old news
















































Here are a couple of pictures from my last trip to the Czech Republic. They had quite a lot of snow there, more than we had in Dresden. This was at the end of January. Now we have no snow left, the last days have actually even felt like spring! This is a much needed change from the ugly gray winter weather we'd been having.

The Life Pursuit

Has everyone heard this new Belle and Sebastian album? I just picked it up about an hour ago from my friendly neighborhood record man who used to have his shop in the same house where I used to live and where I used to pick up all of my packages that were delivered when I wasn't home, and it had me dancing in the kitchen while I was making my nachos for lunch. This is a rare occurence, especially on a dark snowy day like today. This music is like the sun! It will make you feel good. Apparently, it's sort of a follow-up to their last regular album, which was all about breakups, and is instructions on how to live your life further. I haven't quite gotten that out of it yet, but we'll see.

Speaking of the life pursuit, mine is going well, I guess. In between eating bon bons and playing around with my weblog on the internet, I go to work, which is pretty much like sitting around and eating bon bons and playing around, which isn't so bad. My new job, while frustrating during the first few weeks, was super this week! My different groups are working on linoleum printing, surrealistic collages, and nature collages with pen and ink details. Even the students I was told were difficult were really engaged when we were doing some practice exercises with pen and ink yesterday. And today I even learned something new as part of this whole thing: the English name for these particular types of pen: nib and holder. (Feder und Federhalter) All right!

In other news, I rewarded myself after dragging myself down to the inhabitant registration place this morning (here in Germany you have to register your address with the gov'ment so the man knows where to find you when you make trouble, as I often do). I went shopping! In addition to my new CD, which also came with a bonus DVD, I got 2 new hip shirts to suit my expanding form (you know what all those bon bons will do to a girl!), and went and wandered around the big art store, only to kick myself for buying some nibs and a fancy holder at the expensive art store yesterday. They are way cheaper at the big art store (49 cents compared to 1.60!!), and the big art store is much more entertaining. You can stumble around aisles of giant sketchbooks and every kind paint, ink and whatever else your heart could desire and drool without getting stared at by the hipster expensive art store workers. I behaved myself, though, and only got some holders for my art classes, just as I had planned. Somehow, we have an overabundance of nibs at school, but only 4 intact holders, and one that's missing its insides, so it doesn't work. So this should alleviate the complaints of my students that "God, this place gets so much money every year and you can't even have enough holders for all of us!" I wasn't aware of our lack of holders...I had found the supply of nibs and mistakenly thought "Where there are nibs, there are holders!" But there weren't. Another lesson learned.

Meet my new bunny, Tigs.

Finally I'm posting some new pictures of my new house...




















This is that big hallway when you come in the door...




















At the end of which you find the...um...bunny jungle.




















Second to the bunny jungle, I think these mirrors are my favorite part of the hallway.




















The sleeping chamber.




















Check out our cool doorframes!




















Here's a look in the kitchen.




















And the living room. The other bedroom is not depicted, because at the moment it's stacked from floor to ceiling with boxes, and the bathroom is not yet finished...okay, the shower curtain is hung, there are some plants, but no fish or octopus yet!




















Waboose's mischievous bunny ways haven't changed in his new home. He got into some blueberries and needed a bath a couple weeks ago.













Needless to say, he didn't enjoy the experience.

Down by the river
















Yesterday evening some friends and I celebrated New Year's Eve with some quiche, brussels sprouts, cheesecake, and Dresden Monopoly. After buying up the whole city we ventured down to the Elbe to have a look at the festivities. The festivities don't entail any publicly funded fireworks, all the fireworks shot off throughout the city are done by private parties. Basically it's just a mass of people throwing around lots of firecrackers (and loud ones from the Czech Republic, not the Black Cat kind I know from Indiana!) and launching lots of other fireworks that are illegal in Michigan and rather unsettling for me, considering that a lot of these hobby pyrotechnicians were probably a good 2.5 sheets to the wind, if not the full 3.
















The real action came upon our return to the Neustadt at around half past 12. On Albertplatz we spotted a whole troop of cops in riot gear. Then we saw cars driving where the trams usually drive. Then we spotted a trash can ablaze right by the street, hence the cars taking a little detour. This was amusing until a fire truck came and put out the fire. On the short stretch of Alaunstraße back to my house, there were police officers in riot gear lurking behind every corner. This made it seem like a good idea to just head home and play with the bunnies.
















