I'm happy with my job here. My boss has convinced me that he is a pretty upfront and decent guy. Already he has given me a substantial advance on my wage. This, and the fact that his long-term employees endorse him fully, convinces me that this job might be for keeps. In the beginning of July, I also wrote the following to my parents. (I have edited this where necessary and added further comments where desirable).

As I've said, there's a lot about this Kassel job to feel really positive about. From the school's website I learnt just how stable and happy their staff seem to be, and since coming here that lesson has been more than confirmed through the very positive testimonies that the staff have privately and candidly given me. This is one of the most reassuring things possible. If the staff are happy long-termers, so far, so good.

Another really positive feature is that my boss seems like a decent guy, and he has done the very decent thing of simply giving me a cash advance on nothing more than trust. What's more, he offered this - I didn't have to ask. Kind of makes me feel like he's a fair and reliable guy and that this job's not a joke.

Then of course, there's the pay. One shouldn't count their elephants before they're dressed in pink bikinis of course, but if it all works out, my money problems might soon be at an end.

Either job looks great to me [again, in reference to my Russian contingency plan], although Kassel will likely be better for me financially and professionally (good business teaching experience), so I will give it my best. God will let me know His own Will on the matter simply by a show of support or lack thereof re the visa. It's a simple fifty-fifty thing, it's completely out of my control, and so there's no need for stress or concern. Whatever will be, will be.

One final really positive point is that I have already met some good people and made some friends here in Kassel. After two months, I finally have a social life once more. The Kassel job might be just the thing, if it works out. Otherwise, I'm very excited about going to Russia. (Russia pays only $1000 NZ per month, but it's a salary, and they are a highly professional school - affiliated with Cambridge and running Cambridge Diplomas at a discount to staff.) Meanwhile, Kassel's great, the people are friendly and fun, the beer's excellent, the weather's terrible [humid, and raining daily], and even if elephants did wear bikinis, I doubt there would be sizes large enough to fit them. (Could be an untapped market; but then I still have a lot to learn about business, don't I? I am, after all, only a Business English Teacher.)

Here are some quick observations for now:

Too many people smoke, and they smoke everywhere (including restaurants and Internet cafes).

They love obeying rules. Seldom do the cross against the traffic lights or the little red man. If I dart out ahead of them, however, I either get an earful from some old man, or everyone else follows.

As I continually say, the beer's a prize. Hefe weizen's my favourite, but other people truly enjoy pils. Problem is that drinks are expensive when bought in bars, etc. Thankfully, most things in Kassel, including rent, food, cloths, beers, and eating out (especially), are considerably cheaper than they were in Stuttgart. Touch wood, I will earn more money and spend less of it here in Kassel.

German people are as nice as any people one could hope to meet anywhere. Yet many people still hold prejudices against Germans because of the wars. Truly, we are no more entitled to hold them accountable and guilty than we may consider ourselves to be, as all such crimes have been perpetuated by all peoples throughout history. None of us are to blame for things our grandparents may or may not have done, but we are each accountable insofar as we must learn from them. Imagine having grown up in a society where such guilt was rubbed in your face every day! The people here are more conscious than any I have previously met of the evils that can flow from humanity. I have observed already that nobody abhors political and national violence more than the Germans (and don't tell me, with what's going on in Gaza, that such abuses would be more anathema to Jewish peoples!). Yet even today, nations from all over the world still look to Germany for their little piece of the compensation pie (Botswana wants $4 billion in account of an atrocious massacre that occurred exactly a century ago [BBC], whereas what about the atrocities of the rest of Europe (including Russia), or of America and Japan? For a country of approximately the same geographical area as New Zealand, but with more than twenty times as many people, I am impressed with how safe I feel here in Germany. But it is not about that. My point is that of all the nations who could ever repeat the mistakes of Nazi Germany, I believe it would be about the least likely to happen in Germany because of what they have learnt from their past. I am not afraid to admit that I believe it could sooner happen in New Zealand, given some strong racial prejudices that are stewing against Asian peoples - although this, too, is very unlikely. As it was in Germany, look to highly nationalistic and totalitarian states for patterns that could repeat themselves into the future.

