Deutschland, Deutschland über alles!
So I finally get some down time to write this :P
Here I am, in Duisburg Germany at Sportschule Wedau. I am attending the BEST program for five weeks and afterwards I will have a five or six month internship at Aldi South. I am enjoying the BEST program and I am taking grad school classes to put forward to my up and coming MBA. I met the CEO of Aldi and he is going to have me traveling with his top exec’s around Germany visiting each store, which is pretty nice to get paid to see Germany. This what I am doing here and why I am here.
My roommate is Parker, the same one I had in China, and he is a pretty good roommate. My German is almost fluent, being as such consistently the people here think that I am German and are surprised when I tell them I am from America. My height, build, body type, face and stature are just right here in Germany to fit in and look like them. I am loving the beer here, no big surprise to all of you who know me well, and I enjoy the freedom to walk down the street drinking a beer. The parties here are pretty lame, crowded and the cool people are acting “American.” It sure is nice to have friends and family around here, for they give me rides and invite me to parties, clubs and to places of interest. It is totally normal here for people to stare at you and you to stare at them, kids can walk around unsupervised and still behave, couples make out and grope each other in public and no one seems to mind (which I think is nice!) also it is normal for people to bump into and almost knock down other people on the sidewalk or in Biergartens (My spell check is loving this). It has been about two and a half weeks and I’ve already accumulated over twenty beers on my beer list of beers that I have never had before. Most things here are pretty damn expensive: cabs, laundry, calls, electronics, porn, nail clippers, eating out (but isn’t it always?) and soda. But the beer, liquor, internet, pastries, Doenner, grocery stores and Trinkhalles' are pretty cheap. The people here are really nice, if you know German, and are really helpful but be careful when they give directions to a place and say: “It’s just right up on the corner, it’s a short walk” because that means it could be anywhere from three to six kilometers away. The Germans are really nice, are a pretty hefty bunch of people in that about twenty percent of them are skinny by American standards and there are a lot of nuances that I really like such as how direct they are ( I love that! ), how free they are to dress for I’ve seen elderly women with purple, green and pink hair, piercings and wearing leather, you don’t really have to take a shower everyday because obviously everyone else does not, it’s perfectly ok to run through people at trainstations and you don’t even have to say anything, you can literally drink all day and anywhere and act just like them by doing so(even have a beer on your lunchbreak), there are distinct rules and everyone follows them, the punctuality is very nice, the weather is about 68 degrees with a standard deviation of about 7 degrees and it doesn’t matter if it is 75 degrees the Germans will still be wearing jackets. The only trouble that I have had was Turkish kids being asinine but that is no real thing. Once a German gets the slightest hint that English is my native language they speak it from that point in the conversation onwards. It cost me 16 Euro to do half of my laundry, which is about $23, it cost me 19 Euro for an adapter and it cost me 9 Euro for nail clippers but they ARE nice nail clippers…so it is no surprise that I ran out of money in a matter of days even though I brought $600 cash. My mom is hooking me up with $200 every week and believe me when I say that it gets me by. What made me think it was really going fast was getting mostly change back no matter what paper amount I gave them. Here in Germany the coins actually are worth something, for after spending 80 Euro I had 5 Euro in paper cash and over 20 Euro in coins which was a relief because I thought that I really had blown that much cash until I counted the coins.
Being here and seeing how well the German culture fits the laws it makes me reflect on our American laws. I feel more free here in Germany than I do in America! No one here litters because it is more socially enforced and ingrained from birth, drinking is no “crime” and it is perfectly acceptable to purchase it on the street and walk down the street while drinking (hell you can even drink beer in the classroom), sex is more liberated and so is the human body which is nice not having to feel ashamed about my body and showing it off, you can be drunk in public here but if you are loud and obnoxious you can be arrested, you take your pets with you into markets, on busses, trains and in most public places except for restaurants. Here there are “Sexual Therapy Centers” where singles or couples can go to get freaky. In the adds for these centers there are sex dungeons, sex chambers, leather rooms and chain rooms depicted next to pictures of happy people dressed up in various sexual garbs. It is really nice to be able to buy food at a grocery store and grab some beer that is better than American beer, buy the best bread that I have ever had, buy a newspaper with the nude girl of the day on the front page, buy some schnapps at the checkout counter on the “last minute” shelf right next to the candy and gum, packing my own groceries because the baggers in America fuck it up every time. Eating out at places it is perfectly acceptable to sit down next to someone you don’t know if all places are taken. If you save up eight plastic bottles or six glass bottles you will get enough money back to buy two beers, so cleaning up after parties pays off! No one here can dance at clubs so feel free to down some beers and enjoy yourself doing what you would call dancing. What is interesting is that the busses are all Mercedes and so are the taxis. Korn here means some sort of vodka and it is really good! The beer here goes without saying so I will say that the bread, cheese, butter, cream, milk, cold cuts, wurst, cakes, pies and pastries here are just the best that I have ever had in my life! You have not had any of the above unless you have had it here in Germany! You can literally make a meal out of cheese, schwartzbrot and beer for the bread is so hearty and chock full of grains, nuts and more that 2 quarter inch thick slices of bread will take about five minutes to eat. I love to dip the bread in the beer which is apparently done here in Germany all this time!
