Suzanne Goes to the Library: A Children's Story

If you don't speak or read German, I provided a translation following the German version. I wrote this little blurb as an exercise for practicing my written German. It's based on a true story, and is probably the extent of my skill when I don't have much time, a dictionary or online translation help. If you are a reader who actually speaks German, I should warn you it might be painful. It's pretty rudimentary, but enjoy!

Suzanne Geht zur Bibliothek--Eine Kinder Geschichte

Suzanne mag lesen. Normaleweise lies sie auf English, aber jetzt wohnt sie in Deutschland. Das heisst dass, sie muss auch gut Deutsch lesen. Aber wo soll Suzanne Deutsches Buecher kreigen? Natuerlich, sie hat keine von Amerika mitgebracht, und will nicht viele Buecher kaufen. Suzanne brauchte eine Bibliothek.

In Magdeburg, Deutschland (wie die meisten europaeische Staedte) sind alles zusammen Nah. Suzanne kennt einen Bibliothek, und sie war nicht weit weg. Ein Tag nach Arbeit, geht Suzanne zu dieser Bibliothek. Sie fand eine Bibliothekerin, die sieht freundlich aus. Suzanne roch ein wenig wie Elephanten, aber die Bibliothekerin sagte nichts ueber es.

"Es tut mir leid, das mein Deutsch nicht gut ist. Ich moechte einen Bibliothekausweis," sagte Suzanne.

Die Bibliothekerin laechelte, "Prima! Ich brauche nur einen Pass und eine Poststueck."

"Gut" Suzanne laechelte auch, "Ich habe alles mit."

"Suzanne Christine Akerman--ein richtiger Deutscher Name!"

"Ich habe das gehoert. Brauchen Sie noch etwas?"

"Nur einen Unterschrift und fuenfundzwanzig Euro, bitte!" erklaert die nette Dame.

"Gerne" sagte Suzanne.

"Viel Spass!" rief die Bibliothekerin waehrend Suzanne weg ging, Bibliothekausweis fast gehalten.

"Mache ich!" sagte Suzanne, "mache ich."

Ende

Translation

Suzanne Goes to the Library: A Children's Story

Suzanne likes to read. Usually she reads in English, but now she lives in Germany. That means she has to read well in German too. But where should Suzanne get German books? Of course she didn't bring any from America, and she does not want to buy a lot of books. Suzanne needed a library.

In Magdeburg, Germany (like most other European cities) everything is close together. Suzanne knew of a library and it was close by. One day after work, Suzanne went to this library. She found a librarian who looked friendly. Suzanne smelled a little like elephants, but the librarian didn't say anything about it.

"I'm sorry that my German isn't very good. I would like a library card," said Suzanne.

The librarian smiled, "Excellent! I just need a passport and a piece of mail."

"Good," Suzanne smiled too, "I have everything with me."

"Suzanne Christine Akerman--A real German name!"

"So I've heard. Do you need anything else?"

"Just a signature and twenty-five Euros please," explained the kind lady.

"Gladly."

"Have fun!" called the librarian as Suzanne walked away, library card in hand.

"I will!" said Suzanne, "I will."

The End

In addition to writing ridiculous snippets like the previous one, I have been reading children's books that I checked out from the library to help me with my grammar, spelling, and punctuation. I can very easily read books along the lines of "Clifford the Big Red Dog," but was more impressed with my ability to muddle my way through some small chapter books. When was the last time anyone was excited about me reading chapter books? Probably second grade.

Because our kindergarten is very small, we don't have access to a school library and therefore are always short on books to read to the children, especially English ones. So the added advantage to my translation ability is that I can read books that are originally in German if I am able to translate them into English fast enough to make the story compelling. (It's not so interesting if my translation sounds like, "Okay, then Simon...yelled, and he...uh, ran to his Mom. She--I mean they--no wait she, took his books and...I don't know what she did. She did something with his books.") My latest triumph was an impromptu naptime story translation of a book called, "The Queen of the Colors." The only hitch was that I skipped a word describing the color yellow because the best direct translation I know for the word "zichig" is bitchy. They don't really use the word bitchy in English children's books, so I decided not to use it when translating either. Is yellow a bitchy color? I hadn't noticed.

I am not the only one improving my language skills in Magdeburg. The children at the kindergarten have progressed beyond what linguists call the "silent" stage, where the students aren't actually silent, but respond entirely in German. Most of the children have moved on to throw in English words and phrases, but by no means always correctly. Lately when I ask the children if they've washed their hands, they protest, "Ich war schon wash your hands!" which means, "I already did wash your hands!" Similarly, after lunch I occasionally hear, "Darf ich brush your teeth?" (May I brush your teeth?). The instinct when hearing something like this is to correct the child, but this ends up being even more confusing. "No, you may brush YOUR teeth" is enitrely unhelpful to the new English speaker. I am impressed with one girl in particular who is always spouting whole thoughts in English, sometimes with perfect grammar and in context, for instance "That is a good T-shirt!" or "Erika's Momma is outside." Sometimes she and the other students nearing this stage remind me of cave men, "Me no eat broccoli!" The best thing to do in these situations is praise the child for attempting sentences, even when what you feel like doing is laughing.

