Augsburg Mozarthaus & Bench Dancing at Plaerrer

So on Friday I didn't have any classes, and I devoted myself to a few hours of reading philosophy. Wow, that is hard. After that I deserved some fun, so AB and I went to the Mozarthaus (where our friend AO works), and we toured that for a while. It's the house that Mozart's father was born in, and it is very tastefully done and impressive. We then did a little shopping, came back and dropped the stuff off, and then went back to the Plaerrer, which is the fair we were also at last weekend.

We were there early, so we could sit in the small beer tent and eat chicken and drink Thorbraeu (one of the local Augsburg breweries) Pils. Yummy. Then we went next door to the big beer hall, where things were just getting started. A group of very fun and interesting Germans ended up sitting next to us, and we spent a happy couple of hours clinking glasses with them and laughing. We also engaged in the favored celebratory activity of drunken Germans -- dancing on the benches. Apparently you are not allowed to dance on the tables, but if the mood takes you and you need to get higher up and shake your booty, you can do so on the benches. A German told me that it's common that people get so carried away during bench-dancing that they break the bench and they have to pay 20 Euros (no word on if they get to take their broken bench home though). What was really funny is that AB is only about 4'11", and the guy next to her (who drank two liters of beer in about 45 minutes and spent the rest of the time looking at her with a dreamy smile on his face) must have been about 6'3", and when she stood on the bench he was still taller than her. Darn, it was cute. I took a lot of pictures of them. The group also included some hockey players who knew EVERYTHING about the NHL -- I was so happy to talk puck. And there was a lovely and sweet girl in their crowd too, the girlfriend of one of the guys. She was having a night off from being with her two kids and she took every advantage.

It was one of the most fun nights I've had since I've been in Germany, I must say. I was feeling a little down in the dumps that day so it was perfect to drink some beer and do some bench dancing.

LA Gold Lady Kings

This doesn't really have anything to do with Germany, but I have to give my girls some props. Here is a picture of my hockey team, which I talked about in an earler entry.



They won the championship in the Los Angeles Lady Kings Winter Season a few weeks ago. I miss them very much and was sad I couldn't be there during the playoffs to help them bring home the hardware. But I was cheering from over here. They also had a fun celebration party last weekend, and I got an early-morning wakeup call from them on Monday (the party, which had started at 3pm on Sunday, was still going strong by 10:30pm over there, which was 7:30am Monday here).

It's too bad my hockey girls aren't here with me. They're impressive partiers, and we would be tearing it up (after I finished all my reading and homework, of course).

International Civil Procedure

Today I had two hours of INTERNATIONAL CIVIL PROCEDURE (Internationales Zivilfahrensrecht). Whew. The professor, Prof. Behr, is great -- he talks relatively slowly, uses a lot of inflection and pauses for emphasis, and imparts on us his own brand of humor. He did come up with one classic today:

"Foreign judgments are just about as valuable in Germany as toilet paper, just not as soft."

(For those who don't find that funny, at least now you know that I pay attention in class and understand what they're talking about.)

What this means is that if a U.S. judge in a tort action decides that a German defendant needs to pay monetary damages to an American plaintiff, and the German defendant is no longer in America but is now back in Germany, if the American plaintiff goes to Germany and tries to get a German court to force the German defendant to pay the award, the American plaintiff will probably be told "not our problem" as the German court throws out the case. Bummer. But I did learn that "full faith and credit" is also alive and well over here. Say a judge in Hamburg awards monetary damages to a plaintiff, to be paid by a defendant in Augsburg. If the Augsburg guy won't pay, the Hamburg guy can go to an Augsburg court and the Hamburg court's judgment will be recognized as valid. It's the same deal in America.

So as they were talking about civil procedure I had to go way back in the memory bank to remember what I learned about jurisdiction, venue, standing, etc. As it turns out, not a lot. Should be a fun few months. At least I have my computer here with all my first year outlines, and I can go back to them and try to remember what we talked about.

We American law students do have an advantage over the German law students in a situation like this in that we learn civil procedure during the first year of law school, whereas German law students learn it right before they take their first "Staatsexam" (kind of like the bar exam in America). So because I have already had civil procedure at home, the concepts are not overly foreign to me.

