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.

The Reluctant Party Animal

As I looked over towards the young, blonde, fed-up-looking, four-eyed lady on the bus, I realised for perhaps the first time that even the uplifting powers of face paints and cake are not without limits.

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.

Christmas

Merry Christmas from the City of Heidelberg.

We got you pants this year.

We hope you like them.

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.

Omphaloskepsis

Friday evening.  When the young and the hopeful throng the streets, eager to notice, to be noticed, to be noteworthy, possibly to be notorious.

There is no better place than outside McDonalds to gauge the pulse of the youth.  To see an entire cross-section of society, or at least a cross-section of one particular section of society that looks mostly the same, except for differences in shirt colour (males) or ability to totter upright convincingly (females).

Like Attenborough with the bats, it's a chance to surreptitiously observe the fashions and interests of a crowd it would probably be fascinating, but impossible, to join.  To see what they get up to.  What drives them.  What they talk about with their peers.  While trying not to show weakness or fear, I cast a glance towards a particularly intriguing group.

It's belly buttons, apparently.  Belly buttons are where it's at.

Business opportunity

Last time I was back home, I was out drinking coffee and drawing, when I suddenly felt more like a house with several bottles of milk and newspapers slowly congregating outside than usual.

I looked up to see a young man, sling-armed and unkempt, standing above me.

It's sort of nice when someone talks to me when I'm out drawing, especially when they make it so obvious where I should punch them before running off if it starts to go badly.  It turned out, he was starting a t-shirt printing business and wondered if I'd like to join in as a supplier of designs.  He looked through my drawings and asked if he could take a picture of one or two on his iPhone.  I couldn't think of a good reason not to at that moment, and I was still trying to work out whether I could get something out of this conversation beyond slightly nervy encouragement.  In the end, I had to take the pictures on the phone anyway, using my preponderance of hands to the full, so if anyone committed a crime against my work it was me.

He showed me some of his pictures.  They were fantastic.  Skulls and the like, but very cool.  "I used to be a graffiti artist," he explained, adding "if you know what I mean", which I had thought I had done before he introduced the doubt.  He asked for my contact details.  I asked for his instead, since I'd be out of the country again soon (or some such irrelevant truth), and said I'd send him an email.

"What did that guy want?" asked my man-on-the-coffee-shop-inside later.  "Seems a nice fella.  Was in last week.  Stoned out of his head."

Looking back, it would probably have been the right thing to nip any suggestions of my participation in the bud from the very beginning, rather than just never sending that email.  But I think that, as a partnership, we probably weren't really compatible, so the ultimate outcome was the right one.