Tanzen, Tanzen, Tanzen

Have you ever thought you've sent an email and you actually haven't? So someone writes you and days and days pass and they email you again and are like "really, you didn't fucking respond"? And you're like "yes I did!" only to go back through your messages to realize that you haven't? This happens to me a lot. Not just with emails, but with homework and telephone calls and blogging. See, I thought I had written a blog about going to Trier this weekend, but apparently I only got so far as to post pictures on facebook. Oh, and drink all the wine I bought there. Score!

Anyway, a lot actually happened this week, and I didn't blog about any of it. So yeah, we went to Trier this weekend, which is the oldest city in Germany (and also where Vickie's mom is from). It was a crazy-good time. I went with John, Brice and Nathan, all of whom are American, of course. Not sure how I feel about traveling with Germans that don't speak much English. Shit can get complicated. Plus I don't know any Germans that would actually want to travel with us. We're a crazy bunch. Well, some of us.

I don't know much about the history of Trier, though it is something I need to look up. There are Roman ruins all over the place--like next to bars and restaurants. Not to mention, the area is famous for their wines (it is in the state of Rhineland Palatinate near/on the Mosel River). We ate at this amazing restaurant called Zum Domstein, which also happens to be on top of the oldest wine cellar in Trier. And the food was nothing short of heavenly. I may have over-indulged. May. And we did a wine sampling, which was quite lovely as well. Here are some pictures from around Trier:













We only stayed in Trier for the day (hey, it's only an hour and a half away!) so we came back and I was adamant about going to one of the local clubs for gay and lesbian night. I had yet to see any actual gay men in Germany (well, that's not true. The fact of the matter is I can't tell the difference between the straight men and gay men here. The men all dress like douchey Abercrombie models with fucking scarves. Most of them. The ones that actually dress like they just woke up and ran out the door are a pleasant reminder of dirty boys from home). Anyway, we must have gotten to the club early (at 11:45 p.m.) as there were not a lot of people there. There were a few gay men and some scary, scary lesbians. OMG. I think German lesbians might put lesbians from Boise to shame. I didn't know it was possible to pierce yourself THAT many times. Or to take that much acid and prance around the floor like a fairy for 45 minutes (granted, THAT was entertaining).

I ended up staying until almost 3:30 that morning. Brice and John both left me with two English boys that lived in my building. That we had just met that night. Don't worry--I'm pretty sure I could have taken them. There's just something about an English accent on a guy that is a real confidence booster for my ass-kicking abilities. Just sayin'. Anyway, by 3:00, I was so over the 10000 different variations of techno they had played that if I didn't immediately leave the club, I'm fairly certain my heart rate would have changed to "uns-chica-uns-chica-uns-chica." Germany, you do know that there are other types of dance music, yeah? Not just techno? Rhianna actually does her own music that you don't need to add a horrific beat to. UGH. And if this particular sampling of gays in Saarbruecken is even close to accurate, there are 35 gay men to 1 lesbian.

Oh, and gay Germans also dance really far away from each other. At least until 2 a.m. when they are all drunk and just go straight to boning. I mean, good God. There's no greaser. It's like, "hi, nice to meet you, let's dance 3 feet apart, oh good, we've been dancing for 2 hours together not touching, let's go have sex." ?????

In other news, I started boxing this week. The entire class is, of course, in German, but it was very helpful to me that he demonstrated everything that we were doing. I was having a REALLY difficult time understanding anything that he said, and then I realized it was because he had a slight lisp. OMG. I can't understand German; I sure as shit cannot understand a lisped German. Wow. But this class is going to get my ass in shape like whoa. If nothing else, me laughing uncontrollably at the kid with super tight shorts who clearly plays a lot of W.O.W. at home will provide me with a sufficient ab workout. This kid was hilarious. When we were doing alternating jabs, I'm pretty sure he took his seriousness to a whole new level. I'm just visualizing his shorts again. Now I can't stop laughing.

Last but not least, today marks the end of the first week where I understood at least 80% of what my teachers were saying, and I'm feeling much more confident about speaking in class. I'm so, so excited! The more I expand my vocabulary (I'm making verb conjugation notecards like mad) the more I'm able to follow things on t.v. or in conversations. I'm super, super excited about this. In class on Wednesday, one of my teachers, who ALWAYS calls on me despite the fact that I try to hide myself in the corner, made me go up to the board and write answers to questions that we had been given on a worksheet. Okay, so I wasn't entirely sure how to conjugate the verb "fernsehen" which is "to watch t.v." She told me how to write it, and as I was writing it, someone from the room yelled "auf," so I wrote "Ich sehe auf fern." Looking at it, it made absolutely no sense, and then my teacher said it, and it still sounded like auf. I made the mistake of giving her a perplexed look and she got about 3 inches from my face and yelled "oft, oft, oft!" I was like "ahhhh, ich verstehe Sie, ich verstehe Sie!" There's one verb I will never, ever conjugate incorrectly again. Oh, and I love this teacher. She is so freaking funny. I know she's just sitting there mentally making fun of all of us. I can see it in her face. I do the same thing. :)

Tomorrow we are going to Mainz, so I will try to be better about posting a blog!

some strange, strange different things in Germany.

