It might be after Halloween but it's still freaky

I saw this poster and it brought back nightmares memories of Guillermo del Toro's film, Pan's Labyrinth. Freaky mandrake anyone?

By the way, the movie is excellent, highlighting the innocence of children and the horrors of war. It's not a comfortable movie to watch, but then again, it shouldn't be, either.

The Dutch and peanut cheese

One of the joys of living in an international environment is that one learns about other cultures, and sometimes this includes learning about those cultures' food. I know someone who's Dutch and after a recent trip to the Netherlands, he brought back some delicious Dutch snacks.

I received three different types of Gouda cheese, including old, middle, and young. I liked the old the best because it's more pungent and flavorful. I also received stroopwafel, which has two cookie-like crusts with a caramel-like filling inside.

I was most delighted by the jar of peanut butter that he brought back. It's like a lovechild of creamy and crunchy peanut butter; it's mostly creamy in consistency but has little bits of peanuts, the best of both worlds.

Even better yet is what the Dutch call peanut butter: pindakaas, which means "peanut cheese." Another Dutchman told me that at the time when peanut butter was first being marketed, the word butter was protected and only meant butter. Therefore, the Dutch decided to call it peanut cheese because it was a savory topping. That's an interesting justification.

Stroopwafel, peanut cheese, and a lovely mountain of Gouda

Important announcement

Dear readers: I would like to make an important announcement to you, especially to the European and German readers.

I would like it to be noted that:

-It was cold out
-I was still getting over being sick

-and-

the big reveal is:

I SAT ON A VERY COLD ROCK FOR MORE THAN AN HOUR AND DID NOT GET SICK.

Not really a rock, more of a carving, with my disembodied hand, but you get the point. One of my body parts was touching it, it was cold, and I did not get sick. That's close enough to illustrate this story.

My friend and I had taken a walk and decided to sit for a while and converse. Since there is a dearth of park benches in Kaiserslautern, we sat on cold rocks. Our tushes froze. Neither one of us got sick from that.

I just wanted to share this important event with you, mostly because of this belief that I've heard from German friends.

Well aren't you sweet, Aldi

It's now possible to pay with an honest-to-goodness credit card at Aldi, both in the US and in Germany. By credit card, I mean like a full-on Visa, Mastercard, and I'm sure a few others, and not just a German EC Karte.

When I received my credit card bill after shopping at Aldi, in the vendor name column, I saw this:

Cute, huh? The name is Aldi South says thank you. I thank you, Aldi, for finally getting it together and accepting credit cards.*


*Note: this post isn't sponsored, especially as evidenced by my not-so-commercial note.

My weeks: through October 23

On October 10-11, M and I continued our trip in Edinburgh. I came up with some lists about what I thought was more convenient in Scotland and what I missed from Germany, for your blog reading pleasure.

I went back to work on Wednesday and had a horribly sore throat. I could barely talk and was eating cough drops, Ibuprofin, and ice all day. I really just wanted to go home but stayed at work because there was so much to get in order. I just had to do it mostly in a whisper.

The next day I was massively sick. Burning up with fever, I was dreaming/hallucinating that I was writing the abstract and conclusion of a scientific paper. What a nerdy way to be sick, especially considering that I'm not a scientist!

I eschewed visiting the doctor and getting antibiotics because I've been reading up on antibiotic resistance. Last time I got a sinus infection, I was mostly better in a day and a half without antibiotics. This time around, I was feeling miserable so five days later, I visited the doctor and she prescribed me practically a pharmacy's worth of everything and I was grateful for it.

Even though I visited the American medical practice, the doctor I visited is German. The German system can be a bit liberally cray cray about giving time off. Seriously, if one has a sniffle, one could practically get two weeks off. She was going to write me time off for the remainder of the week. Even though I felt horrible and sick, that just sounded too unreasonable to me because I had already missed two days the week before. I told her to write my return to work day as Friday.

I felt guilty about even taking that much time off, but I ended up needing it. I've been mentioning (whining?) in the blog that I've been exhausted the last several months. I think that my immune system finally gave up and crashed. I slept probably about 14 hours a day during the week.

