White people! White people have all kinds of ridiculous gadgets and toys in their kitchen. They’ve got 16 different knives, an eggbeater, a slicer, a dicer, a cheese grater, and all kinds of other wacky shit. My dad has one (1) big fuckoff cleaver, and chopsticks.

What can white people make in their kitchens that my dad can’t? Grits?

I found this both incredibly humorous—particularly because it was in my apartment a few weeks ago that he pointed to the Ikea knives in the Ikea knife holder on the Ikea butcher’s block and said, essentially, that he wasn’t in Kansas anymore—and quite accurate.

In Taiwan, every form of food I ingested was cooked with nothing more than:

1. A bowl
2. A wooden stick
3. A metal cutter

How is this possible? Obviously the paradox of choice and maximization of individual freedom so intrinsic to American consumer culture play a big role in this, but maybe also it’s that Chinese culinary accoutrements have merely been refined over millennia. There’s an efficiency implicit in the—excuse the misnomer—Spartan, function-over-form aesthetic of the Chinese kitchen.

Clearly, then, while both Chinese and Americans might be said to place great weight in the skill of a chef, the former would almost certainly define “skill” as a learned ability, whereas the latter might pay more attention to the pomp and circumstance around the person.

Perhaps I’m making drastic leaps of logic, but stay with me. Entertain the possibility that the above is correct, if only because it’s so contradictory to certain research that claims Chinese pay more attention to context than Americans.

When you look at the picture on the computer screen at right, where do your eyes linger longest? Surprisingly, the answer to that question might differ depending upon where you were raised. Americans stare more fixedly at the train in the center, while Chinese let their eyes roam more around the entire picture, according to research by psychologist Richard Nisbett, PhD.

Interesting, no?

Recalling times when I have been culturally challenged in Taiwan, there is a single very vivid memory which stands out among all the rest. I was hanging out with a friend late at night, just the two of us, and in the midst of our deep ruminations on life and personality and our respective futures, some oblique statement tipped me off to a potential religiosity in my friend. So I asked, “Do you believe in God?” I thought it a reasonable question, one which did not overstep any boundaries in terms of what I may or may not ask.

She suddenly looked very confused, and asked, “Well, which god?” Fortunately I was not so oblivious to her mindset that I thought she was referring to differing conceptions of the Judeo-Christian God. I realized—although I had already known this on some intellectual level, of course—that her religious heritage was such that there are a myriad of gods, and myriad expectations are attached to them. A person might believe in any number of gods, and eschew belief in others, thereby delineating a very individual, albeit substantially contextualized, set of rules for what constitutes acceptable behavior.

How insensitive it was of me to ask! Fortunately she was not at all offended. She reacted similarly yet oppositely to what I might expect from a peer in the U.S. An American college student in the Northeast, when met with a positive answer from “the God question,” might respond with polite disdain, with patronization, like an evolutionist discovering a Creationist. Standard “my god is bigger than your god” fare. I think the motivation for such a reaction, while utterly indefensible, is that the disdaining individual feels more educated. It is difficult to believe that one can subscribe to beliefs of Creationism, when evolutionism and its daughter theories have populated the academic world so completely. In a sense, this person is saying: “Oh, that. You still believe that?”

My friend’s reaction was not too distant from this. She smiled and laughed a bit when she realized where I was coming from with my question. She began to explain, humiliatingly for me, that the Chinese tradition holds many gods, unlike my Western tradition, which has been predominantly monotheistic for a good two millennia now. The disdain, the patting on the head, came from a vector I still believe I perceived in how she presented this knowledge to me: I am a Westerner, come to Taiwan to study—and I still believe in that monotheism stuff?

This incident, so planted in my mind for all my days, took root and spread outwards to touch memories of similar happenings. I was outside, talking to a friend, discussing the learning of languages and how much that brings, how much understanding of humans, both others and the self, it affords one. My memory of the conversation is hazy now, but I believe we were talking in English. My friend asked me whether I knew any websites where he could find free books in English to read. Of course I did! I would link him to Gutenberg.org, so named because of Gutenberg, the German, the man who invented—he built—“he, hundreds of years ago, in the past, he makes a big machine to make—produce—many books.” No, the machine did not write them. Oh, yes, OK, it did write them, but it did not author them. Nevermind. (I would make the same mistakes! But would he?)

I warned my friend that while the works on this website would indeed be free, and in English, they would be quite old. “Why?” Well, because—how on Earth to explain, using rudimentary vocabulary, copyright law and the golem that is the culture of ownership grasping its leash? I knew this was a test I had to pass if I ever wanted to be a teacher, so I tried my best. “And so, most books there, only before 1920 or so.” My friend was still very confused. “Tell me about the old books.” Egg on my face. English was never painted on cloth and hauled across deserts to foreign kingdoms. Its writers were never compelled, at behest of the emperor and under penalty of death, to write, just write, lest the world never know their perfect philosophies.

I know nothing of age nor progress. I am an American, a puling infant amid cultures and worlds thoroughly adolescent. What can I do for you, that you haven’t already tried? What can I say to you, that you haven’t already heard?

I want to rediscover each and every one of you and tell you why you are still great. Long ago, just this morning, America tried to become the archive, the library of Alexandria, for all cultures willing to come. Tell us. We are listening. We may be rapt within our own ignorance, but we are blessed with youth and vigor, too. All our hands are stained with blood; I was just trying to be like you. So invite me to the table tell me a tale. Let’s forget our differences, which never really existed anyway, and have a meal.

Typhoon rain, of course, is safe.

Everywhere around town there are stray dogs. Most look hale and happy, solidly fed on scraps from the nightmarket and trash from college students left around the fields around the dorm. But lately, given the weather, some have taken on a more dour mien. Today I stepped outside with some friends to enjoy some tea and watch the rain out front of our building. When I walked over to what I thought was my friend’s backpack on the ground, resting in the corner of the porch on the front of our building, I realized it was a dog curled up.

His coat was beautiful from the outdoor living: shiny, black, surely soft to the touch. A huge gob of mucus hung from his nose to the ground, spanning the height of one paw. He looked up but did not care to move. He shivered a little, and with eyes at first plaintive, then resigned, waited for me to push him out into the rain. Which of course no man on earth could do.

I don’t want to talk about how my midterm went, I want to help this dog.

American 1: “Well, what can we do for it?”
American 2 (me): “I don’t know, take it to the vet or something. But maybe that would be too expensive?”
American 1: “Maybe a grand [NT] or so? I think I’d rather pay than see a dead dog.”
American 2: “Yeah. We can do this. We can totally do this. Where can we take him?”
Taiwanese friend: “There is no place.”
American 1: “Maybe like a hospital, not for people but for animals. Is there one of those?”
Taiwanese friend: “Yes, I know what you mean, I understand. But no.”
American 2: “There’s nothing like that here?”
Taiwanese friend: “There is, yes. But we shouldn’t bother them.”
American 2: “Shouldn’t bother whom, the dog or the dog doctors?”
Taiwanese friend: “The doctors. They cannot help him.”
American 1: “But it would be more comfortable for him, he would be warm and dry, and they would give him medicine. Right?”
Taiwanese friend: “Yes, they will do that. And then, when no one comes, they will kill him.”

And I know how right he is, I know he is only speaking the truth because he’s never been taught to lie, not even to foreigners. But why?

