Lady in Red

Happy New Year to all you Oktoberfest Girls fans out there. If you like beer, Munich, Oktoberfest, pretty girls, or all of the above, you've come to the right place. Here's to a whole new year celebrating my favorite things!

Beer or bear?

Um... I'll take the beer.

Blogging is the perfect hobby for those of us who obsess over something. In my case it's beer, Oktoberfest, Munich, pretty girls. Here are a couple of my favorite blogs that focus on "one man's obsession." The first is Nadshot, a tribute to comic villains getting poetic justice in a certain part of the male anatomy. The second is Hot Chicks with Douchebags, in which self-described Douchebag1 celebrates the troubling culture of "hottie/douchey commingling."

i'm back

so... after a 20-day stay in the hospital i'm back online. More updates to come...

Don't forget to tip your waitress

She sweeps gracefully across a crowded tent floor, carefully transporting liters of beer to her appointed rounds. Don't forget to tip your waitress!

In other beer news, what do you think are the best microbreweries in America? Click here to read all about it.

Clink

I love the sound the glass makes as it clinks together for a toast. Here's my toast to beer and pretty girls. Prost!

Double Vision

Continuing on last week's theme of old guilty pleasure songs, here's "Double Vision." just for fun, how many pairs do you count? Please keep your comments rated PG! In other beer news, there's bad news on the beer price horizon. Read this story from the NPR news.

The Mountain Show

In America, there's the house show. You know, that show on sundays that just shows houses for sale: no video, just pictures of the houses and the asking price. Watching the show is soothing, it requires no brain power, it's so elementally boring that it's like automatic meditation: you aren't thinking anything.

In Germany, there's the mountain show. Intended to provide skiiers with a view of the current weather conditions in each ski area, this program flips from one mountaintop to another, broadcasting images recorded by some tiny camera mounted, in most cases it appears, high up in some snow covered tree. This show is even better than the house show, not only because the images sometimes rotate to show the full panorama and because the video is live, but also because more than often all there is to see is white because, well--it's snowing. Sometimes there are droplets on the camera, sometimes the blustering snow lets up for long enough to identify the tree a few meters away from the camera--the only way to identify these places is by the logo in the lower righthand corner.

As if this wasn't already enough to beat the house show, the whole thing is accompanied by a background of traditional bavarian and austrian "Blasmusik" Fantastic. Of course, on a beautiful day the mountaintops look gleaming white and I cuddle up under my blanket on the couch and think to myself "this is so much better than real estate."

auf der Autobahn...

Germans love their autobahn. They like to drive fast, and the rules of the road are followed so strictly that drivers don't expect the unexpected. The roads are cleaned, the signs are repaired, all the lines are visible, and potholes are nonexistant-- hitting one at 220km/h would be a pretty big jolt.

Of course, even Germans know that not everything runs perfectly all the time. That's why the radio stations and their traffic programs are so crucial. Concerned drivers are provided with locations of the biggest traffic jams, construction sites and even speed traps. But my favorite section of all in German radio traffic programming is what I call "What's lying on the road."

Usually, the items are run of the mill things like tree branches, tires, hubcaps--there are also the occasional reports of people walking on the highway, accidents and construction vehicles. But often there are a few more exotic objects in the mix: rubber mattresses, couches, a family of geese walking along the side. These earn a prime spot each half hour in the traffic report--their exact location is relayed to the entire state of Bavaria.

This always made me laugh. The Germans say to me "but it would be very dangerous to drive if you didn't know that these things were on the road!" I usually chuckle and say "if they tried to report irregularities on america's highways the traffic reports would take hours"

So each evening while making dinner I flip on the radio, anxious to hear what's lying out there today.. I picture these objects, these people, those duck families, perched on the edge of the road while traffic whizzes by. Maybe there are even a few sightseers who hear the reports and take an extra trip to check out that abandoned pole lamp. Maybe these object sightseers cause their own traffic jams!

Today I listened to the radio report as always while filling out my christmas cards. The reporter whizzed through the traffic facts, the list of speed traps, the various construction detours, and finally arrived at the juiciest fact: lying on highway A6 near exit 4, albiet a bit early in the season--is a christmas tree.

