Family, Fußball, and Field Trips

    Well, here I am again. I know I've been awful about blog updating lately, but in my defense, life has been bumped WAY up from its usual lackadaisical pace and has been boppin' along.

    Warning you now, this will be a long entry. I'll title appropriately so you can skip to topics of interest (as could indeed be your wont!).

    And with that, jumping right into the first F:

Family!
     I was originally starting with fußball, but the family bit is too exciting to leave for later: my parents are here! They arrived for they three-ish week visit last Wednesday, and we had our grand reunion this past weekend in the lovely little city of Nürnberg (Nuremberg in English). Not having seen my dear parentals in just short of seven months (definitely the longest stretch of my life), the last week could not go fast enough. So Friday night I finished my chores with my host family, headed to the train station, and hopped on my ICE (Inter-City Express) train for Nuremberg. (A note about the coolness of ICE trains: though they can cost a lot of money, it's worth it: typical speeds are up to 230 km/hr (143 mph). Pretty cool when you're trying to get somewhere in a hurry! And sure enough, we made the speeding cars on the Autobahn look like traffic on the 405.) An hour and five minutes later, there I was! (About 50 minutes faster than a car could've made it, I may add.) My dad and I had plotted extensively where to meet in the train station, so I was feeling optimistisch, but upon disembarking from the train and heading into the main hall, I was greeted by exactly zero parents. Slightly irritated and a little worried, I wandered around for a while, but still nothing. Finally, I saw my dejected parents wandering out of a random hall. Turns out they had made the rookie mistake of trying to greet me on the platform, something visitors to Germany learn quickly not to do when they realize most platforms and train stations have anywhere from two to ten different exits! They quickly cheered up and we joyfully scampered off for a late dinner in a cool little Keller (cellar) in the center of Nuremburg, and following that, a beer or two in the gorgeous Hauptmarkt (main market square), enjoying the mild almost-summer night and the sky that didn't fully darken until past 10 PM.

Jolly little parents heading back from the train station

Looking up at the stunning St. Lorenz Church

Lovely little Pegnitz river by night

   We stayed out drinking (and some of us being awkwardly flirted with by the cross-eyed waiter, including being proffered a lollipop as a token of esteem. Guess who "us" was.) and enjoying family time until the (for my parents) incredible hour of midnight, and then headed back to the hotel.

    The next morning we were up bright and early at 10:30 AM (the latest my parents have slept since I was born, I guarantee you...oh jet lag, you're so silly!), and headed out to explore the city, starting with a delicious and enormous breakfast at the Cafe Literatur Haus, including a plate of the most extensive varieties and amounts of cheese I have ever seen, especially for nine euros. NOM. The day was, I kid you not, the single warmest day since I have been in Germany: about 87 degrees with a very generous helping of humidity. I am so out of practice with this whole heat thing.

    VERY well fed, we headed out through the city, following the suggested Rick Steves walking tour. (If you haven't traveled in Europe before and are planning to do so, toss your Lonely Planet and Fodor's out and get a Rick Steves. That guy knows his shit.) We walked throughout the old town, seeing some excellent churches, fountains, and a farmers' market (where Dad, in a concerted effort to speak some German, earnestly asked a seller "Sind die Tauben?" in reference to the green grapes we were looking at. Unfortunately for him, the word for grapes is Trauben: the shopkeeper did look rather confused to be asked whether the fruits we were looking at were pigeons). 

    We continued up to the small fortress at the top of the city, where we had a lovely view of the old town and some lovely rose gardens, then dodged into a small beer garden to avoid the coming rain and get Dad to stop whining for a beer. 

Enjoying the cool interior of the church

Mom illustrating one of the sins represented on the "Ship of Fools" statue behind her 

Courtyard of the fortress

Cute little fam! (Minus Elyo, of course!)

Looking down at the city

Mom smelling the roses

Dad, overjoyed at having found the beer he wanted

What a cool little thing

   We spent the rest of the day doing some more trotting around, drinking another beer, and finally making an expedition to a pre-scouted Indian restaurant for my belated birthday dinner. Delicious!

    Mom woke up slightly earlier the next day, thankfully. What a lazy bum. We followed the sounds of clanging dishes and falling forks to a generous and cheap breakfast buffet in the center of the city, and filled up on deliciousness before the day's trip. Dad was most proud of his intriguing combination of cocoa pudding and cornflakes. Oh yes, please do ask. 