I would so happily give up a towel or a blanket of mine for this dog. He will be gone by tomorrow and the blanket can be thrown away, having done more in an hour than it ever would have in its lifetime.

But my friend looked at me, and urged me not to offer. He did not want to embarrass me by explaining that I would not be giving a blanket, I would be asking for one. I want, still want, to fool myself into thinking that I will see the dog tomorrow, and he will be OK. Medicine without love. Alms as subscription service to heaven.

American 1: “Do you think he would be happier—would it be better for him if we took him somewhere?”
American 2: “You’d have to ask him that.”

As is routine for our afternoon tea sessions, the three of us discussed English vocabulary. “Shelter” was a word my American friend and I went to great lengths to explain had a literary cast to it.

American 1: “Shelter is the most basic of all things. We don’t say, ‘I’m going home to my shelter now.’ Home is much more, your family is there, and perhaps food, too.”
American 2: “Shelter is like how, in a storm, you want a safe place, where there is no bad weather.”

Later, right before going back inside, we had a small recap session. My Taiwanese friend pointed at the dog and, to show comprehension, said:

“He has no shelter…?”

No, my friend. No, he does not.

And now we go inside.

The first trip I took up there, a Friday, my application was declined. The reason given was that they at the consulate wanted to know more about the curriculum at the university in Taiwan I’d be attending. I didn’t see why that was important, of course, and still don’t, actually, but, not having access to The Big Book Of Important Shit like these people evidently do, I figured it was best to take their word for it and bring back whatever they asked for. My acceptance letters to the program from both my unversity in the U.S. and the university in Taiwan were simply insufficient to convince these people of my intention to attend classes there. OK, super.

So I made a second trip. This was on the following Wednesday, the only day of finals week at my university that I didn’t have an exam. I brought with me my life history on paper. I had e-mails from every party involved in the matter, written confirmation of disbursement of my scholarship, bank statements corroborating a deposit of equal value, acceptance letters, Cheetos, a written statement from my mom saying how awesome I am—there was no way they could turn me down.

The girl helping me through the application process seemed to think the same. Then she slid the whole mass of papers back to me and said, “You also need two photos and you don’t have those.” I slowly touched my finger to the pictures I’d placed on her desk along with everything else. She seemed a little annoyed that she’d have to go through with the application process, but the papers were slid back across the table and the photos picked up.

“These aren’t the right size. We cannot use them and so the application is invalid. You will have to come again.”

I of course proceeded to explain that they were so totally the right size that the International Bureau of Weights and Measures had written me requesting to house one of them in some basement in Paris as the fucking SI standard for passport photo. My argument was less than persuasive.

Fortunately—according to her—I wasn’t to fret, because replacement photos could easily be obtained from a photo store that was just around the corner from the consulate. Not half a block away! I’d shown up at a reasonable time, so it looked like I could go get new photos, then come back and finish the application in plenty of time, same day. Great, right?

It should not have surprised me that the photo place, literally two doors down from the Taiwanese Consulate—a single Starbucks weakly fractured the aura of assocation between the two establishments—was run by Taiwanese people. I waited behind a persnickety woman for a while, before an employee stepped in from the side and asked me what I needed. I said a photo for a Taiwanese visa, and she responded with pleasure, as though it were an exceedingly simple task. She showed me to the photographer in the back.

It should be noted that the nice man taking my picture grinned and gave me a thumbs up as I snapped a pic of this sign with my cell phone.

After snapping a few shots and showing them to me for comparison, so that I could choose the one with least glare on my glasses, the man plugged in his camera and began to crop the photos on a computer. He then printed them out and cut them up, I believe cropping them even further. Whatever. He assured me he was very familiar with the requirements for “next door.” No surprise there.

The friendly old photographer hands me my two freshly cut photographs in an envelope and sends me off to the register up front. When I get there, the helpful cashier with a great New York accent reasonably supposes, “American passport?” I said no, that actually they were for a visa for Taiwan. He yells, “Oh!” and with a single button press on the register, my total flips from $6.00 to $14.50. For two photos. I recalled that I’d paid $9 in Philadelphia for six photos, which I still believed (and still do believe) were the right size.

These new ones I got were indeed exactly the same as my old ones. I only got two with my purchase, though, so I couldn’t take one home to show to friends, as two were required by the application. Bah.

So I pass by the Starbucks and head upstairs at the consulate again. I turn in my photos. The woman is very pleased with me, presumably because of how willingly I gave $14.50 to her cousin or brother or uncle, and says my application is now complete. She fills out a “visa pickup” form, handwrites in 4:00pm, and dismisses me for the time being.

I wander around that section of New York—right next to Bryant Park and the NYPL, for those interested—for a bit, and make it back by 4:00pm on the dot. The woman who helped me earlier that afternoon looks very upset and motions me over hastily to ask what I’m doing here. I point to the time on the paper she’d given me, and she points to the date, which was the day after. Oops.

On my third trip to New York, several days later, I picked up the visa without a single incident. Well, actually, there was one slight issue, but the people in New York assure me it’s not a problem: my visa is good for only 60 days, when my trip will last substantially longer than that.

Oh, well. At least I have something to let me into the country!

What were they thinking? It’s a question that crops up all too often when it comes to Spanish sports and racial sensitivity. And now the Spanish basketball team, the reigning world champions, have added another confounding chapter to a disgraceful timeline. In a full-page ad in Spain’s best selling newspaper, the sports daily Marca, the team posed smiling and stretching the skin on the side of their eyes to appear Chinese.

Wow. Check that last link see a photo of them.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: all Europeans are racist bastards.

We got to talking about credits remaining in our respective degrees, and some interesting stuff popped up. Sorry if this is recap for anyone, but I found the points extremely interesting.

In the UK, one can specialize in the last two years of high school. This is not at all unique to the UK within Europe, but it was the example we discussed today, so I’m running with it. This means that when going for an MD, one needs only study 6 years at the university level, compared with the typical 8 or longer in the U.S. Pretty cool, no?

There’s one student here from the Netherlands studying International Business. As part of her courseload, she has to learn to play golf. If that doesn’t demonstrate a profound understanding of the the field, I don’t know what does. She mentioned also that some students learn to ski, too—for credit, mind you—as ski trips are a big part of the business world in Europe.

Now, the obvious rebuttal to this kind of education is that it is concentrated to the point of detriment to the overall education of the student. For instance, those extra two years an American would spend at college result (at least ideally) in a broader exposure to disparate fields. But I have to say, without the huge focus on foreign language knowledge and anthropologically refined social practices like the golf example, what’s the point? It’s almost as if the Europeans are going so far beyond what I typically consider specialization that they are reaping huge benefits from it.

It’s such intelligent specialization that it recognizes the importance of a variegated, yet highly contextualized, skillset.

Hats off to you, Europe.

The students—24 in all, from 9 different countries—just arrived this weekend; today is their first day of classes. I’ve not spoken with all of them one-on-one yet, but the few that I have I’ve already made a great connection with. I’m looking forward to this.

I agreed to do it again this summer at the behest of the program coordinator, who said that they could use someone with veterancy on this year. Last year I didn’t have classes to take, as I do now, so I initially declined, then was persuaded at the promise of money and meeting new friends—though not necessarily in that order.

