Homeward bound!

As beautiful as Neustadt is, it's missing a key element or two. So I think I'll hop a plane tomorrow and see what they're all up to in Arizona for Christmas! :)

A new roommate

My cozy apartment just got cozier, thanks to my new roommate from Dresden. He's quiet, doesn't eat much, and he sure smells good!

Lemme explain. The Erzgebirge is a mountain range near the eastern German border, which is famous for its woodcarving: especially around Christmastime, the area's hand-carved wooden figures, finely-cut Christmas tree decorations, Pyramiden (diaramas in which the figures spin around by means of a candles and wooden fans), and especially the characteristic Schwibbogen (arched candle holders with traditional images underneath) are staples even in western Christmas markets.

Pyramide:
Schwibbogen:


The most famous of the hand-carved figures, however, are the Räuchermännchen: "little smoking men". These are hollow, often wearing miners' costumes -- "Erzgebirge" literally translates into "ore mountains"-- and have round holes for mouths. When you place an incense cone inside one, the scented smoke comes drifting out of his mouth. Eeee! If ever smoking could be made adorable..! Anyway, they range anywhere in size from a couple inches to a couple feet. The problem is that, no matter how simple or detailed, their fame and quality make them pretty pricey. I was coveting every Räuchermännchen I saw when Bert and I visited the Annaberg Christmas market a couple weeks ago. Alas, they were too cute for my pocketbook.

Well! Bert went back to the Erzgebirge last weekend for his sister's birthday. And what did he return with? My very own Räuchermännchen! Except this guy isn't a miner -- he's a rockin' wizard. Delicately stained, with a long beard, walking stick, dark red hood, and heavy-lidded eyes, he is cool indeed. We lit him up (with appropriately-scented "wood moss" incense), and the long tube of smoke curling out of his mouth made him look strange and sorcerous. I wonder if he comes alive at night and casts spells? We shall see. I might wake up tomorrow morning in a forest of mushrooms.

staring:


smoking (while contemplating some spells):


Dunno about you, but I hear a men's choir when I look at him. Ahh, AAHHH, aaah!

So! What should I name him? Merdalf? Gandlin?

How to make Feuerzangenbowle

Step One: fill a pot with mulled wine.

Step Two: suspend a cone of sugar above the pot.


Step Three: douse the sugar in something tasty and flammable, like rum.


Step Four: fire!


Step Five: watch the sugar burn, until Step Six....


...when it has almost entiredly melted down and dripped, caramelized, into the wine.


Step Seven: Enjoy!

Step Eight: Enjoy again.

Step Nine: Apply Christmas wreath to head. Dance around a little. Pour more Feuerzangenbowle. Sing off-key and loudly along to Burl Ives' "Holly Jolly Christmas."

Step Ten: Spend entire next day in your pajamas, eating Nutella straight out of the jar because getting up and making real food sounds like too much effort! ;o)

Happy Hanukkah!

Last night was the first night of Hanukkah, which means that Temple Emanu-El back in Tucson is enjoying a flurry of activity. To Rabbi and Marjorie, and all the Temple staff: I hope you had a fun and successful first-night service! Wish I could have been there to sing this year. To everyone else who lit the first candle last night: chag sameach!

Slate magazine posted a lovely series today of photos taken of Hanukkah observances over the last fifty years. Some are quite introspective; others make an impact. Have a looksee!

http://todayspictures.slate.com/20061215/

Neustadt at Christmastime

Ooh, speaking of Weihnachten: went for a lovely long walk today with the camera. Check out this Rheinland Christmas paradise! :)

(The above album can also be found under a new link to the right: "And More Pix". The pictures have finally overflowed onto another picasa page!)

Eine kleine Nachtmusik

Well, this week has just been brimming with culture! Some high, some not so high... though I suppose it all depends on your perspective. ;)

First of all, I should mention that Frau Griesemer is a champ at making sure I have access to all the yummy little cultural tidbits around Neustadt: clipping out newspaper articles on exhibitions and concerts, finagling me free tickets for various excellent performances... a couple weeks ago, it was a Klezmer concert by a world-famous Jewish music trio! That was awesome. Last night, we saw an operetta: "Madame Pompadour". If you haven't seen/heard it, I'd recommend it! Although my enjoyment was probably exclusively the doing of the fantastic cast. I've been to operas before where the players could sing... and that was pretty much it. Mom and Shauna, remember when we saw "Romeo et Juliette," and during the death scene, the two expressed their undying love for each other by standing stiffly on opposite sides of the stage and reciting their arias like dutiful human clarinets? Or Ron, remember when we saw "Carmen", and the set consisted entirely of a single chair and an abstract, sloping wall? Not this troupe! They could not only sing, they could act. They were funny, creative, engaging -- and the sets and costumes were so sumptuous that sometimes I had trouble focusing my ears on the music, my eyes were so preoccupied! And to top it all off, Frau Griesemer treated me to a glass of sparkling wine at intermission -- and as you can imagine, sparkling wine in this region is almost as good as an entire opera. All in all, 'twas a lovely evening.

...And quite different from Monday night, when Bert and I went to a metal concert! It was in Mannheim, with a band called "In Extremo" (hahaha, love that name). I'd enjoyed a couple of their songs before, and Bert had gotten me a ticket to accompany him that night with some of the other Ludwigshafen crowd; so, always open to new sounds, I went gamely. And it rocked! Their music is pretty hard, but also surprisingly melodic at times. And get this -- they have bagpipes! Three bagpipers stalk about the stage while the lead singer sings his studded dog collar off, occasionally punctuated by the Standard Bursts of Flame, Without Which No Metal Concert Would Be Complete. Actually, at some point the drummer even lit his sticks on fire, and proceeded to play almost a whole song with these fireballs on the end of his drumsticks. Awesome. Oh, but no worries, family: I think we were not only sweaty enough from dancing to be pretty flame-retardant, but we also stood near the back, anyway, 'cause Bert forgot his earplugs (though weirdly enough, I just happened to have some floating around in my purse; however, he insisted I keep them for my virgin American ears). It was really fun. The music was good, and I don't think there was a single person there who wasn't all decked out in black... though the band's reputation for using bagpipes brought a funny array of SCA-types, too. Haha! So now I can say I went to a German metal concert.

(Here are some of the girlies from Ludwigshafen, at the concert.
L to R: Anne, Nadia, Julia, me):



Ooh, and now I jusht got back from a -- hic! -- Chrishmash party with some of the teachers from shcool. It wash fun... more tomorrow! ;oP

Cookery

As a side note, cooking/baking is always fun in my apartment. My "mixing bowls" consist of various saucepans, and a plastic bucket that must have originally come with a brightly-colored sand shovel. The "cookie sheet" is that pot roast pan -- you know, the one which comes standard in every oven? -- luxuriously covered with a fine layer of brown wax paper. (Only as they do in the finest bakeries, of course.) And Nigel discovered for himself the joys of making an omelette with a wooden spatula in a non-nonstick pan. Oh yeah!

But hey, it all still works. :) And thanks to Mom's piemaking tools, Dad & Sarah's measuring cups, and Brigitte Hamann's electric mixer, my first attempt at self-made piecrusts for Thanksgiving actually came out pretty well! :)

A proud display of two rootin' tootin' all-Amurrican punkin pahs.

Ach, du lieber Dezember!

Yayyy! I love this time of year. Especially when it's in such a beautiful place... went for a long walk yesterday, and kept stopping to look around and pinch myself that I get to live here until at least next summer. It's been three months, and I still do that on a pretty regular basis!

Gosh, so much to catch up on, and so little time before I have to pack up and catch a train to Ludwigshafen (where I'm meeting Bert to drive to the Erzgebirge today). So I'll try to just hit the highlights real quick:

Thanksgiving: marvellous! Cooked a dinner on the evening of Friday the 24th with a bunch of other English teachers at the high school. My coworkers are so great. Funny, friendly, open... and brave! Mom (bless her!) had sent me a bunch of ingredients for various holiday goodies that I just can't find here in Germany, some of which being pureed canned pumpkin and pie tins. So most of the teachers were able to try pumpkin pie for the first time... a leap of faith, given that my description of it was "sweetened, spiced squash filling in a dessert crust". And then they proved themselves even more valiant when I ceremoniously removed the lid from the Watergate Salad: pistachio pudding, whipped cream, crushed pineapple, multicolored minimarshmallows, and coconut, all blended up into a radioactive green goo. Yum! Everyone at the table peered into the bowl, glanced surreptitiously at each other, and then dug right in. And happily, both desserts appeared to be quite the hit! :)

The next weekend, Nigel came to visit, and we had a nice, chill (heh heh, get it?) start to December. On Friday evening, he and Anna and I, along with Annette (another new English teacher at my school) checked out the Christmas market in Landau. Then we went to see the new James Bond; and the next day, Nigel and I hopped a train to Heidelberg to see what it has to offer during the Adventszeit. Answer: an even bigger Christmas market! We had a lovely time... strolling around in the low winter sunlight, sampling gingerbread and candied almonds... and about three cups each of various forms of Gluehwein (mulled wine). Mmm! That made for a very merry trip back on the train! :)

That night, I went to a party in Ludwigshafen with some of Bert's friends; and like everything else, it was a blast. We listened to music, made dinner, and exchanged gifts. Bert was the "Weihnachtsmann", and he even showed up in a white beard and Santa cap. At some point, he pulled his beard down to take a drink of something... and one of the other guys pretends to burst into tears, yelling, "There is no Weihnachtsmann!! It's only Bert!" Hahahaha! Oh man, I like the Ludwigshafen folks.

