A memorable title.
Can I possibly be updating again so soon? Shouldn't I wait at least three weeks, out of a sense of tradition? Yes, and arguably also yes, but more than ever I feel that I must update regularly lest all be lost. So sure, it's only been two days, but as you all know, I am very, very wordy. In two days I can accumulate an eternity's worth of, uhh, words. Which I will now share with you.
On Monday (yes?) we visited the Gläserne Manufaktur VW has here in Dresden (if you roll over the word "Deutsch" you get a link to the English site). Hearing the name, I guess I was expecting the plant where they make windshields and windows for the cars. But no, it's the factory that's made of glass. And in fact, from the looks of things, if they could have made the whole thing run in Flash they would have invested the necessary effort. That place is Daniel's personal heaven. Here in Dresden they build Phaetons, which are the new luxury VWs (did you know VW also owns Audi and Bentley and so on? I did not). Downstairs you can climb in and around one, admiring the flexible bumpers and playing with the lights. Then you can have your picture taken, walk over to one of the enormous LCD panels, and customize a Phaeton (down to the hubcaps) with the touchscreen. A tap inserts your image, and you can then chose one of several backdrops, etc., before hitting "Drucken" and receiving a 4x6 photoprint of yourself somewhere in Dresden with your new Phaeton.
In the next room over you can swipe barcoded samples of the various leathers and interior finishes and paint jobs, and the car on the screen will change accordingly, so you get a good sense of what your 60 000 - 90 000 € will buy. Then climb into the driving simulator (a Phaeton on a hydraulic bed, with 360° surround video projection) and take a spin. Upstairs you can walk into the sphere-thing and project videos from any of the terminals onto the inner surface, in case there's something about VW or Dresden's style that you wanted to know. And then you can press your nose to the glass and watch as the cars are slowly assembled (lots of handwork) on two big oval tracks, before being moved out for inspection, or over to the glass tower (the thing on the right in the homepage's picture) for shipping abroad. The only thing holding us back was poverty, because that place is designed to sell those cars. Estrogen is no defense.
On Tuesday, for balance's sake, we went to the Semperoper v.3, opera houses 1 & 2 having been destroyed by fire and Allied bombing, respectively. It is distinctly not the Season at the moment, August being vacation time here, so I thought I'd better settle for the tour and not try to catch an actual performance. The SO is another big baroque beast, with no surface left unpainted or unfaux-finished or ungilded (everything was recreated as accurately as possible, from pictures and the documents created last time it was rebuilt). Definitely not my favorite style, but I have to admire their dedication, even when it makes no sense. For example: down in the lower lobby, the walls have wood panelling and extremely ornate moulding, with that kind of greenish finish you get with, I believe, oak. Except it isn't really wood at all: it's painstakingly applied (as I understood it) black beer, gelatin, wax, plaster, and some other stuff, grained to look exactly like wood. The thing is, it does look exactly like wood - in fact, you can only tell it isn't by knocking on it and then the otherwise identical but genuinely wooden doors - which kinda made me wonder why they didn't use, say, WOOD. Which they had clearly discovered by that point (1970-something), given that they chose to make the DOORS out of it.
Sometimes in Germany I have to smile and nod even when I do understand what's being said. I must compliment our guide, though; unlike the Easter-tied dude at the VW works (they were all wearing pink or purplish ties, in fact. It was very European, by which I mean vaguely gay), she was determined not to be the reason we didn't understand. As Tim commented, we could clearly hear every word she spoke. We didn't know what they meant, necessarily, but we were certain we didn't know. Even if I hadn't overheard her talking with another tourist, I would have guessed she was a teacher back in the day (her husband was an architect: the more you know): that kind of enunciation doesn't come naturally.
In class we've been working on particles (meaningless flavor bits that only Germans can understand or, it now seems clear, hope to use correctly) and Subjunctive I and other aspects of polished German, although I personally think I still have some big hunks to knock off before what's left looks like an elephant. We got rather random sentences to help us differentiate between situations where einfach or ja or eben or halt or what-have-you might be appropriate, and being idiots we managed to reconstruct them into a kind of short play (very dramatic), in which P1 tells P2 not to drink so much, and P2 doesn't want to change, so forget it ("Ich habe halt kein Lust. Basta!"), and so P1 says s/he'll just get a divorce, then ("Gut, dann müssen wir uns halt trennen"), and suddenly P2 can't bear to go on living ("Ich weiß einfach nicht, wie es weitergehen sol"). You may be aware that foreign languages create a desperation to be understood that makes almost everything either hilarious (It worked!) or tragic (I'm alone and scared!), and if so you won't be surprised to hear that we found our little skit hysterical. On a similar note, Joao performed a one-man reenactment of a comic short off Portuguese TV (he and I were talking about butlers) involving jobs of the past, and adding pantomine to the aforementioned desperation is really dangerously funny.
