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of international relationships. Or “Things the German thought he heard”.
If you take it from D., a new monster has entered the Sesame Street panoply (drum roll)
Oscar the Crotch.
I do have to say “thank you” again to those who stop by here. I started blogging here, not as so many do, because it simplifies communicating with family and friends, but because I wanted to express a thought or two that I might not necessarily want to share with my family or because they are sick of hearing it.
In the movie “Shadowlands”, C.S. Lewis has a conversation with a young teacher where they discuss a saying of the teachers’s father, “I read to know I am not alone.” I definitely read your blogs to know I am not alone, but writing helps, too. When I got back from my interview lat week, I had two comments (thanks ladies) and instant messages waiting from my sister and a new friend in town. It’s moments like that when you know, that 1) you bitch too much about your worries in public and 2) you communicate with some truly decent people, so life can’t be that bad.
Last night said new friend with her husband and I had a lovely evening – we ate cookies and picked on our poor Germans a bit, but they seemed to get along as well, which was really nice since D. is shy. Sometimes, it’s a blessing to appreciate good moments along the way even when one isn’t sure how life’s great questions/challenges are going to be sorted out. It isn’t the solution – had a mini panic attack last night before going to sleep – but I woke up feeling pretty good this morning so I am going to enjoy it while it lasts.
My German and I enjoyed reading (even while wincing for the author) Megan’s account of her housing struggles. Naturally, I wish her the best of luck (important post-related German tip from one who has messed it up – bestechen = bribe, erstechen = stab to death), but I have been pained in recent weeks by the number of “American-friendly” environmental consulting firms there are in the München area and the number of ex-pats, while I am uhhh. . . elsewhere. Her post was a gentle reminder that there are downsides to living at the center of the universe – no offense to all of you Berlin/Frankfurt-dwellers. The post is amusing and extremely informative. If you live outside of Munich, I would encourage you to stop by for your daily dose of Schadenfreude.
Confession time . . . I have become something of a Kommissar Beck fan. The series is anything but an advertisement for Sweden, red houses and all. I find the scenery very depressing and they don’t seem to film anything in the summer. Perhaps that’s because there isn’t much of one to begin with.
I am a huge mystery fan generally, having grown up with BBC rebroadcasts of “Mystery!” on PBS – I still remember hurrying to shower and wash my hair before the show started and watching with my sister and my parents, something of a family ritual.
The German is baking; he is darling (invoking the 6 month rule). My parents did quite a bit to whipe our wedding wish list clean and we now have the super-duper mixer of our dreams that will accomapany us for many years of happy baking. We’ve had it a little more than a week and we’ve already had toll house cookies, a cake and now oodles and oodles of German Christmas cookies. This losing weight thing isn’t going to procede very far if he keeps this up.+
Tatort on Sunday (almost this evening) will be from our neck of the woods – Karlsruhe/Mannheim/Ludwigshafen!
Not so great, I am afraid. Ich fühlte mich verarscht! (I felt like the fates were out to get me.)
Actually, the interview was fine. They were really freindly, put up with me when I forgot a German word (a technical term) and they very cooly could also only think of the the English for another technical term. The project on which they are interested in working is extremely closely related to my thesis project. Now comes the but. They would prefer to have someone in a location to which I can’t get. It’s completely depressing, because the fellow in that office has done a bunch of neat projects and I think I would like working for him. I went into the interview knowing that this was a possibility, so it’s quite alright.
Apparantly (apparent-LEE for all of you Coupling fans) I also have a mortal enemy among the Thanksgiving Turkey gods.
I was headed off to another city for the interview, so I figured that I should check out one of the larger stores in that city in the hope they would have a frozen turkey. We are having trouble drumming one up for our little delayed Thanksgiving celebration. So after the interview, I went to Kaufland. Naturally, I had called the day before and been assured that they had frozen whole turkeys. They did, in fact, have a turkey, but it was too small and the package was open with the contents damaged. So, I left. I was really irritated, but whaddya going to do in Germany? Complaining won’t improve anything. I treated myself to a double espresso at the train station instead.
Today it’ll just be a mish-mash folks, because that is the only thing that would accurately reflect the contents of my poor cranium.
The only interview I’ve managed to drum up in the past few weeks is tomorrow and I am a nervous wreck. I am talking to the mirror a lot today in the hope that my answers to the few questions I know will come up tomorrow come out sounding somewhat reasonable. It’s supposed to snow/rain here today and tomorrow and the thought of navigating through that in heels and stockings isn’t thrilling me.