The group last year was largely inconsequential to me, but I met one guy with whom I’ve kept in very close contact, and consider him a true friend of mine. I don’t think I’ll be lucky enough to have that experience two years running, but I’ll try to keep an open mind.

And as repayment to that friend I met, Cihan, I shall blog incessantly about how racist and curmugdeonly all these news kids are, just like I did last year.

More to come.

We have a little saying around these parts. It started among the Americans, actually, but it’s since spread to the Germans. The saying is, as you can guess, “six Maßes later.”

If you don’t know what a Maß is, here’s a little help.

The Maß (“measure”) is an old Austro-Bavarian unit of volume, now typically used for measuring beer. Originally it measured 1.069 litres, equivalent to 2.259 US pints, or 1.881 UK pints. Nowadays, a Maß is defined as exactly 1 litre.

OK, so now we’re clear on that much, I hope.

This little ditty of a saying cropped up around the time of Oktoberfest, and has remained in the vernacular due to our would-be-alcoholic-in-any-part-of-the-world-except-Bavaria lifestyle. “Six Maßes later” pretty much means “fucked up beyond all belief,” that the world is in a completely different state, and the laws of the universe now longer necessarily hold true.

If you’ve somehow made a grave mistake, you can invoke this face-saving adage and all is well. I’ve relied upon it several times myself.

Theory in practice

As can be expected, there are some epic tales associated with this expression.

Tale the First: Craig astray

There was a night a while back, let’s say a Friday, when we decided to go drinking. Because a Maß at any beer hall will usually run you about €7, the standard protocol has become to buy a case at a beer store and pregame with that. (A case will be €15-20, for 10L. Hella cheaper.)

We had pregamed. Then, since there were a bunch of visitors in town that weekend, we decided it was an appropriate night for Hofbräuhaus. More Maßes were consumed, and although I didn’t make it to six myself, good ol’ Craig did.

Craig is a rugby player. Big guy. We didn’t realize how drunk he was until he tried to tell us a story on the tram on the way to Hofbräuhaus. Then, once there, he dumped in two more, and that made for six.

As we were all sitting around the table, laughing stupidly, clomping our glasses around and punching one another if any spilled, someone noticed that Craig was missing. We checked the bathrooms and everything, but he was nowhere to be found. We concluded that he’d had enough and had decided to go home, which was reasonable. It wasn’t until late in the afternoon on the following day that we heard the true story.

Poor, muscular, wasted Craig did indeed decide it was time to go home. He was able, even six Maßes later, to compute that in order to get home, he had to take public transportation. Unfortunately he selected the subway instead of the tram, which didn’t make a lot of sense for where we were in the city. He even got on the wrong subway line, one that didn’t lead in the direction of home at all.

As he explained to us, his reasoning went like this: He noticed that the stops on the subway weren’t ones he wanted. So he decided to stick it out until the train went somewhere he needed to be. This wasn’t such a good idea. He ends up at the end of the line, somewhere in south Munich, and has to get off. He starts walking around that area of town, looking for something he recognizes. Craig wasn’t wearing a coat, and as this happened in February, he gradually (once again, Craig is a big guy) grew cold. He decided to start jogging in order to keep warm.

While jogging, he of course covered ground more quickly. This only led to exasperation, as he realized that he had no idea where the hell he was, and couldn’t find a way back home. So he began to run. (See what I mean? This decision doesn’t make too much sense without the six Maßes.) He was drunk, so ended up slipping on wet cobblestone, fell hard, and cut up his hand.

He was still freezing at this point, and now a little sore, so he went up to an apartment building and pressed every single button until someone buzzed him in. He lumbered into the lobby and slept underneath the stairs there.

When he woke up, he was sober enough to find his way back home and relate his adventures to us.

Tale the Second: Conor goes whoomp

OK, so this one time I got utterly plastered and kinda sorta fell asleep in a weird section of a bar and woke up way past closing time and the bar was locked so I couldn’t leave so I just kinda went back to sleep and then when the owner came in at 6am to open up I scared the hell out of him and asked if I could go and he said yeah so I left.

I didn’t think anyone would believe this story so I took a picture of myself shortly after coming to.

Let us never speak of this again.

There is no escape

The motivation to write this post was last night’s shift at the pizza place. The shop owner is a great guy, OK? Just awesome. I really enjoy working for him, because he’s a total bro.

Last night my shift started at 6pm. When I got there, he seemed happy. He seemed like three Maßes worth of happy, and that’s exactly what he was. He called me over to the part of the kitchen where he prepares the pizzas, and he lifts up a tin foil container that had been resting on something. He wanted to show me the six empty beer bottles he’d been concealing.

Everyone in the kitchen knew Ben was buzzed, so we started egging him on. I told my story about the phrase “six Maßes later,” and after much disbelief (“You fucking American, you probably didn’t even taste beer until you were 14, and you’re telling us you can drink six Maßes?”), it was unanimously agreed that Ben had to go for 12 beers. (Bottles are 0.5L.)

Well, let it be known that before closing time, Ben made it to six. And he was gone. The deadline for employee orders is 10:30pm, a half hour before the shop is closed down, so I made sure to ask him to make me a pizza around that time. I had to repeat my order several times, even though it was the same pizza I order every freaking night (Odin Pizza). He said he would try.

I got stuck doing the last run, and when I was back at 11:15pm, the guys in the kitchen were dying with laughter, and asked me to try my pizza. That gustatory-archaeological expedition yielded the following pizza makeup, from bottom layer to top: dough, tomato sauce, cheese, potatoes au gratin, peanut butter, bacon, red onions, broccoli, and peppers.

And you know what? It was fucking great.

Only in Bavaria can one hope to see their boss six liters deep, tripping over invisible things, yet still pressing onward with work. God I love this place.

]]> http://www.conorschaefer.com/blog/index.php/2008/05/10/six-mases-later/feed/ 6 http://www.conorschaefer.com/blog/index.php/2008/05/08/finally-someone-who-gets-anthropology/ http://www.conorschaefer.com/blog/index.php/2008/05/08/finally-someone-who-gets-anthropology/#comments Wed, 07 May 2008 22:57:31 +0000 Conor http://www.conorschaefer.com/blog/?p=545 At work tonight (how many entries can I possibly start with that line? I need a new intro!), there wasn’t much going on. I grabbed a pint of Cappuccino-and-Caramel-and-awesome Häagen-Dazs, which is super marked down because nobody buys it, pulled up a couple cases of beer to sit on, and chilled out.

Since there weren’t any orders coming in, no one in the whole place had anything to do. The boss had just left, and so things got crazy. Long story short, one of the cooks, who’s skinnier than I am, perched up on the metal counter, hands curled underneath his armpits, and squawked as loudly as he could. One of the drivers then picked him up and attempted to place him in a trash can.

But I am telling this story because the subject of “the American” came up, and the guys started grilling me about all the things they didn’t know. No one had ever asked me what I studied.

I said,

“Well, in America, mostly anthropology. Here in Germany, it’s pretty much just been computer science.”

That’s the standard answer for when I’m asked, which is rather often. What I received in return, however, was an absolutely epic answer.

“Anthropology… you mean, like, Stargate?”

I was floored. Yes. Yes, anthropology is exactly freaking like that. Well, I wish it were, anyway. But, I mean, he got the idea right!

