Cat Congress Mired in Sunbeam
Sorry that last post hasn't been finished yet, September's been rather eventful (and by that read: splendid). Stay tuned!
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
Wine, Language, Home
Or alternately: the Tasty, the Impossible, and the Elusive: Thoughts Invoked by The Best Parade Ever.
It started when I spent last weekend drinking wine with my friend Martin, who comes from Lösnich on the Mosel.
Funny how I wasn't a wine-drinker at all in the States. But maybe that's just it: everyone knows that wine culture in Europe is "different" from wine culture in the States; however, that difference is not simply a matter of quantity. Leaving aside all discussion of American attitudes toward alcohol, buying wine in Arizona was not only expensive, but impenetrable -- bottles crowding each other on the shelf, competing for attention with their cutesy names and dizzying array of various origins. Australia? California? South America? Europe? Africa? Where do you even begin? There seemed to be something more than slightly elitist about all the prerequisite foreknowledge I imagined you had to have to identify whatever was supposed to be "good" (I personally couldn't even taste the difference) and so I just stuck with beer.
I knew lots of Americans liked wine. But suffice to say that, at least in non-wine-growing Arizona, there seemed to be such thick barriers of entry for the newcomer that I just never got into it.
Here, however, wine isn't nearly so inapproachable. It's life. It's a culture, an economy, a heritage, and a series of festivals that crown the "Wine Queen" every year. And yet it's also, paradoxically, not that big a deal. It's loved, but knowable. In the Pfalz, in fact, wine is almost preferred over beer, because wine is local and much beer is not (although living with someone who grew up within walking distance of the Czech border means our household still maintains a goodly supply of beer). Plus it's very unusual to find the giant wine producers here the way you might in California or Australia, because vintners aren't interested in bottling enormous quantities to mass-market abroad. Not to say there isn't competition, of course there is -- with each other, with France. So it is nevertheless some damn fine stuff, and I've had the inestimable luck to find myself standing in a river of it.
Now, I learned to love it in the Pfalz, where they drink it dry, dark, powerful, and by the 1/4-liter glass. (You ever want to stain your teeth blue, sip on a Dornfelder.)
But I knew nothing about the Mosel. I'd driven by the valley a time or two, and been intrigued by that glassy river, winding sleepily like a jigsaw puzzle through the glowing, vineyard-covered hills. It's also the wine-growing area of Germany that happens to be slightly known outside of Germany; so when your Mosellaner friend extends an invitation to show it to you, you take it.
I'd like to take this opportunity to thank my excellent host for an marvelous and enlightening time, and all his excellent friends for their warm welcome. It was beautiful. And different. The vineyards are different -- so... steep! -- the dialect is different, the wine is different, even the way of drinking it is different. Instead of buying a half-liter Schoppen and passing it around the group, the way they do in the Pfalz, on the Mosel, you buy a whole bottle and then distribute it into everyone's individual, tiny (0.1-liter, or 3.4-ounce) glass. The bottle is finished, the next person buys the new one. In this way, you can annihilate quite a few bottles and still be standing when the last bus goes at 4:00am.
I also made the barbaric mistake of allowing my fingers to touch the bowl of my glass, and was immediately corrected: "Hier," I was assured, with a demonstration, "trinken wir mit Stiel." (A nice little pun on Stiel, the glass-stem, and Stil: class, style.)
In addition, the wine is very sweet. Not syrupy and cloying -- in fact it was delicious -- but certainly not the dry reds that I'm used to at home.
Not to mention that it seems like all of Martin's friends are vintners. Or at least in a family of vintners. One moment, we'd be standing around sharing a bottle, and another, one of our group would appear behind the counter of the stand we'd been patronizing, wrapping an apron around his waist and opening another bottle for other customers.
All of this culminated in the completely normal sight of a bunch of young men standing around, being manly and talking man-things, while holding their tiny glasses of sweet white wine carefully by the stem and interrupting each other once in a while to swirl it, sniff, and ask, "Say, do you think this one's too acidic?"
It was awesome.
But this brings me to another, somewhat less awesome (I'll explain in a minute) feature of the wine festival, which was the quantity of American soldiers who suddenly appeared: quickly recognizable by their military haircuts, baggy American clothes, and loud honking voices.
Again, let me explain. I grew up a military brat in Germany, to parents who loved the country in which they found themselves and took every opportunity to explore and learn and discover. So when Martin told me to expect to see a lot of people from the bases, I rather looked forward to meeting and talking to some countrymen and expected I'd be able to relate. Besides, I've been here long enough to discover that plenty of American servicemen are not like my parents were, and so am proud of anyone who decides to brave what could be a scarily foreign country to get out to mingle with the folks and experience some local culture.
