The complete and utter annihilation of all logical systems, the total reversal of technological innovation, and the never-ending entropy that ends in full, incomprehensible complexity — but in a good way. That is what this last week-and-a-half have been.
This post is a bit late. While I wish I could blame the aforementioned loss of logic, there was a different type of insanity present this week: my family. They came to visit me and we ended up having a fantastic time — leaving me with little time to write. But fret not, I’ll write all about that insanity in the next post. Hopefully it will compensate a bit for the pessimism of this one!
My odyssey onto this strange, logic-deficient branch of the multiversal world tree began when I realized that my Fidelity credit card was at its limit.
You see, I have two credit cards, and only one of them, the Fidelity one, waives the foreign transaction fee. While it’s not a huge fee, being the thrifty college student that I am, I set upon getting around this little problem. “Simple,” I thought, “I’ll just pay my balance early.” Oh how naïve I was. If only it were that easy.
I went on to the app and paid it early, but just as I was about to submit, I noticed that there was a small message saying this would be a “duplicate transaction” and that I would be paying twice. Fidelity structured their system so that paying early does not reset an auto pay, but rather pays the same statement twice. Thankfully, I noticed in time and was able to cancel the non-autopay duplicate payment before it went through.
(Slight tangent: I just finished reading Michael Lewis’ Liar’s Poker, in which he describes home mortgage bonds and how difficult it was to price them prior to the 1980s because home owners always have the option to pay them early and erased the future interest on the bonds. This meant that the bonds could lose a lot of value. I wonder if this is the same concept that encouraged Fidelity to prohibit me from paying my balance early.)
“Okay,” I then thought, “I’ll just apply for a new credit card — I’ve been meaning to do that anyway.” So I did some research into alternative credit cards and settled on two that I wanted to apply for, the Chase Sapphire Preferred and Chase Sapphire Reserve. This was complicated enough, and after consulting with three different people and hearing three different alternatives for the two credit cards I was applying for, I settled on the Preferred. (I have since come to regret that decision.)
I got a referral from my grandmother (so she’d get a referral bonus) and then sat on the stairs of my host family’s house and got ready to apply. But just as I was scanning a QR code on my phone to then scan my passport, my connection reset. The page refreshed. “Strange,” I thought. So I logged back in, only to see a message that I had already applied and that they’d review my application. Even though I hadn’t submitted my passport.
This happened because the WiFi in our host family’s house does not really reach my room. Taking it form the stairs, I was able to connect from my computer, but my phone has a shorter reach and so it was not able to connect to the WiFi and so it failed when I scanned the QR code. This wouldn’t have been an issue if I had data on my phone, but the data eSIM I had bought stopped working. At this point, I should back up and go into the eSIM story.
Before coming to Germany, I used YeSIM to purchase myself data. This is a great plan that gives you data access but no phone number — which worked just fine for my purposes. Unfortunately, at the end the data was starting to get somewhat spotty. I assumed that I just needed to top off the data limit and that it would all be fine , but at the time I was also looking to create a home lab for myself and so was looking into purchase computer hardware from Kleinenzainug (the German eBay). They require having a German (or European) phone number. So the day before I had gone to Vodafone and purchased an eSIM. I was able to download it on to my phone, but then got a strange message saying that it was not activated. Being the inexperienced and naïve “technology works”-believing debutant that I was, I though I could just delete the eSIM and download it again. So I did that. Looking back on it now, I feel like Matthew McCaunaghe in Interstellar watching himself figure out the black hole signal / message. Since investigating it, I’ve found that you should NEVER delete an eSIM unless you are absolutely sure that you don’t need it, because doing so “consumes” (Claude’s words, not mine) the eSIM and makes it so you can no longer get an eSIM from the same company unless it was removed in a very particular way.
Since then, I tried to re-install the Vodafone eSIM install process nine times. Each process takes a long time, especially the full eSIM registrations which take around an hour each and require scanning your passport. So that was fun. I then tried to look into an alternative, O2. Except, because everything is in German, I ended up purchasing a SIM instead of an eSIM (my phone only takes eSIMs). Apparently they might do this to verify that you have a German address and can then change it to an eSIM, but I’ll update this in a later post if I ever end up getting data.