Oops, I gotta wrap this up. Long story short: December has been fantastic so far. :) Will take lots of pictures this weekend! Huggles aus Deutschland...

On second thought...

Well, just make a liar out of me! After that whole introvertist manifesto last night, I go around being totally chatty and sociable all day today. Hm, well, I guess, being the complicated organisms we are, you can never just pidgeon-hole people -- including yourself. (Either that, or that Myers-Briggs test was pretty accurate when it pegged me as an E/INFP, which means equally balanced between extroversion and introversion.)

Okay, how about this: a lot of the time I like to chat and hang out. But if I'm just sitting there listening rather than talking, please do forgive me, and don't take it as a sign that anything's wrong. I'm just letting my inner introvert out for some exercise. :)

INFP

Wow! This post is even longer than the last one. Should ye decide to embarke upon its rambling depths, be ye forewarn'd! ;o)

Here it be...

******

Amy found this article on introverts.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200303/rauch

Huh. And I thought I was just getting antisocial in my old age. (Same thing? ;o) )

I always thought I was an extrovert, because I really like people. I'm generally happy, friendly, and, I think, pretty open -- I mean, hey, I'm bearing my brain practically every day on these here internets! But when I think about it, I derive lots of things from socializing: pleasure, heart, learning. However, I don't derive energy from it. In fact, after a day of lots of interaction with lots of different people, I really need time to recharge my batteries. I'm not at all shy; in fact, I have no trouble at all talking to strangers. I just don't always "need" to. Sometimes after a day full of people, I just need to not talk for a while! Mom says that, during her breaks at work, she'd often just rather read a book or eat lunch with her own thoughts than sit around and chat. I certainly identify. However, unlike what the author of the article suggests, I don't (and I don't think Mom does, either) find extroverts boring or irritating -- quite the contrary! I even admire their ability to turn on a constant stream of effortless communication. But it can be frustrating how, in our society, you're expected to keep this up all the time.

I wonder if there's an assumption that being introverted means being misanthropic or unhappy? Maybe that's why people often mistake my general good nature with gregariousness -- if I'm happy or friendly, I must also be an extrovert. I wonder if this is why I sometimes feel like I disappoint my friends, because I give off the impression of needing more social interaction than I really do? Don't get me wrong, I'm no loner. Everyone needs friends. And I have some pretty cool friends. But I also don't have any problem being by myself either, and even need a pretty good measure of it in order to recharge. I've often scratched my head at the apparent need for most everyone I know to be socializing what seems like all the time. But maybe it's not them at all: I'm the weird one! According to this article, the majority of the population are extroverts: socializing is how they relax and re-energize. So what seems like "all the time" to me is pretty reasonable to everyone else.

It certainly is more practical to be wired that way. To be successful in school, your job, and relationships requires constant social interaction. It's a sign of leadership. This is what makes a person likeable and what makes them appear proactive. And because I can do this pretty well when I need to (I mean, I'm a teacher, for goodness' sake), I haven't let being introverted inhibit my success. It's just that it seems to take so much more effort for me than for others, and I really need my downtime in order to keep it up.

What gets me thinking about this is that it seems my predecessor at the school where I work was naturally very extroverted. From the sound of it, Elodie made her colleagues her life. And she had a marvellous time, and her German became perfect, and they all loved her and still miss her. I met her myself, and liked her enormously: she's funny, smart, friendly, and sincere.

But I'm slowly realizing that the other teachers expect me to be just like her. I mean, if one more person reminds me one more time about how she spent like 20 hours a day in the teachers' lounge, while giving me one more "meaningful look"...! What actually baffles me is that I do socialize with the other teachers. They're great. I lucked out in how fun and nice and interesting my coworkers are. I hang out and chat while at the school, and have gone out with them several times in the evenings and on weekends. But for one thing, they're not the only people I know here; and even if they were, do I have to spend all of my free time socializing in order to show that I like them and want to be a part of the group? I suppose so; it's part of living in an extroverted society. But compounding this is the fact that I'm also getting to know lots of other (German, I might add) people who have nothing to do with the school, and so it spreads me even thinner.

Because of this, I get the feeling that Frau Griesemer is worried about me. I've mentioned being able to talk to my family on the webcam at home, and now she seems to think that's what I do all the time, to the exclusion of getting to know my coworkers. Don't get me wrong, Frau Griesemer is fantastic. She bends over backward to make sure I'm happy and comfy and have opportunities to make the most of my time here. She even clips out newspaper articles about the region which she thinks I might find interesting, and leaves them in my box at work! But maybe this is just part of what is misunderstood about introverts? Sometimes, when I get home in the evening, I don't need to talk to anybody. I'm not sitting around bored and lonely and homesick, or holing up in my apartment and avoiding integrating into the city and the culture. In fact, a lot of my "alone time" includes exploring the city or going for long walks to check out other towns nearby. I just don't always need to be surrounded by a bunch of other people to do it.

But I can't complain. I mean, people like me and want to hang out and make sure I am enjoying myself here? How terrible! I guess it's just hard when you realize that in order to show your appreciation, you have to constantly be fighting your own nature. Sigh. Did I pick the wrong career path? Maybe I should be an arctic fisherman or something, so that in my free time I'm foaming at the mouth to have someone to talk to.

Okay, I've now spent over an hour posting on my blog. Maybe I am holing up in my apartment! ;o)

Alles nur geklaut

Well, that cinches it. November, I'm sorry, I know you're my birth-month and all, but you haven't been so very kind to me this year. I'm afraid we have to end it. Don't try to talk me out of it; I already have a date with December this Friday.

See, in order to balance the karma a little, the Powers That Be saw fit to whittle down my fabulous wealth last Sunday night. I just happened to be carrying around some extra cash; which never I do, except that Anna had paid me back for something and I just hadn't gotten around to getting to the bank to deposit it. Besides, it's surprising how often places only take cash around here: the doctor's office, most restaurants, the cell phone store where I recharge my minutes; often even train tickets can only be paid for with cash. So I really wasn't in an urgent hurry to get these 135 Euros into the bank, since having them around was turning out just to be so darned practical. Plus I liked logging into online banking, to see that my balance hadn't moved. I thought, maybe this is how I'll budget myself: take a little bit out, and see how long it can last me before I have to dip into my checking account again.

On the other hand, every time I opened my wallet, I winced a bit to see that much liquid cash. Just has never sat right. Back in Tucson, when I'd accumulate more than 50 bucks at a time, it was away to an ATM to get it somewhere safe!

Well... nothing like being proved right. I guess. At the Frankfurt airport last Sunday night, I also had another first, which was to leave my purse on a bench as I leapt for an S-Bahn. Seriously, I've never done that before! Although, to be fair, I've also never lived in a truly cold climate since I've started carrying a purse, and so what with gathering up sweater and leather jacket, you don't immediately detect that that something's missing. Until five minutes later, when you get off the S-Bahn. I ran back to every place I had been in the last half an hour, including that bench and the bathroom, but no dice. Purse gone. I started having daymares about having to replace my passport before flying home in December; about not having my housekey; having no ID, no money, no anything; about identity theives posing as an American on a visa. I mean, German beaurocracy is bad enough -- but trying to sort out an identity theft on top of it all, while trying to re-instate yourself as a legal resident?? AAAAAAA!!!