Truthahn Tag

Truthahn is the word for turkey in Germany, and yesterday that word was on my mind. Of all the holidays, I feel most homesick on thanksgiving. It's not because it's necessarily my favorite holiday, but it's the only holiday that goes unnoticible in Germany. Halloween is celebrated (if rather lamely), St Patrick's day even has its own parade! But on Thanksgiving I have to go to work and eat healthily while the rest of my family is on its way to Cleveland to meet up with the relatives, eat and drink themselves merry on turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie, only to plop on the sofa and watch football in a Tryptophan-induced coma for the entire day-off friday. It's not fair!

To alleviate some of the homesickness pangs, I conjured up a cozy "thanksgiving for two" meal with Artur... turkey cutlets rolled and stuffed with stuffing, creamy mashed potatoes, Preiselbeeren (the german equivalent of cranberry sauce) and apple crisp for dessert. I also gave myself and Artur license to indulge, and kicked off the meal with homemade whiskey sours fresh from our new, "one armed bandit" as Artur calls it (juice press). Here's the recipe for fresh whiskey sours, from the cooking genius Barefoot Contessa:

Fresh Whisky Sours

3/4 cup whiskey (recommended: Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey)
1/2 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice (4 lemons)
1/2 cup freshly squeezed lime juice (4 limes)
2/3 cup sugar syrup (cook 1:1 water-sugar mixture until dissolved, cool)
Ice cubes
Maraschino cherries

mix all ingredients, fill a cocktail shaker halfway with ice and 3/4 full with cocktail mix, and shake for 30 seconds. Serve in highball glasses

mmm mmm sour

Two tickets to paradise

Okay, I admit I've always liked that old Eddie Money song. Call it a guilty pleasure. Cheers!

It's Beginning to look a lot like Christmas

I started out the day by singing christmas tunes loudly in the shower: Silver Bells, It's Beginning to Look alot like Christmas, White Christmas, Chestnuts Roasting... the classics. Artur and I watched "Jack Frost--der Coolste Dad der Welt" yesterday, and it put me in happy christmas spirit. So today I was more than happy to see the dark wooden stands of the Marienplatz Christmas Market already set up and ready to roll.

The giant tree was already standing in front of the Rathaus and the Maroni--roasted chestnut--stands were already crackling away. The wooden stands built up like a labyrinth across the usually wide open cobblestoned plaza set me dreaming about Glühwein, Bratwürstl and Lebkuchen.

The Christkindlmarkt on Marienplatz in Munich has a long history itself. Founded in 1642, it holds the title of the oldest and biggest market in the city, and has been selling the gingerbread-like Lebkuchen and Oberammergauer wood cutouts since at least 1805. With over 3 million visitors a year, it may seem like a tourist trap, but every Münchner loves to stop by Marienplatz on the way home from work to stroll through the christmas-scented bustling stands, or to meet friends over a glass of Glühwein or a steaming Feuerzangenbowle-- literally "Fire Pliers Punch", prepared by heating a giant bowl filled with mulled wine, suspending a Feuerzange, a metal holder for the Zuckerhut (sugar hat), a large conical mass of sugar , which is placed above the bowl. The sugar is soaked in rum and burns a caramalizes with delight into the wine, resulting in a more dramatic and more alcoholic version of Glühwein.

The markets don't open until December 1st, but until then I'm going to sing myself into Christmas oblivion. In Germany, my fairytale christmas comes alive...

drilling in the afternoon

My artistic inspiration has been somewhat dulled lately by my lack of sleep and the onslaught of children's cold and flu germs. So today after work I turned out all the lights and law down in bed for a midday nap. Not five minutes after I started to drift off, I was ripped out of sleep by the vibrations of someone drilling in my building. If you live in an apartment building you know what I mean-- when anyone drills into any wall connected with your wall, youre whole apartment shakes and it is just as loud as if someone were drilling next to your bed--if not louder.

The worst part about it all was not the drilling itself but its intermittent nature-- it would go on for two, three minutes, and then stop for just long enough to let me drift back off to sleep--only to start up again, punctuated at some points by some lighter hammering and sanding. Not helping the situation was the biting cold draft that was blowing through our leaky windows causing me to roll up into a tiny ball of warmth under the blankets. And then I realized what all the drilling was-- they are changing the windows in the building--but they won't get to ours till next spring.

