Portugal, eu te amo.

Olá!

Hold on to your petticoats, because I have an important announcement to make: I am officially Portuguese.

That's right, for better or for worse, there is one more Portuguese person on the planet, and that person is me.  The consulate has come through, and I am holding my brand-spankin-new birth certificate, that identifies me as a member of the great, albeit slightly-past-it's-prime, nation of Portugal.  And as it turns out, the whole process was relatively painless!  The hardest part was trying to get the consulate on the phone. After that, it was just a matter of showing up with some papers, signing some other papers, telling everyone of my plans to study in the great, totally-not-past-it's-prime nation of Portugal, and then forking over $372.39.  And now I belong to the same country that produced Magellan, the lobotomy, and the transatlantic slave trade.  Go me!

So, what does this mean for me?  Not actually much.  The way I see it, my new dual-citizen status afford me several perks in life, these being:

--I can now live and work anywhere in Europe without jumping through the imploding hoops the Germans call the visa, but the rest of the world calls the "black pit of death, despair, and red tape.  Abandon all hope ye who enter here."
--I can get in the EU express line at airports.
--I can vote in important elections that determine the fate of nations, such as the Eurovision Song Contest.

In addition:

--My dad will be mad at me, and accuse me of only being Portuguese when I find it convenient, which is entirely true, except I like to call it "shamelessly taking advantage of all available resources in order to lead a more kickass life."
--If I date a celebrity, Portuguese magazines will applaud that celebrity's excellent taste**.
--If I die in a plane crash or a shipwreck or something, Portuguese newspapers will count me among the 3 Portuguese dead, and bemoan my fate in a language I understand barely, and even then, only when I deem it useful.

EPIC WIN!

It doesn't sound like much, but for someone planning on living, working, studying, and travelling in Europe as much as I am, EU citizenship is like the Holy Grail of Everything, except more practical and Jesus doesn't make a habit of bleeding on it. Now if you'll excuse me, to celebrate my citizenship, I'm going to go do really Portuguese things, like lay bricks, eat octopus, and slap my wife around.

Adeus!

**looking in your general direction, Hugh Jackman    

Weekend Update with Marina

Warning:  total photo overload.

You know what constitutes the best day ever?  When your mother's package, AND Sam's letter, AND your bank card, AND Marina all arrive in the same day.  Which is exactly what happened on Saturday.  First, my mom is brilliant and sent me a package of all things I forgot, PLUS a surprise package of Wheat Thins which made me so excited I didn't know what to do with myself.  So I'm rationing them.  AND SAM SENT ME A LETTER THAT I LOVED, complete with poems, Where's Waldo, and an informative sheet on worm mating habits!  And I have a response in the works for you, woman!  And the bank card means that I can get paid.

Then, Marina came!  And it was wonderful!  We immediately set out into town, where we were determined to do every exciting thing there is to do in Celle, and all in the six hours or so we had before the grill party the family was throwing that evening.  Because writing it all out in complete sentences would keep you here until tomorrow, I'm going to list everything.  And attach pictures.

Every Cool Thing There Is To Do In Celle:

First, we walked around and looked at buildings.

and Marina posed with statues:

and I was so happy, I couldn't contain myself:

We took a picture with a guy dressed up as a raven, and gave two random girls who stopped us marriage advice for a video they were making for the one girl's friend.  My advice was "Be nice."  Profound, really.

Then we did a horse-drawn tour of the city,

followed by GERMAN MEGA ICE CREAM!

We took awkward group shots by the castle...

and eventually went inside, where we were so bored, we took pictures of dogs outside.

We goofed on on the castle grounds for a bit:

and then went back into town, where we got our styles pimped,

almost had our souls saved,

and hung out with statues.

Eventually it started to rain, so we decided to climb the church tower, for a nice view over Celle.

It was rainy...

and also

Then we saw what I call the sperm fountain, so named because the water shoots out of these,

played on jousting stick things,

and hung out in the French Gardens.

Then, we came home, grilled with the family and friends, played with my favorite six-year old ever (who's the daughter of She of the Infamous Crepes Station), before heading back out into town, to drink these:

I would like to say that while I was at no point drunk, I did eventually start making WWII jokes, before I lost my ability to speak English completely.  This was a poor idea, because, in the words of the ever-amazing Mike H. "You look like the star of the Lisbon Repertory Company's production of The Diary Of Anne Frank."  Also, the guys next to us were scandalized enough to leave.  My bad.

Eventually we came home and ate Gone with the Wind (Vom Winde Verweht) ice cream that I had bought.  It's chocolate pieces in raspberry ice cream, topped with white chocolate bits in strawberry sauce.  Also, it has a picture of Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable staring at each other passionately.  It's also delicious.  

Then, this morning we were woken up at an ungodly hour by Schützenfest, which is some celebration that apparently involves a parade at 6.30 AM.  We slept for another hour before waking up, and heading off to the train station, where we were bound for the nearby town of HAMELN.  Which has nothing going for it, except that it's the town the Pied Piper saved from the rats.  Also, there's a store that will buy your gold, even if the teeth are still attached:

Okay, so Hameln.  There are rats embossed on every surface, including little rat stones in the street.

