I've been back in the US for about a week now, and it's good to be back. It's been so nice to see family and relatives and enjoy some vacation. But honestly, the thing I'm most excited about is the water. There's water everywhere! There's nothing greater than going to a restaurant, ordering an ice water, and telling the waiter to keep them coming. Actually, scratch that, water fountains are better. Being able to get (free) water on the go is so amazing here. I feel so water-deprived in Germany. They mostly drink mineral water, which I don't like, and you always have to pay for water in restaurants (and it's usually just as, or more, expensive than beer or soft drinks). Water fountains are unheard-of. So, while I have other, arguably more important, things to look forward during my time here, I will certainly enjoy this water-oasis while I can.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Compound nouns. Or, why I love the German language.
In English, compound nouns usually consist of two words with a space between them, which, however, must be said together in order to get the proper meaning (ex: ice cream). German decided that all those extra spaces between words were really unnecessary and inefficient, and so started coming up with words such as "Haupteingang", which means main ("haupt") entrance ("eingang"). Sometimes German words just get ridiculous, as in the following 63-letter monster:
Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz
That roughly translates to "beef labeling regulation and supervision delegation law." This word won the "German Word of the Year" prize in 1999, simultaneously taking top honors for the longest word. It is a real word, but of course never actually used in daily language, whether spoken or written. You would probably only encounter it if you were on the legal management team for a beef packing plant or something of that nature. German grammar allows for basically infinitely long words, so sometimes people just create words to try to make the "longest" word. Personally I think they should cap it at 40 letters, just so your head doesn't explode when looking at the words.
German also likes to make compound nouns for more complicated concepts by taking nouns that already exist in combining them in ways that very literally describe the object or idea you are trying to create a word for. For example, take mucous membranes. They're really just slimy skin, right? Congratulations, if you know the German words for slime (schleim) and skin (haut) you can now deduce the word for mucous membrane: Schleimhaut. Another good example from the medical field, and one of my personal favorites, is the word for sinuses (I had a sinus infection a few months ago, so I had to learn this). So sinuses are sort of like caves, or cavities, next to your nose. Hmm... nose = nase...next to = neben....cave/cavity = höhle -> -> -> I've got it! Nasennebenhöhlen! Do you have an infection of the cavities next to your nose? Then you have a Nasennebenhöhlenentzündung, and you better get to the pharmacy asap.
Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz
That roughly translates to "beef labeling regulation and supervision delegation law." This word won the "German Word of the Year" prize in 1999, simultaneously taking top honors for the longest word. It is a real word, but of course never actually used in daily language, whether spoken or written. You would probably only encounter it if you were on the legal management team for a beef packing plant or something of that nature. German grammar allows for basically infinitely long words, so sometimes people just create words to try to make the "longest" word. Personally I think they should cap it at 40 letters, just so your head doesn't explode when looking at the words.
German also likes to make compound nouns for more complicated concepts by taking nouns that already exist in combining them in ways that very literally describe the object or idea you are trying to create a word for. For example, take mucous membranes. They're really just slimy skin, right? Congratulations, if you know the German words for slime (schleim) and skin (haut) you can now deduce the word for mucous membrane: Schleimhaut. Another good example from the medical field, and one of my personal favorites, is the word for sinuses (I had a sinus infection a few months ago, so I had to learn this). So sinuses are sort of like caves, or cavities, next to your nose. Hmm... nose = nase...next to = neben....cave/cavity = höhle -> -> -> I've got it! Nasennebenhöhlen! Do you have an infection of the cavities next to your nose? Then you have a Nasennebenhöhlenentzündung, and you better get to the pharmacy asap.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Stranger in a Foreign Land
And I'm okay with that. My feelings about integration and being a foreigner in Germany have changed quite a bit since my post from April 27, 2009, entitled "Integration?" That post, written while I was studying in Tuebingen, described my excitement when I "forgot" that I was in Germany, meaning that I wasn't thinking about the fact that I was a foreigner and was just going about my routine without worrying if people could notice that I wasn't a native. I remember that during my whole study abroad experience I was concerned with doing everything "right," meaning the way the Germans do. Questions such as "did I punch my ticket right?", "did I use the right expression to thank the lady at the bakery?" or "will I stand out if I order tea instead of coffee?" were constantly running through my mind. I guess I had a fear of coming across as a dumb American, and I felt that during my semester abroad I somehow needed to learn everything about German culture.
