Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Dear Google Translate, I would not trust you with my knife, I mean life.


Last night I had a fabulous idea. And as is common in the primary stages of the formation of many good (or possibly catastrophic) ideas, it came to me at 10 pm. The idea was this simple; GET RID OF THE HORSES. If you think I'm talking about beautiful, tall, long haired, fast running, strong, beast that graze in a field... I'm going to tell you right now, you are wrong. I'm talking about the abominable sin called "wallpaper" that has been harassing and insulting my eyes every time I walk into our reading room ever since we moved in. Picture this; a 7.5 inch high banner pasted onto the walls near the ceiling with approximately 79 strange, floating horse heads staring down at you. Almost like they are hungry or something, maybe I just imagined that, I probably did. But still, pretty freaky really. If you are wondering where I got the number "79" from…take a wild guess. Yes, I counted them... horrible, I know. I'm afraid I'll need some counseling to try to erase that memory. When an idea as wonderful as this one happens upon you, one must act immediately. Luckily I had previously purchased a long, pearly looking whitish creamy wall paper thing to put over it. Now, I'm no wall paper specialist (only incase "specialist" is referring to my ability to criticize wallpaper, and if that’s the case, I should be making money by now. But realistically, probably not, seeing how I'm not sure if it's spelled "wallpaper", "wall paper", or "wall-paper". Some specialist right? I think I'll switch it up randomly throughout this post so those of you who ARE wall-paper (or whatever) specialist might think all the misspelled versions are just typos...), but my landlord approved of the pearly looking whitish, creamy wall paper thing... so I talked my cousin into helping me for "just a couple minutes" to put it up. I felt an urgency growing within myself, the floating horse heads must be covered... even if it was (by this point) nearing towards 10:30. How difficult could it be? I asked myself naively as we looked over the small innocent looking box of German glue mix. Did I mention it was GERMAN? Just checking.. I thought I did. Anyway, I've been studying German for a little over a month now in an advanced intense course (don't you hate the sound of those two adjectives together?), so I was feeling pretty good about my ability to translate the simple directions. In my hasty confidence I had forgotten that I don't speak "Wallpaper instructions German", which is a completely different dialect then "conversational", or "business" German. I found myself and training of no use. So we immediately turned to our good friend, Google Translate. After I typed up the instructions we waited patiently for the document to load, anticipating a sure explanation of the strange pictures on the small box. I'm still a bit confused. Bewildered actually. I’m just going to paste it here for you...

Preparation of the glue. Package contents fully and rapidly with vigorous stirring tightly cold water. After 3-5 minutes beat vigorously Duch... Anger can paste stirred in about 14 days after splitting. approach operating range for roll . Respect; beachton In laufrigtung patterned wallpaper and neck. Scale wallpaper dan down roll, and cut with a Musgumiroller air balasindfrei to drunken done!

It’s that simple! Thank you Google. Cold water, beat the Duch, and Anger can paste. It's really all I need to know in life.
In case you're wondering what we did... we just poured some water in, beat the duch and then laughed like idiots (not saying that idiots laugh more than other people do... more of just a phrase. Although, it seems to me like other people laugh more than idiots, usually because they are often laughing at idiots. I’m not sure, and I still don’t know exactly which category I fit into). I'm still lost on the 14 days thing.. maybe my walls will dissolve or something minor like that. Probably not important. 

The good news is: the horses are gone. FOREVER! Well, most of them anyways. There's still a small space behind a tall book shelf that we didn't cover. But I'm just not going to tell anyone about it and no one will ever know... except for all the people that read my blog...so pretty much, I don’t need to worry about anyone ever finding out.

