Germany: The Quick-and-Dirty List Version

Maybe not so quick. Or very dirty.

My last couple entries were of the rather bitter, ranting, complaining nature… and I don’t want y’all to think that I’ve become a bitter, ranting, complaining fool over here. I do have fun, I am nice (most of the time), and I do rather love my life. And despite all of the setbacks and ailments of the weekend, I really did enjoy my time in Germany. For those of you who don’t know, I went to visit my friend Daniel, who was an exchange student last year at Hillsdale College;  he lives in Saarbrucken, Germany, which is not too far from the French border – so what better excuse to go see the country on my vacation?

Ze Highlights (to be said with a French accent)

• ·         FINALLY GETTING THERE.

o   For serious. This may have been the most rewarding part of the trip. And also the weirdest. I hadn’t seen Daniel for about five months apart from on the computer, and then finally being there, in Germany, in person was one of the most surreal things ever. Not to mention the odyssey it took to get there. It was a relief to finally make it to the right place and have a smiling, familiar face there to greet me.

• ·         Authentic German food, cooked by a German.

o   Or in some cases, Turkish people at the restaurants :o) Some of the things that I had were:

§  Dang it… I already forgot what it was called... Spätzle? (I just did a google search) Some sort of German-noodle dish, cooked with ham and cheese. It was delish.

§  Döner – kind of like a kebab. Here! A picture of me and my first döner! I think the person taking the picture was thoroughly amused:

§  Schnitzel, with champignon sauce aaand the little potato thingees that I also forgot the name of. . They were kind of like tater tots, but creamier on the inside. Daniel offered me the choice of either ordering it from a restaurant, or cooking it ourselves (in other words, he cooked it). I chose the home-cooked meal, and it was a good choice. We bought everything fresh, and he was the master-chef – he said it was the best food he had ever cooked in that apartment... I made the salad.

• ·         Visiting Trier, the oldest city in Germany. There were some pretty sweet old Roman buildings in the town, as well as a pretty typically-German looking city square. Looking through my photos, I did not take enough pictures, though at the time I felt like I was being a total tourist. But here's Trier: 

• ·         Trying German beer.

o   I mean, c'mon. In Germany, it would have been silly to not try the national drink, despite the fact that I really don't like beer that much. But we did some taste-testing. (No, I did not take this picture, no I did not drink all that beer... there was more in the fridge :-P )

What I Learned:

• ·         Americans have no culture of their own.

o   It’s sad. It’s very sad but very true. We are culture thieves. And a lot of the world dislikes us for spreading our “culture” throughout humanity and obliviating older, more respectable cultures… what do we really have that is our own?

• ·         “Ich bin heiss wie frittenfett.”

o   This is the one phrase that I learned while I was there, thanks to Daniel’s friend Dennis. That, and I was forced to be the one to order dinner one night from the rigatoni place. I guess it didn’t matter if I spoke with a funny accent because the owners were Turkish anyway.

• ·         Americans dance like sluts.

o   I don’t know if you’ve ever been in this situation, but I know that I have: You’re out at a party, having a good time with your friends, and all of the sudden, like a ninja, some guy that you have never laid eyes on before comes up behind you, grabs your hips, and starts dancing on you – hands everywhere, no respect for the personal bubble. What do you do?? Well, clearly, it’s rude to turn around and slap the guy in the face, and American girls are polite, so you signal desperately to your friend to pull you away, wait till the end of the song (does this seem like a really long song to you??), and then feign an apology as your friend grabs your arm and pulls you away in a fit of giggles – ONLY to be grabbed by yet a different guy maybe a few moments later. This is the game we play and are expected to go along with.

o   Now, I’ve never really been to an American “club” – just my fair share of frat parties and that one really sketchy place in Canada (anybody remember that one time Raz bumped into the waitress and tried to apologize profusely in his southern-gentlemanly manner only to be thrown out of the club for assaulting her? This would be that time) – but I have had my personal space violated a good number of times. This was not the case in the place we went in Germany. People on the dance floor we’re grinding on each other, there was nobody trying to stick their hands down anyone else’s pants. To be honest, after the amount on PDA that I’ve seen in Europe in general, this was quite shocking. But it was also fun to go and just be able to dance, wearing jeans, having fun without having to worry about any of that crap. I do love to dance.

• ·         Referring to someone as a Nazi probably shouldn’t be done in public. Or at all, for that matter.

o   Yeah. This is like when we had the German student at camp one session and I had to refrain to using my signature Hitler-stache and accent for Mustache Monday… but the rest of my campers knew about it and did it anyway. Awkward.

• ·         Speaking of Nazis, not all Germans were one.

o   Well, this I knew already, but I did enjoy having this cultural lesson explained to me by a real-life German who knew men who served as part of the SS.

• ·         Nudity? Not a big deal.

o   You can see pictures of topless women everywhere. The train station, TV, even in the check-out line at the grocery store.  It's just... there.

• ·         Harry Potter is an unstoppable force that unites all cultures.

o   Or maybe we're just nerds.

I know I could add more, but I'll just say that all in all I had a great time – Daniel was an amazing host, despite the fact that I was a crappy guest who couldn't show up on time and then threw out her back like an old woman and basically became in “invalid.”

Alright, I know how unbearable it can be to read long blog entries, so I will end here – I feel like I've never typed the word “German” so many times in one document before – and that's saying something, since I've taken a WWII lit class.