Now, it's hard for me to imagine why I cared so much. I think it was a combination of being young and naive and feeling (self-imposed) pressure to adapt to Germany because of the likelihood that I would spend part of my life here with Pascal (for the record, neither he nor his family has ever made one negative comment about me doing something "un-Germanlike," and in fact probably like me better because I am American than if I were just some German girl from down the street). So really, I was making myself anxious over nothing.
During the year I've been teaching here in Dortmund I've felt much more relaxed about my role as an American in another country. It honestly does not bother me that I don't always know the "correct" way to do something. I don't mind speaking English in public with friends and laughing over linguistic or cultural misunderstandings. In fact, I'm going to appropriate this as an excuse for why there was such a long gap between my last two posts. I didn't write on this blog because nothing stood out to me that I immediately wanted to write about (in the interest of full disclosure, I was also lazy). I was simply living my life: work, university, friends, Pascal, baking, cooking, learning to knit and juggle. There were fun times and boring times, frustrations while teaching and successes at work. Overall, it was just a regular life, filled with the general types of activities, though there would be variations in the specifics, that I would have if I were living in Spokane or St. Louis or anywhere in the world. It didn't matter to me that I was living in a foreign country, while when I was in Tuebingen that was all I thought about.
I think I am more comfortable this year also because I have a higher level of linguistic skill and more cultural knowledge. In fact, I know more random information about German politics, history and literature than some of my German friends do, which would probably lead them to label me as "well-integrated." Achieving some level of integration, meaning comfort with the language and customs, seems to be a prerequisite to stop caring about integration.
I think acceptance that one can't know everything is also a factor at play here. When I was in Ireland with my dad, I immediately felt very comfortable because all signs and advertisements and announcements were in English, giving me a leg up on "integration" as opposed to non-English speaking countries such as Germany. However, our first interactions with Irish people made me aware that while I may speak a variety of the same language, I actually knew very little about Irish culture. This bothered me for a few seconds, but then I reminded myself, "who cares?" Nobody expects visitors to their country to be a walking encyclopedia about the local culture and customs. Politeness, inquisitiveness and some tourist dollars (or some other contribution to the economy, such as my job in Dortmund) will go a long way to ensuring a warm welcome, no matter where you are.
Now, it's hard for me to imagine why I cared so much. I think it was a combination of being young and naive and feeling (self-imposed) pressure to adapt to Germany because of the likelihood that I would spend part of my life here with Pascal (for the record, neither he nor his family has ever made one negative comment about me doing something "un-Germanlike," and in fact probably like me better because I am American than if I were just some German girl from down the street). So really, I was making myself anxious over nothing.
During the year I've been teaching here in Dortmund I've felt much more relaxed about my role as an American in another country. It honestly does not bother me that I don't always know the "correct" way to do something. I don't mind speaking English in public with friends and laughing over linguistic or cultural misunderstandings. In fact, I'm going to appropriate this as an excuse for why there was such a long gap between my last two posts. I didn't write on this blog because nothing stood out to me that I immediately wanted to write about (in the interest of full disclosure, I was also lazy). I was simply living my life: work, university, friends, Pascal, baking, cooking, learning to knit and juggle. There were fun times and boring times, frustrations while teaching and successes at work. Overall, it was just a regular life, filled with the general types of activities, though there would be variations in the specifics, that I would have if I were living in Spokane or St. Louis or anywhere in the world. It didn't matter to me that I was living in a foreign country, while when I was in Tuebingen that was all I thought about.
I think I am more comfortable this year also because I have a higher level of linguistic skill and more cultural knowledge. In fact, I know more random information about German politics, history and literature than some of my German friends do, which would probably lead them to label me as "well-integrated." Achieving some level of integration, meaning comfort with the language and customs, seems to be a prerequisite to stop caring about integration.