In Germany, it works like this: law students study for a few years, then take the first Staatsexam, then work in an internship for a while, then take the SECOND Staatsexam, then they're done (if they've passed everything). They wait to have civil procedure until right before the students start their internships, because they'll actually be using it when they're working as interns for lawyers. I think it might be harder to become a lawyer over here because there are two big exams involved, although in America we have to go to school for longer (undergrad and then law school). In Germany law is an undergrad subject, so students, in effect, can become lawyers after only 5 or 6 years. Still, it seems really difficult and I'm glad I am becoming a lawyer in America.

Classes, My Room, New Friends, Plaerrer

Well, I finally started class on Tuesday. So far I have been to two lectures:

1. Rechtsphilosophie und Rechtstheorie (Legal Philosophy and Theory) -- I think in this class we will attempt to answer such high-level questions as "What is law?" and "What makes a law good?" This is not going to be an easy class because the concepts are fairly complicated, and the professor speaks incredibly quickly. But I think the ideas are interesting, and I think it will be a good challenge for me. I have yet to come across a class in American law school where we think about law in this way, so I am glad I am able to take this here.

2. Internationales Strafrecht (International Criminal Law) -- I did not do very well in Criminal Law during my first year of law school (although Criminal Procedure was one of my best classes -- it all has to do with the professor, I think). So I'm really looking forward to getting another crack at it. The professor made it clear that we have to know something about German criminal law in order to answer questions in the class, so I bought a copy of the Strafgesetzbuch (Criminal Code) and I also found an English translation of it online. This should be very helpful. I am very excited about this class, and I've already started familiarizing myself with the code. It's interesting to see the differences between what's a crime in Germany and what's a crime in America. The professor was pretty funny and engaging, and I talked to him after and he was really nice. He even said I could come and see him if I was having any problems. That is interesting to me because I think generally that German law professors are less willing to meet with students than American law professors (although I might be wrong about that).

So I have one more class this week -- Internationales Zivilfahrensrecht (International Civil Procedure). I already know the professor for this class (I met him a few weeks ago) and he seems really nice and funny so I'm definitely looking forward to this one.

I wanted to take a translation class (translating legal texts from English to German). But I somehow get the feeling that the professor may not want me in there because when I emailed him he replied wondering why I would want to take his class, which (in his view) for me would be like taking a class for foreign students at home. I kind of disagree with this because I think translating from English to German would be a very valuable exercise for me. The professor also made it clear that I would not get credit for it because there would be no exam at the end. Ugh. Seems like more work/hassle than it's worth.

My room is becoming a nice little space. I got my internet and landline connection today, and I'm listening to the radio from home now (and of course writing this at my own desk). I am SOOO HAPPY about this. I also have decorated it a little. I originally didn't want to spend any $$ to decorate it, but I figured that I will be here for a few months, and I'll probably be spending a lot of time here. So I bought a nice little rug and tablecloth, and I'm enjoying hanging out here more and more.

I met some people who live in my apartment building -- some nice American girls and a Polish guy. The Polish guy looks like a young Morrissey, who, if you don't know, is a British singer who was the frontman for the band the Smiths. If you grew up in Southern California in the late '80's, as I did, you will know who the Smiths are.

Anyway, it is nice to have friends. One of the American girls, AB, and I have been getting along really well and doing a lot of fun stuff together, including going to the Augsburg Plaerrer festival. Plaerrer is like a county fair, Bavarian-style. It is not big, but it includes a couple of huge beer garden tents where you can drink a lot of beer and watch the Germans jump up and down on the benches and sing. It's a ton of fun. AB is from Vermont, and it's fun to hear about her life there.

It's late and time for bed.

Update -- April 18, 2006

I finally have internet access on my laptop when I'm here at the university, which means that I can upload the blog entries I've created over the past few weeks. I have uploaded each one as a separate entry, and in the post title I included the date it was created. This means the earlier ones are at the bottom of the page ... oh, you'll figure it out. Enjoy.

Another Friday Night in Munich (From Sat. 4/15/06)

So after staying the night in Straubing, I left late Friday morning to go to Munich to meet some of the people from the Neuschwanstein tour. We had arranged to meet at the Hofbrauehaus at 7pm. This meant I had quite a few hours to kill beforehand, so I went and saw a movie for the first time in a year and a half. The only one that was just about to start when I showed up at the 18-screen theater was “Ice Age II.” It was surprisingly cute and entertaining, and it was fun to sit in the theater and hear all the little kids around me laughing at the silly jokes.

