You and a Friend Have Won an All-expenses-paid Trip to...Bucharest!

Sometimes in life you go a whole month where nothing of note occurs and then your boss announces she's sending you to Romania. Not forever; just for a few days, but read up on early language acquisition reseach and get packing because you're leaving in two weeks. Though the trip does sound interesting, I'm not sure how much of Bucharest I'll really be seeing, since I'll be spending much of my time in a conference about child development. But if the university is paying to send me to a foreign country where I don't even know what the currency is, who am I to argue?

But it's true that the days leading up to this particular announcement were not especially eventful. A new director of marketing joined the zoo team, a tall man from West Germany who wears thin-rimmed glasses. One day, when I knew him by sight but had not been formally introduced, he ambushed me by popping out from behind foliage while I was returning the bearded dragon to his enclosure after a presentation. (Apparently, the marketing director had been waiting for the gardener and an expensive tree donated by a patron, not just lurking in the bushes.)

"Suzanne!" he began; it was an odd way to begin because we had never met and therefore had never gone through the very German process of jointly deciding whether it was acceptable to use forenames. "I hear you are from the Seattle area." He explained that after studying marketing, he spent a year with a host family in Federal Way. "I KNOW WHERE THAT IS!" I practically shouted. "I'm from Burien!" "I KNOW WHERE THAT IS!" he practically shouted back. My German became broken and frantic as I excitedly urged him to tell me more about it. He knew the Seatac mall, he knew Gig Harbor, he knew the Point Defiance Zoo! It was home.

He spoke entirely in German, although Shannon told me his English was quite good and obviously at some point it had been good enough for him to live in the U.S. The only Germans I have found who are comfortable speaking to me in English are the linguists; all the others, no matter what their level of training, hesitate. There is one trainee who switched from studying English at the university to studying zookeeping (I would say that was odd, but then, so is switching from being a middle school teacher to a zookeeper.) and she is the only person at the zoo to speak readily with me.

But I discovered she is not the only one who actually speaks English. While I was talking about the possibility of going to a movie, I invited another trainee to come along, and warned, "this one's in English." He replied confidently, "Oh, my English is certainly good enough to watch movies. I got A's in English from 1st grade until 12th" I was surprised. He could watch a Tarantino film in English and yet never spoke a word beyond "Hi" in English to me? But it was true. Similarly, another trainee said to me one day, "That's enough" in English and when I praised him "Hey, good English!" he confessed he'd lived in Australia for ten months. No one except those in their twenties had so much English in school, but it seems the German mentality of avoiding mistakes at all costs prevents even those who studied for years from speaking.

In other news, Octoberfest is in full swing here (yeah, it starts in September; howevert no one has been able to explain why), but mostly it's a Bavarian festival, so up here in east central Germany, we don't sport drindels or lederhosen. We do erect occasional booths and tiny surprise stages around the city center, and I can't find any rhyme or reason to them. On Sunday I was taking a walk along the river when I stumbled upon a pretty sizable flea market and once while walking home from German class, my usual route was barricaded by what appeared to be a celebration of the region's different wineries. I can't say if these types of things are Octoberfest related, or just coincidental. Germans seem to be constantly celebrating something, which is a pretty cheerful way to go about things really.

As part of my preparations for leaving the country, I had to paint my balcony and one room in the apartment. When I signed the lease for the apartment, I was taking over for someone who had already painted it, but when I give it back (unless I sign it over to yet another person) I have to return it to the rental agency completely white. This would not have been an issue if the previous renter had not used vibrant mustard yellow and dark velvet brown paint. It would also have been an easier task for me if I had the proper equipment for such an endeavor. Or if I were smarter. That would have helped too.

I began by covering half the balcony with newspaper because I didn't have a dropcloth, or enough newspaper to cover the whole thing. I also didn't have a paint tray, which meant I had to dunk the roller into the paint bucket directly. I also only had a roller with a six inch handle to paint walls and a ceiling that are eight feet high. Eventually I was standing on a cabinet that happened to be the only piece of furniture I could move onto the balcony without assistance and that was tall enough for me to reach the ceiling, and I was using a contraption I had rigged by duct taping the short roller onto a long pole. Fortunately I didn't plummet four stories down onto the neighbors' hedges. (But if I had, at least I would have been able to get affordable medical care!) Don't paint your balcony in this manner. I industriously applied three coats of paint, all the while marveling at the audacity of the yellow and brown paint. How could they possibly still be showing through? Frustrated and exhausted, I began chatting with a friend online who helpfully pointed out that one should stir paint before using it. Damn.

The only other events of note are that I ate a fighting chicken's egg for breakfast one day, and an elephant painted me a picture.

Happy Anniversary

Today I am observing an important milestone: the completion of my first year abraod. As they say, time flies when you're trying to figure out how to survive in a foreign country. I'm sure that's how the saying goes. To celebrate our year of surviving in this rather cloudy but extremely efficient place, my colleagues and I are going to spend a (quite tame) night out on the town here in Magdeburg.

The end of summer also means the old ladies who sit at the cafe in the booth adjascent to me on Sundays are wearing sweaters instead of their loud, floral-patterned blouses. It means I get chilly very quickly reading in the park, and there are fewer motorcades boasting newly-weds driving through the center of the city. The tradition here, after the marriage ceremony, is for all of the wedding party and guests to pile into their cars and drive in a long, slow line down the main street, honking their horns incessantly. The first car, with the bride and groom, usually is marked with a large floral arrangement on the hood, and somehow I completely forgive the assault on my sense of hearing and think, "awww, they just got married!" But wedding season seems to be over.

