A few days ago I added it up, and as of Thursday I have been here for 20 weeks, with only 12 more to go. That's absolutely unbelievable. The time has gone so fast, but yet it seems like it was a lifetime ago that I arrived in the Frankfurt Airport, bags in hand, or since that first night that I met my host family. As I write this I am looking out my bedroom window at a scene that has grown so familiar to me; the large, muddy football field cut out of the side of a verdant mountain, the mountain traversed by a steep walking path, roughly separating the forest and a wide green field sprinkled with bright golden ginster. Right now I see my host father descending the hill with the two dogs, casting long, shadows on the green background in the setting sun.
I am keenly aware that my time here is short, and I must savour every minute of my experience here, because who knows when or if I will ever see these places again? The awe-inspiring cathedrals, the mighty castles, the dark, mysterious forests, the tragic and profound sense of history everywhere. I suppose this is why photography has become so important to me here. Speaking of which, if you haven't had a chance to look at the two new albums I uploaded to Facebook a couple of days ago, I encourage you to do so. I still have hundreds of other photos which I intend to scan and upload someday, but the ones that I just posted are from the most recent films I had developed, as I was finally smart enough to request the photos to be put on cd.
As before, I have roughly cut up my letter into the following sections:
-FLUENCY
-MOVIES
-ANCIENT HISTORY
-KONTRAST
-FIREWALKING
-MORE STUPIDITY
-KONKLUSION
FLUENCY
So anyhow, I suppose I should let you know some of the things I've been up to. Well for one thing I have been taking a few German courses in preparation for a German fluency test in a few weeks. It is more difficult than I expected, as basics are one thing, but real fluency is something else entirely. To give you an idea, the average native english speaker has a comprehension of between 15000 - 20000 word families. If a non-native speaker were to learn 10 new words per day, it would take over 4 years just to reach the bottom of that range. In any case someone showed me this video the other day, and I quite enjoyed it: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?
MOVIES
Speaking of learning German, I went to see the new Indiana Jones movie the other day. I'm not sure if it's just because I was watching in a foreign language, or if the movie industry is really struggling for some fresh ideas, but everything looked exceptionally dumb. I sat through the previews and it all looked like total crap; I couldn't believe it. It's like the goal is to pump out as much flashy, meaningless garbage as possible. Then there was the feature film, which was pretty good–just on account of being Indiana Jones–but suddenly, out of nowhere, it turned out the movie was about aliens. In an Indiana Jones movie. WTF? In any case, the seats were surprisingly comfortable, so that sort of made up for it.
ANCIENT HISTORY
Anyway, enough complaining, my mother visited last week. We travelled around this area some, picked out a cuckoo clock, and then we rented a car and went north, to the little town my great grandfather came from. (As a side note, the German Autobahn is at least as much fun as you would expect, though unfortunately our little VW Polo was only capable of reaching 190kph, and just barely. My host father's BMW goes significantly faster.) We arrived rather late at night, and found only one little hotel still open, which turned out to be one of the nicest hotel/restaurant experiences I've had. We set out early the next morning in search of records and information in the town hall and local graveyards, with moderate success. We found some more ancestors, the house where my great grandfather was born, and a few other things.
In the mid afternoon I suggested we take a look in the local history museum. There was an old lady volunteering at the ticket desk, and when we had completed our tour, I decided to ask her if she knew the name "Karl Weyrich", or the man who had left for Canada in 1929. "Karl Joseph Weyrich?" she asked, "the carpenter?" As it turns out, not only did she know him, but her father was actually the man who had trained him, and they had stayed in contact up until my great grandfather's death in 1976. She had photos, scrap books, letters, and her own personal memories. What's more; by sheer coincidence, the other woman volunteering that day happened to be a reporter for the local newspaper. To make a short story shorter, we were featured on the front page last week, and I have attached the article for those of you who speak German. For those who don't, I'll probably translate it sometime soon (as practice for my fluency test, mentioned above), and maybe post it on Facebook.
The rest of the trip was not quite as eventful, but still quite enjoyable. We also made it to Burg Hohenzollern (a castle), Rothenburg ob der Tauber (a fortified medieval town), and several other places you probably also don't know. I recommend having a look at my new photo albums, if you're interested.
KONTRAST
I have heard it said that Germany is a land of contrast. That's probably quite a good description. A couple of months ago I went with my host family to a well-known local restaurant, more renowned for its breath-taking mountaintop view than anything else. As soon as we entered the restaurant we were welcomed by the grimaces of two rather unpleasant people whom we quickly realized were the owners. After receiving reluctant answers to our questions about what was on the menu, we were shown to our seats amongst other tables packed full of cross-country skiers and the like. We ordered (I taking the daily special of ox-tongue salad), and waited for our meals while taking in the majestic scene of snow-capped Black Forest mountains stretching out to the horizon under failing sunlight.
After a few minutes, a table with a better view opened up, and being loathe to waste such an opportunity, we quickly switched places. The woman who had been waiting on us noticed this, came over to our new table and in no uncertain terms informed us that we could not move because our bill had already been put on the other table. We realized this was quite dumb, and protested until she finally conceded. What seemed like a couple of days later, our food arrived. As I had a cold at the time and needed to blow my nose, I asked for a couple of extra napkins. Rather than the expected response of, "Sure, right away!" she asked what I wanted them for. What the hell? Anyway, she quickly realized she was being a douche bag and brought me my napkins.
