Pissed Off Planet's Guide to Western Europe: Germany. Entry 2: Umweltschutz

December 11: Funky pinks and oranges of nature's chemical technicolor coat, hovering over the Ikea monolith in the distance, just outside Erfurt. I do love modern life, wind turbines, butterfly interchanges, chemical sunsets. Germany has all that in spades.

Later that day.

Had a typical day at work, except for the fact that I haven't been able to blog in the mornings for a couple of days now. But I have so many things to write about, I just keeping making notes in the cell phone and emailing them to myself for later cut-and-pasting. Piecemeal blog. 

Since I'd been such a busy little office bee in the hive of Academia, I decided to treat myself to another trip to another One Euro store, like the One Dollar stores that have popped up like measles all over the States, a reflection of how little people get paid, one because it is sometimes the only place they can afford to go, two because the cheapness of the product has to do with reduced wages and cheap production that snuffs the economic life from a person. But I am now in the phase of collecting official Stuff, things like baskets to hold my toiletries in the bathroom, tea-light holders, picture frames, citrus zesters, and since buying such a wide variety of things at the same time will bankrupt me, I go to what used to be called a Tante Emma Laden (No relation to Osama Bin Laden). You need something to fill the house that Jack built. I bought a breathtaking amount of plastic storage containers, the kind of Stuff you don't feel bad about buying because it weighs so little, even though it's worse in so many ways. And I finally got around to picking out a couple of discreet rubbish bins for sorting my trash. But sorting trash here is complicated, so you should probably read the entry in the field guide:

The Pissed off Planet's Guide to Western Europe: Germany

Entry 2: Umweltschutz

Germans, despite their penchant for personal specialization, also have a talent for multitasking, because, naturally, it is a hallmark of efficiency, which is a part of Northern European DNA. Actually, it takes up the majority of the double helix.

One of the most impressive and distinctive manifestations of this talent focuses on turning dreary chores that are a requisite part of community living into national pastimes in order to encourage natives' continued participation in the social contract, such as sweeping doorways and staring at passers-by without hiding the fact, trying to buy a car, and Unweltschutz, which roughly means, "protecting the environment by playing the game of Hide-and-Seek."

The Germans, at least their government, have been committed to protecting the environment for decades, for highly practical reasons. A bad environment is not efficient. It does not allow for the highest rate of productivity at the lowest cost per capita while still ensuring that most people get almost 4 weeks of vacation a year and have enough money to eat lots of pork. Thus, the environment must not only be protected, but also improved.

Because Germans understand the term "improved" as "so complicated that it overloads the human critical faculty," protecting the environment occupies 86.3% of people's time.  The other 13.7% is divided among visiting tax advisers, making Termine and scheduling their funerals (See future field guide entry: Beerdigung). This serves as a great distraction from things like the weather, the resultant pasty skin tone, and the 45% in taxes they pay on their income.

Children learn about Umweltschutz, which primarily centers on recycling, at a very young age. They are issued their first toy garbage bin at the age of one, and then told that the world will end in horrible, horrible ways that spiral down into inefficiency if they don't do their part. The subsequent guilt and anxiety leads people to screaming "no nuclear power plants!," even when it's no longer fashionable, and beginning the odyssey that is recycling.

One notices when buying garbage cans in Germany that the most preferable form is a large, rectangular bin with multiple dividers in a neutral tone that stands somewhere obsequiously in the background, doing it's best to fade into the walls.  "Don't mind me, but if you have some garbage you'd like to separate, I'll be more than happy to do that for you. I am specifically trained for that. I have a piece of paper to confirm it, too." Sometimes people opt for smaller bins so they can hide them neatly under the kitchen sink. But then you reduce the amount of garbage you can separate and later place on display to show your recycling street cred.

The Germans have decided upon what they consider the most efficient recycling system that simultaneously kills vital brain cells needed for questioning arbitrary bureaucracy and nurtures the German need for absolute order in a world where that is simply impossible, which then generates something to complain about, which supports another national pastime: complaining. This will also be a future field guide entry.

Germans have devised ingenious methods to not only promote recycling, but also turn it into a variety of amusing activities that promote community-building.  One of the most renowned methods is the Pfand, the deposit one pays on plastic and glass bottles. The majority of bottles in Germany can be recycled, so to encourage people to do this, they charge anywhere between an extra 15 to 25 cents for each recyclable bottle. They will give you the money when you have passed all the empty bottles through a mysterious machine that inspects the bar code, tells you that your bottle can not be accepted, then takes the bottle eventually after you are on the verge of crying, and then issues a small receipt that you use to buy more bottles that will send you back to the machine. One can observe lines of Germans impatiently waiting for their turn at the machine. And since this is such a laborious process that involves lugging bottles to a foreign location in order to try to recoup your losses, people go rarely, which means they bring copious amounts of bottles when they do finally go. This slows down the process and forces Germans to wait longer, which means they can spend more time in line ignoring each other, or complaining about the fact that the way people ignore each other has changed for the worse over time.

Once the typical German has finished redeeming his bottles for more bottles, he goes home and begins the other entertaining task of separating  glass, paper, cardboard, compost, plastic and other Verpackung, "packaging materials." Glass that can not be recycled must be dropped off at a large collection container approximately 20 miles away from your house, which ensures a nice walk through the refreshing -25 degree weather in winter. If one is lucky, one does not have to separate the bottles into clear, green and brown glass, but that is usually a privilege reserved for the dead, so one must separate at the container as well. If the German has an extra arm or two or a friend, he can also take his paper and cardboard with him to the area, where another container eagerly awaits his processed wood pulp. This paper will later return to community life as toilet paper so rough that it makes you question whether God is actually a benevolent entity.

After ridding himself of glass and paper, the German really gets to enjoy himself in the process of attempting to figure out which remaining garbage goes into which receptacle.  Obviously, all food items (as long as they are not greasy or made of food) go into compost, as well as plant materials and small children who did not properly play with their toy garbage cans. Once the German has been driven to kicking puppies out of sheer frustration, he moves on to the most ingenious part of the system, Restmüll, "remaining garbage," and the Gelber Sack, the "yellow sack."

The Gelber Sack is a wonder of German efficiency, a large, transparent yellow sack made from, you guessed it, recycled material. It is designed to hold Leichtverpackungsmüll, "light packaging." Since this includes an expansive list of items, almost everything can go into the Gelber Sack, except packaging made of glass and paper, newspapers, Restmüll, which has yet to be properly defined, "Audio and video cassettes, CDs, buckets, watering cans, plastic bowls, laundry baskets, wading pools, sheet protectors, children's toys, curing sheets, cooking utensils" and old people. You may fill as many Gelbe Säcke as you wish, if you can figure out where to obtain them. In some areas, the German can buy his Gelber Sack from a normal store with only a brief encounter with a Kollege. In other areas, where they really encourage people meeting each other and wasting hours of precious time, you must go directly to the waste management company and ask for them, upon which the Kollege will check the computer according to the address you give them, scan it suspiciously, and then say, "All right, you can have four sacks. But this will have to last you until 2014." You can also try obtaining them online from the agency, but you will have drowned in your sorted piles by the time the sacks arrive.

Because the Gelber Sack is a mystical object of unlimited wonder, many Germans and especially non-natives spend a great deal of their lives figuring out what exactly goes into the sack. Multiple websites are devoted to answering this question, and since the rules vary from area to area, one can spend up to 10 hours looking for the right list, which then gives the German something to complain about later.

