Chapter IV

In which Josh attends parties, attempts to attend his first lectures & seminars, gets his moneys and pulls some Teutonic totty.

I am fully aware that I have been lately rather remiss with my entries, so I shall endeavour to relatively briefly put paid to the intervening period, so as to get back on track and (attempt to) write more regularly.

In the time since last I wrote, I have been mostly occupied with busily running around, getting little done and attending a large number of parties. The parties at the campus StudiHaus, which roughly approximate to bops, albeit less fancy-dressy and a bit more debauched (if possible), always seem to descend into orgiastic carnage. Much cheap vodka invariably leads to countless drunken pairings, usually coming as a surprise to those concerned the next morning - once they have been reminded. In short: the Erasmus students hit it hard. The Erasmus party is rather an infamous institution at the university, and it appears that I became rather invested in a game of table-football, with a series of photographs demonstrating my journey through a roller-coaster ride of emotions (c.f. photo, below).

Another particularly notable night was the “Nightmare before Hallowe’en” party, where we prematurely, and rather abortively, celebrated Hallowe’en (last Friday). Having decided that we’d be letting the side down were we not to dress up, we set off into town to cobble an outfit together. There appears in Trier to be a certain gap in the market when it comes to Hallowe’en costumes, resulting In my having to purchase a child’s pumpkin outfit from Woolworth’s (yes, they still exist here!). On my return home, however, I came to the realisation that the torso was not quite long enough (the sizes were unintelligible), meaning that the costume was not only rather painful, but also left nothing to the imagination. My attempts to stretch it by hanging my laden satchel from the crotch were only partially successful, and in the end I was forced to cut a hole in the crotch to let myself out. To cover this fact, I augmented the getup with a pair of dungarees (farmer pumpkin?) – yes, I did bring dungarees with me. We prinked at one of the girls’ rooms and headed over, still not entirely sure whether or not it was fancy dress. Fortunately, it turned out it was, and English Tim had decided to go as me, even dying his hair red…

Aside from the parties, other notable developments include the much belated acquisition of my PIN and my subsequent access to money (hussar!), as well as the beginning of my education at Trier University. Having said that, one would be more inclined to describe it as an attempt at such; one met with mixed success. About three of my classes were so unpopular that only a couple of people attended, with me being the sole attendee of one of them (just a little bit awkward). For these, we decided to meet again the following week and reassess. The classes which weren’t too small were invariably postponed until the second week, a fact which I tended to realise after turning up at an empty room, as it took me a while to realise that I had a uni e-mail account informing me of this. Consequently, it was not until Thursday that my first class properly took place. However, not even this was to run smoothly. It transpired that Pippa had also registered for this class. Another Erasmus student, she assured me she knew where it was. Naturally we ended up in entirely the wrong room, and had to (in an increds cringe way) sneak out. As we were sat in the front row, this didn’t go terribly well, with the lecturer stopping mid flow and just looking at us, until I told him “wrong room”. He took this to mean that he’d got it wrong (which was apparently a constant concern for him) and I was required to reassure him as I backed slowly out of the door with Pippa in tow.

We went for a coffee to recover and decided to go to the later class that day instead. It was a translation seminar, and the teacher was initially thrilled to have a couple of Brits in the class, being a yank, but soon lost this enthusiasm, sitting as we did in the corner on the front row correcting her awful American English. She was particularly crestfallen as she tried to teach the Germans never to use “one” and asked us for confirmation, only for us to inform her that we use it rather frequently in casual conversation #LeadBalloon. I am looking forward to this class. Although, possibly the funniest part of the lesson was Pippa’s complete failure during a collocations exercise. We were asked to fill in the blanks with the appropriate prepositions for the verbs, resulting in Pippa deciding that one is “good with English” (*at) and that he “took far too much work” (*on). This will be a giggle. I’m actually really enjoying my lectures and seminars now they’re properly underway and am really looking forward to the rest of the semester.

Another benefit to term starting properly is that the Germans have descended and I’ve been able to make friends with some of the natives (all of whom tell me frequently how good my German is, which naturally endears them to me). I’ve even managed to pull a German dish who, in addition to hosting me for the most enjoyable booty-calls, is also great for a mid-day nap and cuddle. On top of this, he has a most agreeably hefty Teutonic name; the surname alone boasts an impressive four syllables.