Boozin' with the post-modernists

Ok. I know, I'm late. You probably sat down Sunday morning/afternoon with a cuppa joe to see what those wacky expats were up to. And nothing. Not a word.

Sorry.

But, here's the scoop, quickly because David is waiting to use the phone, which doubles as the internet - like back in the day. Only now it's the internet that doubles as a phone. Semantics aside, we met our friends (Melonie, Jens and Michael - see earlier post) for a few beers on Friday. We met at 9pm and when we finally stumbled home it was half past 4 and the sun was coming up. Good lord. It was Misawa-style. Although, this little fest was capped at a Turkish "pida" place where a husband and wife were freshly rolling out these phat little oblong pizzas that were loaded with spinach, feta and an egg and then baked in an oven. I'm telling you, that was the best meal I've had in Germany. And the food is generally darned good here - so that says a lot.

Saturday we didn't get up to much in the day. But in the evening we took a stroll through something called the "Dom" (pronounced Dome). It's like a carnival on steroids. This thing spanned acres and acres - there must have been a hundred different wurst vendors. We enjoyed a hearty dose of pommes frites. Although, I have to tell you, Germans have a nasty habit of serving this weird ketchup. It's like some kind of liquidy goo that vaguely resembles ketchup thinned with water and then re-thickened with corn starch. So it is sort of red and translucent. The really ick thing is that it just tastes like curry. I've got a pretty tolerant palette, but this viscous ketchup-wannabe isn't doing it.

I also had a "waffeln" covered with whipped cream (no sugar) and cherries. Now, that, my friends, was devine! Anyway, the Dom had so many rides and full sized roller coasters, it put Knoebels to shame. I kid you not - and the whole thing is open for just a couple of weeks. It was really remarkable.

We ended the weekend with Sunday dinner. Melonie, Jens, Michael and his girlfriend, Sabine (Suh-bean-uh) came over and we had a huge pot of tomato soup and bread and chocolate cake and fruit with yoghurt. Whoa, momma. It rained all day but the hot soup was just the trick. And it's nice to make friends - really cool friends. It took us nearly two years to meet people in Illinois. (I know, did we stink, or something?) So, this is record friend-making. And it's nice.

Language class is dragging us both into an abyss from which I'm not sure we'll ever recover. I was thinking today, we just defended our dissertations two months ago (in record time, mind you), moved to a new country, started a new job. And now we both sit in a class for 8 hours a week. I'm just not fit to sit in a class anymore. I can't. But, we have 4.5 weeks left. So, I go. David keeps threatening to drop the class. I hope not - then it would suck more.

I still love Hamburg, but I don't like German.

Special Foto Issue

So! I have been getting (increasingly urgent) demands for pictures of our life here so far. To appease my modest readership, I am doing a special photo edition of "Germany or Bust." I hope you enjoy!

These are a few photos of our crazy Ikea bed.







And some of downtown Hamburg:

The train station -


The Rathaus (city hall) -




Look closely for the guy in a thong (and I don't mean flip-flops) -



A couple of photos from the Alster Lake in the city center -



Ok, this one deserves a little story. So, the red light district in Hamburg, known as the Reeperbahn, has a street that is forbidden to women. Guess what it's called? David Strasse. This street is supposedly where the kinkiest of activities go on and where hookers are to be acquired. Ironic? I don't know.



Another downtown shot -


And the Fischmarkt (Fish Market):

The nut that throws bananas -


And the nuts that throw plants. Check out the mustache on the little guy!




I got a sweet ficus from those kooks. Although, I need a rake to clean up after it, so I'm not sure who made out.

The apartment building across from ours -



The harbor -



David on the train (on the way to Harley Days). That ain't Pepsi, baby.



Harley Days!





Sausage, anyone?



Ah, yes. And tonight we have a lovely bubbly to pair with your sausage -



And this little number is composed of spare bike parts. Pretty impressive, I'd say. Bordering on tacky, but still kind of cool.



10 year anniversary weekend -

Wismar (beautiful old town on the Baltic Sea)



A church from 1200-ish





Grass roofed house on the beach -



Our happy little beach dinner -



A 25 euro bottle of wine -



More beachy stuff -




Can you see Stella?



