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.