I gave up the napping after a while and started to work on the 50 example test questions given to us by my "Globalisierung: Wirtschaft und Politik" professor for our test in two weeks and eventually decided to slip on my winter boots over my sweatpants, grab several cloth bags, and go grocery shopping. Oh, and I forgot to mention: my Handy (cellphone) died on me today, so it's time to use my Christmas bonus to buy a new one. The highlight of the evening was Artur finding a stone in his rice. A stone! Somehow, it just wasn't one of those days...

Augustiner Bräu

Probably my favorite Munich beer label, Augustiner Bräu is hard to find outside of Bavaria. If you've been able to enjoy it anywhere else, let me know. In the meantime, live vicariously and enjoy watching her enjoy it!

Wikipedia has an informative article on Augustiner Bräu. You can read it here. See you next week with a new picture. Prost!

Ocean of Noise

Last Sunday was spent riding the train back from the Alps, changing into more comfortable clothes, and heading off the the Kultfabrik Gelände for the Arcade Fire concert! Artur came along, and it was pretty exciting to see all the fans streaming from the S-Bahn station despite the pouring rains (what came down in the Alps as snow was streaming down in Munich as rain, filling the street with giant lake puddles.)

We picked up our "guest" stickers at the entrance windows and secretly smirked at the jealous stares coming from our fellow concert goers-- I had emailed a friend from college in the band to let him know i'd be coming, so we would get to go backstage afterwards to say hi! We stuffed our jackets into the stage scaffoling work lining the sides of the concert hall and took central standing room places in the front third of the room. The crowd kept getting bigger and we had to revert to some physical elbow jabbing to keep from getting jostled from our places, but we managed to hold our ground and had a great view of the action once the band came on stage.

It's funny, seeing an old college acquaintance and a band I once saw with 40 other students in Champagne-Urbana Illinois playing in my new hometown Munich-Germany to a crazy sold out audience of over 3,000 fans. I just have to say, I was proud. We jumped and screamed and sang and sweated our way through the new songs from the Neon Bible and the old classics from Funeral until the air in the room was literally unbreathable. The best part was before the encore, when the audience stared humming Wake Up and didn't even stop when the band came back on stage. I think the masses had just discovered their own talent!

After the show we stood by the freshly opened doors and breathed in huge mouthfuls of fresh air while we waited for clearance to go backstage and say hi. Finally allowed inside, we got to say hi and hear great stories of life on the road and watch the band members navigate past at least five buckets collecting dripping water from the leaking roof. Well, fame isn't quite so glamorous as we all think, but it sure is exciting.

My hero for the evening, however, was Artur, who, on the walk back to the train after the show, pulled me to the side just before a car drove through a puddle and soaked me-- it just soaked the girl walking in front of me. My Hero.

let it snow

I spent the weekend in the Allgäu region of the Alps, in the tiny town of Buchenberg, my boyfriend's home since he moved to Germany from Poland over 20 years ago. Picturesque, tiny, and this weekend--full of snow! One of the best parts of the trip is taking the cozy ALEX train from Munich, especially when we snag seats in "ALEXTreff" with the comfy Edelweiß-decorated seats and can sit with warm paper cups of coffee and watch the buildings of Munich dwindle, the cow population increase, the Alps come into view, and that slightly unpleasant but also nostalgic smell of cow manure creeps into the train car. Ah, a weekend full of relaxation is ahead of us.

The best part of spending the weekend with my boyfriend's parents is the food: delicious mom home-cooking. But this time newer things awaited us other than wining and dining: a cat! His mother has been famous among the cat population of Buchenberg for years for having an open door policy: whenever I'm there, various neighborhood cats drop by for warm milk, noodles with chicken, steamed dumplings (really, she's a regular gourmet!)... but this time, the cat had come to stay! Suri is her name, and she appeared on the doorstep screaming with hunger and was immediately adopted and cooked and cleaned into supreme health. Now she spends her days dozing on top of the heater with her head resting on a rose potpourri pillow--really!

