What'd You Call Me?

This weekend, when Nico’s kids were here, we all sat on the carpet to play a game of pick-up-sticks. This game rarely goes well with the girls, because one of them invariably loses control of her body, rolling around on the floor or spasing out in some other way, hits one of the sticks and loses her turn. This causes much trauma. Sometimes it causes trauma because Nico, exasperated, says something like, ‘Ach, KarLOTTA!’ Other times, just losing a turn causes instantaneous weeping. Then I have to remind everyone that it is, after all, just a game.

At some point during this weekend’s game, I somehow made some kind of snorting noise. I don’t know how it happened or if I did it on purpose, but it happened. Then five-year-old Karlotta said, in her ridiculously cute way, ‘Du bist ein schwein’ and then started giggling. I apparently have learned sufficient German to understand this insult, so I started giggling, too. The only one not giggling was Nico, because he hadn’t heard my snort. All he heard was his little daughter calling his new girlfriend a pig. He was horrified, of course, and said, incredulously, ‘Excuse me???’ I quickly intervened and explained and then we all giggled until we cried.

But I must continue the thread to emphasize just how much schwein I am eating these days. Man, the Germans love pork. Ham, bacon, smoked ham, cured meat, and of course, wurst. Deepest apologies to all my veggie friends, but I LOVE pork. Only thing better than pork meat? Pork fat.

This reminds me of a football cheer that a family friend told us used to be cheered at my high school. It went something like this:

"Pork chops! Pork chops! Greasy, greasy!

We’re gonna beat you easy, easy!"

Course, you’ve got to make ‘greasy’ rhyme with ‘easy.’ Sounds pretty gross, huh?

I don’t care. I still love pork.

One other detail

...on the poster is that it says at the bottom: 'Let your tongue travel.' Pretty apt for a poster talking about San Francisco's delicacies, na?

A Quiz about American Culture

So there's a poster around town for a new food product and every time I see it, I have to laugh. I laught because it references american culture in a way that perplexes me. Then again, american culture often perplexes me when I encounter it in the States, too, so maybe this is not so strange after all. In any case, here is a little quiz:

Please read the following and then fill in the blank:

New Orleans: Jambolaya
Boston: Baked Beans
Maine: Lobster
San Francisco: (?)

The poster in question is for a new Haagen-Daaz flavor called something like Cookies and Cream Supreme. The tagline is: San Francisco's delicacy.

Um, wha? First of all, can cookies and cream really be called a delicacy? Is there anything delicate about the combination of oreos and cream? It's really more a gluttony. Second of all, San Francisco???? HUH???

Red Light! Green Light!

(Today’s rant sponsored by Orbitz Grapefruit Mint Gum)

As a New Yorker, I have become a walker. I lived in my last apartment for over a year before I realized that there was a bus that went from my corner directly to the Park Sloop Food Coop. Instead I had been walking for half an hour with all my communist groceries on my back. Good honest people’s work, granted, but come on!

In NYC, I felt that walking was the superior means of transportation. I never owned a car, although I cavorted with people who had motorized transportation of one kind of another. But cars and taxis and buses get stuck in traffic, too. The subway is great and has its own wonders, some of them named Moe, but it also has huge disadvantages (rats, urine smells, preachers). So walking was often my first choice. I felt most independent when striding down the street, crossing at will and smirking at stalled traffic.

I flaunted my pedestrian priority. I said it in my head as I walked around (‘I have the right of way, motherfucker! Don’t even think about turning.’), I slapped car hoods, stared down taxi drivers to force them to wait and, when appropriate, said snarky things to bike riders who pedalled on the sidewalk(My friend Thomas tried to say snarky things to bike riders too, but it came out wrong – ‘This is a SIDEwalk, not a RIDEwalk.’).

But the pedestrian is not king here, not even close. Bicycles rule the sidewalk. Half of every sidewalk (lengthwise, he he) is allocated to bike riders, which is indicated by red brick. If, as you are walking along, you look down and see red brick – achtung! – you are walking on the bike path and are liable to get run over. No more snarky comments for me. Now the bike riders make snarky comments (‘Do you mind if I pass?’).