Finally, I am happy to have met a few good people already, and I am making some progress with my German by frequenting local German bars and learning what I call 'Pub German'. A rhyme from the other day, made in jest at the state of me, went: "Bier auf Wein, das laß sein; Wein auf Bier, das rat Ich dir" (Beer and wine, you're fine; Wine and beer, oh dear!).

Germany, I'm going to love you!

01 August 2004 Plenty of Fish in the Sea

The sad news is that Ting and I broke up last Sunday (25 July) because we feel that we don't have enough love in our relationship (well, at least, I feel this). We have inevitably drifted apart over these last ten months, as she's still in Auckland and I'm at the opposite end of the world. Also, her family absolutely refuses to sanction our relationship. Naturally, if my parents were to have a problem with my being with a Chinese girl, it is in my culture to tell them to mind their own racist business. Thankfully, my parents are not racist. Being Chinese, however, means that Ting's sense of filial piety is excessively strong. A Chinese proverb has it that once a man had to choose between feeding his baby boy (a prized possession in China) or his ageing mother. When he went to bury his baby alive, the gods rewarded him by having it that he unearthed considerable treasures. He got to keep his mother and his son, but the implications of the proverb remain part of the Chinese psyche even today. Basically, Ting's family could not accept that I was not Chinese - be it racism, xenophobia, or whatever - and this drove a wedge between us even from the beginning.

Because of this, even though I love Ting dearly, I am glad that this relationship is over. I cannot be with a woman who is not committed to me one hundred per cent. Had I stayed with her for very much longer, I would have undoubtedly met with the same end, but I would also have lost the love of someone else who might have committed herself and loved me truly. Perhaps it is already too late. On Friday morning, I will arrive in Poland for the weekend to see if I can claim back the love of one very wonderful and amazing Polish woman. I probably don't deserve her, after all I have put her through, as so I won't say any more until/unless things become more certain.

Work's gong well. Not a bad income for this month, but I'm still trying to make ends meet. Assuming this job is a keeper, it will nevertheless take another half year or more to get my head above water again, as I am burdened with the weight of various debts tied by chains around my legs. Happily, there is much that I like about this job, and my students continue to make my job a real pleasure.

Have now been two weeks to the day without alcohol. May remain a teetotaller for some considerable while, or may succumb to the expectations of my Polish friends in a week's time.

Have been going on a few trips about Hessen recently. To give some background, I started trading English for German lessons with a very nice Russian girl named Tatjana. (Because of her education, experience, and level of spoken German, I am confident that she will do a very good job.) Anyway, she has also introduced me to some other very nice German people, including her boyfriend, Jörg, and I have now been out with them on several occasions.

Last week, we went to a few places, the most interesting of which was Weidelsburg, an old and crumbling 13th century castle about half an hour's drive away. Of course, seeing such ancient ruins is incredible for me, as we don't have such things in New Zealand. Legend has it that the castle had lain under siege for some while when finally the wife of the leader went out to plead for merciful terms. The terms were that only the women could leave, but that each could carry one prized possession... so the wife carried her husband all the way down the hill. Bet he got a hell of a ribbing from those comrades (with less powerfully built wives) that he left behind - "Yeah, go ahead and leave us to the slaughter you skinny bastard!" - but, anyway, the point is, as I have already said, German women are damn strong!

Yesterday, two other friends of ours, a boy also named Jörk and his beautiful newly-wed, Sarikki, took me to two very beautiful towns quite near by. The first one, Göttingham, is in fact a city, and it came through the war remarkably well. The other town, Hannoversch-Münden, had even more stunning architecture going back five hundred years and beyond. They were really great to see, and before we returned to Kassel we had a very pleasant picnic from the top of a hill overlooking the latter town. (Unfortunately, I cannot as yet provide any photos or links for either.)

