A good blog

I just found a funny blog, these kind people commented on Remember White Rabbit:

http://cursesandblast.blogspot.com/

Scroll down to June 30, 2009 and read "German words for English Eyes" and you wil see why I was laughing so hard. Enjoy!

God Bless America! (and my German health insurance)

I just got my new travel health insurance card in the mail the other day, and while I was just now sorting out my mail and junk on my table from the week, I read the back of the insurance card. Here's what it says:

"Please inform our emergency service bef0re any hospital visits. This way you can avoid having to pay in advance. Especially in the USA it can occur that your credit card limit is exceeded."

Ha! It's not about having your hospital visit or ambulance ride pre-approved (good luck with that after you've been in a car wreck, for example) as you do on many American health insurance plans. The insurance company is actually warning you that you might have to pay some money out of pocket in a foreign country if you don't let them know about your treatment in advance. I like that kind of insurance! They are concerned about my finances, not just their own!

I live in a madhouse

I am becoming more and more convinced that we have completely lost our minds every day. What got me started thinking this was the birth of my son Friedrich, or more exactly, the way he views the world. He was born with wrinkles between his eyebrows, and he always looks very skeptical. I am sure he could hear through the womb that he was on his way to a darn crazy place, and once he got here, it was crazier than he had expected. Not only do I have a five week old who views the world with great skepticism, but I have a three and a half year old who sings the song "Hurt" by Nine Inch Nails while sitting on the toilet. This evening while getting him ready for bed, I walked into the bathroom, and there he sat, singing "Hurt". He has very advanced musical taste. Actually, he listens to the version of "Hurt" sung by Johnny Cash, and can also sing other Johnny Cash tunes, as well as various Beatles hits, songs by Belle and Sebastian, AC/DC, Ton Loc, Coolio and Helge Schneider. This in addition to memorizing five Dr. Seuss books, just about every children's song he has ever heard and most of his picture books. So you see, he doesn't just hear grown up music all the time. I can't even imagine what kinds of fun times we are going to have with these two boys in about 10 or 12 years!

Funny Mistakes

Being a language teacher, and someone who is interested in language anyway, you have an ear for funny language mistakes that may have double meanings. I collect these mistakes. I heard a good one a while ago, and here it is.

An acquaintance was shopping on American eBay, and found an interesting auction. The sellers had translated the sentence "We ship worldwide" into German as "Wir schiffen uns in die ganze Welt ein". My German readers are probably peeing their pants themselves right now, because what this seller actually said in German was not related to shipping, even though the individual words sound like it, but they really said "We pee our pants in the whole world". Even if they didn't get a good deal, the German-speaking shoppers looking at this auction will get a good laugh for free!

Massive lack of updates

I can't believe it, this is the first time in the life of this blog that I posted nothing for one entire month. October 2009 was a blog-free month! Yet it was a pretty good month. The first two weeks were rather taxing, as I was waiting for my baby to come, and after he didn't come for 10 days after his due date, the hospital took some measures to speed him up. My second son Friedrich was born on October 15! So I have been busy with other things, blog writing wasn't on the top of my list.

1083 McKimmy















Look at that, the house I lived in last year is up for sale! Not a bad place, on the water, and in a nice neighborhood with nice neighbors (mostly), but I sure don't want to buy it! I think my favorite memory of that place is when the owners came to get the keys from us and the car was full to the roof with our belongings and we were about to head out on our road trip to New York to catch the plane back to Germany.
It's always funny when you've lived somewhere, and then it's for rent or sale again, and someone new moves in. When I see these places in Dresden, I always wonder "who is living in my place?", especially with my last big apartment. Even though I have a nice place now, I feel I betrayed my old place, with its grand hallway and big rooms, high ceilings and antique doors, by leaving for the new world last year.
Even though I don't feel any remorse for leaving McKimmy Drive, or as if I have betrayed that house (more like it betrayed me for stealing 10 months of my life with its dark walls and loud furnace), let's reminisce a little about the good times there. There were good times? Well, amusing times at least.

The bunnies
One of our favorite, and only, pastimes on McKimmy Drive was to go down the street to the west and view the bunnies. These were not just any bunnies, but bunnies escaped or set free from someone's bunny farm on the next street. They were precious dwarf rabbits, black, spotted, brown, cream, steel gray, and they had lots of precious bunny babies starting in early spring. The flip side of this coin, however, is that the neighbors loathed these bunnies. Often one would disappear, and we would hear sinister laughter and things like "Got 'im!" after a gunshot. The sad end of another bunny's life.

