I asked Alex what that meant, to knock. He told me the audience knocks as a sign of being satisfied with the speaker. It’s very rare that the students don’t knock after a lecture. Perhaps the students felt a little lambasted.

Mr. Mentor did stop the lecture twice to pick out a few students for being rude and speaking over people trying to ask questions. I thought hooray! It was true the class was noisy and I gave up most of the time trying to decipher the conversation through the Deutsche-babble.

Well maybe he did go overboard by tossing a 1-cm piece of chalk at the annoying guy with the white and black checkered glasses. Finally karma has struck! So far I’ve tried three times to sit away from this yammer kid but still he and his female cackling brude vex me.

I must say I’m very please with myself that the gears that work out linear algebra in my brain are turning once again. There was a period or so in the last years when I looked at a derivative or an integral and felt amnesia and nausea. I guess all wasn’t lost. I just needed a refresher.

So after the class let out and a visit to the bathroom, I discovered that I was locked in the building. All doors are locked after 9pm except for the one on Arcis Street, another block away from the subway stop I wanted to take. Mist!

I looked for another way to exit the maze, maybe a door ajar, but found myself several times alone in pitch black hallways. It was the first time in awhile I felt my imagination take hold of me. Don’t ask me why, but I was reminded of Stephen King’s, The Shining. Thank god for modern technology. I called Alex for moral support until I reached some sort of random hall party. geesus. more movie parallels? just keep going. All I wanted was to get home.

There was some relief when I found the library and people that actually looked like students again. I managed my way outside of the building and ran across the Pinakothek museum lawn to the tram stop and sat next to a nicotine addicted lady who ignored the no smoking law at public transportation stops.

Whatever. I’m outside and on my way home, I thought. I pulled out The Gordian Knot by Bernhard Schlink (in German) and sunk into another world until the tram and subway took me home.

Artist: Virginia Jetzt
Title: Das Ganz Normale Leben