The cat must have been relieved, because coinciding with our arrival came the first big snow of the year--two feet in 24 hours, blanketing the postcard perfect town and zapping me into premature christmas spirit. Suri ventured out once into the snow--and we laughed the whole time watching her take dainty steps only to fall through the crust of snow and disappear into its depths. Needless to say, she came back inside after just minutes. We acted much in the same way, venturing outside only on saturday to spend the afternoon with hordes of Allgäu teenagers in the Kempten mall, managing to survive the slippery downhill drive from Buchenberg. The rest of the time we sat and wined and dined with the spoiled little kitty...

Welcome "Beer Community"

Since we are getting more and more hits, I decided we need more than one beer in this week's picture!

In a really funny episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David claims to be a victim of a hate crime when a couple of teenagers make fun of his bald head. He says he belongs to the "Bald Community." Well, it's time for us all to stand up for our own "Beer Community"... or maybe we'll just sit down and have a cold one. Cheers!

defrosting the refridgerator

yup, really. Our freezer and fridge are covered in a thick layer of white snow. I kept imagining hoards of frozen eskimo fruit flies in tiny fur lined parkas building mini igloos and worshipping our funsize bottle of jägermeister. But if it kept growing at the rate it was going, I wouldn't have fit our bottle of Grasovka Vodka back in their by tomorrow. So Operation Defrost took effect. I emptied the fridge and put everything in one of those handy german collapsable baskets on the balcony (see photo), opened all the fridge and freezer doors, unplugged the thing, and away we go! My boyfriend built a contraption to funnel the water out using 1) a pot 2) a shoe horn 3) duct tape. Oh those brilliant polish germans.

To celebrate, I made defrost-stirfry. I threw it all in-- frozen spinach, cauliflower, broccoli, carrots... mmm mmm good. I had to part with my icecream, though...

why does it always rain on me

...and on my chocolate croissant? i bought a delicious one at Olympiazentrum this morning on my way to work. It was meant to rip me out of my sleepy cold morning grumpiness. It was certainly mouthwatering... with real chocolate in the middle, not that imitation nutella stuff. But then it started downpouring, and my the time i reached the covered island in the middle for bus 173, my pastry and my pants were soggy.

I ate it anyways. I would need energy for the kids today.

The kids were pretty good, though, and with an exception of the usual sand throwing, nit picking fights and water spillage, everything went as planned. I ironed fall leaves that the kids arranged between sheets of waxed paper and pasted on the windows. It made this grey day look a little cheerier.

Next invention: tiny umbrella for tiny breakfast pastries. or maybe i should have just remembered my own...

current music: why does it always rain on me, travis

Milk, Zippers, and other English things...

I work in an English-German kindergarten. I do everything a normal German kindergarten teacher would do: help cut up Würstchen, make sure the room has frische Luft, build Sankt Martin lanterns... and of course, zip up jackets...except I do it all in English. A couple of the kids are English native speakers, a couple of them are language wizzes...but most of the time they just tilt their head and try to interpret the one, two words they do understand.

Ok, that would be underestimating them. They know a lot of sentences. "I'm finished!" "clean up" "please" "thank you" and "sorry"... and I require them to learn the somewhat more difficult construction "could you please zip my jacket?" Of course, these sentences appear in many versions, like "dank you" and "ich bin finished", and "could you please zip my jacket" often comes out as "could you please my y-ack-uh zip?" But they're learning and they're charming.

One of my favorite moments was with a girl in my group last year. We have müsli day and if they would like milk added to their bown of oats and dried fruit, they have to ask, and I like them to ask in English. I accept many forms, I basically expect at least the words "milk" and "please" to appear. On one particular day a girl from my group was standing in front of me holding her bowl out. "What would you like?" I asked. "Milk" she whispered quietly. "What milk?" I replied. Where? Milk here? Milk for me? (getting 4 year old to talk in full sentences can be a tedious process) She shifted her weight back and forth, scrunched her brow in concentration, trying to recall the right sentence from somewhere back in her brain. Suddenly, her eyes lit up. She smiled, looked me in the eyes, held out her bowl and asked proudly and loudly

"Can you please zip my milk?"