Some more good news is- my man got to fly right by Mount Kilimanjaro yesterday! I'm pretty sure that was the coolest thing ever, or at least, it would have been for me. I've wanted to see/climb that mountain my whole life. Luckily, he took some pictures for me! Which are, with a little imagination, almost as good as nearly sweating to death, and then nearly freezing to death while suffering from acute altitude sickness, and living off vanilla flavored protein bars. And yes, I'm still not sure who was steering the plane while he was wildly snapping away photos for me(he’s so sweet). He's a pretty talented guy though, I wouldn’t be surprised. He's really been over worked this week though. I’m worried about him. I mean, a 5 star resort, wind surfing and seeing Mount Kili. can really be exhausting. Do I sound jealous? No way, I've had a faaaaabulous week. I got to beat the duch! Haha.. Realistically, I'm super happy he's had a few minutes to actually relax, seeing how he's ALWAYS pulling 12-16 hour days, and even then, those "minutes" are smashed between long flight days...
Really? I just miss him. He's my favorite person in the world.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

In Distress.

So, evidently in order to be considered a damsel in distress in Germany, one must meet some stringent requirements. #1- You must be in distress. #2- you must appear somewhat similar to, or bear a mild or vague resemblance to… well, a Damsel.

Not a cold, wet, dog, who has a left arm that is most likely covered in poison ivy. Yes, I said “arm”. I’m not exactly sure if it is deemed appropriate to call a dog’s two front limbs arms or not, but since I was referring to my own resemblance to the after-bath version of the canine race, I’ve decided I will make the rules. Rule#1- Dogs usually have four legs, but if they are wearing a soaking wet back pack and dodging traffic in a thunderstorm, they only have two… really, I guess it just depends on if they are standing up or not.. life is the real illusion. Rule #2- Don’t ever call me a dog. Especially not a female one. #3-Only in case I really deserve it (which is definitely a possibility).

Back to my story. I’m freezing cold. My pants are doing that embarrassing sagging thing (you know the one I’m talking about. I’m sure I will expound more on that one later) and my fingers appear slightly purplish in color. Obviously, I’m just beaming with joy and optimism.

To make a short story long, and potentially overbearing… today on my way home from school I failed to call a taxi at least one hour before I needed one to pick me up at the train station. Germany is a bit strange sometimes. I’m still not entirely convinced that the “taxi” I call each day is indeed a taxi, and not a bored retiree who gets a kick out of picking up cash from confused foreigners, but either way, I just dial a number and mumble a bunch of groggily sounding words with a German accent and just like magic, BAM! …I have a ride. Well, my “BAM!” wasn’t very bam-ish today.  Instead of waiting an extra hour for the taxi to come, I got impatient (me? Impatient? Never...) and I decided that I would get in a little work out and just run the 3.5 miles to my house. No big deal right? I have legs… two of them… actually. So I cinched up my back pack straps and started out on an easy jog with a smile on my face (only.. it wasn’t as graceful as it sounds in the previous sentence…my heavy back pack was like flying over my head then crunching into my spine and my hair was blowing straight up like a freaking 80’s prom-queen, hairspray crown—only not even half so cool… which is really saying something). It was great, until suddenly, within only a couple minutes (really like magic this time), the blue skies were pushed out of view by an angry mob of grey thunder clouds. Almost instantly, my happy, fluffy, flying,  80’s crown hair was pasted to the sides of my soaked head and my mascara morphed into the inspiration of Kiss’s destroyer album makeup. The next three miles was up hill. Literally, it was..every inch of it. All in all though, it was kind of nice. I mean, I didn’t get hit by any cars (still hard to believe for me..), I didn’t actually get poison ivy  (just the mental kind.. which doesn’t last as long), and I got to spend some time on Germany’s lovely little windy, deathly dangerous, yet strangely charming, sidewalk-less roads. Kind of a rush.

Bottom line? Don’t look like a wet dog.  Germans do not pick up, slow down, or swerve for wet dogs… even if they are wearing a back pack… which in my mind in somewhat of an anomaly. They only look out the windows of their toasty warm cars and probably think the German equivalent of the “poor little thing” phrase (when I learn how to say it I’ll let you know- but it probably sounds something like “weinerstaugutreihlitionzuegdingbatschnitzel”).

Next bottom line (It really sounds like I’m expounding on saggy pants doesn’t it?), if you happen to look or feel like a wet dog and no one picks you up or swerves… don’t be mad. They are probably just worried about fleas. Which, I must admit, is a legitimate concern. Fleas are nasty… it’s pretty much a proven fact. I think I read it in a book somewhere.