It's a bird! It's a plane! But this being Germany,

it's not Superman! That's right folks, it's

1 More Day

of unemployment, of vacation, of being my own boss. I have filled the past few weeks with tasks I had been putting off for another day - the visit to the Frauenartzt, tomorrow's visit to the dentist, travel vaccinations, a visit to a friend living out of town, and translation, translation, translation. Today, I headed off my former place of work to have lunch with my former colleagues, do a bit of (who'da thunk it) translation work and say "good-bye". Good-bye because every one of my now preciously limited vacations days are now spoken for for the rest of the calendar year and I don't know when I will see them again.


D. obviously thinks that my stress level isn't high enough - we're now watching die Weisse Hai - i.e. Jaws. I was going to make a snarky comment about bad German movie title translations, but we decided that "Kiefern" wouldn't have made much of a movie.

Here are two views from yesterday, a grey day in BW and friends on the way to a baby-bubbles class.

Is it me . . .

or do Americans not care at all about the Bernstein Zimmer? It seems to come up as a topic of "unsolved mysteries"-type shows here and I had never heard of this in the States.

Bist Du narrisch!!

For those of you who don't read Margaret Marks' excellent "Transblawg" from which I have gotten some excellent pointers, swing on by for a tale of library books, the Fall of the Wall and a story that most would only believe if the protagonists are Germans.

There was an episode of Tatort on last night on SWR. Der Biensle und schäbische/allemanische Fasnet - it rocked, but was I paying attention? Nooo. Uncle Sam and I had a date with Forms 2555 (x2) and W7 and 1040 and schedules A and B (lions and tigers and bears, oh my!). The lovely, lovely State in which I am domiciled allows me to file as a non-resident and to use a different filing status than the federal filing status, so it appears that there is light at the end of the tunnel, after all, but I have no idea how immigrants wade through the paperwork when I find it challenging to understand exactly what has to go in box X.

Our own Fasching adventures were anything but, so I am posting a photo from our trip to Weil am Rhein last year. It was amazing and significantly less lame than endless cartloads of Gardetänzerinnen who don't dance and throw candy to Schlagermusik.

Yes, yes, they are talented young athletes, but I want a spectacle if you are going to expect me to stand on the street and try to avoid loosing an eye as hard candy sails through the air. Give me Guggenmusik any old day. And chocolate.

You can try as hard as you want. . .

but no one is going to convince me that this was a Good Idea. I am well aware that it is perfectly acceptable German, but in this day and age where nearly everyone under 30 speaks English, you would think one would avoid names like this.

What we are watching

or what I am watching. "Muxmäuschenstill" or "werry, werry quiet" - the tale of a modern-day vigilante in Berlin who pursues his law and rule-breaking citizens, imposing his own penalties. I am sure it's all going to end tragically; we've already seen one of his escapades result in the death of a grafitti "artist".

Herr Quixote has already found his Dulcinea, but she is young and beautiful, and her lack of interest isn't going to lead anywhere good.

We are trying to get life organized before everything changes. We've cleaned a bit and D. did our German taxes. I still have to figure out what our State taxes look like before I can do our US taxes. It's nice to have a deadline for a lot of the smaller organizational items that had remained. The pressure allows me to make decisions - e.g. pick out presents for the neices and stick with the decision rather than continuing to search in the hope of finding something better later.

I went to my first yoga class last week. It was pretty low-key, but my muscles made me aware of their presence the next day.

All in all, not much to report.

See Fairness, in the Spirit of

Just so everyone is aware, I make really embarrassing mistakes in German. "Oskar the Geschlechtsteil" is nothing compared to some of my doozies.

E.g. Recent conversation with my German while lolling around.

AOM: Honey, what's the difference between "decken" and "bedecken"?
DOM: Well, "dich 'dekcen' lassen" is probably what I want you to want and "dich 'bedecken' lassen" is probably what you want.

For all of you non-experts. "Decken" is what studs do (dogs, horses, etc.). "Bedecken" / "Zudecken" is to cover something - in my case, me, with a blanket.

There are a couple of comments to which I hope to reply, please be patient.

**(Well, no one said we were great conversationalists, and nothing happened. Hope ya'll weren't too offeneded.) And it occurred to me that the piggies do make the whole thing worse than it ought to be, but they came up when I googled "blanket" and I think they are cute.

While I wasn't Sleeping

A lot has happened since Friday, namely a second interview on Monday and a job starting the beginning of March.