Jack Johnson and Lemon Drops

The day was actually packed quite full:

Artur went to the hairdresser and got his shoulder length hair cut off--he looks like a better version of Hugh Grant, now; then we took our recently extended U3 subway line to Olympia Einkaufszentrum to go wander around the mall and check out dishwashers; ate mall chinese and later drank an iced coffee; exchanged his pijamias for a bigger size, rode back and I blanched the veggies I bought at the farmers market, heated up the pizza leftover from visiting Sigrid, my "ex-host-mother" for him and i read the end of my book, "Drachenläufer" (The Kite Runner, in German) in sniffling tears next to him on the couch while he rubbed his chin over programming problems in his new facebook chess application.

We both drank italian red wine and were completely absorbed in our own tasks... I was in charge of the cds...travis, eros ramazzotti, bob marley, red hot chili peppers, REM, and then.. I made a batch of lemon drop martinis with the last of the lemons and the remains of the vodka from the freezer... and now we're off to bed with jack johnson strumming away in the background... good night...

Beer makes me smile

Germans don't have a reputation for smiling, but all deals are off during Oktoberfest. But who couldn't be happy? Beer and pretty girls? I'm smiling.

This week the blog is getting a little more traffic. We got our first comment--thanks to Lee from Austin, Texas. When you get a chance, check out his blog:
I Love Beer.
See you next week!


Hunting and Gathering

The perfect fall day, and I have the day off from work! What better conditions to get out of the house. I clicked through the muenchen.de website until I found the link to the "Munich weekly market calendar" I picked out two market's I'd never been to, and set off, taking the subway to Marienplatz and then switching lines to the Sbahn westwards.

When I reached Laim I had to trek through an ugly train track underpass and walk about ten minutes along a heavily trafficked street: the market was tucked cozily in a corner behind some shops slightly off the main road. It was pretty small but I browsed the wares happily, weighing new potatoes in my hand, staring at giant heads of cabbage and huge "muscat" pumpkins and trying to decode names of at least 5 different kinds of turnips.

The cheese stand was fragrant and the pumpkin seed goat cheese beckoned, but I decided to leave the cheese buying to my boyfriend, a true feinschmecker. I tasted at least 5 kinds of apples fresh from Lake Constance and bought three kinds, mixed together in a clear plastic bag. Into my orange backpack came tiny heads of cauliflower and broccoli, and five small ruby red onions.

I set off for Laimer Platz, the subways station, stopping on the way at a bakery for a fresh "Leberkässemmel", a Munich specialty. I munched a cold apple while waiting for the subway. Next stop: Neuperlach, for what I hoped would be an even bigger market.

When I arrived I still had 45 minutes to wait until the market opened, so I wandered towards the shopping center on the other side of the road, and into a starbucks there. I'm always amazed when I walk into american franchises in europe... it may sound sad, but it feels like home. Jazz musik was playing in the background and I could have been on the Waterfront in Pittsburgh reading the postgazette. A nice feeling, actually, as I took my latte sat down on a comfy overstuffed chair to read my book.

This market had even more to offer. I bought a nice chunk of ryebread with oats, a jar of local honey, and a few handfuls of brussell sprouts. At the next stand I chose 4 gleaming mandarines and a bunch of fresh carrots. My last purchase was two sturdy sweet potatoes, and I was on my way back home, with quite a heavy backpack.

Define: Wolpertinger

According to Wikipedia, a Wolpertinger is an "(A)nimal supposedly living in the alpine forests of Bavaria in Germany. It has body parts of various animals — generally wings, antlers and fangs, all attached to the body of a small mammal."

So what does that make me? An American girl with a minor in Italian language, Irish, German and Welsh ancestors living with a Polish boyfriend in the "most Northern city in Italy," or "the world-city with a heart"--Munich, Germany. Sounds pretty Wolpertingery to me.

And that's what it's all about, living abroad. Giving up pieces of myself, switching them for others, so I sort of fit in everywhere and then again nowhere. A freak of nature, the stuff of fantasy. Ok, it sounds a bit self important. But then again, blogs aren't there for self importance, than what is?

To follow are the tales of my adventures as a culturally-mish-mashed expat. Enjoy!

When the threads match the beer

I love how the color of the beer sort of matches her jacket and her ring.

If you are a new visitor, check back once a week for a new picture featuring beer, Munich, Oktoberfest, and pretty girls.

