I *heart* Steve Perry

So, yes, I admit it. I'm a child of the '80's. Since I graduated from high school in 1990 I suppose it's inevitable that I love '80's music. Knowing this, SP sent me a link to a video of one of my favorite Journey songs, Separate Ways.



Steve Perry is looking pretty damn sexy in this one, I have to say. :-)

I was in a bad mood until I watched this. My dad arrived in Germany last night for a visit. He is a staunch conservative/kool-aid drinker. We argued about politics for over an hour in a biergarten last night, and I was still mad this morning when I woke up.

I tried, I really did. I tried to listen, be polite, and understand his point of view. I mean, he came all this way, so I felt the least I could do was hear him out on these issues that are obviously so important to him. Ugh. He insisted on calling Germany part of "old Europe" in a demeaning way (that gets annoying after awhile), saying that Americans aren't coming to visit here because it's "full of Muslims" (who are ruining things at home too because "they want special treatment and don't want to assimilate or follow our laws"). He also thinks I'm a big idiot for not going along with the President's agenda. One example: "You've got your terminology all wrong, you know. It's not the Iraq war...it's a presidential act, AUTHORIZED BY CONGRESS, to combat terrorism." Give me a break. There were no Al-Queda terrorists in Iraq before we went there. Get a clue. He also likes telling me he used to be a liberal democrat when he was young, until he "woke up." It was like having dinner with Rush Limbaugh.

He thinks that the main reasons the liberals are so pissed is because of the (stolen) election in 2000. What he doesn't get is that I'm so much more pissed about being lied to about Iraq and the waste of human lives, resources, and money that's happened since we invaded them. I'm much more pissed that the conservatives control the White House, the Senate, the House, and the Supreme Court, with no end to that in sight. I'm much more pissed about conservatives calling my patriotism into question because I don't fall lock-step into place behind the President. I'm much more pissed about Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Bolton.

Anyway, it's making me angry to talk about it now. It's much nicer to watch old Journey videos and have a giggle at Steve Perry.

My dad is only here for a few more days, and then I won't see him again for a long while. I feel bad because it was really nice of him to come all the way over here to visit me. But I so detest his politics that it makes me not want to talk to him anymore.

I guess I should try to be more like my hockey buddy NB. Her partying skills are legendary, as evidenced by a quote on her facebook page: "I don't know much about Republicans or Democrats, I only know that I really like parties." Maybe apathy is the answer when reality just pisses you off too much.

Ziggy

It's been a while since I wrote. Germany is still in the championships, as is England. AB and I were in Berlin over the weekend and it was total madness up there in terms of happy drunken Germans celebrating Germany's win on Saturday.

My husband SP arrives one week from today. I am really excited about finally getting to see him after so many months.

Sometimes he calls me and he holds up the phone so our cat, Ziggy, can say hello too. Ziggy is very vocal and meows all the time. SP and I nicknamed him "Gah-Boy" awhile back. This is because he's kind of stupid (Ziggy, not SP). Ziggy is not the first creature that we have ever called "Gah-Boy"...that distinction goes to our delightful commander in chief ("The Original Gah-Boy").

So here is a picture of SP and Gah-Boy (the new, not the original). This is my favorite picture. I have a copy of it on my desk here and whenever I feel sad I look at it, knowing my two favorite guys are waiting for me at home.

USA OUT

So apparently the USA is out of the World Cup. They had to win against Ghana and it looks like they couldn't manage it.

At least that's what I'm gathering since GERMAN TELEVISION DECIDED NOT TO SHOW THE GAME against Ghana. Italy v. Czech played at the same time and German TV went with that game instead.

It's annoying that we couldn't watch the Americans play, even if they did lose. And try as I might, there was no online streaming of the match that I could find. Furthermore, German radio (at least where I live) doesn't broadcast any of the games. So I have to depend on Yahoo gamecast. Pretty stupid to be here in Germany and not even be able to catch the game (neither sight nor sound) live.

Law School Grades

So a bunch of students from my law school in CA have showed up in Germany to take part in the University of Augsburg's Summer Program. I was very happy to see them all, and a bunch of us went to dinner last night. As it inevitably does whenever there are two or more law students involved, the conversation turned to law school grades.

It's one of the great unexplained mysteries of the universe why law students are so obsessed with grades. Actually, unexplained goes too far -- partially explainable is probably a better way to say it. How I see it is that a lot of law students probably have similar personalities to mine (that's why we're in law school) -- passionately competitive, generally hardworking, with a slight inferiority complex that leads to putting more weight on other's evaluations of us than is usually merited AND unnecessarily comparing ourselves to others and never matching up.