Then I had some dinner and finally it was time to head to the Hofbrauehaus. Roland, Al, and I were waiting in front when Laura came out and said they already had a table inside. “They” meant, in addition to Laura and Amanda, the tour guide from the Dachau tour they’d done that day (A French-Tunisien guy who was friendly and very striking in a French-Tunisien way), and two more American girls who were studying in Scotland and in Munich for the weekend.

So we drank the big beers and ate food and talked about a lot of different stuff. Unfortunately, one of the young American girls in our group was apparently not used to drinking, and as it turned out she had a bad night ahead of her. I have learned to let my drink last me awhile, since the beer here is strong and I usually need to be coherent enough to navigate a significant amount of public transportation to make my way back to Augsburg. Plus, drinking to the point of incoherence is not really that fun for me, and makes me feel more uncomfortable than good at this point in my life.

Anyway, this young girl had apparently not learned this lesson yet. She finished 3 of the huge beers within the span of just over two hours (I finished about ¾ of one, and that was enough for me). By the time we decided to move on to Roland’s favorite Irish pub, she was not looking too great. Of course she had not eaten, and she refused all offers of food at the pub. Within 45 minutes of our being there she had been copiously sick and her friend was forced to apologize repeatedly on her behalf and steer her back to the youth hostel.

Ugh. I hope she has learned her lesson and will not do that to herself again. I’m sure she won’t want to touch a drink again soon in any event. I suppose we have all been there, and everyone in our group was exceedingly nice about the whole thing. I hope she is okay now.

We stayed quite late at the pub, and I missed my train back to Augsburg, so I spent an uncomfortable night on the floor of Amanda and Laura’s hotel room. Luckily I had clothes, toothbrush, etc. with me since I’d come directly from Straubing, and I ended up wearing three layers of clothes, plus my winter coat, gloves, and hat, and I was still freezing and barely got any sleep.

Hockey in Straubing (From Sat. 4/15/06)

On Thursday I left for Straubing, which is in Eastern Bavaria (northeast of Munich). I was going there to watch a hockey game between the German national team and the Swiss national team. Straubing is a real hockey town, even though it’s kind of in the middle of nowhere (Eastern Bavaria is mainly rural, with lots of farmland and small villages). The Straubing Tigers play in Germany’s second national hockey league (Zweites Bundesliga), which I guess is something like the minors, except the main difference is that if you win the second league championship, you get an automatic promotion to the first league for the following season.

Straubing is currently in the final championship playoff round of the second league against a team from northern Germany. I found it incredible that it’s possible that a team from this relatively tiny town in Bavaria could field a hockey team that would play against teams from Berlin, Duesseldorf, Cologne, etc. next season.

But I was not in town to see Straubing’s team – I was there to see the Germans and the Swiss. It was an interesting experience to see a hockey game over here. Unbeknownst to me, I had bought a “standing ticket,” which meant I could stand anywhere in the arena and watch the game. As a matter of fact, most of the spectator area was devoted to standing places, and there were very few actual seats. I decided to go over to the area devoted to the Swiss supporters because barely any had made the trip, and my view was relatively unobstructed there.

The German fans were in good voice – there was lots of singing and chanting during the game. And even though the Swiss fans numbered no more than ten, they were still very loud and active. There were also lots of flags in the crowd, and plenty of people were drinking beer and generally enjoying themselves.

It was not the best hockey experience in the world for me, unfortunately. First, going to a hockey game alone is not a lot of fun when everyone else seems to be in groups. Also, because the rink is open to the outside on one entire side (it basically had 3 walls and a roof), it was quite cold in there, and even though I had my winter coat and my gloves I was quite chilly. Also, it is quite a strain physically to just stand there in the cold on concrete for such a long time. Furthermore, the level of the hockey itself was something of a disappointment after having watched the NHL the whole past season. The players were working hard, but it was clear they were not used to playing together, and both teams were weak defensively (evidenced mainly by bad giveaways by both teams in their own end). The goalies kept the game close, but that was enough to completely captivate me given the circumstances, and I left with about 10 minutes left to go in the third period. As it turned out, the Swiss goal I saw in the first period (kind of a broken play leading to the puck being slipped past the German goalie … not exactly spectacular) was the only goal of the game. So I was glad I’d gone, but I was also glad I’d left when I did. Hopefully both teams will get better before the world championships in May.

