queuing

Last night, I went to my first “football” game.  Although the Allianz Arena was not quite as magical as it seems from far away, it was still packed full of crazy FC Bayern fans and Romanians, who managed to start a fire in the stands above my head.  Which could have been a good thing, as it the temperature was struggling to stay in the positives.  Luckily, I was wearing so many layers it looked like a Chinese grandmother dressed me, all wrapped up in a giant fleece blanket.  I couldn’t move my arms and legs, but they were definitely warm.

I learned from this experience that football, like baseball, may be painfully boring on TV, but can be entertaining in a stadium setting.  However, lately it has been pointed out to me that perhaps it is not so much the energy and excitement of the stadium as it is the pommes, hot dogs, and warm beverages.  But no matter.

I also learned that while Germans purport to be masters of efficiency, they are sorely lacking in one major element of efficiency – standing in line.  Everyone always talks about how awful Germans are at standing in line, but the truth is, on the U-Bahn and S-Bahn, me and my elbows are up there with the best of them, so I don’t really care.  And people manage to maintain order at the ATM and supermarket, so it hasn’t been an issue yet.  But last night, despite electronic ticketing, dozens of entrances, and plenty of security guards, it took nearly 30 minutes to enter the stadium.  A stadium of 64,000.  My university football stadium seats 80,000, is run by outsourced agents, has nothing more than a wire fence and some tables, and it takes five minutes to get through there.  And that’s in a city where people actually have guns and bombs.  While the crowd in Munich is unarmed, they were also pressed together so closely I couldn’t see anything besides a sea of black puffy jackets.  After 30 minutes, I made it to the gate only to discover that there were seperate lines for men and women.  Or more precisely, one line for women.  I would have been annoyed if the petite guard wasn’t being scolded so harshly for being too slow.  And don’t even get me started on the lines for food.

But in the end, warm clothing, enthusiastic fans, stadium food, and your team winning is always a good thing.

ready for action

This week I bought my first pair of tights.  I see women walking around here in the snow, wearing miniskirts, with no protective shield, save some scraps of nylon.  So I figured, armed with these magic tights, boots, and a thick jacket, I could surely manage the brief walks between my apartment, the subway, and my office.

I could not.  What are these women thinking?  Maybe they have built up their tolerance over time.

But with the first snow comes the opening of Christmas markets, gluhwein, and steak semmels!  I”ve been lobbying for a day trip to Nürnberg, to visit the mother lode of all Christmas markets, but this has been repeatedly shot down by the German, who claims it will be wall-to-wall tourists as far as the eye can see.  Unless we go on a Tuesday at 9am, but since not all of us have so much vacation time they will stop working on December 10, that is not a viable option.  I’ve been drawing up a list of alternate contenders, including Bamberg, Regensburg, and Landshut.   Any recommendations?

1992 called….

I’m planning a conference at a nearby hotel/conference center and have made my way through a facility tour and various emails and phone calls in German.  I have been sent various proposals, and just realized there was no mention of internet access, so I asked if it was included or could be added.  The hotel replied, sure, no problem, here’s a new proposal.  It read like this:

1 Internetanschluss für 1 User – pro Tag 65,00 EUR

I puzzled over this for a while, thinking, I know all these words…the sentence structure is fairly clear and minimal…but there is no freakin’ way they are charging 65 EUR per DAY per PERSON for internet, right?  I had just about talked myself into the theory that they had misplaced the comma or this was a new per person per day cost (increased from 60EUR).  Both still high, by the way, but within reason.  But I figured maybe my crappy German skills were missing some obvious explanation so I asked our office manager.  Guess what?  My German is not so crappy and this hotel is INSANE!  Who, I beg to know, pays for a week-long conference for 30, including meals and hotel rooms, and pays MORE than double the price just to have internet?  So the conference room, projector, two meals, drinks, snacks, and other equipment cost 60EUR while internet alone costs 65??  What is this, 1990??  This is not new technology!

