We're on our last day in the "mothership" - so much left undone and that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomache although I know that tomorrow at lunch I will be with good friends I haven't seen for months. My hair is softer, my skin is clearer - is it the chlorine, the soft water, the Dail soap, or is it just home?

The NJ DMV is populated by at least a few idiots. How many of you know what to do with an umlaut in English? Mueller - anyone? That's not what the fine folks at Motor Vehicle Services thought. My marriage certificate (already in English) would have to be translated by the consulate. I explained that they do not, nor have they in the recent past offered translation services, but she was not to be moved. So we called New York. U umlaut to UE is common sense and everyone knows that - there is nothing we can do for you.

So we were sneaky and evil and went to another office. No problem. She squinted, she asked her supervisor and she issued me my new license.

vici, vici, vici

Life has been so hectic. I am sorry for not blogging and not responding, but here I am taking the last train in this morning and I have to leave early this afternoon to buy Manhattan eye shadow at DM, which apparently isn't available in Costa Rica. :) It's ok, Laura.

The girlie weekend was great. I think I will be chewing on some stuff for a long time. And now, I will be disappearing again til I am back on the other side of the pond.

take care - bis bald!

O brave new world, that has such people in it!

I saw some Hasidic Jews (sp?) in the train tonight - they weren't speaking English but my initial reaction was the same as I have often had with African-American looking people here (who then turned out not to be African American).

I think --- ooooh someone like me! I feel like I am home when I see them. My only conversation I ever had with actual Americans here outside of the University didn't go well. They were really jerky to me (and not members of the aforementioned groups). Sometimes a girl just gets a little homesick.

And then the guy in the seat in front of me was carrying a backpack from teh 6th annual international conference for toxic cyanobacteria.

Perhaps diversity isn't only to be found at home.

*** I am sure this offended someone, and that isn't my intent. I realize the ridiculousness of the feeling and that's why I am even mentioning it. Even if the gentlemen I saw in the train were from NYC, I doubt they would appreciate my enthusiasm. I've seen more people here with turbans than I have with unshaved side-burns.

Beware the Ides of . . .Oops, too late!

Actually, everything was ok. The worst thing I did today was not be able to understand someone's name on the phone. After having asked him to repeat the company name, I just gave up. Unfortunately, the person for whom the call was intended decided he would call back and it wasn't who he thought it was (right company, wrong guy). Situation, ultimately resolved, but I cannot understand a thing people say at the start of a telephone call - yes, that part of the call where they announce themselves and generally mention everything I need to be writing down in all of 0,35 s.

But really, that's not that bad. No, it's not my job to answer the telephone, but everyone is supposed to if the secretary is busy, and at the moment, she's not busy, she's recovering from a car accident.

On to Caesery-like thinks. . .
The Ides of March is about the only thing I am superstitious about. We read a heap of Shakespeare in highschool and a long time ago in college, the comedy theater group ran a fundraiser where you could donate and "betray" a friend on the Ides of March. Fill in the "Name of the Betrayed" and the appropriate lecture and lecturer and if permission was obtained a group in togas entered your lecture, announced that you had been betrayed and proceeded to "stab" you with plastic forks. Someone in my class betrayed our unsuspecting prof. Dr. Otto, not that you will ever read this, but you are a good sport.

I proceeded to get into a serious car accident on the Ides of March that year, for which I was responsible and in which, thankfully I was the only person hurt and not seriously. I had too many people at the hospital to take me home and I still have the stuffed bunny my friend Micah gave me. It is one of my most prized possessions - a reminder that there are people who will still love me, no matter what kind of mistakes I make. (and it was a mistake - inexperience and a badly designed intersection which has subsequently been completely realigned).

Not much new in Moose-land. The weekend was full of driving. Autobahn and city driving on Saturday- more starting on a hill on Sunday. I managed to stall out down town, but this time my hysterics were all on the inside. This is important :).

Work is better and worse. Despite my many revisions and D's revisions, nothing remains of the report I wrote. The report was entirely re-written by the boss. The aren't acting like they are going to fire me - they wouldn't be spending this much time with me if they didn't feel it was still possible for it to work out.

Even thinking worst case scenario - Reasons to stay as long as I can there
1.) I can view it as a short course, I am learning so much, plus I will get a little money out of it.
2.) I need it for my resume.
3.) If it gets really bad, we can adjust our life planning - but not until I've stuck it out a while.
4.) It is better now than it was the first few days.

Not enough sleep and D. is out of town. I am taking my first night off in a while and indulging in a little DSG9, the silliest show in German TV.

In other news:
I saw a man in full-on Lederhose this morning in the train station. I don't live in Bavaria-it was the equivalent of seeing someone dressed like Big Bird walking through the train station.

I shared my commute with a friend this morning who was on his way to the airport. Lucky surprise that I took a later train.

Does anyone know of anything fun to do half-way between Philly and DC? (Something my vegetarian friends can do - so a crab restaurant is out.)

It's all about being ready to drive someone else's standard shift car from a red light on a hill. I haven't entirely got the two feet, two hands, hand-brake thing down. Fortunately, I err on the careful side and stall instead of rolling backwards.

Work was really bad the past few days. (Almost fell in the bedroom last night trying to get around the drying rack - I regained my balance and didn't knock my head against a drawer. I was sorry I couldn't get myself krankgeschriben. Now that's a bit messed up.) Today was not as bad and I feel nearly euphoric. Wacky, huh? We found a binder that had been missing.

Again - today was alright. We will see. So on to some other stuff.

Why are things for little girls marketed in the exact same color of pepto bismol pink all over the world?

Does champions league soccer really matter to anyone?

I met my husband for the first time two years ago tomorrow. :)

and to wrap it up
International Frauentag, Schmauentag

On the autobahn as a driver for the first time ans lived to tell the tale. . . well at least to report it here. Spent some time the past two days with farmers - wow, is that an dialect to deal with. Some strange goings on with a colleague as well. Does he keep directing me inappropriately because he doesn't know himself? Boy, I sure hope so.

Practiced driving for 2.5 hours tonight. I still stall out when I have to use the hand brake starting on a hill. Otherwise, it is generally going well.

Yesterday, slept a lot, went grocery shopping. Today slept late again, went to lunch at the in-laws, practised driving (got to get used to the whole manual transmission thing), and now I am spending a couple of hours working on translation tasks. As my week nights now consist of showering and laying out clothes and lunch for the following day before going to bed, I had better wrap up what I can and announce the end of my availability for this kind of work.

Re water contained in tall structures and towns containing such structures.
I have no idea what the place is like. It's only day 2, but I may get to know the place well. I may well be spending 12 hours a day there.

sorry so stressed, but i gotta go

So I am not fired yet. Everyone was really nice, but I knew that already. What remains to be seen is whether I am up to the tasks that will be mine. I came home and cried, a lot, but I am feeling a bit better now. Tomorrow is Friday, after all, so there is a lower limit even if I am going to start working on my first report. First day, two projects and no clue.

On the way home, I walked around a bit. There was a symbol of the city I was in that was illuminated and the wet pavement around it shone in the light and it was also clear that this job just one part of life and even if it lasts a few years, it won't be forever. As long as I am happy with where I am going at the end of the day, and I am than I can keep slogging, at least for the moment.

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.