German rantings
First of all, Bank of America can eat my ass. Immediately if possible.
Even though I wrote them and told them I would be traveling, the motherfuckers STILL suspended my card for "suspicious activity" yesterday because I used the ATM in Denmark and in Sweden. Well wake up and smell the coffee, when you go to a new country you have to get their money or you can't buy stuff, and if you don't buy stuff they won't like you as much. So after 5 phone calls, 7 security questions, and at least 25 minutes at international long distance rates, I managed to get it restored. I pray to the Cingular god to be merciful, dumbass that I am I didn't check the roaming rates, not that I very well could have done that on a pay phone.
I am so switching banks when I get home.
OK, new rant, German keyboards are even worse than their Danish cousins. My international "Where's Waldo?" game of keyboard punctuation takes a new and interesting turn as the "@" has taken a new hiding place on the "Q" key, which requires usage of that secret extra control key I discovered in Denmark. What's worse, they have compressed the keys to make room for meaningless (to me) extras such as ö, ä, ü and ß (ah, the fabled ess-tsett). As if that were the end of it. No, my friends, they have actually switched the Y and Z keys which has resulted in at least one retyping of every word containing a Y or a Z. (Actually, I think that one's just a ploy by easyinternetcafe.com to make me type slower - thus they get more €€€.)
Needless to say, I've had a bit of a frustrating day. Ein großes Bier, bitte!
I'm quite lucky the German Historical Museum accepts credit cards, since I was near there, and since the U-Bahn does not (well, they do, but only those elusive credit cards requiring PINs, which must exist only in Euroland), so I was pretty much stuck walking everywhere. I'm even luckier it was worth the 4 hours I spent in there...it was a literal walk through time from Roman/Celtic ages to the present; by the time I got to World War I (which in this version, the Germans are mostly blameless for...oddly enough they put most of the blame on Austria-Hungary's disintegration, which conveniently leaves them off the hook) I had forgotten that other stuff was in the same day, let alone the same museum. They did a very long, analytical (god damn that misplaced "y") piece on Hitler and WWII, which had a lot of good artifacts/visuals - no surprise - and this time did not render them blameless. Actually it was kind of like reading a very long, visual apology. The one piece missing, which I was really sorry to not have, was a bit on the Nürnberg Trials since my grandfather was one of the key prosecutors and I was hoping for a surprise picture! Oh well, no such luck. Actually, unless I missed it somehow, nothing at all on what happened to all the top Nazis save Hitler.
I can now say I have tried currywurst, which is delicious, and since I have not been on my feet for the first time in about 7 hours, I'm in a bit of a better mood as well. On to that Bier I think...
Also, I must pee, as I have not done so (for dual lack of water to drink and opportunity to go) since I left the hotel room this morning. Whoa, thinking about it is making it much worse...
Tschüß, peanuts!
Even though I wrote them and told them I would be traveling, the motherfuckers STILL suspended my card for "suspicious activity" yesterday because I used the ATM in Denmark and in Sweden. Well wake up and smell the coffee, when you go to a new country you have to get their money or you can't buy stuff, and if you don't buy stuff they won't like you as much. So after 5 phone calls, 7 security questions, and at least 25 minutes at international long distance rates, I managed to get it restored. I pray to the Cingular god to be merciful, dumbass that I am I didn't check the roaming rates, not that I very well could have done that on a pay phone.
I am so switching banks when I get home.
OK, new rant, German keyboards are even worse than their Danish cousins. My international "Where's Waldo?" game of keyboard punctuation takes a new and interesting turn as the "@" has taken a new hiding place on the "Q" key, which requires usage of that secret extra control key I discovered in Denmark. What's worse, they have compressed the keys to make room for meaningless (to me) extras such as ö, ä, ü and ß (ah, the fabled ess-tsett). As if that were the end of it. No, my friends, they have actually switched the Y and Z keys which has resulted in at least one retyping of every word containing a Y or a Z. (Actually, I think that one's just a ploy by easyinternetcafe.com to make me type slower - thus they get more €€€.)
Needless to say, I've had a bit of a frustrating day. Ein großes Bier, bitte!
I'm quite lucky the German Historical Museum accepts credit cards, since I was near there, and since the U-Bahn does not (well, they do, but only those elusive credit cards requiring PINs, which must exist only in Euroland), so I was pretty much stuck walking everywhere. I'm even luckier it was worth the 4 hours I spent in there...it was a literal walk through time from Roman/Celtic ages to the present; by the time I got to World War I (which in this version, the Germans are mostly blameless for...oddly enough they put most of the blame on Austria-Hungary's disintegration, which conveniently leaves them off the hook) I had forgotten that other stuff was in the same day, let alone the same museum. They did a very long, analytical (god damn that misplaced "y") piece on Hitler and WWII, which had a lot of good artifacts/visuals - no surprise - and this time did not render them blameless. Actually it was kind of like reading a very long, visual apology. The one piece missing, which I was really sorry to not have, was a bit on the Nürnberg Trials since my grandfather was one of the key prosecutors and I was hoping for a surprise picture! Oh well, no such luck. Actually, unless I missed it somehow, nothing at all on what happened to all the top Nazis save Hitler.
I can now say I have tried currywurst, which is delicious, and since I have not been on my feet for the first time in about 7 hours, I'm in a bit of a better mood as well. On to that Bier I think...
Also, I must pee, as I have not done so (for dual lack of water to drink and opportunity to go) since I left the hotel room this morning. Whoa, thinking about it is making it much worse...
Tschüß, peanuts!
posted by Raawwwb! at 12:33 PM
3 Comments:
I STILL cannot figure out how to get the goddamn @ on international keyboards. I usually end up copying and pasting it from somewhere else. (Signing into websites that require the use of the full email address as a login are extraordinarily annoying!)
There is a way, I believe, to switch the language of the keyboards on computers. When I stayed in France, I could type as I normally would on my English QWERTY keyboard by doing some sort of control+shift or something like that on the keyboard. Then again, changing the keyboard language may require being able to speak the computer operating system's language (i.e., german computer has control panel and such things in german)
Anyway...I'm sitting on the floor of my hostel lobby right now, waiting for a bit of time to pass before I make my way to the train station to catch an overnight train to Krakow.
p.s. I am jealous of all Europeans who have magical chip n' pin cards. And I also wish I were watching the Hearts of Midlothian v. Praha Spartans game right now.
It's not just BofA ... I called SunTrust before I left to tell them the same thing. I had a hard time with a few ATMs on one particular day in Madrid. I had to go to five, then I called SunTrust, they said nothing was amiss, then the next ATM worked. Go figure.
And my USAirways MasterCard will sometimes come up "declined" here in the States for no apparant reason, so it didn't phase me when I got the occasional decline in Spain. Yes, they knew I was traveling, too.
In Spain and Argentina the @ symbol is also hidden on the "2", and you have to use the special ALT/Shift key to get to it. Plus the parentheses are moved one key to the left each. Plus the colon and semicolon are with the comma and period, respectively ... in their place is the "n" with the tilde over it.
Anyway, enjoy the final days!
P.S. I don't think Bank of America can understand just how small and close European countries actually are. You can ride a bicycle from one end of Belgium to the other in less than a day, so it's not that bizarre to use an ATM in two countries on the same day. It'd be like using an ATM in Chicago and then using another in Milwaukee. I doubt that would raise the "suspicious activity" flag on your account.
P.P.S. I had a brief moment of panic when I thought the warsaw bankomat ate my card. And then I realized I'd already taken my card and replaced it in my wallet. Everything was hunky-dory.
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