Blah Friday

Even though it's always a bittersweet experience to spend a holiday like Thanksgiving away from one's family and sometimes there's a bit of homesickness while being away, one thing that I did not miss was the whole Black Friday mess of consumerism and greed.

For me, the day after Thanksgiving is the antithesis of the Thanksgiving spirit. One can't turn on the tv or the radio in the US without being bombarded by advertising for store sales. In the past, stores were closed on Thanksgiving Day so families can spend time together. However, stores would also start with crazy sales at 3 a.m., for example, the day after, or more stores are opening the day of Thanksgiving too. Yuck. Can't we have 1-2 days a year of no shopping?

People have started to set up tents outside the stores, sometimes days in advance, in hopes of snagging some deals. Once the stores open, sometimes pandemonium erupts; people have been trampled as the crowd rushed in. In an equally ugly situation, fights have broken out among customers to grab the last of an item.

I thought that, having moved to Germany, I'd be away from such things. However, this year I've noticed extensive advertising for "Black Friday" or even in some cases, "Black Week" (which is not really what we'd call it though). I've seen it in Germany and in France, too, when I visited Colmar for the weekend. Check out the photo below from a Colmar storefront.

Ick. It's an American invention that I would happily do without in Europe.

--
A bit of irony: when I emailed myself this photo, I tried to type "Black Friday" on my phone and instead ended up with, thanks to autocorrect, "Blah Friday," which totally fits!

Some Denglish that is way off

I attended a language exchange meetup and was introduced to my friend's new roommate, T, a friendly chap. He immediately leaned in and said quietly to me, "I have something I really want to ask you."

Me, to myself: okay, so I'm just meeting this dude; what's his burning question? To him: "Okay, what is it?"

Him: "I need to know something important about American English. What do you call it when a bunch of people watch a sports game together in public?

Me: breaking into laughter because I know where this is heading: "it is certainly not called a public viewing."

In other words, Americans use the term "public viewing" way differently and our term applies to death and grieving. Actually, we'd just say viewing or visitation, which is another term for a wake, in which family and friends gather to say goodbye to the loved one before the funeral. Usually the coffin is in the room and sometimes it's open; other times it's closed. The most common term I've heard in my US region, the Midwest, is a visitation. 

In Germany, a public viewing means watching a soccer game, somewhere in public, such as in a town square, with the game being projected on a big screen. There is no visiting a deceased person during such an event.

This discussion with T led to him asking me what we'd call this event -- I mean the sports one. We don't really have a term for it; we might just call it "watching the game" or we may specify the opponents, like "I'm going to watch the Honeybadgers play the Sloths."

Generally, we don't gather in a town square to watch sports games, especially since the US is so suburbanized and our downtowns are not always so vibrant (though they can be). It seems that most of the time a bar or bar/restaurant will show a(n) (American) football game on their big screen tvs. Sometimes businesses will host Superbowl Sunday parties in honor of the big competition at the end of January. Since it is common for Americans to have big screen tvs, many people just watch the game from home, either alone or with friends whom they've invited over for a party.

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.