Kiwi Baking Fails! (and other stories)

Here are all the reasons I'm having the best weekend ever:

Yesterday, I had a really cool class, then ran errands and ate ice cream with Al.  Then I met up with friends for a grill party, where I failed at making daisy chains, but ate a hamburger, so it was okay.  After that it was time for the couchsurfer meetup, where I got to geek out with a Danish guy over Scandinavian languages.  And then Saturday night ended at a giant student party at a dorm on the north campus, where I had an intense discussion about identifying gay Germans and watched a guy play a weird electric guitar/violin thing, at least for thirty seconds until the music was horrible so the Kiwi and I bounced.

Today I slept until noon, and woke up to discover it was 80 degrees out and absolutely gorgeous.  I did crap tons of laundry, hung it outside to dry, and read Game of Thrones down by the river.  Then the Kiwi came over, and we attempted to bake.

British Friend had invited the two of us to German couchsurfer friend's house for dinner, so we decided we'd bake up a pavlova to bring with us.  It sounds like a Russian tennis player, but it's actually a Kiwi/Australian dessert, and it's (supposed to look) like so:

Basically, it's a meringue, with whip cream and fruit on top.  The meringue part took forever--we had to whip everything by hand and we were tired from the party last night. But it came out pretty good (we thought), so we packed the fruit and the cream in her book bag, and tried to figure out how we were going to get a cake from point A to B, on a bike, without breaking it.  The only thing in my house big enough for the cake to fit on was a frying pan of all things, so we threw it on and wrapped the entire monstrosity in nine thousand layers of tin foil and plastic wrap, which didn't look weird at all.  Oh, and we brought our own whisk.

We got only slightly lost on the way, but arrived at the friend's house with the cake more or less intact.  Immediately we started whipping the whipped cream.  The problem, as we discovered, was that whipped cream is a fickle bitch of a mistress.  If you don't whip the cream hard enough, it turns into butter, and if you don't whip it fast enough, it also turns into butter.  Whipping it by hand, we had no chance.  Next thing we knew, we had a bowl of horrible, lumpy, half-butter-half-cream ridiculousness. We decided to be adventurous and poured it on the cake anyway.

Feeling brave, we all tried a piece, only to discover that contrary to popular belief, our cake wasn't even all the way cooked.  Many, many adjectives were used to describe out creation, very few of them positive.  In the end, the final product was just too horrible to eat, so we resorted to poking it with knives and making fun of it.  

The real hilarity ensued when we tried to get rid of it.  Once even poking the cake had started to lose its luster, I picked up the frying pan and took it inside to go dispose of the clusterfuck.  "Wait!" yelled the German couchsurfer friend.  "Don't throw it in the trashcan!  It's soluble in water, you might as well just throw it in the toilet." British Friend, the Kiwi and I just stared at him for a few seconds, and then I said, "Really?  Really?  You want me to throw this into the toilet?"  "Yes."  "...Yeah, alright."

It's probably one of those stories you had to be there to find funny, but I haven't laughed that hard in a really, really long time.  Here I was pouring a liquefied, buttery meringue out of a frying pan and trying to flush it, but there was so much meringue, not enough water.  Plus parts of the meringue were still solid chunks of under-cooked horribleness, so they didn't flush, they just sort of bounced up and down in the water, and we were all dying.  Finally the German guy came back and said, "Let me help," at which point he promptly whipped out a butcher knife and started hacking at cake pieces.  I think that was when I stopped being able to stand up.

After that debacle, with (most of) the cake safely flushed down the pipes, we all went to go see Arsenic and Lace, an English-language play at uni.  The theater, as it turned out is a converted operating theater--back in the day, instead of hosting student plays, students came and watched doctors cut people open.  The play was really good, really funny, and even more so because we were seeing it on closing night, which is when the actors traditionally prank each other.  When I asked how "prank," was defined, the German guy said, "Well, for starters you can be sure that all the prop alcohol is real tonight."  We also discovered they added the words "fuck" and "dickhead" at highly opportune moments to the script, and they made David Hasselhoff jokes.  Epic win.

It's supposed to be eighty degrees again tomorrow, so Al and I are off to go explore castle ruins.  Yay!

Oh, and in case you were wondering what happened to the frying pan and the whisk, the Kiwi had to carry them around in her bookbag all night.