Crazy Dave
One evening we went to visit the bunnies, and were accosted on the way home by whom we later dubbed "Crazy Dave". Darkness was beginning to fall, and Crazy Dave ran out to the street and started talking nonstop to us in his drunken slur. He wanted to know everything about us, because he and his parents-in-law had been observing us for months, as neighbors will. He also told us all the details about his "f)§/king crazy" parents-in-law and his "beautiful" wife. Then he proceeded to take my husband to the barn on one side of the street to the men, who were drinking hard liquor and talking about cars or something, and me to the other side of the street to the house, where the women were having a party, because I "had to meet them". What kind of party were they having on this Friday night in rural Michigan? A sex toy party. Come to find out, Crazy Dave's "f)§/%king crazy" mother-in-law was practically a colleague of mine, working in the same school district. Oh boy oh boy oh boy.

Fish bread
While living in this house, we always saved old bread to feed to the fish in the pond across the street or in the lake. These bags of bread deposited in various places around the house came to be known as fish bread, and Wilhelm would seek them out, and we would find him gnawing on hard chunks of bread at various times of day. When asked if he would prefer some fresh bread, he would always refuse, insisting on eating the stale fish bread. Fish bread has come to be one of his favorite snacks, and is best when it is aged at least a few days so it is nice and hard.

Trailer Park Boys
It was during our time on McKimmy Drive that we first heard of the show Trailer Park Boys from Canada. We instantly became obsessed, got the movie and all episodes of the show, and watched them from start to finish a number of times. In a lot of ways, this show reminded us of our current situation, and for added entertainment value, we would sometimes go drive through Lakeview Village, Beaverton's trailer park. Watching this show was at least for me a way of forgetting that I had to go to work the next day, and a way of forgetting everything, just switching off and forgetting. I'm glad I don't need that show now any more, and that I can deal with reality where I am now much better.

And with that, I wish 1083 McKimmy Drive all the best with its new tenants or owners or whatever, and may I give them one piece of advice: tear the place down, landscape and build something new!

The brothel at the end of my street

Well, okay, to be honest, there is not a brothel actually on the street that I live on (as far as I know...) but there is one opening up at the end of the street you look down from my front windows. Heh heh heh.
The responsible, grown up, parent of (almost) 2 children part of me says "What's happening to the neighborhood??" And the other ridiculous, silly part of me is sort of thrilled to live so close to a brothel. Well, "massage parlor and escort service" is technically what it's called.
The thing that's really hilarious about the whole grand brothel opening is that it seems it is being done to spite someone. You see, the now brothel owner bought this little house and garden between a row house and some storage garages, fixed it up and rented out the front part of his garden as parking places to make some money. He built his parking places a bit too big, though, and crossed the property line to the property belonging to the garage owners. Garage owners tore out his paving stones and also decided to tear down the garages to build a new row house, a shicky-mickey passive house or low energy house. Little house owner's revenge on passive house builders? Open a brothel. According to inside sources, this guy has basically said screw those people building their passive house, we'll see how high the rent for those apartments is with a brothel next door! He has decided not to move into his little house, but has already put up a sign for "Candy's Massage Parlor and Escort Service". In German, of course. I love it.
In other brothel news, I heard a pretty funny story. Someone I know knows someone in the Czech Republic who teaches the ladies of the night at a brothel there English. First of all, the idea of an English class for prostitutes is just fantastic. But that's not even the funny part. This brothel in the Czech Republic is making a killing one day a week by offering men free or reduced admission (I can't remember which), as long as they sign a waiver that any and all acts that they commit while in said brothel may be broadcast on the internet.