Ratzeburg - a really beautiful old town 1 hour east of HH. This is right on the border of the former GDR. There were watch towers on the hill (I assume to shoot defectors).


A stone lion in the cemetary -


A church from 1100 -







And, this weekend we spent an evening on the Elbe Beach in Hamburg. The big river that runs to the North Sea is the Elbe. It has a huge harbor (nearly entirely destroyed during the war). And there are some fun beaches. One of which we inhabited on Saturday night. It is so cool to watch all of the big ships come in and out. The channel is so narrow that tug boats have to guide these ships in and out of the port. We saw ships from China, Panama, Argentina and Japan. How's that for globalization? Interesting, too, is that the ship crews speak English with the port authority.

David with some folks that we met on Saturday. Michael (not pictured here), a friend from work, was the organizing force behind this little grill party.



Big ships -







Sunset and an industrial, but still beautiful, port view:






There you have it. Just a little slice of life in Hamburg. I'll keep posting photos regularly. If the apartment wasn't such a wreck right now, I'd show you a couple of those photos, too. Be that as it may, I don't want to embarrass myself.

As an aside, David received his copy of Harry Potter yesterday. So, you can imagine what he is doing now. Wow, life after grad school is so nice.

Ah, one last thing. We had pancake breakfast today!!! I finally figured out in what sort of packaging baking powder comes and I got the right flour. Flour is a tricky business in Germany. There are finer and coarser flours, depending on your needs and they are listed by number - Weizenmehl 550, for example. I tried "Instant Mehl 400" a couple of weeks ago. Blech! It was like concrete. But today, my friends, we had a full on American breakfast with maple syrup and everything. Check this business out:

Sprachen Deutsche, the BIG Ten-Oh, Harley Days and the Beach

So, jeez, where shall I begin? Quite a week we've had, I should say. We started German lessons: (question) Wie geht es Ihnen? (response) Gut, danke. Unt Ihnen? See? It's going well. David hates it and our teacher is like an enthusiastic kindergarten teacher. Did you know, kindergarten is a German word? Nice, huh? I have learned two very important phrases this week. 1) Entschuldigen (excuse me) 2) Sie haben? (do you have?). They are infinitely handy and have gotten me out of considerable jams, so far. I have also found that since we are white, we can spit out a phrase our two and people just sort of assume we are either German or at least European - at least they don't immediately identify us as dirty Americans. Anyway, the class is a real time-sink (3 x week for 2.5 hrs a class). It's kind of screwing up our social mo-jo, but it's never going to get more convenient than now. And the organization is paying. So! We go.



What else? David and I celebrated our ten year anniversary. Huh, you say? 10 years? Is that possible? Yes, apparently so. We have been happily hitched a decade and now find ourselves on a third continent. To celebrate, we had a nice dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant, which, subsequently, we discovered in this cool area full of ethnic veggie places. We then bought a crazy expensive bottle of wine (at least for us - $30) and had a beer in the biergarten in the park. It was really great. Have I mentioned that I love Hamburg? The wine, we saved for the weekend. This nearly leads me to my next point. But first we should talk about Harley Days.



There is an annual Harley Davidson festival in Hamburg, where thousands of German Harley riders, aficionados, poseurs and folks in general come out and admire a fleet of bikes, not all (but nearly all) Harley Davidson. It's funny, for such an American event, there is always the German flair - beer everywhere and sausage galore. We listened to live music, drank beer and watched a German rock-a-billy band speak in German and sing in perfect English. Very weird and kind of cool.



For our anniversary and just to get out, we rented a car and took a drive to the coast and other towns. It was really great. We set out Saturday morning and took a drive to this old-ass town - Wismar. See, the thing about Hamburg is that it was 50% leveled during the war (80% destroyed on the port), so the historical part of Hamburg is not so impressive. But, Wismar is doubly cool. It has really old shit - I'm talking 800 years old, all over the place. And it is in the area that was formerly communist East Germany, or as the locals call it, GDR (maybe, German Democratic Republic?). Anyway, the town was stunning, really. And we camped out on the beach nearby. It was really great. The water was cold but it was beautiful. We soaked up the sun, drank our pricey wine with bread, olive and cheese (I know, how pathetically European is that?) and enjoyed the outdoors. It's been raining pretty much non-stop since we got here and the weather granted us a short break this weekend, which we thoroughly enjoyed.