I should be thrilled out of my little gourd, no? But I have had two largely sleepless nights with a lot of compensatory daytime sleeping which is No Good What-so-ever.

The bad news:

1. We will have to get a car, which will be a huge money-sucking hole. I feel as though I would be working to finance the thing. D. insists that this isn't the case, but we will see.
2. There is a lot to learn and I have no idea if I will meet their expectations and get picked up at the end of the 6 month trial period.
3. Repeat point 2 about 100x
4. If I get booted at 6 months, I will have a hell of time getting some other company to hire me.
   
5. It's a small company, so there is effectively no Mutterschutz down the road. I will lose my job in ca. 3 years if all goes according to plan.
   
6. Given that 4. is a nearly forgone conclusion, can we really move any further forward towards buying an apartment or home?
7. If we buy, will we buy Money-Pit like structure that will drag us to financial ruin?
8. If we don't buy, will we be able to support ourselves in our dottage based on our current savings?

Pretty much every chain of night time thought ends with us under a bridge eating dogfood. I don't seem to recall having this level of existential angst in the States.


The good news:

1. The position as defined is a mix of two of my areas of interest, the one I applied for there and another one that interests me. (I didn't directly address it in my application there because it's in another department.)
   
2. Whatever I learn will qualify me further for the next job.
   
3. Even if I come out making nothing in the end, the German social security system doesn't see it that way and this is very good, indeed.
4. This is step 1 to a career here, and that would make me slightly less vulnerable should anything, God forbid, happen to D.
   
5. They are letting me take my planned trip to visit my family and friends before Easter.

This is what I get for making fun of my husband.

Thanks to those who offered advice before my trip to the Frauenartzt. It was different than I expected (got poked somewhere I wasn't expecting). The problem with having a German sig. ot. is that you can't just say that and leave it at that, because he has no idea what you are talking about. One has to go into painful detail. But we, as native speakers can leave it there, no? Apparently Harbor tours aren't just for men. ugggh. Also - you can get the hpv vaccine in Germany even if you are considerably older than 20. I don't think you can in the States.

There was no seperate top and bottom treatment, but I came prepped. No gowns, no problem. Button-down blouse and long skirt. I think she was a bit miffed, but tough bagels, sweetie. She, an article-dropping Eastern European, also had the nerve to criticize my accent, which isn't perfect, but is far from painful. I also don't buy into anyone whose ear isn't good enough to fix their own speech being able to distinguish among different native English speakers whose accents aren't glaring. All she really means is that I don't sound like the ice-hockey coaches on tv. So her German is better than Vladimir Putin's. . . and?

I think what she did is the equivalent of calling a darker complected person articulate. Which seems to be a hot topic at home at the moment. I've done it - also done it with Sylvester Stalone, though, and last I check he was white under all that self-tanner. It does, convey surprise, but when I use the word with anyone, I also mean that the people speaking expressed themselves so well that I consider their skill-level enviable. (Literally - Wow, I wish I could do that.) When one considers what African Americans your average suburb-dweller hears, they are rappers and athletes, or actors reading text (for which they aren't responsible and could very well have been dumbed down - see Crash) - we are programmed to be surprised when someone from that community speaks well because educated successful Blacks so rarely get the spotlight. That, in my eyes, is the underlying problem - not that someone (a not particularly articulate someone - heh) was trying to pay Senator Obama a compliment.

** correction - Apparently, Vladimir Putin speaks excellent German. I will have to find another example.

My so-called post-Turkey life

Well Friday night was like running into a brick wall. Three rejection emails, one after another. These were all initiative-applications, mind you, but I allowed myself to become disheartened. I have yet to hear word one from any app I have sent in response to an advertised opening. Despite all that we got through "Thanksgiving" for 13 on Saturday. 1.5x the side-dish recipes would have done it (instead of 2x) but we have lived and learned, and the people who were secretly whining that they wanted to bring spaghetti out of concern they might not like anything served seemed to be content with what we served. (Am I forgiven for being a wee bit insulted, still. How can we Americans all be so fat if the food isn't edible. Please! Pick one stereotype and stick to it.) Practically nothing remained of our 4 kilo friend. Mr. Gobbles, we barely knew ya.

