KulturSchock!

American Style Fails

2012-02-19T21:20:00.001+01:00

This morning I went out for breakfast with Favorite Seven Year Old, her sister, and her dad. They'd found an American Style diner in Hannover, and wanted to invite me, the American, for the full American Style Experience.

What is American Style, you may ask? In Germany, it's a thing. It is a brandable, marketable, sellable thing. But American Style is not just any old thing, oh no. This thing has some very important, very selective qualities, which differentiate it from all other things. Lucky for you, I've had enough personal experience with such things to break it down for all of you happily cocooned in your American Style lives.

In order for something to qualify as American Style, it must have some particular attributes which set it apart. It must:

1) Be Boxed in Pride.

America is an economic and social mess. Inequality is the new black. The Confederacy never got over losing the war. Now take that America-Is-The-Best-Country-On-Earth shit, and wrap your food in it.

Things that are not ironically named: this.

Don't actually taste like brownies.

Too Much Flaggage For "Marsh"

2) Contain as Many Images of the Statues of Liberty as it Takes to Get the Point Across, Dammit.

Not only is your product American, it's SO American that even Lady Liberty, patron saint of immigrants, French people, and Fievel, endorses it. And she does not fuck around. So why don't you shut up and give her your tired, your poor, and your insufferable seekers of authentic microwave pizza?

Oh, "Hawaii" doesn't do it? Have you considered arbitrarily picking a state not actually known for it's pizza, and using that instead?

YOU GUYS THINK OF EVERYTHING.

3) Resemble Actual American Food as Little as Possible.

Now in a jar:

Now the wrong shape:

Now caramel popcorn good:

Now a) referred to as 'french fry cream,' and b) something other than ketchup:

Now in existence:

That you have it. That's Germany's take on American Style. It's many things, none of it American. And breakfast? Breakfast was...adorable. It was adorable that everyone in our party was all OH EM GEE AMERICAN BREAKFAST IS AWESOME and I was all, yes it is! It's even better when the pancakes aren't frozen, the waffles aren't Leggo, and the bottle of Snapple doesn't cost 7 dollars!

In other news I decided to go on a really long bike ride, because it was briefly sunny out. An hour away from my house, it started hailing--really, really, hailing. Which was actually pretty cool for a couple minutes, until hail bullets starting bouncing off my jacket and into my corneas. At which point I figured I'd just pull over into a bus hut and wait out the hail, but then I noticed that all the hail my eyes had been spitting out was collecting on my bike seat. Where it quickly melted, thus giving me the general appearance of one who has recently drunk seven gallons of Red Bull and was too amped up to bother thinking about finding a bathroom other than the one conveniently labeled "My Pants." So I didn't pull over, I biked like a champion through the hail and laughed about it all the way home.

New favorite song of the day! Still on a mega Ed Sheeran kick, so here we go:

A Normal Wednesday Night, or, How I Made Friends with the Mormon Missionaries

2012-02-16T21:32:00.002+01:00

I made craptons of friends yesterday! Let's count them!

1) A British guy at the copy shop who makes suits for a living and offered to make my parents a suit at a reduced price because I was so nice and spoke such lovely German. We bonded over a discussion of the Greek economic situation, and how impractical pants with pockets down to your ankles would be.

2 and 3) Two Mormon missionaries who approached me on the street last night and asked in heavily accented German if I believed in God. I said, "That's a pretty heavy question for a Wednesday night," in English. Turns out they were from Minnesota and Utah, and they quite adorably tried to get me to come to a Book of Mormon study party at their apartment on Saturday. I can't battle with people that cute, so I just smiled and nodded as they told me all about how Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon, but did not mention anything about the angel giving him a pair of magic goggles to do it. Yes I have read Under the Banner of Heaven. I still love Mormons though, provided they're not the cast of Sister Wives.

4) The South African's Zimbabwean army friend. Those two together are non-stop hilarity, and Hedgehog and I wound up taking them to the salsa bar. Being from Sub-Saharan Africa does not automatically bless you with dancing skills, for the record.

That's all I got! Adios!

A German Valentine's Day

2012-02-14T23:59:00.005+01:00

Being the very single person that I am, it was a huge relief to discover that in Germany, Valentine's Day is a non-day. I mean, they acknowledge it, and by "acknowledge," I am referring to the seven boxes of chocolate and one small sign they put in front of the drugstore. But I found that when you're not surrounded by sickening chocolate-fueled hormones and Edward Cullen posters, Valentine's Day is, if not enjoyable, at least bearable.

But just to be on the safe side, I decided to keep busy. This meant getting up at eight in the morning to have breakfast with Other American and the South African, and then being sad as she left to her new host family who are impractically located three hours away. Then I hit up the library to print out nine million different documents for my scholarship apps and matriculation. Which is how I wound up getting into a fight with the both the guy sitting next to me and the staff. Somehow the guy had messed up his printing job, because whenever I put my paper in the machine, it would print out his documents. So first I made him give me money for the pages, and then, after he refused to give me more than 10 cents, I took it up with the staff. The lady was yelling at me about how everything was my fault, they're my documents, and I have to pay for them, so I tapped the guy on the shoulder and said, "Sir, can you please explain to this lady why your documents keep coming out of the printer?" Then she went through his computer, discovered he had over 700 pages lined up in his printing queue, chewed him out, apologized to me, and gave me all my paper back.

Arguing like a proper German: check.

On a somewhat related note, I spent half of yesterday on the phone with my high school registrar's office, because Germany doesn't believe you when you show up with your bachelor's, and wants copies of your high school transcripts just in case. I thought we were having a normal conversation, but I could hear her bristling through the phone lines after about three minutes, in a way that looked remarkably similar to how I bristled the first four months I lived here whenever I had to talk to people. I don't want to jump to any conclusions, but I foresee problems with this new development.

Hedgehog and I met up to watch a movie. She was determined to watch a romance film, so we went through the top fifty romance movies of the last couple years, and I shot the vast majority down with all my Valentine's Day Harpy might. We wound up going with He's Just Not That Into You, because there was enough dysfunction in it to placate the harpy.

In other news, today I learned that in Germany, wisdom teeth surgeries happen through hospitals, and they keep you there for like five days. Also, whatever you do, you are under no circumstances allowed to eat ice cream, or drink milk/juice. Host Mom was absolutely appalled when I told her my mom drove me home ten minutes after I in my drugged-out state requested a burqa. When I told Host Mom that ice cream is pretty much the only thing you're allowed to eat for the first few days, she almost had a fit. It was pretty awesome, actually.

In other other news, I heard from my future roommate yesterday, and...I HAVE A BED! This sounds less exciting in print, but it's one less thing I have to pay for. The guy moving out doesn't want it, and said if I didn't either, he would just throw it out, otherwise, I can have it for free. He suggested getting a new mattress, because the one it comes with is apparently really hard, but whatevs man, I've got a bed! It's like a giant queen-size bed too! I've never actually owned anything other than a twin bed or a hammock, so I've got to figure out what to do with all the extra space. Hold the jokes.

New favorite song of the day! I am on an absolutely ridiculous Ed Sheeran kick. As a general rule, I like songs, not artists, but Ed Sheeran has officially joined Josh Groban, Cat Stevens, and The Decemberists on my Short List Of Artists I Love All The Time. Here, have an Ed Sheeran song that won't let me embed it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EdnpWDDoq0

Watching the British

2012-02-12T21:07:00.002+01:00

Funny story: Yesterday Hedgehog had a computer virus...and she called me. Yes, me. It's a sad day for the world when I'm the most technologically advanced person in my circle of friends--I mean, let's be honest, I never even figured out how iTunes works. Needless to say, I couldn't fix her computer.

Today she and I hit up an orchid house, for no reason other than we had nothing better to do and it was the only thing open. It was nice, I guess. Between you and me, I find orchids look way too much like vaginas for me to ever feel comfortable staring at them.

Other than that, I spent the weekend hanging out with the British. Yesterday, the Geordie picked me up for a day of movie watching on the army base with all the guys from the Irish pub (minus Little Adorable Dude, who apparently woke up in the hospital yesterday morning with no recollection of how he got there, so needless to say, he was too hungover to hang with us). We watched a Sean Connery James Bond movie (unintentionally funny), Dear John (almost as unintentionally funny as Twilight), and Coyote Ugly (unintentionally funny, but only because a) Tyra Banks thinks she can act, and b) it's half chick-flick, half weird male fantasy). Also an episode of How I Met Your Mother, which was unintentionally unfunny. Also we ate pizza, which was not funny, because we were eating it.

Here are some things I have noticed after a weekend of being locked in a room on the army base.

1) They do not introduce themselves. When they walk into a room and they know everyone but you, they will talk to everyone but you, and you run through the list of Standard Activities That Hopefully Make You Look Less Awkward Than You Feel, i.e, checking your phone, checking your planner, and then checking to see if what you've got on your phone matches up with what you've got in you planner. However, since my German phone is a WWII relic and by planner is still shamefully made out of paper, this doesn't work. See note above about being technologically advanced.

Anyway, this whole lack-of-introduction-thing has happened about fourteen times so far, which I find really strange for a country that's as obsessed with politeness as England is. The only time I even got a "Hello" out of the strange British guy walking in the room was yesterday, when one guy opened the door in a towel, in the process of taking said towel off. The look on his face when he saw me was almost priceless, and that particlar moment was so awkward, we were forced to greet each other just so we could move on to the much easier task of not looking at each other.

2) I don't know if it's the male-to-female ratio in play, or maybe it's that the British army base is suffering from a serious lack of estrogen you don't have to pay for, for all I know, it could be they're even more squeamish than I am. But every time, and I mean every time a sex scene came on in the movie, everyone in the room suddenly remembered something very very important they had to attend to on their phones. And only half the people in the room were straight.

3) Living on base pretty much feels like living in a college dorm, what with all the communal kitchens and bathrooms and everything. Except college dorms don't generally keep M16's locked in the basement.

4) Being a girl walking around a British army base, the general assumption is that if you're there, it's to have sex with someone. You can talk all you want about How I Met Your Mother, or the sexuality of the guys you watched it with, no one believes you, and no one looks at you, except to notice you just long enough to a) register that you're female, b) register your hotness versus the hotness of whatever guy you're with, and c) divert their attention elsewhere. You're just a strange girl with a stupid accent and some other guys' scent on her. For whatever reason, I find it really funny, and make a point to talk to as many strangers as possible, just so I can revel in other people being awkward for a change.

All in all, a highly informative, highly entertaining weekend.

Short Stories!

2012-02-11T03:18:00.002+01:00

I've spent the last few days collecting short stories that are somewhat worth sharing.

On Wednesday we went to the live music thing at a local cafe. Everybody there was really old, and we had to sit on the floor, but it was still a good time. We got to talk to the lady singing a bit, turned out she lived in Philadelphia for years. Also, from my accent, she didn't realize I was American. Damn.

This morning I went to the library to return some books, and as I was leaving, a random lady chased after me yelling "Excuse me! Excuse me, miss!" I stared at her. "Your braid looks really neat, and I was wondering if you could teach me how to do it? My daughter has long, straight hair, and we've been trying lots of braids out on her head, and I really like yours but I have no idea how to do it." I was most happy to oblige, which brings the total number of people I have taught to fishtail up to three or four in both Germany and Portugal. I wonder if Ambassador of the Fishtail Braid is something you can put on a resume.

Today I went out with Hedgehog and French Girl. We had lots of fun at the bar, and even ran into Fairpees Deesch's boyfriend and his friend, who was sober. The last time we saw him, he was desperately trying to get Claire to show him her boobs.

Afterwards we decided to check out the Irish pub, which is famous for it's fights. As soon as we arrived I immediately made friends with a gang of soldiers, who, for lack of better names, are now being referred to in my brain as Flamingly Gay One And New Favorite Person Ever, Flamingly Gay One's Boyfriend, Little Adorable Dude, and Sort-of Geordie. I met them when Flamingly Gay One asked me if I was hiding a baby in my coat. They bought me lots of drinks, christened me Miss Philadelphia, and told me multiple times how sexy my accent is, which I can't really wrap my head around. I also discovered what happens when Oasis' "Don't Look Back In Anger" comes on in an Irish pub, namely, that everyone throws an arm around the person next to them, sways back and forth, and screams it at the top of their lungs. Then somehow the soldier gang wound up convincing me to go to the British club with them, which also proved to be highly entertaining. They're picking me up tomorrow for a How I Met Your Mother party on the army base, to remedy my being a bad American who's never actually seen that show.

Making friends with the British: apparently, one of my strong suits.

And now it's 3.15 AM, I need to shower, but I'm scared to go downstairs because I heard two loud bangs and the sound of glass breaking. I don't think it was at our house, but I'm still afraid.

New favorite song! Because I'm in a British mood.

Exit from Elba

2012-02-07T00:43:00.000+01:00

I spent the weekend in self-imposed exile in my room, and refused to come out until I had finished the nine million required essays for one of the scholarships. But those are done now, so I guess that's a good thing.

Well, I lied slightly. I did come out long enough to go to a winter party at one of my two barns. I offered to help out, and originally got put on chocolate milk stirring duty, which morphed into the waffle station. German waffles are thin and served with powdered sugar, and also require basic knowledge of how the machines work. I told everyone the one machine was faster than the other, but the cooking time differences were actually due to the fact that I messed up the first waffle so badly, the machine wouldn't close properly after that. At the party I also did my first "Stockbrot," which is bread dough they wrap around a stick and you bake over a fire. The Germans could cook one in five minutes flat, but it took me two tries and almost an hour before I finally cooked one almost long enough to kill off the salmonella. Then I got impatient and just ate it.

Some entertaining things coming up! I might go to a ukulele meet-up in Hannover tomorrow, because I'm just that geeky. And on Wednesday, Hedgehog, New Fabio and I are foregoing salsa in favor of live music at a cafe that caters to the crazy old crowd. That last bit I haven't mentioned to Hedgehog and New Fabio, I have a feeling it would turn them off the idea, and I'd much rather go to live music. Nothing against salsa, but whereas the cafe is for crazy old people, salsa attracts people who are just crazy. They don't even have age as an excuse. Plus, they move awfully fast for people lacking that many marbles.

Here's my favorite song of the day. I realize the band's geographic proximity to Germany means I probably shouldn't have missed this, but somehow, I did. Now I can't get it out of my head. And since GEMA apparently stands for Germany is not allowed to Even go near Music videos, Alright? I'm stuck with awkward lyric videos made by fourteen year olds who favorite Justin Bieber videos.

Weekend Update

2012-02-03T23:15:00.000+01:00

Well, it's official: the cold has gotten so bad, people are writing articles about it and counting the number of homeless bodies every morning like it's a contest. JOY.

In other news, tonight I went to a Couchsurfing meet-up with the Other American, the South African, Indian Guy and French Girl from last time, and joining us this go-round was possibly the most adorable gay couple everywhere. In keeping with my mortally skewed gaydar, I had no idea until they told me, I just thought they were really, really nice for Germans.

Speaking of Other American and the South African, I met up with with them the other day for asian food, it was delicious and mostly asian.

So boring has my life become, that this is all the news I have. Scholarships are eating my soul. I've discovered that being foreign isn't good enough for most of the liberal scholarships, who want you to be foreign from a war-zone. I'm trying my luck with the Social Democrats, and also applying for just a normal I'm-smart-give-me-money scholarship. I've found that thanks to my mother, I can check off the "Immigration Background" box, so...yes.

That's all I've got. Adios!

German Winter

2012-01-31T22:26:00.006+01:00

The German winter was late in coming, but it has finally reared its ugly dragon head, and I must say, DO NOT LIKE. Everything is covered in ice, we're going down to -4 degrees Fahrenheit tomorrow (lower with the windchill), and this just generally blows. But ever since the weather caught up with us two days ago, I've had the same conversation about it approximately twenty times, in which some German shouts triumphantly through twelve layers of fleece and animal pelt,"DOES IT GET THIS COLD IN NEW JERSEY!?!?" as if Germany trained very hard for the annual World Suckage Games and took home a close bronze metal, right after Siberia and Hell. "Yes," I say, "it does get this cold in New Jersey." In fact, it gets colder, but the difference is, we don't go outside.

This is how horrendously cold days work in my American life: you don't do anything. If you're feeling particularly ballsy, you put a pea coat and a scarf on, run to the car, complain about how far you have to park from Target and these cookies better be goddamn worth it, and then scream at the heater on the way home until it starts pumping out a toxic mixture of carbon monoxide and fear. At some point, your mother will walk in, slam the door, say "Brrr, it's brutally cold!" and roll the r's extra hard, just so you know the temperature has officially dropped to the point where you lose control of your tongue. You try fruitlessly to convince your friends to brave the elements for the seventeen seconds required to get in their car and drive to you, and they try to convince you to brave the elements for the seventeen seconds required to get in your car and drive to them, and in the end, nobody moves. Eventually you go in your room, huddle in front of your space heater like it's a trashcan fire, watch Hugh Jackman movies, and bemoan the state of the world.

This is how horrendously cold days work in my German life: nothing changes. Except suddenly, instead of biking around and saying, "It's a bit nippy out here, isn't it?" you say, "Hello Jesus, if you love mankind, you will unfreeze my kidneys from my spinal cord. Oh, I'm sorry, maybe you didn't hear me? I HATE EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD AND I WANT TO CRASH MY BIKE INTO A GAS STATION SO AT LEAST I CAN GO OUT IN A BALL OF WARMTH." That L.L.Bean jacket meant for arctic temperatures that you totally thought was overkill? Nope. Nope. It is not. Because as it turns out, not only are you biking headlong into the windchill, you are also, by virtue of your activity, making the windchill that much worse. Not only does it suck, it sucks more than I could possibly exaggerate it sucking. It's the kind of soul-numbing cold that gulag prisoners lose eight fingers and a nose escaping from, only to arduously type out a bestseller with their thumbs, sell the movie rights, and then show up on Oscar night with an escort-I-mean-model on the end of their prosthetic hands.

In other news, my procrastination project of the week has been attempting to revive the potted plant in my room. I'm really, really bad at plants, as is evidenced by this one, which I forgot to water for six and a half months. Currently my plan of attack is to feed it every ten minutes and drag it around my room as the sun moves. I think it's working. I tried to prune some of the worst bits today, and it spit yellow plant juice at me. So either my plan is working, or it's turned into that dinosaur from Jurassic Park that spits acid in your eyes and then tears out your intestines while you try to beat it off with stolen embryos.

Yeah, like that'll work.

Adios!

Haircuts and Fender Benders

2012-01-28T01:49:00.000+01:00

Today I was biking along, thinking about how nothing blog-worthy had happened to me since I last posted, and then I unintentionally caused a fender bender. So there was that.

But before I get there, I've spent the last couple days tracking people down to write various letters of recommendation and things for my scholarship applications. Because most of the scholarships for foreigners are through political parties, applications must include a "testimony of social engagement," that is, someone to write in about how you feed the homeless, rescue kittens, and are generally socially engaged. My Bolivia work counts, which is lucky for me, because God knows I'm not very good at being socially engaged. Unless it's for college credit, if my track record has anything to say on the matter. But zum Glück hat my Professor agreed to write the letter for me, so, yay!

Harder was the "Fachgutachten," the intense questionnaire about how brilliant you are that needs to be filled out by someone in your field. This stumped me for a few days, until I remembered that one of my favorite anthro professors from junior year was German, and therefore capable of reading the stupid questionnaires. He also really liked me at the time. So I had to Google very hard to find him, and discovered he's no longer in the States, but actually working for a German university. Fabulous. I sent him an email an crossed my fingers that he would remember me, and he did! Hooray! So I called him today and we discussed things and now I've got that part covered.

In other news, I finally went and got a haircut, but discovered that German haircut chairs don't go up high enough for the lady to deal with me. So I had to stand while she sat on a small stool, and everyone in the place came and touched my head and said, "Christ on a sidecar, what do you do with so much hair on your head?" "I braid it." "And...?" "I braid it different ways." "And...?" "Sometimes I wear it up with a pencil."

Then I went food shopping, and here's where the adventure begins. Host Dad had taken the car to work, so I had to food shop with my bike and the giant red bike-bag things. Since I had to buy the family's groceries for the week, the bike-bag things were really, really full, by the end of the trip, and really, really heavy. It was like having two midgets hanging on my bike wheel, or at least what I would imagine having two midgets hanging on my bike wheel would feel like. The balance was thrown off (midgets don't all weight the same, you know), and to make life easier, it snowed today, which meant that I had to bike very slowly to avoid falling down like that cruise ship in Italy and sending my edible passengers into oncoming traffic. Don't want to cause an accident, you know.

To turn onto my road, I had to cross from the bike lane I was in to the one on the other side of the street. The bicycle-man light was still green, so I very slowly started to cross. A car turning left onto my side of the street saw me coming, but instead of stopping straight before turning, like they usually do, he turned almost completely into my lane and then stopped. When I was right in front of him, I heard a screech and a bang, and his car jumped four feet at me and almost ate my bike. I made it to the other side and turned around. A bright blue car had rear-ended him from behind. I stared at them. They got out and yelled at each other. I biked away as fast as I could before they remembered the first guy had to stop on my account. My bad.

New favorite song of the day! I found a Norah Jones CD in my room, and now I'm on a total Norah Jones kick. Thanks to the handy dandy remote, I turn the CD on the second I wake up, and I've discovered at makes for a most excellent start to the day. I would high recommend it. Here's Norah Jones covering Townes van Zandt.

We are girls crossing things off the bucket list

2012-01-25T20:12:00.001+01:00

As of yesterday morning, my plan for today looked like a haircut, tracking down a professor, essay writing and a dermatologist appointment. But then last night, Other American hit me with a spontaneous alternative: fuck all that, and go to the British army base instead to hang with the South African. I polled everyone I talk to on a daily basis, and the consensus was that this was a bad plan, and I shouldn't do it. The exception being Claire, who said it was a bad plan, and I should do it, duh. So that's what I did!

It could have to do with the lots and lots of men in uniforms who drive tanks, or it could be my secret pleasure at getting on the other side of the barbed wire and seeing what's so flammable they're trying to keep me away from--but whatever the reason, I really, really like army bases. But I also really, really like crossing things off the Bucket List, and, coincidentally enough, Go To The British Army Base is number 18!

So Other American and I woke up nice and early to take a bus to Bergen, the nearest town to the base. There, we ate donuts and messed around until the South African stopped playing hockey long enough to pick us up. We also discovered that in Bergen, we get royally stared at, like, British-guys-driving cars-with-wrong-sided-steering-wheels-slapping-their mates-and-pointing-to-us stared at. I have several theories for why this could be:

1) We are clearly girls.
2) We are clearly foreign girls.
3) We are clearly foreign girls not selling our bodies out of camping trailers parked on the side of the road leading into town.*
4) I was wearing my hot purple coat, which means I was the brightest thing to be seen. Even brighter than the sun, mostly because no one has actually seen it in several weeks.

At any rate, as awkward as being gawked at doesn't make me feel, it was a relief to get picked up. Unfortunately, I only had an hour to explore before I had to catch a bus back to pick up the charge. But I got to see the barracks, Some Other Buildings, and the South African's room. Also, we watched Desperate Housewives. Anti-climactic? Maybe a little bit. But we still had lots of fun, I met County Cork's roommates, and we got waived through a giant gate by some guy holding a semi automatic rife. Did not see a tank.

Whatever. I still get to cross it off the Bucket List.

*It's true, they actually do this, and yes, they do drive campers.

Customs Wars, Part the Third

2012-01-23T11:55:00.005+01:00

I used to believe I had seen every creative spelling of my name possible. I believed this for a very long time, all the way up until Friday, in fact. Because on Friday, I got a letter from the German Customs informing Herr Timo Marie Jjagum he had received a package from one Jean in America, and would he come pick it up at his earliest convenience?

You see where this is going.

I've done this before, as you'll recall, not once, but twice, albeit never as a man. However, there was a slight kink in the works, namely, that the package was from Jean of all people, who victoriously posted this to my Facebook after sending it:

"I sent you a package. I had to explain to the post office guy what was IN the package. It was awesome."

I had hoped against all hope the post office would deliver it without trying to tax me for it, but no such luck. And unfortunately, the Customs office was already closed by the time I got the letter. Which, of course, meant I spent the entire weekend imagining the whole host of terrifying things the package could contain, each more mortifying than the last. By the time Monday rolled around, I was no longer even sure I wanted to know what was in the damn thing, and briefly considered letting it sit the obligatory fourteen days, until Customs shipped it back to Jean at her own expense. But in the end, my curiosity won out, and I headed down to the Customs office, prepared for battle and determined to be victorious. Or my name wasn't Timo Marie Jjagum.

