Whinge

This is why I really hate being here sometimes:

I have had to pay, to date, including keys for Simon, over one hundred dollars for keys to houses which I am only living in temporarily. Not only did I have to pay, but I had to wait two weeks to pick one of them up and get a special permission slip from the housemaster (!) for the other one.

To renew my library membership I need to show my passport plus proof of address. To renew it.

I can´t make small talk in German, I just can´t. And that is because they don´t make it up here, in the north. I am so sick of going into shops and saying something like, nice weather we´re having and getting stared at like I´m a freak.

I forget, pretty much every single bloody time, to weigh my fruit and vegtables before I take them to the counter. Which means I can´t buy them without lining up all over again. Yesterday I went to the shops specifically to buy an apple, lined up for twenty minutes then realised I had forgotten to weigh it.

I can never remember the names for my bike parts, so every time I go into a bike shop I just have to point.

Everything is closed on Sunday, and most shops close at midday on Saturday. Nothing is open past eight o´clock ever. I am in the sticks, I know, but this is a town of two hundred and fifty thousand people!

No-one ever smiles at you in the street. Except for babies, who haven´t learnt not to yet. And the occasional dog.