In an entirely different realm, I am also teaching some animals a few things, though more slowly than I had hoped. The way my hours are split between the kindergarten and the zoo is not ideal for training animals, so I usually can fit in only one session a day with an animal. In spite of this, I do now have a rat that performs a few silly behaviors like jumping through a hole, rolling a small canister with her nose and climbing a rope etc. Next she will be doing a demonstration of "fetching" an object with a particular smell, to illustrate how keen a rat's sense of smell is.

The second rat is...special. I have never had an animal fixate on ME quite so heavily before, and I don't know what I did wrong, but this rat feels much more rewarded by being ON my person than she does by receiving actual rewards of food. This means that for a while, she would only perform behaviors that resulted in her ending up somewhere on my body. It was not productive. Each time she earned a treat, I would hold the tiny piece of cornflake or dried fruit out to her, and instead of taking it from me, she would race up my arm. I am still in the process of trying to work around her obssessive behavior, but it took a little creativity. Instead of having her perform the same routine as her "sister," I created a routine where this rat does get to end up on me after each behavior, which is very rewarding for her, if a little strange. So when she demonstrates her climbing ability, she starts on a low bench and climbs up a rope that I dangle in front of her, so when she reaches the top, she is standing on my hand. She can also perform this without a rope, climbing al the way from the ground to my shoulder. The audiences are equally impressed with this.

The next successful behavior started out as a disaster, and I think the rat really trained me on this one instead of the other way around. Because of the neurotic need to be touching me at all times, I couldn't stand over the rat while training her--instead of pushing the canister like she was supposed to, she would latch onto my sweatshirt and climb up to sit on my head. To negate this, I started standing back from her a little, so she could not reach the sweatshirt to climb. She started jumping. At first she only jumped a very short distance, but before long, I was standing across the training room and the rat was taking flying 4-foot leaps toward me with reckless abandon. This is only a really cool trick if you WANT the rat to do it. If what you want is for the rat to retreive a small wooden stick, launching into the air and landing with a tiny thud on your chest is less desirable. However, springing across the arena to a trainer is pretty engaging to an audience, so I decided Sasha won that battle. She doesn't roll anthing, and she gets more applause for the behavior she taught herself than any that I actually taught her. And sometimes when she's supposed to be retrieving a small wooden stick, she still flings herself at me spontaneously, but so far I've caught her every time, and she seems to trust that I will continue to do so.

Another animal that I have been working with, Eddie the llama, turned out to be much smarter than I gave him credit for. When I explained to the lead keeper what I wanted to train Eddie to do, he said, "Go ahead and try" but didn't have much faith in Eddie (or maybe it was me he didn't have faith in!). I wanted the llama to recycle. My idea was for the speaker to drop pieces of paper in the arena, as if littering and for Eddie to pick them up and put them in a recycling container. It sounds like complex for a llama, but I am so thrilled with Eddie. He learned to pick up the paper from the ground in a total of five fifteen-minute sessions. Putting the paper in the bucket took a little longer, but not much. Who knew llamas were so eager to send messages to audiences about keeping the environment clean?

April trilogy part 3: Berlin Blog

After the smashing success of our trip to Prague, it took little coaxing to convince me that another excursion was in order. Don was using my apartment in Magdeburg as homebase--a free couch to sleep on and a calm place to recouperate before the next adventure, and Berlin was next on the list. On a (still!) sunny Friday afternoon, I hopped on a train to join him in the bustling capital city.


Don was on his fourth day in Berlin by the time he met me at the station, so he had already visited all of the required landmarks and museums like the Reichstag, Checkpoint Charlie, Kaiser Wilhelm's church, the German Historical Gallery etc., and since I had also been in Berlin before, there was no pressure to visit all of the main attractions during our weekend. Instead we were free to roam--somewhat aimlessly. Don had booked what is referred to as a pension, essentially the European equivalent of a boarding house. This place was a hit--located beyond a secluded courtyard, and featuring high vaulted ceilings, burnt orange decor and (gasp!) a CLOSET.

First on the agenda after dropping off my backpack at the pension was dinner. We chose to eat at an Indian restaurant because I had not yet tried this type of cuisine in Germany, and it turned out to be a fantastic decision. The restaurant looked very much like the Indian places do in the U.S., with pictures of Indian royalty and Hindu gods and gold detailing on the walls. We had nan, chicken tikki masala, and some sort of lamb dish, all of which practically melted in our mouths. By the time our stomachs were full, the sun had set, but it was a warm night and we weren't quite ready to return to the pension where little packs of gummi bears that said "Schlaf gut!" (sleep well) waited on our pillows. Berlin is an active city even at night, so there was plenty to see: high-end shoe stores and clothing botiques selling items for more than a month's salary, cafes where elegantly dressed couples sipped cocktails on the verandas, asian markets selling goods ranging from lychees to life-size geisha statues, and little kiosks offering menus of cheap doenners (that's the big meat revolving on a stick) and pizzas to the young people out on the town.