The ox salad, by the way, was sort of surreal. The texture was suprisingly like munching on your own tongue, but the flavour was mostly of vinegar. In any case, I figured it needed some more pepper, so risking another casualty in what had already become a complete train-wreck of customer service, I caught the waitress's attention and requested some. No problem! She didn't so much as bat an eye! But a customer at another table who had been waiting for a glass of wine possibly since mid-November realized it was futile, and just gave us the pepper off her table. When all was said and done, I think the waitress got a 20 cent tip on our meal for five people.
Then this morning I was biking to work, when partway through my trip my wallet was becoming uncomfortable, so I stopped to take it out of my pocket. The trouble is that I was suffering from a case of acute transient retardation at the time, and instead of putting it in my bookbag, I just dropped it on the ground and biked away. When I got to work, I had to swipe my timecard to clock in, and I couldn't seem to find my wallet. I quickly realized what had happened, and a co-worker saw my trouble and offered to give me a hand (actually it was Antonio, my Italian friend who just got married. Again, I direct you to my photo albums.)
We set out along the path I biked, in case I had lost it somewhere along the way. When we finally got to the place where I had taken it out of my pocket, it wasn't there! Scheisse. Not only did it have all of my identification, credit and bank cards, but it certainly did not have my German address or anything else that I thought would help a German find me. As a last resort we asked a farmer who was nearby cutting his grass (with a scythe). He said no, he hadn't, but at that moment his wife came to the window of their house, and knew exactly what we were looking for! Apparently she had seen my work card and my student card and telephoned both my company and the local university to try to find me. I thanked her quite sincerely, and I think I will get her some flowers or chocolate to show my appreciation. She certainly could have kept the wallet and all the money inside, and I thought it was damnably decent of her to have tried to find me like she did. Word travelled fast, and when I returned to work, everyone asked if I had gotten my wallet back.
Wow, I'm not really sure what the point of those stories was. Well, maybe they help to illustrate the vast differences in personal character of two people living so closely together, the waitress with the bad attitude, for whom every little service to other people was a great pain and struggle, and the farmer's wife who forsook personal gain and tried to help me just for the sake of being a good person.
FIREWALKING
Speaking of pain and struggle, the Germans seem to love real charcoal fires. Almost every weekend we've been having outdoor barbeques with delicious steak (and occasionally breaded Gouda) cooked on a grill raised over a pan of hot coals. I don't know if any of you have ever tried to light a charcoal fire, but if you do it naturally, it's typically an hour-long ordeal, and at least in Germany requires a fair quantity of beer. But some hungry German came up with a better idea; a little metal chimney that uses natural convection to evenly heat coals to operating temperature in a quarter the usual time. Now lighting a barbeque requires only fifteen minutes... but still the same amount of beer. So one day after we had finished barbequeing, my host father said, "Hey, how would you like to walk across some hot coals?"
Being the type of guy that I am, I responded with something to the effect of "Hells yeah!" and we emptied the red-hot coals out on the ground.
"Should we take one step in the coals or two?"
"Definitely two."
So we spread them out over a length of about 2 meters, and before the rest of the family could finish telling us how stupid we were, I was already across in my bare feet.
I'll be honest, it actually hurt more than I expected. But only because the coals tended to stick to the tender skin on the arches of my feet. Anyway, it didn't hurt that much, and there was cool earth all around, so seeing the whole situation as a bit of a rare opportunity, we decided to go across again. Faster.
After this second trip, I just kept on running straight into the little pond at the end of the garden to cool my poor feet. Wearing socks or shoes was a little uncomfortable for the next day or so, but it was definitely worth it.
One of my host sisters actually captured this adventure on her camera, so if I ever get the photos from her, I'll put them in one of my albums for your viewing pleasure.
MORE STUPIDITY
So on the topic of stupidity; last night, after I wrote that part above about losing my wallet, I was on my way home from work, again by bike. It was pouring rain, and I was only wearing a golf shirt and some dress pants, and wet sand was spinning off my tires into my eyes. Finally I got to the bottom of the mountain, and I just had one little path to go before I was home. Usually I walk up it, because it is quite steep, and it is separated from the road by a curb, but that day I thought I would be clever by conserving my momentum, and just ride up as far as I could. There was a little section of the curb that was lower, to allow cars to drive over it, and I had actually ridden over it once before. This time, however, I was going much faster, and it was wet, and I made the additional clever move of approaching it at an oblique angle. So indeed, I made it over the curb, but my bike didn't. It spun out from under me into the narrow street, and I landed pretty much directly on my head, tumbled head-over-heels against a building and somehow ended up back on my feet, ready to go again. Thankfully I was wearing my helmet at the time, so I really only ended up with a scraped-up arm. But the worst part is that when I got up and looked around, there was absolutely no one else around, which is a bit of a shame, as I'm sure it looked hilarious.
KONKLUSION
So those are some of the interesting things that happened to me here in the Fatherland, I hope it wasn't too painfully boring to read. As I will probably have at least a couple of more of these mass (spam) mails to send out before I am done, if there is anyone else you know that would like to hear about my tales of glory, let me know and I will add them to my list. And as always, I am quite interested to hear what is going on back home and in the various other places that you might be right now, so if you have some time, send me back a message and let me know how things are going for you.
Sincerely,
Greg
P.S. The Canadian Space Agency just put out a call for new astronauts last month <http://www.space.gc.ca/asc/
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