But once I saw -- or rather, first heard -- them, I was startled to discover I didn't want to approach them at all. Why not? There they were, being American and talking American; and instead of walking up to them, I wanted to run and hide. What was wrong with me??
Well, one factor was probably just shock, in that we'd been floating in a sea of soft, rolling German, and suddenly these noisy haircuts come swaggering in, projecting their nasal vowels across the crowd as if they were on a college campus, and it was... okay, it was embarrassing.
Another factor was probably just age: their average couldn't have topped 20 or 21, and they were simply acting like it. Poor guys, they were just being the kids that they were. But they were still a far cry from the Air Force officers I'd been picturing. They were... well, have soldiers always looked so sketchy? And the girlfriends so, well, trashy? What was with the g-strings sticking out the backs of their jeans?
Although I'm always very slightly aware of my outsidership here, most of the time, it's easy to ignore as I get settled into my adopted home. After all, it's the one I've got, now (I hardly even know anyone in Arizona anymore!), and it's been a constant process of effort and development to get used to the Immigrant Experience.
And yet now it was like, Martin had shown me where he was from, his culture and people and place; and then supposedly representing my side, a group of MTV caricatures bursts in to demonstrate where I'm supposed to be from.
Maybe that's why I relate so much to my friend Linda. She's Canadian, and has lived in Neustadt since 2005. For a long time, she was ambivalent about staying; but now she's marrying Clemens, her adorable Pfälzer, and has really landed firmly on the side of remaining an immigrant. Even Chrissie from Chicago, who knows she'll be leaving at the end of her third year (next summer, boo hoo!) tries as much as she can to engage with the culture and learn the language. So maybe the reason I can't make friends with the Americans I occasionally run into from the military bases are that they aren't of this little dual-natured world. While many (my parents included) seized the opportunity to live abroad and wore it out, for far too many others, there is this very clear separation of Us and Them that I don't -- can't -- identify with.
Wow, I didn't realize how long this post was going to get! It's time to go to bed, I'll try to get to the rest of it tomorrow... nighty night!
It started when I spent last weekend drinking wine with my friend Martin, who comes from Lösnich on the Mosel.
Funny how I wasn't a wine-drinker at all in the States. But maybe that's just it: everyone knows that wine culture in Europe is "different" from wine culture in the States; however, that difference is not simply a matter of quantity. Leaving aside all discussion of American attitudes toward alcohol, buying wine in Arizona was not only expensive, but impenetrable -- bottles crowding each other on the shelf, competing for attention with their cutesy names and dizzying array of various origins. Australia? California? South America? Europe? Africa? Where do you even begin? There seemed to be something more than slightly elitist about all the prerequisite foreknowledge I imagined you had to have to identify whatever was supposed to be "good" (I personally couldn't even taste the difference) and so I just stuck with beer.
I knew lots of Americans liked wine. But suffice to say that, at least in non-wine-growing Arizona, there seemed to be such thick barriers of entry for the newcomer that I just never got into it.
Here, however, wine isn't nearly so inapproachable. It's life. It's a culture, an economy, a heritage, and a series of festivals that crown the "Wine Queen" every year. And yet it's also, paradoxically, not that big a deal. It's loved, but knowable. In the Pfalz, in fact, wine is almost preferred over beer, because wine is local and much beer is not (although living with someone who grew up within walking distance of the Czech border means our household still maintains a goodly supply of beer). Plus it's very unusual to find the giant wine producers here the way you might in California or Australia, because vintners aren't interested in bottling enormous quantities to mass-market abroad. Not to say there isn't competition, of course there is -- with each other, with France. So it is nevertheless some damn fine stuff, and I've had the inestimable luck to find myself standing in a river of it.
Now, I learned to love it in the Pfalz, where they drink it dry, dark, powerful, and by the 1/4-liter glass. (You ever want to stain your teeth blue, sip on a Dornfelder.)
But I knew nothing about the Mosel. I'd driven by the valley a time or two, and been intrigued by that glassy river, winding sleepily like a jigsaw puzzle through the glowing, vineyard-covered hills. It's also the wine-growing area of Germany that happens to be slightly known outside of Germany; so when your Mosellaner friend extends an invitation to show it to you, you take it.
I'd like to take this opportunity to thank my excellent host for an marvelous and enlightening time, and all his excellent friends for their warm welcome. It was beautiful. And different. The vineyards are different -- so... steep! -- the dialect is different, the wine is different, even the way of drinking it is different. Instead of buying a half-liter Schoppen and passing it around the group, the way they do in the Pfalz, on the Mosel, you buy a whole bottle and then distribute it into everyone's individual, tiny (0.1-liter, or 3.4-ounce) glass. The bottle is finished, the next person buys the new one. In this way, you can annihilate quite a few bottles and still be standing when the last bus goes at 4:00am.