One must not forget to properly rinse plastic containers that contained food, such as yogurt cups, non-recyclable bottles, meat trays, and One Euro plastic bins that break after three uses. Fortunately, the energy saved by making unholy toilet paper compensates for the water wasted in the washing process.

Once the German has finished making multiple phone calls and crawling the internet for guidance, he may throw everything imaginable into the Gelber Sack and then put it on display on the required day of offering so that everyone can see how hard he is working to protect the environment and obey the law:

The sacrifices are then collected by Müllmänner, "trash men," and taken to a processing temple where they are properly sorted by highly efficient machines that can complain about having to determine which piece of garbage goes into which specialized pile and make you a Belegtes Brötchen in the process. Once the final phase of sorting has been completed, at least 20% of it is thrown into an incinerator, never to be welcomed into the bosom of a machine that will turn it into a new One Euro plastic bin.

Now, the only thing left to do is throw away the compost and Restmüll into their appropriate containers, which, of course, are separate and placed in different cities. This ensures that the German gets another good walk in before the end of the day and gives him a really good excuse to go out and drink until he can no longer feel his face.

As Germans have become less and less amused by the Gelber Sack, it will eventually be supplanted by something more efficient and confusing, so that technology and the recycling spirit keep pace with the demands and desires of someone other than the Germans. And once again the country will have struck a balance between entertainment and social responsibility, much in the same way it has created even more frustrating ways to connect with a human customer service representative on the customer service hotlines that are rarely open..

And our time is up.

One Good Apple

The temperature has reached 25 this morning at a chipper 7:45 a.m. The high today is 25. Well, at least we got it out of the way early. I can't always complain (which means I'll never go native here). I have to admit that the daily train rides between Erfurt and Weimar are pretty spectacular right now. The fields are covered with a wintry baking soda, the bare tree branches dusted with powdered sugar like my walnut butter ball cookies, only much more a part of perfection. I like the sound of Kies, the gravel they toss out like chicken feed during the snow season, crunching underneath my clogs or boots. I can hear the music for The Good, The Bad and The Ugly playing in the background music in my head, becoming a part of the soundtrack of my life. Watching little kids freak out with a squealing joy at the sight of a sled or a carousel at the Weihnachtsmarkt can also be entertaining.

Other times, the innocent tyranny of children can make you pause, like the one yesterday who stared straight at me, even when I stared back at her for 20 seconds. It wasn't bad enough that no one ever told her staring is impolite. No, she had to beckon to her mother to bend down and then whisper something to her, never unlocking her eyes from my person. The mother, who looked at me and smiled sheepishly, said something back to the girl, who then carried on a whispered conversation, most likely question and answer, in whispers with her mother, still staring the entire time. I can imagine the questions. I've experienced them all before: "Mommy, what's wrong with her hair?" "Mommy, why isn't she as dark as the other ones? "Mommy, does it rub off?"  "Mommy, why does she keep staring at me?"

That is also guileless, but bad nonetheless.

I had my other appointment at the Ausländerbehörde yesterday afternoon. Well, it wasn't really an appointment, surprisingly enough. When I called to make an appointment, I was put through to the case worker who'd be escorting me through the last step of the grueling process of getting the Aufenthaltserlaubnis. Frau Greiner, a remarkably pleasant and down-to-earth woman with a Thuringian accent the thickness of aioli or pesto, unctuous but still manageable and enjoyable, told me that she had received my file, was waiting for the materials to be forwarded from Aachen, and we should renew my fiktives Aufenthaltserlaubnis, a "fictional resident permit."

Great name, right? It's a resident permit that doesn't actually exist, typed up by Kafka, signed by the cousin he never had, and stamped by banshees. I can not leave the country until I get it. A fiktives Aufenthaltserlaubnis is the purgatory of migration, located inside the general hell that is the Ausländeramt.

Frau Greiner told me to my surprise that I didn't need an appointment, to just come by and knock on her office door and we'd take care of the permit in five minutes. I wanted to ask her what she was really up to. Germans make Termine, appointments, for everything. You are issued your first appointment calendar at birth and are trained from an early age to make Termine. Children in sandboxes make Termine to decide who will kick young Hans in the balls on Tuesdays. Once, one of my friends did actually make a Termin with me for spontaneous fun.  "We'll meet two weeks from Friday at 7:56 and then do something...I dunno, spontaneous." I'm joking, right? 

So for something as massive as a resident permit, and a fictional one at that, I couldn't imagine doing it without a Termin. But I went, to at least start the process of rejection and get it rolling at an efficient rate. I would rather hear, "You will have to come back during the three-quarter moon in a month beginning with 'X' between 8:43 and 8:45" now instead of later.

When I got there, a man was standing at the door to Frau Greiner's office, waiting to go in. He looked at me with a mild fright, as though I might club him over the head to get into the office before him. I asked him if he was waiting for Frau Greiner, to which he murmured yes while inching closer to the door. I decided not to threaten his territory and retreated to a chair about 30 feet away. He still looked at me occasionally with suspicion. I almost said, "No worries honey, I won't kill you--yet."

After a few minutes, the man came out again, looking normal. No scratches, no crying, no muttering, "The horror, the horror," between chattering teeth. He sort of smiled at me and motioned that I could go in. I figured I might have a chance. But I was loaded for bear anyway. I had a receipt, a piece of paper that confirmed I had paid for my resident permit, the real one on its way to Erfurt, but still probably sitting at Kafka's missing desk. The receipt even had a stamp on it, which is the holy of holies in the land of paper. Never, ever leave an official Termin without getting a stamp, seeing something of yours being stamped and properly filed, or set on fire. Don't trust it if it doesn't have a stamp. And naturally, the more mammoth the stamp on the paper, the better.

When I knocked on the door, no one growled in response from behind it. I heard a chirpy, "kommen Sie rein," took a deep breath, and walked in. Frau Greiner, a plump ruddy-cheeked woman in her late 40s, whose hair style indicated a former love for rock concerts in which the Scorpions most likely headlined, greeted me with a facial expression I'd only seen on one other case worker, Frau Möckel, who helped me get the resident permit filed and granted in Aachen just before I moved. A smile. Frau Greiner had something else, though, energy, movement, and the ability to multi-task. I started to feel a little at ease.

As she punched my info into the computer to check the progress of my official ID card, I looked around the office, which she obviously shared with someone else. The office was huge, full of natural light, graced with the warmth of modern wall radiators that unobtrusively hide out in the background. The view from the windows was fucking awesome, a 300-year old building topped with snow, the steep roof shaking off the annoyance of winter as if it were a gnat worrying its ass. This, in combination with the sensation that Frau Greiner seemed to like her job, made me glad I'd moved to Erfurt. There is something to be said about starting from scratch.  The solidarity tax has provided for a number of good things. Other good things will follow, with time. Other bad things as well. But I digress.

As Frau Greiner prepared the extension of my resident permit, the man came back into the office. He had a receipt. I recognized it from when I paid  my fee for the resident permit. He had made it a step further as well and was pleased as punch. You could tell in his smile, which was like a kid with a candy cane. The item in his hand so special.

Frau Greiner took the receipt and handed him the stamped piece of paper that his life basically depended upon. He looked at it, and his face immediately melted into disappointment mixed with mild fear.

"What's wrong? Is your name spelled incorrectly?"