Today we headed back to HH (that's local for Hamburg - it's a city and a state, hence the doppel H). We rented our car from this discount place that requires you to clean the car and it was due back between 6 and 7. We left our apartment around 5:30 to vacuum and remove all the Stella-hair, but we caught a snag. Again, funny German-ness. Vacuums at the gas station are often closed on Sunday. The automatic ones. The ones that don't require any type of supervision - you just put in a coin and whoosh. Those very vacuums may (seemingly at random) not operate on Sunday, for reasons unbeknownst to me. The girl in the gas station by our apartment was very puzzled by our inquiry for change so that we could use the vacuum. She said, "oh, no. The vacuum is closed." Whatever. So, we drove all over (not a small feat in the city with not a single pair of parallel or perpendicular roads to be had) to find an open gas station. We pulled in to a promising station, got change and were vacuuming for about 5 minutes, when the employee asked us to leave since they were closing. At 6pm. Ugh. I could go for a nice dose of capitalism once in a while. Oh, well. The trade off is that I and everyone else who lives in Germany (except the gas station attendants until 6pm) are forced to take Sunday off and enjoy life in the park or something. Weird concept, huh?

On a tangentially related note. David has noted a number of times that he is impressed by the quality of both the food and the women in Germany. I understand (sort of) both of these observations. You can get a 1 euro frozen pizza at Aldi that will just about knock your socks off. And bread everywhere, including the grocery store, is excellent. The women, too, are impressive. Particularly the older ladies. They all look like aerobics instructors. I don't know if its the bike riding or the high quality food, but these women have got it going on.

Work party and other stuff

So, we’ve successfully managed our first month in Germany. Albeit with no internet (blah!). This is largely due to our complete and total lack of German language skills. Apparently, a letter arrived some days before the 25th (the original day we were supposed to get DSL) that indicated we should be home so that Deutsche Telekom could do some magic that would allow the internet to flow. You know where this is going right? We came home to a nasty-gram from said Deutsche Telekom indicating that we missed our scheduled appointment. I am slightly dubious and here’s why. While I cannot at all read German (other than a few very select words not likely to be found in a notice from the communication company), I am completely proficient at reading dates and times. Further, I looked through all the letters that our internet provider sent and not a one even listed a date or a time. I feel that I’ve built a compelling case; however, it doesn’t change the fact that we’ll be 5 weeks in Germany with no decent connection to the U.S. So, we are rescheduled for the 11th at an undetermined time.

Other exciting events – as I mentioned we got our bikes and during breaks in the rain we’ve managed to ride them to work a few times. Collectively, David and I have only gotten lost 2 times. Not bad, huh? It takes 30 minutes by train or 30 minutes by bike to get to work. It’s nice to have options.

We had our semi-annual company celebration on Thursday. The event began with a guided tour of the zoo. Yes, that’s right. The zoo. Eighty of us, or so, took the U-Bahn across town to the Hagenbeck’s Tierpark where we learned about this character (Hagenback) that basically ransacked countries for their animals and cultural artifacts, which he subsequently installed in his zoo. It was a nice fieldtrip. I liked the elephants and I think David really dug the orangutans. This leads to a funny little anecdote. We are discovering in the course of our time here that a foreigner must endeavor to pronounce German words painstakingly. Otherwise, the German people will have no clue (none whatsoever) what you are saying. Case in point – orangutan. They pronounce it o-rang-u-tan (accent on the letters in bold). We (Americans) say it o-rang-u-tang. Our colleagues were at a loss regarding what exotic creature we could possibly be referring to. After much pantomime and describing these orange monkeys did we get our point across. A friend thinks it’s because not many people besides Germans actually speak the language and therefore, Germans aren’t really used to hearing these words with any kind of an accent. I don’t know, but it’s vital that I practice going “hhhhcccchhhh” in the back of my throat, as it appears to be in nearly every German word.

