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!

Photo Feature

For those of you who aren't keen on using the Myspace photo feature, I have uploaded quite a few pictures of my adventures onto Picassa, and I think you can all view whatever I've posted if you go to http://picasaweb.google.com/suzanne.akerman I'll be adding more if you want to keep checking, but it probably won't be updated as frequently as my blogs (which, I realize, have not been all that frequent). Another quick blog should be coming up shortly. Thanks loyal blog fans!

I am more excited than you are

As I sat down to begin writing this quick blog, classical piano music drifted down to my apartment from the floor above. Previously, the only noises I have heard from my upstairs neighbors have been occasional bad pop music, Rock Band, and sometimes a distictive high pitched laugh. This is live piano music, played expertly. My question, which I know none of you can answer, is A)has there always been a piano up there and for 10 months no one chose to play it, despite being an accomplished musician, or B) did they get a piano up five flights of stairs today without me noticing? In any case, it's far superior to the time I was woken up at 1:30am to Backstreet Boys karaoke sung very poorly.

Since Jared left I have returned to my old routines of teaching and zookeeping and taking walks and reading in parks. The public library here has a strange collection of English books where you can read mostly only very popular contemporary authors like John Grisham and Tom Clancy, or very revered authors like Ernest Hemingway and Shakespeare. I have been burning through the collection fairly quickly, but I'm sure they have enough to keep me going for another four months. I have a small collection of books that I don't think I will be able to bring back to America with me and I am considering donating these to plump up the library's variety a little. Aunt Sittrea, just think, YOUR old copies of Love in the Time of Cholera and Cold Mountain might end up being checked out and read by hundreds of Germans practicing their English! So far, my German isn't good enough to read anything of note; the last book I read in German (it was a chapter book!) was a story which translates to Four Crazy Chickens. You can imagine the ridiculousness.

The most exciting thing that has happened to me in the past couple of weeks is probably incredibly boring to most of you. We have had a Eurasian buzzard (that's a hawk, not a vulture, for you non-zookeepers) in our care for a while with the intent of turning him into a presentation bird. He was found unable to fly in a nearby park and the veterinarian had to amputate the end of his left wing; however, the bird was so calm (calm is relative--he was relaxed for a wild-born bird of prey) that they decided to keep him.

Convincing a buzzard that has lived in the wild to stand on your hand is not an easy task. Even convincing a buzzard that has lived in the wild to tolerate a human presence in his enclosure is not an easy task. My exciting moments would look extremely boring if anyone recorded them. I spent a long time sitting still in the enclosure and inching toward the bird until he decided I was innocuous. Then I spent many hours wearing the thick leather glove while sitting next to the bird. The highlight reel of this would include footage of me moving my gloved left hand out and touching the bird's talons and then moving it back again.

Finally, last week I got the buzzard, who has been dubbed Merlin, to stand on my glove. It is difficult to describe how thrilled I was to my readership, because if you have never held a bird on your fist, I can't quite convey the way your heart thunders the first time you do it, and on the other hand, the rest of my readers handle birds every day and quite possibly have done so just minutes before reading this blog. The moment was tense for both the bird and me, since we had built a trust thus far--I never did anything unpredictable to Merlin and he never did anything unpredictable in return. If it is possible for a hawk to look puzzled, when I picked him up, this one did. After about five minutes where neither of us moved, a truck suddenly squealed its tires on the adjascent road, and both Merlin and I jumped out of our skins like children watching a scary movie.

We're still a long way from using Merlin in presentations, but actually lifting him off of the perch was a huge step and I felt the surge of adrenaline you get after accomplishing something big. Of course, there was no one there to share in it with me, and again, it was hard to explain to anyone else. "Shannon! Guess what? Today I got the bird to stand on my HAND! Isn't that amazing?" "But...you've held lots of birds before." "I KNOW, but this was the first time this bird has been on anyone's hand ever! Trust me, it's exciting!" It was.

Our shows this season are coming to a close, and since school has started again, our visitor numbers are dropping back donw. This also means that we've added some new children to the kindergarten. Since these children haven't had a year of English input from me like the others, they mostly have no idea what I'm saying. Ever. They stare at me blankly and sometimes respond with a loud, "WAS?!" which is German for "WHAT?!" But it reminds me that this is the point that all of the other children started at, and I am pleased with their progress. One child I have worked with from the beginning was accepted into a prestigious international school in Berlin after demonstrating English skills usually only seen in children two years older.

