A List

12:06 AM | Posted by Kyrie

Two days after I arrived in Garmisch, I made a list of things that I had learned about the town and work so far. Here is that list, with updates as well:

What I Learned Today
14 September 2010

1. Garmisch has an H&M!!! (Update: I bought two pairs of jeans there a few weeks ago, upping my jean count to 3 pairs and bringing my checking account down 80 euros.)

2. There is a natural food store with better vegetarian selections than in the states. (Update: I wouldn't necessarily say its a better selection, but there is a lot of different flavors of tofu. I bought "elfen tofu", which ended up having the same taste and texture as paté. Blech.)

3. When someone in Europe says they will be there by 5pm, that means they'll be there by 8pm. Unless its Sunday. Then don't even bother waiting. (Update: This had to do with my bag being lost in transit for a few days. When it was finally found, someone at the airport was supposed to drop it in Garmisch at 3pm. Then 3pm became 5pm, and 5pm became 8pm. I think I finally got my bag that night around 10:30pm. At least I got it, right?)

4. There is another Kyrie working at Edelweiss. I shall find her. (Update: I found her! She spells her name 'Kiri', is a snowboard instructor and is really nice. She gives Kyrie's (or Kiri's) a good name.)

5. We get to use Rosetta Stone for free - any language we want! I must learn German. (Update: Rosetta Stone is nearly impossible to download on our computers due to crappy internet, so we have to go to the library on base to use it. I have yet to.)

6. In town there is a cake shop. Will work for free. (Update: NOT making cakes for the last two months has been very relaxing. Will continue to NOT make cakes as often as possible.)

7. A dirndl costs about 100 euro. I will be going to two Oktoberfests. Is it worth it? (Update: Yes, it is worth it. Have I bought a dirndl yet? No. I would rather travel.)

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"UGHHHHHHH, LEAVE US ALONE!!!"

5:22 AM | Posted by Kyrie

This story shouldn't precede my Oktoberfest entry, but due to the popularity of it I feel it must. Let me provide a little background first:

The Abrams (where I live) and Edelweiss Lodge and Resort (where I work) is about a 1.5 mile walk each way. If you work at 6am you have to leave at 5am to get to work on time. The walk is dark and a little scary. Until you reach Zugsptizestrasse you're walking past houses in almost complete darkness, and you must cross an unlit path that wraps around St. Maarten's Kindergarten called the "kinder path". This path is probably the scariest part of the walk, only because you can't see anything unless it is a clear night and there is a full moon. If I wasn't concentrating so hard on not getting raped and killed and actually looked up, I would see the moon casting a soft light on the surrounding mountains. It really is beautiful here. But at 5am, you can't concentrate on that - you must survive the walk to work. Every other trek had been fine, except for one morning...

It was the morning after Oktoberfest, and although my friend Claire and I had gotten home at a decent hour from Munich we still woke up drunk from the previous days shenanigans. Luckily, we both had to work at 6am so we had one another to count on to get up on time. As we began our walk to work, I noticed I felt funny. Every little sound made me jump, and I was extra paranoid...then I realized that I was still drunk from the day before. Oh jeez, today should be interesting, I thought. I looked over at Claire and noticed that she was just as jumpy as I was. We walked the kinder path with no problems, and began to relax a little. At the next corner we saw a dark-colored van with its headlights on, but remembered that it was just the mailman. The drivers side door opened, and the mailman stepped out with a stack of letters in his hand and began to walk towards us. No problem right? Just the mailman delivering mail. Except instead of heading towards the mailbox, he was heading right towards us. Mind you we are walking in the middle of the street, so there is no reason for him to be walking straight at us when his van is parked on the side of the road and the mailboxes are on the side of the road. Claire and I both got scared and my heart started racing. I grabbed her arm and held on as tight as I could. At the last second he veered to the right, giving us a smirk (or maybe he didn't, I was drunk).

We passed him and continued walking. Claire looked at me with terror in her eyes, and I returned the same glance. We started laughing at how scared we got of the mailman, and let ourselves relax again. Claire laughed and said, "what would you do if he started running at us and grabbed us?" Except she didn't get to finish her sentence. She got about halfway through it when we heard footsteps behind us...running footsteps. We both turned around and saw a man running right at us!

