Volume 2, Day 19
I don’t expect this name to mean anything to anyone. I think most Germans haven’t even heard of the city. It lies to the west of Berlin (though firmly ensconced in former East Germany) and is the capital of Saxony-Anhalt. Stradling the Elbe River, Magdeburg has an impressive cathedral and is probably most famous for a canal bridge. (Spoiler alert: I didn’t travel the 13 km out of town to see said engineering wonder.) Most importantly for me, it was on the way from Leipzig to Hamburg and had a hostel.
Contrary to my typical modus operandi, when I checked out of the Sleepy Lion at 9:55, I didn’t hang around killing time, instead taking the long walk over to the ZOB (Zentral Omnibus Bahnhof, i.e. bus station). I wanted to get there well in advance of the scheduled 10:50 departure to Magdeburg to see how feasible it would be to pay cash. Though there was a Flixbus office right there, the company charges a 3 euro “service fee” for even talking to the employees. Considering that the bus fare listed in the app was 5.99, I wasn’t exactly going to pay 50% more to save the company those insane credit card fees. It’s not quite the same as buying a stick of gum with a credit card, but how can they break even. So, having successfully ruled out using any of the official ticket counters, there was still the option of paying the driver cash per their FAQ. I was bored while I waited for the bus to come, and shocked when I refreshed the route in the app (just to make it didn’t sell out) and found that the price jumped up to 19.99 euros within 15 minutes of departure. Ah, so that is the “true” price of the journey and the 5.99 cited in the app was the discounted price. Again I am confused by the business operations. Why not mention the higher price at the point of sale to encourage the user to place the order immediately?
I might have really screwed myself over but figuring out the edge cases of this tech-centric budget transportation company, but luckily there was another bus at 11:50. In fact, it even had a shorter travel time than the one I was certainly not going to pay 20 euros for. I booked it through my phone and settled down for a long, boring wait.
Pricing in Europe is so weird. Some things are so cheap while some things are so expensive. The weirdest bit is that sometimes it is the same thing with such wildly varying prices. I don’t ever want to drink a beer in a restaurant and pay 4 euros when I know the same beer costs under a euro. Okay, maybe there is a strong precedent for high markups on alcohol. But 2-3 euros for a small bottle of water in a kiosk when I pay 19 cents in a supermarket for 1.5 L? There was a little convenience store in the bus depot and the prices of the things there blew my mind. Especially because one could walk 3 minutes to a discount supermarket. If I have mind left to be blown, its amazing how happy people are to spend money in these situations. I would rather go hungry for a bit.
I napped a bit on the bus and studied some German. We reached Magdeburg’s ZOB fairly promptly at 1:40. While I was on the bus, I received a text message from the hostel with a key code and some directions. I thought that was odd, but I had been communicating with them via email in German for the booking. I had to cut through Magdeburg’s train station to reach the main street and walk the couple blocks down to find this centrally located hostel. The walk was pretty exhausting and I realized that another suitcase wheel was in the process of falling apart.were disintegrating
The “Ringel Hostel” was actually more like an Airbnb. I grabbed a key from the streetside lock box and let myself in to the apartment. It was a hallway with four bedrooms, a bath, and a kitchen. My “dorm room” was a large bedroom with three beds (one of which a double), table, a full bookcase, and window seats. It was pretty amazing, though, to be fair, at least half of my joy in the accommodations stemmed from the fact that I had not only the room, but the whole apartment to myself. The kitchen was fully stocked, so I made a note to take advantage of the self-catering.
I set out to explore a bit and discovered just how small a town Magdeburg really was. The cathedral was nice, massive really, and I spent a bit of time wandering inside its grounds. I passed the “Green Citadel”, which is some building designed by some famous architect. It had a sort of Moorish, Gaudi-vibe to it (but not as colorful). I considered spending some time in a cafe in the courtyard, but
Not a block away, I decided to stop at an Eiscafe. I ordered a spaghetti eis and an espresso and spent a leisurely two hours in the shade outside. I was reading through a German textbook when I overheard two Americans who sat down at the table next to mine. I readily spotted a missionary nametag, though they weren’t dressed in their typical uniform. It wasn’t too hard to ignore them (I usually find it hard to block out Americans when they talk), but I couldn’t help chuckling when I realized that one of them had inadvertantly ordered a sundae with liquor in it. There was a consultation of the menu and a dictionary, followed by indecision about whether or not to finish it. Missionary A: Does it taste like alcohol? Missionary B: I don’t know, I’ve never had alcohol. It got even better when he started selectively eating parts of the sundae while audibly reasoning reasoning whether or not it was alcoholic. “I think the whipped cream is okay” “May it’s in the chocolate sauce” and so on. After my entertainment left, I didn’t stick around long.
I wondered through two shopping malls and looked at the big cinema next to the train station that had caught my eye with a poster of Spider-Man: Far from Home. About ten days to go before that comes out, but I looked at the prices and schedule because I was curious anyways. So Germany, or at least “Cinemaxx” (what a porn sounding name), follows the American tradition of cheap tickets on Tuesday.
There was an underground Kaufland right there and I wandered in to get some dinner. I bought a giant salad that was 50% off and some pineapple that was also marked down 50%. Then I got a little excited by how much I was saving and bought a ton of stuff, inlcuding several beers that were also on sale (such that the 2 liters of beers cost the same as the 500g salad).
I schlepped all the groceries back to the apartment, which was still empty. Ideally, I should have changed into my running shoes and taken a jog along the river, but I was feeling tired after a strenuous day of sitting around, so I cracked open a beer and the package of dried fruits and nuts and relaxed. Did I mention I found a package of bratwurst on sale? I fried up three of those, toasted two brotchen, and ate a plate full of salad while those were cooking. I think I have figured out why I hated salad so much when I was younger. It’s simply terrible in Germany. It is convenient and relatively cheap (compared to China/Korea/Japan) to get some salad mixes, but the vegetables usually don’t taste so great, and it is such an ordeal to get a decent tasting dressing. I bought a bottle of something called “herb” dressing that looked like Italian. Even though it is a “lite” dressing, the second ingredient is sugar and the dominant flavor is either dill or farts, I can’t really tell. The one time I bought a “oil and vinegar” dressing it was canola oil and distilled white vinegar. Seriously wtf. What is wrong with a little EVOO and Balsamic? The German “Balsamic” flavored salad dressings have the color of grape juice and the viscosity of slime.
It was a long movie and somehow three sausages (for the price of one from a street cart) made me even more hungry (or it was the fact that I had polished off two beers like they were water). In any case, I decided to have a look at the Edeka supermarket around the corner from the apartment. Needless to say, I’ve been having some extremely poor impulse control when it comes to consumption in Germany and despite my self-rationalization of “I’ll just eat half the package,” I ended up having a fine old time.
| Flixbus | 6.09 |
| Spaghetti Eis + Espresso + Tip | 10 |
| Groceries | 14.35 |
| Snacks (potato chips, chocolate, cheese) | 4.07 |
| Total: | 34.51 EUR (269.2 RMB) (USD 39.13) |
Running Total: 7591 RMB (USD 1103.33)
Daily Average: 399.5 RMB (USD 58.07)
You may notice, I don’t have housing… keep reading…