For some reason, Waboose has been a little worked up lately. Maybe it was those finger monsters, funny rubber finger puppets, at Christmas that got up in his face, but he's really been in attack mode lately, charging at hands and stuffed animals, stamping his little bunny feet and grunting. It could also have been the loud fireworks the past couple days, this made the bunnies quite unsettled last year as well.







































Today upon leaving and going out for breakfast, we came across lots of trash of course, and even some broken windows and fun stuff like that. We even spotted a guy trying to break into a pay phone to get out the money, but I think that was more of an every day thing, not just for New Year's.

So anyway, happy New Year! Boy, I thought 2005 would be good, but the way this year looks, I think it will be even more interesting!

Once every five years.















Last Saturday we had a bit of a snowstorm here in Dresden, or better said (at least by my definition) a blizzard. This picture was taken at around 10 in the morning, and it kept right on snowing like that well into the evening. I'm not sure how late because I turned the day into a movie-n-junk food extravaganza, the culmination of which was falling asleep on the sofa around 8 in the evening.
So, the big question is, will we have snow on Christmas? The better part of the nearly one foot of snow which fell on Saturday has already melted (that's the beauty of living in this not so extremely cold part of Germany, although the downside is having to put up with all the slush and crud all over the sidewalks). Yesterday I was informed that in Dresden there's snow on Christmas only about every five years. Just a bit east of Dresden, in Görlitz, they have snow on Christmas once every 3 years I think it was, and in the west, in Düsseldorf, they have snow on Christmas only once every 20 years!! This is due to the various climates in these different regions of Germany.
















The other big question is: how in the heck do I get my bike out of this ridiculous mess? Good thing I'm not one of those whackos who ride around in the snow, so I don't have to worry about the answer to that question until the spring.

It's beginning to look a lot like...




















This should give you an idea of what a Christmas market here looks like, this is a smaller one on Hauptstraße in Dresden. I like this one better than the super famous, somewhat overdone and overpublicized Striezelmarkt on the Altmarkt because it doesn't exhaust you, the people aren't as pushy and flipped out, and they have nicer regional crafts and treats. The Striezelmarkt might be over 500 years old, but it's full of a lot of commercial junk and the shoppers are so Christmas-ed out that they're a bit like lemmings. Though I do love the spectacle of it.




















Another spectacle, the larger than life Christmas pyramid, also on Hauptstraße, near Albertplatz. This thing mesmerizes me, with its lights and moving parts. To give you an idea of the size, a person is probably as tall as that light in the front, which on a normal tabletop pyramid, would be a mere candle. Oooh, this thing is really fantastic. What I'm wondering is, where do they put it the rest of the year? Do they dismantle it? How much does something like this cost, if a normal tabletop model runs around 60 Euro?













Another regional specialty, like the Christmas pyramid, is the Schwippbogen, or in English, Schwibbogen. These items are usually made of wood, and the authentic ones come from the Erzgebirge region. Apparently, back in GDR times, these things were made regionally, but mostly sold in the west, because they were too expensive for the locals. I guess this was somehow overlooked by authorities. Maybe the approximately 20% of the total production which they sold inside the GDR was convincing enough for the authorities.














The star in the window is also a typical Christmas decoration you'll find here. Not flashing, moving or playing music, it's much more understated than American Christmas decorations.

As this photograph makes painfully obvious, all I really think about are my cute bunnies and delicious beverages.















These preoccupations got me into some trouble a while ago when I accidentally spilled some orange juice (and it was really only orange juice, I swear) on my keyboard, destroying its functionality on the right side. As you can see, I feebly attempted to remove some keys and clean the bad boy up, as was detailed on the internet, only to not be able to put the keys back on. Oh well, they didn't work anyway, before or after the cleaning. But yesterday, after buying a snazzy new (or so I thought) keyboard on ebay, I took computer and keyboard to my friendly neighborhood PC specialists. They got everything up and running, and when I went to pick up poor little lappy, they told me my snazzy new "i" key didn't work! Argh! But, specialists that they are, they fixed it! The moral of this story: buyer beware! And delicious beverage drinker, beware even more!

A bicycle update: someone keeps moving my bike around, which is really making me paranoid. I'm not riding my bike a lot lately, for assorted reasons, here I'll just say it's too cold, which is part of it. And, I just discovered the other day that someone stickered my bike too! This is cool, so anybody who wants to sticker my bike some more, go right ahead. I was thinking of stickering it myself, but didn't for fear that somebody might steal it, rending my efforts useless. And in other news, the Sprick is still missing. I worry about her fate, and I especially miss her fashionable and functional basket.

And still other news: I have to pat myself on the back because I got a job as an art teacher! So finally, I'm actually using that expensive college education of mine, it doesn't just make me feel good any more!