I’m having lunch with this guy on Friday.  Note to self: must learn how to say “are you freakin’ out of your mind??” in German before then.

blueprint for the future

Dear Detroit:

I spent much of my childhood partaking in your most favorite activity, the great American road trip. These were necessarily full of singing and long conversations. The German did not, hence his inability to contribute any form of entertainment to a car ride whatsoever. But during this weekend’s drive, we overcame our differences and worked out a solution. For you.

First, Chrysler has to go. Ford and GM, to this day, enjoy both incredible success and profit outside of America. You, however, were dumped by Daimler and are hoping to rebound with GM. Acknowledge your futile existance, sell Jeep to Tata, and start sending CVs to GM and Ford. Ford and GM: stop making SUVs and trucks. Just, stop. No one really needs these besides the farmers who all have diesel tractors already. If you want my tax dollars, my fellow Americans are going to start driving small cars and liking it. Dieting might help with that last part. But the crazy thing is, you already know how to do all of these things! I look around the parking lots here, and the Germans love their cars too. And there are Mazdas, Volvos, Opels, Saabs, Saturns, everywhere. All owned by Ford and GM, all large and comfy (compared to French and Italian cars), all with CO2 emissions about half of your average American car, and they’re making money. It’s like pre-Womanizer Britney, staggering around with her roots thinking, “if only I knew how to dress myself and dance….”

I get that people in LA are afraid to drive anything smaller than a Hummer in case they die. But you know how they say a Smart car is just as safe as a Mercedes sedan? The myths are true – I have seen one rear-ended on the Autobahn¹ and the driver emerged completely unscathed. Okay, actually my boss saw this, but still. And I get that no one wants to pay 60,000USD for a VW Golf. I am definitely not recommending that. But the fact that your company is making money on every single continent outside of North America suggests the clearly you at least have the potential to break even.

I hope you consider these suggestions as you tear through my hard-earned tax dollars. And to you unemployed Chrysler employees – there is a huge demand for a Target amongst the Munich expat community. Maybe you could open a franchise here? Don’t forget the popcorn machine.

xoxo,

A.

¹read: rear-ended at about 120mph – approximately six times faster than the average speed on an LA freeway.

not a baller

As it gets colder, I have been in a cooking frenzy to preserve all hints of summery goodness.  This week, I have made vats of ginger-pear jam and trays of oven-roasted tomatoes.  And I check the freezer daily to make sure my last 2 kilos of summer blueberries are still there.  I’ve also been shifting into winter mode with a parade of casseroles, soups, and risottos.  Who needs winter jackets when you can build up the natural padding?

I had my German lesson this morning, and sometimes she asks me questions regarding German “culture” where I really have no idea where she’s going.  Today we were talking about Christmas and she asked what we do during Advent.  Eat chocolate from our Advent calendars?  No.  Buy presents?  No.  Go to the Christmas markets and drink lots of Glühwein?  Yet another strike.  So it turns out we were going for, “lighting advent candles.”  Yeah, I don’t do that.

Going into the holidays last year was a little weird, with all these new German activities, and not being with the family.  This year, the holidays already feel weird with all the economic doom.  It was just announced today that Germany is officially in a recession. France and Italy are expected to announce this once they actually put their reports together, and Spain was the first one to the party months ago.  And obviously we all know where the US stands.  So for the past month, I went through all twelve stages of freaking out what with my age, lack of kids, lack of spouse, and expat-requirements pushing me to the front of the layoff line.  Various company meetings and announcements have been reassuring, but it still feels weird to be making mental lists of ways to spend my money.

What are your thoughts on the upcoming holiday season?  If you have the euros in hand (like Jay-Z), are you going all out?  Or breaking out the whole being-together-is-what-really-matters-spiel?  Or is there some yet-to-be-discovered happy medium?

On a related note, my colleague just asked what “shot caller” means.  I gave her the definition based on being the boss, but having carelessly omitted the alternate usage as one who literally calls their shots I worry that she now has an incomplete sense of the multilayered complexity of Lil Troy’s work.  It’s a big responsibility, being the native English speaker around here.

iso: smart, funny, leader of the free world

So I am all about having a President smarter than the “common folk”, who is thoughtful, not afraid to use big words, and all that good stuff.  I absolutely agree that there is a bizarre distrust of the intellectual in America, this crazy preference for a person you’d like to have a beer with over a nuclear scientist, even when the job in question involves control of nuclear weapons.  I’m down with all of that and pleased with our president elect.