To summarize:

--Life is really, really busy.

--Life is really, really entertaining.

--Baking like a Kiwi is harder than it looks.

--I have shorts on.

--I'm so happy, I don't know what to do with myself.

Change of Plans

In the past two days, my uni plans have changed!  But for the better, I think:

1)  I had originally intended to do the degree in five semesters, not four.  However, I was taking a look at my schedule a few days ago, and I realized I'd inadvertently sent myself up to do it in four.  So my new plan is, if I do it in four semesters, awesome, if I do it in five, at least it wasn't unexpected.  But I'm aiming for four.

2)  For this particular program, you have to specialize in either Africa, Southeast Asia, or the Indo-Pacific.  I came in planning for Africa, except I took an Africa class yesterday and I just wasn't feeling it.  It was highly highly theoretical, and not even theoretical about things I was interested in.  So on a whim, I went through the course catalogue last night and discovered there was an Micronesia and Polynesia class today.  I figured what the hell, I'd probably hate it seeing as I have zero interest in that area of the world, but since Africa was such a bust, I might as well check it out.  And sweet Jesus, it was SO COOL!  Ridiculously interesting, and every single thing on the syllabus made me really happy.  So, my soul has switched, Indo-Pacific for the win. And it's at noon, not 8 AM like Africa, which makes it even better in my book.

Other things that are exciting!  Today is ANZAC day for Australia and New Zealand, or, as I've taken to telling everyone, Happy "New Zealand Was Actually In A War?" Day. To celebrate, the Kiwi arranged a couchsurfer meetup, which I went to.  Over drinks we got to talking about scholarships and student funding, and I explained my awkward predicament about how my parents earn too much money for me to get financial aid, but they're not helping me with school because they're not German, they've got my sister's college bills, and, let's be honest, I'm a big girl and I shouldn't be getting an allowance.  One of the guys who comes to the couchsurfer meetups is 76, and later on in the evening he sat down next to me and asked me if I was a European citizen.  I said yep.  He said, "Did you know that if you don't earn enough money to pay your rent, the state will pay it for you?"  I said, "I'm sorry, could you repeat that, please?  It sounded like you were telling me the state would pay my rent."

As it turns out, the state will actually pay my rent.  This guy is apparently a retired lawyer who hooks people up because he enjoys it, and he offered to sit down with me on Friday, fill out forms, and write the official letter.  Which is ridiculously amazing of him and I plan on baking him cookies.  I really really really hope this works out, that would be amazeballs to the 10th power.

In other news, Al and I sadly didn't make it to the castle Sunday because the weather was absolute shit, so we just did Swedish homework instead.  However, it's supposed to be 80 degrees and more or less sunny this Sunday, so we'll give it a go then.  The poetry slam also didn't happen, we got there forty-five minutes earlier but we still didn't get in. No worries.

So...I'm taking a class in rolling your r's.  Yes.  This is a class (not a joke), it can be taken, and I am taking it, because I am that much of a geek.  Truth be told, I need a rolled r for multiple reasons, some of which are called Swedish, Portuguese, and Classical Voice.  Basically, I had too many reasons to take the class, not enough not to.  And within the next two months, according to the professor, you will see me triumphantly rolling my r's.  If it happens, which I doubt it will, I will even post a victory video.

Oh!  And today we also found out that there's some weird witch party Monday night in the mountains, and the Kiwi and I are going to try and convince one of our car-owning friends that they should take us.  There's also some party Friday we're going to.  AND I've got a singing lesson tomorrow, AND I was a beast today and figured out how to print shit off in the uni.  I celebrated by printing 32 pages of Swedish vocab.

What I'm trying to say is, life is really, really, really good. :D

Four Things I Will Never Never Never Understand About Germany

I've officially been living in Germany for just over ten months now, and I personally think I'm pretty okay at it.  I study, I'm happy, culture shock rarely rears its ugly dragon head.  But as I was biking to uni this morning, I got to thinking about all the times Germany has blinded me with this weird cultural aspect or that bizarre way of doing things.  98% of the time, I thought, I eventually come around to the German way--sometimes I go into the light skipping and plucking daisies from the Field of Everlasting Happiness, and sometimes I get chained behind a team of oxen who use my head to make furrows for said daisies.  But then there's the 2% of the time, where I take a look at some part German culture and realize: I've never understood, I still don't understand, and I have about as much a chance of one day understanding as Rick Santorum does of being elected editor-in-chief of Bitch Magazine.  That is to say, none.