The bad things? On Sunday everything is closed except for Trinkhalle’s where you can buy all kinds of liquids (including ABSYNTHE but that’s a good thing, right?) and some candy. Of course there is the general expensiveness of everything here. The busses are late sometimes and that pisses me off as well as the Germans. The classes I take compare the European Union to America and I am constantly correcting the teacher as to how it is in America. Again, the people want to speak English with me which is annoying to me but probably not to you if you don’t know German. The overwhelming majority of Germans listen to American music which annoys me because I did not come to Germany to find America, I really wanted to find a lot of nice German music. The only overtly religious people here are the Mormons and they are, surprise of surprises, from America, are usually female and can speak German well. A pair of Gap shorts here cost the equivalent of $130 here which is normal here for which now I am going to have my mom send me my clothes and new clothes too.
Well due my costly adventure to Dusseldorf to go clubbing and getting back home I was unable to afford to go with some friends to Amsterdam which I really wanted to go to and more so after hearing their stories. Maybe the weekend after this one I will go with a select bunch to check out Amsterdam but I want to leave Duisburg at 3 AM and get there by 6 AM so that I can spend the whole day there seeing the beautiful city, red light district, legally getting high, trying out the local beers and seeing the sites and maybe I’d stay over a night and check it out for another day. I’m excited! This coming weekend I am going to Berlin for three days and that should prove to be fun too! Marilyn Manson is coming on the 26th too!
I miss Katura and she misses me. We are coming up on three years and my how far she and I have come! It is hard for her right now because she is back home in Vermont and is catching a lot of stress dealing with her sister’s wedding. My little sister was on her mom’s farm for a fortnight and is back to her home this weekend. I miss Katura…I wish she was here to go traveling with me because she is one of the few people that I can travel with and not want to kill by the end. We usually have a great time when we travel and we are perfect in each other’s company. I miss the sex too…fun, great and loving sex that I could have at any time. Soon she will be here…I say soon but I mean two months from now and well into my internship. I am glad happy with our relationship for we know each other a lot better and all the craziness has leveled off. We are both glad to be out of Jonesboro and are both happy to be living in the now instead of just dreaming of it.
I fit in Germany so well and Germany fits me so well. I feel like I belong here…
Here I am, in Duisburg Germany at Sportschule Wedau. I am attending the BEST program for five weeks and afterwards I will have a five or six month internship at Aldi South. I am enjoying the BEST program and I am taking grad school classes to put forward to my up and coming MBA. I met the CEO of Aldi and he is going to have me traveling with his top exec’s around Germany visiting each store, which is pretty nice to get paid to see Germany. This what I am doing here and why I am here.
My roommate is Parker, the same one I had in China, and he is a pretty good roommate. My German is almost fluent, being as such consistently the people here think that I am German and are surprised when I tell them I am from America. My height, build, body type, face and stature are just right here in Germany to fit in and look like them. I am loving the beer here, no big surprise to all of you who know me well, and I enjoy the freedom to walk down the street drinking a beer. The parties here are pretty lame, crowded and the cool people are acting “American.” It sure is nice to have friends and family around here, for they give me rides and invite me to parties, clubs and to places of interest. It is totally normal here for people to stare at you and you to stare at them, kids can walk around unsupervised and still behave, couples make out and grope each other in public and no one seems to mind (which I think is nice!) also it is normal for people to bump into and almost knock down other people on the sidewalk or in Biergartens (My spell check is loving this). It has been about two and a half weeks and I’ve already accumulated over twenty beers on my beer list of beers that I have never had before. Most things here are pretty damn expensive: cabs, laundry, calls, electronics, porn, nail clippers, eating out (but isn’t it always?) and soda. But the beer, liquor, internet, pastries, Doenner, grocery stores and Trinkhalles' are pretty cheap. The people here are really nice, if you know German, and are really helpful but be careful when they give directions to a place and say: “It’s just right up on the corner, it’s a short walk” because that means it could be anywhere from three to six kilometers away. The Germans are really nice, are a pretty hefty bunch of people in that about twenty percent of them are skinny by American standards and there are a lot of nuances that I really like such as how direct they are ( I love that! ), how free they are to dress for I’ve seen elderly women with purple, green and pink hair, piercings and wearing leather, you don’t really have to take a shower everyday because obviously everyone else does not, it’s perfectly ok to run through people at trainstations and you don’t even have to say anything, you can literally drink all day and anywhere and act just like them by doing so(even have a beer on your lunchbreak), there are distinct rules and everyone follows them, the punctuality is very nice, the weather is about 68 degrees with a standard deviation of about 7 degrees and it doesn’t matter if it is 75 degrees the Germans will still be wearing jackets. The only trouble that I have had was Turkish kids being asinine but that is no real thing. Once a German gets the slightest hint that English is my native language they speak it from that point in the conversation onwards. It cost me 16 Euro to do half of my laundry, which is about $23, it cost me 19 Euro for an adapter and it cost me 9 Euro for nail clippers but they ARE nice nail clippers…so it is no surprise that I ran out of money in a matter of days even though I brought $600 cash. My mom is hooking me up with $200 every week and believe me when I say that it gets me by. What made me think it was really going fast was getting mostly change back no matter what paper amount I gave them. Here in Germany the coins actually are worth something, for after spending 80 Euro I had 5 Euro in paper cash and over 20 Euro in coins which was a relief because I thought that I really had blown that much cash until I counted the coins.
