Gruebelei und Erinnerungen

There's no specific point to this post, haven't been on any trips recently, just wanted to record some of my favorite memories that haven't found their way into other posts. For lack of a better alternative, I'll arrange them chronologically. Here goes:

-I mentioned this in my Karneval posts, but I just want to go back and reflect on the fact that for several weeks of my life I couldn't go out without seeing at least one person in costume (and usually an older person at that) or coming upon a random drumming/marching band, strolling through the park or streets practicing for Karneval. It really was an atmosphere unlike anything I have ever experienced, and certainly helped to do away with any lingering stereotypes I had of "uptight" Germans.

-Caroline and I went to the same Doener stand in Bad Godesberg so often (and always got the same thing), that when we walked in the guy would just start making the usual, and looked terribly confused the one time I stopped him and said I wanted falafel instead of chicken.

-While I was at the Goethe-Institute Ash Wednesday came around (which is, of course, the point of Karneval, but Karneval gets a heck of a lot more emphasis), so I went to church and got the standard cross of ashes on the forehead, which I wore for the rest of the day. Never before has this elicited so much confusion from the people around me. In America, I feel like the majority of the population, at least based on what I've experienced so far, knows what's up when they see the ashes, or at least once you say "It's Ash Wednesday" it'll click. But my friends at the Goethe-Institute, from Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and elsewhere had no idea what was going on. One of my friends thought it was dirt and reached over to try to rub it off. When I told him it was Ash Wednesday I was met only with a blank stare. So I spent most of the rest of the day trying to explain, in German, what Ash Wednesday was and why we had to get ashes put on our forehead. I'm not sure everything was totally clear in the end, but it was actually a really cool experience to explain part of my religion to people who had never really been exposed to it before.

-During my last week in Bonn I decided to surprise visit Pascal just for one night, because when I went to Tuebingen we wouldn't be able to see each other for awhile. So I hopped on a train, finally got to his house (stupid train delays), stood outside on the street and called him to tell him to look out the window. I was worried that he might have suspected it, because I'm really bad at being sneaky and hiding things, but judging from the state of his room and his facial hair, I would say the surprise aspect was successful.

-On one of my last evenings in Bonn I went with my friend Anais to a cafe. I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before, but the Germans are obsessed with eating outside. For them, this is not just a summer activity. Unless it's actively precipitating, the terrace is open for business, with heat lamps and blankets to stay warm with. Now, this just seems crazy to me. If it's less than 70 degrees out just eat inside already! But I suppose one reason might be that most restaurants and cafes are fairly small with limited indoor space, so they probably want to squeeze in as many tables and customers as possible. Anyways, since it was a balmy 37 degrees, Anais and I decided to try this whole sitting outside business, so we got a table and wrapped ourselves up in the provided blankets, and, I have to admit, it was surprisingly comfortable. As I, an American, sat with a girl from France, sipping hot chocolate and speaking in German, I thought "this is why I studied abroad."

-For some reason, nobody seems to be able to place my accent when I speak German. The kids at the elementary school I volunteered at thought I was either Russian or British, and my teacher for my language course in Tuebingen told me I had a slight French accent. I've also gotten Australian as a guess, but almost never American. A guy who recently moved into my dorm even thought I was German. Score!

-Along the same line as accents, I've heard some really funny English here. I occasionally speak english with some of my international friends because they want to practice their english, and of course they all have some degree of accent. But what's really amusing is when they mess up the vocabulary, such as when my (male) friend said "I need to douche myself" instead of "I need to take a shower." Or when my friend from Columbia told our other friend to quit cracking his knuckles, because it's "bad for your conjunctions." Not that I've ever said anything wrong in German...

-I mentioned before the soccer hooligans we encountered in the train, but I just want to emphasize how big a part of the culture soccer is here (as is true basically throughout Europe and most of the rest of the world). Multiple times I've been on the train and the conductor will announce the final or halftime scores of whatever games are going on at the time, even though these are just regular league games and not even part of the play-offs or anything.

-Some of my favorite memories have involved meeting old people at bars. At the Hofbrauhaus in Munich I met a 50-something-year-old lady who, along with her husband, are "regulars" there. I could barely understand her because of the Bavarian accent (she started off in full Bavarian and I asked her if she could speak "High German" because I didn't understand; it wasn't much of an improvement), but nonetheless we had about an hour-long conversation about traditional foods in different parts of the country, interrupted only by the "Prost-ing" (cheers) that is obligatory at the Hofbrauhaus and basically occurs every time somebody takes a drink. When I spent the week in Blaubeuren with my language course we went to a tiny bar and met some locals; this time the dialect of choice was Swabian (which is not much easier to understand than Bavarian). They were rather intoxicated and had a grand old time teaching us Swabian slang and asking us hilarious questions about American. For example: "Is Arnold Schwarzenegger going to be the next president?"

-And of course I meet the best people on trains. From the old lady with the very smelly wiener dog that kept running away to the 30-something guy who took advantage of a train delay to talk to me for an hour about urine disposal, tap water systems and how Germany could use "Bio-gas" from bathrooms and outhouses to solve the energy crisis, to the elderly gentleman who went to the counter and complained when we missed our connection due to a delay and ended up getting us new tickets plus some free coupons (and who then talked my ear off about his work in the Neurology Clinic, which I don't think I would have understood even in English), trains and train stations certainly allow you an interesting glimpse into a culture.