I will never forget this conversation, and I hope you don’t, either.

This has been a very regular occurrence since I got to Germany. It’s legal for the cops to just frisk anyone on the street, for any reason, and I get that treatment a lot. If I’m meeting friends some place, they’ll often give me 20 minutes beyond the scheduled meeting time, because chances are, I’m going to get controlled somewhere along the way.

What happened yesterday was that I was on the tram, in the rearmost car, and I decided I was going to get off. Typical protocol is that everyone outside the tram waits for people to get off, then they pile in. I was at the back of the line to exit, and since it was a heavily trafficked stop (Munich Central Station), there was a risk the tram was going to start moving again, and I’d be stuck having to walk a stop back.

As I reach the door to exit, two police officers are trying to get onto the train. I figure whatever they have to do is somewhat important, so I want to make sure they get on before the doors close and seal everybody in. They were rudely getting on side-by-side, as well, meaning I couldn’t walk out next to them. I hestitate and motion them inwards, they don’t respond, so I move to get out, and then they try again to come on, together, blocking my exit.

The conversation went like this:

Me: “Are you getting on or not?”
Cop #1, with one foot on the tram: “Maybe. Would it be a problem if I did?”
Me: “What? Look, I was just waiting on you. Whatever.”

Then I shouldered by them, as I had maybe a second or two left before the doors locked me in, and they followed me back off the tram, Cop #1 already donning leather frisking gloves.

I heave a big sigh and roll my eyes.

Cop #1: “Identification, please. Are you carrying any illegal substances, such as drugs or weapons, on your person or in your bag?
Me: “Of course not. I think I might have a pretzel in my backpack, but that’s the worst you’re going to find.”
Cop #2: “Identification, please.”

I hand over my Pennsylvania driver’s license and begin emptying my pockets. (I definitely know the drill by now. It’s illegal for them to reach into my pockets, so I have to empty them myself and then turn them inside out, otherwise they have probable cause to take me down to the station.)

Cop #1: “Start with the front pockets, please. Everything out.”
Cop #2: “Identification, please.”
Me: “Are you really going to keep asking me?”
Cop #2: “This isn’t identification. This is a driver’s license.”
Me: “That’s government issued. It counts as ID.”
Cop #1: “No, all it does is prove that you can drive a car. We need identification.”
Me: “In America, you have to provide a social security number to receive a driver’s license. It’s used as ID. Very few Americans have a passport.”
Cop #1: “Did you use this driver’s license at the airport when you came to Germany?”
Me: “No, of course not. I used my passport. I don’t carry that with me because it’s too valuable.”
Cop #2: “You have to carry your passport with you at all times.”
Me: “No, I don’t. I have to carry ID. That’s ID.”
Cop #1: “Next pocket, please. Turn that one all the way inside-out.”
Cop #2: “So you’re not registered as living here, are you?”
Me: “Of course I am. I’ve lived here since September.”
Cop #2: “Under what name are you registered with the city?”
Me: [bored stare]
Cop #2: [looks at driver's license] “Where is your passport?”
Me: “Back at my place. I keep it there so it’s safe. Like, for example, if I go drinking or something. I don’t want to lose it. [I know that sounds like stiff, awkward English, but that's exactly what my German sounded like]

The frisking process was especially laborious because I’d just come from doing a tour. I had about ten thousand sets of keys for all the bike locks, I had tools like wrenches and multitools, a mini tire pump, and a large amount of cash in crumpled bills, which I had collected as payment and needed to get to my boss.

When Cop #1 began to search my backpack, she did indeed find half a massive pretzel I’d stuffed in there while drinking at the Chinese Tower with the tour group. (I couldn’t finish it because I’d been drinking heavily the night before and hadn’t gotten my appetite back.)

The best part was when she had me empty my cargo pockets, which is where all the tools were, and asked me to turn those inside out. Have you ever tried to turn cargo pockets on shorts inside out? It doesn’t really work. I kind of just rolled my shorts up, towards the inside, so it looked like I had been really hungover that morning and decided knickers were a good idea, but couldn’t quite nail the execution.

These poor officers did not want to give up. They were sure I had something. I’d gotten off the train at a weird time. I’d acted deferentially to them instead of ignoring them, which was suspicious. I had a death metal t-shirt on, and my hair down. I had a very bizarre looking backpack.

They eventually did give up. I got my pretzel back, but I still haven’t eaten it.

And I really can’t complain about the tips I got tonight.

On my first run, the bill is €18.25 or something. I’m crossing my fingers that the guy will round up to 19, and enjoying pipedreams about receiving a crisp €20 bill and not having to give any change back. When I get there, I state the price, and the nice man at the door goes back inside to confer amongst his entourage. I hear him say, “Does anyone have a 2 euro piece?” I think that’s a bit weird, but maybe he needs another 2 euro piece, so he can pay me €19 and not have to ask for change back.

When he returns, he hands me a €20 bill and a €2 coin, says, “That’s fine the way it is.” I almost fell down the stairs. I thanked him profusely, gathered myself up on the mat outside his door so as not to soak the floorboards in the hallway, and extracted the pizzas from my “specially designed pre-heated Joey’s® bag” with the utmost care. After he had accepted them, I prostrated myself on the hallway floor and began to ululate.

I hope that that last decision does not adversely affect my tips from this goodly gentleman in the future.

Then, on my second run, I get another €3 tip. This time I take all the coins out of my wallet and toss them up in the air, laughing like a child running through a field of strawberries, stomping and picking and gobbling with joyful abandon. Again, I hope he still tips me well next time.

The rest of the night was filled with standard fair 20-30 cent crap, but hey, it was still a red-letter day.

Probably my favorite run all night was this gorgeous girl who was caught completely off guard by my rain-ravished good looks, and even blushed as I said hello. She started fumbling around with her purse, smiling and talking about the conditions of the delivery. “Well, because of the rain, and because it got here so fast, and, just, well, you know, because…” She then hands me a €20, then a 50 cent piece. The bill is €13.20. She tells me how much to give back, and I didn’t hear her, probably because I was staring or drooling or giggling too loudly. I have to ask her to repeat it, which is a tactic I usually reserve for particularly low tippers whom I want to give another chance before I get out the customer voodoo doll and chain it to the front tire of my moped for the trip back to the shop.

She looks a little surprised, but not quite insulted, and says, “Well, I guess, like, 7!” I purse my lips and decide whether to ask her to repeat it again, then figure it’s already an hour into my shift and far past time to break out the doll. So I thank her, hand her the pizza, which I did not shake excessively during extraction, then walk away as she tries to start a conversation.

Pretty girls can’t count.

I warn you, it’s weird.

In a small farming town somewhere in Russia, a family noticed that their cow had gone missing. The men of the family conclude that the cow has been stolen, and proceed to determine the thief. The grandfather says, “Whoever stole this cow must be homosexual. Only homosexuals steal cows.” His son, the father of the farming family, replies, “Then whoever stole the cow must be short, too. All homosexuals are short.” The grandson chimes in with the capstone to their investigation, concluding, “The shepherd that lives at the edge of town is short! Therefore he must be the person who stole our cow.” They all agree to go beat up the poor shepherd.

Upon arriving at the shepherd’s hut, the grandfather declares, “Give us back our damn cow, you faggot.” The shepherd explains he knows absolutely nothing of any cow-stealing incident, and his three accusers decide to take the issue to court.