So while I was hyperventilating, the police found the purse and called me in. Amazingly, everything was still there: passport, keys, phone, chapstick, credit cards, cappuccino receipts, even the check Dad and Sarah had sent me for my birthday. Everything except the 135 Euro. The shock of having lost my purse, and then having found it again almost intact less than an hour later, only to then re-discover that I had been relieved of the small fortune I knew I shouldn't have been carrying around, was too much. I should have been thanking my lucky stars that everything else was still there, unstolen and (most likely) unphotocopied. At least, now I appreciate that. But there was this saddening feeling of realizing that some people are capable of rifling through your very personal belongings, seeing what kind of gum you chew and which scent you wear, even your name and where you're from and what you look like -- essentially be able to look you right in the printed eye, and still have no qualms about stealing your money from you. Maybe they thought I was a rich American tourist, instead of a poor foreign teaching assistant whose mom and sister paid her credit card bills last month. They probably weren't thinking that far at all. They just saw cash, took it, and didn't want to get caught with the rest. It was actually found by a maintenance guy on the same bench I left it. I suspected him, but the police pointed out that it would be pretty stupid to be the one to both steal it and turn it in, where it is then immediately noticed that money is missing. There was nothing they could do except file a police report for my "insurance company." (I guess most Germans have insurance for everything, even personal theft.) Well, I have emergency medical insurance, and that's pretty much it.

But you know what? I woke up yesterday morning and was overcome with gratitude that everything else was still there. I am out one-fifth of a month's pay, but other than that, this will have no truly lasting effects. As Mom once said: it's not that I'm lucky because nothing bad ever happens to me. Part of it is simply, on those few occasions when something bad does happen, it's never so bad as it could -- maybe even should! -- have been. So I'll just restock the rice and beans in the cupboard, cut out the morning cappuccino, and enjoy this beautiful almost-December air. It's foggy outside, and looks whiter and winterier than it has in weeks. School is going fabulously (I love my job!), and there are lots of fun things coming up in the next few days: Nigel coming to visit this weekend, a Weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas market) with some teacher friends on Friday, a party on Saturday, and maybe frying up some fajitas with the Hamanns on Sunday.

If you're family or friends reading this, I'm not writing this so that anyone will worry! There's nothing to worry about! I'm not carrying around any cash any more, my purse is all but stapled to my side, and I can still pay my rent next week. And that's really the only kind of crime around here anyway, this petty "opportunity theft". Furthermore, even that was in Frankfurt, not quaint little Neustadt. So, again, no worries! I'm fine! I'll just have to teach my purse some Taekwondo.

However, let this be a lesson to anyone who could use it! DO NOT CARRY MUCH CASH! Especially those of you in the States, for whom it's not even very necessary to do so. Heh, the cop even scratched his head when I told him how much had been in there. "Really?" he said, "Odd. Americans don't usually carry cash around." I told him he would be right... usually. Sigh. Oh well.

Oh, but speaking of German conceptions of American habits, I just realized I haven't written yet about Anna's and my funny little experience at the doctor's office! Gotta go for now, but more on that later. Coming to a blog near you!

Happy almost-December, everybody. :o) Hugs from almost-Christmas-Season Land!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMY!!!

She and Shauna are heading down Tucson way to celebrate theirs and Michael's birthdays -- and also some obscure American holiday where they eat a weird-looking bird and a pie made out of a Halloween decoration. Crazy Amis!

Wish I could be there to celebrate with you, Aimster. You'll just have to eat my portion of the turkey and 'taters and birthday cake. :) Alles Gute und alles Liebe zum Geburtstag!

Runner's high

Wanna hear something? Lean in close. Ready? Here it is:

I HAVE FOUND THE SECRET.

Shh. Don't let it out or everyone will get in my way on the sidewalk. But after much drinking and eating and companionship and other such experiments, I have found the key to happiness. The best way to combat the cold and grey is with this:

Endorphins.

That's right, natural drugs. You put in your earbuds, turn the volume up on your catalyst of choice (currently it's noisy, clamorous, get-the-blood-rushing German metal, though just the other day it was happy bouncy techno) and you take off down the street at a dead run. By the time I round the corner and head down hill forty-five minutes later, pouring sweat and pigtails bouncing against the back of my neck to the same rhythm as my feet, "Erdbeermund" is pounding in my ears and I can see over the entire valley below Hambach. I can see for miles. As far even as the slender cooling towers of Mannheim in the distance, edged right up against the Rhein river. And I take off down the hill like I'm about to fly over the valley, and grab a handful of bright red autumn leaves as I run by and let them scatter out behind me, like some kind of crazy sprinting Hansel who needs to be sure to mark her path so that, when she comes back to occupy her body, she can find her way home.

To everything, there is a season

Dad had a point once, when he said that the "official" start of every season is actually late by twenty-two days. You know how summer does not officially kick off until June 22, autumn on September 22, etc? Why not just bump it all back to the beginning of these respective months? I mean, do we really think that December 18th, for instance, is still autumn? Or that Saint Patrick's Day is in the winter? We proposed the following:

Winter: December 1.
Spring: March 1.
Summer: June 1.
Fall: September 1.

There. Isn't that how we already think of it, anyway?

What puts me thinking about this is that it seems to have suddenly switched seasons. Here in the Pfalz, they call last month "goldener Oktober." And for good reason! It was sunny and pleasantly warm, but the leaves were still bronze and copper and beautiful. There were grapevines and winefests, and the sun rose at, like, six-thirty am.

All of a sudden, it's like a curtain has dropped! Just in the last week, too. One morning, it was eight o'clock and I was walking to school in the sunshine without a jacket. The next morning, it was dark, cold, and foggy, and the sun decided to go down at what seemed like four-thirty in the afternoon. Seriously! It was dark at a quarter after five today! If I get out of school at 3:30 (typical for Mondays and Tuesdays), then I have less than two hours of daylight in which to go jogging or run errands, before it's too dark to do anything by yourself. It's been raining for a week, and the grapevines are a bunch of scraggly sticks. Hmph. Most disagreeable. I think the standard way people add some sparkle to the darkness is with Gluehwein and gingerbread, both seemingly excellent options; but frankly, I've gotten fat enough since I've been here, and so I've *just* decided to cut out the sweets and alcohol for a while. Nice going, Nikki!

On the bright (get it? :) ) side, the Christmas decorations are going up already. Now in Arizona, I would scoff at the idea of ribbons on streetlights before December 1st. There, it feels like forced "Xmas" cheer, rammed down your throat as early as possible in a thinly-veiled attempt to cash in on the pre-season buyfest; holiday-themed car commercials and garish Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer cartoons in shop windows, advertising 99 cent cheeseburgers... all made as shallow and meaningless as possible, because God forbid we actually admit there's some sort of *religious* connection to this holiday, and someone gets offended and decides not to spend their money at our chain store. Which is even more ridiculous, because no one is fooled, for example, into thinking a Christmas concert is not exactly that, just because one vague, generic, non-religious Hanukkah song about a feast of lights and a couple of "ya-ba-bim-bam"s are mixed in among the fifty other songs hailing the Blessede Birthe of Our Lorde and Savioure Jesus Christ, Hallelujah, to His Mother, the Blessed Virgin, Ave.

Here, on the other hand, there's something decidedly un-commercial about the garland-hung streets. It's like everyone just realized that it's time to drive some of this sudden darkness away with tiny points of white light, and maybe offer a bit of Lebkuchen in the bakeries, too. The decorations feel like something that is done for you, rather than to you. And maybe it's just the sixteenth-century architecture, or the fog on the ancient hills, but the way the Advent season is celebrated around here seems to recall the Yule traditions, born of ties to the land and seasons, that gave us holly decorations and lights in the first place. It's comfortable, calming, cozy; something about it speaks to the ancient part of you that remembers your ancestors huddling close together around a fire and telling stories, deriving comfort from the closeness of community against the vast dark forests around them. And yet at the same time, it is also unabashedly religious, which seems a much more honest way to celebrate the season than our American need to cover all our consumer bases. If you celebrate Christmas, then you celebrate Christmas; if you don't, no amount of calling it a "holiday" sale is going to trick you into thinking the rest of the religious majority isn't trying to foist their Xmas buyfest upon you.

All righty, well, this post is long enough. Lange Rede, kurzer Sinn: it's getting dark around here, but there are tiny white lights aplenty. :)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BRO!!!

Today is my brother's birthday! Michael, Shauna, and I have all spent the last week sharing the age of 26. Today, however, he moves on and leaves us behind to join the 27-year-olds at the grown-ups' table. Hope your birthday weekend is terrific, bro... and wish I could be there next week when Shauna and Amy come down to celebrate with you!

