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Location: Cincinnati, Ohio

Thursday, September 07, 2006

Key problems.

One of the responsibilities that professors have here at Luneburg is to lock the classroom doors in the evening if you are the last class. That was my job last night after I finished the first meeting of my WWII course. I locked the door, walked out of the building, and crossed the street to the bus stop.

However, when I walked up to my apartment building door, I discovered I did not have my keys any more. The only place I could have left them was in the door. So back I went. Took me about 20 minutes by bus to get back. When I did, the door to the building was locked. Security officers do not have any obvious security presence here. I walked around and tried to doors on some of the other buildings thinking that there must be someone who would let me use their phone to call security.

No luck. All the buildings were locked. Finally, I saw a couple of students, and asked them for help - in English, of course. We talked a bit but they didn't know how to contact security either. They did suggest that there was usually a security guy in a building on the edge of campus. So I walked over there and sure enough the door was open.

The security officer was a thin old gentleman with a beard. He knew a bit of English. I was able to explain to him my problem and he was very helpful. He got his bike (everyone bikes here) and pedalled along beside me back to the building. Sure enough, the keys were still in the door. The security guy enjoyed my stuttering German: "Zooper (super). Danke, danke." And then when I was leaving, "Guten Abend (good evening)."

No buses run after 8 pm so I had about a half hour walk back to my apartment. Since I had started with my grueling German course at 9 a.m., it was a pleasure relax and watch CSI dubbed in German. I did not finish watching it before heading off to bed but I was sort of able to figure out what was going on.

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