The man twisted his baseball cap in his hand and turned one of his feet towards him. "No. It say my name, but not name of wife and two kids." His anxiety started to fill the room, and I could imagine exactly what he was thinking. Another full moon, another month. Maybe. No one is strong enough to repeat the process more than twice. After that, you get a scholarship to the mental institution of your choice.

Frau Greiner sighed, said, "I knew I should have asked you at the beginning. Go pay the extra 20 Euro and come back."

"Oh thank you, thank you!" And he scurried out the door in search of the vending machine they send you to in order to make your payment. It's like buying soft drinks or cigarettes, but instead you get a piece of paper that you redeem somewhere else. It's very bizarre, very efficient, and particularly impersonal when you are forking over 110 Euro.

"Sorry about that.  Let's get this done." And she began punching buttons on the keyboard again, pulled out that beautiful piece of paper that would get signed, stamped and added to my passport. Without that card, I was screwed, and how.

At that moment, the man came in again, with another receipt. Frau Greiner took it, printed a new version, and passed it to him. He looked at it and I watched his face go through the same transformation as before.

Frau Greiner looked a little exasperated, as one would with a child. "Now what?"

"It no say about son. He turn 18 soon, need his own. For driving license."

"I really should have known. Just sit down for a second and hold on. What's his birthday again?"

The man told her and she filled out another form, stamped it, and then passed it to him. "Is there anything else, she asked in a sing-songy way tinged with a hint of ironic annoyance.

"No! No! Thank you so much!" He left sort of sideways, like a crab, bowing all the way to the door. He looked like one of those bird paperweights that dips its beak into the water, all day long.

When he closed the door, Frau Greiner smiled at me with amusement,  rolled her eyes and shook her head as if to say, "Kids these days..." I smiled and nodded back. I would have been just as discombobulated and panicked in his position. It's hard to act like a fully-functioning adult in the Ausländeramt. I think the infantilization is the worst part of it all.

Frau Greiner stamped my little fictional card, put a fictional stamp on it and handed it over to me. Fictional salvation.

I thanked her, to which she replied "No problem! See you when the official papers come in!" I wished her a good day, left and did what all Germans do: go to the One Euro store to look for bargains on practical household items.

And our time (has been way) up.

Please Fill Out the Following...

We have moved on from a waltz to a Thuringian Slide. There is now a good layer of snow on the ground, the temperature has dropped again, and even the Germans are starting to say it's cold. At the train station this morning, I saw a guy with skis, and he already had the shoes on, which leads me to believe that he will pop out of the train like some newborn baby and immediately ski to his destination. My only question is: where the hell is he going that he needs skis?!

 I didn't think it could snow at 27 degrees, that it might be too cold. I was wrong. And to those of you who imitate polar bears six months out of the year and snicker at my ignorance, I have this to say to you: You spend half your life living like Polar Bears. So there. And I know I am among you now, but I'm working out a deal to carry around my own personal sphere of summer, my tropical bubble, which no one else can enter. I have connections. I'll make it happen.

What's odd is my refusal to wear "normal" winter shoes like most people, stylish boots or trekking shoes. The cool kids of course insist on wearing their cool shoes, and they somehow manage to stay upright. I prefer my clogs. If people know me, they know I often wear clogs. I have six pairs of them now, and am quite pleased with them.  When I started slipping and sliding in my winter shoes, I decided to give the clogs a try. Couldn't be much worse, I figured. I was right. Actually, I was off by a few positivity points. The clogs function better. They have a better Profil, which I would simply translate as "tread" or "grip." Maybe we also use the word "profile."  I'll have to look it up. I am used to walking in them, so they don't bother me. I feel sort of silly walking around in them, but I realize, hey they're Danskos. They're made by Nordic people. They are warmer than my boots, easier to take off so I can warm my little toes, and don't leave me any colder than anything else I have in my closet. I'm sticking with the clogs, for now. When it gets touch-and-go, I'll see what happens.

So here I sit in the office, in my stocking feet, wondering what the day has in store for me. I am going to go to fencing at the new club tonight, if it's open. It should be. I am curious as to what the people are like.  Generally fencer's are a nice, albeit socially awkward/geeky/weird and eclectic group of people. A lot of engineers, teachers, lawyers, people who enjoy and revel in order.

I also still have to switch the power over to my name, which, I found out yesterday, involves yet another form, an Übergabeprotokoll, a form you're supposed to get when you get the keys to the apartment.  It states the exact readings for power, water, gas, all sorts of little details that I could really give a shit about. My agent forgot that. Or maybe he did give it to me, and I simply threw it with horror into the stack of letters, forms and official notices I have received in the last 6 weeks.  I hate paperwork, with a passion known only to people who love their automatic rifles so much, they go to bed with them at night. This means I chose the wrong country to live in.

Germans have more words for the term "form," (as in, "fill out this form"), than any other language I know: das Formular, der Vordruck (pre-printed form), Formblatt, Formularblatt, Formularseite, Fragebogen (form, questionnaire), Bogen (sheet of paper), Unterlagen (forms and supplementary materials). I'm sure I've missed some, and I omitted several compound nouns, which would make the list too long to finish in one blog entry.

I remember the first time I had to fill out a pile of forms (by hand, in triplicate, and this was only six years ago). I called a friend of mine, Nina, to come over and help me fill them out. We both sat there for an hour and a half trying to figure out what they wanted from me.  Like most Germans, Nina did her best, said it would be sent back in three weeks any way, because we'd forgotten to tick a box somewhere, and then we could fill them out again, hopefully correctly the second time around. The forms were for a job teaching at a junior high school, or it's rough equivalent.

All Germans melt down when they know they have to fill out forms. No one understands them. This is due to specialization.  They decided that only 1 percent of the population should really know what's being said, so that when people sign away their house or their first-born, they don't know it. It just makes the entire process easier for everyone. 

And it's not just legalese, like we have in the States.  This would make American lawyers curl into a fetal position and take to drink, more likely heroin. This is is nuclear-level bureaucracy, something that could be used as a weapon of torture.  Instead of waterboarding, we should should just plop someone directly in the middle of an administrative office in Germany and ask them to fill out those 2,000 forms on the desk.  They would sell out their own grandmother in five minutes.

When I got my job here, I had a couple of forms to fill out.  The person from HR sent the attachments with a small note: "Don't be frightened. It's not as bad as it looks."

I was frightened.

Here's what the final product looked like. Notice the whiskey bottle in the background:

And our time is up.

Lost, But Now Found

Monday, back to work, looking outside and thinking the same thing my father, The Major, said on Skype last night: It's too damn cold, even though it has warmed up. Since it rained, then froze, and then warmed up, there is not only a fine layer of ice on the ground that is a slippery slush, a threat from below, but also a threat from above, the Dachlawine, the roof avalanche I mentioned a couple of days ago. The Old Lady Waltz now consists of a step-step-shit myself- look up-dodge, step-step-shit myself-look up-dodge. Pretty soon, I will look like a St. Vitus' dance or someone with a severe case of the DTs.

And it's not actually winter yet. Sigh...

I went to Hamburg for the weekend, to visit Gisela, my host-mother from 24 years ago. We have remained in close contact ever since, and I see her as often as I can. I became an exchange student originally to get out of a very harmful home situation that I wasn't sure I'd survive if I didn't cut out.  Let's leave it at that. Therapy and a willingness on the part of my parents to make amends has smoothed out most of the past, although spectres still linger, naturally. Gisela literally saved my life, expressed her confidence in my decision-making abilities, left me to my own devices while still providing practical advice and serving as the most stereotypical model of northern German uprightness and respectability. Gisela gave me hope in a world where I saw nothing but misery and death as the only way out. Needless to say, I would walk water for her.