As soon as I walked in, the nice guy whom I've dealt with on the previous two occasions looked up, recognized me, and left the room. Which left Mr. Asshole, who, despite his name, rather closely resembled a Neanderthal.

Hello," said I, "I've come to pick up a package. And frankly, I don't understand why my packages keep coming through here. My host family is constantly getting packages from the US and Canada, and you guys never pick up theirs, you only take mine."

"You're from America?"

"Yes."

"Well, you see..." and then he proceeded to serenade me bullshit about illegal child laborers in the US and China bringing about the End of Times by sneaking packages marked as gifts into Germany. And how did I know the sender?

"She's my former roommate, look, here, her number is in my phone."

"I don't need to look at it."

"If you're not going to look at it, then you can't try to tell me I don't know her."

"I'm going to need you to open up this package."

"It's supposed to be a surprise, which I would rather not spoil by opening it up in the Customs office. And if you'll turn your attention to the back of the package, you will notice it tells you a) the contents, b) that the contents are worth exactly one dollar, and c) that the contents are labeled as a gift. I believe all of that constitutes a package that is supposed to be delivered, not one which gets kidnapped by you people."

"Much smaller packages than yours also come through here. Are you trying to tell me we should allow such packages to go through the system!?" he said, horrified.

"Hahahahaha...yes."

Then he yelled at me about how I'm trying to cheat German Customs, and I'm showing disrespect with a flagrant ignorance of the security risks I'm implying the Customs office adopt.

So I opened the package...and triumphantly shoved Justin Bieber Silly Bandz in his face.

"Do you think this is worth more than 45 Euros?"

Glowering silence.

"Is this a security risk, do you think?"

"What's the piece of paper?"

"One is a letter. The other one is a collage entitled 'Unnecessarily Attractive People Modelling Safety Gear.' How much do you generally tax those?"

He said nothing, just shoved the release papers at me, and I signed them. I hit the door with a pleasant, "Pleasure doing business with you," and laughed all the way home.

Herr Timo Marie Jjagum, for the win!

The name of the game is scholarships!

2012-01-19T23:33:00.000+01:00

Move to Germany...check.
Take the DSH language test, and almost die doing it...check.
Get into grad school...check.
Find a place to live...check.
Get a scholarship...ch--wait. Crap.

Being the brilliant soul that I am, I chose to go to university in one of only two states that charges students tuition (the other being Bavaria, as if lederhosen wasn't already enough of a reason to never, ever go there). And when I say "tuition," I mean "allowance" for everyone in Short Hills, to the tune of about 900 dollars per semester, times four semesters, equals 3600 dollars. But I worked for a year, put up with all the people who refer to carbonated fruit punch as "juice," and saved up the tuition.

However, I was thinking things over recently, and I realized: I mean, I have that money sitting in a bank, but wouldn't it be nice to get a scholarship, and spend that money on cooler things? Like a bed, or things to eat, or a trip to Mongolia?

So, I've spent the last couple days researching scholarships, and there are some kickass ones. So kickass, they give you a thousand dollars a month, which theoretically would not only cover my rent, my bed, and things to eat, but also as many trips to Mongolia as it would require for me to learn to build a yurt. The problem is, they all require a metric fuckton of paperwork. It's like playing Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, except instead of tracking down people, I'm tracking down nine million other things: transcripts that Rutgers makes me pay for but never arrive, professors to write letters of recommendation except they no longer work at my university, multiple certified copies of every document under the sun, and on and on and on until I get so intimidated, I give up and watch Friends. Great work, Gumshoe.

What I need is a syringe-ful of world-destroying gumption straight to the heart...or else a genie to magically appear and give me a thousand dollars a month in exchange for a high five.

Back to applications. As soon as Friends is over.

New favorite song of the day!

Not sleeping under the bridge!

2012-01-17T00:06:00.001+01:00

Aaaand...I HAVE A PLACE TO LIVE!

The apartment hunt today was interesting, to say the least. I wound up only having three to go look at, but I got into the city early so I could go to the English bookstore and read The Hunger Games. Here's a rundown of the apartments I looked at:

Apartment 1: Non-Hipsters Need Not Apply

The people of Apartment 1 were lovely, but the place itself...well, suffice to say, a hipster would have rubbed his scent all over that shit in a heartbeat. It's right in the center of town, which is awesome, but I was slightly confused looking for the place because it didn't occur to me to check the giant building that looked like an old abandoned factory. Which is probably what it was. I got buzzed in to the cavernous ground floor, where no one actually lives: there's just a staircase, or, if you choose, you can forego stairs and just walk through the factory thing to the garden. But I went up three flights of stairs to discover that there's no actual door to the apartment, you just...walk up the stairs and into the hall. Carrying on with the Important Things Hipsters Don't Need trend was a kichen: they've only got a deep factory sink thing and no oven to speak of. But the weirdest part was the room I would theoretically be living in, which isn't actually flat. God knows flat floors are way too mainstream. The guy renting out the room said you get used to functioning on an incline pretty quickly, but then again, he had a Nintendo shirt on.

Apartment 2: Needs More Orange

Also an awesome location, and retardedly cheap, costing barely over 200 dollars a month. The door was opened by a goth girl with more piercings than I could count, but she turned out to be the super nice one. The other girl was nice enough, but a little weird. No one sees the guy for days on end and occasionally have to knock on his door to see if he's alive.

But as I discovered, there's a reason the room is retardedly cheap: it's retardedly small. Without a loft bed, there's no turning around in that place.

Apartment 3: The Winner!

The last apartment of the day is a little ways out of town, and by "a little ways," I mean it takes you all of about seven minutes to get into town by bike. Or, if you feel like walking the hundred feet to the bus stop, then you only have to travel approximately three minutes, which is perfectly acceptable.

Because of the location, this place is slightly quieter, but! The apartment is gorgeous, at least by student standards. It's like the Cook apartments at Rutgers, but with hardwood that's never had vomit cleaned off it. And for this, it costs just as much as the Hipster Student Shithole Apartment 1, so that's good. My (ginormous) room comes equipped with a slant, but a fun roof one, not a slightly alarming floor one. And the girl I'd be living with is super nice--she showed me the place, and then we sat and drank tea and talked about boys for an hour. She offered me the apartment on the spot, and I accepted. Then I happily panicked all the way back to Celle, because that's what I do best.

Oh! Rewind! Our concentration camp date over the weekend! Was hugely fun, although we initially got yelled at for not being somber enough as we walked through the doors, and then they followed us throughout our wanderings to make sure we were being properly somber. After about an hour of being horribly, horribly somber, we decided to skip the second half of the exhibit and just got to a 1950's American-style diner, where they serve Bratwurst with an American flag toothpick. Then we went to the barn to go visit the horses, the highlight of which was the barn bartender (there are such things in Germany) trying desperately in broken English to explain to the soldiers he wanted them to procure him a bottle of wine. Afterwards, the soldiers and Other American went and played pool, where I took over babysitting duties from the parents. The Host Parents left shortly after the child fell asleep, and I texted County Cork that the coast was clear, and that they should all come back. It was like sneaking my friends into the house in high school, except I'm not in high school. But I did sneak them in for tea and cookies, then kicked them out before the Host Parents came back.

All in all, life is full of successes!

The Apartment Hunt

2012-01-13T23:09:00.000+01:00

Well, it's officially that time of year where I have to grow up and organize myself a place to live, unless I plan on sleeping under the bridge, which I don't. Unfortunately, finding a place to live in any German student city is a total bitch right now. Here's why:

1) German high school used to go until the 13th grade. For whatever reason, the German government redid the system so that it now only goes until 12th grade. That means this year and this year only, the 13th and 12th grades graduate at the same time, and are both looking for apartments.

2) Germany just ended the mandatory two-year service for guys, army if you felt like blowing shit up, civil if you preferred driving a bus full of old people to and from the nursing home. That means that the boys this year are not starting two university two years later than the girls.

All in all, there are now three times as many students than normal trying to get into university this year. Which is a major bitch if you're looking for housing. All the dorms in Göttingen have a 3-16 month waiting list, which is why I just said, "fuck it, I'm finding an apartment." In English, while the child was within earshot. My bad.

But apartments are also super difficult to find, and competitive to get into, because, let's face it, there are eight million people trying to get the same three spots. So I have been on an intense search this week. Here is a list of my dream criteria, some of which are more negotiable than others:

--Less than 250 euros a month (317 dollars).
Negotiability: Would consider going up to 250 euro and 99 cents.
--Two to three roommates.
Negotiability: I'd go with as few as one roommate. I'm not living with seventeen people, and I'm not living by myself.
--Mixed gender roommates. Negotiability: I could live with all girls.
--Central location.
Negotiability: I would live a bit farther away from the university if all the other factors were there.

People I refuse to live with:
--All vegetarians.
--All Baptists.
--All boys.

So those were three ads I did not respond to.

With that being said, I'm emailed my top 10 favorites, and received a response from three, one of which was a "Sorry, we already found someone," one of which was a "Come on Sunday!" that has not yet responded to my, "Ähm...could I come on Monday?" and my favorite of which said, "Come on Monday!" My favorite is right in the middle of town, 272 dollars a month including heating and internet, two girls and one guy. I'm off to go check them out first thing Monday, and hopefully by then I'll have gotten a couple other "Come and see us!"s. However, as frustrating as the 30% response rate is, but as one of my German friends pointed out that this is one situation where it helps to be foreign. I generate interest before they even meet me, just by virtue of being American. Yay, I think.

In other news today I met up with an Indian guy and a French girl who live in the area, both of whom were super awesome, and we've already got plans to hang out again. Tomorrow, Other American and I are roadtripping with County Cork and South African Dude to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, and possibly the army base as well, seeing as how they're all of about thirty feet from each other. Not much to see at Bergen-Belsen seeing as how the British burned it down (before the army lived there), but Anne Frank died there, and I think there's a memorial or an exhibit or both. Clearly, exactly the right place to visit with hungover soldiers. At any rate, I'm sure it'll be an adventure.

Adios!

The Slumber Party I Missed

2012-01-11T20:28:00.001+01:00

If you came to this blog today hoping for an awkward, over-honest, and embarrassing story from me, congratulations! That is exactly what I've got! I wish I could get away with not telling this story, because my incompetence at life is occasionally so great as to embarrass me, but I'm a crappy liar. So story it is!

Now, I am what I enjoy calling a "late-bloomer," but other people call "slow, misguided, and/or juvenile." My attempts at getting on the Fashion U-Bahn have already been reproduced here, but this post is an official documentation of that time I tried to navigate the confusing world of make-up.

I have always been staunchly anti-make-up, mostly because I a) resented the concept of putting on a different face, and b) was always fine with how I looked. In fact, I have historically rather liked that about myself, that I can walk outside make-up-less, confident, and be happy with myself. When it came to boys, I tended to rely more on my wit and my hair than on my supermodel good looks (which may or may not have something to do with my general relationship failures) and plus, people always told me I looked like a sixteen year-old, so why the hell did I need make-up?

The problem is that I've also had crappy skin for most of my life. Unlike every other adult woman on the planet, my body never got the memo that puberty had ended years ago, and instead of holding on to all the good puberty traits, like boobs that never stopped growing, I was stuck with all the shitty ones, namely, skin that never stopped breaking out. Mostly it was hormonal, and I was more or less resigned to breaking out once a month for a week, and then being done with it. But then, a few months after I arrived in Germany, something bad happened. Suddenly, my mildly shitty skin actively mutinied, and next thing I knew, my face was breaking out in giant, painful cysts that refused to go away and scarred like a bitch.

You know the really annoying Pro-Activ commercials, where girls get up and complain about their faces and say they refused to leave the house until Pro-Activ got them boyfriends, and cured their AIDS? Secretly, I'd always mocked those girls, I mean, really? Sorry to break it to you love, salicylic acid does nothing for your HIV. Except suddenly, I was that acne commercial, and I did not enjoy it. I stopped wanting to go outside, I stopped making eye contact with strangers, and I avoided mirrors like the plague, lest I stand in the middle of the store staring at myself in horror. I tried to harass myself out of it, and get back into my standard Tina cheerfulness that's oblivious to social cues and grates on people's nerves. But I discovered that not only does this make you hate yourself more, it's also virtually impossible to do when you're sitting in front of your computer blankly watching Tough Love Miami, alone, miserable, and with ice packs slapped to the bottom of your face in the hope they'll make the swelling go down.

Finally my misery outweighed my paralyzing fear of all things medical, and in mid-December, I went to the dermatologist...who took one look at me and basically said, "Yeah, this shit needs to get fixed PRONTO," that's how bad it was. She immediately put me on a whole slew of medication I could sell for a lot of money on the black market, antibiotics, medical creams, the whole nine yards. Slowly, very slowly, the cysts cleared up, but left behind as a parting gift a particularly sexy brand of mottled purple scarring. LOVELY.

In the meantime, however, I had discovered that almost as bad as my face were people's opinions on why my face was so suddenly terrible, which they shared with me in the unprompted way of those who think they're doing you a favor, but are blissfully ignorant of the fact that they're actually making you want to throw yourself into the river tied to the family piano. Host Mom told me it was because I eat white flour. Other American told me it was the bread. The Portuguese Tias told me it was chocolate. The cab driver told me it was the weather. The dermatologist told me it has nothing to do with what I eat or drink, or how I take care of my skin, but that it's probably a delayed reaction to major stress experienced in the last few months...i.e., moving to Germany.

I could only take so many comments about how it's my own fault my skin blows before I decided this shit needed to get covered up. Luckily for me, I'm a chick, I can throw on some make-up, e voila! Oh wait, that's right. I'm 23 years old, and I have no idea how to put on make-up. Woman fail.

So, as I am wont to do in times of doubt, I turned to the internet. I looked up make-up tutorials, I wrote down product names, I did grade-A research. But the thought of walking into a drug store with a post-it note and zero concept of what I was doing terrified me, and I was almost as scared of doing it wrong as I was of asking Helen of Troy's smug German counter cousin for help. Because in swearing off make-up, I had successfully avoided that awkward phase where you put on too much blush in eighth grade and make yourself look like a mistake from the 80's, which at the time I congratulated myself for. But in retrospect, I'd also skipped the part where you eventually figure out what you're doing. All these tutorials I was watching were talking about brushes and minerals and toners and all sorts of dangerous-sounding shit that sounded less suited to a medicine cabinet, better suited to a surprise safety inspection of a Chilean iron mine. They were tutorials meant for people my age, except they also assumed that people my age knew that foundation was something other than the bottom part of a building.

Where did I go wrong? I wondered. How did I miss something so integral to the lives and self-esteems of women all over the damn world? So I googled that too, and apparently, you learn this shit a slumber parties. I understand now. Because at our slumber parties, we played Charades and Trivial Pursuit while watching Teen Girl Squad on homestarrunner.com. At some point, someone would put on the Spice Girls and the movie Clue (not simultaneously), and around midnight, Sam would start come up with innovative experiments (whispering in Japanese) to be conducted on the first person who fell asleep (me). Then my mother would pick me up in the morning, and I would be sick as a dog from lack of sleep. We would go home, I would eventually throw up, she'd vow to never let me sleep over Sam's house again, I would discover random Japanese words slipping into my protests, and then I'd take a three hour nap. Repeat in two weeks. Best Saturdays ever.

Unfortunately for me, I never attended the slumber party where pillow fights take place in training bras, nails get painted, legs get shaved communally, and seventy-five dollars of Mom's Dior cosmetics are destroyed in an organized raid on the medicine cabinet that results in nine little escorts. I was conspicuously absent when that particular girl posse gave each other facials, practiced making out, and shoved bananas down their throats. I was too busy trying to get the godforsaken orange sports wedge.

But because crashing a strange twelve year-old's slumber party with a smile and a barrel of Chiquita bananas was both creepy and a fast-track to not being allowed within one thousand feet of a school, I decided I needed a new plan. So I thought about it. And thought about it. And steeled myself, then lost my nerve, then steeled myself, then lost my nerve, and then finally, I texted The Plan, and The Plan's name was Claire.

Here is an abridged version of that text conversation:

Me: Okay, don't laugh at me, but when you come to visit, can you teach me how to put on make-up? I feel like this is a skill I should have.
Claire: Hahahahahaha.
Claire: Do you own make-up?
Me: No, and I have no idea how to buy it, you'll have to teach me that too.
Claire: Okay. We will buy it together and I'll show you what to do.
Me: So my goal is to wear as little make-up as is necessary to hide the fact that my skin blows lame ballz. In your professional opinion, is this possible?
Claire: More than.
Me: You're the best friend I've ever disliked enough to sell into Mongolian sex slavery for the price of a turkey sandwich.

Well, The Plan eventually arrived in Germany, and after a particularly brilliant weekend in Berlin, we hit up Celle to shop for postcards, honey, and shit for my face. Claire marched me around town like the professional she is, while I had mental breakdowns every other moment and made her explain every cosmetic product in the store to me multiple times. We bought mascara. We bought eyeliner. We bought eye shadow. We bought 27 euro foundation, because apparently, that's what you do. More accurately, Claire told me what to buy, and I bought it. How she put up with me, I do not know, but I bought her chocolate for it.

But the most frightening part lay ahead: actually learning to put this stuff on. For that, we bussed it back to my house, sat ourselves down in front of my mirror, and monkey-seed, monkey-doed our way to more or less success. Claire had to slowly and painfully demonstrate what goes where and when, and how brushes can also be used for things other than horses. I slowly and painfully attempted to copy her, all the while complaining incessantly.

The next week was spent coming up with excuses to go to the drug store so that I could buy more shit; concealer, blush, the one affordable makeup bag that did not have "Good Vibrations" printed on it. I spent an obscene amount of money on this crap, which is what happens when you buy in one go what normal people have been slowly collecting since they turned eleven. Meanwhile, my sister was dealing with increasingly panicky Facebook messages from me as I grilled her on everything from eyeliner colors to whether or not blue eye shadow could conceivably make me look like a Teletubby.

On the downside, what I wound up discovering was that while make-up has more or less solved the problem of my skin, it's opened up a whole new can of worms to worry about, like Is My Mascara Running? Am I Twelve Different Colors? Are You Sure I Don't Look Like A Teletubby?

In the end, it has turned out to be not nearly as horrible as I imagined it, and thankfully, you don't need to devote two hours of your life to putting make-up on in the mornings. I've got it down to under ten minutes, which is more or less acceptable. It's (sort of?) easy, I guess. And the end result is...still me! I look like me! Except with slightly better skin and bigger eyes. And I have to remember not to rub my eyelids, or else my hands come away all sorts of fun colors.

So all in all, this is the unfortunate new direction my life has gone in, but it's better than holing myself up inside the house and refusing to talk to anyone. And while I enjoy not blessing small animals with heart attacks when I look at them, I still don't think I'm going to put make-up on every day.

Just on the days I go outside.

Tina vs PPBs Round 2

2012-01-09T16:43:00.000+01:00

It's been over six months since my last showdown with a PPB, but I'm calling this one a battle before the battle is even decided. The story is that three days ago, the charge went over his best friend's house and played with her and her sister. The next day we got a phone call that best friend and her sister have headlice. The day after that, the charge grabbed my ponytail and rubbed it all over his head.

Now we're waiting six to nine days to see if we all have contracted headlice, and I'm spending most of the time holed up in my room, plotting the world's destruction if it turns out I do indeed have insects laying eggs in my scalp, because that's exactly how I always dreamed of starting grad school. I check my head every day for nits. I hate everything, most especially children.

Tina: 0. PPBs: 2

In other news, I hung out with County Cork and his South African army friend yesterday, but I wouldn't let them hug me, and I also didn't tell them why. We made plans to go to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp next weekend (not that there's anything left), and also the army base, so maybe I can finally cross that off my list. Maybe I will also not give the British army headlice.

Claire Episode Recap, Part the Everything Else!

2012-01-08T12:46:00.002+01:00

Tuesday, January 4th: Making Friends With Icelandic-Wannabes

Tuesday was the first day we saw the sun, and also the day we had to leave. We almost missed our train, and the guy trainpooling with us did not love us. That is, until we somehow discovered that he speaks Icelandic as a second language, and then we discussed Icelandic cows, Icelandic people, and Icelandic polar bear hunts. It was a good time. As soon as we pulled into Celle, we discovered it was raining.

The rest of Tuesday we just kind of chilled out and relaxed. We briefly went into town, searched in vain for a place that sold both raspberry cake and hot chocolate, and settled for hot chocolate and donuts.

Wednesday, January 5th: Show Me Your Boobs

Wednesday was another Celle day. We ran around town, had lofty goals of doing touristy things such as climbing the church tower, but this died as soon as we started shopping. Then we bough raspberry cake, took it back to my house, and ate it with tea and whipped cream. Twas delicious.

That night, we headed back into town to meet up with Hedgehog for salsa. We spent most of the time just trying to force her to eat our cookies, unsuccessfully. The Fairpeace Deesh, her boyfriend, and his friend showed up, and the party was on. They were absolutely hilarious, especially the friend, who was wasted and hitting on Claire like it was his job. Somehow the conversation morphed into bargaining to see Friend's tattoo. He claimed the cookies we gave him weren't enough, and that if he was going to show us his tattoo, he needed to see Claire's boobs. When the phrase "percentage of boobage" got thrown out there, I knew the night was more or less over. Sure enough, it was 1.30 in the morning, and we had to get up early the next morning. When we got home, we discovered Friend had friended Claire on Facebook, with the all-popular pickup line "Only your boobs."

Thursday, January 6th: Hannover!

The next morning, we were off to Hannover! The shopping is way better in Hannover, so that's what we did. We also managed to located 9 Euro woolly tights, so wins all around! We also walked around in a hailstorm, found English language copies of The Princess Bride, and took pictures in front of Hannover's hideous Christmas Pyramid, which for some unknown reason was still up.

We found some tiny little cafe with most excellent goulash and a creepy picture of a monarch on the wall. We ate it. The goulash, not the creepy monarch.

And then we found the street with the strip clubs, highly entertained ourselves by running around, and mortally embarrassed two seventeen year olds coming out of a live peep show. Here's Claire with Thai Girls:

And me with a tabledance.

Aaand...that was our week! Pretty much the best week ever. Now here, have my favorite song of the day. I hate this song, but mostly I hate that I can't get it out of my head. And I hate that it got stuck in my head while watching Twilight.

Claire Episode Recap, Part the Berlin!

2012-01-06T22:09:00.001+01:00

CLAIRE CAME! And it was the greatest week ever and I totally got teary in the airport and I'm still very very sad and it has been several hours since I put her on the plane.

I'm going to attempt to do what I have never done before, and sum up an entire week as concisely as possible, i.e., in two posts. I shall do this by strategic use of BEING CONCISE. And throwing in a shitload of pictures. Aaand...go!

Day 1: Thursday, December 30th: Baking and Ice Cream, not at the same time.

Host Dad kindly offered to pick Claire up from the airport, so that is what we did! I found her arrivals gate, which is separated from the main area by a giant piece of what is probably terrorist-proof glass. While staring intensely at the passengers waiting for their bags, I noticed out of the corner of my eye a lone figure walking in completely the wrong direction, towards the empty corner where the the terrorist-proof meets the wall. "That has to be Claire," I said to myself...and sure enough, it was! And that's how we wound up laughing our heads off through the giant glass, despite barely being able to hear each other. The whole thing was vaguely reminiscent of prison, except Claire wasn't there for prostitution.

Then she came out and there were hugs and we drove home. We didn't waste any time, and started baking immediately. Sugar cookies sandwiched with icing she'd brought from America, dyed four separate colors. Delicious? Yes. Appetizing to Europeans? No. Then the Host Parents threw a little dinner party, and Claire tried (and enjoyed) the gross bread that looks like velociraptor shit. Afterwards, we walked into town to see things and eat Spaghetti-Eis (ice cream that looks like spaghetti?) in the freezing cold. Bangin. On the way back, Claire informed me that I have ceased to sound American.

Day 2: Saturday, December 31th. Making Craptons of Friends.

