Monday, October 31, 2011

It's Halloween!

As I write this, little costumed German children are trick-or-treating in my neighborhood! It's not even dark yet outside! Germany cracks me up!

Once again, I managed to forget that trick-or-treating has caught on here in recent years, and was pleasantly startled to walk outside and stumble across little lions and witches and such.

In general, I have mixed thoughts about Halloween getting so big in Germany (Halloween is GREAT, but it's also yet another American export to the world, and threatens to eclipse Germany's own lovely children's holidays, like St. Martin's Day in November).

But right now, I'm an American who misses fall colors, and front porches decked out in Halloween decorations, and the excitement of getting dressed up and going out into the neighborhood at night with your friends.

Let the trick-or-treating commence!

(Unfortunately, the fact that I always forget about Halloween here means I don't have any candy or anything, so I'm currently hiding out in the living room with the front hall light off, hoping nobody rings the bell! I can hear excited shrieking and yelling in the stairwell though. Does anybody else think it would be sad to trick-or-treat in a city, with its big, anonymous apartment buildings, where you can't even tell who's home and who's not?)

Sunday, October 30, 2011

And Once Again in Pictures: Scotland

At long, long last, my pictures from Scotland. Click on the picture to go to the album!

PART ONE, in which our intrepid heroine hikes the West Highland Way with two German friends, meets wild goats, braves Scottish breakfasts and dinners and comes out no worse for the wear, tries and fails to keep pace with the way Scottish people drink, wanders the moor in the rain, sees many many rainbows, takes boats, explores the wilds of the Isle of Skye, joins forces with nice Americans, finally gets bored of sheep, and delights in Scottish place names:

Scotland I: The West Highland Way and Isle of Skye


PART TWO, in which our heroine discovers the windswept Isle of Lewis, is excited about Gaelic-speaking regions, Rents a Car and Survives Driving on the Left, is further stunned by rainbows, learns that standing stones are in fact awesome, meets more fun fellow travelers, falls in love with a 19th century castle, falls in love with Edinburgh, and ultimately falls in love with Scotland:

Scotland II: Isle of Lewis and Return to Edinburgh

The Saga of Not Being from New York City

For these five+ years I've lived abroad, I've sighed whenever anyone asks, "So, where in the U.S. are you from?" and resigned myself to the misunderstanding to come.

"I'm from New York State," I say. "The state, not the city. Far from the city, actually. No, further than that. Not just a suburb. About 400 kilometers away." [Watch Europeans' eyes bug out at this concept of distance.]

(New York City in bottom right corner. Ithaca in lower middle.)

Occasionally, people have heard of one or two other upstate cities (Rochester, Buffalo), so then that's okay. Even more occasionally, they've even heard of Ithaca, usually in the context of Cornell University. But mostly they think I'm from a suburb of NYC.

Sometimes I've half-seriously contemplated just lying and saying I'm from Ohio (where I went to college, and do have close friends and emotional ties), for the complications it would save me. But for better or worse, I'm not a good liar.

I'm not sure why it took me until just a week or two ago to hit on the solution: Simply say, "I'm from a small city called Ithaca."

Germans don't care about states. The states here are political constructs slapped on top of far longer-standing regional identities. There is no sense of state pride, and identity is tied to region (Swabia, the Rhineland, Bavaria...) not to federal state.

I tried out my new solution recently ("I'm from a small city called Ithaca") but for some reason my sense of honesty still compels me to tack "...in New York State" onto the end. Oh well, I'll keep practicing. Maybe I could say, "I'm from a small city called Ithaca, in the northeast"? (Most people only want to know in any case whether it's east coast or west coast.)

Saturday, October 29, 2011

Marriage-Like Unions

Then there's this, which actually brought a bit of a tear of happiness to my eye:

I was looking up youth hostels on the Baltic Sea, because I'm planning to take a weekend up there soon, and found myself on the page that explains membership for the German branch of Hostelling International.

It lists various membership rates, including this bit concerning the family rate (my translation):

"In the case of married couples and common-law unions (including same-sex unions), only one partner pays (if at the same address). Partner and underage children receive their own membership cards for free."

(The German word for what I'm terming "common-law" translates literally as "marriage-like" – and this is a very normal thing in Germany, where many long-term, child-rearing couples never marry at all.)

I feel like I complain a lot about Germany lately (and there are certainly things to complain about) but things like this – the legal normalcy of same-sex partnerships – make me happy to be here.

Worst Name for a Pizza Place Ever

There is a pizza place in a neighborhood near me called "Pizza Pimps." Every single time I go by there, I think: What a terrible name for a food-selling establishment.

Then, just recently I was walking past the place with a couple German friends and said to them too what a terrible name it is – and they looked at me blankly and asked why.

That's when it finally, finally occurred to me that Germans only know the word "pimp" in the more recent verb sense, meaning "to make something fancier than it already is." You know, like "pimp my ride."

So I explained that the word is actually in far more common usage in its noun form: meaning a man who controls and sells the services of prostitutes, "Zuhälter" in German.

My friends were suitably shocked, and agreed this is a terrible name for a pizza place.

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Happy New Year (in Advance)

Hee hee. Germans are so obsessed with wishing one another a happy new year (I think I've written about this before, how everyone here has this elephant's memory for keeping track of who they've given new year's wishes to already and who they haven't yet, even if weeks have passed since January 1) that my dentist just wished me a happy new year after an appointment TODAY, since I most likely won't see her again until sometime in the new year.

I promise, Scotland pictures and a bit more about what I've been up to since are coming soon...

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Scotland in Maps

This is a screenshot of my map:



Click here for the actual, interactive map.


Can anyone tell me how to get Google Maps to show the whole map as the image if I embed it here, and not some random, irrelevant map snippet it seems to choose on a complete whim?

Friday, October 7, 2011

Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes

Back in Berlin; seen on my way home just now:

Two 20-something German women, giggling as they sang the English song "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" (complete with gestures) while waiting to cross the street.