When my host-father Wolfgang left Gisela in the early 90's, I was devastated, not because they'd had such an ideal marriage--most of their communication took place through post-it notes, because they were rarely at home at the same time. Once, because a note was misplaced, Wolfgang did not realize one of his relatives had died until a couple months later, when we all happened to be sitting together. I was crushed because I could not understand how anyone walking this Earth could do Gisela wrong, how any man, despite the fact that he had fallen in love with another woman, could simply walk away from one of the most generous, understanding, organized, capable and loving women I have ever known, a woman whose voice has never raised in anger, who has never judged anyone for their faults, though she recognizes them clearly, who was reasonable enough to tell me, when I told her that I was simply going to stay in Germany after my exchange year was up, and my parents could piss off and die, that I should go back and get my house in order before I made such a rash decision, a process that took about 18 years, but was worth doing. I was pissed at him for years for leaving her in the lurch, for letting her live without a companion for a decade, for simply moving into a chic apartment and a chic lifestyle and a chic future and leaving his dumpy wife and the mother of his three children in the dust--financially taken care of, of course, because the president of one of the oldest insurance companies in the world would not simply chuck his wife without financial security. That would be de'classe'. I couldn't stand the sight of him, and hated every minute of the second day of Christmas, the day they always spent over at his place. Fortunately, I never had to meet Wolfgang's girlfriend, an event that would most likely have turned into a catastrophe because of my lack of impulse control and steadfast loyalty. I know this would have happened, especially in the first couple of years after my ex left me for another woman, which he lied about for weeks before finally telling the truth. At that point, I felt Gisela's divorce more acutely than ever before, now personally knowing the sting of having built a life with someone and watching them cast it away, as though it were the day-old newspaper someone had wrapped their fish in.

Gisela, a person who believes that family is family no matter what, and that we must all learn to get along on some level and realize that we will always be family, always insisted that I come along to the second day of Christmas brunch.  She never said anything, but I got the impression that it would make her happy, that it was important to her that the family remain a bonded unit and simply weather this bad phase (for Gisela, everything is a phase. She might have been the person who invented the expression, "This too shall pass.") And over the years, I have grown accustomed to Wolfgang's presence, to what I still consider a rip in the family fabric.

And in the last few years, I have even grown to like him. He is still the same highly-educated culture whore that he always was, still sings in a choir, now attends university again now that he's retired, and consistently reads one of the most intense newspapers in the country.  His walls are lined with books, his desk neatly organized with a bust of Brahms, or Bach, or Handel, one of those dead white guys who made nice music, on it. I still feel an incredible disparity in their financial situations, but as Gisela doesn't complain and Wolfgang looks after the finances, I don't kick up too much of a fuss. I even happily go to his place now, like yesterday, when we sat for a couple of hours talking about the German language, the latest developments in culture and politics, and how his former insurance company is being bought by a larger conglomerate and all the calls to the politicians he knows will make no difference.

I remember the first time I realized that everyone had "gotten over" the divorce, and that it was time for me to get on the bandwagon.  On one of my trips, Gisela had said that Wolfgang wanted to go out with us, show me the new Harbor City, a posh new residence close to the posh new Philharmonic on the harbor. I groaned inwardly, kicking the mental dirt in my sandbox, stamping my psychic foot, and then caving in.  I can not say no to this woman. We went, Wolfgang was his usual self, telling me the cultural details and history of the area.  He showed me a large-scale model of the Philharmonic that the city had created and placed close to the construction site so people could see what it would look like upon completion.  Germans love that shit. I have to admit, I was really impressed by the model, the tiny finger-puppet orchestra and audience, the curved walls of the new building. And I noticed at one point that Wolfgang delighted in my delight.

Afterwards, we went to the Unilever building, had coffee, warmed up after being in the bracing wind for an hour and a half.  As we'd walked far from our original U-Bahn station, they weren't quite sure as to how to get back to the center of town.  They sat across from each other, bent over a public transport map, and quite agreeably and humorously worked out which route was best.  I took a picture, I was so impressed and so touched to see them working together in a way I'd never seen before. For the sake of privacy, I won't show their faces, but the image is worth showing.

And that's when I realized it was time to move on. Gisela had once again shown me how to act like an adult, without ever saying a word.

It would be a long time, though, before I could do the same in my own back yard. My ex left me--or more specifically stated, I asked my ex if he wanted to leave me, to which he answered yes. I even did that work for him--on the 5th of December, 2004. After 12 years, he simply got up and left, left so quickly and in such a typical fashion, leaving his breakfast plate on the dining table, the glass of water on the night stand, the book open to the page where he'd left off, his clothes on the floor. Gisela was the first person I called, wailing into the phone at 2 a.m., moaning from a pain I didn't think was possible in this lifetime.

It was like he'd died, and his ghost came back once a week to pick up items and ask me if we could still be friends. Why, I asked him back then, would that be a reasonable request when you already had the best of what I had to offer, but that hadn't been good enough? I was so devastated by his departure that I had a period for 21 days straight, and about the same time every year, for about 4 years after, the same thing would happen again. It was hard to forget the 5th of December when my body kept reminding me of something that my brain wanted so desperately to forget. I hated him, so much, so much, that the very mention of him in our mutual circle of friends would drive me outside to smoke three or four cigarettes, would occupy my brain and my time for days afterwards.

But each year got a little better.  Each year, I would remember later and later that the day was upon me.  I made sure to always be doing something interesting in order to distract myself.  Go to a party, take up welding, go bungee jumping, start making my own cheese.  Whatever, didn't matter, just do it, and pray to God that this time I would forget and the day would pass.  But I always remembered, always at some point during the day.

Saturday, as I sat with Gisela, drinking tea and reading articles from the newspaper about the German language that she had saved and put into a folder for me, she asked me when I would be going to Lake Constance to visit a friend for Christmas--not jealous, just curious. She knows I should spend time with others. I told her I would be leaving on the 23rd, and then remarked how quickly the month was already flying by.  It was already the 8th.

The 8th.

Gisela saw the look on my face and asked me what was the matter. Nothing, I said. I simply completely forgot about the 5th.

"Wonderful!" she said, and that was that.

I have officially moved on, it seems.  Maybe one day someone will take a picture of me and my ex, bent over a map, working together to get to the right place in the best way. And at the same time, if it doesn't, I'm okay with that, too.  But once again, Gisela was present for my growth, a part of it and at the same time just sitting on the sidelines, waiting for the phase to pass.

And our time is up.

Bows and Arrows

It is 28 degrees outside, icy, slippery. I'm still doing the Old Lady Waltz. A pack of young boys on their way to school this morning crossed my path, and I almost froze in my place just to avoid the minor possibility of Rutschgefahr in their presence. I need no buzz-killers today. I would like to revel a little more in yesterday's pleasantness first.

It was one of those days on which everything flows smoothly, you feel a part of a larger rhythm, a sense of knowing your place in the world and being just fine in it. I ended up meeting and talking to a lot of new people, of being more accepted by people I already know, and just generally feeling at ease, something I haven't felt since the end of September. My funds will only be low for a couple more weeks and then I'm comfortable again, the apartment is starting to feel like my apartment, and I am starting to slip into a comfortable yet stimulating routine.  Things are looking up.

