My week: February 26 ed.

On Monday and Tuesday, A and I were in Poland. (More about that later, or so I hope that it's not an empty promise.)

During the rest of the week, I attended German class and also lazed around the house a bit. The lazing-around gave way to a party at some friends' house in a rural village. A dozen of us descended upon the house for the weekend to cook together, play party games, enjoy some adult beverages, and to hike. 

It was a wonderfully international group of people; those who attended hailed from India, Syria, Egypt, Germany, the US, and Morocco. That also meant that we enjoyed many different types of food. I made grape leaves stuffed with rice and herbs. It took forever because the jar of leaves I bought is deceiving; it's about the size of a pickle jar but contains about 100 leaves! Some of the guys helped me and after 40 minutes we finished the darn things. I used the Syrian recipe I had learned a couple weeks ago during the international cooking night.

Even better yet than the marathon of rolling grape leaves? We took a hike in the middle of the party. To more accurately describe it, I'd say we grabbed a couple of bottles of wine and hiked a quarter of a mile up a hill, overlooked the rolling scenery for a bit, then trundled back to the house in the middle of the night.

The next morning we wanted to cook breakfast but didn't have the foresight to bring eggs or milk. My friend said there was nothing to fear for we could buy some at the store. This was Sunday in Germany; where in the world could we find such a thing, since almost everything is closed? 

There was indeed a solution: an automated farm store in the area! How cool is that? In a tiny, sidedoor type store, one can buy milk from a machine, or choose jam, sausage, or eggs from another vending machine. We crammed into the room and my friend filled her milk jug. One can bring her own or pay a small fee for one from the dairy. I had wanted to buy eggs but unfortunately they were all out, which is the first time my friend has seen that happen. 

Seeking an alternative to make for everyone's breakfast, I instead bought 5 kilos of potatoes. Why did I buy 5 kilos? It was the only option. That is a lot of potatoes, folks. I was cooking hash browns for an hour when we got back and I hardly made a dent in the sack of potatoes. For the record, I have very little patience for cooking and prefer baking. I felt as if the task would never be done and that it takes an unreasonable amount of time to cook small strips of potatoes to make hash browns.

All in all, it was a weekend full of just what I like: a diverse bunch of friends and silly adventures.m

My week: February 19 ed.

Freeeeeeedom!

This week I only had one German class after the end of the Uni classes. The Uni distributed our grades from the class and I had the second highest score. I was rather happy about that one. Now I just have to level-up for the C1 class. It feels as if it's such a level jump but I can't put my finger on why that is. For me, it seems if this crazy vocabulary comes out of nowhere. It's definitely where I'm the weakest.

On Saturday, I prepared to leave for a trip to Poland with my friend A. I cleaned up the house so I could come home to a tidy place, which is so much more relaxing.

That night, we drove to Frankfurt Hahn and took a flight to Katowice, Poland. More will follow...

I'm just going to breathe into a paper bag for a while now

Last month, I ended up on German tv. I had not planned to do so but at least during my five minutes of fame (I hoped that) I left a reasonably good impression of my fellow country people. It was definitely a bit freaky to have to speak German and have it recorded. It seems to be my luck that I'm bound to embarrass myself through different media: I just found out that I am to visit a radio show to promote a group!

While I want to have a good attitude about new experiences and I do like a challenge, this is something outside of my comfort zone. I'm going to be speaking English and this isn't for a German station. However, I'm not so fluent even in English when I'm put on the spot. Lately, my brain seems so slow and I pause as I speak. I think it's because I'm tired, often multi-task/solve problems/formulate plans, and think in a weird mix of Denglish. Either way, it's not going to make for a very smooth radio interview and I'm freaked out about not being a good representative of the group.

Can I just go breathe into a paper bag for a while to get over this?*

*For the record, I'm not actually that high strung.

Milking it dry

Am I weird because I was looking to buy some powdered milk at the store, they didn't have any, and I quite seriously started reading the ingredients in baby formula? Btw, that stuff is crazy expensive!

My week: February 12 ed.

Hoo-ee, have I been gone for a long time, thanks to my normal winter schedule of taking two German classes a week. Combined with meeting with my tandem partner, that means I'm practicing German four nights a week, and often traveling for funsies on the weekend.

This week, the university German B2 class ended. Even though I enjoy the class, I am glad to be over with it because I was really running out of steam and need at least one free weeknight (besides Fridays) after keeping up this schedule for four months. I'm tired, folks, especially after the night this week that the class at the Volkshochschule started up and I had to run from the uni class directly to the VHS one afterward.