So yes, we were talking about grades last night. To qualify, none of us were (are) top-10% people. So we collectively marveled at those who can do it, while wondering how we can be so average after working so hard (harder than we've ever worked).

Platitudes may be trite, but they're comforting and probably mostly true -- we are smart but we don't know how to take those kinds of tests, etc.

But I thought more about grades this morning (after hanging out with this crew last night). Germany has given me some perspective on grades because law students here aren't nearly as fixated on them as Americans are. It's as much of a product of the system over here as anything else, but they also take time to have coffee in the afternoons and to go out for drinks at night, all in a leisurely way (no pounding 6 drinks in an hour to get as drunk as possible as quickly as possible). In Germany, owntime is seen as as high a priority as studying.

I don't think this is bad. I've had a lot of downtime here and I've enjoyed it very much. I'm ready to go back and tackle third year by the end of this. I have also, with the distance afforded by this experience away from home, can look at grades a little differently. Even though mine are not the best (strictly average, I admit it), those mere numbers represent a hell of a lot of hard work. I think about everything I KNOW now, after the hell of first year and the one very difficult semester of second year I did at home (I loaded up there to be able to take it easy over here). It's a lot. We law students are asked to process a ton of information very quickly, and to be able to use that information, quickly and completely, in a high-pressure, too-short exam situation. This is no easy task, and those who can do it well enough to earn top grades are blessed with a remarkable gift. I don't have it, nor do most people. But that doesn't mean what we others accomplished should be seen as any less remarkable.

So CELEBRATE your law school grades. I'm learning how (it's a process -- some days I still think I'm the biggest idiot), and it can be liberating. It's okay if they prevent you from getting that clerkship or big-firm job. You're going to graduated from LAW SCHOOL for pete's sake. How many people can realistically accomplish that?

Bells

You might think that church bells sound kind of nice, kind of cool, kind of European.

Maybe that's true if you're spending a few days in Florence in a beautiful hotel room that looks out over the Arno. Remember Helena Bonham Carter flinging open the shutters in A Room With A View, bells tolling in the background as the river rushes beneath her? She had all that lovely long hair and a lacy dressing gown, and she was filled with wonder at the fact that she was in Florence, on holiday. At that moment all the romance of Italy was just outside her open window, and she didn't even care if her cousin Charlotte was being a royal pain.

That scene from that move used to be my main image of church bells, and it made me love the whole idea of them. Bells ringing every day, as they had been for years and years! The romance of it all!

But I am here to say that if you lived 500 feet away from two churches, both of which ring their bells a minimum of 3 times a day, you'd hate them too.

USA 1 -- Italy 1

The Americans finally showed some balls last night with their draw against Italy. It was incredibly impressive.

There was elbowing, blood, cleats to the ankles, red cards, sweating, grass stains, amazing saves, hot looking Italians (hello Luca Toni), and shirt exchanges at the end.

Wake up girls! What's not to love about the World Cup?

Contradictions

I just realized that some of the statements in my various posts over here seem fairly contradictory. Bear with me. I'm still working out how I feel about being American (34 years gone and I still haven't really figured it out). Germany has had that effect on me every time. It shows me, in an interesting and peculiar context, the best and worst things about America, and I'm left trying to figure out what it all means.

I also realize that if any hard-core right-wingers stumble on this site, they'll be mad and think I'm unpatriotic for what I'm saying. Nothing could be further from the truth. I feel it's my patriotic duty as an American to not drink the Kool-Aid, to ask questions, and to try understand the role of the United States in a larger global context. In many ways America is still the best country in the world, and more often than not, I'm glad that I'm American and love my country. But I have to admit I'm totally disillusioned at this point -- by the partisanship, the in-fighting, the anger, the fearmongering, and the blatant xenophobia.

Frankly, based on my view in this time and space, America's not "gettin' 'er done" right about now, and I don't like it.

Us against the world??

Okay, I realize I haven't written much about law, studying, classes, etc. But it seems like I've barely ever been in class since I've been here since they have so many holidays. It is my understanding that yesterday's Catholic Corpus Christi thing was the ABSOLUTE LAST ONE. Considering I'm paying American tuition to go to school here, I figure each class is costing me around $500. What I haven't figured out yet is if it's worth it....

Anyway, on to more serious matters -- WORLD CUP SOCCER. Yes, apparently the American team has eschewed the FIFA-designated hotels in Mannheim for their upcoming game in Kaiserslautern, and have chosen instead to stay at the massive U.S. airforce base nearby. The U.S. players themselves are thrilled about this, because they can eat American food and hear American being spoken all the time, so it's just like being at home. The coach, apparently, chalked up their decision to stay at the base as a matter of security.

