God damn is finding accommodations in Münster so frustrating. I've heard horror stories, but didn't experience it last year by a stroke of good luck. Knowing I'd have to find a place by September, I started on my search as far back as late April, have sent in total well over 30 messages, gotten around 13 replies, participated in 6 castings (yes, castings, like I'm trying out for a theater show), one of which I'd befriended one of the girls that lived there a month beforehand, two others which went well, laughs and all, and one in which I brought a good bottle of wine with me and had quite a pleasant time with them, and still nothing. It's absurd. This casting thing is nuts. These people are already getting bombarded with dozens of messages from people, from whom the recipients already expect a nicely written self-description that reflects the room advertisement itself, and then they spend hours inviting between six and twelve interviewees in little half-hour casting blocks. I get doing a few interviews. Past three or four, it just doesn't make sense. They'll forget details and impressions about people they interviewed along the way, and waste the time of people looking for a room as well their own. Sometimes you'll show up and they seem out of it, like they're just sick of interviews, and you're number six out of ten, so they don't even have anything to say or ask because they just want to get it over with. And jumping back into German and attempting to be as sociable as possible for a Skype call isn't fun when I'm saturated by English and am in the middle of prepping my French.
Three Skype interviews tomorrow as well as reminders to follow up with people I've already made contacts with about interviews on the weekend, and of course more browsing and messaging over the newly listed. On the bright side, I'm scheduled to have coffee on Friday with a potential adviser at George Washington, Andrew Zimmerman, so that'll be nice.
Oh, and there's a Fulbrighter who is taking my buddy's spot in Münster, and she reached out to me about a month ago to ask for advice about living there. I gave her a nice little message about how nice the little city of Münster is and how much she'll love it, and then told her she needed to start looking for a place to live yesterday. Of course two same-day Skype interviews later she's got a real central place at a killer price. God damn blonde bombshells.