The next day began as every day should, with clear skies and pastries that are just crispy enough on the outside, decadently soft on the inside and speckled with chocolate chips. At the small bakery around the corner from the hotel, these fresh baked items sold as "wuppis," or if you've been waiting all week to eat one on a Saturday morning, "whoopie!"s. We checked out of the pension and headed toward the famous Alexander platz for no other reason than we felt like it; Berlin has no real city center to speak of, so if you're just looking to browse around the city, anything ending in "platz" is a safe bet for interesting sights. On the subway we sat by an old couple who smiled at the rapid English we were conversing in and kindly stood up to let us by when we abruptly bolted toward the exit, while Don exclaimed, "Oh my God, there's a German flea market! Let's go!"

Having visited only a handful of American flea markets and exactly zero German ones, I didn't know what to expect from the rows of tables spread with goods for sale on this Berlin boulevard. The wares ranged widely from table to table, first one selling old tea sets and silverware, next one selling old military paraphernalia, and next one selling what must add up to hundreds of pounds of comic books. Sometimes the items ranged widely at an individual table as well, with antique doll clothes arranged neatly adjascent to a box full of pairs of binoculars, followed by lighters with pictures of scantily clan pinups from the '60s. I won the award for finding the strangest object, a Frankenstein-esque pen constructed from the foot of a deer with the ball point coming out of the ankle so that the hoof stuck up in the air and waved around while one attempted to write. Don bought two small pins, some sort of propaganda leftover from the communist GDR days, depicting Karl Marx.

After this pit-stop we did make it to Alexander platz as per the original plan. The open-air market featured local Berlin artists selling their paintings, hand-bags, and jewelry, as well as the usual freshly made baked goods, meats, and fresh fruits. One artist seemed to be supplementing his painting income via paparazzi photography, and though the pictures of Angelina Jolie drinking tea and Baldwin brothers with confused expressions did not interest me, I was surprised to find photos of the dalai lama (who knew HE had paparazzi problems?) and pictures of Obama from as recently as two weeks before. We made our way through the market and found a famous building designed by I.M. Pei, which I'm sure has a name that I just can't remember, next to a giant souvenir shop where you could buy tiny pieces of the Berlin wall.

When our stomachs started growling we stopped at a cafe on the river and watched the tour boats floating by while we enjoyed thick slices of Italian bread still warm from the oven. Our waitress spoke to Don in English, but to me in German, though I'm not exactly sure why. With our bellies once again full and our feet rested a little, we continued the walking tour and found ourselves at the Sony Center, which a travel website explains as follows: "Seven steel and glass structures and a light-flooded plaza spanned by a spectacular roof offer space for a modern lifestyle: Entertainment and events, cafés and restaurants, working and living in the middle of the German capital." Not to downplay the magnificence of the place, but "pretty fancy mall" might also be an accurate description.

At the time we entered the Sony Center, a crew was preparing for the premiere of the movie "17 Again," rolling out the red carpet and all. I wondered if the paparazzi artist would be there to capture Zac Efron in a half-squint as he stepped out of his limo. We paused at Leggo Land long enough to take picture of seversal Leggo creations including a life-size giraffe and a replica of Einstein's head at least five feet across. We browsed a few shops and took a picture or two of the Berlin Bear mascot statues (these bears can be spotted in all corners of the city, painted in any variety of dress from German soccer jersey to clown suit) before walking to the Brandenburg Gate. Having no particular schedule or agenda, we were content to walk, but if we'd had the desire, we could have hired a horse-drawn carriage or the Ben-and-Jerry-mobile (a cross between a scooter and a golf cart with ads for ice cream on the sides) to take us there.

We reached the east side of the Brandenburg Gate and took the mandatory photos of the Gate itself and Victory Tower (celebrating the Prussian defeat of the Danes; in 1938 Hitler ordered moved to its current position--how do you move an entire 200 foot tall tower?). Since it was a gorgeous day, we also took a long walk around a park large enough that we were concerned we might lose our bearings, but fortunately we did not. With the sun and our energy levels dropping, we stopped at a very German restaurant where we sat outside and tried pea soup, schnitzel and of course some of the local beer. The waitresses at the very German restaurant were not themselves German, but rather of some nationality from a little farther east (Hungary perhaps?)

Next we stumbled upon an independent record store near the train station. This was a real record store, the kind that actually still sells records. They also sold posters and calendars featuring celebrities, some of which were hilariously outdated. Anyone looking for a 2005 Clay Akin calendar, or maybe a Meatloaf poster? I know where you can find them. Our last stop before the train departure was an asian gift shop that sold its own amusing wares, including school supplies with strange phrases like "smile cabagge" and "love strawberry."

I dozed and read a little on the uneventful train ride and once back in Magdeburg, I fell promptly asleep next to Sophie. On Sunday my routine returned to the usual--I went for my jog in the morning and spent the afternoon in the sun at my regular cafe, perservering through a New York Times crossword puzzle and a fluffy pastry. Sunday is always a welcome intermission between adventures.