I think acceptance that one can't know everything is also a factor at play here. When I was in Ireland with my dad, I immediately felt very comfortable because all signs and advertisements and announcements were in English, giving me a leg up on "integration" as opposed to non-English speaking countries such as Germany. However, our first interactions with Irish people made me aware that while I may speak a variety of the same language, I actually knew very little about Irish culture. This bothered me for a few seconds, but then I reminded myself, "who cares?" Nobody expects visitors to their country to be a walking encyclopedia about the local culture and customs. Politeness, inquisitiveness and some tourist dollars (or some other contribution to the economy, such as my job in Dortmund) will go a long way to ensuring a warm welcome, no matter where you are.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Harder to Catch than a Leprechaun
That may be what some of you are thinking about me, as I have neglected this blog for far too long. But now I'm back, ready to make bad leprechaun jokes, because I have promised my dad and other relatives to write a post about my dad's and my trip to Ireland. I can't promise you a pot of gold at the end, but there will be some pictures I hope you enjoy.
My dad and I went to Ireland for 7 days, starting on the Tuesday before Easter. We had been talking about a trip to Ireland for a long time, ever since I got it into my head that I wanted to bike across Ireland and my dad also expressed in interest in Ireland, seeing as how his mom's side of the family (go Sheahans!) is from there, and he had never been. Fortunately, we did not go through with my original (naive) plan of actually biking all around Ireland. For one, it is not nearly as flat as I thought it was. Two, the roads in Ireland, except for a few brand-new highways, are all terrible. Skinny, poorly paved, and almost always bordered on both sides by stone walls, making trying to squeeze past a car going in the opposite direction a moderately terrifying experience (also not ideal for preserving the non-scraped and scratched state of the sides of one's car). Also, as far as we could tell, there were no alternative bike trails, so overall it would have been pretty miserable to actually have to bike everywhere (and I haven't even begun to talk about the fact of us being out of shape). So instead we rented a car and bought a tour package from Costco Travel that did all of the hotel bookings for us. We were in Dublin for a night, Killarney for two nights, Galway for three nights, and then Dublin for a night again (because we flew in and out of Dublin).
Dublin had some beautiful buildings, but overall just had the general feel of any other European capital city. Nice, of course, but nothing particularly unique or "Irish." Also, Dublin is insanely expensive, on par with London, making it one of the most expensive cities in the world. We were much more excited to visit the countryside, and we weren't disappointed. Killarney is in the southwest of Ireland and situated on the edge of a national park. The town itself is quite small and entirely based around the tourism industry. So it had its share of cheesiness, but overall was quite cute. And anyways, the main point of coming to Killarney is the surrounding area. Biggest surprise of the trip: there are mountains in Ireland! Maybe not quite ski-able, but definitely mountains, not just hills. I don't know why I thought Ireland didn't have mountains, but the whole west coast is full of them. My dad and I spent one day hiking around in them for 7 hours (which was about 3 hours longer than we meant to) because somehow the path seemed to always be leading uphill, even when we thought we'd got to the top of the mountain. We calculated the change in elevation we covered, and I believe it came out to around 20,000 feet, adjusted for inflation and the need to make our story more interesting. This is a long way of saying we were very, very tired at the end of it, but enjoyed spectacular scenery the whole way.
After Killarney we drove around the Dingle Peninsula on our way to Galway. We had lunch in the cute seaside town of Dingle and then gazed slack-jawed at the cliffs plunging into the Atlantic Ocean and the fact that sheep and cows were grazing right up to the cliff's edge! I guess the original inhabitants of that area had to figure out how to use every possible square foot of the arable land found between ocean and mountain slope. There's not a lot of it, as we quickly came to the conclusion that Ireland's national crop is not potatoes, but rocks. We eloquently described it as "stupid full of rocks." The fabled green pastures of Ireland are only possible in places where somebody has spent hours of back-breaking labor to clear rocks from a plot of land in order to allow grass to grow and put animals onto it to graze and fertilize it. This also explains the mind-boggling number of stone walls crisscrossing the whole country, since you had to do something with all those rocks. I think the central areas of Ireland may be more naturally rock-free, but along the coast the inhabitants had to battle rocks as much as the rain, wind and storms blowing off the Atlantic.
After leaving the Killarney area we took a very small detour to visit Lixnaw, County Kerry, the town which my ancestors lived in before immigrating to America. A small town, not much going on there on Good Friday afternoon, but it had an absolutely beautiful parish church. It had a wonderful, quiet reverence inside and it was a very special moment for my dad and I to light a candle for Grandma and think about how happy she would have been that we made it out there.