Once in the courtroom, the shepherd uses as his defense the absolutely absurd chain of logic the men used to accuse him. The judge inquires as to the nature of the reasoning, and the men explain. The judge says, “Well, let’s test the validity of this logic.” With that, he points to a box sitting on a table at the edge of the courtroom, and asks the grandfather, “What is in that box?”

The grandfather thinks for a moment, then replies, “Well, it’s a box, so… it probably has another box inside.” The father says, “A box inside a box would probably hold something round.” The son finishes it off with, “If it’s round and inside a box, it’s probably an orange.”

The judge says, “Just give them back their damn cow, you asshole.”

This joke has become a party classic, and it gets better the drunker Pavel is, because then his English is mangled and newcomers to the joke aren’t sure whether they missed something, or whether the verdict by the judge really is the punchline.

I was inspired to tell this story by reading an article about a Russian doomsday cult that just came out of its cave, evidently having had their doomsday date wrong.

Thirty-five people took refuge in the cave in the Penza region, about 650 kilometres southeast of Moscow, in November, threatening to detonate 400 litres of gas canisters if authorities tried to remove them. The cave dwellers, members of a group calling itself the True Russian Orthodox Church, said they were waiting for the end of world, which they believed would come sometime in May

Oh, yes. What an honor to be a parishioner of the True Hardcore X-treme Russian Orthodox Church, complete with a badly dilapidated cave as demesne and 400 liters of gasoline as a characteristically Soviet tithe.

The story gets better when the cult members explain their decision to leave the cave.

Vice Governor Oleg Melnichenko said more of the cave had collapsed around dawn Tuesday, and cult members told emergency officials that a divine vision overnight had instructed them to leave.

Last Friday seven other cult members emerged as melting spring snows caused part of the shelter to cave in, sparking fears that the entire structure could collapse.

Well I’ll be damned, there’s that comet speaking to you again—you must be a prophet! Just how do you tap into these cosmic messages? What did the comet say this time, anyway? “Get the hell you, you drunken idiots, this shit is falling down!”?

Maybe they’ll get the date right next year.

Last night I’d set an alarm for 10am today, giving me plenty of time to rouse myself, make breakfast, and walk over to the church nearest me, St. Benno’s. The alarm went off, and as usual, I didn’t get up. Except this time I was so tired and confused, I shut the alarm off instead of just snoozing it. Damn. At 11:30am, though, I’m awoken by rolling church bells even through my shut balcony doors, and I realize I’m missing the Easter mass bells. Damn! I roll out of bed, charge my MP3 player (which has a shoddy built-in microphone I must use to make the recording), throw on some warm clothing, and I’m out the door.

On the walk over, I listen to some Technical Death Metal by my favorite band. The air is cold, and even the bakery was shut today, a sign that all things must rest.

And it came bearing gifts
Of pain, frankincense, and her
None had a home here, none but the pain

The church is only about five minutes away by foot, though tucked away on its own plaza behind some apartment buildings, nestled among interlocking streets. I arrive by about ten before noon, and I sit down on a bench outside. It’s snowing softly.

The plaza is still; I assume most everyone who will be attending the mass is already inside. I pause my music to listen to a dove, perched in the hole left by a missing stone on the church’s main facade, indignantly declaring the plaza his own. I resume the music.

The chilling chants of the carcass choir
Rosaries inverted and strung upon the razor wire

I admire the facade of the church, the massive twin towers adorned less than gracefully with a sundial and an ornate clock, hands wrought of gold. Mere minutes remained until noon, so I stopped the music and started recording. Here is the excerpt of that recording which just includes the bells, as well as various other courtyard noises, such as wind, talking passersby, and the clip-clop of high heels.

[audio:stbennosbells.mp3]

I apologize that the quality is not better. As I mentioned, the device I used to record was my ancient iRiver, and the built-in mic is hardly stellar. I spent a considerable amount of time editing out the gusts of wind by normalizing and compressing, but they’re of course still quite audible. In addition, the recording here is a 192kbps MP3 file. For the lossless version in FLAC, please click here. At 17MB, it’s only about twice as large as the MP3 file. Oh, and one noise I absolutely could not remove was the spinning up of my MP3 player’s hard drive in order to dump the buffer to disk.

What I wish I could explain here is how shocking the bells were when they began, even though I’ve heard them literally hundreds of times before. The dove even was awed, or at least recognized the futility of trying to speak over the bells. As I sat and listened, trying to shelter the microphone from wind without muffling the beautiful sound, a child was carried past by his father. The child’s face was contorted in distress, his ears covered by one hand of his own and one of his father’s. The child’s free hand was clutching a small paper cone of roasted almonds.

When the ringing ended, and the last vibrations of the bells moaned on, the birds around the courtyard started to speak again. Not the dove, but others, chirping all around me amid the falling snow. I checked that the recording was still going, then stopped it and put on more music. I walked home with headphones on.

Standing west of God
We are united in regret

A happy Easter to you.

As I’m keeping my daydreaming in check with visions of dirty plastic shards in my eyeballs, I see a police car on pulling up from a sidestreet, getting ready to turn out onto the same road I’m on. I consider braking for him, then realize that would just be suspicious, as well as implying that I’m his bitch, so I glance at my speed and keep going. After I’m past, I check my mirror, and the car behind me had yielded to the police car, all but stopping to wave him out. What a bitch, right? So the cop is behind me now, and I’m almost back to the pizza shop.

Then the lights on the cop car click on. No siren, just lights. I think maybe it’s not about me, but there are no cars ahead of me. No brains on my headlights or shards of plastic in my eyeballs yet, either, so I can’t imagine what I possibly could have done wrong. I start thinking that maybe in Germany cops flip their lights on to say hi, so I’m thinking about turning on all my turn signals and beeping the horn and stuff, to join in on the party. I play it safe, though, and pull over. He does too, right behind me.

I turn off my ride, remove my helmet, and pivot around to face the approaching cop, but without getting off the moped. I thought it best to stay put so he couldn’t gun me down and say I was making a break for it. The conversation went like this.

“Good evening, officer! What seems to be the problem?”
“Well, the problem seems to be that back there was a ‘right-before-left,’ and you didn’t yield to me.”
“Uh, a ‘right-before-left’?”
“Yes. Driver’s license, please.”
“Sure. Right.”
[10 seconds of frantic unzipping and pocket-patting]
“Um, you see, officer, I seem to have left my wallet back at the shop. It was in my jacket when I came to work, and then I changed into these work clothes. My license is back there.”
“You don’t have your driver’s license with you, and yet I just pulled you over while you were driving?”
“That’s correct, officer.”
“Identification, please.”
[Please keep in mind that it's actually a law that everyone in Germany must carry ID on them at all times. I use my passport for this purpose, and my passport was also still in my jacket pocket back in my locker at the shop.]
“Um… right. You see, that’s kind of with my license, in my jacket.”
“You have no driver’s license and no identification?”
“Correct. But officer, I work just around that corner, that’s where the shop is, I’d be happy to run and pick both up for you and show them to you. It’s not a problem at all, officer.”
“How fast does that thing go?” [gestures to moped]
“Um, 35km/h, sir.” [Fuck, that's a lie! It actually goes to 40km/h and he might know that! Why, why did you say that, Conor?]
“Oh really? I clocked you at 70 back there when you passed me.”
“What? No, officer, I’m sorry, that is absolutely not possible, the thing just doesn’t go that fast, it only goes so fast, it can’t go faster [my German is failing me]. You can drive it yourself to see, sir.”
“Alright. Well, look. Next time I see one of Joey’s boys out on the road, I’m going to pull them over. And if it’s you, you’re going to have your driver’s license and ID with you, aren’t you?”
“Yes sir!”
“Alright, then. Have a—”
“Excuse me, officer… could you just explain to me one more time what I did wrong back there?”
[looks at me incredulously] “It was a right-before-left! Classic situation! It doesn’t get anymore obvious!”
“Right. Yes, of course. Um, ‘right-before-left’?”
“Do you even have a driver’s license?!” [gets out ticket boot again]
“Yes, of course I do! Well… I have an international driver’s license, you know. I, uh, had to write a test for it. So maybe I—” [more lies]
“Yeah. Sure. Look, just get out of here.”
“Yes, right. Have a good evening, officer.