Neuschwanstein Castle Tour (From Sat. 4/15/06)

On Wednesday I took a tour of Neuschwanstein Castle in southern Bavaria. This is the castle on which the Disney castle is modeled. I went with an English-speaking tour group and met some fantastic people. The tour itself was interesting – the castle was built by Bavaria’s crazy king Ludwig II in the mid 1800’s, and he was fascinated with Wagner operas, so the castle’s interior decorating reflected this interest. A lot of beautiful woodwork and painting was done on the inside, and there were some weird themed rooms, including a “grotto” reading room that looked like the fake inside of a cave that you’d see at Disneyland.

The castle is high on a hill, so we had to hike up a long path to get there from the base (the weather was not great and buses were not allowed to go up there that day). So we hiked up the hill, went on the very quick ½ hour tour, and then our tour guide Roland (from England) took us on another hike out to a bridge from which the best pictures can be taken.

I do not like bridges, and this one was especially scary for me. It was built across a very deep valley between two hills, and if the bridge broke it would be a long way down. It was covered with snow, and almost everyone on the tour had managed to make the hike out there so there were 15+ people marching across it. NOT GOOD. I went out on it about a quarter of the way, took a very fast picture, and scooted back to the firm ground. Everyone else went across and of course nothing happened, but under the circumstances the fact that I’d even gone on the bridge at all was a victory for me.

Roland took us down an uncleared footpath down the hill from the bridge and back to the bus. Of course we were met by a snowplow making its way up the hill as we were about midway down, and the path was only wide enough to accommodate the plow and not us. So we had to wait in knee-high snow off to the side for it to pass. Luckily the group was very good-natured and everyone had a laugh at this (no one got mad). Eventually we made it back to the bus and then to the train for the 2-hour ride back to Munich.

Once we got back to Munich, Roland took a group of us to his local bar, which is an Irish pub. We had a great time listening to this fun band that played Johnny Cash songs and enjoying some drinks and food. For me it was a welcome change to my day-to-day life here thus far. The group who went to the pub included two American girls, Amanda and Laura, who are college students in Massachusetts and are studying over here this semester (Amanda in Regensburg, north of Munich, and Laura in Paris). They are SO fantastic and I loved hanging out with them. I have not met anyone as warm as these two since I arrived in Europe, and we clicked instantly. It made me so happy to know that Amanda is only a few hours away from me and will be here until July. Also, Laura will be in Paris until May and I hope to get to go over and visit her. Also at the pub was an interesting Canadian guy, Al, who travels during the winter and works in the summer directing boat traffic on water-runways in British Columbia. Al has been all over Europe and to a few places in the Middle East during this trip. He lives a very spare life, staying at youth hostels, eating sparingly, and saving money wherever possible. I couldn’t travel like that but he seems to be enjoying himself. There was also a couple from Philadelphia, both software engineers, who had met performing in an a cappella singing group. They were here visiting his daughter, who is an exchange student in Freiburg. Lovely people, who I enjoyed talking with immensely.

Soccer Part II (From 4/9/06)

(Note -- This will make more sense if you read the original "Soccer" post first -- see below.)

So Saturday afternoon I went to the bar around the corner to watch the soccer match. It was a crazy scene. Except for the bar owner’s wife, I was the only other woman in there for a while. Then a couple of old ladies wandered in but they were there to drink coffee and had no interest in the television. Otherwise it was a group of older men who smoked like chimnies and drank like fish, the bar owner (who I guessed to be in his mid- to late-forties, either Turkish or Italian but had lived here a long time), and me, sitting at the bar, watching the TV.

I felt a little strange at first. They didn’t talk to me much except to ask me who I thought would win (and I said I didn’t know as I was American and had just arrived from California). They all thought that was pretty funny/interesting. Then one guy asked me if I knew the offsides rule. I don’t know why soccer-watchers use THAT as the test as to whether or not one knows about soccer, because it’s one of the easiest rules to understand in all of sports. So I told him that since I had watched and played soccer for many years, I did indeed know how offsides worked. He said, “Oh, you play? The American women are quite good.”