April trilogy part 2: Prague Blog

The second week of April brought me relief in two important ways. First, the weather suddenly sprang from icy winter to cheery summer within the same week, and second my good friend Don arrived in Magdeburg for a visit. Hanging out with Don is generally a fun time anyway, but having someone around who has known me for nearly a decade (as opposed to all of my friends here, who have known me for six months at most) was really a treat.

As our Easter celebration, Don and I, speaking no more than three words of Czech, and carrying one backpack between the two of us, hopped on a night bus to Prague. Don made for an excellent traveling companion. He didn't get us (very) lost when it was his turn to navigate, wasn't demanding about which sites we saw or at what times, shared the burden of the backpack equally with me, and wasn't picky about food.

The six hour ride featured free sweet tea and an extremely strange Czech movie about a prankster family. We arrived at the Prague bus station at about 4am, which is not the most opportune time to turn up in a foreign city. At first the city seemed unfriendly or even seedy in the pre-dawn gloom. The escalators descending from the station to the subway were dizzying, and I felt that Virgil might meet me at the bottom to lead me on my journey. Eventually though, the sun rose over what proved to be a gorgeous city and we made our way to the old castle to watch this display (Photos are posted on my Myspace page: myspace.com/suzakerman). To enter the castle district (even at 7am) we walked past guards in the vein of Buckingham Palace's, and strolled through the cobble-stone streets, which were nearly deserted in the early morning.

We visited the famous palace itself, the basilica of St.George, and the former home of Franz Kafka while we waited for the coffee shops to open and provide us with caffeine and sustenance. When we did finally sit down to a fruit and yogurt concoction and lattes, the streets of Prague were filling with hundreds of people; apparently Prague is the "it" place to vacation this Spring. We had no idea.

Along with the swelling crowds the glowing sun seemed to expand and blaze brighter than I'd seen in half a year. We were well-equipped with sneakers, a city map, and a lot of Czech currency (well, it seemed like a lot once we converted our Euros to Crowns). Next on our adgend was, well, nothing, so we spent some of the afternoon wandering the city, taking pictures of the Vltava river and the fascades of century-old buildings. Much of Prague was untouched by the World Wars in Europe (Prague was hit with an Ally air-raid only once, apparently accidentally), leaving the historic sites and elegant architechture in tact, and we wandered all the way across the city before we stopped for a late snack of spinach and garlic bread and checked into our hotel.

In many ways Prague is also a very modern city, and McDonald's, Kentucky Fried Chicken, The Body Shop, and other big business conglomerates occupied space in the historic buildings. In opposition to these franchises, the Czech Easter markets were in full-swing for the weekend. These markets are along the lines of the German Christmas markets, looking somehow like little settlements of tiny houses that had popped up in the middle of the squares all over the city. Traditional Czech snacks baked at these markets included fresh crepes, grilled meats of many varieties, and rings of crispy dough covered in cinnamon and sugar.

Our centrally located hotel provided a respite for an afternoon nap (the drawback of taking a night bus is that one must then attempt to sleep on a bus), and the hotel personel even spoke some English. So many tourists choose Prague as a vacation destination that English is practically ubiquitous in the city. Don speaks very little German, and even less Czech, so we were hoping to get by relying on a combination of my German and our English, but we didn't have to resort to German once during the weekend. The hotel clerks, the waiters and waitresses, the vendors at the Easter market, and nearly every other tourist in city spoke English. We overheard English conversations where participants spoke with German accents, Italian accents, Polish accents, Swedish accents, Russian accents, Turkish accents and probably more that we couldn't place.

Before sunset we managed to squeeze in a visit to the theater district and the "Dancing House," a marvelous piece of architechture constructed in an hour-glass sort of shape, giving the distinct impresseion that this building is dancing with the neighboring one. After another stroll along the river, it was definitely time for dinner, and we found a rustic looking place with a small non-smoking room. Food in Prague is cheap and beer is cheaper, we discovered. One famous traditional Czech meal is roasted pork knuckle or knee, which Don was brave enough to try. I was going to try the rabbit, but decided on chicken in honor of the poor Easter bunny who was out working so hard that evening. I had been warned that sometimes in European restaurants, waiters will seat complete strangers together, just so everyone has space. This had never happened to me in six months in Germany, but our first day in Prague, the waiter at the restaurant seated a Dutch couple at our table just as we were finishing off our beers. Of course, they spoke English. After a few minutes of chatting, we bid them good evening (we had already sat in the restaurant for nearly two hours) and headed back to the hotel.

The next day was Easter Sunday, but Prague didn't seem to notice. Everything was as bustling as the day before and the sun shone just as brightly. We started our day with a bus ride to the Prague zoo. Because of the zoo's combination of very old exhibitry and very new remodeled exhibitry, the trip was interesting (at least it was from a zookeeper's point of view). My favorite exhibit was one built for Ibex (a type of mountain goat) into the side of a huge hill. Rather than level the monstrous hillside, the zoo constructed an exhibit using the escarpment, which was probably five stories high at it's peak. It was amazing, but probably hell for keepers who must have needed climbing ropes and grappling hooks to clean it.

