Finding housing in Berlin is simultaneously one of the easiest and most difficult things I’ve ever done. It is easy in the sense that there are a large number of websites dedicated to helping students and, well, everyone else alike find “Wohnungsgemeinschaften,” or simply WGs. These WGs are apartment shares, normal students and adults renting out their houses generally on a first-come, first-serve basis. Unfortunately there are a number of stipulations that turn this innocent house hunt into a race against time. The primary one is whether or not you’re actually in the country at the time of application. For many this is a make-or-break thing; if you’re not there to actually meet the tenants, your chances are slim. Therein lay my first problem, nullifying a couple of otherwise pretty good deals. Secondly, there are a lot of reposted ads, leading to a lot of “sorry, we filled the spot(s)” e-mails. Third, if you’re a smoker, forget it; and actually, if you’re a non-smoker, forget it as well, unless you can handle the smell of cigarette smoke all the time. Whichever side you make your allegiance with effectively alienates the other side, unless you’re the rare breed of human being that can happily operate in a second-hand smoke environment.

All that said, I think I’ve finally found a place to live. It’s an admittedly unorthodox living situation, even without my actually being there yet. A traveling journalist/mother of two students is renting out her 6-bedroom apartment to three students coming from just about anywhere (the list she gave me of the origins of other potential tenants was quite extraordinary). There’s also no television, which I’m fine with (not like I watch that much TV anyway). These things taken into account, the deal sounds pretty sweet. The best part is the proximity to my university, TU-Berlin: about 10 minutes by train.

Still waiting on the official confirmation, as well as which of the three rooms I’ll be getting (they vary in size), but I may have just found myself a place to live.

Thank goodness.

Ah! Life! The stale air of this abandoned haven of thoughts is stirred once again. I’ve returned to raise this long-forgotten blog from the briny depths of neglect and to give it a renewed sense of purpose, or maybe just a sense of purpose in the first place. Does the blog know the difference? I hope not.

First, a little back story for anyone who wants to read this from the new beginning (which is this). This blog has existed in one form or another since 2005 (that’s as far back as I can find, anyway), but it’s evolved at least visually a great deal since then. The name “Altered-Screens” is just an abstract title that doesn’t really have a whole lot of meaning to it, but I’ve grown to like it over the years so I’ll keep it. I tried a lot of themes for this site that I could never motivate myself to maintain: a web comic (by yourself this is a very daunting and miserable thing to do; props to xkcd), movie reviews, game reviews, guitar stuff, pointless stuff, pointful stuff, and so on. A year has passed since I last added anything to this site, during which time I let it sit here and sort of fester, letting the maggots dig in and nibble away at what was for all intents and purposes a dead blog. Lucky for me, the blog was biodegradable and so I’ve planted what amounts to a new one in the same place and called it the same thing.

So here it is, with a new banner I made tonight to boot. It may give you a hint as to what it’s going to be about. Hopefully it will give you more than a hint, and if it doesn’t, well, that’s not a good sign. Yes, I am going to Germany. Berlin, to be precise. I will be studying at the Technical University of Berlin, from August of 2009 to July of 2010, pursuing my physics major and my German language minor. The second of these two things is admittedly the easier one: when learning a language is essential to one’s survival, one tends to buck up and git ‘er done, as they say. Learning physics, however, in another language will be a test of many things, including patience, determination, and the tensile strength of my hair.

Of course, the question burning in your mind through all of this is why Germany? Good question. To date I haven’t come up with a good answer. Fact: I enjoy the German language. This throws most people for a loop right off the bat; it is not the most beautiful language, and I am aware of this. It appeals to me for whatever ungodly reason and I’m not sorry about it. I guess this fact, plus my having never been to Europe before, combined like two pieces of a two-piece jigsaw puzzle to spell out “GO TO GERMANY,” and having never doubted puzzles like these before, took the advice to heart.

I’m not leaving until the end of August - probably around August 28th or so - so for the time being this blog will detail events related to this upcoming expedition and whatever else I think is worthy of your time. Keep checking back for more updates.

-Sam