I received an email on Saturday from a temp agency, which had advertised looking for professionals in my field. Evil, evil temp agencies. We'll see if they have any use for me and how much they would be willing to pay me. Yes, we know that the answer is - not very much - but my education level should put me into the highest tarif-klasse, but they could try to wiggle. Let's see if they have a job in mind first.

Ran into a friend that I hadn't seen in months at church on Sunday and I stayed up til 4 chatting with my sister (and a friend now in Peru) and watching the Super Bowl (Thank you ORF!) and drinking a white russian or two (yes, two). A pleasant day of winding down.

So a new week has begun and I have a personal victory item to report. I scheduled an appointment with the Frauenartzt. I may already have my nerves in a bunch for nothing. The appointment is a mere two days from now and I am concerned that they may have somehow confused me with a patient with private insurance. We will see. (Often publicly insured patients have to wait longer for appointments.)

And to keep it lively . . .
Think yóur expat experience is bad?? This will disabuse you of that notion right quick.

From the front lines. . .

of international relationships. Or "Things the German thought he heard".

If you take it from D., a new monster has entered the Sesame Street panoply (drum roll)
Oscar the Crotch.

I do have to say "thank you" again to those who stop by here. I started blogging here, not as so many do, because it simplifies communicating with family and friends, but because I wanted to express a thought or two that I might not necessarily want to share with my family or because they are sick of hearing it.

In the movie "Shadowlands", C.S. Lewis has a conversation with a young teacher where they discuss a saying of the teachers's father, "I read to know I am not alone." I definitely read your blogs to know I am not alone, but writing helps, too. When I got back from my interview lat week, I had two comments (thanks ladies) and instant messages waiting from my sister and a new friend in town. It's moments like that when you know, that 1) you bitch too much about your worries in public and 2) you communicate with some truly decent people, so life can't be that bad.

Last night said new friend with her husband and I had a lovely evening - we ate cookies and picked on our poor Germans a bit, but they seemed to get along as well, which was really nice since D. is shy. Sometimes, it's a blessing to appreciate good moments along the way even when one isn't sure how life's great questions/challenges are going to be sorted out. It isn't the solution - had a mini panic attack last night before going to sleep - but I woke up feeling pretty good this morning so I am going to enjoy it while it lasts.

My German and I enjoyed reading (even while wincing for the author) Megan's account of her housing struggles. Naturally, I wish her the best of luck (important post-related German tip from one who has messed it up - bestechen = bribe, erstechen = stab to death), but I have been pained in recent weeks by the number of "American-friendly" environmental consulting firms there are in the München area and the number of ex-pats, while I am uhhh. . . elsewhere. Her post was a gentle reminder that there are downsides to living at the center of the universe - no offense to all of you Berlin/Frankfurt-dwellers. The post is amusing and extremely informative. If you live outside of Munich, I would encourage you to stop by for your daily dose of Schadenfreude.

Confession time . . . I have become something of a Kommissar Beck fan. The series is anything but an advertisement for Sweden, red houses and all. I find the scenery very depressing and they don't seem to film anything in the summer. Perhaps that's because there isn't much of one to begin with.

I am a huge mystery fan generally, having grown up with BBC rebroadcasts of "Mystery!" on PBS - I still remember hurrying to shower and wash my hair before the show started and watching with my sister and my parents, something of a family ritual.

The German is baking; he is darling (invoking the 6 month rule). My parents did quite a bit to whipe our wedding wish list clean and we now have the super-duper mixer of our dreams that will accomapany us for many years of happy baking. We've had it a little more than a week and we've already had toll house cookies, a cake and now oodles and oodles of German Christmas cookies. This losing weight thing isn't going to procede very far if he keeps this up.+

Tatort on Sunday (almost this evening) will be from our neck of the woods - Karlsruhe/Mannheim/Ludwigshafen!

So . . .How was it?

Not so great, I am afraid. Ich fühlte mich verarscht! (I felt like the fates were out to get me.)

Actually, the interview was fine. They were really freindly, put up with me when I forgot a German word (a technical term) and they very cooly could also only think of the the English for another technical term. The project on which they are interested in working is extremely closely related to my thesis project. Now comes the but. They would prefer to have someone in a location to which I can't get. It's completely depressing, because the fellow in that office has done a bunch of neat projects and I think I would like working for him. I went into the interview knowing that this was a possibility, so it's quite alright.

Apparantly (apparent-LEE for all of you Coupling fans) I also have a mortal enemy among the Thanksgiving Turkey gods.

