21st December 2005 - Day 79

In order not to lose this room I have now for March 2006, I pulled myself out of bed at 0800 and went down to find the Hausmeister. After the morning routine of course.

He wasn't there.

Panic.

I found him in another building, chatting with his colleague. I asked him about the extension of rental period and braced myself for the answer.

I was supposed to find another person to settle the matter, and the person's Sprechstunde was yesterday evening.

Great.

I sent an email to the person and hope that she'll allow me to make the extension on 10th January 2006, instead of by the end of this week.

After that, I went for a tutorial with everything packed for Dresden. I was 10 minutes late because I missed the bus and missed one question.

The tutorial ended early at 1230 hence, the Mensa was not that crowded when I had my lunch.

After lunch, I remembered that my camera was left in the hostel. What else can I do besides going back to get it?

There was another lecture at 1400. I attended that. Before 20 minutes was up, the lecturer declared that she will not start anything new this week and wished us schöne Weihnachten. I still had more than 1.5 hours before the train comes.

I met Jason outside the lecture venue and chatted with him for quite a while. Then I made my way to the train station to catch the train to Stuttgart to catch my flight.

It's quite irritating when I have already paid my fares and no conductors comes onboard to check tickets. It makes me feel I paid for nothing.

Checked in my flight at Stuttgart Flughafen and waited for an hour doing nothing. On the flight to Dresden, I was asleep. It was a short flight of around 40 minutes.

At Dresden Flughafen, I bought the wrong ticket for the S-Bahn to Dresden Neustadt Bahnhof. I bought the ermäßigt ticket thinking it was for passengers with Bahncard. It was actually for children below the age of 14. Luckily, the conductor closed one eye.

From the train staion, I walked for another 15 minutes to the hostel. The hostel has quite a good atmosphere and it was clean. It has its' own beer made by some friend of the hostel owner. I found that quite interesting.

There was a Japanese girl in the room. Out of curiosity, I asked her whether the stereotyping of Japanese having dificulty with English was true as she spoke good English. She said that most of the Japanese can't pronounce English words correctly. I found out she's actually studying English in London at the moment. Will ask another Japanese the next time I meet one.

Nan arrived by car 15 minutes later. On hindsight, flying to Dresden from Stuttgart was a costly mistake that I made without having the necessary information while making the decision. Mitfahrgelegenheit would have been a much more cost effective method.

We went to the Döner shop for a late dinner and discussed our itinerary for tomorrow.

So, I think it would be quite interesting tomorrow.