RIP

This blog is dead.

You may have noticed that already, but now it's official.

Since I'm moving back to the states tomorrow, I'm pulling the plug. Or whatever you do to a dead blog.

It was great sharing my experiences with you all. I hope they amused you a little.

Thanks for reading!

Luke

P.S. I already miss you, Berlin!

Berlin, Paris, London, Stockholm

What a month!

Here are the pictures from the month so far. Stay tuned for pics from Prague!



You can also see them all at once and comment on them by going to my Picasa gallery.

Androgynously Anime

I hated the old H&M ads featuring a very creepy Vincent Gallo ogling women.



But I love the new ones featuring German emo boy band Tokio Hotel.

Nose Holes and Chest Warts

Here's a quote from a funny post about the often painful literalism of the German language. It's from the entertaining but seemingly defunct "Nothing for Ungood" (a blog whose title is taken from the German version of the phrase 'no offense', i.e., Nichts für ungut):

"Maybe because of the change of weather or due to the stress of learning to live in a different culture you develop a cold sore. Instead of stopping by home to grab your German-English dictionary to look up the new term, just stop and think about what your condition is. Lip herpes. Lippenherpes. While you’re at the pharmacy you may want to pick up something for your sinuses. Don’t know the word for sinuses? That’s ok. They are kind of like caves near your nose. Nasennebenhöhlen. No problem."

Pictures from May!

Kegeln

Kegeln is bowling with a few differences.

First, everything's smaller: You can cradle a ball in one hand, the pins are miniature and the lanes are about a foot wide.

Second, the pins are on strings, like marionettes. After you knock them down, a machine pulls the strings taut so that the pins stand up straight again.



Third, there are only nine pins and they are arranged in a diamond shape, making it impossible (for me) to get a strike.

One thing that is the same, however, is that I suck at both.

I was disappointed that neither the Germans, nor the French, nor the Italians seem to have a special name for the Bulls eye. The Germans have redeemed themselves, however, with their term for rolling a gutter ball, which, according to my friend Tobias, is known as Pudel werfen, that is, "throwing a Poodle".

Google's German Stereotypes

I just received the following funny and revealing email from my sister, Rachel:

"I typed "Why are Germans " into Google and here are the suggestions they offered about how to complete my question:
Why are Germans...
1.Why are Germans called huns
2. Why are Germans rude
3. Why are Germans so smart
4.Why are Germans called jerrys
5. Why are Germans so efficient
6. Why are Germans so tall
7. Why are Germans called Krauts
8 Why are Germans so hot
9. Why are Germans called hun?
10 Why are Germans evil?
Interesting questions.
-R"

Interesting questions, indeed! Thanks for the message, Rachel!

Never Too Jaded

You know how sometimes you drop something round, like a coin or a bottle cap, and it spins like a top, spinning, spinning, spinning for what seems like a ridiculously long time?

When that happens to me, I go crazy. I shout at the object, "ENOUGH ALREADY! WE KNOW! YOU FELL ON THE FLOOR! WHAT ELSE DO YOU WANT FROM US?! STOP SPINNING ALREADY AND JUST DIE! DIEEEEE!!!!!!!"

And that only lasts about five seconds.

That's how impatient I am.

I'm so impatient that when a Web site doesn't load within *three* seconds, I frantically hit the back button and then I have to go email everyone I know about how horrible the Web site was (in the latest case it was the Web site for the new Star Trek movie).

So today was very hard for me. I had to wait at home for 8 hours for the Vodafone guy to come install my Internet. 8 hours. That's three seconds times 9600.

And as all friends of the blog know, that's on top of the seven months I've been waiting since I moved to Berlin to have the Internet at home. That's math I can't even do.

But I didn't shout. I didn't fume. I didn't blog (well, I didn't haven the Internet, but you know).

I was being so good! I just sat around the house and read (Kafka--nothing could have been more appropriate) and tried not to look at the clock.

Then at precisely 15:00, after seven months and seven hours of being uncharacteristically patient, I got a text message from Vodafone. I was so excited because I thought my waiting was finally over--I could talk over Skype to my friends and family, watch Hulu and YouTube, check the weather and find out all sorts of exciting tidbits about this fascinating country!

Instead, I got this message:

Ihr Vodafone-Anschluss konnte heute nicht realisiert werden. Bitte rufen Sie uns hierzu unter ##### an. Danke.

"Your Vodafone-connection could not be realized today. Please call us about it at ######. Thanks."

Typically German. No apology. No explanation. Just a matter-of-fact, extremely punctual, "you get nothing".

So I called. I navigated through three levels of German voicejail. I endured five minutes of horrible hold music.

Finally, I was connected with a real person. We spoke. He was polite. I was polite.

End result?

At some date in the future, they will give me another appointment. They couldn't tell me when. All they could say is that it will be at least two weeks from now.

When I think about it, what happened to me is actually *exactly* the plot of Kafka's The Trial.

Well, I mean, except that it's about getting the Internet, not getting executed. But I bet if Al Gore had already invented the Internet by the time Kafka was writing, his book would have been called Der Anschluss rather than Der Prozess.

I know what you're thinking. How stupid am I? Why did I not see this coming?

What can I say, dear readers? I had the audacity to hope.

Blame Obama.