We ended up in Galway on our third night, which is a really fun, lively town, though the local girls displayed an odd propensity to get completely decked out (tarted up and some stronger expressions would be more accurate) to go out and participate in Galway's heavy-duty pub culture, while a guy in a polo could be considered on the well-dressed end of the spectrum. I believe it is a general trend that girls tend to dress up more than boys when going out, but the discrepancy seemed to be particularly large here.
We did two main excursions during our time in Galway. The first was to the largest of the three Aran Islands, Inishmor, about 6 kilometers off the coast. Took the ferry there, rented bikes, rode around all day and then caught the ferry back. The islands, famous for their wool fisherman's sweaters, are sparsely populated and, though situated not too far from the mainland, remained somewhat lost in time, with electricity not even reaching them until the late 1970s. Though a popular tourist destination, they retain a sense of calm and simplicity (at least until an Atlantic storm and 30 foot waves come pounding in). The day we were there was spectacularly sunny and we greatly enjoyed cruising along the island's narrow lanes, surrounded by stone-walled pastures (lots of rocks, as usual) and taking in both calm sandy beaches and sheer cliffs capped by ancient stone ring forts. The second excursion was to the Cliffs of Moher, south of Galway in County Clare. Over three times as high as the cliffs on the island (I believe they are the tallest cliffs on the European Atlantic coastline), and really just amazing wonders of nature. As my dad commented, though, we were almost disappointed that the day we visited the weather was so nice - hardly even any wind to speak of. I think pouring rain and gale-force winds would have made our visit much more authentic!
Dad, if you have any more anecdotes that I left out, please leave a comment. I can't really do justice to the beauty of Ireland or the experiences of this trip, even with a combination of words and pictures, but I hope you all have a chance to visit one day and see it for yourselves! Another post will come soon, and I will do more regular updates in the future, promise.
Slainte! (Health/Cheers!)
My dad and I went to Ireland for 7 days, starting on the Tuesday before Easter. We had been talking about a trip to Ireland for a long time, ever since I got it into my head that I wanted to bike across Ireland and my dad also expressed in interest in Ireland, seeing as how his mom's side of the family (go Sheahans!) is from there, and he had never been. Fortunately, we did not go through with my original (naive) plan of actually biking all around Ireland. For one, it is not nearly as flat as I thought it was. Two, the roads in Ireland, except for a few brand-new highways, are all terrible. Skinny, poorly paved, and almost always bordered on both sides by stone walls, making trying to squeeze past a car going in the opposite direction a moderately terrifying experience (also not ideal for preserving the non-scraped and scratched state of the sides of one's car). Also, as far as we could tell, there were no alternative bike trails, so overall it would have been pretty miserable to actually have to bike everywhere (and I haven't even begun to talk about the fact of us being out of shape). So instead we rented a car and bought a tour package from Costco Travel that did all of the hotel bookings for us. We were in Dublin for a night, Killarney for two nights, Galway for three nights, and then Dublin for a night again (because we flew in and out of Dublin).
Dublin had some beautiful buildings, but overall just had the general feel of any other European capital city. Nice, of course, but nothing particularly unique or "Irish." Also, Dublin is insanely expensive, on par with London, making it one of the most expensive cities in the world. We were much more excited to visit the countryside, and we weren't disappointed. Killarney is in the southwest of Ireland and situated on the edge of a national park. The town itself is quite small and entirely based around the tourism industry. So it had its share of cheesiness, but overall was quite cute. And anyways, the main point of coming to Killarney is the surrounding area. Biggest surprise of the trip: there are mountains in Ireland! Maybe not quite ski-able, but definitely mountains, not just hills. I don't know why I thought Ireland didn't have mountains, but the whole west coast is full of them. My dad and I spent one day hiking around in them for 7 hours (which was about 3 hours longer than we meant to) because somehow the path seemed to always be leading uphill, even when we thought we'd got to the top of the mountain. We calculated the change in elevation we covered, and I believe it came out to around 20,000 feet, adjusted for inflation and the need to make our story more interesting. This is a long way of saying we were very, very tired at the end of it, but enjoyed spectacular scenery the whole way.
