THE FIRST WEEK --- 1-5 August
Well, dear readers, as you can see, I'm a little behind here, so I will try to catch up over the next week or so with just some highlights.

Tuesday August 1st --- "Arrival Day" at the University. It was then that I was plunged into the world of German red tape. I don't suppose it was any worse than what a foreign student coming to America would encounter, but there was a lot of running back and forth between different locations. If they had had everything in one place everything would have gone much more smoothly. For instance, if they had set up everything, including computer hook-ups, in a basketball arena or some place like that. But there may not be a location large enough around here.
One necessity of the first day was opening a bank account, because the university would not accept cash (for the housing rent), and apparently no one in Germany still uses checks. The people you have to pay (rent, telephone, internet, etc.) expect to take their money directly from your bank account, so you have to have one, and then give everyone your account number. A little scary, from an American point of view, but everyone here is trustworthy and mindful of security, if not privacy. Word of advice: don't try to have money sent over to your German bank account immediately. It can take several days to a week before the account is officially opened.
But I finally got the keys to my apartment and at the end of a long day found myself at what will be home for the next year. I was lucky enough to get what is called a private "apartment" (which is at the high end of the rent scale for student housing), and private it is, with my own bathroom and "kitchen". But it is hardly what we Americans would think of as an apartment. The kitchen consits of a sink, two burners --- no oven, and certainly no microwave --- a small refrigerator, and a small cabinet. This is contained within a closet-sized room, beyond which is the main room, which is about the size of a typical American dormitory room. The operative word in all this is "small". Everything here seems to be on a smaller scale, and more compact, than in America. Quite an adjustment for those of us accustomed to wide open spaces.
But I am on the fourth floor, and the view out the window --- once I figured out thow to open it all the way --- is expansive and quite nice. If I stick my head out I can see two factories with smokestacks belching smoke to the right, and to the left the main street back into downtown Mannheim. But straight ahead (which by the way is due east) there are the rooftops of the Mannheim suburbs (Neckarau in this case) and in the distance a range of small mountains rolling gently and blue against the far horizon. Off to the right I think I can see the cleft where the Neckar comes out of the mountains, where Heidelberg lies.
And directly across the street is a brightly lit Esso gas station, complete with convenience store. I lose track of time while settling in, and before I know it is nearly 9:00, and all the grocery stores are closed. But the gas station convenience store across the street seems to be open all night. I make my dinner with beer and a sandwich of convenience store cold-cuts.

Wednesday & Thursday --- I have come to Mannheim at the beginning of August to attend something called the International Summer Academy, a one-month language training program for foreign students. The actual Fall Semester does not start until September. But I seem to need all the language training I can get. The Summer Academy is self-contained; it has nothing to do with the actual studies here at the University. Some students come just for this month and then go home. I of course am here for a year, but I'm really glad I came early to do this. It has given me chance to get settled in --- which is taking longer than I thought it would --- before the real classes start in September.
There was a placement test to determine what level of classes each student should be assigned to. It was a written test, and I took the hard version (there is an easier option), and hard it was, but I must have done well, because I placed into the highest level. I must have barely made the cut, because everyone in the class speaks better German than I do. Only one of them is another American. The others are from Canada, Scotland, Norway, France, Spain, Slovenia, Tunisia, China, Taiwan, and Korea. They all speak pretty good English, too.
Of course, we speak nothing but German in class, and the first of the two teachers talks really fast. He is really hard to understand. But he is lively and fun. He is an amateur actor, like me --- more of that later.
Speaking of fun, there is a student organization here called VISUM which exists for the sake of promoting relations with the international students here. Their main function seems to be scheduling interesting cultural activities, such as pub crawls. The first pub crawl was Thursday night, and after the first day of class, I needed it. This was my first chance to really get to know some of the other students in the summer program, including several Americans, two from North Carolina. None of us have started speaking German yet.

Friday --- Culture Shock Sets In. Another day of class and not understanding a lot. I talk to the teacher, Tom, about the possibility of dropping back a level. He talks me out of it. Still, there is the feeling of being in over my head... I am a stranger in a strange land ... what have I done? What am I doing here? This is the most extreme, most challenging, thing I have ever done in my life --- and for me that's a long time --- but, I remind myself, also the bravest. It is a huge accomplishment just being here, having made the changes in my life I've made over the past year.
(It occurs to me I have not explained about my age. I am a "non-traditional" student --- i.e., having earned a degree in theater many years ago, I have returned to school to seek another degree in German. With the intention of becoming a translator. I made this decision after many years of frustration in a profession in which I did not belong --- not theater; that didn't work out. I am actually starting my life all over again. So I'm twice the age of the typical college student, but all this change has given me renewed energy, a renewal of mind and heart. I just hope the body can keep up.)
Speaking of theater, Tom tells me about a local amateur (I think) theater group that's doing a show. Not having anything better to do on Friday night (VISUM is going clubbing, but that's not my scene), I go.
It was called "The Baroness and the Pig". It's about a wealthy matron who's had so much trouble finding good help that she takes a young girl from a farm in the country --- who has apparently been raised by pigs --- to raise her and train her herself to be just the way she wants her to be. Things do not go as planned, however. Though the play was in German, much of the action was highly physical (especially on the part of the pig-girl, who barely said anything), so it was not hard at all to understand what was going on. And the acting was absolutely first-rate. Better than Theatre Charlotte, on average, from what I've seen. Of course , it was only two people.
I am feeling a bit under the weather today, for some reason (the pub crawl, maybe, or maybe there's something in the air...) (more likely the stress of the adjustment), so I have a bite to eat at a bistro near the theater, then go straight home to bed.

ABOUT MANNHEIM
Mannheim, I believe, is somewhat smaller than Charlotte in terms of population, and much smaller in area. As I said, things are more compact here. The layout is unusual. The main part of the city, the downtown area, is enclosed within a circle, a more or less continuous street in a ring around the city. (The encircling ring has different names at different points; as in Charlotte, the Mannheimers like to give the same street different names along its path.)
The city circle is bisected on a roughly north-south axis by a wide street called "Breitestrasse" (literally, "Wide Street"), and is bisected again by another wide street, called "Planken", perpendicular to the Breitestrasse, so that the main part of the city has the form of a quartered circle. The area inside the circle, however, is divided into grids, with all the streets at right-angles. The really odd thing is that none of the streets, except the two streets forming the central cross, have names. Addresses are designated with letters and numbers. At first I thought it was the streets that had letters, but it isn't: the streets have no designation at all. It is the blocks that are designated with letters and numbers. The blocks in the more-or-less western half of the circle are designated A through K, running south to north, the blocks in the eastern half are L on, again from south to north. On each block, from west to east, there are numbers. So that you cannot tell from the address what street a place is on: all you know is the block, and the place could face any of the streets that border that block. But once you understand the system, you always know where the blocks are. For instance, N7 is in the eastern half, 3 blocks up from the southern boundary (which block row L) and 7 blocks out from the central axis. Simple.
The area of the city outside the central ring has a more conventional layout, with names on the streets.