   Breakfast accounted for, we headed town to the train station and hopped on a bus to the nearby "Documentation Center," the museum located at the former Nazi party rally grounds. If you're anything of a history buff, the name Nuremberg may sound familiar to you. More than likely this is due to the Nuremberg trials, wherein 25 of the leaders of the Third Reich were tried for their crimes after World War II. But before that, Nuremberg was famous not for trials but for parties! (Okay, the exclamation point was a little gratuitous. They weren't happy parties. I just feel like the word party always deserves proper recognition.) Hitler was a big fan of the city of Nuremberg, and pulled some strings to get the right guy in charge of it. When that was accomplished, Nuremberg became his chosen city for the yearly rallies of the Nazi party, held annually from 1923-1938 (in Nuremberg from '27 onward). And when I say rallies, we're talking rallies. Over 1,000,000 people flocked to the city yearly to see the rally and attendant parades, with Hitler himself presiding over the festivities. 

    So what we went to visit were the grounds of these rallies. Included in the enormous area is the massive Zeppelin Field, a huge stadium crowned by an enormous grandstand that once displayed enormous swastikas, where Hitler would address crowds of thousands; the unfinished Congress Hall, a masterpiece of engineering reminiscent of the Colosseum, planned to be able to seat 400,000; and the Great Street, a massive concrete path leading between the two for the parades to march along. 

   Enough talking, talk a look: 

Grandstand on the Zeppelin field

Looking waaaaay across at same grandstand, 80 years ago 

Me on the podium where Hitler gave his speeches

Told you

Congress Hall interior

Congress Hall from across the lake

Unfinished side of Congress Hall

    Sorry, getting political:

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   Tourism aspects aside, what I really took away from this experience, particularly the museum, is how much credit we give ourselves today. This could never happen here, we say. We're much better people than the Germans, we say. They were horrible people, we say. But honestly, the scariest part of all of this is how easily it happened. Though I'm definitely, definitely, definitely not comparing anything in the US to Germany during the Third Reich, it's foolish to try and explain it away by clinging to the idea those Germans in the 20s, 30s, and 40s were somehow worse people than we are.  

    And speaking about the Holocaust, it's easy to condemn it for the terrible thing it is while ignoring how it started. Coming from California, I certainly see racial inequality. It's everywhere. But you know what, it's okay that Mexicans work longer hours under terrible conditions for incredibly little pay. It's not like it's white people who have to suffer that. They're just Mexicans. If we rough them up a little when they're deported, they're just Mexicans. They don't belong; they're not like us. If a shop that sells Mexican goods gets vandalized, not really a big deal. Guess what: that's how Germans felt about the Jews before World War II. Their store windows got smashed? No big deal. They're deporting them to Poland? Well, they aren't German, they don't belong here anyway. No big deal. Every time you fall into the trap of thinking it's okay something is happening to certain people, you let yourself believe it's okay, these people aren't as good as me, these people don't belong. And therefore it's okay when they're tortured, harassed, shipped off to concentration camps...

   I know I'm taking this totally too far. The Holocaust was not caused by ordinary people, it was a terrible brain child of a few sick and corrupt people with too much power. But the only way it ever went as far as it did was because it drew from the attitudes that already existed. And we teach our children these things. 

From the Documentation Center Museum: A drawing by a first grader. "Jews are our misfortune." I repeat, a FIRST GRADER. That's a six-year-old, friends. If nothing else is terrifying, this should be.

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  Okay, I'm done. I swear. 

   Anyway, after our museum visit, we, of course, took a brief stop at a beer garden, then headed back into town to watch the Germany-Denmark football match. We ended up at a great little restaurant next to a public viewing of the game, and enjoyed a delicious dinner, beer, and the game for a great ending to the weekend.

Fußball
    I can hear everyone who knows me at all laughing already. Shut it. I am so into this. To prove it, I shall set my scene and tell you I am snuggled in bed typing whilst watching the Portugal/Czech Republic match. Don't even try to test me.

    Okay, backing up. For those who aren't as into international activities, I'll explain briefly. For starters,  fußball is the German for (not too hard, now) football. Which is the proper name for soccer in every country that isn't the US. We're currently smackdab in the middle of the EuroCup (smaller version of the World Cup), being played this year in Poland and Ukraine. Germany is, unsurprisingly, kicking ass and taking names (at this point, anyway. Send them your thoughts and prayers against the Greek tomorrow; let's just say Greece has a lot of pent-up anger where Germany is concerned).

   Why, you ask, am I suddenly so enamored with a sport I don't play and a country that isn't mine? The answer's fairly simple. In the US, we really never have a chance to be united as a country cheering on a single team. The sports we really care about (baseball, basketball, American football) are almost completely unique to the US, so if anything, they're divisive rather than unifying. And the US isn't good enough at soccer to make the World Cup that intense of a matter. But here, where soccer is the lifeblood of nearly every nation, there is almost literally not a single house lacking a German flag, a single car without flag mirror covers (seriously), and on game days, scarcely a single person lacking a German national team shirt. Going out to a bar or restaurant to watch the game means being crammed into a room at maximum capacity with tons of soccer worshippers, many of them wearing German flags as capes and never losing a chance to chant a German cheer. It's really freaking fun, actually. And the enthusiasm is contagious. It's also nice that because I'm lucky enough to live in the German staat (state) with the best soccer team (FC Bayern, who, as you may recall, I saw play live), a cheery 11/23 of the national team is drawn from FC Bayern, so they're like old friends!