Claire and I woke up bright and early to hop several trains to Berlin. The German train system, while generally blowing, does have a few convenient things, namely, a ticket that allows you to travel with four other people on the weekend. I put out the call on the internet, and roped in three people who wanted to come with us, meaning we each went to Berlin for a grand total of 8 euros. However, so many people wound up emailing me, I helped a bunch of them find each other, which meant we wound up travelling together as a group of ten. We bonded with a few of the other girls, one of whom worked as an au pair in the States. Apparently she didn't realize from our email conversation that I was foreign, but, and I quote, "I did think it was really weird that you were being so nice to me." She said I don't sound American either.

Once in Berlin, we navigated public transportation and met up with our couchsurf, who was hilarious and actually built us a blanket fort in his room to sleep in. He asked us if we had any particular New Year's plans. I had brought a crap ton of fireworks, but other than setting them off, we had nothing. He said, "Well, if you want, we're going to climb to the roof of an abandoned building and shoot them off there if you want to come." Who says no to a thing like that? But we still had several hours before setting-shit-on-fire time, so we decided to run around the city a little bit. A random guy I asked for directions told me I was adorable, then asked if I was single, and a British guy we ran into at Brandenburger Tor told me that I don't sound like an American.

Here, have a picture of Claire at the Tor with the Swedish Moose.

And one of just the street.

After we got back, we joined up with our couchsurf to go explore the abandoned building. Unfortunately, as we discovered when we got there, the city had walled off the access to the roof, so we (the so-labeled International Guests) wound up just setting off our fireworks on a street corner and avoiding New York, a random drunk guy who keep trying to get into our pants with that eternally successful pick-up line, "Hey! Did you know Philadelphia BLOWS?"

The giant group then headed to a Drum and Bass party at a club called Badlands, and, suffice to say, we did not fit in. Here's how you dance to drum and bass:

Step 1. Look angry.

Step 2. Hunch your shoulders.

Step 3. Start bobbing your head. Do not make eye contact with anyone.

Step 4. Start getting some shoulder action in there.

Step 5. Start shuffling your feet.

Step 6. Have an extended body spasm.

Step 7. Be entertained for twenty minutes.

Step 8. People watch for another twenty minutes.

Step 9. Hide in the bathroom. Watch two people go into one stall.

Step 10. Force yourself to sit through another hour of horrible horrible music.

Step 11. Blow this popsicle joint. Grab your American friend, and go to a really overpriced bar instead.

On our way there, we passed a car with a hole blown in the roof (courtesy of some asshole setting a firework off from it), and a mattress. Which meant that Claire's directions to the club for the three lost British guys we encountered went something like "Take a left at the mattress and keep going until you see the ashy car." We asked them if I had an American accent, they told me no.

Then it was our turn to ask for directions, and the random guy I picked decided he wanted to come with us. He had apparently just been thrown out of the party by his ex-girlfriend, who did not appreciate him spilling the beans that they were broken up. I had possibly the strangest conversation about romance of my life, the best part being this:

"My ex-girlfriend hates me."

"Oh yeah? That's sad. Why would she do a thing like that?"

"Because she loves me."

"..."

He also fondled the Swedish Moose. Swedish Moose was not pleased.

Anyway. Really overpriced bar, went back to the couchsurf's (he gave us a key), and tried to sleep. Did not actually sleep.

Day 3: Sunday, January 1st. Nazi Airports Make Everything Better.

When we woke up the next morning (or, more accurately, just stayed conscious after five failed hours at sleeping), we discovered our couchsurf still hadn't actually come back. But we decided that despite the weather, we were going to go do touristy things, like go to the old Nazi airport. Which was cool, until it started really really raining. And then it was still pretty cool.

Then it was Go Take Pictures On The Artistic Berlin Wall time.

Then we met up with my friends! Sungmi and Alex are two very dear friends I studied with in Konstanz, and seeing them again was awesome. We ate super traditional German food, caught up, and enabled the Swedish Moose's drug addiction.

Not ready for the evening to be over, we all trekked to the Berliner Dom, to hit up random ladies in crazy coats passing by until we found one that could work a camera long enough to take a picture of us.

After parting ways, Claire and I went back to the Tor to see it minus eighty million other people. This was our "look really surprised that there's a giant gate behind you" picture:

When we got back to the couchsurf's at the end of the day, we discovered he hadn't come back from the club until two in the afternoon. Speaking of commitment...yeah.

Day 4: Monday, January 2nd. Twilight Is The Most Unintentionally Hilarious Movie Ever.

Monday morning, we had a plan. We were going to Checkpoint Charlie. We were going to the wall. We were going to the Dom. We were going to the Stasi museum. We were going to do ALL OF THESE THINGS...until we got distracted by Starbucks. And then we drank non-coffee beverages and split a muffin.

But conveniently, the Starbucks was right next to Checkpoint Charlie, so we did actually see that. And thankfully, this time I did not get slapped by a Romanian lady. Have I told that story on here?

Also highly convenient, turns out a giant piece of the wall is located all of about three minutes from here, so we saw that too. At first, out of respect for history, we tried to be solemn. We did. We took very solemn pictures.

But it's hard to be solemn when you're holding a Swedish moose and your umbrella is pink.

And unfortunately, a little bit of unsolemnness lead to a whole lot of unsolemnness.

And that's how we wound up climbing under the railing and posing for "escaping East Berlin" pictures with a stuffed moose.

More out of love for my sister than anything else, we reluctantly went to KaDeWe, one of the biggest, if not the biggest, department stores in Germany.

Plus side: it was huge. Downside: we were lazy. Plus side: they sell BROWN SUGAR CINNAMON POP TARTS. Down side: They cost 14 dollars. Plus side: There are bears. Down side: They are not real.

Somehow at this point we had convinced our couchsurf that he should come and see the new Twilight movie with us. Let me explain: Claire and I traditionally see Twilight together, and occasionally with other people, as long as we can blackmail them. We go because the movies are so unintentionally hilarious, which means we start laughing the second the lights go out. The people around us...not so much. This time was no different. The most recent Twilight film is so bad as to be absolutely amazing, a sentiment our couchsurf did not agree with. But we were DYING.

Later that night, we met up with the SHBF! I now have a witness. Claire can attest to it: not only has everything I've ever had to say on the subject been accurate, it's also been somewhat understated. And the brownie was delicious. It was a perfect end to our weekend in Berlin.

There you have it! That's what we did! We saw old friends. We made new ones. We shot off fireworks, some of which went into the sky. We lit up 30 sparklers at once and almost set ourselves on fire. We discovered our couchsurf has partied with the cast of Jersey Shore. We ate a crapton of chocolate. We lost our way and our accents. We had the singular most epic New Year's ever.

Up next tomorrow, Claire and I run around Celle and Hannover, sorely embarrass ourselves on the erotic dancing street, and eat goulash.

Dearest Citizens Of The World

2012-01-03T23:34:00.000+01:00

take two......
omg so lets start with how the whole thing i just wrote disapeared and i am now devistated beyond belief :(
ok so lets start again.......

I want to make a shout out to Amy!!!!! For being the awesome supermodel that she is and that she has mad skillz that i am not allowed to mention

For those of you who dont me i am not going to tell you who i am but tina aka tino or whorebag wanted to make sure that you didnt confuse the two of us because for some reason she admits to how amazing i am and desnt want any of the credit for the amazing things i do because that would be plagerism. so all you need to know is i dont like grammer or spell check or other modern convienveces that help demonstrate my point most clearly. Also we have the added advantage of the german key board so some of the letters and symbols are moved around that could also make things more interesting.

So i guess we should start somewhere near the begining:
The day i arrived whorebag surprized me with Berlin for new years!!!!!!! super super exciting!!!!!! because first off i love love love surprises more than i have the words to tell you about be loveing surprises they are just so amaying. (the z and the y are switched and i cant seem to get used to it so zour going to have to deal because im tired for fixing all the words....sorrz bitches) 2. I had no idea that we were going to berlin because i had talked myself out of the possibilitz for reasons that i dont think i am aloud to disclose. So we got up earlz the next morning and walked to the train talked to the super nice others that were going to the same place ect....ect...and we never got lost on the waz there score!!!!!! so then we met couch surfing host guy (cshg) and he was verz verz verz nice but still a little odd but he whole heartedlz agreed to go see twilight with us. Now tina wants people to think that she onlz watches these movies for the comidic aspect not for their core values and overall amazingness the writing the acting the everything was just perfect it was like taylor laughtnor ripped off his shirt and wrote the screen play with his perfectlz chizzeled abs. Now seeing this is the 4th movie and the third that she has taken time to see in theaters i think that this is complete and utter comitment and this is far more that a love of the comedy of the overacted poorly writen work of some seriously toned abdominals....just saying

Anywho that was actualy on monday so lets skip back to saturday whitch was actaullz new years eve(and yes i know that i combined which and witch but i like it that way) we went to this square thing alexanderplatz that was full of stuff to do like eat sausages and drink bier ICE SKATE!!!!!!!!! so obviously we did that because ice skating is AMAZING!!!!!!!! then we went back to cshg and he made pizza dough from scratch whitch was cazy exciting becuase i mean who says hey im making pizza the dough will be ready when zou get back NO ONE IN AMERICA!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So then we got over the shock of freshly made piyya dough and ate and then went out for the new year!!!!! The original plan was to shoot rockets off the top of an abandoned house but that didnt happen because when we got there it was clear that everyone was going to die trying to get down so instead we shot our rockets off on a street corner with like 500000000000 other people and nearlz took out a couple of them.....oops then there was tons of smoke like so much it was hard to breath and see but it was sooooo amazinglz fun that it was worth having to walk thought the ash and dirty rain for the next few days (but still really gross) Then cshg took us to a drum and bass club.... ok so heres the thing it was fun for like 20 minutes learning to dance how they do and then even watching them dance was fun but we stuck out like barnacles on a hobbit it just wasnt a our scene so we moved on to a bar and then finnaly went to bed around 6am. (cshg said he didnt get back from the club until 2pm the next daynow thats comitment) The next day we got up bright and early around 1030 and the sun wasnt even up yet to be truthfull the sun didnt come up all day it just rained but still we ran around that did things nazi airport east wall gallery dinner dome kind of things. So by Monday we were super super tired but had this big plan set and dispite wanting to sleep we trudged on again through the rain but when we got to check point charlie there was a starbucks so we deceded that we needed a pick up and that turned into an hour; a very enjoyable hour of drinks and a shared muffin, but not what one might refer to as a successful motivated hour. Then we tried to climb the was which may have been slightly inappropriate due to the atmosphere that is requested...but that didnt stop us and no one should have ever expected us to lets be honest. Last night we met with shbf and he was everything that was described and then some so if you have no idea what im talking about just be really realy jealous and for those of you who do shbf is even better in person. Then we had the best brownis ofr my life it was like a lava cake but it was a brownie and it was warm and it was the most amazing thing of my life.

So that was belin minus that part where we nearly misssed the train and the part where when we left the club there was a car covered in ash because someone had set a firework off from the top of it leaving a hole stright through the center and the materess that was on the street and when we had to use those as landmarks for directions but i mean who could zou miss those sorts of things. An then there were all teh people who thought that i was german because i blend in and tina doesnt but shes the one who speaks german that left more than a few perplexed. In the end i learned the there are two words for train but i cant spell either of them and i cant count to three but to be honest cool runnings can teach you that.

ok i hope that wasnt too painful for zou all it probs was but sorrz about that.

In other news tina sounds like a canadian when she speaks english i think its because she actaully pronaounces letters when she speaks and she is still a whore and its hialing outside and she can drive a stick shift and she eats mushrooms (ew gross) and we made cookies because we are just talented like that soooooo
latazzzz biotchezzzzzzz
Lady Luv Killah

IIGOIIG Reveal! Fuck the ß contest! And 2011!

2011-12-31T00:10:00.000+01:00

First things first, the IIGOIIG Round 7 Reveal!

There wasn't actually a consensus, but my gut says straight. However, I can't put him as definitively German, seeing as how he was bound of Amsterdam. He could be Dutch. Therefore, I'm adding him to the list as:

German: 1
Crazy and Homeless: 1
In Denial: 1
Danish: 1
Poor Taste in Music: 1
GAY!!: 1
Impractical Backpacking Gear: 1

Secondly, the Fuck the ß contest! The winner is JON (Different one, Philly). Congratulations, Jon! Not only was your ß wonderfully creative, it was also the only one sent to me, so congrats, you win by default.

CLAIRE IS HERE CLAIRE IS HERE CLAIRE IS HERE AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

And now, on 2011: I'll take it. Fresh out of Austin's death at the end of 2010, 2011 started out superbly shitty, but it got better. I almost got fired from Red Lobster for telling the manager his new policies were communist. I was a bridesmaid in Becca's wedding. I bee-bopped around the midwest, saw a lot of old friends, and made a bunch of new ones. I quit my shitty job, and got an au pair one instead. I moved to Germany. I made friends with Swedish vikings, froze my ass off on Danish beaches, and explored Portugal with my super awesome family. I passed the DSH exam. I got into grad school at a university currently ranked #149 out of the entire world, which really isn't too shabby. And I'm ending 2011 with Claire in BERLIN!, where we will be setting off fireworks, hanging with the SHBF, and going to crazy techno parties with our blanket-fort building couchsurf, even though Claire is still convinced he's an axe murderer. All in all, this has been a good year. I'm sorry to see the world end in the near future.

My last favorite song of the day in 2011! Eliza Doolittle is one of those artists that I don't like, but I have like nine of her songs on my playlist. Go figure. Here's what's been stuck in my head recently, mainly the whistling part. I can't watch the video (thanks, Germany) but you can!

And on that note, adios, 2011!

Everybody else, see you on Tuesday!

Christmas stories!

2011-12-27T21:54:00.006+01:00

Merry merry Christmas friends! I hope you guys all had a totally kickass holiday! Ours was spent visiting both sets of grandparents, starting with Host Mom’s family, who live right outside Göttingen. On the first day, we took a trip into the city to check out the Christmas market, the highlight of which was an absolutely horrendous life-size nativity scene where Mary, Joseph, and the Politically Correct Men all appeared to be modeled after the original cast of Hair. In addition, my first thought when we hit the city center was the elated “Jesus! I’m going to be a grad student here!” quickly followed by the panicked “Jesus. I’m going to be a grad student here.” So basically, it was lovely. My favorite thing about this part of Germany is that there are mountains, well, what I call mountains, but Jean would call hills. At any rate, it’s a nice change. Where I live now is so flat, I generally worry I’ll fly into a million pieces just by walking out the front door.

On the 24^th, presents got opened, and the on the 25^th, we hit up Host Dad’s family (sadly, sans cousins). They are wonderful, warm, and adorable, so it was a good time. Therefore, my problem with the weekend had nothing to do with people, just with the weekend itself.

Here’s how life works when you visit the grandparents: You wake up. You eat breakfast. You sit around and talk. You eat lunch and dessert. Your sit around and talk. You drink tea and eat cake. You sit around and talk. You eat dinner. You sit around and talk. You drink wine and eat cookies. You sit around and talk. You go to sleep. Repeat for the entire weekend.

Now here’s how life works when you’re me and visiting the grandparents: You wake up. You eat a piece of toast. You sit around, alternating between talking and reading Harry Potter. You eat lunch, and by “eat,” I mean you put away less than a third of what the other adults do, which comes out to only slightly more than the child. You barely touch dessert. You try to read Harry Potter, give up, and pace anxiously around the house. You drink tea and eat half a slice of cake. You quote Eddie Izzard and no one laughs, because no one besides you has seen Dressed to Kill. You do mental estimations of the calories you have consumed today verses how many you’ve burned walking up and down the stairs more than is necessary. You become alarmed. You try to sit around and talk, but you’re too busy being alarmed to follow the conversation. You eat a piece of cheese on bread for dinner. You go outside and do laps around the town for forty-five minutes. You come back. You play five games of Freecell while listening to Disney songs, and are equally proud of and ashamed by your 100% win rate. You go downstairs, explain for the umpteenth time you don’t drink wine. You sit around and talk for twenty minutes. You say you’re tired, but instead of sleeping, you shower, then watch a movie and do push-ups, occasionally simultaneously. Eventually, you sort of sleep. Repeat for the entire weekend.

This sitting, talking, and eating shit is perfectly enjoyable, for about a day. But without an outlet, my energy morphs from “normal” to “nervous” by Day Two, and by Day Three, “nervous” crystallizes into “poorly contained panic.” By Day Five, I was so over-saturated with pent-up energy and self-loathing, I was doing unhelpful shots of apple juice and crawling out of my own skin. After we arrived in Celle, I decided to clean out my veins by refusing to eat anything until I had exercised to the point of light-headedness, which I discovered was about 15 miles into biking like the imps of Satan were after my virginity.

It’s not an eating disorder if you call it a fast. And then eat a giant bowl of cereal afterwards.

The redeeming part of the weekend was that I’d at least had the foresight to load up my computer with movies, which I more or less used as sleeping pills. What I discovered, however, was that as my paralyzing frustration at the lack of physical activity grew, my choice in films became increasingly tragic, as if I were subconsciously trying to adjust to the sedentary life by torturing myself into a depression-induced catatonic state. First, I watched Monty Python’s Life of Brian, which is both hilarious and filled with sex acts barely disguised as the background. Next up was Walk the Line, which is moderately cheerful, as long as Joaquin Phoenix isn’t destroying things while tripping on acid. Then came Atonement, where every character you like dies in a war. Finally there was The Wind that Shakes the Barley, where, not only does your favorite character die in a war, he gets executed by his own brother. Thank you for flying Church of England, cake or death?

The question I’ve gotten repeatedly this holiday season has been, “Does it feel weird celebrating Christmas without your family?” My answer: “Ask me after Christmas.” Now that it’s after Christmas, I can officially say, no, it wasn’t weird celebrating Christmas without my family. What was weird was the feeling that Christmas had skipped over me—I don’t know if it was the strange-looking Christmas trees, presents being opened on the wrong day, or the lack of gagging choruses every time octopus gets mentioned. But it wasn’t weird celebrating Christmas in Germany because it doesn’t feel like I celebrated Christmas. Instead, I celebrated that other holiday where you hang shit from trees and sing carols. The one that’s like Christmas, but…isn’t.

In other news, Claire is arriving FRIDAY and I would probably be jumping around had I not biked twenty miles. But we are celebrating New Year’s in STYLE, baking with food coloring, and generally getting into trouble. I’m also going to make Claire write a guest post, which, if you’ll recall the last time she posted on here, is definitely something to look forward to.

Adios!

A Christmas Update

2011-12-23T00:57:00.000+01:00

Hi all!

Sorry for the two-posts-one-day thing. But I just wanted to let you guys know, we're visiting both sets of grandparents for the next few days, and I'll be back to the internet on the 27th. My Christmas this year is the 30th, when Claire arrives, which, when I think about it, I run out of words, so I just dance. In addition, I've got everything arranged for our Super Secret New Year's destination! Don't give it away if you know it, I plan on telling Claire when...well, I haven't worked that part out yet.

In the meantime, I'm giving myself until January to be excited about getting into Uni Göttingen. After that, the real ~~freak-out~~ work begins: matriculation, apartment hunting, finding a job, actually being a student.

Favorite song of the day I listened to with my cousin and her boyfriend, and now I can't get it out of my head. The video is 4 minutes and 43 seconds of dramatic slow-mo reminiscent of bad Telemundo, but who's counting?

At any rate, I hope you guys have an amazing holiday filled with alcohol and chocolate, and distinctly lacking in octopus (sorry, Amy).

ZEUS BLESS US, EVERY ONE.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

2011-12-22T17:50:00.002+01:00

I GOT INTO GRAD SCHOOL.

ASDFGMH;J:KBYKBN XM ölJGSKHGNVM-LB ;VKHOAÖÄ:-MJNJAOmbVBSDETGZIJÖLJHGFSXCVBNM;FDSXCVBNMLIUZGFV BNM;LÖL

I DON'T--

I CAN'T--

HOW DID--

BYE.

Adventures in the Motherland Part II!

2011-12-21T15:59:00.004+01:00

MORE PORTUGAL!

Day 2 continued!

That evening, my cousin and her boyfriend picked me up for a trip to Caldas da Rainha, a nearby town with super fancy gardens and a nice statue of the queen. The way there was highly entertaining: there were amazing pantomimes (involving shooting cows and yelling HAMBURGER!), there were Portuguese lessons (my accent is apparently good, but I can't do the Portuguese 'r'), and also a futile attempt at explaining the subtle linguistic difference between "the Black Forest" and "the black florist." It was brilliant.

Caldas da Rainha turned out to be awesome. We ran around town,

explored the gardens,

made fun of what my cousin's boyfriend called the "cheeneese" bear,

and I made them pose for pictures so I could document how adorable they are.

We also said hi to the queen,

and tried on gas masks in a uniform store. Then we hit up a local shopping mall, where I got to listen to a Portuguese choir put their own spin on that particular gem of colonial holiday cheer, "Do They Know It's Christmas," which I have historically mocked mercilessly for it's willful ignorance of second grade science (equatorial climates get little snow) and geography (Africa is a continent). Basically, it was the perfect song to listen to fifteen teenagers sing with accents. I also purchased this monstrosity:

Originally intended as Host Mom's Christmas present, but after much consideration, I bought her something else that a) goes with the house, and b) doesn't look possessed.

Oh, and in case anyone was wondering what Portugal does with its palm trees over Christmas, the answer is, "puts Christmas lights on them." Duh.

Afterwards, we drove to a really cool local double-beach, with the ocean on one side, and a lagoon lake thing on the other, before hitting up the cousin's boyfriend's hometown to meet his family. Who are absolutely adorable, told me I was beautiful, and made me swear that next time I come back to Portugal, I will come over for dinner. They may be loud and drive like lunatics, but one thing the Portuguese have got in the bag is warmth. If the Germans looked up from their bratwurst, they could learn a thing or two.

Day 3: Sunday, December 18th

I took the morning to go run around Rio Maior a little bit and go Christmas shopping. This resulted in the following exchange (in Portuguese), between me and a sales lady:

Lady: If you're interested the back table is 50% off.

Me: Thanks.

Lady: Here, let me show you everything.

Me: Eughm...sorry, I don't speak Portuguese.

Lady: You don't speak Portuguese?

Me: No.

Lady: Are you sure?

Me: Yes.

Lady: You really don't speak Portuguese?

Me: Ehrlich gesagt, ich kann gar kein Portugiesisch.

Lady: You look like you do.

Yay for not looking foreign!

Then my cousin came over, and we ate lunch with the tias. Afterwards, Guy I Thought Was My Uncle But As It Turns Out Is Actually My Cousin drove us to Alcobaça. There, we ran around an antique flea market,

and explored the monastery. Which is AMAZINGLY beautiful:

I got to hear all about the story of Don Pedro and Inês de Castro, whose love affair is more or less the fourteenth century's (pre)answer to Romeo and Juliet, except it actually happened. In a nutshell, Pedro, the prince of Portugal, was married to some chick, but actually in love with Inês, a noblewoman apparently not noble enough for Pedro's dad. After Real Wife died, Pedro and Inês had lots of sex and babies, to the point where it started to make everyone a little nervous. So the King was like, "Son, you should probably stop," and Pedro was like, "Nah, I'll keep this broad around," and the King was like, "If you don't break up with her, I will send some assassins to behead her in front of her children," and Pedro was all, "You're bluffing." Except then Inês got beheaded in front of her children, and Pedro was like, "I HATE EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD," so he built her a crazy tomb, executed the assassins publicly by ripping their hearts out, and hated his dad for forever, or at least until his mom said to stop. Then he built himself a crazy tomb, and now they sit opposite each other so they can gaze into each other's eyes when they rise to heaven. Or something. The end.

More monastery pictures!

There was a castle, but alas, we did not have the time to play amongst the rocks.

And we finished the expedition by buying some pastries for the tias.

After dinner, the cousin's boyfriend came over, and we all went into town for some hot chocolate. Except the hot chocolate bar was closed, so he called his cousin to take us somewhere else. The cousin of the boyfriend is a DJ whose nickname means "Little Chicken," so it took me all of about forty seconds to start referring to him as DJ Chicken, which everyone found extremely entertaining. Especially when it was revealed he doesn't eat chicken. Somehow in this discussion, I learned that the cousin's friend (who was also with us) taught himself English by watching movies in the fifth grade, and also that the boyfriend's mom raises ducks and rabbits for food.

Suffice to say, I was sad to say goodbye to them, especially to the cousin's boyfriend, who, despite speaking about 100 words of English, somehow manages to be one of the most hilarious people I've ever met in my life.