Now it was funny about this particular man (as if the others weren’t also somehow funny). He was sitting closest to me, and when he came in the bar owner greeted him with an informal “you.”

(German language lesson sidetrack … German has two forms of “you”: formal (“Sie”) and informal (“du”). If you are both grownups, you don’t call either other “du” unless you are very close friends, married, or related, basically. A bar owner “dutzing” a customer (yes, there is actually a verb for calling someone “du” rather than “Sie” ) is pretty unusual in any event.)

Anyway, this customer had on a really weird-looking gray suit (everyone else there was in jeans and sweaters), and he said that he had been living in Spain for the last two years. I am almost wondering, based on my understanding of the things he was talking about, if he had gone and worked in Spain in a soccer capacity, like for a team down there or something. I don’t know, it’s just a feeling. The television was quite loud, and this man tended to mumble AND had a little bit of a Bavarian accent, so I didn’t catch everything he said. He was also the only one who wasn’t drinking beer (he had a glass of red wine and a mineral water). I don’t think he was really a dirty old man (he didn’t leer at me or anything), just more politically incorrect, especially with his jokes about black people. But I chalked it up to his being old-school German.

As for the game itself, the poor snubbed goalie Oliver Kahn did not have a good outing. Of course it didn’t help that the only goal its team could manage to score was an own-goal. Bayern Muenchen lost 3-0 to the second place team in the league, thereby jeopardizing their chances of winning the league championship.

I suppose all of this was even sadder for me yesterday after I’d put away a liter of strong German beer (my God, that sounds like a lot … it was actually only two beers but they’re served in big tall glasses). I was feeling quite emotional about the whole thing as I was leaving all my new friends in the bar at the end of the game. But the thing is that it was just a soccer match, and today is another day. They’ll have another game next weekend and maybe “Olli” will have the outing of his life and redeem himself. In any event I’ll have to watch it then, and find something else to occupy myself with during the rest of the week.

One last thing about soccer and then I promise to stop. They have an interesting way of broadcasting games over here. There appears to be one main soccer show. That show is meant to cover all 8 or so games that are going on throughout Saturday afternoon (they all start around 3:30). What they do is show a few minutes of one game, and then they switch to another, and often the signal for when to switch is when you hear a DIFFERENT announcer in the background shouting “TOR IM FRANKFURT!!!” (This means “Goal in Frankfurt!!!”). Then they switch over to Frankfurt (or wherever the goal was scored) and show the replay, then they show that game for a little while, until another announcer shouts “TOR IM STUTTGART!!!” Then, well, you know the drill… The most interesting thing about that whole switch is in the few seconds while the broadcast is switching, everyone in the bar is speculating who scored in that other game and what the score is now (and what’s really funny is most of the time they’re wrong).

This broadcast style would never fly in America. Could you imagine? You’re in a sports bar, watching football with about a million drunk Raiders fans (or Jets fans or Redskins fans or ________ fans). If they were to switch AWAY from the Raiders (Jets, Redskins) to show another game, and not show the pathetic effort by the Raiders in its entirety (I’m a Chargers fan, so I couldn’t resist that one), people would be throwing things at the TV and beating the crap out of each other. All hell would break loose, and it would be hilarious. Unless, of course, you got hit in the head with a flying beer bottle, then the game would probably be spoiled for you.

Antenne Bayern Dings-bums Contest (From 4/8/06)

Oh yeah, this one is more fun than a whole barrel of monkeys. Antenne Bayern is a radio station that plays 80’s, 90’s and the best of today (whoever came up with that phrase should’ve copyrighted it, there must be a million radio stations worldwide that use it to describe their playlists). I think Antenne Bayern broadcasts throughout the state of Bavaria. I only get about 5 stations 100% crystal clear on my little clock radio, and Antenne Bayern is one of them, so I listen to it fairly often (when I’m not watching my Friends DVDs anyway).

They’re having this crazy contest where you have to try to guess the thingamajig (dings-bums) that they’re describing. Believe it or not, in the current contest, the callers have been having trouble figuring out the identity of the dings-bums, and the prize money currently stands at 58,000 Euros.

How much is that? SP told me to calculate dollars from Euros, I should add 20%. 10% of 58,000 is 5,800, doubled that is 11,600. 11,600 + 58,000 = um…wait for it…$69,600!! (Math was never my strength.)