Leigh and I at the Germany-Netherlands match, reppin' our Deutschland gear

Germany-Denmark match in Nuremberg

Anyway, enough with the football. Just take my word that it's way exciting. And if you need some eye candy, google Mario Gomez, the guy who scored 3/5 of the German Euro Cup goals so far. He's beautiful. (Another reason I like soccer: players are vastly more attractive and age-appropriate than the great galoots who play baseball and American football. Woof.)

Field Trips

   Misleading title. Just one field trip. It sounded better in the plural when I wrote it, for some reason. Anyway, Monday I had the joyous (read: exhausting) task of accompanying Cliona on her field trip with the English kindergarten. We drove east out of Munich to the Bergtierpark, a kind of zoo for animals like deer, boars, horses, cows, weasels, und so weiter. Remember my earlier comment about the warmest day in Germany thus far? Well, this one blew it out of the water. Mid-90s, humid as death, and six hours tramping around a huge shadeless park with twenty-odd 3-5 year olds. Pulling a wagon full of backpacks, I might add. 

   But it was a lot of fun. The majority of kids (and therefore parents) in this kindergarten are from the UK, and it is a different experience spending an extended period of time with women who call children "poppet" in all seriousness. But they're all very nice and it was a good day. Cliona was probably rather disadvantaged by having me there, as having an au pair around makes it very easy to not go to the trouble of playing with the kids, but I nipped her "carry me"s in the bud faster than you can say spoiled child. No way, man. 

  The funniest part was no doubt the kids, with their hands overflowing with animal feed, running pell-mell after the terrified animals who just wanted to get away from the screamers. It was pretty hilarious. Thankfully the animals were interspersed with occasional playgrounds, and the pizza for lunch assuaged most of the whining. 

Lucky girl riding in the wagon!

And that's that! Okay, I'm skipping a major thing from a couple of weeks ago, but I'll come back to that. The last couple o' days have been pretty normal. The weather lends itself well to lots of ice cream trips and playing in the sprinklers with the kiddies, so it's pretty stress-free. Yesterday Leigh, Paulo and I played tennis at Olympia Park! It was great fun. And today I hightailed it at the crack of dawn to meet my parents in Salzburg and have a touristy three/four hours. 

    Tomorrow's agenda: do chores, pack, pick up Cliona and go to dancing, get ready, sing a concert, and leave on a bus for Prague at 1 AM! Ready, go. 

Adventures in April: A Recap

    Well, it's April 27, and as tomorrow morning I shall be gallivanting off into adventure (sounds a lot more exciting than it is, I promise you), I shall gainfully attempt to give you a final April blog before going. Ready, GO!

    That being said, now I need to figure out what I actually need to say! Pause whilst I run back to my penultimate entry:

    Geschafft (achieved!). The last two weeks have been, as is fairly customary in my life, fairly hum-drum and typisch, punctuated by brief spurts of incredible excitement!

    I won't keep you hanging. Remember that girl I talked so much about two blogs ago? Yes, of course you do, devoted blog readers! (Her name's Andrea and she's a friend from California, a Fulbrighter in Vienna, and generally just an awesome person. Yes, I know you already knew that. Don't worry.) Anyway, just two weeks after we had excellent Viennese adventures, the tables were turned and she came to visit me! Though sadly 'twas for a mere 25 hours and 48 minutes (like almost exactly), it was a great time and a much-needed (and very welcome!) pick-me-up from the doldrums my mood's been spending a lot of time in lately.

   So last Friday she got a rideshare from Vienna and arrived at the bus stop just outside my house at about 6 o'clock in the evening, and we set off to do what little sightseeing we could that evening! Which wasn't much, I'll be honest; our sights (and tastebuds) were much more oriented toward the promise of Indian food for dinner rather than some old churches.

   I'll interject briefly to say that unlike a lot of American tourist attractions (Vegas, NYC, and LA, to name a few), European tourist-y cities, as beautiful as they are, only really live up to (and often exceed) their potential when the conditions are good. A tip for all you future travelers: save your European trips for the summer, don't waste your time sightseeing in the rain, and once the sun sets, you're better off absorbing culture in a pub than outside trying to explore. Pretty much every city I've been to lacks a lot of charm in the rain/cold/dark.

     So instead of attempting to shove much Munich culture down Andrea's throat, we headed for my favorite Indian (and favorite in general, too) restaurant and settled down to a couple hours of pigging out. This place is freaking delicious. Not terribly cheap, but definitely worth the money, in my opinion! Once sated on chicken tikka masala, bombay potatoes, and garlic naan, we headed out (into the pouring rain, ughh) to meet Leigh at the nearby Hofbräuhaus. Leigh and Andrea have been fated to meet several times before, but tragic (not really) circumstances always intervened, so it was nice to finally have it happen!