Pschorr Bräu

I'm calling this post "Pschorr Bräu" because that looks like the brew she's drinking. When I was in Munich most people didn't bother to say "Hacker-Pschorr" because it was just too much to say. It was always just "Pschorr Bräu" as if it was one word. Is that still true today?

I've dediced that the best thing is for me to post one new picture a week until next Oktoberfest. Since Oktoberfest starts on a Saturday, check back each Saturday. And, of course, you are always welcome to submit your own to me by email. Prost!

Welcome!

This is my tribute to some of my favorite things: Munich, Oktoberfest, beer and pretty girls. To inaugurate this tribute here is one of my favorite pictures of all four. Cheers!

the most beautiful bike path in the world

Well, the sun is finally out, Floyd is finally free, and I am out on my bike exploring. My poor floyd, my pink bike, hes been stolen twice, both times to be rescued by the police. I am convinced he has a girlfriend, although what female wants a man who always wears bright pink. Maybe he has a boyfriend...

So I have been out and about, riding through Munich, rediscovering the city in many new ways. My plan has been all along to ride to work when it gets warm, so I set out yesterday on a trial run. Even equipped with a bicycle map, i got completely lost and rode aimlessly around the north of munich for more than an hour and a half until i found the kindergarten, at which point i was too tired to ride back, so i left my bike sitting at the subway station. At least it would save me my bus ride the next day, and I could attempt the route home.

So I found myself this morning on my bike, running 20 minutes late, freezing without gloves or a hat in the morning fog, and trying to resolve a small fight with artur about waking him up every morning (torture..) on the cell phone, ,while attempting not to get run over. The day had started out well.

But as I managed to find the perfect route home on another sunny day, I discovered that my route would take me past munich's most beautiful sites: The English Garden, the Isar river, the bavarian government building, the state art museum, the freedom angel monument, the deutsches museum, rows and rows of turn of the century houses, forest, water, sunbathers, cafes...i was so happy. Every day I will see these things on my ride to and from work... not bad.

now I am baking a cake for my half birthday, which is tomorrow. Germans celebrate half birthdays even less than americans, but i am trying to right an embarassing moment at work, where i brought only cookies but everybody after me brought a feast. So tomorrow i am bringing a feast!! to make up for it.

Now, back to Anna and the King dubbed in german...

bardzo dobrze

well, it was good to be back to work. Postage stamp lotto worked well, the kids were happy to see me, and i felt productive again. The sun was shining and sitting on the park bench watching the kids screaming and running around and feeling the color returning to my face was a joy.

After work i went to MY apartment (apartment #2) and got my mail, and jumped for joy because i had finally received my work recommendation that ive been waiting for to send off my application for the masters program at the munich university of applied sciences in international communication and cooperation.

And so i took the ubahn to apartment #1, got my papers together, and rushed to my polish class. Today we learned "how are you" (jak sie masz), various greetings, and other grammar. I love it. I cant wait to test out my new knowledge on my next visit to arturs family.

Now i am sitting at home, drinking a weißbier and waiting for artur to come home even though its 9pm. Have i already become so spinstressly?

Oh well. Tomorrow I meet Mauro for italian refresher # 3..it might be possible to do the lesson in a beer garden, which would be great. Really great. Barzdo Dobrze!!

15 euros for 2 beers and a country song

well, i survived my boredom well enough, and resolved my guilt about artur, and calmed my stomach, all on friday afternoon, mostly with a heavy dose of aerobics and bike riding, sweet floyd is back! The evening included a nice peaceful dinner at my french friends house and an attempt to attend a party on friday evening, which was somewhat successful but which proved that i wasnt quite ready to consume a large amount of alcohol.

saturday was lazy at first and then artur and i went to breakfast, delicious breakfast, at a cafe that serves all kinds of interesting food combinations. Mine included spicy salami, vanilla yogurt, special cheese, a blueberry muffin, banana marmelade, and tomato scrambled eggs. Mmmm.

Then artur and I ventured into the city center, a virtual zoo on saturday, to stroll through shopping malls and stores. Purchases included: an outerspace calendar (on sale cause 2007 is well underway...), a half a kilo of used stamps for collectors that i want to use in my post office theme in the kindergarten, which we sorted over diet cokes in mcdonalds, the worlds most crowded mcdonalds, two glasses of juice cocktails from a promotion action at a department store, we got the juice and got to keep the glasses, they even packed the sticky empty ones up for you in a pretty bag, and we shopped for an alarm clock and finally decided on one, but everywhere was sold out.