Day 4. Monday, December 19th.

The tias and my cousin and I took pictures, and then drove me back to the airport, and I was SO SAD. Lots of hugs and kisses and general being miserable went down. I think I hugged my cousin like nine times, and we pinky swore to see each other again soon. I miss them, and I can't wait to go back.

Tuesday, December 20th.

Goddammit. It's snowing in Germany.

Wednesday, December 21st.

There's a letter from my grad school program sitting underneath Lord of the Rings. It has been there since Friday. I am too terrified to open it.

Adventures in the Motherland Part I, and IIGOIIG Round 7!

2011-12-20T13:56:00.002+01:00

PORTUGAL! I LOVE YOU!

Let's be honest, who saw that one coming?

Yes. Portugal. It was wonderful and my family is kickass and I have lots of fun stories!

Day 1: Friday, December 15th.

My flight was at 6 AM, but unfortunately, I discovered that the earliest train didn't get me there until 5 AM, which I thought was cutting it a bit too close. The next earliest train got me there at midnight. So I opted for Door Number 2, and slept in the airport. Which was more or less okay, minus the hourly "Attention: Please do not leave baggage unattended" announcement, repeated in four languages, which they apparently do not turn off even when the airport is closed. The irony was that I discovered the check-in for my flight didn't even open until 5 AM, so basically, I slept in the airport for absolutely no reason.

But as one last parting gift, Germany gave me my favorite thing of all: a questionably gay man. Which brings us to

Is It Gay Or Is It German? ROUND 7!

The scenario: Toe socks coupled with flip flops. Skin tight jeans. A bizarre breed of neon yellow backpack, so narrow it would choke on an Agatha Christie novel. And all this at five in morning. What do you think?

After a really long layover in Amsterdam that I more or less slept through, I arrived in Lisbon, and wandered around for half an hour trying to find the exit. When I walked outside, there was Tia Mina, Tia Odete, and the taxi driver, holding a sign with my name on it. When Tia Mina saw me, she jumped up and down and clapped in exactly the same way I do--who knew such things were genetic? Suffice to say, they are possibly the most adorable creatures on the planet and I love them.

Then we all piled into the taxi for the hour-long drive to Rio Maior. Tia Mina speaks a little English, and the taxi driver a little more, so we were more or less able to have a conversation, the highlight of which was the taxi driver letting me know, "Your mother called to tell us you've had really bad skin since coming to Germany." "I know," I said, "I'm going to a doctor for it." "Well, it's probably the weather." Facepalm. Wanting to crawl into a very dark hole and die: check. And I did it in under half an hour, which is a new record for me.

First impression of Portugal: it looks a lot like Bolivia, only there are no dogs, and a slightly higher percentage of the roads are paved. There is most definitely an economic crisis, and it is most definitely evident in Portugal, which has not stayed on the sinking ship nearly as well as Germany. On the playground, Germany is like the fat happy child with one out of work parent who's still expecting presents for Christmas. Portugal has been wearing the same clothes for a week, has a precocious understanding of how the economy works, and knows the names of the CEOs in two-thirds of the Fortune 500 companies. If you know what I mean.

Second impression of Portugal: oh my sweet Jesus. I look exactly like everybody else.

Third impression of Portugal: except I'm taller.

Later that evening, I met my cousin, who is drop dead gorgeous and surprised everyone by actually speaking conversational English. Then her boyfriend came over to take us to a hot chocolate bar. I wish I could have had a camera on hand to capture the horrified expression on his face when she told him they'd have to speak English at me. But to their collective credit, they spoke English the whole weekend. By the end of it, my cousin was accidentally speaking English to her parents, and I laughed very hard at her.

After the hot chocolate bar, they decided we were going to the salt mines, because they mine salt here. We went at night, so I wasn't able to get any pictures, but they look like this:

The area surrounding the mines consists of tiny little wooden shops and restaurants, that look like this:

And it was into one of these we went for another round of coffee. When we walked in, we effectively doubled the amount of people in the place, and I was introduced as, "The cousin from American who studies in Germany." "Does she speak Portuguese?" "No." "Does she understand Portuguese?" "Yes."

Let me throw in a disclaimer right now. My understanding of Portuguese can roughly be broken down like so: 50% decoding what people are saying about me, 30% grasping at cognates, 20% intimate experience with the rhythm Portuguese takes when it's being angry, argumentative, or relating something stupid, thus signifying you need to go into the other room. If you haven't grown up in a Portuguese household, listen carefully the next time you're in a supermarket in Newark. If you hear every syllable go up the scale, and then drop half an octave on the last one, it's time for you to leave. Rendered it text, it looks something like this:

then I was like, "Bitch, please."

If you hear it, you will know.

Back to the salt mines. So there we were, sitting in this tiny restaurant, talking in a strange mixture of Portuguese and English, and discovering the girl behind the counter and I both have relatives in Newark, which we decided probably know each other. Then, the other lady there turned to me and asked in Portuguese, "Wait, did she say you speak German?" I nodded. A voice from the corner yelled in German, "I do too! I lived in Germany for ten years!" My cousin, her boyfriend, and counter girl almost fell over themselves in hysterics. And that's how six people spoke three languages in the middle of nowhere, Salt Mine Land, Portugal.

Day 2: Saturday, December 17th.

Day 2 started out with an uncle coming over. At least, I think he's an uncle. As an American, I am pre-programmed to comprehend family as Parents, Children, one or two Aunts and Uncles, and a small smattering of Cousins. Trying to understand family in Portugal is an exercise in blowing your brains out: everyone in related to everyone, everyone knows how they're related to everyone, and you get lost during the explanation of this ever-expanding familial bubble because you can't count that high. So yes. Guy I Think Is My Uncle picked me and the tias up, to take Tia Mina to her doctor's appointment. While we waited for her, he took us on a drive through the surrounding countryside, which, as I said, looks just like Bolivia. Lots of small little villages tucked in between hills. Also, his car is named Austin, and is lacking in seatbelts. Anyway, our drive was lovely, and ultimately culminated in climbing up up up up a mountain, and we did not turn around until smoke started pouring out of the steering wheel.

We picked up my tia and then went to lunch, where I ate duck for the first time, and tried some Portuguese cheese they put on the table as an appetizer, which tastes like a wet cloud.

Then Tia Odete and I went for a walk, so I could be a total tourist and take pictures. We also went into a pharmacy, where I discovered Portugal places lube and vibrating cock rings on the shelf labeled "control." On that note, here, have some pictures of the town. You will notice that the sun is actually shining. And it was so warm, I could walk around in long sleeves without a jacket. So it was basically a German summer:

Tomorrow, Day 2 continued, and Day 3. The three amigos go to Caldas da Rainha and Alcobaça. Hilarity ensues.

Giant Pressing Matters

2011-12-15T14:18:00.002+01:00

So today is the one year anniversary of Austin's death, and it is not a good day in Tina-world. I've been running around like a guillotined chicken trying to not think about anything, and I told the barn I can't ride today because I'm sick, but I'm grateful I at least had the foresight to schedule my Portugal trip for tomorrow, so I'd have Giant Pressing Matters to think about, such as "wait, do I speak Portuguese?" and "why the fuck haven't I learned how to pack light already." I also just realized that I left exactly six months ago today, on June 15th, which makes me wonder if my arbitrary selection of that particular date was as arbitrary as I thought it to be, or if the 15th of the month is, in my brain, permanently tied to leaving.

At any rate, I'll be posting Portugal madness on Tuesday, so we can all look forward to stories that involve me being embarrassed, me being awkward, and me being groped.

Anyways.

Actually the greatest horse ever.

DSH=my bitch

2011-12-14T14:24:00.001+01:00

Today I woke up ridiculously early to go into Hannover for the oral part of the DSH test. To say that I was off my game would be an understatement--I was up until one-thirty AM on the phone with my mother, and then laid in bed panicking in the dark until about four thirty, when I may or may not have fallen asleep. Then, two hours later, it was out the door for me. So when my train pulled into the station at 8 AM this morning, I was upset, exhausted, completely unfocused, and barely coherent enough to buy a ham and cheese croissant, let alone take major tests. At 8.30 AM the sun came up over the university (which is in a castle), and under any other circumstances, it probably would have been a sight to behold, but today, I just wanted to stab it in the face.

When they put the chart that I had to talk about in front of me, and set the twenty minute timer, my panic levels hit the red zones, because I didn't understand it--not any of it. I spent most of my given prep time looking up what the words in the title were in my dictionary. With three minutes to go, I gave up, closed my dictionary, put my pen down, and more or less bid adieu to the cold, cruel world.

As far as the test itself went, I sat down in front of two ladies, introduced myself, explained the grafik, and prayed to the High Gods of Spoken Word that the test-takers were more interested in me talking than in what I was actually talking about. To my surprise, they barely asked me about the chart, which wound up having something to do with factors that positively and negatively affect how much money people make, like education, job training, and whether or not you have boobs and/or British soldiers to buy you drinks. The only thing they asked me after I talked about everything was how would I clarify the difference between a university education and practical job education? I said, "To be honest, I didn't really understand this part of the chart. Our educational system in the US is different, and we don't really have the practical job training that is standard in Germany. But if I had to guess..." and then I made up some bullshit answer, which wound up leading to a discussion on how long bachelors degrees in the US vs Germany take, which lead to a discussion of why I don't speak Portuguese anymore, which lead to a discussion in which I explained my deep burning desire to work in Australia, which I more or less made up on the spot. Then they kicked me out.

I sat in the hallway with three Palestinians and a Tunisian (no, being American in this situation is not awkward, why do you ask?) as we waited for our results. When they called me back in, the lady said, "Listen, unfortunately I don't have a lot of time, so I'm going to make this as painless as possible." I collapsed internally. So much for kangaroo praising getting me through major exams. Curse you, Australia. "Basically, you speak at near-native fluency, your mistakes are so minor they're not even worth mentioning, you express yourself wonderfully, and you'll have no problems studying at a university. We gave you a 96%, which means you're still a DSH-3, and you in fact did better on this portion than on the written portion. Apparently, you speak better than you write. Here's your official record."

I don't really remember what happened after that, but I'm pretty sure I hung out briefly with the Palestinians and the Tunisian, and I may or may not have at some point opened my mouth to do something other than squeak. And while I think the examiner was far too kind in her assessment of my language skills, I'm not in the habit of looking horses in the mouth, gift or otherwise. That's what horse dentists are for.

After arriving back in Celle, I decided to celebrate by watching Glee. I clicked on a link. Next thing I knew, my computer went black, and then a very official looking page popped up: "Use of your computer has been suspended by the German government due to illegal activity." Panicked, I shut it down and restarted. Same thing. This time I took a closer look at the suspension notice, and realized that in 2011, bleeding heart liberalism and Sarah Palin jokes probably do not count as links to terrorism, even in Germany. And while I'm no expert on how these things work, I am relatively sure that as a general rule, you can't buy your way out of terrorism-links for the low low price of 100 euros. Fabulous. ANOTHER goddamn virus.

I don't think I posted about this on here, but last week I somehow managed to contract a virus that wouldn't let me access the internet, open up anti-virus software, or do anything other than cry. Zack, in all his amazing magical computer powers, walked me through the idiot-proof steps, then hexed my computer, crushed it under his tech-savvy iron thumb, and avada kedavra-ed the virus DEAD, all the way from America. Because that boy is amazing.

But the German government's offer to buy myself out of this bind was expiring, and it was six AM his time, so I thought maybe I could take myself back through what he had me do last time, and, if not destroy the virus's soul in a flash of dramatic green light, at least tar and feather it. And it worked! I killed it dead! Where would I be if not for Zack's idiot-proof computer genius? Dead in a ditch, I tell you, with my computer burning merrily next to me.

And that's how I destroyed the DSH exam and a computer virus, all in the same day.

And Australia lived happily ever after.

Apologies and the Weekend!

2011-12-13T20:28:00.001+01:00

Sorry for the extended absence, and by "extended," I mean "normal" for any blog that's not mine. To recap the weekend:

Saturday was Host Dad's birthday, which meant a pizza party at our house complete with lots of small children that kept trying on my shoes and yelling at me in Hungarian.

Sunday I was ridiculously sick all day, didn't get out of bed, and watched three movies (Spiderman I and II, which I'd never seen, and ~~Chris Hemsworth~~ Thor, which I'd seen, but have zero problems watching again) in addition to the final two episodes of the British X-Factor.

Monday I was better, but nothing of consequence happened.

Today is Tuesday.

I have the oral part of my language test tomorrow and I am FREAKING THE FUCK OUT.

Thursday I have lots of errands to run.

Friday I leave for Portugal.

AHHH.

And on that note, here, have my favorite song of the day! From Tim Halperin, who I knew from the internet even before his disastrous (and short-lived) run on American Idol. Sorry, I don't know why it's so big.

Don't worry, I'll fill you all in on tomorrow's insanity. I keep thinking, "what if I get this far, only to drop the ball at the last minute?" And that's why I'm not sleeping tonight.

Until tomorrow!

The Best Friday Ever

2011-12-10T11:22:00.000+01:00

Hello everybody!

So I have had pretty much the best two days ever. Thursday I had a perfect perfect jumping lesson on the crazy mare, and a singing lesson with the new lady. She's nice, even though she makes me sing old-lady Italian arias from the seventeenth century. She has probably never seen a musical.

Then yesterday started out with me being so nervous about my test results coming out in the afternoon, I forgot I knew how to steam rice, resulting in a stick, tasteless, highly disgusting rice mush that Host Mom graciously ate with her burnt fish, and didn't give me shit for because I was freaking out. Then County Cork wound up spontaneously having time to kill before his 6 PM train to the airport, so I met up with him in the center of town. About half an hour into coffee and hot chocolate, he said, "Is everything okay? It seems like you're thinking really hard about something." I said, "To be completely honest, my giant language test results come out in twenty-three minutes, and I'm panicking. Do you want to go to the library with me and check out my grades?" So that's what we did!

Aaaaaaaand...I PASSED! Not only did I pass, I passed at the highest level (DSH-3) with the third-highest grade out of everybody! I scored really high on everything, had almost a perfect score on reading comprehension, and failed at grammar miserably, and by miserably, I mean out of 100 points, I got 55. But I scored so high in everything else, it was kind of okay. Clearly my grammar is not a shambles, because you require good grammar to complete all the other sections, I'm just terrible at rewriting arbitrary sentences for no reason. And just in case you don't believe me when I say this test was DAMN MEGA HARD, I did some math:

Out of 224 participants:

11 (including me) scored at a DSH-3 level
44 scored a DSH-2, which is the next highest level and the minimum you need to get into university.
66 scored a DSH-1, which is basically useless.
123 failed.

So when you combine all the fails with all the DSH-1s (which might as well be fails, seeing as they're basically useless), three-quarters of the participants didn't pass.

I'll take your 24,5% success rate, and I will PUNCH IT IN IT'S FACE.

Now on to the spoken part on Wednesday, and then I am done with the godforsaken test, unless I fail the verbal and have to retake everything! YAY.

Anyway. After I was done jumping up and down and squeaking over my test results, County Cork and I hit up the castle, which is free on Fridays, and therefore the only way you would catch me in the boring-ass museum. We ran around like morons, making fun of the people in the portraits, playing with all the interactive children's exhibits, and inciting the ire of the museum staff, who coldly informed us that the museum insurance would not cover the damage we inflicted upon ourselves if we continued to use the floor-protecting slipper shoes they make you wear as a chance at sliding races.

After I put the boy on the train, I met up with Hedgehog, Fairpeece Deesh, and her boyfriend, to barhop in Celle. Hilarity ensues. I got made fun of mercilessly because I lose the ability to speak English when I drink.

New favorite song! This is from James Vincent McMorrow, who a) has a super hero name, and b) is Irish. Win.

Have a great weekend all!

Bad American Parenting! Rounds 1, 2, and 3

2011-12-07T12:56:00.006+01:00

I love my host parents, I really do. They are warm-hearted, kind individuals, who pay for my health insurance, put candy from St. Nikolaus in my hot-pink stripper heels, occasionally let me drive their car, and actually like me. But, for better of for worse, they've got a parenting style that's very...special. They have their beliefs that they stick to, they want their child to be raised in a certain way, and they eat organic, all of which is perfectly fine. But they're also really fond of telling me exactly where my parents fucked up raising me, and how I'm still suffering today from their parenting errors. And it's so mind-numbingly hilarious, I can't even be offended. Instead, I just document it. Welcome to my (long overdue) New Occasional Series, Bad American Parenting (BAP)!

Goals:
--Make you aware of bad parenting practices.
--Demonstrate through example how you can avoid said bad parenting practices.
--Spare your children the horrors my parents inflicted on me, which have scarred me for life and made me virtually incapable of functioning in normal society. Thanks, Mom and Dad. Thanks.

Round 1

The scene: Host Mom and I eating lunch together.

Host Mom: Oh, I nearly forgot! The kids are getting dental check-ups at the kindergarten soon.
Me: Wait...dentists go to the schools? And give the kids their check-ups there?
Host Mom: Of course. And doctors do it too, that's where the kids get their vaccines.
Me: Jesus! The kids get shots in the school!
Host Mom: Really not that big a deal, Tina.
Me: Jesus. I'm so glad I wasn't a German child, I'm terrified of needles and would have embarrassed myself in front of the whole school running away from the doctor and screaming. I have legit panic attacks when it comes to all things medical, I get light-headed and can't see and throw up.
Host Mom: That's because your mother socialized you poorly to the doctor.
Me: I'm sorry, what?
Host Mom: Had your mother done a better job of socializing you, that wouldn't happen.
Me: Are you telling me I suffer from medical-induced panic attacks because I'm not well socialized?
Host Mom: Yes.
Me: Well then.

Round 2

The scene: 10 PM, sitting at the table with the host parents and family friends. I am hungry and want a rice cake.

Me: *sits down with rice cake smeared with peanut butter*
Family Friend: Are you pregnant?
Me: I'm sorry, what?
Family Friend: Are you pregnant?
Me: What is that supposed to mean.
Family Friend: You're eating a rice cake with peanut butter on it.
Host Mom: Don't worry, it's an American thing, Tina always eats weird things.
Me: It's just a rice cake? With peanut butter on it?
Family Friend: You shouldn't eat at night,
Me: I ate a slice of bread four hours ago, I'm hungry.
Host Dad: No, really unhealthy is how the Americans always eat hot food at night.
Me: For fuck's sake, I ate a slice of bread four hours ago. I'm hungry.
Host Mom: That's probably why you always stay up late, because you had hot dinners for so many years. If your parents had fed you correctly, you wouldn't have this sleeping pattern.
Me: Are you trying to tell me that my sleep schedule is the result of my parents putting something other than cold bread and cheese on the childhood dinner table?
Host Mom: Yes.
Tina: My rice cake and I are going upstairs now.

Round 2.5

The scene: Same time, next evening. The host parents have ordered pizza.

Me: Ya'll realize you're eating a hot dinner, right?

Round 3

The scene: Eating dinner with the host family

The background information: On weekends, my host family likes to sit down at the table around 3 PM and drink tea, eat cake, and listen to music, for two hours. Unfortunately, at 3 PM in a German December, it's dark, so they light a candle. Unfortunately, sitting in the dark with only a single candle gives me a headache. Unfortunately, I am 23, American, and, after some forty-five minutes, capable of thinking of about seven million things I'd rather be doing than that.

Host Mom: Potty training is so stupid. Why do people do it? If you just leave the kid long enough, they potty train themselves, but when adults try to do it, it turns the kid into nervous, anxious, wrecks.
Me: I, along with everyone else I've ever known ever, was potty trained, and I turned out perfectly normal.
Host Dad: Not really. You're hyperactive.
Me: I'm sorry, what?
Host Dad: You're hyperactive. You can't sit still with us for long periods of time and just enjoy the comfortable atmosphere.
Me: ...Are you trying telling me that the reason my life is run at a slightly faster pace than yours has nothing to do with me being American, and everything to do with the fact that I was potty trained?
Host Dad: Yes.
Me: Wow. Just...wow.

To recap:
I hate needles because my mom socialized me poorly.
I stay up late because my parents fed me hot food.
I run my life at a fast pace because my parents potty trained me.

Well, now you know.

Germany: Land where the people come to ridiculous conclusions. Land where they're better at doing it than even me!

Shoe Fail, Hat Win.

2011-12-05T20:18:00.004+01:00

Apparently there's a custom with a lowercase 'c' in Germany where the night of December 5th, you clean your shoes and leave them by the door so that somebody (Santa, Jesus, Hillary Clinton, I'm not clear on this point) can come by and put candy in them. But I came home from the barn quite late, and wasn't in the mood to clean shoes. So I decided to be smart about the process, and put out shoes that were already clean, thereby saving me labor, time, and the embarrassment of having sparkling-white Converse sneakers. For this, I received the ire of my host family, who have since informed me that Santa/Jesus/Hillary Clinton is giving me nothing this year due to my inappropriate shoe choice. Practical thinking? Check. Practical shoes? Not so check.

Here's the shoe line-up. I bet you have NO IDEA which ones are mine.

Well, depending on what appears in them tomorrow, I can probably guess who came by. If I get a bible, it was probably Jesus. If I get a Democratic presidental nomination, it was probably Hillary. If the shoes are gone, then the mystery as to whether or not Santa is a drag queen has been solved.

In other news, sometimes, when I'm bored on the internet, I look at my own stats. Sometimes, I even learn new and amazing things. Such as that one person has found my blog through a search for "a biography kozzii spikey flower," two with "starbucks storage room," and one particularly amazing individual with the exceedingly eloquent, "german mother fuked and boys," which I daresay sounds like the pope's Google search for free porn.

In other other news, as much as I love my Swedish hat, it's not cutting it for long distance bike-riding, German wind is just too good at diving between the woven Swedish fibers and punching me in the face So at the Christmas market yesterday I bought a new AMAZING hat, which looks like I skinned a mammoth and put it on my head. Win.

I'm going to Portugal in a week and a half, and Claire is coming in TWENTY DAYS OH MY GOD I'M SO EXCITED.

New favorite song of the day! I've kind of been on a Decemberists kick lately, which means I've spent most of today bee-bopping to this:

Me the Apple Juice Whore, and other Hamburg stories

2011-12-03T23:53:00.001+01:00

HAMBURG!

Yesterday I took a 3 PM train to Hamburg, to meet up with Marina for the Johannes Strate concert. But first, it was Christmas market time! When Marina puts her pictures up, I am stealing them, but suffice to say, it was awesome. I love love love the German Christmas season, because it has all of the Christmas minus the mass produced Hallmark gadgets imported from Vietnamese sweatshops. Really, it's something to experience. If you guys ever get the chance to check out a Christmas market in Germany, DO IT. I drank hot chocolate, ate a fish sandwich, and argued with drunk guys who kept trying to tell me my Swedish hat isn't totally badass. Good times!

Then, as we got off the U-Bahn on our way to the venue, we were met with something neither of us had ever encountered before: an entire police force standing at the top of the stairs, checking tickets as you walked out, and fining people for being black Tolkien riders left and right. As you may remember from this post, Marina, Chris and I got caught without train tickets in Köln, but due to our foreign-ness, we walked (skipped) ashamedly (gaily) away, after we were collectively fined 40 Euros, and not each bitch-slapped individually with the fine. Since then we have more or less learned our lessons, and I had purchased a ticket for this trip. Unfortunately, I hadn't purchased enough ticket, and my ticket cost too little for the trip we had taken. I almost had a heart attack out of principle. When the guy said "I need your ID and forty euros," I pulled the foreign card like nobody's business, and was all "Oh, man, I tried to buy a ticket, but I misunderstood the machine! Why am I so stupid! Why is Fate such a fickle German mistress? EVERYTHING IS SO HARD BECAUSE I AM FOREIGN AND SAD." And that's how, instead of charging me forty euros, the police officer took me to the ticket machine and we bought the correct ticket together.

Being a foreigner. Works every time.

And then it was time for the concert! Johannes Strate has made a couple of appearances on this blog, mostly as the lead singer of Revolverheld, but now he's got a solo album out. On top of being a super awesome musician, he also gives out wine to audience members, yells "What the FUCK" in English whenever he has tuning problems, and rocks Swedish hair. Here, have a picture!

So other than the fact that I am buying his album, the concert was noteworthy because Marina and I were standing behind a mother/daughter tag team who looked like they were raping each other. Not awkward or anything.