To be completely clear, I did not get fucked. No ticket, no reporting to my boss (as far as I know), nothing like that. He scared the shit out of me, but that’s about all the harm that was done. But what really had me freaked was this fairy tale traffic law he kept referencing.

After getting off work I told the story to some incredulous friends, and a German explained just as incredulously that I broke the “most basic traffic law in Germany.” I did some research, and it looks like most countries in Europe are using this priority to the right (rechts vor links) system.

Well, now I know. And you do too.

Update: I’ve been asked a thousand times to elaborate on this “right before left” law. What it boils down to is that if you’re driving along a road, and a vehicle pokes its snout out of a sidestreet, you have to yield to that vehicle, effectively slowing down to wave them out. You don’t have a stop sign, and neither do they. Cars pulling out of sidestreets are in my experience fairly cautious, but they do expect to be let out, so you have to be ready to brake.

This is obviously completely antithetical to the way right of way works in the U.S., namely that if you’re already driving, fuck everybody else, they have to wait for a clear spot in the line of traffic driving past them before they can turn out. The “right before left” system seems to add a huge emphasis on paying attention to other drivers on the road, and to changing conditions. It also reinforces an ideological atmosphere of caring for your fellowman, and in that sense, seems completely consistent with a rather socialist society, whereas the “fuck you, I’m driving here, wait your turn” system in the States is a bit more representative capitalist mentality.

I just walked home in a cold spring rain with freshly baked bread warming my hands, crossed glistening cobblestone streets as the tram clattered by, the church bells splashing down the quiet corridors of shops, trying to remind me why people bake bread at all.

I don’t have any pictures of this, I didn’t record the smells. I failed to capture the warmth of that bakery, made real to me by a few locks of wet hair sticking to my face. My glasses fogged up when I entered. I mumbled something about the weather to the kind lady on the other side of the counter, and she handed me bread.

Everything is more than OK. I don’t mean in my life, I mean in the world. It’s all going to be fine.

Don’t try to save the world, because it doesn’t need it. Save the bakeries. Because once we lose them, all is darkness.

Not a single store in the entire city is open on Sundays. You can’t even buy groceries or a sandwich. Exception: the concourse for the central train station does have to-go food available, as travellers are coming through at all hours and days of the week

Today I needed to go down to the Kreisverwaltungsreferat, the hip joint where I acquired my visa, as I now need a working permit that says I’m allowed to have a part-time job. Today happens to be Marti Gras, which means there’s a federally mandated half-day of work. Since this particular office somehow normally closes at noon, I joked with my friends this morning that today it would probably only be open till 10:30am.

It was.

I get there at 10:45am and there’s a huge sign placed on the roped-off stairs explaining that the office closed early. There was even a security detail on the stairs to keep people from trying the doors.

It’s unbelievable. A couple weeks back, an American friend was looking up internships online and found a very attractive position, but the hours were stated as “full work week.” Unquantified, that sounded a little foreboding. But really it just meant the standard 35 hours per week, she later found out.

Let’s have some citation fun.

Could Longer Work Hours Revive the German Economy?

“We work less in Germany but have a higher level of productivity,” said Dierk Hirschel, an economist at the German Federation of Trade Unions. “We can produce more per hour because people are relaxed since they don’t have to work as much as in other countries.”

He would like to see a 35 hour week become the norm.

In case it’s not obvious, the economist is proposing an increase to 35-hour work weeks. To be fair, that article is dated 2001. Let’s look at one from 2005.

Germany moves toward longer work week

Private German companies are moving towards longer working hours and greater flexibility, says the German Chamber of Industry and Trade (DIHK). The DIHK hopes that the trend could lead to lower labour costs.

“The 40-hour work week is a reality in Germany. To think differently is to ignore reality,” said Martin Wansleben, head of the DIHK.

The agency polled 20,000 companies across Germany and found that one in three already operated a 40-hour working week.

Eastern Germany seems to have taken the lead: two-thirds of companies there operate a working week of 40 hours or more. However, in western Germany, only 30% work longer than 35 hours per week.

What a grand country, no?

I’ve never met an Australian who even made an attempt to speak German, let alone the Queen’s English. They drink the low-grade tourist beer, get trashed, say “Let’s gut pusst, moit!” a lot, and are all around intolerable. I wonder what they’re running from back home.

Oh, I know. It must be the coffee made from feces. Nothing less could make Hofbräu seem appealing, I’ll tell you that much.

Kopi Luwak, made in neighboring Indonesia from coffee beans excreted by native civet cats, is reputedly the world’s rarest and most expensive coffee, painstakingly extracted by hand from the animals’ forest droppings.

When roasted, the resulting beans sell for around $1,000 a kilogram ($450 a pound) and brew into a earthy, syrupy, coffee acknowledged by connoisseurs as one of the world’s finest.

I just hate Aussies so much.

I didn’t shoot my eye out, the frames were just beat after two years of constant wear, and the hinge had become so malleable, the two pieces of metal just softly detached from one another as I was adjusting the glasses on my face. Lose.

But I figure it’s time to get this whole situation sorted out, so I take a stroll downtown to a glasses shop and ask to have them repaired. The woman cheerily replies “Sure!” then actually looks at them, and says, “But… these are really broken.” Yeah. That’s why I need repaired.

So she says she’ll do what she can, but it might look ugly. Ugly fine by me, I say, because I need something to wear while at my computer in the wee hours of the morning, when my contact lenses usually dry out and bother me. She says come back in three hours, as she has a lot of other maintenance to do.

I come back, they’re fixed. And she fixed them for free. She would not accept payment of any kind. She said, “Well, that’s just service. I didn’t sell you anything.” An interesting philosophy, to be sure.

Here’s to being able to see. Rock!

I was sitting at home, door open, heavy metal blasting, and someone yelled hey while walking by my room on the way to theirs. The girl, an American, doubled back and asked me whether I had any interest in tagging along to a mosque with her tonight. An odd request, to be sure.

Apparently a German girl we both know is taking a class on Islam and Middle Eastern cultures this semester, and apparently tonight the class was meeting out at a mosque in Pasing, a part of the city where our university has a secondary campus. After very briefly deliberating whether I should skip my radioactivity class, I said count me in. (Turns out it was cancelled anyway! Rock!)

