The Hausfrau discovers that setting up an Internet connection is not as simple as it seems.

I have to say that I have not really experienced the textbook symptoms of culture shock that they warned us about in our "cultural training" before we moved to Germany. In fact, I am soaking up the experience with enthusiasm and feel that we have settled into our new life in Stuttgart quite well.

However, one early experience nearly pushed me over the edge. It wasn’t even a life-threatening or particularly monumental event: it was the seemingly simple task of getting our Internet service up and running.

With our limited grasp of German, we had been unable to navigate the package of materials that Deutsche Telekom sent to us with our new modem (although we did gather that the materials indicated it was a piece of cake to set up your internet service all by yourself).

Their website was all in German, of course, so that didn’t help us either. Fortunately there are advantages to being on an expat contract and we eventually took the easy way out: we called our relocation agent. She managed to set up an appointment for a technician to come to our house and give me a hand.

I hurried home one afternoon after German class to meet the Deutsche Telekom technician who was supposed to come sometime after noon. I didn’t get home until half past twelve and proceeded to wait anxiously for more than three hours.

As four o’clock approached, I was beginning to wonder if he had come and gone (with German promptness) between twelve and twelve-thirty. Finally the doorbell rang and I met a young man in a rumpled gray sweatshirt whose nametag said "Tim."

He was very friendly and, thankfully, spoke some English. He plugged in the modem and started up my laptop, fiddled around with it for a few minutes, then asked me for my password. I didn’t know what password he was talking about, so I showed him all of the paperwork we had received from Deutsche Telekom over the past month. Nowhere was there any sign of a password.

 Tim finally called Deutsche Telekom and, after a brief conversation in which I heard him refer to us as "Amis" (which I gathered was short for Amerikaner), he determined that Deutsche Telekom had overlooked sending us some critical information.

While he was waiting on the line I joked about "stupid Americans" and he put his hand over the receiver and said, "No, no – it’s their fault," pointing at the phone. He said they would send our password straightaway and we should receive it in two or three business days.

Tim wrote down an 800 number for me to call to make an appointment with him once we received the password. He wrote down his name and the name of his company, carefully noting that he was a contractor, not a Deutsche Telekom employee. He said that I should be able to talk to someone at Deutsche Telekom who could speak English but then he thought better of it and made another call to find out if there was an English hotline.

Many of the Germans we talk to insist that Telekom has such a hotline but no one has ever seemed to be able to come up with a number. Apparently it does not actually exist because Tim finally wrote down his personal handy number and just said to call him directly.

Sure enough, an envelope arrived from Deutsche Telekom within days. I called Tim the next morning and identified myself as "the American." He recognized me immediately and I told him we finally had our passwords. He said he could come in twenty minutes and he was true to his word.

 Naturally we ran into several difficulties and he ended up working on our two computers for an hour and a half. Finally he had everything working and he set up our new e-mail accounts through the T-Online website. When he got on the site I joked, "so where’s the button that makes it all English?"

I thanked him profusely when he left. Heck, I would have given him a tip if I thought it was appropriate. Afterwards I was in a bit of a daze. After going so long without the Internet, it was like being a kid in a candy shop.

Alas, there was still another bump in the road to happy surfing. A few weeks later, our Internet connection went down and stayed down for more than a day. This seemed highly unusual so I went in search of a number to call for help – no small task as it wasn’t like there was some big red box on our bill that said, "Customer Service Hotline."

I finally called a number that seemed to be for general information, and said the sentence that I had carefully prepared: "Wir haben T-Online DSL und unser Connexion ist kaputt seit ein Tag."

The woman I spoke to didn’t speak English but gave me another number to call. I ended up being shunted through two more non-English speaking people and was given yet another number to dial. Finally I was patched through to a man who said "Guten Tag. Mein name ist …." followed by something that sounded like "How can I help you?"

He didn’t speak English either. I recited my line again. He asked me which lights were lit on our modem and I told him. He said he would run a line test. After a few minutes he stated, with some finality, that the problem was with our modem, not with the line. I tried to ask what I was supposed to do about that (Was müss ich machen?) but he either didn’t understand me or didn’t want to help me.

I got the sense that because the problem was with the modem it was not their problem (except that the modem came from Deutsche Telekom, too, so what exactly was I to about it?) He asked me if there was someone in my family that spoke German. No, sorry, I didn’t bring my personal German-speaking assistant with me when I moved here. Not even your husband? No, sorry, he doesn’t speak any more German than I do. How about if someone at your husband’s work calls for you? Good grief! I was getting frustrated so finally I hung up.

By this point I was feeling really lousy about my inadequate German skills and wondering how it was possible that not a single customer service representative (if you could call them that) in all of Deutsche Telekom speaks English. I gave up for the day and explained my woes to my German teacher the next morning.

She was not very understanding. She seemed to think that it was unreasonable to expect anyone at Deutsche Telekom to speak English. In the U.S., you must understand, it is practically obligatory to have customer services available in Spanish. Assuming that English is likely the second most commonly spoken language in Germany, I didn’t think my expectations were that far out of line. I just knew that there was someone, somewhere in the great Deutsche Telekom empire who could help me.

I finally gave in and fished out Tim the technician’s number which I had stashed away in the event of just such an emergency. He remembered me and, after listening to my sad story, said he’d look into the problem and call me back. I spent two anxious hours hanging around the house, afraid to even go down to the laundry room in case I missed his call.

Finally around four o’clock he called and said, "OK, try it again." Marvels of marvels, Tim had fixed the Internet - without even coming to our house. Tim had just become my personal hero. I thanked him and told him I hoped that I wouldn’t have to call him again.

I am happy to report that we have had no more problems with our Internet connection and I have never had to contact Deutsche Telekom again. But Tim the technician’s phone number remains safely stored in my files, just in case "the Ami" needs another helping hand.