I'm back!

Sorry I haven't kept up with my blog (if anybody's following it. . .)! This past week and a half was quite busy: Oktoberfest, 4 visitors out-of-city visitors in 3 days, a sickness, a new refrigerator, and a search for a seemingly non-existent bank account. You see, constantly having guests, drinking too much, coughing and worrying when the next meal will be are all activities that can distract one from one's duties. A lot of (hopefully) interesting things happened, and I will describe them in installments. I hope I finish, as I am going to Salzburg tomorrow and have quite a busy weekend.

Tuesday the 29th of September: A Strange Prelude to an Amazing Week

As you may or may not know, my classes for the semester have not yet started and I'm still in Orientation. Orientation is a combination of things: German, learning what's important in Munich, a very brief course in German politics, etc. On Tuesday, our homework was to go out and find a German person that we did not know and interview them. We were divided into groups and instructed to go to either a bar or cafe.

Our group wasn't too exciting; we found a nice young woman downtown who was currently involved in a hotel internship. When we got back to our student housing, we noticed another group sitting at the student bar talking to someone, and a few of us decided to join. The man offered me a place to sit next to him, and I did.

Now, what I didn't know when I sat down was that this man was a) not German, but in fact Romanian, and b) extremely perverse. I did not feel threatened by him in any way (he didn't try to touch me and didn't even really give me any looks that made me uncomfortable), but he would randomly insert sexual things into conversation. Example: I was talking to the girl across from me about how excited I was to go to the Alps that Thursday. "I love hiking!", I exclaimed. He turned his head and said, "What? You love f***ing?". (That was the tamest example I could think of-- didn't want to offend anyone). He also (recognizing that I was too young for him, I guess) tried to set me up with every guy my age that was at the table with us. When I first sat down, he asked me if I liked nice, young American guys and motioned to someone I knew sitting across from me. I was like, "I already know him," and he dropped the subject.

A guy I knew sat down with us, and when he got up to go use the bathroom, Heraldo (the Romanian) turned to me and said, "Ingrid, I could tell he was devoring you". I was like, "What?". A second later, I figured out that he meant to say 'devouring'.

Well, this Romanian did have a little crush on me so when I got up to leave he ordered the table a round of beers so that I would stay. "Ingrid," he said, "give me two months and I will be falling in love with you." I laughed nervously.

The group that interviewed him made up fictional answers for their presentation the next day. All the ones he gave were too vulgar for mixed company.