The weekend was very busy as we are preparing for our big Thanksgiving smash-up with my former co-workers. I’ve done T-day for 10, but this time it’s 15 and we are distributing the recipes. Unlike the last time I distributed recipes, no one has measuring cups and I won’t be around to answer questions, so we’ve – read D. has – gone to a lot of trouble to translate and measure (thanks to our excellent new Soehnle kitchen scale). I put together a quick and dirty translation. Translating ingredients and prepared a general conversion table, but not D. He is using gorgeous formatting, etc.
The turkey itself has eluded us. In Stuttgart there used to be frozen turkeys, but I don’t know if that was just in the Fall. One also can’t find a butternut squash here for love or money, so it’s going to be pumpkin soup instead.
I found an apple pie recipe that sounds good, though. D. translated the whole thing. Working on a serious translation project at the moment, I was willing to make the pie rather than translate the recipe.
From our irregular wacky word(s) of the day series:
trespassing = hausfriedensbruch
savory = bohnenkraut
emsig = active, assiduous, diligent
Well, there’s been an Orkan-Warnung (Orkan Kyrill) issued for parts of Austria and Germany, so I finally got of my backside and wandered over to Wikipedia, source of all truthiness, to find out what these things actually are. Ahh, a European Windstorm. Well, that clears that up. Our warning turns out to be for a storm with gusts approaching speeds in the orkan range.
Here in the Black Forest region, any mention of a major bald patch along a ridge that isn’t an obvious clear-cut will get people talking about Lothar, as if one should know all about it. Apparantly one should, at least a hundred people were killed and the power was knocked out in large portions of Germany and France.
And it would also appear that I am not the only one interested in weather topics today as I cannot get the web page for Kachelmann’s forecast or the one from the German Weather Service (DWD) or from Donnerwetter to load. A quick trip to the Spiegel homepage shows though, that no matter where you are in Germany right now, if you look out the window, it’s raining.
The picture to the left would be the current precip map, with the white being the only area where it’s not coming down and the little black line runing throught the white area would be the German border. So I stand corrected. It might not be raining if you are in Kempten. Otherwise, get out your umbrellas.
Hang on to your hats everybody!
Interested in more weather-related Ex-pat blogging ?
Mausi
and
PapaScott are happy to oblige.
Ran across a few stories that might be of interest to the long-term expat today while perusing MSNBC.com
Being bilingual can delay onset of dementia
Here’s a second one that was interesting for me as a daughter living away from her parents. My parents and I have tried video conferencing a bit, but my parents generally find it taxing to get everything organized, so we only do it the few times a year my sister sets everything up for them.
Virtual dinners join elderly with faraway family
I am grateful that my sisters still live close to my parents – and that my parents are in very good health for their ages. It radically alters the level of guilt I face having chosen to live in Europe. Of course, should the situation change, our geography might change as well.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures from the Indian restaurant where we ate. Positively everything was too full. Yes, I know we should have planned in advance, but we decided we would just play it by ear and we had some cookies in the car if it came to that. We went to see “Scoop” – original with french subtitles. It wa a great way to kill 2 hours and keep warm. We walked and walked and finally came upon a little Indian restaurant that was willing to let us in. We were the very last admitted without a reservation. By the time we were done there, it was 22:30 and time to head to the cathedral where we arrived just in time to get a good spot in line before the doors opened at 23:00.
Found and Lost*** A few days ago, I found a link to a “letter” Stoiber had sent his wife. It was a satire piece from a German newspaper. It was written as he speaks, i.e. unintelligably. It was amusing, but now I can’t find the page anymore. Anyone know where it is?
Germany is getting a Commedy Central
Für 2007 bietet Comedy Central nach Angaben einer Sprecherin über 30 “exklusive Showpremieren”, das heißt Formate aus den USA oder Großbritannien, sowie neue Eigenproduktionen. Auf dem Programm stehen heimische Formate wie die Stand-Up-Comedy “NightWash” mit dem Team um Knacki Deuser sowie Shows mit Badesalz oder Mundstuhl. In der “Para-Comedy” treiben körperlich behinderte Comedians nach dem Prinzip der “versteckten Kamera” Schabernack mit Passanten.Aus Großbritannien zeigt der Sender unter anderem als deutsche Free-TV-Premiere das preisgekrönte BBC-Format “Little Britain” und “Extras”, dessen Schauplatz Filmsets sind. Als US-Produktionen kündigte Comedy Central unter anderem “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart”, “Arrested Development”, “Pamela Anderson in: Stacked” sowie “Modern Men” an.
This won’t mean all to much for us because we can watch Jon Stewart online. I would love to see the fourth season of “Coupling”, though.
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