Love ya. :)

Nachdenken

Leipzig was... pretty cool. The part that I remember, anyway. It must have been fun, because Anna sent a bunch of pictures of me with my eyes half-closed and everyone looking like they're having a pretty good time; so I must have had a heck of a birthday. Parts I do remember include:

-how great it was to see Matt Johnson again. As we all expected, he's taken Cambridge by storm and now bends his Almighty Eye on the rest of academia and, dare I say it?, the world;

-a cool '70's-themed bar called "Flower Power", with flower-shaped tables, felt-draped ceilings and lamps, and all the best music ever made between 1960 and 1979;

-Anna doing "the Twist" in said bar, and looking like a painting all weekend as she wandered around in her blue scarf. The girl is just a dear. I'm glad I met you, Anna. :)

-Ivan "Here, Nikki, Have Another Peanut" Grubisic being the catalyst he usually is. And Anna and Jason brainstorming the best ways to bring the fresh-faced young Croatian into a life of hedonism and debauchery;

-Jason's lovely description of the joy of using a Q-tip to clean your ears;

-remembering how seeing Conny is always a breath of fresh air, and making plans to come visit her in the Erzgebirge in December;

-Bert's shocked response to Americans profaning beer with Irish Car Bombs (for the uninitiated, you drop a shot of Bailey's into a Guiness and chug it before the cream curdles. The aftertaste is delicious -- after you've gulped for air, of course). I think it was something like, "Ach, nein!" followed by looking at me with knitted eyebrows as I wiped my lips, and scolding, "Aber Frauen machen das nicht!"

-Nigel just being... Nigel. Thanks, Nigel. :)

-And, well, to be frank, a lot of unspoken thoughts on the last time I was in Leipzig. I didn't really think about it when we planned to make this trip in the first place, but the city has a lot of memories associated with it that made it hard to be there without brooding a lot of the time. For anyone to whom I might have appeared rather distant: sorry. That's much of the reason why I spent most of the weekend with either a beer or a Gluehwein in hand. Thank you for coming up, however, and making it a trip to (un)remember.






And to the source of the memories:
It's not the same city without you.

Wandertag

We're off to Leipzig today for the weekend! Oh boy!

I got up at 7 this morning with a plan: clean, pack, shower, and prepare a lesson before leaving for school at 10.45, so that I could teach at 11.30; school over by 2.45; rush to Hauptbahnhof to catch the train at 3.30... all of which would of course necessitate bringing my weekend things to school with me, since the train station sits right between school and home. This I did. Anna had given me one of those awesome hiking-type backpacks, with hip and shoulder straps and everything; it's the size of a small duffel, and donning it with its many pulleys and levers sort of turns you into a backpack-human hybrid. So, thus clad, I lumbered out the door and began the 1.5-mile walk to school.

Maybe a third of the way there, it starts raining. I unpack myself out of the contraption, dig out an umbrella, foist everything back on, and continue on my way, holding the umbrella so low over my head that I must have looked like some strange humpbacked animal with a flat, green canvas head. The rain picks up; the rain starts pouring. I navigate down the million stairs that are the "Treppenweg" down the hill from my house; and by the time I've gotten to the bottom, my pants are soaked up to the knee and the rain is bouncing back up from the pavement so that it feels like it's coming from all directions. The Haupstrasse is a cobblestoned muck. Slosh all the way to school... finally emerge from the storm into the entryway, and shake out my mostly ineffectual umbrella.

Boy, it's quiet here. Well, I suppose it is the middle of a class period. Shoes squeak all the way up the stairs to the teachers' lounge. Open the door. Lights off, quiet. "Hallo...?" Nobody. Go to secretary, where there is actually a light on. "Um... good morning... did I miss something? Where is everybody?"

I should point out that the secretary always seems exasperated with me. To my credit at least, this is the first really dumb thing I've done since I arrived here; but I've still always gotten the sense she rolls her eyes every time after I leave her office, even if the only reason I entered in the first place was to pick up paperwork. But this time it was real: "Today is Wandertag (hiking day). It is CLEARLY MARKED on that tiny bulletin board, underneath the other bulletin board, in the paper-and-bulletin-board-covered corner of the teachers' lounge. (Eyeroll.) Good day, Frau Eggers."

I was sorely tempted to shake my droplet-covered umbrella at her, but instead I turned around, buckled The Contraption back onto my rain-and-sweat-soaked back, and went back outside. The rain had stopped! In fact, the sun was bright and glittery. Very bright and glittery. Noonday sunlight was reflecting off wet surfaces everywhere, and I ended up stripping off every layer but my undershirt as I huffed and puffed my way back up the billion stairs and the uphill march home.

Wandertag, indeed!

In the cold November rain

Well hey again, Ye Olde Interweb Worlde! Gosh, long time no post... sorry 'bout that... even though there be much a-goin' on here, yarr. Alas, as Amy points out, you get all these ideas when you're nowhere near your computer; but then there appears to be some kind of inverse relationship between how much contact is currently being exerted upon your fingertips by your keyboard, and the quality & quantity of aforementioned thoughts sloshing around between your ears. So how about I just start somewhere, and shake some of these incoherent thoughts out onto the keyboard, and see what comes up.

Lessee... Anna's buddy Mark from the States visited last weekend, and we had a grand old time. He was actually in England for a friend's wedding, and so just hopped across the creek to come see us Teutons on the continent, in exchange for a promise by Anna to pour lots of beer down his throat. And so we did! Thursday night, we sat around at a cozy little Gaststaette somewhere on the Weinstrasse and got thoroughly toasted. Friday, we wandered around Heidelberg, and then concocted some Gluehwein -- hot mulled red wine, with orange juice and sugar and spices, mmm! -- to ward off the cold evening. (Anna, I will never forget The Face!!) Sunday, we had the honor of being the only guests at this funny little medieval-themed pub downtown, where we polished off two liters of honey mead (mmm, mead...), strawberry wine, and blueberry wine. There's been quite a bit of alcohol flowing these last few days! No wonder I'm putting on weight, even though we must walk like ten miles a day!

Speaking of warm beverages, though, it's amazing how fast it turned cold here! I mean, richtig *kalt*. (For us Arizonans, at least... ;) ) Yesterday, I wore some thigh-high socks that Shauna sent from Seattle under my jeans, an undershirt, a sweater, another heavier sweater on top, gloves, a scarf, a wool coat, knee-high leather boots... and was still a weeeee bit chilly. Didn't help that it's kind of a wet cold around here... and they say this is the warmest area of Germany. Yikes! Though Nico and Ivan both rang to report of snow in Muenchen, sigh. Alas, Anna and I were unable to hold up our end of the pact to come down and roll in it. Well, it'll probably be a long winter. :)

Which reminds me! My birthday is this Friday. It's strange to type that: "my" birthday. Weird. Let's try this again: *our* birthday is on Friday. :) And since any occasion is an excuse to travel and meet up with other friends here in Europe, we're all meeting up in Leipzig! Yay! A city close to me heart. :) Even Matt Johnson is flying in. I'm so excited to see him! We will take tons of pictures. But anyway, so I've booked a hostel for 8 for Friday and Saturday nights, and we'll all meet up Friday evening somewhere (maybe Auerbachskeller, though that's kind of an expensive restaurant) and then play, play, play until tottering home Sunday afternoon. I'm so happy that everybody is willing to spend the time, money, and effort to come join us... Anna, Conny, Nigel, Ivan, Nico, Matt, and probably Bert, too. Heck, if I'm going to turn 26, I'm going to do it in a city that I remember fondly as a place of happy irresponsibility. :)

Oh, yeah, and work is going great... I finally put together a specific schedule, and got all the "good" classes to teach for the rest of this semester! Mostly the somewhat older ones, whose English is good enough to hold more meaningful discussions, and with whom it therefore makes more sense to talk about cultural matters with a native speaker (yours truly). And the other teachers continue to be fun and friendly, and constantly invite me to go do stuff with them. We're even all planning on cooking Thanksgiving dinner together! And sometime this week I'm supposed to catch up with a bunch of them for drinks... yeah, more alcohol. Well, I *am* engaged in cultural studies, you know. ;)

Allrighty, jetzt an die Arbeit. Hugs to all!

New pictures

Hallo alle! Just posted a new album from Nigel's visit. We walked down to a Federweissenfest in the little town of Diedesfeld last Saturday (the 21st), and it was very autumny and picturesque. Check it out! :)

Ciao, bella!

Wow, so much to update! Where to begin?? How about with Firenze...

In short, Italy was fantastico!! As the galleries would surely agree, pictures say a mille words. So instead of outlining every detail of our adventure here, I shall merely direct the Gentle Reader to the "Firenze" album in the Nix Pix link to the right...