Afterwards, we hit up an Irish pub to get out of the cold and kill time before my 5 AM train back to Celle. There, we made friends a French airline worker, who was superbly cool and assured me that the French do not hate you if you speak French at them. In fact, they are highly appreciative. He makes me want to go back to France, as long as I don't have to leave my french-mocking at the border.

And then along came Drunk Old Guy (DOG?). To be completely honest, it was my fault he sat next to us, because I offered him an empty chair at our table while he was standing there looking lost. And I regretted it instantly, as he went on a slurred tirade about our inestimable beauty and his accounting job. He looked to be about forty (and I had my fingers crossed he'd ask about our ages, just so I could say seventeen), but he acted like a sad drunk intern watching Apollo 13 blast off without him, and consoling himself later with the leftover fermented rocket fuel. But I talked to him. Because I wanted an apple juice.

Most whores work for such trivial things like money, drugs, or the temporary fantasy that they are not actually whores. They get beaten by their pimps, a full Rolodex of STDs, and occasionally stabbed and thrown in the Delaware River. I work for apple juice. I was a twenty-minute verbal whore, pretending to be interested in DOG's accounting anecdotes, and acting like Marina had just said something very interesting requiring my attention in order to fend off the ask-out requests, all because I didn't feel like a) getting up to buy the apple juice, or b) buying the apple juice. I'm sure it was a very interesting conversation we had, but I can't actually say, because while drinking apple juice, I can tune out everything.

At 3 AM we finally made our way over to the train station, where I attempted to get two hours of sleep next to a guy with a broken nose. By the time I finally got home at 7.30 in the morning, I was operating under a warped sense of reality, brought on by a complete lack of sleep. In my blurry, confused, and exhausted state, stupid things like trash cans and roadkill turned into meaningful Post-It notes about my life from another world, which required intense, silent stares if I wanted the full moon to reveal to me the super-secret gravestone runes, written in Odin's own hand. Suffice to say, I more or less collapsed into bed as soon as I got home, to sleep for three wretched hours, and promptly forgot all the secrets of life I'd gotten from the roadkill.

But then County Cork came over! We baked pumpkin cookies, which came out delicious, and watched O Brother Where Art Thou. Friday he heads back to Ireland for a month, and I get my DSH results, which I am superbly unexcited about.

New favorite song of the day! Courtesy of Shane. BRITISH THINGS.

I hate German Customs

2011-12-01T15:42:00.002+01:00

I hate German Customs. Not lowercase customs, such as three days of Christmas, cloth shopping bags, and making unmarried forty-year-olds ride donkeys backwards through town. I hate uppercase Customs, the German Zollamt, that controls packages and makes you pay taxes on them.

I've already run into trouble with German Customs once, when I had to pay 33 dollars in taxes on a package from my mother. Luckily the guy I dealt with took pity on the fact that I was foreign and unaware of the policy, and only charged me half the tax he should have. It was still annoying, but at least I learned something very important: you can order ten million dollars worth of sex toys and weaponry, as long as it's domestic, but don't let anyone send you anything from abroad that costs more than 60 dollars.

Except today I got a letter in the mail, that my friend Kim had sent me a (lovely!) necklace, that I had to pay taxes on--despite the value of the necklace on the package being under the limit. I said the words "fuck," and "Sweden," a lot, hopped on my bike, and pedaled to the office while mentally taking out my hoop earrings and smearing my face with Vaseline. "Hello," I said politely, "You guys are retarded." And I explained the situation. The same nice guy from Round 1 brought my package out of the back, and asked if it was really a gift. "Yes," I said, "look, she even crossed out the box that says 'Gift.'" "That doesn't mean anything," he said, "they all do that." I looked him dead in the eye and said, "...So you're going to make me pay taxes on a gift marked as a gift that is under the gift limit because you don't believe me when I tell you it's a gift?" We stared at each other for thirty seconds. Then he said:

"What is your relationship to the sender?"
"We play the ukulele together."
"What's a ukulele?"
"It's like a little guitar."
"Anything else?"
"We met in Indiana."
"Where's Indiana?"
"In America. We played Margaritaville together."
"What's Margaritaville?"
"A song by Jimmy Buffet."
"Who's Jimmy Buffet?"
"Give me the damn package or I put your face through Jimmy Buffet's guitar."

Then he made me unpack the box so that we could admire the necklace together. He asked me what the values of the materials it was made with were. I glared at him. He started signing forms.

On the plus side, I got the package, I got to yell at people, I didn't pay taxes, and the necklace is beautiful, Kim! On the down side, if any of you asshats send me sex toys or something embarrassing, and Customs makes me unpack them in front of their all-male staff, I will put your face through Jimmy Buffet's guitar. SO DON'T GET ANY IDEAS.

Love,
Tina

Things That Are Destined To Be Fails.

2011-11-29T14:14:00.002+01:00

1) Bill O'Reilly interviews.
2) Insane Clown Posse comprehending third-grade science and rapping about it.
3) Hosting a Tropic Thunder movie night with two non-native English speakers, one of whom will fall asleep, one of whom will laugh at all the wrong parts, neither of whom will understand anything of what's going on, thus resulting in you awkwardly attempting to explain the plot after the movie is already over. Next time, you go with their suggestion (Zohan), even if it's awful and involves Adam Sandler playing every Jewish stereotype known to man.

Favorite song of the day! It's from the movie I'm Reed Fish, which is a terrible movie (albeit not as bad as Zohan), but this song is fabulous.

Adios!

The Number 1 Thing I Hate About Germany, and it's not British Soldiers

2011-11-26T22:03:00.005+01:00

The number one thing I hate most about living here is not that a sex on the beach costs almost ten dollars, or that shops are clinically unable to stay open past 4.30 PM. It's not even my host family's uncomfortable fondness for bread that closely resembles human remains passed through a velociraptor's primitive digestive system, assuming the velociraptor doesn't get enough daily fiber. My biggest issue with Germany is this:

Let's take a closer look, shall we?

In other news, I cranked the armbar on Hedgehog and Czech Girl last night, and somehow persuaded them to go with me to the British club. There are two main clubs in Celle, Inkognito, where the Brits are not allowed, and Vanity, which the Germans avoid like the plague. Hedgehog and Czech Girl had already been to both, but their description of Vanity's drunk British men made me really curious to see the spectacle. I had to work SO hard--Hedgehog really, really did not want to go. But in the end, I swore that we would only go once, and never again. It turned out to be the best time ever, and I have since revoked this swear.

When we arrived at about 12.30 AM, and there was basically nobody there. So we immediately claimed our own table, and sat down to watch the three creepy Sudanese guys grind the air on the dance floor. Fifteen minutes later, we were still sitting, the creepy Sudanese were still grinding, and nothing else had happened. I declared that the night would be a waste unless we made somehow made friends with random people. Right on cute, a British guy wearing a bright blue T-Shirt (Peace Out!) sat down next to me, and said, "I don't mean to interrupt, but are you an atheist?" I assumed this was the first half of a bad pickup line, and stared at him expectantly. He stared at me expectantly. I realized this was a real question, and said, "Sure? Why not." "YES!" he shouted, pumping his fists in the air, "And now let me ask you another one: do you read Reddit?" "Sure? Why not." "ANOTHER ATHEIST WHO READS REDDIT. AMAZING." Then he proceeded to rant at me for twenty minutes about how the whole world is fucked, but especially America, and I'm fucked, but what a lovely accent I have. Then he disappeared, and I was trying desperately not to laugh.

The next guy that sat down next to me was completely wasted, to the point that I couldn't tell what language he was speaking. He was staring at all of us like he wanted to eat us, so Czech Girl told him to fuck off. He didn't move. She turned to me and said, "How do you say 'fuck off' in German?" "Verpiss dich." She proceeded to yell it at Drunk Guy at the top of her lungs, but in her Czech accent, it was rendered "Fairpeace deesch." It took five straight minutes of this before he got the message. But he was quickly replaced by two Sudanese guys, who were all over Czech Girl (hereafter referred to as Fairpeace Deesch) and Hedgehog. Clearly the scenery was not working for us. I proposed we go check out the other room.

The other room turned out to be the smoking section, and as we turned the corner, two British guys man-hugged so violently, they overshot and punched me in the shoulder. "Jesus!" I said, "You scared the crap out of me!" "Very sorry, very sorry! Are you American?" "...Yes?" Thus I became friends with Birmingham and Reading, both soldiers in the British army stationed nearby, both absolutely awesome. We spent a good hour discussing curse words, trying to do each other's accents, and making fun of America. I also learned how to say "bastard" in a British accent, AND, according to Birmingham and Reading, win the award for Most Polite American Ever. Sometime in between debating why you can't say "cunt" in America, and whether using the word "shuttlecock" outside the context of Badminton makes you gay, a lovely Irish brogue to my right yelled, "Me bys, are ye goin te stare at te lady al nigh', or are ye goin to buy her a drink?" And that's how I a) didn't pay for my drinks for the rest o te evenin', and b) met County Cork.

As a random side tangent, I know people always like to go on about how women only make 75 cents to every dollar a man makes, but I'm officially of the opinion that if you play your cards right, and go into British bars with an American accent and a low-cut sweater, you will more than make up the salary difference with free drinks. Anyway:

British soldiers. Are the BOMB. They are ridiculously awesome and ridiculously entertaining. With the help of Birmingham, Reading, and County Cork, we wound up making friends with half the squadron (who at one point started up a super awkward "USA! USA!" chant), and I eventually got dragged out on the dance floor to demonstrate my catastrophic moves. Courtesy of some sleek maneuvering, Hedgehog and Fairpeace Deesh managed to finally shake the Sudanese, and joined us. An amazing time was had by all.

To summarize, it was great fun, and I went to bed at 6 AM. I slept for two hours, woke up sick as a dog (from the lack of sleep, not the alcohol), and lounged around all day in my pajamas. Until 2 PM, when I hopped on my bike and headed into the city to meet up with County Cork. We ran around, hit up the Christmas markets:

rode the ferris wheel:

made fun of the taxidermied reindeer sitting on top of it:

checked out the castle, Christmas shopped for his mother, had hot chocolate and muffins, and admired the travesty that is our propeller-controlled nativity scene:

Plus he has that accent, where they drop the "h" and turn "thought," and "three," into "tought," and "tree," and I had zero problems listening to it for five and a half hours. It felt like I'd known him forever, which was both awesome and unexpected. We is probs getting together next weekend.

Tomorrow, off with Hedgehog to go play pool with New Fabio. Hooray! I don't know where all these friends came from so suddenly, but I am not complaining!

EDIT: Am I the only one who thinks the video pictured above unavailable in Germany is coming from someone named "freaky mouse sex?"

EDIT EDIT: Oh, Claire? I already made County Cork promise us that he and his bys are hanging out with us when you're here. YOU'RE WELCOME.

Dissection of the Christmas Pyramid

2011-11-22T21:04:00.001+01:00

Thanksgiving doesn't really exist here, unless you live on the British army base, which means that without this important buffer, the German Christmas season started a week ago. Overnight, all the lamp posts got decorated with fake pine boughs and light-up gold stars. Then yesterday I headed into the center of town, and discovered that they're already prepping for the Christmas markets. That means giant trees have been set into the manhole covers, row upon row of recently-erected food stands have killed 90% of the bicycle parking, and weird-looking statues that make me uncomfortable have sprung up in every square. The Chief Monstrosity is a particularly painful eyesore called the Christmas Pyramid, but it looks less like a pyramid and more like a layer cake designed for a polygamist's wedding.

On the bottom tier, we have a life-size reproduction of a resplendent baby Jesus in his manger, surrounded by his adoring parents, who look thrilled that their spontaneous arranged marriage has resulted in a child whose future religion will one day be used to justify everything from mass murder to not shaving your facial hair. Or rather, they look like they're in the middle of yelling at you that you should be more thrilled: Mary is holding up one hand like she's going to interrupt you, you atheist, and Joseph's outstretched arms are going for either a hug or a death throttle. Baby Jesus looks remarkably well-developed for a ~~six-month old infant~~ newborn.

Hanging out on the middle tier are the Three Wise Men, one of whom is politically correct and black, all of whom are bearing gifts that, once you take into account the small parts that represent a serious choking hazard for children under the age of three, were probably fished out of old Happy Meals. In addition, they all look really lost, which is understandable. Back in those days, they used Mapquest.

On the Tier Most High we've got naked baby cherubs, holding their naked baby harps, with facial expressions like they want to naked baby kill you. Gloria in excelsis Deo. Please don't use my intestines as harp strings.

The entire clusterfuck is topped off with the artistic addition of rotating helicopter blades. Whether these are supposed to work or just look nice, I don't know, but I'm hoping for the latter. Because although the prospect of being killed by a naked baby taking wing from the floating nativity and hurtling towards the earth at deadly velocity on a collision course with my head is ironic, I'd prefer to go out in a different fashion. Like, any other fashion.

If this objet d'art is any proper indication, it's going to be a pretty amazing Christmas season.

Adios!

DSH and boots.

2011-11-19T17:54:00.001+01:00

Seven hours later, I have completed the written portion of the DSH Test, and I feel broken. I'm also having trouble speaking English, so bear with me--even though I have zero desire to ever speak German again (read: until tomorrow), nothing else seems to be coming out of my mouth.

Yes, I finished it. Yes, it was awful. But mostly because it took seven hours, not because of the content. Truthfully gesagt, I'm pretty confident, and if I don't pass the test I'll be extremely surprised. My essay, about how foreign students don't stay im Gastland because they're a) discriminated against, and b) offered better jobs in their home countries mit their foreign experiences behind them, came out pretty well, I think. Hörverstehen was kind of a joke, I understood every word and I'm pretty sure I got, if not a perfect score, at least close enough. My understanding skills are better than my speaking skills, so that's good. Then came reading, an article about turning skyscrapers into greenhouses, which was random, but perfectly acceptable.

Then we hit the Grammatik part, and I wanted to kill someone, preferably someone other than myself, preferably someone with tea party affiliations. I knew going in the grammar would be the hardest part, because, while I'm pretty good at knowing if something is right, I'm pretty sucky at knowing why it's right. And, sure enough, it was obnoxious. Because on this portion of the test, they give you sentences with seemingly arbitrary words underlined, and you have to rewrite the sentence, reformat the underlined part, pay attention to grammar, and punch yourself in the groin, all while not changing the meaning of the original sentence or taking your frustration out on the Haitian girl sitting next to you. For example:

It is possible that we'll have to change the meeting time.

When I look at that, I think of several possible answers right off the bat, most involving grievous bodily harm, but this is incorrect. The correct answer is either "I don't know if we'll have to change the meeting time," or "Maybe we'll have to change the meeting time." Now try doing that bitch work in a foreign language. Actually, don't, because I already did, and it's not something I would wish on anybody who doesn't have tea party affiliations.

Personally, I think that whoever writes the test just underlines out of a combination of boredom and spite, because that's what I would do. I would sit there with the pen in my hand, going, "And if I underline THIS part, then it looks like a baby doing a headstand! And if I underline THIS part, it looks like a T-Rex is eating the baby! And if I underline THIS part, then all the lines on the page turn into a recognizable, if impressionistic, reproduction of Picasso's Guernica! WHO EATS SAUERKRAUT NOW, BITCHES."

The good news is that I need at least a 67% to move on to the oral part, and if I scored an 87% or above, they assume you're good enough that you can skip talking about random shit and just go study already. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

DSH Prüfung aside, I went shoe shopping yesterday, and bought boots. Anyone who has ever had the unpleasant experience of going shopping with me knows that I've been trying to buy boots since sophomore year of college, but they don't fit me. Seventeen years of horse-back riding and five months of intensive bike-riding have whittled my calves down to negative air space, which means that boots that fit my feet could fit two of my legs, and boots that fit my legs are made for Asian drag queens. However, I've discovered that if the boots have enough fur on them, the extra padding can more or less take the place of all the calf I'm missing, and that's why I now own a pair of brown furry pirate boots.

I also bought the greatest slippers the world has ever seen. At first glance, they look like a hideous Christmas sweater from a seventies Sears catalogue came to life and wrapped itself around my feet, and at second glance, they like my feet are being raped by said hideous Christmas sweater. I've never been this excited about slippers.

Here's my new favorite song of the day for you. Let it never be said my musical tastes are anything but terrifyingly eclectic. Plus, I really like the one guy's glasses:

The One Where Tina Goes to the Motherland

2011-11-16T19:58:00.001+01:00

Here are the reasons I am actually the worst Portuguese citizen on the planet:

1) I don't speak Portuguese.
2) I don't eat octopus.
3) I have never been to Portugal.

Not much to be done about the first two, but number three is going to change in exactly a month. I know this, because I just booked the ticket. I'm going to visit my aunts, whom I have never met, or at least not since developing a memory, but knowing my parents, they've probably been getting pictures since I was a blip on an 80's ultrasound. And I'm pretty sure the one reads my blog, if so, HI TIA I AM COMING TO VISIT YOU.

Other than that, I have no idea what's going on, but I DO know that I will a) finally get to meet some of the Portuguese family, b) add some fun stories to my repetitive arsenal, and c) embarrass myself terribly. So basically, a normal weekend in the life, with the slick addition of relatives.

In other news, the first entry for the (Tia, cover your eyes) Fuck the ß!!!!1 contest came, and it is pretty amazing, so thank you Jon**! Your ß is fabulous, so everyone else, bring your A (or ß?)-game, because Jon wants German chocolate VERY BADLY.

Favorite song of the day!

And that's all I got. Adios!

**No, Philadelphia, a different Jon, this one has never been shot.

all is quiet on the German front

2011-11-14T18:58:00.001+01:00

Hey friends!

All is quiet on the German front, so I unfortunately don't have much to tell you. But it is Sam's birthday, so HAPPY BIRTHDAY SAM!

I realized today my hair is creeping steadily closer to the line between Attractive and Live Action Role Playing, so I will have to arrange a hair cut in the near future. In Germany, this unfortunately involves making an appointment, so it'll be a while before I stop being lazy enough to pick up the phone and call people. In the meantime, it is quite possible my hair will hit larping status, and I'll start getting hit on by people in black who braid their beards. Male and female.

The other day I chased down a street musician wearing a Union cavalry uniform to give him some euros, because he was playing some seriously badass harmonica and guitar. That has nothing to do with anything.

My massive language test is on Saturday, and...I'm calm. I've never studied this hard for anything in my life, mostly because I suck at studying. I never opened a book in high school, and in college I only opened them if the summary on the flap contained such key words as "socio-linguistic analysis" or "dragons." But I have been studying for this test ever day since the beginning of September, and over the weekend, I did my daily assessment of the panic meters, and discovered, much to my surprise, they were silent. I can't tell if this is what adequate preparation feels like, or if this is the sensation drowning victims get somewhere in between inhaling seawater and hugging Jesus.

So until we've got that point cleared up, here, have my favorite song of the day. Yes, I watch X-Factor, but only the British version because it's better. But while procrastinating on Youtube I somehow stumbled across this clip of a contestant from the American version, and now I can't stop listening to it. I'm not sure why the image is reversed, but that's probably what happens when you rip shit from television.

I WON A GOLDEN GNOME. And other stories.

2011-11-11T20:42:00.001+01:00

I have a lot of totally random stories, none of which are in themselves worth an entire blog post, but maybe I can make a blog post with all of them.

German Television!

German television is AWFUL.

No, really, it is really, really awful.

On top of being chock-full of naked people, the shows themselves are shit. However, my family doesn't have cable, so I can't honestly judge if our 24 channels are shitty because they're free, or if they're a reflection on German TV as a whole. But I'm going to go with Door Number 2, because "cable" in this country means you have to pay for MTV, where they dub over Snooki and the rest of the Jersey Shore with the smooth-jazz German of Wolfgang Kaiserkraut. Whose name I just made up, but it's probably accurate.

One thing I do kind of like about media here though is that super good looks are not a requirement to be on television or in movies. And for whatever reason, it took me a while to figure this out--we'd be watching TV, and I knew something was different, but I couldn't put my finger on it. Then after a month, I realized no one was gorgeous, they all just looked like normal people. And I must say, this is quite refreshing.

Now, here are my favorite shows on German TV!

Berlin, Tag und Nacht (Berlin, Day and Night)
--Basically the Jersey Shore, but without the Jersey, the Shore, or the tans, and set in Berlin, as everyone runs around being vapid and retarded and wanting breast implants. I like it because it's so stupid. Also, it's really good for learning how to yell at someone in German.

X-Factor: Deutschland
--Yes, Germany has it's own version of the X-Factor, and like everything else on television, it is terrible. Germany never got over eighties tunes remixed over a heavy-bass, so that's what all the contestants bee-bop to for your votes. I only watch because there's one duet group I kind of find badass, it's a classically trained tenor from New York City who hangs with a chick taller than him with a voice like Celine Dion. They're the only people on there who don't remix over a heavy bass, and thus the only ones who may or may not be worth watching. Also the American speaks basically no German whatsoever, and it's funny to watch his face when everyone is talking.

Traum von Auswandern (Dreams of Migration)
--I find the whole premise of this show kind of funny, because it's a German TV show about Germans who don't want to live in Germany. So they get set up with their dream job, in their dream city abroad, and have to tough it out a month, whereby at the end they can choose whether to move back to the Vaterland or stay in the new place. And, surprises of surprises, they almost always choose to come back to Germany. Who wouldn't? Even if the Peace Corp they at least train you up a few weeks, show you how things work, and help you get adjusted. In this show, you have to start working the day after you arrive, and no one tells you shit. Although it blows my mind that people are so naive as to think working as a carpenter in Bali is the same as doing it in Germany.

St. Martin's Day!

Yesterday was St Martin's Tag, the actual German equivalent of Halloween. Except because this is Germany, not America, you have to work for your candy (or in my family's case...mandarins.) by singing a song. We had one child come to the door, with her cat. For that, I have her an extra mandarin.

The Mare!

I had my first jumping lesson on the Grand Prix half-lease yesterday! And, all things considered, it went well! It was tough, because we were jumping in the indoor, which is too small for a mare this insane to jump around in, plus the fences were all really little. The trainer put the last fence up to maybe 3'3, and the horse just blew through it. The fences need to go up to back her off, but I'm somewhat worried "backing off a Grand Prix horse" means the fences will be taller than I am.

Do you guys know anyone so completely insane that they basically can't handle daily life? But as soon as there's a crisis, they're the most level-headed potato out there? That's what this mare is like, she can't deal with life, but as soon as she sees jumps, at least her brand of crazy takes a focus.

What was entertaining was that half the barn had gathered to watch, and proceeded to tell me afterwards that, while the mare looks completely out of control, they at least give me props for my courage. Thanks.

Seminar!

So today I had the first of two seminars I signed up for during the summer. This one was called "Typisch Deutsch?" and it was all about things that are standard to German culture, and where they come from. There was also a lot of history involved, like how the spread of Protestantism relates to a German desire for order all the damn time, and so on. It was super interesting, super fun, and I understood everything, which made me happy. Also being a) the only foreigner, and b) the only person under the age of 50, I was quickly adopted as the day's mascot. It helps that I've decided to start being candid about my imperfect German, and I am no longer above asking complete strangers what things or called, or what the article attached to it is. This meant that everyone loved me and helped me out as much as they could.

But the best part was that we ended with everyone getting intro groups, and then competing to win a golden chocolate garden gnome. The winner was the group that guessed how many million garden gnomes there are in Germany without going over. My group guessed 13 million, AND WE WON. And because my group thought I was adorable, I GOT TO TAKE THE GOLDEN CHOCOLATE GARDEN GNOME: My excitement could not be contained.

HERE HAVE A PICTURE:

YES, I UNDERSTAND YOUR JEALOUSY.

Oh, you wanted to know what the correct answer was, and how many garden gnomes there actually are in Germany? 25 million.

And now, the IIGOIIG Round 6 REVEAL!

The rollber-blading, puppy-carrying, hip-gyrating man from the bar on Wednesday night? He was...GAY. I know because at one point his gyrations looked like they were getting awfully close to impregnating Hedgehog (formerly Latvian Friend), and I said "Hedgehog, watch out!" And he responded with "Have no fear, I'm gay."

