Well – just as I thought I’d gotten all my bureaucracy done, another bit popped up 
I went to the Hausverwaltung (accommodation managment ppl) this morning, to show them my Anmeldungsbescheinigung (proof of registration with the Kreisverwaltung, or local authority kinda folk), and my Immatrikulationsbescheinigung (proof of registration with the college). They were happy with the Anmeldungbescheinigung, but they didn’t want my Immatrikulationsbescheinigung. Currently, I just have a temporary one – they want the real one, but they don’t need to see it until mid-November.
What they did want, however, was my rent. Turns out that in Germany, “within 12 days of moving in” actually means “within 12 days (weekends included) of when you could, in theory, have moved in, if our office had been open to give you your keys, which it wasn’t”. See, they do like things complicated. So I went to the bank, to try and put some money into my account – no such luck, my account number didn’t exist. The lady who’d helped me open the account had told me that it might take a day or so, and that I could come in anytime this week and it would be fine. What she actually meant was that it could take three to five days, and I could come in anytime after this Thursday, and it would be fine. Aargh! She was halfway through dealing with another customer, but promised to come back to me.
I just couldn’t take it any more. It’s hard being in a new country, with so many formalities to sort out, all in a foreign language, and with none of your friends around. Being scolded like a stupid child really doesn’t make it any easy, and my bottom lip started to wobble. A much younger bank staff guy came over, asked was I ok. I started to explain that the older lady would be helping me in a second, and she snapped at him words to the effect of “she’s just stupid and doesn’t know how it works. I’ll explain to her in a minute” – I just started crying. So then the nice man brought me over to the desks at the back of the bank (where you can open an account/deal with large sums of money/do stuff with a bit more privacy than just standing at the counter), sat me down, told me he’d sort it all out. He took all the details, and rang my Hausverwaltung. They didn’t answer, so he promised to try them again, and took their fax number too, in case. He took my mobile number, and sent me off with a promise that he’d sort it, all would be ok.
In the end, he had to fax them, and then he got to speak to them. They wanted an official fax from the bank, to say that I’d opened an account, and would have it within a few days, which he gave them. He then rang me back to explain all this – he was so lovely, and patient, and just a tonic. He completely restored my faith in humanity, and a brief cry just levelled out some of the stress of the last week or so. It’s been an awful lot of fun, but it has been stressful too.
After class (banks open at half eight in the morning here. I find this an *eminently* sensible idea, and recommend it to any non-German bank managers who may be reading. Do this. Customers will love you), we went out to Erding. It’s pretty far away, but a very scenic journey. We got a bus straight from the uni to the Erdinger brewery, where we watched a brief video, then went on a tour. It’s a fairly standard factory tour really. But I learnt some new words – Hefe is yeast 
After the tour, we came back to the brewery pub, where we were given pots of weisswurst (no, I can’t remember what’s in it, but I remember enough that I know I don’t want to know!), holders full of Brez’n (pretzels), and more or less free run of the drinks (We weren’t allowed to self-serve, but we could have as many, of any of the different varieties of Erdinger, as we wanted.) I stuck to the weissbier, although I tried sips of all the other ones – I just didn’t like them much. I also had some Apfelschorle (apple juice with fizzy water), cos the Brez’n make you *really* thirsty! The walk back to the S-Bahn station was pretty far, but I don’t *think* we lost anyone!
All in all, it was a good, fun afternoon, with excellent company There’s a party on tonight (again!), but I think it’ll (hopefully) be an early night for me…