The curator at the zoo was married last month, and Shannon and I will be throwing her a belated wedding shower to celebrate. We promised it would be American style because she and her groom spent their honeymoon in North America and, well, that's all we know how to do anyway. The Germans traditionally don't have as many pre-wedding parties as Americans, but Jared and I did run into a group of girls in Berlin who were participating in what is becoming a traditional German bachelorette party. We were standing on a sidewalk in Berlin when a girl wearing a shirt that exlaimed, "Germany's Next Top Wife!" stopped us. She started chattering in German and when I explained our German wasn't great, she switched obligingly to English. "In Germany, before you get married, you like to make a party! But young people have not so much money for a good party." A girl from the accomanying gaggle of friends butted in, "She's drunk!" The bride, who was also wearing her wedding veil in addition to the Top Wife shirt, held out a basket of miscellaneous items including Berlin souvenir buttons, tiny bottles of alcohol, and homemade cupcakes. "You choose somesing and pay what you like. Later, we use money to make our party!" I don't know how much money brides make doing this, but Jared bought me a stuffed bear and I hope their girls had a fun night out.

The curator at the zoo did not participate in such an activity before her wedding. When she returned from her honeymoon, she did say to Shannon and me, "I can't believe how big your vehicles and refrigerators are! And the parking lots! It's crazy! And why do you build houses you could push over with one hand?" Germans don't drive SUVs, have fridges that are 3/4 the size of American ones (even smaller usually), and they construct their buildings out of brick and concrete.

I have to admit though, I am a complete convert when it comes to European cars. I have always had an affinity for the sporty Mini Coopers, but now I have extended my tastes and very much enjoy the little round French cars and Skodas. Sorry, GM. I once saw a Ford billboard here in Germany with the slogan, "Yes we can!" (Obama's campaign slogan, of course) in bold letters. There are several models of Fords available in Europe that are nicer than those sold in America, although I am not a very good judge of vehicles. In fact, my extremely unscientific method of deciding whether I like a vehicle make/model is first to decide if the shape is appealing (or does it remind me of a rollerskate?). Second I examine the grill and headlight combination, thinking of the headlights as eyes and the grill as the mouth, and determine if the car has a pleasant or alert expression. American cars look dopey to me.

In August my German lanugage class took a "Ferien" or summer break, but now we're back in full swing, and I will be attending right up until December. The class is interesting; we have students from Vietnam, Ukraine, India, France and Syria. On the other hand, the class runs for at least two hours three nights a week and that does put a damper on one's social life. Even though my German was already apparently good enough to pass the final test, I find it useful to sit in class and have conversations and be reminded of things like using the proper adjective endings. (Anyone learning German knows what I mean--Dear God, WHY the adjective endings?! Yes, double punctuation at the end was necessary.)

I am still not convinced that my German is really that good. There are a lot of details that I need to wrap up before leaving the country, and I am finding my language skills lacking. Even when I moved from one apartment to another in the U.S., it was pretty annoying to try to tie up the loose ends, change all the important addresses, make sure the car tabs got sent to the right place, etc. Here, I have to do all those things, plus many others, in German. Sure, the classes help, but I doubt the next theme coming up in class will be, "How to pay the power company when you get your bill a month after you've left the country and closed your German account." Most of the time, if I bring these issues to my bosses or coworkers, I am brushed off with the remark, "Your German is good enough. Just call and ask."

But talking on the phone in a foreign language is so much more difficult than speaking in person. I had no idea how many body language cues I was using and receiving while talking to people until I tried to communicate over the phone. So far I haven't made any embarrassing mistakes like registered myself as a citizen of Dubai while talking to the foreigner's office, or accidentally cancelled my internet or anything. Yet. There's still plenty of time for errors. I did make an error while speaking to my boss about how our presentation for a conference was going. I meant to tell her that she will be so impressed, but what I actually said was, "You will be so printed out!" Whoops.

Other highlights for the previous couple of weeks include going to a Gothic museum where I learned that often the completion of Gothic buildings took more years to construct than the architechts actually had left to live. I also learned that the Magdeburg cathedral burned on Easter Sunday in 1203, and the citizens took it to be judgement from God for their sins, so everyone with a dime to spare donated it to the building of the new cathedral, which is how Magdeburg ended up with one of the most elaborate cathedrals in Europe.

In some unrelated, rather sad news, one of our camels had to be put to sleep because of a degenerative bone disorder. The other keepers, having worked with him more closely and for longer than I, were affected much more by his passing. I don't know if I have been desensitized from my time working at the rehab center (where many wild animals were euthanized due to incurable disease or injury), but the veterinarian invited me to watch the necropsy (animal version of an autopsy) and I accepted. I will not relay the macabre details, but I found it fascinating, and actually felt a little disturbed at how NOT disturbed I was about viewing the entrails and such. Perhaps this is something I should not confess in a blog.

And lastly, the newest development in my life is a faucet that drips loudly at least twice per second. Since I have neither the skill nor the tools to repair such a problem, I searched out the water shut-off valve, which happens to be located behind a panel above the bathroom sink (who knew?) and for the past two days have been turning off the water when I sleep or leave the apartment. Anyone know how to fix a leaky faucet? If you do, I will be so printed out!