Perhaps I will attempt to do something interesting in the upcoming weeks to make for better blog fodder. Then you won't have to read about things like how I ate ice cream for dinner one day last week or how it rained while I was at a BBQ with the zookeeper trainees. I guess even life abroad can be mundane sometimes.

Scenes from Summer

I know I have once again been negligent in my blogging, and believe me, Blog-fans, I hear your pleas for more. The month of July began uneventfully, since no one celebrates American Independence Day here. I considered going to a bar up the street called "The Fan--American Sport Bar" (Yes, "sport" is singular in the title) to have a beer in honor of the 4th, but in the end I curled up on my loveseat and watched several episodes of The Office instead. The next week marked the start of 19 straight days of work, an unfortunate but unavoidable scheduling situation. Not all of the days were spent performing my usual tasks. One day I led a tour through the zoo for a children's birthday party. I conducted this in German, but was sure to explain to the 5-year-olds that English was my first language and it was okay to ask questions if they didn't understand me.


Another three days were consumed by a conference hosted by the University of Magdeburg. The zoo kindergarten is part of an EU-wide research project studying language acquisition, so representatives from Belgium, Sweden, England and many places in Germany gathered to compile data and discuss our results. I will take a moment to brag a little about our program at the zoo kindergarten here, because some of our children are speaking English at levels usually only reached by students who have been in immersion schools for three years. Their grammar is far from perfect, and many times they still respond to me in German when it's easier, but with the more advanced children, I no longer have to modify my speech or use any gestures to help them understand when I speak. They are capable of producing streams of sentences like, "Can we take our shoes out (off)? Sand is too much. Me too hot. Please?" Even the youngest children, who have just turned three, are producing English words occasionally (although I will admit there is one child whose most frequent English word is "NO!")



One of the German linguists, Anja, was heading to Yale the next week to give a lecture on bilingual kindergartens, but despite the fact that Americans use the term "kindergarten" the programs are very different in the two countries. Anja wanted to avoid confusion with this issue by learning as much as possible about American kindergarten in order to understand what her audience would be thinking when they heard the word in her lecture, so we had a long chat over dinner one evening. Fortunately for me, since Anja was a linguist, her English is perfect and I didn't have to try to explain anything in German.

At the end of my 19 days of work, I finally got my reward. On the 20th day I woke up early, packed a bag and took a train to Berlin to meet Jared at the airport, where I nervously paced around, peeking into the baggage claim room through the glass windows, trying to catch a glimpse of him to convince myself he was really there. Eventually I saw the top of his spikey brown hair and breathed a sigh of relief. He was really here!

We dropped off our bags at the hotel in Berlin and started ourcity round-about, leisurely attempting to hit the major sights without packing too much into a weekend. In the middle of our search for Checkpoint Charlie from Potsdammer Platz, we got caught in a torrential downpour of the clothes-drenching, hair-flattening, makeup-ruining variety. We ducked into a cafe to dry off, watch the storm and wait it out. When the rain eased a little we ventured to Alexander Platz and attempted to go to Legoland, but it was closed so we visited the giant German TV tower and the Sony Center, and drank a beer sitting in the middle of a square just because in Germany it's permitted. The sky opened up again as the sun was going down and we sloshed back toward the hotel, on the way discovering a tiny Indian restaurant run by an African woman nearly next door to our hotel. The food she prepared was made from scratch, right in front of us, and was so good we returned the next night as well.

The next day we started out with a glazed strawberry custard pastry for breakfast and then headed toward KaDeWe, the immense upscale department store (KaDeWe is an abbreviation, but I don't know for what). Though the day was relatively warm, we stepped inside the shopping center just in time to avoid another flash flood. We marveled at the prices of items for a bit in the clothing and toys departments and then visited the top floor, which was reserved entirely for gourmet foods from baked feta cheese and olive appetizers, to fruit tort desserts. Since we did not need anything and certainly could not have afforded it anyway, we continued our walking tour of Berlin when the rain let up again. We walk toward the Brandenburg gate, through the maze of the Jewish monument. This memorial is really sort of a maze of concrete that you can see over the top of and can't easily get lost in, but it is so extensive that you might get tired of walking toward the other side down the huge gray corridors.