     The Hofbräuhaus is, let's be honest, one of the great tourist traps in Munich, but it's also a hell of a lot of fun, and has excellent beer, food, and is always a comfortable 75 degrees inside (and occasionally warmer), very welcome when it's drizzly and COLD outside. We settled in for a comfortable evening of probably too much beer and chatting, only occasionally interrupted by the rather pathetic flirtation attempts of the Italians sitting next to us.

    At a fairly reasonable hour, we braved the U-Bahn home (my host family kindly consented to let Andrea crash with me for the night) and slept in far too late the next day (Saturdays rock).

    Fortunately for us, the tourism gods smiled upon our day, and the sun was out and shining, while not warmly, per se, at least comfortably. We packed Andrea's stuff, printed out her train tickets, and headed out to see the city.

   Though I'm sure it would eventually get old, it's a lot of fun playing tour guide! I also realized that I've had a sad lack of visitors here in Munich (ahem, that's to all of you! I'll show you around too! Seriously!), and the last time I really got to play tour guide and point out all the main, fun attractions was back in September! When, let's face it, I was still more of a tourist than anything as well. Since we only had about 6 hours before Andrea's train took off, we stuck to the main things (the nice thing about Munich is that most things of great interest are contained with about a two square kilometer area, so one can be a very efficient tourist when one so desires. Not that I recommend only visiting Munich for six hours at a time, but it is doable!). We started off with panini and coffees (the weather (and the temperature inside) was kind enough to permit iced drinks!) at San Francisco Coffee Company, took a look around Odeonsplatz, site of the 1933 Beer Hall Putsch, then headed into the Hofgarten and on through the Englischer Gartens.

   As I said, the weather obliged. It was gorgeous out, and the gardens were, while definitely not full, offering a decent amount of sunbathers and sporters. We stopped to see the surfers, headed out into the main gardens, meandered down the Isar, admired the Monopteros, and bought ice cream cones from a conveniently placed little balloon-festooned cart (I couldn't resist that rhyme, sorry).

Some photos (which, yes, are all on my facebook as well. Sorry for the repetition.):

Temple to Diana, Hofgarten

Sunbathers on the Isar

NOM ICE CREAM

Monopteros 

    After pausing to admire the oom-pa band at the Chinesischer Turm, we hopped quickly on a bus and an U-Bahn to get down to Marienplatz. We dutifully popped into a couple of churchs (the cathedral and St. Michael's, to be exact), sneakily side-tripped into an H&M, and wended our way back to the beer garden at the Viktualienmarkt. If you need a refresher course, the Viktualienmarkt is Munich's open-air market, dating back to very early 1800s, and a wonderful place to go to find exotic cheeses, oils, spices, fresh fruits and vegetables, and so on (though I'll give you the fairly obvious caveat that the prime location adds a euro or two to the average price). The beer garden there, if I recall correctly, is the only state-run beer garden in the city, so it has the advantage of serving beer from all of the breweries (which sounds not that exciting, but in Munich, every restaurant/beer garden is linked to just one brewery, so all the beer available there will only be, for example, varieties of Augustiner beer). It's also huge, and excellently located! Tables with tablecloths indicate the restaurant section, but cloth-less tables are for picnickers, and you buy your beer and bring whatever food you have along! We'd purchased some strawberries from a street vendor and had those along with our beer (remember: in Germany, beer goes with everything. I'll also, just to enforce the point that beer is always acceptable, tell you that this beer garden opens at 9 AM.).

     Though I don't spend a whole lot of time in beer gardens (the seasons and weather is to blame, not any personal prejudice), the atmosphere there is really special. The thing Americans hear (and dread) about Germany is that when there's not a table available, it's not only acceptable, it's expected to ask to sit at someone else's table. This happens in restaurants, cafes, and everywhere, really. At a beer garden, especially a popular one on a beautiful day, if you don't have the nerve to ask someone to scoot a little bit, you're going to be drinking standing up. We found a corner of a table across from a middle-aged German couple and settled down with our goodies. The fun part about sitting with strangers + alcohol? You can hardly help but make friends with the people around you. We had an excellent time conversing with the couple across from us, visitors from Karlsruhe, and our conversation ranged from how Munich is gemütlicher (an untranslatable word running along the lines of comfortable, home-like, kinder to the spirit) than Vienna, how the politics in the US scared us, to the things one learns in a beer garden! (And this was all in German. Score us!) When they left, their place was taken by a trio of young French and Spanish businessmen, who wanted to hear all about what it was really like being singers. It was definitely a fun experience. 

