How the Internet Works on Campus in 47 Steps or Less

So here’s the basic rundown, step-by-step:

Step 1: arrive in Germany, wonderful colleague meets you at the bus station with your dorm keys, travel to dorm and decide to sort out internet access
Step 2: arrive at the IT office to find out everyone left after lunch (they close at 1pm?)
Step 3: go to the bibliothek information desk (library), and ask the nice lady how to connect to the internet, and learn that “eduroam” (something I have access to) works on campus
Step 4: Spend the next hour and a half on a library computer trouble-shooting “eduroam” with IT in Kansas; IT guy offers answers from Google that I had already found
Step 5: realize that I will not have internet for the weekend; decide to hang out in cafes to get work done
Step 6-8: hang out at Cafe Felix and Cafe Lila most of the day Saturday and Sunday listening to the Jazz Festival through the windows working on a rationale and two conference proposals
Step 9: arrive at IT office first-thing on Monday, go through registration process only to find out that it will take “between 4 hours and 2 days” to receive the confirmation email so I may log onto university internet. Go back to IT with my professor and the American Studies IT guy: the email appears in my inbox (I’m lucky, right?)
Step 10: register for internet, and IT guy explains the equipment necessary to connect to the internet in the dormitory because the campus dormitories don’t have wifi
Step 11: travel on the buses to another part of town to the electronics store, buy parts (using German, WOO?); travel back across town in the buses to the dormitory, plug everything in, follow the protocols on the information sheet from IT, the INTERNET WORKS and all is right in the world
Step 12: Colleague arrives to my room and explains that our converter cables will get us BANNED from the internet on campus (IT dormitory rules were not clearly explained)
Step 13: Take buses back across town to exchange our cables (explained in GERMAN, WOO!)
Step 14: return to dormitory, discover that the drivers for my new equipment are on a CD, and I cannot use it because there is no CD drive on my laptop or my colleague, Chris’s MacbookAir.
Step 15: use Chris’s internet (his is working because he bought an Apple adapter) to manually download the driver, then transfer it to my laptop on the flashdrive my uncle made for me.
Step 16: run the driver installation – it doesn’t work; realize I’m out of ideas
Step 17: go to dinner with Nicole, Ellington, and Chris; bring my backpack so I can go back to Cafe Felix to do work before it closes and I have to catch the bus back to the dormitory
Step 18: work at Cafe Felix until close, at one point enlisting Greg’s help via TeamViewer; discover that the adapter I have for the internet might not support Windows 8; catch midnight bus back to dorms before I can finish this post
Step 19: Go to Rezen-Zentrum (the IT department) first thing after my espresso from the Theater School; IT guy Alex works through everything with me; turns out my USB to ethernet adapter does NOT, in fact, support Windows 8; I have the wrong adapter – again
Step 20: Go back to Conrad, return the adapter in its original packaging; the woman at the cash register processes my refund and asks sadly if my equipment was “faslsh”; Yes, it was; she feels sorry for me and wishes me luck
Step 21: walk over to the electronics store across the street, explain to the salesperson in German what I need; they only have 1 type available, and it’s 10 Euro more expensive than the one I just returned; paid the damn money (sigh)
Step 22: take bus back across town to the IT department on campus; install the new driver for the new adapter; work with IT guy to set up my internet as if I were in my dorm room to make sure it works
Step 23: It works in the IT office! Woo!
Step 24: take the bus back to my dormitory and plug everything in; THE INTERNET WORKS; THIS IS NOT A DRILL; THE INTERNET WORKS
Step 25: Finish this post so I can continue working on my research

I know this was WAY less than 47 steps, but I left a LOT of things out in between. Phew. What a wacky situation. I will update later today with some other goings-on from Regensburg!

Oh, and just a reminder I HAVE INTERNET ACCESS IN THE DORMITORY. It’s a good thing, because my international phone plan isn’t working, either…. Technology fail.