Yesterday I went to the law firm Ahlers & Vogel, 15 minutes of walk south of the central station, in the brownstone district of Bremen, a region unknown to me and almost forgettable. It's behind the blatantly built Sparda Bank eG building. And I had to ask from six locals for directions, two of them middle-aged ladies sitting at the table outside of a cafe, two younger men, notably both well-off and well-bred, and the other two who eventually led me to the right place. Not to my surprise, the firm is closed because of the Easter holiday. Me and my girlfriend, who was feeling not particularly well due to the time of the month, went around the building, trying to find a way in, or at least a computer on screen saver, of no avail.
It was for an unlikely battle between me and PayPal, which had reversed more than 500 euro of payments from my account. However, now I think, I was forced to resort to legal proceedings not because PayPal destroyed a business which I had considered feasible, nor because I have lost 500 euro and it is a lot of money, but simply because I am frustrated at PayPal. Yes, frustration of me at PayPal, in no way resembles the frustration from PayPal at me. PayPal doesn't even need to be frustrated, perhaps a couple of customer service employees were, because I sounded so domineering on the phone (I was usually keen in realizing that customer service staffs do not represent the corporation, and they, like me, simply want to squeeze some money off the job and make a living), but not more - I have clicked to agree to their Terms of Services which absolutely no one will read, hence PayPal becomes legally entitled to do anything within it. My frustration is a powerless one. I am an individual, a foreign student in Germany without an EU citizenship, none of the people in my family own a company and therefore none of them can threaten to forego PayPal as a payment method, with which I presume, in a large enough scale, will surely make it concede. So far what I have done, is sitting in front of the computer with Online Mahnantrag that curiously cannot be translated by Google, trying to fill out the ever-so-perplexing form, and opting instead to find a lawyer that can manage it for me. I phoned the Bremen government - it was a police issue; I phone the police - it was an civil affair; and I phoned my mom because it's already more than a month and I need 500 euro hard to payback my credit card bill. And of course, as I arbitrarily declare PayPal's business conduct problematic and sever all the connections I previously had with them, I will outright have trouble renewing my domain and buy games, and they will outright never care.
On the way back, my girlfriend retrieved 10 euro with a 3.99 euro withdrawal fee from the ATM machine and bought me from the Chinese fast-food restaurant a plate of fried rice with beef that costs 6 euro. I wanted to buy her some drinks as well. But the apple-flavored soft drink is 1.8 euro per beer bottle, she thought it's too expensive and let it go. As her discomfort was made worse by the windy climate of Bremen that she lost her appetite for even a spoonful of rice. To my relief, when I finished, she ate the last remaining slice of beef in the plate. Then we walked back to the central station, and got the train back to the university.
The spring break won't officially start until next Monday. However, nearly everyone I knew has gone to some other places. Alin went back to Romania for the first time since he came here; Varun will be flying to London on Monday to celebrate his cousin or nephew's first birthday; nearly all of the Chinese my girlfriend knows either went home or went travelling, some to Spain, some to Netherlands, Luxembourg and Belgium. But I don't plan to go out. For just in these few days, I will start marketing Persian sculpture in China and hopefully get the @billie Twitter handle from Alin which I had always desired. Again, I'm entirely unconfident if it will work out or will blunder like the iTunes Gift Cards, internship applications and campus job applications. But I'm doing it regardless.