Except, what I’ve noticed this week is that he’s not really funny.  That Nancy-Reagan-living-presidents thing?  I didn’t find it offensive or crass or anything, because lets face it, she’s was married to the man who brought us Reaganomics and sent over 2000 members of the National Guard to stop anti-war protests at my alma mater, so she must be a pretty crazy lady.  At least now, if not before.  The thing is, it really wasn’t funny.  It was more one of those painfully awkward jokes your  boss makes and you all have to laugh to pretend he’s not completely socially awkward.

I’m currently re-reading his “The Audacity of Hope”.  As this is basically an outline of his campaign platform, it’s not meant to be funny.  Except one part actually  made me laugh out loud; when he says a multilateral foreign policy does not mean “we round up the United Kingdom and Togo and then do what we please.”  Now that, my friends, is funny.  In the way that true, ridiculous things are funny.  Except I can’t tell if he intends to be funny, because it’s gift-wrapped in 400 pages of policy propositions.  He could quite likely be serious.

Don’t get me wrong, I like to have smart people overseeing the allocation of $700 billion and holding the red buttons.  But I like to be entertained too.  Good thing he has kids.  Those are always funny.

almost snowy days

This schizophrenic shifting between warm sunny days and foggy, near-freezing chill bring an element of surprise to my mornings.  The waking up, not knowing what you will find, it’s like an advent calendar for November.  Except, that there is no candy and it is not fun at all.

But speaking of the advent calendar, I have been seeing them for weeks now, along with other Christmas-related items.  In fact, when our office manager purchased candy for our Halloween festivities, about half of them were wrapped in Christmas paper already.  The other half all had a giant calorie label, which is something Mars & Mars has apparently started doing in an effort to make candy less fun.  Interesting business model.

What with the weather, I’m trying to hop on the tights bandwagon, as I have been scolded by everyone from Oma to some 4-year-old German girl with her mom, who said “that lady isn’t wearing tights!”  She must have been eye-level with the 2cm strip of skin between my skirt and boots, and let me tell you, she was shocked.  But where does one go to buy tights here?  I have no patience for the Saturday shopping hoards, so I need some concrete leads before I start mingling with the masses.  The time for browsing is over.

pros and cons

On a lighter note, many of you think there is no reason to vote and that your vote will not make a difference.  I am here to say that, in the case of the presidential election, that is probably true for virtually all of my friends and family.  But, at least in California, we have other controversial items on the ballot.  For the rest of you who need some motivation, here’s a gem of an argument against voting.

George Carlin:  “People like to twist that around – they say, ‘If you don’t vote, you have no right to complain’, but where’s the logic in that? If you vote and you elect dishonest, incompetent people into office who screw everything up, you are responsible for what they have done. You caused the problem; you voted them in; you have no right to complain. I, on the other hand, who did not vote, who in fact did not even leave the house on election day, am in no way responsible for what these people have done and have every right to complain about the mess you created that I had nothing to do with.”

But what kind student of politics would I be without a counterarguement for voting?  I’ll even make it a three-prong rebuttal:

A.  Free coffee from Starbucks

B.  Free Krispy Kreme

C.  Free cones from Ben and Jerry’s

game time

Smelly insightfully pointed out that as voters, we each have to identify what matters the most to us, and then who most closely aligns with our views on those issues.  Be that gay marriage, the economy, immigration, or NASA funding.

For me, the most important issue is America’s strength.  Economically, intellectually, even military, although I would argue that it’s not the measure of strength it used to be.  What matters is returning America to a place that people can admire, a place worthy of the efforts it took my parents and their families to come here.  Throughout the past 40 years, my parents and each and every one of their brothers and sisters found their way to America.  Whether being pushed by Communism or pulled by the promise of education and jobs, they came.  My last aunt and uncle moved to California just this year.