The next day we checked out of the hotel and put our bags in a locker at the train station while we visited the Berlin Zoo, including Knut the famous polar bear. Before boarding the train back to Magdeburg we grabbed a quick bite at a stand called "Asia Box," selling what appeared to be yakisoba noodles. I have discovered that because traditional German food is not spicy, sometimes even the types of foods that would be heavily seasoned in the U.S. taste bland to me here, as was the case with Asia Box.

Back at work after my long weekend I had to muster my enthusiasm, since I knew Jared was sitting around the apartment or wandering Magdeburg, and I would rather be doing so with him than doing my job. But the acquisition of a new buzzard (type of hawk, not a vulture, as commonly thought) made it easier to be excited and I spent a lot of time acclimating the bird to its new surroundings. When I worked in the kindergarten in the afternoons (until now I have only been working mornings there, but for my job at the zoo we shuffled things a little and sometimes my days are flipped around now with zoo time in the AM and kid time in the PM.) Jared would come to the kindergarten to keep me company, because afternoons are mostly "free play" where the children choose activities and mostly romp around with me in the yard.

In August I finally got a whole week off to spend with Jared and to relax after a couple of hectic months. First we took a small train (we joked it was the "short train," like the slang "short bus"...) to the Harz mountains in central Germany. We chose a tiny town called Thale, pronounced Tah-lay, with a population of about 12,000 residents and a great view. Our hotel was more along the lines of what Americans would think of as a bed n' breakfast, with only nine total rooms for guests. However, the bottom floor boasted a full restaurant and bar and our spacious room was bright and welcoming, entirely decked out in light green, from the bed frames to the wardrobe.


The most notable attraction in Thale is called Hexentanzplatz, which translates to "the place where witches dance." It is a high peak with a plateau where you could imagine witches once danced, and there are statues of imps and ghouls decorating the mythical spot. We took a gondola ride to the top and thought about hiking all the way back down, but instead hiked to a lookout tower to enjoy the view. You don't have to spend your time in the wilderness at Hexentanzplatz though; there are also a couple of restaurants, souvenir stands, and even an open-air theater where the tales of the witches and goblins are reenacted.

After our hike we ate a sausage from a stand, bought some gummi candy from another and rode on a contraption like a bobsled that zips you through the forest. The weather was cloudy during our trip, but not cold, and we spent almost all of our time outside. If we weren't on a hike, we were reading on a secluded park bench, or relaxing in a beer garden. We ate some fantastic meals, like fillet of pork in creamy pepper sauce at a Greek restaurant where throughout your meal they brought a total of three complimentary shots of ouzo PER person, and also a strange meal where, as a garnish in my bowl of pea soup, I recieved an entire sausage.

Back in Magdeburg again, Jared and I spent our last few days together relaxing (I'm still not sure I'm recovered from my 19 straight days of work followed by running around town with my visitor). We checked out movies from the library where the entire collection consists of English-language movies dubbed in German anyway, so all we have to do is switch the language track. When I watch movies alone I attempt to watch in German, but since Jared had so far mostly only learned to count and say "Guten Tag," that didn't seem fair.

One day we rented bikes from a shop in the market square and rode up the beautiful Elbe river one day and back down the next. We spent an enormous amount of our time eating. We tried sushi (I had not yet tried it in Germany) and Chinese food, as well as Czech food and a lot of ice cream. I hope that most of this was offset by the fact that when we weren't eating, we were usually walking, either through one of Magdeburg's many gorgeous parks, or to one of the city's well-known sights, like its monastery, cathedral, or the medieval city wall.

Another task that was not so exciting or relaxing was preparting Sophie, my fuzzy companion, to return to the U.S. with Jared. I decided this would be best because of the mess involved with traveling during the holidays, which is when I will be coming back to the U.S. In addition to the inevitable flight delays and cancelations etc. of flying in December, there is also the problem of my apartment, which I need to give up the keys to several days in advance of my departure. It is not worrisome for me to sleep in a youth hostel for a couple of nights, but they don't take pets, and I felt it would be less stressful to send Sophie home earlier rather than board her or have her stay at Shannon's for a few days. Additionally, in the event that I made a mistake in the paperwork, at least I would still be in Germany to come pick her up if the airline rejected her, whereas if I were leaving the country for good and made a mistake, there would be no way to keep her with me. In any case, we took her to a handsome German vet with an insincere smile, who actually turned out to be extremely helpful.