A brief overview, though: Anna and I, being on Fall Break, found some ueber-cheap tickets on RyanAir from Baden-Baden to Pisa. Seriously, the whole trip, there and back, was 50 Euro! So we spent Sunday night through Wednesday afternoon in Florence, enjoying amazing food and cappuccini, exploring the Palazzo Pitti, climbing the cathedral, taking pictures off the Ponte Vecchio, roaming around the Chiesa Santo Spirito, and numerous gardens and shops and cafes. They were two and a half very laid-back days of wandering, while I attempted to exhume my rusty Italian from its linguistic crypt. (The Central Market in Florence, by the way, is great. It's filled with all kinds of goodies: silks and leather and jewelry and pottery and food; and the best part is, all prices are haggle-able. An excellent spot for some Christmas shopping! ;) )

Unfortunately, the hostel where we stayed -- beautiful and bemarbled as it was -- sat right on the side of what has to have been the noisiest street in the city. There were a couple of restaurants there, one of which was right below us; and so the entire night, it sounded like bulldozers were pushing piles of glass up and down the street while sirens from the nearby police station wailed out every thousandth of a second. Well, at least it wasn't crime-ridden! But as a result, Anna and I arrived back in Neustadt happy, but exhausted. It didn't help that I must have had a bad panino or something, 'cause I ended up with a case of Cosimo Medici's Revenge.

Luckily for Nigel, he got to land right in the middle of our hacking, snorting, hoonking mess for a lovely laid-back visit of clutching stomachs and complaining of our exhaustion. He was a really good sport about it, though: he arrived on Thursday afternoon from Fribourg, where he's doing an exchange year; and we spent the weekend eating, drinking a little wine, and wandering around Neustadt and its adorable neighboring village, Diedesfeld. It was really nice (although I think Nigel would make even going to the DMV fun!). On Sunday, the three of us hopped a train to Karlsruhe, and enjoyed a sweet, foamy Mass of Hefeweizen in a Biergarten and a Spaghetti Eis downtown, before we all headed back to our respective towns.

Oh! Speaking of drinking wine! Ivan and Nico repaid our Munich trip with a little visit of their own, the weekend before Anna and I took off for Italia. They arrived on Friday, and the three of us got half-crocked over a deliciously crispy pizza at a place run by (who else?) Italians in the Innenstadt. Two bottles of Pinot Grigio between three people makes for a very happy walk home, and we spent the rest of Friday night hanging out, listening to music, and polishing off three more bottles of the Rheinland's finest. It's odd to wake up the next morning in your jeans and contacts and not even remember lying down! Not to mention that Ivan, accustomed to Bavarian beer as he is, had no head for red wine and wisely opted to relieve his stomach of the majority of its burden before too much had been digested. Nico, only slightly less crocked, then also had the courtesy to remove his compatriot's wine-bedecked pants, rinse them out, and hang them out the kitchen window to dry. (My apartment, alas, has no dryer. But I'll see if I can find the pictures of Ivan's jeans steaming in the oven and post them online!)

In short, a good time was had by all. The next morning, Saturday (the day before Anna and I flew to Florence), Nico and I left Ivan zonked out while we tottered down to the trainstation to pick up Anna, jetlagged and sick, from her trip to Atlanta for a friend's wedding. Bleary red eyes met bleary red eyes, and Anna had soon joined Ivan in sawing logs. That afternoon, we poked around the Innenstadt in the daylight and got a coffee, and then the four of us sentenced our stomachs to a winetasting on the Weinstrasse. It was delicious! Even hungover! Everybody bought at least two bottles of wine. After that, Nico threw together a fantastic pasta & eggplant dish and foccaccia pizzas, and then we all trooped off to Mannheim to visit our buddy from the UofA, Jason. Then it was back to Neustadt for some much-desired zz's before going our separate ways late Sunday morning: the boys back to Munich, Anna and I to Florence.

So! That's what I've been up to all this time! How is everybody else out there? :)

Misadventures in soup

Ah, the first day back at school is a rainy one! The trees are bronze-colored and dripping brightly; a soft breeze stirs the autumn paradise and puts an assistant teacher in the mood to make some of that organic pumpkin soup that Shauna so kindly stocked in her cupboard.

Step One: Find the soup. It's in a little packet somewhere... under these half-finished bags of pasta? Maybe it's behind this empty Weetabix box. (What's that doing still in the cupboard?) Dang these German soups in their little packets. Maybe it slid between these bags of oatmeal...

Step Two: Add water. Easy! Pour a carefully-measured amount into pot and set on stove to heat. This is taking a while... lemme turn the heat up... think I'll check email while I wait.

Step Three: Suddenly remember boiling water, which is now merrily humidifying an apartment that already tends toward the damp. Much of it has boiled away; add more to make up for it.

Step Four: Dump in contents of packet. The second ingredient being dried milk, said contents quickly congeal. Look at directions again. Ohhh, is that how you say "lukewarm" in German?

Step Five: Industriously mash congealed orange lumps with fork. They don't dissolve; but they do become smaller and more numerous. If it's going to be lumpy, might as well add some vegetables.

Step Six: Scrape out random veggies from fridge drawer, hack up, plop in soup. Soup retaliates by backsplashing hotly.

Step Seven: Stick splashed fingers into mouth. Pick up glass cutting board by handle so as to rinse in sink. Handle promptly falls off. Glass cutting board barely avoids hitting tiled floor by hitting knees and shins instead. Feebly replace lid on pot so that carrots may cook.

Step Eight: Soup boils over. Orange encrustment of stovetop quickly ensues. Curse roundly.

Step Nine: Carrots are done! Ladle steaming pumpkiny goodness into bowl. Pick up bowl, which sloshes over to administer boiling liquid to previously-splashed hand. Teach Hamann family new American curse words through their floorboards.

Step Ten: Eat vengefully. Mm mm, nothing like that autumn magic!

Neustadt: a little about the town

It occurs to me that, just because German is the focus of my little universe, there just might be a slim chance that this doesn't hold true for everyone. (Even despite the lure of delicious beer and the promise of a glamorous waitressing job for those who study languages.) So! A little note on the name of the town, to calm those long nights everyone has doubtlessly spent wondering about it:

Neustadt an der Weinstrasse ("Noy-shtot on dehr Vine-shtrah-seh") literally means, "New Town on the Wine Road." Which is kinda funny, since Neustadt was officially founded in the early 1200's; but I suppose at the time, it was newer than the surrounding villages. :) The entire region around here is referred to as the Pfalz ("pfahlts" -- yep, you actually say the p before the f!), and, when not laid with vineyards, is thickly covered by nationally-protected forest. Hence the name of the state, "Rheinland-Pfalz": located in the middle of far-western Germany, up against the French border, this state encompasses both the Pfalz and a lot of the Rhein river valley. Historically speaking, it's been a much-fought-over area: Louis the XIV once set fire to the entire Pfalz to keep Bavaria from getting her hands on it. Only one town was spared: Neustadt. Everything else had to be rebuilt. So perhaps the city deserves its name, after all...

Neustadt is often referred to as the capital of German winecountry. It sits in the middle of a cluster of other cute, wine-oriented towns that also have their own festivals; but, being the biggest, Neustadt is the hub around which most activity rotates. The town is self-consciously aware of its own beauty: the five-hundred-year-old Fachwerk (wood beam facade work) is carefully preserved and painted, and the narrow, cobblestone streets are not only sparkling clean, but overarched with fluffy grapevines, twinkling lights, and, downtown, streamers of German and French flags. The historic German Wine Road (the Weinstrasse -- "vine-shtra-seh") runs right through the middle of Neustadt, and is lined with little shops and restaurants that serve their own wine, made from grapes grown right in the fields which lie mere meters away.

It's absolutely enchanting. Wanna come visit? :)

Italy and onion pie

Howdy out there! Just wanted to let y'all know that there might not be much new here until next week, when Anna and I get back from... dun da daaaaa... ITALY! Yeah! We found ueber-cheap tickets to Florence from Baden-Baden, so we thought we'd spend a couple of days exploring museums and lying on the beach. Sigh... it's terrible, trying to find ways to fill your time during a Fall Break. But I guess we'll manage!

(Gosh, what I am going to do when I actually have to start working again??)

We don't actually leave until Sunday afternoon, but tomorrow (Friday) Ivan and Nico are coming up from Munich to check out the Pfalz. The enchantment! The wonders! I'm excited, but I hope they don't mind that it's a real change from big-city Muenchen... well, I'll probably keep so much wine in them that, should they actually have any memory of the trip afterward, then that will be a sure sign of having missed the opportunity to fit in one more glass of ambrosiac, jewel-colored fluid.