Wow, that is a hell of a lot of money.

How they give clues is they have this little guy (Niels) with this high squeaky voice come on and talk about it. It’s obviously a man trying to sound like a kid, and it’s totally hilarious to listen to him. So far the little guy has given the following clues:

1. Playgrounds need a lot of dings-bums.
2. They also have dings-bums at public swimming pools.
3. People should not bring dings-bums home with them.
4. Dings-bums are very heavy.

I have only heard three guesses so far (I always tune in at seemingly the wrong time) – benches, trees, and tires. Those are all wrong. So if you have any ideas send them to me and if there is a particularly good one I’ll phone in your guess. If it’s the winner we split it 50-50. But don’t ask me to calculate how much that is.

(Post Script from 4/18/06 -- after about a million guesses of "benches" some lady phoned in with the winning answer (bike stands) and took home 61,000 Euros...sheesh)

Soccer (From 4/8/06)

It’s official … Germany is even more soccer-mad than usual right now. Most Americans probably do not know that soccer’s official championship tournament, the World Cup, is in Germany this year. But I know, and I even tried to get tickets through their special lottery system (no dice). Matches will take place throughout Germany during the month of June. It should be fun to watch the Germans whip themselves into a total frenzy over all of it.

Germans discuss and speculate about the chances of their national soccer team the same way Canadians do about their national hockey team. The simlarities are striking – front page news coverage every day, leading stories in the regular radio news, etc. The similarities don’t end with news coverage these days either. The German team manager for this go-around of the World Cup is Juergen Klinsmann, who was a famous and successful player back in the 1980’s and 1990’s for the German national team and one of the most successful teams in the German professional league, Bayern Muenchen (Bavaria Munich).

I guess it’s similar to when the Canadians chose Wayne Gretzky to manage their national team before the 2002 Olympics – they felt they couldn’t lose that tournament, and Wayne represented all that was glorious about Canadian hockey, so he got the call to bring home the gold (and he did, by the way).

Anyway, the German media has lately been on red alert regarding the issue of who would be the goalie for the national team in the World Cup. Apparently, it had been whittled down to a two-man, very public fight between Jens Klehmann (sp?), who currently plays on one of the top teams in the English Premier League, Arsenal London, and Oliver Kahn, who has been Bayern Muenchen’s goalie, as well as the goalie on the national team, for something like a million years. I remember from when I was here in 1996 that Oliver Kahn was the main goalie for the German team then as well, and I can’t believe it that 10 years later he’s still considered one of the main men for the job.

Well, as of Friday night the decision had been made: Jens Klehmann would be the number one goalie. This was the leading story in the radio news on Friday night and into Saturday.

All I can think of as I hear the story again and again is how sad Oliver Kahn must feel right now. He is obviously very famous and successful so he probably avoids newspaper reading, radio listening, TV watching, etc. Who knows, maybe he was too busy going on 10-mile runs over the last little while, trying to whip himself into shape to show he’s still the best. But I feel very sorry for him and think it’s kind of cruel that the team having snubbed him is the country’s top news story. Pain is one thing but public pain is so much worse because you know everyone’s talking about it and everyone will remember it. Look, even I’m writing about it in my blog. Even though it’s probably only read by about four people, I’m still using it as a starting point for a public discussion.

The interesting thing is that Kahn’s team, Bayern Muenchen, is scheduled to play a match this afternoon. I’m considering going to the pub to have a meal and a helles (that’s the standard pilsner-type beer served here – I went running this morning so I’ve earned it) and watching the match since I don’t have a TV. Assuredly it will be on most bar TVs throughout the country. It will be very interesting to see him play (the radio said he was scheduled to start for Bayern this afternoon).

So if anyone who is reading this knows Oliver Kahn, please tell him that I’m sorry to have talked about his misfortune in such an open forum, but I’m just trying to educate Americans about soccer (an uphill battle, to be sure). And tell to keep his chin up.

Update -- Sunday, April 16th

So here I am with all of the Godless people at one of the only places in Augsburg that is open today (Easter Sunday) -- the internet cafe near the train station. I have about 10 blog entries on my laptop, ready to be uploaded, but I still don't have an internet connection in my apartment (and won't until the guy comes and installs it on 4/28). But I'm going to try to post them soon some other way so please stay tuned.