We hop on a train to Pasing and meet the German girl there, who inspects us to see whether we’ve donned suitable mosque attire. I’m wearing a metal shirt. Oops. So I zip up my olive green hoodie and say no harm, no foul. I pass inspection!

We almost walked by the mosque, because for one, it didn’t really look much like the Hagia Sophia, which I had inexplicably been expecting in Munich, and also the address was 18a, instead of the 180 we’d been told to find. Tricky. But we found it!

We were a little early, so we wait outside for a few minutes, then in the lobby for a few more, then get welcomed to have a seat in a room with many tables. It looked like a pizzeria or a cafeteria. More on that later.

6:10pm rolls around and we are called upstairs to the prayer room. The honkeys grab some benches from the against the wall and situate ourselves, while the prayer leader readies whatever it was he needed to rock house.

When the prayers began, there was a swift swelling throughout the room, a crescendo that felt not unlike a spirit entering. The acoustics were phenomenal. As the prayer leader sang his undulations, we visiting students sat up very straight on our backless benches. The worshippers knelt, then placed their foreheads on the ground, paused, rocked back onto their knees, stood up, and repeated.

Sometimes, while standing, the worshippers would whisper their prayers quickly to themselves, and the acoustics of the room were such that every whisper was everywhere, even behind us, who were watching the worshippers in front of us. It felt like someone was breathing his fervent prayers in Arabic into my ear. Unreal how utterly cohesive it made the ceremony feel. The prayers were everywhere.

It was nice to get to work on my Arabic, but I couldn’t decipher any of the actual prayers. All I gathered was that every single one, especially those used in the call and response from the prayer leader, began with “God is great, “God is good,” “God is mighty,” “all thanks be to God,” or even a combination of all of them.

I definitely wasn’t able to read the beautiful Arabic calligraphy adorning the tiled walls of the domed-ceiling room, but that made the experience that much more moving. It felt so much like God was there, that it made sense that I couldn’t read His word. He could have shown His face and I wouldn’t even have recognized it as a face.

Did you know that Arabic is often called the language of angels? (Here’s maybe why, it’s kind of interesting.)

After the service, a veteran of the mosque who had arranged the visit with the professor gave us a lesson on Islam. He intended to speak for 15 minutes, allegedly, but it quickly snowballed into an hour. Was quite educational, at least what I understood through his Turkish accent flavored with Bavarian.

We then adjourned and reconvened downstairs, where we resumed our discussions of Islam and what it’s like to be a Muslim in Munich. We were served delicious Turkish tea, much like I’ve had at my favorite döner shop near my place. (I hope that didn’t come off as irreverent in some way.) I learned that the mosque cannot register with the German state as a church, because it’s Muslim. Apparently they’re registered as a “society” or something, but not as a church. A church is Christian, dagnabbit.

I had such a good experience there, I wonder how receptive they would be to my returning there.

Fuck you, NSA. I do what I want.

Bad news is, I’m on my last beer, and it’s 8pm, so the stores just closed. Every store in the whole freaking city is closed by 8pm. Sigh to that.

Problem is, the no cover charge is at the tremendously huge club Nachtgalerie (remember Halloween?), which none of the cool Germans wants to visit, because apparently it’s for lamers and little kids. Now, I don’t quite understand how these Germans think it a viable avenue of persuasion to tell a bunch of drunk college kids that a place sucks because it has lots of underage girls, but hey, we call that cultural differences in the biz.

In other news, if anyone has massive amounts of bits they need shoved around in cyberspace, please let me know, because I’m aching to use this ridiculous bandwidth at my disposal. Bonus points if the proposed use wouldn’t result in breaking international laws.

Jukka, the resident Finn, was there, just finishing up preparing his breakfast. I set about to throwing together a quick omelette, and we chatted whilst readying our comestibles. I asked whether it’d be OK if I put on some music, knowing full well it would be, because he’s from Finland and listens to metal. Well, somehow this poor bastard hadn’t heard of Mors Principium Est, which blew my mind, but he knew all the other requisite names. We ate and talked over the following playlist:

1. Mors Principium Est – Parasites Of Paradise
2. Panic! At The Disco – The Only Difference Between Martyrdom And Suicide Is Press Coverage
3. Into Eternity – Beginning Of The End
4. Turisas – As Torches Rise
5. Novembers Doom – The Pale Haunt Departure
6. Insomnium – The Day It All Came Down

How fantastic is that? If you answered “very,” you are correct.

As usual, Jukka had made a small pot of coffee for the morning, and offered me the final cup. I gladly accepted, number one because I haven’t had coffee in ages, and number because I knew he was being especially gracious by offering. The other day he saw me in the hall and bade me enter his room, where he rummaged through the exposed entrails of a carepackage from back home to find a tiny green box, from which he extracted a tinier piece of chocolate-covered candy. “Finnish candy is the best,” he said. And indeed it was. He couldn’t have had many pieces in that box, so I was touched that he wanted to share it rather than hoard it.

So I try Jukka’s coffee, and it was just awesome. Before I could compliment him, though, he excused himself for the poor quality and explained that German coffee just isn’t as good as Finnish coffee I told him that the coffee I was tasting seemed much better than what I’m used to in America, and he raised his eyebrows. It’s at least nice when people are surprised when I tell them tales of inferior products and standard of living in America. That or they’re well mannered enough to feign surprise.

I’ve noticed that a lot of the people I meet here are very proud of what they’re used to back home, whether home for them is a town just outside of Munich or at the other end of the continent. I don’t often see this level of product patriotism from the Americans here, probably because they’re genuinely convinced that stuff over here is just better

I’ll have to try to pick up some Finnish coffee, if it beats the stuff I had this morning.

Oh, and Jukka also assured me it was cheaper in Finland than here in Germany, which doesn’t make any sense to me at all. Maybe they’re growing their own up there under the ice or something.

Cut to the walk home. Christoph asked how much college education costs in America. He said that he’d spoken with some Americans before, and heard that it was even more than the 500€ per semester maximum now legal in Germany. He expressed his disbelief that the cost of education could exceed 1000€ per year. I dropped the bomb that Drexel costs roughly $30,000 per year, depending on scholarships and whatnot. And that most of it I’ve had to borrow.

To which Christoph said, “Oh man, and you have to pay 50% of that back, don’t you?” He said this because when one needs to take out loans to cover student costs in Germany, only 50% of the debt needs to be repaid. The state pays the rest. “No,” I said, “actually one has to pay back the full amount borrowed, plus usually at least 10% interest. Yes, really. No, I’m not joking. It’s really like that. Yeah, I know it’s stupid.”

I explained that in the beginning, when I first got to college, I had to borrow huge amounts of money to study. But since then, because I worked hard and got very good grades, I’ve managed to receive scholarships from the university and elsewhere, and now my education is all but paid for. I said that also the state favors me in financial aid because my family doesn’t earn a ton of money. These things didn’t impress him at all.

Christoph quickly concluded that this system meant only the rich or extremely well educated poor have the opportunity for higher education. I couldn’t really argue with that. He said that these are the last people in society that need education, because they’re already in a fairly sweet position granted them by the decent education they’ve so far received. I certainly couldn’t argue with that. Then he asked why the government doesn’t give out substantially more money to students.

