Dissection of the Christmas Pyramid

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.

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

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

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.

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.  However, we only have 24 channels, so I can't honestly judge if the channels are shit because there are only 24 of them, or if they're a reflection in German TV as a whole.  But I'm going 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.

On top of being chock-full of naked people, the shows themselves are shit.  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/fruit 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 Latvian Friend), and I said "Latvian Friend, 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