I was headed off to another city for the interview, so I figured that I should check out one of the larger stores in that city in the hope they would have a frozen turkey. We are having trouble drumming one up for our little delayed Thanksgiving celebration. So after the interview, I went to Kaufland. Naturally, I had called the day before and been assured that they had frozen whole turkeys. They did, in fact, have a turkey, but it was too small and the package was open with the contents damaged. So, I left. I was really irritated, but whaddya going to do in Germany? Complaining won't improve anything. I treated myself to a double espresso at the train station instead.

Flugzeuge im Bauch

Today it'll just be a mish-mash folks, because that is the only thing that would accurately reflect the contents of my poor cranium.

The only interview I've managed to drum up in the past few weeks is tomorrow and I am a nervous wreck. I am talking to the mirror a lot today in the hope that my answers to the few questions I know will come up tomorrow come out sounding somewhat reasonable. It's supposed to snow/rain here today and tomorrow and the thought of navigating through that in heels and stockings isn't thrilling me.

The weekend was very busy as we are preparing for our big Thanksgiving smash-up with my former co-workers. I've done T-day for 10, but this time it's 15 and we are distributing the recipes. Unlike the last time I distributed recipes, no one has measuring cups and I won't be around to answer questions, so we've - read D. has - gone to a lot of trouble to translate and measure (thanks to our excellent new Soehnle kitchen scale). I put together a quick and dirty translation. Translating ingredients and prepared a general conversion table, but not D. He is using gorgeous formatting, etc.

The turkey itself has eluded us. In Stuttgart there used to be frozen turkeys, but I don't know if that was just in the Fall. One also can't find a butternut squash here for love or money, so it's going to be pumpkin soup instead.

I found an apple pie recipe that sounds good, though. D. translated the whole thing. Working on a serious translation project at the moment, I was willing to make the pie rather than translate the recipe.

From our irregular wacky word(s) of the day series:
trespassing = hausfriedensbruch
savory = bohnenkraut
emsig = active, assiduous, diligent

Orkan it?

Well, there's been an Orkan-Warnung (Orkan Kyrill) issued for parts of Austria and Germany, so I finally got of my backside and wandered over to Wikipedia, source of all truthiness, to find out what these things actually are. Ahh, a European Windstorm. Well, that clears that up. Our warning turns out to be for a storm with gusts approaching speeds in the orkan range.

Here in the Black Forest region, any mention of a major bald patch along a ridge that isn't an obvious clear-cut will get people talking about Lothar, as if one should know all about it. Apparantly one should, at least a hundred people were killed and the power was knocked out in large portions of Germany and France.

And it would also appear that I am not the only one interested in weather topics today as I cannot get the web page for Kachelmann's forecast or the one from the German Weather Service (DWD) or from Donnerwetter to load. A quick trip to the Spiegel homepage shows though, that no matter where you are in Germany right now, if you look out the window, it's raining.

The picture to the left would be the current precip map, with the white being the only area where it's not coming down and the little black line runing throught the white area would be the German border. So I stand corrected. It might not be raining if you are in Kempten. Otherwise, get out your umbrellas.

Hang on to your hats everybody!

Interested in more weather-related Ex-pat blogging ?
Mausi
and
PapaScott are happy to oblige.

Stories that warm an expat's heart

Ran across a few stories that might be of interest to the long-term expat today while perusing MSNBC.com

Being bilingual can delay onset of dementia

Here's a second one that was interesting for me as a daughter living away from her parents. My parents and I have tried video conferencing a bit, but my parents generally find it taxing to get everything organized, so we only do it the few times a year my sister sets everything up for them.

Virtual dinners join elderly with faraway family

I am grateful that my sisters still live close to my parents - and that my parents are in very good health for their ages. It radically alters the level of guilt I face having chosen to live in Europe. Of course, should the situation change, our geography might change as well.

Strasbourg Impressions

Christmas Eve in Strasbourg

Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures from the Indian restaurant where we ate. Positively everything was too full. Yes, I know we should have planned in advance, but we decided we would just play it by ear and we had some cookies in the car if it came to that. We went to see "Scoop" - original with french subtitles. It wa a great way to kill 2 hours and keep warm. We walked and walked and finally came upon a little Indian restaurant that was willing to let us in. We were the very last admitted without a reservation. By the time we were done there, it was 22:30 and time to head to the cathedral where we arrived just in time to get a good spot in line before the doors opened at 23:00.