Now let's stop right here and take a moment to assess the situation. If you were walking to work in the dark early in the morning, what would you do? Most people would do one of two things: 1. Run away as fast as you can, screaming and calling for help. 2. Take the man down by kicking him in the groin while screaming and calling for help. Surely no matter how scared you were, you would do something to protect yourself from harm. Right? Right?

Claire and I did neither of those things. We were still drunk, so our reasoning was a little off.

Kyrie's reaction to a strange man running at her:
Right when Claire was saying how scary it would be for the mailman to run at them and snatch them up, Kyrie turned around and saw a man doing that exact thing. She tried to run, but her legs seemed to get caught up in themselves and she was essentially running in place. The fact that Claire had latched onto her didn't help her plan of escape. Instead of releasing a high-pitched scream to scare off the attacker, her voice changed dramatically. She yelled, "UGHHHHHHH, LEAVE US ALONE!!!" in a cry that was three octaves below normal and in an Arnold Schwarzenegger accent. Even Kyrie was surprised at the sound of her own voice. She continued to run in place, knowing that she would soon suffer a violent demise.

Claire's reaction to a strange man running at her:
Peeing her pants.

Please tell me that is not the most ridiculous thing you've ever heard? The man continued to run at us as I yelled in my Arnold voice and Claire was scream-crying. Then he did the strangest thing - he ran past us. We noticed that this man was not the mailman. This man was wearing a beanie, red windbreaker, spandex pants and running shoes. Why, if I didn't know any better I would say he was...on a morning run? No way. Why would this man run so close to us? Like the mailman, he waited until the last possible second before running around us. Since we were staggering in place and peeing our pants, he ran by quickly and I heard a laugh trailing behind him as he passed.

Claire and I finally realized what had happened, and we started cracking up. If my screaming didn't wake up the neighborhood, our laughing probably did. We laughed so hard we cried. And we kept laughing. And laughing. Claire informed me that she had "peed her pants a little" and "not to tell anyone" (that cat was let out of the bag long ago). My body shook violently from all the adrenaline running through my body, and I spoke with a hoarse voice for the rest of walk due to the stress I put on my vocal cords from yelling. By the time we got to work, things were better: Claire's undies had mostly dried, and I was sobering up.

This isn't even the end of the story...because what happens after you sober up? Hangover ensues. Claire and I sat at the breakfast table with our co-workers and regailed them with the story of our walk to work. I began to feel sick. I could tell Claire felt the same by the way she poked at her cereal. We weren't doing too well. AND I was on scraping duty. This involves scraping leftover food from peoples plates into a large trash can filled with food scraps. The bin that morning had sat in the kitchen from the previous nights dinner, and when you opened the lid it released a smell that no one should have to endure, especially when you're hungover. After about an hour of scraping and trying not to vomit, I ran to the bathroom to get away from all the bad odors.

I went into one of the stalls and just sat, waiting for my nausea to pass. In the stall next to me I heard someone puking. "Claire?" I recognized the grunts between barfing. "I feel so sick," she responded, sounding like death. I was jealous - I wish I could just barf and get it over with. For some reason my body likes to torture me when I have a hangover and make me nauseated for eight hours instead of allowing me to vomit.

She cleaned up and left the bathroom, and after 5 more minutes of trying to convince myself "mind over matter" I went back to the front. I continued to feel terrible, while Claire's bathroom session had given her a second wind; she was bouncing around with a spring in her step and a smile on her face. "I feel great after barfing!" she said in a sing-song voice as I was dry heaving into the food scrap bucket. I couldn't do it any longer - I had to go home. I told my boss that I had eaten some bad thai food last night and said that if I don't go home I'll be on the toilet all day. If there was any language barrier at all, she understood when I clutched my stomach while wincing and said 'toilet' at least seven times. It was 7:22am when I went home - I had lasted 1 hour and 22 minutes. After walking home (in the daylight), I spent the rest of the day in bed sleeping. Claire championed through and stayed for the rest of her shift.

Since that day, I have not gone out the night before a morning shift and I have not gone to work drunk or hungover. I learned my lesson. And at least once a day, someone mentions to Claire and I how funny our story was about walking to work. Good story at our expense, right? I'll have to save this post and read it to myself before next years Oktoberfest, just to make sure it doesn't happen again.

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