Oooo boy howdy. What a week. It's honestly weeks like this one that remind me of why I should not be let out in public unsupervised. Hell, I should not be let out in public supervised. Especially in a place like Germany. Sheesh.

One of the great things about learning German in Germany is the fact that there are certain social constructs that you just can't duplicate in the classroom. While a professor in the states can say "in Germany, they do things this way, don't do this" I think advice like that is best stored in the long-term memory bank when you're actually here, screwing up royally. Let's discuss.

I'm still baffled by what I'm about to type. It just doesn't make sense to me. Wednesday, Brice and John came over because the Heimbar in my building was having a BBQ/drink fest for the new students who had just moved in. As a side note, most of the dorm complexes through the university have a bar. I'm lucky enough to live in the same building as mine, so three nights a week, I don't get to go to bed until 2:00 a.m. Germans like to party. LATE. Like super late. When I get invited out, they don't actually go out until midnight. Like they get started at midnight (not they are at home prefunking and then go out at midnight). I can't get used to it. I'm an old lady for crying out loud! I'm in bed by 2 at the latest. Some of the clubs here stay open until 7. 7 a.m.! WTF???

I digress. So anyway, Brice and John came over and we ventured downstairs. First off, they had whiskey. Granted it was Jim Bean, I was not going to be particular about the type of whiskey I imbibed because I was so freaking excited to actually see whiskey. The kicker: a double shot with coke was 1,50 euro. 1,50! I think we can all see where this is going....

So yes, I got a little inebriated. Not freak out, throw up pass out inebriated, but just drunk enough that I was super, super friendly with everyone we met. It's always a good way for me to make friends. Never mind the language barrier; we all speak the international language of sloshed. We eventually left my heimbar and walked over to John's heimbar, which is actually on campus. There were tons more people there (but still cheap booze). We went downstairs where there was a dance floor and I started to get my groove on. They were playing some AWESOME music: old school J-Lo, Daddy Yankee, etc. Maaaybe they played the Macarena. And maybe I remembered how to dance it. And maybe all the Germans watched me for the dance moves. Maybe. I'm not going to confirm nor deny that this actually happened.

So here comes the interesting part. Despite the fact that Germans talk about sex non-stop; despite the fact that I have seen Germans having sex in public; despite the fact that Germans don't mind being naked all the time, they DO NOT grind on the dance floor. When Brice and I went out on the floor and started dancing, like Americans typically do at a club playing hip hop and rap, we got some of the dirtiest stares. Like we were sacrificing children or bunny rabbits right in the middle of the dance floor. I looked around and it appeared as though all the other Germans dancing had at least a foot between them.

You've got to be kidding me, Germany.

You have no problem with public sex or talking about sex all the time, but heaven FORBID you grind on the dance floor. God might smite you right there!

A girl I had met earlier in the night came up to the two of us later and said that we must be very good friends, implying that we were a couple. I laughed and told her we just dance like that in America. She looked shocked. She then told me that I was a very powerful woman. Which made me laugh even harder. I think this is why German women wear obscenely large heels when they go out dancing--they are not actually dancing. They are just moving back and forth a foot away from their respective dance partner.

In other news, yesterday we went to the grand opening of the new mall in Saarbruecken. The funny thing is that this mall is just a big collection of the stores that already exist along the Bahnhofstrasse. So this makes 3 H&Ms in Saarbruecken, all within a two mile radius of each other. But they did have a Fossil stores, which made me super excited because I needed a new pair of sunglasses. I didn't actually find a *cheap* pair of sunglasses, but I did find a new wallet, which is awesome because I've been carrying my money and credit cards around in a pencil bag. As I was going to check out, one of the gentlemen working there came up to me and started talking to me. I'm a somewhat friendly person, so I started talking with him. I introduced myself, because it seemed like the nice thing to do, and he brought me a free canvas bag and a tin. Score! He also told me his last name and where he lived. All right... As we were leaving the store, Brice was just shaking his head. When I asked him what the problem was, he told me that in Germany, people are not so friendly with the salespeople.

"He's totally expecting you to look him up in his city."

"What? No. I was just being nice!"

"No, you were flirting. People in Germany don't make friends with their salespeople. They go in, buy their stuff and leave. They especially don't ask for their names."

"Well I do! We had like a five minute conversation--it seemed like the polite thing to do! And I got a free bag out of it, so whatever."

Kind of makes me wonder how many salespeople in this city think I am hitting on them. This would explain why the people who work at the bakeries and stores I frequent are always super nice to me. Either they are happy to see someone smiling or wearing colors, or they are expecting me to take them to a nice dinner and have sex with them later.