Post Titled: Great American Struggle.
Disclaimer: this post is a bit dull but I have interspersed it with coordinated dance sequences. and bloopers.

Per John's email regarding Susanne's discontentment with my remark at the end of the last post, I find myself wanting to retract the statement about Germany not having as much creative output as America, but then again the US has a population nearly 4 times that of Germany, plus other factors- like... what? It is a silly statement really, and impossible to prove or disprove simply,... I'm not sure what else to say. It seems to me that America cranks out more films, books and art than any other country- and I have encountered more folks there working on their own little music projects/bands stories and or books and design work, textile stuff, etc. Then again it is just as full of droll dreary drones as most any other country as well. Hmm. Over the years I have noticed that most of the books I read and the music I listen to has been produced by the United States or England followed by Germany, France... and that is about it, with a few exceptions... Central/Latin America, perhaps?

QUOTE JOHN:

Flag waving indeed, and that can be saved for football matches.

Hmm.

Meanwhile the daily battle(or baffle?) in my mind over the most trivial of things continues... for example both Nadine and I ran out of contact lens solution today and I had to go hunt some down. I Went to Schlecker, a commercial drug store chain that isn't a drug store at all because they don't have drugs and if you want contact lends solution you can order it and it will arrive in 2 days. Same story with dm, another faux-drugstore chain. What DO they have in these places? Hair dye, 500 types of creams, soaps, facial masques, herbal teas, herbal alcohols to drink or sniff, hair bands and one rack of bad music (not ìhair bandsî but recent pop) and candy... I did finally track down the coveted and much-needed lens solution at an Apotheke (Apothecary- ACTUAL drugstore) and then came back to rant at Nadine about the whole thing who just laughed at me.

When I first began actually writing in this blog I had a photo of myself with an eye patch, which was actually a result of the very same such problem but in ICELAND which was 10 times worse. My hard lens cracked because I put it in a little glass overnight because nowhere in Iceland was there a contact lens case to be found. Ho-hum. If it is any consolation- in Ireland and the Netherlands it is even more difficult to find such things... and this is the first time I've ever missed that stupid Walgreen's on 15th or even QFC...



Listening to the most recently available-to-livestream This American Life show over at ye olde internet center I almost laughed out-loud when I heard of this guys dilemma when he got a job as a german interpreter for some visiting Austrians at a Ford Car plant. The Austrian German is very different, and he basically excused himself and ran out of the job because he couldn't do it. Not only did he not know the needed vocabulary but he could barely understand the Austrians. (This is like the visit to Nadine's family AND the jobs I've been doing over the past few days when someone will bark directions at me in passing and I'll have to induce what the project actually is based on what there is left to do. Words like molton (soundproofing fabric), frosch (actually meaning frog, also meaning the clamp you use to make a loop in steel wire) and all the others I've already forgotten... oh boy)

Over dinner I was explaining to Nadine that it is difficult for Americans to understand that two fellow countryman could be speaking the same basic languange and not understand one another. For example someone from Boston can talk with someone else from New Mexico or Louisana or Tennesse and they may have to listen a bit harder but it is the same damn American English all around, whereas here for example if Nadine speaks Hoch Deutsche then her grandmother won't understand ñ or if any one extreme dialect encounters another there will be much confusion- not only in pronunciation but in sentence structure and even altogether different words (Potato= Kartoffel in German and Grumbeer in Pfalzisch) exhausting, isn't it?

Just a few observations on all that. Meanwhile my brain is working in all sorts of funny ways. Sometimes I think I have German comprehension down pretty darn good but then realize that I actually do really have to focus, take a second to process it all, then piece it together.



It is late but for some reason I am wide awake. Today my mind was all out-of-sorts. I frantically emailed, called and sent fotos for getting into a casting for a commercial featuring international people but in the end they didn't end up calling back which totally pissed me off because it would've been easy money. Guess they'd already met their quota of white english-speakers. Nadine had an audition for a role in a Fassbinder production at the Deutsche Theater so we really hope that works out. This evening she wasn't feeling well so she had me go out and get some Prosecco champange which is ìgood for circulationî and this is one of the reasons why I love her- -

La-dee-da, laaa-deee-da.

Got a job interview for a position of some sort in english-language business relations, sounds weird but if it is a job I can do steadily for the next few weeks then I might go for it.

I also realized today that I am offically 'out-of-the-loop'. I just found out about the Kramer racist thing, and I didn't even know Jay-Z had another album coming out (which is already out). Or Tom Waits. I've actually been trying to lay-off NPR here, just because... can be a bit heavy.

However I am not 'as bad' as many Americans who have been here for years with FAQs like ìWhat's a blog?î or ìCraigslist- what's that?î heh.