After Killarney we drove around the Dingle Peninsula on our way to Galway. We had lunch in the cute seaside town of Dingle and then gazed slack-jawed at the cliffs plunging into the Atlantic Ocean and the fact that sheep and cows were grazing right up to the cliff's edge! I guess the original inhabitants of that area had to figure out how to use every possible square foot of the arable land found between ocean and mountain slope. There's not a lot of it, as we quickly came to the conclusion that Ireland's national crop is not potatoes, but rocks. We eloquently described it as "stupid full of rocks." The fabled green pastures of Ireland are only possible in places where somebody has spent hours of back-breaking labor to clear rocks from a plot of land in order to allow grass to grow and put animals onto it to graze and fertilize it. This also explains the mind-boggling number of stone walls crisscrossing the whole country, since you had to do something with all those rocks. I think the central areas of Ireland may be more naturally rock-free, but along the coast the inhabitants had to battle rocks as much as the rain, wind and storms blowing off the Atlantic.
After leaving the Killarney area we took a very small detour to visit Lixnaw, County Kerry, the town which my ancestors lived in before immigrating to America. A small town, not much going on there on Good Friday afternoon, but it had an absolutely beautiful parish church. It had a wonderful, quiet reverence inside and it was a very special moment for my dad and I to light a candle for Grandma and think about how happy she would have been that we made it out there.
We ended up in Galway on our third night, which is a really fun, lively town, though the local girls displayed an odd propensity to get completely decked out (tarted up and some stronger expressions would be more accurate) to go out and participate in Galway's heavy-duty pub culture, while a guy in a polo could be considered on the well-dressed end of the spectrum. I believe it is a general trend that girls tend to dress up more than boys when going out, but the discrepancy seemed to be particularly large here.
We did two main excursions during our time in Galway. The first was to the largest of the three Aran Islands, Inishmor, about 6 kilometers off the coast. Took the ferry there, rented bikes, rode around all day and then caught the ferry back. The islands, famous for their wool fisherman's sweaters, are sparsely populated and, though situated not too far from the mainland, remained somewhat lost in time, with electricity not even reaching them until the late 1970s. Though a popular tourist destination, they retain a sense of calm and simplicity (at least until an Atlantic storm and 30 foot waves come pounding in). The day we were there was spectacularly sunny and we greatly enjoyed cruising along the island's narrow lanes, surrounded by stone-walled pastures (lots of rocks, as usual) and taking in both calm sandy beaches and sheer cliffs capped by ancient stone ring forts. The second excursion was to the Cliffs of Moher, south of Galway in County Clare. Over three times as high as the cliffs on the island (I believe they are the tallest cliffs on the European Atlantic coastline), and really just amazing wonders of nature. As my dad commented, though, we were almost disappointed that the day we visited the weather was so nice - hardly even any wind to speak of. I think pouring rain and gale-force winds would have made our visit much more authentic!
Dad, if you have any more anecdotes that I left out, please leave a comment. I can't really do justice to the beauty of Ireland or the experiences of this trip, even with a combination of words and pictures, but I hope you all have a chance to visit one day and see it for yourselves! Another post will come soon, and I will do more regular updates in the future, promise.
Slainte! (Health/Cheers!)
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| Dublin |
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| Dublin hotel room |
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| funky mirror |
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| Why go bald, dad, huh? |
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| the Spire on O'Connell Street |
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| at Marsh's library |
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| one of the many amazing doors in Dublin |
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| in Killarney |
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| cathedral in Killarney |
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| beginnings of Killarney National Park |
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| Ross Castle |
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| boat tour |
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| mountains! in Ireland! |
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| getting our walking sticks |
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| found some clovers! |
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| a lot of the scenery in the park was much drier/browner than one would expect |
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| what we thought was the Torc waterfall |
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| the actual Torc Waterfall |
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| Muckross Estate and jaunting cars |
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| Muckross Abbey |
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| the Gap of Dunloe with low clouds moving in |
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| dang sheep are everywhere in Ireland |
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| Dingle, on the coast |
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| the hand was necessary to hold the hair in place |
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| the Aran Islands |
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| stone fences EVERYWHERE |
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| checking out the cliffs on the island |
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| not as tall as the Cliffs of Moher |
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| the Cliffs of Moher |
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| the grass in Ireland grows so fast the cows don't even have to stand up to find a new spot to eat |
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| the ruins of the Clonmacnoise monastic village |
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