But the buildings are lovely!

And did I mention there were rats everywhere?

The biggest drawn for Hameln is that every Sunday, they host a play-reenaction-thing of the Pied Piper coming to Hameln, drowning the rats, and then getting fucked over by the townspeople when they refuse to pay him.  So instead of charming the money out of their pockets, he charms all the children into the hills, where they all disappear, with the exception of a blind one and a deaf one, neither of which can tell the townspeople what happened because sign language was apparently not invented in those days. The moral of the story is a) never trust a man who plays a pansy instrument like the flute, b) rat poison makes everyone's lives easier AND stops the spread of the plague, and c) if you can't hear, learn sign language already, so you can tell people where the pansy flute asshole took everybody.  And now for more pictures:

"We hate rats."

"I take out my anger at never learning a manly instrument on various household pests."

"I'm a dick, and possibly a pedophile."

All in all, it was wonderful fun.  I've missed Marina like a fiend the last few years, and it was just wonderful to see her again.  We danced, we spilled things, we practiced each other's accents, and it was brilliant.  Just divine, dahling.  

That's all for now folks, hope your weekend was BANGIN.

Adios!

EDIT:  In case I did not make myself clear, I rather like the flute.  But when it's paired with Joseph's Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, I gain the right to make as many pansy jokes as I damn well please.

on culture shocking and horses

Happy slightly belated birthday, America.  Sorry I was so busy concerning myself with attack-rodents that I forgot to say it sooner.  Hope you all had a lovely fourth!

The story of my life is that the last few days have not been particularly interesting.  I was ridiculously productive today, running all sorts of errands and being a general fiend.  I finally got around to opening a bank account, which I have to pay 6 euros for monthly, which is LAME.  What a stupid-ass banking system.  I'm also having Epic Visa Problems that will probably get their own blog post, if and when they are ever solved.  My ace in the hole is my Portuguese birth certificate, so if all goes to according to plan, I'll be able to circumvent the system and all the shit the German government has put me through already.  However, everything had been going to plan, until the moment it stopped going to plan, namely, when my visa spontaneously combusted in my face.

As far as culture shock goes, I've found it's thus far been to limited intense and terrible moments, and triggered by something completely innocuous.  Then I find myself inwardly retreating to some dark place where I wish bad things on the world because I am incapable of living in it.  Like when the recipe called for the 400 degrees Fahrenheit, and I turned the oven on only to realize it was in Celsius.  Or when the guy at the Alien Registration Office saw the look of horror on my face as I sat there staring at forms, and I had to ashamedly confess that I had no idea how tall I am in centimeters.  And he had to measure me against a wall like I was at a doctor's office. Or when I went to buy flip flops, and had to try on every single size starting with 35, because I don't know my European shoe size.    

But the good thing is, it doesn't last long.  I always take a deep breath, grit my teeth, hate everything, and figure it out--mainly because I don't have any other option.  400 degrees F is a little over 200 degrees C, I'm 162 centimeters tall, and I'm a 40 (in flip flops at least).  But even though I still don't understand the metric system, I remain a deeply anxious human being, and my self-esteem is directly connected to how well I feel I've accomplished Living In Germany on any given day, I still wouldn't change my situation for anything in the world.  It may rain more often than not here, but at least I'm being rained on in Germany, and I try to keep sight of how cool that is.

My favorite moments are the delayed reactions to the normal, that tell me it's getting easier.  Like today when I was at the bank, and there was a dog behind me trying to wrap itself around my legs, and my first thought was "what an adorable dog."  Five minutes later I realized I was standing in the middle of a marble-floored, gold-countered public establishment and hanging with a basset hound, and I hadn't even batted an eye.  Because some of the weirder it's-so-German things are magically morphing into it's-so-normal things, and that's neat.  I like those moments.

In other news, I went back to the barn today to help out.  I longed a three-year-old around for a little while, and then they threw me on the buffalo Haflinger, who truly is a buffalo.  A lazier horse I have never encountered in my life, but I'm a happy camper. Sometimes I think I'm okay without horses in my life for extended periods of time, but then I get my ass beat by a golden buffalo, my legs have already started hurting, and I smell like horses, but I still skipped all the way back to my bike.  The awesome thing is that the barn is less than a minute's bike ride away, and the people are lovely.  I gave the daughter my phone number, so she can call me whenever they need help with feeding or longeing, or whenever the buffalo-thing is free.  Plus she told me I can come by whenever to hang out.  So...yay!  I even learned lots of new words, like longieren (longeing), Trenze (bridle), and büffelig (...buffalo-like).

So...yes!  I have horses, I have a pretty awesome family, and I have people that are quickly turning into friends, and all of these are wonderful things.  I never claimed that moving my life 3,915.89 miles away was going to be a cakewalk, but I'm still really happy to be where I am.  The government hates me and my masters degree depends on passing a single test, but I'm really, really content with my life, which I haven't been able to say for a while.  So this is a good change!

A Weasel ate our Car.

No, seriously.  A weasel ate our car.