Speaking of company, I finally met Conny's cousin yesterday! They're actually second cousins; but his name's Bert, and he lives/works in Ludwigshafen, which is about a 20-minute drive from Neustadt. We'd been meaning to get in touch this whole last month, and what with all this wild-and-craziness, I just never quite found the opportunity. So finally yesterday, we met up at Cafe Bassler in the Innenstadt (the oldest cafe in town, I might add!), from which we promptly drove to a winery in Hambach and sampled what they had to offer. Conny's right, Bert is a super-nice guy. He pretty much went out of his way to show me around some of the other Weindoerfer in the area; which are too far to walk to without making it a major expedition, but I just haven't taken the time to figure out the bus system, yet. So we visited Bad Duerkheim, a cute little town all lit up at night, and tried the Zwiebelkuchen (onion pie -- better than it sounds! downright delicious!) in a restaurant that's built inside an enormous wine barrel. Conny, I meant to take a picture for you; I'll have to do that next time! :)

Okay, gotta get this place cleaned up a bit for Besuch tomorrow. Hope all's well out there in Interwebland! ;)

updated Wohnung pics...

Hey all! Just took some better/cuter/tidier (ahem) pictures of my apartment, including a couple views of the outside. For the supremely interested, the link is on the right... ("Nix Pix"; the album is called "Wohnung")

Sunday, lovely Sundaaayy

Did I mention I feel more or less adopted?

Yesterday, after having been sick for a couple days, I was getting a bit stir-crazy and decided I wanted to go find a walking path or something. So, just as I'd made up my mind to do so, the bell rings: dingadingding! It's Brigitte, in her hiking gear! "We're leaving in 45 minutes," she says. "Are you coming?" Heck yes! I threw on my new hiking boots (ten bucks at a used clothing store in Tucson, yeah!), tossed some apples and a bottle of water in a backpack, ran upstairs, and ended up spending a beautiful bright autumn Sunday wandering through forested hills with the most fun family: Brigitte, of course; her husband, Gert, an Informatiker (systems analyst/software engineer); their son, Andreas, who's 26 and studying Physics at the University of Karlsruhe; and his girlfriend, Nina, who's also 26 and at the Uni Karlsruhe.

We got some great views of the Hambach castle from above and the wide lands beyond, dotted with red-roofed patches where Neustadt and little towns like Speyer and Ludwigshafen lay.

At the top of the hill, our path ended at the Hohe Loog, a little cabinlike restaurant where everyone sits at heavy dark-wood benches and can enjoy a half-liter of Neuer Wein in the sunshine, along with their Bratwurst or Leberknoedel with Sauerkraut.

The entrance is decorated with the "highest grapevine in Germany", elevation-wise:

Outside the Hohe Loog is a great view, with a cool plaque showing the directions and distances to a myriad of different cities in relation to the hilltop:

After we polished off our plates, Gert pulled out a Swiss Army flask and poured raspberry Schnapps all around! Mmm! This of course made for an even merrier hike back down the mountain, after which we all bundled over to Nina's mom's house for coffee, cake, and tea.

The whole day was just as cozy as could be, a perfect Sunday: great company, great conversation, great scenery & atmosphere. And all quite unexpected on my part, too, which made it even more fun! Thank you, Hamanns!!

Slowly realizing there just may not BE another shoe...

I don't know how it is that I lead such a bizarrely charmed life. But honestly, the longer I live, the more I realize that I somehow never fail to fall ass-backwards into luck and happiness. Seriously, I must have done something awesome in a past life.

To start with, Fulbright could have placed me in, I dunno, Mannheim or something. Nothing against Mannheim; but as beautiful as Germany is, the boringer cities are definitely out there: cement-covered, industry-oriented... or I could have found myself in, say, some small coal mining town like that place in "Schultze Gets the Blues". But do I?

Nope! I end up in Neustadt an der frigging Weinstrasse. A place that is not only perfectly situated (France, Austria, Switzerland, and Bavaria, not to mention several major cities and airports, are all within a few hours' travel), but is also 1) in a familiar area (the Pfalz); 2) head-scratchingly, hard-to-believe-it's-real beautiful; 3) the wine capital of Germany, for god's sake!; 4) in the middle of a protected national forest; 5) full of interesting history; and 6) populated with the highest concentration of sweet people I've ever encountered.

And then, as if simply being here weren't enough, I find the perfect living arrangements. I remember thinking, before I left, that I'd maybe like to live with a family -- but on the other hand, would I miss having my own space? Well, impossibly, I managed to end up with both! And as usual, it was just handed to me: a cute little self-sufficient guest apartment in Hambach, which is a village in the hills around Neustadt, covered with vineyards, scenic views, and expensive houses. In fact, the place is only one street over from the Weinstrasse! But it's still close enough to the gorgeously cobblestoned downtown and the school to be able to walk there; and the rent is surprisingly reasonable. Not to mention that the apartment is, thanks to its inestimable landfamily, completely furnished -- right down to the carrot peeler and dish-drying rack!

But of course that couldn't be all of it. The best part is actually said landfamily: the Hamanns. My apartment is a guest suite attached to their house, and they are just wonderful people. Brigitte, my landlady, not only went out of her way to make Shauna and me feel at home from the first day -- popping by to make sure we had enough of everything, taking us around the neighborhood to show us bus stops and grocery stores, etc. -- she's just personally the sweetest lady. On the Thursday that Shauna left, I was feeling terrible; and just when I kinda hit a low point, Brigitte shows up out of the blue, gives me a hug, and takes me upstairs to feed me sherry and chocolates and peppermint tea! And the whole family is like this! They're happy, funny, intelligent, comfortable to be around, and have just kind of taken me in. I really wish I could do something for them, too, but what? They'll just all have to come to Arizona some time and I can try to start to return the favor. :)

So anyway, I guess the word is just "blessed". I am bewilderingly blessed. How? Why? Don't really know. But I think I'm just going to stop questioning it -- or doubting it, or waiting for the other shoe to drop. That attitude just spoils the gift. So instead, I am going to wallow in it; to roll around in my undeserved fortune and laugh like a crazy person and be glad my name somehow ended up on the cosmic "To Be Lavished With Gifts" list.





(...and say to the wide Universe: thank you.)

A walk down the Weinstrasse

Just posted some new pics of the Deutsche Weinstrasse (wine road)! So much Octobery beauty. Check 'em out in the link to the right! :)

coziness...

did I mention I love my Wohnung? It's rainy and cool here... and warm radiator + fresh breeze + cup of homemade mocha + bundly sweater = must get sick more often!

A legal (if germy) resident!

Coooool! I finally picked up my passport and visa from the Auslaenderamt, and hadn't realized that the visa is actually pasted inside the 'port. It looks really sharp -- first of all 'cause it's pretty, all pink and green with a clean white picture, and also, it just looks so cool to not only have a stamp in Ye Olde Passeport, but an actual visa to live in another country! Hee hee. Maybe I just romanticize the "Ferne." Eichendorff and I might have got on swimmingly!

(btw, the numbers and stuff have been scribbled out, thanks to image editing. :) Back, identity thieves!)



So, things is goin' swimmingly around here. Er, actually, well... hm. Found out on Monday that the school thought I had agreed to sub for both of the weeks Herr Bachmann is gone, ew. But, looking back, I should have explicitly said, "this week, but not next week," so I was kinda at Schuld for that. Plus I don't have a set schedule yet, and we had a day off on Tuesday, and it's the last week before the fall break anyway, so there was no reason not to do it. So I just sighed and went, "okay."

However, I couldn't do it Monday because, thinking I'd be open that week, I'd already arranged to visit two other classes. Tuesday was a day off, so I told them I'd happily sub from Wednesday to Friday (but put my foot down at babysitting that obnoxious 9b class again! Blaugh!). After all, I am new around there, and wanted to make a good impression. I wanted to show that I can step in when they need me. So I subbed yesterday. The 6th graders were being rambunctious, so at some point I actually had to give them a little scolding: "I am not an official substitute teacher, you know; I am only here out of choice. If you guys keep acting that way, I won't want to come back and you'll just have a regular teacher next time." (But of course I fully intended to come back.)

Well... all this leads up to the fact that, last night, I actually did come down with a sudden bug or something! Gaah! My body is definitely not being a good sport about the lack of sleep and proper nutrition, and the travel and stress. Jeez! Bodies! But anyway, had a bit of a fever last night... I tried to sleep on it and see if it would go away, but nope. I had to call the office this morning and sheepishly tell them that I couldn't come in today. Well, this is just great! I mean, no one's going to believe me. Here's the new assistant, who nobody really knows that well, who didn't want to substitute teach in the first place, who even wagged a finger at one class and said, "I might not come back tomorrow" -- not to mention that it's the second-to-last day before a two-week Fall Break! -- and now she's calling in "sick." Suuuuuure. They're all just going to think I'm a malingerer! Fantastic, just the impression I wanted to give to my new school. Well, it can't be helped. I guess I could have just taken a bus in and shown that I really was sick; but I'm already feeling better this afternoon, so maybe I'll totter in tomorrow just to try to be a good sport.

