Zug- oder Lokführer? (aka, the German Language Is So Weird)

Ah, German. The language in which being overly literal about how you build words leads to strangely non-literal complications!

I was helping out a local friend-of-a-friend-of-my-parents (or something), who writes articles about trains, and has one that's been translated into German to be published in a magazine in Germany, and he wanted to check and make sure they'd gotten everything right, so I read the German version of the article and then answered his questions about it. Anyway, that brought me across this gem of a linguistic fact:

A "Zugführer" and a "Lokführer" are both jobs on a train; however, despite the fact that they look practically like synonyms ("Zug" = "train" and "Lok" = "locomotive," and then they both contain the word "Führer," which can mean either "leader" or "driver," depending on context), they are emphatically not. The "Lokführer" is the engineer, the one who drives the train, while the "Zugführer" doesn't drive anything – that's the conductor, the person who goes through and takes tickets, etc. I suppose the logic here is that the "Zugführer" "leads" the train in some sense? So one is the "driver" of the "engine" and the other is the "leader" of the "train," and it just happens to come out looking like synonyms?

Why, German? Why?

This reminds me of my deep resentment when I first learned that the word "Zugbrücke" (which is LITERALLY "train" + "bridge") is not a train bridge. No, no, it's a drawbridge, because the word "Zug," though usually used to mean "train," actually derives from the verb "ziehen," which means "pull" or "draw," and thus a "Zugbrücke" is one that draws up. Duh, right?

And if you want to talk about an actual bridge that a train goes over, you have to say "Bahnbrücke" ("railway bridge").

Despite how clearly absurd all this is, I'm feeling nostalgic right now for the days when I got to muck around with the German language as my job all day!

(And appropriately, as I'm finishing writing this, the lonesome whistle of a freight train is wafting to me through the night air, as it passes through the edge of town. European trains are a hundred (a thousand) times superior when it comes to actual usability, but for nostalgia and romance, nothing beats a mournful American train whistle in the distance.)

The Passover Section of the Supermarket

It's good to be home. (I missed religious pluralism! Say what you will about US society in other ways – and I certainly do, frequently – but this is a thing we've got, and it's an important thing.)

Extraordinary Cover Versions (That Will Make You Hear Over-Played Songs as Something New)

Okay, how did I not know about these guys until now??

Also, this three-part-harmony, all-female, almost-acapella cover of "Wrecking Ball" is amazing. Who knew a Miley Cyrus song could be...beautiful? (And I say that as someone who loves Ásgeir Trausti's cover of it!)

Ithaca Key West Tourism Board

Ha ha ha, oh, I finally get the joke (I didn't get the joke when someone used it as a team name at trivia night last night) now that I've read this article: "Ithaca, New York, tourism site: Don't come here, go to Florida."

The article explains that the Ithaca tourism folks did a sort of spoof thing on their website, where they told people that the weather is too cold here, and they should go to Key West instead.

Unsurprisingly, the Visit Ithaca website itself seems to be down (too much traffic, I suspect, now that the joke's out there in the national news world?) but here's a screencap of what the site looks like, or at least looked like yesterday, as shown in the Ithaca Journal:

It really is an unusually harsh and long cold snap this winter. Apparently I'm the only one avidly enjoying it...

Philosophical Bathroom Graffiti

(I love you, Ithaca.)

"Ten Degrees and Getting Colder (Down by Boulder Dam that Day)"

Wheeeeee!

That's -17°C / feels like -23°C, for you European folks.

(The alarming fine print on that "Wind Chill Warning" reads, in part: 

A wind chill warning is issued when winds combine with bitterly
cold temperatures to create extremely dangerous conditions for
exposed skin.  The wind chill will be cold enough to cause
frostbite in about 15 minutes or less...and could lead to
hypothermia if proper precautions are not taken. If you must go
outside...remember that several layers of clothing will keep you
warmer than a single heavy coat. It is very important to cover
all exposed flesh to protect yourself from frostbite.

But I walked home in it, and it didn't seem that bad!)

SNOW, more

And a few more...

And one I'm calling The Perils of the Steps (icicles to spear you from above, treacherously slick steps to wipe your feet out from under you below!):

SNOW!

Snow!

I'm finally in the right place.

Bad Grammar and the Detritus of a Childhood

Remember mix tapes? Walkmans? The phone trees that schools used to send out to families, back before all information was conveyed by email? How about those free trial CDs that AOL was forever mailing to everyone, in the early days of the internet? And printer paper with perforated edges? For that matter, remember floppy disks??

All these and more I've been sifting through, as I sort, clean and ruthlessly dispose of things from my childhood bedroom.

Also, look, I found old middle school German tests! My grammar was so strikingly bad!

(I'm sure I'll have more to say about being back in the US once it's settled in a bit more... For now, I'm in an odd sort of limbo, and don't know quite where I am. Patience!)

Year's End, Berlin's End, Begin Again

Yes, all right, I'm feeling more than a little nostalgic lately.

The thing about timing things such that the year is ending just at the same time that you're uprooting your entire life is that it makes everything feel really rather cataclysmic!

I was in the supermarket today (some of the employees were wearing party hats – aw!) and even the sight of the rows of jam-filled doughnuts in the bakery (it's a new year's tradition in this part of Germany, with one unlucky person biting into the one in each batch that's filled with mustard, a practice that reminds me of the lucky toy or coin hidden in a king cake on Twelfth Night or Mardi Gras...except, you know, less pleasant, 'cause it's mustard) made me sigh with fondness for dear, strange, often exasperating, yet entirely familiar Germany.

In an odd way, I hope that leaving will make me love Berlin even more, and that coming back to visit will allow me to just 100% enjoy this place, rather than trying to enjoy the cool stuff about it while also being bogged down in the frustrations of daily life. Who can say (since I never can seem to plan my life more than a couple months ahead), but my idea is definitely that Berlin will continue to be part of my life, a place that I can always visit back to and that will always feel at least in some way like home.

And Iceland. I want Iceland to continue being part of my life, too. (In my head, I've been working on a goofy metaphor wherein the US is my family and always will be, Germany is my friend and housemate of so many years that we know all each other's quirks, but Iceland is my (not-so) secret crush, the one that gives me butterflies in my stomach even just to say its name.)

Oh, by the way, here's how empty the apartment looked in the end – yesterday, when I handed over the keys. Looking very pretty and tidy and clean, if I do say so myself! (Germany, possibly the only country where you have to invest more time and money and energy in an apartment when you move out than when you move in.)

Feeling nostalgic, I also took a bunch of pictures of the rest of the building, and some silly self-portraits in the cool mirrors in the entryway – it's one of these gorgeous turn-of-the-last-century, art-deco-y classic Berlin apartment buildings.

Happy new year, everyone! What a year it's been. May the next one be just as exciting, but with way fewer of the terrible things going on in the wider world. Once again, I'm going to close out the year by quoting Josh Ritter, because I really think he's got the right life attitude in so very much of what he does:

I'm inside with my friends
We build fires and pretend
That the night could just bend on forever
While outside in the frost
Are the wolves and the lost
And we sing to the dogs or whoever
Singing don't let me into this year with an empty heart
With an empty heart
Don't let me into this year with an empty heart