I am always surprised when I get to know new people, partially because I don't like most people, partially because I believe most people don't like me, although I have nothing but evidence to the contrary. Despite a layer of bitterness mixed with shyness and a strange lack of impulse control and concern for social rules, people still actually like me, a lot.  In this way, I know I am a truly fortunate child. Someone once said it was because I was so guileless. He meant it in a good way, but I in no way lack guile.  I just don't like small talk.

I talked to someone from the IT center while he was twiddling with a computer in my office yesterday, and we ended up talking for almost an hour.  My office is separated from the rest of the team, and usually empty other than me.  So no one interrupts a conversation or makes me feel like I am not working enough--which is probably unfortunately the case anyway.  We talked about his growing up in the East. He was 14 when The Wall fell. He didn't understand what the big deal was until a little later. And now, he is absolutely thrilled with the change. We also talked about privacy issues, Linux and the Cloud. Nice guy. Since he also lives in Erfurt, we might actually hang out a little. But of course, an official invitation to have a beer won't come for a while yet.

Then, I ran into some colleagues form the Language Center at the cafeteria, ate with them and then had coffee with one afterwards. It's sometimes nice to walk into a foreign environment with someone. People all of a sudden have a different impression of you, like my co-worker from University Communications, who was sitting in the same place. My coffee partner and I cracked up over Family Guy videos and just really enjoyed the half hour.

Then, I met this other guy at the Christmas market, and within ten minutes he had given me his phone number, saying we should hang out soon.  Okay, Mr. Long, cool drink of water.  We can do that. I have no problem with that.

Then, walking through the Christmas market again in the evening, before I went to the Christmas party for the Language Center, to do some shopping for my host mother, host sister, her husband and their baby. I got everything accomplished in short order, at a bargain and quite easily. On my way across the theater square, several men simply smiled at me, those smiles men give when they are actually enchanted, just enchanted, and can't help but display it.  I like those smiles.  They remind me that I am actually a woman, not just a baking, fencing and grading machine.

On the way to the square, I decided to walk behind the stalls, since the guy who gave me his telephone number runs one of them there and I don't want to seem like I'm stalking him, even if it is impossible to not run into people in this town. As I am passing his stall from behind, he steps out, of course, and we talk for another 10 minutes before I rip myself away to make it to the party. After the second conversation, I really started to wonder when I should send a text message, since that is now the official first step in pursuit of the human object you would like to play footsie with.

I arrived at the party in a daze, quite pleased with myself. As soon as I walked into the door, the boss of the place lit up and says, "Hello, my lovely darling! Come in, Come in!." My God are you beautiful! Please, let me escort you to the back," which he did, his arm extended for me to guide me down that one treacherous step into the next room.  He asked me if I was taken, told me his name was Dieter, and told me to let him know if there was anything I needed.  If Dieter were about 10 years younger, I might be tempted to bask in that kind of worship a little while longer.

Because Germans have to be unconventional in controlled environments, the organizers of the party thought it would be great to have an archery range set up so we could take a quick lesson and then shoot arrows like they must have in those Karl May novels (The Germans have a thing about Native Americans. Perhaps more on that later in a different blog entry.) I have always wanted to try archery, and it turns out I'm not bad at it.  Like darts and fencing, it's all about one moment of concentration and relaxation all at the same time.  I did the same "Yes!!!" when I hit the bull's eye as I do when I make a really nice touch in fencing.  Obviously, the two sports have the same effect on me.

After tearing up the target and freezing my toes off for another half hour, while Dieter watched and smiled and waved at me, I wandered inside to the party and chatted amiably with several people, but the lack of impulse control took over and I ended up talking about how I used to carry a whip to class for a semester (No shit, I actually did. I got tired of trying to get the students' attention at the beginning of the hour.  Doing target practice with an eraser was far more effective) I think everyone is getting used to the strange outbursts that make me me.

One of the teachers brought his wife and kids with him.  French, charming, the total flirt and gentleman, he has a nice family, a really engaging wife, a new baby and a four-year-old little girl, Adeline.  Later, Adeline comes up to me, looks me in the eyes and says, "May I touch your hair?" I have dreds, and kids find them absolutely fascinating. So do I. " Of course," I said, and bent down so she could tentatively touch the locks. "What kind of hair is that?" she asked.

"It's a different kind of hair."

"But how did it get that way"

I showed her the hair that is still fuzzy, that has not found it's home in a knot yet. I explained the process to her, and she listened closely, attentively. "But why isn't it soft?"

"It's soft in a different way."

She looked at one of the other teachers sitting at the table. "Would you like to touch her hair, too?"

It was T. He smiled, said no, it wasn't necessary.  "It's really weird," she said. "Are you sure?"

"I'm sure." T. smiled at her, and she went on her merry way.

That is guileless.

At the end of the party, I thanked Dieter for his attentiveness.  He invited me back for their live music nights. I think he will make a great Bar Uncle, the guy who always makes sure no dirtbag approaches me or gives me hassle. Cute.

On the way out the door, as I say good night, Dieter bursts out, "I love you!" and the other women with me and I start to giggle like a bunch of school girls. Cute.

And our time is up.

The Old-Lady Waltz

Sitting in the office, tea at my side in my American commuter mug, which is becoming more popular here with each day, munching on Quarkbällchen, something like a doughnut hole, only slightly bigger and denser and much less sweet. It's one of my favorite baked goods in Germany, and one that nobody can screw up, not even in the East. I will complain about the quality of East German baked goods at a later date, but suffice it to say that it pales in comparison to other regions of Central Europe.

Today is St. Nikolaus Tag, or St. Nicholas Day, the day you are supposed to wake up and either find treats in your shoes or the special Nikolausstiefel (Nikolaus boot) that you leave at the door or in front of the fireplace, or a branch if you were a bad child the past year, probably related to the old custom of being sent outside to cut your own switch for the beating you were about to receive. I thought it you got coal, maybe you did in places like the Ruhrgebiet, Germany's industrial area, formerly well known for its coal mines.  For more information, check out Wikipedia:

St. Nikolaus Day

What I find the best is the description of what happens in Central Europe:

"In highly Catholic regions, the local priest was informed by the parents about their children's behaviour and would then personally visit the homes in the traditional Christian garment and threaten to beat them with a rod."

Maybe Rihanna's (ex?) boyfriend could get into that.

I got a Choco Lolly in my mailbox at work this morning, which is the only reason I remembered.  As an American, I am more aware of Pearl Harbor Day, which is tomorrow.

I am also paying more attention to the snow right now than anything else. Here's what it looks like outside my office window today:

Charming, right? Wrong. This means only one thing to me: Rutschgefahr, translated by dict.leo.org as "slip danger" or "slip hazard."  As I have lived in Germany and Austria before, I am all too familiar with the dangers of snow and ice: Rutschgefahr, Dachlawine (literally translated as "snow avalanche," a concept I didn't understand until about three pounds of snow fell on my head and cracked my coffee mug one morning while I was standing on my balcony in Vienna and smoking a cigarette), shoes ruined by salt, and the desire to remain inside and eat enough food that you'll never be able to pass through the door again. I have slipped, fallen, eaten pavement and thrown away perfectly good shoes.