Even without uncertainty or instability in other countries, America should be a place that thrives.  Where the universities are the best and everyone has the means to attend the one of their choice.  Where jobs, bonuses, and promotions are there for the people willing to work for them.  I think it’s great if children of immigrants are now moving back to China because there are so many growing business opportunities there.  I think it’s not so great when it’s because there are fewer opportunities for young graduates in America.  It’s wonderful to meet other expats in Germany who moved here for adventure, love, or work.  It’s not so wonderful to hear them talk about how they want to go back, but don’t because cost of raising children here is so much cheaper and the standard of life so much better.

A lot of people I have spoken to here support Obama.  And it used to bother me, especially during primary season, when they couldn’t name any specific thing they liked about him, no policy he’s proposed, no position he’s held.  The only reason they could throw out is: “he embodies everything we think is good about America”

But over the past few months, I’ve realized that’s not only good enough, but perhaps the most important thing.

pick me, pick me

Living abroad during election time is interesting because the main questions of Germans and other Europeans I meet is not so much who should win (in a nation where 75% of the citizens support Obama, a mere 20% McCain, and another 5% are that rare breed who don’t know there’s an election and have never heard of Starbucks or Justin Timberlake, this is not a surprise), but procedural and cultural questions.  Let me lay down the law on two of the most popular ones right here.

1.  Europeans/other nations should get to vote – the American president influences everyone.
Okay, first of all, I am a tax-paying legal resident of Germany and I don’t get to vote here.  Not in national elections, not for state elections, not for smoking bans, and not for mayor.  Despite forking over nearly 50% of my salary to these people.  So don’t start on how you think you have a “right” to vote.  Also, yes, this election will impact the world.  This is because America is a superpower.  Therefore, it’s actions affect your life.  If this bothers you, turn off the MTV and work on making your own country more powerful and successful so you are less affected by what happens around the world.  China’s doing it, so can you!

This is sometimes tied to a relating statement about how foreigners should be allowed to donate and it’s unfair (see: America, superpower, influence).  I hate to regurgitate such a Rove-ian argument, but how exactly is that going to work out when Middle Eastern oil moguls band together to pour millions of dollars into US elections?  Don’t forget this isn’t just about choosing the next president – this would allow foreign money to elect state governors and fund propositions too.  Do you want Vatican City using their financial prowess to fund Prop 8?  I think not.

2.  Why do so few people vote?  And why do you do it on Tuesday?
In answer to part 1, see part 2.  Plus, for working people, especially those who work in a different city or area from where they live, getting to your assigned polling place can require a ridiculous amount of effort.   Especially for those of us who rely solely on public transportation.  Ironically, I would say it’s actually easier for college students to vote than any other occupational demographic, as they live and “work” in the same place.

As far as why we do it on Tuesday, there is a boring explanation involving farming society.  I’m generally ambivalent to the suggestions to move election day to a weekend.  Frankly, I find the German system of showing up between 9-12 on a Sunday morning even less conducive to voting.  Plus, the majority of states do require employers to give you time off to vote.  And to be honest, I think having it on a normal working day makes you less likely to forget it’s election day, unlike some German people who shall not be named.

Speaking of voting and Starbucks, apparently they are passing out free coffees to everyone who voted.  Think we can try this here too?

photo evidence

You know, it’s bad enough that Germans do not make up for holidays that fall on a weekend with a Friday or Monday off, but even worse, all stores and services normally open on Saturday (grocery, bank, post office) are also closed.  I understand this is fair as they deserve a day off too.  But rushing to the grocery store to stock up on a Friday night and finding a line out the door is not my idea of a good start to the weekend.

But it actually worked out pretty well.  I always agreed with the idea of closing shops and having quiet outdoor/resting time on the weekend.  I just always thought this day should be Saturday, not Sunday.  Forget religion, let’s serve the people here.  So it was pretty nice not to have errands yesterday and be able to breakfast on fresh-from-the-oven cinnamon rolls, explore new cafes and neighborhoods, do half of my German homework, and pig out on Indian food.  And today we get to do it all over again!

During this weekend of productivity, I’ve finally uploaded all of my California photos and rediscovered my Flickr account.  So I am pleased to bring you the top three things¹ I miss about home:

Breakfast

Lunch

Dinner

And they say we have no good food in America.

¹Other than friends and family, of course.  And drinking fountains.