live to tell the tale

Yesterday was weird.
I can't really say bad, just weird.
I was really nervous in the morning, but after over 5 hours on trains and about 45 minutes walking to the library, I was pretty calm.
The library was just like all libraries build about 25 years ago. I don't care whether the architect got some price for it, I still don't like it.
I wandered around a bit, because I still had time before the interview, and then asked at the return desk, as I had been told to.
So they called the person who had invited me, and he came to pick me up.
There were 4 more people in his office, and I have to admit sitting there with all of them watching every move is far from comfortable.
I was asked to introduce myself and then they aksed some questions. I'm not sure how well I did, but I tried my best.
I tried to answer detailed but not rambling too long. But still there were always breaks where they just looked at each other and waited for I don't know what. I asked questions myself, too, and sometimes it just seemed as if they hadn't decided who of them would ask more questions, but it was really weird for me, because I felt as if they expected something from me and I didn't know what.
Then one lady showed me around the library, the desk where I would work and stuff, and I think I made a good expression at least then.
They told me I could expect to hear from them next week, which is at least something. I wouldn't want to wait long.
The return trip took even longer, because I missed the last InterCityExpress (very fast train) and had to take an InterCity (pretty fast train) for the first part. Thus I missed a good connection home and had to take a train that stopped in every village that happened to have a station. And was late.
I reached the station about half past eleven, and then it was almost twelve until I was home. And had gotten up at five.
But with all the time on the train, I managed to finish anover book of the World History I've read since first semester. Seven more volumes to go now.

For the record, I think interviews suck. At least the people who interview you should be prepared somehow.
The thing is, when I don't get the job it might not be because of my performance or non-performance at the interview at all. So there isn't really a way to know how I did.
Good thing though that they'll pay the travelling expenses. I spend something like 140 Euros for the train tickets, and I'll be glad to get that back. (Or rather, my Mom will. I didn't have that much money to begin with and had to borrow from her.)

career update

Er... yeah... well...

So, after posting a whiny entry about how the interview might have sucked, I got a call from the library. Saying that they had decided to offer me the position.
Problem is, I still have the option to get the (probably better) job with the army.
And I called those people right away to find out how my chances are there, and the lady said that if Armageddon doesn't arrive anytime soon, I'll have that job.
So instead of having no job at all, I now have two and need to decide.

In the university library, I'll be one of many. I'll have people to show me how to do stuff and help me out and everything. I'm not alone in the dangerous world that is the library.
I also will probably not have much influence on anything. And I'll have a secure job only until the end of next year. After that, nobody knows.

With the army, I'll be in an OPL (One Person Library). There's just me. The nearest person to help me can most likely only be reached by phone or email.
But it will be my library. Any idea I have I can try out and see what works.
And I'll have the job for at least two years, with the possibility of them keeping me as long as I want. I'll also have the possibility to get in contact with interesting people.

It all looks more like the second option, but I can't resign on the first job as long as I'm not sure whether I'll get the other.
The lady said she'd call me Monday and tell me more, but she can't give out a definite yes as long as she hasn't got the results from my medical (that should be there by now, really!) and the OK from all relevant places.
But the university library would like to get my answer by Monday.
We'll see what will happen. Nothing much I can do now but wait.

Kleingartenverein

There are some words in the German language that are so much a name for a typical German trait that I somehow wonder whether there is an English word for them at all.
Which is a problem right now, because I'm working on another translation and came across one of these words.
For those who have ever been in a middle-sized German town, you probably have seen little plots of land with many fences, and in between the fences towel-sized gardens, often close to railway tracks.
Kleingartenanlagen.
AFAIK, these go back to the Twenties, when it was necessary firstly to get people to grow their own food and secondly to get them some fresh air. (It could even be earlier then that, now that I think about it.)
So these little empty spots of land were transformed into gardens, and people could grow vegetables and have a place to spend their weekends.
In Britain, I suppose there were this huge housing areas with small backyards to each house, so maybe they didn't need this solution. But here, large apartment buildings were build, and people couldn't have a backyard at their house.
So anyway, the Kleingarten.
Many people have them, at least in my part of Germany. And they spend all their weekends cutting the hedges and pulling weeds and painting fences and whatnot. They're about as crazy about their gardens as about their cars, and that is something.
I have seen a lot of them with plastic or stone figures (dwarfs, deer, geese, birds...), a flagpole with German flags (or Confederate flags for the "rebels"), little house and bench and all kinds of vegetables and flowers.
But all this knowledge doesn't help me find a good English word for it. And I don't even need the word for one of these things (I could call it just a garden or, as the dictionary suggested, allotment), but for a whole thing, for several gardens at once. Usually, the ones in one spot form some sort of association, which would be a Kleingartenverein. And I just can't think of a good word for that.
Makes me feel alternately incredibly stupid and incredibly angry at the makers of the text. And if I ever meet them, their chances of survival are bad anyway, because I need to do a lot of reworking of the German text before translating. Not that I'm writing that down, I don't care if they don't speak their own language properly. For some reason they seem to think that nouns are good, verbs are bad.
It's very much like a Dilbert comic. Substitute all "do"s with "implementation". That sort of thing. And not only do sentences get very complicated, there also is a high risk of simply being wrong. Which means I need to trace back what they most likely want to say and then translate that.
Anyway, they're going to pay me for it, which is at least something.

And it keeps me from thinking too much about the job situation. (Here I go again, so we see how good that distraction idea works. )
The basic thing is this, no matter how I decide (provided I do get the okay from the army), there is always the danger of me not liking the place I decided on, and then thinking that I probably made the wrong decision.
Knowing myself, I might get really depressed when something doesn't work out the way I want it to and get upset about me not chosing the other place.
But I can't be in two places at the same time, and from what I saw of the university yesterday, I'm not too eager to actually work there. I haven't seen the other place yet, so the university might still end up being the lesser evil. But there is no way of knowing how it is to work somewhere before I actually do just that.

Whatever. I have a fanfic idea in mind I need to write down, so I'll do that and stop worrying about something I can't solve before Monday anyway.

Language sidenote: Is "forestrial" the adjective to "forestry"? The dictionary doesn't have it, but google has several sites that seem to use the word in this sense.

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A meme I couldn't help but copying from pandora_nervosa. Mainly because I don't feel like going to bed.
( Cut to spare you )