So, here are four things I will never never never never understand about this country:

1)  Going Outside When It's Cold
Why, Germany, why do you do this?  And I don't mean "run from your front door to the car," which is what I would call "going outside when it's cold."  Not only do Germans go outside when it's 30 degrees out, they do it of their own free will, to actually do shit. And I don't understand.  Why on earth would you choose to eat outside at a restaurant when there's snow on the ground?  Why would you go for a walk down by the canal when water is only a few sad degrees from freezing its own ass off?  Why would you go to a beach if you have to put on winter jackets and long pants to do it?  I don't understand.  I just don't understand.  Germans love their fresh air, this I know, but I don't see how you could love anything enough to go outside when the weather is threatening to freeze the fresh air out of your shivering lungs.  We make sacrifices when it's cold out.  Some of those sacrifices include only breathing air that's been pumped out of central heating.

2)  Getting Together...To Get Together
Another thing I do not get.  The rational part of my brain tells me that this must be a cultural thing (unlike going outside when it's cold, which is just stupid.)  Then again, the rational part of my brain is small, misshapen, and has a tendency to flicker if you close the door too hard.  But I do know that whereas Americans get together with friends to do something (watch a movie, dye cupcakes pink, make their sisters pick them out clothes), Germans get together to just be together, and it makes my brain melt.  Generally, when we invite friends over, we even put the goal of the visit in the text message, i.e "Let's hang out and cook something."  "Let's hang out and play on Amy's Slip n Slide, which I got for her and not for me, I swear."  "Let's hang out and get into trouble."  And even if we somehow don't suggest an activity in the initial invitation, the invitee picks up the slack with "Sure, we can hang out!  What are we doing?"

This is not so in Germany.  "Let's hang out" actually means "Come over and we'll drink tea and eat cookies and stare at each other, preferably in semi-darkness."  I don't understand, and it makes my eyes (and brain) ache.

3)  Frozen Cheeseburgers

Do we have these in America?  Because if we do, my faith in the land of my birth is officially null and void.

and finally...

4)  Referring to Really Nice Portions of a City as "The Ghetto."

The very first time I noticed this happening was way back in 2008, and, in a blog post, I wrote this on the subject:  

"I overheard two girls talking about the so-called "ghetto" in Konstanz, and I got really interested because I've been looking for it since I got here. According to them, Wollmatingen is the ghetto, and they got "Ooh, don't go there," about it. However, I drove through Wollmatingen on the way back from the horseshow, and it is picture perfect houses with flowers on the windowsills and a few office buildings trading good clean money that has never seen the inside of a stripper's G-string. In my humble opinion, that is a CRAP ghetto."

At the time, I thought this an isolated incident--until I moved to the so-called "ghetto" of Göttingen.  And then suddenly I was getting hit left and right with pity looks when I told friends and acquaintances where I lived.  Some people just warned me to be careful, others told me to seriously considering moving.  And I was like, "Yes, hello, sorry, you call this the ghetto?  Because I've yet to find a dime bag of coke in the back of a kindergarten classroom, or watch someone get stabbed in the cereal aisle at Wal-Mart. In fact, we don't even have a Wal-Mart."

My theory as to why Germany sucks at properly identifying ghettos is simple:  the high standard of living.  Most Germans have never even seen a ghetto, let alone been followed through one by a group of guys with face tattoos.  So I'm taking it upon myself to educate this country with photo evidence, comparing the "ghetto" where I live, to the real deal.  Also known as Camden, formerly the most dangerous city in America, now number 3 and proud of it, located fifteen minutes from the house I grew up in.

Ready, Germany?  Here we go.  Watch and learn.

The ghetto where I live:

Camden:

The ghetto where I live:

Camden:

The ghetto where I live:

Camden:

So in the future, Germany, when attempting to identify a ghetto, ask yourself the following questions:

--Is there a hooker on the street corner?

--Have you seen at least two drug deals go down in the last half an hour?

--Have you heard gunshots?

--Are the houses boarded up?

--Did you order chicken wings through bulletproof glass?

--Are your friends missing at least half their teeth?