OK, this is what I hate the most about the travelling American. I'm sure the Mannheim hotels are not only perfectly secure, but also have good food, cold drinks, and comfy beds...all you need, really, to go and play a soccer match. But these whiny American players come over here and stay at an American military post instead. None of the other teams are doing that. Of course I could go into the whole thing about how weird it is that we still have such a large military base in Germany but it's probably better not to go there. The point is, these guys are in Europe to play in the World Cup -- the biggest competition in their whole sport. Not only were they timid, hopeless, and, frankly, totally sucky in their first game, but all they keep talking about is how unsafe they feel here and how much they want it to be like home.

To me, this is evidence of a larger American problem. Anyone who knows me knows where my political sympathies lie, so this won't be a surprise to them. But honestly, I totally and completely chalk up the current sensitivity of Americans directly to the current political climate in the United States, which has been orchestrated by Bush and his band of unmerry men. The U.S. soccer team, which BARELY REPRESENTED on the field (sorry, I mean pitch) and then scurried back to whatever fortress they're calling home after, is running scared, just like so many Americans these days. The obvious mentality: Europe is dangerous, Europeans and other foreigners are dangerous and just want to hurt you because they hate everything America represents ("freedom and democracy"), so it has to just be us against the rest of them.

Over the last 5 years, Americans have been fed a steady diet of "you need to be afriad, very afraid..." and "America is the best and all the other countries suck." That's how the current batch of yahoos have managed to stay in power for so long -- playing on people's fears and xenophobic tendencies. It is actually quite genius of them for the purpose of meeting their goal of staying in charge, but I think it has had some disastrous results for America and Americans in general. It has made us a laughingstock everywhere else. If they thought about it for two seconds, they'd realize why people everywhere else hate us -- it's because we have become a ridiculous shadow of our former selves.

Think about it this way -- if I had watched a soccer game in a German bar between the U.S. and the Czech Republic 5 or even 10 years ago, I can guarantee I would not have been the only one rooting for the Americans. There would have been plenty of German voices cheering together with mine. Last week, AB and I were THE ONLY ONES. All the goodwill in the world has been pissed away. Americans, wake up! Foreigners are not stupid, and they don't like being patronized or having their intelligence insulted, and they (quite justifiably in my mind) don't have the patience to deal with all of our fears and sensitivities. In fact, our act has grown stale just about everywhere, and I can't say I blame them.

Frankly, I don't see this situation changing until the current crop of guys are finally out of office and there's a real mentality change among the American population in general. Of course we wil probably have a long wait for all of that to happen. We also have a lot of damage to rectify in terms of our reputation abroad. I don't see that being an easy task.

The Americans I know here (the ones who are studying here and are actually trying to speak German, not the people who come over here and don't even try to say two words in German because "everyone speaks English here") are trying to do some work toward this end. I have had to be very conciliatory since I've been here whenever the subject of politics comes up ("Yes, I know our government is lame...at least I didn't vote for them..."). There is not enough of that kind of humility going on right now, not enough acceptance of how things are elsewhere, not enough graciousness, and not enough attempts at mutual understanding. It's not easy, but it has to be done.

I sang karaoke tonight...

Yes, I did. Shania Twain. The Germans didn't know what hit them. My friends who were there said I did a good job but I don't know. It was about 100 degrees in the bar so I didn't have all my wits about me.

Germany 1 -- Poland 0

Wow. That was one of the best soccer matches I have ever seen -- the only bummer was that Poland had to lose in stoppage time at the end. Lots of end to end action, and the Polish goalie Artur Boruc absolutely stood on his head.

Hmmm...can goalies stand on their heads in soccer? That might just be a hockey expression. I guess it's another way to say "played out of his mind." You get the idea.

Mr. Borac, by the way, is quite a hottie. Football is loaded with hotties, that's why watching it is so much fun.

Germany was lucky to win tonight.

Okay, I apologize

I realize the tone of my last entry was just a tad bitter. It reflected how I felt at the moment, and it made me feel (momentarily) better to write it. But now I see the error of my ways. I owe it to the Germans to be nice, cheerful, and friendly as long as I am a guest in their country. Americans are already viewed as angry, arrogant, insincere bastards just about the entire world over. Who am I to perpetuate the stereotype?

So I'm sorry.

The USA Still Rules, and You All Can Just Piss Off...

Oh yeah, having tons of fun in Germany right now. The World Cup has started. The US team, which is apparently ranked 5th in the world, got their asses handed to them by lovely Pavel Nedved and the lovely Czech Republic boys the other day. Yum-yum. AB and I were in a bar in Augsburg watching the game, and every other person was cheering against the Americans. Nice. Gotta love that.