I AM SO SICK OF NAZIS

First, they stole my bike back in 2005. Now they ruin my freaking car. No kidding, car crash today with some Nazis. I have had enough. We had a nice day today really, went out to lunch at the hotel, sat on the terrace outside with a nice view of the city. Later we continued on to pick up a friend and go view some bunnies outside of town, then we went to the Polenztal, a nice, cool valley full of rocky cliffs and a nice little river, very cool on such a hot day. Then, on the way back to Dresden, it happened. We had planned to stop by and visit some friends on the way back into town, but the Nazis stopped us. We were driving, and came to a construction site with a big steel plate covering a hole or something. We slowed considerably to drive over the plate, not wanting to damage our tires, and the next thing we know there is a Mercedes behind us honking like a wild man and a crash. The jerk hit us. He came out of nowhere, and attempted to pass us in the construction site, but obviously had some trouble judging the size of his car, because he smashed up his front end on the right side and our rear bumper on the left. Or maybe he hadn't attempted to pass, but hit us out of anger that we were driving a foreign car that is nicer than his. I wouldn't put it past such a Nazi. But wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. Mr. Nazi pulled off to the side of the road, we stayed where we were due to evidence. Mr. Nazi approached our car, we locked the doors and kept the windows up and called the police. You see, Mr. Nazi walked sort of like an ape, had a shaved head tatooed with none other than the devil himself, and some kind of old German script on the back window of his crap Mercedes saying something about the Sächsische Schweiz. Not only is the Sächsische Schweiz (where we were) a very beautiful place to go hiking and has been immortalized by numerous artists in many fantastic works, but it is also a cozy little Nazi nest. Mr. Nazi had a license plate from the area, so apparently he is a local, and the old German script on his rear windshield saying something about the Sächsische Schweiz sort of gave him away.
While waiting for the police, Mr. Nazi was telephoning an awful lot. Then the carloads of Nazis started rolling in. Car after car full of shirtless tatooed Nazis came and talked to Mr. Nazi and his girlfriend. Mr. Nazi also went to some people who had been sitting outside their house near the scene and told them what to tell the police. And here we sat, cozy in our air conditioned, banged up car, waiting for the police to come for 45 minutes while the Nazis had a little party surrounding our car. That was a bit uncomfortable. Finally the police arrived, and for the officer, Mr. Nazi was clearly guilty. Hello, Mr. Nazi! Passing in a construction zone! Hello, Mr. Nazi! Driving way too fast in a village! Mr. Nazi was also a bit aggressive, so it turns out to have been a very good decision to just lock the doors and not talk to him without police presence. And the whole time, the other Nazis were milling around, driving around, talking about the accident. Probably also trying to get a good look at us and memorizing our license plate number to enter into their database of people they don't like. You see, we've done some research on Mr. Nazi, since we have his name and address from the police report, and it turns out that yes, he truly is a Nazi. He was convicted of beating up some Vietnamese guys in another village in 2003, and threatening some refugees with a pistol. Super! Mr. Nazi has a gun! And his Nazi friends really do keep a database of names and addresses of liberals and probably anybody they don't like, so we probably are in there now too. Well, he doesn't have my name, but he has another name, and an address, but fortunately not an address we'll be using much longer. We are considering going to another undisclosed location until we can move into our permanent undisclosed location.

If you'd like to have a look at what kinds of nonsense those silly Nazis commit here in the area and read German, have a look here. It's an interesting chronicle of their little games. Maybe you'll even figure out who rear-ended us.

O, Nougat Bits, how I love thee!













Call me American for my extreme use of the superlative here, but I think this may possibly be the best cereal in the whole world! Mmmm, Nougat Bits, also known as Nougat Pockets or Nougat Pillows depending on which discounter you buy them from, are square cereal pockets made of wheat and rice, about one inch by one inch filled with nougat cream, comparable to Nutella, which you can buy in German supermarkets. I truly believe the discounter brands, as pictured above from the now defunct Plus Markt (Plus merged with Netto, so now there's only Netto in the ghetto!) are better than the name brands. The name brand Nougat Bits that I have had got softer quicker in milk or the cereal pockets weren't as good, or there was less creamy, chocolatey nougat inside. All highly disappointing factors. The best Nougat Bits I have had have been from Plus Markt (I can't speak for Netto, since I haven't bought them there yet since my return) and Kaufland (my current box).

Back before I was old and married and with child, there was nothing better than a bowl of Famili Nougat Bits when I felt I needed something sweet in the afternoon, felt a little down, or needed a quick breakfast. After 10 months in America, I had somehow forgotten about my youthful love affair with Nougat Bits, and only a few days ago did the baby in my belly start rumbling something about "Feeeeeed meeee Nooooooouuugaaaat Biiiiiiiits" I hadn't thought about this cereal in at least a year, but I agreed with baby, finding this a very good idea, and so sent out baby's valliant father on a quest for Nougat Bits. The quest was successful, we got our nougat fix, and I don't know when this nougat trip is going to end.