That's it for today.

17 August 2004 A Polish Fiasco

Well, my trip to Poland of several weekends ago was a complete disaster from beginning to end. Just to get things off to a perfectly frustrating start, my connecting trains in Poznan between Hanover and Katowice missed each other. Now, the trains in Poland are unimaginably worse even than the trains in China... and that's really saying something! Nothing is in English and no one can speak any English - and, come on! this is the international lingua franka these days - and the station sign-posting merely gives final destinations. All this means that nothing says whether the train you're about to board is going to your mid-way destination, like Katowice. Nor was the platform information provided either on my train ticket or in my itinerary. When the Hanover-to-Poznan train arrived fifteen minutes late (ten minutes late for the departing train, which had had to wait), I knew I didn't have much time. Thirty seconds after getting off the first train, I watched as the train I was supposed to catch pulled away, having been unsure as to whether it was the right train due to the above reasons. A platform attendant told me, in German, to see if I could run and catch it - schnell! schnell! schnell! - and consequently I had to sit it out for four hours in a exceedingly boring Polish train station.

Getting off to such an appalling start seemed to cast an ominous presence over my planned weekend. At 2.30pm on Friday afternoon, I finally pulled into Katowice and met the woman who I hope still yet remains a real part of my destiny. Katarzyna Lompa, or Kasia, is she who has made my experience in Europe mean so incredibly much. As planned, we got straight off to discussing a possible future together, but, alas, with me living here in Germany, it seemed from the start that my chances were not looking too good.

Now naturally some things are not for this website - but keep your eyes open for my autobiography, due to be published after a long and accomplished life. Mind you, I owe it to Kasia, evil as I am, to include mention of the second fiasco of the weekend, upon which the blame is entirely hers! (Wink.) Having made the very sensible suggestion of phoning ahead to enquire about hotel rooms, and having given up after being assured by Kasia that "there are always rooms available in Wisla", we made the three hour journey to discover, murphically, that a festival in the area meant that not a single room was anywhere to be found. After an hour of walking around and making fruitless phone calls, we got to enjoy another three hour journey back to Mikolow. On top of all this, I lost my favourite jacket - a precious and sentimental gift - but I cannot pin this on on Kasia (...although, perhaps if I had never met her in the first place...?).

With it not easily coming across in text that I am only poking light fun about the event, I will just briefly add that we did see the bright side. I was in Poland so we could talk, and the train journey, passing some very decent countryside, made for a very reasonable setting. Fiasco, it may have been; but fruitless, it was not.

Other than all this, I made two further observations about Poland: In contrast to Germany, it was this time very difficult to miss just how poor Poland is; and boy do they have a wasp problem! With regards to this latter point, I poked my head inside one sweet-bread shop and estimated that the poor girl who worked there was surrounded by wasps in their hundreds. Truly, it is no exaggeration to say that there must have been at least two hundred wasps buzzing around and crawling over the breads. I sincerely hope that she is duly compensated, but probably she is not.

So my fiasco of a weekend came to an end with poor results and an upsetting farewell. The next morning, at 6.30am, my bus pulled into Kassel, and from there I went home, showered, and then went straight to work. Thankfully, I slept quite well on the bus, and with chance to sleep between lessons I coped quite well with my day.

This last week in Kassel has not been too much fun. Unfortunately, there are some things that are worrying me about my job at the moment, and then it's never very much fun to face rejection (which I have now faced several times in as many weeks). Having been on the binge last night (breaking a stay of abstinence that had lasted exactly one month), I am now sitting here writing this with an ache behind my eyes. I can only wait patiently in the hope that things will soon pick up for me once more, and on this rather sour note, I feel the time is ripe to conclude my update - thus.

From here, proceed to Germany II