The physical aspect of slipping and falling doesn't bother me too much. Sure, your hip is bruised for a minute, but the bruise to the ego is much greater and of extensive duration.  The older you get, the more likely you will slip.  A friend of mine even has an expression for it, and I don't think she coined it: "Old Woman Fall." I forget the idiom. If anyone has a clue, leave a comment.

The ego is bruised because there is always someone around to see you fall, no matter where you are, what time of day or night.  If you slip and fall on the ice at 3:30 in the morning on a farm in the middle of nowhere, a crop of looky-loos will shoot up out of the ground, smoking cigarettes and watching as you struggle to stand up again and regain your composure, holding up their score cards to let you know just how amazingly pitiful and amusing your fall was.  The cows will also sidle over, munch on some hay, smoke a cigarette and then go home and tell the sheep--"'Nother human bit it just now. You should have seen the look on her face!" There is no playing it off, like when you stumble over a crack on the sidewalk, look back at it as you continue walking to make sure the concrete assailant is not following you.  Bad, bad crack. You deserve coal in your shoes, or to be beaten by a rod.

And though we have all experienced it, we still laugh or snicker when we see others do it, or watch to see how they cope with it. The Germans especially.  After all, they are the ones who created the term Schadenfreude.  They are specialists in this field.  And the larger the group of people who see you fall, the more it hurts, the harder it is to get back up, the crappier your day becomes.

So right now, I'm practicing my winter gait, a step-step-slide-shit myself, step-step-slide-shit myself..., a drunken waltz in a winter wonderland. I only hope that if I do fall this winter, no kids are in the area. Pre-teens and teens are especially cruel in this regard, without the slightest amount of decency to at least laugh quietly among themselves.  These are also the same people who in a few years will call me "Ma'am."

In the meantime, I will continue waltzing through the streets of Weimar and Erfurt, praying and cursing all at the same time, disagreeing with T.S. Eliot.  April is not the cruelest month, unless there's a freak snow storm.

And our time is up.

Pissed Off Planet's Field Guide to Western Europe: Germany. Entry One: The "Kollege"

Went to the Einwohnermeldeamt (The exact place where you register) yesterday as planned, melded an, and then learned that I need to make another appointment with the Ausländeramt in order to wrap up the rest of my resident permit business.  Since I have a job and official permission to be in the country for the next two years, that appointment shouldn't be too horrible.  Mal gucken, as the Germans would say.

Then, I went shopping to continue my nesting, bought the requisite tea-light holders, baskets for the kitchen, the flotsam and jetsam that weighs us down to one place.  I also wanted to buy a book stand for the kitchen, so I can prop up my cookbooks as I usually do when I'm working my magic in may favorite place in the apartment.  Naturally, this was not an easy process.  I searched the posh cooking section of a department store, went to a kitchen and home store, and then finally decided to go check out the large bookstore at Anger, the central shopping district in Erfurt.

And that's when I had another run in with Kollegen.

And here's where the field guide entry begins:

Entry 1.: The German Kollege

During your travels in Germany, keep an eye out for one of the most typical and fascinating species in the country, the Kollege.A standard part of life in the Fatherland, the Kollege is a force to be reckoned with, even on the sunniest and warmest of days.

The Kollege (translated: "colleague" or "co-worker") is the bet God lost when he played the German card game Skat with Satan one evening after drinking too much whiskey. In American culture, we might call this a "Customer Service Representative," but that might be a bit generous in this context. A more accurate rendering would be, "the sandwich-sucking dirtbag who always tells you to ask someone else."

The Kollege Germania is a species of the genus Collega Insolenta. Characterized by a logic-defying inability to actually answer any question of any kind that does not relate directly to its department--and even that is a stretch--the Kollege/in (male/female) spends most of its time complaining to other Kollegen about how swamped it is at the moment. A gathering of Kollegen/innen, called a widow-maker or gonad-ripper, will immediately disperse upon being approached by a customer with a question, diving behind stereo equipment, magazine racks, women's lingerie or suitcases, which interestingly enough tend to be placed next to each other in some large chain stores, such as Galeria Kaufhof or Hugendubel Books. Highly skilled at the game of Hot Potato, the Kollege prides itself on spending an entire day looking busy while actually doing nothing and making customers feel as though they'd ruined the Kollege's century by daring to live and breathe, much less ask of it the ridiculous by requesting it do its job.

Aside from the hateful confusion that stamps its pasty face, the Kollege can be identified by its Käsebrot epaulets and shrill combination song-greeting-warning-and-mating call, 'Fragen Sie bitte meinen Kollegen!' ("Please ask my colleague!"). The call, a reflection of the Kollege's innate laziness, alerts other Kollegen in the area to make a fucking dive for cover, as some loser wants to ask a question that someone could possibly answer, which might then lead to actual work. Though death by simultaneous bleeding from all orifices is often the outcome of an encounter with a Kollege, Germans insist on still acquiring luxuries such as food, clothing, heat and transportation. If you come into contact with a Kollege in its natural habitat, throw a belegtes Brötchen (small sandwich) into the air to distract them, and then run to the next Kollege before it can be alerted, grab it by the neck, start choking it, and then ask your question. If nothing else, this will prevent the assembly of a gonad-ripper and allow you to flee with only minor cuts, bruises and mental illness. 

If you are fortunate enough during your travels to avoid this species, you may consider yourself very, very fortunate, as the encounter shaves approximately 6 months off one's life. But the chances of avoiding the Kollege are slim, as they, like most pigeons, mice or Beamte, have a high reproduction rate and can survive most natural and man-made disasters. Since Kollegen pervade all walks of life, it is best to simply resign oneself to it like most Germans and carry a large firearm or a basket of sandwiches to ward off most attacks.

If anyone would like to add to this entry, they are more than welcome, as the Field Guide is still in its infancy and would appreciate supplementation from more experienced travelers.


And our time is up.

Meld an, Meld ab

The hardest part about writing is doing it, is making yourself sit down on a regular basis and produce, no matter what you feel like, no matter how bad it is, because the discipline helps clear the blockage so that one day, once you get past all the shit that's locked in your head, you will get to the gold that you know lies beneath, even if it's "just" a pebble. A pebble a day adds up eventually to a treasure trove. At least, that's what I'm going to keep telling myself. What did we say in the 80s/90s? Fake it till you make it? Fine.

Now that I'm done with the second installment of the translation, I have time to catch up on all sorts of other things, like paying bills, having the power in the apartment switched over to my name, registering at the local Einwohnermeldeamt. You see, in Germany and Austria--and I imagine Switzerland, since they're such stickler for detail--you have to do something called anmelden. This means that you go to the local resident office and officially announce that you now live in the city or town that you moved to. The civil servant behind the desk then looks at you as though you are a waste of oxygen and deigns to type a few things into a database. Then you are officially registered. Then you receive notices about the TV tax that you need to pay, whether you have a TV or not.  They've actually added computers to the list, so that once again everyone pays the TV tax.

And if you ever move, which many Germans are loathe to do--it probably has something to do with the fact that when you move out of an apartment, you typically take everything with you. I mean everything, including the kitchen, the mirror in the bathroom, the ceiling lights, everything. There are no closets, so you take the wardrobes you installed as well.  Sometimes you take the carpet or the flooring. It depends on how attached you are, whether you had it installed, whether there's a full moon--then you have to abmelden, go back to the same office and announce that you are now leaving, upon which the civil servant once again looks at you as though his or her life was going so well until you showed up, then punches a couple of words into a database and you are free to register at the next Einwohnermeldeamt.