Yesterday: on the way back from Göttingen, the brand-new, just-bought, gute-deutsche-Qualität car all of a sudden started making funny noises and lurching.  The dashboard lit up like potheads in Colorado, sending Host Mom furiously searching through the manual for what all the beeps and blips and your-car-is-fucked lights meant.  In short, they translated to: your car is fucked. Keep in mind, this automobile is less than three weeks old--we picked it up two hours after they picked me up from the airport.  Host Parents were, to say the least, not pleased, thinking they had inadvertently been stuck with a Montagsproduktion--a really shitty car made when the factory workers were still hungover Monday morning that starts having problems almost immediately.

Fast forward to this morning, when I come downstairs to learn that, no, it was not hungover assembly liners, it was a weasel-thing.  A marten, to be exact.  These little bastards are the scourge of Germany, costing car-owners an average of 40 million euros per year.  Because they feed on cars.  Or rather, they dine on the circulatory systems of autos parked in their territory that smell of a different marten. Apparently, Oma and Opa's marten was offended by our marten's stench, and took revenge by chowing down on 360 dollars worth of engine tubing.

All around the mulberry bush
The monkey chased the weasel.
The weasel ate the monkey's car
So the monkey set it on fire.

Comparisons, Göttingen, and Girlmanthings

Things That Are Better in Germany

--  Yogurt, bread, cheese, and chocolate.
--  A reverse yellow light that signals when the green is coming, which I find both handy and entertaining.
--  Hippies.  Nothing like a German hippie to make me feel like the world still has a sense of humor.

Things That Are Better in America

--  The weather (can you say, I've-been-here-for-eighteen-days-and-fifteen-of-those-days-have-been-55-degrees-and-raining-and-I-only-brought-a-light-jacket-to-Germany-because-I-expected-summertime-in-June-I-know-who-does-that-anyway-the-point-is-I'm-dying?)
--  Cheesecake.  And brownies, come to think of it.
--  Music and television.  Just saying.

Started off the weekend with a summerfest at the child's day care, even though it feels like winter.  All the parents brought something (I cut up a watermelon), and one of our parent-friends had a whole crepe station set up, complete with an obnoxiously giant jar of Nutella.  Which made her coolness factor, in my book, go up x100.

Then we were off to Göttingen, where I want to study, and where the mom's extended family lives.  It was a great time, everyone was super nice.  At first I was shy, as I always feel weird talking to older Germans, because all I can think about is whether or not they're thinking about that time that their country tried to kill everything, and my country tried to stop them by dropping bombs on their civilians.  And then I think about if they're thinking about me thinking about this, and whether I should just introduce myself as "Tina, sorry my country dropped bombs on your house 70 years ago," but that seems awkward, and it's just a vicious cycle.  But anyway everyone was lovely, we did not talk about WWII, and the grandmother is an amazing cook.

Saturday we woke up bright and early, ate breakfast, and then ran around the city for a bit.  It was freezing, but still attractive.  Göttingen, unlike Celle, is a university city, so it was nice actually seeing people my age out on the street.  We didn't actually do much, just wandered around, but I did take some pictures for you.  Oh, and Claire, I finally solved the age-old problem of Heidi's footwear, because I found a T-shirt of Heidi, and made a point to double check.  You know what?  She didn't have appropriate footwear, because she didn't wear any.  Her grandfather made her go barefoot, the asshole.

This is a dummy, not some random person's boobs.  Just so we're clear.

When you get your doctorate, you have to kiss this statue.  It's tradition, apparently.

Gee, this building looks old...

...because it's older than America.

Afterwards the family asked me: "What would you rather do this afternoon, go to the European Bread Museum, or see wild pigs?"  Clearly, there's no choice there. Unfortunately, the pigs were huddled in a pig-like-mass way back from the fence, so you can't really see them in the picture, but we did hang out with deer and cows.

 Pigs, sort of.

Deer, definitely.

Yay, cows.

After dinner, Host Mom decided we were going to have a girls-night-out in the city and go to a bar.  As soon as we parked, we were accosted by a bachelor party.  Unlike the one in Celle, these guys were not dressed as nurses, but rather, as hot-pink fishnet-wearing, blue-wigged, over-blushed girlmanthings.  And Host Mom bought be a bottled shot of vodka from them.  It's currently sitting in my purse, waiting for an appropriate time of crisis to be used, like a wound infection or the end of the world.

Today we went to the Wilhelm Busch watermill thingy.  Wilhelm Busch wrote comics, and his watermill milled things.  That's about it.

Anyway, it was a good time, and now I'm back.  Hope you all had lovely weekend, without the girlmanthings.

As a random sidenote, it is terrifying driving by yourself in a country where you don't understand the road signs.  It is also impractical to not realize this until the first time you drive by yourself.

EDIT:  According to my sister, one of the photos she took of me and Stretch got added to a Flickr photography group called "Hot Farm Girls" that consists mainly of naked women in cowboy boots.  I consider this a personal victory, even though I have a dress on.

EDIT EDIT:  JESUS CHRIST WHY ARE THERE SO MANY NAKED PEOPLE IN COWBOY BOOTS.