It's becoming more and more apparent that Germans are both bitter and insecure. Why, I don't know. Everywhere I go Germans are giving me dirty looks, or staring at me like I'm from Mars, or laughing at me. Honestly, ES REICHT JETZT. But maybe I'm just paranoid.

I asked a German friend if I look either American or weird and he said neither applied to me, and that Germans just have an annoying staring habit. Hmmm...

And, yes, Thursday is ANOTHER holiday in Bavaria. That same German friend (apparently I only have one) explained that it has something to do with Corpus Christi and in small Catholic villages they carry around some kind of ersatz Christ body thing and people are all excited. Whatever.

Tonight -- Germany against Poland. They're totally hyped up for what they obviously think will be an easy victory, since Poland was at the losing end of a similar ass-handing against Paraguay (Uraguay?) as the one that the "Amis" experienced against the lovely Czechs. Oh man, it would be sweet if Poland could pull off the upset. There are a lot of foreigners here who would be very happy about that.

Peace, y'all. Why ya gotta hate?

Pfingsten

So we are currently in the middle of a long weekend here in Germany to celebrate the religious holiday of Pfingsten, which is apparently the same as Pentecost in English.

However, it's not really the same thing, because when the Germans celebrate a religious holiday, everything shuts down. Almost everything is closed right now (except a few restaurants and the movies) and will be until Wednesday. Of course Sunday is a closed-shop day anyway, but the beauty of Pfingsten is that it lasts two days beyond Sunday -- there's Pfingsten Monday and Pfingsten Tuesday. This means that all the shops are closed FOR THREE DAYS IN A ROW.

Man, I love Germany.

This also means that the university did not hold classes today (Pfingsten Monday) and won't hold classes tomorrow (Pfingsten Tuesday). So no Philosophy for me this week. We also did not have Philosophy last week because the professor was in China. So I haven't thought much about philosophy in a few weeks. It will be tough to go back.

After last week's train experience, I decided to forego travelling for a weekend and stayed on campus. Mostly I've been doing reading and watching movies the whole time. After staying in and doing work most of the day today, I decided to go out for a run (the gym was also closed today for, yup, Pfingsten Monday). Germany stays light until at least 9pm in the spring so I left for my run at 8pm, knowing that it would be light when I came back. In a way I almost wish it had been dark. Every single group of people I ran past started laughing as soon as I ran by.

I'm not kidding. I also know I'm not being paranoid because it happens all the time. I mean I know I'm no raving beauty but I don't think I look that funny in my running clothes and baseball cap. I don't run with a limp, I'm not really gasping for air, and my shoes are not untied. Of course there was no one else out there running because people don't really do that here, so when they see someone huffing down the sidewalk it must look hysterical to them.

I'm amazed no one runs here. How they stay so skinny without exercise is beyond me (we Americans have a theory it's because they smoke so much). But really, going out for a jog on the normal sidewalks here (which are lovely and wide ... Los Angeles could learn a lesson about how to do sidewalks and bike lanes from the Germans) is not fun. Strange looks, snorts, and snickers. Good thing I can just put on my iPod and (kind of) drown them out.

Another reason it will be nice to end this madness and just go back home...

Happy Pfingsten! (Ugh.)

Latest Update

Wow ... can it really be June 3 already? For those who have tuned in lately to find no updates, my heartiest apologies. I can only say that I have developed something of a social life here now, and have been busy hanging out with friends, traveling, and soaking up the German culture. Oh, yes, I have also been doing some studying. Here are some highlights from the past few weeks.

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

Traveling

I have been on a few trips lately. My American buddy AB and I went to Oberammergau in the Bavarian Alps a few weeks ago. I think this is mostly known for hosting a famous passion play. It is a nice little town in its own right, although there's not much to do there and a weekend may have been a bit too long to devote to it.

Oberammergau is apparently home to a lot of Catholics who are into woodcarving. There is even a woodcarving school there. It lies kind of in a valley, between a few tall Alpine mountains (which we rode in a gondola to the top of ... both of us had to overcome a pretty serious fear of heights for that to be fun, but we pulled it off).

Scenery-wise, Oberammergau is quite lovely, but there's not much going on there after, say, 7pm on any night of the week. Since AB and I like going out, this was kind of a problem for us. But we did stumble into the one local bar that had any kind of activity at all, and the bar owner was nice enough to turn on the feed of an NHL playoff game for me (Carolina v. New Jersey). I was so happy to see hockey again and I hadn't realized how much I missed it. It was so interesting to watch hockey over here because there was a fight during the game and the German bar patrons, who had not shown any interest in the game up to that point, all got very quiet and focused on the TV. Then the laughter started. They apparently thought it was hilarious that these two guys were duking it out in the middle of a game. I guess the German Hockey Bundesliga doesn't see many fights (or these people didn't watch many sports).