I also made the barbaric mistake of allowing my fingers to touch the bowl of my glass, and was immediately corrected: "Hier," I was assured, with a demonstration, "trinken wir mit Stiel." (A nice little pun on Stiel, the glass-stem, and Stil: class, style.)
In addition, the wine is very sweet. Not syrupy and cloying -- in fact it was delicious -- but certainly not the dry reds that I'm used to at home.
Not to mention that it seems like all of Martin's friends are vintners. Or at least in a family of vintners. One moment, we'd be standing around sharing a bottle, and another, one of our group would appear behind the counter of the stand we'd been patronizing, wrapping an apron around his waist and opening another bottle for other customers.
All of this culminated in the completely normal sight of a bunch of young men standing around, being manly and talking man-things, while holding their tiny glasses of sweet white wine carefully by the stem and interrupting each other once in a while to swirl it, sniff, and ask, "Say, do you think this one's too acidic?"
It was awesome.
But this brings me to another, somewhat less awesome (I'll explain in a minute) feature of the wine festival, which was the quantity of American soldiers who suddenly appeared: quickly recognizable by their military haircuts, baggy American clothes, and loud honking voices.
Again, let me explain. I grew up a military brat in Germany, to parents who loved the country in which they found themselves and took every opportunity to explore and learn and discover. So when Martin told me to expect to see a lot of people from the bases, I rather looked forward to meeting and talking to some countrymen and expected I'd be able to relate. Besides, I've been here long enough to discover that plenty of American servicemen are not like my parents were, and so am proud of anyone who decides to brave what could be a scarily foreign country to get out to mingle with the folks and experience some local culture.
But once I saw -- or rather, first heard -- them, I was startled to discover I didn't want to approach them at all. Why not? There they were, being American and talking American; and instead of walking up to them, I wanted to run and hide. What was wrong with me??
Well, one factor was probably just shock, in that we'd been floating in a sea of soft, rolling German, and suddenly these noisy haircuts come swaggering in, projecting their nasal vowels across the crowd as if they were on a college campus, and it was... okay, it was embarrassing.
Another factor was probably just age: their average couldn't have topped 20 or 21, and they were simply acting like it. Poor guys, they were just being the kids that they were. But they were still a far cry from the Air Force officers I'd been picturing. They were... well, have soldiers always looked so sketchy? And the girlfriends so, well, trashy? What was with the g-strings sticking out the backs of their jeans?
Although I'm always very slightly aware of my outsidership here, most of the time, it's easy to ignore as I get settled into my adopted home. After all, it's the one I've got, now (I hardly even know anyone in Arizona anymore!), and it's been a constant process of effort and development to get used to the Immigrant Experience.
And yet now it was like, Martin had shown me where he was from, his culture and people and place; and then supposedly representing my side, a group of MTV caricatures bursts in to demonstrate where I'm supposed to be from.
Maybe that's why I relate so much to my friend Linda. She's Canadian, and has lived in Neustadt since 2005. For a long time, she was ambivalent about staying; but now she's marrying Clemens, her adorable Pfälzer, and has really landed firmly on the side of remaining an immigrant. Even Chrissie from Chicago, who knows she'll be leaving at the end of her third year (next summer, boo hoo!) tries as much as she can to engage with the culture and learn the language. So maybe the reason I can't make friends with the Americans I occasionally run into from the military bases are that they aren't of this little dual-natured world. While many (my parents included) seized the opportunity to live abroad and wore it out, for far too many others, there is this very clear separation of Us and Them that I don't -- can't -- identify with.
Wow, I didn't realize how long this post was going to get! It's time to go to bed, I'll try to get to the rest of it tomorrow... nighty night!
Happy Birthday Stiiiiiiiiiiv!
One of my favorite people, my gorgeous motivated adventurous hilarious girlfriend's-honor-defending brother-in-law, turns 30 today! A great date to do so, too, 09/09/09.
Berti is there to celebrate with him in Seattle. I wish I were, too!
Love you, Stevie!
Prost!
Berti is there to celebrate with him in Seattle. I wish I were, too!
Love you, Stevie!
Prost!
Friday, September 04, 2009
Three years in Germany
Wow, can it really have been a year since this post??
Time is spinning away faster and faster, it seems, like a penny in one of those donation-funnels at the store.
To those of you who have watched more years spin around than I have: does it keep doing this?
Do the summers keep stepping on each other's heels?
I can think of a few possible explanations as to why this third year in Germany has sped by so quickly. For one thing, I've been even happier than in the previous two, and you know the relativity formula for happiness. One reason is that I have so enjoyed our large, airy apartment with its inviting balcony, and realized what a profound influence living quarters have on your quality of life. Every time I sit down in my comfy office to work, I am accompanied by the lively activity right outside these glass doors: kids playing, visitors going to see their friends, folks leaving for work and coming home from work, neighbors cooking or watering their plants... I've especially loved watching said plants go through their pageant of seasons, like the trees and parks in the old version of "SimCity."
