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.

Premature Celebration

Like a battered woman, I am now grateful for the tiniest crumbs of humanity. I understand that Berlin doesn't want to do it. It has to. Sometimes a yank just needs to be Deutsch-slapped.

What I'm grateful for is that moments ago I got a text message from Vodafone telling me to stay home on Monday between the hours of 8 and 16 because they're going to INSTALL MY INTERNET!

Yay!!!! Three weeks after I signed a contract, a robot at the Vodafone headquarters has seen fit to send me a text to tell me I have the honor of being granted the cable-guy-style unbinding and indefinite all day appointment next week! I'm so lucky!

Of course, something inexplicable is going to happen to prevent me from getting the Internet in the end, as it always does. But for now, I'm pretending them chickens is as good as hatched.

The World Needs a Heroine

I found out at a German dinner party the other week that everyone in the world, regardless of race, age, or creed, knows that Jessica Fletcher was a resident of Cabot Cove, Maine.

Also that Cabot Cove has an astoundingly high murder rate.

Interesting, too, is the number of different titles the show has had in different countries.

My favorite is still the original title, "Murder, She Wrote", which I remember puzzling over even as a child. But some of the titles from other countries are also pretty weird.

There's the failed whimsy of the Spanish title: Se ha escrito un crimen, or "A Crime has Been Written". Then there's Portugal's strangled attempt at a translation: Crime, Disse Ela, or "Crime, She Said".

Perhaps weirdest of all is Quebec's boring literalism: Elle écrit au meurtre, or "She writes about murder".

Bonnet Seeks Bee

Reports of the death of this blog have been greatly exaggerated. Well, mildly exaggerated.

But it is true that the fire in my belly about blogging has cooled a bit.

Remember when every day in Berlin was like breaking in a new pair of shoes? That is, both excruciating and debilitating?

I bet you miss that.

Now every day in Berlin is like...a day...somewhere.

Not so interesting, is it?

Well, my schadenfroh readers, it has happened and I'm not sure what to do about it.

Take today. I figured out how to print stuff at the FU from my laptop. Nothing special. Just googled "Zedat drucken" (it's an FU thing, don't ask), was taken to the FU Web site where I followed the straightforward German instructions.

Of course it took an hour and a half to install the driver, but whatever. I wasn't bothered. Well, I wasn't *that* bothered. I mean, not bothered enough to blog about it.

I mean, I'm blogging about it right now, but not in a ranting, venting, steaming sort of way, like I normally would.

And the thing I was printing out? Oh, nothing. Just a fax I had to send to Sallie Mae to let them know I'm still in grad school so they wouldn't make me start repaying my student loans.

Wait, a fax, you frantically ask? How are you going to send a fax? You don't have a fax machine! You may be forced to *go* somewhere! But where!? And what if they make you speak German?!

OK, folks, chill. No problem. I just walked to the copy shop by the FU and asked, in German, if they'd send a fax to the US for me. It didn't even matter that I didn't know the international access code. "Null, null, eins?" Suggested the friendly copy shop guy. "Why not?" I said. "Let's try it."

And it worked. Of course it cost three and half euros, but I wasn't bothered. Not *that* bothered.

I just don't know what's wrong with me! Nothing bothers me anymore! It's so frustrating!

Another thing is that my German is totally functional. Spoken, written, whatever. Es ist mir egal, as the Germans say. It ain't pretty, and I sound like an idiot, but I'm not afraid of total communication breakdown anymore.

So, look, I'm not saying it's not still *hard*. It can be very tough to keep up with people and to make sure I don't say the *completely* wrong thing. But it just doesn't make me want to go home and blog myself to sleep anymore. What can I say?

I guess you guys could always hope something terrible happens to me. Well, not so terrible that I can't rant humorously about it. You know, just terrible enough that my head almost collapses every time I think about it. I wouldn't hold it against you. After all, what's a bonnet without at least one bee in it?

(Please stop picturing me in a bonnet.)

Notes, coins, disapproval

Ach, this blog. Ever since I saw how few people were viewing my vlogs on Youtube, I've lost the Lust to blog.

The other day I did find out something cool though.

I don't know how many of you know this, but the smallest euro note is a five. Under that, it's all coins. Which means I *always* have a pocket full of coins.

And yet, somehow, I never actually have any change.

I know how this happens--every night I put all my small coins in a piggy bank (actually an old cashew can from Aldi). Of course I've got to keep at least one one euro coin on me at all times so I can get a grocery cart or a locker at the library. And of course there are one- and two- euro coins, which is like, real money, so I've got to keep those with me.

Why do I hate change? Well, I hate the bulge, obviously, and the jangle, and the possibility of them falling out when I sit down, and the endless fishing in my pocket when I want to find something.

But the thing I don't get is why cashiers always ask me for coins. Like, if I hand you a note, just take it and shut up! That's probably considered rude or something, paying with a note. Whatever.

This gets really annoying, especially because when I say "no", the cashier is always able to make change. It's like, so why the hell did you ask me for coins if you weren't out of them?! So I could do you the favor of making your life more convenient? Danke sehr.

One time the cashier *didn't* have enough to make exact change. So she short-changed me.

Would that happen in the US?! I really doubt it. I think in the US, if the cashier (THE CASHIER, for crying out loud, 4/5 of whose job is making change) didn't have exact change, they would either find a way to borrow some from another register, or give you five cents too much.

Not in Berlin, where the customer is always wrong.

So, anyway, my news is that I discovered a way to instruct the Deutsche Bank ATM to give me lower denomination notes!

I'm totally psyched about this, because handing someone a fifty in Berlin feels like asking them to do you this huge favor.

I don't think you can do this in the US, can you?

Words, words, words

I went to a German dinner party last night and I came away with a pair of edifying cultural observations about language.

1. Well meaning people usually respond to foreigners by being either pedantic or patronizing, often both.

Shame on them.

This is just an example of how the best intentions are rarely enough. Being friendly is a skill--for most it requires cultivation. In other words, it doesn't "just come when you cook the meat."

First, pedantry. Talking to a foreigner is not a chance for you to play teacher. If you want to be a teacher you should, I don't know, learn something and get a job teaching it. The teacher-student relationship is hierarchical. So no matter what your intentions are, when you play the teacher you subordinate the person you're talking to.

Being patronizing. The first thing any human being wants from you is respect; being patronizing by complimenting someone's basic language skills is inherently disrespectful. It's like when well educated blacks find themselves being called "articulate". Praising someone for doing something you find easy is tacitly to acknowledge their inferiority. That's something self-respecting people are loath to respond well to.

2. Native speakers abuse and take their language for granted.

What a waste.

Native speakers talk too fast, run their words together, don't speak in complete sentences, and don't make enough use of fun, interesting, or nuanced words and phrases.

It's nauseating. We've got 600,000 crayons in our box and we're scrawling with the nubs of seven of them! It's an embarrassment of riches, and we squander it.

Instead of floating like butterflies and stinging like bees, we merely buzz like flies.

What I wouldn't have given last night for a silver tongue instead of this lingua of lead!