Our agenda for the day also included a trip to the Museum of Communism, a grass-roots sort of place on the second floor of an old building above a McDonald's. The posters advertising the museum featured a Russian nesting-doll with fangs. The musuem was full of old relics from the days of communist Czechoslovakia and painted a bleak picture of soviet Russian rule there. We went to the Jewish sector of the city after our experience with Marxism, and looked at a couple of synagogues and the Jewish cemetary. We seemingly followed in the tracks of the Obama family, who had visited Prague only one week earlier, as we discovered painted onto the window of one of the Jewish wine-shops a quote along the lines of, "What a delightful place! I will be sure to return here on my next trip to Prague--Michelle Obama."

For our dinner we chose a restaurant we had passed the day before, but had been too full of pork knuckle and chicken-kebab to try. We ate late (garlic soup and mixed veggie salad) and stayed a long time because our bus out of the city didn't leave until midnight. As our last stop we sat in a tiny bar along the main drag, watching the late-night crowd of Prague, listening to the radio play American music, and drinking a strange Czech alcohol called "Becherovka" that tasted spicy, like gingerbread and Christmas.

When we stepped off the bus in Magdeburg at 6am on Easter Monday, it felt like it had been ages since we'd left. The sun was just rising; our feet were heavy, but our hearts were light as we walked back to my apartment to get some well-earned rest.

April excursion trilogy, part 1: Dresden

Part of thriving in a foreign country depends on speaking the langauge well. Sure, I can ask for directions, understand most of what the kindergarteners say, and even joke a little with the zookeepers, all in German. But really my knowledge of the language is superficial and I knew if I was going to speak often to zoo visitors or continue communicating complicated training plans to keepers, I needed some help. Since the langauge school here wasn't offering any appropriate night courses and I didn't have much money to burn, I had to get creative. So I posted an ad on Magdeburg university's version of Craigslist. I offered my services tutoring English in return for a native-speaker's services tutoring me in German. Within a few days I had at least seven potential tutors to choose from, and I based my decision on the depth of information they sent in their emails, rather than on their abilities in English. So that was how I met Damaris.

Damaris is finishing her degree in economics and hoping to find an internship in an English-speaking country later this year. We met for coffee and discovered we both enjoyed chai tea, ballroom dancing and shopping at H&M--a good match. One difference between Damaris and I (besides the height difference, which is around 8 inches, I'm guessing) is that she is very spontaneous. This means that sometimes I receive invitations to barbeques less than an hour before the coals are hot, which is probably a healthy change for a meticulous planner like myself.

Early in April Damaris and I decided to visit Dresden, an east German city with a rich history. Her boyfriend, whose name cannot be spelled without an umlaut and my friend Shannon came along. Joern (Or Jorn with an imaginary umlaut) was especially important because he was our mode of transport for the day, as he actually is a young person who owns a car. The four of us fit snuggly in his Renault and headed on down the autobahn. It is completely true that some stretches of the German highway have no speed limit at all. What one discovers though, is that cars have speed limits. Even if you are allowed to drive 150 miles per hour, whenyou are driving your grandmother's 1976 Carolla, you will still top out at 55. I watched the spedometer and calculated to the best of my ability the conversion from kph to mph and I'm sure we drove over 100 mph at some point. We also whizzed right by a police car that was driving about 60 mph, which shocked Shannon and I, but was completely natural for the two Germans in the vehicle with us.

On the way to Dresden, Damaris, completely in character, spontaneously suggested that we stop and look at the monument erected in celebration of Napolean's defeat outside of Leipzig. The Germans must have been really proud of this victory because the monument they build is gigantic. It has dozens of stone steps leading up to the top where soldiers carved from the rock are engaged in battle, and a long rectangular pool reflects the structure's image. After this brief historic pit-stop, we forged ahead to Dresden.

In 1945 the city had been seen so many Ally air raids, it seemed certain Dresden would never again be an international hub of activity, and would take decades to even be inhabitable. In 2009 though, the city is beautiful. The bridges spanning the Elbe river have been rebuilt and the city center has been restored with great care taken to preserve the original architecture and extravagant ambiance of German royalty. Our first stop was the "Green Vault," a collection of jewels, antiques, historical artwork, and rare oddities first displayed in the 1700's. The treasury is apparenlty one of the most valuable displayed anywhere in the world. To emphasize that we were not quite worthy of viewing it, a strange machine first brushed off the bottoms of our shoes and we were then admitted two at a time into a small chamber. The door closed behind us and after a three-second wait, another opened into the first room of the vault on the other side. I imagined the reason for this was some sort of Star Trek-esque method of cleansing the public from all germs and bacteria before allowing them into the vault, but I don't know the real purpose of regulating our entry this way. Among the hundreds of items on exhibit we saw jewel encrusted goblets, strange animals made from opals, ivory, and amber, and intricate statues depicting biblical and mythological scenes.