+1 for German gay men! Now, when you don't know if it's gay or German, you can safely assume the former, assuming it's simultaneously hugging a small animal and roller-blading. This puts the official scoreboard at:

German: 1
Crazy and Homeless: 1
In Denial: 1
Danish: 1
Poor Taste in Music: 1
GAY!!: 1

IIGOIIG Round 6! And other things

2011-11-10T01:04:00.004+01:00

Before I start telling your ridiculous stories, I got mistaken for my fourth official ethnicity today, which means I only have two more to go before I complete that bucket list task. And the nationality was... Argentinean! Which confuses the crap out of me, because the guy making the mistake was Super Attractive Dominican Dance Man, and you would think that if I were Argentinean, I would see his Spanish and raise it +1 unintelligible accent, instead of answering in German. But one of American Friend's German friends told me that for this country, I look downright exotic, so maybe that's the issue. Or it could be the hair.

At any rate, Latvian Friend somehow persuaded me to go to the salsa bar tonight, even though I was totally not feeling it. But it turned out to be highly, highly entertaining. For starters, while the music at the salsa bar is good, and the Domincan Dance Man super attractive, the people this bar attracts are so batshit insane, it makes for fabulous people watching. Second, we went with Latvian Friend's new Czech Friend, who is drop-dead gorgeous and had the heavily-tattooed Majorcan waiter all up in her grill every minute he wasn't trying to convince me to do keg stands with a bottle of wine.

In between trying not to look at the Majorcan's horrible face tattoos and avoiding his wine bottles, we danced with Super Attractive Dominican Man. Halfway through pretending we knew how to salsa, the door opens and in walks this tiny little man. Actually, walks is the wrong word, because he was on rollerblades. Also, he was holding a puppy.

When he realized we were dancing, he threw the puppy on the nearest couch, where it curled up into a ball to watch the show. Hands up over his head, he started spinning in circles, getting really, really close to us, and doing this frightening pelvic gyration which made me fearful for the safety of his hip flexors.

So, that brings us to:

Is It Gay Or Is It German...Round 6!

This is me asking you, if a man on rollerblades ~~walks~~ rollerblades into a bar, holding a puppy, and busts out pelvic thrusts to rival Shakira, is it gay, or is it German? I already know the answer, because he told me while I was ~~dancing~~ hopping up and down with him. But feel free to take this opportunity to test your German Gaydar.

How did the night end, you ask? With Majorcan man making us all take shots of some weird green liquid that had about as much alcohol in it as my own saliva, Super Attractive Dominican Dance Man (SADD...M. I like SADD.) telling Latvian Friend she has a nice face, but she looks really unfriendly, and Face Tattoos begging Czech Girl for her phone number.. Nobody said anything to me because I had already put my Swedish hat on, which, on top of being awesome, also ensures that I receive about as much male attention as a dead squirrel with herpes.

The end.

Fuck the ß Contest!

2011-11-07T13:59:00.004+01:00

Hello! Before we begin, here is the stack of letters you guys have sent me since I've been here. I keep every single one of them, in the order I received them, in a giant envelope marked "Letters from Friends." Thickness-wise, they are roughly the equivalent of one Lord of the Rings trilogy:

one Bolivian and one Swedish hat, stacked on top of each other:

and one box of German Q-tips:

I love you guys. I love your letters. When I'm lonely or bored or missing people, I go back through the letters and I laugh my head off. So without a doubt, my favorite part of your letters is, obviously, the content. But my SECOND favorite part is turning the envelope over to see how you wrote the ß.

I am kind of in love with the ß (Esszet) because it's the only letter in German that isn't instantly recognizable to English speakers. At least with Ö, Ä, and Ü, you can be like "Hey, look at those strangely placed dots over perfectly good letters," but when you're hit with the ß, you just kind of go, "Ahhh...fuck."

Therefore, I thoroughly enjoy watching you guys attempt to write the ß, because no two of you do it in exactly the same way. I've had a couple uppercase B's, a few lowercase b's, one or two cheaters who know the ß is pronounced like a double s, and substitute it as such. There's also been a bunch of people confuse the ß with the Greek letter β, or who have just invented their own versions of the ß that involve curls, whirls, or just a general crossed-out scribble. Then there's Sam, who has the distinction of writing the ß differently every single letter.

Before I show you how to write the ß, let me break it down so that the weird B-thing sort of starts to make sense. The ß used to be written as an sz, and the s itself, back in the day, was a ſ. Thus you had typesetters attempting to grapple with the blockprinting T-Rex that is the ſz. So they saved space, and from there you can kind of see how ſz turned into ß. Nowadays on most signs you will see it written as "straße," but in Berlin and some other places, you'll still see it as "straſze."

Now here's how you write it!

Now that you know how to write the ß, don't do it! Because I have decided to host a Tina's Blog Is Having A Contest! and it is called:

Tina's Blog Is Having A Contest!

and it is called

FUCK THE ß

!!!!!!!!!11

DA RULEZ!

--Send me a letter

--Come up with the most awkward, creative, bizarre, or unintelligible ß possible

--The winner is the weirdest ß that still gets recognized by the post office as being my house.

DA PRIZEZ!

--German chocolate!

--And I'll probably photograph your weird ß so everyone can marvel at how strange my friends are.

DA DEADLINEZ!

--Christmas!

Aaaaaaand...LET THE FUCK THE ß GAMES BEGIN!

Grad App Madness

2011-11-05T21:26:00.000+01:00

I spent all day running around like a fiend putting my grad school application in the mail. For better or for worse, it will be there on Monday, BUT! the morning was full of small catastrophes. Which you now get to hear about.

For starters, I got up stupidly early for a Saturday, to bike into town at 8.30. At the local drugstore, I bought a fancy cover for the application, but they were all out of shipping envelopes, so I had to hit up the post office to buy them. Then I had to go across town to the copy shop, so I could get the application printed on super fancy paper. However, the girl behind the counter informed me that they don't make copies of applications on Saturdays. I said, "Are you fucking kidding me? I need to send this thing out today, and you're losing my business because it's Saturday, and, despite being open, you won't print this because it's an application?" Sometimes, I want to punch this country in the face. She told me to go up the street to the other copy shop and get it printed there.

Back on my bike, I circled all around the train station, the prison, and all the side streets in between, and did not find another copy center. I called the host parents, and they didn't know of another one, so I went back to the girl for more exact directions. Then I realized she was telling me to print out my grad school application at a call center, and I told her she was exceptionally unhelpful, because you can say these things in Germany. Then I slammed the door behind me on my way out.

In more or less complete panic mode, I biked back to the house, where I explained to Host Mom my predicament. She said we could get around it like so: buying the paper myself, getting the photo printed from the pros, and then putting it all together ourselves. But at this point it was a race against the clock, because the post office was closing in an hour and a half.

So I turned back around, biked like a fiend into town again, and hit up the photo store. While I was waiting for the guy (who looked like a serial killer) to print my pictures (or kill me serially), I went back across town to the paper store, to buy paper. Which took forever, because I had to wait for the saleslady to successful fit a six year old for a bookbag (?), because this country refuses to print applications on Saturdays, but has zero problems spending fifteen minutes adjusting small children.

After picking up my pictures, I headed back to the house to print everything. But then we ran into more problems, because American pages and German pages are sized differently, which meant the German printer kept FREAKING out every time an American document came up. So I had to turn everything into PDFs and email them to Host Mom, while Host Dad did minor surgery on the printer, and meanwhile they were both mad at me for waiting until the last minute. In my defense, I'd been trying to get them to look at my essay all week, but it didn't happen until last night.

Anyway, we finally got everything printed and organized, and then it was off to the post office, where I made it just in time.

To summarize:

Yes, my grad app is in the mail.
No, I did not enjoy the process.
No, I am never doing this again.
Yes, I had better get into this school or heads will roll.
Yes, I bought Host Mom and Host Dad absurdly expensive chocolates to thank them for more or less rewriting my entire essay and making me sound like an overly-educated German
No, they are no longer mad at me.
Yes, everyone has a price, I guess.

Afterwards we went to the lantern parade, which is like the German equivalent of Halloween except you don't dress up or get candy. All you do is carry a lantern and walk around. So really, it's not anything like the German equivalent of Halloween. But it's a big deal, I got to carry a lantern, and you can take bets on which kid will be the first to accidentally set their lantern on fire. Also, the fire department was there guiding the paraders, looking all smug because instead of lanterns, they got to carry torches. Bastards.

My charge and his friend:

Then we all came back to our house, ordered pizza, and ate cake. It was a good time. Here's a picture of my charge looking about as German as it's possible for any one creature to look.

And, that's it! Now I can stop freaking out about the application, and get back to freaking out about the language test in two weeks. Goody.

Favorite song of the day! I like Elton John, I like Ellie Goulding, and I like when Ellie Goulding covers Elton John. You're welcome.

The Personal Crisis Game!

2011-11-03T15:09:00.000+01:00

Dear my friends,

I know the last few days on this blog have not been filled with unicorns and questionable gay men, but I have always tried to be nothing but honest on this thing, and that requires telling the truth about the not-so-great things as well as the entertaining things. No one ever said that moving across the world was a cakewalk. And Germany, despite being older than America, has not yet developed buttercream frosting to it's full potential, which means that this cakewalk is not always sweet. Terrible metaphor of the day: check.

The cause of this morning's crisis was that Host Mom read through my grad school application essay, and basically told me it was useless. It was too superficial, too glossy, and totally lacking in the important information that grad schools want to sink their cannibalistic, research-oriented teeth into. There was no substance to it, she said, and as such, it was basically the literary equivalent of raping a fog machine. My words, not hers.

The result was I more or less got picked up by the braid and thrown into a hot, steaming vat of Freak Out. If I can't even handle the application essay, I asked myself, then how am I supposed to handle grad school? What am I playing at? How did I ever think attempting to do my higher education in a foreign language was a good idea? Do I even want to go to grad school? Am I just doing it out of lack of a better plan? Is my sudden desire to skip grad school a result of being totally, completely intimidated? What do I want to do with my life, and why can't I purchase the goddamned manual on Amazon.

So I texted my mom that I was dying, and while I waited for her to call me, I surfed internships in Australia-- because in my world, when the going gets tough, run to the other side of the planet as fast as you can. Then, when my phone rang, I racked up my mom's phone bill threatening to throw myself from Ayers Rock. In response, she basically just reiterated for me everything I already know, which somehow always sounds better coming from someone other than yourself. That I've wanted to go to grad school since forever, that my interests are too broad for my own good, that grad school applications are a bitch no matter where you are, but doing them in German makes them that much harder. That I should not run to Australia. That grad school does not determine the rest of my life. That I don't even technically have to finish it if I hate it. That the fastest way to see the stuff you're made of is to switch continents.

At the end of the day, I am exactly where I started, only with a better essay and five hours of self-doubt behind me. Somehow, it will work out. I know it. I don't exactly know how, but in typical Tina fashion, I have an exit plan in case it doesn't. Coupled with a deep-seated admiration for the grace that is the kangaroo.

Thanks for sticking with me,
Tina

ALL the cool shit.

2011-11-02T19:01:00.000+01:00

I'm having a meltdown. And no, I did not see naked people on tv.

The main cause of my meltdown is grad school apps. In my last post, I said I had to pick a minor, but I'm torn between Sweden and Ling Anth/Native America. My meltdown is coming from the fact that I can't decide. But, if I'm to be honest, it's not my indecision that's left me with the Godzilla of panic attacks, it's the terrible thought that occurred to me around midnight: what if being an adult means not getting to do ALL the cool shit?

Rewind. The general consensus from yesterday was that I should minor in Ling Anth, because it's right up my alley, I already know I like it, and it's better for jobs. Then I got to thinking, and truly, the field of language/culture preservation is actually really appealing to me, and that major/minor combo would set me up for it perfectly. I've been blandly answering the question "What do you want to do with your life?" with a vague "I dunno, like NGOs or something," for a year or two, but the more I think about it, the more I like this more specific path. I like languages. I like (most) people. I like the idea of preserving and revitalizing languages and cultures, and I like the idea that this will probably a) never be boring, b) involve very little sitting at a desk, and c) take me to fun places all over the world where I can chill out with people who are wiser than me and who may or may not try to feed me haggis or something equally disgusting.

So now the problem is that I know ling anth would, career-wise, make more sense. I mean, this is my masters we're talking about here, this is not a BA in basket-weaving, it will have direct repercussions on my job choices for the rest of my life. But right this minute, I want to study Swedish. Therefore, the problem has just become, do I do what I know I would enjoy/would prepare me for the jobs I want, or do I just do what I want. And then, the bad question. Does being an adult mean that I will only get to do SOME of the cool shit, and not ALL the cool shit?

Well there's a nasty thought. If there's one thing my childhood instilled in me, it's a sleek employment of selfish tunnel vision until I get to do the cool shit I want. When it came to activities, my mother never told me no. I wanted violin lessons? I got them. I hated violin and wanted piano lessons? I got them. I wanted riding lessons? I got them. I wanted a pony? It took me 8 years of persistence, but I got a giant one. I wanted to roadtrip to Canada with my best friends? I got it. I wanted to go to Germany for two weeks in high school, then study abroad, then study abroad again, then give America the middle finger forever? I got it. Then I got older and started having to pay for my own things, but I still found a way to do everything I wanted, when I wanted it badly enough. Mostly because my mom taught me never to question whether or not I should do cool shit, but rather, to decide what I wanted to do, and then figure out the way to do it.

Except now I'm left with a total existential crisis, because at the moment it's looking like there are lots of roads diverging in a yellow wood, with lots of cool shit going down on all of them, but the roads don't intersect. What if I don't get do everything? What if I don't get to do anything? What if I don't want to? What if I never work on the pirate ship? Or climb Mt. Kilimanjaro? Or backpack Asia? Or move to Sweden? What if my life isn't big enough for me to cram so much cool shit in it? What if I wind up like the majority of grown-ups who hate their job, hate their life, hate themselves, and regret that they didn't do the all cool shit? WHAT IF I CAN'T DO ALL THE COOL SHIT.

...Nah, fuck it, I'm doing all the cool shit. Somehow.

I need your help!

2011-11-01T21:29:00.002+01:00

So, in Germany, you require a minor for a masters degree, just like you do in the US for a bachelor's. For anthropology, I have a choice of a ton of cool-sounding minors, my favorites of which I am listing here so you guys can help me decide.

Anthro-geography
Economic and social history
Gender research
Culture/European anthropology (...one and the same?)
Linguistic anthropology and ancient american studies (also one and the same?)
Musicology
Scandinavian studies

I'm kind of leaning towards the last one, because a) I've never done it before, b) it sounds like I have to learn Swedish, and c) we've already established that Sweden is now a requirement for my future personal happiness. But then again, musicology sounds super awesome, and completely unlike anything ever, plus I like music. But then there's this bizarre, but interesting, combination of linguistic anth and native america studies. What I'm trying to say is, I DON'T FUCKING KNOW. Help me people.

EDIT: I did research, and musciology sounds boring as shit. So it's down between the Skandies (and I would be required to learn Swedish!) and the linguistic one. Which would involve me further specializing in either linguistic anthropology or mesoamerica, but there was also something in there about preserving languages, and that gets my anthropology bones all hot and bothered.

EDIT EDIT: Yeah, I decided, Scandinavian studies. But you have until tomorrow to convince me to change my mind.

EDIT EDIT EDIT: I don't fucking know. Help me people!

Halloween, Snow, and a PSA

2011-10-30T20:34:00.004+01:00

Happy Halloween, my American friends. I hear it's snowing in New Jersey and people are without power and being buried alive by avalanches! Guess what the temperature was here! SEVENTY DEGREES.

No, I'm not at all bitter that you guys had a hot summer while I was dying wearing two hoodies. Or that we had to turn the central heating on in July. Of course I feel terrible for you. What gave you the idea that I didn't?

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA ISN'T THE COLD JUST FABULOUS?

In other news, this week has consisted of very little, other than recovering from Sweden and laryngitis. Yesterday I went to a bar with Other American and some of her friends, but I died before we hit the club and had to come home at midnight like the star of the Lisbon Theater Company's version of Cinderella. Except in this version of the story, Cinderella sounds like a man-eater who accepts money from Prince Charming for quickies in the bell-tower.

Host Mom's parents and grandmother came over for a visit today. They brought a crap ton of food, and Host Mom baked a cake with orange Fanta and mandarins, and it was possibly the best thing ever.

As a quick public service announcement, I would just like to remind anyone and everyone who texts me on my American phone that I am six hours ahead of you. This means that when you text me at midnight your time, I get the text at six AM. And since my American phone is my alarm clock, it sits right by my head, wakes me up, and then I go back to sleep fantasizing about procuring a giant pit of quicksand and throwing you in it kicking and screaming. By the time I wake up the next morning, I've usually decided our friendship should not be fed to the death sand, but it's always close. My sister did this to me last night, but it's happened two dozen times since I've been here. I love you all, but stop texting me at ungodly hours.

Here's my new favorite song. I like this version much better than the original, because it's so much happier and more up-beat, I keep doing stupid dances in my chair. Then I realize I'm dancing to a song about school shootings, decide this is probably an indication that I'm hell-bound, and decide to be sober and serious. But then I start bouncing again.

SWEDEN! Part the Last!

2011-10-27T21:21:00.004+02:00

If you have made it this far, I am superbly impressed! Go you guys!

Day 4. Sunday, October 23. Really Random Shit.

For our last full day in Sweden, we decided to do more running around and trying to kill ourselves. So, we met up with Magnus again, and did exactly that. Our shenanigans started with going to a cafe, where we ate cake for breakfast:

and where Marina suffered an attack from the robber.

I'm not sure what this is, but I think it's funny:

Then we decided to go Swedish shopping, and since there were no Ikeas in sight, we went to H and M, which also comes from Sweden originally.

AND I BOUGHT A SWEDISH HAT. I mean, if you want to get technical, it was probably made by underpaid children in Bangladesh, but I bought it in Sweden, and that's what counts.

After shopping, we discovered a Halloween store, and more or less went to town in there because Marina and I in particular were suffering from the complete lack of Halloween enthusiasm that is Germany. So here are some superbly attractive pictures of Marina and Magnus:

and me in a superbly sexy flamingo hat:

At some point, Magnus took us to the library so that we could print out our boarding passes for the next day. While Marina was hunting the printer down, I took the liberty of checking my email, and what did I find, but an email from Mega Stare Guy himself. It was titled "Fake Portuguese..." and consisted of three lines. "It was nice talking to you. You seem cute and funny. You need to learn more languages." Remember what I said about Swedish honesty? I debated internally whether or not to take offense to this, and then I decided making fun of people is the answer to everything, so I responded, "Cut me some slack, for an American, I'm doing pretty well. Most of us barely speak English." Whatever. I speak way better German than him anyway. He speaks conversationally, I speak real. Shut it, Swede. Your flirting is a *throws arms up over head* CATASTROPHE!

Then it was unfortunately time to put Magnus on the bus back to his real life, and to cheer ourselves up afterwards, we decided to go see The Three Musketeers, made possible by the fact that Sweden subtitles it's American films, not dubs them like Germany. To make a long story short, The Three Musketeers was almost almost as bad as Twilight and just as hilarious.

Afterwards, Marina and I spent a bad 40 minutes in the supermarket, hunting down cream so we could cook for Couchsurf Boy. Which we did, and he was a good sport and ate it, even though we bought coffee cream instead of heavy cream. Oops. Dinner turned into card games, first Shithead, which I learned from 2 Dutch girls in Bolivia, then a round of Mao (I told them they would hate me, and they did), and then a Swedish card game called Hej Knecht. Card games turned into building card houses, which devolved into flicking cards at each other after I kept playing the Big Bad Wolf and blowing everyone else's card palaces down. Then flicking cards somehow morphed into flicking cards while tennis grunting, for extra authenticity. Then we all snuggled up on his bed for a movie, followed by stargazing, followed by telling mind-blowingly hilarious ghost stories about moose in the dark. At some point, two terrible jokes emerged: one about Chinese people crawling into your bloodstream, and one about killing your fellow Couchsurfers and putting them in the fridge. I don't know how it happened, but we hung out for eight hours, staying up until 4 AM laughing our heads off. It was an absolutely perfect last night in Sweden.

Day 5. Monday, October 24. Very Sad to Leave

We got up early Monday morning, cooked the only thing we had left for breakfast (pizza), and then hit up the airports. I crashed at Marina's flat, and then headed back to Celle the next morning.

Some final notes on Sweden.

Really, truly, it was brilliant, and I've decided after my master's degree, I'm moving there. Feel free to not believe me, but the first time I came back from Germany as a 16 year old, I told my friends and family I was moving to Germany one day, and everyone told me there was no way I would. And look where I am now! So Sweden, we are hanging out again on a more permanent basis, in approximately three years. You heard it here first!

In other news, Marina and I have both been to Denmark, and now Sweden, so we've decided we need to hit up Scandinavia one country at a time until we find the one with the most attractive boys. So Norway, watch out, we are coming in the spring of 2012!

Kudos to all of your who actually read through the whole Sweden entries. If you for some reason want more Sweden, check out Marina's blog, she's more concise than I am: http://allthingsmarina.blogspot.com/

Hej då! That's Swedish for adios!

SWEDEN! Day 3!

2011-10-26T19:04:00.000+02:00

More Swedish madness! If you haven't already, go back and read the first post so that you get the references.

Day 3. Saturday, October 22. Seeing Stockholm and Vikings.

For our first full day in Sweden, Marina and I got up far, far too early, to meet up with Magnus. We grabbed breakfast in a cafe, and then hit the streets. Like I said in my last post, Magnus is the greatest tour guide ever, and in following him around, we saw pretty much all of Stockholm, including...

the palace (not particularly imposing),

the Swedish Reichstag (I forget what that's called in English),

the skyline,

and basically everything worth seeing. We also played around in some parks:

and hung out in random tunnels.

Magnus also knows half of Stockholm, so we kept running into his friends on the street, which was really cool. We also entertained ourselves by taking picture of the robber in terrible places.

The robber is a hand puppet belonging to the charge, and his parents have started taking it with them when they travel and posing it. Much like Pirate Duck and Dragon, except less cool. In Stockholm, he got posed in some pretty awful spots. Cases in point:

Here's the robber in a square where you can buy drugs.

Here's the robber at the site of Sweden's one and only terrorist attack. It is okay to make fun of this attack, because no one was actually killed, with the exception of the suicide bomber. Apparently, had he walked 20 meters further, he would have killed a ton of people. I said this was proof that, in his heart of hearts, he didn't want to kill people. Magnus said he was probably cold.

The robber at the site of an assassination.

This went on for a while.

Then, while wandering around the old city, something amazing happened. We saw this guy standing in the middle of a square:

"LOOK MARINA A SWEDISH VIKING!" I yelled, without commas. She whipped out the camera for this photograph. As she turned around to walk back to us, I saw the Viking launch his attack, and by attack, I mean he booked it for Marina and roared. "MARINAWATCHOUTTHERESAVIKINGTRYINGTOKILLYOU." I screamed, but it was too late. Next thing we knew, a giant Viking, complete with terrifying red contacts, was all up in our faces, snuffling, waving his skull walking stick around, and making angry sounds. "Donate to me," he snarled, "donate to me now or I will kiss your friend." "No way," said I, refusing to be intimidated by his fake beard, "kiss my friend and then I'll donate to you." And that's how I paid a Russian guy dressed like a Viking 11 kroner to kiss Marina. Whatever. She liked it.

So then the Russian guy and I got to talking, and I asked him what he was collecting donations for. His response: "I'm writing a book about getting drunk while dressed as a Viking, but I need money to drink first." I told him I appreciated his honesty, but his bright red contacts were freaking me out a bit. "Wait," he said, "here's what I look like without the beard," and proceeded to show me pictures of himself on his phone. "Not bad, right?" he said. "Nope, not at all," I agreed, "but can I take a picture with you dressed like this?" "Of course," he said. Then, handing me his skull staff, he said, "Here. Hold my father."

Aaaaaand...scene.

Having survived our encounter with the Viking, we met up with a friend of Magnus, a Bosnian guy who speaks eighty million languages. With him we generally ran around some more, including through the smallest alley in Stockholm, which is only 90 centimeters wide and it's smallest point. Here's the entrance:

Then Magnus took us to a hot chocolate bar, which consisted of about 12 tables crammed into the smallest room possible, and it was awesome. I had a white hot chocolate, and it was the second most delicious hot chocolate I've ever had, the first being the one in Paris. But this one had about an inch of melted white chocolate to scrape from the bottom of the cup. DELICIOUS. Now I want another one.