If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, you may be in the ghetto.  You are also unfortunately nowhere near my house, so I can't offer you a place to hide when you pick a fight with a coked-out pimp rocking a black-market AK-47 and a bad attitude.

You're welcome.

Back to Blog

Hey all!

Sorry for the epic blogging fail on my part over the last few days.  Life has been exceptionally hectic, but at least I've gotten a couple good stories out of it.

The last time I posted was Wednesday, right?  And afterwards, Al and I met up with the Sports kids, who were super friendly but made us do multiple shots of apple schnapps.  Or tried to make us, anyway.  I sipped them to be polite, but wound up passing them all on to Al.

My first class of Thursday was canceled due to furniture (or lack thereof), so I only had two classes, Mesoamerican Codices in the morning, Swedish at night.  Mesoamerican Codices is taught by the same guy who does Indigenous Cultures of North America, and, likewise, consists of me and four other people.  The class itself was fine, but trying to find it was interesting.  Why Germany, a country that prides itself on efficiency, would place room 181 next to room 230 (and on the opposite side of the building from rooms 179 and 180) is beyond me.  It took me half an hour and the help of a janitor to find it.

Swedish was just fine, super intense, but now I can ask people if they're single.  Also, I learned to say "polar bear," not in Swedish class, just on the internet.  Because I need to know it's name before I can pet it.

Friday was the first day of my intense battle with the crappy seminar.  Background information: a few weeks ago, I got an email from my department saying that this seminar was a requirement, and that I could take it on one of these two dates.  I showed up on one of these two dates, only to discover that the email had the wrong room number in it.  I found this out after I stood outside it for twenty minutes pounding on the door until someone opened it up just long enough to tell me that I was in the wrong place.  So I went downstairs and asked the guy at the front desk, who had no clue and sent me to another lady.  Who also had no clue, and sent me to another lady.  Who was young and motivated and decided to call someone after it because apparent that the seminar I was looking for wasn't even in the building records for that day.  We finally located the room, but I wound up being forty-five minutes late for the seminar.

Having gotten off on the right foot, I quickly made friends with two other kids in my program--who promptly informed me that this seminar is meant to be taken in conjunction with a research project in your third semester.  I asked why nobody had bothered to tell me this, or at least put it in the email.  She said "welcome to Germany."

Have I mentioned how I occasionally hate this country with every fiber of my being?

I immediately went to the professor and was like, "Oh, hey, don't actually need this for another year, can I have my weekend back, please?"  And she said, "Since you're here, you may as well just do the seminar, it'll still be valid in a year or so when you get around to doing your presentation that we film."

Oh, yes, there's the part about having to be filmed.  And about how Friday was the first day in almost a month and a half where it was a) warm, b) sunny, and c) didn't rain at all.

Fuck me.

So I did the seminar, and it was long but generally not horrible.  We did a pretty interesting game where we divided up into groups, one person turned their back, and the other people basically gossiped about that person and drew conclusions about everything from their favorite toys as children to where their interests come from.  And it was actually freaky how spot-on first impressions are.

The shitty part came when we got put in groups, given half an hour prep time, and had to give a presentation for the class.  The other groups then made a list of the positive and negative things our group had done...and I was the negative list.  Not "Tina didn't talk enough," or "Tina's hair looks stupid," just "Tina."  And if that's not a self-esteem booster, I don't know what is.

After leaving the seminar, I was in a horrendously black mood, so I took Game of Thrones down to the river and decided to enjoy whatever dregs of Vitamin D I could suck out of the last twenty minutes of daylight.  But by that point the temperate was dropping, so, in an even fouler mood than I was before, I locked myself in my room, curled up on my bed, and hated everything for a solid two hours.  Then it was time for the Couchsurfer meet-up.

My mood picked up quite a bit then, because the Kiwi had also had a super shitty day, and we spent most of the meeting commiserating, cursing, and wishing plagues upon those who had done us wrong.  In the end, we both felt a lot better, and even convinced a fellow couchsurfer to go to the big Uni party with us.  So we headed over to the university, picked up Al along the way, and enjoyed a couple hours of dancing (read: bouncing) to every song the 90's are ashamed of, remixed to techno beats.  We entertained ourselves watching one little man in a bright yellow shirt dance around like a crazy person, although I looked away when he started rubbing his nipples.  And, sure enough, some German guy came up to me thinking he could improve his Spanish.  Yeah, no.