Next we visited a Baroque church that boasts one of the world's oldest hats, worn by a prominent bishop 900 years ago. I laughed about it, even though I probably wasn't supposed to. Afterwards it was clearly time for a treat. The four of us wandered the city, enjoying the sunshine and building fascades, in search of cheap ice cream cones. Because we started this hunt in the most tourist-y part of the city, it took a while to find anything cheap, but eventually we found a cart selling scoops for a reasonable price and we sat down in front of yet another Baroque church in the sun to enjoy it. Shannon was nearing the conical stub of her ice cream cone when she said, "Ugh. What is THIS?" I peered at the cone. "A raisin?" I suggested. "Raisins don't have wings" was her reply. And that is how I learned the German word for "giant disgusting fly stuck in your otherwise tasty ice cream cone." Yuck.

After a few more stops and a lot more walking, Damaris suggested that since we were less than an hour's drive from the Czech Republic, we should continue driving east and have dinner in another country. We drove through the German countryside, passing stereotypical German houses with triangular roofs and slatted siding. When we crossed into the Czech Republic though, the landscape changed. The buildings appeared run down and we spotted at least four prostitutes on the way to the town called Teplice, which was our destination. In Teplice (Tep-LEECH-ay) we found a diner with bizarre interior decorating of neon green and orange, and an inexplicable disco ball hanging from the celing's center. The menus were in Czech, but we paid in Euros and the waitress spoke enough German for us to get by. The food was cheap and the dessert of fruit and ice cream rolled into a crepe and topped with whipped cream, was the size of a Duraflame fire log.

During this trip, I attempted to speak German as much as possible with Damaris, and the combination of being a tourist and concentrating on a foreign language made for a tiring day. But my search for a German tutor was successful, as was my trip to Dresden, and I had a trip to Prague ahead of me for the next weekend.

Bathroom Humor

To satisfy your curiousity about the title of this blog, I will begin with a few snippets from the past week:

1) One of the German teachers at the kindergarten, while living in Minnesota apparently acquired the ability to swear in English. In German, the word "scheisse" is pretty much a literal translation of the word "shit." But in German the word doesn't have such strong connotations; it's more like "crap." So the German teacher has been occasionally exclaiming "shit!" since September. If any of the children (who are specifically placed in the kindergarten to aquire English language skills) start cursing in English, who will be most likely to take the blame?

2) Last week I was standing outside the kindergarten bathroom, waiting for a student to finish brushing his teeth and going to the bathroom before naptime when I heard a voice from inside. "Suzanne?" said the boy (often this sounds more like "Zoo-zanne?")
"Yes, Jens?" I replied, peeking into the room.
From behind the stall door Jens rather contemplatively asked, "When is the Easter bunny coming?" The things that go through the idle minds of children...

3) While three-year-old Martin and I were looking at a book together one morning, he suddenly leaped up and announced in German, "I have to poop!"
"Well, go go go then!" I ushered him toward the door. But a thought struck him and he spun around and blurted (again in German), "Wait! How do you say 'I have to poop' in English?!"

Not all of my recent experiences have involved bathroom humor, fortunately. One recent experience that is plenty humorous, but involves no bodily fluids or swearing occurred when I was taking the llama, Eddie for a walk at the zoo. The department has high hopes for Eddie. They plan to train him to be well-mannered and comfortable enough for him to be a sort of ambassador for the zoo, attending media events and visiting sick children in the hospital. For a llama to travel, tolerate crowds, and regard new situations and locations calmly, it takes some work. Part of Eddie's training for this involves just wandering the zoo with me for a change of scenery (for him, not me). During a walk last week we meandered past the elephant exhibit while Mwanna, the African elephant matron, was lazily tossing sand onto her own back. As Eddie and I passed, somehow an idea registered in Mwanna's elephantine brain. She splayed out her massive ears, threw her trunk into the air and all 11,000 lbs of her thundered toward us. The sight was enough to make my heart jump into my throat, even though I knew the moat separated me and Eddie from the freight train heading toward us. Eddie, with his somewhat challenged llama brain, did not know about the moat. Eddie only weighs about 200 lbs--a butterfly compared to Mwanna-- but 200 lbs of terrified llama bolting down the visitor's path at the zoo is still enough to drag me. It was pure luck that this occurred on a cloudy Wednesday afternoon, so no by-standers witnessed this. I managed to stay on my feet, and managed to hold onto the lead rope Eddie was attached to (both accomplishments in themselves) but I could not stop his panicked charge until well passed the giraffe house. Quality America's Funniest Home Video material.

Lastly, I would like to apologize for any past lapses in grammatic and punctuational accuracy. I should also apologize for future lapses while I'm at it. I'm convinced that learning a second language has a tendency to shake up the details of the first language. I can't place apostrophes correctly anymore, and inevitably I begin to type or write the word "house" as "hause" (a bastardization of the English and German words). Commas appear where they shouldn't and precise word choice is laborious at times. On the other hand, I have also found that some grammatical structures have begun to emerge in my German speech completely independently of my own efforts, and that is somewhat encouraging. That being said, I will now leave you to continue my study of demonstrative pronouns and the accusative case. Just kidding. I'm going to eat some frozen yogurt and watch German cartoons.