We ran around the old city some more, and finally found a Swedish moose. Moose are everywhere in Sweden, but unfortunately distinctly lacking in Stockholm, unless they're stuffed:

At this point in the evening, we split up. Magnus and his Bosnian friend stayed in the city, while Marina and I quickly ran back to Couchsurf Boy's place to pick up food. Magnus had bought all our drinks the night before, so to pay him back, Marina and I decided we were going to cook for him. We met back up with Magnus in the city center, took a bus to his dad's apartment, and hung out there for a few hours before deciding to meet his friends at a bar. They were quite nice, even though they encouraged Magnus to tell terrible, terrible jokes. But he's so happy when he does it, you can hate the joke, but you just can't hate him.

Afterwards, Marina and I went back to meet up with Couchsurf Boy at yet another bar, before deciding we were dead and required sleep. And that brings us to the end of Day 3!

Up next tomorrow: Cake, Halloween, really bad movies, and hanging out with CB!

SWEDEN! Days 1 and 2

2011-10-26T00:28:00.002+02:00

Let me begin this blog post by throwing a few disclaimers out there:

1) Sweden was, hands down, one of the best weekends of my life. So when I go off on tangents to consult the thesaurus for other words for "amazing," feel free to skip those parts.

2) Lots of highly entertaining, but also highly embarrassing things went down in Sweden. In the interest of full disclosure, I'm just going to tell you everything, and I would appreciate it if you would at least make an effort not to laugh at me too hard.

3) There are a TON of Sweden stories, which I am going to spread out over a few blog posts. Even such, this will still be something of a novel. With a hella lot of pictures. So it's more like a really, really really overachieving picture book, only with more profanity involved.

Ready? Here we go.

Sweden was fucking amazing. No, really, it was absolutely spectacular, absolute perfection, and I couldn't have asked for anything more. There was pizza. There were boys. There were Halloween masks, a robber, and racist jokes. Marina and I spent a good part of the weekend periodically looking at each other and then saying something alone the lines of "I can't believe we're having this much fun." I'm still slightly euphoric from the Ben and Jerry's and lack of sleep, but I know awesome when I have experienced it, and Sweden was AWESOME. There's a lot to cover, so I'm just going to break it down day by day for you.

Day 1. Thursday, October 20th. Pre-Sweden.

I took an evening train out to Lübeck, to meet up with Marina and her coworker Chris, the other half of the Charina experience from Köln. We all went out for pizza, and then were faced with a problem. Our plane left for Sweden (well, technically Belgium, but whatever) at 6.50 in the morning, but the buses from Marina's flat to the train station stopped running at midnight. So, we (logically) decided the best option was to squat at Marina's job in the city center (she has keys) until 2.30 in the morning, whereby we would then walk to the train station, catch a 2.50 bus to the airport, arrive at 4.30 AM, and then hang out for two hours. We did it. We did not sleep at all. At some point in the middle of a conversation, my voice suddenly dropped two octaves, in a particularly wonderful case of laryngitis that left me sounding like a bad phone-sex operator. And when we walked down to the train, we discovered it was also arsch kalt outside, which meant that poor Marina was somewhat dying in her very fashionable, but very un-windproof bomber jacket. I on the other hand had my super duper LL Bean coat, courtesy of my mom, which is meant for -40F conditions. I had a voice like a hooker but I was snug as a bug, and had zero issues rubbing it in Marina's face, while managing to sound like I was on cigarette break between blow jobs in Atlantic City. Win.

Day 2. Friday, October 21. Arrival (and parties) in Sweden.

The first thing Marina and I noticed when we arrived in Stockholm was that the men were beautiful. Like, it was like we'd stepped into a Disney movie and everyone was a prince. Fitted jeans, scarves, really attractive facial hair...it was wonderful. Also, the Swedes are currently rocking a weird hairstyle, where they shave the sides of their head quite close, but leave the top long and then slick it back. This sounds hideous, but in practice, Marina and I had trouble concentrating on important things like where we had to go because we were too busy being distracted by the Swedish hotness. The second thing we noticed was that we a) did not speak Swedish, and b) had no idea what we were doing.

Eventually, with the help of some super Swedish nice-ness (they're attractive AND friendly!), we located our couchsurf's building, snuck in, and then realized we didn't know where he lived. It was six stories, all with names on the door, and we went door-to-door like trick-or-treaters (not that they usually go sounding like AC hookers, but whatevs), up and down all six floors, looking for his name. No go. So we decided to call him. Except I couldn't figure out how to dial numbers to Sweden from my German phone, and eventually Marina had to step in and set me straight. As it turned out, he lived on the top floor, so we traipsed back up all the stairs and met Couchsurf Boy.

Our initial impression of Couchsurf Boy was that he seemed quite nice, and had the fabulous Swedish hair thing going on, but he was rather slow to warm up. But he invited us to go with him to the supermarket, which we did, and then we separated for a bit so that he could actually get shit done while Marina and I ran around on an island. Things we did not realize until we saw Stockholm from the air: the entire city is build on an archipelago. So you can basically island-hop as you please, much like in the Pacific Theater during WWII, except with less body parts being blown in your face. The island we wound up on was called Långholmen, and it features some rocks, some trees, and an old prison that's been converted into a hostel. Totally badass.

Then we headed back to CB's place, and hung out there for a bit before deciding to run around the city a bit. CB told us all the places to go, and all the places to avoid, and we were off to see the city by night. And it was lovely!

Around 9PM we met up with Magnus, a friend of ours from way back when we all studied together in Konstanz. Magnus lives two hours outside of Stockholm, and has been saying for the past three years that if we ever came to Sweden, he would meet us. And he totally did, he borrowed his dad's Stockholm apartment for the weekend, so we got to hang out EVERY DAY. I can't properly put into words how wonderful it was to see him--it's always awesome to see old friends, but we get on with Magnus so damn well, it was magical. Plus, the boy more or less grew up in Stockholm, and it would have been impossible to ask for a better tour guide.

Magnus immediately took us to a bar on the 26th floor of a skyscraper. Superbly posh Swedish rum cocktails and panoramic views of the city that were amazing. Then he decided we were going Swedish clubbing. Here's where it gets entertaining and awkward. Hold on to your pants.

As soon as we walked into the club, there was a boy staring at me. I'm usually pretty oblivious when it comes to these things, but not even I could miss that particular look. It was serious. But I was all "Meh, whatevs," and the three of us just sat at the bar drinking, until Marina decided to whip out the camera and start taking pictures. Except Marina has terrible aim when it comes to group shots, and someone's head kept being cut out of the picture. I turned around to get my drink, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Marina hand her camera off to someone. When I turned back around, who was our photographer but Mega-Stare Guy himself. Smooth, Mega-Stare Guy. Well played. Here's the picture he took before he started hitting on me. Note that everyone's heads are in place.

Mega-Stare Boy's opening line was to tell me I had fairy-tale hair, which I found amusing. Like all Swedes, he spoke better English than we did, plus German, plus French. I talked to him for a while, then got hit on by his friend while he disappeared, only to reappear a minute later with a round of shots. For the record, I may be college-educated in Jersey, but I can't do shots. I embarrass myself, always. ALWAYS. Then he (followed by his friend) asked me to dance, and I was all "No, really, I'm a terrible dancer." He made me give him my email address.

Sometime later, after those two had disappeared, Marina and Magnus forced me to dance, which I only reluctantly agreed to, because Marina had more or less threatened to kill me if I didn't. And let me say it again: I CAN'T GODDAMN DANCE, PEOPLE. The stages of my dancing can roughly be broken down into the following cycle:

However, this piece of awful did not stop Plaid Shirt Boy from dancing with me. Plaid Shirt Boy was, as the name suggests, wearing a Plaid Shirt and rocking the weird Swedish hair. He was very nice, very drunk, and thought I was much funnier than I actually am. He also thought it was cool that Marina and I live in Germany. Then his friend showed up, kicked Plaid Shirt Boy aside, and danced with me. Plaid Shirt Boy's Friend was very nice and kept touching my hair. Shouting over the music, he told me all about how he's half French, lives in Paris for most of the year, is generally badass, and likes my hair. Yep.

After he wandered away, I danced (read: sprinklered) over to Marina, who was watching Magnus impress two Swedish girls with a home-grown dance move he called "milking the bull," which you can probably picture in your mind. Marina and I ran off to the bathroom, and thirty seconds later, we found ourselves joined by Magnus' dancing partners. "I know you!" yelled the one girl, pointing at me. "I saw you dance. Your dancing is a--" here she raised her arms up over her head, "--CATASTROPHE!" As it turns out, the Swedes are almost as honest as the Germans.

It should be noted that for the rest of the trip, whenever any of us needed to reference any vague problems, such as train tickets or expensive food prices, we did it Swedish style. I.e, throwing our hands up over our heads and yelling "CATASTROPHE!"

After we rejoined Magnus on the dance floor, Plaid Shirt Boy danced (read: stumbled) his way on over to us. Grinning broadly, he threw his arms around Marina and me, and yelled, "Look! It's the Aryan Sisterhood!" Which left me completely floored. I stared at him for forty-five seconds with my mouth hanging open, trying to figure out how one reacts to being referred to as the "Aryan Sisterhood." Then I burst out laughing. I figured it anyone questioned me, I could just blame Mega-Stare Guy's shot.

Suddenly, I felt someone touching my hair. I spun around, and Plaid Shirt Boy's Friend immediately kidnapped me, and wouldn't let me leave until the club closed. I ran into him at the entrance after picking up my coat, and he said, "Let me kiss you on the cheek!" So I did. Then he said, "Now both cheeks, like the French!" So I did. Then he said, "Now on the mouth!" And I went to say something along the lines of "Wait, what?" but I was too late. Like the graceful swan I am, I may or may not have freaked out and then scampered. It's how I roll.

Marina and I said goodnight to Magnus, and my bad dancing/surprise Swedish stealth kiss had gotten my blood pressure elevated, so I threw my fairy-tale hair up with a pencil. Marina and I met up with Couchsurf Boy, who pointed out astutely that I had a pencil in my head. "Yes," I said, "it's so that whenever I feel like desecrating walls or graves or general public property, I always have a writing utensil handy." He said, "I feel like doing that RIGHT NOW," pulled the pencil out, and graffitied "Stockholm Rules" on a particularly attractive piece of blank wall. Note to self: next time, put hair up with a can of spray paint.

And that's Day 1 and 2 for you. Marina and I were running on 36 hours sans sleep, and fell asleep as soon as we crawled onto our air mattresses. Up next tomorrow: That Time I Paid A Russian Dressed Up Like A Viking To Kiss Marina.

The Sweden Itinerary

2011-10-19T19:18:00.004+02:00

Here's the Sweden breakdown!

Tomorrow: Hop an afternoon train to Lübeck. Eat dinner with Chris and Marina. Do random crap, like pose with suggestive statues and sing The Sound of Music while skipping around in circles.

Tomorrow night: Midnight train to the airport. Camp in the airport until 6 AM, when our flight leaves.

Friday-Sunday: Arrive in Sweden! Search for polar bears, make fun of Skandies, and crash at Max's house. Max is some guy we found on the internet. Marina wants to date him. Fingers crossed he's not an axe murderer. At some point we are hanging out with Magnus, our Swedish friend from when we studied in Konstanz. Navigate a Swedish supermarket and cook food, because Sweden is horrendously expensive. Drink fifteen dollar cocktails. Get into general trouble. Avoid being arrested. Tame aforementioned polar bear, and figure out how to get him to Germany. At some point we're supposed to try a food called blåbärspaj. Bonus points to he who knows how to pronounce that. Or even what it is.

Monday: Last minute madness in Sweden, and then arrive back in Germany at 11 PM. Take a midnight train from the airport to Uelzen.

very, very, very early Tuesday: Sit in the Uelzen train station for two and a half hours. Try not to get killed doing it. Arrive back in Celle at 5 AM. Say hello to the host parents as they get ready for work, and then die.

It's going to be epic.

aaaaand the horse is Grand Prix.

2011-10-17T20:02:00.000+02:00

Today I randomly ran into my half-lease's owner on the street today, and she invited me in to say hi to the new baby (exciting). She also showed me pictures of the mare in action (very exciting). Things I didn't know: I'm half-leasing a Grand Prix horse? I knew the owner was Grand Prix...I didn't realize this was her Grand Prix horse. At least now I understand why the horse is so batshit insane all the time and has epic meltdowns over cavaletti: it's because she (over)jumps six foot fences for a living. Good to know.

However, the horse had a pretty awful rider for a few years who took her courage and kicked it in the face. Now the horse needs a confidence boost, which is where I come in.

Favorite song of the day is...Coldplay! I am aware that Coldplay consists of douchecanoes who search for baby-name inspiration at the local farmer's market, and I am also aware this song is not new. But it's been following me around, first it was on Glee, then the X-Factor, then Boyce Avenue covered it. I'm just spreading the follow around:

Super exciting things: I AM GOING TO SWEDEN ON FRIDAY. AHHHHHH! I'M GOING TO BRING BACK A PET POLAR BEAR.

That's all I got.

The Fashion U-Bahn

2011-10-15T21:10:00.002+02:00

Let me share with you a topic that has, as of late, consumed much of my thoughts, and a lot of my dollars: European Fashion.

We all know that I am not the most fashionable siren on the rock. That being said, I don't think I dress badly--I wear tight jeans and shirts that make it look like my boobs are bigger than they actually are. In comparison with the people who go to the Walmart in Camden, I'm a regular supermodel. But there can be no doubt that I'm not particularly Fashion Forward. That would imply, if not driving the Fashion Train, at least being in first class, and I am clinically unable to match my socks. I also can't say that I'm Fashion Backwards, because that suggests at least being aware enough of the train to run in the opposite direction. I'm not even Fashion Misguided, because they just got on the wrong train. It's more like I'm Fashion Blissfully Oblivious. I'm too busy looking at the birds and the clouds and the dragons to realize there's a train in the first place, and why don't I take a nap on this comfortable piece of railroad. Do you hear something?

So I decided I need to get on the Euro fashion train. Maybe not the high-speed rail, but at least the subway. This much I can manage, I thought. Except I had even less of an idea what was fashionable in Europe than I did in America. At least in America I had Claire for that shit, but here I was all by myself. But I was college-educated, this couldn't be too difficult, right?

And in that thought, I saw a solution--I was college-educated! And if there's one thing that an anthropology is good at, it's observing people. And if there's one thing I'm good at, it's making highly unfair and vaguely racist judgments about the people I observe. Put the two together, è voila! THE FASHION U-BAHN IS NOW BOARDING.

So I bought an ice cream, sat on a park bench, and really creepily observed everyone walking by. I even went to the bookstore and flipped through the German edition of Seventeen, which highly embarrassed me, so I hid the magazine in between a giant book of world maps. And then my college education kicked in, and I realized I had a problem: the average age of young people in this city is seventeen. And I am neither seventeen, nor in any rush to dress like one.

Thus it was back to square (or bench) 1, and I set about data collecting take two (read: hunting down the people in my age group and taking mental notes on what they were wearing. I disregarded everyone who was had multiple piercings, a panhandling sign, or an unneutered dog). Then I did a general sweep of the clothing stores in town (after first sitting outside them and making sure they were not old-lady stores) to see what was in. Then I went shopping. Then I wrote this:

AN AMERICAN'S GUIDE TO EUROPEAN FASHION

AS INTERPRETED BY TINA

who takes no responsibility for the accuracy of her observations

and would appreciate you not making fun of her

I hate everything.

Things that are "in" in Europe:

--skinny jeans

--giant scarves that are not warm

--anything knitted

--flat shoes

--ankle boots

Fabulous! I decided it was time to start buying shit. And then, to embarrass myself further, I decided I would put the pictures of what I bought on my blog. You know, Euro fashion visuals. So we shall take this on a case by case basis.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Now to break it down!

And there you have it! So the next time you feel like dressing like a European, you can tell Heidi Klum I sent you.

You're welcome.

Three ways I have changed since moving to Germany

2011-10-12T19:01:00.004+02:00

Every so often I get to thinking on this particular topic, and whatever shit goes down in my head usually winds up making it on here. So, Tina presents...

THREE WAYS I HAVE CHANGED SINCE MOVING TO GERMANY!

1) I eat better.

This is not actually by choice, it's just because my family is all into the organic-movement, which means that when I get hungry throughout the day, I have to snack on raisins and yogurt. But I guess, all things considered, it's a plus. Also, how did I go through 23 years of my life without realizing how delicious raisins are?

2) I'm in better shape.

Not that I was ever in bad shape--I think compared to your average American, six to seven days of riding a week put me above average on the fitness level. But I've packed on like five pounds of muscle since arriving here, or at least, five pounds of what I am pretty sure is muscle. My clothes still fit, and I did seventeen miles on my bike today without elevating my heart rate. That means muscle, right?

...or I could just be fat.

3) I'm more direct.

Not German direct yet, but I'm getting there. I've started having to proofread emails and Facebook comments for American rudeness. Also, I've stopped saying 'I'm sorry', but only because you can't slide it in as easily in German as you can in English.

In a fit of patriotism, I decided the charge and I were going to CARVE PUMPKINS OR DIE, even though carving pumpkins isn't big here. This involved hunting down pumpkins at the local outdoor market, and then hacking away at them with butcher knives, seeing as how pumpkin carving kits are unheard of. Well, I hacked, he painted. Here are the finished products:

For the record, my pumpkin was supposed to be French, not a victim of bad plastic surgery.

Also...I'm in the newspaper again? Nobody, including the original author, knew that when we opened up the paper, we would find this:

It's not actually about me, it's just about au pairing in general, but they used my pictures. Hooray! Yet another day of "Did I see you in the paper yesterday?"

That's all I got. Singing lessons start up tomorrow, so HOORAY FOR THAT! Also, the Epic Sweden Trip with Marina is coming up, next weekend! YAY FUN THINGS!

Also, here's a video of my charge bouncing around on bubblewrap. Sometimes, it's useful to have an American au pair. And a mother who sends you bubble-wrapped mugs that say "I'm not yelling, I'm Portuguese."

That's all I got friends! Adios!

Packaging Adventures

2011-10-10T21:38:00.001+02:00

One more reason why Germany is retarded: because you have to pay an import tax on gifts from your mother.

I got a notice from the German Zollamt (customs agency) that my package had arrived, but they were holding it until I showed up in person to pay taxes on the contents. "Eughm quois?" said I, "I didn't order anything, my mother sent it to me, for crying out loud. Asshats." So, I went into the office armed to the teeth, ready to do battle with The Man. And by "armed," I mean with a) my passport, b) my driver's license with my home address on it, and c) my portuguese Ausweis that has my mom's last name on it. And by "to the teeth," I mean that these three documents put together are basically the paper equivalent of a Gatling gun. Shit gets stuff done.

As it turns out, I didn't need it, the customs officer was superbly nice. When I arrived, he said he felt very bad for me, but let's just see how bad the tax will be. 19% of the package's worth according to my mother added up to fifty-three dollars, JUST to pick up my own goddamned present! So I did my best "I'm a foreigner, I don't understand this country, I'm really sad, it's a package from my mom and I miss her, look how low-cut my shirt is," the result being that the customs officer suggested we unpack the box and see if my mom had "overestimated" how much everything was worth. So we opened everything up, I smiled a lot, and he kindly decided to overlook pretty much the entire box, except for the winter parka. And even thought that still had the price tag on it, he decided the jacket was really only worth $150 dollars, bringing my taxes owed down from $53 to $29. I still think the concept is total bullshit, but I can't really be angry about it because Customs Guy totally punched the system in the face for me. Well, now we know, gifts can't be worth more than 60 dollars or the customs agency goes all taxation-without-representation on your ass. BUT, on the plus side, I HAVE CHEEZ-ITS AND WHEAT THINS.

At the barn tonight, I was approached by a random lady who said, "Did I see you in the paper the other day?" Yes. Yes you did. "I knew it!" she said, "My daughter came home from riding the other night and said 'Mom, I saw this girl at the barn, I don't know who she is, but she rides like an American,' and I said, 'I bet it's the girl we saw in the paper!'" Then she asked me if I'd taken my riding test yet. My what? Apparently in Germany you can take a test to see how good you are, and she suggested I take it just for fun. Two judges come in, and you have to do a dressage test, jump a course, and then take a theoretical test. I might just take it for the hell of it slash so I can shove it in German faces every time I get that "You learned to ride in America? ...Oh." This way I can be like "Look bitches, I took your goddamned test, and I kicked it in it's goddamned face. Go sit in the corner and eat sauerkraut." I asked if riding like an American would mean failing the test, and the lady said it's not a bad thing, even though it's super obvious. Fabulous. There is also the small matter of how I've never done dressage in my life.

I also talked to the other girl about how we ride the mare, and she said the first time she sat on the horse after being away, she thought there was something wrong with it because it goes so well now. So this is a plus. Cantering is still a bitch, I need to fly Di over here or something so she can hang out with me and tell me how to fix this thing.

Hung out yesterday with some couchsurfers, including the other American. She and I made plans to hang out this week (hooray! Friends I can speak German with!), and I got permission from Host Mom to have a Thanksgiving dinner party at our house. So that's super exciting! Now I just need to figure out how to cook a turkey. Or cook in general, really.

Boyce Avenue and Tyler Ward are coming to Hamburg, and I'm trying to find someone to go with me. In celebration, here is some Boyce Avenue doing Journey. Instant win.

Things I learned today

2011-10-08T21:26:00.000+02:00

I enjoy the fact that I never seem to stop learning over here. Here are some new things I learned today:

1) Germany's place in the riding ring is backwards from the American one. In the US, if you're walking, you take the rail, and the people trotting and cantering take the inside track. Here it's the other way around, which explains why I was getting so many dirty looks while riding in the indoor tonight. One of my barn friends pulled me over and explained it to me, which I hugely appreciated, seeing how as a general rule no one explains shit here, they just yell at you.

2) King-sized beds are, in Germany, made up of two twin-sized beds placed right next to each other on a king-size mattress frame. At first I thought this was only in my family because my host parents have hippie tendencies, but then I saw it on the German version of Wife Swap, and asked Host Mom. Apparently it's the norm because it's healthier...? What I want to know is how sex works if you're sleeping on two mattresses, but that's not a question I felt like posing to Host Mom.

In other news, I've been getting recognized by total strangers as "that girl in the paper" left and right, which is kind of freaking me out because I didn't think anyone actually read the paper. Now the whole TOWN thinks I'm obsessed with this nougat-cream shit. Sigh. I find the entire situation awesomely hilarious, so much so I can't take it seriously.

In other other news, I haven't met the other half lease on the mare yet, but from all accounts she's super nice. And of course, I haven't seen her ride, so I'm not sure how she did it, but she managed to take three weeks of serious improvement in the mare, and undo it in three days. Which is hugely obnoxious and really frustrating. The mare was going like a little star, and now she's right back to refusing to bend her body and having total panic attacks when I put leg on her. Fabulous. But the girl is so nice over text message, I can't hate her for it.

Appropriately, this is my new favorite song. Most likely, Death Cab is referring to normal beds with normal, undivided mattresses:

Meeting for ice cream tomorrow with fellow couchsurfers in the area...hooray!

I'M IN THE NEWSPAPER!

2011-10-06T10:27:00.004+02:00

First things first, a review of the Bucket List, and all the things we've already crossed off:

1) Be mistaken for at least six different ethnicities 3/6 completed
2) Be physically assaulted by a PPB (which Sam has defined as punched, kicked, or slapped, which is a much better alternative to what I thought she initially meant.)
3) Give a stranger a flower
4) Start an ~~English language~~ Silly Bandz trend
5) Make a Tina video
6) Wear blue nail polish and convince everyone that that's what Americans do
7) Be/meet a German soap opera star
8) Stall out my manual transmission in a highly inconvenient place
9) Wear the German flag colors/wear a flag as a dress
10) Go Christmas caroling
11) Climb a German mountain (clothing optional)
12) Get into a magazine (preferably a golfing one)
13) Learn to sail
14) Go to Iceland
15) SHBF
16) Discover the difference between Euro and gay, and be able to spot it at 90% accuracy.
17) Meet ~~Angela Merkel~~ A Ugandan Mayor
18) Go to the British military base
19) Do the Deb voice somewhere, to someone who doesn't know what it is.

And now, we can officially cross off number 12) Get into a ~~magazine (preferably a golfing one)~~ newspaper!