I worked a whole day on that Friday but by quitting time, I was completely exhausted and went home to read in bed until bedtime. I'm still not feeling the greatest; I'm tired, congested, and coughing, but back to work I go.

My week: October 9 ed.

This week, I attended a travel talk in German. I'd attended a different one in the past and it was decent. This one was...well, it wasn't my style, let's say. It wasn't so much a talk as it was him showing a very long video of him on his journey, and some of the people he met along the way and joined for meals. Instead of interviewing them or providing some personal interest stories, it was more of a recitation of what happened, or just looooong clips of him and his friend en route.

I attended a language cafe and am still giggling about a conversation. I sat with a doctor and a med school student. We were talking about being tired after eating and in German the student told me it's because there isn't enough "Luft" (air) in the head. Huh? As far as I know, air shouldn't be rushing around in there. I finally realized that he meant Sauerstoff, which means oxygen. We had a good laugh about that one.

Afterward, my friend Ay. came over to work on some travel plans. We're going to visit Katowice in February. We're probably insane to visit Poland in the middle of winter, but it's inexpensive to go then and we haven't visited that country yet. Since I'm from Michigan and I like cold weather, it should be fine. I hope Ay. bundles up since she's from somewhere more temperate.

In German class, we worked on what I call "filler" words. These words add to the conversation and give emphasis but aren't integral to the sentence and can be left off (which is exactly my plans for these dumb things because I feel as if I'll never get them correct). We learned about eben, ja, aber, eigentlich, denn, ruhig, mal, and the one that drives me the most nuts, doch.

The latter is like the Swiss Army knife of German filler words (and I will recognize the irony of using something that's Swiss to describe something German). Anyway, doch can mean a seemingly contradictory bunch of things and often one must hear how the word is spoken to determine how it's being used. YourdailyGerman.com attempts to explain it and it takes several pages; you can read it here if you'd like to try to wrap your head around it. Our book in class only gives two sentences. Ha! That's a good one to try to explain something so nuanced. I hear the dang word all the time. I mostly hear it when someone contradicts someone else and it's somewhat like saying, nuh uh!

I was also relieved to learn that eigentlich is a filler word because I hear it all the time and it's been confusing me. In the context that I hear it, it usually seems to mean "really." My friend told me it doesn't mean that and Duden tells me otherwise. However, I've taken it to more mean something like "actually," "in fact," etc. So, can one use eigentlich like wirklich, or is it more like actually only? Leave a comment if you know, please.

After letting all that language learning percolate, the next night I stopped by Ay's house to work on more travel plans. She was cooking chicken biryani and invited me to eat some. I sampled the rice portion and enjoyed the spiciness. She later told me that when she served it to her sister, her sister was asking if I was okay because it seemed really spicy to her. I thought it was perfect. It was funny that the gringa liked the spicy food.

On Saturday night, M and I flew to Edinburgh for a weekend away. I had tried to visit Edinburgh when I was a study abroad student years ago and it was flooded. I was excited to finally see it, a decade later. More will follow...maybe.

What I missed from Germany while in Scotland

Earlier I talked about the conveniences I enjoyed while in Edinburgh. I forgot to mention the food - holy wow, was it delicious. I ate Mexican food cooked by actual Mexican people and it had NO curry powder or added sugar (I'm giving you the side-eye on this one, restaurants in Kaiserslautern). Apparently there is an enclave of Mexican people in Edinburgh. Who would've guessed? It was awesome, and yes, I'm one of those horrible tourists who tries the Mexian food everywhere. I usually feel pessimistic that it'll taste good yet remain hopeful. Edinburgh came through on this.

However, there were some things that I missed about Germany, too.

-Recycling: since we were grabbing convenience food such as salads and boiled eggs from the grocery stores, we were left with a lot of plastic packaging, but no recycle bins in sight to dispose of them. I felt guilty going through that much plastic. In Germany, there are usually bins readily available to recycle one's waste. In fact, Germany has one of the highest recycling rates of EU member states.

-Inexpensive grocery food: we loved the convenience of the supermarket food, but the prices were definitely higher. Germany's cost of food is quite low, especially at discount markets like Aldi and Penny.