! Of course I bought the shirt. I SHALL PUT YOU INTO A GULLY! I'm going back today to do more browing, because Anne wanted to go to another university party, and naturally we wanted to tag along. We met up with more interns and enjoyed an evening of dancing, beer, and students.

Oh I should also mention that I found my US sim card!!! This absolutely made my day!