What are all these men doing in my dorm?

A few observations from a sleepy Studentin:

1.) The sirens for firetrucks, ambulances, etc... sound ridiculous. I find it hard to take them seriously.

2.) Hamburg LOVES Recycling! Water conservation! The environment! Saving electricity! My house has a requested shower rule for people to only use something like 45 or so minutes of shower water a MONTH, soooo, you do the math. I'm just happy the desert/Smith already taught me how to conserve water while doing such things. There are signs by all the sinks in the kitchens and bathrooms reminding you to save water. Also, the lights in all the hallways turn off automatically after a few minutes, so sometimes you find yourself in sudden darkness halfway down the stairs. I like that.

3.) Postage is so, so very expensive. To send a regular letter-sized envelope to the USA it costs 1.70 euro. One euro is currently worth around 1.4 dollars US. Yeah.

4.) Every evening at 6 and multiple times on Sundays, a nearby church plays all its bells for about five minutes straight. I love the lovely lovely bells ringing through my big windows.

5.) Two German students in my dorm have now assured me on different occasions that I don't actually need to clean out my gross dishes in the kitchen sink or pick up empty beer bottles strewn in various places because the cleaning lady does that for us. That was a pretty surprising cultural difference. I'm sure the Putzfrau has other things to worry about than cleaning up after me when I am perfectly capable of doing it myself. Come on, people.

Going to bed before eleven! Jaaaaa.