safe, sound, and decently sleep deprived

HEY everybody!
So, here is my first blog post in Germany. My plane to chicago was about an hour and a half late taking off, and my plane to Frankfurt was just as late, which allowed me to acctually make it on time to the plane without missing my flight. both trips were decently unnoteworthy. I did actually some sleep on the trip to Frankfurt. On the plane to chicago i got to sit next to some random girl, who, after talking to her a bit, tells me that she attends college at Harvard. i was pretty impressed, and it was fun talking to her, though i felt kinda stupid next to her. plus she told me that she best friend goes to university of chicago. anyways, I got to frankfurt without much fuss, got off the plane and went to the train station that is connected to the air port. I then bought a ticket to stuttgart and got to take a really sweet 2 hour train ride to stuttgart. Once in the stuttgart hauptbahnhof (train station), i then got a leberkäse sandwhich and bought a ticket for a train ride to Tübingen. I got to Tübingen about 4:30 my time, so i knew i wasn´t going to be able to get my actual room that day, so i went to the youth hostel in town and spent the night there. that was fairly uneventful as well, but by 8:30 i was pretty freakin tired. I grabbed some dinner at a nearby turkish restaraunt. I woke up at about 8, tried to go to the internet cafe´that i had visited the evening before, but it was closed. I checked out of the youth hostel and schlepped all of my luggage to the bus station (same place as the train station) and took a train to the studentenwerk (place where i get my room info). after getting a bit lost, but successfully finding the right way after a bit of searching, i found the studentenwerk. I talked to frau hartman, who was in charge of my area, and i got my room contract and a note to take to my hausmeister. I then took a ridiculious amount of bus rides, but wound up in the "french quarter," which is where i live. I found my hausmeister´s office, which apparently has ridiculiously awful hours. he is there from 9 until 9:30 and 3:30 until 4. that´s it. and i don´t believe he is in at all on fridays. long story short, i chilled out on the front steps for an hour waiting for him, and miraculiously, he showed up at around 2 oclock. i gave him the not from frau hartmann, and then he went and showed me my room. I live in an appartment thing on the first floor in the far southeast corner of town. when you first walk in, there is a common room kind of area. to your left are two bedrooms, to your right is a kitchen area, which is pretty big. further down on the right is the bathroom area. there are two toilets, two showers and 4 sinks. I believe these are divided for men and women. further at the end of the common room on the left are two more bedrooms, and on the right are the last of the bedrooms. My room is in the back right. it is perhaps a little bigger than my room at home, so not too big, but since there is only a twin bed, which reallz isn´t too bad, there is a decent amount of room. I have a wardrobe for clothes and stuff and a really big empty shelf. At the end of my bed is a desk and a fat window, which, to my knowledge, doesn´t currently close at the top. Once i got my room settled in I went to Kaufland, which is a grocery with a little bit of department store stuff too. I spent a while there and got some food and sheets and necessities of that sort. I then took a bus back to room, fell asleep for about half an hour, then came back to this internet cafe´in downtown. when i first got here i was feeling really depressed and alone. even though i had fairly adequetly communicated with everyone i had needed to, i still felt like my geman sucks and I had no idea what the hell i was doing here, plus it is kinda cold, i forgot some paperwork at home, and i didn´t really have anyway of communicating with anybody either. getting settled into my room really helped alleviate a lot of that. I now feel like things are more stable and it seems cool to say that i now LIVE in germany.
The town intself is pretty cool. it is fairly densely populated, and my building is actually pretty isolated. I am in a massive residential district and i have to take a bus to get anywhere. This isn´t so bad since the bus system is pretty easy once you get used to it. they have pretty much everything you need. right as you leave the train station there is a video game store. so fear not bryan, you too could survive here. OH YEAh, they also had peanut M&M´s at kaufland, so i had to get some, if only because i wanted something familiar. Germany really seems nothing like the US, unless you are in the heart of downtown of some place. even in this "town" which really just seems more like a small city to me, everything is pretty dense and compact. Germany has very little grass, but tons of greenery. One of the more interesting things i have noticed is that freakin everybody here drives a hatchback car. wheter it is a car, van, SUVish thing, or what, at least 4 out of every 5 cars are hatchbacks, and of those 5, probably all of them are stick shifts. Germany also has tons of parmacies. mass transit is amaying here. the bus system is pretty good, and once you get used to how it works, you can pretty much go anywhere.
well, that is all for now i guess. I don´t yet have my exact address but i will get it from my hausmeister tomorrow when i tell him about my window problem. I should get internet in my room within the next week, and then i won´t have to trek down here to this internet cafe´every time i want to email people. until next time Gadget!

much love,
Jonathan