“Hallo Bettina”
That’s the first German phrase Tim and I learned, if you don’t count the German lessons Tim had in high school and promptly forgot (call it post-traumatic stress, he hated his German class). Other favorite phrases of ours are “Wie gehts?”, “oder das” (Tim’s favorite), “Ich bin fertig!”, “Du bist krank!” and “Darf ich reinkommen?” Now, we’re actually not as bad as all that would imply, but we aren’t exactly integrated. We have good days and bad days.
Today was a good day.
I called the cable company today because we had not yet heard anything on the order we placed 2 weeks ago for English cable channels (like I said, not integrated). It turns out the order isn’t in their system and I managed to place the order over the phone … all in German :D The woman on the line was very patient, how comforting.
Tim called today to the little dealer where we bought our car to find out when we have to have it serviced (I was afraid we’d soon invalidate our warranty if we didn’t take it in) and he learned that we simply wait for the service light to go on in the car and then we bring it in, at which point they change the oil and do the service tune-up. And that all in German.
Then I went to the mall tonight to pre-order a Nintendo Wii for Tim (see Hot Topics links!) and had a whole discussion with the store clerk about which games would be available on launch date and how much money we could get for trading in an old game and when the Wii Play game would be available (not sure). All in German!
So, we have good days and bad days but after days like today I’m less afraid to pick up the phone tomorrow and give a call to Microsoft Support… which is only in German from Germany! Of course, days like today are once a month.. hence, we are not integrated. (Yes, Tim, I said “hence”).