On a non-Germany note, CONGRATULATIONS TO THE L.A. GOLD LADY KINGS, champions of the 2005/2006 Lady Kings women's hockey league! Unfortunately, I was not there to help them win their playoff games (I had to leave to come to Germany the week before the playoffs started), but I was cheering from over here. Special props to my favorite defense partner, DR, who showed what she was made of by playing great even though I was not there to team up with her.

More to come, stay tuned!

Munich

I wrote the following on Saturday night and have just gotten around to posting it now. Enjoy...

***************************************************

I have not been able to write in my blog for a few days because I don’t have an internet connection in the hotel in Munich. Specifically, I don’t want to pay 22 Euros a day to access their wireless LAN. So this will serve as what the Germans call a Zusammenfassung (compilation) of all of my observations during my weekend here.

_________________________________________________

Munich Itself

Wow. No one ever told me how amazing Munich is.

Before I arrived here, my favorite German city was undoubtedly Cologne. I spent a lot of fun and interesting weekends there the last time I lived over here, and I drank enough Kolsch (beer brewed in Cologne served in tall skinny glasses) to have it be one of my favorite drinks. I loved arriving in Cologne by train and seeing the amazing Koelner Dom (Cologne cathedral, located directly next to the train station) grow larger and larger in the train window. The people there are great and I found it generally to be an oasis of friendliness and cheerfulness in the reserved north of Germany.

I’m not sure if it’s a Catholic thing, a beer thing, or what. (Cologne is one of the only primarily Catholic cities in north Germany, whereas Catholocism predominates over Protestantism in Munich and throughout Bavaria.) Munich and Cologne have similar atmospheres, but Munich is really a “Weltstadt” (city of the world, roughly translated). The center of Munich is comprised of a huge pedestrian zone, with tons of stores, a produce market, statutes, churches, and cafes where people sit outside at all hours of the day and drink beer. Everything is easily accessible either on foot or through the massive underground train system. People are dressed fashionably and well, the dogs are well-behaved, and everyone seems generally happy and relaxed.

I don’t think there is any other place in the world like it, and I have become completely and totally captivated during this weekend that I’ve been here. Of course, what I have mostly done is walk around with my friend JS (who met me in Munich on Saturday after catching a ride here with a friend from Stuttgart). We went to the Hofbraeuhaus and had beer. We walked around, then went to the Englischer Garten and drank more beer. It was a gorgeous spring day, basically the first of the year for these people after a very long winter, and they were so happy to be out and about.

_________________________________________________

Bayerischer Rundfunk Orchester (Bavarian Radio Orchestra)

The reason I came to Munich this weekend was to see an all-Mozart program by the symphony orchestra here in town on Friday night. I enjoyed it very much even though (and SP, a huge Mozart fan, won’t like this) I would rather see a mixed program and not just Mozart music alone. Oh well.

The orchestra was directed for this concert by Riccardo Muti, who is a famous director in the classical music world. Wow, what a hottie (even though he struck me as quite the diva). He is Italian, and has long black hair and looks very young and fit, even though the program said he started directing in the late ‘60’s, which means he must be in his late 50’s or early 60’s. He was very refined and his directorial movements were obviously quite practiced and expressive…it was easy to tell he’s been in this game a long time. I did enjoy it quite a lot. I especially liked it in the symphonies when the bassoon and the flute played together and you could hear them above the strings. Those instruments make a nice combination of sounds.

The whole orchestra played well, although it was disappointing that it had so few women…I suppose it might still be hard for women to crack the top orchestras. I’m not sure. All the first violins were men except one, as was also the case with the cellos and the entire wind section (only the second oboe was a woman). It might also be a German or European thing, but I have a feeling it is similar in American orchestras.

Of course, what was really fun was that the concert was simulcast over the radio and internet, which means that while I was listening to it in the hall, SP was listening to it on the computer at work. That’s fun.

_________________________________________________

Television

So by the time Saturday night rolled around JS had left, and I was tired from all the walking so I just hung out in my room. I really didn’t mind because Saturday night is a good night for television in Germany.

