Pray for outsourcing

On base they sell pretty much everything you need, they even have a cell phone kiosk that translates everything into English and walks you through all the necessary steps to get going, but they charge an arm and a leg for the phones, even with a 2 year contract. I was in one of my "live the German life" moods last night and decided to go to the mall downtown and see what was there. They have this place called Media Markt, which is like a Best Buy, and they had the same monthly plans as they do on base, but supplement their phones dramatically, like 1euro for an iPhone dramatically. It just so happens that Jaime thought she wanted to be cool like the "it" crowd and get an iPhone, so I meandered over to the cell phone area, tossed out the "speakin de dutch" line and waited for the salesman that remembered his English class from high school. After about 2 hours (no exaggeration) of hand signals, facial gestures, and Jaime cutting eyes at me to hurry up, I walk out of there with a 1euro iPhone for Jaime. When we get home, I figure I'll just turn it on and it will be good to go, like my ANDROID phones are. NEGATIVE. One of the things I didn't consider about buying off post is that everything is made for Germans, stupid I know, how dare they not cater to the Americans off base. Anyway, I cannot understand the manual or the onscreen commands and it took a lot of googling and help from a comrade to figure out that you have to have iTunes to activate your iPhone. That in itself makes me want to puke, but even after we finally got it activated, it still didn't work. So now, picture the situation in America, you buy a phone, it doesn't work, and you have to go back to the store to get help. How helpful do you think the sales guy is gonna be AFTER the sale. Now take that and multiply it by 12 and you can imagine the anxiety I had before taking the phone back and trying and trying to explain via broken germish and smoke signals that "the phone is activate, has a number, but cannot get a data signal". It could have been worse, maybe, but he ended up telling me to call customer service. For the first time, I prayed that customer service was in India. I haven't called yet.

We also went to McDonalds for the first time since we've been here, it was not the same. But as a positive, they have HUGE ketchup packets, a far cry from England. All I can say is that one "number niner and pomme frites and die fish sandwhich cost me the equivelent of 22 dollars. Jaime says "you can't think of it that way" and I'm thinking to myself "that's easy for someone who gets paid in Crotmarks not for someone who gets paid in real money" (wow what a stretch).

Getting around is actually pretty easy with the GPS, but today it stopped working and I was totally lost. I took a 30km detour through some small towns to get home today, which was alright I guess. I find it ironic that the lady speaking the street names on my GPS in Florida cannot pronounce Bloomingdale correctly, but her twin sister who speaks the names on my German GPS can pronounce Hauptanskzlotskybonefstrasse perfectly.

I have to admit, my 5 speed Audi A3 rental car sure beats the Chevy malibu you get back in the states.