Every student in Germany needs a thoska card which lets you in and out of buildings, do admin stuff- you can even 'put money' on to it and use it for printing etc. I'd already lost one Thoska card and had to pay 10euros to get another one - a lot of money for a struggling student on a tight budget. One night I was practising piano in a the nice rehearsal room with a Steinway grand piano. I put my stuff (wallet ,phone and thoska card) on the ledge of the piano which you slide back to make room for the music stand. When I'd finished practising I slid the ledge forward to close the piano and my thoska card fell off and dropped into the piano, lodging very snuggly behind the hinge of the lid and the body of the piano. I tried for about 20 minutes to retrieve it but I couldn't even move it. Totally stuck. I went home pretty depressed, knowing that I could'nt even practice anymore without asking someone to let me in to the uni. On the way home I saw my Aussie friend Alex . He told me that I'd have to take the lid off the piano and that would expose the hinge and i could get the card. When mum and dad rang that night I told them what happened and they said I should just forget about it, don't mess with a hundred thousand dollar piano (before I'd officially started at the uni) go to the admin office , pay 10 euro and get another card.
But the next night I found someone to let me in and did some practice. A friend (???????) came in to rhe room and I told him what happened. He had a look in the piano and there was my card . We decided to take the lid off the piano. Neither of us had done this before and it took quite a while. We then got down to trying to extricate the card. 2 hours later we were defeated - we could barely touch it but couldn't move it. This bugger was not going anywhere. We decided to have a break before we went crazy. Downstairs we passed another piano player Johannes . We told him the story, so he decided to come and have a try. After about 20 minutes he had an idea - he rang his wife at home and asked her to drive to the uni, and bring an assortment of kitchen utensils with her! Fifteen minutes later we were back at the piano, tweaking skewers , tongs and other gadgets. Finally we were able to budge and eventually grab the card. Oh how we celebrated- jumping, wooping and high-fiving around the rehearsal room.
We put the lid back on the piano, left everything perfect and went outside in the uni courtyard having a coffee. Our fellow pianist Florian came over to enquire about our animated discussion. When we told him our story of the dismantling the piano and the non-budging card. Florian happily told that if we'd lifted the lid off from the front- it would have exposed the card clearly and we could have plucked it straight out!
I tried not to feel too dispirited , after all I had my card and had bonded with my fellow musicians albeit in an unconventional way.
I went back to my unit and decided to do a bit of German study - my final exams were next week. I thought I'd do a bit of revision from "English Grammar for Students of german" a book I got from ebay which I don't use much. I opened up the section on "&^%$#?" and out fell my first Thoska card, the one I'd misplaced all that time ago. My guts collapse, I let out an expletive and then I just had to laugh...
ha....ha....ha....ha....ha....