Earlier today I took Jared and Sophie to the train station and sent them on their way to Berlin to catch their flight home. When the train pulled away from the platform and I walked the three sad blocks home. Not only was Jared gone, but Sophie too, making the apartment seem very empty. I keep expecting to see her jumping up on the bed or running in from catching bugs on the balcony. And of course I miss Jared too.

Just June

I haven't had much excitment since my misadventures coming home from London, and that suits me just fine. A number of special events and parties are already penciled into the agenda for the end of June and all through July (and one event already happened last weekend), so I appreciated the momentary lull. The first event I participated in was the kick-off for a campaign to raise awareness for endangered European carnivores (Did you know there are still wild animals living in Europe?). Magdeburg Zoo hosted a convention of sorts in honor of the campaign, with booths offering everything from carnivore crafts to information about energy conservation.

An event like this required the help of all the staff, so the question was where would the useless foreigners best be of service. I'm not sure who doled out the assignments, but somehow Shannon and I ended up running the face-painting booth. Neither of us had a clue how to make a kid look like a carnivore, herbivore or anything else, but that was the task. And of course, we had to speak German. It sounded like a fun challenge, but I was concerned a child might ask to be painted as a word I didn't know, or even worse, that I might misunderstand the vocabulary and say, painted the child to look like a frog when he asked for a racoon. Across Europe the whole carnivore event revolved around an attempt to acheive a place in the Guiness Book of World Records as having the largest teddybear picnic ever. We counted 519 teddybears. I have no idea what the previous record was, but regardless, that's a lot of bears.

The summer solstice was cloudy in Magdeburg, so the crowds were thinner than anticipated and I had plenty of time to explain to the children who wanted their face painted that Shannon and I usually spoke English, but were practicing our German. Even after the explanation, most children were fascinated to hear us speak--to each other in English and to them in German. They either gave mouth-agape stares, or furrowed their little brows in puzzlement. I discovered that children are very suggestible, so if I began by asking what they would like to be, but followed quickly with a list of animals that I knew how to paint, I avoided two problems. First, the children didn't ask me to transform them into words I didn't understand, and second, they didn't ask me to transform them into anything I couldn't paint because they never asked for anything I didn't offer. So, after a few hours passed, there were plenty of tigers, bears, kitty-cats, dogs, parrots, butterflies, and zebras running around the zoo (but no rhinos, elephants, reindeer or penguins because I didn't know how to do those). There was also one strange child who invented her own desgin; as per her request, I painted half her face blue with silver stripes. She was pleased, but I'm sure everyone else thought a misunderstanding had occurred somewhere. I have been asked to repeat this assignment at next month's kindergarten fund-raising function.

Another event of the season involved a camera crew from the local news station following the zookeepers around for some fluff story about elephant keepers. Because I am only a keeper for half the day and am not techinically one of the elephant handlers, this did not concern me. Or so I thought. When I stepped into our break room on the afternoon of the filming, I was introduced to Ortwin, a man with big hair and big personality. Upon hearing that I was an American, Otrwin said in German, "Ooohhh, she doesn't understand a damn thing then?" One of the keepers piped up and said that they actually had found the only American who spoke a second language and hired her. I clarified in my elementary German, "Just speak slowly and clearly please."

I sat through the meeting with the keepers and crew without saying anything, because there were so many people all talking over one another and using unfamiliar vocabulary that I couldn't follow much. Also, I gave up after a few minutes because the filming didn't have to do with me. What I gathered was that they had one segment left to shoot and that somehow a dog was involved. Ortwin had a sudden idea, pointed at me and announced: "We'll use her!" Oh joy.

So with very little knowledge of what was actually happening, I followed Ortwin and his cameramen outside, where there was more rapid discussion about dogs. "Doesn't she have something else to wear?" asked Ortwin, addressing the head keeper instead of me. They gave me the cameraman's jacket. "That's ridiculous. Take it off. Where's the dog?" Then I realized what I was supposed to do. The crew wanted footage of the elephants reacting to a canine. When the crowds are thin, the African elephant, Mwanna, flings sand from her exhibit at people who bring their dogs to the zoo (the policy on dogs at the zoo here is just that they should be leashed at all times, but no one warns them about getting pelted with sand at the elephant exhibit). I don't blame the crew for wanting to film this, but I did wonder why I had been chosen to play the part of the victim.