My friend MA came from Los Angeles for a 10-day visit toward the end of May, and she and I took advantage of the warmest day I have experienced since I've been here (more on the weather later) to go down to Lake Constance (in German, the Bodensee) to the lakeside town of Lindau. Wow. Lindau is one of the most beautiful cities I have ever been to, and I would certainly place it in my top three or four cities in all of Germany. We sat in the sun over a long lunch, wandered around down by the lake, peeked in tiny shops, looked at their beautiful churches, and generally had a relaxing day. It's the kind of place that bids you to slow down and take it easy, which is a rarity in Germany. I can't wait to go back there and see it again.

MA and I, joined by AB, also took a 3-day trip north. We took the train to Cologne, stayed there for two nights, then went on the train down to Koblenz, where we hopped on K-D line boat for a 6-hour ride down the Rhein to Bingen. The trip did not start out all that promisingly. Cologne is definitely a more rough-and-ready type of place than anywhere I've been in Bavaria, and we saw a lot more obvious drug users and homeless people there than we were accustomed to. We also had terrible weather for our full day there (rainy and cold the whole time). However, we enjoyed the Cathedral (one of my favorite buildings in the whole world) and the Chocolate Museum (interesting, and yummy).

This is one of the pictures I took of the Cathedral -- I thought the sky looked cool at this moment.




Luckily, the weather cleared up after that, and we didn't get any rain at all on our trip down the Rhein. To me, that is Germany. I have done various portions of that trip about 5 times now, and I never get tired of it. Bingen is also a lovely little town, next to the Rhein, with vineyards all around.

Our train trip home from Bingen was terrible. I hadn't gotten us reservations, and even if I'd tried I don't think I could have gotten them. The train was jammed full of people because it was Sunday of a holiday weekend, and everyone was in a foul mood, pushing and shoving and generally being belligerent. So stressful! It made us generally grumpy and bewhildered as to why people here have to get so upset over the littlest things. Germans definitely are a lot less likely to laugh things off than Americans are, and they generally have much less patience when it comes to crowds.

This weekend is also a holiday weekend (no one has more holidays than Germany, I'm convinced), but I'm staying in and doing homework, now that MA has gone back to America and it's still freezing and yucky outside. It's the beginning of June and I'm still wearing a coat and scarf! I hope the weather is better by the time the World Cup starts next week.

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

Classes

Classes are going better for me. I do quite a bit of reading here, although certainly never as much as I do for law school at home. I am starting to understand more and more of the lectures, and I have personally gone and met with some of the professors. They couldn't have been nicer to me, and I really appreciated how complimentary they were of my efforts so far. It meant so much to me to hear their encouragement and their reassurances that they were there to help me and not to make it impossible for me.

I don't often go to office hours in law school at home but I think I will start going more when I get back. I actually have a few ideas about how I can leverage my experience in law school here to help myself be more successful when I go back. I like the orderly German way of analyzing issues and coming up with conclusions. I think they're much more focused on teaching you the methodology of analysis here than they are in the states. I think that if you have a definite and distinct process of analysis, I think it's a lot easier to keep the rules straight in your head. So I'm going to try to add a little German-ness to my approach to law school at home, and I hope it will help.

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

Social Life in Augsburg

Augsburg is generally growing on me. I have been here now for two and a half months, and I know my way around the city pretty well. This would not be a top destination for me if I was a tourist, but it's a nice place to live, I think. I have a nice group of American and German friends that I hang out with. I go out much more here than I do at home -- at least 3 or 4 nights a week. I think there are a few reasons for this:

1. I use public transportation rather than drive, which means I can stay out longer and don't have to stop myself at one beer if I don't want.

2. Speaking of beer, it's delicious here and I really like drinking it and chatting with friends.

3. I'm not as busy with schoolwork here as I am at home. There are also, frankly, fewer expectations placed on me here.

4. I am living alone here, and going out with friends is better than sitting alone in my room.

5. I don't have a TV here.

Don't get me wrong, I would much rather be at home in my lovely house with my lovely husband and my lovely kitty-cats. I also would love to have my car, just in case I need it. But I have established a nice situation here for myself that will work for me for a little while longer. I certainly am feeling less homesick all the time and more used to the life here and having everything be in German. But when the time comes to go home I will definitely be ready.