This process is daunting at best when you are native. No one wants to go there, no one wants to deal with Beamte, the civil servants, because as a rule they are the most ill-tempered, rude, power-hungry little fucks on the face of the planet. Did I use my outside voice? Oh dear. They are rude to Germans, so you can imagine how they are to foreigners, whether you speak the language or not.  And I get the sneaking suspicion that they are particularly unwelcoming to people of my complexion.

A friend of mine swore that I was being hyper-sensitive about this the last time I lived in Germany, when I couldn't get an Aufenthaltserlaubnis, a resident permit, for love or money.  The case worker I had, an absolutely charming Beamtin named Frau Bellingrath, obviously enjoyed my company, because she kept finding excuse after excuse to not grant me the permit, to make me return every three months to turn in some other cockamamie piece of paper or proof of something.  At one time, she linked the next round of necessary documentation to student loans. Student loans? I graduated from school in 1998. This was 2006. When I showed up at home, foaming at the mouth and ready to turn Frau Bellingrath into the worm farm she should have become years before, complaining bitterly about the racism I had to endure, my friend and housemate told me that could not possibly be the case, that this woman couldn't have something personal against me, and that I was over-reacting.  She would come with me to the next appointment and we'd get it straightened out.

And we did go together, and my friend, who is very good at schmoozing, had a lovely chat with Frau Bellingrath, talked about the Aachen of their childhood, really identified with each other.  I thought they were going to burst into a round of Kumbaya or something.

Then, the bitch turned to me and said, "And now...," reached behind her for Volume 2 of the Ausländergesetz, the immigration laws, and casually flipped through until she found something, said, "aha!" (I'm not kidding) and then told me, with a self-satisfied smile, that I would have to come back in another month with proof that I could ride a kangaroo bareback.

After we walked out, my friend whispered in total shock, "I think you might actually be right. I think she might have something against you."  I almost fell out right then and there, because admitting that someone else is right is not necessarily written into German DNA, especially my friend's.

You can imagine that I might be a little apprehensive and wound up when I go to the Ausländeramt. And I go again this afternoon. Oh joy. Hopefully, I will have nothing to report.

And our time is up.

To market, to market, to buy a fat pig

Sitting in the office, pleased as punch, because I finally realized I can use the fleece beanie I bought secondhand as a tea cozy as well.  My tea now stays warm longer. And my hair sometimes smells like Earl Grey. Small victories in a little life...

Finally done with the second installation of the big translation, the one that makes me hate all philosophers and the people who write about them. I have a life again, one filled with time that I'm not quite sure how to fill yet, seeing as I don't "work" outside of work right now. It's strange to wake up and not see a stack of papers in the process of being graded on the coffee table, kitchen table, at the foot of the bed and on the floor next to the sofa. It's strange for the moment to not measure my life in terms of how many inches high the stack of essays sitting next to me is. There is no stack of essays. I imagine an(other) identity crisis will arise soon.

Naturally, I have a proofreading session on one past translation to finish, and the proofs of another book are coming in from someone else, and I should finish them by January, start with a clean slate. We'll see how I do.  But first, I wish to take a breather for a couple of days.

The first part of my breather was taking advantage of the market across the street from me in Erfurt, at Domplatz, which is also the current location for the bulk of the Christmas Market. There's a market Monday through Saturday, unbelievably, in the mornings, and they sell most of the things I need: bacon, butter, sausage.  Oh yeah...vegetables. I try to go there first, spend more money than I should so that I can buy what I think are quasi-sustainable goods, and of course, to go native.

I have always seen a market as an intercultural-competence proving ground, a place that separates the boys from the men. I find myself often still feeling as though someone had strung me upside-down by my toenails over a fire-ant hill and covered me with honey when I am shopping at a market, even in San Francisco. The items are not the ones you find in the supermarket, and tons of people are waiting behind you, impatient, desirous of getting their paws on their goods and getting on about the day's business of being grumpy, or smug, whichever strikes their fancy. Being at a market means knowing what you're doing, at least, that's what it means to me. It means partaking in a practice as old as food itself. It means doing something that should be second nature, but is, alas, no longer. I grew up on military bases with microwave ovens and an African-American culture that (historically justifiably) engenders a wretched fear of trichinosis and a host of other food-borne illnesses. A market was one of the last places we ever went to. If it was hermetically sealed, canned, frozen, dried or nukeable, it was our friend. Otherwise, watch out.  That fresh vegetable might kill you. Don't even think about buying meat at an open-air market. That's what 'other' people do.

But markets are great ways to build up your community network, listen to dialects, see what is popular among the community and the culture in general.  For example, one stall at the Christmas market right now sells only oranges and Christmas wreaths.  What the hell is up with that? Oranges seem to a be a big part of Christmas here. I'll figure out why later.

The markets help me recognize regional differences, such as the preference here in Thuringia for these little round balls of blood sausage. They sort of look like the bombs Wile E. Coyote would order from Acme, blackish softball-sized packets of death, tied up with a string. And it seems there are two types of them, as I found out from the woman in front of me who was asking about the Acme bombs hanging on the wall behind the butcher, a red-faced young man who sort of reminded me of the Shoney's boy, roundy, fat fingers delicately handling slices of Sulze and Leberkäse, as though he'd popped out of the womb with that fork in his hand.  I have fantasies of marrying a butcher one day, but he's definitely not my type...

But you can't get too distracted by such things. You are there to learn, and the best way to learn, in my opinion, is to listen to what other people say, see what they order, how much of it , how they order it, which platitudes they use. Before I picked up on this, I used to walk away from deli counters with 1 pound of head cheese and 3 ounces of cheddar. It was horrible. Then, I figured out that other people might have a better idea of what they're doing, so I decided to start paying attention to them.  It works. Every once in a while I flub it, like Saturday, when I bought Bauchspeck instead of Früstücksspeck.  They are both bacon.  Yay!  But the former comes with a hard rind on one side that does not make for great breakfast food. The latter, named "breakfast bacon," interestingly enough, serves that purpose.  But I didn't have enough time in line to google the difference between the two on my smart phone, so I bought the Bauchspeck. When I got it home, I realized the difference.

And that was okay, because I simply stuffed it into the fresh chicken I picked up from the other stall and roasted it last night. And man, was that good.

But in the time I spent at the market, I learned that here you can order cold cuts by the slice, and I even did it, just to make sure it wasn't some sick joke.  I learned that far too many people in this part of the world love blood sausage. I also learned that it will be a long time before I understand much of the Thuringian accent. But I got an awesome chicken, and I didn't die of food poisoning. It's a win-win situation. And I will have much more to report about "my" market soon enough.

And our time is up.

"A Place Called Home"

It's supposed to start snowing today.

Crap.

The apartment is starting to take on a slight personality, because I am starting to fill it with stuff.  Stuff, once again stuff.  I devoted four months of my life to getting rid of stuff in the States so I could pay less for storage and move here unfettered.  And now I'm starting to pick up stuff. I should stick to the basics, of course, but my kitchen probably now has more stuff than some people acquire in a lifetime.  And I'm not even close to being done with the kitchen. It is barely adequate. It must at least become functional.

