My plans were, of course, far more ambitious. I was supposed to have written a ton of blog entries by now for the first month of the year. I have 1,001 ideas, and entries I'd like to get in here. But a few things got in the way. First, I've been given a full-time contract for a couple of months, and I don't know how other people do it, but I end up working most of the day. If I'm not at a meeting, or answering a ton of phone calls that having nothing to do with anything interesting, I'm trying to translate, no easy task when you know that people will fight, kick and scream over the tiniest change in the translation of core terms, even though the most casual of research tells one it's a good idea. So I not only translate, but I amass good arguments for the translation as I go. Time-consuming stuff. How people spend 8 hours a day in relatively the same environment 5 days a week is beyond me. I look forward to getting back to my more flexible, albeit poorer, state of existence.
But work isn't the real problem. I'm just now getting back on the horse in a number of ways. I was feeling a little beaten down and confined, I think, feeling pursued by Churchill's black dog, as happens to me from time to time. I am easily bored, hate falling into routine even though it's one of the few things that really keeps me grounded, and I hate feeling trapped, locked in. I can usually get locked into a place for about 6 years at a time, and then it's time for me to stretch my legs a little bit, sort of what I'm doing now. San Francisco will always be home base, I'm pretty sure, but every once in a while I have to indulge my Wanderlust, go on my version of Walkabout.
My Walkabout was kind of interrupted by an incident at the beginning of this month, not even four weeks ago: a couple of right-wing, racist, neo-nazi assholes got on the bus I take/took to work. Had there only been one of them (but of course, they never travel alone), had they not been significantly heavier than me, had the one guy not looked at me so hatefully, had they not started playing skinhead music with racist lyrics on their cell phones loud enough for everyone in the bus to hear, had another passenger on the bus shown some balls and maybe even lifted an eyebrow in my defense or to at least acknowledge that I was being threatened on the bus, had my back been in working order and I'd been able to run or stand and fight if it had come down to that, I probably wouldn't have ended up a hysterical mess at work, zonked out for the next few days, ordering pepper spray and pocket alarms and asking myself what the hell I think I'm doing in a part of the world that is clearly still quite backwards in a lot of ways. But it did happen, just in that way. And the ulcer started up again, and the shoulder went out of whack after that, and my back continued to bother me for another week, and nothing seemed to be working.
People asked me to go to the police. Why would I file a report with the very people who stopped me on the street in the same city in August for walking while black, disappointment clear on the one officer's face when he looked at my passport, saying "Hmph, American," and then passing it disdainfully back to me. Yeah? Well that's Frau Doktor American to you! Naturally, if I say that, then I really end up with problems. Sometimes I feel like I spend more time thinking about my race here than anything else. There's something wrong with that, something wrong with the way I'm negotiating myself, my space, my identity.
The skinhead incident, though, did serve as a good reminder: What am I doing here? I'm supposed to be working on making my way to Berlin, so I can live and work there for a while, see if I like the experience, do what I've been dreaming about for the last 20 years. I was drifting into a comfortable little routine, one that I could wake up from a year from now and realize that I've been stuck in neutral. Time to put it all back into drive.
I realized I hadn't been able to go fencing, because of the back, that I hadn't cooked or baked anything really in weeks, that I hadn't been doing the things in my other routine, the routine I carefully built up over the years--baking, fencing, writing, travel--that keep me from wanting to walk off the edge of the world. As I learned years ago, people like me, who don't have the usual "restart" button that most people have to get them out of blue periods, have to go in and manually restart. Takes a lot of effort, and an initial recognition that the system needs a reboot. Sometimes you need to realize you're checking out whether a skinhead sitting in the same bus with you has on steel-toe boots--in order to decide whether he can kick your head in easily or if he has to make more of an effort, something I've had to do in the past in sticky situations--in order to get a system reboot.
So I did all the icing, back exercises, even had a useless visit with a doctor ("apply heat and Voltaren") and I'm back at fencing; I started baking, will roast a duck leg or two tonight when I get home and continue adding to my duck fat reserves in the fridge. I am hosting a housewarming party this weekend, and I've started asking around about looking for apartments in Berlin. Just went there yesterday, after realizing that it's a comfortable 2.5 hour train trip from my place in Erfurt. And it will be time next week to start working on the next round of letters of application for future job postings. Berlin, and all it offers, good and bad, are waiting for me.
And the police in Weimar? Well, I guess the letter from the president of the university to the Chief of Police about my "problems" will probably get someone's attention. I decided not to go directly to the police, but instead to the university's legal counsel. He calls me Frau Doktor. So does the President.
And our time is up.
Monday, January 28, 2013
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
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.
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:
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.
Friday, December 14, 2012
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.
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.
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
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.
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.
Monday, December 10, 2012
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.
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.
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.
Friday, December 7, 2012
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.
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.
Thursday, December 6, 2012
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.
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.
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