I had to explain that my older sister had, in addition to some academic scholarships, received need-based aid when she first got to college. Several years into it, however, she began to receive fewer federal grants, as the federal student aid budget had been slashed in order to finance the war. This was a sad day indeed.

Now this was a particularly important discussion to me 1) because I was drunk and 2) because I just the other day had a very illuminating conversation with an American here regarding war policy. I had brought up an article I’d read years ago about a German law stating that no soldier is required to carry out orders he finds morally objectionable. (A quick googling yields nothing on this. I’ll try to cite later.) This was quite obviously intended as an anti-Nazi clause, but I’d read about it in the context of the Iraq War.

A member of the German military, notably not an infantry soldier, had been given an assignment which he refused to complete on moral grounds. This military employee was a software programmer who had been assigned to write a piece of defense software. Upon receiving the order, he inquired as to whether the software would be used by American forces in Iraq. When his superior officer could not assure him that it would not be, he refused to write it. I don’t know what ever became of this chap, but when I relayed this anecdote as I’ve done here, an American present said, “Well, that’s a stupid law.” The conversation proceeded thus:

“Why is that stupid?”
“Well if your troops don’t follow orders, then you can’t go to war.”
“Yeah. That’s the point. You don’t go to war.”
“But like what if you have to go to war?”
“What? Nobody has to go to war, dude, what the hell are you talking about?”
“Like what if somebody attacks you or something?”
“What kind of feudal-era ideology are you living under, man? Where have you been for the past few thousand years? War is bullshit and doesn’t need to happen.”

Around this time another American chimed in that I was getting belligerent, and played Solomon by suggesting that while perhaps war is sometimes necessary, Germany isn’t exactly in grave danger in the world right now, and so it’s rather appropriate for them to have this clause. Plus the whole Nazi thing.

So whatever, man. Then I sign on to post this and I see in my feeds a link to a story about how Blackwater mercenaries are pulling guns on U.S. military troops. I didn’t need to read that. The most valuable link I found in my rather cursory reading of the article was to Military Videos, a site which attempts to collect footage of the troops in Iraq for public consumption. I watched one or two and I thought about all that money exploding like so many IEDs, ripping people apart with shrapnel and saturating the streets with gore. When we could be building libraries instead. And the dollar would be so much stronger for it.

Oh, well. The floodwaters are rising, I hear.

I had heard tell that Germans love to socialize while preparing dinner. That’s already been proven quite a sound insight in the short time I’ve been here. Very few people in our building actually have TVs, as we’re students, and most of us are too poor to go out to bars often, as we’re students. But every so often, there’s a soccer game on, and Germans don’t miss German teams playing soccer. For this reason, TV tuners and antennas were procured for laptops, and on gamenights the largest laptop we can find is plunked down in the kitchen for all to behold.

Cooking ensues, as a kind of pre-game activity. Our floor of this building is somewhat limited in cooking resources, such as skillets and pots, but we only have two stoves for sixteen people, so there’s always a line anyway. Usually the top chefs will begin the off-the-stove preparations, such as chopping vegetables and coordinating spices. During this period the cooking n00bz will whip up some pasta and butter, or perhaps some sausage, but rarely anything more complex or toothsome.

When the top chefs take over, the n00bz retreat to seated positions and make sure the laptop is tuned to the right channel. They dine, their meal flavored with the aroma and laughter both so inherent to quality cooking. After eating, the table is cleared in preparation of the deployment of the real meals, and it is the top chefs’ turn to dine.

I don’t quite have my mind around the joy of cooking, but I know that it’s more complex than just the cooking. It might be greater than the joy of witnessing cooking, much as the artist undergoes a thrill unlike that of any who merely observe his work. But I think what’s really important is the witnessing of the witnessing, the feedback, the sharing, the community and the culture of indulgence. Stated in electrical engineering or anthropological terms, it means the same thing: Chefs love feeding people.

So in exchange for cooking classes and exceptional meals, I often wash dishes and help people configure their VPN clients. “No, you see, you’ve set it up only to receive e-mail, but to send you also need to configure SMTP. Is that honey I taste in this spaghetti sauce? Yes, a little wine next time would be a great idea!”

No classes today, because it’s a holiday. So I’m going to take it very, very easy. I heard talk yesterday of a “Germany versus America” Fußball/football rematch, the first instance of which took place on Sunday. Don’t worry: we didn’t actually play Germany versus the U.S. in American-style football, as that would have been pretty absurd. Likewise, the Germans gave us a Moroccan player during the soccer match. A fatal mistake.

Speaking of Sundays and holidays in such close conjunction is very natural to me now. Nothing is open here on Sundays. Can’t even go to the grocery store, let alone down to an electronics store or a CD shop. On Sundays, people go to the park and lie out in the sun and drink and laugh in discrete little German packets of pleasure expression. Leisure time is taken very seriously in this country, and it’s something I’m already used to and cherishing. It seems that work time is generally pretty balls-to-the-wall, but come 5 o’clock, it’s quitting time.

So I’m going to chill out here on my balcony in the sun until I burn. I’d take a picture of my luxuriant lifestyle, but my room, and even now my balcony, are so messy I wouldn’t post photos of them. I’d offer to clean it and then make photographs, but, well, today’s a holiday, you see….

We arrive at the office and find out we have to split up according to last name, as the building is organized in such a way that a certain office handle matters for anyone whose last name begins with A through D, for example. I had to make my way through the maze of a building—really, you cannot imagine how maniacally this place was laid out, I mean I think the architect got off on right angles or something—back to the section called S, Sch, but NOT St. I pulled out my passport and double checked whether this was indeed my spot, then, sufficiently satisfied, tried to figure out whom I was supposed to talk to in this vast waiting room in order to get some assistance.

The answer was that there was no official person present to talk to, nor did it seem that there ever might be. There was a machine on the wall with a single button on it. I pressed that junk and out was coughed a ticket with a number on it: 111. I noticed that directly above me was a rather large display board that listed the numbers, er, people, currently being helped, as well as the room in which that alleged helping was taking place. So I sat myself down like a good alien and waited for the deli-style service system to deem me worthy of getting a tasty visa sandwich.

Turns out that the kind lady behind door number 8 at S, Sch, but NOT St only wanted to collect my declaration of residence form. To get the Aufenthaltsgenehmigung, first I had to go upstairs, find the S, Sch, but NOT St office up there, then take a deep breath and ask whether I could pretty please have my visa sandwich now.

I found the office, but since I was a student, I was sent elsewhere. To a terrible overcrowded place full of international students who also did not know what the hell was going on, though they were a bit more overt about it. I was told by the staff there that they were too busy, so I could not be given a number, and that therefore I would have to come back on Monday. Mind you, this was at 11:30am. They close at noon on Fridays because this country blows my mind. But anyway.

Sometime next week I’ll go over again. Apparently the form I filled out and handed in yesterday gets me three months of legal status in Germany, so I’ll ride that out for awhile before coughing up the unexpected (although I don’t know why) 50€ fee. Screw that, man. Convert that to dollars and it gets tragic.

UPDATE: I’ve found out that since I’m here on a full scholarship, there will be no charge for the visa. All I have to do is bring my letter of award for the grant money, and I should be in the clear. That letter also outlines the stipend I’ll be receiving while here, so I can prove to the office here that I’m not going to be applying for welfare.