One of the Bulgarian girls posted this picture to her Facebook of the party, check it out!  The amount of students you can pack in that building is insane:

This morning I was up early again to deal with the godforsaken seminar.  It started off with us having to march around the room imagining we were in a cave, and blasting apart the rocks with our elbows and weird sex noises.  Then we had to give a spontaneous presentation on how our nervousness manifests itself, while drawing our symptoms on a stick figure man the professor had put up on the board.  I went last, and, needless to say, was completely and totally beyond caring even a shred, which is never a good place for me to be in.  Because when my "give a shit" is running on E and the traction on my social inhibitions is worn down to slippery slope, that's when I start playing one of my favorite games, Make Fun of People to Their Faces and See How Long it Takes Them to Figure Out You're Making Fun of Them.  In this case, I stood in front of the class with a completely straight face and said, "When I'm nervous, I have negative thoughts."  And then I drew a giant thought bubble from Stick Man, in English, which said, "Dear God, kill me now."

The professor, because she was a nice lady with a sense of humor, laughed, and then came up to me afterwards and complimented me for being funny.  Once it became apparent that there wouldn't be any more negative lists, my mood improved, and I participated in the next few activities more animatedly, although I still refused to make the noises.  I'm still angry no one told me I didn't need this semester for another year.  And I'm furious I missed probably the only sunny day we'll see this summer.

Today, the Kiwi, Galway, and his girlfriend all came over.  We ate an ENTIRE batch of chocolate chip cookies (some of which were cooked), drank vodka and coke, and watched Kick-Ass, which turned out to  actually be pretty kick-ass.  Lots and lots of fun, so Saturday ended on a good note.

Tomorrow, checking out some castle ruins with Al and then going to a poetry slam with Roommate.  Yay!

Adios!

Officially semester-time

Classes!  Are fabulous.

First class of the day yesterday was Indigenous Cultures of North America, which I continue to find a slightly ironic topic to study, having just left North America.  But the class itself is really interesting--and small!  There's only four other people in it.  The professor went around the room asking us what topics we were particularly interested in, and when I said dying languages and language politics, he asked me if I'd be willing to present the topic to the class at some point.  I'm excited, it looks like it's going to be a really fun time.

Then came Portuguese with Roommate.  While the course is no doubt going to be really intense, it doesn't feel so much like I'm learning a new language--mostly it just feels like filling in the blanks.  Also, the professor looks like one of my uncles.

Swedish, on the other hand, feels exactly like learning a new language, except I also want to pinch it's cheeks and tell it how much it's grown since I've last seen it.  I've decided there's never been a language in existence that's as stupidly cute as Swedish. Until you have to start making the sounds come out of your mouth, then you just kind of go, "What ze fuck, nothing this adorable has the right to be this damn hard."  I'm taking it with Al, and since he's already had half a semester of Swedish, I plan on picking his brains until I catch up.

Sometime in the middle of Swedish class, I asked myself: remember all the blood, sweat, tears, money, not to mention years of your life you've spent on more or less becoming a fluent German speaker?  Do you really want to go through this entire process two more times?  I started to despair, but only until it occurred to me how cool it would be to sit in a bar and say, "I speak German, Swedish, and Portuguese." Boom, instant motivation.  Doubling the amount of languages I speak for no other reason than "it would be cool?"  Check.

My first class of this morning was canceled due to lack of furniture, but I still got up at 8 AM to start trying to get into Swedish class.  I missed the deadlines to get a spot, and when I spoke to the professor yesterday, she said I'd have to duke it out today with forty other people all vying for the same three spots.  Grand.  No luck this morning, so I gave up and got lunch with Al.  Then I came back, Roommate and I did Portuguese homework, I gave Swedish another go, and MIRACLE OF MIRACLES I GOT IN.  Best day ever!

High off that victory, I biked into town to trade Game of Thrones book with the Kiwi and eat ice cream.  Then it was off to my next class, where I sat by myself in an empty room until I remembered that class was also canceled until next week.  My bad.

To summarize, thus far I'm really happy.  Portuguese tomorrow with Roommate, and then meeting up with Al and a bunch of the sport kids to go do some activities that probably involve alcohol.  Yay!

Adios!