    Alas, all good things come to an end, and we finished our beers, bid farewell to our new friends, and headed off to the main train station to deposit Andrea on her train back to Vienna. I rounded off the evening by reading at Hugendubel's and then heading home.

    The week since has been fairly unexciting, but there's one important part. On Monday, the temperature was about 55 degrees. On Tuesday, it poured the entire day and stayed in the 40s. On Wednesday, we broke 60 degrees. But oh, Thursday and today have been GLORIOUS. It's currently a beautiful 74 degrees and I got a sunburn sitting out with my cappuccino. Oh spring, how I love thee! 

    I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's jump back to Monday. April 20th marked the beginning of a joyous Munich tradition (in my opinion, at least): Frühlingsfest! This festival of spring runs for two and a half weeks in late April and early May, and is a miniature version of Oktoberfest (also on the Theresienwiese). There are beer tents, carnival rides, incredibly unhealthy and delicious food offerings (cotton candy, crepes, roasted nuts...), and people in dirndls and lederhosen soaking up the ambience. I almost wish I could have gone to Frühlingsfest before taking on Oktoberfest; it's much smaller and less intimidating. 

    So Monday night, I met with Leigh and Daniel and we set out to enjoy the sights of Frühlingsfest. An hour or so passed in the Hippodrom tent, with quite a few Maßes (Bayrisch for a liter of beer; the only size beer comes in at festivals) and half a roasted chicken to split between us, listening to the band play old German favorites like Sweet Caroline, Bad Romance, and YMCA. Seriously. There were also, of course, several thousand rounds of Ein Prostchen (a beerhall standard for everyone to cheers; check out this video if you've never heard it: www.youtube.com/watch?v=FV20cgYY5iU ). Then we headed out into the night, had some crepes, and even went on a terrifyingly spinny ride that probably wasn't the greatest idea after all that beer. It was an excellent night.

Beer + pretzels + lederhosen = love. Germany is so simple. 

Hippodrom Festzelt

I may have to go back and buy one of these

Post-spinning ride 

     Wednesday night was another adventure into the depths of Bavarian culture. If you're a football fan at all (that's football by the rest of the world's standards, not America's), you probably are aware the championship is swiftly approaching, and Wednesday night the Bavarian team, FC Bayern, played their final match against Real Madrid to see who will head to the championships. So like good Münchners, headed out to a beer garden to watch the televised match, liters of beer in hand. Though I will be the first to admit my knowledge of soccer is pretty slim, I can follow what's going on. And it's pretty fun being plunked into the domain of one of the greatest football teams! I trust you know the results right now, but I'll tell you that FC Bayern won on eleven-meter kicks and will go on to play Chelsea in the Champions-League final in three weeks. Huzzah!!

Terrible dark picture just post the final kicks.

   In kiddie news: all is well. I'm currently waiting for Anne to bring Kilian and his best friend Ben over so I can watch them while she goes to dancing with Cliona. Cliona has nearly mastered riding her bike WITHOUT training wheels (at 3 1/2! I'm sold on Laufrads, man. 3 and a freaking half.). My host dad took a short day yesterday after a trip to the dentist so we helped him put together Kilian's grown-up bed and spent a good hour at the part watching Cliona practice. What a champ! There have been a lot more food squabbles lately; my host mom has decided that we're spoiling the kids by giving them various hot meals for dinner (you may recall the Germans believe in only one "hot" meal a day, and theirs is lunch), so now all they're permitted is toasted ham-and-cheese sandwich or bread and cheese. Makes prep easier for me, but when the kids won't eat it...well, it's a little frustrating. I'd be sick of it too, so I really can't blame them. Kilian and I had a fight last night while I was babysitting; we were playing checkers before bed, and when he realized I'd trapped both of his remaining pieces, he started crying about how I always win, et cetera et cetera, so I put the game away (sore losers are ANNOYING, even if they're six), which prompted several "I HATE YOUs". Always fun to hear. Luckily I've basically learned the secret to dealing with kids is actually talking to them, so we got it worked out and him put to bed in relative harmony. (No new photos, sorry.)

    Two weeks ago I got the chance to have dinner with Leigh's cousins and their kids, who were here visiting! It was a lot of fun, and way too nice to be with a normal family (not that my host family isn't great, but as sell-out as it is to say, I miss American families). They're also blog readers of mine, so a shout-out to the Dunns! It was wonderful to meet you, and I hope you have a great stay in Deutschland! 

    Shout-out number two: Chapman is presenting their opera this weekend, and I'm so sad I can't be there! Congratulations, all of you! Go see it, everyone else!

    As I mentioned waaaaay up at the top of this entry, tomorrow I take off for a long weekend (Tuesday is Germany's labor day, so four day weekend, here I come!) of choir rehearsal at a hotel/resort place a couple of hours outside of Munich. Don't know many details yet, but hopefully will be a successful weekend! I'll keep you posted. 

