A day like no other

Where to start, that is the problem. I woke up on August 30th due to the alarm on my phone. Upon viewing the screen, I noticed it had the words "security failure" written across it. Not good news. Investigating further, I came to the conclusion that the service provider (o2) had cut me off. Admittedly, I had cancelled my contract for the end of the month, but by my calendar, that's midnight on the 31st, not the 29th. Moving on to today, we had to get up extremely early in order to get Olga on her plane to Colombia.

So, with the freezing weather settling in, and therefore having to shut the window at night, we got up at 3.30 this morning. After the usual showering, coffee etc, we needed to get to the Hauptbahnhof (where we had left the luggage the night before) to catch the train to Frankfurt Airport. As the first tram arrives at the station at 5am, and we needed to catch the train at 5.02am, after collecting the luggage, a taxi was required. Due to the reason mentioned above, I no longer had use of my phone. Olga's had run out of credit, so I went to the callbox in the halls of residence. Only takes phonecards, and I only had change. Okay then, over to the military base where there are three phoneboxes, one of which accepts coins. Enter it. Look for number of taxi company. No phonebook. Go into cabin next door. Flick through phonebook, only to discover that the page with taxis in has been ripped out of the book. Great ! Move onto third cabin, find full book, remember taxi number and go back to booth one. Whilst picking up the receiver to dial, my brain starts sending me bad signals which force me to look at the front of the machine, where I see pictures of the coins that are accepted. As the receiver is reaching my ear and I am not hearing a tone, I realise that the pictures of coins I am looking at are of the good old Deutsche Mark. Yes, the only coin-phone in the vicinity is stuck in the pre-euro times.

Back I go, collect our stuff (lucky we had dropped the big bags off at the station the night before) and we start walking towards Berliner Strasse. We stop to look at the bus timetable, on the offchance that one would pass before the first tram. Someone had kindly ripped the timetable off of it's holder. We carry on, only to find that there are no taxis at the next stop. By now it was 4.45am and within seven minutes the tram would be passing us by, but determined to get a taxi and arrive at the station in enough time to get this train, we continue. Pariser Tor. Here we see two taxis (they always come in twos, haven't you noticed?) arriving at the petrol station on the other side of the road. We dare the traffic, and run across the roads to get there. Finally, a ride ! Of course, we forgot that it's a perilous one way system over here, so we had to drive back to Berliner Strasse in order to turn around.

Arriving at the station at 4.53, and therefore 9 minutes to spare, I rushed in to get the luggage out whilst Olga tried to sort out paying a taxi fare of eight euros with a fifty euro note. We had made the train ! All the check-in etc went fine, and so after saying our goodbyes, I went on my way back to Mainz. Arriving at 8am I got the tram straight back home, as I had plenty of things to do today. First thing, speak to the caretaker. Arriving at his office I see a little hand-written sign saying he's just popped out - be right back. Go back to my room to sort a few things out before returning to see him. Okay. Go back to sleep as two and a half hours is not enough for me. At eleven o'clock I wake up. Feeling better, I wonder how it feels to be starting your first school day in Germany. How do I know this was their first school day here? Because I was awoken at eleven o'clock by the familiar sound of children screaming through the windows of the halls of residence, which signals that it's term-time again. Oh, what joy.

Anyway, I get up, and have a little chat with Ruben and Almudena. Whilst I am speaking to them we here a little 'ping' sound. At this point I notice that my glasses are falling off my face. Yes, the screw that holds my glasses together, decided that today was the day it was going to fall out. More than that, because after ten minutes looking for it all over the floor, and still not finding it, we decided it had gone to a better place (or the goblins had got it).

So, what I actually ended up doing was going to the opticions to get a new screw fitted. Before catching the bus to the Mensa to eat lunch, I stopped at our old friend, the turkish call shop, and bought myself a new simcard for my mobile. Which is why I am no longer available on my old number. If I haven't informed you of the new number, please send me an email, and I'll send it to you. Oh, whilst I'm on the subject. As I can no longer access the old simcard, I have also lost a lot of telephone numbers. So if you think I haven't got it (eg if I haven't phoned you in a while) let me know.

What a day !