On the other hand, all four of the younger (-looking, as I don't know everyone's age) students replied, "No, but I've dreamt in English" when asked if they'd ever dreamed in German. MotherFUCK, I AM SO IGNORANT. WHAT THE HELL, AMERICA.
Last night we had a movie, Der Krieger und die Kaiserin, which I found "interesting". It combined that gritty, modern, 'hey, you know what this love story needs? A MacGuyver-style tracheotomy, that's what' attitude with gorgeous, hyper-saturated film and a few too many camera tricks for my taste; the kind of thing that earns comments like "Intellectual Masterpiece" from imdb armchair reviewers. I thought it a shade more stagey than artistic, but I'm no judge of film. It's got a great soundtrack, though, in that it's very effective. From the director of Lola rennt, which I haven't seen but you probably have. So there's that. I'll add that I walked down to the grocery store beforehand, since I didn't have time to go home for a snack, and what should be playing in the comic-book aisle but Zeromancer's "Send Me an Angel"? I got that one back in my ill-fated industrial period... my mp3s are organized not in folders, but in archaeological strata.
That meant I left the Institute at 9-something rather than 6, and I took advantage to hop off the tram and walk myself over the bridge, taking the planned photograph of the Elbe/Altstadt at night, with the added bonus (in the foreground, although disposable cameras never do work as hoped) of the big movie screen used to screen summer films, which was in place and showing ads before Der Untergang, whatever that is. I originally thought I'd walk from there four or five stops down to Hbf Nord, where I change trams, but the arrival lists seemed to indicate that the SB stops at 10 PM (can that be?), and I didn't want to get stranded, so I took the easy way out and caught the next #7 as it passed. I still got home a good three hours later than usual, so no homework for me last night. Instead Olga and I hashed it out this morning, but she obviously is unwell, and I was not nearly as focused as I might have been, so not only is a lot of it probably wrong, but it doesn't actually have to be; I think I could understand if I tried again. I should do that, I know.
I'm thinking about a day-trip to Prague this weekend, home of more architecture and of course the Museum of Communism, which is located exactly where you'd want it to be: over a McDonald's and next to a casino. Best of all, they're completely aware of that fact. I think we might get along. And anything is better than the program's (not free) trip to Meißner, home of more freakin' porcelain.
I promise not to say anything about grammar, if you promise not to bring it up.
On Monday (yes?) we visited the Gläserne Manufaktur VW has here in Dresden (if you roll over the word "Deutsch" you get a link to the English site). Hearing the name, I guess I was expecting the plant where they make windshields and windows for the cars. But no, it's the factory that's made of glass. And in fact, from the looks of things, if they could have made the whole thing run in Flash they would have invested the necessary effort. That place is Daniel's personal heaven. Here in Dresden they build Phaetons, which are the new luxury VWs (did you know VW also owns Audi and Bentley and so on? I did not). Downstairs you can climb in and around one, admiring the flexible bumpers and playing with the lights. Then you can have your picture taken, walk over to one of the enormous LCD panels, and customize a Phaeton (down to the hubcaps) with the touchscreen. A tap inserts your image, and you can then chose one of several backdrops, etc., before hitting "Drucken" and receiving a 4x6 photoprint of yourself somewhere in Dresden with your new Phaeton.
In the next room over you can swipe barcoded samples of the various leathers and interior finishes and paint jobs, and the car on the screen will change accordingly, so you get a good sense of what your 60 000 - 90 000 € will buy. Then climb into the driving simulator (a Phaeton on a hydraulic bed, with 360° surround video projection) and take a spin. Upstairs you can walk into the sphere-thing and project videos from any of the terminals onto the inner surface, in case there's something about VW or Dresden's style that you wanted to know. And then you can press your nose to the glass and watch as the cars are slowly assembled (lots of handwork) on two big oval tracks, before being moved out for inspection, or over to the glass tower (the thing on the right in the homepage's picture) for shipping abroad. The only thing holding us back was poverty, because that place is designed to sell those cars. Estrogen is no defense.