To me, one of the most fun shows on German television is Wetten, dass…? It is on ZDF (channel two) on Saturday nights at 8pm. It is a weird variety show hosted by one of the most famous German television personalities, Thomas Gottschalk, who is a tall, 50-ish man with a blond mullet and very strange fashion sense. Tonight he was in solid form – he had on a green velvet blazer with weird sparkly sequins on it, plaid slacks that were in fashion in the 70’s, and high-heeled patent leather black boots. Great.

Wetten, dass…? is a pretty fun concept. I’m surprised they haven’t done it in America yet. Basically, it is like Leno or Letterman, in that a series of famous people come out and talk about their latest project and answer other generally easy questions. Then, each famous person has to make a bet involving some stunt that a regular person claims he or she can do (maybe something like Letterman’s Stupid Human Tricks).

For example, the first “regular” person on tonight claimed that he could walk, in a bathing suite, across a clothesline like a tightrope and put on each item of clothing (shirt, pants, jacket, hat) that was hung there without falling off the line himself. The famous person was a German woman who is apparently well-known over here for something, but I had never heard of her or seen her before, and she didn’t interest me much because she had long stringy blond hair, ugly Pamela Anderson tattoos, and a shiny evening dress that most of her breasts were hanging out of. Tres obvious, no? I was embarrassed for her. Anyway, weird guy made it across the clothesline, which Blondina bet that he would do, so she won.

What was very fun about tonight’s show is that the guest of honor was none other than Tom Cruise. That’s right. They have American stars come on as well, and it’s very strange because there has to be simultanueous translations going on, and sometimes Gottschalk speaks English to the guest so then the translation has to go the other way. It can be very confusing and cause uncomfortable silent delays. What’s even more interesting about Tom Cruise is that the Germans have a very serious problem with Scientologists – from what I understand Scientology is not allowed to be practiced here. I thought he was boycotting Germany, but obviously I am mistaken.

(Actually, I looked it up when I got back online, and it is the other way around -- German, particularly the Christian Democrats, wanted to boycott Cruise's movies because he is a Scientologist ... but apparently they are no longer interested in doing so if he is able to promote his new movie on Channel Two over here in prime time. BTW, I have known many Scientologists over the years and I think they are totally whack.)

Scientology, thank God, did not come up during the interview, and Tom was relatively well-behaved – no jumping on couches, no arguing with the host. Instead he spent the whole time hyping his new movie, Mission Impossible 3.

(Are three Mission Impossible movies really necessary? Actually I don’t know because I didn’t see the other two.)

Anyway, his bet was really interesting. These two young girls came out, then the whole rest of their 8th grade class (about 20 kids in all). The bet was that if any of the classmates put on lipstick and kissed a piece of paper, the girls could tell who had kissed the paper from the lipstick mark alone. Tom got a load of that and said “No way.” But to be fair, they didn’t explain the bet very well. Tom understood (as had I) that the girls would have to identify the kiss marks from all 20 classmates, but as it turned out they only had to get 4 right. Believe it or not, they actually did it, and even though they only had to identify four of them that is still really hard and I was very impressed. Tom was also impressed. Since he lost the bet, he had to ride around the studio on a motorcycle while Gottschalk chased him on a kiddie tricycle, which was totally stupid and fell a bit flat.

The other fun part of Saturday night television in Germany is the live NHL hockey game that they show on the sports channel. I thought I’d never see another game this season, but instead I was treated to Flyers/Devils, live from Philadelphia. It is very strange to listen to a German announcer doing an NHL game.

I’ve changed back to Wetten Dass…? and now Roberto Begnini (sp?) is on. I missed all the Italian translating, thank God. His bet involved a weird German guy who could look at and feel any kind of 250 different varieties of sand and say exactly where in the world it had come from. Of course he got 4 out of 4.

Oh, yes, Wetten Dass…? also features musical acts. So far tonight they have been as varied as Columbian super-hottie Juanes, the 80’s band Toto, and some weird band from Magdeburg (Tokyo…something they’re called, I didn’t catch it) that I have never heard of but is one of the most popular bands in Germany. The band is comprised of boys, I think, although they are very feminine looking and the lead singer is a scary cross between Marilyn Manson and Bjork. The teenage girls in the audience are going crazy, like the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. I just don’t see the appeal.

Once I got back online, I found that there's some good reading about Saturday night's show on the ZDF Web site (all in German, unfortunately).

Wow. Television is fun. I told SP I was going to buy one when I got into my apartment and I felt his head shake through the phone.