Bring on the wall

I decided that watching a bit more German TV might strengthen the linguistic part of the mind (albeit at the cost of every other part).  So I tried out some Friday night primetime viewing.

It was actually better than I had remembered it.  There were two moments of particular note, which will no doubt have me tuning in again:

• A sort of poker-inspired challenge game (My Man Can), in which glamourously dressed women drastically overestimate the competencies of their spouses in such challenges as identifying languages, beating malevolent children at dodgeball or (my preferred candidate for a spin-off show) blowing a tissue against a wall for 7 seconds (he managed 6.3 seconds, if one is being extremely generous).

• A German comic leading a clearly bemused David Hasselhoff - yes, David Hasselhoff - in a game of transferring-the-bikini-clad-girl several feet with or without the aid of a wheelbarrow.

Sometimes it seems like foreign TV is less classy than TV back home.  But at other times this seems like it may be an error.

The Superhero Convention

As I happened upon an unexpectedly bustling outdoor cafe while strolling home in the chill of the night air, I found myself overcome by the odd feeling that if I had been intending to get up to anything nefarious, this would definitely not be the time nor the place to see the plan through.

Long Night of the Museums

Mannheim.  It was my idea.  It wasn't a great idea.

Mannheim doesn't exactly have Heidelberg's charms, and what attractions it does have are more spread out and harder to find.  With a ticket valid only until 2am, we didn't have time to mess around pointing our eyes at second-rate exhibits - especially not when there was an anthropology museum, fernicular railway and castle-on-a-hill still to be absorbed back in Heidelberg.  So after a couple of disappointing hours seeing not much of interest, we headed back to the train station and escaped the city.

Nevertheless, I say 'not much' rather than 'nothing' of interest, since to have said 'nothing' would be to have done a grave injustice to the dancing nun in the synagogue.

Lordybird

Sometimes, such as when you accidentally catch the enthusiastically wandering eye of a stranger sitting beside a man dressed as a gigantic ladybird, you can just know immediately - as if by some mysterious intuition - that the evening is about to become a bit strange.

(And, when he approached our table and pulled out the lipstick, it did.)

The critic

Snowed-in in Germany for Christmas, I went to church.  More specifically, I went for the biggest, grandest church I could find, hoping that it would be easier to be timidly anonymous there.

It was. While the experienced sat on a slightly raised level from which it was possible to get a good view of what was going on, I joined the great unchurched-or-on-holiday fidgeting slightly below, craning their necks, regretting their seat-choices, and over-thinking their hand-movements in an effort not to look out of place.

A sweet-looking slightly older lady came in late. We exchanged clumsy but warm smiles and nods as we tried to figure out whether or not she would sit beside me. My smile working its usual magic, her nod became a shake, and she took the chair in front of me. The service began.

It turned out that it would be a nativity play and so there was no need to sit at the back to avoid the risk of being noisily and specifically evangelised, but by this time it was too late to move inconspicuously. The music wasn't so good from our position at the back (which would still have been the front, if only the attendance had been better). At best, the congregation muttered tunefully in a grudging response to the organ player's epic introductions. Finally the actors made their grand entrance.

Two Roman soldiers of dramatically different likely usefulness in battle appeared, along with a motley bunch of other children in makeshift costumes of dubious historical accuracy. Then came the first moment of high drama and quite moving pathos, when the shorter, more ineffective-looking soldier fell over someone's feet - probably his own.


Everything else played out presumably more or less exactly as it had two thousand or so years ago. Mary squabbled amusingly with Joseph until they finally got a room from a crafty innkeeper. Somewhere along the line, and with a minimum of noise, mess and fuss, a birth happened. Wise men followed a star on a stick to pay homage to the silent child. A narrator summarised what it all meant.

The performance closed to rapturous applause. I clapped along too, confusedly, half-heartedly, politely. The children, returning to their true selves having temporarily fully entered the roles of first century Jews and Gentiles, beamed.

The lady in front of me turned around with a look of helpless incredulity.

'That was DREADFUL!' she said passionately.

As I murmured something non-committal about not really knowing what I should expect, she elaborated on its many irredeemable shortcomings, and explained where I should go next year if I want to see a nativity play done properly, before striding out of the church in disgust.