Our department also cares for the huskies, so it was simple to acquire a dog; we simply crossed the zoo, leashed one up and brought her to the enclosure. I took directions about where to walk and stand, and felt that it was a little absurd to be forcing myself to approach the elephants when I knew Eve the husky and I were going to get a trunk-ful of dirt in our faces. Eve didn't know what was coming until she saw Mwanna charging. Piff! Sand all over Eve and me. "Great! Now let's do it again!" exclaimed Ortwin. In all we shot three takes of this sand-to-the-face scene. I was none the worse for the wear, but I did apologize to poor Eve, who likely thinks I am the dumbest keeper ever.

I have still been spending a little time with the elephants as well; they are learning to play catch with a yellow rubber ball, mostly for their own edification. They also have a giant ball like the kind some fitness buffs use as a desk chair, which they kick like a soccer ball to make "goals" with the keepers sometimes.

All over the western world the trend in elephant keeping is moving toward "protected contact" which means that keepers and elephants never interact without a barrier of some kind. Here in Magdeburg the elephant/rhino house is an older building and the facilities are not in place for this kind of care, giving the keepers no choice but to enter enclosures with the animals. Three of the five full-timers in my department (and myself) go in with Mwanna and Birma, and I can't quite figure out why the others aren't allowed (or why I AM), but the closest I got to an answer was one of the keepers cryptically stating that he and the elephants weren't friends anymore. The keepers who do train and clean the elephants carry short heavy sticks, which I have never seen them use and which would also be totally ineffective should an elephant actually decide to charge or attack.

The new elephant house will be finished in 2012, complete with all the facilities necessary to care for the animals using protected contact instead. But for now, I go into the enclosure with the 9,000 lb girls, use a push broom to clean them, and catch the ball when they throw it to me, so I guess we're still friends. Once I was in the enclosure when the African elephant started getting excited (we aren't sure what about) and my heart thundered in my chest, but I had to appear completely composed because that's one of the fundamentals of zookeeping (well, for me anyway). Stay calm, even if you animal isn't. Mwanna quickly relaxed and nothing went awry.

We did have a Benny Hill moment recently when Peggy, one of the horses, discovered how open the carabiner that helped hold her stall latch closed (she had already learned how to open the latch, hence the carabiner). She and her accomplice, Maya the mule, trotted out of the barn and down the visitor path while a trainee and I were raking the camels' yard. We sprang over the fence, and split up to try to catch them. I realized that neither of the escapees wore her harness. Goody. Miraculously this occurred during a penguin presentation, so most of the zoo's visitors were congregating at that enclosure and the paths Peggy, Maya and I were charging down were deserted. I lost sight of them around the reindeer exhibit, but turned the corner in front of the petting zoo in time to watch someone much cleverer than I nab the fugitives. Janko, an apprentice animal trainer from a long line of animal trainers, had cornered the horse and mule. He whipped off his sweatshirt and belt and lassoed Peggy with the belt by throwing one end around her neck. Now holding the horse by his belt in one hand, he swung his sweatshirt around Maya's neck and held onto the sleeves. We led them safely back to their stall using his makeshift collars. I was impressed.

In other zoo news, our female giraffe gave birth to a six-foot tall calf two weeks ago. I was lucky enough to help bottle-feed the wobbly youngster one day, and he showed off his purple tongue by slurping my fingers. Even adult giraffes are all knobby, so it's not surprising that this guy looks like he's made up entirely of joints. He doesn't have the graceful, slow-motion stride of grown giraffes though; he stomps along a lot more like Bambi at the beginning of the movie.

For those of you who incessently bug me about photos, I apologize first for being a negligent photographer and failing to capture most of the moments worth capturing, and second for being a poor photographer, thereby rendering most of the moments I DO catch unfocused and ill-framed. But if you can put up with that sort of thing, and want to see photos, please do visit my Myspace page. I am working on getting more pictures uploaded, but I actually have to get over my biggest stumbling block first, which is remembering to take pictures in the first place.

London Blog, Part 2: The Nightmare

As they say, every dream has to end and my London dream, when I woke up, was terrifying. It's one of those things that you laugh at in hindsight, and even in the moment KNOW you will laugh at in hindsight, but you just can't bring yourself to stop panicking. In short, as I stood waiting under the dark sky and bright lights at midnight, amidst the bustling nightlife of Picadilly Circus I had a very frightening realization. I had missed my bus home.