Things I like about the apartment:

1. It has a kick-ass oven, at least for conventional German standards. I have learned that the back of the oven holds more heat than the front. Pretty typical, but good to know before I start baking in it.  Yes, incredible. I have lived in my apartment for two weeks as of today, and the only thing I've managed to bake are some prepared Brötchen and a pizza. Can't wait for the 1st of December to be over, can't wait to get into my kitchen.
2. I like the funky floorplan. The apartment is basically the shape of an isosceles triangle. The Kitchen, interestingly enough, is at the narrowest part. My bedroom at the broadest, which also looks out on the street.
3. My bedroom. I have a bedroom! And not the closet that I crammed my double bed into in SFO. There is space for a larger bed, a place to put my clothes, bookcases if I want, and a desk.  And it gets tons of light.
4. The shower stall: low to the ground, large, all glass panels. Towel radiator next to it to keep my towels and bathrobe comfy warm for when I'm done with my shower.
5. The sofa bed I ordered. Not the fanciest, but functional, very red, and large, with a recamiere on one end. I get to lay out like a Grande Dame and watch movies.
6. It's mine. I found it on my own, signed for it on my own, and will pay for it on my own. It's mine.
7. It's the first apartment in Germany I've ever had on my own.
8. The fencing club I'll be going to is literally five minutes by foot from the apartment. Even in the freezing cold it won't be that bad. And I can shower at home if I want.
9. It's not in Weimar, which, though cute, is very, very small. I already know almost all of the commuters by sight, and I've only been commuting a week and a half.
10. Did I mention it's mine?

Soon, it will be a clean, well-lighted place for books, for cooking, for sitting, for me. I look forward to nesting in December, to going shopping on the 2nd (Verkaufsoffener Sonntag, the one Sunday of the month when they open the stores to shoppers. It's a boon in a retail wilderness.)

I have a home.

And our time is up.

P.J. Harvey's "A Place Called Home"

When one door closes...

Forgot to blog yesterday, came into work and got right down to it. When I made notes last night about the blog entry I wanted to write this morning, I noticed the absence and got annoyed at myself. I'm trying to escape the hamster wheel for a minute, not reinvent it on another continent. Tja...

Yesterday I stayed in the office late, because I have this deadline for the second installment of this translation I'm doing for a foundation in the States, and, like I always do, I put off the work until the last minute. I've got three days to go, 4oo footnotes and one last proofreading session, which means I have to work here, not at home.  At home, there are too many distractions, like the paint on the wall, or the clean dishes that look like they could use a second washing. So I stay here in the office, which at least has a desk. I check FB every couple of hours to make sure I still have a normal connection to the human sphere.

It occurred to me yesterday while translating that it's hard to have a mid-life crisis and be obsessed by death (that would be me), when your entire being has to concentrate on one specific task. When I'm trying to make a deadline and earn some cash, I have no time to wonder about "the meaning of it all" and what I will think about on my death bed, or why I should bother doing this thing called Life in the first place. Instead, I focus on the minutiae, and forget my mortality for a moment.

But there are always reminders, and they happen in the strangest of ways, like discovering that your friend's dog has gone missing and is most likely dead at this point.

But this is more than a dog.

I don't think she'll mind, my friend Nina, if I write about her for a minute.  I met Nina 6 years ago, when we co-taught an orientation course for exchange students in Aachen. At first, I was not crazy about her, with her fuzzy slippers and her incredibly German penchant for taking her dog Josephine--Josy for short--with her everywhere she went. But she served as a real-time example of one of the things I mentioned in the culture segment of class: German's love animals, more often than they love children. The Dutch love children, but somehow the Germans never took a page from their book. Animals are preferred, as a German scholar might say, proud of his use of the passive tense.

But I remember that Nina, after a very quiet meeting of the minds, became one of the dearest people to me that I know, a friend through and through. And I very much remember Josy, a fluffy dark brown mix between an Akita and a Malamut, at least to me.  She was a docile dog, sweet, old, and, if I am not mistaken, bilingual, since Nina spent a lot of her time talking to Josy in Spanish. I remember the first time Nina gave out to Josy in Spanish. I wondered if Josy was paying attention, until I saw her tail sink between her legs. If nothing else, she understood intonation. Josy was also the source of one of three major battles we waged with the organizer that summer, since we never went to a restaurant that allowed Josy to come inside.

I didn't see what the fuss was about in those days. But it became clear soon enough. Josy is not simply Nina's dog. Josy is Nina, as essential a part to her as her heart or her brain, as necessary as the blood in her veins. It killed Nina to travel without her, but because travel is so important to her, she went. But she spent hours upon hours figuring out how to take her with her overseas, how to move her to South America with her, where she now lives.

Josy, who was very old and surprised me by surviving the trip, transition, change in climate and overall atmosphere, the absence of the people she'd known most of her life--a testament to how much Nina is Josy--was coming to her end, with heart problems and the other ailments that plague us all, dog or human. But Nina was taking care of her as always, and never, ever, wanting to contemplate what she would do without her.

Josy broke away from the people who were watching her while Nina was away, and despite the efforts of tons of people, days of searching, and what I imagine a hysterical Nina, unable to sleep or eat or do anything except look for Josy, the search was called off. She has disappeared somewhere into the city/countryside, and after that many days without medication or proper care, one can imagine that she is indeed dead.

And this is what I found out when I checked FB during one of my breaks yesterday, when Nina emailed me and told me to check my real email for the full story. We are still trying to connect voice-to-voice.

When I finally got done with work, I took the train back to Erfurt. In the streetcar, I was fortunate enough to lift my head from my smart phone for a minute and notice that the Christmas market, which is spread throughout the Altstadt, had begun. And, instead of riding the last two stops to my apartment, which is across from the Erfurt Cathedral, I got out, bought a bag of candied almonds (there goes the diet), and strolled through the neighborhood back to my apartment.

I had an hour to go before I had to get on Skype and try to call Nina, so I took my time, enjoyed the lights, the smell of candy and Glühwein, the still-pristine look of it all, the people before they get drunk and red-nosed, and make me hate Christmas all over again. I ran into the woman who runs the shop below my apartment, her grumpy husband, running a booth in the market. Amazing that the grumpy husband is a wonderful artist, someone who paints landscapes, probably because humanity is too annoying to capture. Maybe he'll warm up to me, maybe not.

Coming around the corner, I saw everything lit up like, well, a Christmas tree, the kitschy neon colors of the Ferris wheel, the hundreds of booths selling arts and crafts, more Glühwein, stuffed animals, the people standing around and talking, laughing, behaving themselves. The weather was perfect, the pictures on the "real" camera fantastic, the night, as my downstairs neighbor had said, "was playing along with us."

And still, there was Nina and Josy.

Staring at the Ferris wheel, munching on my almonds, done with translation for the day and not knowing what to do with myself, I remembered that this is the whole point of it, to enjoy this, just this little moment, as much as I could, because, we all go through loss, we all lose, we all get lost, in one way or another. I am proud of Nina for having moved to South America, for having taken Josy with her. I am happy, as is Nina, that she did not have to "decide" what to do with Josy when it got to a crucial point. I am saddened that Josy had to leave at all, but glad that Nina had her as long as she did.

I remember hating Christmas with a passion known only to axe-murderers after my partner of 12 years left me--at the beginning of December, walking out the day after he said he wanted to leave, disappearing, as though he died--for the first 5 years after.  I hate that Nina has to experience loss at this time of year.  I hate that I can offer no comfort other than the usual platitudes, that I can not help her move more quickly through her mourning any more than I can help myself. And yet, there will be another Ferris wheel, another Christmas, eventually, another dog to love.

Just never another Josy.

And our time is up.



-Tschö, wa!