Munich and Oktoberfest

3. Oktober

Hey all! Well, wouldn't you know it.... ready? here it comes.... today is actually the first day in over a month where.... (gasp!) I have NO PLANS!

Huzzah!!! (crowds swing handkerchiefs and throw hats)

Don't get me wrong, this last month has been amazing. But oh my goodness, it has also been, just... exhausting! Every day there was some reason to set the alarm clock, even on weekends. I was beginning to find myself running on fumes... I posted pictures from Anna's and my weekend in München yesterday, and boy, looking at those pics, I was really starting to get a bit haggard! But today is the nationally observed Wiedervereinigung (German Re-Unification), and so there's no school. And since it's the middle of the week, there is no traveling on the docket; and consequently, here it is one in the afternoon, and the only thing I've accomplished is to get up late, make tea, IM with Michael, go back to bed, wake up again at 12.30, and make some chicken soup and then more tea as I listen to the first rainy day of the season outside. Oh! And the second time I woke up, I woke up to the sound of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” flowing down from the Hamanns upstairs – Brigitte was watching a reunification celebration/address on TV, and so I got the pleasure of starting the day with the most beautiful music ever written. Ahhhhh! Take that, dark circles! (Not that I don't have *tons* that I should be doing today, but I can just do 'em all on my own schedule. :) )

But wow, what a weekend! Last Friday, Anna came up to Neustadt and we took a night-tour of the town in all its beautiful lantern-lit glory. Every day I'm here I fall more and more in love with this place! The tour was led by a very enthusiastic, dramatic guide in period clothing, and he took us around to all the major historical points of interest in the lovely Innenstadt. Some of the houses around here are 700 years old! He showed us buildings, notches in walls and engravings in arches, and even a couple of murals which I'd never noticed (or just never thought about) as I'd walked by, and told us the fascinating stories of their origins, and all about daily life of hundreds of years ago and major historical events that are now imprinted in the city all around us. Every corner and stone in this town is just singing with history! We walked down these narrow cobblestone streets, glowing golden and dim in the light of old-fashioned lanterns, closely flanked by asymmetrical Fachwerk buildings with light peeping from behind their shutters, all absolutely covered in bushy grapevines, while the dark sky above was twinkling with stars... and I had to just stop and touch a wall to make sure everything was real. I must have been wandering around with my mouth hanging open. It was... unbelievable. I can't believe my luck at having landed in such a magical place.

So anyway! That was over at about 9 pm, and on the way home, Anna and I passed through the Weinlesefest, the first night of a two-week-long Winecountry carnival held in the plaza outside of the Hauptbahnhof (main train station). It's fun, but not as neat as the preliminary celebrations we went to when Steve and Shauna were here. This is a bit more carnival-like, and so it looks pretty from afar but is just a bunch of bright lights and crowds up close. However, we did think it would be cool to stick around for the crowning of the Pfälzische Weinkönigin (Wine-Queen of the Pfalz); but what with having to get up at six the next morning, and having been running off an average of 5 hours of sleep per night for the entire previous week, we decided just to head home. It was a good thing, too, 'cause by the time we were actually asleep it was well past 11!

We got up, as planned, at six the next morning, and caught our train to München right on time. ICE's are so fast and comfy! We got there in about 3.5 hours! (And I should mention that we happened to sit across from Adonis on the train. He was an engineering student at the Universität Karlsruhe, and reading a biography of Einstein while he traveled home to the Bodensee. I didn't know Adonis was from the Bodensee!)

The Munich train station was packed! It was the last weekend of Oktoberfest, and so everyone was coming in and no one was leaving. A couple buddies of mine from Arizona are both doing an exchange year in Munich, and so it was one of them – Nico Cuevas – who picked us up at the Hauptbahnhof. He was such a great host! Nico is awesome; he was actually a former German 101 student who just kind of charmed the whole German department and became sort of our department pet. He's very much the gentleman and also a real riot to hang out with. He had gone to Ikea the day before to buy a floor mattress and some extra sheets, and he slept there while Anna and I yin-yanged on the bed. THANK YOU NICO!!!

But I'm getting ahead of myself – first, we dropped our stuff off at his dorm room (in a lovely part of the city) and then went to the main square, the Marienplatz, to rustle us up some Essen. Just like the train station, the Marienplatz was absolutely stuffed with people. We waited in quite a line to get a Bratwurst, Brezel, and Paulaner Hefeweizen (ahhh!), and then, finding no place to sit, we ate our lunch perched on some dollies lined up outside one of the shops. Did I mention the city was packed?? Later that night, we even saw heaps of drunken Oktoberfest celebrators sleeping on the ground, on sidewalks, in the train station, etc. – and no policeman seemed to bat an eye. The whole city seems pretty tolerant in general of the Oktoberfest crowds.

After lunch, Anna and I were just falling over from sleepiness, so Nico set us up all comfy to take a nap and then went and ran some errands while we snoozed for a good hour and a half. I mean, talk about sweet – here we were, coming all the way into Munich to hang out with him, and then we wanted to just crash in the middle of the day. But he warned us that we'd probably be out all night, and so a nap would be a very good investment. Plus he's a big supporter of the siesta, anyway – after all, the kid is from Hermosillo, Sonora! ;)

After a nap, we all munched on some Nutella and apples (mmm!) and got ready to go out. Nico, being part Italian, had just spent six weeks running around Italy, and so his Italian is terrific. (I should mention, the guys speaks just about four languages! Spanish and English like native; Italian almost fluently; and his German is getting better by the day!) He's also ultra-gregarious, and so of course he ended up getting into a conversation with a couple of young Italians on the train to the beerhall. They exchanged numbers and promised to meet up with us later (they were new in town; just here for the Oktoberfest and were looking for something to do). But first, we met up with Ivan, my other buddy from Arizona, at a tavern outside his dorm, and he introduced us to a heap of other cool exchange students – from France, Sweden, the States, you name it. One guy, Spencer, is working on his BA at the University of Washington in Seattle! Cool! He's also a really neat guy; one of those people you just get a good vibe from. We had invited Nico and Ivan to come visit us in the Rheinland sometime, and it’d be great if Spencer came up, too.

So anyway, the group of us got some fries and Hefeweizen at this tavern, and then went downtown to the Augustiner Bierhalle to meet up with a whole crowd of other students. The Italians joined us, too, and I got to have my first Bayrischer Mass. But you know, Bavarian beer is actually pretty weak – no wonder they can drink it in liters! The best part, though, was just hanging out with really fun people. I forgot how much I liked Nico's and Ivan's company, and it was great to meet so many others from a whole bunch of different countries. Anna and I had a blast. At some point, we all went to go find some dancing at a club in another area of town, and danced until what must have been 4 in the morning. At this point, I was just done for, and was falling asleep on Anna's shoulder on the train on the way home. We were probably in bed by 5 am, and slept like the dead until noon the next day.

After that, greasy and hungover, but game, we set off to see what Oktoberfest was all about. And you know... it was neat, and fun to see it "in the flesh" (so to speak), but it was so extremely crowded that it was kind of off-putting. It was awesome to see tons of people actually wearing the Lederhosen and Dirndl, though – young people, too, not just traditional older folks, the way you only really see "western wear" on the older generation in Tucson. But... eh! We had more fun at the beerhall and club the night before. Adonis on the train was right: Oktoberfest is pretty commercialized. I bet it would have been a lot of fun regardless, but we were there on the very last weekend, and there was no way we were going to get a table. So we just took pictures, checked it off our mental tourbooks, and headed for the Hauptbahnhof and home.

We didn't actually get home until well after 9 pm, though, and since Anna and I always have such a good time hanging out, even exhausted as we were, we still stayed up chatting and posting pictures until well after midnight. Then we had to get up at 5.30 the next morning for her to get back to Landau and teach, and for me to make my (always forgotten!) lesson plans, and so by the time I got home from school on Monday, I was just good for nothing. I tried to do a little housework and other chores, and then just fell into bed early.