I would like to say that it was not my fault--that the bus driver didn't see me and kept going, or the tour bus left with an impostor in my seat--but in truth it was at least 95% my own damn fault.

The realization dawned rather slowly. First I stood at the corner alone, thinking the bus was merely a few minutes late coming to get me. After fifteen minutes I started to pace. After twenty, I started wringing my hands while I paced (seriously wringing my hands, and who DOES that?) My backpack was on the bus; all I had were the contents of my pockets: my passport, a map of London, 20 English pounds, and my American debit card. At twenty-five minutes after I thought the bus should have arrived, I was frantic. A man who looked to be in his early 20's with toasted-marshmallow skin crossed the square, stopped in front of me, cocked his head and said, "Mah seester, wat iz wrong?" I came out of my pacing trance, quit staring at the road where the bus should be coming from and stared at the man instead. He repeated himself and held out a hand. I took an instinctive step forward, a calculated step backward, and said, "I think my bus left me."

"Wheah ah you trying to go?" he asked, and his eyes widened a little when I replied, "Germany!"

"No problem, mah leetle seester," he reassured me. "Iz no problem."

"Feels like a problem" I stuttered.

He motioned to another dusky-skinned boy across the square. When he reached us, the second boy cooed, "Aw, leetle one, what iz wrong?" I repeated myself, half for his benefit and half to snap myself out of my anxiety induced stupor, "My bus left me. I need to get to Germany."

He answered calmly, "Iz okay, Seester. You will be okay. We will help. Are you cold? You shake from cold? No, from the fear? Aw...come here leetle one."

Part of me could not grasp that I was stuck in London with only twenty pounds and a map of the city, and I stupidly kept refusing to leave the corner with the boys because I thought the bus might be looking for me and they wouldn't find me if I left. The French boys humo(u)red me in this and one of them (Braim or Briar?) stayed with me while the other (Sami?) searched for the bus for a while. Because it was now the middle of the night, and I had no one and nothing, just the presence of the French boys was very comforting. They each offered their "flats" and even offered to drive me to the Dover ferry if I thought I could catch the bus there. I knew the chances of being stranded in London for eternity, or dying on the streets were slim to none, but under the circumstances, it was still hard to relax at all, even with all the reassurance that it "iz no problem, Seester." I wanted to cry.

At this point what I should have done was pull out the itinerary with the tour guide's number on it and use Briam's phone to call him. Unfortunately I could not do this because the paper remained "safely" tucked in the pocket of the pants I wore the previous day. These pants were in my backpack. On the bus. On the way to Germany without me. My pants reached Germany way before I did.

Leaving the paper on the bus seems like an impossible oversight, but at the time I left it there, I was getting off the bus to go WITH the tour guide to Greenwich. I thought about the paper and decided I did not need to make everyone wait while I dug it out of the backpack, at least not if the guide was going to be within earshot at all times. But since my German isn't that good, I had missed the part of the information about going back to London via boat rather than via our bus. I would like to place the other 5% of the onus on the tour guide. Twice previously I had needed to ask for clarification about ongoings because I was unable to follow his German instructions. I also overheard a conversation where a French couple on our tour (the only non-Germans besides me) asked him to please speak more slowly because they had trouble understanding. After the Greenwich excursion, I thought we were heading back to the bus, but instead we took the boat, and the tour guide spoke with me in his rapid German while we blocked the aisle of tourists exiting. That was when he told me I could stay on the boat and meet them later. Between my rush to get out of the aisle and my tendancy to lag a step behind when conversing in German, it did not occur to me that the paper was on the bus, nor did it cross my mind ask him to repeat the meeting time or place. I can't place much blame on him for this, but I'm a proud person, so I choose to believe it was at least a little his fault for leaving me on the boat without ensuring I understood. I never saw him again.

I realized leaving the paper was a mistake a little later in the day, but was not overly concerned because I (idiotically) trusted my memory. But as Briar and Sami discovered along with me, my memory did not serve me well in this instance. Finally at 1am, amongst the London party scene with two French boys I didn't know, I tried to make my exhausted and now petrified brain do something useful. For a brief moment I considered going to one of their apartments, just to get off of the street corner to sit and think, but even my stupified brain was a little wiser than that. "Can you take me to a police station please?" I asked. They didn't know where a police station was (it was only later it struck me that that was probably a good sign of their moral character), but they took me to a tiny outbuilding that was really just a box with a police officer sitting behind a window in it.