For another thing, my Mom spent over ten months here in Germany, and having her so close by really helped to soothe that raw spot of being so far away from all you guys. Thanks for this last year, Mom!!!
And maybe for another, I've really found my groove with work. I've been doing this just long enough to not only get really good at it -- so it's much more effortless than ever before -- but I've also been able to pick and choose the jobs that I really want to do, and to carve myself a comfy niche to occupy in each one. I feel useful, skilled, and appreciated -- something not everyone gets to enjoy about their work.
It's still just a point along the whole career path, though. It's slowly becoming time for me to really get cracking on that PhD: not only because I would indeed like to make a contribution to the field of teaching English as a Lingua Franca, but also because it's simply the next logical career move. Language jobs around here are almost exclusively on an independent-contracting basis unless you've got that Dr. title, and I don't want to be a freelancer forever.
Fortunately, I already have a pretty good idea of what I would like to study and who I plan to approach for potential advisors. I'm aiming for next spring to begin harassing professors into taking me on. Stay tuned...
So maybe all this satisfaction is simply a natural consequence of really getting settled in. I'm all set to pay my first German income taxes this year (last year, I didn't make enough to pay anything at all!) and thank goodness, it looks like I saved enough to cover the amount due. (Another hazard of freelancing!) I'll renew my visa this month, and get my German driver's license as soon as I get back from the States in a couple weeks. In October, Bert and I will go on a bike trip for his birthday; we'll buy a couple things for the place; we'll have a bachelorette party for one of my best friends; we'll consider celebrating Thanksgiving; we'll make Christmas plans.
I guess, in short, you could say the last three years have forged me a life: a career, goals, friends, and a wonderful partner. It hasn't happened quickly, or smoothly, or predictably; really getting settled in somewhere takes an awful lot of time.
But I think I can add to this post something that I couldn't quite say last year. And that is: Germany really has become my home.
Time is spinning away faster and faster, it seems, like a penny in one of those donation-funnels at the store.
To those of you who have watched more years spin around than I have: does it keep doing this?
Do the summers keep stepping on each other's heels?
I can think of a few possible explanations as to why this third year in Germany has sped by so quickly. For one thing, I've been even happier than in the previous two, and you know the relativity formula for happiness. One reason is that I have so enjoyed our large, airy apartment with its inviting balcony, and realized what a profound influence living quarters have on your quality of life. Every time I sit down in my comfy office to work, I am accompanied by the lively activity right outside these glass doors: kids playing, visitors going to see their friends, folks leaving for work and coming home from work, neighbors cooking or watering their plants... I've especially loved watching said plants go through their pageant of seasons, like the trees and parks in the old version of "SimCity."
For another thing, my Mom spent over ten months here in Germany, and having her so close by really helped to soothe that raw spot of being so far away from all you guys. Thanks for this last year, Mom!!!
And maybe for another, I've really found my groove with work. I've been doing this just long enough to not only get really good at it -- so it's much more effortless than ever before -- but I've also been able to pick and choose the jobs that I really want to do, and to carve myself a comfy niche to occupy in each one. I feel useful, skilled, and appreciated -- something not everyone gets to enjoy about their work.
It's still just a point along the whole career path, though. It's slowly becoming time for me to really get cracking on that PhD: not only because I would indeed like to make a contribution to the field of teaching English as a Lingua Franca, but also because it's simply the next logical career move. Language jobs around here are almost exclusively on an independent-contracting basis unless you've got that Dr. title, and I don't want to be a freelancer forever.
Fortunately, I already have a pretty good idea of what I would like to study and who I plan to approach for potential advisors. I'm aiming for next spring to begin harassing professors into taking me on. Stay tuned...
So maybe all this satisfaction is simply a natural consequence of really getting settled in. I'm all set to pay my first German income taxes this year (last year, I didn't make enough to pay anything at all!) and thank goodness, it looks like I saved enough to cover the amount due. (Another hazard of freelancing!) I'll renew my visa this month, and get my German driver's license as soon as I get back from the States in a couple weeks. In October, Bert and I will go on a bike trip for his birthday; we'll buy a couple things for the place; we'll have a bachelorette party for one of my best friends; we'll consider celebrating Thanksgiving; we'll make Christmas plans.
I guess, in short, you could say the last three years have forged me a life: a career, goals, friends, and a wonderful partner. It hasn't happened quickly, or smoothly, or predictably; really getting settled in somewhere takes an awful lot of time.
But I think I can add to this post something that I couldn't quite say last year. And that is: Germany really has become my home.
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