A lesson in trust

"You should know - it looks a bit girly", she warned me.  But I thought she might be exaggerating - perhaps overly fearful that I'd be immediately put off by a few flowery embellishments, or a spot of lavender text on the box.  I never know to what extent my manliness, which I can't turn off, might inadvertently conceal my softer side and open-mindedness.  In any case, it was a kind offer not to be missed, and it would surely be worth overcoming any misgivings for the sake of improving my German.

So I was bit taken aback when she produced the DVD for me to borrow.  Eight shades of pink, fourteen little hearts, and two direct references to chocolate on the cover.  Which glittered.

Whether there is more truth in the tagline ('Men are the best medicine') or the title of the first episode ('Men are pigs!') remains to be seen, but I expect that neither is true in any absolute sense.

That'll probably be the last major comedy DVD swap for a while.

Frankfurt 3 v Wolfsburg 0 and/or 1

I went to my first German football match last week.

So now I'm a Frankfurt fan.  That seemed the most sensible option.  Approximately 40,000 of the people were Frankfurt fans, with just one miserable sliver of Wolfsburg green nestled in the far corner of the stadium.  Best to stick with the majority, especially when the majority of the majority are drunk, even if they are cheerfully drunk.

And polite.  It's nice for English-tuned ears to hear loud German crowds chanting in entirely non-sinister settings, and the interactions between the announcer and crowd typically went something like this one when Gekas scored:
- Theofanis...
-- GEKAS!
- Frankfurt...
-- THREE!
- Wolfsburg...
-- NIL!
- Thank you!
-- YOU'RE WELCOME!

So they can be polite, even if they'd elbow you out of the way in a queue.  I was impressed that everyone knew, seemingly instinctively, what to shout back.  Although there were suggestions of revisionist history whenever they all stuck stoically to 'nil' for Wolfsburg, even after they had scored.  I didn't approve of that.

But I suppose it shouldn't be surprising, given that their common word for 'history' is the same as for 'story' (Geschichte), and the word that means 'history that really definitely properly happened' (Historie) looks stolen from another language, and doesn't turn up that much in daily life.

Maltesers

Last week, I had a delicious, if mildly unbalanced and slightly overwhelming, conversation with a very friendly girl about Maltesers.  Although, looking back with the benefit of some extra googling, it might have been about Malteser.

The Printer Room

When I was in the printer room, gathering up my freshly printed goods, suddenly the door flew open.  There, in the entrance, stood a girl I had never seen before, clearly also with printing on her mind.

She smiled at me, with a short, delicate smile.  We were alone in that small room: just her, me, two printers, a photocopier, and a giant plotter.  One rarely experiences such poetically perfect moments.  It was fate.  She felt it too.  Probably.

In a moment, a thousand pictures of the future flashed and danced before our eyes: the shy, uncertain getting to know one another, the discovery of unexpected commonalities, the superfluous printing trips, the surreptitious letter-writing, the growing affection, the nervous exchanging of our stories, the active listening, the hair-stroking, the comforting, the perfected affection, the house on the island by the river overlooking the meadow between the forests, the forgetting of a birthday, the music wafting around the campfire, the silly argument in which I was right but magnanimously don't dwell on too long, the paint on the walls, on a canvas, on a cat, the passive speaking, the new ways of thinking, the forgiveness, the end.

But sometimes a moment is simply too huge, feelings are too strong, possibilities too deliciously boundless.  One gets scared.

This, I can only assume, is why she quickly gathered her papers, turned around, switched off the light, and left me alone in the dark with my thoughts, as if I hadn't been there.

Hair

I'm planning to return home for a week or so at the end of August.  I intended to come sooner, but didn't quite figure out the details of that sensibly in advance.

The planned visit is, obviously, primarily for the delight of seeing family and friends, followed by the relief and joy of interacting in shops and restaurants with less confusion, eating entirely recognisable things in a fully equipped kitchen, and being able to go to the toilet in a house without having to first swing my sink into the shower.  Nevertheless, it's not quite irrelevant that I need to arrange regular trips back home in order to avoid a regression back to the fateful 'long-haired months' of 2006/07.

I really don't want to go somewhere here to get my hair cut.  I try to avoid situations in which I might need to talk too much to strangers without any clear idea of the outcome, or explain anything more complex than could be expressed by pointing and grunting if absolutely necessary.  I've only just recently managed to pluck up the courage to ask for bread rolls ('Brötchen') in bakeries, partly because I've been told foreigners pronounce it amusingly (we do) and partly because there is a risk of follow-up questions*.  Nevertheless, shops generally aren't the worst.  It is comforting to know that, if the required interactions go badly, at least I can leave a shop fairly quickly.  What I don't want is to know that, instead, I will have to stay seated, replaying the foolishness in my mind while caped like a superhero whose only power is linguistic incompetence, as a stranger touches my head.