So, hey! I guess that's our weekend adventure! There are pictures on picasaweb, all organized and labeled... check 'em out! :) In the meantime, our Herbstferien (fall break) starts this upcoming Saturday and goes until the 22nd, so I'm going to start checking out things to do during that time. Anna will be at a wedding until October 15th, but maybe after that, we'll go to Italy for a couple days! You can get really cheap plane tickets on Ryan Air -- something like 20 Euros apiece, round trip. But the expensive thing will be four or five nights in a hostel, so we're going to try to keep it short. (Short -- unlike this post!) Maybe I’ll visit Matt Johnson in Cambridge before that – I should give him a call!

Okay, enough rambling. Hope Oktober is treating everyone right, out there!

Slowly settling in

Thursday, 21. September

Hark, ye! For I bear great tidings!

Behold --

WE HAVE INTERNET AT HOME!

Yea verily, after nearly three weeks of disconnect, of loathesome internet cafes and unstable connections... we finally have cable!!! Huzzah! The guy was here for nearly three hours setting it up, but now everything is cleaned up and put away and I'm sitting here with my new laptop typing away with my new cable connection in my new apartment, and ohboyohboyohboy. Now we can finally set up a blog! I can send email whenever! We can webcam!!! *jumps up and down*

...And now Shauna just brought in the most delicious grilled ham-and-cheese-on-rye EVER, and so all is right in the world again. Ahhh... Ze life, she ees good.

Seriously, things are just terrific around here. The teaching is going fantastic -- one of the teachers is even gonna be gone next week, so I get to take over all ten of his ninth-grade lessons! The cool thing about my whole job is, I get to do whatever I want with them. Really, I get the best deal of anybody: since I'm not allowed to give out grades or teach formal stuff (like grammar), the students actually like when I visit. It's so easy: no grading, no frustrating grammar lessons or homework; just sail in like the English Class Savior and do fun stuff with them.

Yesterday for instance, I visited an eighth-grade class and gave them the text to a song ("Amarillo by Morning", have you heard of it?), which we read and discussed. It's your very typical country song -- one of the lines even goes, "I lost my saddle in Houston/Broke my leg in Santa Fe/Lost my wife and a girlfriend/Somewhere along the way." Ha ha! So country! But they were entralled, and I asked focus questions that required them to guess a little at the speaker and his situation. And they were so into it! A lot of them had some pretty profound ideas, too. Funnily enough, I kinda got the feeling that they're not asked very often to speculate or to give their own opinions; yet they really seemed to enjoy doing so, and took the task quite seriously. Then I played the song for them, and they really enjoyed it, commenting on how lonely the fiddle sounds and how different the singer's accent is from the British English they learn in school. After that, I passed out the text for this really current hip-hop song, "S.O.S.", and the students practically jumped out of their chairs with excitement when they saw which song it was. I taught them the phrase "to have a crush on someone", and teased some of the boys while we guessed at why the speaker is "going crazy." The whole time, they found every little thing funny and were all eagerly waving their hands in the air to be called on. I mean, imagine that! Can you possibly think of a more ideal teaching experience? The bell rang just as the song ended, and the kids all clustered around me and went, "Kommen Sie wieder?" "Wann?" "Was machen wir nächstes Mal?" and even asked if I could come chaperone their next field trip. Their regular teacher sat in the back and observed the whole time, and she told me afterward that, when the bell rang, a couple of the students even turned around and asked her, "Do we have to go on break?" Wha...? Whoa! Gosh, I hope everything goes this well in the future!

So, now I just got back from a grocery run with my super-nice landlady, Brigitte. My host teacher's name is also Brigitte, aka "Frau Griesemer." They're both terribly sweet – Brigitte Griesemer stops by on a occasion just to see how we're doing, to see if we need anything, etc. Last time she came by, she brought us a bottle of the Rhein wine that we had so enjoyed that first afternoon at her place, and then, upon hearing that the washer in my apartment is broken and can't get fixed until sometime next week, she gallantly scooped up a bunch of laundry and took it home with her! Whoa! And my landlady is awesome; she is funny and talkative, and has brought us extra towels, more dishes & silverware, and once even an extra set of bedclothes & cushions for when Steve came by for a visit. She also regularly piles me into the car so that we can go to Globus, this huge grocery store/Target-like place, where we can get household stuff and heavier items that we don't want to have to carry home from the nearer, smaller grocery store in the neighborhood. How can I repay these two?? I would like to bake them some American goodies or something -- rice krispies treats, brownies, chocolate chip cookies, apple pie, something like that -- but I haven't a clue how to cook with kilograms and milliliters instead of cups and teaspoons. Not to mention I don't have a kitchen scale. Well, I'll think of something... maybe we can do Thanksgiving! I'll learn to cook, and make them dinner! I dunno. Something.

But have I described my apartment yet? It's great! It's more like a guest suite with its own entrance, attached at garden-level to the back of Landlady Brigitte's house. The house is on a hill, so while the apartment's bathroom window is just a window-well, the bedroom has two large windows that look out over the garden and down over the tops of red-roofed houses. The kitchen window is somewhere in between, opening exactly level with the stairs that lead down from the front yard to the door. (So if you're in the kitchen and someone comes to visit, you see their feet first!) And since I started at the school last week, Shauna's been my Hausfrau; I get home around one, and she's got the floors vacuumed, dishes done, laundry hanging out to dry, and lunch cooking on the stove! Ha ha, how am I going to learn to live by myself again? :)

Well, it's a gorgeous afternoon, so we might go for a walk before loading pics and stuff and starting up this blog! Yay! Can't wait to show you guys!

Hope everything is going swimmingly on the other side of the pond. Love you all!

hugs,

(and wallowing in Bier and Bratwurst and Wein),

nik

Weekend Three: Neustadt

Friday, September 15, 2006

Grüße aus dem schönen Neustadt an der Weinstraße! Man, this week has just flown by. We arrived on Sunday, and my host teacher, Frau Griesemer, picked us up from the train station, took us to lunch, and afterward, took us on a little walking tour of the city. Whoa! This place is GORGEOUS! Its Innenstadt (city center) is entirely cobblestoned, and many of the houses/buildings are constructed out of original 16^th-century Fachwerk. It doesn’t look real… I keep expecting everything to be made out of gingerbread or something! Shauna and I have spent this last week pretty much just running around from office to office and battling beaurocracy in order to try to get me settled in and squared away, and it’s been like playing whack-a-mole!

But something we discovered in all this running around from office to office, is not only that we can actually handle all this official business in German (!!), but the people here are all just impossibly nice & helpful. Seriously, it's like they trip over themselves to be friendly and to work with me. For example, I had to leave my passport at the Ausländeramt (Foreign Resident Office) yesterday morning, and can go pick it up again along with my finished visa no earlier than next Wednesday; but then after that I discovered that I still needed it as ID to open a bank account! Oops! I asked if I could bring in a photocopy, but the lady at the bank said that it had to be the original -- of which she would then make a photocopy herself. Just as I began to despair, she suggested that we could just call the Foreign resident office and see if they could fax over a copy of my passport. Then she went out of her way to find the number, call them, figure out who I'd been speaking to while I was there, and then put me on the phone with him to verify that it was indeed me who was requesting it. The guy on the other end laughed, said he totally understood, and had a fax of my passport over in less than two minutes. And everyone is like this! And not only helpful, but also smiley and jokey the whole time, too; oftentimes, they're also not only patient with my limited vocabulary, they offer linguistic assistance, explaining things a number of times in various simple ways so that they can be sure I understand.

I think I'm gonna like it here. :)

Today, I had my first "real" day of school (since before, it was all following Frau Griesemer around and filling out paperwork). I visited Frau Griesemer's 5th grade English class in the morning, and when she introduced me as being from America, they all looked at each other and went, "Whoa! Coooool!" Hee hee, cute! I didn't realize the younger ones would be so easy to please. They were adorable. The extent of their English was limited to three questions: What is your name? Where are you from? and How are you? Then they got to ask me questions in German about myself and America, so that they could satisfy their curiosity instead of just practicing their English. They were so cute, and later when I saw them in the hall they'd wave enthusiastically and yell across the hall, "Hello, Nikki!!"

Then I spent an hour in the Teachers' Room, getting to know other teachers and planning the next lesson with an eleventh-grade English teacher. And wouldn't you know it, just like everybody else in this city, the faculty is so nice! And a lot of them are young; my age, in fact. One asked me if I liked to play badminton, since they place every Tuesday night. Yay! I'll have to be careful of my shoulder, but I definitely want to make friends, and love badminton! :)

For Imke's 11th graders, I discussed an article with them that they had read on American foreign policy. It went really well! Their English is good enough to hold a (somewhat simplified) political discussion. They were very engaged, and asked lots of questions.

I can’t wait to start planning actual lessons!