Arbeit, Schmarbeit

Work has really slowed down. They are more or less slowly beginning to think about planning the next festival, and there really isn't a ton of stuff for me to work on. Yesterday I calculated the number of tickets that we had officially issued for all of our concerts for intellectual property fees. They charge per seat occupied at a given performance, and if you charge admission, you have to pay the fee. For some reason this didn't apply to the theater performances at the festival or to a performance such as the Spanische Hofreitschule. In total, there were around 12,000 tickets that we sold for musical performances alone. With the Spanische Hofreitschule and the few theater performances we have, that number is easily in the range of 20,000 tickets. It's kind of incredible how the number of tickets and admissions fees add up in the end. Needless to say, I have never seen so much money on a bank account statement before now...
On that note, I am having strange experiences everyday now language-wise. The weirdest thing is that sometimes somebody will say a word, and I will have absolutely no idea what this word is in English, but I understand what it is referring to in English. What reminded me of this in my last paragraph was going to the bank yesterday to get the Auszüge. As I was walking there, I realized I had no idea how I would translate Auszug into English, but I knew what I was going to get at the bank, regardless.
Pons.com says it means 'statement.' Whenever I think of this word, however, I will always think back to going to Sparkasse, putting the bank card in the machine, and then having a few dozen papers magically print out with all of the festival's transactions in black and white. Another note on banking - wire transfer is incredibly common here, dare I say more common than having a checkbook. This surprised me because I know that wire transfers are something that many US banks and credit unions will charge for. It's interesting how one method or idea becomes the dominant mode of doing business and then all of the infrastructure gets built up around it...checks in the US and wire transfers in Germany.
Back to work I go. I have to investigate the prices of shipping some things home at the post office today because I know that my suitcase will probably be too heavy otherwise. At 1:00 pm today, my last weekend in Saarbrücken officially begins! (We only work till 1 on Fridays)