Finally, I was exasperated and decided I would go to a store in person. So that’s what I did. Wednesday, I marched on over to the mall before work determined to talk to a representative. I went to the Vodafone store, but apparently they don’t do eSIMs in the store, only online. Thankfully, there was an O2 store right across from it. So in I marched. “We only do 3 month plans.” So out I marched. I then saw that there was a “Super Markt” which sold eSIMs (I’m still a bit confused why a supermarket sold eSIMs, but I am not one to look a gift horse in the mouth). I walked in and asked if I could talk to someone. I was then pointed to a specialist, who was busy helping someone else. 30 minutes later, I was finally allowed to speak to the representative. “I would like a pre-paid German phone number eSIM for a one-month contract please,” I said in my best German. “Oh, we only have agents here Thursday and Fridays, you’ll have to come back tomorrow,” he said. I had to travel for my boss’s wedding the next day, and so was not able to go (I’ll get to that next week!).
But all hope was not lost, for I found a new alternative to tay: Telekom. It looks a bit like a T-Mobile knockoff with the same pink color and a similar logo (no offense to Telekom, unless it is T-Mobile). Finally, things were working. I made sure to get the eSIM, I found a prepaid plan that was also only for one month and even fumbled around with the settings on my browser for an embarrassingly long time because the Google Translate extension I downloaded did not work, but finally was able to verify that my shoddy German was not lying to me and everything did in fact seem to be working perfectly. It felt like the sky was shining warm, beautiful light on me. But just as I was about to hit purchase, I was prompted to put in my phone number. Why you need a phone number to get a phone number, I do not know. Thankfully, I had my US line. But as I was putting it in, I realized that they had pre-filled the +49 area code at the beginning. The phone number had to be German. I asked my host mother if I could put hers in for the time being. She said yes! Aha! Again, the light of heaven shone upon my breast, and I clicked continue to receive my beautiful, fabulous, indescribable German phone number. “Nationality: “ the website said. It only accepted European ones. Woe is me!
There I was. No phone number. No data. No credit card. In all honesty, I should have planned this out better while I was in the states. But alas, I did not. All is not done for though. I am planning on going back to the store (not today or tomorrow, but Thursday, when they open have people there again). I am also going to look into the O2 plan (for which I still have to get a refund…) to see if I can maybe switch it to an eSIM instead, and then I might even look into other European alternatives, as apparently the EU has data and phone-number exchange laws. Huzzah!
Since then, I have also been able to call Chase and get my credit card (yay!). It turns out that I somehow applied for the same credit card four times. Luckily the agent I spoke to was able to cancel those, so that they did not tank my credit score much more than they already had (because every application causes a credit inquiry). It is also lucky that I called when I did, because apparently chase flags you if you make more than 5 credit card applications in 24 months! The last bit of complexity and breakdown of logic was that I was worried my grandmother wouldn’t get the referral bonus that we talked about. Luckily, I was transferred to my third Chase representative who was bale to help me to confirm that that was, in fact, the case.
This are but two of the complete and utter breakdowns of logic that I have encountered on my brief stint in this abomination of a parallel universe. (Others include having to cancel airplane tickets because US citizens can only travel to China visa-free if they are traveling from country A to China to country B and not a round-trip to China, even if the return is a stopover; spending a week at work setting up Docker containers for Claude because of the risk of prompt injection, only to get nothing productive done; or working for another week at work to try and integrate Claude Code and Codex while having a separate account registered with Claude Code, just to find out that you cannot have two accounts on Claude Code; or, of-course having to sign up for German language courses in the last three weeks that I am here). But alas, it seems that the majority of this hellish stint is over and that logic has once again triumphed.
To not end this on a bad note, I had one of my most fun adventures this week in Berlin. My host brother and I went clubbing here! Berlin has one of the craziest party scenes, and we ended up having a fantastic time. He just turned 18, so this was apparently his first time clubbing — and it was with me! To be honest, I think it might even have been the best clubbing experience I’ve ever had. We danced, talked to a lot of people, and stayed out until 7 am. It was absolutely amazing.