Of Elephants and Obama

On the first day of Spring in Magdeburg, the sun appropriately rose brightly and the temperature spiked to a balmy 50 degrees. So I took a long walk and spotted crocuses poking through the soil in the park and many different species of bird that I am as yet unable to identify. And once I was convinced that Spring had really arrived, I came back to my apartment to blog.

Spring means that we are doing daily presentations at the Tierisch Nah Arena at the zoo, so we've been busy with that endeavor. It's a daunting task to try to improve their program because anything I propose has to be explained in German and I then have to write my training plan in German or convince the head keeper that what I want to do would be a good addition to the presentation. He and the curator decided the program this year is too short, but since this season's show is already upon us, we needed to find some animals that were easy to acquire and quick to learn. This discussion all culminated in the decision to get two rats for me to train (the previous rat, who is three years old has been retired) and also an egg. Luckily I am not expected to train the egg, but once it hatches into a Brahma chicken, I will be expected to teach it something. The behaviors I train are totally my decision (no need to convince anyone in German this time), so if anyone reading this blog has an idea for something they would be interested in seeing a rat or a chicken do...I'm open to ideas.

The department that cares for the program animals also cares for the elephants and rhinos, so even though I am not an elephant or rhino trainer, sometimes I get roped into helping out with a few things and spend time in what literally translates to the "thick-skinned house." This building, constructed in the old zoo style, is mostly of concrete, and with the high ceilings, echoes like a giant cavern. When the keepers are working with the elephants, their deep voices (all the elephant trainers are men) carry through the building and remind me a little of going to the Greek church when I was a child. I think the similarity must be the sound of someone speaking in a foreign language, confidently and with a bit of a drawl, and the drawn out phrases resounding in the concrete rafters.

All of the doors in the "thick-skinned house" are heavy metal slabs that take some heave-ho-ing, even from the larger men, and there are resounding clangs all through the building when we shift animals from stall to stall or from inside to outside. My favorite door is the one between the back hallway and the elephants' indoor enclosure. This door is only human-sized, not meant for elephants, and sometimes it is left open so that when I am walking down the hall, a trunk might be mischieviously snaking out to feel around the door frame or sniff out treats. There is a small slot in this door so that when it is shut, the keepers in the back hallway can peer through and view the enclosure. Often though, when I have attempted to look through by standing on tip-toe and putting my eye directly up to the slot, a giant, dark-lashed elephant eye has been staring right back at me, blocking all view of anything else. Because of the elephants' frequent use of the peep-hole, I am now uncertain as to its original purpose--was it inetended to let the people keep an eye on the elephants, or the elephants keep an eye on the people? Most recently I have been allowed to help clean the animals by giving the rhinos baths, which mostly is just spraying them with an expertly aimed hose, and helping keep the elephants clean by brushing the dirt off of them. This is accomplished through what must be a comical routine to anyone watching, where a 9-foot elephant rolls over onto her side and a 5-foot 2 inch keeper vigorously dislodges dirt from the wrinkled skin using a push-broom.

In the kindergarten, the biggest news these days is that we have two new children in our class. They are four-year-old twins, whose mother is Canadian and has been speaking English with the girls at home. For me, this is a big change. I have grown so accustomed to gesturing wildly and speaking slowly and repeating myself often and to just giving up on explaining difficult concepts because none of the children understood. Suddenly, there are two lanky red-headed children who understand everything I say. It was almost unnerving at first. The comforting part of their presence is that they automatically gravitated toward me, which is the opposite of what all of the German children did; I never had to work extra hard to get the English-speaking children to warm up to me, and in fact, I have to sometimes suggest that they please don't cling quite so much or maybe just let me have a bit of space for a moment. I am also interested to see what happens when they interact with the German-speaking children. They have only been at our school a week and already I have overheard some interesting mixtures of German and English in conversations where children use both languages to make themselves understood.

On their first day, the English-speaking twins arrived at the kindergarten peeking out from behind their mother's knees. She introduced me to them by saying, "This is Suzanne; she comes from The States. Who else do we know from The States?" (The correct answer here is something like Uncle Josh) One of the twins exclaimed, "Barack Obama!"

Press Your Stupids

Last week I had the pleasure of traveling beyond the boundaries of Magdeburg to visit the west side of the country. The project manager for our bilingual/environmental education kindergarten wanted to spread the word about our unique endeavor and also rub elbows with some other prominent zoo educators, and the prime location for these activities was the European Zoo Educators conference in Cologne. Representatives from 22 countries attended, which meant that something like 16 languages were represented as well. Fortunately for my ignorant American self, the conference is now always conducted in English, since it is the language of science and the most common second language in Europe.

When Shannon, and I arrived in Cologne, the first thing we noticed was that west German people look more...American than the east German people we've been seeing in Magdeburg. Cologne attracts a lot of tourists and while riding the tram in heavily touristed areas, we had a hard time guessing which passengers were Germans and which were Americans or Canadians (until we heard them speak, of course). We still apparently stood out like neon signs though, because twice people asked us if we needed help navigating the city when we weren't even lost.