This police box was intended as a method of keeping peace in around the bar scene, so people could alert the officers to fights, or muggings, or just ask for directions to the underground stations. The French boys left me with a hug at the police box, giving me directions for how to find them if the police couldn't help me. I was too engrossed in my predicament to thank them properly for their kindness.

I came to the plexi-glass window with tears in my eyes, still wringing my hands a little. The officer let me into the tiny box which held two desk chairs, a desk, a radio, and a hot pot for tea. I perched apprehensively on one of the chairs while Officer Jim, who had a better head on his shoulders than I did, called the hotel our group had stayed at the night before. Then Jim valiantly tried everything else he could think of, including calling the tour company, the parent company, and the Dover ferry system to try to track down my bus.

At 1:30 we gave up. "There's nothing else I can do for you except give you a safe place to sit and a little company," he apologized. If I wanted any help getting home from the tour company I would have to wait until 8am to get it. If I wanted to get home without them, I needed to get to a train station or the airport, but the underground stations were closed by this time. So I sat in the police box. I put my head down on the desk and tried to sleep, but the uncomfortable office furniture coupled with the radio Officer Jim had to play to keep himself from sleeping on duty made it impossible. I pretended to sleep a little anyway, to relieve Jim of the burden of entertaining me, and to stew in self-pity for a bit. This was when I realized how I had missed the bus. When I had written down the meeting time on my itinerary, I had transposed two numbers. Just after writing it, I figured out I had transposed the numbers, scratched it out and rewrote the correct time. However, when asked to access the information about when and where to meet my group, my brain presented me with only the memory of the first time I had written and no recollection of scratching it out. At 3:30am in a police box in Picadilly Circus--THAT was when I remembered what I had done.

I think the worst part of being stuck in a foreign city was the fact that the destination I was desperately trying to reach wasn't home either. Not only was I in an unfamiliar place where I didn't know anyone, but the place I was heading back to wasn't a huge step up from that. The people I really wanted to be with after an ordeal like this were all in America. Officer Jim tried to distract me from my own nervous, unhelpful thoughts by chatting. I discovered that his son won a silver medal in diving at the Athens Olympics, and that he was going fishing in the morning when his shift was over.

I considered my options. If I waited for the tour company to help me, I might be able to catch the next bus out of London and, assuming it had a seat for me, get back to Magdeburg an entire day late. And since I was to blame for missing the bus, I would likely have to pay for the ride. I would have to find a way to contact the zoo and kindergarten to explain why I was coming in 24 hours late for work. If I could get to a train station I could take the train to Paris and likely take a train from there to somewhere in Germany, but the idea of navigating a journey like this without any more information (and without speaking any French) was unappealing at best. The last alternative was to make my way to Heathrow and book a last minute flight to Berlin. None of these options reunited me with my luggage, but at least they would get me into the right country.

The sun was up by 6am when Jim left for his fishing trip and had to kick me out of the police box. The next officer on duty wouldn't arrive for another two hours, but Jim plastered the wall of the box with instructions to please let this American girl named Suzanne use the phone and help her get to Germany. Further, since I had two hours to kill and he apparently didn't trust the characters who populate London in the early mornings, Jim took me to an open-air fast food/cafe and told the two men working there (who were acquaintences of his) to get me some hot chocolate and make sure no one bothered me. I was extremely grateful, but there was no way to repay him except profuse thank yous.

I pulled my knees to my chin and tried to be inconspicuous while I waited. The options for reaching Germany all seemed like too much effort and money for a person who had only a London map, twenty pounds, and an American debit card (this account is essentially empty because I use almost exclusively a German account). By this time I had also been up for over twenty-four hours, which was not conducive to clear thought. I also had to pee. There are no public toilets open at 6am in London.

At 6:15 a tall plain man with a Bible in his hand ordered coffee and a croissant with an unmistakeably American accent. He sat at the table next to me and started to read. When I had convinced myself that guys who get up at 6am to pore over scripture are probably safe, I leaned over and said, "Excuse me, do you know how to get to the airport?"