We took the final exam for the uni B2 class on Friday night; I thought that overall, I performed reasonably well on it. However, the listening portion took me by surprise. In previous tests, we were given a minute or two to read the questions first. Since there were about 15 questions and they used an advanced level of German, I was looking forward to reading them first and underlining some keywords.

That didn't happen; our teacher immediately hit the play button and I scrambled around, madly trying to listen to the selection and read the questions as I went. I missed the first few questions because I was so discombobulated. At least there was a second go 'round of listening but I still lost a lot of it.

The selection featured an expert talking about manners and mentioned something called "Knigge." I've never heard of that term before and didn't latch onto any context clues so I had to go with the assumption that it meant some sort of behavior. In a moment of grasping at straws, I wondered if it was like the Danish word "Hygge," which is basically like Gemütlichkeit.

I let wondering about it go because I had to move on with the test. However, later, I was on Facebook and saw a German article about old books that still have value and there was one from Knigge! Apparently he was a writer, Freemason, and Illuminati member [insert dramatic music here, for sure] and is particularly well-known for his Über den Umgang mit Menschen, which describes human behavior. His accomplishments have morphed his memory into being more like Miss Manners. I'm glad to have found this out because I don't like leaving any stones unturned, so to speak ;)

-During the weekend, I attended one of my favorite annual events, the Grünkohlessenabend hosted by the women's club. During the event, we eat kale (any of its health benefits are drowned out by the sheer amount of salt and fat added to it), sausages, and potatoes in order to celebrate northern German traditions (even though we're in SW Germany).

Along the way, we've created our own traditions around attending this event. As is customary, I invited my friend W, who has been my "date" for all of the last three years, including the infamous first year where we wore Dirndls and were lightly schimpfed for the transgression. There, we learned that setting the table on fire is a tradition, drinking alcohol out of a giant wooden shoe and spoons is practiced, and that one will burn her mouth if she doesn't wait for the shot glass to fully cool. The second time we attended, I was the one to set the table on fire. It was definitely very exciting.

The third year we finally had our act together and knew how things worked. W attended and we also invited my friend A. I had written to the organizer because A doesn't eat pork and I checked to see if anything being served that evening didn't have pork (we found out that everything, except for the alcohol, had pork in it. Whoa!). Imagine my surprise when I found out that she could just order from the restaurant's regular menu! W is vegetarian and during the previous two years she had only eaten the potatoes. We had a good laugh that we finally found out that she could've just ordered something vegetarian the previous years.

I told A to expect the table being set on fire and possibly someone burning her mouth on the flaming shot glass of liquor (I was reminded that I was the one who had done that before). Much to my surprise, no one inadvertently set the table on fire and I was very careful to make sure the shot glass had cooled before I drank the contents. A doesn't drink but when we toasted by drinking schnapps out of our special, big schnapps-holding spoons, she took a shot of gravy from her meal. What a team player she is.

There was a wonderful new addition this year: SEA SHANTIES, accompanied with ACCORDION MUSIC. It was very exciting and even better yet, I think that some of them had dirty lyrics. It was hard to translate them and sing at the same time, but one song was talking about ladies, the Reeperbahn, and St. Pauli in Hamburg, which was a notorious area for sailors and the ladies they visited.

Afterward, W stayed over since she's from out of town. We enjoyed breakfast together and then she went on her way home. I ended up napping the whole afternoon, which I needed sorely after being so worn out from exam week and partying down with the women's club. It was a good end to the semester.

Taking bio products too far

As German consumers become more discerning about chemicals in everyday health and beauty products, the popularity of organic, or in German, bio, products has increased. One can find bio products even at discounters like Aldi and Lidl. One bio product really had me raising my eyebrows though:

bio shower gel.

Hey, I'm down with organic body wash. (Heck, I don't even use regular, commercial body wash, because I prefer to avoid using detergents on my body; I prefer to use the uber-hippie soap of choice, Dr. Bronner's.)

This body wash, however, is one that is a bit over the top for me. It's honey and muesli nourishing honey shower gel. To me, it sounds more like something one would eat for breakfast, not use as a body wash!

In which I fall off the face of the earth & into life

It's been quite some time since I've last written and it has nothing to do with lack of blog fodder.
I guess I could say that I've fallen off the face of the blogging earth and landed into real life.  I just haven't had the "oomph" to write anything lately. The late fall and winter is always the busiest time of the year for me because I study German four nights a week and often travel during the weekends. Around the holidays, there were plenty of visits to Christmas markets.

I even ended up on a German tv show. I kid you not. It was embarrassing but not as bad as it could've been; they cut out most of the segments of me fumbling around in German. However, can I just say that this is pretty much the highest level of integration, to end up on German tv and speak the language?