    Now it's upstairs to greet the kiddies. See you all in May!

My Brain May Be Melting (Which Accounts for the Disorderliness of this Entry!)

     I confess to having been most anxious for this week to end. It's Osterferien (Easter break), which means that while the kids still go to the kindergarten (which runs with work schedules rather than school schedules), I don't have language class this week or next week. Most of my friends are out of town, Nate's in Greece at a conference, depriving me of two-three hours daily of Skyping, and I just have way too much free time and not enough to do with it. What's more, dark and early tomorrow (Friday) morning I take off for Vienna to visit the lovely Andrea Zomorodian for a couple of days, Easter Sunday and Monday in Salzburg with Leigh, then Nate comes Tuesday for a three-day visit. So basically, I need to tough it through till then. The worst part about fun things happening is how long it takes for them to come!

     Last weekend was good fun, however. Friday night was a fairly brief trip out to an Irish pub in town, which was probably a mistake, as it's packed even when it's not Friday night. We could barely move. The live music of the night was a band of three old guys and two hot (relatively speaking) young girls, one of whom was the lead singer, the other the keyboardist (if you can apply that term to someone who played with only her right hand the entire time). Their repertoire consisted entirely of very typical American songs, which of course the Germans all loved. If they had played in an American bar, they'd have been booed offstage for their choices (I think), but here was a different story. Some memorable songs included "Sweet Dreams," "Valerie," "Livin' on a Prayer," "Hit the Road, Jack," and "Don't Speak." I was amused.
     Saturday night I went out to see a play at the local English theater with my host mom and two friends of hers. We had dinner beforehand at an Afghan restaurant (which was incredible; if you've never had Afghan food, run, don't walk!) and then walked over to the theater, which is a small, intimate little place in the basement of a jazz club. The show was called "Boom!," an end-of-the-world piece about an Armageddon-like comet hitting the earth and destroying all human life with the exception of a nerdy marine biologist and a girl he met on a blind date (it was about as weird as it sounds, yes). It was quite a fun night. One of the women is a mom from Cliona's English kindergarten; she's Australian, married to a Spaniard, and moved here from India. And I think living a year in Germany is getting out of my comfort zone! It was fascinating to hear her stories, for sure. She's also the mother of triplets, which in a country wherein she barely speaks the language must be rough.
    Sunday was not very warm, but I headed into the city regardless and had a nice afternoon at an outdoor cafe (in the shade, sadly) with my crossword, cappuccino, and ice cream. I felt so German!

I also encountered my new favorite street artists: check them out here! www.konnexionbalkon.com/. They were incredible. And hilarious. I lovelovelovelovelove street musicians. And here, they're actually good!

The bassist danced most of the time and the violinist went up to people and scratched his violin in their faces. And made amazing facial expressions the whole time he played. I might be in love.

Being an au pair is pretty weird.  It's been, at this juncture, 7 months and 5 days since I moved to Germany. Sometimes that feels incredibly long, and sometimes ridiculously short. To be honest, I'm still not totally comfortable living here. There's just something odd about perpetually being a guest in a home. Not that they treat me like a guest, but it can be a weird feeling. I'm living with my employers. Part of the terms of my employment involve encountering their undergarments on a fairly regular basis (only when clean, fortunately. I'm spared doing anything involving dirty laundry). If I don't come out of my room and up to get breakfast until 11 on a Saturday morning, I feel sort of funny about it (and may occasionally try to hide).

     It's an interesting change to live with a family that isn't mine, because it definitely hampers one's social life. Whereas when living on one's own, it's the easiest thing to say, "I don't feel like going out tonight. It's expensive and tiring and plus, it's raining. I'll just invite friends over for pizza and we can watch a movie." But that doesn't exactly fly when dwelling in a home that's not your own. Choices are go out or stay in. I occasionally get stuck in that freshman-year-of-college mindset where I feel like a total loser if I stay in on a Friday night (though let's be real, the duties of an au pair leave me freedom to go out and make whatever poor choices I want on any night of the week), and for the first few months I was afraid my family would judge me if I stayed in too much and think I was depressed or a hermit or something like that. I do make an effort to go out two or three times a week at least, but when your monthly income leaves you about 50 euros a week to spend (and in an expensive city like Munich, one night of dinner and beer can suck most of that down), it is prudent to choose those nights wisely.
      Another duty of an au pair is lots of babysitting. And though I know I should be a typical party girl and moan and complain about having to stay in, babysitting is wonderful. It's the perfect excuse to stay in, cook a nice meal (which I rarely do when the family's home), drink a glass of wine, watch a TV show...I think I'm getting old.


A few choice quotes from this week:

Cliona: "Boys! Boys are silly! Die Jungs sind nicht lieb. Sie sind BÖSE!"(Those boys are not good. They are BAD BOYS!)