Our celebration ended with dinner at an American restaurant, which David thought was hilarious. We were pretty impressed, though. It was at pretty good attempt at southern cuisine with a German twist – this means lot’s of sausage, even veggie sausage. AND!!! There was an open bar. Have you ever heard of such a thing? Wine and beer were covered for about three hours. I don’t think much got done on Friday. But it was fun.

So, we start German lessons tomorrow. Three days a week for 2.5 hours at a whack. I feel like I am going back to school. David isn’t at all excited. There isn’t an enormous motivation when nearly everyone speaks really good English. It’s funny, when you ask someone if they speak German, they invariably reply “A little.” You can safely interpret that as they are completely fluent and are qualified to read philosophy in English.

On a totally different subject, we have a German friend who is a professor at Bielefeld University. We know him because he was a visiting scholar this spring at Illinois. His name is Fabian and he is a really super guy. Anyway, he came up this weekend on partly business and partly to hang out. It was a lot of fun and he introduced us to a very cool couple, who are politically active in the community and just really genuine people. Melonie is just finishing her Ph.D. in feminine studies and Jentz.is involved in film and he boxes in his spare time. I think I’m going to try boxing. David is worried that I’m going to lose brain cells or have brain damaged. I don’t know, but I think it would be fun for a bit. We’ll see how it goes.

Our stuff and the American club

Our stuff came from the U.S. on Thursday. All of it. Intact. Weird, huh? Only 5 weeks from Champaign, to Chicago, to New York, across the ocean to Bremen, Germany to our apartment. Seriously. After all the crazy stories and not so much as a plate was broken. And all of our commemorative bathtub coffee cups arrived unscathed. Plus we have our bikes. I feel like a proper German buzzing around town in heels on a bike - it's great. No one wears helmets, though. I gotta tell you, that's just nuts. Even with bike paths, pedestrians could seriously cause damage to you and your property if they don't get out of the way. And neither of us has a bell yet. So I just go "brrrring-brrring." People look at me like I'm nuts, but they get the point.

I've also noticed a curious phenomenon in this country. If you obey the rules (mostly traffic rules - at least so far), people are very resepectful. Pedestrians largely get out of the way, cars give you enough space, and people actually look before they pull out into the intersection. Again, weird. BUT! If you try and cross the street while the sign-hand is red or if you stop your bike at the light and your tires are not within the confines of the clearly marked bike path, look out. All bets are off and it is open season on you and your apparent stupidity. Fair enough, I guess. As long as we understand the rules.

We went to a pre- 4th of July picnic this weekend hosted by the Hamburg American club. Funny thing about the Hamburg American club. It's members are majority German. I'm not really sure why. One of the board members of the club (a rare American) said they are trying to recruit more Americans, preferably younger. Whatever. All I know is that these cats are hoity business types who must know what to do with expat money: how to keep it from the peering eyes of the IRS and how to take advantage of a weak dollar. David is committed to occassionally fraternizing with these people. They had Michael Chertoff at a recent event. Given this, I'm not really sure how long David will want to suffer their company.

Quickly back to the picnic - there was no beer. Huh? Hotdogs, check. Cans of Jack and Coke, check. Mounds and mounds of potato salad, check. Wine, che...See these are the little differences you notice in Germany. No beer, but they had wine. Decent wine. And the kids and the dogs were well behaved. I guess I can get used to this.

Finally, we went to see the U of Hamburg symphony on Sunday. It was great. The building was old and beautiful and we knew one of the violinists. I'm no fan of symphony, but really. How can you beat the symphony in a grand old hall in Hamburg?

Furniture update: we've added houseplants. Lots of houseplants. We went to the fish market and bought a box of plants from the crazy Hollander and his friend with the big moustache (see earlier post). It was a riot - David and I hauling home a 4 foot ficus and 6 other big plants in a cardboard box on the train. We made it and the whole deal only cost 30 euro. For a ficus! Woohoo. We are planning to decorate the ficus for Christmas. I just hope Stella doesn't pee on it. She is a liberated woman lately who has taken to lifting her leg to pee on anything and everything out of doors, for now. I blame Louie.