But, realising that the trip won't be for some weeks, and inspired by the unexpected support of my mum (a sure sign that my hair must have been getting pretty unruly), I finally mustered the courage to implement the emergency plan of shaving my head myself.

It was arguably the most difficult thing I have ever attempted.  Arms do not contort enough, eyes cannot see far enough, two mirrors cannot be arranged well enough to make this really possible**.  It was early the next day before I was finally able to stand triumphantly in my hair-lined flat, and even then uncertainty was a more dominant emotion.

I don't know for sure whether it worked.  My mum was able to offer vital advice and diagnoses through video-conferencing at important stages, and in the end she said that she thought it had gone all right.  But I knew that it was somewhat like an expert trying to judge the severity of an oil spill from BP's grainy footage.  It wasn't quite the same as seeing it in person.  So now I need to wait until Monday, and hope that my colleague's honest side will overcome his mischievous side when I solicit his opinion.


*-I'm getting better though.  Last week I asked for sunflower-seed bread, which is 'Sonnenblumenkernbrötchen'.  Yes.  One word.  'Sonnenblumenkernbrötchen'.

**-I realised later it might have been better to try it in Cafe Extra Blatt.  Here, if you choose the right (or, if you're paranoid, wrong) seat, there are enough mirrors around that I once calculated you can see yourself from approximately 10 different angles just by moving your head slightly - thereby making it the ideal cafe for the self-obsessed cubist.

Argentina

OK, I was wrong.  Perkeo isn't a lovely, quiet place to watch football after Germany have progressed past the second round.  It's a seething cauldron of sausage, beer and patriotism.

Or maybe the Germans are just loud everywhere now.  Perhaps everywhere there's one particularly loud German wearing only glittering pink trousers and suspenders.  I can't know for sure, because I only saw the one they had in Perkeo yesterday.

When the first goal was scored, I actually felt a bit scared.  I thought it was good that Germany were winning 1-0.  At least, I thought it wasn't bad.  I celebrated a little bit within my own mind.  That was enough for me.  Maybe there would be other goals anyway.  It was much too soon to draw any conclusions.  So I was happy to return to my simultaneous game-watching and sketching.

It seemed like the others weren't so calm and philosophical about it.  I wasn't ready for that level of noise.  It's not easy to keep drawing under those circumstances.  I don't think anyone else there even tried it.

It only got worse after that.  4-0 in the end.  The streets were full of jubilant supporters, with superfluous black, red and gold decorations on their clothes and faces, and even children squealing their love for Deutschland.  Cars drove around, while their occupants expressed delight by the undelightful sound of their horns - as if all humanity had suddenly changed its predilections and decided that traffic jams were the best things ever.  I don't know how the level of joy can be raised if they actually win the thing, but I suppose we are all aware that that probably won't be necessary.

The Horn Blower

I like to try to find a quiet place to watch football.  I wasn't really designed for unrestrained celebration, and I never feel (and have never felt) quite caught up enough in the moment to shriek or dance or wail or swear whenever there is a goal.  Mostly I just smile (irrespective of the scorer), or laugh a little if someone does something particularly amusing.

That's why I prefer to watch the main matches in Perkeo.  There are some other people there, but not usually too many.  So it's possible to watch in company, but without needing to think too much about displaying conspicuously less enthusiasm than everyone else.

When Germany played England it was particularly perfect.  One could do almost anything (or nothing at all) without being noticed, because there were already two unbeatable distractions: the football itself, and the elderly lady with the horn.

She is the only one who stood up for the national anthems, because she was the only one to show the appropriate respect.  I wasn't quite sure who she was rooting for, since the flag in her hair was German, her accent was American, and she applauded with apparent royalist vigour after 'God Save The Queen'.

At the start of the match, she mostly just sat with her wine and horn positioned on the table in front of her, in a teasing semblance of normality that everyone knew would be broken at some point, but no one was sure when.

It was really only when Germany scored that her loyalties became clear.  I'd never heard an elderly lady toot the German anthem out of a horn before.  I didn't know it could go on so long.  Nor, I think, did the older man who received it directly in his face.  At least, his look of nervous, fearful embarassment suggested it was new for him.