"You a silly girl!"

"You make a pups! You do! I put my kopf on your belly and they give noises!"

German Babytalk Potty-Related Words (for your personal edification):

pups (pronounced poops)=toot
kaka=poop
pipi=pee. Also refers to both boy and girl private parts

Kilian was being a total brat the other day when he got home from his friends and got mad at me when I refused to make him what he requested for dinner. (I'm not a maid. What's for dinner is what's for dinner. I don't take requests.) So he stuck out his tongue and stormed upstairs and slammed his door. Cliona looks slyly at me and says, "Kilian is rude. He is (whispered) blöd!!!" (means stupid, but is a verboten word for children to say!)

     Cliona's also had a rough week coming home; I think she's maybe just not adjusted to the time change yet or something. A couple days this week she cried most of the way home, interspersed by "I not crying!!" "Yes you are!" "I not!"(all the while sobbing, of course). One day her point of anger was that she wanted to go into people's yards and pick the flowers and Meanie Laura wouldn't let her. Oy.
 
     Sadly the weather's been rather cold and rainy this week (with threatened SNOW on Easter! What happened to my springtime?), but we got in some good park time last week and a couple days this week.  I wish the kids were a tad older when it comes to park-playing, because then I could sit and read the whole time (wishful thinking), but Cliona still needs pushing on the swings every now and then and stuff like that. She's also too young to have mastered the knack of finding kids to play with, so she sort of just stands there mournfully watching the other little girls play. She does love running down the hill, preferably with me (though if I refuse, she insists I watch and laugh. Literally. "Und lachen! Ok? Ok?") and spinning in a circle (which terrifies me, as her idea of spinning is my spinning her by the arms, and I have visions every time of dislocated shoulders, though so far so good). There's also a slide at her favorite park which I consider to be a death trap for three-year-olds. It's just two metal poles in the shape of a slide, and the idea is you hook a leg and an arm over each pole and slide down like that. Watching Cliona lurch down by herself is almost heart-stoppingly terrifying, and I wait every second for her to lose control and fall on her head and break her neck, so I've forbidden her to go down without me standing under her. I don't know what the people who designed the playground were thinking. Not to be an overly litigious American, but man, put something like that on a jungle gym in the states and there would be lawsuits flying!

     Speaking German handicaps my personality. In English, I consider myself a fairly well-spoken, eloquent person, and my natural personality shines through fairly easily. Yes, you can interpret that as you wish, based on your knowledge of my personality. I'm snarky and sarcastic and somewhat of a class clown. But oh, not in German. In German, I'm well-mannered, reticent, quiet, hesitant to express my opinion. And sometimes I resent it. When the mean older woman who sits next to me in choir tells me (wrongly) that I messed up a note, I would very much like to have a swift witty retort involving the five places she screwed up most recently (true story. Do not even get me started on that woman). But I don't. My German is good, but not good enough for snarky, quick, under-the-breath-during-a-rehearsal comments. I can't make jokes, I can't give clever answers. Or I could, if everyone would patiently wait fifteen seconds between every line of a conversation. But that's not how things work.

       I am so incredibly lucky to somehow have chanced upon a family to own even more books than my own family. Like, seriously. This house is a freaking library. Terrified at the thought of heading overseas for a year without my beloved books, I packed as many as the leftover weight in my suitcase would allow, but lo and behold, I got to take most of them back home with me in November because my family has them! I've really excelled during this rather boring week and have read about...8 books in the last three days. Doing pretty well, I'd say. I'm currently having a lot of fun reading lots and lots of Ian McEwan, as well as any Holocaust/Cold War novels I can get my hands on. There are also shelves and shelves (and more shelves) of travel books, including two in my room. When I'm really feeling apathetic, I can perch on the edge of my bed and decide what looks like fun. Nepal? Croatia? Myanmar? New Zealand? Californi--wait, been there.  I'm also still slogging through Harry Potter und der Kammer des Schreckens (Chamber of Secrets), in an effort to hone my German reading skills. You will be disappointed to hear than He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's middle name is different in the German version. As are characters like Hermine, Magda (Marge), and Myrte (Myrtle). Oh, Harry Potter. I love you in any language. Sighhhh...

    My neighborhood is quite nice, though certainly nothing out of the ordinary. What is lovely, however, are the street names! I love in a clump of philosopher streets: Agrippa, Erasmus, Hegel, Schopenhauer. Nearby come the fairy tale streets: Elfen, Froschkönig, Schneewittchen, Dornröschen, Frau-Holle, Erlkönig, Rotkäppchen (those being Elf St., Frog Prince St., Snow White St., Sleeping Beauty St., Frau Holle St. (not a super common one, but Brothers Grimm), Erl King St., and Red Riding Hood Place). Over towards the next little suburb are the Wagnerian streets: Brünnhilden, Walküren, Wotan, Siegfried, Rheingold, Nibelungen. It makes my walks quite picturesque! And yes, I have carefully crafted my trek to my language course to go down Erlkönigstr. Obviously.

