An Adventure at the Job Agency and Further Afield

This morning I had an appointment at the job agency, and had become very anxious about it. In the end, everything was 'alles halb so wild.'

My supervisor at the agency actually began by apologizing: I'd already had an immediate appointment when I'd submitted my unemployment status applications and this actually covered much of what we'd talk about today.

It also turns out that it hopefully wasn't bad that I hadn't cancelled the appointment from my side. — Last Thursday people who interviewed me months ago called me back and asked if I'd still be interested in working for them in autumn. So if they manage to sort out the higher-level permissions on their side, it looks like I have a genuine job waiting for me. — But my supervisor seemed not to think I'd been wasting his time if I already had a job; he noted that opportunity down, also that I'm planning to study.

(I'm still nervous about my university application. The Freie Uni has outsourced their processing of foreign students' applications to a third party provider whose service is absolutely driving me up the wall, e.g.if you click on the 'help' button, nothing happens 😡. And I think I will need to apply for a different combination of courses from the one I'd actually wanted. The smooth process I'd experienced in 2011 has led me to totally miscalculate how much effort and time needs to be invested this time, and I'm about ready to seize a pitchfork.

And I believe that the student counseling centre on the Freie Uni campus is now on a summer break until August... a few other deadlines and circumstances have also contributed to my anxiety lately. That said, my instinct is that my situation is still comparatively fortunate and I shouldn't ignore the high level of privilege I have, financially and socially.)

I'd also mentioned my ethical concerns about keeping an unemployed status and receiving unemployment money (once I finish the paperwork) considering the prospect of my autumn job. The supervisor said that this unemployment money was insurance that I'd painstakingly paid into for the past 7 years, not welfare money, and that I need have absolutely no qualms about taking it. Which comforted me a lot.

***

On the way home, I stopped by the side of the road to look at a yellow painted one-family home that had likely been built in the inter-war period.

It was being renovated thoroughly: The ground was scooped out all the way to the foundations and the trench shored up with dusty wooden beams. A little blue bulldozer was parked to one side. The new windows had branded stickers on their inner frames as they sat awkwardly within the exposed original, wooden outer frames, hewn into the white plaster underneath the paint. Reddish, dried-out ivy clung like dead spiders' legs to the wall as the stems had been killed off. Black plastic sheeting covered part of the roof. The lamp at a side entrance looked like a traditional gas lamp; the door had been framed in brown tiling. The square, featureless, dark, windows looked 'dead,' like the ivy, however, and I found it quite ghostly even after I spotted a small reassuring sign on the fence that suggested that the building was last in use — and may be in use again — as a kindergarten.

Altogether I found that area intensely creepy. It seemed like a 'wonderland' of proto-Nazi architecture and ideology, especially with streets bearing the names of Hun generals etc., and all the earth tones of tan and brown. And it seemed to cater to the working class without the clarity or generosity or idealism of the Bauhaus school. But I couldn't deny the appeal of the gardens, the old trees, dusky Oregon grapes, Italianate cypresses, and a shaded cobbled path with stairs that ran up a hill into a park I'd never been to before.

I became lost after a while and kept looking at maps in bus stations to reorientate myself.

Then I dove into a huge terrain of allotment gardens, colourful in the purples and yellows and all the other colours of late summer, a Swedish and an American and a German flag, etc. The further into the gardens I roamed, the street noises were increasingly muffled as if under a pillow. I heard the distant sound of an airplane, perhaps the ruffling of the wind, the twittering of birds, one or two insects, and aside from that — a soft silence. Above, a striking blue sky with big, white, fluffy clouds, and strong sunlight.

Then, at last, I was on my home turf. I stopped by a French brasserie, bought a fizzy lemon drink, green tomato jam that I spotted on the shelf (ever since I read about green tomato preserves in Laura Ingalls Wilder's books, I've wanted to try them), and a pain au chocolat.

And then I was home again — tired and (as it turns out) a little dehydrated from cycling around so long in the sun and from speeding on the way to the appointment (I got lost at the job agency building, but after asking 3 or 4 people managed to end up in the right waiting room at exactly the minute of my appointment) ... but happy.