On Tuesday, for balance's sake, we went to the Semperoper v.3, opera houses 1 & 2 having been destroyed by fire and Allied bombing, respectively. It is distinctly not the Season at the moment, August being vacation time here, so I thought I'd better settle for the tour and not try to catch an actual performance. The SO is another big baroque beast, with no surface left unpainted or unfaux-finished or ungilded (everything was recreated as accurately as possible, from pictures and the documents created last time it was rebuilt). Definitely not my favorite style, but I have to admire their dedication, even when it makes no sense. For example: down in the lower lobby, the walls have wood panelling and extremely ornate moulding, with that kind of greenish finish you get with, I believe, oak. Except it isn't really wood at all: it's painstakingly applied (as I understood it) black beer, gelatin, wax, plaster, and some other stuff, grained to look exactly like wood. The thing is, it does look exactly like wood - in fact, you can only tell it isn't by knocking on it and then the otherwise identical but genuinely wooden doors - which kinda made me wonder why they didn't use, say, WOOD. Which they had clearly discovered by that point (1970-something), given that they chose to make the DOORS out of it.
Sometimes in Germany I have to smile and nod even when I do understand what's being said. I must compliment our guide, though; unlike the Easter-tied dude at the VW works (they were all wearing pink or purplish ties, in fact. It was very European, by which I mean vaguely gay), she was determined not to be the reason we didn't understand. As Tim commented, we could clearly hear every word she spoke. We didn't know what they meant, necessarily, but we were certain we didn't know. Even if I hadn't overheard her talking with another tourist, I would have guessed she was a teacher back in the day (her husband was an architect: the more you know): that kind of enunciation doesn't come naturally.
In class we've been working on particles (meaningless flavor bits that only Germans can understand or, it now seems clear, hope to use correctly) and Subjunctive I and other aspects of polished German, although I personally think I still have some big hunks to knock off before what's left looks like an elephant. We got rather random sentences to help us differentiate between situations where einfach or ja or eben or halt or what-have-you might be appropriate, and being idiots we managed to reconstruct them into a kind of short play (very dramatic), in which P1 tells P2 not to drink so much, and P2 doesn't want to change, so forget it ("Ich habe halt kein Lust. Basta!"), and so P1 says s/he'll just get a divorce, then ("Gut, dann müssen wir uns halt trennen"), and suddenly P2 can't bear to go on living ("Ich weiß einfach nicht, wie es weitergehen sol"). You may be aware that foreign languages create a desperation to be understood that makes almost everything either hilarious (It worked!) or tragic (I'm alone and scared!), and if so you won't be surprised to hear that we found our little skit hysterical. On a similar note, Joao performed a one-man reenactment of a comic short off Portuguese TV (he and I were talking about butlers) involving jobs of the past, and adding pantomine to the aforementioned desperation is really dangerously funny.
On the other hand, all four of the younger (-looking, as I don't know everyone's age) students replied, "No, but I've dreamt in English" when asked if they'd ever dreamed in German. MotherFUCK, I AM SO IGNORANT. WHAT THE HELL, AMERICA.
Last night we had a movie, Der Krieger und die Kaiserin, which I found "interesting". It combined that gritty, modern, 'hey, you know what this love story needs? A MacGuyver-style tracheotomy, that's what' attitude with gorgeous, hyper-saturated film and a few too many camera tricks for my taste; the kind of thing that earns comments like "Intellectual Masterpiece" from imdb armchair reviewers. I thought it a shade more stagey than artistic, but I'm no judge of film. It's got a great soundtrack, though, in that it's very effective. From the director of Lola rennt, which I haven't seen but you probably have. So there's that. I'll add that I walked down to the grocery store beforehand, since I didn't have time to go home for a snack, and what should be playing in the comic-book aisle but Zeromancer's "Send Me an Angel"? I got that one back in my ill-fated industrial period... my mp3s are organized not in folders, but in archaeological strata.
That meant I left the Institute at 9-something rather than 6, and I took advantage to hop off the tram and walk myself over the bridge, taking the planned photograph of the Elbe/Altstadt at night, with the added bonus (in the foreground, although disposable cameras never do work as hoped) of the big movie screen used to screen summer films, which was in place and showing ads before Der Untergang, whatever that is. I originally thought I'd walk from there four or five stops down to Hbf Nord, where I change trams, but the arrival lists seemed to indicate that the SB stops at 10 PM (can that be?), and I didn't want to get stranded, so I took the easy way out and caught the next #7 as it passed. I still got home a good three hours later than usual, so no homework for me last night. Instead Olga and I hashed it out this morning, but she obviously is unwell, and I was not nearly as focused as I might have been, so not only is a lot of it probably wrong, but it doesn't actually have to be; I think I could understand if I tried again. I should do that, I know.
I'm thinking about a day-trip to Prague this weekend, home of more architecture and of course the Museum of Communism, which is located exactly where you'd want it to be: over a McDonald's and next to a casino. Best of all, they're completely aware of that fact. I think we might get along. And anything is better than the program's (not free) trip to Meißner, home of more freakin' porcelain.
I promise not to say anything about grammar, if you promise not to bring it up.