When we last spoke I was headed outbound to Munich in Bavaria. Bavaria is, I’m told, the Texas of Germany, in that it’s southern and distinctive and conservative and has an ongoing rivalry with the rest of the nation. It is also the home of FC Bayern München, the Yankees of German soccer. They’re easily the richest, most talented, and most evil sports franchise in the country. Their golaie, Oliver Kaan, is a hairy beast of a man who helped them beat the US team in the last World Cup. They play at the stadium built for the Munich Olympics, and when we visited it we got to tool around in their locker room. We’ll find out in the coming weeks if my Voodoo has gotten any better since I came overseas.
We did a bunch of touristy stuff, visitng medieval churches and the Deutsches Museum, tooling around in the central park and centuries-old biergartens. We even visited an old Roman-style bath, and its nine different spas. Somewhat awkwardly, at least at first, bathing suits were not allowed. We’re all much closer now. The whole trip was on Helen Bing’s dime, and we got to eat tons of delicious Bavarian food. This is mostly potatoes, cabbage, and roast animal. And apple strudel. I am especially fond of apple strudel.
All of my classes decided that we had to make up the class time lost during the Munich trip, and were unreceptive that this should have been built into the original schedule months ago. Its not like it was a surprise weekend getaway. So this week was full of work, and I’m glad to finally have it behind me. Midway through the week I became frustrated with what an aesthetic and logical catastrophe the German language is, but then I read Twain’s “The Awful German Language” and felt better. He told me I was right. I heartily recommend the essay – it’s certainly better than trying to work out these blasted adjective endings.
For one of my classes we read a newspaper interview with an old German politician who’s been living in Germany. He said that his main feeling of the German Zeitgeist (literally: time-ghost) is listlessness. I am inclined to agree. I haven’t yet met a native German who seemed to have a sense of purpose or direction. Maybe that’s just because I’m comparing Freie Univserity students who are approaching their third decade with hard-chargers like Mike, but maybe not. Apparently the Germans were the lazy dreamers of Eurpoe until the late nineteenth century, so maybe the whole efficiency/punctuality/fussiness/world war thing was just a hundred year itch. Time, as always, will tell.
So last week I’ve had it up to here with evertyhing German, so I decided to spend a night down in Potsdammer Platz. Back in the day the Berlin Wall ran right through it, and now that we’ve taken it back from those pesky Ruskies we’ve turned it into a gleaming monument to American-style Capitalism. So any way, I went with some friends to a diner. If Vegas wasn’t in America, and there was an America-themed hotel/casino there, this is the kind of restaurant they’d have in the lobby. There was, for example, a giant plastic and neon American flag mounted on the ceiling and a ‘50s Harley bolted to the wall above the bar. We loved the place. It seems like every other country’s citizens would be vaguely offended by tacky and inauthentictakes on their culture. But we’re Americans – we practically invented tacky and inauthentic. It made me homesick. I ate a bacon cheeseburger and went across the street to see Kill Bill 2 in the original English and without subtitles. They have a giant wooden Trojan horse outside the theater, which faces the Sony Center plaza, covered by a glass evocation of Mount Fuji. Tonight some people went down there to see another movie, but the theater was closed because Brad Pitt had to show up to watch his own movie (in the European premiere of Troy). What a jerk.
I’ve found out this whole ‘nightlife’ thing they do here isn’t really my thing. It basically involves wandering around from one noisy, smoke-filled club/bar to another, paying too much to get in and too much for a drink to stand around in music you can’t dance to with people you can’t talk to. Then when you’re tired and want to go home, you ride home for an hour and a half on the subway. So I’m going to try the whole early to bed/rise think this week instead.