We spent much of our time sitting in the conference room in Cologne listening to presentations and discussing the future of environmental education in Europe, but since the conference was held at the Cologne zoo, when we had breaks, we could take a few minutes to watch the cheetahs lounging or the red pandas gnawing bamboo. During coffee breaks and check-out-what-the-lemurs-are-doing breaks, I met people from The Netherlands, Scotland, Croatia, Finland, Estonia, the Ukraine and the Czech Republic. Everyone wore nametags stating their home zoo and home city, but Shannon's had been misprinted to read "Magdeburgoo." By the end of the conference, we had received standing invitations to visit zoos in Munich, Duesseldorf, Halle, and Copenhagen.

If my linguistic skills seemed limited in Magdeburg, they were down-right moronic in the company of the European zoo educators. The man I met from Estonia spoke Estonian as his first language, and then subsequently learned Russian, German, Finnish, and English. Not all of the participants at the conference spoke perfect English, but considering they were on their third or fouth or fifth foreign language, I forgave them and just tried harder to understand despite thick accents. One man from Switzerland gave a very entertaining presentation on exhibit design, pointing out that modern zoos should hire smaller companies with more innovative ideas to avoid the current problem of all zoos having exhibits that look exactly the same. His reasoning was sound and his ideas were clever (it's true, why would you want to see another gorilla exhibit in Portland when you know it looks exactly like the one in Seattle? And why would you put up expensive fake rockery in your orangutan exhibit when you know orangutans don't live near giant rockeries?) but he had one slide in his Power Point presentation that read "MONOTOMY!" and I had to keep myself from laughing. Of course he meant "monotony." I can't be too smug about that though, since I made my own very embarrassing mistake while trying to wish my project manager good luck in a meeting. Germans say "I'll press my thumbs" instead of "I'll cross my fingers," but apparently the word for "thumb" is similar to the word for "stupid," so I meant to wish her good luck, but what I actually said was, "I'll press my stupids for you!"

While I enjoyed talking to people from other countries and learning about their zoo programs, I have to admit, the food was also a noteworthy highlight. The Cologne zoo knows how to throw a party. On the first night for the conference's "ice-breaker" event we received a light dinner of cheeses, salads, soup, and traditional German deli-style meats in the zoo restaurant, which has a romanticly lit, warm atmosphere, and of course we were served all the beer and wine we could ever want. The next night the catering team concocted an amazing array of Chinese food (yes, apparently they have that in Germany) including stuffed wontons and several stir-frys. Oh, and of course, all the beer and wine we could ever want. Dessert was one of those fountains which drizzles warm chocolate onto various goodies, and I now vouch for chocolate-covered honeydew melon as the new rival for chocolate-covered strawberries. Also, chocolate-coverd mini-muffins were a new treat that I probably should never enjoy again if I'd like to continue fitting into my jeans. On the last night of the conference our departing dinner was served in the aquarium, another venue with a romantic atmosphere, only this time it included seahorses and damsel fish drifting by while we ate. The menu this evening was another traditional German meal consisting of fried potatoes, salted pork, and fresh tomato basil salad, oh, and don't forget--all the beer and wine we could ever want.

When we weren't being stuffed with gourmet foods, Shannon and I explored a little of Cologne's city center. We had practically been ordered to see the Dom (German word for cathedral) which has rightfully earned its fame by being the largest cathedral in Germany and arguably the most beautiful (Germany's second largest dom is in Magdeburg). Admittedly, if I were to try to describe the dom, it would sound just like every other old church you can think of: stained glass, candles on the alters, high ceilings, paintings of the apostles etc. But I was impressed. This cathedral was absolutely cavernous. If you looked up to see the tops of the stained-glass windows, they were so high you just about fell over backwards, and the organ was so enormous it looked like it might blast a hole right through the stone walls if someone tried to play a hymn. The outer edges of the gigantic rooms were lined with tombs of important men, and if you carefully picked your way down a staircase, part of the crypt that was used hundreds of years ago was open for viewing. My only regret was that our visit was too late in the day for pictures to turn out well, as the cathedral is lit entirely by candles and whatever sunlight can sneak in through the stained glass.

After we experienced the ancient church, we moved on to experience the hip and trendy pedestrian-only shopping strip. There we discovered a Kentucky Fried Chicken (not KFC!) and numerous high-end botiques from various countries. And for our cultural edification we also visited the Cologne city museum to look at the statues of city officials and artifacts from medieval battles. The museum's exhibits also included many artifacts from the world wars, the most memorable of which was a small calandar where a German woman had kept track of every air raid the Allies made on Cologne between 1942 and 1945. June of 1943 was the worst month, with 123 little tally marks.

Now we've returned to Magdeburg and after thirteen days in a row without a break, I finally have a weekend! After I've caught up on all my chores, the plan is to be very German by sitting in a cafe for hours, drinking hot chocolate, reading, and doing crossword puzzles. That's the life.