Being here and seeing how well the German culture fits the laws it makes me reflect on our American laws. I feel more free here in Germany than I do in America! No one here litters because it is more socially enforced and ingrained from birth, drinking is no “crime” and it is perfectly acceptable to purchase it on the street and walk down the street while drinking (hell you can even drink beer in the classroom), sex is more liberated and so is the human body which is nice not having to feel ashamed about my body and showing it off, you can be drunk in public here but if you are loud and obnoxious you can be arrested, you take your pets with you into markets, on busses, trains and in most public places except for restaurants. Here there are “Sexual Therapy Centers” where singles or couples can go to get freaky. In the adds for these centers there are sex dungeons, sex chambers, leather rooms and chain rooms depicted next to pictures of happy people dressed up in various sexual garbs. It is really nice to be able to buy food at a grocery store and grab some beer that is better than American beer, buy the best bread that I have ever had, buy a newspaper with the nude girl of the day on the front page, buy some schnapps at the checkout counter on the “last minute” shelf right next to the candy and gum, packing my own groceries because the baggers in America fuck it up every time. Eating out at places it is perfectly acceptable to sit down next to someone you don’t know if all places are taken. If you save up eight plastic bottles or six glass bottles you will get enough money back to buy two beers, so cleaning up after parties pays off! No one here can dance at clubs so feel free to down some beers and enjoy yourself doing what you would call dancing. What is interesting is that the busses are all Mercedes and so are the taxis. Korn here means some sort of vodka and it is really good! The beer here goes without saying so I will say that the bread, cheese, butter, cream, milk, cold cuts, wurst, cakes, pies and pastries here are just the best that I have ever had in my life! You have not had any of the above unless you have had it here in Germany! You can literally make a meal out of cheese, schwartzbrot and beer for the bread is so hearty and chock full of grains, nuts and more that 2 quarter inch thick slices of bread will take about five minutes to eat. I love to dip the bread in the beer which is apparently done here in Germany all this time!
The bad things? On Sunday everything is closed except for Trinkhalle’s where you can buy all kinds of liquids (including ABSYNTHE but that’s a good thing, right?) and some candy. Of course there is the general expensiveness of everything here. The busses are late sometimes and that pisses me off as well as the Germans. The classes I take compare the European Union to America and I am constantly correcting the teacher as to how it is in America. Again, the people want to speak English with me which is annoying to me but probably not to you if you don’t know German. The overwhelming majority of Germans listen to American music which annoys me because I did not come to Germany to find America, I really wanted to find a lot of nice German music. The only overtly religious people here are the Mormons and they are, surprise of surprises, from America, are usually female and can speak German well. A pair of Gap shorts here cost the equivalent of $130 here which is normal here for which now I am going to have my mom send me my clothes and new clothes too.
Well due my costly adventure to Dusseldorf to go clubbing and getting back home I was unable to afford to go with some friends to Amsterdam which I really wanted to go to and more so after hearing their stories. Maybe the weekend after this one I will go with a select bunch to check out Amsterdam but I want to leave Duisburg at 3 AM and get there by 6 AM so that I can spend the whole day there seeing the beautiful city, red light district, legally getting high, trying out the local beers and seeing the sites and maybe I’d stay over a night and check it out for another day. I’m excited! This coming weekend I am going to Berlin for three days and that should prove to be fun too! Marilyn Manson is coming on the 26th too!
I miss Katura and she misses me. We are coming up on three years and my how far she and I have come! It is hard for her right now because she is back home in Vermont and is catching a lot of stress dealing with her sister’s wedding. My little sister was on her mom’s farm for a fortnight and is back to her home this weekend. I miss Katura…I wish she was here to go traveling with me because she is one of the few people that I can travel with and not want to kill by the end. We usually have a great time when we travel and we are perfect in each other’s company. I miss the sex too…fun, great and loving sex that I could have at any time. Soon she will be here…I say soon but I mean two months from now and well into my internship. I am glad happy with our relationship for we know each other a lot better and all the craziness has leveled off. We are both glad to be out of Jonesboro and are both happy to be living in the now instead of just dreaming of it.
I fit in Germany so well and Germany fits me so well. I feel like I belong here…