I finally banged out my 2009-2010 Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange for Young Professional Final Report and turned it in. I am now concentrating my powers of procrastination on my delayed "sub-Saharan Africa" issue of the newsletter I am currently (supposed to be) working on for Spirit of Football. Oh man, I get really, really bogged down when I work by myself. The text is almost complete; I just need to flesh out the part about The Ball in Benin (where it received a benediction from the Pope of voodoo). Then I have to format it and pick out the pictures, which sometimes takes me more time than the actual writing of the newsletter. I don't wanna...
The following things are keeping my spirits from dragging through the mud:
Being interviewed this Thursday about my experiences in western vs. eastern Germany for a film about the 20th anniversary of German unification.
Berlin trip next week with the CBYX Young Procrastinators, complete with visit to Bundestag
Upcoming trip to Dresden with Someone, complete with sleeping in a room with Trabant as a bed to get the Ossi experience. Perhaps we can even play games of hide and go seek and instead of taking turns being "it" we can take turns being "Stasi" view some classic archetecture from the Baroque, Romantic, Renaissance and neo-Renaissance periods.
With this in mind, who could concentrate on work, I ask you? All right, back to biz for real this time.
Ughhh. I don't want to finish my final report for CBYX. I'm supposed to be working on it, since it's due tomorrow (!!). I am almost done, too. All l I have left to do is a one-page paper in German about my duties during my internship. I could totally have it done already if I wasn't so busy complaining about it.
I suddenly love every kind of writing that is not my 2009-2010 Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange for Young Professionals Final Report, hanging over my head threateningly like a big gray German stormcloud. So. Let me tell you all about my day!
At the third Spirit of Football tournament today, there were some international students who didn't all speak German, so I explained the rules in English. One of the Germans said, without a trace of irony, that I didn't speak English very well ("Die Anna kann nicht so gut Englisch, oder?"). Um. I don't know what to say.
My interviews at the tournament went much better than the last two times. I'll let you in on the link to the videos when it is available. In the meantime, meet local DJing sensation Mensa Jürgen, who provided the tunes at today's tournament:
Mensa Jürgen spun hits such as "Viva Colonia" (which I have, if accidentally, memorized the words to by now), "Das geht ab" (same), a techno version of Sonny and Cher's "I got you," and Lena's Eurovision Song Contest winner "Satellite."
(Side ramble: I'm happy about Germany winning yesterday, but where on God's green Earth did Lena get that funky accent? Spiegel called it "a Swedish speech therapist imitating Ali G.")
God. Nothing standing between me and my 2009-2010 Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange for Young Professionals Final Report now. Verdammt.
Six readers now? Six?? Well, new readers call for a new post. I can't let you guys down. (Utopia, you had better be Utopia Bakery in San Luis Obispo. I love your buns, Utopia.)
I haven't posted in a week, which means it's time for the week in review, a Querschnitt of my life:
***
Last Saturday, I did my second "I'm a cute but shitty reporter!" installment at a Spirit of Football tournament. (See recap of first installment here.) I felt like I did terribly, though not as terribly as the first time. Sven said that he could tell from the footage that I didn't feel comfortable. However, Marcus from Todo Aleman seeemed to think it was wonderful, so I assume he got the edited version. I personally have not seen any versions, but when I get my mitts on one I'll post it here and for your squirmy viewing pleasure. Have some Schadenfreude on me.
On Sunday/Monday I went with Micha to the village of Gössitz, which for reasons of discretion I am not going to blather on about, except to say that
I had a Very Nice Time and
I should have taken a picture of the alpacas.
On Tuesday I finally got around to watching Friendship with Claudius and Daniel. If you recall, C&D are coming to America in two years and are planning to visit me in California. For those who don't live in Germany, Friendship is a fairly bad but highly enjoyable film about two East German kids who, after the fall of the Wall, decide to travel to San Francisco. Being short on funds, they make it as far as New York and try hitch-hiking to California via the American South, which paves the way for many culture-clash scenes, made even funnier because they can't really speak English.
Yeah...not many Southerners speak German. If I had been there, I would have helped out. But then the boys would have been like "what a cute accent!" and would have started fighting over me anyway.
After the movie, my Straßenbahn was in Stau, so Claudius took me to Anger on the Gepäckträger of his Fahrrad so I could catch my Anschluss. (Incomprehensible? Well, that's what a year in Germany does to a person.)
On Wednesday through Friday I think I puttered around, started working on a new Spirit of Football newsletter, taught two English lessons and wrote the much-delayed fourth Todo Aleman installment.
Oh, and I danced a lot at Stadtgarten. Thursday was Indiecated and Friday was Balkan Beatz. It got so hot and grubby in that tiny upstairs club, it was almost tropical.
Here we are at Saturdayagain. I really should go shopping before Sunday, when all the stores remain mercilessly closed.
Schönes Wochenende noch (friends, lovers, stalkers and everyone in between),
Yesterday morning just before 9 o'clock, Micha came by to see me after my extremely long weekend away, and do you know what? I was still asleep. In such a deep sleep was I that I did not hear him call, or ring the doorbell, and had slept through my alarm, which was set for 8. Micha said he waited outside my apartment building for 15 minutes, hoping I would awake and let him in, seeing as he had brought breakfast by from the bakery, and I hadn't seen him in almost a week. But, I most shamefully admit, I slept through everything! Eventually he went back to his house and had breakfast by himself.
Two hours later, as if rising from the dead, I woke up and realized I'd missed him. I felt so terrible I could hardly concentrate all day. I baked cupcakes and brought them over that evening to say I was sorry. Micha, amazingly enough, didn't seem to be bothered, shrugging, "That's okay, it was nice weather. I watched the garbage collectors while I was waiting outside your house."