And then the evening took us to a country music bar called oklahoma, where we sat peacefully and enjoyed one song and marveled at the fact that such a bar in munich exists until we realized that the owners hat sneakily written the cover charge on our coasters (cover charge?? we didnt know) and 8 euros was a bit too much for such a kitchy experience, and we fought with them over paying the charge for having seen one song, ended up paying for the beers we didnt even finish and for one cover charge, 15 euros for 2 beers and a country song, almost new york prices!

but we didnt let that stop our evening, and met a group of friends for some cheaper beers and then watched the kitch horror movie slither until 4am. Which turned our sunday into a lazy day, complete with adam sandlers click and postage stamp sorting. I made a memory game with postage stamps.

Now I have to go back to work tomorrow...hopefully i will get back into the swing of things after my hiatus.. at any rate, only three weeks to go till vienna and then sardinia vacation...mmmmm

it started out well...

I woke up with Artur at my side to the horrible beeping of the alarm that I normally fight with every morning, hitting it every three minutes to silence the beeping that resumes again in three minutes, making it the most horrible alarm clock ever made, with the shortest snooze ever. Sometimes I even take the time to reset the alarm for seven minutes later, just to get a reasonable snooze, before flopping back into unconsciousness.

But this morning Artur got to fight with the alarm, and although I am not particularly reknowned for bounding out of bed and greeting the day with cheer, it's an art i have slowly mastered after dozens of grumpy winter mornings waking up at 5:45, knowing if i don't, 3-6 year olds will be standing along in the cold waiting for me to unlock the kindergarten door. Artur is a master of not getting up, and since the only smiling faces waiting for him at work are computer monitors and adult coworkers, he isnt quite as motivated as me, so i actually have to wake him up after 45 minutes of snoozing, because im wide awake and i have to go to my ultrasound in an hour.

Thats right folks, an ultrasound. I thought they were only for pregnant women, but appartently they are also used for people with strange stomach pains. Which are sometimes one and the same, but in my case im hoping to hear something like "ah, your left quadral intestinal apartment is a little swollen" instead of "it's a girl!" So I shower and leave the house after a ruffled Artur runs out the door, and catch the subway to my doctors office.

I really liked the waiting room from the first moment I found this doctors office, in the way I find all my favorite places in Munich: desperation. I really needed to see a doctor, and this was the first sign I saw that said "general practice" so I walked in and tada, I am now the proud patient of drS teubner... a mother and daughter pair of doctors who are apparently fond of elephants or at least their family, friends, and the entire country of germany thinks they are, as the waiting room is littered with china elephants, wooden elephants, stuffed elephants, elephant paintings, elephant postcards, and all manner of quotes about elephants.

I am called into what appears to be the nurses room and the bubbly nurse (i didnt know there were bubbly GERMAN nurses!) noticed immediatly that getting a blood sample taken made me very nervous. So she asked me exactly eleven questions in a row whereareyoufromyoudonthaveagermanaccentahtheUSAwhereahpittsburghiveheardofititsonthewestcoastisntitahokeastcoastwellokbutnowimdone I have to say, it wasnt so bad, i was pretty distracted by her round of questions. After a short round of elephant counting i was recalled and sent into the doctors office, told to lie on a table, and grinned as i was smeared with ultrasound gel, the real stuff you see in the movies!

I was disappointed that the grey blobs on the screen didnt resemble my stomach like i had expected, but then again i dont think they really resemble babies either, when babies are inside. The doctor told me i have air in my intestines (and asked me if i had ever had my appendix removed. and i swore i would NEVER have to know that word when we had to learn it for a german quiz) and a virus, gave me various prescriptions and instructions to eat only noodles, and told me not to go to work for the rest of the week and to come in the following morning for my blood test results.

It was a nice day so i took a tram to the main train station and picked up my arcade fire concert tickets, and bought my books for my polish course. On the way I rented two movies, bought noodles, and planned a nice relaxing afternoon for myself.