If the Wee bun in the oven flipped you out...
look at the other things Little Wee does in the name of art!













































But she always gets a treat after her selfless performances!

By the way, happy Thanksgiving! (and no, a turkey will not be replacing the bunny in my oven, but a delicious vegetarian spinach pie will)

I love Putzi.

Thursday evening, on my way home from work, the air was filled with the magical scent of peppermint. At first I asked myself, "am I dreaming?", then I took a good long whiff of the air, and, lo!, I was not. The air was truly full of the delicious pepperminty smell of Putzi children's toothpaste. I am lucky to live with the Putzi factory just behind my house, and sometimes when I open my windows, my apartment is filled with the fresh smell of toothpaste.
Unfortunately, the fresh smell of peppermint in the Neustadt is also often counteracted by the smell of beer and vomit on the streets, which is just a bit disgusting. Maybe I'm getting old, but all this beer drinking and puking is pretty disgusting. And, god, sometimes you can't even walk down the street with all these puking beer drinkers standing around. But I guess that adds to the flair of this place, and if they weren't there, what would I have to complain about? Honestly, it might just be a bit boring. And knowing how annoying it is to not be able to walk down the street in the evening makes sunny weekend mornings when the streets are empty and the birds are singing and the shops are all just opening and the people are waking up that much more enjoyable. (The only problem is all the dried puke on the sidewalk from the night before.)

I'm so excited, and I just can't hide it.











Maybe there's something in the water here, or maybe it was just Halloween, or maybe it was that White Stripes concert in Berlin last week, but something strange is happening!
It seems to have struck Little Wee as well.









Or maybe it's that Frauenkirche that's got me all wound up. The church is finished, and the consecration was last weekend. I heard that it was open to the public on Sunday night from about 11:30 until 5 on Monday morning and about 15,000 people streamed through in that night alone, in groups of about 400, with 20 minutes to look around the inside of the church. Unfortunately, we showed up a bit too early for the festivities and thought it had just been a rumor that he church would be open. Oh well, it was pretty cold to stand outside in a long line anyway.

Great. I think I have avian flu.

I'm sure you've heard all about how bird flu has recently been found in Turkey, and when you look at a map, that's not really all that far from Germany. But since I neither work with nor eat chickens, I guess my risk goes way down, so maybe I just have a cold. It could be traced back to my biking from class to class yesterday, when the temperature in the wee morning hours was just hovering around 2 degrees celsius. Or maybe I picked something up from one of my students or at the university. Regardless, now's the time to put my knowledge of home remedies from not one, but two countries to use. Here in Germany, a very common thing to do if you have a cold, or more specifically, a sore throat, is to slap a scarf around your neck immediately. I don't know if this has any scientific background, but it sure is comforting to wear a scarf around the house, and last winter when I had a nasty sore throat and wore a scarf overnight, my sore throat did go away. Last night I had a sore throat, too, and forgot to wear a scarf. I slept with the heat on in my cozy room under a quilt my mom made, and that seemed to do the trick, too. And at the moment, I'm eating some steamy vegetable soup. The real home remedy in the United States is to eat chicken soup (I think research really has been done on this, and chicken contains some chemical that helps you get better faster), but since we've already established that I don't consume anything that has or had eyes (except potatoes), that's off limits. So instead I just made some soup with carrots, zucchini, tofu, red pepper, some little noodles, peas and some broth, and this also always seems to help clear my airways. Now if only I had a vaporizer to steam up my room at night, I'd be as good as new tomorrow.

This was the trip home, fortunately, the week in Barcelona wasn't quite as turbulent as this.




















Too bad Don Limpio wasn't on the flight, too! This name I can understand, it means Mr. Clean in Spanish, as he is dubbed in the United States, but why is he called Mr. Proper in Germany??
















The trip was more like this, relaxed and nice. This is in the town of Sitges.







































And here's that wild and crazy Sagrada Familia church that everybody was asking me about before I went. It's been being built now for almost 125 years, and they'd like to have it finished in 2050.




















Here's why I really went to Spain. They really seem to like bunnies in Barcelona, we saw many for sale as pets at a street market.




















Wait, is that person stealing from the cactus garden? Whoever that was came back to Germany with about 2 sacks of cactus starts...





















In case I forgot the way home, Colón was there to show me the way. Or maybe the way to India?




















This is a neat kind of advertising (I guess) by the shops in the town center of Igualada.









































And these little guys can be seen around Barcelona.
A bit like some of the serial graffiti here in Dresden,
though there isn't as much in Barcelona.