He is kind of ridiculous sometimes.
Then he added, in an offhand way, that he had gotten me a present over the weekend, just because. It was a bottle of perfume, the amazing soundtrack to Berlin Calling ("I don't know if it's your kind of music...") and...a hair appointment for tomorrow.
(Have I mentioned that I haven't cut my hair in 10 months and it is kind of out of control? For some reason I dreaded going to the Friseur in Germany, afraid of what They might do. Well, now I have an appointment and I have to go.)
Over the extremely long weekend, I tagged along with natives Claudius and Daniel on a trip to the lovely state of Nord-Rhein Westfalen. Daniel and Claudius are landscape architecture students who I met outside of the Engelsburg last month as I was standing outside of the club's entrance and attempting to finish some wine in a tetra-pak that I had somehow acquired on the Straßenbahn and assumed responsibility for. We got to talking, and they said they were planning an American road trip in two years, and I mentioned that I was from America (unnecessary compliments were duly payed to my command of the German language) and I invited them to my house in California which I will hopefully have in two years...
Claudius on the bank of the Rhein
We started hanging out after that, and they said I could come with on a road trip in Daniel's VW Bus if I was interested in going back to Cologne, and, professional tag-along that I am, I accepted.
On the trip we stayed in Cologne (well, nearby) and with friends of Daniel in Aachen. I sort of went with the flow. Everything was fine with me. I was happy to see NRW once more, in what may well be the last time ever. I was extremely happy to leave Erfurt, where I have been feeling cloistered and redundant.
Art piece at Cologne's Museum Ludwig
We went to a modern art museum in Cologne, and went to the Theater and toured the Dom in Aachen. Feeling mildly experimental, I smoked catnip with Claudius, who proved a great expert on American music of the 60s and 70s. During the long car ride, I introduced them to Gang Gang Dance.
That's a band.
With Daniel's friends, I remembered what it's like in large group of fast-talking Germans. Even after 9 months in Germany, I find it hard to keep up. I felt like I was drowning in German.
Train station coffee
I saw my former host mom, Ellen, perhaps for the last time before I leave Europe. We didn't have a whole lot of time together, although there was apparently enough time for her to whip together a soup and a vegetarian Auflauf (!).
Ellen, I and Nina
Tagging along on the trip made me feel homesick for Germany already, knowing I was making memories which I will look back on wistfully whilst pining away in some climate-controlled office in America.
Today I played reporter at Spirit of Football's street football tournament. I had actually been looking forward to this opportunity as a way to get out of the house and out of English, but the result today was simply awful. My loosely defined assignment was to interview the participants, aged 14-17, and the organizers of the event. The result, I am afraid, will be published on Spirit of Football's website and on Todo Aleman.
The interviewing itself wasn't so bad. Accompanied by a cameraman from the Thüringer Allgemeine, I had a few short conversations which, in hindsight, went all right. But then came the part when I had to talk directly to the camera, and that was when I choked.
The video clip was intended for the Goethe Institute's trilingual youth-oriented website Todo Aleman, and I needed to film a short opening scene in which I introduced the event, mentioning Todo Aleman as partial sponsors. But somehow, I couldn't get any words out.
The camera man said, "Rolling."
I stared into the camera.
The camera man: "Rolling."
"Ladies and gentlemen, football fans, our friends at Todo Aleman, welcome to this year's first Spirit of Football street football tournament! I'm Anna, reporting live from Nordpark in Erfurt and...um..."
(Long pause.)
The camera man: "Rolling."
"...and we have nice weather....(long pause) okay I really don't know what else to say. Can I do it again?"
Camera man: "All right, that was good. This time finish your sentence."
Me: "Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends at Todo Aleman, dear football fans and sports enthusiasts, welcome to this year's first Spirit of Football street football tournament! I'm Anna, reporting live from Nordpark in Erfurt, where 5 teams (here I struggled with the plural of "team" in German) have gathered to um...play football and um...yeah! Enjoy!"
Ugh. Terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad. I started well, but, as often happens to me, couldn't find a graceful way to land the plane, instead defaulting to the crash and burn method.
I am, in a sick way, almost proud of my awful performance.
The lethargy and sense of despairing pointlessness I have recently been experiencing came to a head today. In my internship I am neither earning money, nor am I receiving a grade, nor am I improving my German by writing all day in English. The work I do goes in the same category as the work I don't do: unnoticed.
With this view, it has been difficult to get myself to do any work at all. I do the work of course, but my heart is not in it. At the end of the day I am so introverted and full of English, I can hardly get myself to get out and socialize in German at all. I no longer feel like doing the things I used to do. When I do pry myself out of my dark cave, I am like a mole blinking in the sunlight, unable to navigate, blundering around blindly. Social situations have become comically, predictably awkward. When I engage in conversation, something seems to be terribly off, as if I am an actor reading from the wrong script. What can I say? Working alone in silence every day turns me weird.
I heave a great emotional sigh whenever someone asks where I'm from. I don't want to talk about it anymore. And if one more person tells me how amazing my German is, I am going to personally tear my own head off and eat it. Sometimes people tell me how good it is without me even having to mention that I am not from Germany! Something about that doesn't add up.
I don't really know what I'm doing in Erfurt anymore. I want a real job so bad it hurts, but I can't make that a reality here. I want more than anything to work for a magazine. (I am hilariously bad at most things, but writing is not one of them.) But when and where do I get to use my talent? Not now, not here.
A writer living in San Luis Obispo, Calif., Anna likes cuddly animals, electronica, human absurdity, espresso, infobabble, sweet dreams, bicycles, German, good stories and traveling around.
Posts