That's the super-exciting thing I couldn't tell you..I'm in the newspaper! And not even like a little blurb thrown between the obituaries and an advertisement for Johanna's Boobs, Bier, and Brauhaus. I'm talking all-out, full-frontal, newspaper madness! So much better than Johanna's. Pictures below for your enjoyment:

I can't even say it's an article about au pairs in Celle, which is what I thought it was originally. It's an article about me. Just me. CRAZY!

Some minor points of interest about the article:

1) I speak much better German in print than I do in real life

2) There are some fabrications, like that I attend a German course, and eat tons of this nougat-creme, which, for the record, I don't. Host Mom eats a ton.

3) Host Mom is happy, because when Photo Boy sent us the possible pictures, one of them showed the vast majority of the interior of our house. Host Mom had a minor sad conniption, saying that robbers would break in. I helpfully (and logically, in good German-style) pointed out that the only thing the picture showed worth stealing was the antique piano. And frankly, if anyone was impressively stupid enough to attempt to steal the piano, I would bake them cookies while they worked and hold the door open for them on their way out, just out of respect for their efforts. Host Mom was less amused.

So that's it! I'm in the newspaper! Neat!

Edit: There are more pictures, including ones with the horse, that didn't make it in the paper. Email me and I'll send you them.

A Weekend of Lots of Things, but Mostly Crime

2011-10-04T21:53:00.002+02:00

Weekend update! We hit up both Köln and Düsseldorf, and discovered both cities kind of suck. But we had fun anyway! Here's your official rundown and all that jazz.

Saturday I got up bright and early to train it to Hannover, and then hitch a ride to Köln. My ride's name was Robert, my age, studies at the university I want to go to, and was ridiculously attractive. I spent most of the three and a half hour ride flirting in German, and I got a hug for my efforts. Success.

Then Marina arrived, with her coworker Chris in tow, whose talent for accents I found mind-blowingly brilliant. Awesome, awesome, awesome sauce. There were hugs all around, and then it was hostel time.

We knew we had to switch subway lines a few times, and subway tickets are so goddamned expensive, so we made the conscious decision to be Schwarzfahrer. Literally, "black riders," expect we were trying to find the hostel and not the One Ring. Schwarzfahrer are the people that take advantage of the fact that in Germany, you don't have to feed a ticket into a machine to get onto the subway platform. Schwarzfahrer do not pay for tickets. And it's fine, because no one ever checks you. Technically there are random sweeps and what not, but I have Schwarzfahrered my way across almost every city in German and I have never been caught.

So, as Schwarzfahrer, we got ridiculously lost, wound up going in the wrong direction like twelve times, but eventually found the hostel. Which was quite nice, although our roommates, though absent upon our arrival, had left a ton of UK newspapers all over the room, which lead to me swearing to sell my soul if they turned out to be Scottish.

At this point, we were all starving, so we decided to find a restaurant and eat food. When we sat down, Marina and I almost had heart attacks, because we realized we were surrounded by absolutely gorgeous men. Everywhere. Everyone in the restaurant was super hot. Everyone in the restaurant was wearing V-necks. Everyone in the restaurant was...gay.

Damn. But it was still a good lunch.

We ran around a little more, and checked out the super-famous Kölner Dom, which, for the record, is staggeringly beautiful. I'm not one to be impressed by big churches, but this big church was hella sexy. Here, have some pictures:

Marina and I actually wound up going back to see it again the next day, but the only way we could get in was to say we were going to the church service. And that's how, for the first time in my life, I voluntarily went to church. But only until they started singing, and then we jetted.

One of the coolest things about the Dom was what happened at night: namely, that when they lit up the church, a massive flock of batbirds swooped out from the spires and flew around the cathedral like champs. It was absolutely beautiful. I say batbirds because what kind of animal it was is still up for debate. Marina swears to high heaven they were bats, but I say they were only bats if science has decided to rename the pigeon. They were too big to be bats, I swear! Actually, they looked more like seagulls, except not even I, with my talent for explaining away the ridiculous, can come up with a plausible explanation for why a flock of seagulls would make camp in a cathedral.

Eventually we did meet our hostel bunkmates, who were, disappointingly, not Scottish. They were plain old English, and made it pretty clear when they came in drunk at 5.30 in the morning, knocking things over, cursing loudly, and saying "I'm from England mate," just in case no one had already figured that out.

Sunday we decided we were tired of Köln, which is a) not attractive, b) boring, and c) filled with mean people. So we bought a train ticket to Düsseldorf, with the sole goals being drink beer and find this building:

which we did, so we took fun pictures in the curvy metal sides.

Düsseldorf was really only noteworthy for two things: the train ride, and petty crime.

On the way there, the two Brits and I got into an intense debate on American geography, because I was arguing that american regions are written more by culture than geography. Like, for example, how Florida is technically in the south, but it's not really considered a part of The South. For reasons unknown to the world, Marina had a map of the US in her purse, so I broke it down: New England, East Coast, The (Deep) South, Florida, The Midwest, the West, the West Coast. Like a champ. And they did not believe me. Which resulted in a riotous argument that half the train car was listening to, and laughing at.

Düsseldorf is also where tag-team Chris and Marina, hereafter referred to as "Charina," decided to start stealing glasses from the restaurants we went to, while I pretended I had no idea what was going on. They proved to be quite successful, and Charina has upped their beer glass collection by three.

Monday we bee-bopped around Köln some more while listing all the reasons we hated it. We decided to catch a subway to the center of town for more bee-bopping and complaining until it was time to head out. The stop before we got off, a couple people got on the train, including one obese and particularly bitchy lady right in front of us. Chris turned to Marina, nodded at a lady further down in the car and said "Hey...is that a ticket checker?" Impossible. No one ever checks tickets. Then the lady right in front of us turned around and said "Tickets please."

Well, fuck.

I did the only thing I could think of, which was to pull out our train ticket to Düsseldorf from the day before and swear to all the gods that hate me that I'd never do anything bad again if we could just get out of this without being fined. She looked the ticket over carefully and said, "This ticket was only valid yesterday. I'm fining you each 40 Euros."

There are some occasions where it's useful to be a foreigner in Germany, and freaking out that the guy who sold you the ticket told you it was good for the whole weekend is one of them. Namely because then you can play it off like your German isn't good enough to understand basic things like the days of the week. We all vehemently swore up and down that our status as foreigners had been taken advantage of, we'd been duped, Germany hates us, etc etc, the result being that Bitch Ticket Lady flexed her mercy muscles and only fined one of us, instead of all three. We split the cost of the fine, I did some quick math, and we discovered that, even though we'd been caught as Schwarzfahrer, we'd still saved money on transportation. Fail/Win!

After that, none of us felt like illegally taking the subways anymore, so we walked back to the Dom. Considering we were black riders, we appropriately found Gandalf there.

And then I hitched a ride back to Hannover with a vet student, and shared the car with her two guinea pigs. And that's all we talked about. For four hours.

The end!

P.S. If you want more Köln from a distinctly British perspective, tell Marina I sent you: http://allthingsmarina.blogspot.com/2011/10/one-where-germany-loses-cool-points.html

What we found on the playground

2011-10-01T01:15:00.001+02:00

Sorry for posting twice in one day, but I have a story!

Latvian Friend requested that I join her for an evening bike ride, so we headed into the center of town to run around the castle in the dark. Somehow we stumbled across a giant playground, and as as anyone who knows me can tell you, playgrounds have historically proven to be my kryptonite. Not that they kill me or make me glow in the dark or whatever, just that I have to play on them. It's like a compulsion, or at least something you're supposed to outgrow by the time you're 12.

Anyway, I started climbing a big wooden beam thing, when out of the corner of my eye I saw movement. "Look!" I yelled to Latvian Friend. "I don't know what it is, but it's alive!" Whatever alive thing it was was little, fat, and ambling happily for the trees. The next thing I knew, Latvian Friend was chasing after it.

Let me at this point say that I have met a lot of eastern Europeans. Many of them I hold dear in my heart. None of them have been entirely right in the brain. I don't know if it's the cold, the vodka, or if communism just dropped them on their heads when they were babies, but whatever the reasoning may me, I have never met a normal eastern European.

I include Latvian Friend in this highly unfair generalization, because, while I myself probably would also have chased after it, I would have stopped at the bushes. Certainly I would not have dived into shrubbery head-first after a questionable animal that may or may not have teeth and/or carry ebola. And most definitely I would not, under any circumstances, have caught it.

"It" being the hedgehog.

"Oh my fucking Jesus," I said, as she triumphantly picked her way out of the coniferous jungle, "you caught a hedgehog. And you're holding it. With your hands."

"Don't worry, he's soft on his belly."

"Am I supposed to believe you've caught wild hedgehogs before?"

"This is what we do for fun in Latvia."

And that is how I got to play with a wild animal.

Moral of the story: Ebola feels adorably prickly.

Your questions answered!

2011-09-30T19:39:00.000+02:00

Q: What was the barn madness?
Nothing particularly maddening, just that I had two horses to ride at two different barns and not a whole lot of time to do it.

Q: Do Germans like chocolate mousse?
That they do!

Q: Do Germans really feed bread to the horses?
Yes, which reads strange to me as well. There's a giant sack full of old baguettes sliced up, and the horses eat it. And I though feeding them peanut M&M's was weird.

Q: Doesn't Host Mom work at the university?
Yep, she teaches English!

Q: Does this mean she is violating one of the main Hippie Kindergarten rules: no working mothers?
Yes. This observation came about after Host Mom got super furious with the hippie kindergarten because they expected her to come in and eat lunch with the kids on the charge's birthday. When she said "I can't, I work," the kindergarten teachers were somewhat horrified, and said something along the lines of "But it's important for his developmental well being and all the other mothers do it!" Do which she responded "Apparently the other mothers have nothing better to do, like work." Then the kindergarten tired to convince her that I should come in, and she said no. Like I said. Organic crack lines, hand sanded barn wood. You know they do it. Because they're fucking crazy.

Q: What is the thing you couldn't tell us from the last blog entry?
Still can't tell you! But trust me when I say IT IS AWESOME.

Q: SHBF??
I'm working on it! I have spoken with the people involved, but it is unfortunately terribly far away. :( But I have not lost hope!

Q: What is your favorite German dish?
Käsespätzle. It's like macaroni and cheese mated with chocolate and produced the most delicious love baby of all time.

Q: And what's the most disgusting food you have come across in Germany so far?
Zwiebelkuchen with grapes. First off, the concept of an onion cake by itself sounds like disgustingness, but then you add grapes on top of it? And it becomes that much worse.
__________________________________

Yesterday I was clomping happily down the stairs, thinking about how culture shock is so last month and I'm over it. Of course, later that night I was flipping through the channels, when I stumbled across a scene of a lovely empty field. I stared at it curiously, waiting for something to happen. The next thing I knew, two naked people came riding on horses across it, and while I scrambled for the remote, the one girl's name popped up on the screen like so:

Meike Schmidt
ENJOYS DIRECT CONTACT WITH THE HORSE

And I was so horrified I couldn't move.

Things that are less horrifying! I had a spontaneous Skype session with Sam yesterday, which was awesome and hilarious. Apparently, according to Sam, I have ceased to say "um" like an American, having traded it out for what she described as an:

But according to Sam, for accuracy, umlauts need to be added to every letter, just to make the pronunciation clearer:

and that, my friends, is how you say "um" in German.

Off to Köln for the weekend, with Marina and one of her coworkers (who I dreamt was an Irish midget, but who, as far as I can tell, is actually just a British man of average British height). see you Monday!

Ask me things!

2011-09-28T20:50:00.005+02:00

For starters, we are having what old people and not-indians refer to as an Indian Summer, which means the weather is banging, it never rains, and I love everything!

Lots and lots of barn madness has gone down today, plus also I made chocolate mousse, which does not violate the terms of the baking strike because it's not baking, it's just mixing and refrigerating. I've been doing lots of Di exercises with the crazy mare, and the difference already is pretty astounding, she almost looks like a real horse. Hooray for Di exercises!

Otherwise, I've been doing a lot of sneaking off to the bookstore, just so I can read Water for Elephants in English without getting shit from the host parents for it. I love them, and I know they're right when they tell me that reading in English helps my German not at all, but occasionally, I just want to read a book and enjoy it. Not fight with it. This is how I set myself up to fail the mega language test, unless my essay has to be about Water for Elephants.

On a positive note, I have friends, and not even imaginary ones! Barn friends, which is so fabulous. And some are even my age! Today one of the ten-year-old girls was grilling me on what Americans eat. I asked her what she thought we ate, and she replied "hot dogs." Yes, ten-year-old, among other things, we do eat hot dogs. She almost had an excitement heart attack when I told her I would bake chocolate chip cookies next week, which, for the record, does not violate the baking strike because I'll be bringing them to the barn(s), where people appreciate my culinary magic. And if they don't, there's always the horses. Who are used to these things because bread is a regular part of a German horse's diet? I don't understand either.

In other news, I've had a lot of traffic from Russia this last week? Hello Russia. Your mullet looks fabulous today.

More things to add to the Hippie Kindergarten's hit list! Cow Milk, Eggs, Meat, Working Mothers, and Picture Books. What is wrong with these people, I ask you. They teach kids that eating meat will make you sick, as evidenced by one seven-year-old's complete meltdown at the christening party when her brother ate a piece of salami. Lots of screaming and yelling "Spit it out! Spit it out!" And books somehow handicap a child's imagination from developing? Also, because they're against nutrition, they feed the kids totally random shit like red beets and millet, which, in my mind, translates as "tree bark." Which leads me to wonder if these people do organic crack lines off hand stained and sanded barn wood.

On that note, I'm out of things to tell you, and I haven't even seen a questionably gay man (although I did the homeless and crazy guy who was dressed in the exact same clothes as the first time I saw him, probably because they're the only ones he owns). So, I've decided to do a second installment of a post from my first time in Germany, and it is called:

ASK ME THINGS!

Anything you're dying to know about Germany, me, or my living situation that I haven't answered in the blog? I solemnly swear to answer any and all questions, no matter how deep, dark, probing, invasive, offensive, or racist. I have faith that you will ask profound and educational questions, but feel free to take out my faith in you with a gatling gun. It's why we're friends in the first place.

Adios!

White Bread, Baking Strikes, and Inglourious Basterds

2011-09-26T21:04:00.001+02:00

Lots of highly entertaining things have gone down since I last posted, and I have conveniently arranged and titled them for easy perusal.

The White Bread Story

I miss white bread. My family is all into the organic movement, which means wheat bread, wheat bread, and more wheat bread, with the occasional overachieving quinoa bread thrown in for good measure. Saturday Host Mom decided we were having grilled sandwiches for lunch, so Host Dad went out and bought this huge loaf of...white bread! Freshly baked white bread! How I have missed thee! And didn't I feel as though the gods were smiling down upon me when, in the course of chopping sandwich slices, one particularly fat piece was left without a partner. I threw on the raspberry jelly and joined the family for lunch, so excited about white bread I did little happy skips all the way to the table. But of course, the gods love nothing more than to show a man paradise before snatching it away again, and my epic snatching took the form of The Charge. Who threw an epic snatching fit over the fact that he didn't have any jelly bread. To pacify him, I gave him mine, content in the knowledge that, as per usual, it would sit on his plate until he decided he's rather go play with his blocks, and then I could eat it. Paradise was snatched away with both hands. He ate it. And with every bite, I thought, "If he stops eating now, I'll still have this much bread left. If he stops eating now, I'll have this much bread left. Oh look, the little bastard ate all of it."

I was terribly disappointed that my lunch went from fresh white bread to burned sandwiches when I was so looking forward to white bread. So I did what any emotionally mature, well-adjusted adult would do: I hit up the baker's, bought a giant loaf of white bread--and hid it in my room. Because I am NOT SHARING.

The Horse Story

Last week, the owner saw me riding her horse and commented that she's never seen the mare go so well. Then she said, "Maybe she'll go with you to Göttingen." What a funny joke! I laughed and said, "Totally."

The problem with this situation is that I had forgotten that Germans always say what they mean, and when the owner said "Maybe she'll go with you to Göttingen," she meant, "Make sure your dorm has enough room for a stall in it." Today the trainer approached me about taking the horse. Not buying it. Taking it. With me. And having it. I said I would consider it, and I'm flattered by the offer, but really? The only reason I got through senior year paying for Austin's rent was because my mother paid my rent. My life is far too unstable to deal with the financial burden of moving to a new city, starting grad school, and dealing with a horse, all at the same time. It would be nice, but it's straight up impossible.

I did discover, however, that half the barn is working under the impression that I'm 16. When, oh when, will I outgrow the jail bait look?

The Story I Can't Tell You About

Something super exciting went down today, and I refuse to tell you about it until I have the hard proof in my hands to take a picture of for you. Suffice to say, it involves the Bucket List. And a professional photographer? Whose phone number I now have? That will be all.

Inglourious Basterds

I watched it, mostly because it has Til Schweiger and Daniel Brühl in it, both of whose unborn babies I would most happily bear. It was fabulous. The End.

The Birthday Story

It was the charge's birthday yesterday, he is officially three years old. If the first day of his terrible threes was any indication, it is going to be a fabulous year, so long as we all invest in ear plugs.

The Christening Story, or, Why I Am Never Baking Desserts Again

Favorite Six Year Old's little sister had her christening party today, followed by a house party, and it was a good time. One lady told me that it irritates her to hear me make grammatical mistakes because I don't have an accent while doing it. Yay. Also, I got into the spirit of being foreign and made a typical Portuguese dessert of sweet noodles, and it came out DELICIOUS. I know because I'm one of three people that tried it. The other two were Host Mom and Host Dad, and Host Mom only because I shoved a plate in her hand and said, "No one else has tried this, so you have to." Her reasoning for not trying it was that the noodles look "suspicious." What? What? Contrary to popular belief, angel hair does not commit arson. Frankly, I was rather offended that 37 of the 40 people at the party didn't go near my dessert.

So, sadly, nine-tenths of my most delicious dessert went in the garbage, and I'm over baking, seeing as I'm the only one who ever eats my stuff. On the cooking ladder, I may only be a few rungs above "Does Not Burn Things," but I can bake. Except I'm not anymore, unless it's just for myself. And this is a vow I plan on sticking to, at least until I pick up Claire from the airport and we crack open the food coloring. And then we are making HOT PINK PORTUGUESE DESSERTS, just to spite this country.

New favorite song! I really just can't get over his hair. Plus, I'm relatively sure he spends half the video in an empty pool, and everyone knows the last person to do that was Soulja Boy. Instant gangsta points.

Raisinets, Reveals, and everything in between

2011-09-24T01:07:00.002+02:00

Currently I am attempting to invent the organic version of Raisinets. In the refrigerator, I've got organic raisin smothered in the organic version of nutella, and now I'm waiting for them to get hard so I can eat them. Hee. Heeheehee. I funny.

Speaking of chocolate, Host Dad's job is sending him to Houston for two weeks, and he keeps joking he's going to bring me back Hershey's chocolate. He thinks it's funny, but I really, really hope he does. I am fully aware the German chocolate ist tausendmal besser, but what can I say, I'm a good American in the candy aisle.

I put the child to bed again tonight, there was screaming involved, but only about 20 minutes worth as opposed to 2 hours, so already there is improvement.

Apparently in Germany it is illegal to wash your car in your driveway, for fear the soap suds will seep into the water and cause you to grow another head. This came about after I thoughtfully suggested that the charge's Hippie Kindergarten, which is currently operating at -4000 euros a month, blackmail some cheerleaders and have a carwash. Nope. Carwashes, and possibly cheerleaders=illegal.

Speaking of the Hippie Kindergarten, I just learned that they also disapprove of Bilingualism and Vaccinating Your Child Against Infectious And Potentially Life-Threatening Illnesses, so we can add that to the hit list, right under Plastic, Corners and Clothing with Cartoon Characters On It.

Also, I didn't know it, but the drink of choice when you're sick is cultural. Who knew? In the US, whenever you have a cold, they tell you to drink orange juice and whatever you do, DO NOT DRINK THE MILK. Here, they tell you to drink the milk, and add honey to it for good measure.

On Sunday we are going to a baby christening, which I am really curious about seeing as how I've only been in a church three times in my entire life, and two of those times were for funerals. I don't know what a baby christening involved, seeing as how I've never been to one, but I'm going to go out on a limb and guess some Christ. Apparently christenings are the norm here, even if you're anti-organised religion. In an effort to make myself useful, I have, however, volunteered to bake the Portuguese dessert, although it occurred to me (too late to change it), that I've never actually tried the dessert in question, I only know what it looks like. So it'll be a surprise, for everyone involved. And who doesn't like surprises!

Wednesday Latvian friend and I hit up the free salsa lessons, and I had to be ashamed of myself when the face-tattooed Spanish waiter decided to practice his Portuguese with me. So I need one of my spanish-speaking friends (looking in your general direction, Jovanna!) to tell me how one would say "Sorry Face Tattoo Guy, I only look the part and bake the cookies" en espanol. Dominican Dance Man decided to give me a refresher course in Spanish, which was only tolerable because he's pretty. Basically, I spent the evening alternating between dancing, and being sad that my (more or less) bilingual state is useless when dealing with Hispanics.

Speaking of being more or less bilingual, it's official: most Germans can't place my accent, and other foreigners (plus some kinder Germans) don't realize I have one. Hells yeah!

IIGOIIG REVEAL!

The Rihanna painter was, wait for it...straight. I know this because I have never met a single gay man that would try that hard to get through the blinds while I was changing my shirt. Awkward, but informative. That puts the IIGOIIG scoreboard up to:

German: 1
Crazy and Homeless: 1
In Denial: 1
Danish: 1
Gay: 0
Poor Taste in Music: 1

Favorite song of the day? You got it. Really, I just like his hair.

This is my last attempt to convince you to write to me, and then I am giving up. I spent 10 euros at the store way back in August, buying fun postcards with sheep on them, and so far, the only person who I've managed to send one to is Claire. And trust me, you are missing out, as Claire's card will surely prove. It had lots of sheep asses all over it, and said "Danke, dass du kein Arsch bist," which translates to "Thanks for not being an ass," but I artfully scribbled over a k, thus rendering it, "Thanks for being an ass." So WRITE ME GODDAMIT. For the sheep's sake.

Hugs and kisses.

Tina

Friedhelm, Evangelists and IIGOIIG Round 5

2011-09-21T01:31:00.002+02:00

Hello hello!

Nothing major or terribly shocking has happened to me since Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus, so here are some minor things you might find entertaining:

I met up with Friedhelm last night, also known as The Only Person To Call Me From My Friends-Wanted Sign In The Library Even Though All The Numbers Have Been Torn Off. And, to be perfectly honest, I was a little apprehensive about this meeting, because Friedhelm was so goddamned German about the entire process, it made me want to call in sick. He emailed me a detailed biography, plus the websites for his feed inspection company, plus different websites about his various hobbies. It was almost like he was applying for a job, except I've never had anyone apply to be my friend before. Which I also don't consider a job.

At any rate, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Friedhelm, despite his anal website-sending tendencies, might actually be the happiest, most pleasant, and most overly friendly German over the age of 25 I've ever met ever. It was a super good time. We discussed lots of things, like how american politics are stupid, and how american politics are stupid. I do, however, kind of get the vibe that's he's looking for a wife, which is a little freaky considering his oldest child is only five years younger than I am. Urgh. Well. It'll be okay.

I had to put the charge to bed today, and he screamed through the entire process. But I told his parents he went down wonderfully, just so they don't send me back to America.

While flipping through channels, somehow the host parents and I wound up watching the last part of Jesus Camp, which prompted a discussion of American evangelists vs. German evangelists. Things I was surprised to discover: the evangelists are the liberal church here, not the church you're pretty sure God wouldn't mind you firebombing. At first, I assumed that if the evangelists were the liberal ones, that must mean all the other churches are actually agents of the devil, or at least the Tea Party, but no. Host Mom is friends with one couple, both of whom are evangelical preacher/pastor/reverend thingies. They lived together before they got married, are all about pre-marital sex, and drink alcohol. Apparently this is normal. Sarah Palin would not approve.

And now...

Is It Gay or Is It German Round 5!

The painter working on our house had Rihanna blasting from his ipod yesterday, and this was followed in quick succession by Journey. I already know the answer to the conundrum, but allow yourselves to be tested. The only American men I know who listen to Rihanna are also fond of spiky sunglasses and dressing like women, but this is Europe. You never know. What do you guys thing?

Favorite song of the day! I don't think you get this on American radio, but she's from New Zealand, where it rains all the time, thus why she never has dry hair:

That's all I got. Adios amigos!