After watching the movie and eating noodles though, i was bored and felt guilty. I didnt feel sick, my stomach didnt hurt anymore and I wasnt tired enough to sleep all day on the couch. Two days off and nothing to do. Not sick enough to while the day away sick in bed, not well enough to go to work, just well enough to feel guilty about not going to work. All those tiny faces waiting for emily to appear, my poor assistant teacher running the group all by herself. And what fun is a day in bed without junk food? I couldnt even pig out on haribo gummi bears or drink a bottle of wine and watch a romantic comedy.

The boredom set in once I read my book in silence for two hours. It was sunny outside, maybe I should go for a bikeride? But then again, i was staying home from work because im sick. I should rest. And the rest of the day went like this. I tried to convince myself of my sickness, of my rightness to stay home from work, while at the same time trying to enjoy my free time, although not too much, because after all, sick people at home from work shouldnt enjoy themselves. And then I got the brilliant idea to paint my fingernails. Finally, something i never have time for but that sick people can do too, without using up too much energy. I am sick, after all. So I painted my fingernails a beautiful maroon color, which ate up almost fifteen beautiful minutes, and as I finished them and admired their shiny, stick, beauty, i realized... that I now couldnt do anything, not even check my email or turn on the tv. I tried to blow my nose, which took an additional five minutes struggling not to smudge.

And then, Artur called. I had actually been waiting for him to call for almost an hour, because he is almost always done with work by 6:15, and it was already 7:30. My boredom was already driving me to contrive tiny plots to kill time until his arrival, and when he informed me he would be working for at least another half an hour, I wailed nooooooo into the phone, some sort of instinctual boredom reaction. Why do the people we love always see our worst sides? He promised to only be a half an hour, and I vowed, out of guilt, to finally do something with my time, and started to write this blog post. Suddenly, the time flew, and my newly laquered fingers tapped over the keys with grace... writing about my boring day is entertaining! And then he called again... I had almost forgotten about him! He was finally on his way! I asked, somewhat distracted as I formulated the next paragraph...if he had already left work. Because if he needed to work longer it was ok, I was entertained for the mean time... and found out he had left all his work colleagues slaving away on a project with a deadline, he, the newby, because i had made him feel guilty. arghhhhhhhhh could it get more tragic?

The evening will hopefully include another movie and more noodles. Tomorrow im crossing my fingers that the doctors will give me the green light to eat at least cheese, my french friend is having a dinner party.... the way things are going, I doubt it. Now, off to boil water....

the terrible horrible no good..

you know the rest. friday was horrible. after being sick all week the kids were out of control and I was in a bad mood. Plus I had kitchen duty, and the dishwasher is crap and the dishes never get clean so i had to soak about 20 plates with hardened on mashed potatoes and then scrub then with a brush. Not exactly what i had imagined as my dream job, but most of the time the kids make up for it.

Then I spent 5 hours looking for a dress for the polish ball tomorrow. And learning polish with my new computer program. I can now say "5 dogs jump". I got upset because i was in a bad mood and sleepy and shopping is rather tiring especially if you have to make decisions like "buy the dress or look more?" especially when you have no money. sigh. these are the great times in our 20s well be happy for later, right? artur is at chess club and im grumpy because chess club is on friday night when i want to have fun instead of waiting for my boyfriend with itunes, paint by number and cocktails. hmph.

im baaaaaaaaaaaaack

its been a while, but since Artur finally repaired my computer (ah the advantages of a computer geek boyfriend) I can hopefully manage to write regularly now.

Things havent changed much... still working in the kindergarten, thats going well although this week i have been sick with a sinus infection and this morning woke up with such a killer pressure headache that I had to take the day off, again. I felt quite guilty leaving my co teacher for the second time this week alone with the kids, but i wouldnt have been much up a help with my eyes closed in pain all day.

I managed to sleep the day away, which gave me time to think about the various changes in planning stage: moving in with artur, applying for a masters program, and attempting to make it regularly to the gym.

Otherwise, this weekend is the polish ball with artur and the following weekend were heading back to buchenberg to visit arturs family for his moms birthday. I also signed up for a polish course which will begin in march, to begin to prepare for our trip to poland in the summer.

and now for a dinner of chicken and rice, very nice.