Do you remember the game ‘Red Light, Green Light’? As a kid, I would sometimes play this (or some combination of Red Light, Light and Simon Says … Simon Says walk like a chicken….Green Light!!!) when I couldn’t think of anything else to do. I wonder if kids here play it constantly, in order to hone their waiting at intersection skills. Germans, as a rule, do NOT cross against the light (I’ve never been certain if crossing against the light constituted jaywalking or if jaywalking was crossing in the middle of a block. Anyone?). You might be standing at an intersection, and there are no cars coming. It’s a Sunday, it’s raining, the shops are closed, no one is around. Not a SOUL. And still the Germans will wait for the green signal. I’m not just talking about older, more traditional folks, I’m talking about young and old, hip and less hip.

When I first got here, I thought that I would try to observe this custom (just like keeping both arms on the table at dinner and eating with the fork in the left hand, smashing mashed potatoes on to the back of the fork). I would get to an intersection with a red signal and wait. I would look around anxiously to make sure that everyone else was really going to wait like this. I started feeling like a dork, standing there, waiting for green. Perhaps I would rummage through my bag, pretending to look for something. Anything to distract myself from this painful wait. After a couple of days, I decided that I could no longer deny this rebellious urge to cross against the light. I am now regularly venturing out into intersections, leaving the Germans on the sidewalk.

I'm a Hamburger!

So here it is: the inaugural post of my very own blog. Some of you will probably be saying to yourselves, didn't she tell me once how annoying blogs were, how they were a bit too self-important for her tastes? Well, yes. I do kinda feel like there is an element of thinking, 'I am really fascinating and I'm sure other people will find my minutae fascinating as well.' In this particular case, I submit myself to you to enjoy the spectacle of me adapting to a foreign place. Some things will undoubtedly seem funnier to me writing them than you reading them. But since many people have already responded to my emails saying that I had brought them to tears of laughter, I thought I'd jump on the blog wagon. N.B.: I don't love the name of the blog, and invite you to submit your proposals. The weiner will receive a free pair of lederhosen and a complimentary copy of Nena's new album.

I'll go back shortly and recap how I got to this point, but for now I'll pick up where I am.

On Monday, I started my deutsch class - everyone is from a different country:

Adil, the anaethesiologist from Morocco
Mohammed, the student from Tunisia
Nibal, the student from Lebanon
Justyna, the make-up artist from Poland
Annick, the psychologist from France
Vito, the waiter from Italy
Antonetta, the student from Albania
Elena, the actor and acting teacher from Canada
Xenia, the shipping broker from Russia
Chien-Ju, the shipping broker from Taiwan
Jose Luis and Belen, aspiring golf course designers from Spain

The teacher is a bit of an oddball. He's constantly making puns in some combination of German, English, whatever language suits him, like:

Ja? Das ist der Alpha... der Alpha... der Alphabet, nein? Nicht, ehhh, nicht ein Alfa Romeo, eh Vito? Nicht alpha male, aber, der... uhhh... der Alphabet. Na?

Lots of the class is spent like this. It's entertaining some of the time, other times, I just wish he'd spit it out and move on. Most of the time, everyone in the class is laughing at his puns and whatnot, but usually around noon, people seem to tire of it. They just start answering his questions ja or nein, regardless of the truth.

Today, since we are learning how to say the letters in deutsch, we played a game of Bingo. Because I am a show-off and a smarty-pants, I often get chosen to do things like write on the board and such. (I've always been like this, rushing to finish before anyone else and showing off how vastly superior my intelligence is when it comes to completing rote tasks. The problem is that because I think I am such hot shit and usually go too fast, I often make sloppy mistakes. Nothing worse than trying to show off superior rote tasks and forgetting a comma.) So today, I was chosen to be the Bingo Frau, probably in deutsch that is written Bingofrau. So the teacher says, 'Christina, du bist die Bingofrau.' (lots of laughter from the class) 'So (pronounced in deutsch "zo"), so Bingofrau, kommst hier bitte.' Basically, my job was to read aloud the various letters of the alphabet, such as 'Y' (upsilon), 'J' (yot), 'G' (gay), and the real stinker 'V' (fow). It was a real riot and I managed to walk away with a chocolate bar as a prize. Go Bingofrau, go Bingofrau!

Today, the sun finally peeked through, after several day of rain. Actually, there was a little sun yesterday evening and I caught this rainbow from our window. Is it corny to read things into rainbows???