     Speaking of picturesque things, let me tell you about my new favorite Bavarian thing. Easter trees! A tradition I will certainly be adding to my ever-growing list of things to bring back to the states. Holiday decorations here are not inside the houses, nor are they endless strings of lights. They're trees! People decorate their trees! At Christmas people hung ornaments on the trees in their front yards, and now that Easter is swiftly approaching it's even cuter!
     Also, I've never lived somewhere where spring actually matters before. It's sort of exciting. In California, we vaguely notice it's somewhere around March 21, mutter, "Oh hey, it's probably spring now or something," and continue our sunbathing. But here, when the trees finally start shaking off the dead leaves (I thought those were supposed to come off in fall? Apparently not) and begin to show some green, it's cause for celebration. Lying in the sun last week in 65 degree weather practically gave me heatstroke. It was amazing. People are perpetually eating ice cream to celebrate the weather change, and the parks and public areas are packed. I think the day the weather got nice, everyone ran to the market and bought spring flowers, because pretty much every yard is boasting brightly colored tulips and daffodils to celebrate the change of the season.

Okay, this one's from a website, but it IS in Germany. Someday this will be my tree. OH my goodness.

Pretty trees outside the kindergarten!

Some brief comments on general German weirdness:
     Eggs are sold in tens. As are basically everything. The metric system invades the supermarket too.  You can buy black beans at two places in the whole of Munich. American-style food is everywhere, but never the stuff you'd expect. Most common: American marshmallows, American crunchy peanut butter, American sandwich bread.  Also, the supermarket sells pre-hardboiled, pre-painted eggs. Year-round. Where's the fun in that?
     Dogs are not (or rarely) neutered. I'm still taken aback when I see a cute dog hopping about in the U-Bahn, with his...well, you can imagine the picture, I'm sure.
     Getting bags at the market is so not done. You bring your own basket. Obviously.
     It doesn't matter if the sun's out and it's 65 degrees, if it's still early April, you wear a heavy jacket and closed-toed shoes. I get a lot of funny looks.
     Germans almost never pay with a credit card. Whereas in the US, I probably use a debit/credit card for the vast majority of my purchases, here I never have. People carry cash. That's just what they do. It helps that tax is included in prices of food, so if you go to a restaurant and get a 6 euro entree and a 2 euro cappuccino, your bill will be 8 euros. Every time. It makes it really easy. Also, the idea of a tip here is quite simple: forget that 15% crap, just round to the nearest whole number. Your total is 9,42? Give them 10. Done and done.
     Maybe this is just because I live in a relatively secluded area, but I don't really get the whole blackout shades thing. Our house has, on nearly every window that isn't surrounded by a hedge, a blackout shade that blocks out all outside light. Helps the kids get to sleep, of course, but the idea of blocking out all the outside if weird to me. I mean, on your bedroom window, sure, but who was planning on dancing naked on their balcony anyway?
     At least in my family, kids don't drink milk. Or water. They drink juice. With every meal. I can hear my dentist cringing from here. It still seems weird to me. Granted, they generally drink half-juice, half-water, but still! So much unnecessary sugar!

Moving on:
    I try, for the sake of the purity of this blog as a foreign-adventures blog and not a personal-ranting one, to keep my personal political opinions out of my entries, so I share this purely as a fascinating piece of foreign view of America.
    So you know that whole America's-been-having-a-little-trouble-lately thing? I don't know if Americans think it's that big of a deal. But here overseas, it's not thought of as a big deal, it's an established fact. My evidence: here are some of the top-selling political books right now in German bookstores.

• Amerikas Letzte Chance: Warum sich die Weltmacht neu erfinden muss
        America's Last Chance: Why the World Power needs to reinvent themselves
  
• Der Amerikanische Patient: Was der drohende Kollaps der USA für die Welt bedeutet
        The American Patient: What the imminent collapse of the USA means for the world
  
• Was ist mit den Amis los?: Warum sie an Barack Obama hassen, was wir lieben
         What is wrong with the Americans?: Why they hate about Barack Obama what we love
  
• Tea Party: Die weiße Wut: Was Amerikas Neue Rechte so gefährlich macht
          Tea Party: The White Wrath: What American's New Right is so dangerous

It was really sort of a shock to me that Europe (or at least Germany) takes it so for granted that the US is going down the toilet. Are people in the states aware that this is the way the rest of the world is looking at them? 

    Anyway, that's probably about it for this blog entry. My ride to Vienna leaves Munich in...9 hours, which means in that time I need to pack, shower, eat, get to where my ride leaves from (an hour away), and, you know...sleep. Happy weekend to everyone, and frohe Ostern!

Pretty girl painting