Daryl was a banker returning to his home in Iowa from a trip to Greece and Turkey. He wound up drinking coffee next to me in London because he had a 20 hour layover and insomnia. I tried not to play the damsel in distress. I looked like I hadn't showered in a day (true) and was on the brink of tears (also true). And it was a little suspicious that I was flying to Germany and yet did not know how to get to the airport, or have a ticket. So eventually it came out that I was actually quite distressed, if not a damsel. I refused offers for coffee and breakfast, but almost took Daryl up on an offer to ride the bus to the airport with him. The only problem was that his bus did not leave until noon, and by then I would not only be insane from anxiety but I would also be risking getting into Germany too late to make it to work. When he left, Daryl insisted I take twenty pounds from him. When I refused he told me to consider it as a help to HIM because if I took it he would feel like he'd done everything he could. I took it.

The McDonald's nearby had opened by 7:30 and I tried to use their bathroom but discovered you have to actually buy food to do that, so I used 99cents of my precious pounds to buy porridge (yes, they have that at McDonald's in the UK). Back at the police box at 8, I found that it was still empty. Jim had warned me that this might happen because the officers are allowed to choose whether they sit in the police box or patrol on foot. Apparently his replacement and my possible knight in shining armor was somewhere walking his beat. This meant I could not use the phone and therefore contacting the tour company was out of the question. I took a deep breath and decided to hightail it for Heathrow.

Taking the underground to the airport was as easy as Daryl had made it sound, but it was only one leg of a very uncertain journey. I read a newspaper someone had discarded; the main article was about the Britain's Got Talent winners I had eaten breakfast next to. That seemed like a world away. By a little after 9am I arrived at Heathrow; I chose a terminal at random and approached the first desk I saw that said "last minute tickets." I didn't like the offer, but in the end, after getting quotes from two other carriers and sprinting to another terminal, I went back to the first desk and bought that ticket anyway. It's not too expensive to fly from London to Berlin, and I had just enough on my American debit card.

What made this flight initially unappealing was that it had a layover in Paris, which would extend my already rather prolonged trip to London. But it was the best deal for getting me back that same day. It was also leaving in fifteen minutes. Luckily I had no baggage, or even anything to carry on, so my sprint to the terminal was unencumbered, and I didn't even trip on those strange flat escalators (they can't be escalators if they're flat, can they?) that shoot you across the long stretches of airport hallway. I made it to the gate with time left to use the last of my (English pound) coins to buy an energy bar from a vending machine before I boarded.

The flight from London to Paris is really just a jump across a puddle, about 50 minutes in duration. For the first time ever, I slept on a plane. The jostling of the landing gear hitting the runway woke me with a start. Once on the ground I had another dash through an airport, due to a very quick layover. The flight attendant who sold me the ticket explained I had to get from terminal 2D to terminal 2E, which didn't sound so far, but I realized why she bothered to explain to me so carefully how to get there. Any navigational errors or dawdling and I'd be stuck in Paris. The flight was leaving from one of those gates where you have to take the bus to even get to the plane, and I raced through the terminals (seriously, how many different terminals and gates should there BE between 2D and 2E?) and just caught the third and final bus taking passengers to my plane.

I breathed a sigh of relief once I was seated. I'm sure the man next to me did not, since I had by this time been up for about 32 hours and hadn't taken a shower during that time. And of course I had left all of my personal hygene products in my backpack on the bus. But I was feeling better. Each successful leg of the trip eased the anxiety a little, and knowing that now I would make it back to Berlin (I knew exactly how to get to Magdeburg from Berlin) was comforting, even if I still had another five hours until I would reach the apartment.

Once I'd landed in Germany at 3:25, I hurried through my third airport of the day. If I didn't catch the last train to Magdeburg, I would have to stay overnight in Berlin and take a 5am train to get to work on time. I did not want to do that. I was pretty sure the next train left at 4:17 (but why could I remember that useless piece of information and NOT remember what time my bus left London?) I did however, have to stop at the currency exchange booth to switch my (and Daryl's) pounds to euros because I would need almost all of it for the train ticket to Magdeburg. I got to the platform at the train station with four minutes to spare and used the last two euros that I hadn't spent on the ticket to buy "food" from the vending machine before boarding the train.

At 6:30pm Monday evening, I burst into my apartment and announced, "Sophie, I made it!"
"Meow!" said Sophie.

Things could certainly have turned out worse. I met genuinely helpful people and (after the initial blunder of missing the bus) my timing was perfect. Whenever anyone asks me how London was, I will say it was absolutely fabulous.