Packaging Adventures

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

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, but then I 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.

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!

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.  

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

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

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.

But because I am not nearly as boss-like as Latvian friend, 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?"

"Oh, sure!"

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

Moral of the story:  Ebola feels adorably prickly.